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FORTY NINE;

GRACELESS WEAPONS

There was a wall that became a friend of the teenage girl, a plain, white wall that she stared at for nearly five hours straight, and a wall that was slowly beginning to eat away at her sanity the longer that she inspected it. It had gotten to a point about four hours in that her vision became blurry, and her mind began to come up with such agonizing thoughts as to why the bare wall was so intriguing to her. It didn't have any pictures, it didn't have any color, it was just a painfully sick theory that stuck inside of Sage Connelly's mind as her green irises never moved away from the wall. The wall wasn't good enough to have attention brought to it. It was just like every other white wall in the hospital, it was just like every other broken reminder that there are too many things left uncared for because no one gives a shit about it.

Sage, as she stared at the white interior of the building, felt like she was slowly losing her mind as she began to diagnosis a wall. The reality of why she was acting so lucid had to do with the fact that there was nothing else for her to do in the hospital. Stiles had gone back to sleep after the conversation they had, the blonde girl saying that she was going to go find Melissa so that she would check on the teenage boy, only for both of them to come back to see he was unconscious again. Ever since then, she found herself incapable of breathing the same air as Stiles, breaking her promise to never leave his side as she occupied a spot on the floor outside his room.

He told her that he still loved her, and despite the fact that she knew in her heart what she wanted, she couldn't say it back. The fact that she couldn't even process those simple three words had to do with the still remaining fact that she couldn't love him the way that she wanted to. She had him back, she knew that, and she had her heart again, but there was no way for her to even believe for a second that she could go back to the teenage girl she was a year ago with him. Too many things have changed, too many people have died, for them to ever be that naive to the realistic world that invaded any moment they tried to spend together. It would just be them acting on the belief that they could fix what was broken, when the actuality was that they couldn't even mend themselves. They were too shattered, torn into fragments, and her saying that she loved him back would do nothing to put them back together.

"You know," a voice began, making the blonde's head shoot up and tighten her arms around her legs. Sheriff Stilinski stood there, his eyebrows raised with a weak smile sported on his face, only enough for her to nod at him. "When I agreed to let you ditch school, I didn't think you would be spending your day off staring at a wall for five hours."

She pursed her lips at the man. "It's a nice wall."

"I'm sure it is," Sheriff Stilinski agreed, his smile tugging slightly farther before he sighed, maneuvering himself down next the girl with the help of the wall. "Melissa said that you haven't slept in a while. You should try and get some sleep. It's going to be a long day for Stiles. We're going to start running some tests in an hour, and get him into an MRI to make sure everything is okay."

Sage moved her head back over to the wall, her legs slowly falling down to the ground as she tried to ignore the complete weakness that she felt knowing that this nightmare she was walking and breathing in still wasn't over. "I'm not tired. I'm just confused."

"About what?"

The blonde didn't bother turning around to look at him when she answered, her eyes on the wall of the hospital that had so many memories and so much pain. "Everything. Life. Love. Sometimes, I just wish I was a kid again so someone would tell me what to do with my life. I grew up when I was ten years old. I grew up the moment that my family died in that fire, and ever since then, I've been making decisions based on what I believe is right for myself. I've been selfish, and I've been cold to the people I love most because I didn't want to hurt them, and no matter how hard I try, I'm always left broken. I'm always left standing in a cemetery, forcing myself to make another decision on what I believe is right."

She didn't know why she was tearing her heart out of her chest for Sheriff Stilinski— why she was talking to her ex-boyfriend's father about how horrible of a person she had been for seven years of her life, and how she had been living her entire teenage youth basing herself on the expectation that she was going to lose everyone that she cared about. She deprived herself of happiness, of letting someone love her fully and unconditionally, all because of what the Hale fire did to her. Her entire life was taken away from that point on, and she didn't understand how much it was ripping her apart until she realized that she was a split possibility away from losing the only person who kept her together. Stiles was undoubtably her anchor, the only person who ever weighed her down long enough so that she didn't have to fear escaping into those horrific thoughts. Those hours that she believed she lost him, and these hours right now, had been her kryptonite, and those thoughts invaded her faster than fire mixed with kerosene.

Sheriff Stilinski grabbed a hold of Sage's hand, giving it a tight squeeze so that she would move her eyes away from the wall. "You were neglected of moments, Sage. Everyone is. We lose people, and we lose the way that they sounded or the way that they laughed. We don't lose the person that they made us. You lost your parents and your brother, and no child should ever feel that much pain, but it's life and we can't change it. When I lost my wife, my entire life was at the bottom of a bottle, and I eventually forgot what Claudia looked like when she smiled. I forgot, and that made me regret my decision to ever touch alcohol again. Tragedies don't make people selfish, Sage. They make us human. Don't even let anyone take that humanity away from you."

