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CHAPTER FIFTY;

ASHFUL TASTES

The cool breeze of the November night hit Sage's face, air intoxicating her system as she felt her lungs work heavily the moment that she stumbled out of the hospital. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest, most of it due to the fact that she was still trying to process everything that has happened in the past forty eight hours. Not even in just those hours, but the entire week. The entire month. The entire year, all that she has been doing is trying her best to survive, and in that mass amount of time, there were too many mistakes that she made. There were too many losses that they've had to face, and too much pain that they had to endure for just being teenagers in high school.

        They were just seventeen, and she didn't see how it was fair in the slightest that Scott was going to have to live with being a werewolf all because Peter Hale killed Laura for power, or that Stiles was facing the same lifetime of questions and loss of memory that his mother had gone through before she passed away. She didn't see how it was fair that Lydia was now forced to go everywhere, wondering if something was going to trigger the banshee that lived inside of her, or that Allison had to walk around every single day with the weight on her shoulders of everything she had and lost in a matter of seconds all because her family hunted what she loved. She didn't see how it was fair that Derek was handed the cursed job of being the guardian of a teenage girl who had too many issues that ran deep, or that all of the authority he once had was taken away because he chose to save his sister's life. She didn't see how it was fair that the abilities her mother supplied her with from the moment she was born could only give her pain, and never anything helpful that could save someone she loved. She couldn't heal people like her father, she couldn't even take away their pain like Scott could. She wasn't noble or strong like her brother, or capable of deception like her mother.

        She was just this bitter girl who broke every time something tragic happened, and she was tired of it. So, walking out of the hospital felt like she was evading all of the memories and all of the bad things that happened in the place. The blonde hair that became a definition to who she was blew in her face from the air, sticking from the sweat that was building up from the amount of anguish and fatigue she's gone through in the past hour. The only thing the cold air did was keep her from throwing up everywhere, her unsettled stomach causing her to lean on the exterior of the hospital wall so that she could put her hands on her knees. The last thing she needed was to throw up, that idea only bringing back unwanted memories of just a month ago when blood and mistletoe came up every time a new sacrifice occurred. Bad thoughts should stay far away from her.

        "Sage?"

        The teenage girl let out a rather deep exhale, closing her eyes tightly. It was stupid of her to actually think she could have a moment alone to collect her thoughts after finding out the boy she spent her first year back at Beacon Hills loving was going to be diagnosed with dementia. Lifting her head up, she noticed that it was just the person she wanted to see least in this world, another sigh falling through her mouth before straightening her posture. The previous nausea was still there, but she knew she couldn't just ignore Kira and act like she wasn't there, no matter how much she wished she could.

        Giving the girl a halfhearted nod, she crossed her arms over her chest, taking a fistful of her white shirt in the process to try and ease the bad feeling she had. "Hey. If you're looking for Scott, he's outside of the MRI room with Derek."

        "Uh, actually, I was looking for you," Kira explaining, which only made the blonde's eyebrows raise high. Immediately, the brunette found her stomach dropping as she realized she was going to be telling Sage Connelly that she might have accidentally put a Nogitsune inside of her ex-boyfriend. "There's something that you should know about the night Barrow took me. Um, there's this thing called foxfire, which is when an electrical curren-"

        The girl's explanation had been cut off when Sage's shoulders tensed, both of them picking up on a crackling sound that clearly sounded foreign enough in the area they were at to create the suspicious reaction. Kira sent the blonde in front of her a confused look before the two of them moved from their position in front of the hospital, stepping into the parking lot to try and find what the cause was. Before either of them were expecting it, the crackling was soon being greeted with the sight of florescent sparks coming directly at both of the girls. Neither teenager had enough time to process, Kira only able to let out a single, "Oh, my god," before the severed wire was flying past their heads. An ambulance came in during that time, distracting Sage for a split second, long enough for her to lose her balance and trip on the curb of the sidewalk. The electrical wire that had just barely avoided them didn't seem finished, and the sparks moved back in the direction of the girls, blinding the driver that was inside of the ambulance.

