"Some days I can't get out of my head
That's just the dark side of me
Some nights it's hard for me to fall asleep
That's just the dark side of me
If you ever call my name
You will find out that we're both the same"
Darkside by Ty Dolla $ign, Future, Kiiara
"No one's told her?"
Saying she trusted the pack to protect Scott was one thing. But it was a whole other thing to see him lying on the cold slab in the morgue with the warmth of his skin turned pale and cold.
"What? What happens after forty-five minutes?"
Stiles, Liam, Kira, and Boyd were setting up the computers in a nearby empty hospital room while she stared down at Scott's lifeless body with her mother, Noshiko, Isaac, and. . . Melissa. Melissa, whose terrifying, heart-wrenching screams of anguish she had just heard mere minutes before. The screams echoed through Sara's mind as her heart pounded in her chest.
"He dies."
Then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder with a soft, deep voice saying her name. Sara's head snapped up to see Isaac looking on with concern, but she pulled away quickly and hurried from the room, leaving the others behind.
A small, worried squeak escaped Tamae's lips at the sudden escape by her daughter. She hadn't seen such emotion from her daughter in years. Not since. . . not since she was a child. After Riichi. . . the terrible cries and soaring heat. . .
No, Tamae couldn't think about that. Not with everything going on. She started to follow, wanting to comfort her daughter and make sure no fires were started, only to be stopped by a gentle hand from Melissa.
"Let me," Melissa said, her eyes and tone soft.
Tamae wanted to argue until she noticed Melissa's furtive glance at her nearly dead son and the door where Sara had made her escape, and Tamae understood. Sara needed someone who understood her panic and worry over the potential of losing Scott.
She would have had to be blind to not notice the way Sara and Scott looked at each other. Tamae had noticed something between them the moment she'd first met the boy. A firm foundation of trust followed by a layer of comfort and another of care rounded off by, she daresay, a healthy cover of love. Whether the two recognized it or not, she didn't know, but she knew Melissa wasn't wrong in believing she should be the one to talk to Sara.
So, Tamae nodded and offered a grateful smile.
Melissa left the room and looked around for Sara, only to find her pacing at the end of the hallway, talking to herself with downcast eyes. As Melissa drew closer with careful footsteps, she heard what Sara was muttering.
"Calm, stay calm. Everything's fine." Over and over again, each word strained and accompanied by stressed breathing. "He'll be fine. He'll wake up. Stay calm. Calm, calm."
Melissa waited until she was in Sara's line of sight before reaching out in order to avoid scaring her, but Sara still seemed to jump as she was pulled from her thoughts, her eyes focusing on Melissa's. Was that a quick flash of orange that she saw?
Setting her hands on Sara's arms, Melissa asked, "Are you alright?" with a warm, reassuring expression.
"How can. . . how can you be in there and look at him lifeless?" Sara asked instead, quickly shaking her head. "I-I can't." Her voice cracked as her eyes became glassy.
Oh, darling, Melissa thought as she moved a strand of Sara's hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear.
"Because I trust all of you, and I believe in him," Melissa said honestly, setting her hand on Sara's shoulder. "Don't get me wrong, it scares the hell out of me." She allowed the hint of a smile. "But if there's one thing I've learned in my time as a nurse is that I must focus on the positives and stay strong even when everything around me is delving into chaos. . ." When Sara's breathing still didn't slow, Melissa continued. "I didn't have the best reaction to the supernatural, and I refuse to have that reaction again. Even with his new abilities and responsibilities, Scott still needs me, so I'll be strong for whenever he does. And I'm sure he'd appreciate you staying strong for him, too."
"I'm trying—" The words cut off with a strangled sound, and Sara shook her head again. "I don't know if I can do that. I-I always act like I'm strong and sure, but I'm not. I'm freaking out. Always. And I'm always on the verge of losing control." Sara's breathing picked up more, and Melissa could feel her trembling. "I-I don't—I don't know if I can do this. I—and I can't breathe."
Sara stumbled back against the wall behind her, leaning on her arm, and Melissa followed, moving to Sara's side to rub her back in soothing circles.
"Okay, slow, calm, breathe," Melissa instructed, keeping her voice low but gentle. "Focus on my voice and look right at me." Sara did her best to listen, but she still struggled to take in breaths. "What do you do to help relax?"
