DANGEROUS LIAISONS ◦ STILINSKI [2]

twenty eight; pleading guilty

PLEADING GUILTY
​

"Chief Neolin, you have a visitor."
​
The man's head immediately shot up at the sound of his name being called, thick bandages were wrapped around his wrists with already healed slits beneath them. It had been nearly a century since the last time he had saw anyone outside of the faculty that worked inside that God forsaken facility, and in that time, his physical traits remained the exact same. Neolin's startled expression only deepened when he noticed a young, teenage girl was standing in the doorway. There were goose bumps on her skin, but there wasn't the slightest hint to even suggest that she was cold – practically feeling the heat that was radiating off of her. But, the man could tell from the girl's hard stance that this definitely wasn't a place Carter Hale wanted to be.
​
"Who are you?" Neolin asked, his aged eyes crinkled as he stared at the familiar looking teenage girl. It was gut wrenching to see the reincarnated body of his daughter was alive and standing in front of him. Deaton had warned Carter that she should keep her true identity to herself; her presence would be enough to put him on edge.
​
Carter took a few steps forward, slowly inching toward the chair across from Neolin. The Indian Chief kept his dark eyes on every movement the brunette made. "I'm a friend of Doctor Deaton. He said that if I ever wanted information, that I needed to come talk to you."
​
He continued to analyze her, taking in every single feature and comparing it to the last memory he had of his daughter all those years ago when the world was newly inhabited and wars against the pale faces raged with a certain ferocity. "You look just like her – it's eerie." The man admitted, his body relaxing as he stared at the young girl in front of him. Carter couldn't help but tense as he relaxed, not liking the man's condescending tone; his fingers reaching up to grab the end of his long black braid.

The brunette tilted her head to the side, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. "Who are you talking about, Neolin? I look just like whom?"

"My daughter," Neolin deadpanned with a strong voice, his eyes still glued on the shockingly similar features on the girl's face. The two words had caught Carter's attention, sitting up straighter in her seat. "Rae Echo Hale, she was just like you. A Pheanix – an abomination. They're harbingers of pain and death; everywhere they go shadows of blood trail behind them, making the supernatural tremble with fear. They're powerful essence sparks some sort of violent spike. When a Pheanix rolls into a town, the vengeful creatures are seemingly compelled to fulfill their spiteful deeds – bringing power to the Pheanix as it feeds on all of the pain and suffering that is inflicted on the people around them. They weren't created for good. They weren't created to be helpful. They were created to siphon – siphon up all of the agony."

The corner of the man's mouth twitched upward in the slightest possible way, his finally sentence falling from his mouth the moment a satisfied glint flashed in his eyes. The reaction that he got from his descendant was raw pain, knowing that the teenage girl was already well aware of her destructive purpose in the world. She felt the creature just beneath the surface of her skin grow stronger and hungrier every time her body experienced an injury that wasn't her own, soaking in all of the supernatural entity it could. It still didn't change the fact that Neolin's malicious explanation poured salt into an already open and irritated wound inside of Carter, and that his words only sealed the harsh reality that her rare species would never fall into either categories that defined supernatural creatures. The Good or The Evil.

A Pheanix was much like the Nogitsune, taking too much joy from others' pain and suffering. She had never consciously liked the torture of being that creature, but the Pheanix within her craved, needed, that constant line of physical distress. That was a reality that all of them would have to face – that, she had never been one of the good guys nor one of the bad guys; she just wasn't one of them. It was accepting the fact that, as harbingers of misery, the scale would only tip toward the end that involved the most anguish and they would always gain in the end.