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TWENTY EIGHT;

CRITICAL MEASURES

"How are they?"

Isaac had gotten to the loft, leaning on one of the beams as he stared at the blonde and the brunette lying on Derek's bed, looking as if they were barely breathing. Sage had gone unconscious after they managed to get them out of the ambulance and has stayed that way since, completely out cold.

"Cora's coming in and out," Derek muttered, his eyes never moving from the two girls. "Sage hasn't moved in the past two hours but her heart rate is steady. She's alive, she's just not awake."

Isaac's eyes flickered over to the blonde. "They're dying, aren't they?"

"I don't know," Derek answered, his hands falling up to his mouth.

"So, what are you going to do?"

Derek, once again, replied with, "I don't know."

He would find something, some way to get them better without Jennifer's help. He had to find a way because he wasn't going to lose the only family he had left, the two teenagers in front of him being the only thing left giving him the will to survive. If he lost them, even one of them, he's not sure that he would be able to fight any longer.

As if the blonde had known they were talking about them, her eyes shot open and she was hanging off the side of Derek's bed a second later, convulsing the black blood that Jennifer had created. Both boys had inched forward, Derek having gotten there faster to hold the girl as she vomited the concoction of mistletoe and blood.

When the girl had gotten what was in her system out, her whole body began to rapidly shake. Sage glanced up at Isaac and Derek, the pressure in her head from throwing up making tears form in her eyes, the black blood coating her lips.

"It hurts," she blurted out, blinking away her wet eyelashes.

Derek frowned, his hands immediately falling to her arms so that he could take the pain she was experiencing. He had already done the same to Cora half an hour ago, knowing that he was exerting himself way too much, but he couldn't just let them sit there in agony.

Sage seemed to notice the contort of pain on his face, whipping her arms out his grasp as she shook her head. "Don't. Don't take it away."

"Sage—" Derek went to deny, trying to get her to, for once in her life, think about herself and not other people.

The blonde shook her head again, choking out, "No, no. Cora needs it more than I do."

"Stop being so honorable, princess," Peter snapped from the top of the stairs, making the blonde's head turn to see that he was trying to stay in the dark as much as possible while still watching over the two younger girls. "You're just like your mother."

Sage didn't say anything to him, blatantly ignoring the man's jab about her mom as she moved back onto the bed, curling herself up. She didn't want to go back to sleep, not when she was afraid that she would slip back out again and not wake up. The last thing she remembered was Isaac and Peter trying to get her to stay awake, only after she had made the attempt to stop—

"Stiles," Sage broke out, her eyes lifting to the other two. "Where's Stiles? What happened?"

Derek didn't meet her stare. "Sage, you need rest."

"No, I need someone to tell me what's going on," Sage hissed, flickering her attention away from her best friend and over to Isaac, who she knew would tell her. "Isaac, what happened?"

The teenage boy frowned, stepping back a bit. He knew that he needed to tell Sage, knew that she deserved to know what happened to Melissa. That, now, Jennifer Blake had her second sacrifice ready to be slaughtered. That, now, there was just one more guardian that needs to be found before three people lost their parents.

"She took Melissa," Isaac answered, immediately getting a scold from Derek.

Sage narrowed her eyes on Isaac, trying to tell if he was lying to her not. She thought Melissa was okay, that Scott was going to get her. She thought that the woman was okay, and that nothing was going to happen to her because of Scott's true nature of an alpha. She didn't even begin to question whether or not the mother had been set up into a trap by Jennifer Blake, always having been the second sacrifice.

Sage swallowed hard, ignoring the vile taste in her mouth. "And Scott?"

"That's enough," Derek interrupted, moving to get Sage back to laying down.

The blonde, however, refused to do anything even in her state. "What's wrong with Scott? Tell me or I swear to god, I will never forgive you."

"He went with Deucalion," Isaac muttered, hands falling deep into his pockets as he kept his eyes on the blonde. "We think he offered Scott a deal to help find his mother if he went with him."

Sage stared at the two boys for a few seconds, wondering if they were actually telling her the truth. Then, without warning, she hastily got up off of the bed, having to use Derek's shoulder for support along with the beams in order to put on her jacket. The older man wasn't going to just let her get up without reason, though, grabbing a hold of her arm to stop her.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Derek questioned, looking at her with calculating eyes.

Sage gave him a crazed stare. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Sage, you can barely walk, much less put yourself in the middle of all this," Derek hissed, his grip on the girl never loosening or tightening but making sure that she stayed where she was so he could knock some sense into her head.

"Derek, you know what he did to me," Sage snapped, narrowing her eyes at the man. "He made me watch as the twins killed their pack. What makes you think he isn't going to make Scott watch as the alpha pack kills all of us? Or, that he won't manipulate Scott into killing us himself?"

