The Escort and the Cage

chapter one


"all have such fateful objects - it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another - carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break."

- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita


Allison was jolted awake by the hospital intercom. With bleary eyes and a numb back she stretched. The garish fluorescent lights seemed dim and almost green in the darkness of the night. She ran her hands through her hair and over her face. For a moment she couldn't remember why she was there, but then the memories of the attack on the sheriff's station and Lydia's injury came back to her in a flood.

It was always the same. Someone was always getting hurt, someone was always on the verge of dying. She clenched her hands around her phone as she checked the time. She hadn't been asleep long; Lydia had only been in surgery for about half-an-hour.

There was a text from Scott, too, and three missed calls.

'Tried to call.

Come to Derek's old place.

Something's wrong'

She stared at the text, and there was a moment when she just wanted to ignore it. She shoved that thought down almost as quickly as she thought it; ignoring their problems wouldn't do anyone any good, and there was no way in hell that she was going to let Scott face something dangerous alone. Especially not with monstrous doctors prowling around. Not when they were so close to graduating.

They just had to make it until then.

They just had to stay alive.

Dialing Scott's number, she pressed her phone between her shoulder and her cheek as she gathered her jacket and bag.

He answered on the second ring.

"Allison-"

"Don't do anything until I get there." She said immediately.

"There's something weird in the air here," he said, and she could tell by his voice that he was wolfed out. "But nothing's happened, yet."

She didn't miss the yet. "Be there in ten."

Leaving Lydia sat uneasily in her stomach, but she knew that she wouldn't be any help to anyone by sitting in a waiting room.

The drive took just under ten months minutes – either because it was the middle of the night and the streets were mostly abandoned, or because she hadn't paid any attention to the speed limits. When she pulled into the parking lot in front of Derek's old loft, it was empty except for Scott and his bike.

At first she didn't get what was wrong. But there was something else, something she didn't feel until she had climbed out of her car. It was like the feeling of driving in a car with the windows open; a weird sensation in the back of her head.

She almost left her quiver and bow in the car, but ended up bringing them. Just in case.

Scott stood by his bike, staring off at something that she couldn't see.

She approached slowly. "What are you looking at?"

He looked at her, puzzled. "Don't you see it?" He pointed ahead.

At first she didn't. She stared in the direction that he had indicated, trying to see what he saw. She was starting to think that it was a werewolf thing, but then she saw it.

It was like a wave in the air, as if they were looking at it through water. It was very faint, and she had to focus to really see it, but she knew that whatever it was that was making her hair stand on-end was coming from the strange distortion. She felt very strongly that she shouldn't go near it.

"What is it?" Despite herself, she couldn't help but ask. It wasn't as if she was expecting Scott to actually know.

He lifted his shoulder, which she could see was tense under his jacket. "I called Deaton, and he's on his way, but," he finally looked over at her. "Do you think that this is connected to everything that's been happening?"

She frowned. "It's possible."

With a nod, he turned his gaze back towards it.

"Did you call Stiles and Malia?"

"No. Stiles was really torn up about Lydia, and I just," he shifted, "It wouldn't really do any good to call them. Plus, we don't know what it is yet."

Allison didn't say anything. Ever since Derek had died in Mexico, Scott had been doing that; taking things on as if he was supposed to be the only one who could. As if it was his job as the alpha to bear every burden. She didn't know whether it was good or bad that he would still call her.

Things between them had changed the night that they had rescued Lydia from the nogistune. After people had died. She had been stupid, she had only seen Isaac being sliced to ribbons by the oni. She hadn't been paying attention to anything else; all that had been going through her mind was: "no. You will not take him from me."

Her selfishness got Kira taken from Scott instead. Theirs had apparently been a fragile, new romance, cut short when Kira had protected Allison from an oni's blade. She had gotten stabbed through the chest for her efforts.

The fact that Allison had figured out the key to killing the oni was cold comfort when she had to watch the girl bleed out in the arms of the first boy she had ever loved.

That night had been the last time that he had looked at her with the same light, the same hopeful love that he always had before. Because that was when he had learned that loving someone couldn't stop them from bleeding out in his arms.

Isaac had died the very next night, killed by the last oni seconds before they defeated the nogistune.

She wondered if she was part of the reason why he tried take everything on himself.

