Title: the first time i tried walking here, i almost fell
Summary: "I didn't like you until you were dead." Friendship!EricaAllison
Author's Note: Not my favorite story, but also one of my favorites. It's old and needs to be thrown to the wind, so here you all go. I always hoped Allison would be met by someone when she died, and Erica seems like a great person to be the greeting party with all that sass.
/
The first person Allison sees in heaven is not her mother, not Kate, but Erica.
Erica is smoking a cigarette underneath a tree – is it an oak, Allison wonders, is it a maple? Allison never finished her Earth Science class.
Erica looks bored and gestures Allison over. For a moment, Allison's legs feel like lead before giving way to the oddest sensation — and then, Allison feels lighter, freer than ever before. She takes a tentative step.
Erica smirks, "The first time I tried walking here, I almost fell."
Allison watches Erica raise the cigarette to her mouth and sucks it till it burns out. It replenishes itself and Erica smiles faintly.
"It doesn't kill you here, Allison," Erica says, rolling her eyes. Allison notices they're rimmed in eyeliner – how middle school, she thinks, and almost laughs. Erica looks at her cigarette lovingly, "In fact, they're kind of... sweeter here. Lighter, you know? A lot of things feel light here." Erica sucks at the cigarette and puffs her cheeks to let little breaths out, "Maybe there isn't rat poison in these, or something."
Allison walks the distance, sits down, and notices that Erica is right. Everything is light here. She feels almost faint, like she's lost something and then she thinks, … well, I guess I have.
Erica looks at Allison's profile, "Aren't you going to say something? Like Hey Erica, how are you! or What's it like here?... anything?"
Allison turns to her and says, "I never knew you smoked. You know, before."
Erica smiles mockingly and Allison wishes she never said anything at all, "Well, sweetie, you never bothered to really get to know me."
Erica throws her cigarette on the ground. It stays lit.
"Things never die here," Erica says.
She sounds sad. Allison almost rolls her eyes, almost feels like she understands Erica more than ever before. Allison just sighs instead, saying, "I guess that's just heaven." She pulls her legs into her chest. She's wearing a dress, probably the one she was buried in, because it's something Lydia would choose… But she thinks, modesty doesn't matter here, right?
Erica laughs coldly, "We aren't in heaven."
"We aren't?"
"No, Allison," Erica sighs. She doesn't sound mean or bitter or, even, really sorry. She just sounds tired, and it makes Allison terrified.
"Where's Boyd?" Allison asks suddenly. Suddenly she's clawing at the grass underneath her. The blades don't budge from the ground. "Erica, why isn't Boyd here with you?"
"I don't know," Erica whispers. She takes the cigarette from the ground and sucks on it again. Allison notices she's shaking, but the weather here is perfect – not too hot, not too cold. Just right.
"Can I have a drag?" Allison asks, quietly.
A cigarette materializes in between Allison's fingers, already lit, and Erica laughs sadly.
They sit in silence until Erica isn't with her anymore. Erica just fades, along with her cigarette, and her dark eyeliner and her bitterness. Allison has never felt more alone until she sees her mother looking at her. She promptly takes a drag.
Her mother gapes for a moment at the cigarette, and then laughs the kind of full belly laugh that makes you have to hold yourself together.
Allison has never seen her mother laugh. She does not join in, just watches and then finds herself fading away just like Erica, leaving her mother laughing alone by the unidentified tree.
/
In Allison's heaven (or whatever — she still hasn't figured it out, yet), she still fights bad guys. They aren't even real figures, just shadows.
But in this place, good always wins and Allison always defeats them and good people don't get hurt and she never dies, just constantly turns off the lights for the shadows.
Erica finds Allison kicking one of the shadows where its face should be and asks, "Why do you even bother anymore?"
Allison says, "This was my job, once."
"You don't have to do it anymore. We're not on Earth anymore. Those aren't even really people. You're not even fighting anything."
When Allison turns around, there are no shadows.
/
Isaac, she finds herself whispering. Scott.
She still feels the embrace of muscular arms around her, sometimes. The faint pull of skin against skin, still tethering her to the world, somehow.
She does not know whose grip is that tight.
/
She finds Erica again, smoking her never burning cigarette.
"Is there a way to watch them?" Allison asks, taking a drag from her own cigarette. She finds that the taste varies when she thinks about it.
"Them, them?" Erica asks, left eyebrow raising.
"Yeah," Allison says softly, "Our friends."
Erica bites her lip, "No. You don't watch them."
"You don't or you can't?"
Erica rolls her eyes, "Does it matter?"
They sit in silence, until something crucial springs to Allison's mind. It's so hard to ask, so Allison whispers it, "Hey, Erica… Do you know how Boyd died?"
Erica shakes her head, big blubbery tears rolling down her cheeks, "No. No one bothered to tell me."
Allison doesn't correct her that there's no one else but her there.
"Derek," Allison sighs. "The Alphas lowered Boyd onto Derek's claws."
Erica laughs so loudly that Allison swears they will hear it on Earth. Erica bends over and grabs at her knees, laughing so hard she shakes.
