Chapter 4
She forgot her weapons at Deucalion's place. In her rush to get away from him, she left her bag, and while those are not her only daggers and she can explain the loss of a crossbow and a handful of arrows away if she needs to, it feels wrong to leave perfectly good weapons behind just because she is too weak to face the bad choices she's made.
That's the only reason she returns. She has no intention of staying, doesn't care to resume their sparring practice after what happened, but Deucalion acts like nothing has changed at all and when he tells her to get started, she sees red.
She comes at him with everything she has, all her rage channelled into her attack, and it's not neat, it's not smart, it's not refined, but it feels good to let it all out, just lash out over and over again with hands and fists and blades and arrows, and she wishes she had wolfsbane here that she could ram down his throat and into every little wound she leaves on him.
But they're just that, shallow little wounds that heal almost instantly, her attacks uncoordinated and ineffective. She doesn't care. It's not about winning; she can't win against him anyway, she just wants the release.
Ironically, it's Deucalion who becomes visibly frustrated with her unskillful attempts, the frown on his face getting deeper as he continues blocking her blows with ease. "Concentrate. You're letting your anger get in the way of your tactics."
She doesn't bother to reply, just continues ineffectively chipping away at his defense, trying to ignore the way her limbs are growing tired and heavy.
"Allison, stop it," he says sternly, and his fucking calm is grating on her nerves like claws dragged over a blackboard. "There's no point. You're too angry."
She lands a solid kick at his ribcage that does nothing to him but fucks with her momentum and almost makes her lose her balance. "Of course I'm angry! You fucking used me to get revenge on my family, and I was too stupid to realize what you were doing."
He trips her. When she goes down, he's on her at once, his body stretching out on top of hers, immobilizing her with his weight pressing her down and his hands locking her wrists in place, and this is not sparring anymore, this is –
"Let me go," she hisses, trying to gain enough leverage to kick him, but the way he restrains her is relentless.
"Will you listen to me?" He uses his sensible voice, the one that implies that he's so much smarter than anyone else and ten steps ahead, and it's aggravating her even more, so she just keeps struggling against his hold, her lips pressed into a hard, angry line. "Stop being stupid. If I wanted to use you to get revenge against your family, I would tear you apart limb from limb and spread the body parts at your father's and your grandfather's doorstep."
The violent mental image his words evoke makes her double her efforts to get free, fear ratcheting up her heartbeat. All it does is make him sigh in evident frustration.
"What I'm trying to tell you – apparently not very successfully – is that I didn't have sex with you for the purpose of using it against you or your family. That wasn't what it was about, and I have no intention of doing that to you."
She stills, breathing hard. She can't find a trace of mockery on his face, and he sounded sincere enough, but after what happened, she has resigned herself to the fact that she can't read him for shit. "Then why did you say that? Why would you bring up Gerard after we'd–"
She can't even say it.
A flurry of emotions flickers on Deucalion's expression, gone too fast to be distinguishable. Her hands are suddenly free, his weight lifted from her as he rolls off, coming to rest lying on his back beside her. Part of her still wants to take one of her daggers and bury it in his heart. Instead, she lies next to him, both of them unmoving and quiet, the silence stretching until she's almost sure that she's not going to get an answer.
"Remember when I told you that it took more than a knife to scare me?" he asks, at length. "That's what happened. I got scared." His tone is so matter-of-fact that at first she thinks that he's joking until she turns her head to look at him, taking in the hard set of his jaw, the nervous twitch of his clawed fingers, the way he keeps staring at the ceiling.
"Why would you be scared of me? We both know that I wouldn't stand a chance against you, if we were fighting for real," she whispers, watching his face grimace into a humorless smile.
"I've learned the hardest way not to let anyone in. I don't think you understand what I've lost, Allison. My eyesight, my pack, the woman I loved. Every person I ever trusted either betrayed me or died. Well, or both."
"Did she– Was she in your pack, the woman?"
He turns his head towards her. "If you're asking me whether I killed her, the answer is no. I didn't kill her." There's a moment when she thinks he's going to say something else, but then he seems to change his mind, shaking his head. "Don't ask how she died."
It sounds more like a warning than a request, and Allison senses that perhaps the answer might be more painful to her than to him. She doesn't ask.
Kate keeps showing up in her dreams. That night, though, she's not asking Allison to kill Isaac with her.
She takes Allison's hand and tells her to follow her, and then they're out in the woods. It's cold and dark and there's nothing around them but trees.
What are we doing out here? Allison asks, and Kate smiles that wicked, beautiful smile of hers and bends down to whisper the words in Allison's ear like a secret she isn't supposed to share. We're going to light a bonfire.
When Allison turns her head, she realizes that they're standing in front of the Hale house.
The smell of burning flesh is still in her nostrils when she wakes up, and the screams still echo in her head, over and over again. The very worst part, though, is that in her dream, she reveled in them.