When Deaton arrived, the two of them watched as he tried to assess the strange disturbance in the air. He haphazardly circled it several times. Whatever it was.

He returned to them with the same frown he had been wearing for days. It seemed etched into his face.

"This thing, this disturbance, I've never seen anything like it." He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It doesn't look like anything's happening, so for now I would suggest that we just keep an eye on it. Beyond that there's not much else that we can do."

They stared at it for a long time. Allison felt the knot in her stomach grow twist. She didn't like the fact that there was nothing they could do. It felt like they couldn't do anything about anything anymore.

She clenched her bow in her hand.

Deaton turned back to them. "There is unfortunately more to talk about, but not here. Perhaps at your house, Scott?"

Scott nodded. Allison shook her head. "I should get back to the hospital," she trailed off.

The older man gave her a sympathetic look. "I understand that you want to be with Lydia, but there's nothing that you can do for her right now. The most helpful thing we can do is figure out what it was that attacked her."

"It was Tracy," Scott supplied.

"Not exactly," Deaton shook his head, "but this is not the place to talk about it. Let's continue this at your house. I'll meet you there," with that he turned to leave.

Scott put his hand on her arm. "Allison, come on. I need you there,"

She acquiesced, because it was Scott and she still cared. Of course she still cared. "All right," she nodded.

The drive to Scott's house seemed much longer than it was. Thoughts of Lydia, Tracy, Scott, and the tear circled her mind like a drain. Was Lydia's surgery going all right? Tracy was a nightmare with implications that were as of yet unknown. Malia insisted that there were three masked men behind it. The fact that Scott had neglected to tell his best friend about the disturbance in the air made her worry for Scott, and she knew that nothing good would come of it. Her fingers were pale and stiff around the wheel.

Her phone's buzzing tore her out of her thoughts. She waited until she was at a red light to see that she had a text from Stiles.

'Any news on Lydia?'

She typed and immediate 'not yet' and turned her phone on silent. She didn't look at it again until she had pulled up to Scott's house, but she didn't have any new messages anyway.

Deaton and Scott had already been talking by the time Allison walked into the McCall's kitchen.

"Ah, you're here, good." Deaton gave her a nod. Reaching into his bag, he produced two glass jars, one in each hand. They both contained some sort of claws, but Allison couldn't be sure which kind they were.

The Druid indicated one of the jars. "These are from the creature you fought. A werewolf with the talons of an eagle."

She exchanged a look with Scott.

"Now," Deaton continued, "this could be a creature from eastern mythology called a Garuda, but without knowing more I can't be sure."

Then he shook the second jar. "These were Tracy's, obviously the class of a werewolf. But she also had the scales and venom of a kanima." He looked at both jars, and then back to them. "This is terrifying, but what's even more unsettling is the fact that Tracy got past the mountain ash."

"How could she have?" Scott ran a hand through his hair, and old habit that Allison remembered from when they had been together. It made him seem younger. "Supernatural creatures can't cross over mountain ash."

Deaton shook his head, giving the two of them a look that Allison immediately recognized as I don't know.

"Tracy was obviously some sort of werewolf-kanima hybrid, but she would've been scratched of bitten. The fact that she wasn't tells me that she was made."

"Made?" Allison asked.

"Yes, it appears that someone – or a group of someones – is trying to create a supernatural through non-supernatural means. Doing something like that blurs the lines between science and the supernatural." He put the glass jars back in his bag.

Scott paced around his kitchen like he wasn't sure if he wanted to or not. Allison just wanted to go to sleep and ignore what Deaton had just told them. Scientifically-created monsters? Maybe it shouldn't have surprised her, but it did.

He stopped right next to her, gave her a frown before turning to his mentor. "What about those holes that we found in the woods? Do you think that they're part of some sort of…incubation process?"

Deaton nodded. "I think that that would be a safe assumption." He paused and looked between them for a moment. "The two of you need to keep protecting each other, as well as the others. There is a lot going on that we don't understand yet, and you'll need to be looking out for each other."

Scott got this funny look on his face. "What about you?"

"I'm going to try and find some answers. I'll be out of town for a while, but you'll know as soon as I'm able to find something." The older man looked over at Allison. "Your father has agreed to go with me."

That surprised her, but it worried her more. She immediately felt her pulse quicken; she and her father had promised each other that they would protect those that couldn't, but couldn't Deaton protect himself?