"Oh my God," Erica gasps. "I don't even know why I'm laughing. It's not even a little bit funny."
Allison starts to laugh and cry at the same time, clutching on to Erica and pushing her fingers in the fabric of Erica's shirt.
"I forgot what it was like to be happy and sad at the same time," Allison says later, giggles still escaping from the sides of her mouth.
Erica smiles at Allison and her eyes twinkle, "Hey Allison, I know this is kind of sad, but I think you're the closest I've ever had to a best friend."
"You didn't seem to like me much before."
"Yeah, well," Erica shrugs. "I'm not very good with people and… I guess I didn't like you until you were dead."
For some reason, they both start laughing again, grabbing at their sides.
/
"Allison," her mother sometimes calls.
Allison never faces her, just intertwines her fingers in Erica's, or sometimes, when Erica fades away to somewhere else, Allison hides in her unidentified trees and watches her mother walk underneath the foliage.
Allison can tell from feet away that her mother still smells like dying flowers.
/
"Erica," Allison says, once. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm still a part of Earth."
"You'll always be," Erica says, waving her cigarette in the air. "That's where you came from."
"Where are we? Why haven't we figured it out yet?"
"Well," Erica says, "I don't think it really matters where we are, Ally. The cigarettes are good and I have you now."
Sometimes, Allison thinks this may be heaven, somehow.
/
Erica starts showing Allison the hidden places of Wherever We Are, places she found before Ally, as she now calls her, died.
The first place looks far too much like the woods of Beacon Hills that Allison gasps, but Erica points the tiny green arms peaking from the ground and the little squirrels that scurry through the trees.
"You never got to notice these things," Erica says, smiling. She's doing a lot of that lately. "You were always running."
Allison wraps her hand in Erica's and they move along. The second place is an ice rink. Allison lays down on the ice and stares at the stars above them.
"This place confuses me," Allison admits. "Everything confuses me."
Erica smiles, "That's the beauty of this, I think. On Earth, you had to figure things out. Here, you just don't."
Allison thinks but where's Boyd and who's holding on to me still and why do I still sometimes hurt in the middle of the night but does not say these things.
Allison goes to the third place alone.
It is her funeral on Earth. It must've only been days after her death there, but in Wherever We Are, it feels as if it's been years.
Scott and Isaac touch pinkies as they seat next to each other, but avoid touching anywhere else, and Allison wonders if there is more than a bond to her between them. She smiles when Isaac turns to Scott and looks at the crookedness of his jaw. Stiles presses his fingers to his temples and looks too pale. Lydia grasps the chair underneath her and tries not to scream. Allison skips over her father so she does not see his face.
It hurts to know that Erica is not here with her, but as she watches her coffin lower to the ground, she knows that it is better that Erica, who was not given a real funeral, did not witness this.
Allison turns to return to Erica, but Scott senses her movement. She is a ghost, and yet, he can still smell her. Isaac flinches and she knows he can feel her, but he has been haunted too many times to continue really reacting anymore.
Let me go, she thinks. I know it's you who keeps holding me. Scott tries to catch up to her, but for once, she is given the advantage.
She fades away right before he gets to her, but he still swipes the shadow of her.
When she finds Erica again, Erica is still smiling.
"I found Boyd when you were gone, Ally," Erica says, bouncing on her heels.
"Where? How long was I gone?" Allison asks, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes.
"Oh, Ally. You were gone for so long. But you'll find out soon enough. I know you will." Erica is laughing herself out of existence, fading. Allison gets scared and reaches out to make Erica stay.
"No," Erica whispers, grasping at Allison's hands only to let them go. "No more shadows, Ally."
Allison starts to cry again and Erica tells her, "We were all Heaven this whole time, and that's why we'll be together, again. Even if we have to fight to get there, we'll be together, somewhere else again."
Erica fades away entirely with a smile on her face. Allison falls to the ground and repeats the words in her head.
Allison feels like she forgot how to stop fighting a long time ago.
/
While roaming her surroundings, Allison finds a river running through a field.
She sticks her hand into the cool running water, lets her shoulders relax. All of her muscles feel loosen and lighten and she feels, for the first time in a while, like she did the first time she got here.
She remembers Scott and Isaac and her father and Lydia and Stiles and Boyd and Erica and Kira and even Derek and Peter, and smells the smell of dead flowers.
"I'm sorry," her mother whispers in the shell of her ear. "I'm so sorry, Allison."
Allison's mother puts her hand out in front of Allison's, and Allison grasps it. Unconsciously, Allison's eyes begin to close, like her body already knew it was fading.
Allison's mother whispers, "I've been waiting so long to tell you that."
"Where are we going?" Allison whispers.
"Home," Allison's mother says. "Baby, we're going home."
/
Decades later, a girl with blonde hair and dark eyeliner smokes a cigarette behind the dumpster at her high school.
A girl with brown hair and full pink lips walking past smells the scent and walks around, peering at the other girl shyly, half hidden by the green metal, "You shouldn't smoke those, you know. They'll kill you."
"Bite me," the blonde hair says menacingly.
For some reason, the younger girl starts to laugh.