"Sc-ott usu—usually—he—he helps," Sara stammered, motioning with her hands.
If Melissa's expression could soften further, it did as her heart broke. She was immediately reminded of when she talked Scott down from a shift the previous semester when Rafael was conducting a case for impeachment against Noah.
"Find your anchor."
"My anchor was Allison. . . I don't have Allison anymore."
Melissa remembered the exchange clearly. She remembered Scott's anger and his struggle to remain calm. And she remembered what she told him afterward.
"You fall in love more than once. It'll happen again. And it'll be just as amazing and as extraordinary as the first time, and maybe, just as painful. But it will happen again, I promise. And until then, be your own anchor."
Scott was Sara's anchor, Melissa would bet her life on it. Melissa would also bet a whole year's salary that Sara had become Scott's anchor with the way she had seen Scott defer to Sara's judgment or opinion and the way he looked at her. Her son had fallen in love again, and Sara was trying hard not to break down without him.
"Oh, sweetheart." Melissa gently placed a hand on Sara's cheek. "He'll be okay. You just need to believe he'll be okay. He won't go down without a fight, and neither should you."
When everyone separated to their designated assignments, Melissa left to join Noshiko in scoping out the parking lot, Tamae joined Chris in patrolling the hospital halls, and Sara was left with Isaac stationed outside the morgue, both in charge of watching over Scott as both had refused to leave him.
Sara hated the thought of Scott laying in a cold, metal container, heart barely beating once per minute, but after her freakout and talk with Melissa, she sat in a chair outside the morgue, gripping her hands tight as she kept her heart rate and breathing steady. She had to remain calm and strong. For Scott.
Isaac was sitting near her, an empty seat situated between them for space. He picked at the sleeve around his cup of coffee, listening to the steady, quiet, faint beat of Scott's heart while keeping an eye and ear out for anyone coming near the morgue.
When he glanced up at Sara, he saw her staring at the morgue doors. Before he could think about it, he asked, "You and Scott made out yet? I can never tell with you two."
Sara tore her gaze away from the doors with a scoff. "Oh, this again."
"I don't mean it that way," Isaac quickly said, rubbing his forehead.
She sent a glare his way. "Yeah, well, it kinda sounds like you do."
"I was drugged with wolfsbane," Isaac stressed, "and it brought all my insecurities to the surface. I never would have implied you're a cheater if I was in my right mind. I know you wouldn't do that. . ." Especially since it was a time in which they were on good terms, unlike right then. "I was just trying to lighten the mood with a dumb joke."
"Well, don't," she said. "This is a shitty situation where the mood shouldn't be lightened." She watched as he leisurely took a sip of his coffee. "How are you not worried?"
Isaac lowered the cup back to his knee as he looked at her. "Just because I'm not pacing or hyperventilating doesn't mean I'm not worried. But spending that kind of energy on reacting won't help. I've spent way too long being panicked; I'm not going to do that here."
What he really wanted to say was that he wasn't going to do that anymore, at all, remembering the way he would react to his father. He never wanted to react that way again, but he especially didn't want to do that with someone's life on the line. With Scott's life on the line. Not with the way Scott had always treated him, always been there for him, and always believed in him no matter the dumb shit he did while with Derek as a newly turned beta.
He looked away from her. "Hate me all you want, but don't ever say I'm not worried about Scott. I did something dumb, I get it, but I never stopped caring. Scott's the brother I never had, pack or no pack."
Sara looked down at her shoes, warmth filling her veins. Her personal issues with Isaac aside, she'd never truly thought of him as no longer a member of their pack and hadn't known that he had thought otherwise.
She quietly told him, "Pack."
Isaac looked up at her once more, a twitch in his brows as he frowned. Whether he was confused or uncertain, she wasn't sure.
So she repeated, "Pack," resolution in her voice.
A small smile spread across his face. "Pack."
Tamae did her best to look casual while walking around the hospital next to Chris. But no matter how hard she tried, it didn't quite hit right due to one reason.
Chris Argent. Argent. A member of a notorious hunting family.
He wasn't the first Argent she'd met, and she doubted he'd be the last if he ever had more children or if Gerard had siblings or cousins that she didn't know about, but still, she certainly never thought she would be on the same side as an Argent or any hunter for that matter.
