SONGS OF THE CHAPTER:

HURT FOR ME by SYML

ANGEL BY THE WINGS by SIA

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SIXTY FOUR;

BLACKOUT

"You're an idiot, you know that, right?"

Sage watched Stiles with raised brows, not even slightly phased by his most recent spout of idiocy. He had flailed off the bench after Scott had come up behind him, scaring him, and now he rested on a nice patch of mud from last night's rain. Their friends were laughing around them at the mud all over the side of his face, and all Sage could do was watch the boy with an eye roll before leaning back to give him a hand to help him up. Allison held onto her to support the weight, laughing through blurry eyes. Stiles had a different idea in mind, however, and yanked hard on the blonde girl to pull her into the mess along with him. He hadn't realized he would be taking more than his girlfriend along with him, though.

"Stiles! I'm going to kill you!" Allison shouted, having been pulled into the mud alongside Sage. She turned to look over at her blonde best friend only to see that she was trying to keep herself from cracking up, a hidden smile threatening to show. "What are you laughing at? You look like shit, Connelly!"

"Well, I think you look gorgeous, Argent," Sage grinned, not upset in the slightest by her ruined clothes like Allison was. It wasn't like they had anything else to do today, and she happened to love seeing the brunette so upset over getting a bit dirty. It was almost as great as if Lydia had been the one who fell. Their other friend, however, was off doing God knows what with Jackson somewhere.

Sage felt something wrap around her from her seat on the ground, and she smiled down at the muddy arms that connected around her waist to pull her closer to their chest. As she turned to look at her boyfriend, she watched from the corner of her eye as Scott snuck up behind Allison, grabbing a hold of her waist to pull both of them back down into the mud. Her squeal and his laughter rang in her ears, lightening the load on her heart. It was an easy, innocent moment of being reckless teenagers that they more than deserved.

Looking at Stiles, Sage's grin met her green eyes as she rubbed her thumb over the mud that was on the corner of his lip. Even when it was gone, she kept rubbing at the lower lip curved to a smile. "You've got a little something right here."

"Oh, yeah?" he asked, his grin matching hers as his eyes flickered to every part of her face before going to her lips. His hand lifted up to her chin, leaning in so that their lips were so close to touching. "You do, too."

He gave her a quick kiss before sliding his muddy hand on her cheek, the mess forming a perfect imprint on her wide-eyed face as she looked at him in shock. He let out a loud laugh, quickly rolling away from his girlfriend to get closer to Allison and Scott for protection. It proved to be helpful, too, when a slop of mud was being slung the few feet between them, and Allison was the unlucky victim of Sage's revenge.

With hands going to her mouth, Sage choked down her own laughter. "I'm so sorry!"

"You better be!"

Allison and Sage got wrapped into their own mud fight, tears from giggling coming out of their eyes as they tried to make the other the messiest possible. The remaining mud on the ground was all over their clothes and staining every inch of their faces. It was impossible to tell that Sage had blonde hair, and Allison looked like something had crawled out of a swamp, but there was nothing that could ever take that moment away from them as they held onto one another to keep from slipping or falling down. Not once did they think about the hours it would take to clean up the mess, or the snort of humor that Sheriff Stilinski would make when she saw the four of them in their current state. They were living, and that was all that mattered.

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Sheriff Noah Stilinski was watching the world move in slow motion as he drifted out of his favorite memory of the kids. The station was buzzing, a familiar noise that only sounded like a whisper in the back of his mind as he sat at his desk. A homicide report was out in front of him. He knew he had to work up the courage to walk outside and confront the reality that was waiting, but for right now, he wanted to be oblivious. He could stay oblivious, if only for a few seconds. What he noticed in those seconds was that his hands were shaking. It'd been a while since that has happened on the job. Steady hands meant steady aim, and that was one of the first rules when going to the police academy, but right now, it would be a greater crime to not react to what he just found out.

The sheriff was brought out of his mind like an elastic band had snapped when his door opened. Deputy Parrish was waiting in the frame of it. Immediately, Sheriff Stilinski stood up and placed his hands at his sides so it wasn't obvious that he was shaking. He slid past Deputy Parrish and did a quick overview of his station. Most of his deputies were at their desks, but he noticed they would briefly look up every few seconds in the same direction he was looking at now. Three teenagers sat on the bench outside of his office, and oh, how he wished he didn't recognize the look in their eyes. His attention went past them to see another familiar face further away, sitting on the floor near the entrance.

