It Hurts Because It's Real

"They're already here, aren't they?" Jennifer spoke lowly and turned to see Stiles, Bella and Scott who had walked to stand in front of them. "So, they told you it was me –– that I'm the one taking people?"

"We told him that you're the one killing people."

"Oh, that's right," Jennifer breathed out a nervous laugh. "Committing human sacrifices, while cutting their throats? Yeah, I –– I probably do it on my lunch hour, that way I can get back to teaching high school English the rest of the day. That makes perfect sense."

"Where's my Dad?" Stiles choked out and Bella looked up at him to see tears falling down his pale cheeks; she grabbed onto his hand and swallowed the lump in her own throat.

"How should I know?" Jennifer replied and Bella felt her blood turn cold. The dark haired woman turned to Derek and pleaded his name. "Tell me you don't believe this."

Derek shifted his eyes to look at the three desperate teenager before looking back to Jennifer. "Do you know what happened to Stiles' father?"

"No."

"Ask her why she almost killed Lydia." Bella spoke up, her voice low and filled with fiery rage.

"Lydia Martin?!" Jennifer asked incredulously. "I don't know anything about that."

"Then what do you know?" Derek bit out.

Jennifer turned to him. "I know that these teenagers, for whatever misguided reason, are filling your head with an absurd story. And one they can't prove, by the way."

Scott held up a small jar containing a beige, dust-like substance. "What if we can?"

Something flickered in Jennifer's eyes. "What is that?"

Scott took a step forward as he twisted the lid on the container. "My boss told me it's a poison and a cure. Which means you can use it, and it can be used against you."

"Mistletoe."

Scott threw his arm into the air, letting the substance spill out and find its way to Jennifer. The clouds of dust circled around her, causing her to shift between her human and disfigured form. When the clouds had faded, Derek's hand enclosed itself around Jennifer's throat.

"Derek, wait, wait –– you need me." Jennifer insisted through strained breaths.

"What are you?" Derek whispered lowly.

"The only person who can save your sister." Jennifer replied. "Call Peter –– call him!"

After Derek had called his uncle to find that Cora's health was a downward spiral and that she was throwing up Mistletoe, his grip tightened around Jennifer's throat.

"Derek –– Derek, what are you doing?" Scott asked anxiously.

"Her life –– it's in my hands." Jennifer struggled to gasp out.

Derek continued to choke the woman, lifting her off of the ground.

"Stop, Derek! Stop!" Stiles spoke up, moving forward slightly and pulling Bella with him.

"Stilinski –– you'll never find him."

Bella looked up at Stiles again to see all colour and hope drain from his face. She looked back to the werewolf. "Derek, stop." She tried to say calmly in fear of angering him more. "Derek!" She yelled and exhaled when he listened to her, finally releasing his grip.

Jennifer dropped to the floor and looked up. "That's right. You need me. All of you."

-

"Scott! Bella!" Melissa called out when she saw her children walking around the corner of the hospital. "What are you doing here? The hospital's evacuating."

"We're here for Cora." Bella replied.

"All of you?" Melissa asked and looked to the right of Bella. "Why does Stiles have my bat?"

"Mom, just trust us on this. You need to get out of here." Scott said sternly. "Right now."

Melissa paused for a moment. "The building is supposed to be clear in thirty minutes. We've got two ambulances that are coming back; one's ten minutes out, one's twenty –– Cora needs to be on one of those." She sighed. "They'll be picking up in the basement garage."

"Got it." Scott replied and turned to follow Derek and Jennifer. Bella attempted to smile reassuringly at her mother before turning aswell.

The five of them walked into the lift; the three teenagers all glaring at their former English teacher as Derek kept a tight grip on her. When they stepped out the lights began flickering and Bella glanced at her brother who just nodded, silently telling her that it was okay.

Bella turned her head when Derek stopped in his tracks. She followed his gaze to see a puddle of black liquid next to the bed that had been Cora's. The puddle turned into a path of small drops of the liquid, leading them to a closed door in front of them. Before any of them could react, the doors burst open and a figure came sliding towards them.

Peter grimaced before speaking as he looked up at them. "We got a problem." He lifted his head to look ahead of them. "Big problem."

All five of them looked up to see the conjoined wolf of the Alpha twins, they roared and Stiles pushed Bella back. In less than a moment, Derek had shifted and was charging up to the Alphas; they had barely been fighting for a minute before Scott shifted and was following the path that Derek had taken. Bella hesitated on letting him go but he was already there before she could take two steps forward.

