"You need to come with me!" Brittany so urgently called in Stiles' direction, her hand stretched toward him and her bright blue orbs focusing completely on his wary disposition. She had known such had been the fate of the end of the spell, the moment the demon had gone had become the moment her job ensued upon the continuation of Scott and Lydia's; she had to get him out of there. Brittany had never met this kid, not once, but whatever arguments the wolf and the banshee had used on him seemed to have worked, because whatever spark of fear that crossed upon his features upon seeing her... it was for survival.

It's why it wasn't much of a surprise when the boy's amber orbs focused on her with outmost suspicion. "Where are Scott and Lydia?" He asked, looking around the slowly crumbling empty white nothingness that carried within a darkness with each rock that fell around them. A room, a white endless room with white stone floors and white walls that slowly and with crumbling sounds fell apart second by second. "What did you do to them?" His hand remained extended in her direction, stopping her approach as much as he was able to by taking steps back without falling toward the path of his crumbling surroundings.

They had to get out of there. "They are waiting for you." Brittany urged, her accented tone echoing loudly against the crumbling echoes, pointing in the direction of the only one door in the room. "They are alive and waiting for you. You are free from the demon's grasp, Stiles, you need to get out of here or you will stay stuck inside your own mind!" A hand and arduous breeze started, picking up and playing with the blue eyed girl's hair; the room's slowly breaking brightness gave her already pale skin a strange nearly celestial glow.

But who was she? "How do I know you're not just another trick brought by it?" Stiles asked, watching as her head shook once and again, his short hair flying with the wind along with the shirt he wore; his eyes flicked toward the door at the end of the room; a door he hadn't much noticed, black against the contrast of the white that surrounded them.

"Why would it show you someone you've never met?" She asked, making his eyes return to her only to see her hands twisting to show her palms in a show of surrender. And she could see, even feet away, where she stood, the way her words sank in deeper and deeper into the boy's mind, turning once and again upon the many possibilities that he had literally no possible time to decipher and consider due to the crumbling room around them; it was almost nothing but the floor they stood on and a narrow bridge toward the door. "I'll go in with you, alright?" Wasn't it obvious that such was the plan? "If I were leading you into your death then I wouldn't offer to throw myself in." She stepped closer, listening to the creaking marble under her feet; to her surprise, Stiles' eyes narrowed with suspicion, and all the witch had left was to explain every single detail of what was happening at that very moment. Why hadn't she told Lydia or Scott that they might have to let him know she was coming? "Listen to me, Stiles!" He turned to look at her again after a repeated short flick in the door's direction. "I'm the one that helped your friends rid you of that thing, you're alone inside your mind right now, I'm just here to help, but you're in control, I can't force you out of here, and if you don't get out, if you let every single wall around us crumble down, you will die." She forced her eyes to remain on his, urging the determination of her words on him. "You will stay trapped in your mind forever, and you will never get out, you will never wake up, your heart will continue to beat, but your brain won't work, and you will die. We both will."

The door at the end of the breaking bridge opened, bringing forth the brightest of lights in an illuminating hold around them, making their mirrored arms lift with the hopes of covering their eyes from the unwelcome brightness; a brightness that made the boy loose his balance enough to start tumbling backwards toward the growing void. Of course, not even a second later, the tight hold of a pale hand balling on his shirt pulled him back toward the safety of the remaining floor, and his wide and scared amber orbs met worried blues inches away from him; it seemed to be all he needed to speak once again, jaded breaths echoing along his words. "Alright, get me out of here." Frantic nods encouraged her, and a retaliating motion was all that followed before they were running.

Her hand gripped around his wrist, pushing forward and pulling the boy with her until they both stood side to side facing the wide open door; the echoes of breaking walls tooted once and again around them, slowly but gradually growing in speed, coming closer and closer behind their backs. But, even then their gazes met for a short moment, encouragement from her side and fear from his, but a nod that was shared between them both before, without daring to think twice about it, they jumped into the blinding light inside the door.

Within the blinding whiteness there was a sound, the whispering of an echo that felt wrong to Brittany; everything else had been familiar, exactly as she remembered it, but now there was a repeating sound that bothered her enough to wake up with the gasp of a breath escaping from parted lips in jaded intakes, wide blue orbs switching back and forth as she looked at her surroundings; the paleness of her walls, the red single couch sitting across from her, where the very boy from her memory had rested and asked for her name upon their wake; the artistic vintage coffee table resting between her and the familiar red seat, the television set that echoed with the recorder laughter from the comedy show she seemed to have fallen asleep to, the white material of a cushion resting under her face.

