[ Once he gets an affirmative answer, Stiles rolls out of bed pretty much instantaneously and shuffles into his shoes, muttering an excuse that he's going to the library and leaving Isaac and Scott to their guilt-approved bonding. Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to get rid of him anyway, so the lack of fuss put up is kind of a blessing.
Tugging on a coat as he makes his way downstairs, he texts back-- see you then and waits in the lobby. Let's do some trauma bonding. ]
[ honestly, allison feels a little bad about just nearly kicking isaac out of her room. stiles probably doesn't want more people around any more than she does, but at the same time, she knew isaac was worried about scott. wanted to see him. and scott wasn't leaving stiles alone and all things considered.
allison thought she wanted time to think. but as soon as isaac was gone, it felt like the walls were closing back in. like she was hearing screams, groans, like her room was suddenly turning grey and dark and so-
honestly, stiles' text had been a godsend. she was already dressed, but she needed a minute or two just to pull herself back together. breathe a little to calm things down. and then she's sending isaac a text that she's going out for a run (will he believe her? who knows. but she's not checking her device for a bit so she hopes he does) and then she's heading down the stairs, looking for him once she makes it to the lobby. ]
[ Stiles deals with his problems by just pretending they didn't happen. It's something he's done since he was eight years old, and his mom died--his coping mechanisms lay in comics and video games, old books and basically anything that he could have gotten his hands on that would keep the nightmares edging at the corners of his thought processes far, far away.
This wasn't much different; he'd spend the majority of his time since the event trying to do anything that wasn't him being alone, throwing himself into Thanksgiving and doing research for his bestiary. But every time he'd get distracted, he'd see Scott's body, his head bludgeoned in, hear Isaac screaming around every corner or unturned page.
The walk had been a last ditch attempt of solidarity--he can only imagine how Allison's feeling, considering what happened with Isaac. The week after the event had just gone from bad to worse, as the natives of Beacon Hills curled in on themselves and tried to recover, and after a visit to Cora and completely wrecking his friendship with Derek, not even the pages of Through the Looking Glass have been able to quite hold his attention. With Allison, there's bonding, there's a similar camaraderie that comes from not only being absolutely traumatized but being human, and they'd fought together in the beginning and mourned together in the end.
He's playing on his device when she calls his name, and Stiles looks up and raises his head in a sup nod, offering a half-cocked smile. She looks just as exhausted as he does, if not worse, and Stiles jams his device in his pockets and halves the distance between them, meeting her. ] Ready?
[ allison's problems are all fairly new. her life before beacon hills had been difficult in its own ways, sure, but not that could compare to this. nothing that could compare to watching kate's neck get ripped out, learning about her mother dying after being basically drugged, after nearly killing isaac and erica and boyd and now, now she has this. all of this.
she closes her eyes and scott's just gone. she closes her eyes and isaac's dead on that bed (that didn't happen he's okay). she closes her eyes and it's hell and she opens them and everything is okay again. allison doesn't have coping mechanisms because she hasn't had the time to build them up. so instead, she just pretends. she harbors those visions and that knowledge and those feelings, compounds them into a ball and lets them fall somewhere in the back of her mind, the depth of her chest.
sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes seconds, and then it dissolves into the darkness that has grown so much, expanded so much, she's not even sure how she can breathe.
but she gets up, because she has to. she stands and she walks, she checks in and checks on and wanders between her room and the game room, between the game room and isaac and scott and stiles'. between these rooms and the halls and back again because the smaller the space, the less she has to check, the less corners there are and less darkness she has to sit in.
but then there's stiles. stiles, who just keeps going, keeps walking and talking and manages to hold it all together. allison knows he's got the same darkness, the same weight. he say just as much as she did and experienced just as much and yet when she sees him now, he looks...fine. tired - they're all tired - but better than she feels. than she has to look, judging from the way isaac looks at her. like every ounce of what she feels is written in the lines on her face.
for part of a moment, she's jealous, but then it's gone because when you feel so guilty and carry so much hatred for everything you do, it's hard to feel much else. allison tries for the smile when stiles greets her with one, but it ends up being a sort of nod, a ghost of an upturn to one corner of her lips. ]
Sure. [ her hands are hanging at her sides, and they twitch when they start walking. like she should be carrying something, anything. but what if- she ends up shaking her head, not that she had any reason to, and keeps quiet as they head out through the front doors, down the stairs and outside. it's a little off-putting to her, at first, that stiles doesn't immediately launch off into some kind of conversation. but at the same time, the silence is nice. is shared, rather than awkward, like the understood exactly what the other was thinking, feeling, without having to say much at all.