Parrish came up behind him. "She won't move. It's like she's waiting for someone."

"Because she is," Sheriff Stilinski said.

All four of the teenagers scattered around his station looked up when they heard him speak, but each stared straight through him like he wasn't even there. Barely even a corporeal being. Sheriff Stilinski glanced between them, trying to figure out who he was going to have to speak to first. It wasn't like one option was better than the other. He knew no matter who he pulled in first, it would be just as heartbreaking as the next. Regardless of if he wanted all of it to go away, he couldn't ignore the death of a teenager in his town with no explanation.

Before he could decide on one of them, the blonde that was sitting near the entrance stood up and soundlessly walked over to him. Scott watched as she went by, his eyes focusing in and out without really noticing her. As she got closer, Sheriff Stilinski realized that there was blood on her grey t-shirt, dried into the fabric and making him wonder if the blood was her own or someone else's. Her blonde hair was matted with it, giving off a reflection of pink. A glance at the others led him to think it was probably a mixture of both her own and her friends'.

Sheriff Stilinski didn't say anything as she moved to walk into his room, just put a hand on her back in comfort and led her to the couch. She sat down in the familiar spot, barely recognizing it anymore. She wondered how many times she'd been in there to recount a person's death―how many friends have their own incident report.

"Sage, we have to ask you a few questions about tonight. Is that alright?" Deputy Parrish asked, deciding that he should be the one to do most of the talking. Sheriff Stilinski was more focused on making sure that she was okay.

Sage Connelly glanced up, and the look on her face sent a shiver down Parrish's spine. His mind went back to the girl he met a few weeks ago that introduced herself by telling him to run away. With that single look, he understood why. She was so far detached from herself that Parrish wondered if she could even feel anything anymore, or if the pain had turned into a numbness she'd since grown used to.

She sat up and cleared her throat. "What do you need to know?"

"Just your version of what happened―from start to finish."

FROM START.

It wasn't even a minute after they'd arrived at Oak Creek that Sage noticed a shift in the air, believing that the ground they were standing on was trying to take their oxygen away from them. To remind them of something detrimental. She knew what. Everyone did as they looked at each other before walking in. Innocents died in the places they were standing; supernaturals and humans were burned and forgotten within the cracks of the pavement that they were stepping on, and no one had remembered them for a long while.

Sage knew that when they stepped through the gate, they would have to separate and her side had been decided for a very long time. She'd always been on that side, and the gun in her hand was symbolism of it. Giving one last glance at Scott and Stiles, she broke away to walk into the courtyard of Oak Creek with Allison, Kira, and Isaac at her side. Their heads turned at the sound of footsteps arriving from in front of them. Sage's finger slowly pulled the safety off her gun when she saw Noshiko surrounded by the Oni, each of them armed with a sword that had haunted her nightmares for so long.

However, the woman stepped forward from their military formation when she saw her daughter. "Kira. Turn around and go home. Take your friends with you."

"I can't," Kira began, walking closer as Allison pulled an arrow from her quiver and put it up to her bow. "When I looked at the game, I realized who I was actually playing. You."

"Call them off," Allison ordered.

Noshiko's breath caught in her throat in humor, looking at the teenagers like they were fools. "You think you could take him alive? You think you could save him?"

Isaac and Sage caught one another's eyes and knew what the other was thinking, both taking a step forward so that all of their weight was on their starting foot. Unknowingly, they gravitated closer to Allison. They could tell what Kira didn't want to believe. This wasn't going to end without a fight.

"What if we can?" Kira asked, countering her mother's words.

"I tried something like that seventy years ago. Your friend is gone."

"The difference between us and you, Noshiko, is we don't accept death as a solution," Sage said, her words carrying the distance to reach the woman from across the courtyard. "Seventy years of suffering with your choice, and you still continue to try and enforce the wrong one."

Kira looked back at Sage before adding onto her statement. "If Stiles doesn't have to die, maybe Rhys didn't have to die either."

From behind Noshiko, the Oni prepared their blades. The world itself seemed to skip a beat as the woman stared her daughter in the eyes, and the three teenagers behind Kira saw no emotion within them. No fear, no regret, no love. There was only a preparation for battle, and that in itself made them wonder how far Noshiko was willing to go in this fight against her own daughter. "I see I'm no longer the fox now, Kira. You are...but the Nogitsune is still my demon to bury."

