From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski - Chapter 52: Chapter 52

They dragged her.
Maddie's vision blurred at the edges and the room spun. Her thoughts weighed her down and meandered, disconnected and directionless, opening doors to old rooms that no longer existed in her head. There was nothing left.
Nothing.
She tried to fight someone off but the fatigue and dizziness made her hands clumsy and slow. By the time she started to go limp, she noticed they were no longer underground at all. The breeze brushed against her face and the waning moon hung high over her head. She could smell the pine somewhere beyond the stronger scent of decay.
There were trees everywhere. Thin and wiry black veins against the moonlight.
Her head drooped for a second. It was so heavy now. Too heavy.
The arms keeping her upright left her and she collapsed on the ground onto her side, in the grass, dirt, and dead leaves.
She blinked in and out of consciousness and, for a moment, thought it was raining. The grass turned to asphalt and the blood on the ground wasn't hers; there was a puddle of it, diluted by rain water and spreading. Blonde curls turned light amber to deep red. Blue eyes stared at her.
She blinked slowly again and it was a man with short black hair and a strong jaw. She couldn't tell what the color of his eyes were; the swelling around them made them small and shadowed. Nonetheless, they stared back at her, blank and still. Harper. When her vision blurred, she thought he almost looked like her brother, Jack - or what Jack might look like now. The thought made her chest hurt.
It took a lot of effort to shake her head awake, to stop the slow blinking out of reality. She raised her head slightly, and narrowed her gaze ahead to better focus. Her eyes trailed from the trees down to the ground, finding a clear and distinct line of dirt close by.
Not dirt.
Ashes.
A shadow walked into her line of vision, blurred at the edges. Someone knelt down beside her. She expected the man from before, the vampire who spoke in riddles with a voice like a southern preacher, like gravel in molasses. Like Caleb's voice as it unraveled before Sunnydale spat them out.
The frame was too thin and small.
Sadie looked on at Maddie, and disappointment turned to anger because anger was something she could properly handle. It gave her clarity and adrenaline. It made the world defined and still.
"You doing okay, sport?" Sadie asked.
Maddie tried to speak but the words sounded garbled and hoarse, turning into mush in her mouth.
Sadie leaned closer. "What was that?"
"I..." Maddie tried, focusing on every word like taking the first few steps on a newly healed leg. "...will...end you."
Sadie's eyes widened but there was no fear. She smirked with the corner of her mouth and stared at Maddie like she found a four leaf clover or an unpolished gem half buried in dirt. Like something rare. "That's the spirit."
Maddie began to push up onto her forearm to meet Sadie's eyes but Sadie stood up and brushed the dirt from her jeans.
"You might wanna save your strength before talking. In fact, let me help you with that," Sadie said, taking a step back and raising a hand, palm out in Maddie's direction. "Tacet."
'What?' Maddie asked but didn't hear her own voice and swallowed like something caught in her throat. She shook her head and the world spun for a few seconds longer than she hoped. 'What did you-'
Nothing. Not a sound. She  tried to yell and carefully raised one hand to massage her throat.
No sound, over and over. She felt the strain of her vocal cords as she tried shouting but it was like something pressed the mute button on only her. She craned her head up, terror mixing with the fury in her chest.
Sadie had something in her hand, thin, black, and shining. A phone tapped back to life. Her face broke out in a grin and she laughed as dim, blue light danced across her features. Maddie's eyebrows furrowed.
"I hope this is worth it," Maddie said but it didn't come from her. It came from the tiny phone speaker.
"Totally worth it. I'll gladly risk my well being for this." A pause and a laugh which made her insides twist up. "Has anyone ever told you that you have all the grace of a baby elephant?"
Maddie disconnected from her body all at once, unable to feel anything, then came crashing back into her thoughts, like waking up from a deep sleep. The ice rink. Stiles.
Her fingers curled around the grass and mud underneath her palms.
Sadie glanced at her with a massive toothy smile. "I gotta admit, he has a point."
There was the tinny sound of shouting and laughing as she heard her voice say, "Give me the phone, damn it!"
She didn't realize she was getting to her feet until she was already bee-lining for Sadie, despite the mass of vampires surrounding her. She couldn't help it; her sight was zeroed in on this one, horrible person - this demon - and anything beyond her vanished. A massive arm hooked with hers and, in one motion, pulled her so far back she fell backwards to the ground. Her whole body rolled across the grass and she stopped on her dislocated arm, her lower back hitting something solid and rooted to the ground and she yelped in pain but no noise followed.
"You think this is funny?" she heard from the video. Stiles again.
"Honestly, I think this is hilarious." Sadie was looking at Maddie and back to the phone screen. The grainy, background noise of the video cut and a suspicious grin slowly slithered onto her face. "Oh my god. Was this a date? Please tell me this was a date. That would make my night."
She asked like a best friend would, filled to the brim with hushed giddiness.
Maddie was still focused on Sadie, tasting blood from her busted lip again. It must've reopened, but it was a passing thought. She wanted to stand. She wanted to hurt Sadie.
"How very sweet." Yes, gravel in molasses, but left out in the sun and drawing flies.  The vampire from before turned to Sadie, his form mostly in shadow except for his gleaming, pallid face. "He'll do nicely."
The blood drained from Maddie's face and the world became small. Despite the pain in her ribs and her shoulder and now her spine (truthfully, everywhere hurt when she gave herself time to think about it), she was scrambling to her feet. There was wet mud under her, making the ground slick as she got to her knees. There were no branches close enough to grab onto from the tree behind her and in front of her the shadows from before now had faces.
All the same monstrous face.
Elongated canines and sloping brows and sickly yellow eyes.
She didn't bother pleading; if her pride didn't get in the way, she at least learned from Harper's mistakes.
Small slivers of light in between the shadows revealed Sadie tapping on the phone screen and brought it to her ear. Maddie continued to stand, heaving every breath. Something beaten and bloody. A broken thing, balancing on fragile limbs, taking every step like it was her first, a fawn standing for the first time.
Just like that, Sadie slipped on the mask Maddie and her friends were so familiar with.
"Where the hell are you guys?!" Sadie asked in a panic into the phone. Maddie took a step and the vampires grew closer to her.
The faint sound of static helped her zero in on the voice, despite the distance.
"What do you mean 'where the hell are we'?! Where the hell are you?!" Stiles shouted back. "Better question, why am I talking to Sadie?! Where's Maddie?!"
Sadie groaned loudly, her panting voice mismatching the scene before Maddie, the somber undead clergy awaiting orders quietly. "I got held up at the Argents and ran late! Next thing I know, there's a line of ash and no one around but that's not really a priority right now!"
"Sadie, where is Maddie?! I swear to god if she's hurt, I'll kick your demon ass myself!" Stiles went on, frantic.
The bearded vampire must've heard him too because he turned slowly to Maddie with wide eyes, an almost impressed expression, and a nod as he mouthed, 'Wow.'
Maddie still tried to shout, to scream out a warning. No sound left her throat and when the vampires closed in, she didn't know what else to do but begin throwing punches with her uninjured arm. There had to be a weak point in the crowd, somewhere to roll through. There had to be something.
"Now's not the time! We're just North of the Preserve and we need to get the hell out of here! It's an emergency!" Sadie was shouting but the words sounded hollow from where Maddie fought. "And like you could!"
A heavy fist smashed into her stomach and Maddie doubled over for a second. She coughed and blood dripped from her mouth but she wasn't sure if it was from her split lip or something internal. Either way, she tasted something thick and coppery on the tip of her tongue and she spit it out.
"Hold up, what emergency? What happened?!"
The flickering, half there feeling in her head was increasing and making her form sloppy, but she kept going, pushing one vampire into another to make a break in the barricade of bodies.
"They attacked. There were too many. Maddie got the brunt of it." Sadie's voice felt like somewhere between horror and defeat. "We need a hasty exit, like now!"
"North of the preserve? That's literally miles, can you be a little more specific?" Stiles sounded panicked but direct. Urgent. "Like what's around you?"
"Um..." Sadie sounded like she was mimicking his tone. "I don't know! Everything's trees! I think there's a path going east somewhere up ahead."
"Take the trail!"
"What? Why? What's east of here?"
"That trail winds all the way around the woods. About a quarter mile from the North East entrance is a dirt path that leads to the Hale house. Stay on the trail and we'll find you as soon as we can, okay?"
No. No, no, no, no. Maddie barely dodged a punch, her thoughts careening as she spotted a clear path through the crowd.
She crouched quickly and rolled, scrambling to the girl with her phone.
"Hurry!" Sadie shouted and tapped the screen, letting out a sigh. Maddie was back to her feet and running towards Sadie, who sidestepped at the last second. Maddie, who was far too dazed to see the move coming, came to an unsteady stop and whirled around in time to feel a hand around her neck as she began to leave the ground.
She couldn't breathe and attempted to alleviate some of the pressure by gripping Sadie's wrist and pulling her body up a bit.
"There was a time when the slayer was the be all and end all. The thing monsters had nightmares about," the round, bearded man said behind her as he stepped into her line of vision, which was rapidly fading in and out. "But our Mother was right. Now my eyes are wide open and I don't fear you anymore!"
The crowd of vampires cheered him on and Sadie dropped Maddie at the man's feet.
"Your fate is sealed. The night will come again once more and you'll no longer be our enemy." His voice lowered as he began to chuckle softly. "You will lead your new family, our family, to the promised land."
Maddie slowly raised her head to give the man a disgusted glare.
"Tonight is the precursor. Tomorrow, the seal will be broken by blood and you will be reborn in a new world. One of our making." He turned to the line of ash on the ground and, after a pause, whispered, "From ashes, we were cast out and, from ashes, we will rise."
"And about that consequence..." Sadie cut in, her airy tone back as if it never left.
The man turned to the crowd of vampires. "Brother Paul."
A shadow appeared from Maddie's other side and took shape. It was the same massive, scarred vampire who hauled in the hunter. It was clearer in the moonlight one of his eyes was missing entirely and, on the same side of his face, part of the corner of his mouth was missing, not only showing the fang but his lower teeth and blackened gums. His hair was buzzed short and his clothes were old blue jeans and a stained white shirt. He looked like he hadn't changed his clothes since he was buried and probably died four or five decades ago.
He was as big as she'd ever seen a person, at least as big as Peter was when he was in his Alpha wolf form, but more like a zombie in a lot of ways than a vampire.
Brother Paul's head turned towards the woods and he began to walk.
"You know, I found him in the wreckage of a prison bus, all of his fellow inmates long dead by the time I arrived. Not him, though. No sir." There was a pride in the head vampire's voice, a warmth like a father to a son. "He was crawlin' from the fire like a demon from the pits of hell, flesh boilin' and not even a whimper from him, which was when I knew he was meant for more."
The colossal man kept walking but there was a hesitation for a moment which made him slow. She couldn't see his face but she could hear him now, his voice in a crescendo as it mixed with an unearthly roar and the sizzle of flesh. Smoke came from his body but he kept going. She could see the skin on his arms turning red and boiling.
She could feel something, too. The air around her felt drier and hotter and thinning.
The noise kept getting louder and her skin felt tight as the space around her went from damp to arid. In the background, their leader tilted his head up with a smile as if his god was blessing him from the heavens.
At once, it all stopped.
The silence stretched on for what felt like ages.
