Everyone go wish both Kayla's (KazzaJozzy and -avalanches) happy birthday! It's a bit late because of how long I procrastinated writing this chapter, but I give you my wishes nonetheless! As far as the chapter goes, it's definitely not one of my favorites and I just was eh the whole time. I think I may just be having a mental breakdown over writing Sage in Eichen House any longer. I'm so ready for her to get the hell out so that she can have scenes with more people. Literally, she's stuck in a conversation with Malia and Stiles. I was barely able to add a small Brunski chat last chapter, but I just hate the fact that I can't make the stretches of her character like I normally do with extra scenes. I promise that the next few chapters after this will be ten times better because only four episodes left, omg.

Also, fun fact because I was thinking about this today: did you know that, if Isaac had come back at any point between season four and five, Sage and him would have eventually gotten together? Stiles and Sage wouldn't have originally been endgame. (Which, obviously, they more than likely are now given the lack of her gentle giant.) Just wanted to let all of you low key Sisaac shippers that I did not ruin the chance of our favorite OTP getting together, Jeff Davis did. (SONG OF THE CHAPTER: White Noise by PVRIS.)

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FIFTY SEVEN;

BUILDING A TRAGEDY

"Stiles, you've got to wake up."

Sage repeated the words for what seemed like the dozenth time, grabbing at the thrashing arm of the teenage boy in front of her to try and shake him awake to no avail. Malia had finally managed to get the door to Stiles' containment room open after five minutes of struggling to find his scent and another three to actually convince the werecoyote she had enough strength in her body to, not only bruise the blonde's jaw efficiently, but open up a sealed door. It was an excessive process that took too long; clearly, long enough for Brunski to drug Stiles into a sleep that was nearly impossible to wake him up from. Even worse, this was not the first time that she has found herself struggling to wake Stiles from the slumber of his demented mind. Unlike last time, the home that Stiles lived in within the girl's heart had been replaced with a void he could not contain. This was a permanent hell that not even those that meant the most to him could get him out of.

Sage shifted her cold hand from Stiles' burning arm to his face, already beginning to sense the impatience that Malia was having towards getting caught breaking into an area like this. "Stiles. I really need you to wake up. Like, right now, Sleeping Beauty. Come on. Stiles, wake up."

She placed her other hand on his face, squeezing gently as she lifted his head up so that he wasn't twisting and turning on the ground any more. The moment that she did, a heavy gasp emitted through the air as if the blonde's touch pulled him from the inanimate nightmare he was facing. Stiles set into panic very quickly, a cry falling through his lips before Sage was able to place a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. Her cool skin had silenced him, along with a few hushed pleads that barely went noticed as the teenage boy kept his light brown eyes on the bright green ones that the girl in front of him wore with concern. Just like she remembered, there was a moment of remembrance to when they had been in this exact same position only a few weeks ago. There was a different way that he looked at her this time. She could not tell if it hurt or helped to see it, either.

Malia, who had been watching the scene with the same intensity to understand, took a step forward so that her appearance was known to Stiles. "We really need to go."

"How did you two get in here?" Stiles asked, glancing in between Sage and Malia. It was at that point that she pulled her hands away from his face, the teenage boy instantly feeling his skin begin to burn all over again. A small ounce of relief fell through his chest when she grabbed a hold of his arms to hoist him up as best as possible, the same sensation coming back if only for a split second.

"I broke the lock," Malia revealed, her eyes flashing with detectable excitement. There was something about her reaction that had Sage and Stiles both unable to relate, never once having supernatural strength to guide them through harsh situations. All they had was each other, and it must be working considering they've survived up until now. "If I concentrate, I can be pretty strong."

Sage let a sound fill from the back of her throat, knowing very well that the concentration part took much longer than the actual breaking part had. She didn't take her arms off of Stiles until she was sure that he was stable enough on his own, doing a once-over of his body to make sure that he was physically healthy before she let go of him completely. The last thing that either of them had the time to think about was where they last ended their conversation, the glances that they were giving one another speaking a thousand words that only the other could understand. The blonde gave him a weak smile, one that was as much assurance she could muster up at that moment before turning to look over at Malia.

The brunette tried to make it seem like she hadn't been intently staring at their interaction, blinking a few times to remove herself from the daze. "There's another way to the basement through the closed unit — where they keep the real psychos."

Stiles did not know why Sage's entire body grew tense at that statement, or why she fell out of step when Malia turned to walk out of the room. What he did know was that there was clearly something wrong and it had to do with what just came out of their new, werecoyote friend's mouth. There was a small section of his mind that had growing assumptions, ones that seemed too unrealistic to be completely true. However, those volatile thoughts were pushed away when Malia turned to see that the couple had not moved from their rooted place in Stiles' previous prison, hissing to them with an uttered persistence to move their feet. Without thinking through his actions, Stiles had grabbed at Sage's upper arm to try and pull her out of the momentary hesitation towards wanting to leave.