They understood too late what she meant. It was not them that the Oni needed to get through, but the Nogitsune itself. Just as soon as they were there, the Oni were gone. They were in the wrong place for a battle. Sage stood up, her eyes wild with worry as she looked at Allison. If the Oni were on the way to the Nogitsune, then they were on their way to Lydia, Stiles, and Scott.

Before they could even make a move towards the entrance that the others went in, Kira was speaking up again and attracting the attention of everyone else. "Mom?"

In the palm of Noshiko's hand was a firefly, growing dimmer by the second until it completely vanished in her hand altogether.

"What is that?" Isaac asked, his voice carrying through the silence to ask the question none of them wanted to know the answer to. "What does that mean?"

All heads turned when another voice answered, and Sage's form staggered as she came face-to-face with the very thing that took everything away from her. The Nogitsune still wore the face of Stiles, and he was standing only a few feet from them with the Oni and their swords drawn behind him. The constant terror that existed in her mind, every single cold sweat, was becoming stronger than a reality.

"It means there's been a change in ownership." The Nogitsune stared directly at her, and she could feel him fracturing every fear in her mind. "Now, they belong to me."

Like clockwork, all of them readied their weapons at the Oni. Allison and Sage drew closer to one another while Kira and Isaac waited patiently for the demons to make the first move. And they did. The figures came charging toward the teenagers, and within a few moments, everything and everyone became a blur to one another. Sage was firing her gun on one side while Allison sent arrows in the other direction, the two young women unknowingly finding themselves back to back as they tried to handle the attack from every angle.

It was only when Allison noticed that Isaac was struggling to pick himself up that she broke away from Sage, managing to stop the Oni's sword from coming down on Isaac with her bow and sending the weapon skidding in the direction of Sage in the process. The blonde glanced down at it, considering it for a split second, before she returned back to her gun. Allison reappeared seconds later, once again pressed to the back of Sage.

"You do not leave my side again!" Sage shouted to Allison, unable to turn to her as she went to fire another bullet that did nothing but fall to the ground after hitting the Oni. "You hear me? You do not leave my side!"

Allison huffed out, shaking her head as she fired another arrow. The two of them pushed further back, and her foot hit the weapon on the ground. "You know how to use a sword?"

"Think it works like a big knife?" she asked, another bullet gone. She realized she was running out just like Allison was with arrows, and the girls' only defense was eventually going to be the sword laying on the ground between them. "Stab and swing, right?"

Although they were trying to find humor in the situation, they knew they were losing. Sage could see that Kira was struggling with two Oni at once, and Isaac was taking the heart of the attacks because he had to get so close―nothing was stopping them. So, she did the first thing she could think of, and she quickly swept down to grab a hold of the sword that the Oni had lost earlier.

"How do we stop them!" Isaac shouted across the grounds, his question aimed towards Noshiko.

Noshiko's reply barely carried through all of the chaos. "You can't!"

Sage couldn't even find the time to think as she swung a sword in the air for the first time and felt the pull of it drag down when the blade connected with the Oni's. All she could hear was metal hiding metal, the growls of Isaac, and the faint sounds of Allison from close behind her. She turned when she heard the sounds of metal hitting skin, and she watched in horror as the Oni gathered around Isaac, one landing a blow to his abdomen. One by one, they started to slash at him until he dropped to his knees.

"Isaac!" she cried out, turning to look at Allison before they nodded at the same time.

Allison's arrows went in the direction of the Oni while Sage ran toward Isaac, the two girls trying to do anything possible to keep someone from dying. However, she was stopped just short of him when an arrow went past her, landing directly into the heart of the Oni's chest. Something else happened this time, though. Rather than it simply breaking from the touch of the figures, it stayed.

No one moved as they waited for the Oni to react, and it was when the sword fell from its hand and the hooded demon reached for the arrow that they finally felt a bit of possibility. A yellow light started to emit from the wound, growing in size until the Oni that had been standing there was nothing but a cloud of black smoke, shaking the ground that they stood on. Sage's heart stopped for a moment, letting out a small breath of relief.

Then, the breath was taken out from underneath her. Agony came out of nowhere and struck every nerve in her spine, shooting through her body. The blonde stumbled on her feet as she tried to find balance through the pain, glancing down at her abdomen as she held on tightly to it. Gripping her stomach, she realized that she had no wound―and that was when she understood. Turning on failing legs, Sage found out why it was not her who was bleeding. Allison was directly across from her, holding onto herself in the same place that Sage was, fear across her face as she looked at Sage. Like clockwork, mirror images fell to the ground at the same time, one to the pain and one to an awaiting death.

