From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski - Chapter 47: Chapter 47

It was too early to be awake, but awake was the only thing Maddie could even imagine being. She slept all day at Lydia's and her ribs were healing nicely, even if it was a bit slower than normal. Her calf didn't hurt much at all to stand on - then again, walking or running would be entirely different situations. Not that she was walking or running or anything like that now; she sat in the passenger seat of the jeep as Stiles asked question after question while driving down the highway. She couldn't help but wonder how he got away with simply leaving town, then again it was Saturday night - or Sunday morning, however you wanted to look at it - and his dad probably wouldn't be up until at least sunrise, when Stiles would no doubt get in a monumental amount of trouble. She read the clock on the radio, the only light inside the car. 2:38 AM.
Peter said that it was  nearly a two hour drive to Sunnydale, not that he was going. He outright refused. Whatever was down there frightened him so badly that he couldn't bear going back.
"What do you mean you're not going?" Maddie asked Peter hours ago. Scott had been in the process of talking to Derek over the phone - Derek, who apparently already knew Peter was alive.
"I'm not squeezing into that piece of junk with a bunch of clueless teenagers is what I mean."
Maddie paused and shrugged her shoulders. "Okay. Now what's the real reason?"
Peter's eyes narrowed on Maddie, but she didn't flinch. She hadn't been afraid of Peter Hale since he didn't take the chance to kill her when he could on the night he died. Even when she was powerless, he was no threat. His voice lowered. "You really don't get it. That town had a century or so's worth of monsters much less forgiving than me who were looking to massacre every human being on the face of the planet. Death doesn't destroy energy like that - just pisses it off."
That being said, he had no qualms sending the others off to their respective deaths, which wasn't surprising in the least. On the other side of things, Maddie wasn't so lucky to get away from their other unwanted ally. Her eyes went to the side mirror and she spotted Sadie staring back at her already from the backseat, smiling like only the worst kid in class would to a substitute teacher.
Maddie didn't look back at the other passengers because she could still hear them. Scott and Lydia were talking to Stiles and Scott would pose a question to Sadie here and there, only to be met with a sharp, sarcastic answer - as if he weren't used to that on a daily basis. Maddie kicked the bag at her feet, full of weaponry. She wasn't sure which one of the people in the car had braved going back to the Argents to pick up her things but she put her money on it being Stiles. Lydia hadn't left during the day; she was asleep faster than Maddie was. It wouldn't be a smart strategy to send Scott, what with the tension between him and the Argents. Sadie didn't care enough to go out of her way.
It was strange to think that Sunnydale was so close to Beacon Hills all this time, that whole communities lived through its collapse. She only knew a handful of people who were there and, somehow, it never felt quite real. They felt a tremor rattle their homes and schools and businesses and they saw the news coverage and the articles. Sunnydale was real, a real town with more than monsters and witches and slayers. People lived there, went to school there, bought their groceries there. There were probably neighborhood watches and unions and book clubs and morning traffic...and then, suddenly, there wasn't.
Did Buffy and the others think about that when they drove to Beacon Hills? Did they know how close they were to it? Did it hurt to think about or was it a relief? She didn't want to think about it but her brain kept going as she closed her eyes for a moment.
"I don't get it though," Stiles said. "Why the world? Like, actually destroying the whole world? What's the point?"
"Well, you look like a nerd," Sadie said, leaning forward towards the front seats, "so why would, I don't know, Lex Luthor try to destroy the world?"
"He wouldn't. Lex Luthor wants power, which is why he hates Superman so much. If anything this is the kind of psycho schtick that-" Stiles paused and Maddie opened her eyes, glancing over at him while he was focused on the road. His jaw was set as he looked through the rear view mirror, most likely at a grinning Sadie. "You don't care."
"I really don't," Sadie said with a laugh in her voice.
Maddie's nerves were past shot and were instead being sharpened into tiny points that were directed solely towards Sadie, because it felt easier for the moment. It was easier to direct her anger and paranoia towards Sadie because of what she'd done to Allison and her sudden willingness to help them. There was only so far the "I hate vampires more than slayers" excuse could go and Maddie was already beyond it. It had nothing to do with what Sadie was, honestly; Maddie knew there were good people who were once vengeance demons and that demons in general weren't always evil beasts. Xander would talk to her about Anya in such vivid detail that Maddie almost felt like she knew her. She didn't, of course; Anya was long dead, killed in the very place they were now heading.
What made Sadie untrustworthy was the way she spoke and acted. She didn't give a damn about them and would sooner throw any one of them under the bus to save her own ass. There was a real chance that something terrible was going to happen on this trip and Sadie wouldn't come to anyone's aid. Maddie wasn't quite sure yet if she'd do any differently if the shoe was on the other foot.
Maddie's eyes went back to the road as silence enveloped the inside of the jeep. Something in her gut was taking hold of her and she desperately wanted to turn around and go back to Beacon Hills, something stronger than anytime she stood face to face with wolves or vampires. The stories that Stiles found on Sunnydale couldn't even mention the town's name, like it was too dangerous of a secret. Like uttering it would summon something wicked. What Stiles did find though were the stranger occurrences that happened to those who had been there since it became a mass grave. Cars found at the edge of the pit, dozens of missing people over the near decade and no bodies found.
There were no photos in the pictures, aside from the shots of smiling teenagers who would most likely never be found. Maddie had never been to a hellmouth, especially a destroyed one, and couldn't imagine anything that was so dangerous that a former alpha werewolf wouldn't tread on its soil.
"You still haven't answered my question - what's down there?" Maddie asked Peter just as he started to leave.
"Ghosts, more or less. Memories of the dead so strong, they don't need to touch you to kill you. Every horror ever bestowed on that damn town is waiting to tear you apart."
Ghosts. A town of poltergeists stuck in a massive hole in the earth. Maddie could handle vampires or demons or whatever else that was physically in front of her. Ghosts were something intangible, more concerned with your mind and how they could break that first. They appeared when they wanted you to see them and made noise when they wanted you to hear them. Some touched and possessed and - if they were angry - made their homes into places of immense sound and imagery and violence.
There was no clear way to hurt something without flesh or bone, not in a physical way, but - if they wanted it enough - a ghost could inflict pain on others. It was the one monster that could still made Maddie afraid but no one in the car could know that as they inched ever closer to the last place they should ever go. Maddie's chest tightened and she gripped the strap of her duffel bag on the floor of the jeep as if gravity left her entirely and that bag was the only thing keeping her from falling off the face of the earth.
They were headed to Sunnydale. If they survived, Buffy was definitely going to kill them for this.
The beat of silence made Maddie take a breath. "The kind of psycho schtick that what?"
"Huh?" Stiles asked and Maddie felt several pairs of eyes on her.
Maddie flicked her stare from the road to Stiles, who still looked confused. "...You said Lex Luthor wouldn't destroy the world."
She wondered if Stiles would take the bait and keep talking. His rambling was the only thing keeping her nerves in check and she wasn't sure if it was the white noise of constant conversation or that Stiles' voice was a sort of comfort.
Stiles took his eyes off of the road for a moment and looked at her, first in wonder and then with a barely noticeable but appreciative smile. He turned back to the road, probably trying to avoid getting distracted. "Um...Well, Lex Luthor isn't a 'destroy the world' type of guy, but there are other characters that are."
"Like who?" Maddie asked and Sadie groaned loudly like the conversation caused her physical pain. All the more reason.
A grin was forming on Stiles' face but his eyes didn't leave the road. "Like Thanos or Darkseid or, on a smaller and way more messed up scale, the Joker..."
"Dark side?" Maddie said out loud, familiarity rising from the back of her brain. She pushed her fear to the edges of her thoughts and reached into her memory; as far back as she could for the one nerdy thing she could think of. "You mean the Star Wars thing? Like, the 'dark side of the force'...?"
One of the few memories she still clung to of her brother was watching the first three Star Wars on Christmas Day and whaling on each other with plastic lightsabers. Jack had covered his mouth with his hand, breathed dramatically, and - with his red lightsaber raised - asked Maddie to join him on the dark side. (Eight year old Maddie then announced that Luke was dumb and Princess Leia was the only reason he wasn't around to get burned up on his dumb farm.) That was her last Christmas at home and she forced herself to think about it for every Christmas after that until the memory helped more than hurt.
A loud, choking cough sounded from the backseat, which made Maddie whirl around. She saw Scott, with a closed fist in front of his mouth and the beginnings of a smile on his face. He was looking out the window at the pitch black scenery. Maddie furrowed her brows and turned back to Stiles, who was grinning much wider now but looked like he was fighting it. She wanted to ask if she said something funny.
"Oh my god, are we there yet?" Sadie groaned and Lydia cut her off.
Not just cut off - shouted.
"Of course!" Lydia said, overly loud like an unexpected hiccup. It sounded so out of place that dread coursed through Maddie. "Of course she won't...understand. I'm...I'm beyond her understanding."
"Understand what?" Maddie asked before anyone else could speak. "Who are you talking to?"
She looked at Lydia in the side mirror, the girl's eyes focused out the window still but narrowed, like she was attempting to see through a fog. Lydia shook her head slightly, blinking a few times.
"Is she doing that thing again?" Sadie asked, her tone exasperated as she waved a hand around flippantly. "The human Ouija board thing?"
Sadie explained what happened with Lydia the night she saved Maddie, vaguely at least. Lydia channeled something, a conversation Sadie had with someone long dead. It wasn't quite out of the realm of possibility, what with Lydia's strange behavior and spot on intuition lately. Something was still happening to her and Maddie was sure Sadie knew more than she let on. In fact, Sadie was the one that told Maddie that Lydia needed to go with them.
"Your friend's a whack job but she's a whack job that we need at the moment. Like a paranormal bloodhound - with better bone structure."
"We? Like I'm going to let you go with us?"
"Like you'd trust me to stay here? Look, I'm the only one besides Peter that's even been to Sunnydale. I should still know the way for the most part."
"You've been to Sunnydale? Since when?"
"A friend invited me to a wedding a long time ago."
"And why would I go anywhere with you?"
"Yeah...weird, right?" Sadie had sighed like it was the most laborious thing she'd done all day. "Like it or not, you need me. If something does attack, your beta wolf is all you have. You've got no choice if you want to make it out alive."
Lydia took in a long, sharp breath and winced. "I'm more than that. More than flesh... More... more than blood."
As Lydia said the word blood like there was bile in her throat, Stiles threw a worried glance at Maddie. She shrugged as Scott asked, "Guys, we need to do something. We need to help her. She looks like she's in pain."
"No, we need her to keep going." Sadie swatted Scott's hand just before he reached for Lydia. "Last time I was in Sunnydale, there was an actual road we could follow. I can only get us so far and if this is happening...we're probably getting close."
"Or we're finding something worse," Stiles said, glancing up at his rear view mirror.
Maddie turned towards the windshield again, feeling as though they weren't even driving anymore, but tumbling into a bottomless pit. "I've listened to stories about Sunnydale for half my life. There's nothing worse."
There was a long, tense silence as they waited for Lydia to speak again. The pitch black out of Maddie's window looked darker than before, like there was nothing at all, only the road ahead. The sky was overcast now, the waning moon hidden behind a wall of clouds. Maddie didn't like this; she didn't like the idea that what Lydia just said wasn't really said by her. Lydia was a puppet and something else might be invading her and controlling her words. Again, Maddie had the sudden, paralyzing thought of wanting to leave. She wanted to go back to Beacon Hills immediately and never come back here. She jumped when a white interstate sign swept past her vision suddenly, thinking it was a person.
"My name will be on everyone's lips," Lydia said, her voice low, almost a whisper. "But not-...Not yet."
Maddie turned to Stiles, who was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. She was rigid in her seat, feeling as though this, whatever Lydia was saying or was being forced to say, was for her. The darkness outside was more than darkness, it was a living thing surrounding them - living was probably the wrong word to use though. Maddie was being swallowed up by something made of hate and teeth, something that knew what she was and wanted her to suffer for it.
"I can be patient. She's exactly..." There was a pause as Lydia's words died on her lips. "Exactly where I want her to be. And so are you."
This sent a chill through Maddie, who was focused on the road. She couldn't make herself look through the side mirror at Lydia. She knew somehow Lydia wouldn't be the face she'd be staring at anymore. She didn't imagine a monster or the girl she knew, but another person - or some type of dead thing - with a slender, female frame staring at her with black holes for eyes. Maybe a demon, maybe a slayer who died there. Maddie imagined a girl waiting just behind her in her delicate rags of clothing which covered her peeling, decaying skin. Skin like wet paper,  pale gray-green, glowing like the moonlight hitting moss and other growth crawling over stone mausoleums at night.
When she took a moment to listen closer, she could still hear Lydia whimpering and she imagined the creature, haggard and black-eyed, dragging her withered form into the car. Maddie could see the woman she created in her head, this thing with matted hair so black the light from the window would simply be absorbed into it, reaching for Lydia perhaps to find something she lost in life - or, the more likely scenario, to tear the muscle from Lydia's bones with her jagged, rotten teeth. To leave them all in a pool of their own blood and quiet her bleating.
"So, what, you think you'd get your soul back..." Lydia's voice was growing steadier, which was more frightening. Whatever was speaking was having less problems getting through. Still, they were fragments of statements, disjointed and making less and less sense. "Why d'you think I sold mine?"
The sound Lydia made just after was so sudden and unexpected that Maddie jumped. It was a laugh - a high-pitched, hysterical laugh as if something was mocking them. Like it was a game. Stiles must've jumped as well because she felt the jeep jerk for a second. Once Lydia's manic laugh faded, Maddie slightly turned to see Sadie and Scott. Sadie was gripping Scott's upper arm, most likely to keep him in place, and Scott was staring straight at Lydia like he was waiting for something.
Maddie could hear Lydia catching her breath and clearing her throat. "You thought you'd be your own man, and I respect that...but you never will."
The sentence was strange, like the end of it had a completely different set of emotions from the beginning. There was a solemn tone to Lydia's voice suddenly. Maddie noticed Sadie glancing at her with an 'I told you so' look on her face and Maddie went back to staring forward, out the window.
"You'll always be mine. You'll always be in the dark, with me."
And, for a moment, Maddie fought with everything she had to not think of Marie. Marie, who said they were the same. Marie, who wanted more than Maddie could give. Always, always more. Marie's face was overlapping with the creature Maddie made up in her head and she couldn't will it away. This was the Marie she didn't want to know, didn't want to see. This was the one that was rotting underground in San Francisco, in a grave Maddie never visited. She knew she'd see her in the mirror if she looked. She knew, even when she didn't.
"...Singing our little songs. You like our little songs, don't you? You've always liked them, right from the beginning." Lydia lowered her voice again, this time more like a growl than a whisper. A growl just behind Maddie, almost on her neck. "And that's where we're going."
Something in Maddie was pulling at her, fighting against her willpower. Something wanted to look at Lydia, like peeking from under your blanket to see if the scariest part of a movie's over, even when you're sure it wasn't. Maddie swallowed and flicked her eyes over to the mirror. Lydia was already staring at her, green eyes wide and focused and mouth quirked in a smile. Her face was pale, gaunt in the darkness like the night was a tar pit and this was all that was left of her. She didn't look like Lydia; she looked dead or something more terrible than that. She looked like she was reaching for Maddie from her fresh grave, rising through the loose dirt.
"Right back to the beginning. Not the bang. Not the word." Lydia's eyes were full of wonder and she was simply breathing the words now, like there was nothing holding them back. "The true beginning."
Maddie wanted nothing more than to look away, to close her eyes and block out her fear that was gripping her chest and keeping her still. She wanted to go back. She didn't want this.
"Look at you...trying to do what's right, just like her," Lydia said, smile growing as the word 'her' echoed in Maddie's brain.
Buffy. Whatever was looking at Maddie, it wasn't Lydia and it knew her. It could see through her to her darkest pieces. It could see Buffy like an translucent image over Maddie's reflection. It wanted to talk to her because of Buffy.
Lydia shook her head slowly, mockingly. "You still don't get it. It's not about right, not about wrong."
Two hands gripped both of Maddie's arms tightly, digging fingernails into her skin. She could feel cold air just on the back of her neck and hear heavy, labored breathing. Maddie still couldn't look away from the mirror. She knew that Lydia was just behind her but, in the mirror, Lydia hadn't moved. She was still staring at Maddie, smiling with wide eyes and lips unmoving as she pressed manicured nails into Maddie's skin. Still staring and still smiling, even when she heard Lydia's voice in her ear.
"It's about power."
She wanted to scream. Maddie wanted to scream at the top of her lungs when something bright white flashed across the windshield and the jeep swerved violently to the left, so hard that the vehicle tipped and tumbled and rolled. It felt like gravity had been turned off as Maddie lifted from her seat, only to be tugged down by her seat belt and the same pair of hands from before. Everyone else was yelling and screaming now as the world spun in slow motion.
This. This would be the way they would die - not standing, not fighting. Instead, strapped to seats, falling and crashing.
She knew that she should think of Beacon Hills, of Allison, of Scott and Lydia, of that whole town descending into hell. Instead, she stupidly, foolishly thought of Stiles and that if she could turn and see him, she might actually let out one choking sob as her last act on earth. Of all things, she wouldn't even care for her own death. And, finally, she wondered if this was anything like what Marie felt when she saw Maddie running toward her in that alley, in the rain.
Heat and pain and blackness flooded her just before her head hit the window with a jerk.
☽ † ☾
There was someone in the road. That's what Stiles remembered.
There was someone in the road, a man maybe a little older than him who wore similar clothes and had short, black hair. His face was rounder than Stiles' and his eyes were much darker. Someone so clear, even as they were going so fast.
For a second, Stiles thought that he'd hit the stranger. Then he remembered what happened next. He remembered swerving and toppling and something tearing. Something painful. In that moment, he thought he was dead. He thought that he must be. That's when he found himself lying on a hardwood floor.
He didn't need any time to focus, even though he'd been knocked out before and his eyes adjusting to the light was common at first. Instead, he was immediately met with a low ceiling with a dim overhead light. To one side, there was a large chair with a mud-colored fabric pattern. He jerked up, which was a mistake, and clutched his forehead. The world tilted for a moment and an ache in his head pulsed almost with a rhythm. It was a good sign that he could still feel pain because pain meant he was conscious and, more importantly, alive. It also dawned upon him how awful that sounded.