"Sage," Stiles whispered, not realizing how carefully he spoke her name. She glanced over at him immediately, fear flashing in her irises for a split second before they fell cold enough to hide her emotions all together. Even with her humanity shining vibrantly, there was no falter in her ability to hide herself beneath a mask. It was almost sad to know that she had developed a second personality to hide the one inside of her, the one that had only ever been exposed through a true and indefinite degree of emotional trauma. To see her reacting that way so naturally meant that going through the closed unit, or the basement, was much more than just a path for their plans. "Come on."

The blonde nodded, swallowing hard before she followed after Malia. Sage wasn't even mentally capable of thinking about the fact that the way Stiles said her name just then was so different from the way he had snapped it earlier, or even the way that Brunski sneered it like it was an insult. She didn't think about the fact that the last time he grabbed a hold of her, not the other way around, was five days ago when he was just a skeleton in the captivity of his own mind. All she thought about was the fact that they were going into the unit that her mother had been held, and whether not she was still in there or Brunski had truly done something to her continued to seep through the seams of her brain.

The path that they were walking down was silent, Malia staying close enough to the two behind her so they didn't get lost but far enough away to give them the space that they clearly needed to figure things out. Even though she had been living with the mentality of a coyote ever since she could possibly remember, anyone with the slightest of eyesight could tell that there was something that needed to be addressed between Sage and Stiles. Choosing to come between that was simply idiotic, and she said nothing more about it as she continued to lead the complicated pairing through a narrow hallway. She could hear the blonde's heart begin to race faster as they quickly crossed past the gate that led into the closed unit, a place that they wouldn't actually be entering but was enough of an emotional stress that anyone could sense the insanity living beneath the walls.

Choosing to say nothing about it, smartly, Malia stopped in front of a door with the words 'Storage Room' printed in fading, white paint. It was the closest thing to a basement that Stiles was referring to, and it seemed to bring the teenage boy back the reality of how close he was to answers. He took a step forward from behind Sage, moving slightly so that he could reach past Malia and open the door without thinking twice about his decision. Almost instantly, a familiarity surfaced down the back of spine and had him inhaling deeply to save himself from the abrupt wave of nausea. Even though everything sane left inside of him screamed not to enter, he stepped forward anyway and tried to ignore how the scenery blurred together from the nightmares he had in the place.

"Stiles," Malia called out, gaining the attention of both Sage and Stiles. The couple had strayed further into the room while the brunette kept her distance at the door, frowning slightly as she looked towards them and then the room. "This isn't my fight. I'll keep watch by the stairs, but I can't help you. Not like she can."

Malia's final sentence had been guided by the glance she took at Sage. She was more than aware of the little placement she had in the problems they were currently facing, there being little that she could do to help from the amount of information she had been locked away from because of Eichen House. The blonde standing off to the side was the only resource that Stiles had, and Malia could see that she was also the only thing that Stiles was consistently trying to push away. Giving them time to talk, fight, yell, whatever they were able to do with the exclusion to the rest of the institution was the best that she could manage. She, at the very least, owed that to Sage for getting her locked away in Echo House in the first place.

Sage watched as Malia grabbed the door, moving to close it only to be stopped when the blonde spoke. "Malia."

"Yeah?" The brunette turned around to face the girl with the bruised cheek, feeling the sickness continue to roam around within her stomach. Guilt. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she was beginning to see all of the layers of Sage Connelly, even the ones that she didn't completely understand and wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Don't get rid of it," Sage stated in a washed out tone, the five words providing more significance between them than Stiles would ever understand. Malia's eyes shined with a sense of hope, possibly because the teenage girl had just forgiven her for the problematic situations they originally got into earlier this morning. Possibly because she knew that acknowledging the house fire seven years ago had tore away the guarded stance that was always built when the werecoyote was around. Somewhere along the way, Malia had gotten through to Sage and an apology was fashioned. That was a rarity few people managed to receive in such short time.

Malia nodded once in understanding, giving Stiles one last glance before she was closing the door. It only took a second of her being gone for the couple standing in the room to grow uncomfortable with the tension, knowing very well that every time they've been alone since the moment they saw each other in Eichen House that it's revolved around a fight. Both of them were physically and mentally exhausted, though, and found no urge to start throwing words around just to satisfy the other's thirst of frustration. Instead, Stiles just turned around to inspect the room with much more interest than when he first walked in. The very first thing that he saw that wasn't dozens of file cabinets was a wall straight down from where he and Sage were standing.

To make the matters worse, what he saw had been branded on the blonde's ear only a few weeks ago. "Sage."

"What?" she asked, turning around to look at him. "Did you find something?"

He hadn't needed to explain why he called out for her, though, because when she finally connected the direction of his attention to the wall he was narrowing his eyes at, her own face paled. The symbol that had caused so much trouble for them in the past was now staring at them directly in the eye, neither one of them having the urge to speak about what it meant. They were both already plenty aware, and they didn't need to remind one another that only one of them carried the same thing behind their ear. The other had something much darker branded in their skin.

In an attempt to direct Stiles' attention away from the symbol, she stepped in front of him and waited until he realized her body was blocking his view of it. "Stiles, what are we looking for in here?"

"Anything that can tell us why I've been here before."

That single sentence had introduced Sage and Stiles to the long process of sitting in the same room for an hour, the only sound that interrupted the silence was the flipping of pages every few seconds as the two searched for any helpful information. Stiles had taken a permanent place on the couch that they threw down there, picking through a few boxes that looked more useless twenty minutes later than they did when he first grabbed a hold of them. Sage decided to sit on the floor with her back up against one of the file cabinets, four shelves open as she shuffled through hundreds of different tabs all labeled with more grotesque things than the last. She had made sure to keep her eye out for anything that mentioned altors, or even druids in general, but everything seemed to be completely centered around the fantasies that Eichen House has been playing out with vivid pictures for the past forty years.

The further that she got into the years, the more she began to see just how cruel the place truly was. It practically centered around torturing people, whether that be to try and miraculously give them their sanity in return for parts of their brain cells or just to simply perform the procedures because they found a thrill in doing so. The worst of it all was that she had no idea just how much her mother had given up when she admitted herself into the institution. Sage had absolutely no idea just how much hell that Mallory had been facing just like her daughter. She wasn't completely sure if the pain would have been easier to live with— knowing every she loved hadn't died in the fire — or if it would have made it even more unbearable. For the sake of her own hell of a mind, she tried to believe that it was the latter.

"This place definitely used to be a lot more fun," Stiles said, breaking the silence that had lasted for an entire hour. Sage glanced up from her page on how they used to medically convert a person's health with the usage of prescribed amnesia to notice that the teenage boy's face had squinted in discomfort as he flipped through another few pieces of useless information. "Electroshock, ice baths, trephination."

"They talk about medically brainwashing someone in some of mine if you want to read about it," Sage stated with the same disgust that he had, throwing her packet of papers his way as she reached to pick up another without actually having the desire to read anymore. This one consisted around the same idea that Stiles had previously mentioned, going in full detail on electroshock and all of the procedures someone needed to take if they were considering practicing it on a patient.

It was another fifteen minutes of silence, in which the lack of words carried a deafening feeling to the room that left Sage and Stiles with sore throats. Both of them tried their hardest to keep their attention focused on the sentences that they were reading, but by the time they had neared another pile of papers that went over even more graphic diagnoses of the patients in the place, they had had enough. The blonde that was sitting on the floor had dropped the three pound pack of papers to her right, a sigh heaving through her lips as she curled her legs up so she could place her elbows on them. There was a headache beginning to pound inside of her head, just simply from the lack of sleep and amount of energy that had been exerted today; to make the situations even more brutal, Sage realized that if she was feeling that after having only spent one day awake, she could not bear the thought of how horribly Stiles' mind must be throbbing.

The exhale that she let out was enough for Stiles to glance up, a frown pulling on his face when he noticed how she was running her hands through her hair with little care on how messy it was making it. His fingers slowly moved off of his paper, putting it down on one of the boxes to his left. "What's going on, Sage?"

"What?" The teenage girl opened her eyes, turning her head to look at Stiles in confusion. She didn't see why she was the one being asked a question that should be reiterated back to him. He knew what was going on. He knew that they had been sitting in the same damn room for the past hour looking through useless information in hope that they would find something, anything, to help them. "Nothing's going on. I'm fine."

Stiles didn't let up from his gaze, his eyes hardening slightly through the dark shades of the basement when he heard the blonde's denial towards her stress. "Every time you say that you're fine, you're usually not. I've known you long enough to tell when you're worrying about something a lot bigger than just being in this basement. What's going on, Sage?"

His words were placid, showing no form of frustration or persistence towards shoving her into a corner for answers. The pair had reached the point in the day where they were too drained of energy to bother lunging at one another again. The genuinely curious question was enough for Sage to settle into her own frown, positive that herself and Stiles were going to grow wrinkles on their faces from how much they did it. She didn't know how to reveal all of her concerns in one explanation, though. She was worried about Stiles, surely, and she was worried about the Nogitsune that was festering up a storm beneath the barrier of his mind. She was worried about Derek and Argent, and what they had gotten themselves into. She was worried about Scott. She was worried about her mother. She was worried about the minuscule, little things like whether or not she was to pass junior year — or, more importantly, even reach the end of it.

"I'm just worried about everyone," Sage admitted, blinking once as she turned her eyes away from him to settle on her hands. They had confiscated all of the jewelry lingering on her fingers and her wrists, something that she almost found herself appreciating and hating all at once. Her habit of twisting the rings was not an option, but, at the same time, if all of them were off than she didn't have to have the inevitable conversation with Stiles about the placement of the one that used to reside on her middle finger. One that she, still, did not have any intention of putting back on. "We're stuck in a prison, Stiles, and we have no idea what in the hell is going on outside of here."

Stiles pursed his lips, his own hands becoming of interest as he clasped them together to squeeze tightly. "Well... if it makes you feel any better, you're four feet away from their biggest threat right now."