The vampire, Brother Paul, stopped walking on the inside of the barrier. Smoked still crawled from his skin but the boils and redness was already fading. He looked up to the sky, down at the grass, and back at his leader with a nod.
Sadie didn't look happy or afraid, but as if she was discerning what she should make of all this.
Brother Paul was smiling at Maddie, teeth stained black at the gums.
He turned and began to walk further into the woods.
"As I said, your choices have consequences. I told you the devil was knocking but you refused to hear it. Your refusal killed Harper. Your refusal will kill your friends! How long is it that you think you can hide from me?" the man to her right asked as she turned her eyes to him. "Now, I assume your conscience outweighs your stubbornness, but in case you intend to refuse again, we'll be forced to use another of your kind - albeit a newer one."
Maddie's expression was unchanging. She knew better. She knew Allison would never wander into such an obvious trap or agree to-
Her eyes became unfocused as she tried to connect the fragments of her thoughts together into something coherent.
Her gaze rose back up, only this time to Sadie. Of course, it'd be Sadie. She didn't give a damn about anyone, especially not the girl she turned into a monster.
"Exactly one hour after sundown, we will have a slayer or we will have chaos. And, as you can see," he paused and she could hear the smile in his voice, "we have no qualms takin' our freedom the hard way. We will take every person you have left. The betas. The alpha. The wailing woman. Mothers, fathers, watchers, everyone. No one is safe. We'll drain them all real slow just for you. You can't all stay in there forever."
Maddie watched the space where Brother Paul once was and felt panic jab at her in small but increasing bursts. She imagined a girl like her long ago facing something like him with no slayer power and how this was, at one time, something every slayer went through.
How many girls would die on their eighteenth birthday in this exact way?
Stiles said 'we'. Would Scott be with him? Could Scott kill the monstrosity on his own? Would all of them together stop a reckoning - or would it only be a matter of time?
How many would die for Maddie to keep living?
A ghost of a feeling passed through her. A phantom of a hand around her neck and someone in the distance. A dream. Her name being called out and the odd deja vu it brought to her the next night, from some idiot she barely knew at the time.
Two indiscernible shadows across a field. It was so far away, too dark shapes, and she hadn't thought of anything but watching her best friend die. Thinking back on it, Marie hadn't been raised by her neck in the air. It hadn't been a girl's voice calling for her. Dreams were so easy to manipulate and she was so desperate for her past to be changed, she was convinced it had to be Marie. It had to be a memory, not a prophecy.
It was him, from the beginning. Stiles shouting for her.
And the hand around her throat in her nightmare wasn't Peter's.
"Time's up."
Her gaze slowly raised to the vampire who shadowed over her.
"I'd like to apologize for ignoring your question earlier. I believe you wanted to know who I am!" He chuckled as he knelt down to meet her eyes, close enough so she could smell the mossy, moldy sewer stench and the copper on his breath. His voice steadily got louder. "I am the beginning of a new age. I am everywhere. I am everything! I am the spirit of perpetual negation! I am the new face of fear!"
His eyes blazed as he bellowed and a roar came from the vampires around her. She tried to turn away but, in a flash, he grabbed her face with one hand, squeezing tightly.
His lip curled in a snarl as the boom of his voice turned to a low growl, every word emphasized by a pause. "I am the reaper. "
He smiled again, grip still tight as she clenched her jaw.
"Of course..." His voice was becoming something warm again. "Seein' as we'll be family, you may call me The Father."
The Mother. The Father.
And their children.
How far had the other vampire gotten? How close was Stiles? She needed to go.
"Broken little bird..." The Father's voice was almost remorseful. Pitying. It was the voice of a man who knew pain like it was an old friend. "Make the world pay for all it's done to you."
He let go of her and stood. She didn't rub her jaw despite the pain. Everything hurt but, more importantly, she would do her best not to show it.
"By the way," he said, and Maddie noticed a flash of silver from behind her and it fell somewhere in the trees, past the border. "You'll be needin' that."
A hand roughly grabbed her bad arm and hauled her to her feet and, by the grip, she already knew it was Sadie. She pushed Maddie forward, making her limp into a quickened hobble.
The Father laughed and it became something echoing and boisterous, following them into the night.
☽ † ☾
What do you do when the devils and the angels go to war?
You hedge your bets. You give a little and take a little on both sides. You take pieces of their plans and make your own.
And, the most important part, whenever they think they have the answer, you change the question.
"Ingenuity," Anyanka would say. "I don't believe the mortal world will ever quite catch up to a mind like yours."
She was one to talk. Vengeance was once an art form to Anyanka.
Sadie took the praise in stride at the time, anyway. She saw it as an overstatement of something simple - something which was always inside her. A brain for games and puzzles and no one played against her, ever. People weren't competition; they were hurdles. They were the go to jail space on a monopoly board. They were a bottom left block being pulled out of a Jenga puzzle.
It was too obvious that her shoe choice for the night - her favorite chunky suede ankle boots, in the perfect burgundy - were not the best idea. She could feel them sinking into the mud, making a squish and suctiony pop with every step. Branches snapped under them and leaves got wedged in the groove between the heel and the sole.
She grumbled for the first few minutes but after she found the slayer's ax and the vampires were well behind them, the silence stretched on around her and her captive.
She didn't realize she was mumbling song lyrics like she was on a long road trip. The change from the thick brush to the packed dirt trail was a welcome one but now her voice carried a bit.
What song was she thinking of? She heard it on the radio just the other day. Something about paradise. She mumbled the chorus before she remembered it was Coldplay and she hated Coldplay. She switched the tune to Nina Simone and the mumbles became clear singing.
She didn't bother to acknowledge how she certainly wasn't alone at the moment. Her grip didn't loosen and Maddie didn't fight; it seemed like any time she tried to pull away, she would stumble. It was a little depressing, if Sadie was being honest.
"Sleep in peace when day is done, that's what I mean," Sadie tried and failed to hit a note far out of her range. "And this old world is a new world, and a bold world for me..."
She felt Maddie try and tug her arm away again.
"Oh, come on! I'm not that bad!" Sadie yanked Maddie back.
Maddie pulled again, much harder than Sadie expected and her grip on the girl slipped. Maddie tumbled to the ground and Sadie noticed the trail of blood behind them. Tiny droplets every few feet leading right to where Maddie was, face down.
"How are you so ungrateful?" Sadie's tone was becoming something bitter because she felt bitter. She was tired and annoyed. On top of all this, she still had to go see Allison first thing in the morning. Keeping tabs on the girl was about as easy as trailing a stray cat. She was always moving, always doing something. Besides, no doubt there would be a panic from the missing hunter. "Is it because I do your job better than you?"
Maddie's eyes widened as she stood, bracing her back on a tree and gripping one of her arms as she forcefully shrugged it upward toward her shoulder. Judging by the face she made, she might've screamed while doing so. She stood there a while, breathing deep with her eyes closed before pushing herself forward, towards Sadie.
She was slightly swaying like the lightest breeze could topple her. She was yelling something, but no noise came out. Sadie squinted, trying to read her lips and realizing she was terrible at reading lips.
Sadie waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly, "Dicere."
"- and you sacrificed us!" Maddie shouted but stopped at the sound of her own voice as if it startled her. She touched her neck and cleared her throat before she looked back up at Sadie. There was nothing but hate there. "So, Sadie, what the hell should I be grateful for?!"
Sadie rolled her eyes. "Keep moving."
"No," Maddie spat.
"No? Really?" Sadie asked, incredulous. "So, you're fine with your friends meeting up with Amityville's one eyed giant?"
"What do you think you're doing?!" Maddie shouted, voice shrill. "You attack me but save me from Allison! You helped us get the ashes to keep out the vampires but hand me over to them! You literally told them to kill me!"
Sadie blinked, wishing she hadn't taken off the spell. "So...I can see you're mad."
Maddie raised her hands in less of a defensive way and more of a 'I wash my hands of this' way, wincing in pain the whole time. For a moment, she reminded Sadie of a marionette held up by strings. "You're right. I don't have time for this! I need to stop a giant psychopathic vampire!"
"Wouldn't he actually be a sociopathic vampire?" Sadie asked. She knew what she was doing - detaching. Doing what Maddie could only say she could do. She was going to wipe her hands clean and keep focused on her goal.
Maddie looked at her with a grimace. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"In general or just today?" Sadie asked as she walked past Maddie. She couldn't see Maddie's face anymore and used the opportunity to add in a sing-song voice, "Because the answer to both is you."
Footsteps sounded behind her, going from a walk to a sprint and getting closer. Sadie rolled out of the way and Maddie stumbled before slamming into a tree with her hands in front of her face, stopping her momentum. When Sadie stood again, brushing the dirt and leaves from her hair, she examined Maddie who clutched the bark of the tree so hard, her knuckles paled.
Sadie strolled over to her, arms folded. "Don't you ever just want to stop?"
Maddie didn't turn and her heavy breathing made her shoulders rise and fall, which made Sadie wonder how much it hurt to breathe in general. It was like watching a wounded animal, like some big cat in a zoo. It kept going. It was hurt and cornered and still it bore its teeth.
It was a stark contrast to Allison. Allison was all about adapting; she was mostly concerned with making sure she accomplished her goals, which Sadie admired. The hiccup in Allison's logic was she wasn't adapting for her own sake. She adapted for everyone else. She worked in a middle ground which didn't exist most of the time. Despite her mom's death, her emotions being unpredictable, and her powers completely unstable, she maneuvered from moment to moment fluidly and in a way Sadie could hardly follow.
When Sadie told Allison why she was all powerful, still Allison tried to adapt.
"You came to me because you wanted to help me," she'd reasoned, probably more to her frantic thoughts than to Sadie. "And granted my wish."
"'Help' is a word," Sadie joked. "I didn't expect you to want...this."
It was only a night before the rave, their first time hanging out as potential friends and Sadie explained everything in half-truths. Allison, who must not've gotten a lot of truth in her life (which Sadie would've bet the farm on), took the explanation with caution. She cried not long after.
"I can't control it." Allison took a shaky breath in. "I always end up hurting somebody. Jackson. Maddie. What if the next person was Lydia or Scott...or..."
She cried again and the whole experience made Sadie massively uncomfortable. She patted Allison's shoulders as they shook. Some time later, she was invited over again and was asked for something she couldn't give - life.
Allison again appreciated the honesty and, somewhere in between all of this, they became what must've looked like friends. Sadie promised to change her back once she had her amulet, which was another half truth. "Everything will go back to normal."
The trick was to make the lies sound like the truth and to be gone before you're found out. Everyday, Allison seemed to adapt to all of this. Everyday, she became something Sadie was having trouble recognizing.
Maddie was something else entirely. Maddie dug her feet into the dirt and stood her ground. She didn't waver - well, not metaphorically. She steamrolled everything she didn't want to deal with. She powered forward and Sadie could see the damage from here - both to Maddie and the environment around her. She was practically a wrecking ball.
Sadie didn't like it. She couldn't stand it.
It was so horribly...familiar.
"Better question: do you know how to stop?" Sadie asked, genuinely curious of the answer. Maybe she'd use it later on when someone else asked her the same thing. When Maddie didn't answer, Sadie let out a harsh laugh. "Or is that the point? You'd never stop until someone stopped you first. At least then you don't have to think about wanting to die."
The word hung in the air, ballooning between them.