        "Kira, watch out!" Sage shouted, pushing herself up off the ground hastily enough to grab a hold of the teenage girl's arm. The blonde hadn't wasted a second, stumbling back with Kira, forced to watch as the man behind the wheel of the vehicle crashed into the hospital's fire hydrant.

        Immediately, water was everywhere, creating a pool that was now fatally dangerous with the amount of electricity raging through the air. However, the driver hadn't realized this. Still disoriented from the crash, the man moved to get out of the ambulance despite the shout of protest that Sage gave, her eyes widening as she went to run to help only to be stopped by Kira's hands grabbing her to pull her back from the water, roles having changed. The two girls were just forced to watch as the driver's body jolted at the charged current that just circuited through his body, stopping his heart in a matter of seconds.

        That was when Kira realized how many people were getting out of their cars, Allison and Isaac being two of them, along with others who witnessed the initial accident between the ambulance and the wire. "Everybody get back!"

        A choke fell through Sage's lips when she noticed that Allison was barely conscience of the fact that she was nearing the water, moving to make the exact same mistake that the blonde nearly had when, just like Kira, Isaac had stopped the girl before she could fall the second victim to the current. Her name was the only sound that broke the tense air, the werewolf only having enough time to save the brunette next to him without thinking about the consequences of not moving himself.

        Before anyone was even aware of what was happening, two bodies fell to the ground with Allison screaming out the name of the boy who threw her to safety in the grass. It was immediately that Sage felt every single vessel in her body burn like it was bursting with flames, a gasp escaping her mouth as her body hit the concrete, all of the oxygen that was supposed to be entering into her lungs stopping the moment Isaac's shoes hit the water. The agony was enough to fill the contents of her veins, boiling the blood at such a hot level she expected for her entire body to just fall apart right then and there. Then, all of the pain stopped, and the only thing Sage felt was a small stinging in her chest was quickly leaving.

        Her eyes widened through her wet lashes, the previous sensation enough for her peripheral vision to blur in different shades and lines. The only thing her attention was focused on was the teenage boy across the parking lot from her, his entire body still and her entire body cold. That was when a cry escaped from her mouth, the events happening around her just useless props as she prayed the agony would return. There was a ripping sense in her heart, an after affect of what was made a few moments ago, the blonde's body collapsing all together. It was her losing a limb, it was her feeling nothing at all five seconds after Isaac's body fell. It was her knowing that his heart stopped, and the electrified water was the purgatory between life and death.

        In one last pleading attempt, she shouted out, "Isaac!" to which it went unnoticed as her head began to spin, whether it be from the way she hit it on the way down or the fact that she couldn't wrap her mind around the idea of Isaac not breathing anymore when he was perfectly fine a minute ago. Even with her eyesight slowly disintegrating, she could see Kira standing in the center of the water, the electrified wire tight in her hands as she placed her palm over the top of it, closing tightly. Before she could even begin to question how it was possible, her eyelids fell heavy, and the last thing that she heard before she was out cold was Derek's voice.

        "Scott, he's not breathing!"

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"Sage? Sage, can you hear me? Come on, you've got to open your eyes for me."

    Sage kept her eyes on the wall, the vague and horribly fragile memory of her doing the same thing just two days ago remaining in her thoughts. She could still hear Derek's voice inside of her head, the man trying to get her to open her eyes after she passed out in the parking lot. However, no matter how many times those few lines rang through her head, it was nothing in comparison to the conversation she was forced to endure when she was actually responsive and capable to comprehend a conversation. Her best friend began it gently, stating that Isaac was in a stable enough condition with burns scalding the entire right side of body, which only made the teenage girl feel it five seconds after the words fell from his mouth. It was a gruesome reminder to the time during sophomore year when Kate Argent captured Derek and began torturing him with electric shock and a metal gate.

