Blind Spot

Prologue

"All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time." – Mitch Albom

October, 2002

"Come away from the road!" A tall, broad shouldered man shouted over the pouring rain and faint thunder beginning to rumble in the distance.

The man huddled further into his moss green raincoat, his skin beginning to sting from the cold.

A little girl danced ahead of him. Her bright yellow coat and matching boots stood out against the earthy tones of the forest beside her. The girl's laugh filtered through the air with ease; the kind of laugh that is instinctively childlike and pure. She jumped into a particularly deep puddle, splashing dirt onto her already soaking clothes.

"Emma!" The man called again.

"I'm just playing, dad!"

"You're too close to the road, squirt. Come here!"

Emma jumped one last time in the puddle and, with a giggle, sprinted back to her dad. She skidded to a halt in front of the towering man and grinned toothily up at him. Her cheeks flushed pink with the cold and her red hair dripped with water despite the hood of her coat. Emma reached up and wrapped her gloved hand round the crook of her father's elbow, urging him to skip along with her.

Their feet sent droplets of rain water flying into the air as they trekked through the growing storm. The thunder was getting louder, and faint flashes of lightning could be seen striking in the distance. Slick with rain, the road reflected the forest surrounding the father and daughter. The trees drooped with the weight of the rain, which was beginning to make it difficult for the man to see ahead of him. Luckily, a bus stop offered shelter ahead of the pair, and the man urged his daughter to hurry.

The two scurried into the relative safety of the shelter, huddling into each other to keep warm from the biting cold. Yet, something began to nag at the back of Emma's mind as she and her father stared out into the storm. She wanted to run out of the shelter and back into the rain, to splash and play the way that every child should. And so she did. Edging away from her father, she was pulled back into the rain, her feet scuffing against the soaking ground as she went.

It was an odd sensation that swept over the little girl; almost as if she had no control over her own body. Something compelled her forward, like a string pulling at her stomach and a voice whispering "move, move, move." It was that magnetic voice that dragged her forward, squelching in her boots and her hands freezing cold.

As the man checked his watch – 11:11 am – a black car rounded the corner of the road at an alarming speed. The vehicle swerved into the opposite lane, its tires squealing with the loss of traction.

"Move, move, move," the voice whispered again, drowning out the speeding car and Emma's father calling her back to him.

The car screeched as it slid on the slippery surface of the road, the driver grappling desperately with the wheel.

The voice abruptly faded from Emma's mind just in time for her to hear the car spin off of the road and straight into the bus shelter she had been standing in moments before.

For as long as Emma lived, she would never be able to forget the blank look on her father's face as he was trapped between the wall of the shelter and the hood of the car; nor would she forget the thin lines of blood that spilled out of the corners of his lips. She certainly wouldn't forget that he did not respond to her touch when she placed her hand over his and pleaded his name, "dad?"

No matter how hard little seven-year-old Emma Moore tried to forget, she would always remember the flashing lights of the ambulance and the voices of the fire fighters prying the black car away from her father's body. Though it was a haze, she would always remember Nurse McCall pulling her into an embrace and rocking her soaking body back and forth.

At seven years old, Emma Moore stopped being a child. Her childhood ended sitting in a hospital waiting room surrounded by flickering florescent lights in the middle of a brutal storm.

As nurses and doctors scurried by her, they did not stop to notice the girl with crystal tears staining her cheeks, nor did they notice her silent stare. No one noticed Emma sitting on her hands as they gradually numbed and lost their grip on her innocence. Her eyes had stopped crying but remained open, unblinking at the wall across the hall from her. Emma's little eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she counted the white squares on the wall, wishing that by the time she counted them all that the day would reset and the world would be whole again.

She wished that she could wake up in her bed again and not insist that her father take her to the movies. She wished that she hadn't been tired of watching the same videos over and over again, and that her father hadn't given into her demands when the rain had just started falling. She wished that the rain had not picked up at such an alarming rate, and that her father had continued walking to the movies instead of seeking shelter in a bus stop. She wished that the owner of the black car had not lost control of the wheel and veered off the side of the road and straight into her father. But there were no genies to grant her wishes and she did not have the ability to rewind time. In that moment, Emma ceased being a child.

