Realizing what I was about to do, I immediately slid off of Liam. I drop from the couch as a result, landing roughly on the hardwood floor. I clench my jaw to swallow a groan as pain shoots through my body, not wanting to embarrass myself further in front of the wolf who had been under me. 

Liam curses and swiftly rises from the sofa. He holds his hands out as an invitation to help me up, one that I promptly ignore. I stand on my own, settling for glaring at him 

"The hell were you doing?" I all but growl at him. My instincts told me to default to anger. It would be easier than facing the fact that he saw me in a vulnerable state. 

"You were the one about to punch me, shouldn't I be asking that?" Liam retorts incredulously. His own annoyance falters when my glare intensifies. He sighs, reluctantly giving in. 

"I came down to check on you because I couldn't sleep. I saw you were crying and figured it was a nightmare so I tried to wake you up, but when I touched you, you grabbed me," he explains. 

Liam touching my body made it response with reactive hostility as my mind was under attack. Kate had actually done me a favor tonight by tearing into my side. The pain that shot through me from pinning Liam down forced me out of my slumber, and saved me from delivering any blows I wouldn't have been able to take back. 

My frustration quickly shifts to shame at the thought of hurting Liam. 

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" I ask him. He shakes his head, letting out a slight chuckle. 

"Only my pride. I didn't know you were that strong," he jokes. 

I force myself to laugh along with him, not wanting to let things get more awkward than they already were. I clear my throat afterward, wishing this moment would end and I could salvage whatever shred of dignity I had left. 

One of the perks of living alone was that no one had to see me at my worst. When I woke from a nightmare, whether it was a past memory or an entirely new hellscape, I didn't have anyone question why I came out of it screaming or on the verge of sobbing. I could simply let the images fade and lay in my bed until I eventually felt like I could function again. 

"You should go back to bed," I suggest to Liam dismissively. 

He doesn't move, though, only watches me with obvious concern. 

"Do you wanna talk about what you saw?" he asks softly. 

"No thanks," I scoff wryly. 

Liam remains still and crosses his arms with a determined expression. He wasn't going to let this go, that much I could tell. 

"How about we finish our conversation from before?" he presses. 

My eyes drift past him to the staircase. I was worried that perhaps Scott might be eavesdropping from only a floor away. I had also fallen asleep before I could see if Stiles came back, so there was a chance both boys were upstairs listening to me embarrass myself.

I could already picture Stiles army crawling down the hall to the top of the stairs to listen, his human hearing compelling him to make a fool of himself. Scott would then try to follow him to make him go back to the room, and it would end with the two idiots tumbling down the stairs together right into the middle of my pity party. The thought made me visibly recoil because even though it didn't happen, it was a heavily plausible possibility.

Liam notices my tension and gaze, and puts it together. 

"They're asleep," he assures me. 

Admittedly, that did ease my mind, but that didn't make the idea of all of this any easier. 

Coward, I berate myself.

"Go to bed, Liam," I echo the suggestion with a harsher tone. Liam's not affected by it in the slightest. 

"I don't care what you did, Jac. You don't have to hide things from me," he insists. He probably assumed his words would bring me comfort but they only inspired the opposite. 

"Don't say you don't care. You have no idea what happened," I snap at him. I quickly regretted my tone, sounding far too irritated as I got defensive, but my exhaustion was weighing on me as well as the nightmare I had just had the privilege of enduring. 

"Exactly," Liam shoots back heatedly. 

"Liam, the things that I've done-"

"Are the things that you've done, not what you're doing now," he interrupts me instantly. 

Unable to find the proper way to respond, I don't say anything at all. Liam shakes his head at my silence and looks away from me briefly, working to calm himself down as his breathing grows short. I realize that this situation must've been difficult for him too because of his temper. He had to control himself, but my lack of willingness to open up made things harder than they should have for the both of us. I hated making him feel like that because none of this was his fault, it was mine, and I couldn't fix myself fast enough for him not to see how broken I am. 

