Chapter 44: The Full Moon II
Joe thought her head would explode from the sound of her own pulse. It burst through, hard and fast, filling her every sense. Her lungs burned, but she had to keep going. She had to keep going!
"Come on, come on." Her voice was barely a whisper, no air left to spare, but she pushed through everything she had, supporting Jimmy's annoyingly heavy body over her shoulder. They stumbled, fell, skidded through the dark forest. Joe kept looking over her shoulder, kept looking for Kate, knowing she was out there somewhere. Wounded, but not dead.
She should have killed her. She should have let her die. She should she should she should...
"Come on, come on," she hissed and grunted when Jimmy caught onto a branch, practically collapsing onto her. Groaning, she hoisted him back up, as his head lolled sideways, unable to assist. "Couldn't you have stayed skinny, you asshole?"
Joe wanted to cry when she found her car. In her mind, she'd pictured Kate finding it first, leaving her stranded up here with a half-dead werewolf. Somehow, she managed to shove Jimmy into the backseat and she wondered how the hell they'd gotten Derek in here that night at the school. She realized he'd never told her what really happened, that time where she first felt his pain, when she thought it was all fake.
If you survive, Joe told herself, you're gonna ask Derek about it.
She had Kate's shotgun, handgun, taser wand and knife — stuffing all of it into the passenger seat — and still glanced over her shoulder constantly in case the insane woman appeared out of the shadows. The look in Kate's eyes, especially when she came with the knife, it filled Joe's head every time she blinked.
"Please don't die," Joe whispered under her breath as the Ford jumped and tumbled down the dark gravel road. With only the full moon and her headlights, it was straight from a horror movie. Anytime now, she'd see Kate's silhouette in her rearview mirror. Or Kate would bound out from the forest, throwing herself onto the hood. Or she'd just appear in the backseat, ready to strangle Joe. The last one made Joe check behind her, but her backseat did not have room for much more than Jimmy, who groaned every time the Ford bounced in a large pothole. "Please don't die."
No answer.
"I'll take you to the hospital, please, Jimmy, just hold on, just-"
"No...hospital. Derek."
Joe pulled in a sharp breath and hit the steering wheel as she screamed: "Why does everyone want Derek when they should go to a hospital? What is wrong with you people?"
"Healing. Slowly. Need Derek..." Jimmy's words came slurred and broken, only half conscious. His head swung with every movement of the car. "Warn Derek..."
"I can't take you to Derek!" Joe screamed again. "It's the full moon. He's being mauled by his betas!" She clutched the wheel desperately, keeping the car on the road, sobbing loudly. "I can't, Jimmy, I'm sorry..."
"Wolfsbane," Jimmy mumbled so low Joe barely heard it.
"I know, I know, it's poison!"
"No..." Jimmy's eyes were closed as he managed to talk slowly. "Won't kill...me. Just weak."
"What?" Joe turned around, but he was already slipping back under. "What do you mean it won't kill you? Jimmy!"
"I took...steps."
"Steps? Steps! You know what?" Joe's voice rose to a tight roar. "You can take that mysticism and shove it up your ass, Carter! You and Derek and Kane and all those other shapeshifting assholes can all shove it up your ass!"
Even in his state, his brows furrowed. "Kane?"
"Oh yeah!" Joe's voice reached hysteria. "She knows about all of this, by the way! She's known for forty years! She knows about all of this! About the shapeshifters, the kanima, the hunters — everything!"
Jimmy's lips barely moved, but she heard the low: "That bitch." He shifted slowly, but slumped back down. "No hospital. I'm healing...slow."
"I seriously frickin' hate how everyone keeps saying no hospitals!"
She found herself praying as she sped towards Beacon Hills. They were technically Catholic, which meant they went to church during the major holidays and felt guilty the rest of the year. Last time she prayed it had been on her grandmother's deathbed. Like then, she prayed in Spanish, rushed and fervently, like a child, knuckles going white from clutching the wheel.
