The hum of the hospital ventilation system sounded almost too loud in Scarlett's ears. Every sound seemed louder; the distant click of a room monitor three corridors down, the neon clickling above her head and Stiles' heartbeat.
She could hear every beat, every painful beat.
And she couldn't look away from his face and how his brown eyes were looking at her.
He should have never known, she thought feeling her hands tremble. This wasn't supposed to happen.
"You must be Stiles."
Peter's voice came from behind her — smooth, almost warm, with that particular texture of someone that found that situation highly amusing.
She could hear the smirk in it.
"My moonlight has spoken a lot about you."
She watched Stiles' eyes move.
To her first. Then to Peter. Then back to her.
Something in his face shifted — small, the kind of thing she would have missed if she hadn't spent months learning the grammar of his expressions. His jaw didn't change. His eyes didn't change.
But something behind them did.
She felt it land in her chest before she understood what it was. Slower than fear. Heavier.
"Stiles." His name slipped through her lips in a trembling whisper.
This wasn't supposed to happen, she thought as her body moved. She made a step towards him.
And she felt it before she saw it — the spike of fear in his chest, sharp and involuntary, the way a nerve fires before a thought forms. She felt it the way she felt everything that was his, too close and too real, translated directly into her sternum without permission.
He was afraid of her.
The realization was quiet. But the pain she felt was strong and costricting.
She suddenly stopped.
Stiles took a step back, not quite steady, his shoulder hitting the wall. His eyes hadn't left her face. That was the thing she couldn't stop registering — he was still looking at her.
She wanted to stop him. She wanted to say something. She wanted to explain.
But her body was frozen, the image of how he looked at her burning worse than silver against her skin.
Her breath hitched when she saw him turn to run away.
But Jennifer appeared behind him, so that he could not go away.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice was soft and completely wrong. "Visit hours are over."
Scarlett's mind moved faster than the rest of her.
Stiles had figured out who the Alpha was. And Peter was standing just few feet behind her with that smirk she could still hear in the air. Stiles between them, backed against the wall, his heartbeat doing something ragged and uneven that she felt in the back of her teeth.
Scarlett turned towards Peter, suddenly afraid that they would attack Stiles. And by his look she knew that he would have. So not even telling anything she made a step towards Stiles, and when he noticed his head turned to her.
"No," he said, her body frozen again.
Stiles...
"You—"
Just that. One syllable, and her name wasn't even in it, and somehow that was worse than anything he could have said. His voice had gone somewhere flat and unfamiliar that she had never heard from him before.
His eyes moved from her to Peter.
"And him… he is… and you—" The sentence didn't finish itself. His jaw worked. "Oh my god."
She felt her eyes sting.
No, she wanted to say. Wait. Let meexplain.
The sound of impact hit the corridor like a thunderclap.
Derek came through the door, his elbow connected with Jennifer's temple in a single clean motion and she went down without a sound.
Then he looked up. His eyes found her, then they found Peter. The way his expression moved through something that wasn't quite surprise and settled into something that was almost worse.
Recognition.
"I should have known not to trust you." Derek hissed looking straight at her.
Scarlett looked at him. She didn't like how he spoke. He didn't like what he implyed. But then, despite everything, despite the cold logic of what she needed to be paying attention to, her eyes went back to Stiles.
He was still there. Still standing in the middle of the corridor, eyes still wide as he stared at her.
"That's not very nice," Peter said, and she heard him take a step forward. "So hard on my moonlight and my nurse."
Derek glared at his uncle, "They're psychotic bitches helping you kill people." Then he glanced breafly at Stiles. "Get out of the way."
Stiles shifted sideways, back still to the wall, and the corridor opened up between Derek and Peter like a held breath letting go, so to not be between two werewolves who were about to fight. Scarlett could sense it in the air, but he kept looking at him.
"Stiles—"
She was already moving toward him when Peter's hand closed around her arm. His grip hard enough to pushed her back, as he made his way towards Derek, who's eyes glowed blue before he charged with a roar.
But as he used the wall to jump at Peter, he caught him midd-air, shove him against the wall, hard enough to crack the concrete.
Scarlett heard the impact and Derek's grunt of pain, but she did not look. She heard Peter say something low and almost leisurely. And yet she did not listen.
Stiles was crouched now, one hand against the floor, trying to put distance between himself and the fight without moving into the open. His eyes found hers across the corridor.
She took a step toward him. But yet again she watched him moved away from her, as soon as he realized what she was doing.
She had come to fear that day; the one he would figure all out. She had imagined it, and yet in her mind had never been so painful as it actually was. Her heart aching like never before when Stiles got to his feet, quickly ranning towards the stair.
He wasn't even supposed to be there. He was supposed to be at the game. He wasn't supposed to be there.
This shoudn't have happened, she thought again. But it did. And she needed to explain. She needed to tell him why she was helping Peter. She had to tell him about the fire and about her revenge. And he would have listened. And he would have understand.
Stiles always understood. He would do it even now.
