"i was meant to love you,
i knew i loved you at first sight,
if i abandoned love,
i'd be a man without dreams."
word count: 5.2k
A pair of white earphones dangled down the front of Max's navy blue sweater as he twisted a thread from his jeans around his finger. Cigarettes After Sex was blaring into his eardrums as he sat outside of the gate leading to the closed unit.
Scott and Liam remained adamant that they could break through the mountain ash barrier to help the others get Lydia to safety, but so far their efforts had failed.
He had slumped to the floor when the fear started to make him light-headed. Sometimes he found himself envying his sister for being able to turn her emotions off whenever it got hard to cope with. He didn't have that option. No matter how difficult it got, he had to feel every single thing, and Eichen House was exactly the kind of place an empath hated to be.
It was common knowledge that Eichen was unethical towards their patients. Compared to other things he had seen and felt today, he had a nagging thought in the back of his head that human experimentation was only the tip of a sickening iceberg.
He had felt every trepanation wound in the base of his skull, felt every bucket of ice-cold water poured in the shower, every needle being jabbed through his skin. He had felt every harrowing, torturous act that the staff members at Eichen had inflicted on people they were meant to be caring for. It was an abuse of power.
Throughout his life, he had seen gruesome events in visions and felt a lot of negative emotions when he was in a place where bad things had happened. After he inherited his empath abilities, it came as a surprise that his powers tied in with being a seer. It gave him a bit more sympathy when he thought back on his dad.
Both so alike, bonded by what they saw and felt, yet both pushing the other away because of the fear that they wouldn't understand.
As the song faded to an end, he could faintly hear the panting from Scott and Liam after their attempts to break through the barrier had failed.
He cracked his eyes open an inch, wiping his clammy palms into his frayed jeans. He properly looked up, Liberty averting her eyes but he had already caught her staring. Perhaps it was the curiosity of having never seen his powers taking a toll on him before.
A rosy colour brushed over her unusually pale face and she ducked her head strategically, allowing her locks of mousy brown hair to hide it. Shuffling her weight to her other foot, she raised a brow at Scott, who was checking to make sure the pair were alright. "This isn't a circle of mountain ash——— half of the building's full of it," she bluntly declared.
Without her husky as a support beam to fall back on, her patience was wearing thin and she didn't bother to filter what she was saying.
Both Scott and Max winced and clutched at the spot above their navel. The alpha tugged at the hem of his lilac shirt, pulling it up to expose the freshly opened wounds that bled from his abdomen. He must have overdone it with the effort to get through the barrier and, in turn, managed to reopen the wounds that his cousin had inflicted the night she murdered him.
Max rose to his feet, running a hand through his curls to relieve some pent-up energy— he had never been particularly good at staying still. He shoved his earphones and his phone into his back pocket and he stood opposite the witch as the four of them huddled into a little makeshift circle. There was an unspoken defeated feeling between them and he scuffed his Nike shoes against the floor.
Both Stiles and Jade had less than five minutes to get in, get Lydia and get out. Ten minutes had gone past, the reboot was over and the key card wouldn't work anymore.
As they laid these facts out in front of them, Liberty had noticed something more urgent in need of their attention. "And those angry guards," she tilted her head to the side curiously and pointed over the boy's shoulders, where four men dressed in grey uniforms stalked towards them. Raising their electrical batons, they snarled at the teenagers. For a job that paid minimum wage, she didn't understand why they were so bothered.
The two werewolves growled as the guards closed in on them, sharp fangs extending from their teeth. Her eyes shone gold and wisps flew from her hands as the four of them prepared for a fight. Max quickly knelt, grabbing the silver-bladed daggers from under his cuffed jeans.
Liam didn't move fast enough and ended up getting backhanded across the face by a very pissed-off guard. He was thrown into a corner and left himself wide open for the same guard to taser him right in the chest. Liberty had kicked one of the guards in the face and hit him with a migraine spell, losing her concentration when she heard the beta screaming in agonising pain.