Sage ground her teeth together, feeling her eyes begin to burn in her refusing attempt to break. "But it hurts so much. I don't know how to breathe anymore. I don't know how to sleep. I don't even know how to cry, and everyone is looking at me to be the sane one. They're looking at me, and they're expecting me to be okay when I don't even know what the word okay means anymore. I don't know how to breathe, Sheriff, and I don't know if I want to learn and suffer all over again."

There was pain everywhere, pain that was surfacing from every single moment that she found herself caring, and that was something that hurt so much more than any time she had ever been stabbed, beaten, broken, or shot. It was something that took a part of her soul, something that clawed away at her creation and led her to the furthermost ends of darkness. It was something that made her believe that her mother was right all along about her being an abomination, and guided her in the direction of believing that she was the reaper her mother spoke of. She was the one leading people to death, she was the one loving those that were only doomed to die forgotten and dislonging a place as a gravestone in an old cemetery. She was Sage Connelly, and she didn't know how she could possible be that girl anymore when she finally understood what the title perceived her to be.

"Humanity is always a person's greatest weakness," Sheriff began, giving her a sad smile as he squeezed her hand once again. "But, it's also a person's greatest strength. When I look at you, I don't see what you think. I see a girl, a seventeen year old girl, that has been to hell and back with scars deeper than anyone could imagine— but, she survived. She fought for the people that she loved, and she proved that she was more than just a girl. She fell in love with a boy in the very room behind us, and she stayed with him because she knew that he was her world."

Sage went to speak. "I can't, Sheriff."

"You can, and I need you to because you're all that he has left in this world to know. I can't let him..." the man paused, and Sage watched as his face contorted into pain. In that very moment, she realized that Stiles' father had come here to speak to her about something that was much more important than her own problems.

"Sheriff," Sage deadpanned, her shoulders beginning to tighten when she saw the expression on his face. "You can't let him, what?"

The older man gave her a weak smile. "I can't let him live knowing that he messed up the only chance he had with you. As his father, I'm supposed to teach him right from wrong, and I'm supposed to be there to help him, which means I have to be the one to tell you that there is a possibility of Claudia's dementia having been passed onto Stiles."

"What?"

The response fell from her lips much quicker than the actual thought processed through her mind. In fact, she was barely aware of what Stiles' father was explaining to her as she stared at him in confusion, trying to register what exactly he was trying to tell her about Stiles. When Sheriff Stilinski opened his mouth and began to speak, informing her of what frontotemporal dementia was, and the symptoms of it, she found herself moving her attention back to the wall. Her face had fallen slack, and the tears that were threatening to escape before had been dried by the sole fact of the numbness Sage felt as she listening to the man talk about her anchor slowly breaking right in front of her, and there was nothing that she could do about it.

There was a possibility of her losing her best friend.

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"I'm not sure I know how to pronounce this, or if it's not actually a misspelling."

Everyone looked over at the doctor in the room, the man's hands flipping through the charts of Stiles Stilinski, which only left him in the great confusion that the actual name of the teenage boy brought. Had it been a lighter situation, and had hearts not been pounding so rapidly in the chests of the people in the room, maybe it would have been humorous. Maybe if it had been a year ago, and if the scenarios were different, the three teenagers in the room would have joked about the name that Stiles was given.

Situations were heavy, though, and no one knew how to speak. Stiles' father happened to be the only one who could, and swallowed hard before he answered the doctor. "Just call him Stiles."

The doctor didn't seem to argue with it, and just turned around at the scene that was in front of him. There were four people in the room apart from himself and his patient, four people that he didn't realize where a critical definition of who Stiles Stilinski was. There was his father, the man that literally created him and gave him everything that he possibly could supply, the only person that he had when he didn't know how to cope without another parent; there was Melissa, the woman who had come to be a surrogate mother to him, the woman who loved him and cared for him as much as she did her actual son; there was Scott, his best friend and his brother, the shy kid that he met when he was in kindergarden and didn't know who to trust, the guy that has given him a chance to the best friend of a teen wolf; and, then, there was Sage. There was the girl that made him want to gouge his eyes out at the beginning of sophomore year because of how stubborn she was, the girl that consumed him entirely and took a piece of his heart, the girl that ripped away what he thought he knew when he fought with her.

The doctor didn't know how important these people were to Stiles Stilinski.

