Haunted - an Allison Argent fic

Chapter 42: Guilty

[GUILTY]
"forgive these bones I'm hiding,
from no one successfully"

Song: Family Tree - Ethel Cain

!TW: mature themes, see authors note at the end of chapter

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Everyone has a box, cabinet, a hidden place, the dark, whatever you call it, everyone has it in the back of their mind. The place they put all of the things they want to forget. The bad memories, the embarrassing moments, the worst of the worst of your life. Few are lucky to leave it empty. And the ones who fill it up, with memories of screaming matches with their mother, getting beat up at school, getting hit or worse, anything too horrible, too scary to remember, they fight to keep it there. Sometimes without even knowing it got put there, they never know it happened. Until one day it comes up, and they every gory detail escapes. And like pandora's box, it's impossible to put back. Suddenly, you're forced to suffer the consequences of something you never even remembered.

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"They were there for two days." Cora told a story about Derek and Peter hiding from hunters, they had hid in the base of a tree called the nemeton. Stiles and Aaliyah sat in the loft behind her patiently listening. "Waiting, hiding. That's what we're told to do when the hunters find us. Hide and heal."

"Okay, so is two days the standard, then, or are we thinking Derek's on, like, some extended getaway?" Stiles asked as he paced back in forth in the loft. Derek had left after Boyd died and no one knows where he went. Aaliyah sat in the couch chewing on her nails as Stiles and Cora spoke.

"Why do you care?" Cora asked.

"Why do I care? Let's see- Because over the last few weeks my best friends tried to kill himself. His boss nearly got ritually sacrificed-" Something Aaliyah didn't know about until the day after Scott and the sheriff saved Deaton from the Darach. "A girl that I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed. Boyd was killed by alphas. I- do you want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour."