Basket (C)Ace

Dead

A/N: WARNING this chapter deals with violence, death, blood, implied suicide, and implied mental health issues. As always, take care of yourselves. <3

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"We Die with the dying." -T.S Elliot (and Loki s2 E6)

By all accounts, Alec should be dead. He should be dead several times over.

Maybe a part of him did die. Maybe most of him.

Still, he ran through the streets as if he had something to live for, chest heaving and muscles aching all the while. He ran, his shoes banging down on the concrete and squishing through puddles of the pouring rain, as if he weren't already dead.

An arrow whizzed by, lodging itself into a tree close by—too close. He could hear the hunters behind him trying to catch up. Still, he didn't look back to see how close they had gotten. He just kept running, urging his body forward faster and faster with each passing step.

He couldn't stop running. Not even when his muscles ached and his breath shook and he could barely stand. He could never stop. Never, never, never. Not when there was this screaming in his head, this voice he didn't want to linger on too long or even at all, shouting run, Alec, run!

... His Alpha's last dying words.

He didn't know how long he had been running for. Maybe hours. Maybe days.

It didn't really matter. All that mattered was that he kept going—that he kept living.

He didn't feel alive. This feeling inside, it felt like death. It felt like he was nothing but an empty shell. It felt like everything that kept his heart beating was gone, and now his body was just... running. Just surviving.

He wasn't alive—he hadn't been living for a long time.

Alec died with the dead.

He died with his father in the back of the family sedan on the highway when the car flipped. He died with his mother just a few hours later in the ER, heart monitor screaming through the air all the while. He died with his sister just a month later, the bitter taste of pills heavy against his tongue. Now he died with his pack, wolfsbane thickening the air he breathed.

Alec died with the dead, every time. It didn't matter that his body always managed to escape somehow, didn't matter that he was somehow left standing when everyone around him lay forever still. Forever decomposing. He still died with them. Every time.

He died, but his body would never stop running. It was what it was best at, after all. Even when he was human, he'd been a runner—the fastest kid in his class and maybe the whole school. So much for his black belt in Karate or the near-constant lessons in self-defense he'd been forced into during pack meetings. His body was trained to fight but built to run. Always. Forever.

Maybe that was how he'd managed to escape, how his body always managed to stay intact; it was just too fast.

Not that his speed was really much help now, with the sheer amount of hunters chasing after him, some on foot and others in cars. There were half a dozen behind him, but even more scattered throughout this damn city he'd managed to trap himself in. He didn't truly know where he was, too busy running to look at street signs or landmarks, but wherever it was must've been a hotbed for hunters.

They were cornering him. Alec couldn't see how, exactly, but he could feel it in his bones. He could tell, by the way the hunters ahead didn't push in but kept their posts. He could sense others nearby doing the same.

Alec slowed, his breath catching, scanning his surroundings. There, just a little bit ahead, was a school with a stone sign up front reading Beacon Hills High School.

Something about the name sent chills down his spine, alarm bells ringing in his head. He'd been to Beacon Hills a few times, for tournaments and Lacrosse games, but he had also heard the name murmured from his Alpha's lips—always low and dangerous, like it was an evil that shouldn't even be spoken aloud. It was a dangerous place, and the idea that he had somehow wound up there sent a wave of terror through him. It was like he'd been somehow led here, either by the hunters carefully herding him exactly where they wanted him or by an invisible pull deep inside of him that drew him in.

He shouldn't be here—though he supposed it was too late to linger on that fact now. Too late to do much of anything except run for the school.

The parking lot was empty, aside from a handful of cars toward the side of the building—near what looked like the sports fields. School must have been out of session, but based on the sound of chatter somewhere inside, there was practice about to start. If Alec was lucky, all he had to do was get to the group of teenagers before the hunters got him first. Surely, they weren't likely to gun him down in front of witnesses.

There was a small blooming of hope inside of him as he took off for the school, allowing the voices of teen boys to lead him. The closer he got—the louder the voices became—the more that hope blossomed into something real, something tangible. Something less impossible.

Almost instantly, that hope ripped out of him in the form of a violent scream as an arrow pierced into the back of his leg. He fell to the ground, asphalt cutting up the palms of his hands as he struggled to catch himself. A desperate shout escaped his lips as he chanced a glance down at his leg—at the arrow now embedded into him with blood pooling down his jeans.

"Nowhere to go no, mutt," a hunter called out, and Alec glanced behind him to see men circling behind him with guns and crossbows loaded.

Alec pushed off the ground with trembling hands, forcing himself to his feet. His leg shook under his full weight, threatening to give out on him at any moment, but he continued forward towards the school regardless. Nowhere to go but forward, nowhere to run but onward.

Another arrow dug into Alec's thigh, then another into his shoulder.

Pain flooded his system, all-consuming. Blackness took over his vision, another scream driven from deep inside rushing through his throat. Still, he managed to stay upright, his hands catching onto the edge of the building. Blood smeared against the brick edges as he dragged his hand across, forcing himself—hobbling—forward.

"Run, run, as fast as you can," a different hunter mocked, just as another arrow made its way into Alec's other leg, "but we still caught you."

Alec only lasted a few more steps before he was crumbling, his knees smacking down onto the sidewalk. He caught himself on his hands before he fell more, but didn't have the strength to get up—to keep going.

There was nowhere left to go, after all.

As the hunters circled him, loading more arrows into their crossbows, one young hunter stepped forward. He couldn't have been much older than Alec himself—maybe just eighteen, if not even younger than that—and already he had a gun in hand with his finger ready on the trigger. As the man—the boy—stepped closer, Alec could make out the familiar scent of wolfsbane bullets.

Training the gun at Alec's skull, the teenager curled his lips in a cruel sneer. "Any last words, mutt?"

Alec swallowed thickly.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. Nothing but this. Nothing but death—as always.

Slowly raising his eyes from the gun to the teenage boy, he flared his eyes gold.

"Fucking do it," he growled. Make it quick, he thought but didn't add.