While the guard she was fighting was preoccupied on the floor, she wracked her brain for a spell to help Liam. Unfortunately, she had slightly misjudged the guard's recovery time and he swiped out his leg and knocked her off her feet.
The side of her face made contact with the concrete floor and she could feel a bruise starting to form on her temple. Feeling where the pain on her cheek was coming from, she wrinkled her nose at the syrupy blood that slicked her hand.
Quickly rolling onto her back, the guard towered over her. Still dazed from the hit, she didn't react as quickly as normal and he had enough time to plunge his electric baton into her stomach. Wailing out in pain, she kicked out but her foot hit nothing but air. Scott gained a new motive at the sound of her being hurt and punched one of the guards square in the nose.
Max howled out from their combined pain, not noticing his eyes glowing. Reaching out, he grabbed a fistful of material, not knowing and not caring who he was holding onto.
A woman on a ventilator lay in the back of an ambulance.
The guard tensed up, dropping his taser to the floor. His chest heaved up and down as he relived the day his wife was in an accident. Tears sprung to his eyes as he started to choke on his cries.
Max kept his eyes squeezed shut as he fought the relentless pain of being electrocuted three separate times. Struggling to his feet, he wildly flailed his arms out trying to reach someone who was standing. There was a ninety-nine per cent chance it would be a guard—— statistically, there was no way Scott and the others were standing while simultaneously being zapped with fifty thousand volts.
He blindly scoured the hallway for guards, his vision blurred by the tears gathering on his lashes, and his fingers enclosed around the material of a grey shirt as he incapacitated them one by one.
Smoke filled his lungs as he watched the second guard cling to a baby in his arms, fighting his way through the flames and ash to get down the wooden staircase. Waterboarding flicked through his head as he grabbed the third guard and then he watched the fourth guard's mother slip away.
Each of the guards squirmed on the ground, begging him to stop, their torture methods long forgotten by now.
Liberty was the first to bounce back from her injuries, sitting up on her hands and knees. She glanced at the guards, unsure why they had stopped their relentless attacks. That was, until she noticed how all she could see was the whites of their eyes and how their bodies shook. She only knew of one creature with the power to do something like this; a person who toyed with emotions.
An empath.
Unable to shut out the voices and screams of Eichen patients any longer, Max crumbled to the floor. His body involuntarily curled in on itself and his hands flew up to cover his ears. He couldn't tell if this was an empath or a seer ability but he didn't care.
What he knew was that every bone in his body ached and screamed at him for doing this (even though he hadn't meant to.)
Pressure kept building in the base of his skull and he whimpered in pain. He could tell that a migraine was starting to form. He should have expected it; 48 hours of almost constant visions was bound to cause a side effect or two. The premonitions were getting a tad quieter but he couldn't be entirely sure—— there was a high chance he was losing his mind.
Okay, pull yourself together. If he didn't snap out of this, everyone was going to die, including the only family members he had left. So.... just think.
As he tried to gather his thoughts together, a searing pain burst through the muscles in his hand. Forcing his eyes open, he hissed in pain and tried to examine what seemed to be claw marks in the skin above his knuckles.
Liam tilted his head apologetically. "Pain makes you human," he explained gently, scrunching his nose at the droplets of blood leaking from the cut. Scott and Liberty collectively let out a deep breath now that he had stopped freaking out.
Max's eyes darted around at his friends, who were all gathered around him in a circle, like an odd game of duck duck goose. "Thanks," he murmured, unsure if he was feeling sick from this ordeal as a whole or the level of concern in their eyes.
He shuffled backwards, letting his head rest against the wall. It was cold and soothed his migraine, which he was grateful for. Wiping away the sweat from his temple with the sleeve of his jumper, his gaze fell on the guards, who were unmoving on the floor.
"They're asleep," Liberty spoke up after noticing the way his brows knitted together in panic. "Magic," she wiggled her eyebrows, the silver piercing lodged into one of her brows moving as well. Healing the bloody gash on her cheek and the purple bruise on her head, she wobbled to her feet, reassuring the alpha for the millionth time that she was fine.