Sage turned to look at him, mild surprise shining in her eyes as she looked at him. She wasn't entirely sure if she should have felt fear in that moment or humor, whether it be that he was completely right or that he was completely wrong, she could not decipher. "Did you seriously just make a joke?"

"I'm pretty sure the lack of sleep is catching up to me," Stiles stated, humming slightly as he lifted his head to send her a half smile. It was shouldered with a slight hesitancy, the two of them finding the situation wrong to smile at given how much conflict was settling in the air. Even a small ounce of humor could not take away the fact that they were still locked away in a mental institution with a psychotic murderer out to kill their entire town; and, in some cases, kill again. "Scott will be fine, Sage. He's got Lydia and Allison with him."

The blonde was not comforted to hear that three of the most important people in her life were, more than likely, struggling with some conflict that herself and Stiles could have easily helped in. It was not comforting to know that Allison may be throwing herself into a dangerous situation alongside Scott because she had a code of honor that she followed like her own person tattoo. It was not comforting to know that Lydia would be trying to help in as many ways as possible even though everyone knew that the strawberry blonde did not know how to fight, which worried Sage even more. It was not comforting to know that Scott would hold his true alpha status on his shoulders like a burden he had been cursed with, knowing that his tendencies and integrity always had to fall on the strict line of good. Had Sage and Stiles been there, they could have swayed the good into something slightly more selfish. Had Sage and Stiles been there, they would break the habit of doing the right thing and settle for doing the most logical; and, because they weren't there, she knew that they were in trouble. Even if she wasn't an altor, she knew.

"Do you ever think about what it would be like if Scott hadn't of been bitten?" Sage randomly asked, her thoughts swaying in between parallels of the life all of her friends were living to the life they could have had in another world. "If the fire had never happened, if the supernatural were just in books and cliche movies? Do you think about the people we would be?"

Stiles looked at her, his features higher with new-found interest in the subject change. If there was any way to stray from the topic of his demented mind, he would take it. "Sometimes."

"I never would have left," the blonde mused, turning her body so that she was no longer leaning on the cabinet anymore, but sitting cross-cross only a few feet in front of him. "The Argent's may never have come back to Beacon Hills, or even know about it in the first place. Lydia might still be pretending people don't notice that she's not actually dumb. Jackson would still be a jackass, but he wouldn't be in another continent. Derek might actually be capable of smiling. He never would have been forced to grow up for me. Luke might have been able to propose to his girlfriend."

Stiles could tell that she had thought on the idea a lot, her eyebrows furrowing in concentration as she ran through the thousands of different scenarios that could be different if they had been given a second chance. It did seem appealing. He knew that he had wished before for things to go back to the way that they were, or that just once he could return back to the moments when he was oblivious to the world that they were forever stuck in. Sometimes, he just wanted to get out of it all. Sometimes, he wanted to pack up his bags and drive as far away from Beacon Hills as Roscoe would carry him — but, he didn't; and, he wouldn't. There were too many people in this town that he could not face leaving behind and too many memories that he could not just walk away from effortlessly.

"And, what about the people that weren't happy before all of this?" Stiles asked, reiterating her situation negatively so that she could see it wasn't just one side, the positive side, that she could look at. "Isaac would have to spend another two years getting beat up by his dad. Erica would have still been the school's laughing stock. Boyd would have still sat in the same spot at the empty lunch table. I mean, Scott and I weren't anything before he was bitten, Sage. We became something. All of us. Not everything that involves the supernatural ends up completely bad."

It seemed almost ironic to take his words and compare them to the place that they were currently in, where Stiles said that not everything involving the supernatural is completely bad while two of the three examples are now gravestones and he is walking around with a bomb inside of his brain. Sage looked at him in surprise, knowing that the teenage boy had always seen a light within the supernatural life he had been pushed into, but she hadn't expected for it to stay with how much darkness had visited them in the past few months. Hell, they literally had hearts of darkness. They had been possessed by one of the darkest forms of evil in the supernatural world. The blonde was all but questioning towards Stiles outlook on his life.

"Maybe," Sage muttered, sticking with an easy response as she played with the grey sweats that had given her. "I guess I just wonder how happier we would be if we were given a second chance. If we would be better people... if we would still do the right thing if the biggest problem we faced was Lydia Martin hitting everyone that ran for prom queen with her five-inch heels."

Stiles actually did smile this time, not even completely sure how the teenage girl in front of him had managed to get him to express the emotion when he had not felt any hope in the last two weeks. It was almost poetic, to say the least, that the girl he had been so frustrated with and so completely adamant on staying away from was the only one that had managed to take his mind off the dark future that was soon coming on them all. It ultimately sucked that she still had that capability and that hold on him, even though he promised himself he could not let her. It only made his wish to just hate her instead of love her grow stronger. "Or, keeping Coach from killing Greenberg."

"That, too."

