"Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon."
After the talk with Theo and his pack, the nightmares came back with power. However, she no longer dreamt of Scott's hollow eyes or Kira's teeth or her father's last whisper. Now, she would fall asleep with Theo's eyes and wake up with his dragon voice in her ears – I warned all of you.
It wasn't her fault everybody was dead, but to convince her conscience of that was a whole other story.
Malia thought about going back to Beacon Hills more than once. Going back to Lydia and Parish, discover if they were alive still. They had to be, they had to be. Nonetheless, she never went back. Beacon Hills was a hell mouth, full of dead bodies, and going back there would be suicide.
Another month passed, she raided four more cities and saw Theo's black van once more, but turned a corner before his small pack could see her.
Malia found a survivor in Sunnyvale: a small woman with too much bones showing up underneath the skin and shaking hands around a gun; Human, so weak and breakable, but alive when the supernatural creatures had failed to be.
"I'm Malia" Malia had whispered, throwing her an inspecting look. No blood, no bites "Have you been scratched or bitten?"
"No, no…" the woman shook her head "I hid in the kitchen cabinet when they came… I stayed there for two weeks…" Malia doubted it; nobody could live more than three days without water. But she knew how the world ending fucked up your sense of time and how hunger made it even worse, so she didn't comment. "There was so much blood…"
"Hey, you're ok now" Malia locked the door of the hotel's office where the woman had been hiding, checking the lounge and seeing nobody. No human or creature. "Do you want some water?" she offered her bottle and the girl accepted gladly.
"I'm Lisa" she said between two large gulps, before giving the bottle back. Malia noticed the purple marks around her wrists and didn't mention it. They looked like fingers. "We're going to die, aren't we?"
"Yes" Malia shrugged and sat down, not unlocking the gun or putting it away "But I intend on living the most I can before they take me"
Lisa agreed quietly "It's the doomsday, isn't it?" she sighed "I thought it would be a third World War, in the end"
"You still have time to be right" Malia smirked to herself "Humans are stupid enough to start a war now"
"Truth" Lisa shook her head and curled up around herself "How did you survive?"
I'm not sure I did
"I ran"
Five hours later, Malia woke up from a quick nap covered in cold sweat and with tears in her eyes. Lisa was watching her with huge blue eyes that reminded her of a child. Malia went to grab her gun only to realize it was gone. No longer in her hand, not in her lap, but pointed to her chest by a tearful scrawny woman.
"Lisa, give me it back"
"They said they would give me shelter if I brought us food" Lisa explained in a sob and Malia felt disgust because she was food. She was merchandise. "You gonna have to come with me, Malia"
"I'm so sorry, Lisa" Malia whispered "I'm so sorry" and then her claws were out and Lisa's heart was on the ground. Malia expected it to bounce like a ball, proving how crazy she was, but the organ only laid there, gushing a small pool of blood around itself. She dropped Lisa's corpse next and took the gun from her turning cold fingers.
She grabbed all she could from the hotel lounge, ran outside to her car the fastest she could and threw up in the ground. The world was ending for only a month and half and everybody had gone mad already.
Another town passed her by, another group of crazy cannibal survivors. Food was running scarce, finding clean water was even harder, and though finding gas was easy, since seeing a car in the road was almost impossible, Malia was starting to wonder to where was she running to. What was the destiny? Drive until she fell from the edge of the world?
He found her when the summer was ending and Malia no longer could keep track of the time. For how long was the apocalypse happening now? Four months?
"I thought I'd see you again sooner"
"Not dead yet. You're a lucky guy" Malia answered back, waiting while the bomb filled the car tank "Where is Hayden?"
"Ditched me two towns ago, when I killed Josh"
His words would have made her angry or scared, even disgusted, a while back, but Malia was far too tired to feel anything. "You let her ditch you?"
"I'm half blind, Malia… I'm a nuisance." He shrugged and she frowned. Had he actually let Hayden go so she wouldn't get killed?
"Well, now you're alone and half blind." She pointed out "You're dead, Theo"
"I've been deader" another shrug. He was either too much sure of himself or so scared part of his brain had died.
Malia studied him. Still dirty and still with blood underneath his nails and behind his ears. Hair sandy of sweat and filth and much probably blood too. One eye covered in a makeshift patch and his face as pale as cadaver.
