...
While Jordan watched, several medical staff wheeled body after body into the hospital morgue, the deputy watching in slight disbelief at just how many are dead. Noah walked up to the younger officer, having to use a cane but cleared to be back at work from his previous injuries. "Parrish." Jordan didn't answer right away. "Parrish, look at me." Jordan did as told. "I know what you're thinking. The dream's coming true. It's not." He assured, but it wasn't enough for the man.
"Sheriff, there's 23 bodies. Twenty-three of them."
"Which means you're going to go back to the station and you're gonna go through every missing persons report for the past two weeks. That's what we do. You got it, Parrish?" Jordan nodded and turned to walk away. He didn't feel much better, but at least this would give him something to do. Noah sighed to himself before he turned to face the elevator when it dinged, Stiles, Y/n, Scott, and Kira stepping off to stand next to the older man.
"Who found them?" Stiles asked as they all looked to the steady flow of body bags being wheeled by.
"Argent. And he said the Doctors were down there. He also said you guys might know what this thing is."
"We've got a theory." Scott said.
"It's a slightly terryfing theory." Stiles added.
"Well, the ME said that victims were killed somewhere else and then dumped in those tunnels."
"What if the Dread Doctors are hiding the bodies?" Scott asked.
"Why would they do that?" Kira wondered.
"Maybe they're covering for it. Protecting it like a parent would." Stiles theorized and Y/n frowned. Why did that thought make her stomach twist into such knots?
"Protecting what?" Noah asked.
"A werewolf." Scott answered.
"It's called La Bête. The Beast." Y/n informed.
Noah looked at Stiles. "We know. Horrifying."
"We better figure out what we're gonna call Parrish. Because it looks like his dream is coming true." Noah quietly spoke making the teens look at each other.
...
Scott walks through the halls of the school, glancing at his fellow students and at the new patroling deputies that are toting heavy duty rifles. The P.A. system comes to life, a mans voice rettling off the new announcements. "By order of the Sheriff, a county-wide curfew goes into effect tonight at sundown. All after-school activities are canceled until further notice. Students should go directly home at the end of the school day." He turns the corner and walks up to Stiles and Y/n, the former talking to Deputy Strauss and trying to get more information.
"You don't think this is a bit much in terms of firepower for a highschool?"
"Your dad's the one that issued these things, and he wouldn't officially say why."
"Did he say anything unofficially?" Scott asked.
"No, but everyone's got a theory."
"And everyone includes you, so what's your theory?" Y/n wondered.
"I shouldn't be talking to you guys. Don't you have class?"
"Come on, Strauss. What's your theory?" Stiles repeated.
Strauss quietly sighed before glancing at two other deputies standing further down the hall. He turned his head and leaned closer to speak quieter to the three. "Do you guys believe in the supernatural?" The three shared a look at that.
"I like to keep an open mind." Y/n lightly smiled.
...
Lydia laid in her bed at Eichen, eyes staring off in space while Y/n and Stiles sit next to her. Y/n reaches over and holds Lydia's hand, rubbing circles over her knuckles like they usually did. "Hey, Lydia. I thought you'd like to know that me and Stiles picked up your homework from school today, and I'm keeping it all in a nice folder for you for when you come back."
"I saw something about the, uh, Riemann Hypothesis." Stiles chimed in. "Um, things like, nontrivial zeros, zeta functions and a lot of other stuff that goes totally over my head." Y/n huffed a laugh as she smiled at Stiles, who returned the gesture before they look to Lydia again. "Maybe you can wake up and explain it to us?" He tried, but there was no reaction, like usual. "Oh, come on, Lydia. You have to come back to us. There's no way we're getting through this without you. Lydia, you have to wake up."
Y/n frowned a little as she began to hear something while Stiles was talking. Voices coming from nowhere that echoed in her head. Her eyes widened slightly as she recognized them. Meredith and... Lydia. "She is awake." Y/n realized, but Stiles only gave her a confused look.
"What do you mean she's awake?"
"I don't know how, or really how to explain it, but I can hear her talking. Her body is here, but her mind- her spirit, is somewhere else."
"How are you able to hear that?"
She lightly shrugged. "I don't know." Honestly, she shouldn't even be able to. It was similar to when Stiles went missing that one night when the nogitsune was screwing with him, trapping his mind in the basement of Eichen House while his body was left in Malia's old coyote den. Y/n had been able to sense him and hear him a bit, but that was because she was in the same space and she had a feeling Lydia's spirit wasn't in the same room as them. "I do know one thing. Someone is teaching her to use her voice, and I don't think she'll come back until she does."
"How long is that going to take?"
"I don't know. Let's see if I can ask." Y/n lent closer to Lydia, pressing her fingers to the girl's temple and about to use her magic when someone interrupted her.
"I think that's enough." The couple turned to Natalie who was now standing in the doorway, arms folded over her chest with a cold expression. Y/n's eyes narrowed at the sight of the woman. She used to like Natalie. Before the town started getting flooded with supernatural threat after supernatural threat, before the parents knew anything, she used to be really nice. But now, because of her insistence on denying what she knows, Natalie has changed and not really for the better. "Y/n, Stiles." The woman called again when they didn't move right away.