January, 2011

When Emma was sixteen, she did not realise that she was close to losing another part of herself. On a deceivingly sunny morning, as she readied herself for school, that event was far away.

On that morning, as her world began to slowly change, she was stirring from her fitful – though short – sleep. Her blue and white striped curtains graciously blocked the sun from entering her bedroom before she was ready to face the day, but an urgent beeping began to filter into her consciousness. With a grunt and a firm slap, the alarm was quickly silenced. Emma retracted her hand and rubbed at her eyes. She threw her arms over her head and stretched her toes, letting out a yawn as she did so, embracing the feeling of her muscles stretching. Rolling out of bed with a sigh, she padded her way across the cream hallway and into the bathroom. She closed the bathroom door behind her and switched on the far too bright light. Squinting in the illuminated bathroom, Emma could finally take in her morning appearance and groaned when she saw the chaos on top of her head. Strands of red hair stuck out at every angle with sections having fallen out of her bun and trailed their way down her back or were framing her face. She turned the tap on and let the cool water splash into the sink and swirl down the drain before washing her freckled face.

Growing up, Emma was always ashamed of the freckles splashed across her skin. She would look at her fresh, clear faced classmates with such envy that she could have sworn she turned a little green. Her abundance of freckles, paired with her flaming red hair, made her a target for ridicule by the crueller children in her class. "Spotty face", "Dalmatian", "Ginger Nut", and "Fire Truck" where the names she would recall most often later in life when she lay awake at two in the morning, with sleep evading her. Such names, and her already low self-esteem, led to a young Emma trying to hide and cover up the very things that made her unique. She grew out her bangs – even though they irritated her eyes – and grew accustomed to pairing a baseball cap with most of her outfits.

When she was a child, she never understood why her mother insisted that her freckles and hair color were beautiful. It was simply incomprehensible to her. She would look at the children in her class, the majority of whom only had a few freckles scattered across their bodies, and viewed them as looking at the night sky with bare eyes. The stars on their skin were evenly spaced apart and barely noticeable. She looked at herself and could only compare her own skin to looking at the stars through a telescope; everything was brought into focus and cramped closer together, each star clambering for attention. Cluttered. Messy.

The red of her hair was another point of contention in her childhood. Her red locks were immediately noticeable in a sea of brown and black and blonde. Lydia Martin was the only other red head in her age group, yet Lydia had deniability. Lydia had the shade of red that Emma used to dream of having; it was the color of the rising sun, a beautiful stretch of gold paving, or a pool of daisies drenched in honey. Lydia could pass for strawberry blonde, Emma could not. Emma always thought of Lydia's hair in a pleasant manner, it was pleasing to look at after all, but she could never regard herself in the same fashion. Emma was a blazing fire, ribbons of scarlet silk, or drops of blood in a bowl of water. She never thought of her hair as being calming like Lydia's.

It wasn't until her father died that the teasing lessened somewhat – even children know when to be respectful – and she slowly began to release some of her self-hatred.

She remembered the day she began to value her freckles clearly. She had sat in a black padded chair in a hairdressing salon while her mother had her hair trimmed. There had been a stack of glossy magazines on the small oak coffee table beside her; the covers of the magazines were filled with beautiful women, smiling at the reader with dazzlingly white teeth and sparkling eyes, with sleek hair that Emma wanted to run her fingers through. She had picked up the magazine on top of the pile and gazed longingly at the blonde, freckle free, woman staring back at her. There was no doubt that the woman was beautiful, her smile seemed to scream "don't you wish you were me?" Emma agreed completely. Though she could only comprehend what a few of the words on the covers meant, it was clear to her that beauty excluded freckles and came in any shade other than red.