Her gaze fell down to land on Cora who was lying unconscious at the other end of the hallway. She swallowed and tapped Peter so that he knew she was talking to him. "Help me." She said and started moving forward. Peter followed suit. They made it three steps before Stiles grabbed onto Bella's wrist. Her head spun to look back at him.

"What are you doing?" She asked venomously and glanced back at Cora. "We have to get her out of here."

Stiles just looked at her for a moment before sighing silently; all he wanted to do was keep her out of danger, but he knew that was impossible now. "Okay, fine, come on." He stepped forward with them and they all moved quickly as the Alphas held Scott up against the wall. The three of them reached Cora and Peter began lifting her up over his shoulder.

"Ethan, Aiden, stop!" Scott growled and Bella turned to look at them. "You don't know what you're doing."

"All we want is her!" The Alphas yelled back and turned to look for Jennifer, who was looking at Derek as the lift doors closed on her. They dropped Scott to the ground and Bella ran to him to help him up.

They followed Peter as he walked through double doors which led to another room. Derek yelled at them not to stop moving but Bella had to when she saw that Stiles had. She called out his name but he ignored her and stood beside the door, he held his bat up and Bella's eyes widened.

The Alphas walked through the doors and Stiles connected his bat with the back of their head. The bat smashed into tiny pieces of wood and Bella swallowed as the werewolf roared at Stiles in anger. He fumbled backwards and started to walk back over to her and she grabbed onto him when he was close enough. Bella glanced at Scott who nodded, telling them to go on and follow Peter. They quickly walked out of the room and Bella turned to the boy beside her.

"Are you insane?" She yelled at him and he groaned quietly as they speedily walked down the hallway. "So I'm not allowed to help an unconscious girl get to safety, but you're allowed to hit an Alpha over the head with a wooden bat?"

"Can we do this later?" Stiles asked and looked at her, his hands held out in front of him. Bella opened her mouth to say no but then she saw his shaking hands and the sweat dried on his neck and the tears stained on his cheeks and she felt awful.

"Yeah. Sorry –– I'm sorry."

Stiles looked at her as she looked at the floor. "Hey, it's okay." She didn't reply because it wasn't okay. None of it was. She just looked up at him attempted a smile.

When the two of them saw Peter laying Cora down in one of the rooms they pushed through the doors to help him. Soon after, Scott and Derek came bustling in and Bella sighed silently in relief.

"Where's the big guy?" Peter asked.

"He's close." Derek replied anxiously as he closed the doors to the room.

"What about Miss Blake?" Stiles asked and looked to Scott who shook his head. "What does that mean? Like –– she's gone? Scott, are you kidding me?!"

"Be quiet!" Derek hissed.

"Me be quiet? Me? Huh? Are you telling me what to do now?" Stiles stood closer to Derek and spoke with a furious tone. "When your psychotic and mass-murdering girlfriend –– the second one that you've dated, by the way –– has got my Dad tied up somewhere waiting to be ritually sacrificed?!"

"Stiles, they're still out there." Scott spoke quietly.

"And –– and they want her, right? Which means that we don't have her either!" Stiles looked back to Derek. "Which means that my Dad and Cora are both dead!"

"Not yet." Bella said firmly and Stiles watched her as he moved to stand beside Peter. "Is she really dying?" She asked lowly.

"She's definitely not getting any better."

"There has to be something we can do –– we have to help her." Bella said but before anyone could reply the doors the room they were in flung open. They all looked up to see Jennifer standing in the doorway.

"You can't. Only I can." She said. "I can save her, and I can tell you where Sheriff Stilinski is. But there is a pack of Alphas in this hospital who want me dead. So I'll help you, but only when I'm out of here and safe. Only then."

"You were trying to get out." Derek spoke bitterly.

"I was trying to keep from getting killed, you can't blame me for that."

"If you wanna show that you're one of the good guys then heal her." Stiles said.

"Not until I'm safe." Jennifer replied smoothly.

"I'd like to volunteer a different method of persuasion –– let's torture her."

"Works for me." Derek muttered and began moving forward but stopped when a voice came through the hospital speakers.

"Um, can – can I have your attention," Melissa McCall's stuttering voice filled the room and Bella felt her heart drop to her stomach. "Mr. Deucalion –– excuse me, just Deucalion –– requests you bring the woman calling herself Jennifer Blake to the ER Reception. Do this, and everyone else can leave. You have ten minutes."