[ It's cold and crisp outside, and the first step out of the mansion is bone chilling--were he tired, he'd be awake now. Whatever exhaustion has set into Stiles is deep in his bones, started with mourning for his mother and helping his father into bed and hiding the bottles of jack while he was passed out cold and ending with the darach kidnapping his father. he still doesn't know if he's alright, and it weighs on his conscience with every move he makes, "mom would have believed me", and then he was gone. bottling his sadness comes with years and years of practice, things he'd never bring to light until they slapped him in the face, wheezing, pained panic attacks that brought him full force back to wonderland a couple of months back.
that's what coping is for him. it's not really coping so much as forcing things down, down, staying the comic relief, trying to lighten the mood when everyone around him is struggling. it usually works, but things like this ("i don't blame you for it" from scott's mouth after the mines, cora coughing and hacking and hanging onto dear life again, the way everyone just looked hollow) are hard to just bounce back from. every single blood vessel in his body is singing with guilt, you survived, you were the useless human and you survived, you should have protected them better, you should have protected him better, and after thanksgiving, it felt like that darkness around his heart that his mirror had said was growing three sizes too big.
stiles has always been talkative, but it's when he's hurting that he has nothing to say. there's no real need to press an issue with allison, because she--she just gets it. it's something stiles appreciates in more words than he can possibly put into the air, and so he just walks beside her, keeping his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes ahead, occasionally flicking down to look at the ground or up to the stars ahead.
it's maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the walk when he finally opens his mouth, walking with his head turned up to stare at the stars overhead, and it feels a little like fumbling in the dark, to try and find something to say that just makes sense. ] I don't think I've slept in a couple days. [ it's not asking for pity, or sadness--it's just a fact. ]
It makes it feel like a really long dream, y'know? Like if I go to sleep finally-- [ then the zombies will come back, they'll take everyone he loves one by one, they took scott once, they'd take him again, rip derek's head off until there was blood everywhere, so much blood -- ] --then I'll wake up at home in my bed in Beacon Hills.
[ the first breath she takes stings. it hits hard in her chest like a hammer against a bell, and if she were at all concerned about her own health, she would have considered it a discomfort. as it stands now, she follows stiles' suit on the matter. she takes another deep breath and keeps walking, because the sting of the cold and the slow seeping of the air through her jacket (she should have brought a scarf) with the promise that she won't last very long, or shouldn't last very long, reminds her that at least she's here to feel it. a morbid thought, considering all they're doing is walking in the dark through a path already cut for them by other feet, but she has it. wonders if she had died during that event, if she'd be having this same moment. the same idea.
allison has been so used to wearing her emotions on her sleeves, to expressing herself, freely, confidently, that when she's faced with emotions that shouldn't - fear, loss, guilt, anger, desperation - she struggles to keep them down. last semester, after losing her mother, she'd snapped at the sudden need to put it all somewhere, and gerard had given her a place. when she went to france, with her father, it was about resituating it all. by finding a way to wake up in the morning and not have her mother's figure hovering over her, not having erica's screaming face. it was about compartmentalizing and taking that next step, and when she came back, she had actually thought it'd be over.
but then there was the darach. the alphas. allison clung to her friends because it was the only semblance of normality she had left, and yet it was the driving force behind the uprooting of her life.
she made her decision. no matter what, she would stick by them. protect them. do what she could, when she needed to, and move on from there.
the jealousy pipes back up again when she thinks about stiles, along with worry, with sympathy. she knows about stiles' mom in the briefest of ways, a comment scott had told her before, but nothing more. she realizes how close that makes them, now, more than just their state of being. their humanity. stiles knows what she went through, but didn't lose himself like she had. wasn't still picking up the pieces, like she was. it makes her want to know how, know why, to know if somewhere in there he's hurting as much as she always seems to. always.