        This pain was much worse than anything she experienced through Derek. She was initially relieved, the doctors having found a way to restart his heart and get him breathing again. It was around this time that Melissa came to tell her that she received a concussion from the gravity of the damage caused when Isaac was electrocuted and she fell to the concrete, her head colliding with the gravel and bleeding in the process. They told her that she should remain at the hospital until morning so that she could be monitored and given intravenous saline as well as caffeine to keep her awake through an IV. They didn't want her sleeping until they were positive she would wake up, having noticed that she spent an hour in the bathroom vomiting up acid due to the lack of food in her stomach. It was not one of her finest moments, but she knew that she was one of the luckier ones walking out of that situation considering two casualties would never get to say good morning to their families again.

        Derek and Scott came to speak to her that following morning, just before she was going to be released, which was when the question that everyone had been consistently avoiding the entire night was answered. Melissa was the first one to distance herself as soon as Sage brought up Stiles' name, wanting to know how the MRI went and if he was still in the hospital. Sheriff Stilinski came in next to make sure she was okay, and she asked him the same thing she asked Melissa, getting silence. Parrish showed up to get her accident report, and he just gave her a hesitant look before wishing her well and walking out of the room. No matter the person, each of them were quick to escape, which led her the conclusion that the frontotemporal dementia was actually true, and they were afraid to tell her what she already knew the moment she was given the thought was right.

        She had been very wrong.

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The blonde stared at the two werewolves that walked into her room, both looking as if they hadn't slept since the accident involving the broken hydrant and the cut electrical wire. Dark circled loomed under Scott's eyes, and Derek's hands were clenched in tight fists inside of his leather jacket, which was immediately what tipped Sage off that something was going to come out of their mouths that she wasn't going to enjoy hearing in the slightest. They were too quiet, too reserved, and way too suspicious for her not to be alarmed. Slowly, she lifted herself up on the bed and gave them raised eyebrows while her hands took fistfuls of the sheets.

        When she saw they weren't going to begin the conversation, she did. "Every single person in this damn hospital is refusing to answer any question that involves Stiles, and I've been doing my very best these past eight hours not to rip this IV right out of my arm to go look for him myself. So, if the two are going to stand there and say shit that's all a lie straight to my face about what's going on, walk out of that door right now and join everyone else."

        She wasn't angry, she was just growing frustrated that everyone was so adamant on keeping her away from the truth. They were acting as if she were a fragile teenage girl who hadn't watched the house with her father and brother inside burn to the ground, as if she hadn't spent countless hours in pain over people she would die for, as if she hadn't escaped thousands of deaths, and as if she hadn't been drowned by her friends and returned with a heart of darkness, as if hallucinations of everyone she loved being murdered by a single blade of a demonic ninja didn't exist. They were acting as if she were human, when the reality was that she was stronger than that, and she would rather know the truth and attempt to accept it than be lied to and struggle to cope with the dark unknown.

        Scott seemed to be the only one that flinched at her words, knowing very well that everything she poured out into the sentences had to do with the concern she felt towards their best friend. Derek, on the other hand, let his face stay cold, as if he were trying to erase all of his emotions so that he could bring himself to tell the blonde girl in the hospital bed what was happening around them. Neither one of them knew how to begin, though, the two glancing at each other to try and form some sort of explanation, before Scott just let out a sigh and turned to look at Sage. His hands gripped the end of the bed rails, heart pounding a mile a minute.

        "Do you remember how Allison explained that the Oni were out to find the person who had a dark spirit inside of them — a nogitsune?" Scott began, watching as Sage slowly nodded, her eyes narrowing in confusion. "The night that we were at the substation, when Barrow took Kira, you said that you and Stiles woke up and didn't know how you passed out. That the two of you were disoriented and confused."

        Sage crossed her arms over her chest, wondering where in the hell he was trying to go with this. "Yeah. We figured that we were hit with a spark of electricity whenever Kira blew the power in the place, and it knocked us unconscious. What does that have to do with the Nogitsune though?"

        "We think that Barrow used Kira's foxfire to jump-start the Nogitsune into a person's body," Derek explained, his jaw clenched tightly as he struggled to get the next few words out. "And, that when the two of you were electrocuted, the Nogitsune found its way into Stiles. His metal bat was attached to one of the metal equipment cases when Kira and I went back to the substation."

