Author's Note: Thanks to all who left a review, followed or favourited the story! I'm glad to be sharing the Scott/Malia love with y'all, and while this chapter is going to be a more retell-y in parts than the last one and the next, we got some fun stuff ahead, both stupidly romantic and angsty near-death-y, so hope you enjoy!
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ii. And Others Take None.
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Not running was easy. Planning for war was harder.
In the veterinary clinic's operating room, the sunlight filtering through the windows felt intolerably like a saboteur, a spy in their midst, subverting the efforts of a war council with malicious intent cloaked in a warm smile. They gathered around the cold metal table and ignored its gleam, surrounded themselves with empty cages and tried not to count them, for fear there were just enough to hold them all. As much as Scott would've liked to blame the tension on the creature they had unleashed upon the town, the thing Deaton called the Anuk-Ite, he couldn't; with Deaton himself absent, seeking information to help combat it, the only enemies this council could prepare to fight were human ones.
"It's getting bad at the school," Mason was telling them. "I heard Gabe and Aaron talking about "testing" students, same way Nolan did when he stabbed Corey. Only, they'll do it to everyone. They could've already started. And if they find even one of you guys..."
Scott's stomach sunk. "They'll hand them over to Monroe and Gerard."
"They know we're not actually gone by now, right?" said Liam, crossing his arms. "This could be their way of drawing us out."
"And it'd work," Theo said it as casually as he was leaning against the far wall. "They know you guys can't resist a good piece of bait."
He wasn't wrong, but Scott did not, would not, see that as a weakness. The reason they'd stayed in Beacon Hills in the first place was to help people, save them, because the longer the Hunters thought the town was theirs, the more would get hurt. Beside him, Malia's frown was severe, but all she had to say. Lydia, however, had gone pale.
"I wrote a list," she said, with equal parts frustration and horror. "I wrote a list of every supernatural at the school, I gave it to my mom, it's in a drawer in her desk. If they get their hands on it..."
"You had no way of knowing," said Scott. "We just have to -" The sound of two approaching heartbeats cut him off. They sounded familiar enough to his ears, but he couldn't help but be alert. "Incoming. Front door."
The sudden tension in the room could've shattered glass. Mason, the only one not meant to be in hiding, was sent to check, and he shared a look with Corey as he went. Theo pushed himself off of the wall and circled to a corner, Liam's eyes flashed gold, and Scott and Malia turned as one, coiled and ready, waiting, listening... Mason's footsteps heading to the front of the clinic, the pace of his heart quickening... then skipping, slowing down. The lock on the clinic door slid open, the bell above it rang, and instantly, every drawn muscle in the room relaxed.
Scott smelled them first, and had a smile ready when they entered. They made a curious image, Chris with his beard and leather jacket, his mom with her green scrubs and hair swept in a messy bun, but there was a glint in Chris's expression that not even the grave situation couldn't dull, one that Scott had been seeing a lot more of lately, and Melissa McCall's palpable relief at seeing her son could've climbed mountains.
"Hey mom," he said, with a grin and a wave. To Chris, he said, "You filled her in?"
"She'd figured it out already," he replied, eyes dancing. "There are two tails at the hospital, they think she's attending a bypass for the next couple of hours."
"Three tails," Melissa corrected him. "Your dad's hanging around, Scott. Somehow got a hunch you haven't left town."
"Guess they don't train FBI agents for nothing," said Lydia. "The Sheriff will be glad to hear that, he's paying Stiles's tuition..."
"It's not just that," said Melissa. "Those two kids from the standoff last night are missing. They found the FBI van out on the road, claw marks all over it. The driver was just knocked unconscious, but there was blood, lots of it."
Scott glanced to Liam, who shook his head and said, "That wasn't us. You're saying Jiang and Tierney are gone?"
"Claw marks could mean they escaped," hoped Scott.
"Or they could've just as easily been faked," said Chris darkly.
"We don't know that. Not yet." Malia's hand snaked out and brushed his lower back, and Scott, moored, continued, "They could still be out there, hurt."
