Author's Note: Thanks very much to Kait for reviewing! I hope everyone likes this chapter.

Chapter 22

It was hard to come away from this experience feeling anything but defeated.

They had lost on every front – Derek was captured, having god-knows-what done to him (if he was even still alive), and Allison had been taken out of the game indefinitely.

The only sliver of hope came in the form of knowledge: at least they could be fairly confident that one of the Argents was controlling the Kanima, and within this assumption they could be fairly confident that Gerard was the one to blame.

Which meant that Lyssa was redeemed, at least for the time being, and they needed her. They needed all the help they could get. She had gotten herself paralyzed in an attempt to protect Derek, and was currently recuperating on the sofa in his apartment.

"Tell me exactly what happened," Amy ordered Isaac as they knelt by Lyssa's side. Scott and Stiles had turned in for the night, but Amy knew any attempt at resting until they found Derek would be utterly pointless on her part.

Isaac gulped heavily and stared at his hands, which were folded in his lap.

"It-it threw itself onto the top of the car. Derek tried swerving and everything to get it off, but we just ended up going off the road and crashing into a tree. When we got out of the car it went straight towards Derek like a freight train – it was like Lyssa and I didn't even exist. The only reason it got her was because she stood right in front of Derek."

"And so what? It paralyzed Derek?"

Isaac nodded grimly, still avoiding eye contact. "It paralyzed him and dragged him away. I tried to go after it, but –" he hesitated and stared Amy squarely in the eye for the first time since commencing his story.

"What?" she prodded.

He looked away again, shame glimmering in his eyes like unshed tears. "I froze," he confessed, his voice barely a murmur.

Amy narrowed her own eyes at him, trying and failing to rein in her temper. "You froze?" she repeated acerbically.

"I'm sorry, Amy, I –"

"You froze?! Derek could be dead and all because you froze? Is that what you're telling me?"

Lyssa, who had regained some movement, turned her head to face them while she lay. "Ease up on him," she ventured compassionately.

Amy gaped at Lyssa in disbelief, before turning her attention back to Isaac. His gaze was downcast, his eyebrows were knitted together, his jaw was clenched tightly, and his head was hung low in contrition. It looked as though it was impossible for anyone to hate him as much as he hated himself.

Feeling a twinge of pity, the younger brunette took a moment to regulate her breathing. When she had finally composed herself, she said, "Fine. You froze. All we can do now is figure out a plan to get him back."

"Well, this all began at the Argent house. I'd say that's a good place to start looking," Lyssa assisted.

"We go in tomorrow, then," she plotted. "Guns blazing – we get in, get Derek, and get out."

"You really think that'll work?" Lyssa asked. She was presumably still somewhat unfamiliar with the Argents.

"They must be at least a little disorganized after Mrs. Argent's death – they're not gonna be on the top of their game, which makes it better to strike sooner rather than later. Plus, they're probably extremely pissed. We need to get to Derek before they kill him, if they haven't already," said Amy tonelessly.

Somehow, in that moment, she was able to separate herself from her emotions and attempt devise a logical plan. There was no time to spare for wallowing in despair – mourning something that may or may not have occurred was pointless. She needed to keep her wits about her. Yes, she was torn apart inside with worry and yes, she felt a sinking in her stomach whenever she so much as contemplated what they might be doing to Derek, but dwelling on these worries would do nothing to save him.

They had lost their leader, at least for now, and someone needed to step up to the plate.

BEACON HILLS HIGH

The next day, Allison, as expected, was not at school. The only reason Isaac and Amy had gone was because they needed to talk to Scott and Stiles.

"I've tried calling Allison a hundred times," Scott informed them as they sat around their designated lunch table. "She won't talk to me. It's been radio silence since the hospital."

"She's dealing with a lot," Isaac said. Out of all of them, he had most recently lost a parent.

"So are we," snapped Amy, bringing them back to topic. She was growing exceedingly frustrated with Scott's inability to focus on anything besides Allison, though she knew she herself was guilty of something quite analogous. "We have to go get Derek tonight."

"Don't you think that's a little reckless?" asked Stiles, before taking an unnecessarily large bite of his turkey club.

