Disclaimer: 'Teen Wolf' isn't mine. Shocking, right? But it's true. If there are any similarities in content or dialogue, it has probably originated with the show.
A huge thank you to darklou, ForgeandGred4Ever, crimson sun06, StardustIsMagic, Guest, Nicole1024, Just Anonymous, RHatch89, and angelangie07. You guys are the best!
Chapter 6 - Teeth
If you had asked Gwen earlier where she saw herself at the end of this particular day, she probably would have said at the bottom of a pint of Ben and Jerry's. It was a good way to end a day—equal parts self-loathing, escapism, and delicious. Plus the movement of lifting the spoon from the carton to her mouth could technically be counted as part of her physical therapy. It worked all the right muscles. Yeah, that was where she was most likely to end her day. There were a lot of less likely options, for example actually being productive with her time, but if you were to ask her the absolute least likely place for her to end up it would probably be here, in Liam Dunbar's freaking hospital room.
How in the hell did she end up here, you ask? She was led by a combination of bad circumstances and worse options. To sum it up, her ride had to go and try to prove their lacrosse prowess, ended up breaking Liam's leg, and then had the audacity to feel guilty enough to drive him to the hospital. Which meant that she also had to drive to the hospital. And help check him in. And wait with him until the doctor dropped by, because apparently Stiles and Scott had to exile her there while they were off in a corner somewhere whispering about whatever those two always had to whisper about. Maybe they were just really shitty spies participating in some sort of 21 Jump Street situation. Either way it meant that she was left sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a cold room with bad lighting and a boy she quite frankly didn't care for all that much.
And what made it all the more awkward? The fact that that boy wouldn't stop freaking staring at her. Even with the pages of her 'National Geographic' held up to her nose, she could still feel him continually glancing in her direction. Every time her eyes flicked up from her magazine she would catch him averting his gaze somewhere else. Apparently his cuticles were in desperate need of inspection. At first it was just mildly irritating, but eventually it graduated to straight-up annoying.
"Okay," she finally exclaimed, ripping the headphones from her ears and tossing the magazine aside. "What the hell do you want?"
"W—what do you mean, what do I want?" Liam stammered out.
"I mean that you keep looking over at me like you expect me to say something," Gwen sniped back. "I made it pretty clear earlier that I don't have anything to talk about, so if someone's going to start a damn conversation, it's going to be you. If you have something to say, then go ahead and say it."
Liam opened and closed his mouth a few times, searching for words which apparently were eluding him. "Why are you here?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders.
"Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber are my ride home from school," she drawled out, waving a hand in the direction of the door. "I go where they go. So I'm stuck here with you for the next few agonizing minutes. Don't worry. I'll be out of your hair soon enough. Hopefully."
"And that's the only reason you're here?"
"Yes."
Liam's face seemed to fall slightly at her monotone reply. Her abrupt and, if she was being honest, bitchy response cast them both back into the murky depths of yet another uncomfortable silence. But that was the thing about silences. Sometimes they could be really loud. They allowed you to hear what was rattling around within the confines of your skull. The echoes could be deafening.
Without the headphones blocking out all the ambient noise, Gwen could hear everything—the heart monitors, the ventilators, the murmurs of doctors and patients as if they were whispering directly into her ear. It sounded like a death rattle, the last gasp of some poor asshole about bite it. And then there was the smell. Most people thought death smelled of decay—this putrid, rotting smell. They were wrong. Death smelled like Lysol. All remnants of the body scrubbed away until you might as well have never existed at all.
Or maybe she was just being morbid. Yup, she was probably being morbid. Spend a couple of months in a place like this, morbid was kind of inevitable.
Sighing heavily, Gwen sank down in her chair and draped her legs over the armrest. For some reason the guy was still watching her, so she grabbed another one of the waiting room magazines off a nearby table and through it open, holding it in front of her face to use it as some sort of shield. It took her a few moments to realize it was one of those little kid 'Highlights' magazines filled with 'Where's Waldo' cartoons and those painfully easy mazes. Oh, well. Waldo was better than conversation.
After a few moments, as she was right in the middle of one of those 'find ten differences between these two pictures things'—she was up to seven—her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket for about the fifth time since she got there. Like those other four buzzes, she opted to ignore it. But then it buzzed again. And again. And again.
"You gonna get that?" Liam's voice interrupted.
Gwen rolled her eyes instinctively and idly flipped the page of the magazine. "Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because as you might have noticed, these days I don't like talking to people," she replied easily. "About stuff. Or things."
"It could be important," he drawled out. From the sound of his voice he was pressing his lips together in a thin smirk he always got when he was mildly amused by something. Which she found more than slightly infuriating.
"I vey much doubt that," she said, not bothering to look up from the magazine.
"How do you know if you don't look?" Liam pressed, raising his eyebrows at her pointedly.
Gwen didn't respond. She simply lifted her eyes from the pages of the magazine for a moment, shooting him one brief, apathetic glare before returning to what looked like a brightly colored massacre on the page below. There was no way she would ever understand children's cartoons. They walked this bizarre line between cute and horrifying to the point where she was ninety percent sure that the people developing them were on some serious drugs. Seriously, whoever created the Teletubbies had to be dropping acid or something. And by this point everybody had to know what was really in the Scooby snacks.
In the middle of her internal monologue, the phone buzzed yet again, making Liam groan in frustration. "Okay, can you just answer that already? The buzzing is driving me insane."