Isaac was the one confused now. "Wait, what?"

Sage paused for a second, turning her eyes to the large boy when she realized she had accidentally just let it slip about her past; but, at this point, she didn't even care. The only thing that mattered was finding Scott and Stiles and helping them with whatever the hell she could do before she died on them.

"I'll explain it in the car," Sage answered, turning to give Isaac a nod.

Derek still held on to her. "You can't just leave, Sage."

"Why not?" Sage asked, staring at him with a weak posture. "While Scott and Stiles are out there trying to help people from being killed, you were rolling around in the sheets with the actual killer. Do you get how many people she has killed, Derek? Erica and Boyd are dead, Cora and I are dying, and you are doing nothing."

Isaac, who had been silent, found himself speaking up with his own curiosity. "Why did you do it to us, Derek? Is it all about the power? Were you bored? Were you lonely?"

Sage didn't move away from him, waiting for an answer just like Isaac. She knew that she was being harsh, and she knew that Derek was just doing this for Cora, but that didn't ignore the fact that there was still so much going on around them that they couldn't just shut out. If Sage had a choice in all of this, she would be laying back in bed right now with Cora, making sure that the brunette stayed alive.

But, there is more going on, and she couldn't stop just because her life was running on a time limit.

"Maybe," Derek admitted, glancing in between the two.

That had been all the two needed to hear, Isaac carefully moving over to Sage's side to help her out of the place. She looked like she had already died, and could barely walk, but she refused to let herself drown in the haunting possibilities of more people she loved leaving.

Then, Derek broke out, "I promised Cora I wouldn't leave. I'll help the others when I figure out a way to help the two of you."

Sage's body tensed in Isaac's secure hold, feeling the angry bubble over because Derek thought that she didn't want to be with Cora right now. He thought that she was choosing her friends over her family, but in reality, she was trying to do both. She was trying to save Cora, but she couldn't do that if she was laying in bed, dying herself.

"And how are you going to do that?" Sage asked, whipping her head around to face the man that had his back turned to her. "Do you think you're going to find the answers staring at the ground, or listening to Peter rave on about things that will probably kill you both? Derek, there's no time to wallow in pity about the fact you fell for another psychotic person!"

She felt her vision go blurry for a few seconds after she finished, blinking to try and ease how much force she had just put into yelling at the man. But, she needed him to know that he was doing nothing to help Cora. All he was doing was sitting there, waiting for her to die.

When she realized he wasn't going to answer her, she shook her head and nodded towards Isaac.

"Come on. The full moon's coming and the Sheriff and Melissa will be dead by then. We need to, at least, try to help them."

Isaac nodded and the two got up the stairs, the teenage boy turning around just before he completely left, boring a dark hole into his alpha's head. "You can sit here and perfect the art of doing nothing."

Sage and Isaac left after that, nothing bothering to turn around as they sought to try and help their friends. Both were already well aware of what it felt like to lose a parent, and they refused to let the people they cared about experience the same agony that they went through.

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"Aiden."

"Yes, Isaac."

"You dated one of the wolves that nearly killed me."

"Technically, I dated him before he tried to kill you, but yes."

Isaac gaped over at her. "You... and Aiden?"

Sage had been trying to explain to her former roommate what went down with herself and the alpha twin two years ago, and to say it was confusion the boy would be taking the whole thing extremely lightly. She figured that now was the only time she would have a chance to tell her friends everything, and although it might be one at a time, she was still doing it.

"Yes, me and Aiden," Sage answered, wincing when she felt another wave of nausea run through her body as Isaac accelerated the Camaro's gas; the only good thing was the fact that the conversation was taking her mind off her slow-impending doom.

Isaac's grip on the steering wheel tightened. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Derek was the only one who knew," Sage explained, picking at her nail polish. "And the two of us swore to each other that we wouldn't bring it up after we came back to town. It wasn't ever an issue until they came to Beacon."

"You knew I hated them and you didn't bother telling me."

"Isaac, it wasn't like I could randomly just come out and say, "Oh, hey. By the way, I used to date the guy that nearly murdered you." You would have killed me the second that I spoke," Sage informed, blinking a few times as she wiped her lips to try and get rid of the black stain.

She originally assumed that Isaac would be the hardest one to tell, all of her other friends more capable of forgiveness considering their issues with the twins didn't revolve around near death. Isaac, however, had nearly been killed by the two at the start of the year; the woman that saved him actually did die.

Isaac turned to look at her when they hit a red light. "They killed Boyd."

"I know," Sage said, glancing at him as well with a dark stare. "It's not the first time I've seen them kill someone."

"Just... why?"