"You don't get to decide how I feel," Liam says, his tone remaining level. "Tell me, and let me decide for myself." 

I study him closely, contemplating what to do. I didn't know if he would be able to look past all I'd done when I told him the truth, but events from earlier tried to instill an unfamiliar presence of hope within me. Despite all the things Violet and Garrett did, I still saw a sliver of humanity in them. Maybe it was possible for Liam to do the same for me. 

Liam sees the shift in my resolve; the falter of a hardened exterior. He doesn't take that for granted and sits back down on the couch, watching me expectantly. 

"Trust me," he whispers gently, coaxing me out further from the walls I built to hide inside. 

I move without thinking, daring myself not to back down by becoming overly aware. I sit on the other end of the sofa, wanting as much distance from Liam as I could get. He doesn't press and settles for twisting himself in place to face me. His eyes follow my every breath and I can almost feel the physical embrace of his gaze. I can't find it within myself at look at him, though. I settle for staring down at my hands as they rest in my lap. Liam may have deserved to know that truth, but that didn't make it any easier for me to speak it. 

"When I was a kid, the Alpha Pack murdered my entire family," I begin, my words similar to that from before. They sound foreign to my ears but I press on, all for Liam. 

"Deucalion tried to recruit an Alpha from a pack that lived in a town near us, but she had always been an ally to hunters, so she declined. Because of that, Deucalion killed her and her Betas." 

"But one of them got away. They ran to our compound to warn us that he would be coming. He hated when our kind worked with yours, and he also knew we'd kill him for killing them, so he wanted to get ahead of that," I add bitterly. 

"The warning didn't give us enough time, though, and it only took a few minutes for Deucalion and his pack to kill everyone I ever loved," I whisper to Liam. 

My parents, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins, all of them gone in an instant. 

No one in my family ever moved away from our land, and it was a tradition that those who married into our line move to our compound. They had to leave behind their past lives to respect our lifestyle, especially if they wouldn't become hunters themselves. Everyone on this earth who meant something to me had been on those cursed grounds, and remained there now, buried. I couldn't even remember the last conversations I had with half of them, unaware that those moments would be our final ones. 

I was young then. The world had yet to show me its true and vile face, but I knew it well now, and the sight was all too familiar. 

I continue to tell Liam the story of the nightmare I endured that had been a part of my history: how my father urged my mother and I to hide, how it didn't mean anything in the end as she was clawed and killed, but how she also sacrificed everything she had to save me. I still couldn't bring myself to look at him but I studied his every breath. It remained unchanging, and that was almost infuriating because it gave me no clue as to what he was thinking as I told him the reality of my decimated lineage. 

"I was stuck in the bunker for three days," I say grimly. "Until the Argents found me. Until Kate found me." 

Liam takes a deep inhale at the mention of her, an attempt to keep his composure. He's not only doing that because of his clear disdain for the woman, but because her presence means the inevitable mention of the lives I had taken. His sympathy would surely fade when he understood my life hadn't been a tragedy, it had only been a series of untimely events that turned me into a cold-blooded killer under her tutelage. 

I remember the fear I felt when I heard the hatch to the bunker being pried open. I had assumed at the time that the Alpha Pack came to finish me off and changed their minds about leaving me to waste away with my mother, but I had been mistaken. The reality was far worse. 

Kate emerged from the broken doorway, presenting herself as my savior. She let me out of the cell and her actions came with the promise of revenge for all the Alpha Pack had done. I was too young to see the beginning of her manipulation and agreed without caution. I clung to her as she carried me from that bunker, my body too weak to hold itself on the ladder, and I continued to cling to her with every day that followed. 

When we emerged from the ground, I discovered the compound burned to ash. The surrounding woods were charred and our cabins were rubble. It had been done to destroy evidence left behind by those who killed my family, as well as any sign of life that had once graced those lands. Nothing and no one survived. 