The tension in Liam's voice peaked Gwen's curiosity. Gwen loosened her hold on the magazine, letting the pages to droop back just enough to allow for eye contact. Liam was lying back in his bed, propped up by a few pillows and pulling nervously at the crisp, highly starched sheets beneath him. Factor in his personal appearance—the pale-ish skin, the clammy, slightly sweaty look to him, and the way his eyes darted around the room, unable to focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds—and he was the portrait of somebody suffering from extreme nerves. Plus, given the way he winced every time his leg shifted, also suffering from a probably not insignificant amount of pain. Throw in the likelihood of him not being able to play lacrosse this season…It was enough for her to feel a bit sorry for him. It was almost enough for her to possibly, maybe want to try and comfort him. Almost.
Gwen's phone buzzed yet again. Almost on instinct, Liam's hands clenched into fists and the tendons of his neck tensed, straining against the skin. History dictated that this was about the point where he was beginning to get genuinely pissed. Gwen sighed heavily and snapped the magazine shut, tossing it to the side. "Fine," she bit out. "If it'll get you to shut the hell up, I will check my phone. You happy?"
He smirked back at her. It was a strange look—she couldn't quite tell if it was sarcastic or genuine. "Unbelievably happy," he muttered back.
Shooting him a hostile scowl, Gwen yanked the phone out of her pocket and unlocked it. When the home screen flashed, it showed a long list of missed texts, all of them with the same contact information. Mason. When she gave him her number she had known she would ultimately regret it. Regret just walked up and bitch-slapped her a lot sooner than she expected. But then again maybe it was her fault. She was the moron who had texted him on the way to the hospital to let him know about Liam's accident and tell him that she would check in when she heard any news. Number 347 why being considerate was a giant, glaring mistake.
Ten texts. Mason had sent her ten freaking text messages, five of which had been sent in the past seven minutes. Scrolling through the texts they seemed to range from 'oh my God', to 'are there any updates,' before finally settling in on 'I swear if you don't respond I'm going to text you every minute until you answer me!'. True to his word, Mason texted yet again, lighting up the screen and making the phone buzz in her hand. "Son of a—" she muttered to herself. "Okay, fine."
Grumbling under her breath, Gwen pressed the buttons of her phone until she pulled up the camera function. She shifted in her seat, angling her phone so that Liam was in frame. "Whoa!" he exclaimed, holding up his hands like she was pointing a gun at him instead of a Samsung Galaxy. "What are you doing?"
"You're buddy Mason in harassing me for details of your current status," she quipped back. "This is me convincing him that you're not dead, so look alive, cupcake."
He wrinkled his nose at her, somewhat perturbed by her word choice. "Did you just call me 'cupcake'?"
The phone stayed poised in her hand, awaiting a smile or something, but all she got from Liam was this sort of constipated, confused look. Oh, well. It would have to do. She snapped a photo and quickly sent it to Mason along with the caption, 'he's alive—no news yet'. After shoving her phone back in her jacket pocket she made a move to replace her earphones, but before she had the chance, Liam spoke again. She might have gone and ignored it, but his voice had some strange lilt to it—one that she didn't recognize, even from back when they were friends.
"You're talking to Mason?" he muttered in an oddly quiet tone.
For the first time pretty much since they got there, Liam wasn't looking at her. In fact, he was pretty much actively looking anywhere but her, fixating pretty hard on that tub of lime jello a nurse had dropped off for him. "It's not like Mason's really giving me any choice in the matter," Gwen replied, actively keeping her voice as casual and uninterested as possible. "But, yeah. I'm talking to Mason. It might be against my better judgment, but what can I say? I kind of like the guy."
Liam bobbed his head in understanding, but his movements had a sad, slow cadence to them. "But you don't like me," he murmured quietly.
Gwen looked up from her magazine, smiling at him with false joviality. "Somebody give the guy a cookie!" she declared, her voice sarcastically chipper. Turning back to her magazine, she continued to idly flip through the magazine, though it was more of an affectation than anything else. It had become more of a prop than actual reading material. "Hey, thanks for telling Mason my life story, by the way," she drawled out. "That was super-cool of you."
All of the air seemed to rush out of Liam's lungs as he exhaled sharply, clenching his teeth together and making his jaw twitch violently. His expression seemed vaguely akin to one of guilt. "Sorry," he mumbled. "After that whole lunch thing…He got a bit curious and—"
"Don't bother apologizing," Gwen said, waving a hand dismissively. "Being the subject of conversation instead of participating in it isn't exactly a new thing for me. I've gotten pretty used to it."
"No, Gwen, it wasn't like that. It's just—"
"It's just what?" she demanded, shrugging her shoulders at him. "What is it like, Liam?" He gaped at her again, his mouth opening and closing like a fish struggling for air on the deck of a boat. Only the fish was probably a bit more sympathetic. "Great talk," she deadpanned, giving him a double thumbs up. "Very concise argument."
A wince covered his face, and this time it didn't seem to have anything to do with his leg. It seemed almost apologetic. Slowly, he pushed himself further up into the sitting position, hissing in pain as his leg shifted. Rolling her eyes heavily, Gwen swung her legs back over the armrest of the chair and strode towards him, wordlessly readjusting the flat, scratchy hospital pillows behind him more comfortably before collapsing back in her seat. And, all of a sudden, Liam was staring at her again, that weird look back on his face. "What?" she grumbled harshly.
Liam's eyebrows furrowed together in a frown and he ran his hands down his face. "Look, Gwen, we used to be friends," Liam murmured. "All that stuff that went down at Devenford….That was messed up, okay? And I should have been there for you. I know you hate me right now, but—"
"I don't hate you, Liam," she replied easily. His eyes suddenly snapped to hers, equally doubtful and hopeful, like he was silently asking the answer to a question, but she didn't know what the question was in the first place. So she pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest before continuing. "Really, I don't hate you. I'm not willing to dedicate enough energy to you to hate you. You're just someone I don't really care to see at the moment. Let's call it….disgruntled indifference."
