Phoenix || Malia Tate

01

Malia Elizabeth Tate.

That is the name she has always known. That is who she has always been. Except, the truth is it's not. Because that is not who she really is. Her real name is Malia Hale, and she is the daughter of monsters.

She struggles with that, to say the least. Struggles to identify what she once knew with what she now knows. With who she once knew to be her family with who she now knows is her family. With who she herself once was, and with who she now is.

And her lineage is not the only thing she struggles with. She struggles with school, and her social life, and the entire dynamic of the mundane life and human interaction. She struggles with control, and knowing how powerful she is and can be but knowing she can't be because people get hurt because of it.

She hates that she struggles with everything. She hates that she doesn't even want to try to not struggle with it. She does not want education and a home life and best friends and teenage gossip and heated emotions. All she wants, more than anything in the world, is to run away. To run away from the adoptive father who cares for her when he does not know what she's done, and from the pack trying so hard to help her when everyone knows they can't.

She wants nothing more than to escape.

One day she finally does.

On August 5, Malia Elizabeth Tate/Hale has had enough of the human life. Enough of equations and pointless questions and chatter and always feeling cold and rolling over because people suck and she can't out herself by putting them in their place.

So she runs to the woods. She runs home.

She runs and she runs and she doesn't stop until she reaches her den, and it is only then that it is like she is truly home. The doll is still there. The den is still marked by her. This little corner in the woods, in the dirt, in the mess, is still hers.

For a moment, she considers moving back here, becoming a nomad in the woods where she doesn't need people and education. Where she can run and hunt and sleep and actually be warm in her coyote form. It is tempting, oh, so damn tempting and for the fraction of a second, she allows herself to imagine it. But it would devastate Henry and Scott and Stiles and even Peter, who seems to care just a little bit.

She decides against it. She goes back.

But that doesn't change the fact that she's struggling.

So, compromise.

She goes to school, interacts with humans, and does her best to suppress the wild side that so desperately calls to her. And then when school is over, when homework is overwhelming, when life is stressful, she runs. She feels like herself, like that survivor who made it through eight years of solitude in the Great Acre Woods. She feels safe, and for the first time, she feels free. She returns home almost every day, and every time without fail it is just as she left it.

Every day she comes home and every day it is the same.

Except for October 12.

October 12 it is not the same because instead of the doll or the dirt waiting for her, it is a boy.

****

Lol okay we're just getting straight into it cause this is another 12 am decision I don't have time for but am gonna pursue anyway cause Paul and Shelley are everything and Malia's love interests freaking suck.

Yes, I am extra enough to have a playlist. If you'd like to vibe the tunes, hit up aimeewelcome123 on spotify or search "Phoenix."

To all those reading: thank you and I love you.