No hospital, no Derek — what the hell was she supposed to do?
"I'll take you to Deaton-"
"No!" Panic in his voice and she heard the rush of a shaky breath. "No, don't, I'll heal...just don't leave me alone."
"I have to-" Joe's hands trembled when she wiped her face, drenched with sweat and tears and her mouth was raw from where the gag rubbed into her skin. "I have to report Kate to the police. She's not gonna lurk in the shadows, her picture should be plastered on every news station in the country!"
Jimmy asked the question that preyed on her mind as well. "You think they'll...believe you?"
They had to. They had to! She'd dig up the damned grave herself to prove it.
First she had to tell them. No one was picking up when she tried calling, not even the landline at the Stilinskis'. Scott, Aunt Mel, Stiles, the Sheriff's station, no one picked up and when she reached Beacon Hills, no calls went through at all. For some reason, she did not have service.
Matt had messed with her phone, she remembered and turned it off with an angry grunt. Evidence, she would need it for later. Okay, fine, she would just go straight to the sheriff's station, Kate couldn't come after her there. Could she?
True to his word, Jimmy did seem to improve little by little by the time Joe reached Beacon Hills. If the local cops wouldn't believe her, she'd call her dad. He'd believe her. He had to.
She turned to the ghostly pale Jimmy. "Okay, wait here, I won't be long." Joe pushed the handgun into his arms. Anything coming at him in here would be close range anyway. "Safety, clip, trigger. Don't keep your finger on the trigger unless you're shooting. Okay? Okay. Three rounds, don't waste them."
Knowing it would possibly end with her own arrest, she still could not make herself leave the shotgun behind. She put it over her shoulder, wincing at the stabbing pain from Kate's left hook, hoping the front desk would at least give her a warning before shooting her. Kate could be anywhere. Waiting for her. Waiting for Joe to drop her guard.
Again, Joe was struck with how eerily quiet the night was. Obviously not a fast night for the sheriff's department either, as all cars were parked up front and she could not even see anyone at the front desk. Coffee break, probably. Or processing some drunk and disorderly out back.
Eyes darting around the street while searching for Kate, Joe pushed the doors open into the station.
Quiet. Too quiet.
Something made her stay silent instead of calling out. Something made her realize things weren't right. Something metallic in the air, like blood and Joe walked slowly forwards, taking the shotgun off her shoulder.
Vomit rose in her throat when she passed the front desk. The deputy she had expected to be manning it laid bloodied and unmoving behind it. Large claw marks up her torso. Breath shivering, Joe crept on her hands and knees to the woman, face locked in a scared expression, and knew what she would find even before she felt the woman's pulse. Dead. Gone.
Werewolf? Or kanima? Or Kate?
Did it matter? Did anything?
Trembling, Joe pulled the shotgun up to her front and was going to creep out of the station, find a payphone, call her dad, call the damn national guard if she had to, but she felt his scent. Derek was here. Down the hall, his scent strongest there. She crushed her initial reaction to call his name. He had to know she was there too, there was a reason he was keeping quiet. He either wouldn't — or couldn't — call for her.
Separate the mates. Had Kate been here? Or the Argents? It was hard to breathe, but Joe realized she could not bring herself to leave Derek behind.
Slowly, blinking away tears, she made her way down the hall and covered her mouth to avoid sobbing when she saw the other hallway. At least three bodies, all in uniforms, walls practically coated in blood. Blood filled her nose more than Derek, like something subdued his scent, like he was dead. Everything hurt from crawling, from holding the shotgun, from squeezing her mouth shut to not draw attention. What was happening here? It was like a neverending nightmare.
A sudden hissed whisper made her freeze: "Joe, get out."
On the other side of the hall, through the door to the Sheriff's office she met Derek's wide, pleading eyes. Out flat on his back, unmoving, but alive. Paralyzed. Kanima.