Y/n's eyes softened for just a moment as she looked back at Lydia, gently petting her hair for a second and giving her hand a small squeeze before standing up. But Stiles stopped her when he saw something when Lydia's hair was shifted. "Wait a second, what is this?" He asked as he reached over and moved some of the strawberry blonde strands aside to reveal a small bald patch behind her ear. Natalie sighed, unhappy with their discovery.
"What the hell are they doing?" Y/n asked, now angrier than she had been when Natalie walked in.
"All right, you both need to go." Natalie walked further into the room.
"They shaved her head. Look at it." Stiles pointed out to the woman, just as upset as Y/n was about the situation. "Did you- did you know about this? What are they gonna do? Drill a hole into her head?"
"Are you crazy?" Natalie asked as if that idea was completely absurd, pushing past them to stand by Lydia and smooth her hair back down. "It's for E-C-T. Electroconvulsive therapy. They shave small portions of the scalp. It's done under general anesthesia and it's perfectly safe." She insisted.
"Nothing is 'perfectly safe' about this place." Y/n denied, shaking her head in disbelief. "No offense, Mrs. Martin, but you're a little out of your element here. You have no idea what this place is like, or what they could do to someone like Lydia."
"It's not the same as it was before. A lot of the practices are no longer done-"
"I'm not talking about lobotomies and electroshock here. I'm talking about the side of Eichen House not available to the generic public."
Natalie shifted on her feet, defensively folding her arms again. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." Y/n shifted her eyes for a moment, Natalie's lips forming a line at the bright purple shine before it faded.
"Look at her, Y/n." She gestured to Lydia. "She's my daughter. You don't think I'm trying everything I can to bring her out of this? It's perfectly safe." She repeated.
"No, no, no, that's not E-C-T." Stiles denied from beside Y/n.
"She doesn't need whatever the hell they're doing or going to do to her. She just needs time. What you don't understand is that people like us, people like Lydia, aren't always healed by conventional means. And here in Eichen? We aren't patients. We're prisoners, and you might have just signed her death warrant."
"Is everything alright in here?" A nurse named Cross came to stand in the open door.
"It's fine." Natalie claimed. "Our guests were just leaving." She looked pointedly at the both of them, Y/n not letting up in her hard stare. "Y/n, Stiles, go. Or you're not coming back."
"Come on." Stiles quietly coaxed, only when he took her hand did she finally let him gently pull her behind him and out of the room.
"All right, Lydia, time for your shower." Y/n heard the nurse say as they walked down the hall.
Spotting two male orderlies Stiles accidently bumped into one. "Sorry." He apologized as they continued to the gate. Y/n looked down to see him pocketing a keycard as the security guard opened the gate for them, and she couldn't help but smile to herself at how smooth that was.
...
Lydia had been stuck in Valack's old cell, put there by Meredith who was trying to teach her to use her hands to direct her scream and turn her voice into a bullet. Lydia was trying as hard as she could, desprate to get back to her body so she could help everyone, help Malia who's death was very imminent. With aid from Theo and a device of the Dread Doctors Malia discovered that the Desert Wolf was at an abondonded military base called Fort Jewett, and that's where she was keeping Deaton. Malia told Braeden everything, and while the mercenary wasn't too jazzed about going in practically blind to confront a more than likely heavily armed adversary, she really didn't like the idea of bringing Theo along.
Braeden suggested getting Scott and/or Y/n, assuring neither of them would be upset that the Desert Wolf had taken Alan, but Malia argued that Scott might stop her from killing the woman. Theo claimed that he wanted to kill the Desert Wolf too, which is why Malia wanted to bring him along. But when they got there, Alan, tied to a chair with cloth over his mouth, warned Braeden with his eyes that Theo was no good, and as she spun around to take care of him he blocked her attacks, taking her gun and knocking her out with it. Malia growled at Theo, and his response was shooting her with the gun. He claimed he didn't want to do this, but he had no choice as the Desert Wolf had something he wanted, and that something was the talons from the chimera named Belasko, which Alan had on him when he was taken.
He left then, leaving the wounded Malia to the mercy of the mother that wanted to kill her. Corinne told Malia that she actually had no name, that Talia Hale had taken the baby from her before she could give her one, but she did have speed, strength and a capacity to heal that she claimed was stolen. She stepped on Malia's ribs then, pressing into the bullet wound and asking Malia to tell her when it really hurt. Malia screamed in pain before Corinne grabbed her by the back of the neck and forced her to sit up, claws poised in the air for the kill. Alan managed to pull off the gag and call Corinne's name, telling her she couldn't get the power back like she was, and that it had to be a full moon, or else she wouldn't get anything.