She frowned at him, but replied, "They're probably pretty frazzled after what happened. Now's the only time it could work. At least we have strength in numbers."

"You really want to break into Allison's house the day after her mom died?" Scott scoffed in incredulity. He understood that it was a delicate situation – what her mother did was indisputably wrong, but she was still her mother.

"Um, yeah," she replied bluntly. "When else are we going to?" Amy's words had a much sharper, no-nonsense edge to them than they usually did. In fact, everything about her demeanor had become markedly sharper since Derek's abduction.

"Don't you think that's kind of a low blow?"

"Kidnapping Derek was a low blow," she shot back.

"He did attack her," he pointed out.

"Because she was trying to kill you! You should be thanking Derek, not trying to find a way to avoid rescuing him." Her statement hung heavy in the air; it was undeniable – Derek had saved Scott's life. It made Amy furious that Scott could so easily ignore this.

Half-convinced, he replied, "It just seems really unfair to Allison, is all."

She just barely resisted a strong urge to roll her eyes. "Yeah, well, nothing in life is fair. Haven't you realized that yet?"

"She's right," Isaac agreed. "We have to do this tonight."

Scott still did not seem fully on-board.

"As much as I hate to admit it, they have a point," Stiles leveled with him. "This is our only opportunity. If we don't take it, Derek will die, and even if you're not exactly BFFs with him I know that's not what you want. We may be risking hurting Allison's feelings, but it's a risk we've gotta take."

"Fine," he allowed begrudgingly, feeling cornered now that everyone was ganging up on him. "But after this, I'm laying low for a long time. No more kamikaze missions."

THAT NIGHT

Parked a couple of blocks down from the Argents', Amy was itching to attack. What she hadn't anticipated, though, was the potent feeling of sorrow that pooled in her stomach. Beside the Argents' house was her own, with an innocuous "For Sale" sign hammered into the emerald lawn. It looked… like a shell. Beautiful on the outside, empty on the inside. Hiding a past. Hiding secrets.

It was just a house. She'd only lived there for a few months. And so it shocked her that the sight could evoke such poignant emotion.

But she was flooded unexpectedly with memories. She remembered moving in just as vividly as she remembered leaving – leaving, moving out, running away, escaping. There were so many angles to look at if from, each starkly different than the others.

"You okay?" Isaac jarred her out of her musings.

Amy shook her head, clearing her mind. "Yeah. Fine." She turned around in the driver's seat of her car to see Scott, Lyssa, and Stiles sitting in the back, in that order. "Ready?" she asked them.

They nodded solemnly in unison.

Without further ado, Amy slid out of her seat and out of the car. Her friends quickly followed suit. Stiles grabbed a baseball bat out of the trunk and weighed it in his hands, before joining the rest as they slunk ominously towards the large home.

They had decided previously to try to enter the home through the basement, which was likely where they were keeping Derek. This was a simple rescue mission – ideally, they would get in and out without confronting any of the Argents. In practice, though, they were unlikely to be this fortunate.

They had a security system, which Stiles, the brains of the operation, was in charge of disarming. He claimed to have learned a thing or two sneaking around crime scenes in his youth, so he was entrusted with this task (which he was supposed to perform without using his trusty baseball bat).

After locating the alarm, Stiles began clipping wires while Amy, Lyssa, Scott, and Isaac positioned themselves at the entrances to the basement. There were two: Lyssa and Isaac stood at one, while Amy and Scott stood at the other.

It took Stiles a couple of minutes to accomplish his mission, after which point he gave them a thumb's up, signaling the go-ahead. Even though the security system was disabled, the doors were still locked; Scott and Isaac knocked the door handles clear off.

On Isaac and Lyssa's end, the pair went barreling in without paying much attention to stealth – they were the diversion. Scott and Amy, on the other hand, tiptoed through the doorway like a couple of spies.

Within seconds, Mr. Argent and two unidentified henchmen had guns pointed at Isaac and Lyssa's heads. Gerard was conspicuously absent.

"Dad, what's going on?" they heard Allison call from the floor above.

"Nothing, Allison, stay upstairs!" Chris shouted gruffly.