"You could look a little less stressed," Chris told her quietly as they walked down an empty hall.
"Sorry," Tamae said with a breathy sigh. "I just never thought I would be in this situation."
"What, watching for assassins? Chaperoning a young kitsune to essentially kill a teenage boy?" Chris asked.
Tamae chuckled and shook her head. "No, working with a hunter."
Chris glanced at her as they turned the corner. "Four hundred years and that's a new one? Huh."
"There is a first time for everything," she said. "I'm sure Sara was your first kitsune."
"Actually, my first kitsune was a nogitsune," he corrected, smirking at the way her eyes widened. "Watching demonic ninjas come out of the shadows and skewer a man wasn't my idea of a fun eighteenth birthday party."
Tamae sighed at the thought. "Gerard. . ."
"Well, to give my father some credit," Chris began, "I don't think even he knew the Yakuza boss was possessed. Sending me to meet with the Yakuza in the first place was all him."
That got her to crack an amused smile, so in the spirit of telling stories, Tamae told him, "The only reason this is the plan is because I told Sara how I watched my father help a young woman fake her death to her family so she could run away with the man she loved and not be followed."
"Oh to be young and in love," Chris said wistfully with a soft laugh.
Stiles diligently watched the camera angles in the empty hospital room, aided by Liam and Kira. He would consider Boyd as aiding them, but the hulking werewolf had taken up watching the parking lot from the window instead, being an eagle-eye lookout. The four of them were crowded in the comparatively small room, all worried and waiting for the ball to drop indicating some disaster had happened.
Stiles did his best to focus on the screens showing the boring hospital hallways instead of focusing on how his best friend was just downstairs lying on a slab in the morgue. He was frankly surprised he hadn't snapped like Sara, but perhaps it was his perpetual state of anxiety that was helping in that instance.
"Is that supposed to look like that?" Liam's voice cut through the silence in the room.
Looking away from the computer Stiles had been focusing on, he looked at the camera angle that Liam was pointing at, showing a square of static interference that then blacked out.
"No," Stiles said, growing tense. "No, it's not. . ."
"Where is that?" Kira asked.
Based on the location of the other angles next to it, Stiles deducted, "The roof. Someone's gonna have to go check it out."
"I'll go," Kira said.
But before she could go far, Boyd reached out, grabbing her wrist gently. "Wait," he said, tilting his head and closing his eyes. They noticed his ear twitch as he listened to the sounds of the hospital, focusing upward toward the roof. "Something's up there. Big, heavy footsteps." His eyes opened. "Rattling bones."
A feeling of dread sunk into Stiles' stomach. "Berserker." He didn't like the idea of just him alone in the hospital room, but with the prospect of a Berserker, he had to say, "All three of you go."
Stiles watched as they nodded and hurried out of the room. The moment they left, Stiles had one thought:
Why was Kate at the hospital?
Scott was in the boy's locker room as he continued to dream while in the unconscious state he had been put in by foxfire. He had gone through the same dream sequence more or less with Liam and then Boyd and then Isaac, catching a lacrosse ball thrown by them in a hall in the high school each time, them deferring to him as the captain and the alpha before being killed in front of him—Liam by the Mute, Boyd by Ethan and Aiden, and Isaac by the Kanima.
Scott was unable to move for each one, watching helplessly as it happened before his eyes.
He wondered if he'd have to watch the same sequence again but with Stiles. As if the first dream wasn't bad enough. He didn't know if he could handle seeing Stiles die in front of him, dream or not. That was the only thing getting him through it all, the knowledge that it was all a dream no matter how real it looked or felt.
But then it changed, and he was in the locker room instead of the school hallway. He wondered what this dream would have in store that time. Then he saw Sara standing behind him, looking at him through the mirror in front of him, and he hoped beyond all hope that the dream wouldn't include watching Sara die in front of him.
He already knew what that looked like, remembering how pale and cold she was after fighting the nogitsune at the abandoned internment camp. He never wanted to see it again.
"There's something different about you," Dream Sara said, voice eerily calm for someone who was usually quite passionate.