"Shit, shit, shit," Joe muttered under her breath and darted into the office. Stiles was next to Derek, equally paralyzed, but she could not see anyone else. No Scott, no Sheriff, no kanima. On her knees next to Derek, instincts took over and she put the shotgun to the side to check both of their conditions — no injuries that she could tell and Stiles even gave her a close-lipped smile when she checked his pulse. It took a lot to keep her voice down. "What the hell is going on?"
"Joe," Derek's voice was so low she could barely hear it even when hovering over them, "you need to get out."
"I'm not leaving you here," she hissed back immediately, checking over her shoulder if anyone was coming. Her hands trembled and she had no idea how she was going to move either of them. She could probably manage to drag Stiles out, but Derek outweighed her by at least sixty pounds. "How long have you been like this?"
Neither answered and she immediately looked behind her again in case the kanima had snuck up, but she realized they were staring at her.
"What happened to you?" Stiles whispered and she automatically touched her face. Slick with sweat and the skin around her eyes felt swollen after the first blow from Kate. No idea how she looked, but she could imagine some heavy purple bruises. Now she also saw the angry red marks around her wrists from when she tried to fight out of the restraints.
"Joe," Derek said now to get her attention and she met his wide eyes, filled with surprise or shock or concern. Joe fully understood now that he had not felt anything that had happened to her tonight. How long had he been paralyzed? How powerful were those pills? How could he not have-
"What the hell are you doing?" Unable to look him in the eyes, her gaze had drifted and she saw his clawed hand digging into his own thigh. "Jesus Christ, Derek, what-"
"He's trying to push the toxin out of his body," Stiles supplied helpfully in that same low whisper and Derek nodded with closed eyes, obviously strained by the effort of just moving his hands. "Joe, Dad's handcuffed by the holding cells, there's spare keys in the key safe. Get him out and run like hell."
"The kanima handcuffed the Sheriff?" Joe asked in a trembling voice, almost afraid of moving from them. Hell, every fibre of her body screamed at her to not leave Derek's side, not when he was down like this, paralyzed, helpless — tied up and gagged.
Only Stiles shaking his head — or trying to at least, mostly his eyes moved — broke her out of her temporary trance. "Not the kanima, but the guy's controlling him. His name's Matt-"
"Daehler?" Joe spat, breathless all of a sudden, feeling like someone was pressing a foot into her sternum. Like she was back at the Hale house with Kate laughing over her. That little slimeball was here? She was about to say something else, but stopped when Derek's eyes darted to the side, to something over her shoulder.
A split second passed before Joe reached for the shotgun on the floor, but it was too late.
Something clicked behind her, sounding like the safety of a gun being switched off. "Drop it."
Male voice, not Kate, a small consolation all things considered. Grimacing, keeping her eyes on Derek who was now glaring at the person behind her, looking seconds away from snarling, Joe slowly retracted her hand from the gun.
"Now get up." Apparently not moving fast enough, he barked again: "I said, get up!"
"It's okay, Joe, just...do what he says."
"Scott?" she whispered, but kept looking at Derek. His face. His furrowed brows and his dark eyes and his slightly open mouth, furious beyond belief and completely unable to do anything at all. Joe rose slowly, bringing her arms up. She knew that voice, the one giving orders. Not shouting at her, not sounding so crazy, but she knew it all the same. Joe turned as she got up and faced Matt Daehler with a handgun.
"Hello, Joe," he said with what she had to call an insane smile.
She saw Scott too, standing to the side, clutching his side where a large bleeding spread from his abdomen. Scott tried to calm her down, as if he had not been shot close-range by some high school lunatic. Her chest heaved, trying to get air into her system, and he must have noticed her trembling because he said: "It's okay, Joe."
"It's turning into quite the family reunion!" Matt joked, gun not wavering an inch, not even when he jerked his head to the side to make her step away from the Derek and Stiles. Her eyes kept darting between all of them — Matt with the gun, Stiles and Derek on the floor, Scott holding his hands over a gunshot wound. Only Matt's voice brought her back to stare at him. "You okay, Joe? You look a little rough, if you don't mind me saying."