As the throbbing in his head dulled, he felt something odd crawl over him and nag at his brain. That was one of the things that sucked the most about this newer, terrifying life he lived now: there was never really a way to get used to the feeling of not being alone in a room, even when reality and logic dictated you were.
No one else was in the room when he looked around. The couch and the chairs were empty and the dark corridor was bare as well. He also knew better than that. He looked around the room again, at the chair next to him and the embroidered brown couch directly in front of him, at the wooden coffee table and large windows with thin, white drapes.
Beyond the window was pitch black; no street lights or cars or any indication of other houses.
Stiles' eyes wandered over to the dark hall, just beyond a writing desk. A foyer, with the vague outline of a front door. His stare stayed on the door, waiting for something to jump out at him or to shift in the darkness. He waited for something to confirm the feeling in his gut, the unease. The horrible reason he was kept alive - or in some sort of conscious state. He waited and he watched and he listened.
Something was cloying at him, wriggling into Stiles' memory as he slowly got to his feet. He remembered Lydia's words and the manic laughter spilling from her lips, cutting through the thick air. It sounded distorted in a way, like an old record that was played too many times and dipped off-key. It was almost worse when it faded. It was worse because, in that silence, he knew that whatever possessed Lydia was still there, watching.
"Scott!" It was always the first name that came to mind, naturally. Scott had to be okay; that wasn't even sort of optional. Scott agreed to come along out of kindness, because he didn't want anyone to die. He called the name again, louder, panic rising as it echoed. He swallowed when he thought to try a different name. "Maddie!"
That one didn't echo. The edges were muted, like the sound absorbed into the walls. Like something took it. The crawl over his skin of being watch returned as though there were thousands of eyes, a hushed audience, studying him like he was on stage performing. He wasn't just staring into the dark, unable to look away, but the darkness was staring right back. Part of him knew something was inching closer, reaching out to him.
His eyes caught something new back in the living room at the edge of his vision, on the couch. It wasn't as if anything  moved, but like something was there the whole time and he was just now noticing it. He didn't want to give it attention, hoping things would stay as they were if he paid it no mind. Still, something was nagging at him again, pulling his eyes toward the couch.
Stiles turned and, for a moment, his breathing stopped - a plug in the base of his throat.
There was a woman on the couch, lying still with her arms and legs slack, her mouth and eyes open. Her eyes were wide, unfocused and unblinking.
He didn't need to approach her or listen for a heartbeat to know she was dead.
Stiles jumped and stumbled backwards, hitting his lower back sharply on something hard that banged against the wall and caused the room to fill with noise - the clatter and crash of wood and glass and porcelain falling to the floor.
He turned to the noise and saw a wooden desk and a clutter of broken knick-knacks beside it on the floor but they were still out of focus as his heart hammered behind his ribs. The feeling from before returned, the one that that he always trusted. The one that told him there was something right behind him and all he could imagine is the dead woman standing up and reaching for him.
He turned back to find nothing.
The couch was empty and undisturbed. The woman who was sprawled on the couch was gone.
He wondered if she'd gotten up and dragged her own lifeless form into a different part of the house for him to find later. He took a careful step back to distance himself from where she'd been and heard the crunch of glass under his sneaker, remembering the broken decor and looking down at it.
This time, everything in his vision focused and became real. There were little porcelain figurines, shattered into pieces of arms and legs and cracked, cartoonish faces with large eyes. Some, or at least the ones still with whole faces, wore pained expressions and their mouths were drawn into black arches. They were all screaming, at least they looked like they were. He didn't take the time to count how many were there but something in his head flashed the number '5'.
There was something more intriguing on the floor, something clearer and more vibrant. A picture frame also fell, the glass covering the photo broken into large jagged pieces under his shoe. Stiles moved his foot and bent down with an unsteady hand to grasp the corner of the picture and shake it free of glass.
In the photo, there were three smiling faces: a black haired boy that was maybe Stiles' age and a red headed girl, both of them smiling so wide that they must've been laughing as the picture was taken. Above them, looking down at them with a smile of her own, was a girl with short blonde hair. Her smile was so big that it reached her eyes, full of warmth and joy. If it wasn't for his common sense, he wouldn't have even recognized her as the same woman that siphoned all of the light out of Maddie's eyes in an instant on the steps of the high school with one sentence.
He knew all three faces, none of them with a hint of the people he met a few weeks ago. Just kids. The thought felt like a drop of ink that was expanding into a cloud of murky water in his head. Just like us.
A darkness settled over him, a literal darkness. In a blink, the lights were gone. There was no sound to indicate it, no click or pop of electricity cutting, just blackness as if he the lights weren't on at all. For a second, he had to force himself to remember if they were. Every moment felt disconnected from the previous one, so much so that he was struggling to remember if he woke up here or if he'd wandered here and was attacked.
He didn't remember waking up.
Shouldn't he remember that?
When his focus returned to the room, his eyes already adjusted to the darkness, seeing the same outlines and shapes from before. He was still holding the photo but it was too dark to see the faces in it. It slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor noiselessly as the feeling of something bearing down on him crawled up his neck again.
This time, he still had feeling in his limbs and his head didn't feel quite so heavy. This time, he moved as quickly as he could to another room - hopefully, one with a working light switch.
He rounded the corner, passing a long table with no chairs. He didn't let himself think about it too much as he nearly collided with the island in the center of the kitchen, although realizing he was in a kitchen was more a secondary thought until he stopped. It was secondary because of the amount of moonlight filtering through the windows, illuminating the tile and countertops. It also showed that he wasn't alone.
"And where the hell have you been?!" Sadie's eyes were already on him and her voice managed to startle him a bit.
Rushing into the room from the opposite hallway was the slightly disheveled demon and Lydia, who looked equal parts terrified and intrigued. The first thought that sprang into Stiles' head was Lydia's voice in the car, malicious and gleeful, laughing and talking about power. He remembered not being able to stop the car when he saw the man in the road. Still, he knew that it wasn't Lydia who did this to them; it was almost like something had linked her to the town, like she was the chain between all of them.
Stiles rushed over to Lydia but kept a bit of distance, remembering the panic that filled his head what seemed like hours ago. "Are you alright?"
In the background, he heard Sadie groan. "She's fine."
"I'm fine," Lydia said, her tone short and familiar. There was an edge he hadn't heard since the night they were locked in the school, a hoarse and jagged sound that enveloped her voice. "We thought the house was empty."