"Why?" Is all she could manage without giving her true thoughts away.

"Yes. If my hunch is right, then I'll need the extra firepower where I'm going. And we'll only be gone a few days." Deaton seemed oblivious to her inner objections, but the way Scott looked at her told her that he knew.

She didn't say anything else.

Deaton sighed. "I've lived in the world of the supernatural for a long time, but I'm still a doctor - still a man of science. When something like this happens, it rattles the foundation of everything you believe." He pause for a moment. "Something like this shakes you to the core."

With that he left them. Allison was about to pull out her phone and text her dad, but Scott spoke up and interrupted her.

"Do you think that I should've told Stiles? About Derek's loft?"

She looked at him. "Yeah, I do."


Scott convinced her to just go home instead of returning to the hospital. She knew that he was right, although she didn't really feel like sleeping, either. For his part, Scott looked like he could sleep for the next ten years without waking up once.

She left him with a quick goodbye and climbed into her car. Briefly she considered going back on her word and returning to her best friend, but she decided against it. She would only get sloppy if she allowed herself to get too tired, and sloppy could get someone killed.

Her dad was on his way out the front door of their apartment when she got there. His eyes flashed towards her, ready for a fight as he always was.

"Oh, Allison, good. I was afraid I'd miss you." He stopped and unlocked the door for her.

Her throat was dry. "You're leaving,"

He seemed unfazed. "Someone told you," he nodded, "I'll just be gone a few days."

"I just wish that you had told me," she struggled to stay calm, but she was so tired that it just didn't seem worth the effort.

"I just got the call a few hours ago,"

Allison rubbed her temple. "I'm really tired. Please just keep in touch,"

Her dad gave her a funny look. "Of course."

She tried to shuffled past him, but he put his hands on her shoulders.

"What's up, kiddo?" He bent down a little to get a better look at her face. She didn't bother trying to soften her expression or put on any emotion. "You've been acting off the last couple of days."

She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. "You know that we found Tracy's body tonight,"

He nodded.

"And you know about that weird thing in the air outside of Derek's old loft,"

He nodded again.

She studied him, saw the lines on his face and the shadows under his eyes. "It's just," she sighed. "It's a lot for one day, I guess."

There was something in his expression that told her he didn't quite buy it, but he didn't say anything. With a final squeeze he dropped his hands from her shoulders.

"I know."

Life isn't fair, hung in the air between them, left unsaid because they both knew that she already knew that.

Her dad adjusted the duffel bag strap on his shoulder and stepped aside.

"I love you," he said as she passed.

She stopped and turned, wrapping her arms around him. She was surprised at how tightly she was hugging him, like she did when she was little. He hugged her back just as hard.

"It's going to be okay, kiddo." He sighed. She knew that he hated giving empty promises, but it made her feel better anyway.

With a jerky nod she pulled away and stepped past the threshold of their apartment.

"Be safe, Dad."

"You, too."

She nodded and shut the door behind her.


School had already lost its shine, if it had ever truly posed a shine in the first place. The events of the last few days had turned the promise of senior year into a horrific waiting game. Waiting for Deaton to come up with something solid, waiting for Lydia to wake up, waiting for the next victim.

It was agonizing, but they wouldn't have to wait for long. Most likely someone would be dead or well on their way by the end of the day, with how things were going.

Malia appeared by her locker almost as soon as she got there. They weren't really close, but the only other girl in the pack was Lydia, and the redhead wasn't known for her friendliness. So Allison tried to make an effort to be a bit more approachable.

"Hey," Malia said immediately.

Allison cocked her eyebrow. "Hi. Are you ok?"

The werecoyote shrugged, a frown on her face. That in-and-of itself wasn't too unusual. "No, nothing's wrong." She paused. "Why, do I seem like something's wrong?"

"Um," Allison didn't quite know how to answer that. "You just usually come in with Stiles, don't you?"

"Oh," Malia dismissed, communicating a very clear vibe of I don't want to talk about it. Allison frowned. "No. I came by myself today."

Allison really didn't want to get into anything that she wasn't involved in, so she just nodded. Malia looked like she was studying her . "Ok, then are you-"

The other girl spun on her heel and promptly strode away.

She stared after her.

"O-k," she said to herself, "That was weird."

"What was?"

