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FOUR
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
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The drive to Derek's house couldn't have taken any longer.
Stiles had forced Scott to take control of the Jeep while he sat in the backseat, Carson's head cradled in his lap. She was bleeding out everywhere on the seat and his jeans but Stiles's could care less. His vision was blurred by tears and all he could register was the groaning of the Jeep as Scott pushed it way past its limits. The two boys were in a state of panic and panic didn't know traffic laws.
Stiles didn't understand why she had been bitten. What would any alpha want with his girlfriend? Scott had only been bitten because Peter needed a pack. Derek wouldn't bite her, mainly based on the fact that Stiles was pretty sure that he didn't really care much for any of them. And Derek had bigger issues on his plate with Erica and Boyd being missing. They were probably going to be disrupting some kind of search mission by going to him.
But Derek was the only one they could trust right now.
The alpha pack were clearly the ones to have bitten Carson. But none of this added up. Why would anyone want anything to do with her in a supernatural sense? Better yet, why the hell would an alpha pack want with a beta?
The Jeep stopped short and the breaks were squealing. Scott turned back towards Stiles and gestured his head behind him. "We're here, come on."
He ripped the door open and held his arms out. It was a little bit of a struggle but Stiles got her out and into Scott's arms without her banging her head off of something. The pale boy then climbed out after her and barely had the door shut before Stiles's realized they weren't in the woods. Derek had mentioned something about getting a loft somewhere and that the city had condemned his old house. But it just felt weird not meeting up with him in an area that wasn't burnt down.
Scott was sprinting to the entrance with Carson in his arms, with Stiles hot on his heels. As they got closer, they noticed that there was a dark figure waiting for them under the overhang. Derek had his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes widened slightly as he took in Carson's appearance.
"How did you know?" Scott asked him, referring to why he was waiting at the entrance of the building.
Derek cocked an eyebrow. "I could hear her screaming from miles away and I knew you two were too stupid to get her to a hospital."
"Yeah, well we figured you would know what to do with this," Scott interjected, casting his eyes in the direction of the bite.
Derek's eyes widened slightly before his face hardened. "Come on," he muttered, holding the door of the building open for the two boys.
The small lobby area was deserted and the three made their way to an elevator. Stiles was running his hand through his hair every five seconds and his eyes filled up routinely as they flickered over to Carson. The only indication anyone had that she was still living was her chest moving ever so slightly. It looked like she was struggling to breathe but that small movement was keeping hope inside the boy who had fallen in love with her eight years ago.
Walking from the elevator and into Derek's loft was a bit of a blur for Stiles and he only realized where they were when Scott laid Carson down on a long table Derek had just pushed a bunch of books off of.
"Isaac, get me a damp towel or something," Derek called out before lifting the hem of Carson's ripped shirt just above the bite. He grimaced. "Do you have any idea who did this?"
"Yeah, why don't I just pull out my werewolf phone book?" Stiles snapped sarcastically. He rolled his eyes. "Is she going to be okay or what?"
"It's too early to tell, especially with the amount of wounds she has right now" Derek muttered. "But it's not a hundred percent guarantee that she'll survive. The bite either kills you or it turns you."
"So what are we supposed to do? Just sit and wait?" Scott asked, staring questioningly at Derek.
"Until the bite starts healing," a new voice called out. Isaac moved around the others, cringing slightly at the state Carson was in. "Damn, she's been through a lot."
"And she's going to be going through a lot more if her body responds correctly to the bite," Derek stated, snatching the cloth from Isaac's hands and beginning to dab the blood from her face. "What the hell was she doing walking around at night by herself?"
Scott glanced over at Stiles and the boy let his head fall down into his hands. "She was trying to get away from me," Stiles muttered.
"Well that's a change of pace," Isaac commented with a slight sarcastic tone.
Stiles's head shot up and he glared at him. "My girlfriend could be dying right now, you dick. This isn't the time to make jokes."
Isaac rolled his eyes before groaning as a door opened behind Stiles, "Oh, please. She'll be fine." The four in the room that were conscious looked up to see Peter Hale smirking smugly, his eyes tracing over Carson's body. "I always did say she'd make an excellent werewolf, did I not?"
Stiles glanced back down at the girl he had hurt, knowing that even though Peter wanted her to be a werewolf, she did not. And that was definitely going to change a lot of things.
