AN: Just wanna give a special thank you to rachellaurenm for the title suggestions! They were all really great (:
Also, if you haven't read 'To Have and To Lose', I recommend you do so before reading this, otherwise this will make less than no sense. Okay, now let's begin!
Disclaimer: Don't own TW. Only my OC: Zarina.
I was in a long hallway. Pipes were attached to the walls on my right and a bright light was shining at the end of the hall. I took tentative steps forward and as I did so, whispers turned to loud shouting around me.
Let me in.
Let me in.
LET ME IN.
I threw my hands over my ears and continued walking, eyes narrowed in pain as the shouting reverberated my eardrums. My steps were shaky and my hands quivered over my ears in fear.
As I stepped into the bright light, my hands fell to my sides as the shouting disappeared. I blinked a couple of times to adjust my eyes and I saw that I was in a bright white room with nothing else inside except…
"Stiles? Is that you?"
He was facing away from me, back flexed. He turned to me when he heard my voice and a dark smirk crossed his face. My steps faltered and I bit my lip.
"Zarina," he said. "You should really start to listen to yourself. That voice in your head. It's going to help you. Just let it in."
"N-No," I stuttered out. This wasn't Stiles. I knew it wasn't.
"Shame," he pulled out a katana from seemingly nowhere and held the tip of the blade over his chest, pouting mockingly. "Now, again. Let me in, Oracle."
"Stop! No, please! Don't!" I cried out as he pressed the sword harder against his chest.
"Don't you see? You're going to cause so much death and suffering," Stiles told me. "And all because you're too stubborn to let me in."
"What are you?" my voice trembled.
"Darkness." And the sword plunged into Stiles' heart, the tip coming out of his back as he fell onto his knees.
"NO!" I yelled, eyes shooting open and charcoal clutched in my hands.
Alex burst into my room and hugged me from my back, pulling me onto the floor with him as I flailed around in his arms, screaming uncontrollably. I threw the charcoal at my wall and struggled in his arms, unable to stop myself from crying as I did so.
"Zarina!" he grit his teeth. "It's just me! You were dreaming!"
I stopped screaming and instead started breathing heavily, sobs escaping my mouth. I slumped against his body and let the tears fall heavily, body heaving. Alex's arms were wound tightly around me and I looked up at my canvas hesitantly.
Stiles was drawn messily on the paper, a sword through his chest and blood forming a pool around him. I looked down at my stained hands in terror.
"Oh my god," I croaked.
"Shhh," Alex cooed into my ear soothingly.
He didn't need to ask for a explanation. The past two weeks had been a repeat of this exact routine, except the person who died in my dreams was different every night. But the message remained the same.
'Let me in.'
"I-I need to call Stiles," I decided after a moment of recomposing myself.
My brother nodded and left the room, placing a kiss on my forehead and promising to come back when I finished. I shakily got up and unplugged my phone from the charger, dialing his phone number with trembling thumbs. After about three rings, he picked up.
"Zarina? Babe?" his voice was scratchy. But not from sleep. It was like he'd been screaming. "Are you crying?"
I took deep breaths before responding. "N-No, I'm okay, I just- I just needed to hear your voice. I'm sorry for waking you up."
"Don't be," Stiles assured me and I felt myself calm down some. He was okay. He was safe. "What happened?"
"It was nothing, I promise," I sat down on my bed.
"Are you sure? Do you need me to come over?"
"No!" I replied quickly. "I mean, no. You don't have to. I'm just being stupid. I'll see you at school later, okay?"
"Wait, no Zar-" he began, but I cut him off.
"Goodnight, Stiles."
I hung up the phone and put it on my bedside table, sighing heavily. I laid down on my messy bed, staring up at the ceiling. Even so, I knew that I wasn't going to get any more sleep that night.
As soon as I got into my boyfriend's car a few hours later, I was bombarded with his questions.
"What was that earlier? Are you okay? You look tired," Stiles spoke quickly, barely taking a breath.
"Good morning to you, too," I grinned slightly and examined the bags under his eyes. "You don't look so energetic yourself."
"Yeah, well," he shrugged and started to drive. One hand was on the wheel while the other held mine tightly between us. "Did you get any sleep after you hung up on me?"
I glanced at him and shook my head. "Couldn't. Not after my dream."
"Who was it this time?" he finally understood what'd happened and why I called him so suddenly.