The echo of the knocking on the door.

She was in her own home, many days after the memory she had dreamed of had happened, no danger, no nothing but the continuous knocking on her door. "Coming!" She called with the roughness of sleep singing within her words, and her frame attempting to stand from its resting place with as much steadiness as she could, careful enough not lean on the bandaged arm while she did so. Her knee knocked on the edge of the coffee table, making the hiss of a cuss escape her lips as she walked forward and down the little hall until she was in any way able to open the door; then she nearly stared. "Isaac?"

It had only been a few days, but still, she had not at all expected to see him standing at her door; granted, the wolf was her neighbour, and they had waved once or twice across their window, and more than a few times texted, but not one of the pack members had been at school (she even wondered why she bothered with it after being so mentally exhausted), and with this being the first time they were face to face (without counting the times on their windows while texting), well, Brittany was bound to be surprised. "Hey, can I come in?"

To say she was worried at the candid request from the blue eyed boy would be to truly put it lightly; it seemed Isaac was more than capable of texting her if he wished to speak to her – something she silently preferred for the simple fact that she didn't know what he was going to say before he worded it –, but instead of doing as such, instead of throwing something at her window, or texting her to have a window conversation, for whatever subject he wished to speak to her about, he had decided to come downstairs, walk out of his home and knock on her door. "Of course." She said, wishing upon her own curiosity control to stop herself from searching the beta's mind for all the answers and stepping aside whilst motioning within her home with a hand; her eyes followed the curly haired boy even as she moved to close the door behind him. "Is everything alright?"

Only a few steps inside, Isaac turned around to look at her, eyebrows raised and posture as confident as he could master it. "Uh, yeah." He nodded, lifting a hand to scratch at the back of his neck for a couple of seconds, thoughts upon thoughts drowning his mind with the content of what he hoped to speak to her about. "Everything is fine, uh, I mean, Stiles is still in the hospital, but..." He frowned, lowering his limb until the palm of his hand had crashed against the side of his thigh and a shrug had lifted his shoulders shortly. "I just wanted to come talk to you about something."

"Oh." Brittany's own eyebrows shot up for a moment whilst a flutter of her lids attempted to clear out her mind and the rather forced press of a smile illuminated her lips. "Well, let's chat, then." She prompted, motioning forward once again in the direction of the living room, where the soft echoes of recorded laughter from the show she'd been watching tooted against the walls; sounds soon after cut off by the pressing of a button upon the remote. "Can I get you anything to drink?" She wondered, reaching for the blanket she had been resting under and folding it to leave the big couch free for sitting down.

Isaac's eyes pried away from the red single couch; it was the first time since that day that he saw it, and though he did want to respect the girl's personal space bubble, he would rather stand than sit on the place where he saw such horrors go down. "Uh, no. No, thanks." His head shook, steps leading him away from the personally thought haunted seat and forcing the lift of a smile across his lips as he stepped further into the room that looked so peaceful and in order that, had he not been there during the ritual, he would have never known something so powerful and evil had been destroyed inside it. "You like Friends?" It seemed his mind and his lips had different mindsets; his nerves ruled his insides, and it seemed as if he wanted to prolong the subject he had gone to inquire about that day.

Mind reader or not, Brittany O'Brien wouldn't have missed it. Still, as she sat on the couch and gently patted the empty space beside her, her eyes flicked in the direction of the newly turned off set. "It's a great show; I'd be surprised if anyone told me they didn't like it." She admitted, looking back in Isaac's direction, who was slowly and rather nervously sitting on the couch by her side; her knees a whole hand's length away from brushing.

Still, his head bobbed in an agreeing nod that pushed as nervous as the breathed chuckle that escaped him did. "I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't like it." He admitted, palms pressing against his jeans whilst his mind tumbled and fumbled around the idea of what he'd gone to the girl's house for in the first place. Why had he allowed his forced upon confidence to lead him in her direction if he was going to chicken out at the last moment?

Her eyes were studying him, dancing on his features as if each sift of his lips, every blink, gave way to a tell-tale sign of what he wished to speak about, and it made a small pressed smile to illuminate her features. "We both know you didn't come here to talk about a show on telly." The familiar taint of her knowing smirk lifted her lips minutely, and Isaac's own grin mirrored hers from the recognition of the motion. "I don't need to be able to read your mind to know something is bothering you, tall guy." She announced, shifting her frame to the side enough to lift a leg to cross it under her, making the gap between their knees only inches; words upon which Isaac's own brims pressed onto a line for a short two seconds before they parted in nervous pause. "What is it?"

