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THIRTY FIVE;
HOLLOW HUMANITY
"Maybe we need a little more time to get back to normal."
Scott's voice was laced with optimism, standing next to Stiles as the boy made an attempt to get his locker open. To the right of the brunette boy was a blonde girl, standing so silently as she kept her head towards the ground with her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie. She still found herself unable to look any of them in the eye for too long, which is exactly why the tile floor has become her best friend for the time being. When Scott said that, though, she looked up in surprise. She didn't see how time would make any of this go away, especially since it seems like the more time that they spend with these hallucinations and these horrors the worse it gets. Only a few days ago did she begin to see more than just two deaths in twenty-four hours, and now they were just tearing her apart any chance they could get.
Stiles didn't seem too encouraged either as he spun his lock. "Yeah, try not to forget that we hit the reset button on a supernatural beacon for supernatural creatures. There's a pretty good chance that things are never going back to normal."
"Yeah," Scott muttered, realizing that Stiles was probably right.
Stiles' eyebrows furred as he tugged on his lock, realizing that it wasn't opening no matter how many times he spun his combination. Sage watched him in curiosity, wondering what the problem was as to why he couldn't get open his locker. She would have helped, having known the locker combination, but she figured it would only make things awkward seeing as she broke things off. The only positive thing about the fact that everyone seemed to be losing their mind was that Sage and Stiles didn't have time to gravel in the discomfort of standing so close to each other, plenty aware that there were more serious issues going on than their teenage romance gone wrong. Like, for instance, the fact that the blonde just screamed in her classroom after seeing Allison die in front of her.
Or, in another example, the fact that Stiles couldn't get his locker open. Swallowing the uneasiness she felt speaking to him, Sage asked, "Did you forget your combination?"
"No," Stiles denied, turning to glance at her for a single second with a shake to his head, only for his eyes to settle on the fact that they were just as close to each other as they had been back in the hallway when he grabbed her face to see what was wrong.
Sage bit down on her chapped lips before moving grab his lock, twisting it so that she could find the first number. In the moments that she was doing so, Stiles' eyes caught onto the ring that he had given her still positioned on her middle finger. A small smile cracked on his face realizing that she hadn't taken it off even after things ended. She promised not to but he hadn't held it against her, especially since she was adamant on getting it off when she was trying to break up with him. His smile fell when he glanced over at his best friend to see that Scott's eyes were now flashing a vivid crimson, and his own orbs went wide as he gaped at the wolf. "Dude, your eyes."
"What about them?" Scott asked, panic shooting up his spine as he remembered back to earlier that morning when he saw the red reflection through his bike helmet. Sage turned to look, confused as to what the two boys were talking about. Her hands fell from Stiles' lock the second that she noticed Scott's eyes were a blazing red, something that was definitely not appropriate for school. Just like screaming in a classroom wasn't appropriate.
"What abou—" Stiles was exasperated. "They're starting to glow."
Scott's eyebrows furred. "You mean, like, right now?"
"Yes, right now," Stiles gushed, his eyes widening. "Scott, stop. Stop it!"
"I can't. I can't," Scott muttered repetitively, moving to shield his eyes. "I can't control it."
Stiles and Sage shared a look before moving so that they could help the boy out. The blonde knew that doing this was only sticking her down a deeper hole, more than likely just going to make the hallucinations worse if she got close to the two boys again, but she wasn't going to have Scott reveal the secret of the supernatural like this. Sage quickly grabbed a hold of Scott's neck, making sure that he was looking at her shoulder instead of the rest of the school while Stiles guided the two into an empty classroom. The whole scene probably dosed suspicion, but that was all they could do considering they didn't have a baseball cap they could shove on the werewolf's head.
"Keep your head down," Sage hissed in his ear as she let Stiles step in front of them so that he could open the door to the classroom.
The second that they were out of the hallway and into seclusion, Scott was stumbling forward to rip off his flannel. The blonde watched with wide eyes as he started to breathe harder, Stiles rushing next to her as the two contemplated what they were supposed to do to help him.
When Stiles went to walk forward, Scott was quick to protest. "No! Get away!"
"Scott, it's okay," Stiles assured, moving to walk forward again but was held back by a different force, one that wasn't Scott's words. He turned around to see that Sage had a tight grip on his wrist, stopping him all while keeping her unsteady eyes on Scott.
"I don't know what's going to happen!" Scott explained, his canines coming in as he let out a small involuntary growl. "Get back!"