Scott knew what the dream version of her was referencing, considering he was for some reason partially shifted, his fangs out. But they were different than they had been just a few weeks prior. Instead of the standard four fangs that most werewolves had, he had grown more—two more in the bottom row of teeth and four more in the top row.
"I've got more fangs," he said. "I noticed it during the quarantine. I don't know why."
The dream version of Sara moved closer, and he watched her through the mirror. "It's a natural part of being a werewolf," she explained. "An alpha. An evolution to make you a more dangerous predator."
"Or more of a monster," he said.
Sara met his eyes. "A monster, like me."
Scott quickly turned around to face her. "No, no, you're not. I'm not—"
"Are we not, Scott?" she asked, lifting her hand to set it on his jaw. He knew it was a dream, but he couldn't help but lean into the touch that felt so real, so warm. Dream Sara ran her thumb over his lips, moving them enough to let the fangs peek out. "You're growing, evolving. What is the purpose of evolution?"
"Adaptation. Survival."
Sara inched closer; Scott could almost feel the warmth she radiated. "Predators hunt," she said. "Predators kill. That's how they survive."
Scott shook his head and argued, "Wolves kill for food. Werewolves don't need to."
He knew it wasn't really Sara in front of him. Not just because he knew it was a dream but because she would never be in favor of him killing. She could do it herself, had done it to survive and to protect others, but she would never try to convince him that it was his nature to do so. She had already argued the exact opposite in the past.
But the foxfire dream Sara wasn't the real Sara. She was a part of his psyche, a manifestation created by his mind. She knew every insecurity, every nagging feeling, every persistent negativity, every off thought in his mind. She knew everything he had never voiced.
Every fear from Peter and Deucalion.
Every nightmare.
"And kitsune?" she asked delicately. "A river kitsune heals, but a fire kitsune destroys." Dream Sara delicately caressed his jaw, a soft expression from her that he had come to love. It didn't match her words. "The nogitsune was right. I do nothing but burn. I'll burn Isaac. I'll burn Liam. I'll burn Stiles. . ."
She grabbed his jaw with incredible force, pushing him back against the wall behind him, the tiles cracking from the force as his jaw bruised under her grip. His hands latched onto her wrists, but attempting to pull her away did nothing.
"I'll burn you."
Instead of the glowing orange Scott had come to know, her eyes turned a ghostly white. The same color as the eyes of the nogitsune.
Donning an eerily innocent smile, Dream Sara said, "We're monsters, Scott. It's what we do."
His vision was engulfed by a bright, fiery orange flame.
When the power went out, the first thing Sara and Isaac did was jump up and look around, moving out of the way when a doctor hurried past.
"Do you hear anything?" Sara asked.
Isaac shook his head. "Nothing over the doctors, nurses, and patients panicking," he said. "Can they panic quieter?"
Sara couldn't fight the snort that escaped. "Not how panic works."
Their attention was drawn by Stiles hurrying down the hall toward them, holding his phone out. Once closer, he told them, "Power's out in the whole building. Every camera is down."
"Where are the others?" Isaac asked, referring to the three that should be with him.
"They went to check on a downed camera on the roof," Stiles explained. "Boyd said he heard rattling bones. That was about six minutes ago. I haven't heard from them since." Before Isaac could say something, Stiles cut him off. "Argent's checking out the roof while Sara's mom is finding Melissa and Kira's mom. If it is a berserker, we need to stay with Scott in case Kate comes looking."
"Boyd, Malia, and I took down a berserker," Sara said. "Maybe Boyd can do it again with Kira and Liam?" She didn't sound very hopeful despite the hopeful train of thought. But the thing about hope was that you actually had to believe it.
The three entered the room they had been guarding and stationed themselves in front of Scott's morgue cabinet as if the flickering emergency lights didn't make the situation morbid enough.
As the minutes ticked by, they grew antsier and antsier, with Sara beginning to pace and Stiles giving in and calling Chris who wasn't answering his phone.
"Come on, come on," Stiles muttered to himself. "Answer the phone."
"Repeating that over and over won't make him answer his phone," Isaac said, hands gripping the morgue exam table.
"Well, sorry for panicking!" Stiles exclaimed before glaring at his phone. "Why are you not answering the phone?"
The morgue doors slammed open, and the three of them turned to see Chris sliding through them on the floor, in no position it answer his phone in the first place.