It was only when she accidentally sent the pile of magazines careening towards the marble floor that her mind-set began to change. She had stared at the mess she had made with wide eyes, and quickly scrambled from her seat to fix the disaster. When she was cleaning the mess, she found a magazine that she had been ready to dismiss as being like all of the others when she noticed a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. She had stared at the woman occupying the cover of the magazine in awe. Before her was a beautiful woman with bright red hair – and not the Lydia kind of red, but the Emma kind of red – and to top it all off, the model was drenched in wonderful freckles. Emma had never seen a more beautiful woman.

"She looks like me, mommy!" Emma had exclaimed when her mother returned from her haircut.

"Well, would you look at that?" Her mother had smiled as she handed the hairdresser a twenty dollar bill. "Isn't she beautiful?"

Emma, too stunned to answer, could only nod her agreement.

"You can keep it if you want. God knows we've got plenty more," the hairdresser had offered.

Emma didn't think that there could ever be another woman like the one on the magazine, and so she clutched it to her chest and walked out of the salon with more of a spring in her step.

Years later, the magazine still maintained a coveted place in her overflowing bookcase.

Yanking her hair out of its tie, she let out a sharp yelp as strands were pulled from her scalp and groaned once more; she was not a morning person, and that particular morning seemed to be worse than all of the rest. An uncomfortable feeling had settled in the pit of her stomach and her skin tingled with nervous anticipation – what her body was waiting for, she had no idea.

Her morning routine would normally only occupy a short amount of time; however, she had fallen into the awful habit of doing absolutely nothing until she had to rush so that she wasn't late for school. She had made the decision the previous night that that year would be different: she would not procrastinate in the morning, she would pack her school bag the night before and would organise herself so that she would be in a complete state of bliss. That did not happen. So, while she procrastinated dressing and mulled over the strange feeling that was washing over her, she began packing her black leather satchel bag – a birthday present from her mother – with a few notepads, a variety of pens and all of the standard school equipment. When she figured she had wasted enough time, she finally dressed herself and carefully applied a little bit of makeup to make herself look awake. Emma narrowed her eyes at her reflection, annoyed that no matter how much concealer she applied, her dark under-eye circles appeared to be a permanent fixture on her face.

Emma tiptoed from her bedroom towards the kitchen, hoping that she wouldn't wake her mother. Luckily, Emma could hear soft snoring filter out of her mother's bedroom. She knew that her mother had trouble sleeping, brought on by the frequent nightmares she lied about having. Emma could often hear her mother pottering about the house late at night through to the early hours of the morning. It wasn't often that Emma was awake before her mother but when it did happen Emma was extra careful to make as little noise as possible. Her mother, Delia, tried to shield her from her anxiety but Emma could see past her mother's happy charade. Whenever Delia thought that Emma couldn't see her, the mask was dropped and true sadness appeared in the woman's eyes.

Emma's mother and father had started dating when they were fourteen and had decided that they never wanted to spend another day apart and had married when they were only nineteen; they were the closest thing to soul mates that Emma had ever encountered and it was therefore understandable that Delia was completely and utterly wrecked by Mike's untimely death. For months after the car crash that had stripped Mike of his life, Delia could barely function so Sheriff Stilinski had stepped in to help care for Emma. Throughout her entire life, Sherriff Stilinski had been a second father to Emma – he was Mike's closest friend after all – and when the accident had occurred there was no way he could have even thought of letting Delia and Emma Moore fend for themselves. He and his son Stiles had looked after Delia and Emma and helped them get through the worst of their suffering. It was Sherriff Stilinski who had organised Mike's funeral when Delia couldn't cope with the loss.

Before leaving her house, Emma quickly grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl she had disastrously painted when she was six and the lunch her mother had made for her the night before.

As Emma walked to school, a police cruiser drove past her which instantly made her think of the sheriff and his son. The sheriff's son had a rather unusual name which he never told anyone, not even to Emma or to Scott McCall though they used to be best friends, preferring to be called Stiles instead. Stiles Stilinski was an unusual name to say the least, but Emma always thought that it suited the slightly unusual boy. She didn't like thinking about Stiles too much however, given that their friendship hadn't ended on the best of terms.