Scott huffed out a breath of air when he was satisfied with her answer. His eyes were gradually fading back to their honey-brown colour and anticipation fizzled in his veins. "We're getting Lydia out of here." As he offered out a hand, he witnessed the hesitation flash across his cousin's face. He couldn't begin to imagine how awful it was to see people's futures in one touch.
Just as Scott was about to withdraw his offer in fear that he might have overstepped the boundaries of their rocky friendship, Max wrapped his hand in his. He flinched but managed to ignore the vision as he hauled himself off the concrete. Realistically, it was bad to speak about what he saw, but he didn't think a vague explanation would alter the future that bad. "Jade's going to have a plan. Well, kind of. But we've gotta find Meredith first."
⌜ ° + ° ⌝
Embers of ash flittered to the ground by Parrish's feet as he clambered over the fallen gate, advancing towards the chimera pack. The smell of smoke and burnt fabric wafted throughout the hallways of the closed unit. He snarled threateningly and there did not appear to be a single thought behind his eyes. It was obvious that the hellhound had taken over.
In the chaos that followed Parrish's arrival, Theo had been able to slip into Lydia's room without being noticed. They pushed their way to the front of the pack, standing tall in front of the hellhound as they held a disorientated Lydia by the throat. "Back off," they warned, using the only leverage they had.
Jade hissed under her breath, her fingers hooking through the gaps in the metal gate at the sight of a prick like Theo holding her girlfriend hostage (technically they were still on a break but that hardly mattered right now).
Stiles was quick to realise she was about to blow their cover and before she had a chance to ruin their chances, he lunged towards her and wrapped an arm around her waist, using his other hand to cover her mouth and keep her quiet. For someone who was all skin and bone and hadn't even looked at a weight in his life, he was surprisingly strong.
So, she did the only thing she could think of at the moment and sunk her teeth into the palm of his hand. Swearing under his breath, he grabbed the collar of her leather jacket before she could get too far and yanked as hard as he could. It effectively choked her and she let out a strangled noise, bringing her elbow back and hitting him in the face.
"What the fuck!" he whispered angrily, pinching the bridge of his nose and wiping away some blood. She narrowed her eyes at him and stuck her tongue out childishly, flipping him off. Ducking back into the corner with Stiles right behind her, she healed his nose and they eavesdropped once more.
Thankfully, the chimeras had been preoccupied with the hellhound and missed their fight, which meant that they were safe for the time being.
When Parrish didn't stop heading towards them, Theo tightened their grip around Lydia's throat. Their claws dug into the banshee's neck and droplets of crimson blood fell to the floor. Jade once again had to be restrained as Stiles grabbed a hold of her wrist, refusing to let go this time. "I said, back off," they warned, eyes turning into slits. "Take him."
"The guy's on fire!" Corey scoffed, unable to believe what he was hearing. He was way in over his head and he knew it, but in his defence, no one had mentioned a man engulfed in flames during the debriefing of the plan!
While Corey may have been hesitant, Tracy jumped at the chance to prove herself to her alpha. Valack slumped to the floor in a heap when she dropped him and she sprung forward. She jammed her claws into Parrish's abdomen, reptilian scales covering half her face as she waited for the kanima venom to kick in.
Parrish wasn't impressed at the feeble attack and to prove that he was immune to her venom, he swung an arm back and hit her so hard that she went flying into the bulletproof glass of a cell. The force from his strike had knocked her unconscious.
Josh was next to leap into action, snapping a metal bar in half. He siphoned the electricity from inside the broken metal and it crackled around his body like a second skin. Piercing his claws into the man's body, he started to panic when he realised that it wasn't working. Parrish backhanded him and he was thrown into the pile next to Tracy.
Theo didn't know what to do next and Valack, who had managed to escape into Lydia's room while the fight raged on, snatched up the opportunity. His drill came to life with a whirring noise as he jabbed it into the back of Theo's thigh muscle, causing them to let go of Lydia on instinct.
