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By the time she’s 18, Allison has shot three of her friends, a friend of her parents’, six werewolves, and her grandfather.
She dreams of blood and the high sweet song of the bow, and wakes up hating herself and the werewolves who make her life chaos. She’s no less monster than any of them, now. More than some of them: Boyd has never hurt anyone who wasn’t trying to hurt him, has never said anything to her about turning him into a pincushion. And Scott, God, Scott, who’s only ever tried to protect her. She doesn’t deserve him.
*
The woods are dark, but the light of the gibbous moon is more than enough to aim by. The shell of the Hale house stands as a testament to loss and pain and traded blows. Allison just wants to end this, to make it go away, to bring this awful dance to a close.
“Step out of the way, Stiles! He killed my mother.” She almost hates Stiles, too, because he’s stuck the same way she is, between human rules and pack law, but he never seems to have to question his loyalties.
Derek doesn’t say anything, and is just standing with his arms at his sides. He knows he deserves this.
“Yeah? Then I’m just as responsible as he is.” Stiles keeps himself between her and Derek.
“What?”
Stiles just keeps talking, and she knows this is what Stiles does, just keeps talking until people stop trying to kill anyone but him, but she has to hear this. “I made a ring of mountain ash, and werewolves can’t cross it. No one could get across, or even touch the line. It was to keep the kanima in the club, to stop it escaping. But we heard Scott’s howl, and Derek said he was dying. So you know what I did? I broke the line. I let the kanima escape, and it killed again, and I let Derek go save Scott from where your mom was poisoning him with a wolfsbane vaporiser. Without me, Derek wouldn’t have been able to get her. Without me, she’d be alive and Scott would be dead. So I’m just as responsible as he is. You gonna shoot me, too?”
Her arm is trembling, and not just from holding the bowstring taut. She can feel tears welling up, and hates herself for that weakness. Hates herself, too, because she wouldn’t trade the outcomes. Even if she can’t be with him right now, not until she’s taken care of the monster that is her grandfather, he’s one of the best people she knows. She loves him helplessly, completely, and it’s so stupid because she’s known him less than a year. Her only dreams that aren’t of death are the ones with him in them.
Unknocking the arrow, she releases the tension on the bowstring and wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand. She tries to laugh, or gasp, or sob - she’s not quite sure which - and what emerges is a sharp, hysterical sound.
Stiles takes a hesitant step towards her, because he’s never met a monster whose distress he could resist. Allison starts sobbing in earnest, and has to look away from them, into the woods. She doesn’t deserve this, she doesn’t deserve any of the people who care about her. She’s a killer and a death sentence, and her teeth are longer and sharper than any of the werewolves in these woods. She let her grandfather use her as a weapon; she comes from a family where a man would use his granddaughter as a weapon. Her father is the only one who doesn’t kill innocents, and Allison can’t even claim to be like him, not with how hard she’d tried to kill Boyd and Isaac.
Stiles reaches for her bow, slow but sure, exactly like a cop’s kid, and she lets him take it from her. He drops it to the ground, and she should object because it’s bad for it, but she can’t form words through the sobs. She throws herself against his chest and, miracle of miracles, he doesn’t turn her away or throw her from him like he should. He wraps his arms around her, comforting and solid, and says, “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
She believes him, and it’s the worst thing in the world.
*
Allison doesn’t talk to Lydia about any of the stuff going on. They go shopping, or to the movies, or hang out at Lydia’s house, and their refusal to speak of it is a delicate bubble of normalcy.
Allison doesn’t invite Lydia over anymore, because her house is a fortress. Lydia, in turn, doesn’t comment on how hot Allison’s dad is when he drops her off. Allison doesn’t ask if that’s because Lydia is pining for Jackson or because Lydia found out that her dad had hunted her when she’d gone missing and not intended to bring her back in one piece.
They do a lot of not-talking.
When Lydia shows up to where they’ve cornered the Alpha pack and she’s carrying a flame-thrower, Allison doesn’t say anything about it. Lydia had shown up in Stiles’ Jeep, and leaves in Derek’s Camaro, and doesn’t so much as look at any of the black SUVs.