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A few hours later, Carson's unconscious body had been moved into the room Isaac currently inhabited. He claimed he wasn't going to be using it any time soon, considering every time he closed his eyes he had a nightmare. And while Stiles' could care less about his sleeping problems, her being more comfortable on a mattress was a lot better than her lying on a wooden desk.
Derek had cleaned up all her bloody wounds and had given Stiles an over sized shirt and a pair of sweats to put on her. It felt weird dressing her while she was unconscious but the outfit she was wearing was completely ruined and barely hanging on by a few threads. The alphas had done a number on her.
Scott was downstairs with Isaac, Derek, and Peter discussing the extent of why the hell alphas would bite her. Stiles, on the other hand, was waiting at her bedside; he wasn't too sure exactly what he was waiting on, but she hadn't moved in hours. There were a few wheezes from her but that was about it.
Stiles was sitting next to her stiff body, just running his hand through her hair. When she woke up, she was going to be a werewolf just like Scott. It was a life that he knew she didn't want. There was no way she could want this life. With other people who wanted the bite, they did it to cure an illness or to feel some kind of power. Carson didn't need either of those things. Besides being allergic to shell fish, she wasn't sick. And she didn't need power. She was one of the strongest people Stiles had ever met.
Being a werewolf would flip her entire world on its head. It would be like sophomore year all over again, although she would have a somewhat more reliable teacher in Scott. But it was a life she didn't want. Peter had offered the bite to the couple the night of the winter formal, and she had rejected it faster than she rejected Greenburg the time he asked her out freshman year. And that 'no' had come out of her mouth within point five seconds and earned her twenty bucks from Coach for making Greenburg look like an idiot. But she had turned Peter down, not caring that she had been defying a terrifying alpha.
"So, that's it? You're not going to kill us?" Carson questioned, brushing hair out of her eye.
Peter sighed, turning back to face the two. Stiles took a step back when Peter moved forward, gripping onto Carson to take her with him. "Don't you understand yet, Carson? I'm not the bad guy here," he replied with another sigh.
"You turn into a giant monster with red eyes and fangs and you're not the bad guy her?" Stiles asked, the usual level of sarcasm filling the sentence.
"I like you Stiles," Peter had told the boy. "And since you helped me, I'm going to give you something in return. I'm assuming you still stand on the same page about the bite, Carson?"
Her brown eyes narrowed and a frown made its way to her lips. "I'd rather jump off a cliff then join your stupid pack."
"Shame. You'd make a wonderful werewolf," he sighed.
"Carson, please you have to wake up," Stiles begged her quietly, as he tried to brush that memory from his mind. "I swear to God, I'll make it better. Everything I did, I'll fix it. You just have to wake up."
He got no response, just like he hadn't for the past hour and a half. But something on her face caught his eye. A trickle of black liquid coming from her nose. The only thing he could compare it to was the black stuff Derek had thrown up when he got shot by Kate Argent. Which meant something was going wrong inside her.
"Derek!" Stiles yelled, standing quickly. When he heard no movement on the stairs, he yelled again. "Derek!"
The door burst open and the sour wolf entered, followed by Scott. His eyes narrowed at Stiles before the pale boy pointed at Carson. Stiles could see Derek gulp as he stared down at her.
"Her body . . . I think it's trying to fight the bite," he murmured.
Stiles could feel his heart sink to his feet with those words. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
"Fighting it?" Scott cried out. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means she's not reacting properly," he muttered, going to sit beside her, turning her head both ways as if he was looking for something. "It's only coming out of her nose right now . . . normally it would be pouring from every opening. Like with Gerard, or Jackson. I've never seen anything like this."
"Oh, just great," Stiles moaned. "Is there any chance she could make it?"
"It's the supernatural, Stiles," Derek told him sternly. "It's not a game of chance. It's a game of life or death. Either she lives or she dies. End of story."
"That's not good enough!" Stiles screamed at him, feeling the anger bubble from within. "She can't die. She can't freaking die."
Scott looked at his friend sorrowfully before his eyes flickered over at Carson. "Hey, didn't she have a giant cut across her forehead?"
Derek and Stiles looked at him in confusion before looking for the cut in question. There had been a big one stretching across from the left temple to the start of her right eyebrow. But now it was gone, no indication of it ever being there in the first place. Derek wasted no time fumbling with the shirt she was wearing, pulling it up to see the giant bite. It was still there and there was some sort of steam billowing from it. But the biggest thing was that the wound was healing quickly, the skin seemingly stitching itself together right before their very eyes.