"Okay, Stiles," the man began, moving until he was standing directly in front of the teenage boy. "Just to warn you, you're going to hear a lot of noise during the MRI. It's due to pulses of electricity going through the metal coils inside the machine. If you want, we can get you some earplugs or headphones."

Stiles lifted his head up from staring intensely at his hands, shaking his head. "Oh, no. No, I don't need anything."

It was silent for a few seconds, everyone watching Stiles to make sure that he wasn't going to fall apart in front of them. Despite how they were feeling, they knew that every emotion and every thought surfacing in his brain was ten times worse than anything they could imagine because, while they had to face the possibility of losing a boy they loved, he had to face the possibility of losing himself, and that alone was enough for him to lose grip of reality. His father realized this, which is why his hand went on his son's shoulder to comfort him.

"Hey," Sheriff Stilinski called, getting his son's attention again. "We're just on the other side of that window, okay?"

Stiles gave his father a nod, not finding enough strength to return the smile that his father gave him. He could clearly see that his dad's entire face was contorted in concern, his brown irises trailing the way that the man left, watching as he gave the blonde in the room a tight squeeze on the shoulder before exiting with Melissa. That was when the silence truly began to sting them, realizing that it was the three of them once again. It was the three best friends, the three dumb ass teenagers, that had always been so stupid enough to get themselves into problem that they could barely find their way out of. This time, however, one of them was facing the problem and the other two didn't know how to help him find his way out.

And that, right there, broke their hearts.

"You know what they're looking for, right?" Stiles asked the two, glancing in between the distance of the two. The blonde was near the window, halfway across the room, while Scott stood at his side with his eyes diverted to the ground. "It's called frontotemporal dementia. Areas of your brain start to shrink. It's what my mother had. It's the only form of dementia that can hit teenagers... and, there's no cure."

Scott was the only one who finally glanced over at Stiles, the single look that he gave his best friend saying everything that failed to fall from his mouth. Sage, on the other hand, refused to look anywhere that wasn't the tile floor in fear that she would fall apart in front of Stiles. There was the broken promise between the three of them that they would always be there for each other. There was the broken promise that they made when they were younger that they would never leave, and facing the reality that one of them had already broken that promise and another could as well? It ate them to pieces, it literally ate them apart knowing that they could face the agony of knowing that Stiles may not be there when they get married, or when they graduate. Stiles may not be there to grow up with them, and they may never face arrest again all because of a stupid disease.

And it broke her to pieces because the fact was that life continued to fuck her over in ways of making sure all of the happiness she has once felt in her life was destroyed. Life refused to let her love, and it refused to let her hold onto hope. Stiles was her only hope of surviving, he was her only light, and he was her only safety in the sadistic and cruel world that they were drowning in, and to know that all of that could be taken away, that Sheriff Stilinski could lose his son, and Scott could lose his best friend, and she could lose her light... she couldn't cope. She couldn't breathe.

"Stiles, if you have it, we'll do something," Scott started, pausing when he realized how hard it was to talk. He was speaking to his best friend, not a stranger that he was promising false hope to. He was speaking to his brother. The two were quiet, enough for Sage to lift her head up and clench her jaw at the sight of her best friends to try and keep herself grounded long enough so she didn't scream from the anger she had towards the world. "I'll do something."

The brothers nodded at each other, a silent truce that confirmed everything in that moment. Sage knew what they just agreed to, she knew that Stiles had just given his best friend permission to turn him into a werewolf if it was a necessary action, and she didn't know what hurt more— knowing that they could let him die from the dementia if he truly had it, or give him the fifty-fifty chance of surviving the bite or dying no matter what. The odds, no matter where she seemed to look, never promised anything.

She watched with a numb body as the two wrapped their arms around each other, and she could practically feel the pain that was emitting from their bodies despite there being no physical pain. She could feel it, everything, and she hated it. For the thousandth time in her life, she wished that she could turn her ability off, turn her emotions off, and just lose who she was; because, watching the two boys that she stood by for so many years, hug each other as if they were accepting the end, only made her more infuriated. The moment that the two broke their hug, reluctantly, Scott's fists clenched tightly at his sides before both of them glanced over at the blonde on the other side of the room.

The werewolf glanced in between his two best friends, and when he got two nods in confirmation, he slowly left the room without a word. Sage took a deep inhale, trying to let the oxygen fill her lungs rather than break her chest, just before moving herself with careful steps until she was nearing closer to Stiles. He watched her, and tried to ignore the stinging pain he felt when he did, not knowing what to expect from her.