but that's also stepping over a boundary that she's sure, sure, he wouldn't appreciate. not now, maybe not ever, because they could have text conversations about his love life and zombie information sessions over the network but stiles was scott's best friend, and allison had no right to invade that.
she can walk in this easy silence and she won't ask anything more, and she hopes that's all he wants. all he needs for now.
somewhere along the way her hands find her pockets, and her arms press close to her chest. it's cold, but not that cold. not cold enough. maybe if they stay out long enough, some of it will numb. some of something. some of anything. maybe, if they walk far enough, it'll be too dark to tell the difference between inside her chest and out in the sky. stiles switches between looking ahead of them and looking up, but allison's eyes stay to the path. the slight slouch to her shoulders, down-turn of her neck. it's the same stance she's had since they came back - too worried not to watch where she's going, but scared of what she'll find it she looks up - and out here in the dark it's the still the same.
when stiles talks, it's just as natural as the silence. she listens to him talk just as easily as she's been listening to the silence, and maybe it's that comfort, the fact that it's out here in the dark, walking with someone who she doesn't feel like she has to hide anything from, if only in this moment, that spurs her to answer at all.
allison stops in the path they've been walking down, without much warning at all. she stops, and she stands there for a moment, her eyes still down to the ground.
like if i go to sleep finally, then i'll wake up at home in my bed in beacon hills ]
I don't want to go home. [ she surprises herself a little when she speaks, tensing like she expects some kind of answer, some kind of reaction. the silence hangs for a moment or two before she looks back up, to where stiles has probably noticed she's stopped. to where stiles is probably looking back at her. ] I don't- [ that's when her voice cracks, and her eyes are back on the ground. a moment to breathe, before she speaks up again, her voice much smaller than before. ] The darach, our parents. I don't think I can do it.
[ you can't even save them here, what makes you think you can save anyone there? ]
[ when allison stops, so does stiles, just a step or so in front of her. the phrase--i don't want to go home, it echoes so fiercely in his chest that he has to take it in with her, look at her with a face that's not surprised or sympathetic, but rather empathetic. she puts it into words, in the way that he doesn't feel like he can, the kind of things he feels like he can't say. it's maybe because scott is his best friend--and it's not that scott would ever judge him for being that way, are you kidding? scott would love stiles if he became a fascist, even if he'd probably try to talk him out of it.
but scott was a hero. scott was the kind of person who faced his problems head on, who knew absolutely nothing about what was going home but still spoke energetically about returning, even after stiles had told him in the quiet what had happened to their parents. scott worked with deucalion to try and get their parents back. stiles? stiles tried what he could, but when the message from isaac came that allison's father had been taken he--he panicked, he had a panic attack, and then he ended up here.
his dad could very well be dead. all of them knew, the three of them bound by the single kid in the single parent home, but stiles saw a lot of his younger self in allison, and when that had happened, when she just lost control like that, hurt erica and boyd, he couldn't blame her. he'd retreated so far into himself as a kid that he'd barely gone to school. he didn't have the supernatural to take it out on. just his dad, who was drinking himself to death with her gone, and his best friend. there's more than being human in allison that makes them so similar, and the part of him that wishes he could be sympathetic and kind instead of awkward and stumbling came out the day scott told him about what she was doing.
there's this overwhelming urge to just--open the floodgates, to tell her everything. stiles can't lose his dad just like allison can't lose hers--it's not that scott can't lose his mom, either, but there's a different kind of pain that comes from being in a happy home and having it torn asunder by sickness or suicide. he knows what it feels like to be drowning, because he's right there with her, under the water like matt daehler was, using every single one of his abilities as a human to fight back. if you're going through hell, keep going, morrell had quoted at him, and it was the kind of saying he held close to his chest, when he watched the darach carry his dad away in the dead of the night, when scott nearly committed suicide because he couldn't stand to live anymore, when they were surrounded by fucking zombies and losing members of their group day by day. it doesn't stop him from being afraid. it never will.
he feels like if he goes home and his dad is dead? he might as well be drowned already. ] ...yeah. [ is his less than eloquent answer, as he jams his hands a little further in his pockets and shaking his head, focusing on the ground with her. ] I can't--I just can't. I already lost my mom.