And even now she thought he was quite handsome. "Did you check the store?"
"Yes" he had been parked there before her. Malia hadn't recognized him, the black van had vanished – probably handed to Hayden – and in its place was brown a Toyota. "As clean as it can get. No experiments, but no food either"
Or he had taken all the food already and didn't want to share. She didn't care, he looked four days from dying, and he could keep some half air chip bags.
Malia jumped forward, grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him with the last summer sun burning her nape and making sweat scroll down her cheeks. Theo didn't kiss back, didn't push her away either. His good eye didn't close under her touch, but he also didn't look surprised. "Last-night-on-earth fuck?" Theo opened a lazy smile, a finger tracing the contour of her lips.
Malia frowned "It's not night and I don't really want it to be my last day around here"
"Never mind" He sighed, tugging a hand on her hair and pulling her closer, drowning any complaints under his lips. They stumbled to the store and Theo used a broom to lock the door and pushed her against the cold tiles of the floor. A light was flickering, nobody had spent time turning it off, and Malia saw the way it reflected on the glass of the door.
"Be quick, I don't wanna die in the middle of sex"
"Too bad" Theo grumbled, opening her dirty jeans. He was lazy, Malia caught herself sighing of frustration more than pleasure, while he took his time appreciating every inch of her skin. For all she cared, his shirt could have been kept on, but Theo took it off, because apparently he had all the time in the world.
There's no goddamn zombie apocalypse when Theo Raeken is fucking you in a convenience store.
Somewhere around him kissing the inside of her tights and her legs locked on his naked shoulders, pulling his face and tongue closer, Malia closed her eyes and let out a groan that made her body shiver. He laughed against her skin and whispered something and she wondered if there could be heaven when you're living in the middle of literal hell.
"When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.""
They took one hour and half in the store. One hour and half that Malia wouldn't have guessed, wasn't for the fact that the sun had disappeared in the middle of an orgasm and now, stepping out to her car, she felt cold entering her bones.
Theo entered his car and didn't drive away, instead he sat there and watched as Malia walked to her car. She turned to look at him one last time and sighed, the best one hour and half of her life for the last… six months? Probably.
But sex was sex was sex. It wasn't survival and Theo was still a murdering little liar, so Malia got into her car and drove away without looking back.
Four towns gone and she stopped with his car still in her mirror, pulled out her gun and pointed it to his stupid big head "I'm going to blow away your good eye, if you don't stop following me around. You'll get me killed." Malia growled.
Theo opened a small smile "Kill me and you'll do me a favor. I can't pull the trigger myself, but don't think I haven't tried"
She understood him. The logic told her suicide was the only way, but Malia couldn't kill herself doesn't matter how many times she thought about it. She wasn't born to be a body on the side of an empty road, she wasn't born to be a victim of herself.
Neither was he.
"You are a burden, Theo." Malia lowered the gun slightly "You gonna get me killed"
"Why? Because of the blind eye? I've been keeping myself alive just fine since I got this" Theo rolled his eye and it made her want to laugh.
"What do you even think will happen? You gonna force yourself as my partner and we'll be fuck buddies because the world is ending?"
"Who would guessed, you know what 'fuck buddies' are…" He smiled "I was thinking more like I protect you, you protect me"
"Ha. I don't need you. I'm not winning anything from this"
"How about an objective?"
It made her body freeze. The nihilism of their situation had been driving Malia crazy, but Theo was offering all she could wish: A goal, something to drive for, instead of driving aimlessly to her own death.
- You gonna be bitten -
"What do you mean?"
"That's what I'm doing. I'm not really following you" Theo shrugged "You just happen to be going the same way I am"
"What are you doing?" Malia hissed, tired of his devil-may-care manner.
"I'm chasing the beast" Theo sighed "I've been mapping the devastation signals. It is attracted to the places that haven't been destroyed by the plague yet, so all we have to do is follow it."
"And then what?"
"We kill it" He smiled, like it was easy like that. And maybe it was. At least it was something more or less decent to die for. Humanity salvation. Or the salvation of what was left of it.
"The plague will keep on spreading" Malia frowned.
"The virus will stop mutating once the beast is dead. Humans will come up with a vaccine, they are good at it."
He ended up helping her move all of her stuff to his car and they ditched the police car on the side of the road. Malia felt some weird sense of closure when she watched it burn, like she was finally saying goodbye to everything good she found in Beacon Hills.