Isaac was trying hard to understand without blowing up at the girl, honestly concerned that if he raised his voice she was go into cardiac arrest and die right on the spot. The last thing he needed was the fueled anger towards the twins retaliating and doing more damage to Sage than them.

Sage frowned, her head falling on the cool window. "We aren't born, monsters. We become them."

She knew that she had said the same thing to Cora when she had revealed the truth to the youngest Hale, realizing that, after all this time, she was still protecting the Aiden that she fell in love with. Never would she protect the one now, but she would hold on to the boy that ran into her at the gas station, the boy that was her first time, and the boy that was her first love.

She would protect that Aiden.

"Do you still love him?"

Sage figured that if anyone was going to ask her, it would be Isaac, only for the very reason that the boy didn't hold back when it came to telling her the truth. He had always been that way, ever since he moved in this summer and they started to become friends. The brutality in his words was subsided by the honesty, and she was thankful to have someone like him in her life.

She picked at her ring. "Yes."

Isaac turned to look at her, not surprised in the slightest. "Are you still in love with him?"

"No," Sage dismissed, shaking her head once. "I stopped falling for him a long time ago."

Isaac pursed his lips. "Does Stiles know?"

"I told him last night in the ambulance."

"And?" the boy asked.

"And he didn't do anything. He didn't yell at me, he didn't say he hated me, he didn't make an expression, he didn't do anything besides stare at me. I think he knew, somehow. Cora and Jennifer both nearly revealed it when he was in the room."

Isaac went to add. "Not to mention the way the twins act around you."

Sage's head turned, eyebrows furred in confusion. She didn't know that there was a way they acted around her, figuring that they always had their murderer facade up in order for everyone to know that they weren't to be messed with.

"What do you mean, the way they act around me?"

"I don't know," Isaac shrugged, turning down another street on his way to Argent's apartment. "I think all of us have noticed it. Whenever they see you, both of them, it's like they stop and assess you. They literally look to make sure you're in one piece."

"They obviously didn't care much last night when they were tearing Scott apart," Sage muttered, remembering back to the pain that reiterated from her friend's body to her own. "Besides, it's just because Deucalion made them both go after targets. Aiden had me, and when I refused to acknowledge his existence, he went on to Lydia."

Isaac frowned, figuring he wouldn't start an argument with the girl's condition. "I don't know, Sage. I just think there's more to it than Deucalion's demands."

Sage didn't answer, figuring that it was best to end the conversation there now that they were at the complex that Allison and her father lived in. Isaac got out first, making sure to hand Sage her keys just before he walked over to her side. She would have called him a gentleman had the situation not been so severe that she couldn't walk without support.

Sage's arm went around the boy's waist, flinching when the abrupt movement caused the world to whirl a bit. He stopped when he realized her grip got tighter into his side, glancing down at her for a second. She just shook her head, the only way of telling him that she was fine to keep going without actually having to open her mouth.

When they were in the elevator, Sage was able to lean on the wall, putting her head in between her knees to catch her breath. She was slowly beginning to realize she wasn't going to last long doing physical movement, and knew that she needed to figure out another way to save Cora and her friends; something that didn't involve the possibility of dying in the middle of a conversation.

Isaac stared at the blonde wearily, a hand falling on her back. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Sage hissed out through her teeth, although she clearly wasn't.

Isaac heard the dinging of the elevator, noticing that they had finally made it to Allison's place. Sage lifted up her head when she noticed it as well, moving to walk forward only to realize that she couldn't, and turned to Isaac.

The boy quickly helped her, his arm losing feeling as he moved to get her to where the voices were coming from. With his hearing, he could tell that they were coming up with a plan of action, something useful rather than just acting like Derek and doing nothing but sit and wait for Cora to die.

By the time Isaac and Sage came crashing into the door frame, everyone was already looking up at them in surprise.

The werewolf frowned. "I can't shoot a gun, or use a cross bow, but... well, I'm getting pretty good with these.

His free hand outstretched, showing the claws that Derek had granted to him last year, figuring that it was the only thing he could offer to the group of hunters, and a Stiles. Sage might be on her way of being a weaponry master, but she definitely didn't have the ability nor the coordination needed to shoot a gun or an arrow.

Isaac entered the room, supporting Sage up until she went crashing onto one of the chairs Argent kept in his study, taking a deep breath before directing her eyes over to Argent. The man was staring at her with concern in his eyes, no doubt having seen all of the damage done to her body in the past twelve hours.

She hadn't had a chance to look in the mirror, but she knew that there had to be a bruise where Jennifer tried to strangle her. She was still breaking a sweat, her hair pulled messily back into a ponytail to try and keep it out of her face.

Overall, she just looked like shit.