Two days later, they’re hanging out in Lydia’s room before going out for the evening, and Lydia wrinkles her nose at her closet and says, “Ugh, the smell of fire gets in everything.”
Allison fidgets with her sleeve where it comes down over her wrist. “I’ve heard baking soda helps with smells.”
That’s as close as they come to talking about it for the summer, because Allison doesn’t know how to start.
My whole family are killers and I don’t know how to not be one of them.
I still want to kill all of the werewolves, because they’re responsible for everything in my life that sucks.
I’m scared of what I’m capable of.
I don’t think I deserve to be human anymore.
They go shopping more, just to have something to do. Boots and coats start rolling out for winter, and some of the boots are snakeskin, blue and shiny, with spike heels. Lydia sees them and her lips thin and she turns abruptly and grabs Allison’s arm. “Everything here is so last year. Let’s go.”
Back in Allison’s car, Lydia takes out her compact and adds to the lip gloss she’s already wearing. Allison keeps both hands on the steering wheel and stares ahead, because she doesn’t know what to do when no one’s telling her. What if the things she ends up wanting are evil?
Lydia makes a frustrated noise and puts her lip gloss away with unnecessary force. “This isn’t working.”
“What?”
“Everything has gone to shit, and we just don’t talk about it. There’s no point pretending everything is normal, because I had to watch Jackson die twice, and then he ran away, like I meant nothing. And yeah, your aunt died and your mom died and grandpa was a surprise sociopath, but you went this dark place all alone and didn’t tell me shit. I had to find everything out from Stiles, of all people. I had to find things out from Stiles, because my best friend didn’t give enough of a fuck to tell me what attacked me, to tell me that my boyfriend had been murdering people. I was brainwashed and he was brainwashed and somehow you thought the appropriate response was to try to leave me in the dark and continue not explaining things?”
Allison leans her forehead on her steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”
It was true. It was all true. After Jackson had resurrected, she’d let her father take her home so he could organize the hunt for Gerard. She hadn’t wanted to deal with anything, had just run away like a weak little girl. She’d even run away from Scott, Scott who she’d have shot if he hadn’t ducked.
Allison takes a deep breath. “We’re hunting my grandfather. He got away, last time, and he’s got other people helping him. People who don’t know that he tried to get the bite, who just know that Kate broke the Code and that we teamed up with Derek Hale against the alpha pack and that we let some of them live. They’re hiding him and helping him and he’s probably going to try to kill us all.”
Lydia is silent in response. They both watch the parking lot, shoppers getting ready to go back to school. Eventually she says, “Jackson said he doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back. He said that they’re okay with keeping a beta around, and that he might become an alpha anyway.”
There’s nothing to say to that, to Lydia being abandoned and Jackson premeditating murder.
“Do you want to come to my house? We can raid the liquor cabinet and eat ice cream.”
Lydia cocks her head to the side, then nods.
They keep not-talking, but it’s a better not-talking, and sometimes Lydia tags along to Allison’s archery practice and absently hits on some of the younger hunters.
*
After Gerard is taken care of, Allison doesn’t leave her room for three days. She only leaves on the fourth because it’s the first day of school. She sees Scott talking to Boyd by the front door, low and intent, and hurries past him into the school.
He falls silent as she goes past. She can feel him looking at her. She can feel the way he’d looked at her when she’d wreaked violence on his pack. There’s hope and longing and pain in the way he looks at her, and the pain is a singing condemnation of everything she’s done.
Lydia is waiting for her outside homeroom, and makes an annoyed noise as soon as she spots her. “Okay, really, the constantly heartbroken look doesn’t suit you. We’re getting you a boyfriend.”
“Lydia . . .”
Lydia snags her arm. “No arguing. We’re just going to find some nice, stupid boy who’ll treat you nice and remind you that you’re human.”
Allison doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t have anything to say. She’s not human anymore, not really. She’s a hunter and a hollow shell. But she can still smile at the boy Lydia makes her sit next to, and maybe if she does this she’ll feel normal, even for a little while.