The former couple watched as Scott moved even further away from them, his chest heaving as he finally realized he needed to do something to stop it. His fingers pulled into his palms, claws digging into his skin so that blood began to drain from the wound and down his arms. He snarled once, eyes glowing their vibrant red as he fell to his knees from the pain. Stiles took a step back, horrified as he watched Scott inflict the wounds on himself. From beside him, Sage didn't speak. She exactly what he was doing, knew because there were moments when she had to do it to herself, when she had to literally dig her nails so deeply into her skin to take away the sights and the temptations that blood was drawn— when, sometimes, she had to fall off the bed and hurt her shoulder just to wake up from the paralysis.
Scott had finally gained control of his transitioning, and the second that his eyes moved back to their normal brown Stiles and Sage were advancing forward with their backpacks discarded on the ground. The blonde took more precaution, her steps slower as she neared in until she was kneeling down between the boys. When Stiles gave Scott a confused look, Sage found herself answering for the wolf, coming from her own experiences. "Pain makes you human."
Both of them turned to look at her, their faces softening even more as they realized all three of them were going crazy that it was so bad that they had to inflict pain on themselves just to assure that they were actually in reality. Stiles swallowed hard, turning to look back at his best friend with a weary stare.
"Scott," he began, hesitant with his words. "It's not just in our heads. This is real... it's starting to get bad for me, too. I'm not just having nightmares, I'm having these dreams where I have to literally scream myself awake and sometimes, I'm not sure if I'm ever actually waking up."
Sage tried to ignore it, but there was that sting in her chest as she felt herself worry about the boy. Both of them. All of them. Something was happening to each and every single one of them, whether it be nightmares or inability to control the grip on their hollow humanity, all four teenagers were slowly deteriorating into madness just like Deaton had warned them about. Scott seemed afraid to ask. "What do you mean?"
"You know how you can tell if your dreaming?" Stiles asked, wondering if either of the two in the room with him knew.
Sage pursed her lips. "You can't read in dreams."
Stiles nodded, glancing over at the blonde with fear swallowing his words. "More and more these past few days, I've been having trouble reading. It's like I can't see the words. I can't put the letters in order."
"Like, even now?" Scott questioned, eyes watching as Stiles slowly moved so that he was standing up from his crouch and looking at the chalkboard that had the lesson plan from today written down.
Sage's attention drifted to the boy, who's face was constricting in panic as he searched around the room for anything that looked like the English language to him. He found nothing, though. Everything was a mix of letters and number, spelling out nothing that could ever be distinguishable enough as a word. "I can't read a thing."
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"All of the paperwork is filled out."
Alan Deaton lay the pieces of paper in front of Sage Connelly, who had been leaning up against one of the operation tables in the back room. It was just the two of them, the place having closed thirty minutes ago. It worked perfectly in their favor, mostly because the whole conversation between them was something that Sage didn't want her other friends finding out about, especially Scott and Stiles. Sage nodded, glancing down at the paperwork that was in front of her face. Something stirred in her chest when she saw all of the words, each and every single one of them meaningless inside of her heart. She had to do it, though, mostly because she owed it to herself to know the truth after so long.
Glancing up at the man, she clasped her hands tightly together. "When?"
"Your first meeting is in two days," Deaton explained, his finger moving to the second line on the first page to show that it had the exact date, forty-eight hours from today. "Marin said that she will be there with you if you need anything while speaking to your mother."
"You mean, she'll be there to make sure I don't pull out a gun and shoot my mom in the face?" Sage reiterated, frowning as she continued to glance over the paper. "I know that I asked for this, but do you honestly think that she's even going to want to see me? The woman has been in a mental institution for seven years, Deaton."
He shrugged once, walking back to lean on his counter. "I'm sure she wants to see her daughter, Sage. I wasn't surprised when you came to me about the revelation, nor about the tragedy that the old Connelly home randomly caught flame due to pyromaniac teenagers."
Deaton gave her a pointed look, which the blonde only shoved aside. It was not hard to put the connections together once you got the main puzzle piece. That moment of weakness when she burned her old house to ground was deemed as a tragedy, like Deaton said, where a stupid group of teenagers got a bit too out of hand with some alcohol and a lighter.
No one really considered the possibility of the destruction being the youngest Connelly.
"Right," Sage mused. "A tragedy. Just like how it's a tragedy that, while my dad and brother were burning alive in the Hale fire, my mom was perfectly insane in Eichen House, not even aware of the fact that her whole family had been killed that day."
Deaton frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're still alive, Sage."
"Am I?" The question had been rhetorical, Deaton plenty aware of that as he sent the girl a sheer look of sadness. Over the past two weeks, the man has become Sage's only friend and only adviser. Derek and Peter were missing, she had no idea where in the hell they were; Scott and Stiles already had enough on their plate, not to mention the fact that she can barely look at her ex-boyfriend without wanting to suffocate. Deaton seemed to be her best option, and continued to prove that.