Meanwhile, Amy and Scott crept through the basement, quickly recalling where the Argents had stored Amy after kidnapping her those many months ago.

In a shadowy corner, they found Derek unconscious, shirtless, and strung up on a ramshackle stretch of chain link fence. He looked absolutely awful – his skin was pale and clammy, his eye sockets were dark and hollowed, and his torso was covered in infected-looking slashes and bruises. He looked like a prisoner of war.

Amy quickly rushed to him, trying to reach his neck to check his pulse. Unfortunately, she wasn't tall enough.

"Help me get him down!" she begged Scott. As she looked at him from over her shoulder, anyone could see that her prior resolve had dissolved into utter concern.

Scott, who appeared to have been in something of a trance upon seeing their friend so beat-up, quickly snapped back to reality and hurried to Amy's side.

Just as they had nearly succeeded in freeing him, the lights snapped on. The image of Gerard, sitting behind them in a metal chair with the Kanima dripping venom by his side, was illuminated. On a cart beside him lay an array of torture weapons.

"Well, well, well," his voice rasped. "I thought you might come looking for this Hale scum."

The Kanima's tail twitched menacingly, but Gerard had yet to sic it on them.

The terror in Amy's eyes quickly gave way to a furious blaze of blue. Her fear was betrayed only when she cast a sidelong glance to Derek, who was now slumped on the ground against the fence where he'd been chained.

"Don't worry, he's alive," he informed her, tone saturated with false compassion.

Scott made a move to go support Derek, but Gerard held up a finger in warning and tsked. "No, no," he said, "he's not going anywhere."

"Fuck you," Amy snarled at the man who was coincidentally her school principal. "What did you do to him?"

Instead of showing offense, Gerard grinned. "I like you, Amelia," he told her. "You've got a lot of spunk. It'll be fun to rip that out of you."

He put his index and middle finger to his thumb, as if he was about to snap his fingers. However, just before he could, the sound of footsteps penetrated the dank area and the Kanima scurried out of sight. Soon enough Chris came clamoring in, looking quite winded.

Amy made a mental note of the fact that the Kanima disappeared from view upon Chris' arrival – that was a very interesting development.

Chris stared at her and Scott with a mixture of confusion, disappointment, and anger.

"You're here too?" he growled. He redirected his attention to Gerard. "The others are off chasing after some girl and the Lahey boy. We didn't realize there were more of them."

"Go with the others," Gerard told him. "I can deal with these two by myself."

Chris looked torn, but ultimately decided to join the others in their pursuit of Lyssa and Isaac. Amy trusted them to be able to take care of themselves – she and Scott were the ones who were truly in trouble.

When Chris was gone, Gerard grinned and the Kanima came back out of hiding.

"He doesn't know," Scott muttered to himself. Louder, he said, "Chris doesn't know about the Kanima."

Gerard looked momentarily flummoxed, but soon regained his poise. "You don't know the half of it," he sneered. "Kill 'em," he instructed the Kanima.

Amy screwed her eyes shut and reached for Scott's hand – they were surely dead meat, she couldn't help but think. The lizard-like creature immediately sprung into action, only to be pierced by a sequence of stray arrows before it could attack. Scott and Amy looked around wildly for the source of their salvation.

A very numb-looking Allison appeared from around the corner, dressed from head to toe in black. Her gaze seared into Scott and Amy. "Go," she ordered them, voice monotone.

They didn't need to be told twice – Scott slung one of Derek's arms around his shoulder, and Amy did the same with the other. Together they dragged him out of the house, but only after Scott cast a wistful glance to Allison on their way out.

She seemed unaffected. "This is it," she said. "This is the last thing I'm helping you with. If I see Derek again, he's dead. But right now my grandfather and I need to talk."

Author's Note: Pretty please review. I know I've said this a million times at this point, but seriously it's super upsetting that so many people follow and so few review. I know I've diverged a lot from the show, but to be honest I'm not a huge fan of the direction it's taking and I miss the original cast of characters quite a bit. What do you guys think of everyone's characterizations? Of Amy? Of Derek? I'm definitely going to keep some elements from the canon, but some things are also going to be quite different. Please let me know what you think! And if you think all the mysteries have been solved, you're in for a surprise ;)