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TWENTY FOUR;

NECESSARY CONSUMPTION OF EVIL

"Scott and Derek are werewolves."

"Yes."

"And Kate was a werewolf."

"Hunter. The purple is hunter."

"And a bitch."

Sage had been the one to add the ending comment, interrupting the slow process of explaining to Sheriff Stilinski what the fuck was happening in his town. Stiles was patient, kind of, while Sage sat down next to her boyfriend with her head in her hands, refraining from flipping the whole chess board over. She wasn't as patient as Stiles. Everyone glanced over at Sage, who only feigned a look of innocence as she rubbed her face, figuring she might as well try again. "Kate was a hunter, along with Allison and her father."

"Great," Sheriff muttered, just before moving to stare in between Stiles and Sage. "And, Sage, you're a Darach?"

Sage flinched at the accusation, knowing that it was just Sheriff confusing things. Still, she couldn't help but feel slightly worse about the idea of that; she'd been down that road before and it's not a pretty one. In fact, it's a road with bus flares and a shitty motel where she almost burned herself and her best friends alive. Again, not a road she wanted to go down.

"Uh, not exactly," Sage disagreed. "I'm a druid, hypothetically speaking."

Sheriff gaped at her. "Then my friend, Deaton, the veterinarian, is the Kanima."

"What?" Stiles asked, his eyebrows raised. "No. No, he's a druid like Sage. We think."

"So, who's the Kanima?"

Sage huffed out, blowing a bit of her bangs back. "Jackson."

"No, Jackson's a werewolf," Sheriff argued, pointing towards the chess piece that Sage had messily scribbled Jackson's name on, adamant on his belief that Jackson was a supernatural creature of the night.

"Jackson was a Kanima first," Sage started.

Stiles found himself finishing her sentence. "Then, Peter and Derek killed him and he came back to life as a werewolf."

"Now, he's in London," she chimed, pursing her lips as she realized how lunacy herself and the teenage boy beside her were beginning to sound. Cora wouldn't even intrude on their shitty explanation, too afraid to open her mouth.

Sheriff frowned deeply. "If Sage isn't the Darach, then who is?"

"We don't know yet," Sage replied, other rather grumbled, out.

"But it was killed by werewolves."

Stiles huffed out. "Slashed apart and left for dead."

"We think," Sage added, realizing that there had been one too many of those in this conversation so far. She had absolutely no idea if Sheriff even believed a single word coming out of her and Stiles' mouths, knowing perfectly well that if two people came up to her and interrupted her oblivion, she would be more lost than Alice in Wonderland. At this point, if she were using terms like that, Stiles was the Mad Hatter and she was just mad.

The Sheriff contemplated the knew information, trying to take in the fact that his son's girlfriend was a druid, his son's best friend was a werewolf, his son's former enemy is now a werewolf but a former kanima, and overall, the growing fact that all of this shit actually exists in his town. He just couldn't.

"Why was Jackson the Kanima?" Sheriff suddenly asked, glancing up at his two confidants on Supernatural 101.

Sage picked at her black nail polish, remembering back to Derek's description of why Jackson became the Kanima. "Sometimes the shape you take reflects the person you are."

"And what shape would an increasingly confused and angrier by the second father take?" Sheriff asked, his face slowly beginning to contort into one of growing fury that his son had wasted his time on nonsense when he could be trying to catch the killer in town.

Stiles gaped at his father. "Uh, that would be more of an expression... but the one you're currently wearing."

"Yeah."

Sheriff Stilinski got up from his chair, making an attempt to leave the room. The two teenagers that had been trying desperately for the past thirty minutes to explain everything weren't going to let the man go without a fight, and both jumped quickly out of their seats to try and stop him.

Stiles moved to jump in front of his dad. "Dad. Dad. Would you— I can prove it, okay? Cora is one of them. She's a werewo—"

"Stiles," Sheriff began, only to continue when his son kept talking. "Stiles. That's enough."