The void left by Stiles in Emma's life had been filled by Jessica Reynolds. Emma and Jessica had not been friends, nor acknowledged each other's existence, before Emma's father's funeral. But when Jessica had found Emma crying on the school bathroom floor, she had adopted Emma as her newest friend. Jessica had pulled Emma to her feet and looked right into her eyes and smiled; they never said anything as Jessica wiped Emma's tears away. A form of silent communication had passed between the two as they leaned against the sinks and waited for Emma's sobs to pass. Without ever having spoken to Emma, Jessica instinctively knew that she did not like people seeing her cry. And so they stayed in the bathroom in silence, Emma secretly grateful that she wasn't alone and Jessica happy that she had gotten the lonely girl to stop crying. Jessica had grabbed Emma's hand and had rubbed soothing circles into it with her thumb while Emma clung on for dear life. Since that day in mid-October Emma and Jessica – Ems and Jess – had barely spent a day apart and despite a few curious eyebrows being raised at the start of their friendship, they had never thought of each other as anything other than 'best friend'.

Without realising how much time had passed, Emma soon found herself situated outside of her school and began to blend in with the other students gradually making their way up the wide steps and into the school itself or as Jessica liked to call it "a torture chamber of Hell".

"Emma! Hey, wait up!" A shrill voice sounded behind her.

The shouter appeared from behind a mass of people and revealed herself to be short blonde girl whose extremely curly hair bounced as she jogged to catch up to Emma. Jogging wasn't exactly the appropriate way to describe the way the blonde was moving, resembling Bambi walking on ice as she teetered in her blue heels. The heels belonged to Emma's best friend Jessica who was quite obviously the opposite of Emma. While Emma had donned jeans and a t-shirt, Jessica had chosen to wear a dress with a white lacy skirt and sleeveless denim top half, she wore a white cardigan on top of that and had a small blue and gold watch attached to her right wrist. A pair of pearl earrings could be seen through Jessica's masses of curly hair and her denim blue backpack thumped against her back as she made her way to Emma.

"Well hello Mrs Radio Silence. Where have you been for the last week? I was beginning to think you were avoiding me". Jessica pouted but before Emma could so much as think of reminding her that it had only been a day since they last spoke, Jessica had linked her arm through Emma's and was marching them into the school. Emma stifled a laugh as Jessica never even took a breath before continuing. "You will never guess what Ryan said to me! I was so severely irritated and went off on one at him. We got into this massive fight and now we're not speaking. Well we haven't spoken since last night but still. Now, you listen to me Emma Moore, I realised that he actually didn't do anything wrong but I'm still annoyed with him so we're not talking to him today. I repeat: we're not talking to him. So that means that you're not talking to him either and the official Ryan Lucas boycott begins right now."

Emma couldn't help but laugh at her friend as she rambled. Jessica and her boyfriend Ryan were constantly fighting but Emma knew that as soon as lunch rolled round Jessica and Ryan would be loved up once more. Noticing Emma's sceptical look on her face, Jessica stopped walking and gave her a stern look, saying:

"I'm serious this time Ems, we are not talking to him".

Emma rolled her eyes but nodded anyway in the hope that that would satisfy her friend. It seemed to do the trick as Jessica flashed a beaming grin and linked their arms together once more. A part of Emma thought that Jessica was only holding onto her so that she wouldn't fall over but she didn't voice this opinion, instead she chose to listen to Jessica moan about the latest episode of some TV show she was watching and how her favourite characters just wouldn't see that they were perfect for one another.

"Jess, hey…um, Jessica? Can we, uh…can we talk?" A sheepish voice sounded from the right of the two girls.

Jessica glanced at the boy who had spoken and frowned before slowly nodding. The boy made to move towards the school but stopped when he noticed that Jessica wasn't following him. His shoulders slumped as he turned nervously to face Jessica. Poor Ryan, Emma thought as she chose to give the two a little privacy by taking a step back and zoning out of their conversation.