        Scott noticed how the blonde's face fell slack, any and all emotion slipping completely from her identity as the gears began to turn in her head and the revelation began to truly sink in, which only made it harder for him to continue everything that people were keeping a secret. "Stiles, or the Nogitsune... it cut the electrical wire up on the roof. My mom said that when the power came back on after there was a surge, Stiles wasn't in the MRI room anymore. He's missing, Sage."

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        How is a person supposed to react to that? She didn't know if she was supposed to cry, or scream, or wish that it had been her who the Nogitsune decided to possess so that Stiles wouldn't be forced to go through that kind of trauma. She didn't know if she was supposed to hate herself because she didn't realize it sooner, or if she was supposed to even react in any other way that wasn't staring at the wall of the McCall's kitchen. The very fact that she didn't know how to process the information, even forty-eight hours later, only meant that it was seemingly impossible for her to believe that Stiles, her Stiles, the same Stiles that could barely throw a lacrosse ball and drove recklessly as if he were in Fast and Furious, was the Nogitsune that was known for creating death and destruction.

        A hand was placed on her shoulder, and normally, Sage would have been the slightest been surprised, but she didn't even jerk a muscle when she felt the pressure. She just continued to stare, her eyes stinging from how intensely she was gazing, barely aware of the fact that Melissa was standing over her with a cup of coffee. Only when it was sat down in front her did she finally blink, her irises hazy as she glanced around the room in a daze, before finally looking over to see that Melissa was now occupying the seat next to her at the front of the table.

        "How are you?" the woman softly asked, her eyes heavy with worry as she inspected the girl the way that a mother would.

        Sage's hands wrapped around the coffee mug, staring at the substance inside with a frown. "My head hurts a little. Isaac's injuries aren't making anything better, but they apparently have him on enough medication back at the hospital that it doesn't hurt as much as it used to. So, I guess that's the best I can take at this point."

        She knew that her answer wasn't necessarily the one that the woman wanted to her in regards to a maternal instinct, but it was the most proper answer she could give to the woman as her nurse. Ever since she was discharged from the hospital, two days ago, she had been staying at the McCall house because that happened to be the terms of her agreement with Melissa. Scott's mother wanted her to stay at the hospital a while longer, but she protested against the idea of spending any more time in the place that had become her own personal hell in a matter of minutes. So, discharge came at the cost of being babysat by Melissa. The only bad part was the fact that Sage and Scott barely spoke, even eye contact feeling like a thousand pins and needles in their skin due to how much it hurt them to know their best friend was still missing and they couldn't do anything to help.

        "Do you want me to call you in for school?" Melissa asked, watching as the girl slowly took a sip of the coffee, knowing the girl needed the caffeine in her system if she was going to survive the day.

        The blonde's lips tugged down slightly at the thought. "I've already missed three days, and that's not including all of the other times I've not gone this year. I'll be fine. The distraction is better than sitting here, waiting for something to happen."

        Sage gave the woman a weak smile, one that didn't meet her eyes or feel nearly as genuine as it would have a year ago, hoping that it made up for the amount of distance she's created with Melissa and Scott these past few days. She was practically a zombie, and most of it had to due with the fact that she had time to think about things. Normally, a situation would occur an hour after the last one, which never gave her time to think about what the previous issue was. This hadn't been the case, and she spent forty eight hours drowning in thoughts about her ex-boyfriend, the boy she told she was still in love with, being a nogitsune.

        Both girls looked up when they heard the sound of shoes hitting the staircase, Scott's figure showing up at the end of the steps. He looked about as well as Sage did, leaving Melissa with two teenagers who were struggling to cope with the information about their best friend, and not knowing how she could help. Sage saw that he was ready to leave for school, which made her carefully set down the coffee mug and lift herself out of the kitchen chair without a word, reaching for the black backpack that Derek brought by. Scott's brown irises seemed to follow her movements, noticing how her entire appearance seemed off. Sure, she looked like Sage, the white shorts and black lacrosse hoodie with her last name on the back of it perceiving her to be the same person she was three days ago when she didn't learn that Stiles was possessed and diagnosed with dementia. Her blonde hair was still the same, but the look in her eyes showed everything that her voice would not. She was in pain, she just refused to admit it.

