Not much happened for the next three days, but Allison could tell that Chris's words were on Victoria's mind. She cleaned the house from top to bottom twice, silently and efficiently, barely making a sound. She avoided Allison's room as if it were just an empty void in the middle of the hallway.

Chris wasn't much better, but at least he wasn't avoiding eye contact with his daughter as much as he did the first week. Once, when Allison went into the bathroom to apply her daily make-up and contacts she came back to her room and found a brown paper bag on her bed. Inside were new journals and a pack of ballpoint pens. There was no card, no indication that it'd been a gift, but Allison appreciated it all the same. She hid away in her room while Victoria barreled through her cleaning binge and wrote endlessly. She needed to sort out her thoughts about coming back to life, her time in Eichen House and returning to a cold, loveless home. Allison wanted to know how other PDS sufferers were faring in their private lives and hoped that she was the worst one off. She couldn't imagine what it must be like for those whose families outright hated them.

All she needed now was the perfect time to ask about the support group. Victoria was considering it but she'd wouldn't agree to it unless it was one hundred percent her idea. Allison just had to phrase the question in a way to make it seem like it was.

It turned out that in the end Allison didn't have to say a peep. On the fourth day Victoria knocked briskly on her bedroom door. Allison looked up, surprised that she had a visitor, even if it was her own family. "Come in!" she said, her tone falsely bright.

Victoria opened the door, frowning at the 'state' of the room. Allison's balls of wool (Chris had given her another silent gift just yesterday) were piled next to the foot of her bed but other than that the room was spotless.

Her mother stood stiffly by the doorjamb, her arms folded across her chest. She stared at a spot just over Allison's shoulder. "It's not healthy to be holing up in this room all day," she said coldly. "You're going to go to that support group that that woman mentioned. I contacted her and had the forms filled. It starts in one hour. Get ready." Victoria turned on her heel and left.

Allison stared at the doorway, unable to believe what'd just happened. Her face broke into a grin; Victoria was finally giving her some leeway, even though she made it sound like some punishment. Allison would take what she could get.

Within half an hour they were in the car with Victoria behind the wheel, driving to one of the more vacant streets. The buildings were mostly empty and the street bare of any parked cars. Victoria pulled up in front of a whitewashed office building that looked like it could use a little TLC. Victoria kept looking straight ahead, the engine still going.

"The meeting ends at five," she said. "I will be picking you up at five fifteen, so don't wander off. I've also signed you up for some other classes that happen on other days of the week."

"Why?" Allison asked.

"It'll be suspicious for you to only be there the day that your support group has a meeting," Victoria said. "I got the pamphlets back at the house for you to look over when you come home. Now go in. It's on the third floor." Allison had barely closed the door behind her before Victoria reversed the car and drove away.

Heart pounding wildly in her chest, Allison walked up to the front door and pulled it open. The ground floor's lobby was cleaner than the sidewalk outside, but only just enough to be habitable. Dust bunnies were collecting in the corners and the wallpaper was yellowing and peeling slightly. The elevator wasn't working so Allison resigned herself to using the stairs. They were narrow and cluttering with bits of debris, but she finally made her way to the proper floor and room. She hesitated before opening the door.

Marin was sitting in a circle of chairs, her clipboard resting on her lap. Besides her there were four other people occupying the chairs. Three of them looked to be around Allison's age (well, the age that she died at, anyway) and a young woman with strawberry hair and green eyes.

Allison stared at her, confusion settling in. It was her eyes that threw her off; none of the facilities offered green contacts, only blue or brown. The woman must've noticed her staring at her because she said, "Are you going to stand there and gawk at me too?"

Marin spoke up before Allison could answer. "I'm glad that you're finally joining us, Allison," she said warmly. She gestured at one of the two empty chairs. "We're ready to start if you are."

"Uh, yeah," Allison said, sitting down. She glanced over at the empty chair.

"Are you looking for someone?" Marin asked.

Allison wanted to bite out a retort. Of course she was looking for someone! It wasn't exactly a secret that Allison and Stiles had befriended each other in Eichen House. "Is this everyone?" she asked instead.

Marin paused, as if she was thinking about what reassuring lie she should tell Allison. "Everyone that will be attending this week, yes."

Allison sighed, resigning herself to another fruitless failure. The meeting was only an hour long, but it stretched out due to awkward pauses and lapses into silence as the other PDS sufferers contemplated their answers.

The trio of teenaged sufferers was Isaac Lahey, Erica Reyes, and Vernon Boyd. Isaac had been sixteen when his abusive father had locked him in the freezer for a week during a drunken rage and he'd slowly starved to death and ran out of oxygen. Isaac wasn't sure what had killed him first, but all that mattered was that Mr. Lahey was sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment for murder. Isaac's brother had died in Iraq a couple years earlier and his mother had overdosed when he was a kid so he was essentially homeless. Luckily for him Marin had opened up her home for him until he felt safe enough to live on his own.

Erica's home life was the exact opposite. Her parents had coddled her when she'd been alive due to her epilepsy and now they were even worse since she came back. "It's not like my seizures can kill me a second time," Erica said, rolling her eyes. She'd died when she fell down the stairs and snapped her neck due to said seizure. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Reyes had been terrified to let her come to the support group and had taken them months to finally agree that it'd be best for their daughter to see other people with her 'condition.'