I had told Stiles about how I'd seen all of my friends die in nightmares every night since the Darach incident and he was worried about me, too much sometimes.
"You," I said reluctantly, biting my trembling lip as I remembered my drawing. After laying in my bed for a few hours, I took the drawing and burnt it in our fireplace, along with the other ones I'd drawn.
"Are these just dreams, or are they…y'know, prophecies?" he looked over at me, anxious.
"I don't even know anymore. It feels like a dream, but I always wake up with a drawing on my canvas," my voice cracked. "I'm scared, Stiles. I don't want you to die."
"I'm not going anywhere," he assured me as he parked in the school's lot. "We'll figure this out. Your dreams and mine."
Suddenly, I felt guilty. I was so caught up in my own terrors that I'd forgotten that Stiles was experiencing something similar to it, too. He told me about his sleep paralysis and his nightmares and how he was starting to lose his mind.
"No," he scolded, breaking me out of my thoughts.
"What?" I asked, confused.
"Don't feel guilty. You have that look on your face like you're blaming yourself," he pointed his free finger at me and we both got out of the car, reconnecting hands as soon as we started walking.
"I can't just not feel guilty," I confessed. "I'm being totally inconsiderate to your problems."
"Oh, be quiet," he hushed. "I'll be okay if you are."
I blew out a breath of air and nodded slightly as we continued to walk towards the front door. Then, we saw Scott hurrying down the stairs, looking behind his shoulder frantically at no one in particular. He nearly tackled us, but we stopped him.
"Hey, hey are you alright?" Stiles questioned. Scott nodded and looked down at his shadow. "You don't look alright, Scott."
"I'm okay," he replied unsurely.
"No, you're not," Stiles realized, observing Scott's panicked expression. "It's happening to you, too. You're seeing things."
"How'd you know?"
"Stiles and I aren't having the best time, either. Nightmares, mostly," I explained to him.
"Actually, it's happening to all four of you," Lydia's voice rang as she walked up to us with Allison in tow. The huntress looked as if she'd seen a ghost, which wouldn't have surprised me if she actually did.
"So what's happening to you three?" Lydia asked us.
"Sleep paralysis," Stiles answered.
"Predicting all my friend's deaths," I added on slowly.
"Hallucinations," Scott finished, gulping. Lydia smirked at us and walked towards the double doors to the school.
"Well, well, look who's no longer the crazy one," she chirped as we followed her inside.
"We're not crazy," Allison shot at her.
"Hallucinating? Freak prophecies? Sleep paralysis?" She turned to us and gave us a sarcastic look. "Yeah, you guys are fine."
"We did die and come back to life. That's gotta have some side effects, right?" Scott offered.
"But you're forgetting something. I didn't die," I reminded him as the bell rang.
"We'll keep an eye on each other," Stiles said and kissed my forehead before starting to walk away. "And Lydia, stop enjoying this so much."
"What?" Lydia asked innocently. I shook my head in amusement and followed my two girl friends to our classroom.
For once in my life, I dreaded having to sit in front of a canvas, but I swallowed my fear and did so, pouring paint onto the palette as the teacher walked out of the class.
I began to paint, barely even paying attention to my movements. I simply moved the brush on the canvas, occasionally dipping my paintbrush in my paint as I went on. About halfway through class, Isaac walked up behind me and froze.
"Zarina, what is that?" he inquired, sounding scared.
I blinked slowly and studied my work. It was me, hanging with a noose around my neck in the middle of the paper. The words 'it's all your fault' were scrawled on the bottom in red paint.
I stood abruptly and backed away from the painting, the stool falling onto the ground. My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt my stomach churn.
Around me, the class stopped, looking up from their paintings, but I couldn't move. I saw Allison and Lydia with worried looks on their faces as they noticed my tense stature from across the room.
After a few seconds of staying shock still, I ripped the paper off the canvas and stuffed it in the garbage can hurriedly, picking up the chair as I returned to my station.
I sat again and started to paint, not letting my mind wander as I focused on not drawing another dead person. I ignored the stares of everyone in the class, pretending as if what occurred never happened.
"Zarina, what just happened?" Isaac hissed, sitting in his seat beside me.
"Nothing," I replied as calmly as possible. "Just a screw up."
"You painted yourself. Hanged," he deadpanned and I kept my eyes straight on my canvas, taking a slow breath.
