The girl's locker room was empty now, only Hayden and I inside. She was adamant about cleaning my hand to prevent infection and dragged me in here after my slightly deranged moment out in the hallway. I told her it wasn't necessary and I just needed to walk it off, which only ended up with her giving me a scolding glare that almost rivaled Melissa's.

She had ordered Brett to go to the nurse's office to get wrappings for my hand, that way I could avoid as many people as possible. He agreed without hesitation and claimed he'd be back soon enough.

The first-aid kit in Coach's office was lacking, most of it was cleaned out a long time ago and had never been replaced since then. All that was left were a few mini sticky bandages that wouldn't even cover my thumb and loose squares of gauze, as well as a half-filled bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"This is gonna sting," Hayden warns me.

She pours out the clear liquid across my knuckles, a white foam rising in the areas where my hand was split open. I could feel the distant stinging sensation start to creep under my skin but it didn't even make me twitch. Hayden gives me a concerned look at my lack of reaction but doesn't comment, resuming her ministrations on my injury.

With my free hand, I start to press random areas across my head, searching for a cavity that the Dread Doctors may have created in my skull. I come up empty. In fact, there isn't any proof or sign that I had been experimented on whatsoever. No bruising, no needle marks. Nothing.

It made everything all the more sinister.

They used their scientific and supernatural advancements to conceal aspects of my own body from me, taking what they wanted, when they wanted. I had no idea when it began or what exactly they used me for, all I did know was that, yet again, someone had stolen a part of myself I would never be able to get back.

"Are you feeling okay?" Hayden asks, her dark brown eyes watching me carefully.

"Yeah, I'm good."

She isn't convinced.

"Seriously, I'm fine. Just relax, Hayden." My voice has an edge of desperation, as if I'm begging for her to let this go.

Hayden's lips thin out into a straight line and her once kind eyes burn with contained annoyance.

"Relax?" she echoes me, quietly fuming. "I had to pull you back from the verge of a panic attack, you almost broke your own hand, and that's all you have to say? Relax?" She stares at me, waiting for an answer.

I could tell she was worried, anyone in their right mind would be, but her concern would only lead to questions, which she would beg for answers to, which would put her in danger.

"It's not as serious as you think," I say, almost a whisper.

Hayden contains her reaction and returns to tending to my hand. I don't allow my guard to drop though, as I can practically hear the gears turning in her head. Hayden wasn't the type to beat around the bush, but yelling at a friend who clearly just had a mental breakdown didn't leave the best impression. She was attempting to find the perfect middle ground between her internal frustrations and my avoidance of honesty.

I can tell when she finally does. Her gaze lifts to mine once more, features perfectly calm.

"Do you know why I work at Sinema?" she asks. Her question is ordinary and boring, an obvious trap.

"Mood lighting?" I quip, desperate to change the subject.

"I'm being serious." She scowls.

I let out a defeated sigh, knowing I couldn't avoid this. "No. I don't know."

Hayden refocuses on my hand, dabbing random areas with a paper towel. It's a gesture that keeps her eyes away from mine. I wasn't the only one who had a distaste for having my emotions analyzed.

"One of my kidneys failed a few years ago. My parents weren't exactly the attentive type, so they didn't care about taking me to treatments or figuring out how to literally save my life."

Her voice is bitter as she speaks of her parents. This is the first time she's actually mentioned them to me. That night when we were at the diner, speaking for hours on end, she never brought them up once. She only mentioned Valerie, and now I understand why.

I used to think the worst thing that could happen to a child was losing their parents, but now I understand that the worst thing that can happen to a child is for them to be cursed with parents like that.

"They didn't care. But Val did," Hayden continues, a small smile growing on her face at the mention of her sister. It brightens a story about neglect into something of sisterly love.

"She dropped out of college and worked four jobs at once so we could afford a transplant. That's why I work at the club, so she doesn't have to pay for my medication by herself, or sacrifice anything more just for us to live a semi-crappy life."

Hayden lifts her head, meeting my eyes again. Her stare is as unyielding and strong as she is.

"When you care about someone and they're hurt, you don't relax. You do everything you can to make things better and keep them safe. No matter what."

"I'm sorry," I say shamefully, hanging my head.

My defensive actions had been misconstrued as careless, but maybe, it wasn't that far off to begin with. It was second nature for me to avoid confronting my emotions and everything they brought, and right now, I needed that instinct. It helped me get through what I'd seen. But it wasn't fair to act that way to my friends, or myself.

"You don't have to be," Hayden comforts me. "Friends are supposed to be there for each other, aren't we?"

I nodded without looking up, clearly not an agreement that satisfied her.

"Promise?" Hayden urges.