She almost hadn't noticed Stiles come up behind her, which was more a testament to how distracted she was than it was to any subtlety on his part. He had one hand shoved in his pocket and the other wrapped around the strap of his backpack. His gaze was fixed on something down the hall.

She wondered if Scott had talked to him yet.

"Nothing," she shut her locker. "Anything new?" She eyed him out of the corner of her eye.

He shrugged, turning his attention to her. "You mean, besides the fact that one of our classmates took out the entire police station and that Lydia still hasn't woken up?"

So no, he hadn't been told.

She wondered if she should. Scott might be upset, but-

What was she thinking? The hell she was going to put anyone's feelings above keeping her friends safe.

He was giving her a weird look. "Something weird happened last night, after everything with Tracy." She started.

He looked tired, but his eyes were sharp. She knew that this would make him mad at Scott. "Yeah?"

"Well there was this weird…thing that happened to the air," she frowned, not really knowing how to explain it.

His blank face made it worse.

"It was like the air was underwater, and there was this feeling in my head. Whatever it was, it didn't seem good." It wasn't like they hadn't seen weird things before, but it was still hard to explain.

He frowned and scratched his head. "Where was this? And why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I wasn't the one who found it," was all she said.

"Then who found it?" He asked. He followed her as she started walking to class.

She glanced over at him. "Scott."

He disappeared from her line of sight, but she heard him stay right next to her. She kept walking, not wanting to see what his reaction was.

It wasn't what she expected. "What happened when you found it?" Was all he asked.

Surprise colored her features when she turned to get a look at him. He look at her with an unreadable expression.

"Nothing. Nothing happened. As far as I know, it's still there." She frowned at him. "Deaton said to keep an eye on it."

"Yeah, smart." He agreed quietly, his expression unchanged. He made an abrupt turn and started walking towards his own class. "See you later," he called distractedly.

She knew he was upset, but she didn't know what any of his small ticks meant. For all she knew she could've just unleashed a disaster. Even so, he deserved to be in the know; he was the most useful out of all of them when it came to figuring out the weird things that went on in their town.

She made a b-line to her desk and sat down. When she looked up she made eye-contact with Scott, who had twisted around in his seat to face her. She gave him a calm look in response.

He didn't say anything, and after a moment he twisted back around. But Allison knew that he had heard her conversation with Stiles.


"I was going to tell him, you know."

Scott jogged up to Allison on her way to the library. She inwardly sighed.

"It's not like I thought you were hiding from him, Scott. I just saw him and filled him in on what he'd missed." She shrugged.

The look on his face said that he didn't completely believe her, but he didn't look to be overly confrontational. "It's just," he sighed, "Stiles has just been through a lot recently."

She glanced over at him.

His brows furrowed. "What?"

She shook her head but said nothing as they entered the library. Scott immediately turned his head to the upper level, where Allison could just make out the back of Malia's head. Stiles was probably up there, too.

When they climbed up to the upper level they saw both Stiles and Malia seated at a table, their noses in several books. Malia looked up from her book when they approached. "What took you guys so long?" She asked. Stiles didn't look up from his book at all.

"Sorry," Scott shrugged as he sat down between the two of them, "I had to talk to Coach about our last Econ quiz."

Allison wondered if that was a lie.

Malia seemed to believe it easily enough, accepting his word with a nod.

Stiles finally looked up from whatever book he had been reading and entered the conversation like he had always been a part of it. "What's this about a chimera?"

"I was in class, and someone started talking about chimeras-"

Allison maneuvered behind Malia to get to the last chair as Scott explained that he thought Tracy might've been a chimera. It wasn't a bad idea, actually. It made just about as much sense as anything else that was happening.

Stiles shrugged. "It's worth a look, anyway," he conceded.

"That's what I thought," Scott nodded. He still didn't mention the weird thing in the air.

Allison wondered if Stiles was still mad about having information withheld from him. Was he mad at Scott? He didn't look one way or the other, really.

He looked stressed.

Scott got up and started perusing the bookshelves. He didn't seem to be looking for anything very specific.

Glancing over, she noticed that the book Stiles had in front of him had nothing to do with the supernatural. It was entitled Disturbances in Nature: A Study of Dimensions and Space. He snapped it shut, and she looked up to find him staring at her.

"They wouldn't let me in to see Lydia," he said.

She blinked.

"She's still in the ICU."