He knew all about her hallucinations, saying that the four of them would each have different effects, and because Sage's life revolves so whole-heartedly around her friends, watching them die over and over again in the same way was the worst form of torture possible for an altor. Deaton explained that the darkness would consume the biggest fears and use them against her, that because she has lost so many people, losing more would only lead her to total insanity. Which, at this point, it was.
"Are you still seeing the hallucinations?" he finally asked a few moments of silence.
Sage looked up at him and nodded. "Every day. It's harder to sleep, now. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of my lungs, but no one heard me. That's not even the worst part, though. It's like I can't concentrate on anything anymore. My mind goes blank in class and I'm just standing there wondering what in the hell I'm even doing sitting in a classroom."
"Have you spoken to Melissa about getting the tests done?"
The blonde's head shot up with narrowed eyes. "I don't need the tests. I already know what's wrong with me, and it's not that. I can't just develop schizophrenia overnight, Deaton. Whatever the hell is going on with me, it's not because of what my mom has."
"Okay," Deaton agreed, not wanting to push the girl. "I still recommend it, Sage. Things might be a bit hectic right now, but it would make me, and your friends, feel better if you took it just to be one hundred percent sure."
"They don't know."
Deaton's eyebrows raised. "You haven't told them?"
"No," she denied, shaking her head as she leaned up to stand straight. "Not about my mom, not about the house, not about the tests or Eichen House. The only reason they found out about my hallucinations is because it happened when I was in History class. I don't want them to know."
"Why?" Deaton wondered, moving closer to the blonde with a perplexed mind.
"Because, I can't let it become real." She wouldn't be able to live with herself if her hallucinations became a reality. Losing another person, whether it be Jackson Whittemore or Allison Argent, was not an acceptable life for her to allow herself to live in. There was no way that Sage could put herself through that, put herself through acting as though everything was okay when she has seen the mutilated bodies of all the people she loves.
Because, in the end, Sage's biggest fear has and always will be losing the people she loves most, and it being all her fault.
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It was the next day at school, and things were only getting worse for the four teenagers. Sage had ended up finding out about Lydia's near death experience all because she forced herself to speak to the strawberry blonde. It wouldn't have been so difficult for her had Lydia not been the face in her nightmares just a few hours prior, and just staring into the same eyes that had done dull in her mind nearly made her throw up. Apparently, Allison's handy work in archery was proving to be nonexistent. The brunette could barely keep her hand steady, much less work up the will to hold an arrow and bow properly in her hand. Lydia had opted on helping the girl out after school, which only resulted in an arrow to come flying straight towards her face, nearly killing her if Isaac hadn't of stepped in.
Just a few minutes ago in her last class had she watched with wide eyes as Stiles' hand began to furiously write two words over and over again in a different handwriting, a different style, and overall, a different person. The teenage boy hadn't even realized that he had been using his pen, just blinking a few times as his body jolted forward when Coach blew his whistle. When he turned to look at her, noticing the look in her eyes, he said that he had fallen asleep. That was when Sage knew that something was happening inside of his head, something that was refusing him to wake up on his own. It was all depression in her voice when she had to tell him that he wasn't asleep, nodding towards his notebook filled with two words.
Wake up.
All of them were just walking time bombs, flinching every time they came in too close of contact with a single person. Which, as Sage went down the hallway on her way outside for her study period, came to the conclusion the second that she rammed into a body with wide eyes. An apology went spilling from her mouth, looking up only to see that it was Scott. Sage's eyebrows furred rather quickly in confusion, mostly because he wasn't wearing the same outfit as this morning when she saw him in second period. The blonde went to ask what was wrong, why he was staring at her so void, but she hadn't had a chance before blood went spilling from his mouth the second that his lips opened.
A scream hadn't fell from her throat this time, her hands clapping around her swollen mouth to keep the cries away as she backed up from the boy. Sage's back ended up hitting a door, all while her shoulders crashed into so many people as she stumbled back the wrong way. It didn't take long for her to turn away from Scott's bloody body, very quickly pushing the door she ran into open so she could get into the courtyard.
The second that she was outside, a hand grabbed a hold of her arm to steady her, which only made the girl whip her head over, overly disoriented after what happened. Isaac stood in front of her, a tight grip on her body to assure that she didn't fall over since she looked so out of it. He knew from Scott what was going on with the blonde, figured out why she had been avoiding all of them for so long. Those that weren't going insane, being himself and Lydia, were in charge of making sure that those who were didn't end up harming themselves or others in the process; and, at the rate that Sage was going, infliction was bound to happen at one point or another. Which is why the second that he or the strawberry blonde caught sight of Scott, Sage, Stiles, or Allison, it was an immediate response to grab a hold of them.
