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Scott squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could. The lights were too many and too bright. Police crime-scene work lights had been set up in his front yard. Blue flashers from Beacon Hills Police Department cruisers and red flashers from ambulances strobed what darkness remained. They all had come through the windows, dazzling him.
He did this, he tried to concentrate on shutting out the smells. The whole house reeked of gunpowder. The paramedics, in their haste, had ripped open the packages of the medical supplies and let them drop the ground; the antiseptics stung his nostrils. Between the paramedics and the cops, there were so many strange scents he couldn’t identify. And then there was the blood. So much blood. He couldn’t manage to block any of them out.
A headache had also settled behind Scott’s forehead, probably from all the effort he had made to listen to struggling heartbeats, even as they were drowned out by sirens and machines and shouting. The only recognizable person had been the Sheriff trying to bring order to the chaos. Everyone else was unintelligible; some of the voices must have been in the same room as him, but the words tumbled into each other until they were nothing but noise.
He couldn’t start figuring out what they were trying to tell him.
Scott couldn’t make himself start doing anything. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the attack. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since the police or the ambulances had arrived. He felt suspended, like a marionette hung on a hook. Part of him screamed at him that he should be doing something. Part of him screamed at him that he should do nothing. He had done too much already.
Out of the blue, someone touched him. It broke the spell.
“Hey, Scott? That’s your name, right?”
Blinking his eyes open, Scott turned to the man who had asked it. Scott assumed the figure was a deputy, but he couldn’t focus on him enough to recognize any more than that.
“You need to come with me. You need to give a statement.”
It was a perfectly reasonable request. The deputy was acting the way a deputy should act in an incident like this. Four people had been shot, and Scott had been a witness to it. Four people. Four people.
Scott snarled at the deputy. He would like to have been able to say that he went out of control for a moment or that he didn’t know from where this reaction had come, but that would be a lie. The deputy wanted him to move and talk, and he wanted to stay right where he was. He wanted to stay paralyzed.
“Deputy Strauss, I’ve got this.” Sheriff Stilinski slid in between the deputy and Scott.
“Sir, I …”
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Go canvas the neighbors.”
Deputy Strauss took one final glance at Scott and fled the house.
Scott thought he should offer an apology for causing trouble tonight, but he couldn’t make the words come out of his throat.
“Seems he got an answer to his question about the supernatural,” Noah said wryly. “Hey, want to go to your room? Let’s go.”
The sheriff turned and walked away, as if expecting Scott to follow, and Scott found he could finally move since the decision to do so had been made for him. Anyway, there was nothing dangerous about going up to his room.
“This is a dumb question, but …” Noah was looking out the window in his bedroom, trying to peer through the darkness, when Scott finally made it upstairs. “Are you going to be okay?”
Scott froze in the doorway. He looked for words and found some old reliable ones. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not fine. Not right now. I’m asking if you need help.”
“I’m healed.”
“Not what I meant.” Noah turned away from his search. “Look, it’s been nearly two years since I learned about you’ve been through, and, to be honest, I still don’t really understand how it works, but I do know people. I know what happens to the victims in the shooting like this. There’s no way for you to be fine right now. Should I call someone?”
“I …” Scott could handle this. He could reassure people. “I’ve done this before. I don’t need anyone.”
The sheriff studied him up and down. He nodded in acceptance, but Scott could sense the doubt in him. “Before her father took her home, Malia gave a statement.”
“Peter?” Scott’s tone was sharper than he meant it to be.
“No, not Peter. Mr. Tate.” Noah licked his lips. “Tell me something: if I made you sit down and give me a statement, would it be any different than what Malia told us already?”
Scott immediately shook his head. “No.” If he tried, he doubted he could say ten words about what happened earlier.
“We’ll go with that. You should get cleaned up. You’re still covered in blood. After you do, you don’t have to stick around here. I know you want to get to the hospital.”
The sheriff was wrong. Scott couldn’t afford to get anywhere near the hospital. He knew the man wouldn’t understand, so Scott didn’t bother to correct him.
