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FORTY FOUR;

BLOODY TONGUES

One hour and thirty nine minutes was the amount of time Sage Connelly had to put her life together. The seventeen year old had one hour and thirty nine minutes to register the fact that all of her nightmares were becoming a realistic horror, that Derek Hale was finally back in her life for good, and that it was absolutely impossible to get every single splatter of florescent paint from her body. That wasn't even an appropriate amount of time for a teenage girl to get prepared for a date, much less the entrance to something much darker than any of them had originally expected.

The black light party ended up lasting the entire night, so it didn't leave much time for anyone that attended it to get their act together for school. Which, to add onto the growing hangover that Sage was developing the longer she stayed standing on two feet, she also had to deal with the realization that demonic hooded figures had marked her, as well as her friends, with something that none of them knew the meaning of— but, as always, high school must come first.

Sage wasn't sure just how well that was going to turn out for her today because, already, she was beginning to feel the affects of a few hours ago taking a toll on her body. Not only had she consumed way too much alcohol for her usual amount of tolerance, but she also had the growing headache and aching bones due to the hypothermic state she was left in by the hooded figures. The twins, of whom stayed at the loft until they were both capable of functioning after what happened to them the same night, had opted on calling them 'demonic ninjas', which wasn't necessarily incorrect.

It just didn't bring a comfort to Sage knowing that demonic ninjas were out to mark her friends one by one until they found the person that they were looking for, and by what she has heard from Derek and the twins, Scott seems to be that prime interest. The final few minutes after she had been marked, the hooded figures made their way towards Scott as if he was their next target. The only thing that stopped them was the fact that the sun began to shine through the window of the loft, turning what was once the silhouettes of bodies into dust.

And, just like that, they were gone as if they only existed inside Sage's mind.

Now, the blonde was just standing in front of the mirror that hung depressingly on her wall surrounded by pictures of her friends, reflecting back a soul of a girl that was drowning in all of the stress that Beacon Hills brought her. She didn't even know who she was anymore, who that girl that was standing in the same posture as her was and what she was supposed to do in life besides survive another day. The only thing that Sage saw when she stared into the mirror was insanity, and that had been born into her identity before she was even knew her name.

There was nothing else she could do besides swallow the lump that was forming in her throat and blink, eyes focusing more on the physical portion of her body rather than what was hidden beneath her skin. Her blonde hair was frizzy and disheveled, barely cared for considering she had just taken it from the bun it was placed in all night. The green irises that became a definite description of her were shining with a burning intensity, something that she was sure the alcohol had an effect on.

Then, her eyes directed on her neck.

There was a rather large bruise forming, the dark shades of it plenty obvious from any angle that a person may inspect it, just bringing up the constant reminder of her moment of weakness from last night where she nearly gave into the temptation of stumbling all over her ex. Aiden had this ability to grab her into this little box of security and never release her until the box has been burned down, letting her hold onto this hope that she was safe with him until something happened that took all of it away.

In this case, the box had been burned the moment his lips touched her neck.

She supposed it could have been worse had she not noticed the hooded figures lurking around the party. There could have been that fatal moment where Aiden's lips got to the location that they were trailing towards, where his swollen mouth would have met her own, and they would be led into this dark road of wondering where they stood as a past relationship and present something. The two of them were complicated, and the frustration that they felt every time they were in the vicinity of each other could not be ceased by a single moment of lapsed memory.

Sage, however, couldn't just ignore the fact that she felt as if she had just cheated Stiles out of something. Their relationship was nonexistent at this point, she knew that and she knew that he was plenty aware of that after what he said at the station, but that didn't ignore the fact that she still believed that she had wronged him in some way. There was the guilt that was eating at her knowing that she had done exactly what she promised herself she wouldn't, that she had let her past break through and interrupt her future.

What future she had left, that is.

"You've been standing there for five minutes," a voice broke out, the blonde turning around to see that Derek Hale was leaning on the frame of her door, his eyebrows raised as his arms crossed over his chest. "School starts in ten."

Sage frowned, running her hands over her face as she gave him a nod and moved towards her dresser to try and find a pair of clothes that will make her look somewhat unlike she just walked out a trash can. The blonde was also just doing this action to try and hint to Derek that she wanted him away from her, still not completely over the fact that he refused to tell her where he was for three weeks along with his psychotic uncle.

