Hey guys. Shoutouts to gossgal33, LoginOrSignUp, and Bri P for reviewing last chapter, and for taking part in the guessing game I mentioned. If anyone else wants to guess, go ahead, and if you're right I'll PM you with a reward. Before this chapter, I have a couple of announcements. Later this week I'm going to start publishing 'fugue' (I know, I know, I said I'd wait, but I'm an impatient little Hufflepuff sometimes), which is a multi-chapter angsty Stydia story - more information on my profile if you're interested. I'm really excited to share it with you all. I've also been working on some one- and two-shots, which I'll be releasing on a whim over the next couple of weeks; none of them will be happy, but you might like them anyway. For now, here's the next chapter of 'scarlet'. It should explain a couple things you guys have been wondering about, but will probably raise more questions. Anyway. Enough from me. Here you go.
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Now.
The next afternoon, Allison is sitting at the top of the stairs to the basement, absently flicking through a book she'd found in the spare room. Stiles had invited her into the room earlier and told her she was free to browse through it and pick out anything she liked. He and Lydia are out of the house now – or the hideout, really – to follow up on a few things, and she's meant to be waiting for them to get back. She's not sure she's supposed to be in the basement, but something has drawn her here. Scott is in the far corner, refusing to look at her, and she knows it's because he sees her now for who she is – not the girl she used to be or the daughter her father had wanted her to be, but someone colder, wiser, more willing to do what's necessary to survive.
The book is about the supernatural, of course, and she's found herself particularly perusing the sections on werewolves. It's more about the history of werewolves in popular culture than about the actual process of hunting them, which explains why she's never seen something like this lying around the house. What good is anthropology or psychology when they could just go out with a gun and get the bad guys themselves?
Only, she realizes as she turns the page, she's the bad guy now. Her father hasn't noticed she's missing, and this is both amusing and depressing. She wonders what he'll do when he does find her. He knows a bit about what's going on, and that Stiles is possessed, but he had probably never even considered that his daughter would join forces with the nogitsune. In truth, she had never considered it either.
"Allison," Scott says suddenly, making her jump.
She curls her fingers around the edge of the book, looking down at the werewolf – someone she'd once loved, someone she'd aligned herself with and fought beside. All she feels now is a dim kind of curiosity. "What?" she asks, expressionless, emotionless.
"You can't let them do this to you," Scott says, but his voice is far from convincing. "Stiles and Lydia – they're doing this to you. But you can fight back."
Allison lets out a snort of laughter. Poor Scott, always thinking the best of people, always looking for the happy ending. He's not going to get one this time – she'll make sure of that. "You think I want to fight this?" she asks, setting the book aside and resting her hands on her knees. "I feel powerful, Scott. I feel strong. I feel like I can take on the world and win. Do you know what that's like?"
He mumbles something too low for her to hear, but when she asks him to speak up, he repeats it. "I do know what that feels like."
This gets Allison's attention. "Oh really?" she says, looking at him more closely. He's refusing to look at her, but she can still catch a glimpse of the fire in his eyes, despite the trembling in his hands and the way he can barely hold his head up. "When have you felt like that?"
Now he does look up at her, and for a moment it feels like she can't breathe. "When I was with you," he says simply. "I felt invincible. Like with you by my side I could do anything."
This hadn't been the answer Allison had been expecting, and it takes a few moments to sort through it. Then she laughs again. "I was your anchor, wasn't I?" she asks, getting to her feet and starting down the stairs – maybe she has time to play after all. "Isn't it funny, the way things turn out? I used to be the one who helped you feel free, and now I'm the one keeping you trapped."
Scott looks at her again, his eyes dark, even though she's half-expecting them to turn alpha red at any moment. "I'm not the only one who's trapped," he says, which brings Allison to a complete stop.
She plays this over in her mind, realizing that Scott still thinks she doesn't want this. It hadn't been her decision to join Stiles and Lydia, of course, but she wouldn't take it back – would she? Allison takes another step forward, reaching the floor, and then she stops. Her head swirls and then clears, and she blinks a few times. Something feels like it's shifting inside her, moving aside to let a rush of feelings take over. For one glorious, horrifying moment, she is totally and utterly herself.
"Oh god," she murmurs, as the sight of Scott sinks in. He looks so weak, so hurt, so desperate – and she's part of the reason for it.
He stiffens as she approaches, but then he seems to sense something different in her. She crouches down in front of him and their eyes meet, and in that moment she can tell that he forgives her for everything she's done. But this isn't as comforting as it should be, because she knows that he has no idea what she's going to do – what, until moments before, she had wanted to do.
"Allison?" he asks, just to make sure it's her.
"Scott," she says, and that's enough of a confirmation. She doesn't move again, scared that a single movement will upset the balance and send her spinning back into darkness. "I'm so, so sorry."
"It's okay," he says, quick as always to forgive. He's leaning against the wall, his breathing labored and his face pale, but he manages to give her half a smile. Then his expression becomes serious again and he asks, "Are you okay?"
Allison almost laughs at the question. Scott is trapped in a basement and slowly being poisoned with wolfsbane by two of his closest friends, and he's asking her if she's all right? "I'm fine," she says quickly. "And I don't… I mean, it's not…"
"It's not you doing these things," he says, and somehow she's not surprised that he's known all along. Sometimes she swears he knows her better than she knows herself. "They tricked you, or forced you, or -"
"Infected me," she supplies, and Scott's eyes widen with the realization.
"They got you the same way they got Lydia," he says, and she nods. "I thought it only worked on supernatural beings."