He hacked her phone. When she paid him to fix her screen, he'd hacked it. And he'd sold the info to Kate. Or given it for free, if it could be counted as that. How much had Kate heard? How much had Kate known? Was Kate already here? Was Kate still listening? Kate Kate Kate.
"To be honest," Joe said, surprised her voice came out as strong as it did. The gun in her face didn't bother her. Kate could point just her finger at her and be ten times as dangerous. This little punk, this little shit, this stupid pathetic high schooler with a gun thought he was intimidating her. Her! "You're seriously the least scariest thing I've faced today."
She focused on Matt, staring into wild blue eyes. She could not look at Derek, could not tell him right now, could make him more worried now that he was paralyzed on the floor, helpless, unfeeling. He had to know something was wrong, she probably looked more than a little rough, but that was for later, for now, focus on the immediate threat. Watch, evaluate, survive. A mantra her father taught her. Watch, evaluate, survive. Don't just act, think! Think, you stupid girl, think! How many times was she going to walk into a trap tonight?
"Really?" Matt sounded less than amused by this, but his voice shook, a psychotic break unfolding in front of her. He pushed the gun further against her, like she was supposed to recoil from it, but she didn't. She held her arms up, fists tightening, staring at him. "Are you gonna say the same if I shoot Scott again? No, wait, you know don't you? Not like Scott's mom who's screaming her lungs out now thinking her son's dying-"
His voice turned to a roar in her ears. She saw his lips moving, but her brain never processed anything from the point where he mentioned Scott's mom. Aunt Melissa.
"If you hurt her-"
"What? What are you gonna do?" Matt waved the gun in front of her, obviously emboldened by the weapon, as a high schooler who'd never held real power in his hands. "No calling your FBI-dad now, Joe, I disabled your phone when I saw you approaching. GPS, right? Convenient." He leaned in closer to her, a smirk written all over his face. "By the way, I hope you don't mind, but I copied some of those photos of you and...Alex, was it? To my personal collections. They were kinda hot."
Joe blinked, thrown for a loop. "What photos?"
"The ones in the private folder."
"There's a private folder on my phone?" Joe asked incredulously, more confused than embarrassed.
"Oh my god, you're just like him!" Matt yelled and gestured to Scott who held up his hands slightly, as if to calm the loon. Scott looked more uncomfortable at the prospect of her and Alex in some pictures than she did. She had no idea what pictures he could mean. "So technically incompetent it's scary you have a driver's license! You're all so stupid!"
Unravelling. This guy was falling apart. Scott stood to the side, obviously wanting to intervene, but by now it was lucky Matt hadn't accidentally shot himself or Joe already. He went on some kind of monologue about the high school swim team, but Joe found her gaze dragged back to Derek, to his determined eyes, to his clawed hand digging into his own thigh. Triggering the healing process, pushing out the toxin. Not fast enough.
Kate was alive. Joe could not focus on any other fact. Kate was alive, insane, out there, obviously harboring some kind of resentment. She had never told Joe why she had trapped her and Jimmy. Separate the mates, Joe kept coming back to that. Only it had to be tonight because Derek was being hunted. She had thought Kate meant the Argents. Had she meant Matt? Why had she trapped Joe? Motive. Means. Opportunity. Why why why?
Apparently Matt's motive was revenge. He'd fallen into the pool or something when the swim team celebrated them winning state championship and drowned and been revived. Never told anyone. Never!
"You know," Joe started, hearing how rough she sounded, "Alex, who I'm guessing you jerked off to, she's a licensed psychotherapist. I'd give you her number, but I think you already got it."
Matt stopped re-telling how he felt like he was drowning every time he closed his eyes. So many murders could have been avoided if the mental health counselor at the high school did their freaking job. Matt laughed.
