Chapter Three - Oh, the Stench of Death That Lingers

"The Purge is PSICOM's baby. Our military is split into two arms: the Public Security and Intelligence Command, known as PSICOM, and the Guardian Corps. I was Guardian Corps, Bodhum security regiment."

"Wait, but I don't get it. If you're not PSICOM, then why did you board the train?" Stiles doesn't understand why Derek would chose that, chose the path that was supposed to be their exile, their death.

"For Scott. I had to rescue Scott before they transported the Vestige to Pulse, and out of my reach. My only chance to save him was to join the Purge."

"You're telling me that you got on that train so you can save your brother? That's crazy. I could never do something like that."

"It's not a question of can or can't. There are some things in life you just do."

-x-

As a child, Malia had always been tactile. Hugs, cuddling, touching. That was just part of who she was. When things changed, she didn't have that. She had nothing but survival and the inherent need to protect her own then.

For a long time, her own only meant her sister's things scavenged from the car and the hole she'd made her den.

She isn't happy as a human. She's woefully behind her peers in a lot of things and she doesn't recognize herself in the mirror. She doesn't understand a lot of the things she is supposed to know, things that she should have learned naturally.

In the woods, there had been no good and bad. There hadn't been morality or consequences. There had been her, alone.

She's aware that she isn't making the best choices with her life now. Basing some things off what she remembered and others on what her body told her to do made a lot of things more difficult and complicated than they should be.

It isn't that she regrets all of her choices. She feels some degree of guilt over what she'd done with Stiles in that dirty basement, but when she remembers how much she'd cared about him she hadn't much cared.

The disconnect bothers her. The dreams bother her. She knows entirely too much about math and science for someone stuck as a coyote for as much of her adolescence as she was, and even then.

She dreams of another life every night she rests her head, a life where she was older and wiser. She thought the dreams would stop once she learned to control the shift but they haven't.

She knows nothing of history and English beyond what she'd been taught as a child before the accident, but the dreams leave her with an incredibly vast knowledge of how the world works. In theory anyway. She hasn't tested much of it out. There aren't creatures called fal'Cie here, and she's afraid to find it had been nothing more than a dream after all. That maybe she'd heard someone talking in the woods and imagined up a fantastical world where she was a scientist.

It made her waking life even more difficult.

Some days she longs for the life from her dreams, working alongside Stiles as they grow older together. Not that they'd been dating in them, though sometimes she'd truly wanted that. They'd slept together a few times over the years in her sleeping life, but Stiles had been hopelessly slaving over his attempts to rescue his friends and do what he could to help Scott reach his brother.

Which, she wonders why things are so radically different in the reality of daylight.

She isn't actually in her twenties. She's just a teenager who sometimes had the mentality of an eight year old and sometimes of a coyote.

And sometimes, she remembers the feel of Stiles holding her tightly. Of him pressing kisses to her skin. And she wants.

The only thing Stiles seems to remember was that night, hidden away in the basement of the hospital. He doesn't seem to have any recollection of the world in her dreams, just their ill-conceived make out and touch fest.

He doesn't seem to remember the same them that she had, when her head is too fuzzy between sleep and awake to realize what she's doing or saying. But he let her curl up with him and just touch. It wasn't sexual-not that she would have minded that-but just the press of another body and the beat of another heart alongside her own. Tactile, like she'd remembered of her childhood.

When she climbs through his bedroom window that night, he isn't alone. She hadn't told him she was coming, but she didn't usually and he didn't ever have anyone over this late.

Tonight is apparently an exception.

Stiles is sitting in front of his computer, a dark haired figure over his shoulder. Malia doesn't recognize him, but the way Stiles was just with him, said that he knows the man well.

Stiles is at ease and comfortable and relaxed in a way that she hasn't seen him since before in her dreams, if even then.

"Stiles?" She knows it comes out softer and more hesitant than she'd expected, but she can't help but feel off.

Stiles jumps a little in surprise, the man calmly pressing a hand on his shoulder to calm him. They turn to face her together, Stiles making no effort to brush the man's hand away.

"Malia. What are you..." Stiles starts to ask. He cuts himself off with a strange, almost startled noise before continuing, "Doing here?"

Malia doesn't miss the way the man looks over Stiles then, a little puzzled but mostly protective.

"I don't like the winter," she replies, as if it answers everything. To her it does, but the man with Stiles does not seem assuaged by her words.

"This is Malia...?" the man asks Stiles. Malia can smell the wolf in him, and wonders if this is a pack friend.

Or an older one.

"Yeah. Did Scott tell you...?" Stiles asks the man, before gesturing towards her.

She knows what is being asked then.

"I'm told Peter Hale is my father," she announces. The man's eyes flicker with something she cannot name.

"You can't trust anything he tells you to be true." The man states, hard-edged and matter of fact.

"Actually, Stiles told me," she replies. The man looks at Stiles, surprise in his face for a moment before it shuts down.

"Were you going to tell me?" the man asks Stiles. Malia feels uncomfortable with the sudden tension.

"I didn't think about it-I'm sorry! I honestly thought Scott would have told you, you guys have been-"

"You didn't tell me something incredibly important, about my family, but you told your girlfriend?"