"Sorry, Theo, but I'm not done with her yet," Valack hit them in the side of the head with the handle of the drill and carried the weak banshee down the hallway.
Jade broke free of Stiles' grip and he was hot on her heels as the two of them blocked Valack and Lydia's escape route. Unless Valack was prepared to fight his way through the chimeras and Parrish, there was no other way out. His satisfied smirk dropped when he caught sight of Jade—— he had hoped that he would not have the misfortune of running into either of Liz's children tonight.
Before she had a chance to slaughter him for laying a finger on her girlfriend, Corey released a scream that made their blood run cold. At some point or another, he must have used his camouflaging powers to sneak up on the hellhound (given the other chimeras failed ambushes, you would have thought he had learnt the lesson, but apparently not).
Parrish wasn't impressed, an unrelenting grip on his arm, snapping the bones in multiple places. He must have had enough of the joking around because he let the full extent of his fire envelope the two of them in scarlet flames. He paid no attention to the chimera's blood-curdling screams, lifting the boy off of his feet and throwing him towards the group at the end of the hallway.
Stiles had the slowest reflexes and, against her better judgement, Jade tried to pull him behind the door to safety. But for some reason or another, he seemed to think it would be a brilliant idea to yank her into the middle of the corridor.
Her life flashed before her eyes as Corey soared like a comet through the air and collided with them. The three of them were thrown backwards and Stiles and Jade took the brunt of the fall.
[And this, ladies and gentlemen, was exactly why she would refrain from helping Stiles Stilinski in the far future.]
Smoke infiltrated her lungs and the back of her head ached from smacking against the floor. It was easy to feel overstimulated—— the heat from the flames was making it hard to breathe and a scorched Corey had used the two of them to soften his landing.
It was hard to wriggle out from beneath him and she had to drag herself out on her elbows. She eventually got free, using a handrail by one of the cells to get to her feet.
Emerald eyes flickering around the room, she caught sight of a sharp metal pipe pierced through Parrish's stomach. Theo was towering over the hellhound with a smug smile and she took a few sharp steps towards them before forcing herself to stop. She clenched her hands into fists and dug her nails into the soft skin of her palm.
Right now, she had to stay focused. Her priority was saving Lydia. Wait——where the fuck was Lydia?
Panic made her heart hammer faster with every thump of her boots against the tiles. Stiles had heaved Corey's burnt body off of him. His honey eyes scanned the hallway as he finally regained control of his senses, locking eyes with Dr Valack, who bundled Lydia into his arms and made a run for a door.
His legs hadn't received the memo from his brain as it took him a second to kick into action, screaming at Jade which way to go.
She sprinted past Stiles at record speed, not sparing him a glance and heading right for Valack. All logical thoughts were long gone from her head and casting a spell hadn't even crossed her mind.
For something that played such a big part in her day-to-day life, using magic was surprisingly not her first instinct a lot of the time.
Dr Valack slipped through the bulletproof door with the comatose banshee in tow and slammed it closed behind them, locking it for good measure.
Stiles flailed his arms around wildly and skidded to a stop next to Jade. She was shaking so violently that he thought she might pass out. They slammed their combined body weights against the bulletproof glass but the door remained unmovable.
"Lydia!" she screamed, the back of her throat ripping more and more with every yell. Any rational thought was gone and for the first time in her life, it was as if she had forgotten how to work her magic.
She beat her fists against the door and upon hearing the familiar voice of Theo Raeken, she screamed for all she was worth—— perhaps it was because of the sheer frustration of everything that was occurring or maybe it was due to her humanity clawing it's way to the surface once again.
Her hands flung forward on their own accord and a blast of magic followed. The force of her power burst the door in two pieces and half of the twisted metal was blown over fifty feet away.
The physics wasn't all that important to her; nothing was blocking them in and that was the only thing she had the capacity to care about right now.
