|Scar Stilinski|
"Scar, get up. Dad's gone."
I immediately jumped up out of my slumber and we searched the hospital. We found him in the morgue, next to Donovan's body bag.
"The story Theo told me about the library. That's how it happened. Except it didn't happen to him." Dad said to me.
We both nodded, "Yeah."
"I can't protect you if I don't know the truth. Did you really feel like you couldn't tell me?"
"I couldn't tell anyone." I mumbled, tracing my tattoo.
Dad sighed, "Did you think that I wouldn't believe that it was self-defense?"
"What if it wasn't? What if I told you I wanted him dead?"
I glanced at Stiles, who remained silent.
"I'd believe you. I also believe that wanting someone dead and murdering them are two very different things."
I crossed my arms, "Yeah, but what if the judge didn't think so?"
"Then to hell with the judge. Scar, it was self-defense, and I would destroy every shred of evidence to protect you if I had to. I would burn the whole sheriff's station to the ground." My father declared.
"What about upholding the law? What about Kira?" Stiles asked.
"Kira was a mistake. I guess I'm learning how to bend."
"So, what, it just goes away?"
"Not for you. The problem now is how to bear this burden. This kind of thing is not at all uncommon in law enforcement. A fatal mistake. A partner who dies. Or one who gets paralyzed. Stiles... Scar, you carry that with you. Sometimes it doesn't truly feel okay again until there's a kind of counterbalance."
"Like what?" Stiles asked.
Dad thought about it for a minute, "Like instead of taking a life, you manage to save one. Something like that can help, but maybe only for a moment, but the real conflict you're having now is between your head and your heart. Your head knows that the only crime you committed was surviving. Your heart still thinks it was murder. So I guess you gotta get your heart to catch up to your head."
I shrugged, "I feel like it's more than guilt though, you know, I feel like... I'm becoming who... well, what... I used to be."
"You are. Not entirely, but you can stop it by forgiving yourself. Since that's not always the easiest thing to do, then maybe you start by forgiving someone else. Someone who probably really needs it."
"Someone like Scott." Stiles said quietly.
__________________________
"Is that my laptop?" Dad asked.
"Yeah." Stiles mumbled, as he continued to type.
"You have the password to it?"
"We have all your passwords. You know they just brought in another body from last night?" I said, looking over Stiles' shoulder.
"Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find out. Now give me my damn computer."
Dad reached for the computer, but Stiles leaned away.
"Hang on, hang on. I think there's some footage missing, or something missing in the footage."
"I think there's something missing in your head." I heard our father mumble.
Stiles found the missing footage. It was a video of a huge creature running out of the crime scene.
___________________________
I knocked on Scott's door twice before entering, "Hey."
"Hi." Scott said, finishing wrapping his wounds.
"Still not healing?" Stiles asked.
"Some days it just takes a little longer. What are you doing here?"
"Ah, you heard about the guy who got killed out at the communication towers, right? I think we may have figured something out."
Scott glanced between us, "What, you want my help?"
"Yeah, well you said you can find the clues that I can't. Here, take a look.... This is when the technician first arrived. You see him going in? Then Deputy Clark goes in. Then something really big and really fast comes charging out. Then Clark. Eventually, technician's body is carried out by paramedics." Stiles explained.
"Okay, what am I missing?"
"Two people go in. Three come out. I checked all the footage. Not a single person enters that building before the technician the entire day. So where does that something really big and really fast come from?" I asked.
"There's another way in." Scott realized.
__________________________
"You see that?" Scott asked.
"I see blood." I said bluntly as I stepped into a puddle of it.
Stiles pointed to a knocked over freezer, "Look where it leads to."
We all lifted the freezer up to reveal a hole, most likely made by the creature. We quietly jumped into it, trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Stiles led with a black light until we found a message.
"What is that?" Scott asked.
I thought about it for a second, "It looks like Latin."
"Hold the light. I'm gonna take a picture of it."
The light remained on the words for a while before the light flickered.
"Stiles, hold the light still." I demanded.
Stiles remained silent.
We turned to see that Tracy had cut him on the back of his neck, making him temporarily paralyzed. She went after Scott first.
"Scar, behind you!"
I dunked just as another chimera- Josh, I think his name was- charged at me. Scott held Tracy's hand out and I pushed Josh into it. Josh, being now paralyzed fell to the ground. I turned to the wall and growled. Corey instantly revealed himself.
"Okay. Maybe they're not ready to take on an inugami, especially one that can smell fear."
"She's got completely black eyes!" Corey defended.
"What did you do?" I asked Theo.
Theo shrugged, "I found some new friends. I don't take rejection well."
"Hey, Theo." Stiles said, still paralyzed on the ground.
"Stiles."
Theo stepped on the Latin words, breaking them, "You're going to leave here thinking that you need to worry about me but you're wrong. We're actually back on the same side because that thing... That's what we need to worry about. Your pack and mine. We're gonna go back to school and pretend like we're normal teenagers but at night, we're going to be fighting for our lives."
I raised an eyebrow, "What is it?"
"It's not a chimera."
"It's just a kid underneath. Someone like us." Scott said.
Theo shook his head, "Not anymore."
__________________________
We waited in the tunnels until Stiles' paralysis wore off.
"He knew what it meant, and I can't remember the words." Stiles mumbled.
"Damnatio Memoriae. It means the condemnation of memory. It also means that whatever the dread doctors created, whatever this last chimera really is, it's not something new. It's something old. Really old." I replied.
"So they didn't create a new creature."
"They resurrected one." Scott made the connection.
Scott drew the first circle of his tattoo and our pack's symbol into the dirt, "We need help. If Theo's got his own pack now then we need ours. We have to get the others back."
"The others? You mean Kira who's currently battling a homicidal fix spirit inside of her, Malia who isn't speaking to none of us, Lydia who's stuck in Eichen House, and Liam who almost killed you?"
"Also known as our best friends." I smiled.
"Okay, how?" Stiles asked.
"One by one."
I drew half of the outer circle and looked up at Stiles.
"You're not seriously going to make me do it?" Stiles stared blankly.
"You're part of the pack, right?"
"Okay." He sighed.
Stiles completed the second half of the outer circle and stood up.
"I still hate that tattoo."
I chuckled, "We know."