[ it was your fault, you killed her his brain whispers in response. he wants to say it's going to be okay, but that's scott's gig, isn't it? it always has been. stiles the cynic and his best friend the optimist. he wants to hope that he's alive (believe he's alive, still does) but every night when he sleeps it's thinking about the funeral with the folded flag, a grave next to his mothers.
stiles' mouth twitches up a little, in a bitter facsimile of a smile. ] I can't decide if I'd rather have him here or stuck at home. That's screwed up as hell.
[ allison has a hard time bringing herself to look up at him. even when she feels him stop, feels him move towards her. she knows he's not expecting anything from her and she's not expecting anything from him, but they're so similar, so alike in that way, that allison's too scared to move.
she wouldn't be able to face herself. why would she be able to face stiles? face anyone?
what right did she have to do any of this? because that's what it comes down to, for her. the new girl still fighting for her place in line, in this town. she has her best friend and she has scott (and now isaac, but does that count if it's just here?) and she has the memory of the deaths of the women in her family. her mother's grave, her aunt's grave, and yet no matter how hard she tries, she's still trying to find her ground. back when she and scott were dating, when she knew his secret and had to meet with him in the middle of the night, out in the woods, he'd called her his anchor. it sounded a little silly at the time, but it made sense. for him, then, she was what pulled him back. held him to his humanity. and allison never realized how much that was necessary, for anyone, for everyone. she figured it was just a werewolf thing, but the more she thinks about that, the more she knows that's crap.
she was floating aimlessly out at sea. no town to hold her there, no family. when the only constants she'd every had were cut in two thirds in a just a few months...
when she takes her next breath, she hopes it doesn't sound like a sob. hopes, prays, that it's all just in her head. that it's the cold and the fact she's just being hypersensitive about it, but she doesn't know.
and then there's stiles. stiles, who matches scott in everything. stiles, who comes up with everything, puts everything together. who lost his mom when he was just a kid, and here she is falling apart over it. and while she wants to hate herself for it, (because she does. she wants to hate it all and everyone, wants to sink a little further into that darkness in her chest because at least that'd be easy) she can't help that little voice in the back of her head that tells her of everyone, anyone, here. stiles would judge you the least. it's the only reason she looks up at him when she does, the only reason she's able to look up at all.
it doesn't make anything better, not really, but it doesn't hurt. ]
I don't have anyone left. [ she's not trying to compete with him, when she says that. not trying to do anything but share with him that part of her. gerard would be the closest kin, since despite his health he is still mentally capable of taking care of her, and the thought makes her sick. so sick, she has that thought again. that thought that she hasn't been able to shake since that moment when derek came back into the room with that look in his eyes.
i'd rather die.
and then stiles is smiling, in that haunted sort of way, and allison's chest tightens in how simple that looks. how easy it would be to match him in it. she doesn't, but she could, and her eyes fall back to the snow. ]
I'd want him here. [ it's selfish, she's being selfish, how could you do that to your father but allison just closes her eyes, holds them closed very tightly, hoping to hold back everything else that follows. ] I mean, I don't, I don't want him to deal with this if he doesn't have to, but- but they come back here. He'd come back.
[ she couldn't save anyone, and that's what it came down to. not jackson, not derek, not scott or isaac or cora or stiles. the one event that was supposed to be her's, a chance to prove that she was worth doing anything at all, and they all-
if she couldn't save them here, couldn't save them when no one had powers. no one was a werewolf, or a darach, and instead everyone was on the same level of skill. if she couldn't save anyone, then, how would she be able to save her dad? ]
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someone's got to sleep at some point, though, right?
I'll meet you downstairs in five?
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Tugging on a coat as he makes his way downstairs, he texts back-- see you then and waits in the lobby. Let's do some trauma bonding. ]
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allison thought she wanted time to think. but as soon as isaac was gone, it felt like the walls were closing back in. like she was hearing screams, groans, like her room was suddenly turning grey and dark and so-
honestly, stiles' text had been a godsend. she was already dressed, but she needed a minute or two just to pull herself back together. breathe a little to calm things down. and then she's sending isaac a text that she's going out for a run (will he believe her? who knows. but she's not checking her device for a bit so she hopes he does) and then she's heading down the stairs, looking for him once she makes it to the lobby. ]
Stiles?