Sage snorted, rubbing her eyes to keep herself awake. Her exhaustion had caused her to think about something, making her put her hands down slowly to give Stiles a weary look. He noticed it, his forehead creasing as he watched her push herself off the floor and walk the remaining feet to him. Before he could even ask what she was doing, an intrusively freezing hand was reaching up to grab the bottom of his shirt. His whole body locked up in shock, unsure if it was from the skin-to-skin contact that he was making with the blonde or how comfortable she was simply grabbing a hold of his clothing and pulling it up like they were still the same status as they were two months ago.

The blonde noticed how tense his body was, her cheeks heating up with a slight embarrassment that she wasn't sure she had ever felt before in her entire life. She didn't get embarrassed, and rarely had she ever actually subjected down to blushing, but her face was on fire. Sage didn't care much about boundaries, and while it was progress that she could openly touch him without wanting to flinch away, she knew that there was a large difference between pulling up the back of someone's shirt to look at vivid marks and allowing him to wrap his arms around her, or put his lips on her, like the Nogitsune had pressed him into doing.

The teenage girl inhaled slightly. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Stiles answered, his words straining in his chest as he spoke to try and ignore the ache he continued to have towards wanting to touch her. It had been the same feeling when she shook him from the nightmares, the way it literally felt like she shoved her hand into his body and squeezed all of his organs until he was shedding shattered pieces of parts that were necessary to live. Much like the way she made him smile, he wanted to hate her for that, too. "Are they still there?"

They were, but they were not as intricate as they had been five hours ago when Morrell had last checked on them. The marks were fading quickly, Sage's eyes gazing over the bitter image of the blue lines slowly cascading off his back and falling only on the crease between his neck and his shoulder. "They're almost gone, Stiles."

That had been all she needed to say to implement the fear back into Stiles' features, the carefree attitude that he had before slowly dripping away like a painted mask as he felt like all of the hope had been drained from his system. The nod of his head was enough for Sage to realize he didn't need anymore information, and for the sake of her own stomach, she released his shirt and took a slow seat down next to him. The victim of circumstance sat down next to the victor of her heartbeat, in the process taking more than just her abilities away, and it was a broken record on repeat for them. They were only seventeen, two teenagers that had no idea how to react around each other or react to the current situation. They were just kids that had impulsively fallen in love with a counterpart that was always bound to wash away as an enemy.

Despite it all, though, it was even more sad to watch it happen. There was a way in which he looked at her, and a way in which she stared, that could not be understood; because, even after the events that had gotten them to the place they were then, there was still a persistent need to touch. There was a compelling urgency that they felt being near one another, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. Most others would not understand why they gripped onto that need given the situations they've thrown themselves into, or why someone would be so blind not to see how volatile the couple was together. Most others would judge. However, most others failed to see that Lydia had been right about what she said about Sage Connelly and Stiles Stilinski: they were magnets, connecting to an inescapable distance unless a blunt force is applied, or left with the impenetrable understanding that when they flipped their sides, the last thing they could do was that they desired most: be with each other.

That was why the silence had been so deafening.

"Stiles," Sage said, the sound of his name rolling off her tongue as an impulse while she stared ahead. Her head was craned slightly, lips pressed tightly together as she narrowed her eyes on the wall that was just showing from the corner of her eye. All she could think about was the fact that Malia had continuously talked about how thin the walls in the place were while they talked, which was the main cause of why Eichen House had carried the bigger title of Echo House. "What if we've been looking in the wrong place?"

She got up from the couch without explaining any further, even though he very well might have asked her a few questions regarding what in the hell she was actually talking about. Her feet only padded along the hard floor, taking the small turn so that she could reach the wall with the kanji symbol carved carelessly into the foundation. She could hear Stiles come up behind her, wanting to ask what she was doing once again only to be silenced when Sage brought her hand up to the wall and knocked on it once. Instead of a hard sound emitting back in their ears, the two were equally surprised to hear a hollow pitch ring through the room. That had been enough for the blonde to look back at Stiles, her lips tugged into a straight line as she nodded once.

That was the only push he needed before he was grabbing a hold of the first thing he saw that he could swing into the wall, which happened to be a pipe left in the basement like everything else seemed to be. Before Sage even had a chance to tell him to be careful, Stiles was swinging with all of his force. Even with the distance she put between herself and the teenage boy before he started, she couldn't help but cringe away instinctively. Her green eyes traveled, watching as he repeatedly hit the wall with an uncaring attitude towards how much noise and debris he was letting fall around their feet. She knew that he needed the release, that he had anger and frustration pent up inside of him that he couldn't get out and, now, he had been given the chance. That thought in mind, she noticed that he was quickly running out of breath and eventually slowed his swings until he dropped the pipe all together.

Sage slowly moved closer, her sight focused more on Stiles' heaving chest than what was it was that he could not take his eyes off of. Only when she was assured that he was completely recovered from the heated beating he gave the wall did she finally turn her attention over to what he had just exerted all of his force into showing. What she saw would have had her throwing up whatever contents were in her stomach had she eaten anything in the past forty-eight hours. "Oh, my god."

"This is him," Stiles confirmed, his words throaty and uneven as he took deep inhales.