Through the haze of my weakened state, I had searched the ruins for my father. It took some time, but I discovered his body eventually. His face was almost unrecognizable under the lashes and burns that tainted him, but I cradled his corpse as Kate instructed her men to dig a mass grave, and then helped me to bury everyone the fire hadn't already consumed. They even brought out my mother from the bunker so she could rest with the others. 

It was Kate's first official act of trickery against me, as she had always had an affinity for burning bodies. Her actions that day had only been to have me instill trust in her, and cement my desire to stay at her side.

"Kate took me in after that," I tell Liam. 

"She continued my training, but a lot of the other Argents didn't trust me because I wasn't raised like them. Kate told me if I really wanted to be accepted, I'd have to make my first kill to pledge loyalty." 

The air in the room shifts as this is what Liam had truly been waiting for. He wanted to know what happened to my family, but he also wanted to know how those events led to me becoming a murderer, and why I had allowed myself to commit such heinous crimes. 

"Tell me," he urges gently, his voice patient. 

"He was an Omega," I force myself to say, thinking back to my first kill. 

"He lived in the middle of the woods and was killing hikers for supplies. I don't know what his name was, but I remember his face. His voice," I breathe out, my eyes closing themselves tightly as I picture the man again. 

I can see him so clearly on his back, staring up at me as I aimed a gun at his head with Kate in my ear, whispering false assurances. His eyes had been filled with horror and his voice shook with dread, but it all ended with my bullet. 

"Kate was there, too. She kept telling me to do it, telling me that I'd be a part of her family... that she'd love me," I whisper shamefully. 

Although I wasn't in pain, my expression contorted to appear like I was. It was the only thing I could do to stave off sobbing. I might have mentioned my first kill to Violet earlier, but I didn't care for her acceptance as I did with Liam. I kept my eyes closed because of it, as my urges begged me to peer over at him. I couldn't risk doing that. I couldn't risk seeing the disgust that waited for me, because I couldn't continue with that burned into my mind. 

"I spent years following her and her father after that, doing whatever they told me to. I've played my part in dozens of murders, and covered each of them up," I admit, regret thick in my confession. 

I wanted to take back all I had done, but I couldn't. There was no magic solution to fix all the damage. This was the bed I made, and now I had to lay in it.

"When was the last time you killed someone?" Liam asks, his tone unreadable. 

"Over a year ago," I reply honestly. "Everything changed when I came to Beacon Hills." 

Gerard had brought a few other hunters with him when he came to take revenge for Kate, and I was one of them. He told us we would be decimating Derek and whatever pack he was trying to build since he was the only Hale alive, as far as we knew at the time, and we couldn't punish Peter, because he had yet to be resurrected. 

Gerard completely left out the fact that he and Kate had been the ones to actually make the first move all those years ago against the Hales. Kate burning Derek's family and home hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision or act of safety against murderous wolves. It was a strategic move on her part and that of her father, all to gain power over the supernatural. 

"Tell me about that, too," Liam requests lowly. 

I open my eyes again but refuse to look at him. I refocus on my hands, picking at the calluses that marked my skin from years of training. Liam's plea for that story meant bringing up Allison, and I didn't know if I could do that, not completely. 

"Some other hunters and I came to town to avenge Kate. That was before I knew about what she did to the Hales..." I trail off, Liam already aware of the Hale fire. 

"I also wanted to come here because I had an old friend that lived in town," I continue cryptically. 

"She already knew Scott, and even introduced us when I showed up. I didn't know what he was then or anything about him, but I could tell that she and him liked each other." 

Despite the darkness that existed at this moment, I find a subtle smile working its way onto my lips at the memory of Scott and Allison. I was against them at first, but slowly grew to admire the way they both cared for one another, especially when their relationship is what brought Scott and I closer together. That smile soon fades as I remember when Scott and I's allegiance first began, though. 

"The night I did find out about Scott, was the same night a hunting party and I were in the woods," I say tensely, thinking back to the night of Kate's funeral. 