"The Sheriff's already on the case," his mother informed him. "Parrish too. But Scott, if they are out there -"
"Then the Hunters will be looking for them, I know." Scott kept the sigh of frustration in his chest, but he did run a hand through his hair. "Okay... Okay. Chris, we had an idea, and we'll need your help for it. You said Gerard had an entire armoury full of weapons, right?"
Chris shook his head immediately. "It's too heavily guarded. Round the clock patrols, over a dozen men."
"We can take a dozen," said Malia breezily. "I'll take half, you guys get the rest."
"A dozen men that I saw." Chris pressed hard on the word. "The only way, and I do mean only way, we could pull this off is to get as many of them to leave as possible. Only way to do that is to draw them out with something worth the manpower."
"Like me," realised Scott, and nodded resolutely. "They can't resist a good piece of bait either. We distract them, then sneak in and destroy the weapons."
"It could also distract them from looking for Jiang and Tierney," said Malia.
"And testing the kids at school," added Mason.
"I can draw 'em out," said Liam, raising his hand. "It'll be like when I was bait for the Wild Hunt. Easy."
Behind him, Theo cleared his throat. "You mean when we were bait for the Wild Hunt. You only got away from them because of me, remember? And do you have anything even remotely resembling a plan, or are you just going to run down main street and hope for the best?"
"I have a plan!" said Liam, indignant the first time, then a little more sure the second and third, "I have a plan. Yep, I have a plan."
"I'm just filled with confidence," Theo said dryly, "and also regret everything."
"I can help with that too," said Mason. "I'm still at school, and if they're watching Scott's mom, they'll be watching me. We can use that."
"And I do know a guy who knows a guy that can get some thermite," said Chris, stroking his beard with a calloused hand. "We could be ready to go in a couple of days."
Malia clapped her hands together. "Great. Everyone's got plans. Go team."
From the corner, Corey piped up, "I, uh, I don't have a plan."
"Looking out for Mason is a plan. Just like I'll look out for Scott." When more than one pair of eyes swivelled her way, Malia hastened to clarify, "I mean, I'll be looking out for Lydia too. I can multitask."
"I'll just take care of myself," said Lydia. "Probably the safest option."
"What she said," commented Theo.
"Shocker," muttered Liam.
Scott felt a warmth threaten to bubble up from within him. For all he felt like a general sending his soldiers to go on suicide missions one moment, his friends remained, as ever, themselves, and in that moment, the alien atmosphere of a war council dissolved, and the sunlight felt a familiar confidant again, as earned as a pack's trust in one another. An immense pride filled his chest and rushed to his cheeks, and he cast a grin at Malia, then turned to Corey. "You head to the school. You're the only one who can sneak in and get that list from Lydia's mom's desk. Can you do that?"
Corey's nod was shaky at best, but beside him, Mason took his hand, the earlier lie hanging over them forgotten, forgiven. Corey's second nod was firmer. "I've got it, Scott."
"Good. And Liam?" Scott looked to his beta. "You sure you're up for being the bait?"
Destroying Gerard's arsenal had been his first idea for good reason, to try and subdue that terrible beast of foreboding dread prickling at the back of his neck that he felt looking at Monroe's lynch mob with their rifles and shotguns. The Wild Hunt's pistols could erase them, leave nothing behind. Gerard's guns would leave bodies, real and tangible and soaked in the acrid stench of gunpowder and blood. Knowing that made it far from easy to ask this mission of Liam, and it became even harder when Liam did not hesitate to reply, "Yeah, I'm doing this."
Theo rolled his eyes. "What, no concern for me? I'm playing bait too."
Simultaneously, Liam rolled his eyes back, Lydia shrugged her shoulders, and Malia retorted, "No, not really."
With plans in place and missions in motion, Scott called an ending to their meeting. His friends - and Theo - dispersed from the clinic to meet at their next safehouse for the night ahead, and his mom pulled him aside to gather him in a hug.