"Normally it does," Allison says, sinking onto her knees and casting a nervous glance up at the door. She doesn't want Lydia and Stiles to show up, because they'd be able to tell right away that it was her, really her – and they'd probably kill her for it. "They found a loophole, and they used Isaac to…"
"Isaac," Scott echoes, alarm shooting through his voice like a siren. "Is he okay?"
"I don't know," Allison says honestly, feeling a pang of guilt at the memory of what she'd done to him – even before she was infected. "I haven't seen him since they… since I…" She cuts herself off, shakes her head, and moves on. "I'd know if they'd killed him, so he must be okay. Or at least alive."
Scott leans back slightly, but the news doesn't seem to cheer him much. His expression darkens as he contemplates something, and when he speaks again, his voice is low, like he doesn't want to believe what he's saying. "When Lydia attacked me," he says slowly, "she said that… she said she wasn't possessed. Is that true?"
Allison hesitates, but there's no point in lying. "It's true," she admits. "She's not possessed. But I think that Stiles – the nogitsune, I mean – is influencing her somehow. She seems more like herself when she's not with him. Almost like she'd be willing to go against him, if only we could -"
Her words break off as she becomes aware of a coldness creeping through her, and she knows what it means. The nogitsune is back. She shoots a panicked look at Scott and jumps to her feet, and that movement is what upsets the balance. She feels slightly dizzy from standing up so fast, but when that clears, she's not herself anymore. She's the new version of Allison Argent, the one who's aligned with the nogitsune – not the girl who'd just confessed all that to Scott. She turns to him, and he can tell that she's changed.
"Duty calls," she says cheerfully, heading back to the stairs. She picks up the book on the way, and at the door, she hears Scott's voice.
"You can fight this," he says again. "You may feel strong now, but it's just an illusion. Your strength is with the pack, and if you come back to us, we can win this."
She doesn't respond, just darts through the door and meets Lydia and Stiles in the hall. "Any problems?" she asks, trying to distract them from how agitated she is.
"None at all," Lydia says. Her gaze slides past Allison, toward the basement. "Are we all good here?"
"Nothing to report," Allison replies.
The looks Stiles gives her is searching, like he knows she's holding something back, but he doesn't mention it. "Are you ready for the next part of the plan?" he asks instead. "Mrs McCall is waiting."
"Ready," Allison confirms, although part of her isn't sure she is. Still, she goes along with it, and in a few minutes she's pulling up outside the McCalls' house. The others had assured her that Isaac is out of the picture – although what that means, she doesn't quite know – which means that she can carry out her part of the plan without interruption.
She gets to the doorstep and then stops, taking a few deep breaths and trying to play her part. When Mrs McCall answers the door, Allison is standing there, her shoulders shaking and tears welling in her eyes. For good measure there are splashes of blood across both her hands, and her breathing is coming in shallow sobs.
"Allison!" Mrs McCall exclaims, stepping back at once to let her in.
Focusing on keeping up her performance, Allison steps around her and heads inside. Mrs McCall ushers her into the kitchen and quickly sets her up with a cup of tea, which Allison sips as she makes a show of trying to get her breath back.
"Are you okay?" Mrs McCall asks, sitting down across from her. When Allison nods, the older woman says tentatively, "You haven't heard from Scott, have you? He didn't come home last night."
Allison stares into the liquid in her cup, counting to ten before she responds. "That's why I'm here," she says, doing her best to sound broken. That's not too hard – she just taps into the old Allison, the one who'd been close enough to people that it would hurt when she lost them.
Mrs McCall stiffens, but the sympathy doesn't fade from her eyes. "What do you mean? Did something happen?"
Allison finishes the tea and then pushes the cup away, her hands trembling and tears spilling onto her cheeks. Stiles and Lydia would be proud of her performance. "There was a fight," she says, still in the same shattered voice. "The werewolves were all there, and I tried to stop it, but…"
Silence hangs over them for a moment, and then Mrs McCall bites her lip and asks, "Is Scott okay?"
Allison shakes her head, slowly, and watches as Mrs McCall crumples before her. "I'm sorry," she says as Scott's mom dissolves before her eyes, every tightly controlled muscle relaxing, every semblance of dignity forgotten as she's overwhelmed by grief, pre-empting bad news. "I tried to get them out of there, but one of the wolves went rogue, and -"
"Rogue?" Mrs McCall repeats, latching onto the one word she understands so that she doesn't have to focus on the implications. "You mean one of Scott's pack?"
Allison dips her head and lowers her eyes, fixing them on the table in front of her. "They got into it, and we couldn't stop it. He… he killed Scott."
For a moment Allison thinks that Mrs McCall is going to let her grief take her over until she's nothing but an empty shell, but instead she goes in the other direction – not despair but a desire for revenge. "Who was it?" she asks, her voice hard.
Allison glances up at her, surprised by how quickly the other woman has gone from hearing her son is dead to wanting his murderer to pay. She couldn't have wished for a better reaction. "You have to promise me you won't go after him," Allison says, hoping for just the opposite. "If I tell you, you have to promise…"
"I'm not promising anything." Mrs McCall's voice is still hard, almost a growl, and Allison wonders what she'll do when she inevitably finds out that this isn't true – although by that stage Scott may well actually be dead. "My son is dead, and I want to know who killed him. I think, after all I've been through – and after all I've seen you guys go through – I deserve that much at least."
Allison meets Mrs McCall's eyes, silently seeming to agree with her logic. Then, feigning reluctance, she lets the lie slide from her tongue. "Isaac. Isaac killed Scott."
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Sorry for the depressing chapter, and the Scallison feels, and... well, sorry for the entire story. See you all next chapter?