Chapter 2: Scars

Lunch was hell. Sera was beginning to think that she must have been someone really awful in a past life—a serial killer, maybe—because karma seemed, as always, like it was out to get her.

After leaving Ms. Anders' room, she headed straight for her locker, grabbed her bagged lunch, and hustled to the cafeteria. She didn't want to risk Stiles seeing her—she knew he would only ask questions that she didn't want to answer.

Sera ducked into the cafeteria, determined to be invisible. She had been fine last year. No one had bothered her, save a few kind girls who had tried to befriend her on her first day. Now it seemed like curious eyes traced her hunched figure wherever she walked.

It wasn't long before her luck ran out completely. Sera tried to dodge around a group of boys as they wrestled for a battered frisbee, but she realized that if she reacted too quickly, there would be no hiding the fact that there was something strange about her. Instead, she made her body freeze up and took the brunt of the shoulder-check intended for a six-foot-two upperclassman.

Pain lanced through her hip as she careened into the nearest lunch table. Sera nearly fell over from the force of the collision, stumbling back to gather her bearings. There were several loud protests as milk cartons and water bottles tipped over, spilling their contents all over their respective owners.

She stared, wide-eyed, at the head of the table. Her heart immediately sank when she caught a glimpse of sleek black hair, blue eyes, and upturned nose. The girl's tray of spaghetti was splattered all over the front of Sera's dress.

The boys yelled out apologies and started grabbing handfuls of napkins to shove in Sera's direction, chagrined. She grit her teeth and waved them off as best as she could, trying to shoo them away before the teachers on lunch duty could see what was going on.

Sera bit back a groan as she peeled wet noodles and sauce from her dress, hands shaking hard. She had ruined Danae Welsh's lunch. Danae Welsh, the star of the dance team and the show choir, a senior who lived and breathed gossip. Although she put on a façade for the teachers, the student body knew the truth—Danae was viciously mean to anyone who got in her way.

She stared up at Sera in disbelief, glossy lips parting without a sound. Swallowing hard, Sera took a step back, and then another. She was not afraid of this human girl—she was weak and petty, and Sera could easily tear her throat out if she wanted to.

Sera was afraid, however, of the attention their little incident was receiving.

A hush had fallen over their side of the cafeteria. Dozens of eyes were trained on them. Sera's face flushed.

Danae's surprise faded almost as soon as it appeared, replaced easily by a look of disgust. "What the hell? Watch where you're going!"

Sera couldn't find her voice for a moment. Then she said weakly, "I'm sorry. I didn't see—" She could taste the girl's derision, an irony tang, so clearly that it blocked out her own anger.

Danae gave Sera a once over and shook her head. "Obviously not, or you wouldn't be wearing my fucking lunch." Sera glanced around and a sea of faces stared back at her, most open-mouthed or laughing. Damn. Danae raised her eyebrows. "Are you done yet?"

Sera felt all the air leave her lungs. The words Danae had spat were meant to sting, and they did, but for a different reason than she had intended. Sera was being dismissed, her apology tossed aside without a second thought. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. Nobody wants to hear your excuses.

Humiliation made tears burn in her eyes. Half of the cafeteria was murmuring and snickering now. The longer Sera stood there, the more attention she drew to herself. She couldn't take it. She gave Danae a wooden nod and hurriedly left the cafeteria without another word.

The tears came as soon as Sera stepped into the hallway. They sluiced down her cheeks and made her mascara run. She took deep, shuddering breaths, but she couldn't stop the choked sobs that made her shoulders shake. Sera stumbled down the hall, thankful that there was no one around. For the first time in a while, she felt utterly defeated. She tried too hard to be nice, to remain polite and unseen. All she had wanted was to find a place that could be relatively safe for her in this town.

Sera wrapped her arms around her torso and sank to the floor with her back up against the cobalt lockers.

She just wanted to keep an eye on her older brother. After Laura's death, Sera had made the decision to come back to Beacon Hills. It wasn't a very smart choice—at the time, Kate was still running amok. Now that she was dead, things should have been a lot easier.

But Chris Argent and his daughter still lived here, and before the summer had started, Sera picked up strange new scents—those of multiple alphas. The idea of an alpha pack being on the loose was alarming, especially after the events of the last year.

After the kanima incident, the inhabitants of Beacon Hills had been extremely wary, none more so than the werewolf population. Derek and Scott already had enough on their shoulders. Sera couldn't bear the thought of coming in and flipping their world upside down again.