"I'm so proud of you," she said. "I feel like I don't say it enough, but it's true every damn day. And as much as I want you at college, going to classes and parties you pretend I won't know about, I'm still proud you didn't run. I knew you wouldn't. I raised you right."
"You did," he told her. "I feel like I don't say that enough either."
His mother nodded up at him, and, reluctantly, let him go. Malia and Chris were both hovering near the door waiting for them, and on her way out, his mom stopped to hug the werecoyote as well. For half a second Malia reacted as if being electrocuted, but responded in kind, smiling softly.
"Take care of him," he heard his mother whisper.
"Of course," Malia replied. "He takes care of all of us."
Melissa left with Chris soon after, leaving Scott and Malia alone for the first time since they'd awoken together that morning. The moment wasn't awkward, or unsure; it couldn't possibly be, not with her standing there with sunlight cascading through her hair. It was almost overwhelming, staring at the edge of the abyss they seemed destined to jump off, but perhaps they already had, and the swooping in his stomach was the fall. They were falling together.
"Now we're going to bomb an armoury…" she mused. "You're really moving up in the criminal world."
That time, he let the bubbling laughter win.
- - - -/- - - -
When the alarms shut off, the last of the fresh air escaped without a sound, and hope quickly became as precious of a resource as every escaping breath.
Beads of sweat began to roll down his forehead, and hers too. Already, the room felt moist and rancid on his skin, suffocating in its infinite finiteness, four thick walls of steel and concrete, a roof so strong a bomb could drop and not shake loose a speck of dust, foundations so stable it seemed so foolish they even dared attempt to rock them. Getting into the armoury, he thought that would've been the hard part, the part where they fought men with guns and an itch to use them, traversed a labyrinth of endless, twisting, corridors, and planted high powered, fast-burning, explosives in strategic locations, then ran like hell and braced for heat in their nostrils and ringing in their ears. The scent they caught hadn't been gun oil and acrylic and plastic, but instead two scared teenagers, the last of their pack, trapped behind in an inner vault door. Bait. Gerard had emptied his armoury, baited them with Jiang and Tierney, and let them trigger the motion sensors, let them trap themselves, let them fail to find a way out before the air was sucked from the room, let them die, painful and slow.
The empty shelves surrounding them reminded him all too much of the cages back at the clinic, yet worse; you kept prisoners in cages, but you put trophies on shelves. Trophies like a scrap of skin with a stack of rocks seared onto the flesh. Trophies like a pair of bloodied wolf ears. In glass cases on display for just them to find, before they too became entombed forever.
In his arms, lying half on him and half on the ground, her body bruised but not broken, Malia seemed to pick up his train of thought. "Don't," she said. "It's not your fault."
"I wanted to open the vault door."
"I helped. And I wasn't just talking about the door."
She was right, of course. At the time it had been easy to tell himself it was the right call in an impossible situation, to trust his dad to get Jiang and Tierney to safety and away from the Hunters. And now, two more dead teenagers, another Brett and Lori, and Scott and Malia to follow. "The Hunters got to the FBI, they staged an escape." It made Scott's swim more than the dying air absorbing into his lungs. "It just keeps bigger and bigger and… I sent Liam out there. They were ready for us here, they could've planned for him…"
Malia pressed her battered body deeper into his hold, an unsaid, I know. I know.
And others take none, was all he could hear.
They sat there, drawing what little comfort they could, and waited. All too soon comfort fled too, taking lingering laughter with it, replacing it with the scraping of Malia's lungs as they tried desperately to find new air. Outside the armoury there were heartbeats, and more than just Lydia and Argent's; the other patrolmen had arrived, and they stood between his friends and freedom. He knew they'd find a way, he trusted the feeling in his gut telling him that more than anything, but it still hurt to hear Malia's breaths come in shorter and shorter than his. She had fallen asleep first, the night before, and he had relished it then, laying like they were now, the warmth pleasant, not rotten. Even earlier, with her atop him on the shelves, he had allowed himself to enjoy that after weeks of metaphorical things stirring between them, they'd found a position that lent itself to stirrings more... literal. Another new waltz for their dance. Already, the memory was distant, replaced with fear.