"Dad, can you please just hold on?" Stiles begged. When his father paused at the door, Stiles turned to Cora and nodded once, signaling that he needed for her to transition into a wolf. "Are you ready?"

Cora sighed once before agreeing, standing up next to Sage so that she could do what Stiles needed her to. However, the plan had gone horribly wrong when the brunette abruptly fell, landing at Sage's feet just as the blonde's eyes widened, barely processing what had happened before she was on the ground and inspecting Cora's head.

Sheriff had been on the ground just as quickly as Sage, all while Stiles stood there shell shocked, not sure what he could do. Sage's panic began to set in when she realized that Cora's head was bleeding again, tears beginning to form in her eyes when she came to the understanding that the youngest Hale was not healing.

Whatever that meant, wasn't good.

Glancing up from Cora for a split second, Sage spluttered out the words "Call an ambulance," to Stiles, something that she has never had to say for a Hale in her life; and, that thought alone completely terrified her to death.

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Sage's knee refused to stop shaking.

She hadn't felt like this since she was laying in a hospital bed next to Lydia Martin, waiting as the girl slowly deteriorated from the werewolf bite Peter had given her. She hadn't felt that crushing fear of someone she loved being injured in a while, not someone that meant so much to her that it was like losing a limb.

There was something wrong with Cora, something that defied even the supernaturals' ability to heal. Something was wrong with Cora and no one knew how in the hell they were going to fix her, and Sage couldn't do it. She couldn't go through another person dying in her life, not when she had just lost Boyd a week ago. She couldn't come face-to-face with death again, growing tired of welcoming her old friend.

So, for now, Sage's knee would continue to refuse to stop shaking.

Stiles was in front of her, less panicked and more calm than she was. Cora had been whisked away after Sheriff ordered it, something that Sage figured came in handy. The only issue right now was that the phone call Stiles was on involved the real world, the world outside of someone Sage loved refusing to heal.

The world she knew she had to get back to.

"Stiles?" Sage asked, concern lacing in his name when she realized his eyes had started to widen through the call, something that he only did when there was a revelation on the other end. "Stiles, what's going on?"

He pulled his phone from his ear, staring down at her. "We were wrong. It wasn't guardians that the Darach was after, it was philosophers. Tara used to be a teacher, Mister Westover was just found by Allison and Isaac. Another teacher is going to die tonight if we don't warn them."

Sage's brows furred just before her whole face fell, finally catching on to what had changed Stiles' personality so abruptly. "They're all at the recital tonight."

"I have to go find my dad," Stiles muttered, just before he looked at her. "I'll come back after I find him, okay? Stay here and see if they have any news about Cora."

Sage nodded, watching as he struggled to move past a few doctors on his search for his father. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know if she should be sitting in a waiting room just expecting for an answer to come from one of the nurses telling her that Cora was perfectly fine and could go home.

She didn't know why she was expecting it when nothing ever seemed to go right in her life.

Sage's eyes wandered around the waiting room hospital, knee still beating hard against the tile floor. The second that her green orbs caught sight of a plaque, though, the thumping very quickly ceased as her father's name practically glared at her in the face. Even with how many frequent visits she made to the hospital, she never once noticed it until now.

She wasn't surprised to see that he had gotten an award of some sort for being such an outstanding doctor; she would always rave to her friends when she was younger about how her dad was her hero and he was the one who saved lives for a living. In her mind, he was always better than Superman or Spiderman.

Hal Connelly was a good man, he always had been. He grew up in Beacon Hills his whole life with a single mother and an absent father. Hal became best friends with Bobby Finstock somewhere along the way and the two began to feud over the heart of Mallory Wate, only for Hal to win and get the girl. He never stole her away though, even apologized to his best friend for falling in love with the same girl.

He apologized for loving her.

Sage hadn't realized why he would ever apologize for loving her, but now she did. Granted, she wished she didn't. She wished she didn't know what it felt like to be sorry that you fell in love with someone. That pain and suffering that builds up in a person's heart never leaves, not even when the object of their affection loves them back.

Because, in the end, love is the cruelest torture a man can find.