He knew it too, which is why he let out a sigh. "Are you ever going to tell me what happened while I was gone?"

"I don't know," Sage muttered, grabbing a white tee shirt just to throw it on her bed and turn to look at Derek with a hard glare. "Are you ever going to tell me where in the hell you were for three weeks considering you obviously weren't in South America with Cora like I thought you were?"

Derek's lips went down at her comment, and he stayed silent as he watched her stare at him for a few seconds to see if he would budge. The two of them had been through a lot together, too much for all of it to be defined in a single explanation, and that meant that there was something deep inside of both parties that owed it to one another to explain what happened. After all of the tears shed on each other's shoulders, after all of the shouts of hatred and screams with bloody tongues, the two deserved the truth.

"I shouldn't have to tell you what happened to me," Sage muttered, her tone softer as she felt her shoulders relax when she realized that she couldn't hold out being angry at anyone anymore. There just wasn't enough time. "You should have been there."

Derek's fists tightened at his sides, and he gave an even tighter look. "I'm here now."

"It doesn't matter now, Derek," Sage dismissed, shaking her head at him. "Do you even know what in the hell it means to have a darkness around your heart, what it feels like to know that something is going to be branded into your identity for the rest of your existence?"

The man seemed to flinch at her words, his gaze that had been on the ground lifting up so that the blonde could see his vibrant, blue eyes staring back at her. The single action had given her the answer she needed, had showed her that he knew exactly what it felt like to be stripped of innocence all because of a single moment in time that defined everything that made him who he was. Paige's death had taken more than just his golden eye color, it had taken away the bright red that should have existed in his heart and turned it to a cold black.

"You lost her," Sage said, nodding to him in understanding as her hands tightened on the shorts that she was holding. "I understand that you lost her, but I lost you. I lost you over and over again on a constant repeat inside of my head, Derek, and the sad thing was that your death was the most realistic part of it all— that losing you was becoming such a daily occasion that I didn't even know how to grieve anymore."

Derek's irises returned back to their dark green, blinking a few times as he listened to her words and let them sink in. "Scott said that you were having hallucinations."

"They're not just hallucinations anymore," she denied, face contorting into such a dismissive expression that she knew the conversation would be over after she spoke her next two words. "They're reality."

Derek noticed that she wanted the conversation to be over with, realized that pushing her was only going to leave her even more suspicious as to where he was, and gave a single nod in the direction of the blonde girl before turning around and out of her door. There wasn't anything else for him to say. The words that had been a comfort to Sage ever since she was eleven and screamed her family's names at night would do nothing anymore, and that was what scared him the most.

Derek knew better than anyone that she was becoming an unrecognizable person.

The blonde stood in the center of her bedroom for a few seconds, her chest heaving as she tried to ignore her racing heartbeat. Her emotions were lodged in her stomach and in her throat, preventing her from having a single thought about anything besides how she was going to last a whole day without cracking. She questioned how she was supposed to stay strong for her friends when she could barely stay strong for herself, and how people were going to be able to depend on her to fix everything when she couldn't even fix what was broken about her own life.

Before she let the thoughts eat her alive, the girl quickly returned back to finding an outfit for school, the idea of hiding the bruise on her neck completely dismissed as she realized there was no point in trying to be someone she's not. The idea of pretending to be okay around her friends was sickening at this point, and she was just too tired to try and put up that facade any longer because she wasn't okay.

She wasn't okay at all.

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"— so, then, she starts talking about phosphorus and the key having chemicals on it, right? So, that made me think of the chemistry closet and the fact that someone had to let Barrow in."

Stiles Stilinski was struggling to properly pronounce his words the more anxious he grew as he tried to explain all of the ideas running through his head. The moment that he saw Scott in the hallway of the school, his hands were reaching for his best friend and making any attempt to try and inform Scott of what he managed to put together after he showed up at the high school two and a half hours ago to figure out if the key Sage gave him fit the chemistry closet's lock.

And, it had.

Now, he just needed to show Scott of all the evidence that he found that would support his case of believing that Sage might be the one who let Barrow in, whether it be out of consent or because something had control of her like when she was in his bedroom, he wasn't sure. The only thing he knew was that everything seemed to lead back to the blonde girl, from her handwriting to the ideas that she had running through her brain.

The only fault had been when Stiles' feet stopped abruptly at the sight of the clean chalkboard, not a single number or letter written on it that would further convince Scott that he believed Sage was the one who led Barrow to Kira. After having seen why the numbers looked so similar to him, he took it upon himself to rummage through his locker until he found something with Sage's handwriting, bringing him to a worksheet from math class that replicated the exact same writing as the board showed.

"It's gone," he muttered, his eyebrows furring in confusion as his nerves began to run even more aggressively throughout his body, just before he turned around to face Scott again. "Okay, okay... it doesn't matter, though. I've still got the key."

The teenage boy moved through the aisle, nearly bumping shoulders with his best friend as he edged towards the chemistry closet. His nimble fingers searched for the key, the entirety of his body shaking as he grew more and more sleep deprived and agitated. When he came upon nothing of similar properties to the key that once fit so appropriately in the lock from a few hours ago, the boy could only choke out, "What the hell?"

Stiles kept fumbling through the keys. "I had it here. I had it here this morning. I swear to God, I had it this morning."

"The key you were talking about last night? The one that Sage found?" Scott asked, his voice soft as he noticed how much Stiles was twitching, leading him to believe that his best friend was about to have a panic attack with how devoted he was to explaining what was going on with Sage.

"Yeah," Stiles confirmed, nodding as he glanced up at Scott. "I showed it to you, right? Didn't I show it to you?"

Scott's eyes narrowed slightly as he tried to remember. "No, you just told me about it. I never actually saw it."

That didn't bring any comfort to Stiles, realizing that all of this assumptions running through his head couldn't be confirmed because the only other person that actually saw the key had been Sage, and that was who he was accusing of being the one to lead Barrow into the school. The teenage boy was literally drowning in the possibility of the girl that he dated for nearly a year to be in association with a psychotic murderer.

"I was here a couple of hours ago," Stiles spluttered out, his hands tightening on the keys as he moved back to the chalkboard to try and justify himself again. "—and the message left to Barrow spelling Kira's name was right there on the board in Sage's handwriting, and she had the key to the chemistry closet."

Scott didn't seem as convinced as Stiles was about their childhood best friend. "So, Sage unlocked the chemistry closet so Barrow could hide in it from the cops, she wrote him a message to kill Kira, and then gave you the key so that you could figure out what she did?"

Despite knowing that Sage wasn't the most welcoming to Kira, he knew that she would never do anything to this extent. The blonde was one of his best friends, which meant that he knew everything about her from the inside out, and he knew that she wasn't capable of putting another person's life in danger after everyone she has lost. The Sage Connelly he knew would risk her life for anyone, a friend or not.

He didn't see her being the one to risk someone's life than wasn't her own.

"I know. I know," Stiles whispered, his voice hoarse just before his hands stuck deep in his pockets and he made his attempt to try and find the report that he found. "I know how it sounds, but look at this. It's a news report that came out about Barrow when they caught him, okay? About the shrapnel bomb that he used? See this, see what he did? He put nuts, bolts, and screws, and then then he hid the bomb like a detonator in a box that he wrapped like a birthday present. What does that sound like to you?"

Scott's face softened in realization as he looked over at Stiles. "Coach. The joke we played on Coach."

"That was her idea, Scott," Stiles whispered, his voice nearly breaking as he tried to get the boy to understand what he was trying to say. "Do you remember when she said it at lunch? That was her idea. That can't be a coincidence. It can't be."

Scott's mouth opened to try and form the appropriate words to speak in a situation like this. "I don't want to sound like I'm trying to tell you that you're wrong, but I don't think Sage is trying to kill people either."

"It was here," Stiles muttered, his hands tightening around the crumbled up piece of paper as he stared at the clean chalkboard. "It was all here."

Scott watched his best friend, noticing how affected Stiles was by all of the supposed evidence towards Sage having disappeared. A part of him questioned if all of this was due to the fact that Sage and him were no longer together, if all of that sleep deprivation was finally getting to his heart and leading him to this conclusion that his ex-girlfriend was the responsible for Barrow's entrance into the school.

"Dude," he called out, frowning deeply at Stiles. "Are you feeling okay? You're looking really tired."

Stiles turned away from the board, his eyes moving to the paper in his hands. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just... I haven't been sleeping, really."

"You know, why don't you go home?" Scott asked, nodding encouragingly to the teenage boy. "Take a sick day or something."