"Isaac, just forget it, okay?" I said with an air of finality.
He seemed to get the hint that I didn't want to talk about it because he simply rolled his eyes and returned to his own painting.
Still, even with my false certainty, I was terrified. How could I have not noticed that I was drawing my dead self? Something was definitely wrong with me.
I found Stiles and Scott at his locker and rushed over to them. I had to tell them that something was going on with me. It was getting freaky.
"Stiles?" I nudged his shoulder as he stared down at his lock confusedly. "Are you having trouble with your lock?"
"Huh?" he looked up from his lock at me and shook his head. "No, no. I- uh just forgot my combination for a second."
I raised and eyebrow, skeptical, but he gave me a pleading look, making my resolve crumble. I shifted my gaze to Scott, whose eyes were turning red.
"Scott, your eyes. They're changing," I warned him and he immediately looked at the floor.
"Scott, stop it! Stop it!" Stiles cried out, glancing around the hall to make sure no one else was looking.
"I can't," Scott replied, frustrated. "I can't. I-I can't control it."
Stiles did another sweep of the hallway with his eyes. "Alright, just keep your head down. Don't look up, come on."
He stuffed Scott's head in his jacket as I led the two of them into an empty classroom. The two boys stumbled inside and I hurriedly locked the door as Scott moved farther away from us in the room. A growl left his mouth and he pulled his jacket off.
"You have to calm down," I said softly, moving next to Stiles. "Scott, you can do it."
"I can't!" he shouted, eyes squeezing shut. "Get back, get away from me!"
"Scott, it's okay," Stiles tried to comfort him.
But Scott was still changing. His claws grew on his fingers and he clenched them down on his palms, puncturing the skin.
Blood dripped profusely from the wounds and Scott slowly started to go back to normal. He let himself sink to the ground, fully human again. Stiles and I crouched in front of him as he regained his breathing.
"Pain makes you human," Scott whispered.
"Scott, this isn't just in our heads," Stiles deducted. "This is real. And it's starting to get bad for me, too."
"Same here," I admitted. "I painted myself dead in art today. I wasn't even having a vision. I was just painting and it just happened. I don't even remember painting it in the first place." Stiles sent me a worried glance and grasped my hand, squeezing it.
"And I'm not just having nightmares. I'm having dreams where I literally have to scream myself awake. And sometimes I'm not even sure I'm actually every waking up," Stiles explained to him.
"What do you mean?" Scott's eyebrows furrowed.
"Do you know how you can tell if you're dreaming? You can't read in dreams," Stiles informed him. "More and more the past few days, I've been having trouble reading. It's like I can see the words, but I can't put the letters in order."
"Like even now?" Scott asked quietly. Stiles glanced up at the board and released my hand, standing. I saw him swallow, blinking quickly as he tried to read it.
"I can't read a thing," he told us weakly. I stood up next to him and crossed my arms over my chest worriedly.
"We'll figure this out, guys," I muttered out. "We have to. Okay? The three of us are going to be fine."
The two of them stayed quiet, both hesitant, but Scott nodded. "She's right. Let's go. It's just one more period."
He walked out of the room, shrugging his jacket back on and I turned to Stiles. He was still looking at the board, rubbing his eyes. I felt my expression soften in sympathy.
"This is real, you know that," I comforted.
"But what if it's not? What if I just wake up and this was all just a dream?" he sounded so broken and tired.
I got on my toes and placed my lips on his, pouring every ounce of love I had for him into it. He didn't hesitate to kiss back and after a few lingering moments, I pulled away, holding him close.
"Did that feel real?" I whispered and he nodded, breathless. "Good. Because it was."
Lydia, Allison, and I were standing in the woods together to help Allison try and regain her hand eye coordination. A side effect of her hallucinations was that she could barely move her hands without shaking.
Lydia walked up the to tree in front of us and put a paper with a target on it against the tree.
"Do you have any-" the whizzing sound of my knife flying through the air and going through the paper and into the tree interrupted her. "-pins?" The redhead turned to me with an incredulous look and I laughed.
"Such a show-off," she mumbled and I simply shrugged innocently.
"Do you really think this is going to help?" Allison piped in as Lydia moved towards us purposefully.
"I know that if you think its not going to help, it definitely won't," Lydia state knowingly. Allison sighed and took the arrow from my hand.