Boyd was the quiet, stoic guy in their group, so Allison couldn't figure out how he'd managed to die at such a young age. Marin had gently prompted him to relive the memory, where he calmly admitted that he fell through the ice on a frozen lake while trying to save his sister, Alicia. They'd both froze to death and so far Alicia hasn't been found as a rabid nor admitted as a patient at one of the facilities. The Boyd family was still waiting with bated breath for her discovery and treatment.

The woman with the green eyes was Lydia Martin. She wasn't a PDS sufferer and her only excuse for being there was that her 'friend usually attended'. She kept quiet after that, watching the others with a bored look on her face.

"It's your turn, Allison," Marin said. "You heard their stories and now we want to know yours."

"It was nothing spectacular," Allison said. "Death isn't some grand spectacle." She drew in a big breath. "I was shot twice in the stomach and once in the heart during a mugging."

"You got mugged?" Erica asked.

Allison resisted the urge to glare at her. She sounded so enthralled by the very idea. "No, it was someone else, but I was there and I wanted to help them. It was this older woman and the mugger was taunting her and it pissed me off so much. Dad put me in self-defense lessons for years and so I just… used the offensive. I managed to get the woman's purse away from him before—"

It was one of the few memories that were still crystal-clear. Allison winced when she recollected the blasts of the gun and the burning pain as the bullets pierced through her. She remembered how the cold, hard pavement felt as her body crumpled and gushed out a thick pool of blood on it. The mugger had run off but the woman had stayed behind to phone 911. It didn't matter at that point; Allison died three minutes before the ambulance finally arrived.

"May I be excused?" Allison asked quietly. She stood up before Marin could say "yes" and was already leaving the room. She felt the eyes of the other members upon her back.

The bathroom was just down the hallway. Allison pushed open the door and allowed it to close behind her. The sinks were filthy, but she didn't care. She turned on the faucet and water gushed out of it, spilling into the sink below. She stared at the water, stared at her dim reflection that showed off the horrible make-up and contacts that constantly irritated her eyes.

Allison had thought that coming to this support group would make things easier, but all it did was remind her how lifeless she was. She'd died and for some reason she and thousands of others had risen from the grave only to cause the apocalypse. She was dead, she was dead, she was dead—

"Ally?"

Allison stilled, clutching the lip of the sink. Her eyes widened, hardly daring to believe it.

The voice from behind her huffed out a weak laugh. "Aw, come on, you didn't forget about me already, did you?"

Allison slowly lifted her head, her heart pounding loudly in her chest. She looked into the mirror's reflection and saw the wild mess of brown hair, the pale skin and off-color grey of his dead eyes.

It was him. Stiles was standing right behind her. He gave her a little awkward wave.

Instinct took over, overriding every rational part of her mind and body. Allison swung around and leapt into Stiles's arms, nearly crashing them both into the stall behind him. She snaked her arms around his neck just as he grabbed her around the middle and pulled her close. They pressed against each other, impossibly close, as they hugged fiercely. Allison buried her face in his shoulder. Her entire being trembled with relief.

They stayed like that for minutes, just soaking in the reality of one another. In that moment Allison felt less alone and more whole than she had in a long time. Stiles hugged her tighter against him and at one point Allison heard his breath hitch.

"I missed you," she whispered.

"Me too," Stiles said back. "God, Ally, I missed you so much. You would not believe it."

They reluctantly drew back, now staring at each other. Stiles's face was devoid of the awful make-up that she constantly wore to pacify her parents. Instead there were dark shadows under his eyes, like he hadn't been sleeping for weeks. His hair was greasy from a long absence from shampoo and his clothes were rumpled and loose on his frame.

"I got your stuff," Stiles said. "Dad gave it to me. I was pissed that he didn't invite you over to the house—"

"He was just trying to protect you," Allison interrupted. She was still upset about the Sheriff preventing their reunion, but he had his reasons. "For all he knew I could've been the HVF in disguise."

Stiles looked away when she said that. He looked like he was about to cry. "Let's not talk about them right now. They're causing enough trouble in this town already. I just want to have one good day."

"Me too," Allison agreed. She reached for Stiles's hands and entwined their fingers together. "I've been feeling like a prisoner in my own home and all I could think about was finding you and do all of those things that we promised to do."

"Like what?"

Allison smiled shyly. "Change the world, maybe make more of those ridiculous sweaters. Have that wedding with the flower crowns."

Stiles pressed his forehead against hers. "Are you sure that you want to put up with me for all of eternity?"

Allison laughed softly. "Of course! You're my best friend."

In Eichen House they'd talked for hours about what immortality actually meant for their kind. Eternity was a very real and frightening concept for them; their loved ones would die as they lived on. They could only die if they were killed. Stiles had had a massive panic attack one day; he couldn't comprehend the idea of outliving his father, stepmother and Scott. Stiles's face would always possess an odd sense of wonderment whenever he mentioned his stepbrother. The very thought of his family dead and gone was extremely painful to him.