Her mind began to wander before her attention was grabbed by two boys talking animatedly at the bottom of the school stairs: Stiles Stilinski and Scott McCall. Her mood seemed to worsen inexplicably the more she watched the two boys, particularly when she shifted her gaze to Scott. She had the strangest feeling of overwhelming panic surging through her, and the intense need to warn Scott about something. What that thing was lingered on the tip of her tongue but she was unable to put it into words.

Feeling extremely confused and anxious, Emma returned her attention to Jessica and Ryan who had almost completely forgotten the previous night's argument (judging by the lack of space between their locked lips).

Emma had been best friends with Stiles Stilinski ever since they swapped crayons on their first day of Kindergarten (his blue crayon for her red one) and eventually spent more and more time together in the police station waiting for their fathers to wrap up whatever paperwork they had to finish. The two would sit in the Sheriff's office with their coloring books: Emma trying as hard as she could to stay within the lines while Stiles… it's safe to say that the Sheriff's desk was always a little more colorful after a visit from Stiles. Or they would play 'pretend' and fight each other with their magic powers. However these games would always end quickly as they both always seemed to have a limitless supply of healing potion in their pockets and one would always accuse the other of cheating. Of course they would always have their other best friend – Scott McCall – to resolve these fights. The three had been inseparable when they were younger; if there was ever any trouble, you could expect to find Emma, Scott and Stiles at the centre of it. That had all changed when Emma pushed the boys away.

Emma felt a tap on her shoulder and looked round to find Jessica looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

"You seriously need to stop zoning out Ems, I've been trying to get your attention for, like, ten minutes," Jessica whined. "Come on, I want to sort my locker out before class".

Jessica reached up to Ryan and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek which made him blush ever so slightly before linking her arm with Emma's once more. Ryan had always been head over heels for Jessica and something as simple as a peck on the cheek could make his day. The two girls left Ryan behind them with a goofy smile on his face and made their way through the double doors and into the school, but not before Emma cast a wary look back at Scott.

Beacon Hills High School was like any other normal high school: rows of lockers lined the hallways, posters encouraging students to embrace their potential cluttered notice boards and students drifted from place to place already back in the school mind-set. There were the occasional bursts of laughter amongst the chattering students, the slamming of locker doors, the scuffing of trainers and the zipping of bags all added to the standard feeling of high school. Emma could smell someone's overuse of cologne mixing with a spritz of hairspray and the cleaning products used to scrub the floors for the arriving students.

"What happened with you and Ryan?" Emma inquired. "I thought we were boycotting him?"

"Nah, neither of us can remember what we were fighting about so, you know, forgive and forget and all that. Besides, his lips are too nice not to kiss," Jessica giggled as Emma sent her a playful glare.

"Didn't need to know that."

"You're just jealous because you're not getting any of this". Jessica winked at Emma and shook her hips before releasing a belting laugh, her anger of a few minutes previous completely forgotten.

"Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I just can't get enough of you Jess".

Jessica stuck her tongue out at Emma and flounced towards her locker, pulling Emma along with her. The friends had lockers beside one another and so were able to continue their conversation before they were interrupted by the tell-tale click clack of high heels. Lydia Martin had just strutted into the school. She flicked her strawberry blonde hair over her shoulder and wiggled her fingers in greeting at a few of the other students. Lydia was what you could describe as a 'Queen Bee'; she had the brains, the popularity, the looks, the boyfriend, the works. The mere mention of Lydia Martin's name would cause a variety of words to spill out of the other students' mouths: "beautiful", "smart", "gorgeous" with a few mentions of her being a "heinous bitch" thrown in the mix. However, Jessica and Emma were amongst the few who Lydia deemed important enough to speak to, and Emma had long since gotten over her hair envy. As Lydia flounced passed them she waved and greeted them with a "good morning girls", before walking around a corner and disappearing from sight.

The bell signalling that classes were about to begin rang shrilly from above their heads and the two parted ways with promises to save each other a seat at lunch.

As Emma entered her first class of the day, the first thing she noticed was that she was to share it with both Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski. The second thing she noticed was that there were only two seats left available to her, both of which were behind the two boys. Emma never went out of her way to avoid them, but she never went out of her way to engage with them either; and with her current unexplainable worry for Scott, she was rather reluctant to sit near either of them.