        Turning his attention away from his friend and back to his mouth, two words fell from his mouth, both opting on the small ounce of hope he had left considering he would walk down those same steps every morning to hear the same answer. "Any news?"

        "They're still looking for him," Melissa stated, glancing over at her son with a wavering voice. Sage hesitated in her attempt to put her backpack on one of her shoulders, doing her best to get over the rough feeling she had any time someone mentioned the lack of an Adderall-obsessed, hyperactive teenager in their lives. "It's past the forty-eight hour mark, but I guess if anyone is going to be missing for two days and turn up just fine, it's Stiles."

        Scott glanced over at Sage, knowing that she was just as affected, before asking the second question that has fallen from his mouth every day for the past two days. "What about Isaac?"

        Melissa let out a small sigh, realizing that this was the moment she had to put aside her own emotions towards how she felt about another boy she considered her son being missing, and a girl she considered her daughter suffering in pain every second Isaac stayed burned. This was the moment she had to be a mother, and that title meant she had to think about her son's emotions and Sage's emotions before she had time to think about her own. Which is why she stood up from the table, moving over to Scott, and crossing her arms over her chest as she glanced in between him and Sage.

        "Maybe we should go by the hospital before school?" Melissa suggested, her eyebrows raised high as she looked to see if they would be up for that idea. She, then, turned to give Sage a small purse as she noticed how the girl's shoulders immediately tensed. "You don't have to come if you don't want to. I know a lot of things happened there recently."

     "It's not that," the blonde denied, shaking her head. She paused for a second as if trying to explain to them why she was afraid to step into that place again. "It's just that, the last person I went to go see in that hospital ended up cutting an electrical wire. Now, he's missing, and the last time I saw Isaac, he didn't have a pulse."

        A year ago, Stiles had asked her what would happen if something ended up happening to Isaac when he was going to be killed by one of Argent's hunters. He questioned what it would feel like to lose someone she was connected to, and she hadn't know at the time. She still held the youth in that moment of being lucky enough not to know what it felt like, and the moment that it happened for the first time with Jackson, she realized that she never wanted to feel it again. Twice, it happened with Jackson, and despite the distant connection between herself and Derek's pack at the time, she felt Erica and Boyd's deaths as if they were her own. Each and every time, it felt as though someone ripped a limb from her body, detaching a part of her identity from her soul. It happened that night at the hospital, and she realized that it didn't hurt as bad as it used to. She didn't hurt as much as when Jackson died, or as much as when she watched Boyd fall on Derek's claws.

        It didn't hurt as agonizingly, and she didn't know if it was because Isaac's heart was capable of surviving, or because her heart just wasn't. To have to enter that hospital again, and look at Isaac, a boy that she cared about to the point of stepping in front of him to take a blade if she had to, knowing that she couldn't feel as much pain as she should have in the moments of him not having a pulse completely terrified her. Sage didn't want to physically see all of the damage created to Isaac that she felt in her veins right now , and know that Stiles was the one who initially influenced the pain.

        Scott grabbed a hold of her arm, giving it a comforting squeeze. "You don't have to go in if you don't want to."

        "I want to," Sage explained. "I just don't know if I should."

        Melissa shook her head at the teenage girl, opposed to the idea of the teenage girl believing she shouldn't see Isaac based on the past she had at the hospital. "If it's truly what you want to do, don't try to convince yourself not to do it just because of what happened before. I just want the two of you to understand that his burns are severe, werewolf or not."

        "That's the bad thing about what I am," Sage answered lightly, giving Melissa with a halfhearted frown. The worst part about who she was is that she could never escape the pain. It wasn't something that she could just take away, or something she could magically heal from. It was always there, and it always hurt. "I don't need to see it to understand. I can feel how much it's hurting him."

        She couldn't bring it to herself to tell either of them that Isaac was in more pain that they believed. All of it was flooding through her body any moment she walked, any moment she breathed, and any moment she spoke. The only thing preventing her from putting her life on pause because of it was the fact that, despite how much that ached, there was an even more tremoring emotion in her heart that outweighed anything she felt in her bones. Any time something began to hurt too much, the fragile fact that Stiles was still missing flooded her mind, and the pain became a dull sting in the middle of her chest.