Stiles grabbed onto her hand and she winced, letting her mind take a back seat for this one. Blood dripped from her knuckles and she knew they would bruise in the coming days. Her legs felt like jelly and it took everything in her not to give up. Stiles looped an arm through hers to help her stay upright and he tried to comfort her with promises that this was fine.
"You can't find her without me!" Theo argued, steps growing louder as they gained ground on the pair. At least they were persistent, she had to give them that. When neither Stiles nor Jade indicated that they had been listening, they huffed out a sigh, "I want her out of here, too. There's too much mountain ash for your location spells to work but I have her scent."
Jade broke free of Stiles' grasp on her arm and spun on her heels, pouncing at Theo. Her fingers wrapped around their neck and she pushed them against one of the walls, dangling them above the ground.
"Let me make myself very clear," she hissed, her lips curled into a scowl. Wisps of magic sparked from her hand and she wasn't sure if Theo was terrified or just glad to get a rise out of her. "You're gonna find Lydia for me and if you so much as think about screwing us over, I will know. Rage is the only thing I have left—and trust me, I won't have a problem gutting you like a pig and finding Lydia on my own, mountain ash or not."
Theo choked out a laugh and it only added fuel to the fire as she smashed their head into the wall and used a spell to break their nose. "The whole idea of having your emotions off is not feeling anything," they spat, laughing at how easy it was to wind her up as scarlet blood dripped down their shirt. "Don't tell me you're willing to spill more blood over the banshee."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could make out the darkness seeping in from the shadows and her eyes started to rapidly turn darker in shades of violet.
It was what she imagined drowning felt like——when your clothes weighed you down in the depths of dark murky water and it felt like someone was smothering you in your own skin. Where you could see the shore from the water but you were sinking and suffocating quicker than you could comprehend. That was what her magic felt like; an all-consuming weight, a curse that she was forced to live with for eternity.
"Why would you underestimate what someone who can't feel remorse would do?" she sneered, a couple of loose strands of blonde hair falling into her face.
Theo dropped to the floor like a tonne of bricks when she suddenly relinquished her grip. A witty comment died on their lips when she cast a spell in Latin. "Can you feel it yet?" she smirked mischievously, leaning her body weight against the wall. "That is your blood starting to boil," she lowered herself to the floor and grabbed hold of their jaw, prompting them to look at her.
"Thats a fraction of the pain I'll cause if you fuck this up. You'll feel all your organs shutting down and it'll be so agonising that you'll beg me to kill you."
She put an end to the spell before it could do any real damage and used the wedges on her combat boots to push herself to her feet. "Are you gonna find Lydia or just lie there?"
With a muttered 'bitch' under their breath, Theo was reluctantly crawling to their feet and wiping the dust into their trousers.
Her warning had worked because regardless of how much they hated her, being burnt alive sounded like a worse alternative. "This way."
⌜ ° + ° ⌝
Trudging through a mixture of slime and mud in an underground tunnel hadn't been on tonight's bucket list. If it was, then Jade wouldn't have worn her best combat boots. If they were ruined, she would need at least ten to fifteen business days to recover.
It hadn't taken Theo long to follow Lydia's scent and lead them to a male shower in Eichen, where a grate and a ladder brought them down to the tunnels.
She had lost track of how long the three of them had been aimlessly wandering down there. It kept giving her a horrible sense of deja vu because every time they branched off into the next tunnel, it was fucking identical to the last one. She couldn't help but let her thoughts stray—— was the lockdown over yet? What if Valack had drilled two holes into Lydia's head just for good measure? What if—
"I thought you had her scent," Stiles said impatiently as he crossed his arms over his turquoise flannel. He didn't understand why Theo chose to take the scenic route when Lydia could die at any given second.
He could tell that his former best friend was getting antsy, too; she kept passing his line of sight with her pacing and had chewed off five of her nails since they had gotten down here. She was a ticking time bomb.
Theo quietly admitted that they had managed to lose her scent and Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose to stop himself from swinging at them. "Well you better find it again before she loses her patience!" he hissed lowly, gesturing towards the pacing girl to punctuate his point.