There was a stillness in the air and Sadie knew she struck a nerve. Slowly and carefully, Maddie began to turn around to face her and it was everything Sadie expected - anger and astonishment, maybe confusion. It all just proved Sadie's point.
"You think I want to die?" Maddie asked, her voice low and pain filling the space between each word.
Sadie thought about telling Maddie her journey to this moment, about how it wasn't for Allison. Instead, she shrugged. "Deep down, I think every single one of you wants to die."
"You don't know anything about me." Venom weaved into Maddie's tone. "Or my friends."
"I'm not talking about your ragtag group of misfits," Sadie shot back, daring to take a few steps toward Maddie. It wasn't like Maddie was in any condition to do something about it. "Slayers. It doesn't seem like any of you want to be here. Whenever you fight, it's like you're waiting for something and I never knew what. Until now, obviously."
"Shut up."
"It doesn't matter how many fights you win. They're just counting down to the one you're gonna lose. I'm guessing the worst part is not knowing how many you have left and, at some point, it'd be better if it was just over. Good on you, though! You finally have a finish line."
"Shut up!"
Sadie took a bold step forward, still grinning. "Make me."
There was a moment where Maddie didn't back off and she simply stood there, eyes blazing and jaw clenched. "If you want me dead, why don't you do it?"
"Because I like this way a lot better." Sadie relaxed her posture again. "Tomorrow, I'm going to seal the barrier but I'm going to need a sacrifice if it's going to last and The Father was right about one thing. The blood of a Slayer is pure power."
"Why me?" Maddie asked and Sadie wasn't sure if it was supposed to be an inside thought.
No other slayer was an option. The new one who showed up days ago could be anywhere, including on her way out of town and Allison...well, Allison would never be an option as far as Sadie was concerned. She wouldn't say any of those thoughts though because she knew it wouldn't take much effort to convince Maddie. "Would you let it be anyone else?"
The anger in Maddie's eyes softened and her brow loosened. Sadie could see her world falling apart almost in slow motion.
"Besides, I kinda want to know what'll happen if he drains you while you're still weak." Sadie's nonchalance was making a comeback. "But, hey, I'll tell you what - if you survive all of this, you're the one."
"The one what?"
"The Othello to my Iago. The MacDuff to my Macbeth. The Professor X to my Magneto."
The last one was more because X-Men: First Class looped on tv the past few days, but the reference still made sense. Maddie didn't move or show any inkling of understanding, her brows low on her forehead like she was trying to solve a particularly difficult equation.
Sadie exhaled loudly and rolled her eyes. "My nemesis, you idiot."
"You're crazy."
A flash of a memory. A cafe in downtown San Francisco on a cloudless day.
Pain which called to Sadie across dimensions. Horror and guilt screaming with her every step.
Sadie was never sure what happened to Maddie or why she continued to step on her emotions like they were broken glass, pretending they weren't there at all and leaving a trail of blood everywhere she went. Sadie only knew she lost someone and it was obvious.
A second memory, but it was Sadie's.
Her own pain, on the end of a noose and at the edge of a burning village. Her father, whose face was nothing to her now but a missing puzzle piece, cursing her. Her neighbors, now a blur of god fearing shadows in black and white garb, hissing and spitting words which would never leave her. She ended up loving all of them and wearing them with pride as they became her own bloody path.
Devil.
Heathen. Heretic. Harlot.
Demon.
Sinner.
Witch.
Still better than 'puritan'.
Still better than 'Mercy'.
Three centuries later, Sadie could still sometimes smell them all burning. She could sometimes still see kind eyes and a gentle smile and wished she burned up with them all, too.
She recognized the pain from under a year ago in an indistinct coffee house like any other. She knew it like a phantom limb. Loss had a way of unraveling people, of peeling their outer layer away in one, long strip.
She hated seeing it for this long though. She hated the mirror it created.
"Maybe I am. Maybe you have to be a little crazy to live this long," Sadie said. "If it counts for anything, I hope you find a way to survive this. Might be interesting to see you bulldoze your way out of being a human sacrifice for a bunch of redneck vamps."
In the distance, Sadie heard a car. Maddie must've heard it too because her head snapped in the direction of it. Sadie strode over to Maddie and threw Maddie's uninjured arm over her shoulders. Maddie struggled as headlights came into view somewhere up ahead.
Sadie's grip was vice-like on Maddie's other arm. "Besides, it'd be a shame if anyone aside from me got to kill you."
It would be intriguing to see Maddie find a way out of this. If not, the Father would at least be off his guard enough when Sadie would do him in first.
A jeep came to a screeching halt a few feet away and two boys quickly got out.
"You know you can't tell them. They'd die trying to save you if they could," Sadie whispered, shoving the silver ax into Maddie's free hand. Maddie's head shot up to meet Sadie eye to eye. "Then who would stop Gerard and his pet?"
None of this should've happened.
Sadie should've been long gone, making some poor schmuck's day a living hell on behalf of some no name girl she'd forget in a day or so. She'd have her amulet. Allison would only be half the trainwreck she is now. This wouldn't be happening at all if not for Madeline Hayes.
As the two boys got closer, Sadie could identify them as the beta wolf and his mouthy friend. When they saw Maddie, Sadie could see the panic flooding them and spilling over. They ran the rest of the way, horror stricken.
"What the..." Stiles said, his voice low and disbelieving. "Oh god."
Scott got to Maddie first and Sadie allowed Maddie's weight to shift from her to Scott. Maddie stumbled at first, but caught herself as Stiles stopped in front of her. His eyes were wide but his eyebrows had sunk low on his forehead as worry came off of him in waves. He had his hands up like he was about to reach out to her but he seemed to be frozen in place. Another second and he pivoted slightly, taking his place on Maddie's other side and putting his arm under hers as both he and Scott held her up.
Stiles looked at Sadie. "What the hell happened?"
"I have no idea!" Sadie said, working on sounding offended. "I found her at the edge of the woods like this!"
She glanced back at the trail of blood in the dirt, noting the dots of it getting smaller the closer they got to Maddie. It was interesting, whatever happened to Maddie and her slayer powers. Whatever was going on, she was still healing alright.
She eyed Maddie then Scott. "Her cuts look bad but she'll heal just fine."
"Guys, Sadie..." Maddie began, her voice like sandpaper. Sadie met Maddie's glare, a sort of jittery excitement bubbling up in her as she wondered what the slayer would say. Maddie coughed and even Sadie wondered if it was forced to allow her brain more time to think of a lie or if she was in that bad of shape. "...she helped me escape them."
"Them? Who?" Stiles asked.
Maddie swallowed and winced. "Now's not the time. We need to get out of here."
"You three go on ahead. There's ah... there's a vampire I saw inside the border." Sadie ignored their horror and went over to a nearby tree, snapping off the end of a branch. She waved it a bit. "I'll take care of it before it gets any further."
"You're sure?" Scott asked. She only remembered his name because he annoyed her the most. All altruism and absolutely no common sense.
"Jeepers! One vampire! However will I survive?" Her voice was a few octaves higher than normal and her hands clutched at her chest before they dropped, along with her mocking tone. "I'll be fine! I could use a good kill. Just let your slayer friend rest up and I'll keep watch until the coast is clear. We need to do that spell as soon as possible tomorrow before any other vamps get in."
"Right, yeah." Again, Scott with the overbearing kindness. How was this actually someone's personality? "Thanks, Sadie."
"Don't thank me. We're not on the same side, remember? You weirdos are just the lesser of two headaches." Sadie watched them for a moment as they processed her words, like they'd forgotten. Maddie, on the other hand, was glaring. They stood there so long that Sadie tried to shoo them. "Go! Jesus Christ! How many times do I have to tell you your friend's bleeding out?!"
☽ † ☾
The car ride was blissfully short - either that, or Stiles was speeding the whole way to Scott's.
Scott watched Maddie the whole ride to make sure she stayed awake and she kept seeing Stiles' eyes on her through the rear view mirror. Scott said something about finding Deaton and Maddie refused. She wouldn't bring anyone else any further into this.
She felt the blood beginning to dry on her clothes and grimaced. Everything hurt, either as an ache when she was still or as an ever widening, gaping, and tearing pain when she moved. At some point, Scott held out his hand to her and she glanced down at it, then back up at his worried expression.
"What are you doing?" Maddie asked and it startled her how weak she sounded now.
He gave her an earnest expression, hand still extended. "It's okay. Trust me."
She did. Even if Stiles was her closest friend here, the first person she remembered trusting was Scott. She respected Scott as far back as that first day, despite his idiocy and penchant for martyrdom. Not that she was one to talk.
She reached out and held Scott's hand and the strangest thing happened.
It was something she couldn't pinpoint at first, but if the aching in her muscles, skin, and all the way down to her bones was a vice she felt like it loosened slightly.
Even as slight as it was, it was releasing a breath. It was a respite and when she looked at her arm as it was extended, something black ran through her veins and towards Scott's hand.
Maddie saw him tense and wince, shutting his eyes tightly. Curiosity fell from her face and was replaced by horror when she realized what he was doing.
"You don't have to do this," Maddie said quietly.
He nodded stiffly. "I know."
He eventually let go and despite the pain of her body trying to heal, the worst of it had ebbed a bit.
They dropped Scott off at his house and Stiles checked his phone. Maddie wondered what time it was but she didn't have the energy to dig around for her own phone.
Maddie heard Stiles curse quietly and asked, "What's going on?"
"We can't go to Lydia's," he said, frustration spiking his tone. "Her mom caught her sneaking in."
Maddie swallowed, wondering what options she would have left. "Now what?"
Stiles grumbled to himself and before Maddie could move from the backseat, the jeep was already speeding away.
He didn't talk again the whole way and Maddie could hear his fingers frantically tapping the steering wheel. In what felt like a blink, they were in front of his house and thankful his dad's car was still gone.
Keeping his distance, Stiles guided her into the house and up the stairs. When his door creaked open, it took her an extra moment to keep focused and walk in.
"We should've gone to Deaton," Stiles grumbled. "Or Scott's mom."
"It's not bad." She thanked every god in every non-hell dimension she didn't spit up blood when she said it. "And Scott's mom has been freaked out enough lately."
"You almost died." Typical Thursday night. Or was it Tuesday? Bad things seemed to happen on Tuesdays, specifically. Still, he sounded terrified.
"But I didn't," she tried to argue, disregarding the urge to say 'not yet', "and I'm conscious. So it's not bad."
It was sort of true; she wasn't as dizzy and she wasn't feeling the intense, overwhelming urge to sleep. The blood had slowed from the wound on her side and it wasn't dripping from any other cuts - none which she knew of, at least. When she considered these things, she took time to actually try and glare at Stiles. This turned out to be not so easy. He stared at her - this bruised and bleeding and broken thing she must've looked like - with a withdrawn expression, fear intense in his eyes.
"You really need to reconsider your definition of 'bad', okay?" he was almost arguing back, but instead his shoulders slumped. He walked over to the nightstand and back, pacing and still a little frantic. "We got lucky Sadie didn't want you dead."
About that, she thought, going over everything in her head.
The ultimatum. The plan. What she needed to do.
It made her feel slightly unhinged - or more like...untethered. The one string she used for so long to hold onto the world and her life was snapping.
In about nineteen hours, everything would stop.
She didn't want to admit it felt as much like a relief as it was a fear. The string was unraveling and when she reached the end, it would break. That would be it.