Stiles breathed a small sigh and gave himself a second to look around him. The island and counters were all bare and clean aside from a few appliances. A microwave was tucked in a corner by the coffee machine and the sink beneath the window was free of dishes. The fridge behind Sadie and Lydia, on the other hand, was small and older and cluttered with cartoony magnets holding up lists and recipes and more photos. The words and the pictures were out of focus again, like his eyes were a lens someone had messed with because the details of the room weren't what he should be caring about. Still, last time this happened, he found himself in a room with a dead woman. He furrowed his brows and replayed Lydia's words in his head. "Wait, you didn't hear me?"
Lydia blinked and looked at him as if he was speaking in gibberish. Stiles then looked to Sadie, who was alarmingly silent and wide eyed.
"Did you guys hear anything?" he asked, his voice quieter. He could feel his heart beat pick up speed as he remembered hitting the desk and the crash that followed. "I, um- I broke something in the living room. A picture frame."
Lydia shook her head and looked to Sadie, who seemed confused. "Wait, where's the living room?"
"What are you talking about? I just came from the living room," Stiles said, not sure if he was more anxious or annoyed. He gave Sadie an equally curious stare. "What kind of house doesn't have a living room?"
"I literally said that two minutes ago!" Sadie shot Lydia a look, but Lydia was too busy looking beyond Stiles.
"Was that room there before?" Lydia asked.
"What room?" Stiles asked and looked behind him at the threshold he entered through moments before. A small, blue room connected the kitchen to the living room, a room he didn't even give himself time to acknowledge before. He was sure he went through it, though, because he could see the desk in the living room from where he was standing now. "That's where I came from."
"That...whole area wasn't there last time we were in the kitchen," Sadie said as Lydia moved past them to the small room.
"Last time?" Stiles asked. "Wait, how long have you two been wandering around?"
"I don't know, an hour? Ten minutes?" Sadie snapped. "It's not like I can check my phone."
His phone. He'd forgotten about his phone completely. He reached into his back pocket and found nothing. Not his phone, not his keys. He patted down his other pockets once over and then again. Finding nothing, his shoulders slumped.
"Yeah, I could've told you that," Sadie said.
He rolled his eyes and looked at her again. "Have you tried to leave?"
"Door's locked."
"You're a demon. Can't you just..." Stiles found himself gesturing pushing something large.
Sadie blinked and stared at him for an extra beat. "Mime until it opens?"
"Push it open with your demon strength? Break it?" Stiles listed off, his annoyance needling at him. "Something useful?"
"Clearly, those rules don't apply - and even then, I'm still more useful than you."
"Look, it doesn't matter," Lydia cut in, whipping around to give both Stiles and Sadie a scrutinizing glare. "We can't leave yet anyway. There's something they want us to see."
"They?" Stiles repeated as Lydia turned back and began a slow walk to the living room. "Better reason to leave, right?"
Lydia stopped just shy of the threshold. "I don't think the thing that put us here was bad. I think something's helping us."
"Not all of the somethings," he said, the image of the corpse easing back into his head. He'd seen corpses before; he'd seen more death than he was ever comfortable talking about. Still, the woman he saw brought in something extra outside of his fear. It brought panic. It brought pain. It brought him back to something he worked so hard to bury, like someone else's hurt overlapped with his and made a new, fresh pain.
Lydia turned back to him, only slightly so that he saw only part of her face. "Everything about this place is rotting, but...I don't know. There's good here. I know there is. I mean, I think I know."
"Can we just get this over with and find the stupid ashes and leave?" Sadie asked, breaking the solemn quiet that spread over them temporarily. Her voice was overly loud and forceful, like she had to sound more apathetic than she felt, like she had to mask whatever she was really feeling.
"And find the others right?" Stiles asked, not buying the act and not caring much for Sadie's plan of action.
Sadie rolled her eyes. "Oh my god! Yes, Stiles, we won't leave without your little crush."
"And Scott," he added, zooming right by the accusation, unable to find the patience to entertain Sadie.
Sadie sighed and walked over to Lydia, saying over her shoulder, "The fact that I said 'crush' and you assumed I was talking about the slayer and not Scott is predictable and disappointing."
The comment threw him off for a moment, obviously not expecting an answer quite like that. He shook his head of it and followed the girls past the small sitting room and right to the threshold of the living room. He didn't want to look in there, feeling as though he'd see it again, the body on the couch with its blank stare. That it was always there, even when he couldn't see it.
"We have to go in there," Lydia said, her voice soft. Stiles was beginning to wonder how she knew these things. Why was she possessed? Why was she talking about the dead like she knew what they were thinking or feeling?
"Not sure we should do that," Stiles argued, not surprised that he sounded like the least insane person in the room. "We're locked in a house with no powers and I'm pretty sure we're going to be killed by dead people."
"How do you know that?" Sadie asked, which only infuriated Stiles more.
He didn't bother looking at the girl. "Because I saw one."
Lydia waved a hand back at them a few times as if shooing them away. "Shut up. We need to make it clear that we're not a threat."
"Excuse you?" Sadie said with wide eyes. She folded her arms, looking more like a five year old than an all-powerful demon.
"Really? Is your pride worth your life?" Stiles asked her but didn't give her time to reply. "Actually, don't answer that."
He could tell that Sadie's jaw was clenched when she looked back at Lydia. "Why is it so important to be nonthreatening anyway?"
Stiles saw Lydia swallow as she peeked around the corner stiffly. When she spoke, her voice lowered to shaken whisper. "Because it's her house. We're just guests."
"Who's house?" Sadie asked, not bothering to lower her tone.
Lydia was still looking into the living room, terror surfacing in her eyes. "I'm...not sure."
Stiles breathed out quietly, fear and paranoia crawling over his skin again like thousands of ants. "I think I know. On the couch, she was..."
"She's not on the couch," Lydia said, silencing him. "I think she's on the floor."
Curiosity was always Stiles' weakness. He always had to know. He had to have all of the facts or else he felt like he had nothing. Maybe that's why, in an instant, he poked his head into the living room. It was a strange and masochistic urge that he wished that he could shut off sometimes, especially now, wherever they were. His eyes first went to the couch, which was bare now, just as before - but there was something new in his peripheral. His stare darted to the floor between the coffee table and the couch. The table had been moved maybe a foot farther away from the couch to make room for a long, black bag, the type he saw at crime scenes. The type of bag he'd seen a lot of lately.