Eyeing Theo by her side, driving with only one eye like he had been born to do it, Malia wondered if maybe she did. She did leave everything good in Beacon Hills and now she was driving to the depths of hell with devil himself.
Routine was something easy to fall on when you are the two last people on a city or state. She would drive half of the day, he would drive the other half. They would sleep on their seats during the night, since the backseat was taken by supplies. And sometimes Malia would crawl to his lap and they would have sex in the most uncomfortable position of all, but it was still good and he was still warm skin against hers and Malia didn't feel like the last soul on earth.
Talking was something else. She talked to herself, a crazy habit gained by the apocalypse. He was sullen. Still, Malia learned that if she didn't say anything, he would talk nonstop and keep on even when he said horrible things. Especially when he did.
He told her about killing his sister. A side comment, but she didn't answer and he got that nervous twitch in his lips and started saying he had loved her, and he could remember her in the freezing river and couldn't understand why he hadn't helped. He told her about the weird sense of calm he felt. Control, Theo defined finally. He liked to control death and life, like to play god. Malia still didn't answer and Theo rambled on some more until he finally asked: Wasn't she terrified of being locked up with a sociopath?
No.
He was a total psycho, she was sure of that… Even worse than Malia had thought, if that was possible. However, reason be damned, she felt safe by his side. He wouldn't hurt her, Malia was sure of that, and maybe that was a false sense of security to lure her to something even darker and fucked up, but with him Malia didn't feel alone and lost and that was enough.
The more comfort you gonna get when the world is ending.
Theo didn't question her answer. He didn't say anything, archived this data to probably use against her later – and Malia didn't care, everything was dead and she didn't care – and let a hand rest in her tight. Malia locked her fingers in his, heard his hasty pulse and closed her eyes.
For three months driving with him, they were alright.
"I want you to kill me"
He was staring at her, the moon was bathing Malia's naked body and they were lying to the top of their car, watching the stars in their makeshift bed of blankets and guns.
"When?" Theo pushed a string of hair away from her eyes and kept looking at her face. He had known from the start, from the day he started to flirt with her and Stilinski was still alive and Scott was his main problem, that they were doomed. It didn't explain why his heart seemed to be breaking in pieces small enough to turn into dust.
"When one the experiments bite me. I want you to pull the trigger before I become one of them." Before I kill you.
"I won't let them bite you, Malia" Theo whispered, as if it was confession and they weren't alone in the goddamn country.
"I'll die by a bite, Theo. I know." She bit his lower lip and got on top of him, putting a hand on his shoulder "Promise me"
His good eye shone with the moon and Malia almost could swear she saw tears, but the apocalypse didn't allow lame criers and Theo never dropped them. "I promise you"
She smiled and let a hand go to his hair, ruffling it without thinking. One of her fingers caught in his almost eye patch and Malia frowned only a little before she slowly pulled it away from his face.
Theo had been careful with the cut, he wasn't dumb to let it rotten and infected and end up giving him an even more pathetic death then they would have. The skin had scarred close and where once had been a beautiful blue-grey eye, was nothing more than twisted skin and a slashed in the middle eyebrow.
"Malia, don't" Theo mumbled, trying to put the cloth back on, but she tapped his hands away lightly.
"If you're trying to hide your flaws from me, I'd say it's a little too late" she traced the scar's contours with a finger "How did you get this?"
"Tracy" Theo shrugged, a little nervous she would be startled by his wound "She was attacked in front of me; I had to do something… One of the experiments nailed me on the eye"
"And it didn't turn you?"
"Only the bite turns" He sighed "But I burnt the wound for precaution"
It made her shiver to imagine the pain "Does it hurt?"
"No" Theo smiled and kissed the palm of her hand "It was a pain to learn how to live with only one eye, especially in my wolf form, but I figured."
Malia smiled back now, a little mesmerized to see herself in him once again. A fighter until the end. "If I say I love you, you promise not to think too much into it?"
"Yes" Theo cupped her face and confessed in her ear "I love you too and still doesn't change anything, does it?"
"No"
They were close. The air was getting fresher and her nerves were getting tighter and Theo was getting snappy like the little shit he was.
The beast was lurking and they both knew it, so when they got to a city that hadn't been affected by the plague yet, Malia entered the hotel shower and scrubbed until her skin was red and blazing.