On the outside, Maddie decided to focus her thoughts elsewhere for as long as she could. She could feel her shirt sticking to her side, stiff with her drying blood. The rest of her clothes were no better as she examined her current state. She looked back at Stiles, who was still pacing. "Can I, um...Can I use the shower?"
"What?" was the first thing he said as he snapped out of his thoughts enough to pause and refocus his gaze, eyes widening and mouth slightly agape. "...Oh! Yeah, um...yeah. Go ahead."
He quickly turned away and went to his window, peering through the shades. He was all jagged, sharp movements and tense gestures. Worried. Terrified. Unsure of what to do. Scott brought up in the car how he should call Deaton but Maddie shot him down as well. She didn't blame them for being on high alert and wondered how long they looked for her.
She nearly reached for her bag, which had nothing but her weapons in it. She was beginning to think she should've been dropped off at Lydia's, where her clothes were. Of course, there'd be no getting past Lydia's mother without being noticed at this time of night and she'd gotten lucky that Stiles' dad wasn't home yet.
She was standing there, like a stray dog on a doorstep or a lost child in a crowd or something else equally pitiable.
He turned back and his gaze went from panicked to confused. "What?"
"I need-" Maddie exhaled through her nose in frustration, studied the floor for a second, and glanced back at Stiles. As if she didn't feel useless enough. She gestured to her torn and bloody shirt. "My clothes are still at Lydia's."
Stiles' eyebrows remained furrowed at first and raised as high as they could go on his forehead, eyes wide. "Right! Yeah, let me, um...I'll just-"
He stumbled a bit as he went over to his dresser, opening and closing drawers and pausing a few times, grumbling to himself about something Maddie couldn't catch. It took longer than she expected for him to come back over, a small heap of red and gray in his hands. He was staring at the clothes, his eyes only flickering up to meet hers for less than a second. "They, ah...They might be a little big. Hope that's okay."
She nodded only vaguely and took the clothes. "Should be alright."
It was possibly the most amount of awkward she'd ever encountered, like there wasn't enough space in the room to tiptoe around each other, their equally scattered thoughts, and the reality of what was happening in the moment.
There was a pause where neither of them moved but also neither of them could see each other. Maddie stared at the clothes, the walls, and the computer at his desk in succession, feeling tiny.
Stiles finally - mercifully - cleared his throat and directed her toward the bathroom.
She didn't take very long, not wanting to see her reflection in the mirror more than once. The one glance, where she saw the caked blood at her temple and in a streak below her cut lip, was more than enough. Her hair had mud and gravel in it and her makeup was almost completely smudged off her face. The deep black of her eye shadow only made the skin around her eyes the shade of a bruise. Sweat and dirt clung to her face and neck and the leather of her jacket was as torn as her shirt. She took the contents of her pocket out of her jacket and placed them by the sink.
The silver cross necklace clattered to the surface of the counter. The top half was perfect, unharmed and shining in the incandescent light, the bottom half was spotted with reddish brown. The rest of what she pulled out included a pack of mints and a keyring with one key which went to the Argents' front door, one key to open the hidden back entrance to HQ, a key to a lockbox, and a plastic keychain to a club she hadn't gone to in over a year.
Peeling off her clothes felt like peeling off an extra layer of skin. In a way, it was. She liked her new clothes, for what it was worth, and they were a gift from a friend. She wondered if Lydia would be annoyed by this and it was a stupid thought.
Maddie stood there in the shower long after she watched the last of the dirt and blood circle the drain. She was convincing her spiraling mind she was only standing there to make sure there was no red sticking to the tile. She watched the last of the grime from her skin circle the same way Sadie's words circled.
Talia Hale and her family died horrifically and paid the price for the spell.
Deaths with power in them. Protectors.
A death equal to what would destroy the barrier.
If someone says the words, the spell will need energy. It'll need life to protect life.
Her or Allison. The mission was to keep her safe. The reason she was here was to protect this girl. Despite everything, she couldn't sacrifice Allison. She couldn't sacrifice anyone.
She could be the sacrifice, she could take it. She could poison the vampires like she was poisoned.
She would die tomorrow.
She didn't glance down at the wound on her ribs, afraid of what she would see.
Maddie carefully dried off and balled the towel around her old clothes. All of it would have to be taken care of as soon as possible. She got dressed, her hair hanging down and dripping water onto a faded red t-shirt. It was big on her like she expected,  and the gray pajama bottoms were so long, she couldn't see her feet at all. She felt like a child, small and scrawny in hand me down clothes much too large for her.
Crawling to the surface of her coherent thoughts was the reminder these were not her clothes. She spent far too much time in the bathroom and gingerly picked up the pile of her torn up and bloody clothes wrapped in an old, blue towel.
When she opened up the bedroom door, it creaked a little and she winced at the noise.
"Okay, first of all, just because I own a first aid kit doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. You're gonna have to walk me through this so I don't completely screw it up," Stiles said the moment the door opened and raised his stare as it closed again, Maddie standing in front of it as far away from Stiles as she possibly could be.
He had a first aid kit the size of a breadbox on his lap with the hinged lid open but he wasn't digging through it anymore.
She wasn't as concerned about it as she should've been about the massive gash on her side when she was aware of how unlikely it was she would make it another 24 hours. Instead, she focused on the present as much as she reasonably could, but the present gave her a new issue.
It must've been a little past 1 AM. She didn't come to terms yet with her slight revelation from earlier in the week, when she first thought about Stiles in more...concrete terms - as someone she was only beginning to think she might have feelings for. The kind of fluttery, anxious feelings that made it difficult to stand there in his room - and worse, in his clothes. And he was intently meeting her eyes.
And she was going to die in less than a day.
She was going to die.
She was going to die.
Maddie hugged her midsection tightly at first but it hurt too much and she loosened her grip. She inched further into the room, gaze back on the floor. "It's just first aid, Stiles. I only need help with the ones I can't get to."
There was no going to classes. There was no shopping with Lydia. There were no more formals and no graduation. Why hadn't she ever thought of graduating? There was no visiting her best friend's grave. Why didn't she ever visit Marie's grave?
Her body would never heal from these wounds. She would die with them.
She was going to die.
"Right. Awesome. Okay," Stiles' voice was quiet and he stared down at the first aid kit. "Yeah, I can do this. Just as a warning, the closest I've gotten to actual first aid on another person was almost cutting Derek's arm off. So you're-"
"I'm nothing," Maddie said. There was no rhyme or reason to it. She needed to say it to someone. She needed to hear it.
Stiles paused and glanced up at her with confused eyes. "What?"
Hundreds of slayers died for causes no one would ever know with nothing to make them human beings with personalities or memories or proof they actually existed in the world.
There was no time for stupid comic books or shopping or ice skating. In the end, they were a number, a tally mark identical to the last. They wouldn't be remembered. She wouldn't be remembered.
"Nothing. I have nothing. I am...nothing."
"Woah, okay, calm down there." Stiles stood and set the first aid kit on the bed, his voice soft and careful. "You're not nothing, Mads."
Mads.
"Stop it! Stop calling me that!" It exploded from her. Something inside her snapped, something which didn't have time to repair from the first time it broke. A flash of a smile and freckles and blue eyes in her brain made her want to scream. "You can't say that! You're not allowed to say that!"
"You still won't explain why," he replied, annoyance flooding his tone. Maddie didn't answer and he let out a harsh breath. "What the hell's going on, Maddie?"
Maddie swallowed the words down. She wouldn't tell him, not when she knew he'd tell Scott and they could die trying to find a way to stop it. She shook her head. "It's...it's been a long day, okay? I'll be fine."
"You'll be fine?" he asked, his voice incredulous. "What part of this is fine? What part of nearly dying in a town that no longer exists is fine? Or - here's a good one - what part of bleeding out in the woods is fine? How the hell can you nearly die and be fine?"
Maddie felt the last question in her gut, clawing its way through her insides. She wasn't fine; she was never fine. She was never okay or calm or comfortable with her life. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be content at this point.
Still, people didn't like when she showed her weakness - not her brother or her mentor or her teammates. She got so good at hiding everything that made her weak, she wasn't sure how to access it all anymore.
"Just this once admit you're not fine, because none of this is fine!" He gestured around them. "I for one panic pretty much constantly because it's a natural freaking reaction! Why can't you just swallow your stupid pride and let me help you?!"
Something about this made her unspeakably angry, but not at him.
"Because that's how people end up dead!"
It was so long since she said it last and, at the time, it was to a mirror. She refused for so long to mention the girl who led her here. She didn't want to tell anyone because she knew what it meant.
She knew why the rest of her team had stopped talking to her.
She knew why she was sent here - because she was being sent away.
When the words came, something inside Maddie ruptured. "She's dead. She was my friend and she's dead and it's my fault. You want to know why I don't have a best friend? Because I killed her!"
I killed her. I killed her. I killed my friend.
It kept repeating and it was a relief to say, especially now, at the end. She thought it for so long there was no room left for doubt. Maddie realized she couldn't look at Stiles. She didn't want to see the expression on his face.
"...What?" Disbelief. His voice sounded so far away, it hurt.
She thought about what came after. The days and weeks and months after the night in the alley.
Not letting anyone touch the bed a few feet from hers.
Stripping the bed and tying the last of her best friend's things up in the bed sheets. She dumped all of it where no one would see, where no one could get to any of it ever again.
She remembered not being able to cry over her anymore.
Maddie's stare narrowed on Stiles, not even really seeing him anymore."This is my fight and I'm not going to let anyone else fight it for me ever again. I relied on someone a long time ago and she hurt me worse than... And now she's gone forever! Dead!"
The irony was almost too perfect.
The way Maddie said all of this was so raw and angry, she felt like she was spitting and snarling. She wanted to sound happy Marie was gone. She was probably better for it; at least now, she could see outside her own world. She wanted to sound relieved but heard a crack in her voice before she felt it. "Do you know what that's like? Watching the person you need the most burn out and disappear forever? She was there and then she wasn't and it took less than a goddamn second! I saw..."
Stiles wasn't facing her anymore. He'd jerked away in an instant, as something in his eyes went hard.
In a flash, he'd become unreachable, like she slapped him. She never saw him react to anything like this; she never saw him react to her like this. His reaction reeled her from the past, from her wallowing.
Maddie's voice wasn't as soft as it could've been because she wasn't calm enough yet, but she tried. "...Stiles?"
She saw his shoulders rise and fall slowly and his head began to shake from the left to the right in tiny jerks. He turned back around, his eyes blazing. He was annoyed with her, or angry. "I'm sorry, Maddie. I'm sorry but this isn't just your fight. I'm not letting you push us away again. Scott, Lydia, and I chose to stay because you're our friend and I'm not giving up."
You should, she thought. Tomorrow will be so much worse if you don't. Her voice was as steady as she could possibly make it, as stern as she could force it to be. "I can't ask you to die for me - not any of you. I won't."
"You barely knew anyone here when you stood between us and a freaking Alpha werewolf. You could leave tomorrow, we would never hear from you again, and if you really think we'd all be okay with not knowing if you were alive or not..." He hesitated, like there was a wall between him and the rest of his sentence. He exhaled loudly, his voice losing its anger and giving in to defeat. "How long is it going to take for you to get that you still have people who give a damn if you live or die?"