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This wasn't much different; he'd spend the majority of his time since the event trying to do anything that wasn't him being alone, throwing himself into Thanksgiving and doing research for his bestiary. But every time he'd get distracted, he'd see Scott's body, his head bludgeoned in, hear Isaac screaming around every corner or unturned page.
The walk had been a last ditch attempt of solidarity--he can only imagine how Allison's feeling, considering what happened with Isaac. The week after the event had just gone from bad to worse, as the natives of Beacon Hills curled in on themselves and tried to recover, and after a visit to Cora and completely wrecking his friendship with Derek, not even the pages of Through the Looking Glass have been able to quite hold his attention. With Allison, there's bonding, there's a similar camaraderie that comes from not only being absolutely traumatized but being human, and they'd fought together in the beginning and mourned together in the end.
He's playing on his device when she calls his name, and Stiles looks up and raises his head in a sup nod, offering a half-cocked smile. She looks just as exhausted as he does, if not worse, and Stiles jams his device in his pockets and halves the distance between them, meeting her. ] Ready?
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she closes her eyes and scott's just gone. she closes her eyes and isaac's dead on that bed (that didn't happen he's okay). she closes her eyes and it's hell and she opens them and everything is okay again. allison doesn't have coping mechanisms because she hasn't had the time to build them up. so instead, she just pretends. she harbors those visions and that knowledge and those feelings, compounds them into a ball and lets them fall somewhere in the back of her mind, the depth of her chest.
sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes seconds, and then it dissolves into the darkness that has grown so much, expanded so much, she's not even sure how she can breathe.
but she gets up, because she has to. she stands and she walks, she checks in and checks on and wanders between her room and the game room, between the game room and isaac and scott and stiles'. between these rooms and the halls and back again because the smaller the space, the less she has to check, the less corners there are and less darkness she has to sit in.
but then there's stiles. stiles, who just keeps going, keeps walking and talking and manages to hold it all together. allison knows he's got the same darkness, the same weight. he say just as much as she did and experienced just as much and yet when she sees him now, he looks...fine. tired - they're all tired - but better than she feels. than she has to look, judging from the way isaac looks at her. like every ounce of what she feels is written in the lines on her face.
for part of a moment, she's jealous, but then it's gone because when you feel so guilty and carry so much hatred for everything you do, it's hard to feel much else. allison tries for the smile when stiles greets her with one, but it ends up being a sort of nod, a ghost of an upturn to one corner of her lips. ]
Sure. [ her hands are hanging at her sides, and they twitch when they start walking. like she should be carrying something, anything. but what if- she ends up shaking her head, not that she had any reason to, and keeps quiet as they head out through the front doors, down the stairs and outside. it's a little off-putting to her, at first, that stiles doesn't immediately launch off into some kind of conversation. but at the same time, the silence is nice. is shared, rather than awkward, like the understood exactly what the other was thinking, feeling, without having to say much at all.
it was nice. ]
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that's what coping is for him. it's not really coping so much as forcing things down, down, staying the comic relief, trying to lighten the mood when everyone around him is struggling. it usually works, but things like this ("i don't blame you for it" from scott's mouth after the mines, cora coughing and hacking and hanging onto dear life again, the way everyone just looked hollow) are hard to just bounce back from. every single blood vessel in his body is singing with guilt, you survived, you were the useless human and you survived, you should have protected them better, you should have protected him better, and after thanksgiving, it felt like that darkness around his heart that his mirror had said was growing three sizes too big.
stiles has always been talkative, but it's when he's hurting that he has nothing to say. there's no real need to press an issue with allison, because she--she just gets it. it's something stiles appreciates in more words than he can possibly put into the air, and so he just walks beside her, keeping his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes ahead, occasionally flicking down to look at the ground or up to the stars ahead.
it's maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the walk when he finally opens his mouth, walking with his head turned up to stare at the stars overhead, and it feels a little like fumbling in the dark, to try and find something to say that just makes sense. ] I don't think I've slept in a couple days. [ it's not asking for pity, or sadness--it's just a fact. ]
It makes it feel like a really long dream, y'know? Like if I go to sleep finally-- [ then the zombies will come back, they'll take everyone he loves one by one, they took scott once, they'd take him again, rip derek's head off until there was blood everywhere, so much blood -- ] --then I'll wake up at home in my bed in Beacon Hills.