"Dad, you saw something that you can't explain."

Sage's eyes drifted from her father's name over to the sound of Stiles' voice, not surprised when she saw that he was trailing behind the sheriff all while trying to get his father to stop and actually pay attention to what he was trying to say.

Sheriff, though, continued to refuse believing in the truth. "Stiles, I have seen a lot of things I can't explain in this town. That doesn't make them supernatural and it doesn't make them real. They just found another body. That's real and that's the lead I'm following."

"Dad, another teacher is going to die if you don't start listening to me," Stiles rushed out, trying so desperately for his dad to understand where he was coming from and that he just wanted to save someone before it was too late.

Sheriff Stilinski's temper had hit it's peak, and he whirled around to face his son. "I am listening! I have been listening!"

Every thing seemed to freeze in the hospital, apart from Sage's heart rate. She found herself slowly raising from the chair she was in without even realizing, hands expectantly on the sides of it, preparing herself for when Stiles would need her. The father and son very rarely fought, something that Sage had only seen once ever in her life, and something that hurt every time to witness.

"You just don't believe," Stiles realized, his voice falling flat as he stared, hurt, at the man who raised him. Sheriff didn't know what to say, his mouth opening but falling flat before he just opted on turning around and walking away all together. "Mom would have believed me."

Agony was all she felt, agony for Stiles and agony for his father.

She watched Sheriff Stilinski pause at the mention of his late wife, something that was never brought up in the two-person family. Sage couldn't help but practically hear the man's heart ripping out of his chest, and she knew her own was shattering as well.

It didn't amount to the look on Stiles' face when he turned around to face her though, tears stinging in his eyes as he send her a look. Sage hated it; she hated everything that made life unfair and brought pain to the people she loved. She hated the idea that no one could ever just be okay.

She hated that the happiest and brightest of souls are always the most pained hearts.

So she grabbed a hold of Stiles, throwing away the spats and the words thrown at each other. She just grabbed the boy that she fell in love with and she wrapped her arms around him, hoping that he would at least know that she was there. She was dying, and she was slowly losing her way, but she was there.

His arms slowly encased her, hands tangling into her blonde hair as he tightly squeezed a hold of her to take away the tears building up in her eyes. There was nothing that could be said, but the idea that the two were there for each other was enough for them.

It always had been.

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Sage and Stiles pulled up to the high school, a sudden sense of dread washing over both of them the second that they parked behind Argent's car. There was just a sense of dread when they showed up in general, Sage's hand tightening on the seat belt of Stiles car. She knew that tonight was going to be more than just a recital, it was the beginning of a war.

"Stiles, we need to split up," Sage said, turning to look over at him before she moved from the car. "Okay? You go to the recital and try to find Scott, I'll check the hallways. If any of the teachers are in their classrooms, I'll tell them to leave."

Stiles looked at her like she was insane. "Are you kidding me? I'm not going to let you walk around the hallways alone when there is a psychotic, sacrifice-impending druid out to kill you, Sage."

She flinched, trying not to remind herself of the fact that mistletoe was still inside of her and weakening her every single second of every day. She would rather focus on trying to save a teacher's life rather than her own, knowing that it could wait for another day. Right now, she just needed to know that she did everything possible to save who she could this time.

She couldn't let another person die on her watch.

"Stiles, do you trust me?"

Stiles gaped at her. "Not when you're on a suicidal mission."

"Stiles," Sage pleaded, wanting him to answer her question so that she could assure herself that things would be okay; she knew that splitting up with him was going to be the roughest plan, but it was necessary.

"Yes," Stiles admitted. "I trust you with my life."

Sage nodded once, giving him a half smile. "Then, trust me now."

He slowly began to nod as well, his hesitancy showing by how slow his head bobbed. Sage bit down on her lip, trying to control her nerves before she moved to open the car door. Just before she had pulled it open, something was roughly grabbing a hold of her face and tugging her back.