The sheriff left and Scott walked into his bathroom. He flipped on the light, strangely relieved that it worked. Slowly, he lifted his eyes toward the mirror.
His normal face stared back at him. His crooked jaw. his brown eyes that he got from his mother. His hair color that he got from his father. There was a hole in his shirt stained from blood where he had gotten shot, but his healing had pushed that bullet out within minutes. It said something about his life, but this wasn’t his only shirt which bore a similar hole.
Nothing had changed.
That shouldn’t be possible. Tonight, it should be the farthest thing from possible that nothing had changed. He kept staring at the mirror.
He was supposed to get cleaned up. He was supposed to go to the hospital.
He didn’t.
Instead, sometime later he found himself sitting on the armchair in his room, staring at a box on his desk instead of his own image. He had packed that box before all this business had started. His mother … she had insisted he take some things with him to school, even though he had assured her that he’d be back often enough to annoy her. Inside were pictures of him from grade school and middle school. There was a picture of him at the Delgado family reunion. There was even a picture of their family with Dad in it; all of them together.
There were other objects in there, too. The inhaler Derek had found in the preserve. An Incredible Hulk comic book Stiles had bought Scott for his 10th birthday. A lacrosse ball from Liam’s first game with the Cyclones. An obsidian throwing star. A roll of pictures from a photo booth.
If he had managed to leave for Davis, he would have brought the past with him to his new school.
“Stupid.” Scott judged the idea in the shadows of his room.
A strange inertia kept him in his chair. Why didn’t he get up? Why didn’t he do what the sheriff had suggested? Down below, he could hear deputies moving around in the dining room. They’d be there for hours, cataloging the crime scene.
Eventually, there was a knock on the door. It was almost startling. Whoever it was, Scott hadn’t heard them come up the stairs before they knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Alan.”
Something deep inside him unclenched. With more eagerness than he had felt for the last few hours, he jumped out of the chair to open the door. “Hey.”
Deaton stepped inside, but he did not greet Scott with a smile. His demeanor was somber, yet not formal. “I heard what happened.”
Scott tried to say something, but it caught in his throat. The best he could do was nod.
“I went to the hospital.” Deaton considered carefully what he said next. “I checked on your parents, Lydia, and Mason.”
The veterinarian was clearly choosing not to share any details. With any other person, Scott might have suspected that they were hiding something terrible, but he would never feel that way with Deaton. If there was something that Scott needed to know, Deaton would tell him, no matter how bad it was.
With his voice carefully pitched to imply no judgment, Deaton went on. “The sheriff told me that he had expected you there forty-five minutes ago.”
Had it been that long? Scott’s eyes went to his clock. “I …”
Deaton waited patiently.
“I don’t think I should go.”
“May I ask why?”
As simple as it was, Scott couldn’t answer it right away. He was convinced he should go, but he found it wasn’t easy to put the rationale in words.
Scott swallowed something bitter. When he looked at boss, he saw a man standing there perfectly still yet not the least bit tense. Deaton gave no indication that he was waiting for an answer. It was clear that Scott could ignore it if he wanted to. Doc always gave him that option when it came to things like this.
But Scott wanted to answer him, or rather he wanted to have an answer. He scrabbled through his mind for the reason or reasons he believed that. He remembered Derek and he sitting on a bench in the boy’s locker room after Derek had introduced himself to Liam in his own special way. Derek’s words echoed back to him: If all our names are on that list, then that's what we should be focused on.
He grabbed hold of the memory. There. That was reasonable.
“I’m not going to do anyone any good there,” he replied finally. “Monroe is escalating, and we still don’t have any idea how to stop her that thing — the Anuk-Ite — which is driving everyone onto her side. More and more people are going to die, on both sides, unless we can figure out how. I’m not going to make any progress sitting in a waiting room, am I?”
“Scott, while what you have said is true, it’s not solely your responsibility--”
“It is.” Scott hated how his voice went up in volume and pitch. “People are dying, so someone has to do something. None of this would be happening if I hadn’t been fooled by Theo or if I had figured out how to stop the Doctors before they resurrected the Beast. If I had been quicker, Monroe would still be a guidance counselor and not a hunter. And that’s not even dealing with the fact that the only reason the Anuk-Ite is out there because I let it out.”