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allison has been so used to wearing her emotions on her sleeves, to expressing herself, freely, confidently, that when she's faced with emotions that shouldn't - fear, loss, guilt, anger, desperation - she struggles to keep them down. last semester, after losing her mother, she'd snapped at the sudden need to put it all somewhere, and gerard had given her a place. when she went to france, with her father, it was about resituating it all. by finding a way to wake up in the morning and not have her mother's figure hovering over her, not having erica's screaming face. it was about compartmentalizing and taking that next step, and when she came back, she had actually thought it'd be over.
but then there was the darach. the alphas. allison clung to her friends because it was the only semblance of normality she had left, and yet it was the driving force behind the uprooting of her life.
she made her decision. no matter what, she would stick by them. protect them. do what she could, when she needed to, and move on from there.
the jealousy pipes back up again when she thinks about stiles, along with worry, with sympathy. she knows about stiles' mom in the briefest of ways, a comment scott had told her before, but nothing more. she realizes how close that makes them, now, more than just their state of being. their humanity. stiles knows what she went through, but didn't lose himself like she had. wasn't still picking up the pieces, like she was. it makes her want to know how, know why, to know if somewhere in there he's hurting as much as she always seems to. always.
but that's also stepping over a boundary that she's sure, sure, he wouldn't appreciate. not now, maybe not ever, because they could have text conversations about his love life and zombie information sessions over the network but stiles was scott's best friend, and allison had no right to invade that.
she can walk in this easy silence and she won't ask anything more, and she hopes that's all he wants. all he needs for now.
somewhere along the way her hands find her pockets, and her arms press close to her chest. it's cold, but not that cold. not cold enough. maybe if they stay out long enough, some of it will numb. some of something. some of anything. maybe, if they walk far enough, it'll be too dark to tell the difference between inside her chest and out in the sky. stiles switches between looking ahead of them and looking up, but allison's eyes stay to the path. the slight slouch to her shoulders, down-turn of her neck. it's the same stance she's had since they came back - too worried not to watch where she's going, but scared of what she'll find it she looks up - and out here in the dark it's the still the same.
when stiles talks, it's just as natural as the silence. she listens to him talk just as easily as she's been listening to the silence, and maybe it's that comfort, the fact that it's out here in the dark, walking with someone who she doesn't feel like she has to hide anything from, if only in this moment, that spurs her to answer at all.
allison stops in the path they've been walking down, without much warning at all. she stops, and she stands there for a moment, her eyes still down to the ground.
like if i go to sleep finally, then i'll wake up at home in my bed in beacon hills ]
I don't want to go home. [ she surprises herself a little when she speaks, tensing like she expects some kind of answer, some kind of reaction. the silence hangs for a moment or two before she looks back up, to where stiles has probably noticed she's stopped. to where stiles is probably looking back at her. ] I don't- [ that's when her voice cracks, and her eyes are back on the ground. a moment to breathe, before she speaks up again, her voice much smaller than before. ] The darach, our parents. I don't think I can do it.
[ you can't even save them here, what makes you think you can save anyone there? ]
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but scott was a hero. scott was the kind of person who faced his problems head on, who knew absolutely nothing about what was going home but still spoke energetically about returning, even after stiles had told him in the quiet what had happened to their parents. scott worked with deucalion to try and get their parents back. stiles? stiles tried what he could, but when the message from isaac came that allison's father had been taken he--he panicked, he had a panic attack, and then he ended up here.
his dad could very well be dead. all of them knew, the three of them bound by the single kid in the single parent home, but stiles saw a lot of his younger self in allison, and when that had happened, when she just lost control like that, hurt erica and boyd, he couldn't blame her. he'd retreated so far into himself as a kid that he'd barely gone to school. he didn't have the supernatural to take it out on. just his dad, who was drinking himself to death with her gone, and his best friend. there's more than being human in allison that makes them so similar, and the part of him that wishes he could be sympathetic and kind instead of awkward and stumbling came out the day scott told him about what she was doing.