Sage felt Stiles' lips on hers a second later, plenty aware of what was going on without even having to open her eyes. He kissed her, but it was different than when he had mistakenly done so during chemistry. This time, he knew what he was doing and knew about what the consequences for his actions could be.

The blonde hadn't had a chance to react before his lips were off of hers, and he was sending her a half-hearted smile that clearly showed all of his emotions in one single expression. "That was your insurance policy to come back to me, Connelly."

"I always do, don't I?"

Sage left him sitting in the car after that, quick to pick up the pace of her step once her feet hit the gravel ground. She knew that it was a risk to go into the hallway alone, knew even more than this was the part of herself people hated. Derek always told her that her death would be to save another's life, and she couldn't help but feel as though that wasn't a death, but a victory. When she were to die, a hero is how she would hope to go out.

Not in vain, but in victory.

Sage got into the hallways, realizing that the last time she had actually been in the place so late was when Jackson had been trying to murder them. An even more unnerving thought was knowing that before that, she nearly bled to death after gaining Derek's inflictions through Peter's slasher wound through her best friend's back.

Sage had moved further into the halls when a loud bang caught her attention, nearly giving her a heart attack as she whipped her head around to see what the noise was. To her surprise, another person was filing through the school door she just entered in, confused when she saw Sage holding her hand to her heart.

"Oh, holy shit, Lydia," Sage breathed, trying to steady her heart beat. "Don't do that again."

"Did Aiden text you to come here?" Lydia asked, walking closer to her blonde best friend to find at least a slight amount of comfort in such an incredibly uncomfortable situation.

Sage's eyebrows furred. "No, I don't even have his number. Why? Did he text you?"

"Yeah," Lydia said, pulling out her phone to show Sage the texts. "He said it was life or death."

"Comforting," Sage muttered, just before she glanced further down the hallways, surprised when she noticed that one of the classroom doors was open.

Confused, the blonde slowly started talking steps closer and closer to the class, Lydia falling silently behind her without ever asking a question as to where she was headed. Sage just wanted to make sure that there wasn't a stray teacher with a big, red target on their forehead saying "Take me, I'm alone and vulnerable."

When she got into the room, not surprised to hear Lydia's heels clacking, Sage couldn't help but feel the same sense of dread in her heart now that she had felt before when she first pulled into the school. It was just like when she was in class earlier today, too, when her skin had nearly met with Jennifer Blake's.

To her utter surprise, there was a ringing in her ears, one that she couldn't take away and one that was familiar to her back to the night she nearly set herself on fire at Glen Capri. A chant, whatever it might be, falling in the deepest pits of her mind as she whipped her head around to see that Lydia's attention fell on the same thing.

"You recognize it, don't you?"

Sage and Lydia both turned to their right to see who was coming out of the shadows, only for the face to be one of familiarity, one that had gotten so deeply rooted into Sage's life that the blonde felt nauseous seeing her face.

Jennifer Blake was standing before then, a wicked grin on her face. Sage hadn't even had a chance to react before everything went black for a few seconds, the dull pain in the back of her head ceasing when she realized that the abyss inside of her mind greeted her with a welcoming silence.

But, in what seemed only moments, she was blinking tears out of her eyes and staring at a chalkboard full of writing from what she had done in English class.

The first thing she felt was the pain in her head, and she could only assume that Jennifer had hit her with the hardest thing she could find in a moments notice, taking Lydia out with her. With shaking hands, Sage slowly moved her fingertips up to her forehead, only to pull them back when the sticky substance of blood coated her hands.

"I thought the mistletoe would kill you before I had the chance to," a voice mused from her right, and she glanced down with blurred vision to see the spinning face of Jennifer.

Sage's face creased in confusion, letting out a moan from the pain before her one free hand moved behind her to try and grab a hold of Lydia, who had been put back-to-back with her. There was no way the woman could have made the time to tie them both up, so if Lydia could wake up before the restraints came, maybe her best friend could get away.

She gave up when Jennifer grabbed onto her hand again, and couldn't help but narrow her glazed, watered eyes. "Was this your plan all along? To get close to Derek and pretend you cared about him just to kill me?"