Allison could never imagine the idea of Chris and Victoria dying. Her mother would be pissed off more than scared at the concept of death while her father would just grin and bear it. Chris might've sold firearms but it was the Sheriff whose life was on the line every day. Stiles's fears were genuine.

"Are you two done in here?"

Startled, Allison and Stiles pulled apart. Standing by the open door was Lydia Martin. She gave out an annoyed sigh. "The meeting's done. Let's get going."

For a moment Allison thought she was talking to her for some reason, but then Stiles nodded. "Yeah, sure. Hey, uh, have you met Ally yet? Ally, this is Ly—"

"We've met," Lydia interrupted. She looked eager to leave and tapped her manicured nails against the doorjamb. "Melissa is going to be worried."

Stiles avoided her gaze, but his hold on Allison's hand tightened. "I'll go reapply that shit to my face then." He turned to Allison and kissed the top of her forehead before loosening his hold on her hand. He carefully walked past Lydia, who silently handed him a small make-up bag.

"You're as bad as my mom," Allison said.

Lydia turned to her. "Hmm?"

Allison felt anger stirring up inside of her. She'd finally reunited with Stiles and now he was being taken away from her once again! "Ordering him around like he's a trained dog. Actually, I'm surprised that he'd allow such a thing." She remembered how he constantly defied Brunski until he was beaten down, again and again.

Lydia crossed her arms, frowning. "The Stiles that you remember from that facility is different from the one that lives here in Beacon Hills."

"What do you mean?"

"You're living a sheltered afterlife, aren't you?" Lydia said. She didn't sound cruel, just tired and wary. Her gaze, however, remained laser-focused. "Your parents are doing the right thing by keeping you safe in your house because the outside world is not as accepting of your kind.

"Stiles's father has to constantly defuse the tension in this town whenever PDS is even mentioned. The Rising started here so it gets tense. Stiles can't go waltzing around town without his make-up or a chaperone because it'd get ugly if he did."

"That doesn't explain why Stiles would be different," Allison said. "I don't how he did it, but he was always able to find out what was happening in the outside world while we were being rehabilitated."

Lydia shook her head. "Not everything," she said quietly. "Look, he's putting on a brave face because you're here, but there are some things going on right now that he's still struggling to deal with. So just back off before you overwhelm him."

"If Stiles needs time," Allison began impatiently, "then I'll give it to him. But it's been over four months since I've seen him and we promised that we'd stick together once we got out. I'm not going to throw that away just because you said so."

"I never said you had to do that," Lydia said, huffing a little.

"Who are you anyway?" Allison asked. She had to know why this woman had so much authority in Stiles's life. "What's your relationship with him?"

Lydia rolled her eyes. "We went to the same high school before he died. After that I became friends with his stepbrother. Scott asked me to look out for Stiles, that's all."

She was holding something back, Allison could tell. She wasn't about to antagonize the woman, not while she was in charge of Stiles's safety at the moment.

"I see you two are being acquainted," said Stiles. He was back, his face now covered with a thick layer of the concealer. His eyes had gone from gray to brown with the aid of the stupid contacts. His posture was stiffer and his gaze was averted as he stared at the ground.

"We were just finishing up our conversation. Let's go now," Lydia said.

"Wait," Stiles said. Lydia made a noise of irritation. "Let me just—" He sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Can we have a minute alone?"

Lydia rolled her eyes once again, but silently complied. She walked out of the bathroom and the door swung shut. Stiles watched it for a brief moment before walking back up to Allison, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Not the reunion that you were expecting, huh?" he said. He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. It crushed Allison, seeing him like this. How ironic; Stiles had seemed happier when they'd been locked up in Eichen House.

"Hey, it's alright," Allison reassured him. She cupped his cheek with her hand. "It's not like it's been a picnic for any of us, right?"

Stiles nodded, leaning into her touch. "Hey, can I tell you something?"

"Anything."

Stiles closed his eyes. "I hate the support group. Melissa—my stepmom—insisted that I go to it, so that I could meet others that where going through the same thing as me. But it's not the same. All of them died by accident, or were trying to save someone or got murdered."

"I died trying to save someone," Allison said. "We bonded pretty well."

"It's not the same," Stiles insisted. "It doesn't feel right when I have to talk to Marin and the others about all of this shit. I'm alive when I should be dead and the people that should be alive are…" His voice trailed away. He looked like he was about to cry. Allison pulled him close, hugging him with all of her might.

Something terrible had happened during their separation. Allison just knew it. "Shh, it's okay," she said. Stiles shuddered against her, his shoulders slumping slightly. They drew apart once more.

"Tell you what," Allison said. "I'll keep coming to these meetings as long as you do. That way neither of us has to suffer alone. We'll do that until we can figure out a safer place to hang out."

Stiles nodded. "Yeah, sounds good." He looked towards the door. "I better get going before Lydia gets mad."

"She seems very demanding," Allison noted.

Stiles laughed weakly. "She takes some time getting used to, but once you warm up to her she's actually a lot of fun to be around."

Allison raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh."

"You'll fall in love with her bossiness," Stiles said with a wink. "Seriously, you will."