IN TOO DEEP || Liam Dunbar [3]

FIVE

What the fuck.

That was the only thing running through Katherine's mind as she blinked her brown eyes and focused on her surroundings. She didn't understand what had caught her attention, only that something had, and then realized that it was the shout of her name. In all the time she'd been sitting in the train station — though it looked unbelievably dingy and abandoned, and the lighting was so terrible so she wasn't sure how it was still operational — she couldn't ever remember hearing someone yelling, let alone someone yelling for her,

So she looked around absentmindedly, her brows drawing together as she tried to find the source of the noise.

At first, all she could see was other normal people like herself sitting and waiting patiently. Then, her brown eyes focused on the form of a tall boy with floppy dark hair that looked a lot like her dressed in dark pants and a dark shirt, sneakers and a red flannel. He was racing towards her frantically, as if he'd rather die than have her out of his sight, and he cried out a name that triggered a small flicker of recognition.

"KitKat!"

Her mouth opened wide as if she wanted to respond to him, to yell back but to save her life she couldn't figure out why so she closed it. She didn't remember having ever seen this boy before in all of her nearly-sixteen years on Earth. But he was racing over to her with determination set on his face, his footsteps hammering across the old concrete ground like there was no tomorrow.

The flicker of recognition grew into a spark as she continued to stare at him and her mouth opened again, only this time it formed a word that seemed to shatter some kind of wall that had been put up in her memory; Stiles.

She looked down at her arm as the memories came back to her and she could still see the faint remains of sharpie on it from where she'd written that familiar word not too long ago, and looked back up at him as shock flooded her body. Before she could come up with a coherent thought, Katherine was off the wooden bench and sprinting towards him as well, her heart hammering in her chest.

He's real.

Stiles is real.

She slammed into his chest with a horrible thud! but didn't even stumble back or pay any attention to the ache that flared through her body upon impact, just hooked her arms around his neck and burst into tears when she was lifted off the ground. The feeling of his arms around her was all-too-familiar to her, and now that she could feel it she knew what had been wrong during that awful week of her life.

It was that her brother was real, and she didn't know that.

"Oh my god!" She cried out, burying her face into the comforting smell of his flannel as he held her as tightly as his body was capable of. Katherine found herself grabbing a hold of the back of his sweater as if she were afraid he'd disappear, because in truth, she was. After spending more than a week feeling the way she had, as if her world were ending, she never wanted to feel that way again. "Oh my god Stiles! You're really real! You're — they — they said I made you up but you're—"

"I'm right here, I swear to god I am right here, okay?" His arms tightened around her, and even though she could feel his muscles trembling as they cried out for her to be put down, so he was forced to set her down on the ground. But he didn't let her go, just continued to hold her as tightly as he could in her grasp as they sunk down to their knees and carefully pulled away, hands still on her shoulders. "Are you hurt? Are you hurt at all? How did you get here?"

Katherine looked up at him with a watery smile; just seeing him made her feel warm and safe and okay. "I couldn't forget about you," she whispered, showing him the faint black ink on her arm. "Mom and Dad, they...they put me in Eichen because I was so completely positive you were real; they thought I was crazy."