"I'm not the best at keeping those lately," I scoff under my breath. Hayden understood exactly what I meant but doesn't hold it against me. Instead, she takes a step closer to me to nudge my shoulder with hers.

"You know what's better than a promise?" she asks, lifting her hand away from mine to extend her pinky toward me, brandishing it like a weapon.

I stare at her with a straight face. "A pinky promise? How old are you?"

"It's a binding contract, Jac. Even stronger than blood oaths."

Hayden doesn't relent and wiggles her pinky in my face, waiting patiently for me to accept.

Her actions are that of a child. Innocent and naive. A pinky promise is no better than a spoken one, but for some reason, it feels more precious. More important. I didn't get to have a normal childhood, and I have to face the fact that I wouldn't ever be able to redeem that, but that didn't mean that the freedom of youth had to be something lost to me entirely.

I clasp Hayden's pinky with my own, a solemn promise between us.

"No matter what," I agree quietly.

We exchange silent smiles, our linked fingers saying more than any word ever could.

It's only when the door to the locker room is pushed open do we separate. Brett struts inside, acting as if he owned the place. He tosses a roll of bandages at Hayden who catches it with ease, then puts his attention around us. His eyes trace every detail of the locker room.

"I've always wanted to be in the girl's locker room." He sighs dreamily, standing in the center of the room that was literally an exact replica of the boy's one down the hall.

"Is it everything you dreamed?" I ask. It's not a question I actually wanted an answer to, but Brett takes it upon himself to respond anyway.

"Kinda bummed. Why is it so humid?" he retorts, cringing at the damp walls, condensation dripping off of them from the showers taken not too long ago.

Hayden and I laugh at his words and Brett smiles to himself as he takes a seat on a bench in front of us. He watches as Hayden dries my hand and begins the slow process of binding it, preventing any future harm from being inflicted on my poor knuckles.

"You know, it's not too late to back out on being her friend. She gets worse than this," Brett says to Hayden, gesturing to me as if I'm an object and not a person who can hear him speaking about her.

I glare in his direction while Hayden's only amused.

"Oh, it's definitely too late. I enjoy her positive attitude too much," she plays along, much to Brett's delight.

"Wait," he pauses. "Does this mean we get free drinks of Sinema now?" he asks, rubbing his hands together like a greedy little cricket.

"As if you paid before," Hayden scoffs.

Brett's hardly offended, and the three of us share in a burst of laughter. Our harmonious amusement echoes around the empty locker room, bouncing off the tiled walls to make it sound as though we're an entire crowd.

It comes to an end when Brett stops first, his attention pulled somewhere across the room. I follow his eyes and find Liam watching us in the doorway to the room, simply standing there.

Brett and Hayden exchange a subtle look, an unspoken conversation.

"Uh, Hayden, why don't we go talk in the hallway?" Brett suggests randomly.

"Sounds great," she agrees promptly, piling up the roll of unraveled wraps into my hands before following him. They pass Liam, allowing him to step inside before closing the door behind them.

I move to take Brett's spot on the bench, Liam coming to my side a second later.

"Is Scott okay?" I ask before he has a chance to say anything.

Brett and Hayden hadn't gone to check on him when the crowd from the field ran into the school. They heard what was happening to me and came to my aid, and then refused to have me leave their sight afterward. That kept me in the dark on Scott's current condition and I was still desperate to check on him.

"He's fine, but he had an asthma attack. Miss Finch made him go to the nurse to get checked out, and Mason's with him right now," Liam explains.

Scott having an asthma attack didn't fare well for us. His advanced healing cured his lungs of weakness a long time ago, and I didn't take its return as a good sign. Liam didn't seem to be too concerned with that though, and his attention was solely on my hand.

"I heard a bunch of kids talking about what you did. What happened?" he asks, brows bunched.

High school gossip. A blessing and a curse.

On one hand, it was absolutely infuriating and unsettling to have too many people speak of me and things they didn't understand, but on the other, at least it brought Liam to me.

"It was the book. It showed me a memory from my past and I freaked out. Ruined some poor kids' locker with my hand," I force out some light laughter, playing into my own lie.

Liam watches me, but he doesn't attempt to find fractures in my claim. He's not listening to my heartbeat or keeping track of micro-changes in my expression. He doesn't question me, because there's no reason for me to lie, not in his eyes. We were partners, and partners were always meant to be there for each other, not operate behind each other's back.

I should've felt ashamed for it, but I didn't.

Telling him what I'd seen would change nothing for the Dread Doctors, but everything for us.