Please, she begged. Please stop caring. Let yourself have a good life. You don't need me here to live a good life.
She didn't say it because it would only bring up more questions she couldn't answer.
She didn't fight back this time, though. She didn't argue his point. She stood there, unable to look him in the eye. This was dishonest and it was going to hurt but none of these people were raised for specifically this purpose. Maddie trained her ass off for years for this. They fight and they die. Nothing would ever change that.
The room grew quiet, heavy with the words filling the space between them.
The pain in Maddie's ribs felt like fire but she remained still.
"The thing I said..." Stiles trailed off and cleared his throat. "I meant 'why won't you let us help you'."
"You know, I kind of hate you."
"Yeah, you don't even believe that one."
There was a sudden clarity there she didn't expect.
"No, you didn't." It was so matter-of-fact, it felt like the truth.
"Nah, I didn't," he echoed, his voice now somber and soft. He watched her and she felt something tighten in her chest. Somewhere in his gaze was a feeling so raw and open it made her cheeks warm and her heart beat a tic faster to keep eye contact for so long. When he finally turned away, he passed her on his way to the door. "I'll be right back, okay?"
She was grateful he couldn't see her face anymore and she exhaled quietly. "...yeah. Okay."
Maddie sat at the edge of the bed and winced again when she took a deep breath. Cracked ribs, maybe. She licked her bottom lip and felt the scab where it split. She hoped the bleeding from the gashes on her torso stopped. Those wounds she should dress on her own regardless of the pain, along with anything unnoticeable thanks to Stiles' clothes being fairly large on her. She was thinking about it again.
Now's not the time to be embarrassed. And yet it came so naturally.
Beyond the pain needling her at all sides - mostly her right side - there was a flood of new sensations, none of them particularly physical. There was the fatigue, sheer mental and emotional exhaustion. Sadie set them up and Maddie should've expected her to. Sadie, who never once said she was on their side. Sadie, who Maddie thought she saw an actual person inside of after Sunnydale and when she spoke to Allison. Sadie, who was ready to feed her to a vampire cult.
She heard footsteps approaching and her head shot up again, directed towards the dark hallway. Stiles walked back into the room with a wet washcloth in his hand and he stopped about a foot away, a blank stare on his face like he couldn't figure out what to do next.
He was staring at her again, and she felt heat rise to her face. Maddie thought to take the first aid kit from the bed and begin cleaning up her own wounds but couldn't manage to move. There was a beat of stillness and silence before Stiles jerked back for a second, feet shuffling as if they had a mind of their own, and quickly sat on the bed beside her.
He must've noticed she was cradling her right side the whole way in the jeep - or maybe he saw the side of her shirt shining with blood at the time - because he sat on the same side as her shredded ribs, back stiff and hands unmoving.
He shuffled a bit, his body turned towards hers as much as the limited space would allow. His knee bumped hers gently and stayed there and she thought, This is fine.
They were this close, barely touching, several times in the past. She hugged him on a few separate occasions. There was no reason to get worked up, despite knowing he was less than arm's length away. Despite how he took up so much of her peripheral vision.
Maddie could see him staring at the first aid kit before wringing the tip of the washcloth slightly. She didn't have the courage to turn toward him, not from this short of a distance. She knew she would turn and he would be too close. It was bad enough she could feel something in her stomach pull at her to move closer. She would find something new to like about him and was likely to do or say something stupid and irreversible.
"I, um...I should..." he began and cleared his throat, wringing the washcloth again. His voice was quieter, hushed and thick with something else she couldn't grasp. "I mean, you might be bleeding but I don't want to...I don't know, y'know, where to..."
If she wasn't as tense and embarrassed, she might've laughed. Weakly, she reached for the hem of the shirt, the twisting of her torso sending blinding bursts of pain to her ribs. She sucked in a breath and lifted the shirt on one side, above the wound but short of exposing...well, anything.
Maddie could clearly hear Stiles take a sharp breath through his nose as he saw the mangled mess which were her ribs. For a second, he seemed like he would pass out.
"Holy sh...I think..." He turned away, to the door of his room. "I think this might be more of a stitches situation."
"What?" she hissed as her eyes darted to him out of shock, and a little fear. He kept glancing from the open wound to anywhere else, over and over again. Her rolled up shirt made it difficult to see the damage and she wasn't sure if she wanted to. Her gaze was horror-stricken as she kept her eyes on Stiles. "Is it bad?"
"It- it's not that bad." He closed his eyes and frowned, shaking his head. He looked at it again and his gaze immediately found a wall behind her instead. "Okay, yeah, it's really bad. Oh dear god."
Aside from Maddie's shock and fear, she felt almost deflated. It didn't seem as grisly to her when she saw it in the bathroom mirror, which might've been because of how frequently she saw these types of things. This was a cruel reality of what she did nightly - and horrible injuries were commonplace. Now wasn't the time to worry about closeness or crushes or how much skin she was showing. Still, she began to lower her shirt, embarrassed and dwelling on how many other scars she might have among the fresh wounds. "You're right. I should go to Deaton. He probably-"
Stiles' free hand caught hers - the one closest which was still gripping her shirt. "No, I'm good, I swear. I can do this. I just...It was a lot."
He met her eyes for a moment and she realized again how alarmingly close he was. His hand slowly slid away from hers, cautious and gentle, and she already missed the contact. After accepting the idea of having feelings for him, she was now horribly aware of every little thing involving him in her life - down to the slightest touch and briefest glance. Now, she wished she could keep his gaze on hers an extra second. She felt needy and helpless like this and it only made her angry. Time wasn't on her side here.
Maddie couldn't tell what he was thinking, but his eyes were dark and soft until he looked away, down at the washcloth. After a deep breath, he began patting the gash with the it, which was fine until the burning sensation made her feel like her side had been lit on fire.
She wished she had something to bite down on as he cleaned out the wound or the option to scream.
He took his time and pressed down as lightly as possible - probably because of the whimpering noise she made. This was weakness, a clear sign of it. She was always a wimp when it came to pain - the 'after' kind of pain, the kind the enemy doesn't see they inflicted. In battle, she could hide the pain and fight through it through adrenaline and sheer force of will, but when she laid down in bed at the end of the night, sometimes she wished she would cry.
She wondered if she could cry anymore but the thought was fleeting.
After the bandage was on, his eyes trailed up from the wound to her face and he gave a small, cautious smile. She was so tired and completely unraveled and the small gesture made her want to break into a million pieces and dissolve into the floor. He quietly added, "See? Easy."
And Maddie wanted to kiss him, right then. She almost felt a laugh bubble up in her chest from the sheer inappropriateness of the thought.
They were alive and safe - for the next few hours - and she didn't care if it would hurt the cut on her lip or her bruised jaw. She wanted to be closer to Stiles than she ever thought about before. She wanted to know more than what her dream gave her. She wanted to know what he would do, how we would react. She wanted to know what his fingertips felt like when they brushed her cheek or her waist. She wanted to know what he tasted like.
There was no more time logic it all away. If this was the end, her very last day, she wanted to be stupid and selfish just once. She couldn't think of anything more selfish.
He already started on her shoulder which she didn't realize until she felt the burn of the alcohol on her skin. Thankfully, he only rolled up the sleeve, though Maddie knew it made the wound harder to access. Fingertips brushed her collarbone as he held the rolled up sleeve as far from the gash as possible. She was still thinking when it happened and it only made her more aware of him.
"I like Elliot," she told Marie in haste after constant badgering. She didn't want to say the same word she begrudgingly used for Elliott to describe how she felt now, about Stiles.
She liked Stiles for a while, despite when she wasn't sure of the context. They were friends, genuinely. She liked being around him. She liked talking to him when she didn't really like talking to anyone. She liked knowing he wasn't afraid of her when he saw what she could do. He wanted to know more. All of these things came before the physical part kicked in - the last part, when her subconscious gave her the nudge of it being a more than friendly type of 'like'.
Admitting what she liked about him now was like letting out a breath she'd held for far too long. Of course, she did. It was obvious.
"You're the one that's obvious," Lydia said weeks ago. Maybe she was. Maybe what she saw when she'd assumed he was the one with the infatuation was a mirror effect. Maybe she was projecting something onto him which wasn't his at all. It would make her life easier; less to leave behind. It'd be something she'd take with her like Buffy's cross - proof this wasn't for some sort of glory or lust for violence; proof she felt something and cared about people, regardless of no one else being able to tell.
"All done." She heard his voice behind her and felt the warmth of his touch leave her.
Maddie rolled down her sleeve and she scooted away as subtly as she could. The cold in her gut for months which expanded and swallowed her insides seemed to perforate everything. Seconds were fleeting and bright and gone in an instant like flash paper too close to an open flame. Everything became smoke and ash and the closer she was to him, the faster she burned.
It wasn't much longer before she heard the door downstairs open and shut. Footsteps getting closer made her panic. Her eyes shot over to Stiles, who seemed more terrified than she did.
She grabbed her bloody clothes and the stained towel as Stiles also shoved her weapons bag into her hands. He fumbled a bit as he tried to put away the first aid kit and kick it under the bed.
"Where do I go?" Maddie asked in a harsh whisper, as wide as the footsteps grew nearer in the hall outside Stiles' room.
He emphatically waved her towards the far corner by some shelves and next to his nightstand. She crouched down, folding her form over the ball of clothes between her stomach and her knees. She imagined the Sheriff's baffled expression if he found her there.
There was a knock on the door.
Stiles tripped over his feet but caught himself in time to swing open the door, which happened to provide cover for Maddie.
"Dad. Hey," Stiles began and Maddie heard him force out a long, obnoxious yawn. "How was your first day back?"
"...Good," Sheriff Stilinski answered, his tone flat and slightly suspicious. "You wouldn't be just getting home, would you?"
Stiles guffawed. "What? No. I've been here for..."
There was a pause and Maddie cringed.
"...hours, at least. You know, studying."
Another pause.
"Right." The Sheriff's tone had an air to it which seemed to imply he didn't believe his son at all. "And is there any reason why every light between here and the front door was left on?"
"Horror movie on tv earlier, way creepier than I thought it'd be," Stiles answered quickly despite the disjointed half-sentences he was forming. "Hey, did you know we have a free weekend of HBO? We can get a start on Game of Thrones season two."
Maddie cringed again at the incredibly forced change of subject. There was another pause, tense and filling the whole room, but Maddie heard a sigh.
"Sure thing, kid," the Sheriff said both in concession and quiet humor. "Lights out, got it?"
"Got it."
Maddie could hear the beginning of a smile in Stiles' voice.
The footsteps retreated back down the hallway as the door creaked and Maddie watched it move on the hinge, releasing a breath at the same time as the merciful click meaning it was closed.
Stiles looked at the door for a beat longer before turning to Maddie and whispering, "You okay?"
Maddie was immediately transported into their conversation minutes before. She thought about her words and the wounds which attempted to mend as quickly as they used to. She wanted to not answer at all, but did with a quiet, disbelieving laugh bubbling in between the words. "Are you joking?"
His expression was blank for another second before half a grin pulled the corner of his mouth upward.
"Point taken," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He eyed her for an extra beat and, as if he caught himself staring, looked down at his shoes and back up at her as nonchalant as anyone like Stiles could possibly be. "Shouldn't you, y'know, sleep? You pretty much got tortured, after all."
