The Lives We Lead | tmr/tw • tw/tmr |

(14) Lunch With One So-Called Werewolf

(A/N: Guys... please don't hate me for this, but I'm leaving you hanging on that cliff for a little bit longer.)

You are probably opening up this chapter, expecting to find out who Stiles just got a surprise reunion with.

Unfortunately, the narrator of this story is an evil twit and decided that now would be the perfect time to read about someone else.

And so we enter the world of one Abigail Simon.

Or as you know her, Teresa. But in the world she lived in, Teresa didn't exist.

May 7th, Monday

Abigail woke up in a cold sweat with tears died on her face, causing her cheeks to feel stiff. It took her several minutes to calm her breathing and stop the rush of new tears that followed. With a shaky hand, Abigail moved her hair from her face and then turned her sore neck to read her digital alarm clock.

It was nearly 6 a.m. so she didn't bother trying to go back to sleep. She doubted that she could have managed any more sleep, anyways.

There were multifarious things that stayed consistent for her.

One of those things was that every night, she would have nightmares about earth 816.

They started out simple, being about surviving the Maze with the others as Grievers invaded the Homestead. But then they started to get increasingly worse, resurfacing memories like watching her mother go insane from the Flare.

Surprisingly enough, the worse dreams weren't about her mother or any Cranks, but about her working for WICKED. Sometimes that meant observing the Maze, while other times it meant looking for the Cure, experimenting upon Immunes.

That particular morning, Abigail was startled awake from a dream involving the simulations they put Minho through in order to study his brain scans.

His screams were of raw terror, reverberating through Abigail and sending deadly chills down her spine. It made her blood run cold and she felt nauseated. When she woke up, she could almost still hear his screams.

They were so, so loud.

Abigail had that exact dream for almost a week  and it was setting her on edge every time she heard his cries for help.

God, I'm a monster, she thought.

She couldn't stand that she let all of those things happen so they could find some stupid Cure that would magically save everyone.

How could she be so idiotic? How could she be so naive? Even after everything that happened, she still ran back and worked as a flying monkey for Chancellor Ava Paige.

Abigail nearly scoffed at the idea as she padded to her bathroom to take a shower. She was still shaking as she turned on the water so she stood under the hot current for a few minutes. She took deep breaths until she felt her heartbeat settle down, trying to remember what Thomas looked like that night, laying beside her and smiling like the rest of the world didn't exist; like all that mattered was her.

Abigail didn't deserve him and she knew it. He was too good, too loyal, and she was a traitor. She never deserved his smile, let alone his compassion—and she certainly didn't deserve to think about him, either. But she also knew his existence was only thing keeping her afloat in her sea of guilt and sorrow.

So she continued to think of him often.

The night he visited her was like a beacon of hope in an ocean of sleepless nights. Though it had been almost a month before, that night served as her example of how there was light left in her world, even if she had a hard time seeing it most days. It was her one night of blissful sleep and she yearned for it every day when she would wake up in tears, shaky and terrified.