"Just try it," I persisted. "Nothing's going to happen out here."
"Exactly!" Lydia agreed, determined. "You're here with us and have nothing but the vast space of this forest, so get your head into it. Shoot a few and see what happens."
Allison gave us a small grin and notched her arrow. Her hands shook the entire time and once she released the arrow, it flew to the ground, extremely far away from the target.
This made me nervous. Allison's aim was better than mine by far, yet she couldn't even hit the tree like I'd managed to do earlier. The huntress grabbed another arrow and notched it, only to get the same result.
"Maybe hold the string a different way," Lydia suggested. "Try the Mongolian draw." Allison's head snapped to her in surprise and I grinned. Typical Lydia. "What? I read."
Allison grabbed another arrow and notched it, tilting her bow to the side. She put extra concentration and focus into this before releasing her grip. The arrow fell short.
"Okay, we need to find something else to help Allison out," I announced. "She can't do this when she's shaky like that."
"Okay, um…" Lydia squeezed Allison's shoulders encouragingly. "Take a second to close your eyes and imagine the arrow going into the target."
I watched as Allison shut her eyes and relaxed, concentrating on the target in her mind. As her eyes reopened, they suddenly darted to the side, as if she saw someone.
"Did you guys see that?"
I raised an eyebrow, "See what?"
Allison hefted her arrows over her shoulder and started to walk off. "You guys wait here."
"Are you serious?" Lydia sassed, astonished.
"I'll be right back," she assured before disappearing into the forest.
"You did not just say that!" she called out after the huntress. "She did not just say that."
"Come on," I tugged Lydia with me towards the trees. "Let's follow her."
"Are you serious?"
"Do you wanna figure out what she saw, or not?" I questioned her. She hugged and followed me begrudgingly. We called out Allison's name multiple times, but even with the light of the sun burning down on top of us, she was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, the image of an arrow embedding itself in Lydia's skull echoed in my head and I took action.
"Lydia, get down!" I pushed her to the side and stood where she was supposed to be, fully ready to take the arrow.
I shut my eyes in fear as I heard the sound of it flying towards me, but the impact never came. Reluctantly, my eyes fluttered open and the tip of the arrow was inches from my nose, Isaac's hand gripping the middle of the metal shaft tightly.
Allison's eyes widened from the distance. She dropped her bow on the soil. "Oh my god, oh my god, Zarina!"
I helped Lydia up from the ground and helped her brush dirt off her clothes. Allison hurried towards me and started to apologize.
"I didn't mean for- I didn't know, Zarina. I thought it was my aunt, I saw her, I swear."
"No, it's okay," I soothed her. "We're okay, see? You didn't mean to. It's fine." But somewhere inside me, I knew that it wasn't fine at all.
I flinched as Finstock blew his whistle long and hard, breaking Stiles out of the trance he'd been in since he sat down.
"Stilinski!" Coach yelled.
"Huh?" Stiles responded, breathing heavy.
"I asked you a question."
"Uh, sorry coach. What was it?" he asked after a tiny pause.
"Oh, it was: Stilinski, are you paying attention back there?" Coach remarked sarcastically.
Stiles shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "Well, I am now."
"Stilinski, stop reminding me why I drink. Every night," Finstock muttered as he faced the board. "Does anybody else want to try the question on the board?"
Scott and I both looked at Stiles in concern. He caught us and moved slightly to face us.
"I'm okay, I just fell asleep for a second," he assured us.
"Uh, Stiles," I mumbled. "You weren't asleep." I glanced down at his notebook and he looked down at it, quickly shutting it and flipping it over when he read whatever it was he wrote.
The three of us joined Allison, Lydia, and Isaac at a picnic table during break. I sat between the two and propped my arms on the table as the boys explained what'd happened in class.
"Okay, so what happens to a person who has a near-death experience and comes out of it seeing things?" Scott wondered aloud.
"And is unable to tell what's real or not," Stiles added.
"And is being haunted by demonic visions of their dead relatives," Allison finished.
"They're all locked up because they're insane," Isaac answered.
"Ha-ha," Stiles retorted sarcastically. "Can you at least try to be helpful, please?"
"For half of my childhood, I was locked in a freezer, so being helpful is kind of a new thing for me," he shot back.
"Are you still milking that?" Stiles rolled his eyes and I shot him a warning look.
"Yeah, maybe I am still milking that."