An aged body sat in a chair in front of them, the musty smell immediately hitting the two the moment all of the air had shifted into the basement room. The man, or at least what looked like a man, was wrapped up in dozens of bandages, displayed on every inch above his waist to disguise what would have been beneath it. Sage met Stiles' eye, noticing how pale his face had gotten in the span of thirty seconds, and put together that this was not the first time he had seen this form of the Nogitsune. She didn't know the things that the boy had seen in his past time state of consciousness and unconsciousness. She didn't know that Stiles was absolutely sure in that moment that his heart had fallen five inches and landed in his stomach. All that she could answer was that he clearly would not be offering to glance inside of the caved hole with the dead body inside of it.

Of course, it had to be Sage. The blonde took cautious steps forward, wanting nothing more than to block her nose of the smell as she glanced around to try and find anything that would give them answers to why exactly this man was hidden behind a wall. When she failed to see anything that would help them, she almost moved back. That, of course, was until her eyes caught sight of the pocket that was folded over slightly like something was caught on the side of it. Having more dignity inside of her body than to refuse reaching inside of the pocket of a dead corpse that was haunting her ex-boyfriend, she slowly moved her hand forward to grab a quick hold of whatever was lingering inside of the shirt pocket. When she had pulled it out, she was completely positive that the worry she had only a few minutes prior just leveled to an unfathomable extent as her jaw clenched.

"I trusted her," Sage hissed out, her veins pumping with a sudden rage as she all but shoved the picture into Stiles' awaiting hands. She should have expected it; she should have known not to trust anyone that comes to their town. There was only so much that she could do for Scott, and choosing to trust the girl he liked just for his sake was not the way she should have gone. "Scott trusted her."

Stiles didn't further encourage her anger, frustrated himself as he glanced down at the picture that revealed enough to create even more questions for them. "We've got to get this to Scott."

The teenage girl nodded, her fists clenching at her sides as she turned around with an impatience in her step to get out of the institution no matter how hard it would be. Just as she did so, only managing to put one foot in front of the other, a painful jolt of electricity reverberated down her spine and had her arms instinctively reaching forward at the sign of distress. The shock itself was enough to sting her the lid of her mouth and lock up every single one of her joints, Sage barely managing to cry out at the intensity within the currents before she was crumbling to the ground. Oliver stood above her, a taser held in his hand with an oblivious look on his face to what he had just done.

Before Stiles could even manage knocking the object from his hand, or even notice that Malia had fallen victim to the same paralyzing pain, the damaging ache of every single one of his nerves pulsating throughout his body caught up to him, sending him down just as quickly as Sage had fallen. The blonde to his right was still convulsing, her body twitching in small spasms to try and fight the stream of electricity that was surging in every which way. Helplessly, Stiles glanced up with watered vision to see that his roommate continued to hold the upper-hand against three people. "You took Brunski's keys. I took his stun gun."

"Oliver," Sage muttered, her words slurring as though she had just been heavily intoxicated the entire night. Her head had fallen against the wall that Stiles had previously crushed, her hands pressing down on the ground in a fight for strength. After only seconds of trying, she fell back down in defeat. "Oliver, what did you... what did you do?"

Oliver noticed that the blonde was struggling to get up, his lips setting deeply into a scowl as he watched the blonde continue to wither around in an unaided attempt to push off from the ground. Before Stiles could even let out a sharp warning through his buzzing tongue, the psychotic, teenage boy in front of them had bent down to slam a syringe into Sage's leg. A spluttering mumble fell from her mouth, Stiles unsure of whether or not she was pleading to Oliver or threatening him, as her green eyes slowly rolled to the back of her head and her placement on the wall fell limp. Much like Malia, who was only three feet away from him and in the same circumstance as Sage, the blonde did not move.

"I also got his Haldol," Oliver admitted with a small hum in his tone, showing the only conscious person in the room two syringes which contents had been placed into the two teenage girls with him. When Stiles could only give him a series of broken pants, not properly capable of using his words to speak, Oliver's lips pursed nervously as he rotated the two syringes around in his fingers with content. "Like I was saying, Stiles, I heard they used to do trephination here."

Oliver had moved a few paces back, stepping mindlessly over Malia's body as he put the syringes down to pick up a weapon much greater for the demise of his roommate. Stiles noticed what he was inching towards, his mouth dry as he struggled to speak. "Oliver... what are you doing?"

The sound of a power drill rang through the echoed walls, and the only response that Stiles had been given before his eyelids fell like curtains to his eyes was: "I'm going to let the evil spirits out."

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When Stiles had finally been able to open his eyes, the pain that had previously radiated throughout his entire body dulling to a slight ache in the back of his mind, the first thing that he noticed was that he could not move. The second thing that he noticed was that, no matter how hard he might have struggled to try and break free of the restraints that were holding him down in a chair, he was not going to be going anywhere until he miraculously developed the supernatural ability to break through the leather restraints with inhuman strength; and, while both of those things proved alarming, the third thing that he noticed proved promising enough to stop his struggling all together. Directly in front of him, only a matter of inches away, was a teenage girl with a shield of blonde hair blocking her from the atrocities Stiles was about to face.