"I know," he nodded, his fingers drumming on the closed book cover. "Did you find anything?" He turned his gaze to his girlfriend.

"About chimeras? No." She replied decidedly, frowning at him in a way that said more than Allison could interpret. She suddenly remembered earlier when Malia had tried to talk to her, and wondered if it had something to do with the tense atmosphere between the couple.

Scott returned with two large books. "Ok, these two look promising." He dropped them on the table. He looked between everyone and Allison could tell that he read the mood clearly.

Allison picked up the top book. It was a book of ancient mythology.

"Aren't we going to look through the bestiary?" She looked up at the rest of them.

"On it," Stiles nodded, pulling the tablet where they kept the digital copy of the bestiary out of his backpack.

No one spoke as they settled in. They each buried their noses in whatever material they were searching, ignoring each other with a skill that was probably a little sad to find among people who were friends. Or were supposed to be, anyway.

They were there for what felt like ten hours, but when Allison checked her phone it had only been two.

Scott's phone went off.

He didn't jump, but his back straightened, giving away his surprise.

"Sorry," he mumbled, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

"Is something wrong?" She asked, because texts were never a good thing. Not anymore.

Stiles and Malia had stopped reading, too.

Scott shook his head. He typed a quick reply before returning his phone to his pocket. "Everything's fine," he nodded, "my mom just texted me. Lydia woke up."

"Well then what are we doing here?" Stiles said immediately, already starting to stand up. Malia glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Scott only said that she woke up, not that she can have visitors." Allison stopped him, a little stung that Melissa hadn't bothered to text her as well. Just to be sure she double-checked her messages. None.

"Yeah, but don't you think we should be there for her?" His nostrils flared and he pressed his lips together. He continued to gather his stuff.

She frowned, pulse quickening in irritation.

"Stiles, I want to see her, too," Scott interjected before she could reply, "but what happened to Tracy happens to other people? We can't just sit and wait at the hospital."

Stiles tried to hide it, but Allison could see him roll his eyes. "I've got my reading right here." He waved the tablet in his hand before stuffing it in his backpack.

"Scott's right," Malia spoke up.

"The only way we can help Lydia is by learning how to stop these things," Allison added.

For a moment he didn't move, but Stiles eventually slumped back in his seat. "Yeah," he lifted a shoulder, sounding just about as unhappy as he looked.

Scott leaned forward in his seat a little. "Come on, we'll go visit Lydia as soon as we're done, ok?"

Stiles' gaze slid over to Scott, and Allison knew that he was about to snap at him.

She grabbed Stiles' backpack before he could open his mouth. "Let's switch. I'm losing focus on this one." She decided coolly, unzipping his backpack and pulling his tablet out.

"Hey, don't just go digging through my backpack-" Stiles grabbed it away from her, effectively distracted from whatever he had been about to say to Scott.

Malia nodded. "Yeah, I'm tired of mine, too." She grabbed Scott's book right out of his hands and gave him hers. Scott accepted it with a roll of his eyes.

Allison slid her book over to Stiles, who picked it up with a frown. A moment later she shoved the tablet at him as well.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "What, you wanna switch again? Already?"

"I don't know the password,"

"Oh," he entered the password and she took it back.

She considered remarking on how long his password was, but didn't bother. Everyone knew how paranoid he was.

Swiping through the pages, she scanned through so many monsters and creatures that she wasn't so much reading as she was just looking at pictures. It was mind-numbing, which was dangerous. It let her mind turn to her own desire to go see her best friend.

Stiles was tapping his foot. She saw Malia shoot him a glare, but he didn't notice.

It was somehow important to Allison that she be the first one to see Lydia instead of Stiles. She was the one who had spent half the night at the hospital, not that it had been easy for Scott to convince him to leave, either.

It was ridiculous.

"Stiles," Malia snapped, startling everyone. He looked at her with wide eyes. "Stop the tapping. It's driving me crazy."

"What?" He frowned.

She pointed down at his feet. "You've been tapping your foot this entire time. Stop it."

He blinked, shifted in his seat. "Oh. Sorry," he said, but he didn't really sound like it.

Allison and Scott exchanged a look. Without another comment everyone went back to their readings.