"I think that might be worse," he muttered under his breath. He pushed himself up a bit further and blinked at her, trying to get her to engage. Weaponized sincerity. It might have worked on her at one point, but now she was pretty much determined to be a stone statue.
"You didn't deserve everything that happened there," Liam continued. "Especially after what happened to Liv. There were some times that I came so close to punching Brett in the face…."
As he was speaking, Gwen felt herself leaning further and further forwards, narrowing her eyes at him. A single, bitter bark of laughter was wrenched from her throat, making him start in surprise. "You think this is because you ignored some bullshit rumors going around the school?" Liam just widened his eyes into this sort of naïve, clueless expression and shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. Gwen snorted and let her head fall back on her shoulders, staring up at her mildewy cork board ceiling above her, pleading silently for some force to swoop in and save her from a damn emotional confrontation. Unfortunately, she wasn't nearly that lucky, and Liam was still waiting for her to say something. "Shit, Liam," she drawled out. "This isn't about you not sticking up for me at Devenford. I'm a big girl. Sticks and stones."
A confused scowl pulled at the corners of Liam's lips, replacing the usual cocky smirk. The expression still felt oddly foreign on his face. "Then what is it about?" he murmured. "Because you seem pretty set on wiping me from your life."
Gwen blinked, her eyebrows knitting together as she stared at him in complete disbelief. "You're really going to pretend you don't know?"
Again, Liam just shrugged. And then it occurred to her that he didn't know that she knew. He wasn't going to own up to it until she backed him into a corner. A strange, almost maniacal laugh tore from her throat and she shook her head at him. Honestly she couldn't tell if this whole thing was funny or rage-inducing. Maybe both. "Alright," she muttered, her voice tight with anger. "You need me to spell it out for you, fine. Do you remember the day of the pep rally?"
A 'yes' or 'no' answer wasn't really necessary for that question, and honestly the subtle widening of his eyes wasn't necessary either. Everybody at Devenford would remember the day of the pep rally. Well, everybody but Hannah Marlow who was out sick with mono at the time, but she had gotten a detailed enough account from other witnesses to pretend that she was there. Like pretty much everything else from last semester, it had begun with Bethany Cartwell. Their feud had been fairly well publicized via bathroom conversations and locker whispers. A cold war of sorts, always implied but never explosive. But the pep rally? It marked the turning point in the tide of battle. It was when the passive aggression turned into plain old aggression.
The long and short of the story was that during the pep rally Bethany had wheeled out this huge photo of Liv surrounded by a wreath of roses and baby's breath. Baby's breath. Like she was surrounded by a freaking corsage or something. But it wasn't the wreath that set her off, even though Liv thought roses were cliché, overpriced, and smelled terrible. It wasn't even the rousing chorus of 'Lean on Me', though that did give her a burning desire to punch multiple people in the face. But the second that narcissistic, duplicitous bitch swaggered up to the podium and started eulogizing her best friend….she kind of lost it. Which included screaming for the whole school to hear that Bethany Cartwell was, in fact, a narcissistic, duplicitous bitch. Yup. After the 'incident' as it had been so mysteriously dubbed, Gwen had earned herself her notoriety instead of having it inflicted on her by her classmates' incessant rumor-mongering.
Gwen leaned forwards in her seat, perching her elbows on her and resting her chin on her folded hands. "Right," she bit out through clenched teeth. "Well let me tell you a little story about what happened after that." She cleared her throat theatrically and cracked her neck before fixing him with an intent stare. "So the day of the pep rally the parents were in Dubai or Hong Kong or whatever, meaning after the….incident…. my aunt had to pick me up and I crashed at her place that night. And what do I find when I get back to my house the next day? The words 'psycho bitch' spray painted over the whole damn thing."
The words hung in the air like a bad smell, awaiting some sort of reaction, but Liam stayed oddly still. No exclamation of surprise or shocked gasp. He just sat their fidgeting, his fingers winding into the coarse fabric of blanket he was sitting on. "Yeah, I know," Gwen continued, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "Not exactly the décor I would have chosen. The red color for the paint was super-garish. It really did not fit with the aesthetic of the neighborhood at all. Plus the changes to the house's exterior were done without the permission of the homeowner's association which is apparently a big faux pas."
"So basically it's a Saturday morning, and I'm there de-graffiting my house. Fun times, by the way. Anyways, there I am, scraping the 'o' off of my living room window. And guess what I find in the azalea bush. Go ahead, guess. It'll be so much more fun if you guess."
What little color remained in Liam's face drained away, leaving him ashen. The satisfaction that Gwen felt when she saw it probably didn't make her a good person, but she wouldn't deny the sentiment. That expression was the closest thing she'd seen to an admission of guilt out of anybody. A switch was flipped inside of her. Usually her anger was a cold one, manifesting symptoms like bitterness, sarcasm, and avoidance strategies, but now she felt herself going on the offensive. "What, you're not going to guess?" she demanded harshly, her voice slipping out of that false levity into a darker tone. "Maybe I'm just going to answer for you. What is that Batman watch I gave you in the fourth grade for $500, Alex?"
Liam still didn't speak, and for the first time in a long time she felt the need to fill a conversational void. "You know, it's kind of funny," she barreled on, waving a hand absently. "Because the way I remember it, me giving you that watch when your parents were splitting up….that's when I thought we really became friends. Me finding it in the bushes….it's pretty ironic, don't you think? Beginnings and ends. It feels sort of symbolic. I'm usually a fan of irony. This time, not so much."