Liam would force me to tell Scott and the rest of the pack of my memory. They would all scramble to protect me needlessly, and in the process, forget to protect themselves. It would lead to more death and failure, and I couldn't handle that. I couldn't handle losing anyone else, especially if it would be my fault. I didn't care if my guilt slowly ate me whole as long as my friends and Liam remained whole.

What was one more lie, right?

Liam moves closer to me on the bench until there's only an inch of space that separates us. His hands hover over mine, a silent question. Even after all this time, he still respects the boundaries of my touch, never pushing.

I nod, allowing him to resume the process of binding my battered knuckles. His fingers work gracefully, each line of the bandage straight and perfectly pressed into my skin. Not too loose, not too tight.

When he's done he dips his head, pressing his lips to the surface of my wrappings to seal them.

"There," he says, satisfied.

I smile, the pain that coursed through my mind and body nowhere to be found with him at my side. I wished we could have sat here forever, but we couldn't. Not only because there were forces beyond our control currently growing in the shadows, but there was still the presence of tension that sat between us that I knew had to be dealt with.

"Liam, about Hayden and Brett-"

"It doesn't matter anymore," he interrupts me.

I shake my head, refusing the idea of him settling for something he clearly hated. I didn't want him to give in because he felt sorry for me or because he didn't want to argue. That wasn't fair.

"You don't have to lie. If you don't want them around I understand, I swear I do."

I would have loved the idea of Liam getting along with Hayden and Brett, but I couldn't force him to be friends with them. He would never do that to me. I could handle keeping those parts of my life separate. It would be more work, but they were all worthy of it.

Liam caresses my hand soothingly, still holding it within his grasp.

"Jac, I'd do anything for you," he vows, staring into my eyes deeply. "Even be friends with a couple of idiots."

A sudden laugh escapes through my lips, and Liam laughs too, the sound music to my ears.

"They made sure you were safe, and that's all that matters to me. I want you to have people who care about you like I do," he continues, his frustrations from earlier long gone.

I all but collapse against him as my body floods with relief. My anxiety and worries are given permission to leave, and in their absence, my exhaustion makes itself at home. My mind and body have been through too much in the past twenty-four hours, all of it done without a wink of sleep.

Liam smiles into my hair as he wraps his arms around me, instinctively pulling me closer.

I search for a way to express my gratitude but come up empty. There aren't any words or actions that exceed or even match what he's done for me, so I say nothing at all. I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing I want to do right now, and take his lips with my own. Liam doesn't allow his surprise to hold him back and reciprocates the kiss greedily.

The peace he brings me, it's something I won't ever be able to repay.

I'd met countless people who took pieces of who I was for their own, whether I offered it to them or not. They were all the same. They craved power and used selfish methods to obtain it no matter the cost because it was never a price they had to pay. They kept those pieces of me for their own, and it made me just as cruel as them because of it.

I would never share myself with them again, but with Liam, I'd give him everything I am without question.

What he exposed within me was not a weakness, it was a window to my soul that no one but him could witness. There was no one else in this world I trusted with it more, and no one else I would rather willingly give myself to. There was only him.

My kiss confesses that, as best as it can. There's still so much that can't be said without words, but this was enough for now.

Liam's eyes remain closed for a brief second after I pull back, his face flushed and almost dazed. He clears his throat before refocusing on me, a crooked grin gracing his swollen lips.

"Okay, maybe not exactly like I do," he adds to his previous statement.

The two of us shake with laughter, only stopping when the door to the locker room flies open. Brett and Hayden rush in, the latter covering her eyes with her hands, saving herself from catching us in a potentially precarious position.

"Scott and Stiles are coming," Brett rushes out the warning, waving for us to separate.

We do so immediately, Liam moving to stand next to Brett, thanking him silently. I have to resist the urge that builds up inside of me to pull him back, and place my hands in my lap in order to keep them to myself.

The door to the locker room swings open once again, Scott and Stiles coming in hot, Mason in tow.

"Jac?" Scott panics, his eyes darting around the space until they land on me. He all but sprints across the short distance, coming to kneel beside the bench. Stiles and Mason are right behind him, all of them staring with wide eyes at my wrapped hand.

"You should see the other guy," I joke.

Brett scoffs behind them and I can even see Liam shake his head in disappointment, though he does wear a secretive grin along with it. Hayden's the only one who shows outright support for my horribly timed humor, giving me a proud thumbs up over Scott's shoulder.

"Is it broken?" Stiles asks, ignoring my previous words.

"Only swollen," Hayden answers him.

The boys turn to face her, almost surprised that she's here. It's as if they hadn't seen here when they ran in, zeroing in on me. Hayden shifts uncomfortably under their gaze.

"Hey, Hayden, do you think you could go get Jac some water?" Mason asks her politely. Scott and Stiles give him appreciative looks for his quick thinking.