"Sage," Isaac muttered, slightly shaking her arms. "Hey, Sage. I'm right here."
The blonde blinked a few times, staring at him before nodding once. Her words were still stuck in her throat, something that wouldn't be going away for a few minutes, which just made the boy opt on guiding her over to the table that Lydia and Allison were already sitting at. Both girls lifted their heads up the second a book slammed on the wooden table, only half surprised to see their blonde friend sitting across from them. Isaac contemplated whether or not to sit next to her, then decided against it and moved to sit in the open place next to Allison. He hadn't realized that he just trapped Sage in between her ex-boyfriend and the boy that she just witnessed die.
Which, speaking of them, Scott and Stiles came rushing through the grass so that they could meet up with the others. Sage's head was already planted in her open Algebra book, trying to keep the headaches away as well as the hallucinations, and that had left her oblivious to the fact that the two boys were coming in her direction to sit in both sides of her.
"Hey—" a voice greeted, only for Sage's body to go rigid the second he sat down to the left of her. "What's going on?"
Scott was confused at first, the others all the more out of the loop when they saw the blonde's reaction. Her body was still tight, head in her book as if lifting it up was too much exerted effort. Lydia seemed to be the first one to put the pieces together as to what was wrong, and her eyes narrowed slightly before tapping on the corner of the Algebra book to get the girl's attention.
"Sage, who was it?" Lydia asked.
The girl slowly lifted her head up, exhaustion in her eyes as she gave all of her friends a weak, and failed, smile. It was obvious enough that even being in such a close proximity of the others caused her grief, none of them understanding how much tolerance she has to have in order to keep herself reminded that these were her actual friends, not the hallucinations of the ones that die in her head.
Playing with the end of her book, she swallowed hard when she realized everyone was quietly waiting for an answer, hoping it wasn't their name that fell from her lips. "It was you last night. I just saw Scott before Isaac grabbed a hold of me."
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds, trying to adjust to the fact that they had all died in their friend's mind over and over again. Scott and Lydia both seemed uncomfortable after the revelation, not wanting to set the girl off any more because of what she saw, but there was nothing that they could do besides figure out how to fix this.
"Okay," Scott muttered, breaking the silence. "So, what happens to a person who has a near-death experience and comes out of it seeing things?"
Stiles felt the need to add his own symptoms. "And, is unable to tell what's real or not."
"And, is being haunted by demonic visions of dead relatives," Allison muttered, frowning heavily as she thought back to the scene where she saw her aunt at the hospital, the vision burned in her brain.
Sage kept her eyes on her book as she nervously twisted the ring on her middle finger, trying to hold in all of her nerves towards actually speaking about this subject for the first time. "And, friends."
"They're all locked up because they're insane," Isaac mused, glancing in between the four teenagers, not even knowing how relevant his words had been for the time being. The blonde in between Stiles and Scott seemed to be the most affected by those words, knowing that her mother was alive and mentally unwell all because of being an altor. Sage knew that Isaac hadn't needed to be cautious because he wasn't aware just how spot on he was. She knew that, at the rate her hallucinations were going, there was no keeping her in society.
"Can you at least try to be helpful?" Stiles snapped, annoyed at the negative attitude the werewolf always brought into the equation. "Please?"
Isaac raised his eyebrows. "For half of my childhood, I was locked in a freezer so being helpful is kind of a new thing for me."
"Okay, are you still milking that?" Stiles questioned, rolling his eyes as he grew irritated that the boy's excuse was always about his abusive father, the one that was now dead and buried in the Beacon Hills cemetery thanks to Jackson.
"Yeah, we are still milking that."
Sage's grip on her book tightened. "Both of you just shut u—"
"Hi," someone called out, making all six teenagers turn their heads in confusion at who was intruding on their conversation. Literally, no one else wanted to be sitting at a table with a bunch of psychopaths. "Sorry. I couldn't help overhearing what you guys were talking about, and I think I might actually know what you're talking about."
No one seemed to know what in the hell she was talking about. Sage and Lydia met each other's gaze in a split second, caution screaming in their green eyes that clearly went unnoticed by everyone else at the table. Both of them were the least welcoming when it came to new people, knowing very well that when they trusted people with the lives that they lived, pain eventually came after; and after everything that the six of them have been through, the blonde and the strawberry blonde refused to allow more unwelcoming surprises into their lives.