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        They were standing in front of the hospital in what seemed like simple seconds, hesitation written all across Sage's face as she stopped in the middle of the parking lot, her eyes staying on the very spot that Isaac fell to the ground in the electrified pool of pain. Scott was the one to notice that she wasn't following after them, his lips tugging down as he realized he could no longer avoid the inevitability that was realizing the blonde girl was the only person who was experiencing all of the apprehension, the doubt, the fear, the regret, every single emotion that he was. What she was feeling just happened to be heightened to a catastrophic level.

        Scott walked towards her, and grabbed a hold of her hand so that he could tug her forward. Her bright, green eyes moved away from the ground of the parking lot, turning to give him a thankful nod in appreciation for him pulling her out of her thoughts. Much like when they were in the police station, forced to explain to Sheriff Stilinski that his son was missing the first time, the two tightened their hold on each other's hands, reassurance in the policy of friendship that they accepted the moment she came back to town and infiltrated their lives with her large personality. There was supposed to be three of them, and when one was not there, they were balanced. Scott, Stiles, and Sage had never been placed in a friendship where balanced defined what they were to each other, and they refused to let that change.

        The hospital looked exactly the same as it had two days ago, white and without compassion to death. Thankfully, Melissa was quick in regards to getting them through the hallway without Sage having to think too much about where she was. Isaac was put on the third floor, ICU, due to the extensive damage that the accident created. The bad thing involving this was that there were doctors checking up on him every hour, and one would eventually notice the gradual healing that he was making from being a werewolf. As of right now, though, Sage could practically feel that he wasn't any better yet. It doesn't take two days for a werewolf to heal, not unless their minds are refusing to accept it, much like Scott when he believed Derek was dead and the wound of the alpha wasn't healing.

        The three of them were silent, even when the elevator let out a small ding to signal that they were at their stop. The doors opened, and the first thing that Sage saw when they did was a familiar figure sitting down on one of the chairs outside of Isaac's room. Her attention was focused only on the brunette after that, and moved herself and Scott over their friend so that they could wake her up. The blonde felt terrible, though, the moment that she did. Allison Argent's head lifted, her eyes squinted from the little sleep she received in the hospital.

        Scott sent a comforting, yet so incredibly weak, nod her way. "Have you been here all night?"

        "Yeah," Allison confirmed, blinking a few times to try and get rid of the dizziness she had from the sleep deprivation. It had been days since she was able to sleep properly in a bed, wanting to be with Isaac as much as she could. "They won't let me see him because I'm not family. I told them he doesn't have any."

        Sage tried to ignore that sting to her chest. For the longest time, she and Isaac shared the same exact life. Both of them lost their parents, their brothers, and that was the way that they became friends. The two of them bonded over that grief, but now that she knew her mother was still alive, she felt as though she was cheating, not only herself of that mourning stage, but she had cheated Isaac out of it as well. She had a parent, one that she hadn't seen in weeks, and one that wasn't mentally stable in the slightest, but she had a parent. The only family that Isaac had was his friends, and quite frankly, that should have been enough for the doctors to let them in.

        Apparently, she wasn't the only one with that thought either, because Melissa was stepping forward a few seconds later with a frown on her face and her hospital card in the air. "Well, he's got us, and I've got a key card."

        She unlocked the door for them a few seconds later, muttering to be quick about their unauthorized visit, before leaving them to stand outside and make sure no doctor came by. It was immediately when they walked in that they saw the extremity of the situation. Isaac was in the middle of a large room, dozens of monitors around the bed that he was laying in, all of them working to keep him alive. All three teenagers were very quickly trying to register everything before they made any more steps forward, taking in the amount of burns on the right side of his body and how the one person who caused it happened to be just as close to them as he was. That was the hardest part — walking in, knowing that Stiles did all of this without even having control over it.