Everybody there knew the apocalypse was happening, but they called it Virus 3V1B and Malia rolled her eyes to it, because Divine Pestilence would be more fit and still be wrong.
She wanted to scream like a lunatic that the end was coming and that they should run for their lives, but Theo argued those ideas out of her. Instead, they lied in the hotel bed and made love – not fucked – like a normal couple and Malia wondered for how long they had been together.
Measuring time by seasons is hard when you're crossing the country and weather changes every ten miles. Had they been a thing, a dysfunctional organ of a dying body, for a year now? Had she turned eighteen with him? Or was it a decade and they had grown old together while chasing the beast, when they should be running from this?
"Nine months" Theo answered, a thumb caressing her spine "I think, at least"
Nine was months were time enough to have a child, time enough to create life. All they had created was some kind of compatible madness that nobody else understood. The locals whispered things when Malia went down for breakfast in the cafeteria. They were the immune couple running from the plague.
"I think they are planning to kill us"
"Not kill" Theo answered with his usual calm and laziness that she learned to love and hate "They are planning to sell us to the government for more rations. They think we are immune"
"We're not" Malia sighed "I think we died already"
"I do too"
So she locked the door and barricaded the windows, promising herself not to hate on the locals too much. They were going to save those petty humans, she was planning on dying for them, and it couldn't be a sacrifice forged on hate.
"We'll be fine" Theo whispered in her hair, one night when she woke up with blood in her dreams and in her mouth from biting her lower lip. "We'll be both fine"
"We gonna die, Theo" Malia corrected him, hugging him with arms and legs and burrowing her face in his neck. For a minute, she wanted to run away with him and screw the world, ending or not. If Malia was going to die, she planned on having him alive with her the most she could.
"Yes" He mumbled back and it wasn't supposed to be soothing, but it was "We gonna die and we gonna be fine"
What level of self sacrifice was too much?
"These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead."
In the end, it was anticlimactic. Once TS Eliot said "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper." and the idiot had been right.
The beast came to them in a sunny evening and Malia had spent the last two days trying to forget everybody there wanted them as lab rats, but when she heard the piercing scream, she had forgot about it in less than a second.
Nine months of preparation and she felt like it didn't matter.
The beast was fairytale like. A werewolf out of Red Riding Hood, with too much fur and too much teeth and too much claws. And his eyes – her, their – were made of fire. Its breath made her knee go weak and then it was shoving those gigantic claws into a small girl.
The little girl convulsed, seized, the teeth spilled on the dirty and then the nails-teeth were there and she was an experiment, a creature, a zombie.
He could transform in minutes, he could transform with claws and Theo's hands around hers, shaking Malia to react, did absolutely nothing.
It wasn't until Malia saw those three masked men walking behind the beast that she found strength to move.
"I hope you die by the hands of your creators, Theo" her words echoed in her head and Malia gathered all the faith she did not have, grabbed the blade that felt oh-so small in her hand, and prayed her words wouldn't prove to be a self fulfilling prophecy.
She was thrown against a building and 'the immune couple' was whispered in her ears once again. Malia jumped on the beast, and saw as Theo snapped the neck of one of the Doctors. Kill them, Theo, kill all of them.
"I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead." The beast had its clawed hand around her waist and its eyes locked on hers, when she heard the voice. A female voice.
Theo had been the first successful chimera, after he killed his sister. But Malia knew – just like she knew there was no tomorrow – that the beast looking into her heart was no other than his sister. And with that, she shoved the blade on the monster's heart, finishing the murder that he should have completed all those years back.
It wasn't until the sun was blocked and blood was dropping in her face that Malia realized Theo had killed the Doctors.
"All of them?" She coughed, and there was so much blood in the throat.
"Every single one" He sat down by her side, there were people screaming, laughing, but mostly there was dead silence and his eye too serious on hers. Theo pulled her into his arms and it did not hurt.
"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Malia said into his chest, while he unlocked the gun slowly and petted her hair.
"You know poetry?" He was smiling and she would have smiled too if her lips weren't numb.
"The Bible." She whispered "I do love you, Theo"
"Yeah, I love you too" He said back, pressing the barrel of the gun against her temples.
"But it doesn't change anything, does it?"
"No, not really"
And Theo pulled the trigger.
I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
The End