It wasn't empty. The bag wasn't flat on the ground, but instead a bit less than a foot tall and full of lumps. He wasn't sure what Lydia wanted them to do aside from sit in a room with a woman in a body bag, which was creepy enough when Lydia wasn't talking about dead people like she knew them personally.
"Let's just get this over with, okay?" Sadie added, peering into the living room as well. She was the first to walk in, although her back was rigid and her arms were still folded. "We don't have time to waste here."
"Be careful," Lydia whispered.
"Why?" Sadie called back, but stopped short of the chair closest to them as half of the bag raised straight up, making a perfectly defined 'L'. Sadie took a step back.
In a pained, horrible voice, Lydia said, "Because we're not supposed to move the body."
☽ † ☾
Maddie gasped for air the moment she woke up, life flooding into her like a jolt of electricity. As she sucked in quick, shallow breaths, the cold bit at her limbs, especially from the part of her touching the ground, which she was currently on. Everything around her was pitch black but beginning to take form and sharpen in the darkness. There was a spasm in her neck as she began to sit up, hands at her sides on the icy linoleum. She was expecting pavement or dirt under her fingers - or maybe metal from the car.
The car. The accident. Lydia's hands clamped around her arms. The moment slammed back into her memory, bright and loud and painful. The car had swerved off the road and she wasn't sure why. Stiles had suddenly jerked the wheel, as if he was in the wrong lane avoiding oncoming traffic. Maddie couldn't think of why else he'd turn so suddenly, endangering all of them. Possibly killing them.
She wasn't dead though...right?
No, she wasn't. There was no concrete proof but she her brain was telling her that this was no afterlife. It was telling her that she could feel the ground and the pain in her neck and even her bruised ribs from the night prior. Her body felt real and sore, but there was something wrong. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark and shapes were becoming objects, none of them being the jeep or her friends or even the outside. She looked straight ahead, finding nothing but blackness so thick that it could've been a wall several feet away.
"Hello?" The moment she called out, the echo that came back was so clear and human and not quite her that it sent a chill down her spine. "Lydia?" She couldn't quite explain why the first name she thought to call out was Lydia's, but it had something to do with the last moments in the car. Lydia was channeling something, tuned in to something that immediately targeted Maddie. Lydia had to know something; she had to be alive. Still, there was nothing. "Scott? Stiles?"
She didn't call for Sadie. She wasn't sure now would be the best time to run into Sadie alone.
Maddie looked around her, finding a wall of windows to her left with the light of a waning moon shining in - in where, she wasn't sure. The air was laced with the scent of lemon cleaning products, although stale like no one had cracked a window in weeks. She struggled to stand up, shaky on her feet like she was unsure if they'd still work. Her boots squeaked on the tile, a sound that seemed to bounce off the walls for ages. Smoothing back her hair, she took a careful step toward the windows and looked outside.
It was a courtyard, with grass so green that the color was still vibrant at night. In the grass was a red bricked path with tables and benches, all stone and all empty, and a staircase leading to a second level. She followed the windows until she found a door to the courtyard and pushed it open, just shy of the unnatural darkness. She took a careful step outside and poked her head out. The stillness was strange - false, no different than inside. She slipped through the door and listened for the metallic click to know it closed, breathing a relieved sigh when she heard it. There was no wind, no change in temperature, just the same stagnant air.
She walked further into the grass and looked up at the moon and the stars. Actually, there were no stars, just a thin crescent in the sky. Something about it drew her in, something that made it feel massive and closer than it was, so much so that she felt her hand twitch at her side and her arm rise up towards the sky. It was so close, close enough to-
A thought shot into her head, waking up her nerves with a jolt. This felt so precise and familiar, like deja vu, but nothing about this place should've felt familiar in the slightest. She'd never been here before in her life, wherever here was. Maddie forced herself to look away, to bring herself back to the present.
Where her eyes landed was opposite of the building she exited, where the grass turned to concrete stairs and descended to another part of the building. It seemed to wrap around her like a maze, unable to show her the way out. She took several careful steps in the direction of the stairs until the sound of her footsteps went from the rustle of grass to clean, rhythmic thuds on the concrete. She kept going, descended the stairs, until she felt herself kick something solid and it scratched along the paved ground.
Maddie looked down and, at first, she thought that whatever she kicked was covered in blood. She blinked and tilted her head as she squatted down to get a closer look. It was a thin book with a deep, dark red cover and words outlined in white against a generic illustration of three people in a row looking up at the sun. The illustration didn't keep Maddie's attention for long when she read the words on the cover, all capitalized and searing into her brain.
SUNNYDALE HIGH '99
"THE FUTURE IS OURS!"
The high school. She thought about looking back for a moment at the part of the building she exited but was too transfixed with the yearbook on the ground. Even if she did look back, she was sure of where she was now either way. She'd woken up at the high school, at the hellmouth itself. Xander always made jokes about that, about going to school on a hellmouth and the horrors that came with it. Of course, she wasn't sure of the year they graduated, but she was sure she was about to find out.
She took a breath and held it as she reached for the book, running her fingers over the faux leather binding before lifting it up and examining it. It was blackened on the edges, charred by the looks of it. She opened the cover, hoping it would stay together long enough to flip through. Something told her that taking souvenirs wasn't an option when there was still no proof that she was still among the living and she was standing in a place that no longer existed. She needed to see though; she needed to make sure that this was no coincidence.
She began flipping through the pages - the seniors being listed first with their larger photos and little paragraphs made the job easier by far - scanning the last names for something familiar as the photos smiled up at her. Blaisdell? No. Chase? No. She turned the page. Epps? Gittleston? No. She knew she was getting close - close to something she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Harris. She grinned and then frowned again. There were two and she knew both of them.
Harris, Adrian. He looked young enough to be fourteen, not eighteen, with the same haircut and glasses that were too big and awkward for his head. Genuinely happy, like the world had yet to punch him in the gut and smash his dreams to pieces before his very eyes.
Quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
Activities: National Honor Society, Science Club, Swim Team
She made a note to erase that last one from her memory forever. The rest was all so...standard. Predictable nerd things, almost teen movie-esque. If nothing else though, this was something she could use. He probably knew more than he let on. Still, she wasn't here for this and went to the next photo.
Harris, Alexander. She'd never seen him without the eye patch. He was much thinner here, which made his face look longer and his grin overpower it.
Quote: "Note to self: less talk."
It was something so small but so undeniably Xander that Maddie could hear it in his voice as clear as day. She sighed, guilt poking and prodding at her. She was mad at Buffy, but she had nothing against Xander. If anything, he had always been around, even when everyone else was long gone. He was always just a call away. He was probably the closest thing she'd ever have to a familial connection and suddenly her chest hurt like a weight was crushing it. It was suffocating looking through this, but she was sure that was the exact reason she had to keep going.
This was the first thing she found. There was a reason for it. There had to be.
She flipped through a few more pages, spotting more surnames like Kendall and Levinson and Madison. No one she knew. It was another page before she reached another familiar name.
Rosenberg, Willow. She'd never seen Willow, probably the most badass adult she knew, look so incredibly awkward but, at the same time, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. This was the same woman who still made dorky jokes with Xander and knew as much about science as she knew about magic and melted into a stuttering puddle of half-formed vowel sounds whenever she was around a girl she liked. The girl in the picture with the worried frown for whatever reason was more than likely already at the crux of what she'd become and at the beginning of something else - something massive and frightening and beautiful that would change the whole world.
Under her picture was the quote "Seize the moment" and Maddie couldn't think of anything more fitting.
She didn't even have to flip the page to find the only other name she'd recognize from the Sunnydale High Class of 1999. There was a generic stock picture of a white background and, where a student would be, the cartoony gray and person-like silhouette in a cap and gown. Under the image was the name she'd really been looking for and dreaded finding.
Buffy Summers.
Quote: "Life goes on. Even when it doesn't."
Maddie could feel herself grimacing, could feel her mouth twisting and her throat closing. The words settled in her head and rooted, connecting to everything else she already knew about Buffy. She could hear her voice in them (the everyday voice Maddie first heard from the woman, chipper and edged with snark) and it overlapped seamlessly with the tone Maddie was more accustomed to now - easy but with an underlying sense of distance, as if she was edging away from a more serious and emotional answer. Maybe both were true.
The need to see a younger version of Buffy nudged at her softly. Maddie wanted to know if she could already see the hardness and pain there on that Buffy's face. She wanted to know that the woman who set herself high above everyone ever felt as broken as Maddie and many of the other slayers did. She wasn't quite sure yet if that was out of malice or the yearning to connect. Maddie couldn't help but think that it was both.
She couldn't do it any longer; she couldn't stay looking at this, imagining these people as something other than what she knew. As if she'd summoned it herself with her miserable thoughts, the pages stirred and suddenly whipped around on a nonexistent wind- not so nonexistent that she couldn't hear it as it rustled the pages and the trash on the concrete, though. The air felt still and oddly thick as if something was hanging in it and the pages of the book in her hands being blown a wind that wasn't there rattled her, but not quite as much as what she saw on the page it stopped on.
R.I.P.
The giant letters were scrawled in messy handwriting with black ink over a photo of what appeared to be the front of the school. Maddie felt something in her chest plummet into her stomach with such force that she nearly dropped the yearbook. Of course there was no wind; there couldn't be a wind in a place that no longer existed. She wasn't there, not really. It sent her brain nose-diving into the real issue: where was she? In the pit? At the bottom of it? How far would the illusion go?
The sour stench of the air was stronger now, more defined. It was the smell of rot, heavy and so intense that she could almost taste it. Intense enough to make her drop the book and bury her mouth and nose in the crook of her elbow. Rotting meat, that's what it was. Meat rotting in the sun but also something extra, something almost sickeningly sweet. Something in her brain flickered to life, realizing the familiarity of the smell like she'd smelled it before - or something close to it. She remembered it from abandoned warehouses and cleared out mausoleums and wherever else vampires enjoyed sucking the life out of their victims and leaving their remains behind. It was the odor of the dead, of decaying flesh and organs. Worse, it was so strong that it had to have been several corpses, like they'd been piled together in a heap and left out in the summer sun for days. She knew it was people making the odor because she could still hear the wind, only it didn't sound like wind anymore. It sounded like whispers.
She whipped around in an attempt to escape the smell and her eyes caught something dark and massive, the shadow of something that wasn't there just before your eyes focus and logic returns. She leapt backwards as her eyes focused. A blackened and scaled body that's sheer thickness was bigger than Maddie coiled atop the courtyard, the entire length of it. It wasn't humanoid, but instead a snake like corpse with pieces missing and other parts burnt so badly that Maddie could see the inside of it. It was a snake that she'd likely see in a Godzilla movie, but there was no way something like this could exist in real life. She'd never in her life seen anything like it. She couldn't quite explain it, but she still felt that the smell wasn't coming from the demon corpse. This should've smelled charred, not rotting.
It was a terrible image but Maddie couldn't make herself look away from it; instead, she walked beside it and tried to follow it for however long it went on. She had the horrible urge find the head.
"Murderous little fiend." The whispers were getting louder, filling her ears and her brain, but she heard those words perfectly. The voice was male, aged and distorted as if layered with an unnatural growl, both sounds fading like they were being gasped out.
Maddie kept following the snake's body back up the stairs to the courtyard where pieces of the demon were coiled on top of itself. She made sure not to touch it, dead or not, unsure of what she's do if something under her hand moved. She had no weapons and nowhere near enough strength; there was nothing she could do. There was a large chunk of the snake missing as she found herself nearing the door she walked out from earlier. Burnt scales were hanging from the open wound, the inside of it even darker and shining in the moonlight. It looked almost hollow, no bone or blood left, like something had exploded out of the section and left nothing but scorched flesh. She couldn't quite bring herself to look inside to see if she was right, if there was really nothing left. Instead, she kept walking.
"Do you see what she did to my Faith?"
This time, when the voice - the same voice - spoke, something cold sank into Maddie's skin, right to her core. She stopped like she'd just gotten hit in the head so hard that she the world was moving and tilting and she had to get her bearings. She heard 'Faith' but was sure he didn't mean the Faith that she knew. It couldn't have been that he was talking about a person. He probably only meant the abstract meaning.