"I'm not his-"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Stiles finishes, reaffirming her interrupted reply.

"Your bed smells like her, Stiles. Don't lie to me," the man says. He's in distress, the smell alone would tell her that.

"I'm not lying! Derek, why are you getting so upset-"

"I'm sorry, Stiles. I'm going to go," Malia interrupts, making for a quick getaway.

The man stops her at the window with a hand around her wrist.

He doesn't say anything, but she can guess what that look means.

Hurt him and you die.

Hardly going to be an issue, she thinks.

She'd already hurt him once, a lifetime ago. She isn't going to let her insecurities do the same this time.

Lydia breathes deeply, keeping her eyes tightly closed. It had taken hours to set everything up, painstakingly draw every tiny mark and line in the circle of damp earth. She knows she'll catch hell if anyone catches her in the cemetery after dark, especially since she'd ripped up the sod from in front of the headstone. Her hands are caked with dried mud and grass, but she doesn't care about her manicure or the possible night in jail. Not right now.

Her chest burns with the need to bring Allison back, like a terrible ache in her heart that refuses to dissipate. She'd researched for weeks, staying up late into the night until she had to fall asleep or risk falling asleep in class. And nothing had worked. Nothing really felt like it would.

Until she'd found the little old book in a box in her own attic, her grandmother's scrawl across the first page.

Paddra Nsu Lydia.

She had known in that moment, touching her fingers across the black ink, that it was her name. Her full name, her real name. The nightmares and dreams she'd had were memories of a life before, of lives before. All that death and agony and pain and chaos. And now, she was born anew.

But this time was her last time. This time was supposed to be her gift for her service, her sacrifice.

And she knew then that she had to make this life worth it.

And what would her life be without Allison? They hadn't met in their life before, except at the end. But Lydia would have treasured every tiny drop of her time with her had she known.

She had loved Jackson with every bit of her being in so many lives before, and she loved Jackson and Jordan in equal and different measures in her last one. But she felt like Allison was her sister in a way that her older sister never had. And it wasn't that she didn't love Rebecca, but they were too different in too many ways for her to ever truly get her.

If she could do this, draw this symbol from her grandmother's book in the mud and dirt above Allison's grave, pull from every part of herself whatever banshee power lay within her, and will it so, she could have that missing piece of herself back. She knows she could.

She crouches down in the center of the circle, goes down on her knees and slams her palms into the ground at the top of the dirt tree and her whole world shakes. Everything goes white and then everything goes dark.

Lydia blinks as the world comes back, everything feeling like shifting sand around her. Her nose is bleeding, drops of blood falling across her lips, and she wipes at it with the back of her hand as she reaches around in her jacket pocket for her gloves. They're expensive and warm, but she doesn't have much else to staunch the unexpected bleeding.

Her ears ring for several minutes as she struggles to stand, but once she stands straight everything rights itself again.

There's no sign that Allison's grave had been disturbed, other than the now completely dried dirt and the pattern of tiny purple flowers sprouting from where she'd drawn every line and mark.

Allison's body isn't lying there, and somehow Lydia knows immediately that although she had done something, Allison is still dead and her body is still below the soles of her feet.

She starts to cry, standing in the center of a circle of tiny violets and grave dirt. The moon, nothing but a sliver of silver light before tomorrow's new moon, seems brighter than it rightfully should.

And then she sees the feathers. Large white feathers, edged in pale green. They lead away from Allison's headstone, not more than ten feet. To another grave.

And a naked woman's body, lain carefully in the manner of the dead.

Lydia can see the uneven raised red ridge of a scar across the woman's torso, wrapped around to her back, where though she couldn't see, Lydia knows it would completely surround her.

This woman had been cut in half. And now she isn't.

Her hair is a myriad of shades of dusty brown and grey, as if she had gracefully aged before her death. Her body tells a different, much younger story.

The headstone tells the rest.

Laura Hale.

-x-

Malia shivers as the wind picks up, huddling herself further into her jacket.

She wants to shift, wants badly to shift. To change into her coyote form and huddle down in a den and not move for hours.

But she can't. She's afraid to, afraid of not changing back again.

For all that her shifted form makes things simple, it made living harder.

Or perhaps it had always been the other way around.

The shift in the wind brings an unfamiliar scent to her. It smells of decay and vomit and something unfamiliar that makes her want to yowl in protest at the thought of it.

"You. You're not human," a voice asks. Malia freezes, fear running through her.

The coyote screams run but the human screams don't move.

"I think he'll like you quite much. Visiting the Stilinski house when daddy's playing detective, leaving through the window in the dark of night."

There's a man in front of her. He's old and thin, his skin almost translucent it was so pale. He smiles at her with purple-black teeth.

"Yes, I think he'd quite like you to join him indeed."

-x-

She'd managed to get the woman inside her house with some difficulty, her mother stepping in to help carry her up the stairs when she found Lydia attempting it on her own. She'd dressed her in a spare change of clothes from her car, and Lydia wasn't nearly as tall as she is.