Suddenly, the sound of hissing smoke. Faint, but there, issuing from a grenade. One of Argent's. Scott closed his eyes and saw what he could hear, Argent's heavy footsteps, the barrel of his shotgun exploding, glass shattering. They were coming, but still so far. Still too far.
Against him, Malia's breathing sped up. The swell of her strangled throat grew heavy with a swallow, and she said, "Scott."
His eyes snapped open. "Try not to talk."
"I don't want to die like this."
"Oh, Malia..."
She shook her head. "Not like this."
"The more you talk, the more oxygen you'll -"
"I don't care." Her defiance almost betrayed her failing lungs. Almost. "I was supposed to go to France…" She inhaled, sharp, and exhaled, sharper, and his heart seized. "I'm eighteen. I haven't been anywhere... There's still too many things I wanna do." She craned her head back and looked at him. Her eyes were shining. Her whisper was despair, desperation. "I don't want to die here. Not here. Not like this."
Her eyes fluttered closed, and he retrieved her hand from her side and held it. Held her. Held everything. Every ragged breath was a knife to his stomach, the word eighteen falling through him and pummelling every rib on the way down.
"I never... I never thanked you."
"For what?" he whispered, pleaded, begged. "Malia, for what?"
"For making me human."
The astonishing simplicity of her words blossomed like an inferno in his chest, and robbed of him anything he could dare reply with, anything that could possibly meet the enormity of her sighed declaration, the reminder of one day in the woods, a day where neither of them knew, could never have possibly conceived, what would be conjured from that moment, red eyes meeting blue, an Alpha's roar turning a coyote back into a girl. The day they met. The day they began.
Her pulse slowed, her head lolling as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her body was shutting down, trying to save her, and he didn't know whether to let it or urge her to stay awake, to stay with him. He knew his own lungs couldn't last much longer than hers, wouldn't even want to, but still he held on, grasping blindly at nothing and everything and anything that looked like hope. He held onto her faint breathing like a liferaft in a raging tsunami, and tried so very hard not to remember another girl dying in his arms, so long ago. He leaned in, and pressed his lips to her clammy forehead.
"You'll go to France," he promised, clinging to her shallow breaths. "You're going to see the world. And maybe after... you'll come back. You'll come back to me. So just hold on, Lia... Come back to me..."
His vision began to grow dark as he repeated the mantra for her to just hold on, grabbing her face, begging her to stay, the only thing left in the world. But he still heard the scream Lydia screamed, heard it in his bones like another scream from another night. Where once that scream spoke of incalculable loss, it now spoke of immeasurable power, a power that once opened a portal with its love, a power that could, and did, tear a steel door off its hinges. A rush of air surged through the room, clutching Scott's chest like talons and pressing, into his lungs and out, and Malia's too, her eyes shooting open as they both beheld Lydia Martin, standing in the light with her arms outstretched and looking all the world like a Valkyrie refusing her divine calling.
They were saved. And while the air still tasted of gunpowder and smoke and the words of the dying, it never tasted so sweet.
- - - -/- - - -
Later, in the car and speeding down a back road in the car with the windows down, Scott allowed himself to relax, just a little. Malia laid across the backseat and him both, her head and upper torso on his lap, her bare legs covered by Chris's jacket. Her eyes were closed, like him drinking in the night, but her jaw was set in just enough annoyance as the truck jostled at every dip and bump in the road to make him want to laugh. He didn't, and contented himself with running his fingers through her hair, watching her annoyance transform into a soft, near to imperceptible, smile.
In the driver's seat, Chris's shoulders were drawn, hands gripping the steering wheel. "He knew we were coming," he said, though Scott wasn't sure if he was talking to them or himself. "He knew to move those weapons the second I saw them." He let out a disgusted noise. "I should've killed him. I should've put another bullet in his chest and walked away. Satomi's pack were all Buddhists for Christ's sake, they wouldn't have... And now they're all gone too."