Stiles felt his motivation kick back in at the sight of Sage, a cry that had been resting in the back of his throat escaping as he pulled harder against the restraints in an attempt to free himself. Only when he heard faint sounds of footsteps behind him did he stop all together, the temperature of his body freezing to ice as he watched Oliver appear from the peripheral side of his vision. "I borrowed a few pointers from the five point restraint."

"Oliver, stop this," Stiles pleaded, his fists tightening once again as he grunted, pulling his arms up to no avail. It was when he was diverting his gaze around the room that he caught sight of Malia, closer to Sage than to him, and still completely unable to help with her own slack body. Realizing he was the only one that hadn't been drugged with the Haldol, the brunette boy resorted to turning his head to give his roommate a desperate stare as Oliver coughed heavily once again, taking a single glance down at his hand that would reveal a puddle of crimson blood and a dead fly. "Oliver, listen to me..."

Stiles felt his heart pound in his chest as the sound of the drill shattered the barren room, his body instinctively cowering away the moment that Oliver raised the piece of machinery up to signify that he was going to begin. The tears that were building up in his eyes began to sting, his body wanting to wretch up all the empty contents in his stomach. In one last winded response to try and scream some sense into the boy that was ready to drill a hole into his head, he shouted loud enough for the sounds to ring around the walls. "Stop! Oliver. Oliver! Stop!"

"Start with her."

The voice was piercing enough control to affect both Stiles and Oliver, the two boys stopping their movements when a third party entered the situation. A washed out expression of fear crossed over Oliver's face, Stiles barely catching sight of it before the teenage boy was moving his arm away and retreating over to the two girls across the room. Had Stiles not been so elusive, he would have immediately returned back to screaming at Oliver to stop what he was doing. He didn't, however, as his watered vision was beginning to blur the dark figure nearly hidden behind a cabinet. The same shadow of his nightmares loomed off in the distance, encouraging the disruptive behavior onto more than just Stiles' conscience.

Just like that, the whole scenario changed as the boy felt his face drop in realization. His speech, so battered by the unshed tears and jolts of electricity, swayed as he tried to keep his sentences from cracking from above his teeth. "You did this. You got into his head."

"Every Dracula needs a Renfield." The Nogitsune kept quaint, his words forever interchanging in thousands of different riddles and allusions that webbed a degree of insanity within Stiles' head, so much so that he didn't even understand how he was supposed to cope with the understanding that the demon inside of his head was, now, haunting him around every corner. Just as he turned his eyes in the direction of where Oliver had retreated off to, he felt his heart lurch at the sight of the boy moving in the direction of Malia. Before he could even spare a word of protest, the Nogitsune was speaking in the back of his mind and shattering him with the worst fear. "The other one, Oliver."

Oliver's footsteps stopped on their way to Malia, this immediately setting fear in Stiles' spine as he whipped his head over to the Nogitsune with wide eyes. The heat that was radiating in his chest was something he had never felt before, an anger so deep that it had him concerned for what humanity he had left inside of his soul. "Don't touch her."

His plead had erupted from his lungs in the form of a snarl, but the rage had been thwarted at the sight of Oliver falling directly over Sage's unconscious body. He fell into panic once again, watching as Oliver steadied the drill directly by her face with the awaiting word from the Nogitsune. Stiles could not ignore the fact that the same tension rose deep within him, just as it had when he was forced to watch as the Nogitsune wrapped itself around the blonde with little care in the effects it would take afterwards. It felt, in the most unpleasant of ways to describe, like someone had shoved a scorching iron down his throat and stuck it directly on every single one of his vital organs, allowing the flame to slowly encase him from the inside out as he stared; because, it wasn't just a girl that he had had a single conversation with. It wasn't just a girl that he had walked past in the hallways that was unknowing to the danger that was hanging above her head.

It was that girl. It was the blonde that had held his hands in the numerous amount of times his nerves got the best of him. It was the blonde that had dragged him and Scott out of situations that could have ended very badly without her support. It was the blonde that had pulled him away from the inevitably bruising crush he had on Lydia Martin and sucked him into the equally traumatizing love he had for her. It was the girl he kissed. It was the girl he hugged. It was the blonde that he could not just allow to lose her life again, all because of the evils that were tormenting his mind. It was his damn blonde, and it was his damn arms that needed to find some escape so that he could scream at her to wake up, so he could scream at her to get as far away from him as she could possibly run. It was his Sage. It was Sage, and the Nogitsune knew exactly what needed to happen in order to puncture through the barrier he had created.

There was no one in the world that Stiles Stilinski had ever been in love with as deeply as he fell for Sage Connelly, and within those moments, she had become the weapon used against him as he became hers. He struggled against the restraints, this time belting out a long strain of cries with no care of how helpless it made him sound. "Let her go!"