She's pale and silent the morning after, shrugging off her father's concerned questions, avoiding her friends at school and returning to Deucalion two days earlier than usual, glad when she gets to channel all her fears and the darkness that's choking her up into physical violence.
They don't talk about it, any of it.
The sessions continue as if nothing had happened at all, and Allison tells herself she's glad. She values their training, and she knows she needs it because the period of grace the Nemeton granted them seems to be over. A dark fairy wreaks havoc on the town until Scott and her dad manage to drive her away, and the encounters with rogue omegas become more and more frequent. There's also the matter of Peter, who keeps hanging around the pack, offering unhelpful advice and observing them a little too intently, like he's just biding his time until he tries something.
They'll soon need all the help they can get, and Allison needs to be the best hunter she can be, even if the thing that scares her the most is still the person she sees herself becoming in her nightmares. Every time she sharpens her skills, she wonders how long it'll be until she turns them against the people she loves.
One afternoon in late February, Deucalion pulls a dark, opaque piece of cloth over her eyes without warning. She immediately reaches up to take it off, but his fingers close around her wrists, stopping her.
"What are you doing?"
Her pulse is going faster, and it's like she can feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins, burning like an electrical current. She dimly wonders if she should fight harder, if she's actually in danger. It doesn't seem like he's trying to harm her, the way he holds her wrists firm but not bruising, but she doesn't like being this vulnerable, doesn't understand what's going on.
"We're going to try something new. The blindfold stays on today."
He lets go of her and steps back. At least she thinks he does. He moves quietly, and it's hard to keep track of his movements when she can't see him. She frowns. "I can't fight like this."
"You're going to learn it," he tells her. His voice is coming from a different direction to where she expected him to be, and she spins towards it. "You can't afford to rely on any single one of your senses. You never know when you're going to lose it."
She swallows, suddenly acutely, uncomfortably aware that he used to be blind. That her grandfather blinded him.
"What about my hearing?"
"One thing after the other. First you have to do without your sight. Fine-tune those ears of yours. And then when we're done with that, I'm going to show you how little you can rely on them."
She tries to follow his voice, and yet, by the end of his little speech, he's standing right behind her, words whispered into her ear. She can feel the heat of his body even though he isn't touching her. When Allison startles and jerks away, he chuckles.
"Funny how your trust in me is inversely proportional to your vulnerability."
There's a hint of bitterness to that statement, she thinks, or maybe she's just imagining it. She wants to protest, but the fact of the matter is, he's right, so she keeps silent.
"Tell you what. We're going to start with your offense so you can get used to the blindness first before I actually attack you. Let's call it a trust-building exercise." His tone is mocking, but they both know that he's serious.
"Okay," she says, forcing herself to sound equally nonchalant, but more grateful than she's comfortable admitting.
"Alright then, do your worst."
It's different when you're attacking something, someone you can't see. You know they're out there, you hear them move, but you don't know where exactly they are and what they're doing. She'd been proud of how she's honed her skills in the months since she's been training with him, feeling accomplished. Now, going in blind when facing an enemy, she realizes how foolish that overconfidence was.
She keeps going off in the wrong directions, stumbling into walls, effectively sabotaging herself without Deucalion having to raise a hand against her.
"Let's try this again, shall we?" he suggests, amused.
So she gives it another try, and another, increasingly frustrated when she feels that she isn't improving at all.
After what seems like hours, when she's sure that it's almost time to hurry home, it's Deucalion who calls it to a halt. Allison pulls the blindfold off and carelessly throws it down. A glance at the clock tells her that it's barely been ninety minutes since they started. She feels worn out and defeated, angry at herself for not doing better, angry at him for putting her through this and showing her how painfully ill-equipped she is to handle a situation like this.
When he hands her a glass of water, she takes it, wordlessly nodding her thanks. His gaze on her feels heavy, irritating her because she knows he must see failure when he looks at her, and she hates it, hates being this weak and inadequate and clumsy.
"Stop beating yourself up over it," he says, as if he could read her mind. "You'll get better with time."
"Good. Because I don't think I could possibly get any worse."
His mouth twitches into a smile. "Well, you haven't stabbed yourself with those daggers. I'm counting that as a win."
Allison doesn't even think about it. She instinctively grabs the dagger at her side and throws it at him. As expected, he catches it mid-air, his fingers closing around the blade. Blood drips from his fist onto the pristine floor. Deucalion raises an eyebrow at her, letting go of the bloodied dagger and bending down to pick up the discarded blindfold. "I'm going to take this as assent to start again," he says, stepping closer.
This time, when he ties the blindfold around her head, she lets him, forcing her pulse to quieten as she focuses on the senses she has left instead. The sound of his breathing, the faint hint of aftershave and fresh, clean sweat, the warmth radiating off him, triggering sense memories in her that she tries to shove away, willing herself not to be distracted.
She lifts her head up to him and smiles. "Alright. Let's go again."