Liam swallowed heavily and stared down at his feet, avoiding Gwen's burning, accusatory gaze. "Gwen, that….it…"
Gwen glowered at the boy through his fumbling attempts at an explanation. As far as confrontations went, this had not been what she expected. All it resulted in was some incoherent blabbering and tragic expressions. The whole thing was more than a bit anti-climatic. At the very least she had expected some sort of back and forth—some sort of argument where she got to yell and spout accusations. She wanted some place to channel all that anger. And what did she get? Stammered apologies. She was even denied the catharsis of being able to speak in a tone above what would be allowed in a library.
"Yeah, yeah, I got it," she drawled out, pushing herself to her feet and marching towards the door. "It wasn't my idea, Brett put me up to it, it was a lacrosse team thing, it was peer pressure—sure, all those things might be true." Gwen came to a stop at the door, leaning against the frame as she stared down at him. "I expected that kind of crap from Bethany and Brett, but not from you. I thought maybe there'd still be a bit of loyalty there. I thought…" Her words trailed off, dissolving into nothing on the air. Her stomach twisted with this—this feeling she couldn't quite put her finger on. Grief, hurt, sorrow, anger—she really couldn't pick it out. Exhaling sharply, she scratched absently at her forehead. "You know what, Liam, I don't know what I thought. But the fact of the matter is that I don't want people in my life that would do something like that to me. That doesn't seem all that unreasonable."
Spinning on her heel, Gwen made a move to walk out the door, but Liam's voice made her pause. "What did you do with the watch?"
Gwen stopped short, twisting around to face him, her face scrunched up into a quizzical look. Of all possible reactions Liam might have had, this was certainly one of the least expected. Hell, it didn't even make the list. "Excuse me?"
"My Batman watch," Liam pressed, glancing at her self-consciously. "What did you do with it? Do you still have it?"
Gwen folded her arms across her chest, frowning to herself as she studied him. He looked strangely guilty, like a kid who had been caught stealing candy out of a pantry, afraid of being judged. A crease formed between her eyebrows and she bit down on the inside of her cheek, unsure of what to do in the face of the increasingly baffling behavior that was being thrown in her face. Eventually she decided to go with apathy, jerking her head to the side noncommittally. "I shoved it in the garbage disposal," she drawled out, like it was the most obvious scenario possible.
The drooping in Liam's shoulders became more pronounced, but he bobbed his head in either understanding or defeat. The gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that followed was almost nostalgic in the weirdest, most uncomfortable way. Seeing other people sad…..it made her feel guilty for some reason. Or at least it used to. She shouldn't care—she wasn't supposed to care anymore—but here she was, back at square one with her stomach twisting into knots, like she was in the freaking fourth grade all over again.
Swearing internally and groaning externally, Gwen slumped against doorframe. "Do you want anything from the vending machine?" she demanded, her voice quite a bit louder than it probably needed to be.
Liam's head snapped around to face her, the look on his face so perplexed one might think she had suddenly started meowing really loudly instead of just offering him some food. He glanced around the room making sure there was nobody else she could be talking to, on the off chance that somebody else had teleported into the room. "What?"
"Vending machines," Gwen prompted. "They're these large mechanical boxes that dispense delicious snacks usually characterized by low nutritional value. Perhaps you're familiar with them."
Liam exhaled sharply, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. "I can't talk to you when you're being this sarcastic."
Gwen held her hands up defensively and raised her eyebrows at him. "Hey, I'm not the one asking the stupid questions."
"I didn't ask you anything," Liam said, making a face at her.
Gwen pressed her lips together in a thin line and cocked her head to the side. "Um, yeah you did. You said 'what'."
"That's a word, not a question."
"Yeah," Gwen replied, rolling her eyes a bit. "But you said it with an upward inflection at the end. Usually an indicator of a question."
Liam peered up at her, his eyes narrowed curiously. He was staring at her the same way he stared at homework or lacrosse plays—like he was trying to pick apart the image, stripping it down to its base components so he could understand the whole. Gwen didn't like the scrutiny, or the idea of someone being able to get inside her head. "Why are you offering me food?" he asked, shaking his head at her. "I'm the asshole who vandalized your house."
Gwen let out a long, heavy sigh and shrugged. She didn't really know the answer to the question either. "Because you just broke your leg and I'm apparently still a giant sucker," she drawled out, waving defeatedly in his direction. "Look—do you want anything from the vending machines or not?"
Liam stared at her a moment longer, a hard look in his eyes. Finally, he glanced away, staring instead at that giant pile of lime jello as it wobbled ominously in the fluorescent lighting, almost threatening to come to life. A mildly disgusted cringe formed on Liam's face. "I could go with something from the vending machines," he said, nodding eagerly. "If, uh, if I could get—"
"Kit Kat bar and cool ranch Doritos," Gwen finished for him. "Yeah, I remember."
Without another word, Gwen rolled against the doorframe until she was on the other side of the barrier and strolling down the hallway. Seeing Dr. Dunbar—Liam's stepdad, who incidentally happened to be her doctor as well—heading towards Liam's room, she ducked her head down to avoid detection, keeping her eyes fixed on the checkered laminate. One awkward conversation was enough for the day. An in-depth discussion as to how exactly her PT was going was not on the menu for today.
Sliding the headphones back over her ears, she pressed her lips together in a small 'o' and blew out a long, steadying breath. Which begged the question, why the hell did she need that steadying breath in the first place? And why the hell was she getting Liam sympathy Doritos? He didn't deserve Doritos. He owed her Doritos. Guilt Doritos. She should have a freaking grocery store worth of Doritos. And yet here she was, buying Doritos. She wasn't supposed to care anymore—'not caring' was her thing now. She just sat in the background and made judgmental faces at people. That was her jam. Or at least it was supposed to be. Apparently she wasn't all that good at it.