And, finally, she lifted her head up and he noticed the tears forming in her eyes. "When we were standing in that classroom, you asked me if I wanted to break up with you. I said yes, and for the longest time, I thought that I would eventually convince myself to believe in that yes. I tore myself apart trying to believe in that yes, and I never got a chance to tell you that I'm sorry that I even said it."

Stiles began to shake his head, his lips pursing when he gave her a look to stop placing all of the blame on herself. "It wasn't your fault."

"But, it was," she denied, staring at him with a lump in her throat beginning to prevent her of speaking. "It was my fault for believing I could get over you when the reality is that I can't, and for that, I'm sorry."

He noticed that she was slowly stepping away from him, and grabbed her hand to stop her so that he could tug her to his chest. It was immediately that she was enveloped in his arms, and felt herself completely giving into the reality that she was standing in an MRI room, waiting to get news about whether or not her ex-boyfriend had the same mental disease that his mother had, the same disease that his mother suffered death from. She gave into the reality, and she gave into him as she wrapped her arms around him tightly, not knowing how much it hurt to be safe until she actually was.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she didn't realize that she had let the desperate tears fall from her eyes until it was too late, and she clenched her jaw tightly before speaking the words she refused to let fall from her mouth ever again. "I still love you, too."

And, after they escaped her lips, she had pulled away from Stiles, rushing her way out the door with her hands already wiping the tears away. She loved him, and that was her greatest weakness. He gave her humanity, and no matter how much she hated emotions and hated feeling, he would always be the one thing holding her back from being completely numb. For that alone, she walked away.

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"Hey."

The voice broke Sage of her current thoughts, and she glanced up from her position on the waiting room chair to see that Derek was standing above her and Scott. The two teenagers had yet to speak since they left the MRI room, no amount of words able to properly explain how they were feeling. They knew. Everything that Scott was feeling, so was Sage; everything she was feeling, he was as well. Both of them were slowly breaking, and the anticipation was eating them alive, but they were still able to walk.

Sage stared at him in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

She hadn't had much time to speak to Derek since he came back from South America with Cora, their relationship having gone on pause ever since she began seeing him die in her nightmares. She had experienced false pretenses of the man's death enough to last her a lifetime, and ever since the hallucinations began, she made it her mission to distance herself as much as she possibly could. Sage supposed, in that attempt, she lost her best friend along the way.

"I wanted to see how you were," he admitted, giving Scott a glance before moving his eyes back on the blonde that looked more fragile than he had ever seen her before. "How's Stiles doing?"

Scott glanced to his right, noticing how Sage immediately paused at the question, before turning to give Derek the answer himself. "He's getting an MRI done right now. He's been showing symptoms of the same thing that his mother had, and they want to make sure that everything is okay as a precaution."

"It's not a precaution," Sage dismissed, giving Scott a weak look before she moved herself from the chair so that she was standing in front of Derek. "It's a diagnosis. I'm going to go to the parking lot to get some air. Scott, just text me when you hear from your mom and the Sheriff."

She nodded to the beta wolf that was in front of her before maneuvering around him, her pace falling faster as she tried to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. Had she never realized until now, there were too many memories in this place. Her father worked here, Peter lived here while in his comatose state, she has nearly died here dozens of times, and nothing about this place would ever bring hope for a better option. Everyone was holding onto the possibility of Stiles not having the dementia, but Sage had already accepted it. She was already accepting the fact that she was running on a limited time with Stiles Stilinski, and she didn't know what she was supposed to do with it.

Her entire life had revolved around death, around pain, and that made her feel as though she just cheated Stiles out of a life he didn't have to have just before she fell in love with him. Mallory Connelly had been right all along; Sage was just a grim reaper, and death followed her no matter where she went.

Watching the blonde hastily leave the hallways of the hospital, Derek turned to look over at Scott with a deep frown on his face. "I'm afraid she's turning into Laura."

"What?" Scott asked, his eyebrows furred as he faced at the man in confusion. Due to the fact that he never knew Laura, and the fact that she was dead, she didn't see how there was a comparison between the man's sister and the man's best friend. The only thing that she did see was that the two of the people she loved most her being brutally torn apart from the inside-out, and he could do nothing to help them.

"After the fire, all three of us had to figure out how to cope with the loss. I survived with rage, Sage survived with pain, and Laura survived by becoming numb to everything. She shut us out, she didn't feel anything, she was practically dead. I'm afraid that Sage is becoming numb, Scott."

A numb Sage Connelly would defeat the purpose of the altor existing.

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