Maddie thought of the hunter screaming as a vampire wriggled its fingers under his ribs. She thought of the vampire, Lilith, licking the blood from her fingers like she'd been eating a fresh peach and its juice got all over her hands. The images wouldn't leave; they only added to all the others she couldn't get rid of. She rested her head gently against the wall, the pounding in her skull a dull ache, and stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Pretty much."
Without a word to her, Stiles tread softly out of the room again, closing the door behind him. Somewhere, on the other side of the wall, she heard the obnoxious creaking of a door which immediately stopped when she heard Sheriff Stilinski shouting from somewhere downstairs.
"I'm choosing to believe in ghosts for the moment because that better not be my son sneaking around at one a.m. on a school night."
Maddie heard the door again, somehow creaking slower and louder. It clicked shut. It was the first time all day she genuinely wanted to laugh, despite the slight smile pulling against the cut on her lip.
"Just heading to the bathroom, dad," Stiles shouted back.
A few minutes later, Stiles walked back in with a plain white pillow and a thread bare green throw. He gently closed his bedroom door, prompting Maddie to whisper, "Are you going to get in trouble if he finds out I'm here?"
"Honestly?" He threw the pillow down beside his bed and unfolded the blanket. "I have no idea. Mostly, I don't want to explain why there's a girl who looks like she just got run over by a semi in my room and not the emergency room."
Maddie shrugged her shoulders, despite knowing he wasn't facing her. "Have you ever thought about the truth?"
"The truth? As in 'monsters are real'?" Stiles asked, his tone only mildly incredulous. "Yeah, I'd rather not put anyone else in danger. No thanks."
"Not to be this person, but isn't he already?"
Hypocrite.
"Hey, should we go over your stellar history with the truth?" Stiles bit back, his eyebrows low and his mouth a hard line.
The change in his tone came as a shock and she realized what she said. Part of her wondered what her parents' reactions were when Buffy walked up to their door with the Slayer Scythe in her hand and blood on her clothes while she told them their child was too different to live among them anymore. Too dangerous. Maddie was convinced the only way to help them was to keep them away.
Sometimes, she wondered how they were doing and if she was simply coming up with lies to help her sleep.
Who was she to judge anyone else for their choices?
Stiles shot a quick glance to the floor. "Sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"No, it's okay," Maddie cut him off, unable to stand the idea of being apologized to for being honest. "You're right. I probably just need sleep."
Maddie let go of the balled up towel and thought of her torn and bloody clothes again. In a flash, the night's events swept through her brain and she swallowed, her throat dry. There was Sadie's face again, eyes sparkling as she explained what needed to be done. She carefully placed her hands on the wall behind her and pushed onto her feet, slowly standing up.
She would lay down and go to sleep and the world would be there in the morning. The night would come again and she thought of how it would end.
After so long, Maddie discovered she hated sleep. She realized there was always a chance she would close her eyes and never open them again.
At the same time, it would be done. I could finally-
She shook her head before she could finish the thought. She walked over to her weapons bag, grabbing her phone and checking the time as she swiped the screen to see if anyone freaked out at her via text. She was met with a photo of her, sitting and laughing on the ice, and realized it was the video from earlier still paused. She quickly closed the video and was met with a plethora of texts, too many to comprehend. Lydia was at the top of the page, followed by Stiles, Scott, and a couple new ones from Xander.
Her attention span was dwindling and the idea of sleep felt slightly less like tempting death for the moment. She'd respond in the morning and hoped Stiles already let Lydia know she was okay.
The light clicked off, leaving a lamp on a nightstand dimly bathing the room in a rusty yellow glow. It was then she noticed, Stiles was already ready for bed, having probably changed while she showered. This whole thing was getting far too uncomfortable and didn't get any better when he started to lay down on the floor where he placed the pillow and blanket. "What are you doing?"
His eyebrows furrowed. "Uh...going to sleep?"
"Yeah, I see that," she said, almost relieved that she could revert back to something as simple as annoyance. "Why are you laying on the floor? This is your house."
"You were almost killed. Do you not understand that? Just this one time, maybe be a little selfish." Stiles was still in the process of clumsily getting to the ground and draping the blanket over his legs as he sat there. "Besides, have you seen me? I can literally sleep anywhere. It's this talent I have."
"Right," she said with a nod. "I remember."
He watched her expectantly for another few seconds and she was too tired to argue anymore.
"Fine. Whatever." With her phone in her hands, she climbed into a bed that was already far more comfortable than the motel bed or the extra bed at the Argent's. Not as lush and extravagant as Lydia's but better than hers too, if anyone were to ask Maddie. She hoped and prayed no one did. She crawled under the comforter and sank a little as she laid back. She found it more and more difficult to ignore everything she was feeling - especially the awkward giddiness and embarrassment that followed despite Stiles having no idea she was experiencing either. "I just have one request."
"Yeah?" he yawned from somewhere on the ground that she could no longer see.
Her fatigue made her feel like she was still sinking. She yawned, too, and words came easy. "Try to keep your dirty nurse dreams to yourself."
Stiles snorted a laugh. "What? You've never had dirty nurse dreams?"
"Not that I know of," she said.
She was so warm and so, so tired. The pillow smelled like him and she didn't bother feeling foolish about thinking it. She breathed in and turned onto her side, bringing the over her shoulder and curling into a ball. Her voice was softer and her words were forming slower. Sleep was a tide drifting her further and further away from land.
Her eyes were closing. "And if this was an attempt to get me to talk about any dirty dreams I may or may not have, nice try."
"Or any non-dirty dreams. I'm not picky." There was a pause. "But it would be fair."
"Goodnight, Stiles."
"I'm taking that as a no?"
"Goodnight, Stiles."
The last thing she heard was the smile in his voice. "Goodnight, Mads."
☽ † ☾
The morning was complicated.
Leaving the house was complicated.
Initially, Stiles voiced his worries about Maddie getting caught by staying there and not going to school with him. In a strange turn of events, she agreed to go with him fairly easily. She had a mission for today, if it was going to be her last.
When she woke up, Stiles was already awake and ready for school. Her cuts and scrapes didn't hurt as much but still made themselves known. He passed her clothes Lydia dropped off in a bag, apparently claiming to Stiles' dad that it was a piece of a project they were working on. Maddie almost immediately texted Lydia a thank you and a brief update.
She was grateful for the clothes and that her boots were dry, getting dressed as quietly as possible while Stiles left to distract the Sheriff. He was being obnoxiously loud in the hallway and downstairs to cover up any noise she made. A while later, she ended up climbing out of his window and gracelessly making her way down a tree with her messenger bag.
They met up around the corner and he drove her to school.
The school day was full of tedium and assignments she was supposed to catch up on after being gone the majority of the week. Her teachers seemed massively annoyed with her, including her History teacher, who got a bit red in the face when she explained why she was missing.
"Family thing."
"You'll need a better explanation than that, Miss Hayes."
"Why?" she asked, honestly wondering.
"Excuse me?"
"It's just...you want a better explanation but you didn't even let me use more than two words to introduce myself when I first got here." Maddie ignored the other students laughing. "So which is it? Should I explain more or less?"
It was an honest question. More importantly, it was an honest question that made him not call on her for the rest of the day.
Maddie didn't even go to chemistry. Instead she wandered the halls, remembering the first day she was there and memorizing it all. She wanted to remember.
There was a point to her wandering, though. She was wandering in a certain direction.
When she got there, she looked up at the door as rage boiled under her skin. Principal's Office.
Scott brought up something about him being sick, terminally ill. Maddie felt the urge to see whatever sickness he had eating him away. She wanted to watch him suffer for the little time she had and wondered what that made her.
She didn't wait for the woman at the desk to allow her in. Opening the door, she strode in while Gerard looked up, his expression not surprised in the least. "I heard you were here today. Not a wise choice, my dear."
"I'm not your anything," she said, not actually feeling brave but feeling as though there was nothing left for her to lose. Not at his expense, anyway. She looked down at his desk and laying all the way across it was that damned sword. The sword he used to murder that werewolf. The sword he'd probably murdered a few things with. "I know what you did to me."
He raised his head back and kept his eyes on her. "Do you, now? How interesting."
"Cruciamentum, right? The one Victoria stole when she left the Council?" Maddie asked and Gerard raised his scraggly brows, almost like he was impressed. "She told me, you know, hours before she died. She told me what it was and what it did."
"And, I assume, my son told you I've been administering it to you." Gerard chuckled at the shock Maddie failed to hide. "Considering the time you have left, no use hiding it. You're already dying."
Maddie watched his face and, while her anger never ceased when it came to Gerard, she had a moment of calm at the news and maybe if she examined it closer, she'd realize it was disappointment. Now wasn't the time. There was no time to be hurt at all and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. She kept her gaze stoic and level with his. "How's that?"
"Your slayer healing has adapted to the chemicals. Your immune system thinks it's you and doesn't even fight it anymore. Even the smallest dose at this point would probably kill you."
He said it like he was giving away the ending of a movie, like it was fact and unchangeable.
Something in it made Maddie stop though.
Standing up, Gerard walked around the desk and folded his hands behind his back as he examined her.
"Look at you...you can't even hold that sword's weight, can you?" He nodded to the hulking weapon.
Maddie stared at the weapon and slowly slumped her shoulders with a nod. "You're right."
In a second her eyes were on the man as she kicked his right leg out from under him. The expression on his face as he fell was gloriously shocked and almost frightened.
She was sick with an eagerness to see him dead, choking on his very ambition and the illness coming for him. She wanted to be the one to strike the blow, despite how it would put a wrench in Scott's plan and a new need for vengeance in Allison's heart. She wasn't sure how much she cared anymore, but Scott still saved her life time and time again which was a debt she would always repay. Scott's belief in Allison had to be enough for now.
She grabbed him by his shirt, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles paled against the bone. She thought about her training, everyday for years. Her strength was more than what she was given; he couldn't take the part of it she created. She hauled him to his feet, slower than she normally would as her muscles ached. As she set him down she knocked his head against the wall, pinning him there.
"You," she spat. "You are old and diseased. You're a sickness on your family."
As he wheezed and gasped for air, he managed a grin and a low, horrible laugh. "Oh, you won't kill me. You don't have it in you."
Her lip curled and it was almost a smile, if not a bitter one. "You have no idea what I'm capable of."
"There's the demon." It came out as a hiss as his eyes narrowed. "Go ahead. Prove me right. Prove yourself the monster and condemn your whole kind."
"Real monsters enjoy the slaughter. They kill because they like it. You've always been the monster."
He began to make a choking sound as his collar began to cut off his air and Maddie hesitantly let go, causing him to fall to the ground in a crumpled heap. He began to scramble to the broadsword on his desk. She beat him there in two strides and, with both hands, hauled the sword up.
It was, as he said, extremely heavy, causing her arms to shake and her shoulder to scream in pain. Still, she paused and looked from the blade to Gerard who was on his hands and knees.
"You know, I bet you know absolutely nothing about this sword." She grinned, studying it. "It's a rite of passage these days, when a slayer chooses her weapon. It's not an age thing, but most girls find theirs by fourteen or fifteen. When it was my turn, I wanted to know everything I could about medieval weaponry, mostly blades. There was a passage in Molander's Codex about the Dopplehänder - or Great Sword."
As steadily as she could, Maddie switched the grip of one of her hands on the hilt and eased the sword down until the point met the tile. She held it firm in her hands, feeling like a knight standing guard. She allowed Gerard to get up with the help of his desk, reminded of how hard it was to stand not so long ago.