Pity was robbing her of her resentment. While that might not sound all that bad, to her it was a small tragedy. That resentment had fed her. It gave her something to hold on, maybe for worse rather than for better, but it was still unequivocally her own. Now she was robbed of that as well, left hollow and starving. Not even those incredibly appealing looking snickers bars she had seen earlier could fill that void. She had replaced Liv with bitterness and bitterness would be replaced with nothing at all. She needed to hold on to it.
Gwen moved through the hospital almost as if on autopilot. So much of the past few months had been spent shuffling around the place in that thin, fraying hospital robe and little bootie slippers the schematics for the place might as well have been tattooed onto her brain. She marched straight past the vending machine stationed by the waiting room—that thing was always out of all the good snacks by 5:00 p.m. The one by the cafeteria would probably be a bust as well. There's nothing like hospital food to make you want to eat dinner out of a plastic bag. Nope, the best place to find junk food was the nurse's break room. That is, if you weren't afraid of ignoring the giant, red 'no public entry' sign. Yup, Gwen could make that walk with her eyes closed. Provided nobody got in her way.
Rounding the corner into the adjacent hallway, Gwen found herself colliding with what felt like a hard, mobile pillow, sending her stumbling backwards. Before she could topple over, two strong hands darted forwards, gripping her shoulders. Gwen grabbed on to that arm, using it to steady herself. Once she regained her balance she looked up to find that it belonged to a dark-haired junior with soulful, puppy dog eyes.
"Jesus, Scott," she muttered, yanking her headphones off yet again. "You scared the crap out of me. Try whistling loudly or something when you're rounding corners. Give the other person some warning before they walk straight into you."
Scott smiled blandly at her and nodded. "I could do that, or you could try paying attention to where you're going."
"Yeah," Gwen replied, scrunching her face into the most unapologetic version of her apologetic wince she could muster. "The thing about that is it involves me putting in effort. I'm staunchly against effort."
"So you're just going to keep walking into people?"
Gwen made a clucking noise and wrinkled her nose at him. "Am I walking into people, or are people walking into me?"
"You're definitely walking into people," Scott deadpanned.
"Am I?" Gwen replied drolly. "Because from where I stand it looks like a matter of perspective. At the very best it's a 'he said, she said situation'." Scott's smile shifted to one torn between exasperation and amusement—a sentiment which she was apparently fairly good at inspiring. "Hey," she continued, smacking him in the shoulder. "Where's your brother from another mother? Did he get lost or something?"
"Stiles went home," Scott replied. "He's meeting up with Malia to help her with her math work."
Immediately, Gwen froze, her eyes narrowing into slits. She took a small, threatening step towards Scott who instinctively took a step back. It might be strange for a guy two years older and a foot taller than her to seem in any way intimidated, but she had a pretty good 'death glare'. She'd been practicing in the mirror. "Are you kidding me?!" she demanded, smacking him in the arm a second time only with more force and no humor whatsoever. "First Lydia ditches me and then you guys kidnap me and take me to the hospital—"
"You asked for us to give you a ride," Scott interjected.
Gwen wasn't inclined to be reasonable, so she kept barreling on, waving her hands frantically."—and now you're stranding me here? Not cool, dude. The definition of uncool."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Scott said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. "My mom's off her shift in like five minutes. We're taking you home, okay? We'll be leaving in fifteen minutes, tops."
Gwen gnawed on her lip, still eyeing him suspiciously. "Fine. I'm hitting the pause button on my rage."
"Thank you."
"But!" she continued, holding up a single finger. "But I retain the right to hit resume on that rage in fifteen minutes."
"Fair enough."
"And that rage, when unleashed, will rain down upon you like eternal hellfire, burning through to your very core and branding your heart for all years to come."
"That's great. Really excellent."
"And then the dark lord will rise and take possession of your soul."
"Fantastic."
It was quickly becoming apparent that Scott had stopped listening to her. His last words came out as a mumble, some sort of afterthought. A confused frown tugged at the corners of her lips, until she found him staring blankly and almost wistfully down the hall, in the direction of Liam's room. This indicated to Gwen that it was time for his intense feelings of guilt to settle in. "Liam's okay," she said, poking him in the arm.
"He's okay?" Scott demanded, his head snapping around so quickly she was surprised it didn't pop off and roll down the hallway. "Liam's okay."
"Um, yeah," Gwen replied, bobbing her head. "He's fine. You know except for the whole, 'leg probably being broken' thing he's dandy." Immediately, Scott's face fell, that pained look shadowing his earnest eyes. Letting out a loud groan, Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. Why did everybody in this town have to be angsty? She had enough problems accommodating her own angst, let alone everybody else's. And she wasn't so great at offering comfort anymore.
"Look, Scott," she said, letting her hand fall from her face. "Kids fall off swing sets, players get hurt during lacrosse practice, bones break. Then they heal. That's the way it works. What happened today wasn't anybody's fault. It was just shitty luck."
"I know," he said, absently nodding his head and clearly not listening to what she was saying.
"You know, I can hear you saying the words, but I don't think you can hear you saying them….." She let the words trail off into silence, giving him room to offer up some sort of response. He didn't. He was choosing to feel guilty, and there really wasn't anything she could do about that. "Look, I'm gonna hit the vending machines," she said, jerking her thumb down the hallway.