"Life it is, then," Derek murmured, pulling the shirt back down.
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Carson woke up with a pounding headache and a soreness covering her entire body. She swallowed thickly and, in her opinion, the sound was much louder than it needed to be. It was almost like she could hear every drop of saliva being pushed down her throat. In retrospect, that should have been her first clue.
She sat up slowly, looking down to see that her arms were no longer bloody like she remembered them to be. No cuts, no blood, no scratches. She furrowed her brow and yanked the shirt she was wearing upwards, only seeing some gauze cover the area where she had gotten her tattoo. There was no blood on that either, hinting to her that it must have been fresh.
The last thing Carson could remember was seeing blood all over herself. She knew that there was some kind wounds placed on her abdominal area but there was nothing there now. How long had she been out? She glanced around the room she was in, completely unfamiliar with the area. More and more questions were piling up and there was nothing to answer them.
"You just have to give it time. She'll wake up when she wakes up."
She furrowed her brow once again. That was Derek's voice, she'd know it anywhere. But Derek wasn't in this room and it didn't sound like he was close at all. How the hell was she hearing this? Who was he talking about? Did he mean her? Who was waiting for her to get up? Once again, Carson was trying to rack her brain for how long she had been out.
From behind her, the loud squeak of door hinges was amplified by tenfold. She turned seeing the door open and male figure walked in. The door slammed behind him and it was almost like a sonic boom. Carson clapped her hands over her ears and let out a cry.
"Oh shit, I didn't know you'd be up," Stiles fretted. But there was a small smile on his face, like Carson's presence was amazing to him. "Scott said loud noises are probably going to bother you for a while."
"Scott's here?" Carson asked, removing her hands from her ears slowly. "Actually. Better question, where is here?"
"Uh, this is Derek's loft. It was Scott's idea to bring you here. And he went to your house earlier to grab some of your clothes."
"My clothes?" she asked, shaking her head in confusion.
He nodded. "Yeah. Derek wants you to stay here for a little while. So he and Isaac can keep an eye on you during the early stages or something like that."
Everything out of his mouth seemed completely foreign. Early stages? she thought to herself. What was he going on about?
"I have no clue what the hell you're talking about Stiles," Carson mumbled, sitting back down on the makeshift bed she had woken up on. She was so close to the ground and Stiles towered over her before sitting down next to her.
"Carson, how much do you remember about the other night?" Stiles asked slowly, taking her hands in his own.
Carson stared back at him blankly, not understanding what he was asking. Had something happened to her? She knew that there was something she was missing. She remembered blood and pain and anger but she didn't . . . she didn't know why. There was a large piece of the puzzle missing inside her. There had to be a way to find it and stick it in with the others; to complete the picture. She had somehow woken up with amnesia but it was time to push that away and figure out what the hell was going on.
Carson stared down at her hands that were laced with Stiles and she looked up at his face. There were dried tears on his face and his eyes were red. He had been crying.
"Do you want to know what I want for my birthday?" Carson heard Heather ask, followed by the rattling of glass bottles.
Stiles's unmistakable voice came next. "A bike?"
"To not be a seventeen year old virgin," Heather answered just as Carson reached the bottom.
She watched as their lips connected.
Carson then gulped, her eyes widening. The memories all started to seem to float to the surface, vying for her attention.
"Baby, please, don't do this," Stiles cried out quietly and Carson could see his eyes become wet.
He had kissed Heather. Carson let out a gasp and yanked her hands from his. She remembered the party perfectly now. Things were coming together. She stood up, anger boiling inside her. He had kissed Heather. He had cheated on her. She could feel the pain filling her veins and her vision was beginning to blur, spots of red coming in from the corners.
"Carson?" he asked quietly.
"You kissed Heather," she sneered.
He gulped. Carson could hear the vibrations of his Adam's apple, see the giant vein beneath his neck pulsing. What was going on with me? a small part of her wondered. But she pushed that aside as she continued to glare at him.
"That wasn't exactly what I'd hope you'd remember," he mumbled and Carson could hear him gulp again. "But we can talk about that if you want. Anything you want."
"Get out," she ordered, the sight of his face pissing her off even more. "I don't ever want to see you again."
"Carson," he choked out. "Come on, we can talk about this."
"I said, get out!" she screamed.