"Run," Chris said, his voice strained. "Get out of here!"
Instead of heeding his warning, Stiles pressed himself back against Scott's morgue container while Isaac rushed over to Chris to help him up, pulling him away from Kate and the doors. Sara watched as Kate Argent slowly walked through the double doors.
"Get out of the way, kids," Kate said. "I'm taking the body."
"Why?" Stiles asked. "Visual confirmation?"
"Don't worry, handsome—I'm not the Benefactor," Kate assured.
"Then what do you want with the body?" Chris asked.
"I wish I could tell you."
"Then come get him," Sara said, her eyes turning orange as she positioned herself directly in between Kate and the others.
Kate simply smiled. "Oh, sweetheart, you don't want to go there."
"Yes, I do," Sara said, a snarl pulling at her lips.
"She absolutely does," Stiles agreed with a shaky voice. "But maybe you two can take it outside? Work out the tension not in the morgue? I saw some coffee, a vending machine—"
"Stiles, shut up," Isaac hissed quietly.
"Kate, back off," Chris said as Sara stared his sister down. He didn't want his sister killed despite everything, but if it came down to a fight, he knew Sara wouldn't hesitate to fry her to a crisp and he wouldn't blame her. They couldn't let Kate take Scott's body. Not in a million years.
"What, Chris, don't want one of your teen protégé's throats ripped out?" Kate asked.
"We're not going to let you take his body," Chris said. "Listen to me, Kate—we have a plan."
Kate's eyes flickered away from Sara's. "If killing Scott was part of it, you're worse than me."
"He's telling the truth," Stiles said. "We're trying to get to the Benefactor."
"I'd be happy to cross your name off that list," Sara told her, knuckles cracking as her fists clenched. "I could do a lot with eight million dollars."
Chris stepped up to Sara's side and said, "Back off and let us do what we planned." He looked down at his watch, seeing the numbers counting down. His voice grew desperate. "Take your berserker and go." When Kate didn't move, he tried once more, "Kate, please. We have a plan."
With the warmth of blood on his skin and the copper taste on his lips, Scott roared in the last dream before screaming awake in the cold morgue, his friends standing around him, looking at him in pure relief as he sat up gasping for breath.
The moment he looked at Sara, she wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He hugged her back, happy to see the real Sara once more, not the one in his demented dream.
While hugging, Scott looked over at Stiles and asked, "What happened? Did it work?"
Stiles couldn't seem to form a response as he dejectedly glanced over at Chris who had the same expression. No, their plan hadn't worked. And based on the blood on Kira's forehead and the healing slash on Boyd's cheek, there had been a fight. So, Scott focused on returning Sara's desperate hug.
"Don't ever do that again," Sara told him. "Please."
"I won't," Scott reassured, shifting his grip to one arm around her waist and the other hand on the back of her head. "I won't."
It didn't take long for the chaos that the hospital had delved into to die down as emergency services were able to bring the power back, but the real question plaguing the staff was how Scott had mysteriously come back to life, as though they hadn't seen it before when something similar had happened to Jackson a year prior, and Jackson had physical wounds that were an obvious cause of death whereas Scott hadn't had anything.
One of the nurses settled Scott in an observation room while they readied his paperwork, and Sara sat in there with him with a death grip on his hand.
"I'm alright," Scott reassured quietly, setting his other hand on top of hers.
"Nothing feels weird or off after. . ." Sara's question trailed off.
Scott shook his head. "No, I swear. And if there was something, the werewolf healing probably dealt with it. But my heart feels fine. I'm not in pain. I mostly just feel like I had a long nap."
Sara slowly loosened her grip but didn't let go, not that Scott would have wanted her to. "I wish it had worked. Then it wouldn't feel like the stress was for nothing."
"Actually, I think maybe it did work," Scott said. Sara gave him a curious look, and he moved to explain. "Not that I know exactly who the Benefactor is, but we might know a lot more about him now."
"But no one showed," Sara said with a slight shake of her head. "That was the whole point. No one came to get visual confirmation. It certainly isn't Kate."
"No, but that's why it might have worked," he continued. "Think about it—who has the power to know when someone's dead but doesn't need to see the body to know it happened?"
Sara's eyes slowly widened. "A banshee. The Benefactor is a banshee."