"That's cute. You're gonna psychoanalyze me, Joe? Huh? Like I'm some kind of nutjob?"
"Sure, let's start with your physical health. Did you climax when looking at pictures of Alex and me? Because antisocial personality disorders are often linked with impotence and the way you're clinging to that gun right now is called projec-
"Shut up!" Matt roared and pushed the gun further against her. "Shut up!"
Derek's growl grew louder and that made Matt laugh.
"Really?" His voice dripped of sarcasm as he turned to look at the downright livid Derek Hale. "Are you trying to give me leverage here?"
"Matt..." Scott tried, panic evident in his voice. "You're getting what you want, you don't have to shoot anyone. You don't want to-"
"I don't want to? Are you sure about that?" Matt ignored Scott and pushed the gun against Joe's chest while he addressed Derek. "How does this work, anyway? Are you gonna die too if I shoot her?"
Not looking at Derek or Scott, Joe breathed in and out, moving Matt's gun with each inhale and following exhale. Holding a gun against someone's chest beat the purpose of a long-range weapon. Bad gun technique.
Even worse was taking your eyes off the target while doing so.
Matt paying more attention to Derek was all Joe needed. She made up her mind and tore herself to the side, angling her body out of his aim and reaching up underneath the trigger guard, clamping her other hand over the gun. Push back and rotate at the same time, she loosened his grip, leaving her free to yank hard, hearing and feeling his finger break, forcing the pistol out of his grip.
A move she practiced a hundred times with her dad, over and over, until she could do it without thinking. It would not have worked on Kate. Not on Chris. Not on anyone with actual training. But it worked on Matt.
Instead of just aiming the gun at him, she front-kicked him in the chest so he stumbled back, crashing into the doorway. Distance. A gun was a long-range weapon.
"Back off!" Joe barked, struggling to keep her own finger off the trigger. She wanted to shoot.
God! She wanted to shoot him! Only Scott's panicked gaze by her side stopped her. Only Derek's shocked face stopped her. But they didn't know! They didn't know! She wanted him dead this small slimy son of a bitch who helped Kate find Jimmy and torture him and capture her and she was still out there and-
The world went dark.
All lights in the station flipped off and it took a few seconds for the emergency system to kick in, alarms blaring and safety lights flashing. A few seconds was all Matt needed. Momentarily blinded, he crashed into her as another shadowy figure crashed into Scott. By the sound of the screeches, it had to be the kanima.
Joe fired, but the shot went wild, hitting nothing. She and Matt tumbled to the floor and his disgusting hands gripped for the gun that she refused to let him get hold of.
Chaos erupted as heavy scatter of what had to be machine-gunfire broke through the night, tearing through the windows of the station, raining glass and smoke down on them. Blind, deaf, angry, she wrestled with Matt, neither relenting the weapon. Shots upon shots upon shots kept coming over their heads, like they were under siege.
Next came smoke bombs. Thick plumes of harsh white smoke erupted from small canisters tossed in through the broken windows. In the chaos, she heard Scott snarl, obviously fighting something, but she could not see anything. Joe managed to slam her knee into Matt's face and the act made him drop the gun. She flipped to her stomach, trying to crawl underneath the smoke, only instinct taking her towards Derek.
Matt did not relent so easily. He clambered up on her back and slammed her face into the floor. Adrenaline trumped any pain. Twisting around, she tried to get the gun angled so she could just shoot him and be over with it. They were a mass of twisting limbs, struggling blindly and violently for control, neither relenting.
A sharp burning in her chest and her brain split by the ear-deafening roar from Derek, equal parts pain and rage, like he went straight from paralyzed into his fully morphed state.
Her fingers weak, she could not fight Matt, though she did not understand why until she touched her chest and found it wet and she realized she'd been shot. She could not get up. This had to be a joke. She could not have survived Kate Argent to be killed by Matt. No way!