"We were tracking an Omega, but what we didn't know was that we weren't the only ones. Scott was, too. He was chasing the Omega, and when I saw them, I left the others to chase them both." 

"You saw Scott shift," Liam says knowingly.

I nod in confirmation, my mind replaying the events of that night.

Scott believed that Omega had been Lydia after she disappeared from the hospital, no one aware of what she was just yet. It was the only reason he was chasing the unfamiliar man. He didn't realize until it was too late that the stranger wasn't our banshee, and he had only gotten himself stuck in the middle of the worst event possible. 

The Omega had got caught in a tripwire snare. It yanked him into a tree, keeping him hanging there by his bound wrists. I had used his bound form to my advantage, sneaking up on Scoott while he was distracted by the trap. I was going to pull my gun's trigger, incapacitate him and wait for the others to arrive, but I didn't. I couldn't. Not when he turned to face me, and his dull yellow eyes faded to pleading brown. 

Scott was terrified when he saw me. It wasn't just fear over me discovering his secret, it was fear for his life. The fact that there was ever a part of me that made him feel that way filled me with humiliation.

"I was supposed to pin him. I was supposed to wait for Gerard to show up and give me orders, but all I could think about was my friend. Hurting Scott meant hurting her, and I couldn't do that, so I told him to hide," I say to Liam. 

"I was going to let the Omega go, too. I didn't want to risk him saying what he saw and his eyes were yellow, he'd never taken an innocent life, but then Gerard showed up."

"He killed the Omega?" Liam asks. 

A short and bitter laugh escapes me at his question, with no actual humor within it. 

"He did a lot more than that."

Rage courses through me as more memories from that night surface. 

Gerard's tyrannical speech about how we were ushering in a new era of hunting was absolutely insane. The worst part of it all was that he didn't even mean any of it. He had convinced those men that were with us, men that were willing to die for him, to abandon their code for some act of vengeance he didn't actually believe in. He didn't care about Kate and her death, he only wanted to assure he'd have the opportunity to get the bite from Derek. 

He was willing to do whatever it took to maintain his power, even betray everything his ancestors died building. In the process, his actions ruined the hunting world. People often looked to Gerard for guidance because of what his family created, but when he tossed aside the code his people made, a lot of other hunters lost hope in it, too, and that world I was born into hadn't been the same since. 

It all began that night with the Omega being served in two. 

Loss, grief, and betrayal rush into me like a flood at the memory, and I can only feel as though Gerard killed me that night, too. 

"Gerard wanted to make a statement by killing the Omega. He made a whole speech about how we were abandoning the hunting code, and it wasn't only about killing the supernatural who tried to kill us. We were going to kill them all," I quote a fraction of Gerard's words from that night. 

"He was staring a war," Liam acknowledges. 

"And he used my family sword to do it," I say with an intense level of spite. 

"What?" Liam mutters with disblief. 

"Kate gave it to him. That's why she came to my family's compound in the first place," I grit out. 

I always assumed Deucalion or perhaps Kali and Ennis had taken the sword as some morbid prize, but it was her. Gerard always favored hunting history, and the blade was a piece of that, so she went out of her way to find it so he could add it to his collection of relics. 

I had no idea Gerard had it until I watched him desecrate it. 

The worst part of it all wasn't that gut-wrenching feeling of being completely alone as I faced the reality that the life I had with the Argents had been a lie, it was the fact that I continued to follow Gerard after that. I didn't think I had anyone or anywhere else I could call home, so I stayed with him and the men who had known the truth all along. 

It was only when I saw what Gerard was doing to Allison did I decide to abandon him. Scott showed me that even if I felt like I had no one, I had her. The two of us joined forces to bring her back from the edge because even though we didn't trust each other, we'd do anything for her. 

"Wait, so you know where the sword is then?" Liam sat up urgently, as if we were about to go on a rescue mission to grab the sword right here and now.