"I'm going to go check on Liam," Scott returned, pointing in the opposite direction. "Just….meet me at his room. Meet me there and I'll take you home."
The two of them turned away from each other, taking opposite paths down the hall. Gwen slid her headphones back over her ears, but this time she didn't stare at her feet. Instead, she glanced around her, and what she saw caused her eyebrows to pull together in confusion. The hospital had changed since the summer. For one thing, it was emptier—fewer nurses, less equipment—plus every so often that soothing light blue paint covering the walls was marred by some plaster or spackle. Casual reminder that over the past semester this hospital had gone through both a storm and a murderous rampage. Man, this was a seriously messed up town.
Gwen found her way to the second floor nurse's break room with no further collisions. Only one nurse was inside, seemingly passed out either from exhaustion or, given the number of candy wrappers littering the floor around him, from a sugar crash. She simply strode in, humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme, grabbed the food, and strode back out again. Easy as 3.14159….Pie. Easy as pie. She walked idly down the hallway, bag of Doritos in one hand, juggling a Snickers and a Kit Kat in the other. But then she turned the corner towards Liam's room, and everything seemed to shift.
Fifteen minutes. It couldn't have been much longer than that. Five minutes to the break room, five minutes back, and that five minute bathroom break she took so that her bladder didn't explode like an over-filled water balloon. Not that huge a period of time. But somehow, between Gwen leaving Liam's room and turning back down that hallway, it had been completely vacated. Gwen took off her headphones, listening in for any signs of life, but the only noise filling the space was the tinny music of her iPod.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice hesitant.
She waited a few moments for a response, only to met by a small, confused voice from a few doors down. "Gwen?"
Taking a few more steps, Gwen closed the distance between herself and Liam's room, arriving in the doorway only to find him lying in bed, completely alone. "Where the hell is Scott?" she demanded.
"Scott?" Liam replied, shrugging his shoulders. "I haven't seen Scott since I got here."
"Huh," Gwen muttered, tossing him the Doritos and Kit Kat. "That's weird. I ran into him and he said he was coming to check on you. I was supposed to meet him here so he could give me a lift home."
Liam peeled open the bag of Doritos, shoving a few chips in his mouth. "Haven't seen him," he mumbled through a mouthful of food. He glanced up at her, his face settled into an expression of….resigned appreciation, and lifted the bag of chips in her direction. "Thanks."
Gwen opened her mouth slightly, a 'you're welcome' threatening to spill from her lips, but then she snapped it shut again, opting instead for an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement. She moved back towards the doorway, peeking through it for any signs of other people. Scott, to be specific. "Dammit," she hissed to herself. "I told him fifteen minutes or he would face the full extent to of my wrath."
"I'm glad I'm not him then," Liam snorted. "I'm pretty sure I've only faced like 47% of your wrath, and that was terrifying enough." Gwen slowly turned to look at him, raising one slightly threatening eyebrow, inspiring a mild flinch on his part. "That probably wasn't the right thing to say, was it?"
Gwen just rolled her eyes and unwrapped her Snickers bar, taking a bit of unladylike size. Her eyes happen to sweep over Liam's leg, but once they found their way there, they had to stop and look. The sock had been removed and the pant leg pushed up just enough to reveal his ankle. It had swollen to about twice its normal size and had adopted a mottled purple color. "Does it hurt?" she inquired, nodding at the injury.
Liam snorted and returned the nod. "Yeah. Like a bitch."
"That sucks."
And once again, the two of them collapsed into the awkward silence. Under normal circumstances Gwen would have been fine with silence—she might have even preferred it—but she was coming to understand that there were two distinct types of silences. First there were the conscious silences in which she actively abstained from speaking. But now? She was quiet because she couldn't think of anything to say.
Then, suddenly, she was saved. The phone in her pocket started blasting her ringtone at an unnecessarily loud volume, allowing her to pull away to the corner of the room. Unfortunately, the conversation she was about to begin didn't promise to be all that pleasant either. Mostly because it would involve her yelling at her cousin. "Hey, Lydia," she drawled, pressing her phone to her ear. "Thanks for ditching me at school today. That was awesome."
In response Gwen had expected Lydia to let out an exasperated sigh or a groan of frustration. She did not expect the sounds of hyperventilating panic that immediately reached her ears. "Gwen," Lydia gasped into the receiver, sounding like she had just run like three miles. "Gwen, where are you?"
"I'm at the hospital," Gwen replied, wrapping an arm around her middle as an unsettled feeling began to twist inside her. "I came here with Scott and Stiles after school. Why?"
"You need to get out of there," Lydia hissed urgently. "You need to get out of there right now!"
Gwen's gaze flickered back to Liam for a moment, a concerned crease forming between her eyebrows. "I can't," she replied. "I have no idea where Scott went and he's my only ride. I'm kinda stuck here for the ti—"
"I'm not talking about a ride," Lydia interrupted. "Just get out of the building. Get out now."
Gwen felt her hand tighten around the phone and her jaw tighten. "Lydia, why do you want me to leave? What the hell has been going on with you this week? First Mexico and now—"
Gwen's words were stilled as deep, guttural sound ripped through the hallways, echoing against the walls and rattling the windows and her bones. It almost sounded like a roar—some soundbyte from a zoo exhibit—but there was something about it that seemed unnatural. Preternatural. It left her standing there, feeling as if ice water had been injected into her veins.
"Gwen?" Lydia's voice echoed through the speaker. "Gwen? What was that?"
"I think I have to go," Gwen mumbled into the speaker, her dazed mind muddling through the anxiety she suddenly felt.
"Gwen?!"
"Talk later. Love you. Bye."