Joe watched Matt disappear into the white smoke, unable to pursue, unable to fight. It was not hurting as bad as she thought, but that was just the adrenaline, giving her body a fighting chance to get through this without losing her mind.
Shit, Jimmy! He was outside in the car, with the machine-gun toting people.
It was hard to move, but she tried. Joe made an involuntary humming sound every time she breathed, it was starting to hurt — bad. Okay, chest wound, what do you do? Writhe in pain first of all. God, she should have reconsidered disarming Matt. Left it to Scott, if she was gonna get shot anyway. To any of the superhumans with healing factors. Now she was down and Derek paralyzed and-
A snarling shape appeared next to her and she opened her mouth to scream until she saw the red eyes. Derek. System override at the realization. Derek. Not her Derek though, but wolf-Derek. Was that her Derek too? Was any of them her Derek?
Smoke covered his face and then he was definitely her Derek — if he was her Derek at all — again although that didn't make sense because her Derek — this Derek — didn't have this desperate and scared expression; he was angry and strong and not fervently trying to stop her blood from pouring out of her body onto the floor.
"Don't do this to me, Joe," Derek — because it was Derek — muttered, pushing her shirt up. "Don't do this, please, not now, not like this."
"I'm sorry," she wheezed, but was still going into shock because of this intense and blinding pain spreading from her chest to every part of her body. Not lungs, she rationalized in the back of her mind. Not lung shot, she could still talk, still breathe. Broken ribs though, bullet tearing through them.
Joe let out a small shriek as Derek's hand clamped over her bullet hole. It made her arch her back and he slipped his hand under it too.
"Through and through," he said as if that made any difference at this point. His voice was so hard, no room for weakness, no room for fear. "No bullet. I'll take as much pain as I can, Joe, then-"
Her voice came in a slow croak. "Hospital?"
Derek's beautiful and shiny face stared down at her as his hands pushed into her gaping wound, stopping blood, taking pain little by little. He nodded quickly, obviously in hyper vigilance. "Hospital."
"I'm not gonna say 'no hospitals'," Joe mused aloud, head filling with white clouds beyond the smoke bombs.
The chaos still roared around them. Derek's arms flexed, pushing and pulling and taking from her, and thick black veins ran up his arms, siphoning the hurt out from her. Physical pain, she realized. Blood on his shirt. Blood. She grabbed around his wrist. "Jimmy! He's- he's hurt. Backseat of my car. Said he needed you..."
Derek's voice came fast, without room for discussion: "You need me."
She was about to say who did it, before it was too late, but never got the time as a very human, very female scream tore through all the other chaotic noises.
Derek went from zero to a sixty in an instant, wolfing out and ready to fight. But it wasn't here, wasn't her, wasn't Joe. It was Aunt Mel. Joe met Derek's gaze, felt all that anger and pain and fear, and tried to cut through the buzzing in his brain that saving Aunt Mel was more important than anything.
He gave another nod, as if he could read her mind, and told her to hold on. The gunshot must have forced all the venom out of him as he scooped her up like she weighed nothing. Just touching him helped, Joe realized, it took some of the pain away, made it bearable, made it so she could breathe and as long as she could breathe her heart would keep beating and as long as her heart beat she could keep touching him. Losing a lot of blood though. Her mind felt faint.
Everything rushed past as a blur until he put her down, gently, so she could lay on a bench outside the holding cells area. Not touching him anymore, her mind filled up with excruciating, blinding hot agony. He put her own hand over her chest, trying to make her hold the pressure.
"Go fight," Joe wheezed and pushed his hands away. "Win."
Come back with your shield or on it — not enough breath in her lungs to say it. Even her dazed mind could appreciate the cliche.
Saving Aunt Mel was important. She could survive bleeding out if he saved Aunt Mel. Something was off about that thought, but things were blurring into each other now and she only saw Derek's red glowing eyes disappear and heard his growls and snarls move away from her.