"What can you smell down here?" Theo snapped irritably, unable to focus on anything but the whiny voice of the man-child beside him. Sighing in defeat, they tried a different approach and moved along the pipe to find where the sound was the loudest.
If Stiles thought they had lost the scent intentionally, he was stupider than he looked—— they liked having their limbs intact with their body and pissing off the witch would just get them slaughtered.
"Chemicals." They answered their own question and could hear Stiles' heavy footsteps following a bit too closely behind. "It's the only thing I smell, which is why I'm trying something else, so can you shut up and let me concentrate."
Theo turned their attention back to the metal pipes running along the walls but the silence hadn't lasted long. It was clear that Stiles' hyperactivity prevented him from staying still for more than a few minutes.
"We'll find her on our own," Stiles scoffed, losing his patience altogether and heading in the opposite direction.
"You know you won't, Stiles," Theo announced in a matter-of-fact tone, trying to break down the lack of logic in his statement. "You're gonna have to trust me."
"Trust you?" Stiles was outraged by the insinuation, spinning back around and pointing a finger in their face. "You murdered your own sister when you were nine!" he spat venomously, honey eyes narrowing to slits. Despite knowing very little surrounding Tara's death, he somehow thought he had the right to talk about it and throw it in their face, which wasn't fair.
Hurt flashed across Theo's face but Stiles brushed it off, telling himself that they were simply angry at the idea of being called out.
"I was nine years old. I also believed a guy in a red suit came down my chimney to deliver presents. So yeah, when three guys in leather masks told me that my sister wanted me to have her heart, I believed them too. I watched her fall into the water and freeze to death, do you think I had any idea what was going on!"
"I think you shoved her," Stiles was pushing his luck and he knew it but somehow, he didn't have the sense to stop speaking, because five words tumbled from his lips and he could see how deep the knife had cut. "I think you liked it."
"Enough!" Jade yelled, using her hands as makeshift earmuffs to block out their bickering. Violet wisps of magic kept flying from her hands and no matter how hard she tried to keep a handle on her powers, it was almost impossible to think straight.
Between the thumping in her cranium and the magic fizzling through her veins like pop rocks, she felt like she would explode. Every muscle in her body was tense and she could feel her bones screaming.
People thought it was easy to control her magic—— it wasn't like she didn't want to. In fact, she had spent years of her life trying to figure out how to control it, but all that happened in the long run was carnage.
It was like constantly having pressure building in the back of her head and every time she tried to earn her control, it just got louder and louder and louder until she felt like she would burst at the seams.
Both of the others had fallen quiet when she snapped at them and the silence allowed her a moment to pull it together. A line formed between her brows and she turned to face them, fighting her temper. "Arguing is not helping us find Lydia."
"This isn't about you," she jabbed her index finger in Theo's direction, silver rings sliding up and down the length of her hand. Her voice was cold and sharp but relatively calm. Both of them found that scarier than any magic or scream she had left in her. It was bone-chilling how composed she was. "And this isn't about you," she pointed at Stiles and folded her arms over her chest. "It isn't about me."
"This is about Lydia and I'm not gonna lose another person that I love because you two can't pull your act together," she explained, pursing her lips. It felt odd to wear her heart on her sleeve—— it wasn't anything massive that she was revealing but it still felt like she was giving them both more ammunition to use down the line. "This is our one chance at getting her out of here, so can we please work together instead of—-"
Her semi-motivational speech was cut off by an ear-splitting banshee wail that had all of them curling in on themselves at the noise. Lydia's scream seemed to ricochet like bullets against the tunnel walls, echoing off every surface.
Stiles shared an alarmed look with Jade and his face contorted into panic. As he faced Theo to make sure he and the girl weren't delirious, it was clear that the chimera was starting to get fretful about how much time was running out. "Where was it coming from? What direction?"
"Everywhere."
"We need to split up and cover more ground."
A/N:
i love developing maxs power so much, i promise there's gonna be an in depth explanation soon :))
jade and stiles are so funny to me idec 😭
make sure to vote and comment <3