After his eyes blinked a couple of moments, Isaac nodded. "Alright." He said, fixing his position on the couch to face her too; this time the movement left no space whatsoever between their knees. "I was talking myself out of this earlier, but..." His head shook shortly, and his forehead wrinkled with the frown brought upon his inability to conjoin his thoughts in enough order to form coherent words. "I guess, firs of all, I wanted to actually thank you, face to face, for what you did for the pack." He started, watching her lips lift in a rather genuine grin that confirmed the correct decision of beginning with such a motion. "We all doubted you, and you could have told us to piss off because of it, but you didn't, so..." He nodded, blinking repeatedly once again along the lift of a shoulder to attempt pushing the awkwardness that he felt dripping at the edge of his words within the idea of his continuing subject. "I'm sure the others will tell you the same, but I guess this is me thanking you outside of a text message."

With her blue orbs searching his own, Brittany nodded and allowed the grin to remain across her lips, lifting the other leg to cross under her as she learned sideways upon the backrest of her sofa. "I only wanted to help." She admitted whilst reaching for the white cushion her head had been resting on moments prior and setting it upon her lap, resting her arms against it. "I'm solely thankful that I was able to do so with no casualties." She was aware of his eyes studying her upon the silence that followed, she was aware of his senses catching onto her heart, his attention solely on her and his mind beating once and again around the possibility of a path and wording that would lead him safely into the secondary, and apparently more personal matter that he wished to converse about. "Isaac, you can talk to me." She encouraged him after a few moments, the seriousness of his demeanour encouraging for the use of his name as she reached the short distance to rest a kind hand against his own with the hopes to rid him from any and every doubt that tainted his mind; personal, instead of toward her at all. Though by every single sign on his attitude and nervousness, the witch had a very good and fearful idea of exactly what the wolf wanted to talk about, she still felt slightly relaxed upon its outcome when the boy's own limb twisted until his digits had enclosed hers in a gentle hold that he felt as much strange as he did reassuring.

How could he possibly approach the subject? How could he bring the familiarity of her earlier life's situation up without tainting the atmosphere around them with a horrible sense of remembrance and doom that he wished to rid the girl from? How could he ask the questions he wished he didn't have to so that his mind rested peacefully with his own desires? The answer was: he couldn't. "I..." It was the gentle smile on her lips that made him wish upon the disappearance of his inquiring mind, but the push within his own hopes that willed him to continue so that a mutual understanding could be reached about the familiarity of torturous memories that the two did not have to share on their own. "During the ritual I saw some things I didn't fully understand..." He started, gulping back the nervous knot that had formed in the middle of his throat due to the nearly invisible frown that pushed her brows to a furrow. "About your past and what that thing told you." He was not at all surprised to see the grin in her lips slowly dissipating along with the breath that got stuck before its release and the spike of her heart against her ribcage; it almost made him wish to stop, to let go of her hand and stand from the couch to make the urgent exit that would lead the two to never speak again thanks to the awkwardness he would leave behind.

The thing was... he didn't exactly want that.

"I still don't understand why you trusted me with it..." He continued, admitting to the biggest curiosity that had drowned him from the moment he had left her home that day.

Brittany understood, and it showed within the soft movements of her head that pushed along a nod and the press of her lips in a tight line before they parted to release a soft sigh. "But since I did, you'd like to understand what you saw." She completed his thought before looking up into his curious, yet kind orbs with the wish of a confirmation.

A confirmation she easily got with his hurried utterance to follow seconds later. "I would understand if you didn't want to explain." He admitted, shaking his head shortly and pressing a squeeze of her hand with the smallest reassurance. "It's none of my business, after all, if you want me to piss of, and—"

"No, no, I..." She interrupted with a shake of her head, a press of her own to comfort him for a second and a forced grin to light her features. "If I was in your position I would want answers too." She admitted, looking into his eyes and making the smallest hints of a grin to lift the corners of her lips. "I have to confess to something first, though, before you ask anything, and I will answer." It was his concern that she replied to, his own personal doubts that she dissipated before they took a proper hold of his mind in one way or another, because she could see within pondering clouds the loudest inquiry, the one he had so poorly worded without truly asking for an explanation; and, to Brittany, the easiest to reply. "I didn't know what the demon was going to show me." She said, head shaking for a short instance. "Or if it was going to, I only took the precaution that happened to not come unfounded. And I trusted you because your bond with Stiles, though strong, is not as strong as Allison's. If I had chosen her, then the demon would have caught the link I made and blinded her as well as me." She explained, her eyes dancing on his own as if solely like that she would be able to physically read his reactions. "But the link with you was safe, of course." Rather mindlessly, her hand moved away from his until it rested atop her arm, right on the place where the bandage was so normally holding together the deep wound and burn that adorned it.