"Alright!" I burst out, irritated. "We get it. Now please, for the love of god, stop it." They immediately shut up and looked away sheepishly and I felt a wave of smugness wash over me.
"Hi, hi. I couldn't help but overhear what you guys were talking about," a young Asian girl walked up to our table and I noticed Scott's eyes light up. "And I think I might actually know what you're talking about."
We simply stared at her to continued, so she did. "There's a Tibetan word for it. It's called Bardo. It literally means 'in-between state'. The state between life and death."
"And what do they call you?" Lydia asked in her signature queen bee voice.
"Kira," Scott answered for her and we all turned to him, Allison's face surprised and mine teasing. "She's in our history class."
"So are you talking Bardo in Tibetan Buddhism or Indian?" Lydia questioned.
"Either, I guess," she sat down beside Stiles on the bench. "But all the stuff you guys were just saying? All that happens in Bardo. There are different progressive states where you can have hallucinations. Some you see and some you just hear. And you can be visited by peaceful and wrathful deities."
"Wrathful deities? And what are those?" Isaac inquired, his interest piqued.
"Like demons," she replied, smiling, unaware of the darker problems of our group.
"Demons, why not?" Stiles piped up, sharing a look with me.
"Hold on, if there are different progressive states, what's the last one?" Allison continued curiously.
"Death," Kira replied. "You die."
I looked up from the table and at my friends. They each had their own terrified look on their face.
"Well," I started slowly. "This is bad."
"It sounds like your subconscious is trying to communicate with you," Deaton said to us after Stiles explained to him his 'dream' that involved a lot of sign language.
"Well, how do I tell my subconscious to use a language that I actually know?" Stiles questioned, scratching his head.
"Do you remember what the sign language looked like?" Deaton stepped in front of us as we entered the back room. "The placement and movement of the hands?"
"You know sign language?" Scott pitched in.
"I know a little," Deaton confirmed. "Let me give it a shot."
"Okay, the first one was like this," Stiles did the motion with his hands.
"That's when."
"Then there was this. Twice."
"That's door."
"And then this in between." Stiles did the final motion.
"That's it?" Deaton asked and he nodded.
"Yeah," Stiles sighed. The vet looked between the three of us.
"When is a door not a door?"
"When is a door not a door?" Stiles repeated, puzzled.
"When it's ajar," Scott and I mumbled simultaneously.
"You're kidding me," Stiles' arms flailed out. "A riddle? My subconscious wants to tell me a riddle?"
"Not necessarily," Deaton cut him off. "When the three of you went under the water, when you crossed from the unconsciousness to a kind of super consciousness, you essentially opened a door into your minds," Deaton explained.
"So what does that mean?" Stiles asked.
"The door's still open?" Scott added.
"Ajar," Deaton corrected.
"Wait, but if only their minds were opened, why am I being affected, too?" I furrowed my eyebrows. "I didn't die."
"That's because the door to your mind is always open, Zarina," he responded. "In order for you to be able to predict the future, your mind must be constantly open."
"So now that those three are attracting whatever it is they're attracting, those things are noticing my open 'door', too?" I made quotation marks with my fingers.
"Exactly," he nodded.
"A door…into our minds?" Stiles reiterated slowly.
"I did tell you it was risky," Deaton reminded nonchalantly.
"What do we do about it?" Scott persisted.
"Well, that's difficult to answer," he replied reluctantly.
"Oh, no. Wait a second, I know that look," Stiles pointed his finger at the vet. "That the I know exactly what's wrong with you, but I have no idea how to fix it look."
"One thing I do know is that having an opening like that into your mind, it's not good. You each need to close that door and you need to do it as soon as possible," he informed us.
"How?" I spoke worriedly.
"Well, the three of them need to find an anchor. Something that will keep them tied in real life. Something to keep them focused."
"Wh-whoa, wait, you just said the three of them," I gestured to the boys beside me. "How do I close mine?"
Deaton looked hesitant to answer, like the news he was about to give me wasn't good.
"You can't."
AN: FEELS GOOOD. I know I said I'd wait a few days but I got excited so here I am LOL. Hope you guys liked it. I'm really so excited to write 3B! I have so many ideas and they're like just sitting in my mind right now.
Please review/fave/follow if you enjoyed. It means a lot and it shows me that I didn't totally ruin everything. (:
xx.