      Before she thought about it, Allison was reaching for Scott's hand. The teenage boy glanced down at it, trying to ignore the broken feeling he still had in knowing that there once was a time when their fingers tangled together and they never wanted to let go. Things were different now, and he could only look at her and manage a single nod, letting her know it was going to be okay. A smile fell on her face for a split second before it vanished, and they were back to the task at hand of making their way to Isaac, Scott's hands now being crushed by two girls that meant the entire world to him, one as a surrogate sister and one as a first love.

        When they were at Isaac's bed side, all of their eyebrows seemed to fur in the confusion of seeing that Isaac wasn't healing like he was supposed to be. Allison turned to look at the two next to her, knowing they were better in terms of knowledge about werewolves than she was. "I thought he'd be healing by now."

        "So did I," Scott said, agreeing with the brunette as he continued to inspect the boy. His hand went out, hesitant to touch his friend in fear that it would only cause more pain, before slowly letting it fall on his burned arm. Almost immediately, Scott's face contorted in surprise, glancing over at Sage to give her a slightly narrowed look, knowing that she had been diluting how much Isaac was hurting these past few days, and how much it hurt her as well.

        Allison didn't know any of this, though. "Is he in pain?"

        Scott nodded his head once, turning to look at the brunette before his attention fell back on Isaac as he realized there was something he could do to relieve the pain, if only a little. His hand went back on the werewolf's burned arm, and almost immediately, the veins that were showing on his arms turned a dark black as he began to take as much of the hurting from Isaac as possible. The curly-haired boy arched his back at the weight being lifted, his heart monitor speeding up slightly before falling back at a steady pace. The act of an alpha that Scott decided to do, however, ended up taking a lot out of him and Sage both.

        The issue with the transfusion was that, despite the fact that Isaac was being relieved of the pain, it was all being given to Scott, and Sage was connected to Scott as much as she was Isaac. Therefore, it just made things worse and wore her body down more having to feel the reciprocated pain of more than just one person at a single moment. The amount that Scott decided to take hadn't helped either, the alpha's face beginning to contort as he tightened it, while Sage let out a small exhale, gripping the railing of the bed tightly. During this time, Allison could only watch the reactions of her two friends with her hand over her mouth, only then understanding just how much it was hurting Isaac and them.

        With a heavy breath, Scott began to speak. "It, uh, it won't heal him, but it helps with the pain."

        "Did Stiles really do this?" Allison asked, her words coming in choked attempts as she looked at Scott and Sage in question. She was still having trouble with the idea of believing that Stiles would be capable of hurting anyone, but considering it was someone that she cared about more than just a friend, she didn't understand how much her words stung Scott and Sage to hear.

        The blonde didn't speak up, her hands still tightly on the bed railing while Scott finally peered up from Isaac's injured body to Allison. "Whatever's controlling him did it. Whatever's inside him."

        "Then, how do we get whatever's inside of him the hell out of him?" Allison questioned, her eyes going back to Isaac as he continued to be her main concern at the moment. The last thing that she needed was to lose another person she cared about, and knew that she wasn't the only person in the room with that mindset.

        "I'm working on it."

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It's eight in the morning and I wrote nearly 7,000 words. I'm pretty sure the only reason I'm still able to type right now, and haven't passed out from sleep deprivation, is due to the fact that this is one of my all time favorite episodes of Teen Wolf. However, I've learned from experience that a fan's favorite episode become a writer's worst nightmare. As of right now, it's not been too traumatizing, but nothing has really happened that's too action-y besides the beginning. I still have 27:24 left in the episode, which means it's probably going to be expanded to a total of three chapters instead of the usual two. But, Stiles impales his BFF with a sword at the end of it, so holla.

        Nonetheless, I just wanted to thank you guys for how much you've given me. I know my author's notes always include that, but thank you. Sage hit one MILLION reads a few days ago, a million. I can't even count to a million without screwing it up, much less process that the story has that many reads. It's all of the effort that you guys have put in towards this story, and I love you so incredibly much for sticking with me through Sage's story. She's growing up, and she's been through her strongest and weakest times while in this book, so it's been incredible to share her journey with you guys. Much love!