Hayden seems thrown off by his request and glances over at me, clearly not wanting to leave my side since she'd been with me all this time. I give her an encouraging nod though, pushing for her to agree. She nods too, and steps toward the door.

"I'll be right back," she promises before leaving.

When the door's shut, Scott reaches for me. "Do you need me to take your pain?"

His fingers begin to wrap themselves around my wrist and the feeling of his skin against mine sets off alarm bells in my head. I yanked my hand away from him, remembering that him taking my pain had led to my current problems starting in the first place.

He's taken aback by my actions and the other boys give me concerned looks, my behavior hardly normal.

"I'm sorry, I'm fine. I - I just need space." I recover from my actions swiftly, getting nods of understanding in response. I don't let my guard down though, and make the effort to get the attention off of me.

"And what about you?" I say to Scott. "You had an asthma attack."

"You what?" Stiles asks in disbelief.

I had no idea he was unaware of what happened. I'd assumed he did since he came in with Scott, but it was just as likely that they simply ran into each other on the way here after overhearing what happened like Liam. I didn't feel bad for breaking the news this way though, as it was clearly the perfect diversion.

"I'm okay. Liam got my old inhaler from your locker," Scott assures his best friend.

Stiles tilts his head the to side, thinking to himself.

"Knew it would pay off to never clean that thing out," he murmurs, speaking of his locker that was a glorified garbage can.

There were hundreds of loose notebook papers stuffed inside, junk food wrappers, and who knows what else. If anyone ever wanted to hide something that could never be discovered by any human again, Stiles' abyss of a locker was the perfect place to do it.

Stiles dismisses his own thoughts, his focus on Scott and I.

"What did you guys see? Was it the Dread Doctors?"

Scott shakes his head, his eyes becoming distant as he thinks back.

"No. I only saw a repressed memory from when I was a kid."

They all turn to me next, expecting an answer I can't give.

"Same," I reply simply. None of them press any further.

"At least we know the book works," Stiles sighs, rubbing his hands tiredly across his face. This whole ordeal wasn't showing any signs of having a bright side anytime soon.

"Kira's having trouble finishing it," Mason interjects, getting everyone's attention. His eyes are mainly on Scott as he speaks of his girlfriend. "She can't read it. Her fox isn't letting her."

Scott's posture tenses at the mention of Kira's kitsune spirit. It seemed to be taking more control of her recently, leading Kira to have even more of a lack of control over her powers than usual and resorting to violence. Kira was one of the best fighters I'd ever met, but she would have taken a million punches before choosing to harm another person.

At least, she would have up until a few weeks ago.

"Is that why the lights have been flickering all day?" Liam asks, glancing up at the fluorescent panels above us. They had been going on and off every once and a while, but it was easy to write that off as the school not paying their electric bill, not a supernatural fox.

"She says it's not her," Scott counters, his response automatic. I can only assume he's mimicking Kira's own words of defense.

Brett takes a deep breath, one filled with contemplation. He's debating whether or not to speak, but when he realizes we're all looking at him, he finds he doesn't have much of a choice anyway.

"Do you guys remember when Kira almost split Lucas' head in two?"

Scott, Liam, Mason and I give him tentative nods in response, vividly picturing the moment and the pure rage in Kira's glowing eyes. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before inside of her and it wasn't a moment that I felt needed to be rehashed.

"When she was about to do it, before Scott stopped her, she said, watashi wa shi no shisha da."

Now that I had a chance to actually process the words, no longer distracted by seeing Kira's true kitsune visage, I'm shaken to my core.

"What's that mean?" Stiles questions urgently.

"She called herself a messenger of death," I whisper, the room quiet enough for all of them to hear me. Brett nods grimly, confirming the translation.

Tension builds between us as we now understand that the threats we face weren't only coming from the outside, but also from within. Kira was setting herself up to be a bomb and it was only a matter of time before she blew up in our faces if we couldn't figure out a way to help her regain some semblance of control over her abilities.

"You should go check on her. She needs you more than I do," I urge Scott.

If Kira was freaking out over what was happening to her, he was the only person she'd really listen to in order to calm down. I also didn't want him to feel obligated to stick around me when I wasn't even being completely honest with him. It wasn't right.

He's reluctant to go, but when the door opens and Hayden returns, a bottle of cold water in her hands, it helps him make his decision.

"If anything else happens-"

"You'll be my first call, Scotty," I finish for him, a shared smile growing between us.

He moves away, allowing Hayden to take his place. She begins a conversation with the boys that I drown out. My attention remains on Scott and his retreating form, watching as he walks away and unknowingly carries my lies with him.

~

||| A/N |||

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