All Isaac could do was nod, a curtain of understanding wrapping around his mind to dissipate any and every hint of doubt that befell upon him. It made sense; he wouldn't pretend to be sad or surprised at the revelation that his bond to Stiles was the weaker of the four in the pack. They were friends, yes, they could work together if needed be, and he would give his life if it meant saving him, but... well, compared to Lydia, Scott and Allison... it was maybe nothing. "So what did you want to know?" She asked breaking his mind from his minute realisation and forcing along a clear of his throat that made his hands start picking at the edge of the cushion beside him.

Wording out his inquiries, that was the hardest part. How could he put in words what he wondered without sounding rude, or mean, or... wrong? She understood that he wanted answers, but it didn't mean he had any right to ask the questions; not really. "Well, I..." He blinked, his head tilting to the side with guilt, but his eyes dancing upon her own bright blues with the slowly building will to ask his inquiries. "There was something it said about your immortality." He started, realising, for the manner in which her heartbeat picked once again, and her eyes closed to a press of a soft touch of her lashes against the top of her cheeks, that he realised such was most likely the very last thing she had wanted him to inquire about; but the nod of her head merely minutely encouraged him to continue. "Then that girl in the room..." He could still see it as if it were his own memory, broken by the other side of the situation that he was aware of; Brittany's green gown, the dusty floors, the knife, the blood...

"I killed her." Brittany admitted with a nod, wishing upon the clear of a memory that mixed with her own that so easily made the pain within her heart scorch deeper; her eyes opened, glistening with the tears that wished to form at the corner of her eyes and understanding the awareness from the wolf about the relation between her and the girl on the bed. "Yes, she was my daughter." She admitted, fluttering blinks that freed a couple of tears down her cheeks and the gulp that forced down the knot that had taken home in the middle of her throat. She lifted a hand to press the sleeves of her red sweater against her cheeks to rid them from the treacherous tears. Why? Isaac thought with more than just that word, wondering what could have led Brittany to kill her daughter upon understanding her love for the girl regardless of her parentage as he remembered from what he had seen and heard. Why so long? Why, if you loved her, did you end her life? What does that have to do with you immortality? Many unspoken inquiries that were more visualised and felt than truly thought, only understandable for the witch due to her gift and experience. She had to breathe, to close her eyes once again for a short moment before clearing her throat with the hopes of conjuring the courage to speak of a past so recently re-lived that the hole it had left centuries upon centuries ago felt as fresh as if it had been done only days prior. "She was sick." Brittany started, pulling the blanket she'd folded before, closer until it covered her legs. "She had a horrid difficulty breathing, she started... fainting when she was only two. She suffered so much." She gulped, forcing herself to lift her gaze to meet Isaac's, who was listening intently whilst still picking at the edges of the white cushion. "I didn't come to learn this until many centuries later, but due to the fact that she was..."—she frowned, forcing inside a breath that would push down the knot that formed in the middle of her throat once again—"...that she was my father's, her immune system was low, her organs were weak, Annabelle lived the six years of her life suffering and guarded. Not even my abilities could cure her." She paused, lowering her eyes upon a blink to look at her own hands; mirroring his own actions and picking mindlessly at the edge of her own cushion. "After my father's death I ran to a neighbouring village; there were healers, but the tenth century wasn't that good at medicine, it's a miracle I didn't die at childbirth, like my own mother did.

Upon Annabelle's sixth birthday, though, her condition worsened." Brittany continued, nodding slowly, seeing the face of her little beautiful Annabelle behind closed eyelids. "She couldn't even leave her bed, she couldn't eat much, she couldn't... all she did was cry because she was in pain. And I couldn't stand it, to see her suffering so horribly broke my heart." She opened her eyes once again, feeling the warm trail of her tears betray her feelings as they fell on a splash against the material of her sweater. "But I was young, a big part of me loved her solely because she was my daughter, but another part loathed her because she was my father's as well." Her head shook. "It was that second part of me that made me feel like I couldn't let her die in vain; it made me selfish, it made me seek out texts of the darkest of witchcrafts with what the better side of me expected to be a way to fix her, but instead of that I found something to fix myself.