Stiles gave a small nod, all of his actions from the moment he stepped into the room weary as he grew more exhausted. Despite the fact that Scott was already against the idea of Sage being the one responsible, there was something tugging at the teenage boy's heart, telling him that he needed to go with what he feels and what he knows. Something was wrong with the blonde girl, and it was something beyond this idea that she was just losing her mind.

She was losing so much more than that.

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Sage ended up showing up late to school, but that much was obvious by the time she managed to pull on a pair of skinny jeans, that action alone taking up the short amount of minutes she had left. Not only was she forced to look unlike she had a massive hangover and didn't understand what a stop sign was, but she was also forced to figure out in the few moments she had left just how she was going to pull off the ability to act sane when half of the school left her loft a couple of hours ago like it was on fire.

Which, despite the irony in the words, hadn't been what occurred. Instead, there was just demonic ninjas and a Derek Hale that showed up to the black light party, ruining the long-lasted Halloween night that turned to shit for everyone. In the matter of seconds she has been in the hallways of Beacon Hills High, she has seen two teenagers with all of the paint from the party still on their faces as well as a boy who randomly passed out on the floor.

It was definitely easy to pick out who had attended the party and who hadn't.

The blonde was walking through the first floor of the school, trying desperately to find any of her friends to try and see what in the hell they all were going to do about their issue with the hooded figures. Her first option was to find Scott, especially since he had taken on the role of their leader, their alpha, although all of his plans seemed to be set in stone by her own word of agreement. The only issue with that is the fact that she didn't know what to do, which is exactly why she's hoping Scott does.

Thankfully, the blonde had been turning around a corner near the locker rooms just in time to see three figures coming through the doors on the other end of the hallway. Sadly, however, one of them happened to be the person she was least excited to see today. Not only was it going to be awkward to even stand next to Aiden with an appropriate conversation, but the hickey that he gave her last night at the party was practically on full show.

She nearly turned back around, but Scott had already spotted her.

The blonde let out a small huff in disapproval before continuing to move towards the three teenage boys, her feet slowly getting heavier as she grew more hesitant to actually join in on the conversation. Besides, the three seemed occupied enough as it is just by talking to each other without her interrupting their conversation.

"Hey," Scott greeted, giving the blonde a small smile. "How are you feeling?"

Sage didn't even need to glance over to feel the burning gaze of Aiden. "Like I have a hangover and demonic ninjas just marked me with a Japanese symbol two hours ago. Have you told Stiles what happened at the party yet?"

She knew by the time that everyone filed out of the room that Stiles had left, which she honestly didn't want to think about considering there were too many possible assumptions running through her head about what he could have been doing. The last time she caught sight of him at the party was before she even talked to Aiden, and he had been on the staircase with some girl that she had yet to know the identity of— although, at this point, she really didn't want to know.

"Ah, no," Scott denied, trying to ignore the fact that they were talking about the girl in front of him just a few minutes ago. "He's got enough on his mind right now."

Sage's eyebrows shot up in question, concern lacing in her face for the boy as she wondered what was wrong with him. Scott seemed to understand the silence approach she gave, he knew that she was curious as to what could be so hard on him that he had to take a sick day, but the teen wolf couldn't exactly tell her the exact reasoning. That was why he just gave a single shake of the head, letting the blonde know that they would discuss it later.

"Well, if they're coming for you in a few hours, then so do you," Aiden said, speaking up for the first time since his ex-girlfriend entered herself into the conversation that they were having.

He tried his best to ignore the fact that she was close to him, just as much as he tried to ignore the fact that he could feel temptation clawing at his throat when he noticed the mark that he left on her body visible for him to see every time she moved her shoulder and her jacket fell a little bit too far to the right. There was that fear there, though, when he saw it. Aiden knew that getting close to Sage again, becoming this close to her again, was only going to hurt the two of them more than the first time.

So, instead of focusing on her, he focused on Scott's next words as the werewolf turned around so that his body was next to Sage and facing the twins. "What if it's not me, okay? What if I'm not the one they want?"

"Who else is there?" Ethan asked, his eyes narrowing on the alpha as he wondered who else in the school could even be the possible target for the demonic ninjas, especially since the figures were only looking in one direction and that had been Scott's.