"Hey," Allison muttered softly, her hand moving to grab a hold of Sage's and giving it a tight squeeze. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Sage's eyes flickered over to Stiles before shaking her head. "Melissa and Scott are both gone, and I'm not going to just sit in a bed waiting to die. I can't do much, I can barely walk, but I'm here."

Argent seemed to contemplate actually allowing the girl do anything but sleep, knowing that she couldn't just continue roaming around Beacon Hills with her life on the line. Despite the fact that the man and the teenage girl started off on rough terms, his sister burning her family, Sage has grown to become a reminder of Allison to him— eager and stubborn, but willing to do anything to protect the people she loved.

"We need a plan," Argent began, just before turning to look at his daughter.

Allison pursed her lips, glancing in between Isaac and Sage before turning to raise her eyebrows at Stiles. "Do you think you could stop by Lydia's and tell her what's going on?"

Stiles nodded, agreeing with the plan as he looked over at the blonde next to him for a split second. She looked worse than she did last night in the ambulance, and after the Argent's told him that she was unconscious the last time they saw her, he nearly had a nervous break down wondering whether or not she was ever going to wake up.

He still didn't know what to say to her, he didn't know how he felt about the situation; the whole thing was difficult for a normal person to understand, how the girlfriend he said was a mistake loving ended up being in a relationship with one of the many people trying to kill him and his friends.

"Isaac, you and Allison come with me to the bank to see if that's where Jennifer is," Argent explained, pointing towards the place on the map of Beacon. "It was only place she didn't successfully complete a sacrifice; and, Sage, can you go to Deaton to see if he can find out how to get you and Derek's sister better?"

Sage frowned, realizing that they had given her a job that didn't require much activity. Still, she would do it because she hadn't even began to consider Deaton a possibility. The man was a literal druid himself, something that he failed to mention he had in common with her, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would know how to save herself and Cora.

She hoped.

"Alright," Sage answered, nodding once. "But I'm going to need a ride."

Stiles' jaw tightened when everyone turned to look at him. "I'll drop you off on my way to Lydia's."

Sage nodded, and everyone broke from the conversation, moving to get to their separate points. The blonde moved to get up, pushing hard on the chair. When she had finally stood, a hand gripping Argent's desk hard, she wasn't surprised when a gun had been put in her direction. The one Argent gave her before was still at the loft, and she knew that she couldn't go back there and see Derek and Cora.

If it came down to the point of saying goodbye, Sage wouldn't be able to say it to him.

"Sage," Argent muttered, his attention falling on her as the other three teenagers waited by the doorframe. "I need you to listen to me very carefully."

The blonde glanced up, somewhat confused. "What?"

"Something is going to happen tonight, and you need to make sure your friends don't do anything stupid," Argent answered, his eyes flickering back to his daughter and Stiles before returning to her. "Okay?"

"What do you mean, "something is going to happen tonight,"?"

"I mean, you need to be prepared," Argent reiterated, just before he moved away from her after sending her a small nod.

The blonde frowned, wondering what his plan was. He only moved out from behind the desk, going to help Sage get to Stiles so that he could take her to Deaton. She hadn't really expected for the older man to be so open with her, of all people, much less care about her life.

Stiles' hand moved around her waist, the two going back to the same position they had been in all last night. At this point, the idea of the two of them being anywhere without eachother was completely insane, but absolutely necessarily. Stiles needed time to worry about his father, forget about the fact that his girlfriend lied to him, and inform Lydia of everything she had missed.

Sage just needed to figure out a way to save Cora and herself.

Turning to the others, she sent a weak smile their way. "Be careful."

They nodded, and she was turning out with Stiles to get his jeep, figuring that she could leave her car at their apartment until everything settled over. If not, then she guessed Derek would be getting his Camaro back after all.

"I don't assume Derek just let you get up and walk out?" Stiles asked as they got into the elevator.

Sage, despite the situation she was in, let out an exhausted laugh. "Of course not, Stilinski."

Now, she just needed to assure herself that walking out was the right idea.

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ne

just a forewarning, there might be a couple more updates tonight just for the very reason that im impatient and hate having pre-written chapters. it literally annoys me so much and i dont know why. but, anyways, school starts back up on monday and i have gym. gYM. i can barely walk to my fridge without wanting to shoot myself in the face.

but, anyways, after this chapter everything sort of begins to unravel. im excited because the next chapter has a very important part and its just critical to the rest of the story; not to mention, the whole sacrificing thing that goes on at the end of episode eleven.

yAs. okay, i love you guys; make sure to comment and let me know what you think is going to happen to sage at deaton's and if you think he actually has a way of helping her since we all know derek saves cora by taking her pain and shit. what does u think will happen. :-)