"Great Swords never actually look like this. They're not as heavy, the hilt's longer, the blade's thinner. This is all wrong. It's...probably from a Renaissance Fair," she said, followed by a 'hm'. Or one of those mall weapon shops with the video game sword replicas. "It's a show piece. Not that the real deal's any better. They only lasted two centuries before being called 'clumsy and ineffective'. They were only meant to slaughter the weak, not wage war."
She let go of the sword and it seemed to fall in slow motion until it hit the ground with a thunderous metal clang. Gerard stared at the sword and Maddie stepped on the blade, putting as much of her weight as she could on the steel.
"I trained with swords but I ended up not liking them very much. They're dated, hard to come by, and have limited uses." Maddie reached in her bag and pulled out her axe, the light and shadow playing across the celtic symbols. "Axes on the other hand...how could I go wrong with a weapon as ingrained in human warfare as the hand axe? Close quarters melee. Ranged, depending on my aim."
Her eyes lifted to Gerard again and she twirled the weapon once in her hand like a baton. She could see him swallow nervously. There was a knock at the door of his office and a female voice frantically asking if he was okay.
"I'm going to put this in terms you can understand. If you ever let me get this close to you again..." Maddie took a step towards him and leaned on the desk to meet his glare. "If you can see the whites of my eyes and fail to kill me again, it'll be the last mistake you make."
She took two steps back and kicked the sword to him with all her strength, walking backwards to the entrance of his office as she put away her axe and not taking her eyes off the old man. She reached for the knob and swung open the door, turning and smiling to a secretary she didn't recognize.
When she turned back, Gerard was completely upright, still leaning heavily on his desk with his sword leaning against the back of it, out of view of anyone who didn't know better.
Maddie nodded to him despite his focus on standing. "Thank you for giving me so many...shots this semester, Principal Argent. I'll never forget the lessons you taught me."
She turned away and walked out the threshold, wishing she could be there to see him get what he deserves.
"Enjoy the game tonight," she called over her shoulder.
Only a few minutes passed before the lunch bell rang as Maddie waited outside the Chemistry classroom. She wondered for a second how shocked Mister Harris would be if she'd taken the yearbook instead of the cross from Sunnydale or if she brought up Xander. In any event, this wasn't the time to mock one of her less friendly teachers. She had better plans for her last day.
Lydia walked out first and caught sight of Maddie.
"Maddie! Oh my god!" Lydia said, astonished. Even weirder, she wrapped Maddie in a hug she wasn't expecting. It was short lived, as if Lydia realized she was showing affection at school, and she took a step back. Her green eyes scanned over Maddie's face. "Oh my god. So, when you said torture..."
"Yeah." Maddie knew there were quite a few scrapes on her face and she was grateful that Lydia couldn't see the full extent of the damage. "But I'm healing. I should be all patched up by the end of the weekend."
It hurt to say. It hurt to think about.
She glanced down at her clothes and the plain black hoodie she wore over one of her more comfortable shirts. "I kind of ruined the jacket and some of the clothes you bought for me."
"I don't care about the stupid clothes," Lydia said and Maddie gave her a shocked stare. "But if you ever bring up that I said that, I'll deny it every time."
Maddie smiled, suppressing a laugh.
"We'll go shopping this weekend. I'll even let you pick out something black. Just once." Lydia smiled back and adjusted the books in her arms. "So, lunch?"
Maddie cleared her throat, trying to stay positive but faltering after Lydia's words. She shook her head. "Nah, I think I'm going to skip the rest of the day. I'll head to the Argents while the more hostile ones are out and about. Maybe grab the rest of my stuff."
Something in the look on Lydia's face made Maddie feel like the girl knew more than she let on. Lydia nodded anyway and gave Maddie a worried glance. "Be careful."
"Will do," Maddie said as Lydia turned and walked down the hall full of people.
She stopped as if remembering something she'd forgotten to say.
Lydia turned around, her expression shifting like one of those slow motion videos of an old building being leveled. Her eyes were wide and she was gaping slightly. The longer she stood there, the more her expression became shock and something pained. The five stages of grief hitting all at once.
She closed her mouth and swallowed like she was pushing down a sob. "I'm so sorry."
Maddie felt a chill and a sudden anger throttled her. She molded it into curiosity. "For what?"
Her shock became confusion as her brow creased. "I...I don't know."
Maddie cast her eyes down and nodded, giving her brain time to recover before meeting Lydia's stare again. "Thank you."
And it was as good of a goodbye as she could think of.
It was just in time for Scott and Stiles to walk out of the classroom and Maddie redirected her attention to them, molding her emotions again like it was too easy. Like she floated above all of this, already gone in all the ways that counted.
Stiles turned his head back to where Lydia was standing before shooting Maddie a curious stare. "What was that about?"
Maddie shrugged. "Nothing much. Lydia wants to go shopping this weekend."
"So, you're okay then?" Scott asked, his perpetually concerned expression making Maddie grateful to know someone like him. He would be fine going forward. He was kind and selfless. Beacon Hills was his to protect and Maddie was convinced he'd be something truly great one day.
"Mostly. Nothing I can't handle." Maddie gave Scott an appreciative smile. She turned to Stiles. "I'm taking off for the rest of the day."
"What? Why?" Stiles asked, his tone slightly alarmed.
"Had an encounter with Gerard. It's probably a good idea to steer clear of him the rest of the day."
Scott and Stiles looked at each other and back to Maddie with understanding nods.
"...So, I guess we'll see you at the game?" Stiles asked.
"No. I-I mean yeah, but," Maddie stumbled over her words, regretting this whole ordeal as she kept her attention on Stiles. "I wanted to know if you'd go with me. I'd rather not be alone today after...everything.."
Both Scott and Stiles watched her with shocked faces. Scott turned to Stiles, who asked, "Me? Like...me, specifically?"
This was a bad idea. Maddie tried not to cringe and instead she waved her hand dismissively. "Forget it. You don't have to go if you don't want-"
"No, I want to," Stiles said quickly, startling Maddie a little. "I mean, um...who wouldn't want to skip half the day, right? It's just, with Econ and Coach..."
Scott nudged Stiles. "Don't worry about it. I'll think of something."
"You will?" Stiles looked to his best friend. "You don't have to do that."
"Stiles, how many times have you covered for me?" Scott asked, to which Stiles wasn't able to answer. "Go. I'll still see you guys at the game."
Stiles had a grin on his face like he was about to hug Scott. He nodded and, once she caught on, so did Maddie.
She gave an appreciative smile. "Thanks, Scott."
"Thanks, man," Stiles added. "I owe you-"
Scott had already started backing away, eyes bright as he barely repressed a smile. "You don't owe me anything. Just have a good day, okay?"
He didn't wait for them to answer before turning and heading in the direction of the cafeteria.
Stiles turned to Maddie as they started walking in the opposite direction. "So where are we going?"
"Well, you always offer stopping for food," Maddie said, her stomach feeling particularly empty, making it far more obvious how twisted up in knots it was. "Let's go get food."
Stiles grinned and nodded. "Good. Yes. Definitely. Food's, um...food works. From where, though?"
"You tell me. This is your town." Maddie held on tightly to her messenger bag strap, annoyed with herself for her jittery nerves. "As long as everything is deep fried, and includes cheese."
They headed out the side door as Stiles' grin widened. "I think I know where to go."
☽ † ☾
Before
How many times did she call? How many voicemails did she leave?
Maddie thought of Nora, gone for the past two months. A fourteen year old girl, turning fifteen and out on her own in a world she knew too much about. There were still people looking for her and Maddie no longer wanted to know what they might find.
Marie wasn't answering her phone as Maddie roamed the dark alleys of downtown San Francisco, far off neon light bathing her soaked through clothes and skin in unnatural color more than the stars or moon ever could.
She wished for a sign things would be okay. She would find Marie and it would all be a mistake, like she went to 7-11 for snacks and coffee to stay up a bit later. There and safe for Maddie to apologize, then they'd stay up all night complaining about boys.
She checked the warehouse district which usually held a lot of the raves they ended up attending. She wandered in and out of the buildings. A few had people in them still, crouched in corners crying or mumbling. Sleeping and shaking.
Addicts, she thought. And the homeless. She saw plenty of them; it was nothing new.
Maddie weaved in and out of neighborhoods with cracked windows and white paint stained yellow.
It was raining but she couldn't remember when it started. Sheets of pouring rain with no end and no slowing. It made looking harder than it should've been.
Her phone began to ring and it was a miracle she could hear the annoying default jingle over the rain hitting the pavement and the rooves. On the screen, there was a photo of Maddie and her best friend, smiling just behind the name there. Marie.
"Where the hell are you?!" Maddie yelled, unable to control her panic.
"Mads. Hey." Marie sounded dazed and sniffled. "When did it start raining?"
"I-" Maddie wanted to be angry for so much - for Marie disappearing without a trace and for ignoring the question. Still, the sound of her voice eased something in Maddie's chest and she hesitated. "I don't know. What's going on?"
"It wasn't rainin' when we got here." Marie chuckled but it sounded distorted, like a hitched sob. "God knows I wouldn'ta heard the vamps otherwise."
"What are you-" Maddie cut off. The storm was getting worse. "Marie, please tell me where you are."
There was a silence which stretched on so long, Maddie thought Marie hung up on her until she heard shuffling and a whimper eaten away by static and rainfall.
Marie's breaths were ragged, hiccuping gulps. She laughed quietly, and again it sounded like a sob, but Maddie knew better.
Marie was always little more than bubbling laughter and scathing comments. Crying was something Maddie wasn't sure Marie knew how to do. The closest thing she'd ever seen to Marie showing any sort of sadness consisted only of distant and unfocused looks whenever they allowed silence to envelope them, which wasn't often.
"I keep thinkin'...like, was it rainin' outside when they found me? I don't think it was, but it feels like it was. It was so hot and I got to wear my nicest sundress, white with tiny red cherries. And suddenly..." Marie's voice trailed, like she lost the thread of thought for a second, reaching and reaching but grasping air. "...there wasn't any white left. It was all...red. Big wet splotches of red all over my nice white dress."
There was a lump in Maddie's throat which seemed to keep growing, making it hard to swallow. She thought of bruised fingers and blood soaked into the woodchips on the playground. She remembered screaming, in rage instead of fear. Now, she couldn't speak. She could hardly breathe.
"The same color as when I spilled Momma's wine on our best rug, but instead it was thick and warm and it kept stainin' everything," Marie said, her voice shaking violently. "In my brain, I swear it covered the whole floor and I was so scared I'd drown in it, but I wanted it to keep goin'. I wanted him to bleed. I wanted to see what would happen when I took away his weapon. Couldn't hurt me again without a weapon."
Maddie didn't understand who she was talking about; Marie never told her this story. She never said a bad word about her life before. It was all vacations and fencing lessons and gymnastics. It was knowing what the word comfortable really meant. This was something she never knew and she couldn't understand the meaning.
"It's all they do, Maddie. Men. Boys. They hurt us. They use us," Marie's voice was a choked whisper. "But this world doesn't belong to them, not anymore. It belongs to us. We need to show them. They need to pay for their crimes."
Somewhere in the last sentence, there was another whimper and a cry. They weren't Marie's.