And others take none. "I need to call Liam," said Scott. "Lydia?"
She did not seem to hear him. Since the moment they'd escaped the armoury, Lydia had been preoccupied with staring into nothing, cellphone in hand, absently swiping her thumb on the screen.
"Lydia? My phone's dead, can I...?"
Lydia passed it without breaking from her trance, and the automatic gesture made Scott frown more than seeing Stiles's name already highlighted in her contacts list. As he scrolled up to find Liam's, he asked, "Lydia, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she said, reflexive, muted. "Throat hurts. Took down a big door."
"Good lookin' out for us, Lyds," mumbled Malia. "Multitasking."
"It's not just that," insisted Scott. "Lydia, are you okay?"
The answer was expected, but no less foreboding. "I had a vision."
"Back at the armoury? Was it us?"
Her fingers began to twirl at nothing, as if she was still holding the phone now in Scott's hand. "It was the armoury," she said. "You guys almost died, so it had to be that."
But still her eyes remained faraway, unseeing, and she murmured to herself, "Bullet casings..." Feeling unsettled, and in need of some good news, Scott hit Liam's number, and waited. After three rings, his beta picked up, and relief flooded his veins.
"Are you okay?" he asked promptly. "How it'd go? Liam?"
"We're fine, Scott," Liam replied on the other end. "I mean, we got away. They didn't kill us."
"I kinda figured, yeah. But I'm glad. You did good, I'm proud."
"Yeah... and you guys?"
We almost died, the weapons were gone, and Jiang and Tierney are dead... It sat on the tip of his tongue, the knowledge that he would soon have to burden Liam with, that the last members of Satomi's pack were dead, that they had sent them to their deaths. That wasn't something he wanted to do at all, and even less so over the phone, so for now he said, "Long story, but we're okay, heading back to my house now. Mason's bringing takeout."
"Great! We're still a while out, though I think it'll feel longer if this jackass doesn't stop with the country music radio."
Theo's voice was distant, smug. "Driver chooses the music, that's the rule. You don't like it, you can walk."
"Dick," said Liam with no real heat, and then to Scott, "We'll see you at the house."
"Yeah. And Liam? You really did do good. I'm proud of you."
"You already said that."
"I know, but I... I don't think I say it enough."
For a moment, Liam didn't reply, perhaps thrown by the earnestness of his tone, but eventually he matched it with a stuttered, "Y-yeah, uh, thanks Scott," and hung up.
"What was that about?" asked Malia.
Scott shrugged, returning the phone to Lydia's waiting hand. "It's just that... When the idea of distracting the Hunters came up, he volunteered for it. Immediately. He's not even seventeen."
"You're not even nineteen," Chris pointed out dryly. "And you volunteered too."
"We all volunteered," said Lydia, sounding half in a dream.
On Scott's lap, Malia shifted. I'm only eighteen, she had said with what she was refusing to be her last breaths. And then Lydia, having lived a hundred years in the past three, and lived them far too alone. And Argent, more than twice their age but still much too young for the grief and loss weighing on his shoulders. He would've had to be the one to tell Scott's mother if he'd died, another dead teenager on his conscience, a burden beyond comprehension. Scott felt terribly sad for them. Even the Hunters, with their automatic weapons and the Anuk-Ite whispering dread in their ears. Even Gerard, who took a bullet from his own son and still decided to spend his final days bathing in hatred and fear and blood. He felt sad for them all.
Malia frowned up at him. "Stop thinking," she muttered. "We didn't die. Wasn't a total loss."
"No," he agreed, stroking her hair, watching the frown transmute itself once more into a smile. "It wasn't."
"Besides, we got the map."
Quite honestly, Scott had completely forgotten about the map he'd swiped from the inner vault. Malia seemed to realise when his hand stilled, and her eyes shot open. The little smile had reached them. She looked radiant. She looked an hour older than the girl who'd almost died in his arms. She looked eighteen, and as ridiculously alive as him.
- - - -/- - - -
What happened next was inevitable.