I shook my head somberly, making him sink back into the cushions. 

"I worked with Scott to stop Gerard, but by the time it was all over, the sword was lost. I don't know what happened to it, whether he tossed it or hid it from me, but it's gone." 

The last lead I had was that Gerard left it in his office from his time as principal. I went to search for it there, but my family's sword was nowhere to be found. I had been too late, and part of me always assumed he smelted it down just to get the last laugh. No matter how much I looked, I never found it. 

"I'm sorry, Jac," Liam apologizes, as if he'd been the one to throw the blade out. 

"Don't be, I deserved it," I reply wryly. 

Carrying my family sword and upholding its legacy would have been an honor. That was an honor I didn't deserve. Losing that sword was like losing my family all over again, and in truth, was well-earned penance for what I did over the years. How was it fair that I got a second chance, but those people I killed, those lives I selfishly took, they got nothing? 

"No, you didn't. You didn't deserve any of that," Liam counters defiantly, sounding almost appalled that I would even say such a thing.

I shake my head, refusing to give in to Liam's words or even glance at him. His body heat was spreading to me, a sign that he had moved closer. I hadn't even realized until now, my thoughts too distracted to pick up on his advancing. He was barely a foot from me now, and I started to wonder if he would close that gap, too. 

"I've hunted and killed your kind, you don't have to pretend like things haven't changed." 

"They haven't," he murmurs, his voice low and only a breath away. The deeper timbre of his tone sends a chill down my spine. 

I flinch at my body's reaction, begging for it not to be pleased by Liam's proximity. His words were exactly what I had wanted to hear, whether I could admit that out loud or not, but it couldn't be real. This had to be a dream because it was too good to be true. I wanted Liam to be resentful of what I had done because that was the best way to keep him safe. 

Liam picks up on my desire to avoid him and doesn't give me the kindness of pretending he doesn't. 

"Why are you so ready for me to hate you?" he asks, moving closer. His warmth continues to stretch toward me. 

"Because it's just easier," I admit. 

"Well, I don't care what's easy," Liam replies without any doubt. 

Unable to resist any longer, I turn to him. We're only inches apart now because of his new proximity. He works to close even that sliver of space and leans closer. His breath tickles my skin, and I can feel the ghost of his body at my side. 

"Liam," I mutter his name, almost pleading; pleading for him to consider me a monster and want nothing to do with me. 

"I told you to let me decide for myself how I feel," he says.

"They took advantage of you. It wasn't your fault and you need to admit that. It doesn't mean you're trying to excuse what you did, it means you're trying to do better. You promised me that I wasn't alone, and I'm gonna promise you the same thing. You are not alone, Jac. And I'm so sorry that they ever made you think you were."

I feel numb for a second, but then I feel everything. All the pain of every person who told me they loved me but didn't, the death and carnage that followed me, the deep sense of guilt I carried since I lost my family. 

It had held on to me for so long, and I let it. I never tried to push back and release myself from the torment. I allowed all that despair to fester and build up inside of me. I allowed it to consume me, and for what?

All of that suffering, I didn't want it to control me any longer. 

Tears leave me without caution as I'm unable to hold them back any longer. Liam's eyes track every single drop as it glides down my cheeks. He reaches for me, his hand hovering at the side of my face. It remains there, not making contact.

"Can I touch you?"

"Why are you asking me?" I wonder, confused. No one ever asked me that. 

"Because I'll never touch you unless you want me to," he whispers gently. 

I can't even try to hide my shock at his response. Liam had seen the way I reacted to his unannounced touches before, how I pulled away, and adapted without grief. His words and actions were simple, yet significant. No one had asked me for my choice, and it meant everything to finally hear it. 

Slowly, I nod in approval. 

He brought his hand up towards the side of my face and first he used the tips of his fingers to brush back my hair, pushing it behind my ear. His eyes never left mine as he then used the pad of his thumb to dry my cheeks, wiping away the dampness that had fallen there.