And withouth looking back, she made her way towards the stairs.
She had to explain.
The stairwell door swung shut behind her and the sounds of the corridor disappeared, replaced by her own footsteps on concrete and the echo of his above her, already a floor down. She moved faster than she should have — faster than she usually let herself move around him — and caught the parking lot door before it could swing closed behind him.
Cold air.
The lot was half-empty, lit by the flat orange of hospital lights and she could see him running towards his car.
"Stiles!"
He didn't stop. So she moved without thinking — faster than she should have, faster than she usually let herself move around him — and came around the side of his car just as he reached it, putting herself between him and the door.
He stumbled back a step.
"Stay away from me." He spat at her. His voice made her tremble for an instant.
"Please," she said searching for his eyes, her tone almost begging as she made a step toward him. "Please, just wait—"
"I said stay away!" The words ricocheted off the concrete walls of the lot. He was breathing hard, and she could hear his heartbeat doing something ragged and uneven, and she hated that she could hear it, hated that even now it was the loudest thing in the world to her. "Don't come any closer."
Scarlett froze for a moment, "I-- I just want to talk—"
"You want to talk." He laughed, and it was the worst sound she had ever heard him make. "You wanna talk. Okay! Let's talk! Let's talk about how you've been helping the Alpha this whole time. Let's talk about how you've lied to me since the day we met." His voice cracked and he pushed through it. "Let's talk about how you had me attacked so you could feed me your freaking blood. Is that what you want to talk about?!"
The words hit her like the silver wire at her neck. And his tone almost made her flinch.
He doesn't know, she thought.
Kate Argent had burned eleven people alive. She had built eight years around that fact. She had made choices that needed to be made, before he existed, before Beacon Hills existed, before any of this existed.
"I wanted revenge." The words fell out before she could shape them into anything better. "You don't understand. I didn't even know you. I didn't—"
"So that makes it okay?!" He exclaimed loudly, eyes wide. "You forced a bond on me. You forced it and I was—" Her chest tightened, as something moved through his face. And then he looked away. "I was thankful. God. I was so—" He turned, hands going to his hair.
"Stiles." She moved toward him.
"Don't!" He spun back. "Stop! Stop coming closer."
She stopped. He observed her for a moment as to make sure that she wasn't moving.
He wasn't understanding... He was not letting her explain.
"You lied," he said, his eyes red and glistening. "You've always lied. I thought you cared... but you never--"
Scarlett's eyes widened at those words. "No, that's not true!"
"Stop lying, Scarlett!" he yelled making her flinch. "Stop lying."
She opened her mouth.
She had the words ready — she had been carrying them the whole way down the stairs, through the parking lot, through every step of this — and now they were there, right there, and he was looking at her with red-rimmed eyes and she needed him to stop yelling for ten seconds so she could say them.
"I'm not lying. Not now. What I feel for you—"
"Don't!" He exclaimed, his anger flearing.
"It's true," she said. "Listen, it might have started like that. But it's not— it's not like that anymore. What I feel for you—"
"I am done listening to you!" His voice cracked on the last word and he didn't fix it this time.
"Stop!" he exclaimed again, before his tone lowered "Don't you even try."
"Stiles, please—" She took one step without deciding to.
He took one back.
The mirroring of it — the automatic, instinctive way he moved away from her the way he used to move toward her — broke something open behind her eyes before she could stop it.
She felt the sting first. Then the warmth on her cheek, and she knew without touching her face what color it was.
"No." His voice had lost its volume. It came out low, unsteady, almost worse than the shouting. "No, don't— don't do that." He shook his head. "I'm an idiot. I'm such a complete idiot."
She shook her head, "Please..." She reached for him.
"I said don't--" he said, some tears running down his face. "I said don't touch me."
She let her hand drop.
She could feel her tears of blood slowly sliding down her cheeks.
She hadn't expected that. She didn't know why she hadn't expected it. He was looking at her the way he had looked at her in the corridor — like someone still trying to make her make sense, still refusing to look away from something that was hurting him.
"Stiles," she said again. Just his name. She had nothing else.
He looked at her for a long moment. And finally he spoke.
"I don't want to see you," he said quietly. "Ever again."
He didn't yell it. After everything — after every cracked syllable and raised voice — he said it like a door closing. Like something he had already decided, in the space between one breath and the next, and was done arguing with.
She stood in the parking lot as he passed by her. Her body flinching when she heard him close the door of his car.
Scarlett didn't turn.
She heard the engine turn over and then the tyres on the asphalt — that specific sound, the one she had learned without meaning to, the one she would have recognized anywhere — and she stood in the empty parking lot and listened to it get smaller, and smaller, and then nothing.
The lot was very quiet, the only sound she could hear was her sobs.
The hot tears of blood on her face kept sliding down. As the terrible feeling of nothing in her chest got stronger and stronger. She had already felt such pain, that one she could identify as anything other than the specific, precise shape of where something used to be. She had felt it when she was left alone.