Deaton turned his head to make sure the door was closed behind him. He probably didn’t want any wandering deputies to overhear. “Scott, I think that is an oversimplification of what really happened. The truth is more complicated.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Scott realized he was starting to shout, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “Whenever has something being complicated prevented it from becoming my problem? Peter was complicated! Deucalion was complicated! The nogitsune was pretty fucking complicated! Every time something like this happens, the longer it takes me to figure out what the hell I should be doing, the more people get hurt. So, there’s no reason for me to go to the hospital! The answers aren’t going to be there, are they?”
Deaton ‘s brow wrinkled up, as if he were confused.
Scott swallowed once again, and in doing so he caught a scent in the back of his throat. Derek teaching him about chemo signals had often turned out to be beneficial, but sometimes he wished that the older werewolf had never taken the time to do it. If Derek hadn’t, Scott wouldn’t be able to sense his mentor’s disappointment.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for yelling.” Scott was sorry for yelling, but something else weirded him out. For some reason, He felt immensely relieved that he had something for which he could apologize. “I know I should be better than this.”
The veterinarian tilted his head to the side before a look of recognition crossed his features. “Scott, you have nothing for which you should apologize. You’re not the person in which I’m disappointed. May we sit down?”
Helplessly, Scott nodded. He took a few steps backward and sat down on the bed. Deaton took the chair, sitting across from him.
Deaton sat in silence for a minute or two before he looked up. “There is more than one source of fear.”
Scott already knew that.
“You might think I’m pedantic for starting with basics, but I think it is important tonight. Humanity has been able to name these fears since they created language. Fear of the dark. Fear of fire. Fear of being alone. Fear of failure. Being able to talk about them helped us develop the means to respond. In the end, no matter what the source of the fear, we figured out that there are two ways a person can react to it: rationally or irrationally.”
Downstairs, Scott heard the deputies continued their work.
“This is important. For those afraid of fire, an irrational response can lead to panic or paralysis. For those who have the strength of will and self-awareness to face the fire, they can choose to act cautiously to either combat the flame, retreat from it or any other rational response.”
“Are you trying to tell me that I’m acting irrationally?” Scott demanded, suddenly.
“No, Scott. I’m trying to tell you that I’m afraid.”
Deaton’s voice was just as clear and measured as it always was, but Scott could pick up not only the disappointment he had sensed earlier but hidden under that scent, sadness. Scott bit his lip; he should say something to Alan as alpha to reassure him, but he wasn’t sure what to say that would be a comfort.
“Our enemy, the Anuk-Ite, pushes communities into destroying themselves not so much by creating fear but by amplifying fears that already exist. In my case, I believe that the fear it is working on is one with which I am very familiar. I’ve had it since before I met you, yet it concerns you directly.”
“You don’t … it doesn’t seem like you’re acting irrationally.”
“I have cultivated in my life a certain level of self-control, but I can assure you, Scott, at this moment it is only superficial.” Deaton closed his eyes for a second. “While we have never formally stated this, it should be evident to the casual observer that I am your Emissary.”
“Of course.” Scott had never needed to put a name to what Deaton did for him, but Emissary was as good as any.
“My … concern is that I haven’t been a very good one. Not to Talia. Not to Laura. Not to you.” Deaton stated it simply but there was a tremor in his voice. “I have always been afraid of this. This is why I tried to avoid talking to you about the supernatural, even when I realized that you had been bit, and I suspected what you might become.”
“I never understood that, to be honest. If you knew I had become a werewolf, why wouldn’t you talk to me?”
“It was nothing against you, Scott. I wanted to avoid the supernatural world because I could not help but shoulder some of the blame for the death of my friend, even though I had no clue that Kate Argent was even in town. I also could not help but feel that I could have done more for Laura, even though I didn’t know about the threat Peter represented.”
“That wasn’t fair.”
