disclaimed.

You die at seventeen.

You live at seventeen.

Sometimes, you don't know what's more painful.

...

Scott tells you, one day, when you leave the hospital and go over to his house to find him drinking Jack like it's his job. Werewolves can't get drunk, but you know that he's going to try.

"I felt your heart stop," he cries, hugging you from his knees, face pressed into your stomach. "You didn't have a pulse." His breathing is ragged, his voice muffled in your shirt, and your hands flutter around his head, trying to decide whether you should thread your fingers through his hair and bring him back to his feet to face you.

You decide on the former; he stays on his knees for an hour, crying, and you stay.

...

Here's what you know; your mother died the same way you were supposed to—a knife wound, only it stuck for her. She died. You didn't. Well—

you did.

But your heart started beating when hers didn't and no one can tell you why. Deaton tells you, when you ask, that it had nothing to do with the sacrifice you made, not as far as he's aware. He places a hand on your shoulder gently. "You might just be a fighter," he murmurs.

You might.

Maybe it was just dumb luck.

...

Stiles will not look you in the eyes. Your murderer had his face, in some twisted way, and he stays away. Scott and Lydia split their time between the two of you, eyes heavy with worry for you both.

You corner him in his home, after you had Lydia lie and say that she was coming over alone. The nogitsune is gone, banished back to the depths of hell that it crawled out of, but Stiles looks the same—looks worse when you call his name. His eyes are burdened with guilt, and you see the same guilt in the curve of his shoulders as he hunches into himself, flinching away.

Maybe he expects you to be angry. Maybe you should be. Maybe you are.

But not at him—not at Stiles, who ran himself ragged running messages between you and Scott; Stiles, who risked his life for his best friend, his brother time and time again. How could you be mad at Stiles?

He starts crying when you reach for him, and you hate to think what he's lived through, trapped inside his own mind as the nogitsune tormented those that he loved.

You think that maybe you were both killed.

And maybe it's time for you both to live again.

...

Here's what you know; it's not dumb luck.

Your best friend is a goddamn banshee that felt your wound like it was her own. Your first love is a werewolf that felt your pulse fade and resume. Your blood is silver and wolfsbane, baby, and the world wasn't done with you yet.

...

You asked Scott if he bit you. Asked Lydia if a banshee's scream could bring someone back from the dead. You even lower yourself to ask Gerard if he knew how someone could come back from the dead of their own volition.

You were stabbed through the goddamn stomach—

doctors at the hospital said that you should not be alive, but you are.

In your life, there has never been an easy explanation; there has always been something more.

For once, it's a matter of human nature.

Your will to live is a brutal, savage thing. It's clawed, talons sunk deep around your heart, urging it to beat again and again. It's snarling, frothing at the mouth. It's why your eyes fluttered open when they were meant to be shut.

...

Here's what you know; you will not run. Your father wants to whisk you away—one near death experience too many, but you demand to stay. You are Allison Fucking Argent—you bleed silver and breathe steel; your finger tips are iron and lead, bullets in their own right. You do not bend to the will of those that wish to harm you.

You will not run.

...

Isaac spends a lot of time staring at you like you're a priceless artifact, and that's why you two won't work. You guys understand each other a lot—you do. And you try to make it work.

But you think that maybe your heart made a course correction, a reset, because Scott is suddenly under your skin again. Isaac deserves better.

But so do you.

And you're tired of being shelved in favor of safety, so you take his hand gently, and you give him better.

...

Here's what you know; Isaac will be okay. Cora will come back from South America and Isaac will be okay, because he and Cora have a surprising amount in common. They will fall in love over terrible scarves that you hated and, for once, things work out in everyone's favor.

...

Your father sleeps on your floor for two weeks, after you come home from the hospital. He makes you carry mountain ash in your purse, and he puts a gun in your car's glove compartment.

There's a hot breakfast on the table every morning when you walk out of your room, and you try to avoid thinking about the what-ifs.

...

Here's what you know; your dad talks to your mom, sometimes.

You start going to target practice with him, after that.

...

Lydia tells you that she knew.

Those voices told her to start picking out black dresses, because her best friend was next to die. Crying, she tells you that she's known for a while, but she hoped against hope that, please, god, it wouldn't be you, not you, not her sister. She didn't want you to find her, she screams, pacing around your room like a woman come undone.

"But I'm okay," you tell her, trying to soothe, but all you manage to do is enrage.

She turns on you, then, sobbing, and she says, "I felt it, Allison! And I didn't—I couldn't—you died—."

Her eyes are wild with grief and confusion, and you want to shake her—

you're not dead, but the fact of the matter is that you were, and your best friend lived through it; she felt your death rattle her bones and poison her blood, and you shudder when you think about what would have happened to Lydia if you had stayed dead.

Lydia—who steals your clothes and buys you coffee in the morning on the way to school and who loves you like no one has—.

You try not to think about it, but you know. If Lydia thought there was a way to bring you back, she would have burned the goddamn world down. Lydia would have been fine, you know, eventually. But short term—

her hands are soft and gentle and deserve no blood spilled on them.

...

Here's what you know; sometimes you a get a little reckless with your own life.

Sometimes you forget you are made of vulnerable flesh, breakable bones, and hot blood that will spill from your wounds until there is no more of Allison Argent. Sometimes you place other people's lives above your own.

And, baby, that's okay.

Because sometimes those same people place your life about theirs. Because sometimes the world realizes it isn't done with fragile, human, you. Because sometimes your heart beats out a tune that sounds like more more more.

...

You have a matching set of scars on your belly and back, from where the sword went in and came out the other side. The skin is puckered and angry—the doctors at the hospital warned you that it probably wouldn't ever heal completely. You're kind of okay with that.

When Scott tugs your shirt off, sometime After, sometime in college, his fingers ghost over the angry, red skin, still raised, still calling for attention. You think he's going to stop, but instead he stares at it reverently, moving to kiss it gently.

You feel him say into your skin, "You lived."

...

Here's what you know; no one will ever be able to tell you why your heart refused to give up, or why your pulse pressed on, or why your lungs sucked in the night air.

No one will ever be able to tell you why you lived, when so many died.

No one will ever be able to explain your survival in the face of forces more powerful than arrows could ever be.

...

One day you figure it out. You were not made for death. You were not made to leave.

You were made to breathe and fight, and you fought so hard, for so long; you had lost so much—

you deserved more.

...

You are seventeen and you take what belongs to you.

You are seventeen and you live.

MOTHERFUCKING JEFF DAVIS I AM VIOLENTLY DENYING THAT ENTIRE EP OKAY NOT CANON NOPE