She wasn't so stupid to actually believe that. She knew where she was; there would be no coincidence here. Things were too precise, tailored for Maddie specifically, like someone dug into her thoughts and memories and played connect the dots. This posed more questions but ultimately led her to one pressing question: If it was the same Faith, whose Faith was she?
She had unconsciously started walking again and following the corpse when she would pulled away from her thoughts and sent hurdling back to where she was. She blinked and felt her pulse stop for a split second when she saw it - the grayish-green head of the beast, or what was left of it. It was like the head of a dragon, spiked and yellow-eyed with venom dripping from a large fang in its open mouth. Half of the mouth was gone too, like a grenade went off right next to it. Streaks of black stained what was left, the mouth now perpetually open. Both eyes, while still intact and open, were glazed over and still.
She wondered, for a moment, if this was something Buffy had slayed. If the wounds were inflicted by her. Was that why it was being shown to Maddie? Out of spite? To explain why she was stuck here specifically?
As if the whole world had held its breath, the whispering stopped. The silence felt almost razored and violent, as if whatever caused it was something horrific.
There was a twitch, a slight one. Just a small shudder. This would've been fine if it had been from Maddie, but it wasn't. No, the body of the snake had moved.
Maddie didn't even think twice and once she remembered to breathe again, she stumbled backwards and fumbled into a sprint as her hands scraped the red-bricked path. She went in the same door from before, ripping it open and running into the dark hallway until she hit something solid. She nearly fell backwards but hands gripped her arms tightly. She wanted to scream, to struggle and claw at whatever had her. To get away. She hadn't been so frightened in a very long time and it made her something feral.
"Maddie! Maddie, stop!"
She knew that voice. It was clear and loud and so wonderfully familiar. It made her stop struggling and look up at Scott, his eyes wide and terrified even in the dark. Maddie didn't even realize how badly she was hyperventilating until that moment and focused on breathing slower as relief flooded her. She hadn't even realized how much she needed to not be alone until she allowed herself to relax a fraction. "Scott! Oh, thank the gods."
Her words came out as a sigh but the look on Scott's face was far from relief. "I...I don't...where are we?"
"The school," was her first reply, not missing a beat and hoping she was right. The darkness around her wasn't pitch black anymore and there was a line of lockers on her right, pristine and shining in the dim, indirect light. She could still smell it, the sour odor of death settling around them and on top of the stale cleaning product scent. "S-sunnydale high school. We're right over it."
"Right over it?" Scott's eyebrows furrowed as he looked around. "Right over what?"
Her words were running into each other in her urgency. She remembered the snake moving outside and it kept her nerves on high alert. "The hellmouth. The school was built directly on top. We have to get out of here!"
"I know, I... I saw..." he began, his gaze unfocused as his grip loosened on Maddie's arms. He shook his head, most likely also shaking away a memory as he looked back at her in confusion. "Wait. Where are the others?"
Maddie shrugged her shoulders as the cold settled back in to her stomach, thinking about Stiles and Lydia lost somewhere in this place. "I don't know. Maybe in another part of the building?"
"We just have to find them and find the way out," Scott said, his voice wavering, unsteady in its resolve.
"Right," Maddie agreed with a short nod, her voice uncommonly high and unsure. She knew there was a chance they'd never find the others. There was a chance they'd never get out of Sunnydale alive. Still, she couldn't bring herself to voice her standard level of realism this time. For once, she wanted to believe Scott was right. "Shouldn't be too hard."
"Now, that didn't sound confident at all," said a polite southern drawl, masculine and almost teasing. "Maybe I'm hearin' things, but it sounds like you kids need a bit of help."
It was coming from behind Maddie and Scott had clearly heard it as well, his eyes already focused past her to the other end of the hall. Maddie steeled herself to the best of her current ability as she slowly turned around, toward the light of the windows. The shadows looked as if they were moving, taking form, and something slid out of them like they had morphed into a human shape. She wasn't sure that they didn't. It was a man dressed in all black except for the square of white on his collar. A priest - or pastor or whatever? She wasn't one for learning much about religion, unless it had to do with something demonic. His hair was short and brown and he seemed relatively young, maybe in his early thirties. He was smirking, which didn't bode well and there was something more specific than that about him but it felt as though something was blocking her line of thought.
"Who the hell are you?" she asked, eyes narrowed. She didn't want to fight him if she didn't have to; this was a world he was more than likely a part of. He could easily keep them there forever. She was hoping Scott also figured this out and wouldn't do anything rash.
"Me? Oh, well, I'm here to help." His smile was almost genuine but it made him even more terrifying. He stepped forward, further into the light with his hands clasped behind his back.
Maddie rolled her eyes, her muscles still tense and the cold still sitting at the pit of her stomach. "Is that so?"
"Now, young lady, I'm a bit offended by that tone. I'm a man of faith." He frowned and put a hand on his chest for a beat and dropped it again. "Good people lost their lives here. Heroes, occasionally. Don't fool yourself into thinking that only demons died around these parts."
Maddie examined him for a moment before looking back at Scott. He turned back to her and shrugged slightly, his face mirroring her unease but his expression softer than before. Maddie turned back to the man. "...You want to help? How?"
He gestured to the space around him. "You can't tell yet? It knows about you. You're one of those...what do they call 'em? Slayers? It knows you're here."
"It?" Scott asked before Maddie had the chance.
"The hellmouth. What's left, anyway. The very thing that did most of us in and the monsters killed upon its soil. The thing many of us never escape." There was almost a sadness in his voice, a hollowness. He wasn't only admitting what was happening, but what happened to him as far as she could tell. He knew he was dead. None of this was sitting right with Maddie. "We don't have a chance. You do. We all felt it when the five of you were pulled in. I want to help you find your friends and leave this place safely, that's all."
It was too much. Maddie felt utterly helpless, lost in a maze with no end. It was even possible that she had so little control that she would wander these halls until she really did die, if this man was telling the truth and she wasn't dead already. If Lydia wasn't dead. If Sadie wasn't dead. If Stiles wasn't dead. She swallowed and stared at the man, the apparition. "You never answered the question-"
The man smiled as if he was embarrassed. "Who am I? I apologize. Where are my manners? You can call me Caleb."