Derek deserved closure, not every ghost he had left in the past clawing its way out of the grave to haunt him. As soon as she guaranteed that he was safe and the alpha pack was properly taken care of, Sera planned to return to the Sinclairs.

Sometimes she wanted nothing more than to be a human—she would trade all of her abilities just to reunite with her brother. To have a day where she didn't have to worry about hunters tracking her or stress about blocking her scent from the other wolves in the area.

Ophelia had taught Sera a Masking charm when she told her that she was going back home, but Ophelia had warned Sera that it might fade if she became too emotionally distraught.

Sera was having a hard time keeping the magical barriers up now—the spell was feeble at best. She gave a miserable sigh and tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling.

"Seraphina…?"

Sera jerked like she had been electrocuted when she heard her name.

Stiles stood a few feet away from her. The tension in his shoulders only increased when she didn't immediately reply. He shifted from foot to foot, but he made no move to come closer. "I just heard about what happened in there. I knew Danae could be awful, but she really won herself a gold medal today."

Sera said nothing. Stiles watched her carefully. She couldn't help but feel self-conscious under his gaze. She knew her face was a mess, but she still tried to hastily wipe tears away as they fell.

Stiles eased up to stand beside her, cautious and anxious all at once. His emotions hit Sera hard—she almost gasped at the overload of feeling.

Stiles winced when he saw her stained floral dress sticking to her frame. "Oh, man, you really are a mess, huh?"

She glared at him.

"Sorry! I didn't mean…I was sorta in the bathroom when that series of unfortunate events went down. I missed Danae's rant. You know, the thing she does because she has low self-esteem and impulse-control issues?"

Stiles' words made a laugh bubble up out of Sera against her will. The laugh was a hysterical little thing, so pitiful that it could have been counted as a sob, but she hadn't laughed in so long that it didn't really matter. What mattered was that there was a boy talking to her, and he was kind and funny and a little bit odd. He cared enough to check on her, even though they had just met a few hours before and she had been less than friendly at the time.

Stiles squatted down in front of Sera, a small frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. It seemed out of place on his normally grinning face. His caramel eyes were warm and sympathetic. "You can't wear that the rest of the day," he told her, nodding to her ruined dress.

"What do you mean, I can't wear this the rest of the day? It's not like I brought any extra clothes with me."

Stiles sighed, running a restless hand through his dark hair. "I'm just saying, you shouldn't have to walk around like that for the rest of the day. If you want, you could just go home and change…"

"No!" she exclaimed. Stiles stared at her in alarm. Sera cleared her throat and said, much more quietly, "No, I don't think so. That would be like letting her win."

Stiles nodded like he completely understood where she was coming from. "Okay." He hesitated for a moment, and then said in a rush: "What if you could—could wear something else instead?"

"What?" Her voice was hoarse from crying.

"What if you could wear something else?" he asked, a bit more slowly.

Sera gave him a wary look. "Yeah. I mean 'Like what?'"

Stiles' face flushed. "Well. Uh. I play on the school lacrosse team like I said before, y'know, and we have a locker room." Sera stared at him, not sure where this was going. "I have a locker, and I keep extra clothes in there for practice. And you can borrow them, if you want to," he ended in a rush. Halfway through Stiles' babble, Sera realized what he was suggesting.

Without preamble, she pushed herself to her feet and began to walk down the hallway. She paused outside of the boys' locker room and turned back to look at Stiles. He was still on his knees by the lockers, staring at her.

"C'mon. You have to show me which one is yours," Sera sighed. Stiles scrambled to his feet and grinned as he approached.

"Awesome! I mean…um, yeah, I'll show you! Of course."

Sera rolled her eyes and stifled a laugh.

Although Stiles let her enter the locker room first, he led the way when Sera stepped into the room. The smell of sweat and dust assaulted her nose almost immediately. She made an awful face and sneezed, trying to dispel the disgusting scent.

Stiles wandered to the back, gazing at locker numbers as he passed. When he approached his locker, he flung it open and began to rummage around, searching aimlessly.

Sera walked over to one of the dirty mirrors and gazed into it while she waited. Her face was just as bad as she had feared. She winced as she took in her makeup-smeared cheeks and bloodshot green eyes.

"Shit," she muttered, ripping a paper towel from the roll and scrubbing her face with it. After she wiped her face clean, she turned to look at Stiles.

He had a T-shirt and a pair of black basketball shorts in his outstretched hands. Sera gave him a tentative but grateful smile. "Thank you," she told him, eagerly taking the outfit.