Mason had Chinese waiting for them at his house, and Scott's mother forced them to pretend for five minutes to eat it before going back to war, and so they did. While Chris kept throwing glances at the rolled up map sitting on the dining room table, he knew better than to fight Melissa McCall on anything, and did not. Lydia picked at her rice and answered Mason's assurances about him not having done any damage to her car with the occasional listless hmm. Malia didn't stick around to eat, she had already slipped upstairs, and Scott trailed after without a word, finding her where he expected, where he hoped, where they'd found something over the summer and found something else a few nights earlier, her hand in his.
From the doorway, he watched as she hovered by his desk with her back turned to him, carrying the air of someone arming themselves for battle. The light glinted on the gilded lacrosse trophies nearby, trophies from a normal life and not of lives taken, stolen before their time, encased in glass with all their laughter, their tears, their loves, their fears, kids just like them, now scraps of bloody flesh.
Scott let out a breath he'd been holding in all night. "You okay?"
Malia did not answer, nor did she hesitate. She turned, and stepped toward him. The ground didn't quake, but his heart hammered in his chest all the same.
"Remember what I said out there?" she asked. "When the air was running out?"
He matched her stride, met hers the middle. "You mean about going to France?"
She shook her head. Her eyes were very bright. "I mean about all the things I said I haven't done, and all the things I still want to do..."
"Yeah."
"This is one of them."
Her lips met his, and the cacophony in his head and heart ceased entirely. Inevitable or no, the shock of it threatened his knees to shake themselves to dust, his stomach seemed fit to burst through his throat, and he tilted his head forward, drawing towards her, matching the kiss like he had her steps, but by then she'd already pulled back. But not away, never away. Her hands splayed on his chest, as if seeking permission to his heart, as if it didn't already belong to her with the rest of him. She steadied herself on him, and the noise in his head returned gentler, chords of a familiar song played by a new musician, but sweet to hear, oh so sweet, the promise of a tune that lasted longer, nestled in his very soul, a melody of forevers.
Malia had made the first move, and now, it was his turn. He let his expression ask, ask if she was sure, really sure, as if they hadn't reached that point of no return some unknowable, unidentifiable, wonderfully indistinct yet gloriously real, time ago. He thought of Stiles and Lydia then, how they'd look at each other and think they should've figured it out sooner, that they didn't have enough time. With him and Malia, he thought that every single thing had to happen exactly how it happened to bring them to this moment. Their moment.
He reached up and cupped her face, guided it to his, and they began again, two planets orbiting each other, now colliding, colliding, colliding. Kissing without abandon, her hands running up his back, his burying into her hair, holding on for dear life. She held on too, yanking at the back of his hair, thumb running over his neck, and on and on they went. Lips clashing for control, her hand on his chin, his on hers; the war was in their kiss, and how could it not be, they'd been fighting each other and themselves for so long it could only end in battle, in surrender. The flare of aggression, and its heat, its intensity, soon softened, melted, and for a moment they retreated, still holding each other, their foreheads touching, breathless and breathing as one.
Scott never wanted it to end, but his ears pricked at the sound of his dad's voice downstairs, and, reluctantly, gently, he pulled away. His arms protested leaving her greatly, every hair standing on end and gooseflesh erupting on the nape of his neck where she touched him like wildfire. He comforted himself with the notion that leaving his room with her and closing the door behind them to return to the fight wasn't anywhere close to being an ending. His lips tingled pleasantly, and they would for hours, he was sure.
Before they could leave, he had to tell her. "I never thanked you either."
She inclined her head. "For what?"
"Being there." He thought about the feeling of her hands on his heart. "Being here." He thought about everything that was her, and finished simply, "Being you."
Her smile could've illuminated a galaxy. Eighteen and alive and with all the things she wanted to do, all the things she would regret for the rest of her life if she didn't, and one of them had been kissing him. Nothing could've humbled him more.
