“ ☜ + final fight with the anuk-ite ”
send ' ☜ ' + a canon scene for scott's pov, always accepting / @stygicniron !
the wolfsbane didn't purge cleanly. it's gone, but the diversion cost him too much. focus, consciousness. time that they don't have. he wakes up on the floor of an empty classroom with a deep tendon burn, viscous yellow singed into his shirt around an entry wound that should have killed him. that's what derek said. it's gonna kill you. if monroe was a better shot, maybe. if the poison was meant to do more than just slow him down. she's the one that pulled the trigger, but it's gerard who keeps firing blanks. hiding behind civilians and scripted rhetoric and scare tactics, dangling threats like bait, pouring blood into the water and running from the shoreline before the sharks show up.
he's a coward. scott's known that for a while. since sophomore year, the mountain ash, the bite that didn't take because scott didn't let it. deucalion just confirmed what he'd already figured out. the thing gerard fears most. he can't beat you, and he knows it. and gerard is only part of the problem.
scott can feel the other part, sense its energy in the building, a low - frequency ring like wind chimes.
it's here. at the school, just like he'd predicted.
one look at peter, turned to stone, eyes blank, and scott understood what it all meant. he could see the whole cycle like a moving diagram, how the wheels spun and fit, how it all clicked like a key inside a lock. mountain ash. frequencies. flashbangs. mistletoe. pride, fear, power. everything's connected.
he knows what he has to do.
the wolfsbane sapped his strength in a way that he wouldn't be able to push through if he wasn't flooded with adrenaline. cortisol spiking, his own blood warm under the press of his palm. his back digs into the bookshelf behind him. it's quiet, but it's not silent. something's moving towards the library. the air shifts around it, opens like a mouth to let it in. scott's frozen, breath caught, jaw tensed so hard that it aches. the fear isn't real. he has to tell himself that, over and over and over again, repeating it like a mantra. the fear isn't real.
the voice is. cold and familiar, a bad memory made sentient. it's stiles, but it's not stiles. the rasp, the cadence, each word precise and sharp as a razor. it's stiles when the nogitsune had him, when it wore his face more than a year ago. scott squeezes his eyes shut and holds them there.
his heart hammers against his ribs. this is part of it, too — this is what the anuk - ite does, it takes what you're afraid of, your deepest fears, and it uses them against you. the darach did that, at the motel. jennifer rooted into their minds and dragged out their trauma and made them look.
it isn't real. this is what it wants. bait and lure, wearing you down until you give in. scott grits his teeth and feels the blood between his fingers, and his eyes stay shut. you think you can fight me, but you can't. he might not have to, he thinks, and doesn't say it. he might not have to fight. stiles is on his way, the real stiles, and if scott's right, then there won't be a fight at all. he just has to stay alive until then. stay alive and don't look. don't look. don't look.
he feels it getting closer. careful steps, slow and easy, like it's taking its time. a spider descending into its web when the prey's already caught.
his friends. it's taunting him about his friends.
they're gone because of you.
derek wasn't there when he woke up. he doesn't know where malia is, or ethan, but peter had a heartbeat. underneath the stone, peter still had a heartbeat. that means he's not dead. that means that even if the others are trapped, they're not gone.
it's lying. it wants him to break, to panic, to open his eyes and look.
the footsteps shift, rounding a fluid left between the shelves behind him. the voice changes. not stiles anymore ; the nogitsune in its true form. scott can picture it, conjure the memory from bardo. stained teeth and bandages where a face should be, because rhys died a burn victim. you failed everyone, it says, and he digs his spine into the shelf, crushes his eyes together until the static pulses like a migraine.
something crashes, like a table knocked aside. his pulse slams into the base of his throat. movement. stalking closer, and closer, and then that voice is a vibrato growl right next to him.
scott doesn't open his eyes when he lunges. doesn't think, just moves, noise tearing furiously out of him, blind swings that don't land anywhere solid.
derek's voice, all wolf, and a slash from nowhere. scott pivots toward the sting but doesn't feel the claws.
malia's growl pitches high when she comes at him, only it isn't her, it isn't any of them, none of this is real. he turns again. lets the frustration rip from his throat, but it's drowned out fast. rushing, screaming, an overlap of noise, the library doors slamming like a hurricane's blowing through the school. lydia's banshee wail and a thousand phantom hoofbeats, an army of ghosts. the crescendo swells at a decibel that feels like his skull's splitting in half, hands jammed hard against his ears. like the freezer in the bunker. the flood. the memories. it isn't real. it isn't real. it isn't —
it's on the stairs, just above where he died.
it sounds like stiles again, like void, the steps creaking softly under its weight.
all you have to do is open your eyes.
and scott shakes his head. no.
his body wants to respond on pure instinct, the wolf in him rearing and snapping its jaws, cornered, primal, half feral, but he tightens the muzzle. he covers the bars of the cage. he listens to the voice change, back to the growl, the shape of something that used to be rhys.
your fear is different, scott. there's power underneath.
scott sees it again. the diagram, the wheels. all the pieces slotting into place. it wants power, so it can keep its freedom. but there's a catch. there's always a catch, and they never see it coming.
gerard. jennifer. deucalion. theo. they didn't see it. couldn't see past their own hubris, their own pride, righteous to nobody except for them. the end always justified the means, and that's why they didn't win. that's why it can't win.
scott's the one with his eyes closed, but it's the anuk - ite who can't see. he's counting on that.
your fear brings me freedom.
he isn't afraid. the thought pistons into him without warning, without forethought. he isn't afraid in the way that it wants him to be. needs him to be. the feeling flows like adrenaline, prepares him for what comes next.
the vitriol, the hands around his throat.
he gasps hard, chokes on the last breath he'd pulled in, but his eyes are closed. his eyes are still closed.
its grip tightens. crushing, like it's trying to snap his neck. the heat of its breath in his face, rank and metallic, like the liquefied rot of something dead that's been lying in the sun for too long. he curls his fingers around its wrists on reflex.
soft, at first. then louder, a reverberating command that splinters the silence like automatic gunfire.
that next thought is soild, clear as glass. he has to do this now.
scott leans into the grip. pushes forward against it, grating out each word. coarse. deliberate.