The worst part about the bestiary was that there was no real organization to the monsters. An ice monster was followed by a Germanic legend, and then a Fairytale creature after that. Literally every time they came across anything new they'd have to peruse the entire bestiary all over again. Some entries they had basically memorized, but some of them were so obscure that they had difficulty finding any information at all – not to mention some of the atrocious illustrations.

Lydia was better than any of them at this. Other than Stiles. But her connection to everything supernatural was an advantage even Stiles didn't have. She almost couldn't help but find things.

Allison just wondered if the surgery went well. Melissa probably would've told Scott if it hadn't. But she still wondered.

She paused, her finger hovering over the tablet in preparation to swipe to the next page.

Wendigo.

Sharp teeth meant for tearing through flesh. Cannibal. Strong, by the way it was described on the page. Sneaky. But there was one line she couldn't take her eyes off of.

"Look at this," she placed the tablet flat on the table facing Scott, "it says here that a wendigo is strong enough to take on a werewolf."

"A wendigo?" Scott squinted at the page, and then back up at her. His look told her that he didn't understand why she had shown it to him.

She frowned.

Stiles leaned over, reading the screen himself. His eyebrows hiked up a bit on his forehead.

"Good thing we're not dealing with one of those," he glanced up at her.

"Don't jinx us," Scott chuckled, although it sounded a little strained. "The last thing I need is to have some monster trying to eat me."

Scott's friend nodded. "Yeah, no kidding."

Allison took the tablet back. She didn't know why she had felt compelled to show Scott the entry, but she knew it worried her. It seemed like there were more and more things out there that could kill them every day.

Strong enough to fight an Alpha Werewolf and possibly win such a fight.


Their research on chimeras wasn't very productive. She hadn't found anything useful at all, and none of her other friends looked to have had any better luck. Scott and Malia were still reading, but it looked like Stiles had already dozed off. His face was pressed into the book he had been reading, but she could only see the back of his head.

Her legs felt cramped from sitting in the same position for so long, and her back had fallen asleep.

With a glance at the back of Stiles' head, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Scott.

'I've got nothing.

Gonna check on Lydia'

After he read the text he gave her a nod and replied:

'K but check the loft first please'

Neither of them had gone back yet. She looked up and nodded at him. Gathering her things as quietly as she could so as to not wake Stiles, she gave Scott and Malia a quick wave goodbye before she left.

It felt liberating to not be around her friends, but she knew that it shouldn't have. It didn't matter; she turned her mind towards the strange disturbance in the air. With any luck it would be gone, or at the least be unchanged. They didn't usually have that kind of luck, though, so she tried to prepare herself for the worst.

Whatever that would be.

The drive over to Derek's old place took twice as long as normal because of rush hour. She sat up pin-straight in her seat, trying to not let her back fall asleep again.

The longer it took to get there, the longer it would be before she got to see her best friend. She decidedly didn't think about it.

The traffic eventually let up, but only because she turned off the main road and took a roundabout, typically longer route. When she turned the last corner onto the street that led to Derek's loft, she slammed on the brakes.

"What the hell?"

Where once there had been a strange sensation – a wave, a feeing in the back of theIr ears – there was now what appeared to be a tear in the very fabric of the world. Everything around it seemed unstable, distorting and waving in and out of existence.

Her bow and quiver were in her hands in a moment, although she had no idea what good they'd be in a situation like this.

She was halfway out of her car before she thought better of it.

Everything was unraveling around her. She could feel the pull towards the center, towards what had to be nonexistence.

The air seemed to be sucked right out of her lungs. Everything was being obliterated. It was like God was about to tear the world in two.

She struggled against the urge to throw up as her insides felt like they were being ripped out of her.

Ribbons. Everything was unraveling like ribbons.

What should she do? The question spun in her head over and over. She didn't know. Fear was cooling in her stomach like a viper.

What could she do?

She gripped the hood of her car as best she could as she felt a wave sucking her in like a magnet. Her eyes watered, she couldn't see anything clearly. Her skull felt like it was splitting open with the pulsing sensation.

Her boots slid across the asphalt, her grip not nearly enough to keep her grounded.

She couldn't breathe.

Her hair whipped across her face, hitting her cheeks and neck. Her fingers slid off her car.

Frantically stumbling backwards, she lost her bow almost immediately. She had already lost her quiver at some point.

None of that mattered. She had to regain her balance.

Something – she needed something to grip.

She would not die.