Malia's hand grabbed his, and for a second time, she led him from his bedroom, out the door, down the stairs, and back to the war, but he lingered in the moment they'd just shared, forgetting. Forgetting about the war, the failed mission, about Lydia's vision, about Liam risking himself, about trophies, about almost dying, and almost losing her. Forgetting about the after, about her in France and him at UC Davis, so far apart. Forgetting everything. But not her kiss. Never that. Never the idea that the light could win. That the light was winning.
- - - -/- - - -
Lydia's vision came to life in a hail of bullets, and he remembered all the things he forgot and more.
He remembered being pulled to the ground first, Malia gripping him tightly, shards of glass falling from her hair, her snarl bared at attackers unseen but for bright red laser sights and the fire and metal in the air. He remembered the sound of flesh tearing and bone shattering, of blood spilling, its copper taste wet on his tongue. He remembered a bloodied hand in his vision, and not knowing and knowing deep in his bones all at once who it belonged to. He remembered the ringing of his ears giving way to a cry of pain - Mason's, then Lydia's. His dad's gun clattered to the floor before he followed without a sound. Lydia's heart threaded, slowed, unconsciousness claiming her quickly, too quickly. Chris was grunting, gasping, and when his hands pressed down hard on the puddle forming around his mother's chest, the sickening squelch sound made Scott want to vomit. His mom. They shot his mom. They shot his dad, Lydia, Mason. He couldn't conceive of how many bullets there were, on the ground, in the walls, in their bodies, but he felt every one and more dig into his skin, burrow into the depths of his very soul. He couldn't take their pain. He couldn't possibly take all of their pain.
Somebody called an ambulance, the Sheriff's department, Liam and Theo, half the town. Out of the ruin they carried the bodies - still breathing, but for a heartstopping moment Scott was convinced beyond reason the Anuk-Ite was making him see things - to the red and blue flashing lights, still pressing dishtowels to gushing wounds until the paramedics switched to proper dressings. If any of them - the paramedics, the deputies, the onlookers behind the cordon - noticed the black lines snaking up Scott's arm, Malia's, Liam's, they didn't say anything. They were too busy looking at the shattered windows of the McCall residence, whispering and murmuring, counting the spent bullet casings, ejected white-hot onto his front lawn, out on the street.
"Who did this?" the Sheriff asked, over and over. "Scott, who did this?"
He didn't know. He thought they'd been fighting hunters, who chased their prey, cornered them, trapped them before killing them, not faceless men with enough darkness in their hearts to unload automatic rifles on a suburban neighbourhood on a school night. And they hadn't pursued, hadn't walked into his house to make sure their enemy was dead. It had been an attack of fear, not strategy, and in that, they had succeeded. Ricocheting bullets could've hit their neighbours, or any random passersby on the street, putting out their trashcans or walking their dogs or trying to make it home after a night out. Hours later, Scott would ask himself if the Hunters emptied the neighbourhood first, or if they wanted innocent bystanders to get hurt to prove a point. He could see Gerard in that logic all too well, and in it, he glimpsed something else. Something he didn't want to know, something he already knew.
Who did this? the Sheriff had asked the night. Empty shelves in an empty armoury. He's armed his army. His mom, his dad, Lydia, Mason. We all volunteered. They couldn't heal. They'd shot the ones who couldn't heal. Sometimes wars take prisoners. But this was something beyond war. This was something beyond fear. Testing students, could've already started, if they find even one of you guys... The Anuk-Ite, standing among the crowd, a conquering king presiding over a grand banquet. We opened a door to another world. His mom, his dad, Lydia, Mason, Brett, Lori, Jiang, Tierney, Satomi, Liam, Malia... And others take none. Something beyond war. Something like extinction.
- - - -/- - - -
Who did this?
We did.
- - - -/- - - -
End Author's Note: Next chapter's going to hit like an emotional truck filled with emotions, because goddamn it's been a week and I'm still reeling from four of the group getting shot. Until then, be sure to drop a comment about how much Malia's speech in the armoury messed you up, or the kiss (and that song tho. This chapter was almost called "I Let You In My Heart" for good reason!), because I'm right there with you. Thanks all for reading, see you again soon!