But now it almost hurted more.
She didn't understand it.
She had done what she had to do. She had made choices that needed to be made, for her family, and she had tried to explain that, and he had not let her. He had not listened. He had looked at her with those eyes -- so different the eyes that she had grown so fond of. And it hurt, badly and deeply. Like she felt the need to rip her heart out to stop feeling such pain.
I don't want to see you. Ever again. Another loud sob left her lips, and she didn't even bothered to keep it in. She cried and she cried, standing in the parking lot until the cold air clenched to her clothes, until the orange lights stopped meaning anything, until she was ready to move.
She did not remember the drive home.
She remembered her keys in the lock. She remembered the door swinging open and the particular quality of the silence inside — her apartment, her things, the smell of a place she had lived in for months and made her own — and she remembered that it felt completely wrong, like a room she had walked into by mistake.
Her eyes blankly looked around her house, like she was seeing it for the first time. And then she noticed the DVD he had brought her. They were supposed to see it together...
I don't want to see you. Ever again.
Her hand moved and the glass that had been sitting on the counter moved with it, and the sound it made against the wall was enormous and completely insufficient. She stood there breathing hard and looked at the pieces on the floor.
Then she trew the mug on the counter. Then the book he had once picked up and read the back of, still sitting on the shelf at the wrong angle because he had put it back carelessly and she had never fixed it. She moved through the apartment and she was not thinking, she was only moving, her hands angirly finding things and the things finding walls and the sound of it filling up every corner of the silence.
She stopped at the kitchen.
There was a container in the fridge. The pig's blood.
She took it out. Then she stood at the sink and opened it, watching it spiral down the drain without letting herself think about the look on his face when he'd handed it to her.
More tears ran down, it was like she was unable to stop them. And his eyes kept showing. His face kept showing.
I don't want to see you. Ever again.
Scarlett threw the container against the wall, before taking another glass and throw that too. Then she crossed the room, her fingers gripped the DVD on the coffee table in front of her couch. She wanted to break it. She wanted to throw it. But then she remembered how he smiled when she had asked him to see it together. How happy she had felt. And instead of throw it, she pulled it against her chest.
The tears kept coming in waves that she couldn't predict or manage, and she let them as she set on the couch.
Then she heard the door opened. But she didn't even bothered to look up. But she knew immediately who it was.
Peter moved through the room the way he always did — quietly, with that particular economy of presence that she had always found steadying, once. He didn't say anything. He came to stand beside the couch, close enough that she could feel the stillness of him.
She kept crying, her eyes on the DVD in her hands. A feathering touch of her fingers against the cover.
"He didn't even let me explain." Her voice came out wrecked, unrecognizable. "He looked at me—" She stopped. The look came back to her, the specific way his face had closed. "God, the way he looked at me."
Peter said nothing.
"He just—" Her voice broke. "He just left."
She felt his hand on her shoulder. Warm. Steady. The way it had always been.
"I know," he said. "I know, my love."
She put the DVD on the couch next to her and she pressed her hands to her face, staining her hands with her own blood.
"I tried to tell you." Peter's voice was quiet and gentle. "I tried to warn you. He would have never accepted who you really are."
She thought about the Winter Formal. The way Stiles had asked her, flushed and stumbling on his words. On how his hand went to her jaw as he had kissed her, uncertain at the edges. She thought about his laugh. She thought about the way he smiled everytime he saw her. She thought about his hand gripping hers, warm and gentle.
She cried harder.
"How could he?" Peter continued. "If he truly understood — if he were capable of it — he would have seen that you only did what you had to do. He would have understood and accept you for who you are." His hand moved slightly, steadying. "The bond confused you, my darling. That's all it was. It got inside your head and it made you feel things that weren't yours to feel." His voice was very calm. "You just need time. Distance. And when you have it, the clarity will come back. As strong as it was before. And you will be exactly how you were before."
Before.
Everything had been easier before. No consequences, no boundaries. She had lived exactly how her nature wanted. Like Peter had always told her. Embrace who she was, it would have been the right path. What humanity brought with it? Just delusions, and heartbreak.
She had not cried once in six years. She had not suffered. Embracing anger, hunger and vengeance. Embracing what a vampire should have been. What a vampire was.
Embracing who she was before that boy with honey brown eyes made everything difficoult. Like she couldn't even recognize herself.
And then, she turned.
She pressed her face into Peter's side and her hands gripped the fabric of his red shirt and she sobbed, while he stood very still and let her.
Peter had always understood her. He had always pushed her to be who she should have been. And she had turned her back at him.
"I'm sorry," she said, not able to stop her sobbing.
"No need." His hand came to her hair, slow and deliberate. "No need, my pet." He held her the way he always had since they've met. "You'll always find me here. I'll always be with you."
She believed him.
Scarlett let herself be held while the tears slowed and the silence of the apartment settled back around them, and she thought: this is who I am. This is what I am supposed to be. Before Stiles, before all of it. This is what I am.