A potion." She explained, looking up into Isaac's eyes once again, reading the compassion, the understanding, the curiosity and the expectation all through those water orbs and what little he expressed about it in his mind. "It was a very difficult and rather dark potion that required the heart and the blood from someone who had a part of my own heart and soul. So I did it." She shrugged, holding tighter to the cushion on her lap and gulping back the bile that rose up at the memory made resent by the demon and Isaac's own mind. "I realised death would be the only way to make my Annabelle be at peace, so I killed her and used her blood and her heart for the potion that made me immortal." Her eyes fell to her hands; a rather failed attempt at hiding the tears that slipped down her cheeks quietly. There was a sob building up in her throat, but she held it back, she gulped it down and pressed her lips onto a tight line; yet, as she sniffed, the feeling of Isaac's warm hand on top of her own made her lips part and a breath gently enter her lungs in a long inhale, her eyes opened, and her lids fluttered in quick blinks that attempted to rid her eyes of any tear that wanted to fall until her free hand moved to wipe away the sorrowful drops. "I was young." She repeated as she brought down her hand and sniffed again. "I believed I wanted to make up for the life my father stole from me as much as the one he gifted me with; Annabelle was hurting, I saw a way out, so I just..."—her eyes looked up, right into his, glassy and brilliant from the tears they had shed.—"...I just did it. Sort of like with you and the bite." She confided, blue orbs dancing on Isaac's own in search of an understanding she was rather glad to have easily found right after. "I wanted to feel like I could be more than just my father's little object, I wanted to escape my past, I wanted to prove to myself that I was able to not allow what my father did to me dictate my life." She gulped, her eyes falling as the curls of her hair brushed against the skin of her cheeks upon the movement. "I wanted to prove to myself that I was strong on my own, that the little scared girl that allowed that man beat her, and rape her and... hurt her so horribly had only been a part of me that knew nothing better than to accept what she was dealt with and nothing more.

I wanted to stop being my father's victim." She admitted, and though tears still stained her cheeks there was a fierceness in her voice that made Isaac understand so much more about her, nor only for the manner in which her words echoed upon his own past, but because she had been able to take a step much further and much stronger, and he could hear that; he could see the way she held herself, and many of her reactions to him and her surroundings made much more sense; like the moment she pushed away from him so suddenly during the tour of the school, or her offensive stance when he'd asked if the fate of her parents' death had rested on her hands –she had been fighting against that idea for centuries, it seemed, and Isaac had so easily crumpled it with a question–, or when she'd given him those looks in understanding that he never saw a reason for.

Until now.

How could he possibly explain that, though? How could he word it all well enough for Brittany to see exactly just how well he understood the demon's own use of words, the reason for those memories to be the ones to torture her with, how could he possibly conjoin speech that could contain enough emotion and truth to carry the weight of the understanding he felt? There wasn't; so instead of speaking, he moved, closing the gap between the two until his arms could wrap around her frame, doubtful upon the contact at first solely due to what it could mean to her; would it be uncomfortable? But she didn't pull away, instead she wrapped her arms around him too and buried her face on his shoulder, allowing herself to hold onto him with hopes of conveying her own understanding upon his own situation. "It's okay." Isaac told her, gracing her back with his hand, picking up his own emotions through her own embrace. "That demon was wrong, you're not your dad's victim anymore." He reassured her. "And whatever you did, it's in the past, and the past can't be changed, nor should it matter; what matters is what you do and who you are now." He brushed her hair, wondering where exactly those words had come from. "Trust me, if it mattered we'd all have told Peter Hale to screw himself long ago."

To that, through images in his head and his words, Brittany chuckled, pulling away from him, but not too far, because there was a grin upon her own lips that encouraged her to speak her mind, her hands resting on his back. "You aren't either, you know that, right?" She said, eyes dancing on his own in search for the belief she wanted to see there. "I can tell you're very important to the pack, you're your own person, you're..." The hint of a scoffed breath escaped through her lips, her head shook gently from side to side. "You're so bloody strong and I don't think you even reali—" But she couldn't finish her words, because what felt like out literally nowhere Isaac's lips were on her own and his arms were around her again.

She didn't pull away, nor did he; instead she kissed back, she pulled the beta closer and tangled her fingers in his hair, each other's support becoming evident within their closeness, and all the words they didn't speak floating above their heads understandable to each other. That was the first day both of them had someone who understood them completely.

And the day Brittany O'Brien saved Stiles' life turned into the very day that she became part of the McCall pack.

To Be Continued.