She managed to get her mom away with murmuring of drinking and Allison, and once her mom headed back to bed, Lydia took a shower and then headed into her bedroom with a warm washcloth to wash the dirt off the woman too.

The woman doesn't wake the entire time. Lydia tucks her under the blankets and steals a pillow from the couch downstairs, settling in for a night of uncomfortable napping until she does.

-x-

Laura wakes to birdsong. It seemed like such a simple thing, but in that moment she is totally and utterly terrified.

She remembers the bite of teeth in her flesh and sharp claws slicing through her. And then, nothing. Whatever afterlife there was, if there was, isn't something she remembered.

She just knew that one minute she was dead. And then, birdsong.

She opens her eyes to the ceiling of a teenage girl's bedroom. It smells like expensive perfume and hairspray, and faintly of wolfsbane.

It doesn't help.

"I don't think I have anything that's going to fit you," a voice says and Laura has to blink a few times as she looks around before she can find the owner.

There's a girl sitting in the chair next to the bed, a large book open in her lap. Her hair is a lighter shade of red, and it's immaculately pinned back from her pretty face. Laura thinks she's probably in her late teens, but she's never been terribly good at that kind of estimation.

"Wha-" Laura tries to ask, but her throat feels raw and dry and the words catch.

"You weren't who I was... expecting. I wasn't sure if you'd wake up soon or not, so I could hardly call and let your family know you were... here again. What if you... didn't wake up at all? And I wanted to be sure, anyway..." From the flustered and slightly embarrassed look on the girl's face, Laura gathers she isn't usually prone to rambling every thought like she is. But the girl's heartbeat is steady and even for the most part, only kicking up when she first started speaking. Laura is inclined to believe it was raw honesty that has her stumbling over her own tongue.

Laura nods slowly. The girl smiles a little.

"Can you tell me your name? I mean, I have my suspicions on exactly who you are but I need... to be sure, you know?"

"Laura."

"Hale?" the girl asks, her face softening in relief. Laura nods again, and sinks back into the pillows underneath her head.

"I'm going to let your brother know you're here. Well, Stiles. I don't exactly have conversations with Derek. That's what Scott and Stiles are for."

Laura doesn't know who Scott or Stiles are to Derek now. She knows who they were to him once. The two most important people in his life. But she can't even remember meeting Scott this time through, and Stiles-Stiles had only been a momentary connection.

Laura watches as the girl pulls out her cellphone, standing against her vanity as if it were a lifeline. The girl shifts her head a little as she brings the phone to her ear and something in Laura just clicks.

She remembers her in the life before. Remembers being saved by the power of her will.

Not because the girl had cared for her, but because Laura could make a difference in Derek's quest.

And she had.

"Paddra-Nsu-" Laura starts, and the girl's eyes go wide in surprise.

"What did you-no, Stiles. I didn't mean you. Look, I need you to bring me some clothes. No, I'm not naked! Bring me something of Derek's if you can. Otherwise your stuff should work. I'm at my house. Be quick about it."

The girl finally hangs up, staring at the floor a moment. Then she looks up and her face immediately morphs into something interrogatory.

"How do you know that name?"

Laura relaxes.

Erica does not regret her life. Neither one of them.

She doesn't regret the part she played in saving Cocoon, in holding the world up with Boyd for centuries, encased in crystal. She doesn't regret the Soulsong, though she is ever happy that Boyd helped her from destroying the billions of souls she called to her side at the end of all things. And she doesn't regret fighting their god, fighting Bhunivelze at the end of that, doesn't regret being alongside the people she loved while they fought for the right to be reborn in a new world.

She doesn't regret taking the bite, carving out a piece of the world for herself in curves and cleavage and fangs and blood.

She doesn't regret the feral snap of the moonsickness that brought the barrage of memories of her time before to her as she was trapped in that vault with Boyd and Cora.

She didn't want to die then. Didn't want to die before Boyd, because it wasn't fair that Boyd was always the one who tried to protect her at all costs, to be with her no matter what.

But she did die then, and she doesn't regret the action that brought her to that end.

The afterlife is strange. She doesn't know if death is the same for everyone or if her death is different. The little piece of the forest she resides in is dark, but there are silver-blue crystals scattered about that bring enough light to see by.

She doesn't need to eat or drink here. There is no point, and even if there were, there is nothing she recognizes as food.

When Boyd dies, they make a home together in the dark woods, spend their nights at the pool by their shelter and watch the ones they left behind in the silver-blue of the water.

She feels settled here, in death.

Until things change, once again. Allison Argent finds their little haven and as much as the part of her from her second life wants to deny her, the part of her from before wants to take her in and protect her.

Boyd takes the decision out of her hands and she does not regret it as they give Allison a home in their mutual death.

But the longer Allison is with them, the more Erica feels a foreboding ache in her bones. Something is happening, something is changing and it feels electric and dangerous and wrong.

"Erica!" Allison's voice calls and Erica runs from the shelter to their pool where Allison is crouched next to Boyd.

And in the water is Peter Hale and reflected in the water are three faces full of terror.

The god they fought and battled for the right to live, to be reborn, is smiling.

Bhunivelze's pointed grin is recognizable even in death.