Stiles on the other hand had clocked Emma as soon as she entered the room but, as he normally did when Emma was involved, immediately looked away as if he had been stung. When Emma's father had died, Stiles had been there for her and was hurt to say the least when Emma shut him out, and had tried again and again to reason with her, but she had refused to let him in. Emma had been incredibly angry and had turned that anger on Stiles and their friend Scott, though Stiles had admittedly taken the brunt of it. Eventually, Sheriff Stilinski had convinced his son to give his grieving friend some space, and to let her make contact when she was ready. So when Emma walked into his English class and occupied the seat directly behind him, he could only stare straight ahead like a frightened rabbit and rub the back of his neck (which had always been a small habit of his).

Emma was blissfully unaware of Stiles' nervousness around her and smiled at Scott when he turned around in his seat to say hello to her.

"Weird question," Emma began, glad that Scott had chosen to speak to her first, "but are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, are you?" Scott asked, his head tilting to the side in confusion, his brown hair flopping into his eyes.

"Um, oh…eh, yeah?" Emma's lie came out as more of a question than she would have liked, and she was disappointed to note that her panic had not alleviated at all.

"And you, Stiles?" Emma quickly averted attention from herself.

The boy in question jumped as if he had been burned by the sound of Emma's voice, and nearly fell out of his seat as he spun around to face her.

"Swell!" Stiles blurted out the first thing that came to mind and immediately wanted to bang his head against a wall. "I mean, I'm fine! Not swell, cause this isn't the twenties. So I'm fine…just fine…yeah."

Stiles immediately turned away from Emma, his hand jumping up to rub at the back of his neck as he mouthed the word "swell" over and over to himself with growing exasperation.

-X-

By the end of the school day, Emma was both mentally and physically exhausted. She had spent most of the day either staring at Scott or thinking about Scott, so much so that she could barely remember anything that she had been taught during her classes; though she did know that she had a pile of homework waiting for her and was absolutely dreading the prospect of tackling it.

She declined Jessica's offer to study together, using the truthful excuse that she was too tired to be of any help. She also declined Jessica's offer of a ride home, claiming that the walk would do her good.

She had hoped that that would be true, but the walk home led her past the Beacon Hills Preserve and the discomfort in her body grew tenfold at the sight of the towering trees. A part of her wanted to run straight into the forest and figure out what was making her feel so awful, but the much larger part of her was screaming at her that such a thing is how horror movies start and that it would be the most stupid decision she had ever made. She elected to follow the part of her that wanted to put as much distance between her and the forest as possible.

It wasn't until hours later – when she was halfway through writing a plot summary of Act One of Shakespeare's Othello – that her body relaxed suddenly. The moon had long since risen and all at once she felt intensely tired and relaxed, as if whatever had been making her anxious the entire day had suddenly resolved itself. She had the briefest image flash in her mind of Scott stumbling out of the dark woods in a panic, but quickly shook the thought from her head. She was too tired and her imagination was far too active.

Taking the initiative, she decided to make use of her relaxed exhaustion and clambered into bed. She was asleep before her head even hit the pillow, and all thoughts of Scott vanished from her mind.

Hey, everyone!

Just to clear some things up, this is a reworking of 'The Voiceless'. I wasn't too happy with the way that the story was going, or with the way it was written, and I had some seriously intense writer's block. So I decided to rewrite the story and post it under a new title that better represents where I intend to take the characters. For anyone who has read 'The Voiceless', you'll probably notice that a lot of this is very similar, but hopefully I've laid the foundations for some very significant changes.

I've created a tumblr account for this fic (allthatpurpleprose) and my other fics because I feel like it will be easier to keep you all updated about when the new chapters are available and communicate with you all. I'll be posting previews and stuff like that on there, so please feel free to check it out.

I'm feeling happier about the direction this fic is heading in now, so I should be able to update more regularly.

Thanks to everyone for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think, any feedback is greatly appreciated.