"He doesn't care about you as much as you think he does," Jennifer remarked, just as the rope tightened around Sage's wrist, enough for the teenager to try out in pain.

Even in the situation, a laugh bubbled from the blonde's lips as her head rolled around to her other shoulder. "He cares about me more than he would ever care about you. If you kill me, you're going to be making a lot of people angry."

"I've already made people angry, Sage."

The blonde couldn't keep her eyes open, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head as she came to the conclusion that it wasn't just her own injuries she was experiencing, it was Lydia's added onto that. Which, speaking of the strawberry blonde, is who Jennifer made a move towards next.

Sage noticed, and her eyes snapped towards the woman. "If you touch her, I'll kill you."

There wasn't any time for Jennifer to answer Sage's threat because Lydia's head was falling forward as she let out a deep gasp. Now, both of the woman's captives were awake and barely capable of staying conscious.

"What are you doing?" Lydia asked, her voice hoarse as she watched her English teacher tie her up.

"What's necessary. I'm so surprised none of you seem to get that. You call them sacrifices but you're not understanding the word. It's derived from the Latin sacrificium in offering to a deity, a sacred right, a necessary evil," Jennifer explained, her words echoing through the empty classroom.

Sage scoffed from behind Lydia, figuring that she would use the only plan she's got at this point: get all of Jennifer's attention away from her best friend and onto her, ensuring to buy Lydia more time for someone to come save her.

"Did you get all of that off Wikipedia?" Sage stumbled out, slightly slurring over her words as her vision continued to go in and out as if she were hallucinating everything happening to her right now.

Jennifer let out a brisk laugh. "You try to joke but you are everything that I am, Sage."

"That's not true," Sage muttered, hands tightening beyond the confinements of the ropes. "I'm not a crazy psycho bitch that kills people and thinks it's for the greater good of the world."

"But how long will it be until you become like me? Until all of the wolves you surround yourself with turn you into me and leave you for dead? How long until you're struggling to survive and the only comfort is your own heart beat?" Jennifer snapped, moving her attention away from Lydia to Sage just like the blonde hoped.

Sage shook her head, immediately regretting it soon after. "Why are you trying to kill me?"

"I'm trying to save you," Jennifer snarled, her hands sitting on both sides of Sage's chair as her eyes narrowed on the girl. "You didn't get my messages all of those times? When you were coughing up mistletoe, did it not even hit you that I was trying to help you?"

"Why?" Sage spits, blinking a few times as she began to feel blood run down her cheek.

"Because I can see the darkness consuming your bright heart, eating it away piece by piece and taking parts of your humanity with it. I can see who you are becoming, and my, am I intrigued."

Lydia cried out from behind Sage. "Please, stop."

"Oh, Lydia," Jennifer muttered, moving up from her crouch to stand over the two girls. "I wish I could but you don't know the alphas like I do, and you don't know them nearly as well as your best friend does right behind you."

"Don't touch her," Sage snarled, wishing that she had the strength to make an attempt to break free. She knew that it was no use, though, and tried to comfort Lydia. "Lydia, it's going to be okay."

Jennifer laughed at the two. "Is it really, Sage?"

The psychotic woman carefully wrapped something around their necks, the thin wire managing to capture both Sage and Lydia's necks with just one piece. There was an immediate sting, a harsh burn and the blonde could only imagine what all of the other sacrifices had gone through, what they had felt when they were put in the same position as her.

"It's ironic how we have a girl that knows too much and one that knows too little," Jennifer chimed, tisking as she seemed amused at the irony. "Actually, a girl that knew too much and one that knew too little."

Sage, with what control she had left over her voice, coughed out. "Lydia!"

The strawberry blonde and the blonde hadn't needed to be connected to understand each other perfectly, and while the Darach stood before the two in confusion, Lydia knew exactly what she had to do. The action came so naturally to her that it felt good to break free, and Lydia did what she did best.

Lydia screamed.

Sage cringed away from it, her chest falling forward as though it could block out the sound, but in reality it didn't. She was forced to listen to the high-pitched screech of her best friend and only wonder what it was that created it.

"Unbelievable," Jennifer gasped, and the garrote that had been previously wrapped around them disappeared as the woman moved to stare at Lydia, baffled. "You have no idea what you are, do you? The wailing woman, a banshee right before my eyes. You're just like Sage and I, Lydia— look like a flower but be the serpent underneath it. It's too bad though, you're too late."

Sage didn't know what the woman had meant, the inability to see getting the best of her. Things only began to make perfect sense the moment she couldn't breathe, and finally realized that this was the moment she would die; she was going to die alongside her best friend. She was going to die not know who she was and what she stood for.

She was going to die with the inability to call herself her.

Lydia and Sage both began to choke out, neither having operation of their arms to try and get the garrote from their neck. There was a horrid feeling when a knife appeared right in front of Sage's face, Jennifer's words following with it. "One more philosopher."

But, then, another voice appeared.

"Drop it!"

Sage's eyes widened when she recognized it to be Stiles' father, and the agony ripping inside of her only raged a war knowing that the Sheriff might have just walked in on his own death by trying to save them from their's. When the knife moved from Sage, something inside of her wished to scream out to put it back because she knew where the weapon was going next.

The scatter of a gun and the grunt of a man told her exactly what she thought. The only other comfort was when a loud growl emitted throughout the room, Scott transitioning into a werewolf right before Sheriff Stilinski's eyes.

Jennifer Blake refused to give up without a fight, though, and completely discarded her original thoughts of killing Lydia and Sage, now focused intently on Scott McCall. She hadn't even had a chance to move from her position near the two girls before the werewolf was flinging himself over desks, clawing at the air where Jennifer used to stand.

The woman was quick, too quick for even Scott. When her hand met with Scott's chest, the boy was sent halfway across the room into stacks of desks as Jennifer's power overruled his own. There was an immediate tinge inside of Sage, her whole body flooding with a new kind of pain when she realized Scott had been hurt.

All of her friends were being hurt.

Sage's head whipped to the side when she heard the sound of converse squeaking against the ground, and was able to cry out Stiles' name just in time for the boy to back away before Jennifer sent a desk towards the door to keep it shut tightly.

"There was this girl years ago," Sheriff began to explain, gun held towards Jennifer to keep her away. "We found her in the woods, her face and body slashed apart. That was you, wasn't it?"

Jennifer's eyebrows quirked. "Maybe I should have started with philosophers, with knowledge and strategy."

A gun shot rang through the room, the bullet landing directly in Jennifer's leg only to heal seconds later. The woman wasted no time advancing on the Sheriff, grabbing a tight hold of the knife that was in his shoulder and holding him up by it.

Then, she continued. "Healers, warriors, guardians, virgins."

There was a silence as Jennifer pressed her lips to Sheriff Stilinski, the man immediately recoiling back just as he noticed the difference that was in her face. The, once beautiful, woman had been replaced with a creature unknowing to be the definition of an utter monster.

The Darach had let out a single, wailing screech and that was the last thing that was heard before the sound of shattering glass pierced the silence in the room . Stiles had been late, only just falling through the door right after the chaos ended, his shoes racing to get to the broken window that the monster had fled from, taking a casualty with her.

It was a heartbreaking moment when a single word left Stiles Stilinski's lips and that had been, "Dad?"

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ne.

this whole chapter is a hot mess, i swear. so much happens in it that is practically impossible for me to pick a defining moment. if we look on the bright side of this chapter, which isn't very much, stage hugged and kissed so yaAaAay. it was more of like an i-don't-know-if-youre-going-to-die-so-ill-kiss-you-goodbye type of kiss instead of a forgiveness kiss.

just so everyone is aware, the entire thing with sage and jennifer is going to be explained. just stick with me and it is all going to eventually make sense, i promise. and just so all of you are plenty aware, a scene in this chapter is going to be very relevant for 3b. :-)