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The sun was eagerly beaming it’s last evening rays through the sole window of the musky smelling hospital hall. It highlighted the pale and tremoring hands digging into Stiles’s face, desperately keeping the incessant burning behind his eyes at bay for the moment. The blood still stained the skin underneath his nails, where it would just not wash off. He didn’t believe it ever would. Next to him, it brightened deep auburn locks but failed to do so for a gaze that was lost in the nothingness. Searching for someone who did not want to be found. Melissa was aimlessly pacing in front of both, casting somber shadows in her wake. Malia stood in the corner, out of reach of the sunlight, hiding behind it, her jaw clenched whilst she carefully listened as the doctors did their best a few doors ahead. Each of them was falling apart in their own separate ways.
They should have known, Stiles thought.
There were so many signs, and it all seemed terribly obvious now. The red dots had formed a straight line, still he hadn’t been able to connect them. From unhealed papercuts to uncontrolable red glances. The raging fury flared up so hard, he felt like screaming. And he could see the skin on his hands and the typical blue and white markings on the hospital floor, but the image in his mind overtook everything.
The blood seeping onto the floor, the high-pitched barely there whistling breath about to stop any second. And he couldn’t move, still gut-wrenching screams were stuck in his throat, lacerating everything in it’s wake, constricting his very being.
Lydia muttering “no, no, please, no, not you too”, over and over again.
And then it stopped. Lydia had too.
Worst of all, everything else just went on.
The sun kept shining, cars kept moving, people walked around like nothing had happened. He just wished it’d stop. All of it.
He wanted them to realize what they had so nearly lost.
What was hanging by a thread a few doors away from him.
He wished he had said something when he still had been able to. He wished he hadn’t ignored the scent of stale and cheap coffee usually associated with old people who were living their last moments. That he had stopped that old clock that had started ticking, conveying the countdown a little earlier. Now he was preparing himself for the worst, hours and hours on end. He’d see the doctor approaching Melissa with a sad look on his face.
But he’d hear his own silent scream out loud first, stemming from the banshee right beside him. Or perhaps he’d see Malia’s eyes glow red. What he hadn’t expected was for Derek to arrive, scowl and all.
He nodded at Malia, but Stiles didn’t care. He just listened for Lydia’s voice to cut through the air, glancing at Malia from time to time and peering at that door in between, not sure if he could deal with it opening, ever.
“What happened?” Derek questionend, sounding a lot more frail then what they were used to.
When Stiles felt his eyes burning on him, as if he knew already how guilty he was, could probably smell it, but he just shook his head. Unable to say anything. Not counting fingers, because this time he needed it to just be a nightmare, because the truth was unbearable.
“He’s not healing”, Malia said for him. “I’m not sure he wants to.” She spoke with emotional intelligence that she did not often allowed others to hear.
“How did you know?”, Melissa asked as a way to get her mind off the procedures Scott would be undergoing.
“I felt it. Isaac too.” He sighed, not quite looking up at her.
“Is he coming as well?” She asked, but Stiles could tell she didn’t really want the answer to that. Because if Isaac felt the need to come all the way from France to Beacon Hills to see Scott, it was probably to attend his funeral.
“He’s on the plane as we speak.” And Stiles lungs constricted even more.
Derek sat down next to him and stared at the wall, as if listening to what’s behind it.
Moment of agonizing silence but screaming thoughts later, Derek said: ”He’ll pull through.”
This time it was his own foreign sounding voice breaking the reassurance with a croaking whisper.
“You didn’t see him. I don’t-“, he roughly rubbed his face annoyed for the tears he let slip and regained his train of thought. “They had to bring him back a few times, he’s hanging on by a thread.”
“But he is still hanging on.” He replied with a final simplicity Stiles could only assume was actually naivety.
Stiles knew he was speaking from his own experience. More than once they had though Derek had died, only for him to come back roaring a few moments later. Peter had too, it had taken him years and he had become a murderous lunatic in the process, but he was still alive and bitching to this day. But both of them had reasons to come back for. Ranging from silent all-encompassing anger to a need for vengeance.
But Scott had neither of those. He had been tired to the bone, worn down by his own internal conflicts, let down by people who were supposed to have his back like he had theirs. Bitter from the continuous defeat. He had been walking around doused in gasoline holding that flare for weeks now and none of them had known.
Derek turned to Lydia, uncertainty trickling through.
“Do you feel anything?”
Truth be told, Stiles had had that sentence on the tip of his tongue for over four hours. But it had vanished every time he saw her empty eyes.
She shook her head, pursing her lips, eyes flickering for a second.
“We’ve pulled him back for now, but he seemed so ready to go, he wanted to.” A few tears cascaded down her pale skin.
And with that, the image of Scott lying there overtook everything.
His usually warm skin had lost it’s color, the bags under his eyes stark, blood pooling underneath him, but still for the first time in years, Scott had looked peaceful.
“Then we’re going to have to remind him of all the reasons to stay”, Melissa said fiercely.
But Stiles, no longer bothering to wipe his face or trying to control his shakes, silently wondered if those reasons would be good enough.
If only he had stood in the gasoline with him.