Liam touches me as if I'm fragile and would break if he pressed into my skin too roughly. I thought I would have hated that, to be seen as something delicate, but I don't. Instead, I find myself leaning into his grasp. My head dips as I do so, making Liam tug at my face so I would look back at him. I lift my gaze to oblige, meeting his intense stare.

"Is this okay?" he asks to be sure, and I nod again. 

My movements only stall when I catch sight of the silver chain peeking out from his collar. He's confused when I grab at his shirt, but an embarrassing realization tints his face pink when I pull out my bullet that currently hung from his neck. It dawns on me that I never asked for it back earlier, as Malia barging in distracted me from doing so.

"You know what that symbolizes, don't you?" I ask shamefully. The bullet he wore wasn't a random accessory. It was a statement against creatures like him.

Liam's embarrassment abruptly fades and he shrugs in return. A calculating frown takes over his face as he studies me, and I feel the need to dodge his eyes from how intimately he observes my features. 

"What it symbolizes to the rest of the world and what it symbolizes to us are two different things," he says. 

"What does it symbolize to us?" I ask, puzzled. 

His finger traced the line of my jaw, tilting my head back so our eyes had a direct connection. "That no matter what, I'll always be there to share the burden with you."

Liam's answer leaves me at a loss for words. He chuckles at that, probably enjoying getting the upper hand with his naturally competitive nature. It reminds me of how annoying I had thought he had been when we first met. I never would have imagined that the condescending boy from my Geology class would someday become my closest confidant. 

He pulls away from me after glancing at the clock on the wall across from us. Its various hands revealed it was too early for either of us to be up at this hour. 

"You should get some sleep," Liam suggests. 

"I... I don't really want to," I confess slowly, an edge of fear in my voice. Liam senses it instantly, aware that my nightmares had more control over me than I would prefer. 

He slides further down the couch, leaving me with the slightest emptiness as he's no longer attached to me. That feeling is swept away when he places the pillow I had been sleeping on into his lap, gesturing for me to join him. 

"I'll stay down here with you, and wake you up if something happens." 

My immediate reaction is to refuse and tell him to go upstairs, but I resist that. 

"Won't you be uncomfortable?" I ask instead, not at all shutting him away. 

Liam smiles and pats the surface of the pillow jokingly. "I'll be fine."

I mirror his tender expression shyly and shift on the sofa, laying across it to place my head in his lap. I bring my feet up and curl my body so my stitches don't stretch my skin awkwardly in my new position. I hesitate before meeting Liam's eyes, first analyzing the chain he wears now that suits him well. It draws attention to his strong collarbones, but doesn't appear flashy. I also can't resist a deeper part of my being that enjoys him wearing a piece of me. 

When I do meet his eyes, Liam's grin only grows. His hand comes up to push the length of my dark hair off to the side, revealing my face to him fully. His motions stall halfway through until he's simply cradling my head with a protective hold. 

"Sleep," he orders softly. 

The sound of his voice is enough to allow me to drift off. It didn't scare me to wonder if I would be greeted by another horror within my slumber, not with Liam at my side. I felt safe here; with him. I didn't know how long that could last, but I did know it was worth savoring. 

Kate had trained me to be nothing more than a weapon, but that didn't mean that was all I could be. The chunk of silver that currently hung from Liam's neck had once been nothing more than a testament to a broken code, but was now a sign of something more. 

I could evolve as that bullet had, for me, and maybe even for Liam. 

~

||| A/N |||

vote and/or comment, if you'd like!

So what did yall think about this part and Jacs character?? I want to give her a proper arc bc I see fanfiction as real stories, that deserve real plots!

FYI the scene I'm referring to with the sword is the last scene of Season 2 Episode 1 (Omega) if you were wondering. I always wanted them to do some backstory with the sword bc it kinda came out nowhere lol, and I'm a sucker for medieval weaponry (who isn't though).

<3