She felt her feet move forward and suddenly her vision was clouded with red and she had Stiles pressed up against the wall, her hands at his throat. He had hurt her. There was a part of Carson that wanted to get revenge. Every ounce of blood in her body felt like it was on fire as her hands tightened their grasp. She could see his eyes bulging and she grinned slightly.
Something pulled on her arm and within seconds, she was being tossed across the room. She landed on her ass and she could feel herself let a growl rip through her lips. She was met with an overpowering snarl and it nearly scared the life out of her.
Carson felt the anger flow away as she stared up at Derek, whose blood red eyes were flashing at her.
"Carson," he snapped. "You can't kill people."
"What the hell is going on?" she snapped, wrapping her arms around her legs as she sat on the floor.
Derek's eyes widened as he looked over at Stiles. The boy was still gasping for air, rubbing his neck.
"I'm fine, she didn't want to kill me on purpose," he mumbled.
"Oh that's what you think," Carson said bitterly.
Stiles ignored her. "But she's having a hard time remembering. I don't think she knows she was bitten."
Derek glared at him, "Well, that was subtle."
Carson stared up at them then, confused. "Bitten? What the hell are you two going on about?"
"You were attacked in the woods the other night. You've been out for at least twenty four hours, which is understandable since your body was trying to fully heal itself," Derek sighed. "But you might want to take a look at your eyes."
She furrowed her brow for the umpteenth time. "What? Did I get punched or something?"
He groaned, before pulling the girl up by her shoulders. He stood her in front of the window, which was currently reflecting everything. She didn't understand what he was getting at until she fully looked at herself. While Derek's eyes had been faded of their werewolf color, her own were doing something pretty freaky.
Her eyes were glowing gold. Beta werewolf gold.
She could feel her jaw drop as she stared back at her reflection. She looked down at her hands, seeing the claws elongated from her fingertips. They were just like Scott's. Only they were on her.
"No," Carson breathed. Her head was filling with too many emotions and she could see the red spots coming back before her sight. "Stop lying to me."
Derek heard the tone in her voice and a sharp pinch came to her side. She cried out in pain and felt claws turning back into nails. Looking down, Derek had slipped his own pair into her side.
"Pain keeps you human," he said, uttering the words that were normally directed at Scott. "Carson, when you were out in those woods, you didn't just get attacked. The alphas chose you for a reason."
"No," Carson mumbled, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. She was shaking her head rapidly, his words not fully connecting in her brain. What he was hinting at, it couldn't be true. There was no way . . .
"You're a werewolf, Carson."
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"Do you want to talk about it?" Stiles asked quietly as she stared out the window of Derek's loft. She had been informed that she was going to be staying here for a while, in Isaac's room. Derek didn't trust her on her own apparently, especially since she had tried to rip out Stiles' larynx earlier.
Derek said it was because she was a new werewolf and the anger was going to affect her a lot until she found an anchor. Meaning that full moon nights were going to be painful and full of her wanting to kill people again.
She honestly couldn't imagine herself as a werewolf. Glowing eyes and fangs and claws were Scott's thing. She was just the friend, the human girl who couldn't do anything to save people. The one who did research with Stiles and made out with him when they were supposed to help Scott save the town. But then again, she wasn't going to be able to make out with him anymore, so it was only fitting that everything changed.
Power and roles were swapping constantly on the giant game board of her life but she never thought that she would be affected by it. There was no going back on this bite. She had been bitten by the alphas for some entirely screwed up reason and she was going to have to live with the consequences of their choice. The idea of being a werewolf made her sick to her stomach though. But it didn't matter. She was already way past saving.
Either way, she had apologized to Stiles for her burst of anger and he seemed to take that as an okay to stay with her. But she wanted to be alone. Scott had gotten the picture, only dropping off her bag of clothes before leaving to bring his mother dinner at work. Isaac and Derek were downstairs, apparently trying to get more answers about what happened to him. They weren't having any solid ideas from what Carson could hear.
Hearing was something she had a feeling that she wasn't going to get used to. She could hear Derek and Isaac's voices clear as day. Hell, she could hear the cars on the streets a little ways away beeping like she had her head pressed against the hood. She could hear the nervous tick of Stiles's heart as he stood behind her, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans.
Carson turned to look at him, rolling her eyes. "What I want is for you to leave me alone right now."
"Carson . . . " he replied, letting her name drag off into silence.