"He's not gonna hurt her." Jennifer said calmly.

"Shut up." Derek responded.

"He wont." Jennifer looked to Scott. "Scott, tell them it's true."

"What does she mean?"

Jennifer sighed when Scott said nothing. "You're not the only one he wants in his pack. Deucalion doesn't just want an Alpha pack, he wants perfection. That means adding the rarest of Alphas to his ranks."

"A true Alpha." Peter muttered to himself in disbelief.

"What's that?" Stiles asked.

"The kind that doesn't have to steal his power from another." Peter explained as he looked at Scott. "One that can rise by the force of his own will."

"It doesn't matter." Scott spoke up and looked to Jennifer. "We still need to get her out of here."

"Scott, your Mom––!" Stiles said and stepped forward in protest.

"Our Mom said that there's one more ambulance coming in twenty minutes and I don't think we've been here that long. So if we can get down to the garage and get to the last ambulance, we can get out of here."

"The twins aren't gonna let us just walk out."

"I'll distract them." Scott replied with a determined tone.

"You mean fight them."

"Whatever I have to do."

"I'll help you." Derek replied.

"Sorry but I'm not going anywhere without you, Derek." Jennifer intercepted.

"Then I'll do it." Peter said. "But I prefer to be out there with an advantage."

"An advantage? Like what?" Stiles asked. "You mean like a weapon?"

"Something better than a baseball bat."

As the four of them started to look around the room for something that could help, Bella started to move towards the doors.

"Hey, no, what are you doing?" Stiles said and stepped in front of her.

"I'm gonna go find our Mom." She replied dismissively and tried to move around him.

"No, no you're not."

"Bella, you heard what Jennifer said, he's not gonna hurt her." Scott said from behind her.

She turned around to look at her brother. "Jennifer also said that she was our new English teacher, but really she was just there to find people suitable for her psychotic sacrifices." Bella spat out angrily. "So forgive me if I don't believe everything she says." She turned back to Stiles. "We have to keep her safe to find your Dad, Stiles. And she's the only one who can heal Cora. So just get her out of here and I'll meet you at the ambulance."

"The twins are still out there––"

"Scott and Peter are gonna distract them. It's gonna be fine." She smiled at him and briefly held her hand to his face before she stepped past him.

"Hey, just be careful, okay?" Stiles said and Bella turned to look at him; she nodded. She looked to Scott who nodded once –– he wanted to keep his sister safe more than anything but he knew there was no changing her mind.

-

After what felt like an hour of looking, at least three sets of stairs and too many flickering lights –– Bella felt like giving up. It had been a while since she had heard any growls, so she had no idea where anyone was. Especially her mother. Bella stopped where she stood; it felt far too quiet and empty. She glanced around to find only herself in the hallway. But her breath caught in her throat when she heard something fall to the floor.

She barely had a chance to turn around before she was thrown against the far wall. When she opened her eyes, she saw the morphed Alpha twins standing above her. Bella wanted to get up and run away but it felt like her spine had split in half and her head felt too heavy. The next thing she knew, there was a hand around her throat and she was being lifted into the air. Her own hands subconsciously scratched at the one blocking her airway as her feet dangled in the air.

"Where is she?" The Alphas snarled. "We're trying not to hurt you."

"Try harder." Bella choked out.

"Hey!" A voice called out. "I'd like to try something."

Bella sucked in a huge breath of new air as she watched her mother use a defibrillator to shock the werewolves and send them to the ground. She looked up at her Mom in awe.

"Sweetheart, get up."

-

"He just let me go, he said it was a gesture of good will." Melissa told her daughter as they walked through the hospital. "No other reason."

"He must of had a reason. I don't think he does anything without a reason." Bella replied but stopped when she heard something that sounded similar to a gun being reloaded. Her heart started beating rapidly as she gestured for her Mom to stay put whilst she saw if anything was around the corner. She took slow steps and tried to steady her heartbeat before fully stepping away from wall.

Bella exhaled heavily and closed her eyes in relief when she saw Isaac, Allison and Allison's father.

-

"So, they're essentially trapped." Chris Argent said as they walked into another room in the hospital. Derek and Jennifer had been in one of the elevators when the power was switched off.

"There's no way of getting them out without turning the power back on." Bella said and breathed in shakily when she felt Isaac stand beside her; the last time she had really spoken to him was at the motel when he was poisoned by Wolfsbane.