Lydia's voice still shouting at her through the speaker, Gwen let the phone fall from her ear and ended the call, taking small, deliberate steps towards the door. Carefully, she peeked into the hallway, which remained starkly empty. A few more steps took her past the threshold, and she stood there hoping for somebody else to show their face.
"Hello?"
She had intended for the call to be loud, but for some reason she couldn't make herself speak above unintelligible whispers. She was afraid of who might hear her.
"What the hell was that?"
The sound of a voice near her ear made Gwen jump. She wheeled around to find Liam tottering by her shoulder, trying his best to stay off his injured leg. "Dude, what are you doing?" she hissed. "Get back in bed. Only a total moron would walk on that leg!"
Gwen threw her hands in the air in frustration as he passed her. "Well I guess I'm a total moron then," he deadpanned, hobbling past her further into the hallway.
"I'd argue with you, but it would feel too much like a lie."
Liam ignored her and limped a little further down the hall. "Hey?" he called out. "Did anybody else hear that?" He looked back at her over her his shoulder. "Where did everybody go?"
"Liam, don't be an idiot. Get back in yo—"
If that sentence had an end to it, Gwen couldn't have said what it was. There wasn't any room in her mind when he turned the corner into their hallway. If she could even go so far as to call him a 'he'. It was easy to get lost in the blood covering his hands or dripping from his mouth to stain his shirt. There was so much of it, like an accident had occurred in the middle of some kid's terrible finger painting. And judging from the amount, it looked like he had ripped open someone's aorta. With his teeth.
Behind that blood there was what looked like a boy who couldn't have been too much older than her. The only difference between the two of them was the teeth—the rows of shark-like, pointed teeth. It was as if he had stepped out of the deepest recesses of her subconscious—the worst of her nightmares—and was standing there, staring at her, with murder in his eyes.
"L—Liam," she whispered. "Run."
Liam's eyebrows drew together in a quizzical frown, confused and a little taken aback by her wide eyes and pale, fear-stricken visage. "Gwen, wha—" He spun back around, following her terrified gaze, and she heard a sharp intake of breath. He was seeing what she was seeing. It wasn't just a product of her overactive imagination. The monster was real, and it was closing in on them. Fast.
Without thinking, Gwen grabbed his hand, yanking his arm over her shoulder in her attempt futile attempt to haul the two of them away. It was pathetic, really. She didn't make it more than three steps before something collided with the pair of them, causing Gwen's balance to shift and sending them to the ground. Gwen landed hard on her side, crushed under Liam's weight. Her shoulder twisted in its socket, causing pain to bloom from that point, radiating down her arms and into her fingertips. She bit her lip until it bled trying to force back the cry of pain.
Suddenly, that heavy weight pinning her to the ground was lifted, but it didn't provide her any sort of comfort. Finally letting out a groan and clutching her shoulder, Gwen managed to roll herself on her back. She opened her eyes to see what had happened, but those small tears collecting at the corners of her eyes obscured the image. There were only shapes. She blinked rapidly, forcing those tears out of her eyes, just in time to see Liam being dragged around the corner, that thing's arm wrapped around his neck.
"Liam!"
At the sound of his own name, his eyes snapped to hers. She had just enough time to see the abject terror there before he was hauled out of view. Her breaths were coming out quick and shallow as panic clawed out of her throat. Wincing heavily, she shoved herself up and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to take a deep enough breath to release that one word.
"HELP!"
The voice that ripped from her body didn't even sound like her own. It cost her all of the air in her lungs and made her throat feel as if it was about to split open, but the shriek echoed through the hallway, reverberating against the wall. Gwen slumped down, that scream leaving her deflated like a balloon a few days after the birthday party. But it worked. Within seconds she heard the sound of sneakers against laminate, followed by a voice she recognized.
"Gwen?!" she heard Scott call out. "Gwen! Are you alright?!"
"Scott!" she shouted back, her voice still halting through the staggering breaths. "Scott, you need to get help! There's this—this guy…this thing and he took—he took Liam and—"
Gwen finally managed to haul herself to her feet, turning to face Scott, but it wasn't Scott's face she was met with. Another scream tore from her lips, but it was weak and strangled, like an animal caught in a snare. She threw herself backwards, colliding with the wall behind her.
The face she was looking was like the one of whatever took Liam, but different. She could see the human behind it, but there was too much in the way. The contorted face, the fangs, the hair that had seemingly sprouted from nowhere—she could dismiss all that as creepily authentic Halloween makeup. What made her heart feel simultaneously as if it had stopped and was beating so hard it threatened to burst from her chest were his eyes, blood red and glowing with some sort of unearthly light.
"Gwen—" Scott—or whatever the hell it was that looked like Scott—reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, but she shrank inward, avoiding his touch. A vague look of hurt flashed through those eyes, but he withdrew his hand, instead staring at her meaningfully. "Where did they go?"
Gwen swallowed heavily and glanced to her left. "That way," she whispered, pointing down the hall. "They went for the stairs."
Immediately Scott took off, running towards the stairs with inhuman speed. The door slammed behind him, and once again Gwen was left wholly alone. It was only then that she realized she was shaking violently, all of her muscles spasming uncontrollably. Her head ached, feeling as if it was about to explode. There had always been this clear distinction in her head between truth and story, between history and myth, between actual life and urban legend. That was gone now, along with everything else she thought she knew.
But that didn't matter now. None of it mattered now. Because she was pretty sure someone was going to die on that roof, or at the very least get very badly hurt. And if someone was going to get hurt, it sure as hell was going to be the right someone. Gwen squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands into fists, willing herself to stop shaking. She blew out a long breath, feeling everything go still. "You are not scared. You are not scared."