She set the shorts on a nearby bench and unzipped her dress in a hurry, relieved to be shedding the soggy, stained fabric. Sera was about to slip the straps off her shoulders and pull the whole dress down when she realized, in complete horror, that Stiles was still standing beside her. She had been so distracted that she hadn't even thought to make him turn around.

Their eyes met. Sera immediately covered her chest, although her black bra straps were the only thing visible.

Stiles quickly averted his eyes, his mouth opening and closing aimlessly as he searched for words.

Sera hoped he hadn't seen her scar.

It was a jagged, puckered thing, her scar—colored white by age and stretching up her left side from her hip to just under her collarbone. Six years hadn't done much to help its case, but she had wanted it that way.

Sera had refused to let the burn heal on the night of the fire, forcing herself to go through the agony of letting it heal naturally. It seemed like an appropriate punishment, and an even better reminder. Her scar was proof that she had survived something terrible, but it also reminded her that her survival was nothing compared to the deaths of the ones she loved.

It reminded her that she was only mortal, no matter what abilities she had or what happened to her on the full moon. Her family's death was something that she could never, ever be allowed to forget.

"Well, turn around!" Sera finally exclaimed, her voice rising an octave.

Stiles did as she asked, muttering an embarrassed apology under his breath. Sera would have been angry at him if the tips of his ears hadn't flushed adorably red, or if he hadn't covered his eyes with both hands, oddly resembling a child playing hide-and-seek.

A warm feeling settled in her stomach as she breathed in Stiles' emotions: he was awed by her, and not even the least bit disgusted. Curiosity danced across her tongue. Stiles seemed to be wondering about her scar, but he smartly kept his questions to himself. Sera decided that she admired him for that.

She slipped on Stiles' shirt and tugged off her dress the rest of the way, then pulled on the basketball shorts as quickly as she could. Stiles' T-shirt was dark gray and had Beacon Hills Lacrosse printed across the front of it, and it reeked of him. Not really in a bad way—it just thoroughly smelled like spice and mint, something that was uniquely Stiles.

"There." Sera said loudly, clearing her throat. "You can open your eyes now."

Stiles whirled around, his sheepish smile melting away in favor of a dimpled grin. It amazed her how easily he bounced back from things—embarrassment or sadness were pushed away almost instantly after they appeared. Sera knew he harbored deeper, darker feelings, but they were harder to reach than surface emotions, tangled in the inner depths of his mind. Stiles' witty exterior, however, was refreshing.

"Well," he said, tapping his chin with an index finger, his smile only growing, "I think that outfit looks better on you than it ever did on me. I should probably be jealous, but seeing a girl in my clothes is painfully distracting."

Sera gave a snorting laugh, then froze. Being around Stiles was easy, and it made her feel…free, almost. She wanted more of that feeling, as selfish as it was. Sera wanted a friend who could make her laugh and let her forget herself, even for just a little while.

So when Stiles said, with a smile that was a little less like a smirk and a little more sweet: "We have lacrosse practice after school today. If you want to come, I could introduce you to some of my friends," there was a small silence, a pause where she considered. It would be dangerous, and she could risk everything by meeting the rest of Scott's pack.

But then Sera looked at Stiles, who was staring at her with bright, hopeful eyes, and for once in her life, she allowed herself to be selfish. Derek didn't have to know. It would just be this one time.

"Sure," Sera said. "I think I would like that."

She slipped on her sandals and grabbed the discarded dress, heading toward the door. She paused in the doorway, wanting to say something but not able to find the words. Sera kept walking after a moment—there was nothing she could say to Stiles to express how happy she was that he had befriended her.

Sera had spent the last year pretending like she didn't exist and watching her back at every turn. She had spent the last six years feeling guilty for her survival and wishing to have her family back. And she had spent her entire life feeling like she didn't belong.

But as Sera opened her locker and retrieved textbooks for the end of the day, she couldn't help but to think that things were changing, for better or worse. Something in Sera was waking up, and her scars, mental and physical, ached in anticipation. Maybe, just maybe, she could finally just be Seraphina Sinclair.

Being Seraphina Hale hurt too much.

XXX

I honestly forgot how short these first few chapters are! The later chapters are monsters in length in comparison. And honestly, I'm glad I decided to rewrite this story in third person since the original was in first person POV. I rarely write anything in first person these days, so changing it to third person just felt right.

Chapter 2 song from 2013: Scars by Papa Roach

Chapter 2 song for 2023: The Garden by The Crane Wives

Thanks for reading!