there's this overwhelming urge to just--open the floodgates, to tell her everything. stiles can't lose his dad just like allison can't lose hers--it's not that scott can't lose his mom, either, but there's a different kind of pain that comes from being in a happy home and having it torn asunder by sickness or suicide. he knows what it feels like to be drowning, because he's right there with her, under the water like matt daehler was, using every single one of his abilities as a human to fight back. if you're going through hell, keep going, morrell had quoted at him, and it was the kind of saying he held close to his chest, when he watched the darach carry his dad away in the dead of the night, when scott nearly committed suicide because he couldn't stand to live anymore, when they were surrounded by fucking zombies and losing members of their group day by day. it doesn't stop him from being afraid. it never will.
he feels like if he goes home and his dad is dead? he might as well be drowned already. ] ...yeah. [ is his less than eloquent answer, as he jams his hands a little further in his pockets and shaking his head, focusing on the ground with her. ] I can't--I just can't. I already lost my mom.
[ it was your fault, you killed her his brain whispers in response. he wants to say it's going to be okay, but that's scott's gig, isn't it? it always has been. stiles the cynic and his best friend the optimist. he wants to hope that he's alive (believe he's alive, still does) but every night when he sleeps it's thinking about the funeral with the folded flag, a grave next to his mothers.
stiles' mouth twitches up a little, in a bitter facsimile of a smile. ] I can't decide if I'd rather have him here or stuck at home. That's screwed up as hell.
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she wouldn't be able to face herself. why would she be able to face stiles? face anyone?
what right did she have to do any of this? because that's what it comes down to, for her. the new girl still fighting for her place in line, in this town. she has her best friend and she has scott (and now isaac, but does that count if it's just here?) and she has the memory of the deaths of the women in her family. her mother's grave, her aunt's grave, and yet no matter how hard she tries, she's still trying to find her ground. back when she and scott were dating, when she knew his secret and had to meet with him in the middle of the night, out in the woods, he'd called her his anchor. it sounded a little silly at the time, but it made sense. for him, then, she was what pulled him back. held him to his humanity. and allison never realized how much that was necessary, for anyone, for everyone. she figured it was just a werewolf thing, but the more she thinks about that, the more she knows that's crap.
she was floating aimlessly out at sea. no town to hold her there, no family. when the only constants she'd every had were cut in two thirds in a just a few months...
when she takes her next breath, she hopes it doesn't sound like a sob. hopes, prays, that it's all just in her head. that it's the cold and the fact she's just being hypersensitive about it, but she doesn't know.
and then there's stiles. stiles, who matches scott in everything. stiles, who comes up with everything, puts everything together. who lost his mom when he was just a kid, and here she is falling apart over it. and while she wants to hate herself for it, (because she does. she wants to hate it all and everyone, wants to sink a little further into that darkness in her chest because at least that'd be easy) she can't help that little voice in the back of her head that tells her of everyone, anyone, here. stiles would judge you the least. it's the only reason she looks up at him when she does, the only reason she's able to look up at all.
it doesn't make anything better, not really, but it doesn't hurt. ]
I don't have anyone left. [ she's not trying to compete with him, when she says that. not trying to do anything but share with him that part of her. gerard would be the closest kin, since despite his health he is still mentally capable of taking care of her, and the thought makes her sick. so sick, she has that thought again. that thought that she hasn't been able to shake since that moment when derek came back into the room with that look in his eyes.
i'd rather die.
and then stiles is smiling, in that haunted sort of way, and allison's chest tightens in how simple that looks. how easy it would be to match him in it. she doesn't, but she could, and her eyes fall back to the snow. ]
I'd want him here. [ it's selfish, she's being selfish, how could you do that to your father but allison just closes her eyes, holds them closed very tightly, hoping to hold back everything else that follows. ] I mean, I don't, I don't want him to deal with this if he doesn't have to, but- but they come back here. He'd come back.
[ she couldn't save anyone, and that's what it came down to. not jackson, not derek, not scott or isaac or cora or stiles. the one event that was supposed to be her's, a chance to prove that she was worth doing anything at all, and they all-
if she couldn't save them here, couldn't save them when no one had powers. no one was a werewolf, or a darach, and instead everyone was on the same level of skill. if she couldn't save anyone, then, how would she be able to save her dad? ]