She wanted to scream, but nothing was coming out of her mouth as she watched Allison fall straight into the arms of Scott. She wanted to get up, but every muscle in her body was begging for her to just die right there in that moment. She wanted to wake up from the nightmare like before, but nothing was stopping and she was still forced to watch―this time was real. She wanted to do anything, but everything was failing her. And as she clawed at her throat, she pleading for it to work so that she could breathe even a bit of air. It was all rushing back to her, and she wanted none of it.

"Allison," Scott's voice broke through the choking sobs that she was trying to get out. It was Scott that found the words when no one else could, and it was Scott that had to stare into the eyes of his very first everything and watch as everything was taken away from her.

In her time of dying, she would never think of herself. "Did you find her? Is she okay? Is Lydia safe?"

"She's okay," he said, and as his heart was breaking, he grabbed a hold of Allison's blood-stained hand and tried to ignore how closely the color resembled the nail polish she had on. It was when nothing happened, and her hand remained cold to the touch, that he looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "I can't take your pain."

Class, this is our new student, Allison Argent.

Allison tightened her fingers around his hand. "That's because it doesn't hurt."

But it did. It hurt, and it hurt, and Scott wasn't sure if his body would be able to absorb all of the pain that was circulating through his body. "No."

He gave a pretty girl a pen.

"It's okay."

But it wasn't.

"No, Allison."

And he fell in love with her.

"It's okay," she repeated softly, nodding her head as she smiled up at Scott. The stars in his eyes that she had fallen so madly in love with were dim with tears, but she could still look at him and see all of the reasons why Scott McCall was her firsts. And it was a beautiful goodbye. "It's okay. It's perfect. I'm in the arms of my first love, the first person I've ever loved. The person I'll always love. I lo―I love you, Scott. Scott McCall."

And she loved him too.

"Allison, don't," Scott begged, but even as he willed her to stay alive, he could see that there was nothing that could be done. Perhaps that was the worst part. He was watching the inevitable in slow motion, and every second felt like a million and one―yet, he still needed more time with her. "Allison, don't. Please."

Suddenly, Allison's eyes widened, and she looked at Scott with a different kind of determination. "You have to tell my dad. You have to tell my dad―tell him..."

Before she had even started, she was already gone. It was the world that watched down on that very moment and caved in at the loss of Allison Argent. It was Scott McCall who pulled the brunette into his arms and wished he could breathe life back into her. It was Isaac Lahey who curled into himself when the girl he was falling for no longer existed. It was Sage Connelly, who had been severed in two by the loss of her own and felt nothing but an absence in her best friend's wake. It was Chris Argent whose Earth shattered under his feet and swallowed him whole along with it when he walked through those gates. A dent had been formed, tattered and beaten in at the death of an eighteen year old.

Allison Argent's hand fell to the ground, and the universe felt tremors along with it.

And she took so much of their hearts with her when she died.

TO FINISH.

When Sage blinked again, she was standing in an elevator watching as the numbers went one after another. She didn't even remember how she ended up there, only hazy seconds of getting into Argent's car and driving away from the police station. As the red numbers got blurrier, they finally stopped and a hand was gently pushing on the small of her back so she could exit the elevator. Glancing over, she realized that it was Argent once again. He gave her a gentle smile and moved around her so that he could lead the way to the door of their apartment. She could feel a weight in her hand, tight and compressing all of her fingers, and it was only when she looked down that she realized it was Isaac's hand. He was holding onto her for dear life. Maybe it was the other way around.

Chris closed the door behind them after they entered the apartment, and almost immediately, Isaac's hand went so loose that the only thing linking them together was Sage. She watched with heavy set eyes as he turned to look back at the father of Allison Argent, who walked forward so that his back was turned to the two of them. He had been stone cold the entire time, never once straying away from what needed to be done. Now, the damage had finally begun to settle in, and Chris Argent didn't know if he could take the watching eyes of them.

"I appreciate the concern, but I'll be alright," Argent said, his voice trembling underneath the words as he turned around, heading towards the door in an attempt to lead them out. "I've dealt with this before. I have a capacity...and an ability to compartmentalize my emotions."

