"Does it hurt?" she asks, touching gently the places where his skin hardens like a shell. Around those parts his skin is rougher, red as sunburn and hot, too; it apparently had tried to repair itself, but after many new layers had only made the scars thicker, and exhausted itself with the effort of trying. It's not the same skin it was, not anymore. Inflamed, jagged, and thick. Two straight bands rise in an X-shape on his back so large that Allison can't see them all at once. She shuts her eyes and remembers a time when she knew the miracle of werewolves' skin, a fabric so resilient it would stitch itself together within seconds of splitting—a skin that she thought couldn't scar.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not.
Allison hates to consider how white his skin was before, like one whole slab of untouched marble. He was once entire, snow-white and confident in his immaculacy, before she cut him; before she chiseled him apart; before she tunneled through him; before she cratered him. Before she tried to shatter him into as many pieces as he was made of—just as her life was shattered to pieces.
Mother, Grandfather, and Aunt.
Along with her father they raised Allison, built her into someone sturdy enough to bear with grace the stress of pinballing from town to town; they molded a loyal girl, so she was content with the explanations they gave her, and one brave enough to act when the time called. Even the secrets they kept from her weren't secrets, but opportunities not yet discovered.
And when she outgrew their morals, she didn't resent them or run away from home to expand her life in a different direction. She loved them, still and everlastingly, and only the ultimate hands of death could part their bond. But staying as long as she did taught Allison that what she valued wasn't hers to own; that those she loved were perishable, or so prized to her that someone else might try to steal them away. And they did.
She doesn't like to think about the men who killed them anymore than she likes to think they surrendered to themselves; whether it was the weakness of their stems, or the rip of winter winds, the leaves are gone from the tree. No verdict will change that.
And she's more careful for it. Now Allison checks for amber in the eyes of strangers, and for red in the eyes of those she knows; silver arrows aren't ever far from her mind, and when black overtakes her vision she knows it's because she hasn't tried hard enough.
How can she forget the crick in her father's back that assures he's temporary? How can she ignore the lines of allies and enemies assembling on the battlefield, the cannon fire shaking her window? It was only a matter of time before she, too, was seduced into the march, and then the gun would be forced into her hands.
The trick had worked before.
The need to protect is too strong a pull; it compels one to unthinkable action. Without even a full day to mourn, her mother's grave turned inside out, was leveraged so the brave young girl who took on her parents' problems would perpetuate them through vengeance; would sink thirty arrows in two of Derek's pack, and carve the third near in half.
But that rage was short-lived. Watered with lies, it bloomed from death's frustrations, ripened into violence, and rotted into the shame one feels after any large mistake. What had once charged Allison's blood with power and purpose is a spoiled fruit, and what is left over of her now she's not sure.
Who is she now, if not who she was then? No longer a mother's daughter, but an orphan. No longer powerful, but corrosive. No longer a soldier, but a cut-throat, a butcher. A mutagen.
She struggles to recall the shape of her life before it became riddled with holes and filled with venom, when her biggest problems were making friends at new schools and ascending the next level of gymnastics. What she remembers of that time is only painting landscapes in her room, a recollection so unlike her current self it seems the memory was stolen from another girl. But she had enjoyed painting, hadn't she? The watercolors tacked to her walls are testaments to that.
So why now does the brush feel unfamiliar between her fingers? Why does the whiteness of an untouched page seem to flinch under her eyes?
What explanation she finds says, because that isn't her. Not anymore. Those smudges of trees are no more herself than the case of ring dangers under her bed, or the malice with which she held them. No more than the scars on Isaac's skin are his own.
All the other selves collected in her memories are just that—other. They may look like her, but do they know the same things she knows? Do they want the same things she wants? Have they felt what she feels? Of course not. Allison wasn't always the same Allison, like how anyone else has changed with time. Scott wasn't always a werewolf; she wasn't always a Hunter, and she might not always be a Hunter. And no matter how much his dad likes to say he looks like her, Stiles isn't always going to be the spitting image of his mother.
People are as consistent as the color of the sky.
Isn't that a thought? What if over our heads was blue as ocean, always? No night, no weather, and no rise or set? People would lose their minds. Some might even bury their heads in the dirt just to see something else on top, or shoot every kind of firework into the sky as a slapdash solution for color; even yearn for strikes of lightning to fall on their houses if it meant a little rain. The land would die and sense would die with it.
Things have to change, Allison knows, with time. Like her little dolls from childhood, boxed up in the attic; how would she look now if one's head poked from her backpack as it had in her many elementary classrooms? Surely her old unitard doesn't fit, either. And the bicycle tarnishing in Scott's backyard—it doesn't move anymore, and he gets around quicker without it.
So old are these that one has trouble remembering how they were meant to be used in the first place or why. But no one remembers because no one needs to; older things are succeeded by newer ones that do better, look better, and make the owners better for owning them. Scott traded his bicycle for wheels that don't tax him in sweat, and now Allison is relinquishing her old life for something else.
So that question still clings to her mind like a fever: What is "something else?" Who is she? Who is Allison, if not the rosy-cheeked girl who doesn't care if the other kids tiptoe around her newness, because she has her doll and that's all she needs? Who is she, if not the young gymnast walking the wire with straight legs, even if she feels like buckling? Who is she, if not the fledgling Hunter roped to a chair so she can prove to her father how strong she is?
Who is Allison Argent, and what happens when she breaks free? Where does she go when she's able to run? Against what does she defend herself when she can lift her arms to fight? And what happens when the thing she's fighting isn't an enemy at all? No, not a soldier, but a boy, young as her and swallowed into the same cave mouth of violence that she's in.
What happens when war loses its reason, when loyalty becomes possession? What happens when the soldier loses her way? And what happens when she wants to stop?
That is, if she can stop. Wave after wave breaks over her head, drowning her, and the water is still rising. She is waist-deep in a boiling hot war that is not her own, and those she thought were allies are weighting her pockets like stones. Is she alone? Or can someone help her? And if so, who? How is one girl with her arms flung out expected to stop the tide?
…
Allison's eyes have been shut longer than she can remember, and when Isaac clasps her hands she realizes she's shaking. He lifts one hand to his mouth, shushes the cannonade in her pulse, and then kisses her palm, where the knife used to lay.
Without knowing it, he answers her question.
Maybe waves pound the coast and obliterate the shoreline until its sand. But it's still rock, isn't it? Smaller and looser, but still the same as it ever was. Except now its surface doesn't bite the heels of those who visit; it's smooth, and footsteps linger like a lover's touch.
It doesn't fight with the water anymore, either—it doesn't have to. When the tide rushes in it locks fingers with it, drinks it, lets it paint smiles of foam on it; and when the tide washes out, it lets it take some of the dirt, too. It's cleaner that way. Softer, too.
If only the skin around Isaac's scars knew that, maybe it would be softer, too.
But for now she'll take comfort in just the tenderness of his hands.
Allison Argent: Daughter, warrior, and something more.