She couldn't see anything; her hair was everywhere and the air was like acid in her eyes. Her fingers scrambled for anything to grasp onto.

Her back slammed into something, but the pull towards the tear started to slide her around it almost immediately. She twisted around and grasped at it. Frantic and flailing, she managed to hold onto it.

A bike rack, she registered absently. What she really noticed was that it was being uprooted as well.

Shit.

Her arms were shaking. She felt like she was already being torn apart.

And then something exploded.

She was thrown like a rag doll. Her skin felt like it was being torn to shreds as she skid across the asphalt.

She momentarily blacked out, but when she came-to she wished that she hadn't.

Everything felt like it was on fire. Her skin felt like it had been dipped in acid, her insides felt like they had been crushed by a building. She could tell that she had broken at least one rib, but everything else was in too much pain to pinpoint anything specific.

There was a loud ringing in her ears that didn't seem to want to stop. She knew that she probably had a concussion.

For a long time she just let herself lay there, unmoving. She laid there until she realized that the tear had disappeared. She forced her head up so that she could look around. Where the tear had been was a crater; everything around it was destroyed. But even so, the world seemed stable again. Whatever it had been was gone.

But there was something else.

Something in the center of the crater.

She moved one arm as best she could, then the other. Eventually she worked to where she could push herself up on her elbows.

Her skin was a lot less damaged than it felt. Her arms and legs were bruised and bleeding and her hands were all cut up, but besides that there wasn't much. No large pieces of shrapnel or limbs sitting at odd angles. She breathed a sigh of relief.

There was movement from the center of the crater. Immediately adrenaline shot through her veins, numbing some of the pain. It took a Herculean effort, but she forced herself up onto her feet.

Confusion set in. Where was her bow? She couldn't remember when she had lost it. Instead she had to resort to the knife she kept in her boot. Gripping it in her gnarled hands hurt, but she ignored it.

Her sharp gaze flashed to the potential danger, ready to defend herself.

But nothing attacked. She realized that it was a person at the center of the crater, curled up and unscathed.

From where she stood, the person seemed to be shaking. Sobbing, she realized.

She took a few unsteady steps forward, but halted.

It was a boy.

She blinked. How could he have survived that? Had he been there the entire time? There wasn't a scrap of clothing on him.

The boy didn't seem to notice her.

Slowly, slowly, she took another painful step forward. She didn't lower her knife. "Hey," she croaked out, "are you okay?"

The boy went completely still.

"Are you okay?" She wouldn't get any closer, not before she knew if he was a danger or not. But at the same time there was something that told her to get closer, to run to the boy.

She felt as if she should hug the boy.

She ignored that thought.

Pain shot through her, and she had to fight the urge to double over.

The boy looked up.

He stared at her. She stared at him. She felt like she had gone insane. Maybe her concussion was worse than she thought.

The boy looked just like her.


Author's Notes:

Ok. So. This is the first time I've written something multi-chapter in about seven years, and my first Teen Wolf fanfic ever. I'm instilling tons of confidence, I know.

Basically, I'm stallison trash, and there is just not enough of a fan base for me to not contribute anything. Also, I love dark!stallison/superangsty!stallison. Which this will definitely be. I'm still sort of getting a hang of these characters, but I'm enjoying it more than I thought it would, which is a good sign.

Most of the canon-divergent backstory has been given in this first chapter, and hopefully it wasn't too confusing. In case it wasn't apparent, this chapter is set during s5e4, and basically diverges from there. It'll be weave my in and out between canonical events and my own storyline, but hopefully the events I pull from the show aren't too boring. I try and mix it up, writing my own versions, but I understand that it can get a little dry. I'll try and keep those scenes to s minimum.

As I mentioned, this is going to be dark. I'm going to put these characters through the ringer, and there will be at least one character death. But don't worry, main characters are safe. Also, this story does involve a stallison kid!oc, and I'm really sorry about that. I kind of hate kid!oc's in general, because they usually just seem like wish fulfillment, but I've tried to really justify the presence of one in this story. I have most of the plot figured out, so hopefully I'll be able to keep this moving.

Another warning is that this is definitely going to be a slow-burn. I'm going to try and keep it as realistic as possible while keeping things moving. and I definitely plan on turning up the angst.

I'm sorry for such an extravagantly long author's note. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and take a moment to tell me what you thought. I'm really excited to see where this story goes.