"Look, I need time," Carson stated simply, going to sit back down on Isaac's mattress. She felt weird being in his room, but he said he wasn't getting any use out of it recently.
"You can have as much time as you need," he stated. "We'll get you through this, just like we get through everything."
He was only making this harder. Stiles didn't understand what Carson was saying, what she meant by that. When she said she needed time, she wasn't only referring to what was going on with her. But she needed time with what was going on with them. With how she was feeling for him. Because honestly, she still felt like she was staring at a different person. One who didn't care for her as much as he had claimed to. She didn't feel the same things that she felt for him a few days ago.
And that scared Carson. That suddenly, every ounce of love that she had for him inside of her was just flowing away, like it didn't matter anymore. He may look like a different person, but she sure as hell felt like one.
"Stiles . . . I can't do this. Not now."
Stiles's heard the change in Carson's tone and she gulped again. "Oh . . . that kind of time. Time to think, without me. I guess I'll leave you to it."
She watched as he walked out of the room and it wasn't long before she could hear the sounds of his footsteps heading towards the door and then the door slamming. A ding that sounded a lot like an elevator being called was heard as well.
She ran a hand through her hair, sighing softly. She gripped the mattress around her before she felt something cool. She looked down, seeing a phone. Stiles' phone. Almost instantly, she was on her feet, tugging her leather jacket off the ground from where she had tossed it from the bag. With the phone in hand, she jogged down the stairs, past Derek and Isaac who looked confused. She didn't give them time to question her, heading out the door and down the stairs. If she waited for the elevator to come, she'd miss him.
One thing Carson knew about Stiles was that he had a knack for losing things easily and not noticing they were gone until hours later. So it was probably better to just get the phone to him now and not have to worry about him barging in later when she needed to think in peace.
Getting down the flights of stairs was probably the easiest thing she had ever done in her life. Normally, she would go three flights and get winded but here she was, jogging down all the stairs like some kind of track star. When she made it to the bottom, she ran towards the front door which was swinging shut. Stiles was walking to his Jeep which was parked a little ways from the entrance and she followed after him.
"Stiles!" Carson called out.
He whipped around and there was some hope filling his eyes. She bit her lip before holding his phone out to him as she reached him. His expression dropped as he took it, nodding at her, and holding it up slightly.
"Oh, thanks," he muttered. "I should probably let you go and think now."
She nodded. "Okay."
He turned back around and started walking off. Carson stared blankly and her eyebrows rose as she saw him spin back around. He started towards her, his hand fumbling in his back pocket.
"Actually, no, you just . . . you gotta hear me out this time," he stated, pulling a folded up square of paper from his pocket. He started unfolding it, looking up shyly. "I wrote this all down while you were out. I just didn't trust myself to remember it all."
"Stiles," she started but he cut her off.
"Here it goes. I know I screwed up," he read, pausing to look at her. "I hurt you. I messed up so bad. And I promised I would be the one to never do that, but I broke that promise. And I shouldn't be making excuses for why I did what I did. There is no excuse and there could never be an excuse because while it was the biggest mistake of my life, I still made the mistake. Nothing I can ever say will change that. Because you're the love of my life and nothing can ever justify hurting you the way I did — "
"Stiles, stop," she pleaded.
"Carson just let me — "
She shook her head. "I can't Stiles. There isn't some way for you to fix this except for leaving me alone. I can't just forgive you. I need time. I'm a freaking werewolf and this, us, it's the least of my problems right now. I still feel hurt from what you did but I can't trust myself not to want to rip your throat out again. Stiles, you just need to leave me alone. Kissing Heather, it hurts. But me knowing that there is absolutely nothing I can do about my life right now . . . that hurts more. I know you just want to go back to the way things were but clearly that can't happen."
He was silent for a moment. "So what do you want to do?"
"I'm sorry. But I-I can't — Stiles, I'm breaking up with you."
She swallowed thickly, the sound resonating through her ears. He barely got out a nod, just watching after her as she turned away and headed back inside to her new home. She just made everything officially over between them. The finality in her tone was strong and piercing, like a knife cutting through skin. Their break up was bitter and painful. Her heart felt shattered but it was the right thing to do. Because she didn't know if she could still love him after all that had happened in the span of forty-eight hours.
All she knew was that her life officially sucked.
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author's note: Whoops. Also, this story has been changed to third person. If you find any issue with the POV, please inline comment where the mistake is and I'll be sure to fix it.