“You’re right.” Deaton smiled at him, but it withered almost instantly, like an ant caught in a sunbeam focused through a magnifying glass. “The fear that, in a way, I was responsible for the deaths of the people I love is real, but the truth is that I couldn’t have stopped it. That does not make the fear vanish, but it does help me keep that fear under control. Most of the time, I use it to motivate me to give you the best advice I can.”
Scott saw something behind the smile. On the surface, Deaton was as calm as he ever was, but the disappointment, the anxiety was real. “But not tonight.”
“No, but not just tonight.” Deaton took another deep breath. “Right now, I think what I want to say to you is that you should take your mother and father and go. I suggest that Washington D.C. would be best. You could be with Stiles, and as your father is an FBI agent he would have significant protection. Tamora Monroe and Gerard Argent would be insane to try to take you out there. What I want to say right now is that you’re too young to be put in this position; you’ve always been too young.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.” For the first time, Deaton’s voice shifted to anger. “You won’t. And in the middle of the night, when you’re out fighting to protect everyone else but yourself, I lay in my bed looking up at the ceiling and wonder how much of my advice is the reason you won’t.”
“Doc.” Scott had never imagined this. He repeated the name several times, not only to get through to Deaton but also to settle himself. “Doc. You remember back when Garrett had poisoned Liam and I vowed that no one else on the Dead Pool would die. You told me that it was a lot of burden to carry? You’re the only person who’s ever said anything like that to me, and do you remember what I told you?”
“That you didn’t care. You had a bounty of 25 million dollars on your head; you should have cared.”
“I do care, I did care, but back then, I knew that no one else was going to stop it if I didn’t. I was terrified of being killed, but I was more terrified of … oh, so that’s what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I simply think you’re compromised by the Anuk-Ite in the same way that I am.”
“You think I should go.” Scott didn’t want to go to the hospital, but now he knew from where that desire came.
“I don’t want to tell you what to do. You are the only person who can, in the end, decide what is best for you. If you really think that you should be working towards a goal rather than waiting to see if the people you care about are all right, then I will support you. But I have to note, you weren’t doing anything when I got here.”
“I wanted to.” Scott hesitated. “I wanted to want to. I … what happens if I’m sitting in the waiting room and someone else gets shot?”
“Then someone else will be shot, but you will not have been the one to shoot them. You didn’t hurt Peter’s victims or Deucalion’s victims or the nogitsune’s victims or anyone else’s victims — not even through neglect — they did. In fact, you did more than many other people could, and you did it voluntarily. It’s why your pack follows you. It’s why Chris Argent and the Sheriff turn to you when they need help. It’s why I am so proud of you.”
Scott still didn’t want to go to the hospital, but … it seemed he had to go to the hospital. As much as it didn’t feel like that right now, he understood that he wouldn’t be able to do the right thing tomorrow if he didn’t go there tonight. So, he chose to do what he always did when something had to be done. He stood up.
Deaton followed suit. “If you’re having trouble convincing yourself, think of it this way. It might sound overblown, but you are our light in the darkness. When things like this happen, we follow you. That means you have to be able to lead.”
“That does sound weird.”
For the first time this evening, the veterinarian chuckled, though it was a grim chuckle. “Okay, think of it another way. You’re our emergency flare. We rely on them when there’s disaster, but that means it’s only smart to make sure they work. You have to take care of yourself, Scott, and that means emotionally as well as physically.”
“How do I …” Scott grimaced. He already knew how.
“You go make sure you are there for your family and friends, as difficult as that might be. Everything else can wait. Everything else should wait.”
Deaton was right. Scott could imagine going to the hospital and hearing the worst news, and he didn’t think he could face it, but that was just fear. Supernaturally augmented fear, but fear none-the-less. He could react to it in one of two ways: rationally or irrationally. Scott not being there when his mother or his father or Lydia or Mason died wasn’t going to keep them from dying. It wasn’t going to make it his fault. But if he wasn’t there and something happened, he would never recover.
“I’ve got to get cleaned up.”
“Of course,” Deaton nodded. “I can drive you there, if you need me to.”
Things seem to slip back into motion. Scott could move again.
“I’d like that. Thanks, Doc.”