The kanima screeched and Joe jolted when Derek's fighting transferred into her, new momentary fleets of random pain around on her body. He roared and Joe blinked as her vision turned...red? Like she was looking through an infrared lense, seeing things enhanced. She lifted her arm in confusion, saw how bright it was compared to its surroundings, saw how her veins were darkened and pumped hot blood to her outer limbs. Joe's head fell back and her vision returned to normal. Blood on her retina. She needed a hospital.
Aunt Mel screamed again.
Joe gritted her teeth and forced herself up. Up from the bench, up on her feet, grunting and sweating, holding onto the wall for support. Strongest together. No doubt in her mind about that at the moment. Dizzy, she slumped against the doorway to the holding cells, vaguely noting her own blood smearing against the wall. Blink. Red vision. One body in the farthest cell, one standing outside the cell, one on the floor, one moving high speed towards her-
"No!" Aunt Mel screamed, but Derek's hand shot out and grabbed the kanima with a large clawed hand, throwing it away from Joe. Blink. Joe's vision back to normal and she barely caught how the tail of the kanima flittered away. She slumped forward, but Derek broke her fall, of course he did, and laid her down again.
"Most stubborn woman alive," she thought she heard him mutter through a mouth full of fangs. He left her on the floor, eyes slipping back into her head, and a loud crash followed, as if someone wrenched a cell door off its hinges. Aunt Mel whimpered and Derek growled something or Scott did or-
She slipped under into the cool sea of darkness, conjoining with the fiery tendrils of pain.
"Okay, okay." Aunt Mel's voice broke through and Joe's eyes opened, barely, to see her aunt's fce over her. Mascara-stained tears down her face, large worried eyes that looked like hers except they didn't. "Okay, Joe, just stay awake, it's gonna be okay."
Scott said something, tried to take a step closer, and Aunt Mel covered Joe's body with her own. "Stay away from her! Call an ambulance!"
Sound of running footsteps.
Stay awake.
Joe opened her eyes to glaring bright light. Aunt Mel was there, blood in her face. They were moving. Not just her hands, all of her. Both of them, in the back of an ambulance. "Joe, it's okay, honey, we're almost there. Hold on. Can you stay awake? Just a little while longer."
Stay awake.
Something pushed over her mouth, making it easier to breathe. Various stinging pains and prodding and a needle in her arm reducing it all to a numb nothing. Aunt Mel was there, somewhere, talking, but the words muddled and slipped away.
Stay awake.
Steady beeping. Soft bed. Dark now.
"Derek," she said, but her words hit the plastic cover of the respirator. She flailed around, hands too heavy to listen, trying to remove the mask. Derek's hand, burning hot, covered her own and put it back down to her side.
He did not let go of her hand, rubbed it quietly with his thumb.
"Derek," she tried again, forced to rhythm her speech to the air pumped into her lungs.
He squeezed her hand. "I'm here."
"I know," Joe said, brows furrowing, he was missing the point. Eyes blinked, too heavy to stay awake. "It's Kate." She felt him stir somewhere in the darkness. "Kate's alive."
Another stressful chapter! Poor Joe and Derek (and Jimmy and Scott and Stiles and everyone else), they just can't catch a break, huh?
Promise we'll slow things down in the next chapter, gotta breathe a little before the season finale.
Also another hard chapter to write, so would appreciate your feedback. Yo guys really came through on the last chapter, so thank you so much! Most of the questions (from guest-reviewers) are answered in the later chapters, so I won't address them here. Feel free to PM me if there's anything confusing :)
Also JoyDG, congratulations on your pregnancy and no, obviously, Joe couldn't stay at home. Haha, don't worry, she'll get called out for it.
Sorry for the frequent cliffhangers, I swear I'm not (always) doing it on purpose! Then again, it's only a two days' wait for the next chapter, so I don't feel too bad.
Much love to you all, now I gotta get Christmas presents for my entire family, so wish me luck ^^