Kira, the girl that sits next to Sage in History, frowned before continuing. "There's a Tibetan word for it called bardo. It literally means, 'in-between state'. The state between life and death."
"And, what do they call you?" Lydia asked, tongue flicking over her teeth as she raised her eyebrows at the teenage girl.
"Kira," Scott answered, making everyone turn their attention over at him in accusation. The small smile on his face was enough for everyone to raise their eyebrows, wondering why their friend had taken such an interest in the new girl. "She's in our History class."
Sage still felt a hostility towards the brunette girl, leaning in a bit closer so that Kira would turn her attention to her with a wickedly fake grin. "I just wanted to say sorry for the thing that happened in class. It happens, sometimes. People just lose their mind in this town, and I suggest you turn your perky, little—"
Stiles and Allison turned shot her a look of warning, the only two in her line of sight that were going to scold her. The blonde noticed that Lydia and Isaac were both sporting a smirk, knowing very well that, despite everything that happened, there was still something inside of the blonde that stayed the same through everything. The protectiveness that she had, and the outright inability to let people in, was what resulted in the snap at the new girl. Clearly, it wasn't given a stamp of approval either by her friends. Sage let out a sigh in defeat before leaning back, crossing her arms over her chest. Already, there was a bad feeling that the blonde got about the new girl. It might just be her paranoia setting in that literally anyone could hurt her friends, and she refused to let that happen. If that meant pretending she was perfectly insane, then she would do so.
Lydia, just like Sage, was hesitant to allow the girl into their conversation. However, she was still more a people person than the blonde, who was practically ready to lung if this girl made a single mistake. "So, are you talking bardo in Tibetan Buddhism or Indian?"
Apparently, Kira had taken that as her acceptance, moving so that she was sitting on the edge of the bench. Because of this, Stiles was forced to scoot over a bit until his thigh was pressed to Sage's exposed one, their skin burning against each other through Stiles' pants as the two struggled to act as though it didn't matter.
"Either, I guess," Kira began, setting her book on the table. "But, all the stuff you guys were just saying, all of that happens in bardo. There are different progressive states where you can have hallucinations, some you see and some you just hear... and you can be visited by peaceful and wrathful deities."
Isaac raised an eyebrow. "Wrathful deities. What are those?"
"Like, demons."
Stiles turned to look over at the brunette, letting out an exasperated snort. "Demons. Why not?"
"Hold on," Allison interrupted, her attention having been more focused on the rest of the conversation rather than just the deity part. "If there are different progressive states, then what's the last one?"
"Death," Kira informed, blinking as if it were obvious. "You die."
Sage felt her chest begin to constrict, eyes going hazy as she glanced over at the others before abruptly slamming her book shut, catching everyone's attention. She shook her head, giving her friends a hard stare as she moved off the bench, grabbing her backpack in the process.
"I don't have the time for this," Sage hissed out, her arm bumping with Kira's shoulder as she moved on her trail away from the group of people, barely aware of the fact that nearly all of them let out exhales at the blonde's reaction.
They should have expected it, Sage's reaction towards Kira, as well as the information the girl held. Never has the blonde been capable of letting people in, only when they show her that they can be trusted does she fully commit herself to them. Only when she has shed tears from their wounds will she ever allow them into her heart, and that was one of her worst flaws. But, as walked away, trying to control her rapid heart beat telling her that bardo couldn't be real, she came to the idea that her friends were dying inside of her head on a constant loop because she refused to believe that anything could happen to them. That, maybe, the second she allowed herself to accept the fact that people will leave her, they would stop.
She couldn't, though, because the only thing worse than her trust issues were her abandonment issues, and that all been all because of her mother. Mallory Connelly had given her every single dysfunction in her body, and tomorrow night, she would finally sit face-to-face with that same woman and wonder how she could possibly destroy her the same way. What if the tables turned and the beauty became the beast?
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Recap: Sage is still going crazy but, now that school is back, she has to will herself to be close to her friends considering she doesn't want to lose them but at the same time, she doesn't want to be the one that caused their actual deaths. Also, Sage has bad feelings towards Kira, which you're going to be seeing for a while. I know that I don't show it enough since she is always around people she knows, but Sage has the worst trust issues when it comes to new people and she doesn't want Kira being a part of her friend's, as well as her own, lives when she doesn't know anything about the girl.
(Oh, and the song: You Should Know Where I'm Coming From by Banks is literally Stage's theme song. I spent like two hours freaking out when I heard that song because it talks about literally everything that makes sage who she is, and why she broke up with Stiles.)