by pebble/scifipony
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Scott McCall
Words: 1,437
Tags: Episode Tag (5x11), Angst, Hurt No Comfort
Warnings: Fic contains mentions of blood, thoughts/discussion on death, and brief mentions of suicide.
Author's Notes: - Originally posted to AO3 and SqWA on February 3rd, 2024. Written for the Scottuary Bingo event on tumblr for the prompts "Death" + "Open Wounds" + "Only Human". Title is from the Fall Out Boy song "Love From The Other Side".
Scott used to believe everyone had one chance at life. You live, you die. It had all sounded so simple back then.
Then he actually did die. And he came back. And the idea of death wasn’t at all simple anymore.
But it’s not until he dies again and comes back again that he realizes that maybe death really doesn’t mean anything at all.
One minute, he’s lying on the library floor and his entire body is in absolute agony. Mason is crouched over him, hands hovering like he wants to help but is afraid of causing more harm. His mom is on the other side, wiping away any evidence of tears, even though she knows he’ll be able to feel her grief anyway. Or, maybe he won’t, since he can’t seem to pick up anything with his senses right now, much less differentiate between chemosignals. His body is screaming at him, almost as if it knows it shouldn’t still be alive and functioning.
The next minute, he’s sitting in the backseat of his mom’s car. Mason keeps shooting these glances back at him, like he can’t decide if this is the coolest or most horrifying thing he’s ever witnessed. Scott can’t breathe right, but there’s no inhaler to reach for. His mom probably shouldn’t be driving with how much her hands are shaking. In fairness, she probably shouldn’t have to be involved in this at all. He wonders briefly where everyone else is.
An indeterminate number of minutes pass before he’s lying on his bed, propped up against his headboard. His werewolf senses aren’t fully back online yet, but the smell of blood is unmistakable. Liam’s blood. His blood. There’s a worse stench creeping in under the blood and he doesn’t want to think about how much it tastes like death, or how it permeates every part of his body. He breathes through his mouth, though it doesn’t help. Breathing still hurts. Everything still hurts.
His mom joins him a few minutes after she stops in the bathroom to let out all the tears she’s been holding in. He wants to go back to the darkness for a little while so he doesn’t have to think about how she’s crying because of him.
They talk for a little bit. They talk about leadership and pack and his failure. Because that’s what this is. A failure. It’s not a death — doesn’t count as one. Not if he doesn’t stay dead. Not when he never stays dead. It is a failure, though. His mom tries to reassure him and he tries to believe her words. It’s hard when there are only two heartbeats in the house.
Too soon, she has to leave for her shift at the hospital. She asks if he needs her to stay, but they need the money and she definitely doesn’t need anything else to worry about — and those needs carry a lot more weight when set against each other.
There are things that have to be dealt with, but he finds it difficult to argue against his mom’s protests that he should be resting. Especially when his lungs are still not sure how much they want to keep working. He almost tries to push himself to his feet, but his body is refusing to cooperate at all anymore. Maybe they’ve been at odds one too many times. Maybe it hasn’t really been his body since Peter bit him and changed it.
He loses track of time as he drifts out of consciousness. The house is silent when he wakes.
There’s a brief flash of disappointment at being pulled back to the waking world. Everything still hurts, and the air tastes like blood again. The thought occurs to him that being dead hadn’t hurt nearly as much as being alive does. He doesn’t know if that thought should scare him.
He remembers that one time when he did try to let go and free fall into the dark. He remembers the smell of gasoline and fire, and the way Stiles’s heart was hammering so fast — as if that one moment was the most important thing ever. The only heartbeat he can hear now is his own, and it’s quiet and steady.
There are several texts on his phone from his mom. The sheriff is hurt, and it sounds bad. Which means he needs to get up and get moving. He isn’t fully healed yet, but most of the injuries are gone, and he really doesn’t have time to wait on the rest.
It doesn’t matter. He’ll heal. He always heals.
Too many minutes pass by as he cleans up and bandages the wound on his chest. It’s still bleeding, so he has to change his shirt again. He doesn’t remember changing it the first time, but this one isn’t sliced to pieces so he must have at some point. The smell of blood is stronger now that his sense of smell is fading back in. He hates the warm coppery feeling on his tongue. He hates all of this. It shouldn’t matter. He’s going to be fine, and his pack needs him. Stiles needs him.
The hallway is tilting crazily when he finally makes it out there. His breathing catches again. Then his lungs stop working entirely and he’s suddenly on the floor. He reaches blindly for an inhaler that isn’t there. Stupid. Of course it isn’t there; he broke it.
Parrish is in front of him and he hopes not a lot of time has passed while he was out of it. It’s still hard to get any air in, but the pain in his chest is grounding so that’s okay. Parrish’s words register a moment later.
Lydia needs help.
He’s on his feet again and moving.
The hospital is both comfortably familiar and intensely off-putting. They hurry down the starkly lit halls, Parrish relaying to the doctors the details on Lydia’s condition.
He’s died here, too. He forgets about that one sometimes. It’s easy to forget when it just keeps happening. He didn’t even need to heal that time, brought back by Kira’s lightning. And he can’t afford to let himself think about Kira right now, so he holds in a shudder as they pass the room he’d recovered in and lets himself forget it again.
He doesn’t think any time at all goes by before Lydia has been passed off to the hospital staff. Parrish promises to keep an eye on her, so Scott heads off to find Stiles.
Time stutters to a halt when he spots Sheriff Stilinski in the hospital bed. He’s so still. He was hurt and dying somewhere while Scott was— while he wasn’t helping.
Time resumes its normal flow when something plows into him, knocking him to the floor. Fire erupts in his chest and spreads through the rest of him, stealing his breath away again. Stiles is on top of him, shouting at him. He can’t shout back when he’s burning from the inside out. Not that he’d have anything to shout back. He knows this is his fault.
Someone pulls Stiles off.
His lungs hurt again and he can’t quite breathe right but that’s okay because he’s still healing so it doesn’t really mean anything. Nothing means anything because everything heals. He needs to get up and keep going.
Stiles’s accusations burn hotter than the fire in his chest and he wonders which will kill him first. (Not that it makes a difference, since he’ll come back again anyway.)
His thoughts are still tilting everywhere, but he needs to focus. He needs to tell Stiles about Lydia.
“Oh, you’ll heal.”
The words don’t compute for a second. Of course he’ll heal. Then he glances down and realizes that the blood has soaked through again. No, that’s— how does Stiles think he would be referring to that?
He tries again, and gets it out properly this time.
And he’s pretty sure not even a second passes before Stiles is gone. Lydia is hurt, so it makes sense. Stiles needs to make sure she’s okay. They both do. Between the Sheriff and Lydia, there are a lot of people to be worrying about.
He just needs a minute to try to breathe again.
“You’ll heal.”
He knows that. He doesn’t— shouldn’t need the reminder. It isn’t the first time he’s died (if it even counts as dying) and it isn’t going to be the last.
It doesn’t matter.
He always heals, so none of it ever matters.
A minute passes. He breathes deep, ignoring the burn. People need him. It’s time to get back to work.
This fic is also archived on AO3 [Link] and SquidgeWorld [Link] - If it is found anywhere else, it is posted without my permission.
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