Meredith kept encouraging a distraught Lydia, telling her she could still help Malia. She kept telling Lydia to break the glass, and with a new determination she finally did it, using her hands to direct her scream she broke the glass. Lydia, back in her body, sits bolt upright, a scream ripping from her throat, bursting the lightbulbs and sending Schrader flying back. The power of Lydia's voice reached the fort, making a light burst into sparks, distracting Corinne enough that Malia was able to kick her away and get back to her feet. The werecoyotes faced off, growling with glowing eyes, fangs and claws bared. The two women fought, punching and kicking and dodging, neither seeming to get the upper hand back.
Malia yelled at Corinne, saying she killed her own family because of the woman, only for Corinne to remind it was her adopted family and that she was Malia's family. Malia growled and they began to fight once again. Corinne managed to throw Malia into a nearby vehicle, taking this moment to taunt her. She told Malia that, if it made her feel better, she didn't care about her family and that she was only trying to kill Malia. Malia went to attack again, but a cracking sound drew their attention towards Alan where the tiles were breaking behind him from within the wall, the man himself turning when a hole was punched through the wall. They were met with a horrifying sight. A large, black beast with a mouth full of fangs and glowing, blue eyes.
The monster began to tear at the remaining chunks of wall, wanting to get into the next room and tear apart the three prey instead. Alan called for Malia for help, but she hesitated, her eyes moving from between Alan and Corinne. This was the perfect opportunity, she could end the Desert Wolf here and now. But then the Beast reached through the opening and grabbed the back of the chair Alan was taped to, pulling it towards itself. Malia couldn't let Y/n's father die, so she let Corinne go and went to Alan as he was being lifted up, quickly cutting the tape with her claws and pulling him off the chair. Corinne made her escape while Malia and Alan helped Braeden get up and then they all ran away as the Beast roared after them.
...
At Stiles' house the boy himself was already building a plan to get Lydia out of Eichen, Y/n letting him work his own brand of magic and assisting where needed. She had been coming back down the hall after getting them both something to drink, needing to stretch her legs from sitting and watching him work, when she got a sharp pain in her head. It was so sudden that all she could do was gasp in pain, the cups falling from her hands and crashing on the ground, the water soaking into her pants as she fell to her knees. Stiles rushed from his room to find her on her knees, hands pressing into the sides of her head while she bent over, trying to curl away from the sensation of stabbing behind her eyes. He dropped to the ground in front of her, hands on her arms as he tried to ask her what was wrong. Images flashed in front of her eyes, each one causing another stab of pain as they came.
Dozens of bodies lying in snow.
A woman holding a crossbow.
A crying child.
Stiles gripped her wrists, calling her name again and having to shake her to finally catch her attention. When her eyes landed on him they were shifted and filled with pain and confusion. They shone brighter than they had earlier, or maybe that was because the hallway was dim, but he still saw when they flitted over his features, almost seeming to not recognize him. "Who..." She started to say, but then something else caught her attention making her turn her head to look in the direction of Eichen.
"Lydia." Y/n breathed, the banshee's scream cutting through the fog in her head, silencing the pain and letting her come back to herself.
"What the hell was that?" Stiles asked, and this time when she looked at him he could see recognition in her eyes.
"I don't know." She quietly admitted. Stiles pulled her into his arms, holding her to comfort her and himself from the scare of whatever the hell just happened. They stayed like that for a few minutes before he helped her up off of the floor and back into his room. And for the next couple hours he was trying to get information out of her, but she said the same things. She didn't know what happened, what that was, or why it happened. Despite her denials, he knew there was something she wasn't telling him, and now he was becoming more worried as time went on and she didn't talk to him about it. But how could she tell her boyfriend that for a moment, for just a second, she didn't know who he was?
Malia called her then, and the news she delivered pushed any of Y/n's current problems from her mind, quickly pulling Stiles along with her as she ran to the Jeep and directed him to the animal clinic. Before Stiles even stopped the car Y/n was clambering out and racing to the doors, ripping it open and rushing inside only to slide to a stop when she got to the back room. Malia and Braeden watched the witch as she stared at Alan, alive and now back home.
Alan smiled at Y/n. "I'm sorry I didn't call. I was a little tied up." He jested, and Y/n let out a breathy chuckle, eyes filling with tears as she smiled at the man. She darted forward, throwing her arms around him as she cried into his shoulder, fat tears of happiness and relief. Scott and Liam walked in with Stiles, the wolves having arrived right after Stiles and Y/n. Y/n let go of Alan when the three boys walked in so that Scott could see Alan as well while she went to Braeden and Malia. She hugged Braeden first and thanked her for helping before she went to Malia. Pulling her sister into hug, but being mindful of her wounds, Y/n thanked Malia for saving Alan. Malia smiled to herself, looking over Y/n's shoulder at Scott who was smiling at the sisters, and she gave him a small nod.
...
In the McCall house Scott, Stiles, Y/n, Malia, Liam, and Kira, the pack, stood around the table that held pictures of Eichen, a key card, the facilities blueprints and the security log book. Scott looked at each of them, relieved that they were finally one step closer to being all together again, and ready to save the final member of their pack. "Now we get Lydia."
~~~
Published: 8/3/22
Edited: 8/11/22
My mom said thank you to everyone who wished her a happy birthday last week, she appreciates it a lot ð¥°