" i know how to fight you. and i know how to catch you. "
there doesn't have to be a fight. not for anyone else.
he'd caught it off guard — he can tell by the way its hold on him slackens, just a little. just enough to get loose. to break contact and shove, listening for the stagger, the thud and scrape of a collision when it hits something. a chair, a table. something that skids. something that doesn't matter. claws push from the nail beds of both hands, extending all the way, quick and practiced. claws that poise a quarter inch from his closed eyelids, touching his lashes.
there's no point in trying to brace for this. he'll feel it either way.
that doesn't matter, either.
fragile skin and soft tissue are an easy yield. the claws go right through, shredding thin membrane, nerves, blood vessels, lacerating the organs underneath. when he screams, it almost feels calculated — like he's giving the pressure in his chest somewhere to go, but it's not from the pain. the pain is so intense that he stops feeling it after the first couple of seconds. the neurons stopped firing and his body lost contact with his brain, like that was the only way to stay focused.
fresh blood pours from the twin gouges in his face, hot and thick, coating his fingers like he'd stuck his hands in molasses. he can hear it dripping onto the tile, splattering with more weight than blood's supposed to have.
the silence hums around him, inside him. he thinks of the shipping containers, the clang of deucalion's cane. echolocation means sound. thermoception is heat, every atmospheric drop and rise measured by the way it moves against his skin. proprioception is pressure, how the ground shifts, how you can clock the exact placement of somebody by the earth's smallest vibrations. equilibrioception means balance. center of gravity. spatial awareness, a familiarity with your own body, your own limbs, your own range of motion.
sound. heat. pressure. balance.
everything except for sight.
everything that he needs to clock what's about to happen.
he remembers the bone armor, from the temple. from the road, that night that violet's transport van was attacked. bone armor shifting. impossible to catch with a human's hearing. amplified to his, especially now.
he'd read that before. that when you're missing any of your senses, the ones that still work are putting in overtime.
bone armor shifting and then the rumbling growl, a split second before the air whistles past where scott was just standing. it missed him, because he heard it. he felt it, just like deucalion said. the blow lands on something solid, like a table, and the air's moving again — silence, whispering between his outstretched fingers like he can physically grab onto that shift, then something else.
something else that he remembers.
something else that he was scared of.
an oni's shriek and the wild slash of a blade that misses him, again, and this time there's no pause in between. an oni's shriek becomes the chittering clicks of a dread doctor's mask, seamless, like it was already there. it wasn't. it isn't real. but its arm has real mass when scott grabs on, blocks the incoming strike and pushes back with the force of his howl behind it.
mouth fanged, chest heaving, he stands like he's daring it to make another move, try another shape.
heat threads like voltage through every coiled muscle, the blood on his cheeks prickling under a film of sweat. he's daring it to make another move, but it doesn't.
something snaps in his chest and reforges itself, firm as steel.
his voice doesn't waver. his pulse doesn't spike.
" you can't beat me. " and he knows it. " i'm not afraid of you. not anymore. "
he can feel it. in front of him, but not making a move. not moving closer. not moving. watching, even though he isn't looking at it. he knows because there's no fear in the air now. because he can feel its anger instead, the rage of something primitive that's reached a realization way too late.
" you wanted enough power so that you could never be trapped again, " he levels out, a harsher rasp caught in the growl. " you wanted the power of a shapeshifter like me, but that comes with all the rules of being a shapeshifter! we have weaknesses. and we have lines that we can't cross. "
somebody's moving fast down the hallway outside the library and scott's head snaps toward the doors, half a breath before they burst open. stiles' scent. stiles' heartbeat. stiles throwing the jar that scott told him to bring, hurling it at the tile. scott hears it shatter. hears the rush again, the whirlwind that comes from it, smells mountain ash in the air and pictures what he can't see. the cloud. the wrap. swallowing the anuk - ite until there's nothing left, until it's trapped and caged and frozen. until it's gone.
like jennifer's fixation with mistletoe. using it to mark her targets, before scott used it to reveal her true face. he learned that from deaton. that it was a poison and a cure. which means you can use it, and it can be used against you.
like deucalion thinking he had the advantage, because he could still see as a wolf. before scott stole the flashbangs off of argent's desk and used them in the distillery, turned that advantage into a weakness.
like theo being so obsessed with power that he didn't stop to look at the price, or the consequences. all it took to dismantle everything were a set of fake talons and a well - executed lie.
like gerard letting hubris eclipse logic, never once thinking that anybody would figure out his plan. he wanted the bite to cure himself, make himself more powerful, so scott filled his pills with mountain ash and made sure that the bite wouldn't take.
the anuk - ite wanted freedom, but power and freedom aren't the same thing. it didn't think about the consequences. it didn't look at the price.
you can use it, and it can be used against you.
everything connects. everything is cyclical. and they never see it coming.