She opened her eyes again, and the first thing she saw were those red streaks of blood from that thing's hands. "Shit."
Steeling her nerves, she sprinted down the hall, slamming through the door leading to the stairwell. Her eyes darted around frantically, looking for some clue as to where they might have gone. Like in the hallway, red streaks of blood were smeared across the wall like one of those freaking Family Circus cartoons, tracking their path. Grabbing on to the railing, she hauled herself up the stairs, following the morbid breadcrumbs left behind.
The trail ended at a bloody handprint on the door leading out to the roof. Shutting off the part of her brain devoted to common sense, she shoved the door open. The sounds of struggle immediately reached her ears, making her eyes snap to the raised platform at the edge of the roof. She could only make out two figures—Scott and the other one—struggling with each other, but she could hear Liam's screams. The monster had his arms wrapped around Scott like he was holding him back—trying to stop him from doing something. And then she heard Liam's voice stabbing through the air like a freshly sharpened knife.
"I can't hold on!"
He was over the edge. Liam was over the edge, holding on for life. And he was slipping.
And then Gwen did something she could only describe as completely, utterly, ridiculously stupid. Her eyes happened to fall on a spare piece of pipe lying on the ground. She snatched hold of it and ran full tilt towards the struggle, bounding up the steps towards them. Just as she reached them, Liam let out an agonized scream that shook her to her core.
"Hey!"
At the sound of her voice, Scott's assailant faltered slightly, glancing over his—its—shoulder to look at her. Refusing to let herself hesitate, Gwen swung that pipe like she was trying out for the softball team. Metal struck bone with a sickening crack, the force of the hit making her stumble back. The thing faltered for a moment, but then stood straight, turning to face her. A low hiss emanated from its mouth, sounding almost like a rattlesnake, lulling her into a trance-like state.
"Gwen!" Scott cried, his voice cutting through the air. "Run!"
She sure as hell didn't need to be told twice. Shaking off the shock, Gwen forced her feet to move. She jumped off the platform, tripping and landing on her knees. The bits of asphalt ripped through her jeans and bit into her skin, but she ignored the sting of warm blood meeting cold night air and sprinted for the door. Much good it did her.
Gwen's hand was reaching out, grasping for the door handle as she felt the hands grab her. Next thing she knew she was flying through the air, her back hitting ground with a heavy thud. Half a second later, it was with her, hands pressing her shoulders into the ground and those jagged teeth snapping inches from her face. Somehow she managed to keep hold of that small bit of pipe. Grabbing it in both hands, she pushed it under its chin, holding its jaws as far from her as she could. But it was stronger that her, and her left hand wouldn't allow her to grip it tighter.
There was some vague awareness of others calling her name, but she couldn't distinguish anything real over that serpentine hiss. Its breath engulfed her, filling her nostrils with the smell of blood and decay. Slowly, it leaned forwards and she felt that pipe being forced closer and closer to her own throat. And those eyes. Those eyes with that cruel glint in them that told her there was nothing he—it—would like more in this world that to rip her apart.
But then, all of a sudden, that glint faded. The cruelty drained away from them, along with everything else, and she was left staring into a pair lifeless orbs. Blood dripped from the gaping mouth, only this time it didn't belong to a victim but to the owner. The weight on her shifted, changing from forceful to completely slack. Gwen tried to hold the collapsed figure off of her, but her shaking arms gave out and it fell forwards, its head landing on her shoulder and the blood seeping into the fabric of her shirt. It was then that she saw it—the metal axe in his back glinting in the moonlight.
Gwen felt herself begin to hyperventilate, her eyes searching for the weapon's owner. A pair of dark black boots strode to her, coming to a stop by her head. Whoever it was knelt down, grabbing the handle of the axe and yanking it out of the guy's back. Gwen squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force herself not to hear that squelching noise as metal was extracted from flesh, only to feel a sort of mist settle on her face. She didn't have to open her eyes to know it was blood. She just lay there, paralyzed, waiting for whatever it was that would come next.
Nothing happened. The boot steps moved away from her, fading into the distance, only to be replaced by the sound of panicked sneaker-clad feet careening towards her. "Gwen?!" Scott murmured, his voice sounding desperate. "Gwen, are you okay?"
The weight crushing her suddenly lifted, allowing her to breathe. An arm wrapped around her, hauling her up, and once again she found herself staring into those gleaming red eyes. Only this time she didn't feel fear, she felt relief. "I'm okay," she breathed out, nodding frantically. "I'm fine."
She looked up at Scott, but his eyes weren't on her anymore. Gwen followed his gaze across the rooftop until it settled on a looming figure—one wearing heavy boots, all in black and a blood-drenched axe in hand, like a bad dream. But as soon as her eyes reached his face, that bad dream became wet another nightmare. Because that face was missing something very important. "Scott," Gwen whispered, her voice still shaking. "Where's his mouth?"
She didn't get her answer. He didn't have one. How could he? The two of them just watched as the man lifted a single finger, pressing it to that expanse of pale skin where his lips were supposed to be, before disappearing into the night like some ghostly wraith. Slowly, Gwen felt her breaths become more regular and she glanced back up him, and what she saw made her twitch violently. The raised brow, the hair, the teeth, they had all retreated leaving her with just regular Scott. Her eyes darted between him, the corpse, and Liam, who was now leaned against one of the pillars holding a bloodied arm. When her eyes finally returned to Scott, they were filled with accusation. Jaw set and eyes narrowed, she stared him down.
"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?!"
Phew! Now that was a long one! So now you know Gwen's beef with Liam and a crapload of action happened. I hope you liked it and please review!