"What are you talking about? What crimes?" Maddie asked, raising her voice over the rain. Thunder boomed over her head. "Please tell me where you are and I'll head right over. I can help. Let me help you."
There was another pause but Marie did tell her finally. The address itself kept rerouting to the San Francisco Zoo when Maddie typed it in but Marie said something about an abandoned building.
Bits and pieces of the conversation left Maddie the moment she hung up because something in Marie's voice caused an empty ache in her stomach.
She rode the bus, her sweater, leggings, and sweat jacket soaked all the way through as she stood in front of the change machine, shivering and alone. Alone in a sense she wasn't used to anymore. Alone in the way people looked at her under the fluorescent lights as she left a trail of rainwater in her wake. Alone in the pity she could feel from strangers as she scrounged for pocket change and came up short. The driver told her to 'just sit down' and she only nodded in response.
They probably thought she was homeless and she couldn't find the words to disagree.
It took her a half hour to get to the zoo, which was closed and looked nightmarish, all shadows and flashes of filmy white light as thunder clapped overhead. She spent far too long walking around the parking lot, looking for something that might equate to an abandoned building so close to a family themed park.
Then again, there were a lot of contradictions in San Francisco and this one was no different when she spotted what looked like a lower level parking lot fenced off and a large shadow hovering over it.
She hopped the fence, tearing holes in her leggings and scratching the backs of her thighs on the way down. She didn't feel the tear of skin and kept going through the trash strewn field. Weeds that must typically climb high were pelted by the rain and Maddie hoped the squish under her boots wasn't anything more than mud despite the smell of stillwater and sewage.
She got to the concrete and noticed what she thought was an entrance to a low level parking lot wasn't any of those things. She could barely tell what it was because of the graffiti covering the floor and the walls. She could see some writing on the outside of the big, rectangle hole in the ground and used her foot to scrape some dead weeds and an empty doritos bag out of the way.
3 FT, the faded paint read and it dawned on her as she noticed it filling up in the deep end, layers of trash floating like buoys in the distance.
The pool was massive, bigger than any she ever saw. If she still enjoyed math like she used to, she might've guessed the size. The shadow of something much larger loomed over the old pool when lightning flashed.
She saw abandoned buildings before. She lived in one technically, downtown, converted from an old commercial property into a headquarters and training facility, then the other a castle that hid them from the world. Both frightened her in different ways; both had different stories and their own ghosts.
The castle's walls and towers were made of stone instead of brick, where she swore she heard chains rattling underground and gasped when she saw a woman in a white veil waiting at dawn, as wispy as the fog. She would close her eyes and whisper how it was a dream, how it couldn't hurt her.
There was a sadness inside the castle and she knew whatever might've been there for centuries wasn't out to cause pain. Instead, it searched for something it would never find. It waited. It wept.
Headquarters was different, just like San Francisco was different. It was vibrant but with a rust over it. There was a violence in those walls, an anger. Something there wanted to cause pain.
Maddie never saw anything but sometimes, when she stayed late training downstairs or woke up too early, she could hear it. A dragging. A thumping. The scraping of nails on floorboards. There were nights she was sure it would come for her and no power she had would stop it.
There were other buildings that her Slayer senses would pick up on. There were empty warehouses and abandoned factories, all with their own grisly aura.
The building in front of Maddie now, a massive white resort-style structure, felt wrong. When she focused, there were blackened windows with wood hanging from them like they were boarded up and torn back down. Each window was a gaping mouth screaming, cautioning her. It was only two levels but felt daunting, as if what it held was much bigger than what it was.
Maddie imagined the things that wandered there. The vampires. Demons with nowhere else to go. Ghosts hanging at the edge of hell by their fingertips, trying to claw their way out.
She thought about running, about calling Marie again and telling her she was right outside. She thought of never wanting to see this place again and hoped it would be caught in a wildfire or torn down. When she took a step forward, it felt like going against a tide. It felt like betraying something at her core.
She walked around the empty pool, the sound of the rain hitting the bottom of it like tv static, matching the static in her head filling the places between her fear and worry.
There were three doorways without doors, water pouring in small streams from each, and she walked through the middle one, leaving behind the sound and the constant onslaught of rain. It was no warmer inside, but that might've been because of the gaping hole in the roof, plaster, insulation, and tile hanging from it like a waterfall frozen half way down. Her boots were submerged in water as the shower of rain didn't let up in the dead center of the room. The smell of sewage didn't leave her but increased inside, the sickly sweet stench of rotting food settling in the heavy air.
"Marie!" Maddie shouted, her voice bouncing off the walls but she received no response.
Lightning flashed, bathing the room in white light.
She saw the walls, covered in spray painted art. Words overlapping and cartoony eyes watching and symbols she didn't recognize.
A word caught her attention, in blue bubble letters.
It caught her attention because of the tall, thin figure standing amongst the trash and rubble. Maddie froze, her whole body tensing. The stranger was facing away from Maddie as if reading it, blonde curls flattened into soaked waves.
It was like she was a ghost, same as the woman in the Scottish moors at dawn, waiting and weeping. A memory.
It was only a second or two when they were back in complete darkness and thunder boomed around her. Whatever the word on the wall was left her.
"Do you think we'll ever get it?" came Marie's scratchy, weak voice. She was only a pale silhouette in the deep black shadows.
"What?" Maddie moved to walk toward Marie but stopped as confusion mixed with her relief. "What are you talking about?"
The shape in the darkness jerked and moved. There was a pause and Maddie started to wonder if she was going crazy until she heard Marie's voice again. "What took you so long?"
The familiarity was returning to her voice but she sniffled and Maddie's worry increased. Something inside her stopped her from asking what was wrong; Marie always hated questions like those. What's wrong? Are you okay? Do you need anything? So, Maddie didn't ask anymore. "I was on the other side of town. Took the bus. Why are you even here?"
"It was a, um...vampire nest. There used to be a couple dozen homeless people here 'til they were slaughtered." There was the shuffle and scrape of footsteps. "S'okay, though. I remedied the problem."
"By yourself?" Maddie asked, a flare of anger in her stomach now, clawing its way up.
"I've gotten used to it. Doin' things by myself, that is."
Maddie felt the slap of the words and when lightning flashed again, she saw Marie facing her. Makeup imperfect and streaking down her face. Long hair sticking to her skin. Wide blue eyes distant and glazed over. She looked more like a phantom than ever.
Maddie forced down a shudder as they were left in the darkness again. "Are all the vamps dead then?"
Another pause. A thunder clap. A loud, shaky breath in. The rain felt so far away. "Yeah. They're all dead."
The answer unsettled Maddie as she processed the strangeness in Marie's tone. "We should-"
"Why did you leave?"
Maddie stopped as her stomach constricted. "What?"
"You lied," Marie said slowly. "And you left."
Maddie was gaping, throat dry and her head full of fog. "I...I just- I needed fresh ai-"
"STOP LYING!"
Maddie's shoulders tensed as she flinched at the bellow, something both deep and shrill. A demonic sound. She suddenly felt so small and alone and so very far from everything she ever knew. Part of her already felt the pressure in her sinuses and behind her eyes, like she was about to cry - maybe out of fear.
I wanna go home, said a small voice in the back of her brain and it took her a moment to remember it was once hers.
"I'm sorry," Maddie said and she hated herself for it. "I just-"
"You wanted to see him. I know that. I just hoped I still meant more." Marie's voice was calm again, as if the outburst never happened, but cold. "Guess we both learned different tonight, didn't we, Mads?"
There was another shuffle of footsteps and the hollow sound of an empty can knocking over.
"We both learned we mean nothin' to the people we care most about," Marie said and Maddie wanted to argue for a second, to explain. "He didn't care about you. You didn't care about me. But I. Still. Care."
Maddie still wanted to argue but the sensation left as she was enveloped in silence and the far off sound of rain again. Her stomach felt like it plummeted from her body. "He?"
"I knew you'd go and see him. How could I not when you made it so obvious?" Marie was heading closer to the gaping hole in the center of the ceiling and Maddie could almost see her features as she looked up at the sky. "Then he tossed you aside cause he wasn't allowed to play with you anymore and watched you cry like it inconvenienced him."
A flash of a memory. Wrenching away from cloying hands. The look on Elliott's face. The annoyance. The almost pity.
Another memory. Marie's hand striking her so long ago. Marie shouting at her to stop crying.
Maddie wondered if Marie forgot but didn't have the courage to ask.
Instead, Maddie finally asked, "How do you know that?"
"I wanted to know if I was right and when I knew I was, I wanted to make sure he was worth it," Marie said softly, her voice barely louder than the rain. She turned to Maddie sharply. "He wasn't. He guilted you and touched you and embarrassed you. I didn't need any more proof."
"...Proof of what?" Maddie asked, her voice sounding distant as if she stepped out of her body.
"That he'd try again...and that, maybe, the next time would be in a way you'd never be able to erase. Never. I wouldn't risk it." Even as Marie's voice had a calm to it, there was a razor edge of something angry and volatile. Her eyes were clearer now, pleading with Maddie to understand something and when she spoke again, her voice shook. "I knew. I knew I had to protect you."
of Maddie didn't understand. She was a slayer; she'd never let Elliott hurt her. He physically couldn't. There was no logic there.
The longer she stared into Marie's eyes, the more it dawned upon her. The more Maddie realized there was no logic to this. Maddie almost said yes to Elliott when she wanted to say no and the memory was void of logic. There was no logic. There was no way to prove Marie wrong.
"If Maddie's out, she's probably trailing that drugged out STD ad and Redneck Barbie's not that far behind."
Maddie didn't believe a word of it but knew she hadn't noticed much outside of her own life for a while. Why didn't Maddie notice any of that? Why didn't she take into account any of this?
The silence wasn't only unsettling, it was upsetting. Unnatural.
Marie looked like an addict, wild eyed and talking in riddles. She was something Maddie didn't want to see but it was the part she recognized that frightened her the most. The pleading expression on her face terrified her because it was the one that made it okay to forgive her. It was the same one that made it okay that Marie gossiped about other members of their own team. It was the same one that made it okay when Marie got in trouble and convinced their trainers Maddie was just as guilty.
It was an expression Marie always threw to Maddie when she knew what she did wasn't okay. It wasn't sorrow or remorse; it was understanding. It was knowing what she did was wrong but justified.
Please understand. Please take my side. Please see things from my point of view.
Marie wanted her to understand but Maddie was afraid of why she needed it. She was afraid to see from Marie's point of view.
"Marie," Maddie said, her voice unsteady but she tried her best to be firm. "What did you do?"
Marie was quiet as if she couldn't find the words and her stare went down at first, then drifted to somewhere off in the shadows.
With a shaking hand, Maddie reached in her pocket for her phone and wiped the specs of water from the screen. She turned on her flashlight with the unwavering feeling that there was something here she needed to see.
She went across the room slowly, the light directed down on the floor of the massive and cluttered room.
The first time she scanned the room, she didn't notice it. There was so much on the ground and so much could be easily misinterpreted.
The second time, she felt her heart stop and a cry left her mouth. If she wasn't paying attention, it could've been passed off as more trash or maybe a pile of old blankets.
She knew it wasn't blankets when she saw his pale skin. She knew when she saw two holes in his neck and a trail of blood coming from them.
Black hair. Rockstar good looks turned ashen. He even made a beautiful corpse.