Isaac slipped from her fingers all together, and she watched blindly as his eyes filled up with tears. "I don't."

She turned away when they embraced in a hug, looking ahead at the hallway with the white door a million miles away. Her hands went around her throat, rubbing it gently as she allowed her feet to carry her to the room that was slowly killing her from the inside out. The picture frames hanging up on the way screamed out for help―screamed for two people that were no longer there, for the last person to find his family again, and she rubbed even harsher at her neck when she got to the cracked, white door.

She had been doing so good. Not a single tear had fallen from her eyes since it happened, but she knew why. Of course, she knew why. Crying would mean grieving, and she was not ready to grieve when she had yet to accept the reality of things. It was the first stage of grief, after all, and Sage knew that it would be a very long time before she got to the end. But she could deny it all she wanted, and it still would not change anything. The cracked, white door would always stay cracked because the person who was supposed to open it no longer could.

So, she did it herself. A hand went out to push the door the rest of the way, and there was the room that sucked all of the marrow out of her soul―and everything hit her at once. The sinking feeling that had been resting in her stomach finally dropped, and she knew that there was absolutely no way she would be able to step any further. Not when she could hear the sounds of sobbing behind her shoulder and not when she could very clearly see a picture of two people coated in mud resting on her dresser.

Taking a few steps back, Sage found comfort in the the solid wall behind her, sliding down until the weight was off her feet. She could very clearly see the room from the corner of her eye, and she could see Isaac and Chris walking towards her from the other, but she payed no attention to any of that as she kept her attention on the wall in front of her. They got closer to her, but while Isaac was brave enough to step foot into that room, Chris took a seat next to her.

"I feel like I can't breathe," she said, grabbing at her throat again to rub at it.

His hand reached up to take hers away from her before she hurt herself, but rather than letting go soon after, he let their intertwined hands rest in between them on the floor. "Kira told me what happened."

Sage's body stiffened in response, her hands tightening as a defense mechanism. "Told you what?"

"Was she in pain, Sage?"

Had she been in pain? Sage couldn't even remember.

"No," Sage said, blinking as she turned to look at the father of a dead daughter. "It wasn't her pain I felt."

Chris swallowed hard, nodding a few times as he let the information process. She watched him, knowing that he was struggling to find something else to say when all of the words had since disappeared a while ago. She didn't know what to say either―comforting people when they have experienced death was difficult, and there was truly nothing in the world that could be said to take away how it feels. Silence offered more than anything else ever would.

He looked over at Sage, and although neither one of them said it, they needed each other. They could exude an infinite amount of compartmentalization, but that didn't mean they weren't dying on the inside. Chris had no one left, nothing but ghosts and shadows living inside of his mind. Sage knew about that all too well. Had Derek not been there for her when she lost everything, she would have found a shell in herself. Chris would not become that person either.

"I didn't think that I'd ever feel someone die again," Sage admitted, frowning as she just started speaking. "I mean, I knew I would lose more people. Death follows me around like I'm a beacon for it, but I didn't think I would ever feel that again...and I think I shut myself out from so many people because I didn't want them becoming another possibility. It's not just trust issues. It's that I physically couldn't go through that kind of trauma. Not again. Jackson, Boyd, Erica―when you lose someone in your pack, it's like taking that last bit of air. You inhale, and you hold it. And you keep holding it until you feel like you could explode. When someone dies, I can't exhale. That pain just collects, and it suffocates. When I could no longer feel anyone after he took that away, I hated it. Every second of it. I couldn't be there with them to get through that pain."

Sage stopped, having heard her voice crack. The hand holding hers tightened, and she knew that it wouldn't be long before the burning in her retinas caught up to the swelling of her throat. "And I got all of that back with her, and it didn't just feel like I was holding my breath. It felt like someone had taken my lungs and ripped them out of my body. I couldn't scream. I couldn't move. I just felt so numb and so cold...and then I felt everything again, and I can't stop feeling everything, and I just want it to stop."

So she broke. Chris Argent held tightly onto the only lifeline he had left like she was an anchor to his dying heart, and Sage gave into everything she had been holding onto since the moment she felt that blade go through Allison Argent's body and tried to pretend she wouldn't wish every day it had been her instead.

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I didn't do Allison's death nearly as much justice as I wish I could have. I wrote the Oak Creek fighting scene so long ago, and I just filled in everything else (including her death) tonight. I'm back, guys, and I'm determined to finish up this story for you.