"But if the power's back on they're gonna hear the elevator moving, right?" Melissa said. "We can't get in a fight with them."

"You've got us now."

"It's too much to risk." Bella replied and shook her head. "They want her dead and if she dies.. there's nothing we can do for Stiles' Dad or Cora." Bella felt Isaac flinch slightly when she said Stiles' name but she ignored it.

"I don't think I know which teacher this is." Chris said.

"She's the one with the brown hair. She's kinda hot." Isaac replied and all four of them looked to him. He looked down at Bella to see a disdainful look on her face. "It's –– uh, it's just an observation."

"I've got an idea."

-

Allison's idea was that she would pretend to be Jennifer as she ran through the halls of the hospital, this would lead the twins and Kali outside so that Allison and her father could distract them. As this was happening, Isaac and Bella would be free to drive to the basement garage, where the ambulance was, to get Cora, Peter and Stiles into the car. Scott would go to the elevator and get Derek and Jennifer whilst Melissa went up to the roof to turn the power back on.

"You ready?" Allison said through the phone.

"Yeah." Bella replied.

"Are you nervous?" Allison asked and Bella shook her head no. "Is Isaac?"

Bella turned to look at the boy who also shook his head. "He said he's not."

"Does he look nervous?"

"Terrified." Bella replied and Isaac gave the girl a sarcastic smile and then a glare. Bella stifled a laugh as she placed the phone on the dashboard so that they both could see the screen.

"Just go as soon as you see them, okay?" Allison told them and also re-positioned her phone; she did this so that Isaac and Bella could see the hallway of the hospital.

"Yeah. Yeah, we got it."

After a few moments of waiting, Isaac's voice filled the void. "I never got to apologize for what happened at the motel. It wasn't me, and I think you know that I never would've said what I said or did what I did if it was me. So I'm sorry."

Bella turned to look at him. "It's fine, really."

"I also never really said sorry for beating up Aiden when he told me that he slept with you. And I also didn't say sorry for believing him."

"I'd rather not talk about it." Bella replied and looked at her hands in her lap for a moment before looking at him again. "But I forgive you. For all of it."

"Even what I did to Stiles?"

"No. Not Stiles." Bella said; his bruises were almost faded but almost every time she looked at him she was reminded of what happened. "But, if it helps, I don't hate you anymore."

Isaac breathed out a small laugh. "It does."

The twins running down the hallway filled the screen of Bella's phone and she looked to Isaac who had already started the engine.

The car skidded to a stop next the ambulance and both Bella and Isaac jumped out. Bella ran to Stiles who was closing the ambulance doors as Isaac helped Peter get Cora into the car.

Stiles turned to look at her. "Hey, oh my god, are you okay?" He said and put his hands on either side of her face. Bella smiled and nodded but was sure that she would wake up tomorrow with a collection of bruises on her back. Stiles opened his mouth to speak again but something on the ambulance door caught his eye –– a form that required a signature from a parent or guardian.

"Bella, Stiles, come on! We've gotta go." Isaac yelled at them.

"Stiles, what is it?" Bella asked. When all Stiles did was look at her she turned her head to see what he had been staring at.

Parent or guardian.

That familiar feeling of her heart collapsing fell over her. Before she knew what she was doing, she started running back to the hospital; ignoring the screams from both Stiles and Isaac. She ran through the doors to the hospital and didn't stop when her eyes met Derek's lifeless body laying still on the elevator floor. She knew Stiles was behind her when she heard him call for her to wait as she ran up the flights of stairs. She kept running until she reached the rooftop where she knew her mother had been.

Bella felt the bile rise up her throat when she saw her brother already there with Deucalion. Her brother turned to face her and the look on his face made her want to fall to the floor. Before she could even think of anything to say Stiles came bustling through the rooftop door.

"Scott –– Scott, don't do this, don't go with him." Stiles spoke as he stood beside Bella.

"I don't know what else to do."

"Scott, there.. there has to be something else –– okay, we always... we always have a plan B." Stiles struggled to find anything to say that would fix what was happening.

"Not this time." Scott said wretchedly and turned to carry on walking over to Deucalion.

"Scott." Was the only thing Bella could bring herself to say.

Scott turned around for the last time to look at his younger sister. "I'm gonna find Stiles' Dad. And I'm gonna find Mom, okay? I promise."