Take me to church → derek hale [2]

1: sleeping beauty

      "W-what? Why?" Allison's heart merely stopped for a second at the thought of her best friend being seriously injured.

    "She-- just meet me there," he said as soon as Derek had taken off towards his car, and he entered without a second thought before Derek had raced towards the hospital with the stench of anxiety radiating off him.

   Derek walked slowly towards her unconscious body, carefully examining her body. Her luscious lips stayed in a line, her skin was pale and her eyes stuck in a permanent slumber. Little did he know, Grace's mind was wide awake and aware of her surroundings. She wanted so badly to open her eyes, to twitch her fingers, to scream that she was fine, yet her body was stuck in a never ending paralysis in which she was far from waking up from. Or at least she thought. She had lost track of time.

   Derek crouched beside her body, his emotionless face trying its best not to let tears fall down his cheeks. His hand found itself intertwined with hers, secretly hoping to receive a reassuring squeeze to wake him up from the nightmare he found himself living on. She was his only weakness. He let her be his weakness. The now big bad alpha's weakness was the unconscious twin of his dead uncle's beta.

    He couldn't let his weakness be known, though. Word was already out the last Hale was the new alpha supposed to rule Beacon Hills, and there he was, setting his hopes on a teenager's health. He needed a pack, and soon. It was what brought anxiety at the moment he woke up in the morning. That and the overcoming fear that Grace would never wake up. The first weeks she had stayed, he slept out in the waiting room, hoping for the moment they would let him in and tell him she had woken up, yet the redhead Grace called best friend had woken up weeks before her. That only brought more anxiety into him. He couldn't imagine how Scott felt. Not to mention Melissa. At least she could enter her room freely.

      Scott hadn't visited her in a while. He coped by being with Allison. More like secret make out sessions with her to keep his mind off things. Derek was always one to push his feelings away yet he couldn't seem to push Grace away. She was always on his mind 24/7 and he couldn't do anything about it.

      Stiles was another one not let inside Grace's room. As much as Derek hated to admit it, he was great company under the circumstances. He basically brought a whole camping set inside the waiting room and lifted up the mood with his sarcastic remarks. Grace's room had been empty for a while. Melissa didn't want to enter. It was a way to cope, Derek thought. Maybe if she didn't see her body, it wouldn't be true. Scott only visited her once or twice and spent the night there, coming out with swollen red eyes. That said, Lydia's room was like a party. Before and after she had woken up from her mini coma, people who didn't even know her came and dropped off gifts and get well soon cards.

      And sometimes Derek thought it was all a dream, maybe what happened to Grace was just a hallucination of some sort. Maybe he and Melissa tried coping the same way. Yet there he was. beside the body of his 16-year-old... well, he didn't know what to call her. They weren't just "friends", they weren't a couple, they weren't acquaintances, so what were they? Something Derek looked up to ask Grace once she woke up. There were so many things he had been looking forward to telling her if she woke up. When she woke up. He wanted to think she would wake up shortly, that he could see her blinding smile once again, yet his hope faltered every second he spent observing her shut eyelids, her lips formed into a straight line, her nose taking steady breaths. He wanted her awake. Yet, waking up would only bring more chaos it already had.

     Yet, as much as Derek missed Grace, she missed him more. All she wanted was to wake up from her never ending trance and wrap her arms around his muscular body. She missed the way his lips tasted, the small smile he would give her when he examined her face, the way his arms went all over her body in a way that was gentle yet sensual. She wanted most to blare music in his black Camaro and sing horribly from the top of her lungs with him like she'd done once, the rare sound of his laugh echoed through her mind every day. Sometimes it brought panic. Being in a paralytic sleep was sometimes too much for her. She screamed and moved and cried and shouted every day, yet no one could hear it, she had no power to do any of the things she wanted to. Her mind was wide awake whilst her body stood in a dark void that constricted her of any movement.

     Apart from the dull unconsciousness she stood in, the cold embrace of loneliness was stuck in the atmosphere like crazy glue. Sometimes the sharp beeps of the monitor beside her drove her insane. The thought of everyone forgetting about her drove her even more insane. Sometimes she couldn't hear anything and that scared her. At first, she would come in and out of consciousness yet still be in her comatose state, which only brought to her confusion. It was so quiet she wished someone-- anyone-- would come in and say something. Start a conversation, tell her about Lydia's state, read to her, put on some music, anything. Sometimes when people actually came, it would brew panic as they touched her pale skin, yet the small gesture of affection that came from Derek made a warm feeling brew on her stomach.

     At times she felt as if she was getting sick. Only a few weeks ago the feeling of vomiting had stopped finally and she could hear the nurse's conversation outside of her room. It was weird that she could even hear the heartbeat of the sour wolf crouched beside her, yet she didn't pay much attention to it as it comforted her, hearing the sound of someone being with her. Yet she yearned to just wake up and pull him in a warm embrace.

...

     "Look, Scott, I'm not pushing you to go but bottling up your feelings isn't exactly the healthiest thing to do, okay?" Stiles said as he and Scott glanced at Grace's locker beside his. Scott sighed as he closed his locker quite forcefully in front of Stiles, walking the opposite direction. Stiles scoffed as he walked up to Scott, both of them silent before Stiles decided to speak up once again.

     "I'm going there for the weekend. You can come, if you want, but I know Derek's probably gonna be there," He muttered and Scott looked at him, his eyes watering.

     "I just-- I don't know if I can see her like that again," Scott whispered and Stiles sighed, pulling him into a hug. Scott pulled away, quickly wiping the tears off his eyes and continuing to walk towards the boy's locker room for about the fifth time that week. Stiles looked down. Scott had been acting that way ever since Grace was admitted to the hospital. He'd shut off his feelings when it came to Grace, eventually shutting everyone else out, even his best friend. He hadn't visited his sister in about two weeks and he didn't plan on doing so, seeing as how he broke down every time he thought about her.

     Some part of him blamed Derek for her being in a coma. Somehow it was his fault she had such an unrealistic crush on him, that she now lay on a hospital bed in a comatose state. Maybe he just needed someone to blame for the unknown that happened to his sister. Maybe he always felt off when it came to Derek. Or maybe it was the fact that Derek had killed people and was now sporting the title of alpha. Either way, Scott knew there was something that Derek was to blame for when it came to Grace, yet he secretly wished he was wrong, hoping that Grace wouldn't have so much to face when she woke up.

***

Well this chapter is short and kinda boring, but it was only to introduce basically how everything's going after the cliffhanger that was the end of Thief in the night. I promise it'll get interesting soon bcause there will be a lot of secrets uncovered once Grace wakes up.

-- vivian darkbloom