Chapter Text
The double snap happening with seconds of each other had her head snapping up and her lungs gasping for air as her body felt pain akin to shattering into pieces. Her eyes burned. Her body understood before her mind did and she had already sprung up from the floor where she had been playing scrabble with her sister and was heading for the door, tears streaming down her face before she truly comprehended what had happened.
Dead. Both dead.
She had already run halfway across the yard in an unseeing, unhearing fugue before she was caught around the waist and dragged back. Her feet flew off the ground as her considerable speed was checked.
“NOOOO!!!!” she screamed. She set her feet back on the ground and struggled against her captor.
“NOOOO!!” Her arms reaching out, fingers stretching as far they could as she attempted to claw her way forward.
“NOOOOO!!!!” she shrieked. “Noooo!!” She had to get to them! She had to get to them! She had to do something! This could not be happening! It couldn’t!
It couldn’t.
Behind her, holding her in place she could hear her Uncle Kerin saying something to her and weeping as he did so. He tried to drag her back again but she fought him and broke free. And then just collapsed onto the dirt and buried her face on her forearms and screamed as the pain came crashing down on her. She screamed into her arms again and again before dissolving into heartbreaking sobs and smashed the ground with her fists.
Dead. Both dead.
The pain was crippling. She could feel the empty space the snapped bonds had left within her. Feel the raw pain of the rest of the pack as they too felt the loss that flooded through them and consumed them.
It was somewhere in the middle of her jumbled emotions that she finally realized that she wasn’t feeling the others the way she usually did. It was sharper, clearer. She couldn’t just feel them but it was like they were all there breathing next to her. She knew where each and every one of them was. She could feel their different forms of grief, the way they had all felt towards them both. She could feel their power. She could feel the way they were all tied to her in a way they never had before. Feel her power. Power she never had before. Her eyes burned.
Her sobs choked off and her fingers flexed in the dirt and then she pushed herself upwards and onto her feet in one motion. She stood with her head down breathing heavily as realization of what had happened and of what she had to do flowed through her. And then she breathed in and lifted her head and accepted it all.
Her uncle stood a few feet away from her, his eyes bright, tears still flowing down his face. He looked at her, grief and pain etched on his face and echoing down his bond with her. She stepped towards him and hugged him tightly for a brief moment and then ran to the house.
Her sister, Allie, was on the floor, pinned down by Aunt Laina and Uncle Luke. The scrabble pieces were scattered all over the living room floor. She was still screaming and sobbing hysterically.
She pulled her and aunt and uncle away from Allie and pulled her up and hugged her tightly. Allie clung to her and sobbed into her shirt. She held her, tears springing back to her eyes as she whispered ‘It’s going to be alright’ over and over again. After a few moments he felt her relatives’ arms go around them both. And then the rest of the house’s occupants came in from the various rooms, still crying, fighting to hold on, and added themselves to the group, until they formed several layers around them with her in the middle.
After a while, she didn’t know how long, time was, at the moment, irrelevant, they broke apart and started pulling themselves together. She let go her sister and turned to the last member of the family that was still crying. Her two year old brother was in her other aunt’s arms and he was screaming his little heart out. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t understand what the feeling was and he didn’t know why he was feeling this way. Her heart clenched painfully as she took him from his aunt arms and cradled him in hers.
“Hey,” she said, “Hey, it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. We’ll be alright. We’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you okay? I’ll take care of you and nothing will hurt you, okay. You’ll be fine. We all will be.” She rocked the toddler back and forth as she talked. “Listen to me, baby brother. Everything will be alright. Everything will be okay. You will be okay. You’re safe here. You’re safe here. Nothing will happen to you again. Do you hear me? Nothing will happen to you again.”
Her brother gave a little gasp and then his tears subsided and he buried his face in her chest, clinging to her shirt with his chubby little hands, hiccupping a little. She placed a kiss on his head and then looked up to find that the rest of the family had gathered in a loose semi-circle facing her. She looked at them and they looked at her. And then, as one, they nodded.
We accept you, it said.
She looked at them, her eyes flaring red and she nodded back.
I accept you.
Their eyes flared golden, those who could, and then they all swallowed hard as they felt the bonds tightened, tying them to her and she to them, with their acceptance of each other.
There was a moment of silence as everyone took that in and then Uncle Kerin stepped forward.
“The police will be here soon,” he told her, “We can’t look like we knew the news already. They’ll wonder how, if we do.”
She took a deep breath and then let it out and nodded.
“Alright. Alright, yes.” She looked at him. “You’re good at building stories. How do you want us to play this out?”
He looked at her with pain filled eyes but squared his shoulders and began to talk.
When the knock came on the door, she was sitting on the floor staring at the scrabble board between her and Allie. Her brother was in her lap. Aunt Laina and Uncle Luke were staring blankly at the television and Uncle Kerin was staring blankly at the news paper. But their eyes weren’t red, tear tracks were gone, clothes changed if they warranted a change i.e. those which had gotten torn by fingers or in her case smeared with dirt.
She took a deep breath, handed her brother, Peter, over to Allie, got up and went to answer the door, smoothing her face into a neutral expression.
“Sherriff,” she said, “What brings you to our door?”
The Sheriff of Beacon Hills, with a grave look on his face, said, “Talia Hale, I have come to inform you about the death of your parents.”