"Let me in," the Nogitsune replied, careless to how much pain the image of Sage was putting him in. The proposition was easy: Stiles would either have to watch as Oliver drilled a hole into the girl that he was in love with, or he would have to succumb to the evil that was lurking to his right. It was a decision that the Nogitsune already knew was made, and it was one that he expected great outcomes from. Stiles didn't say anything to the response, only struggled once again with tears dripping freely from his eyes. "Stiles... do you want her to leave here alive? She will not be as lucky as last time once he gets his hands on her. Do you want us to leave? We can walk out of this place."

Stiles never took his eyes away from Oliver, who was glancing down at the machinery that was drilling holes into the air. He felt the skin beneath the restraints rub raw, positive that with any more force he would begin bleeding, but in that moment he did not care. He let out another muffled whimper, tugging the upper part of his body forward. "Let her go, please!"

The Nogitsune was slowly starting to unravel with irritation, his neck craning as he took slow steps closer to the teenage boy strapped down to the chair. His only distraction had been the open wall to his left, which revealed a replicated design of his reflection all the way down to the black stains permanently saturated into the bandages over his body. That only further divulged his motivations, the demonic possession creeping up from behind Stiles and wrapping one of his hands on the chair to cage him from the sight of Sage and Oliver.

"Let me in," the Nogitsune urged, acting as a persistent evil on his right shoulder. Stiles, already having been close to his breaking point moments before, let out a wailing scream from all of the frustrations he was growing as he jerked his body furiously in the restraints. He, yet again, reached no escape. "Let me in, Stiles. Let me in!"

Stiles was not even sure if his movements were real, his thrashing becoming so volatile that he was sure he would knock the wind out of himself. The second that he saw Oliver, from the smallest of glances between the Nogitsune's body, with his arm slowly bending down to direct the drill towards the place on Sage's head that he was holding onto, he let out a rippling cry. "Just let her go, please! I swear to God— don't touch her!"

"Let me in, Stiles! Let. Me. In." The Nogitsune was finished playing with the games, noticing how Stiles had slowly stopped struggling against the restraints as he clenched his fists tightly in his hands. The moment that his brown eyes had disappeared from sight, eyelids closing over the tears that were rolling down his sweating skin, there was an obvious growing victor. He just needed one more push. "Let me in and I'll let her live. Let me in."

The hands that had been squeezing into a ball so tightly slowly eased flat, the alarmed posture of Stiles Stilinski falling slack as he let himself fall back into the deep void of the darkest portions of his mind. Just with three words, and the encouragement of the teenage girl being threatened directly across from him, his life had been handed away. To say it had been willingly would be up for the debate of questioning just how much Stiles truly loved Sage — if he was honestly willing to sacrifice himself to the most brute description of his own hell just to protect her, was the honest inquiry; because, if that were true, that would mean that even though love was the strongest a person could find, being in love with someone does not always come across with a winning streak. Loving someone does not always imply that they will reach the end of their story, and it does not always promise that both parties of the relationship with find themselves successfully surviving the villain.

Because, as predictable as it was, no one had ever anticipated that the villain would also be the one that she so desperately loved, as well. They were not the Beauty and the Beast; there would not be a magical moment in time where she could confess her feelings to the person she loved and all of the evils the Nogitsune lay in his mind slip away. They were not blessed with that life, and if someone were to answer the question that Sage Connelly had asked only minutes before the ill-fitted circumstance happening right in front of her, they would say: Yes. Had they not been introduced to the nefarious supernatural, they would be better people.

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Lots of pain. Lots of pain. Lots of angry comments to me. So, I actually wish I could disown this chapter because I have so many gross feelings towards it. It's not my best, but I've reached that point where I'm considering sending myself to the fictional place of Eichen House after this grueling episode. However, it is that time where we have our intervention and cry about all of the things mentioned in this chapter that I probably shouldn't have written: Okay, so, as most of you are plenty aware, Sage's response to helping Stiles were slightly eh. If you placed yourself in her situation, though, would you not doing everything possible to help a boy that you knew still had good left inside of him? One that still deserved to be saved, no matter what cruel things the demon inside of him had done? This was my thought process towards her reaction because, obviously, the girl still loves Stiles. She just has reached the acceptance where she won't continue to act on those emotions (hence, lack of ring).

Stiles also revealed that he was still in love with Sage, which technically came as no surprise given all of his words that clearly showed that very evidently for us. He also revealed that he had to stay away from her. BUT, GUYS. We get Nogitsune/Sage convos soon. I'm also very excited for the next chapter because I'm pretty sure most of it is going to be all of my own scenes since I miss doing them so much. So, who do you want to see Sage have a conversation with in the next few chapters? I vote Allison and Aiden. ): Three more episodes for Sage's best friend. Four more for her first love.

I would greatly appreciate it if I got some feedback on how you liked this episode, mainly because my heart is struggling to press Publish with how bad this chapter feels to me. I don't know. I'm having one of those icky days. You guys are forever amazing and your support throughout the Sage Connelly series is bomb af. ALSO: What do you think the sequel to Still will be called? It starts with an S... Much love, guys. You mean the world to me. Thank you for always giving me a reason to smile.