Scott's heightened senses picked up on a heartbeat, one that was such a familiar sound to him at this point that he was turning around to see a brunette girl come walking down the stairs. The other three noticed his movement and looked over as well, Kira's face being the first thing that they saw when they did. Sage immediately let out a small scoff, still not pleased in her friend's choice of girl, knowing that she had been right about the new girl nearly getting all of them killed.

"I have to go," Scott rushed out, giving Sage a hard look before jogging after Kira, leaving the blonde alone with the two twins and a gaping mouth as she watched him turn down a corner.

Not five seconds after he disappeared were the two boys behind her inching forward, the blonde nearly being toppled over just before she whipped her head back around to place her hands on the chests of the twins, stopping their movements. Both tall teenagers glanced down at her with raised eyebrows, almost questioning why she stopped them from going after Scott to make sure nothing happened to him.

"What the hell are you doing?" Aiden asked, his eyes focusing on her hand before trailing up to her face, noticing how hard of an expression she wore when they began to leave. "We don't know what's going to happen to Scott if we leave him alone."

Sage frowned at him, her hand falling off Ethan's chest but her other remained on Aiden's. "It's not your job to follow him around."

"You don't even like Kira," Aiden practically hissed out, making the girl's lips tug even further down. "If she really is the one that those things are after then that means there's a reason for it. You said yourself that she took in all of that electricity like a battery, so you really want to leave Scott alone with her?"

"Sage," Ethan called out, making the blonde turn to look his way. "We won't let anything happen to Scott. If anything happens to him, it happens to you. It happens to everyone around him and everyone left affected by it."

The blonde pursed her lips, jaw clenching as she realized she had to make the decision of telling the two to piss off of her friend or let them help. Sage had the choice of pushing Aiden and Ethan out of her life just with a simple "no," but she also had the option of allowing them to enter her life, the reality that she was living in this town that consisted of things trying to kill them every waking moment.

"Fine," Sage agreed, giving the two a nod as she moved her hand away from Aiden's chest, taking a step to the right and out of their way. "Just don't get yourselves killed trying to fight these things."

Aiden couldn't help but snort. "Please."

He gave her a small smile, which only made her frown even deeper as she crossed her arms protectively over her chest, watching as him and his brother turned around to chase Scott down the hallway. She didn't know what she could say to them that would even get them to consider leaving her alpha friend alone, plenty aware that Scott now had more than just Derek's shadow lingering everywhere he turned.

And, sadly, Sage knew that she was going to have to be one as well in order to make sure nothing happened to him and the human battery. Whether it be because she had nothing else to do besides that or because she knew that Scott truly cared about Kira, she wasn't sure. The only thing she did know was that her head was beginning to pound and she felt like she was going to fall over with how intense it was becoming.

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"Hey, Scotty!"

Sage's voice rang hesitant through the Camaro as the single hand she had unoccupied tightened on the wheel. The girl was on her way to the McCall house, fairly certain that the twins were headed in the same direction after they figure out how in the hell to fix their motorcycles. This only left a short matter of minutes for her to actually call her friend and let him know that she was going to be interrupting the alone time that he had with Kira.

Not to mention, there was the fact that Sage's stomach dropped when she noticed that the sun was beginning to set, only further giving her a reason as to why she was doing all of this. The moment that the sky was black, the figures from her nightmare would return and they would take out anyone who stood in their way, and Sage refused to allow the swords that materialized from their chests anywhere near anyone she loved.

There was a shuffling from the other end of the phone. "Sage? What's wrong?"

"Ah," Sage began, her words getting higher as she squinted a bit when she realized there really wasn't a good way to tell him she was only five minutes away from his house. "Do you know how there's this thing that happens to me every time one of you fucks yourself over?"

Scott snorted from the other end. "Yeah, but what does this have to do with anything?"

"It has to do with the fact that you're ready to throw yourself to demonic ninjas that can develop sharp swords from their chests, Scott," Sage all but snapped out, her eyes widening as she realized he didn't understand where she was going with this. "I'm already having a shitty day and I can barely think straight without having to feel you get impaled with a sword— for real, this time."

"Look, I'm not going to let any of you get hurt trying to protect me. That's why I made sure the twins' motorcycles wouldn't work," Scott explained, a sigh audible as Sage frowned before turning around a corner of a street. "I get that you guys want to protect me, I do, and it means a lot, but I can take care of myself."

Sage shook her head, biting down on her tongue. "The amount of times you've nearly died tops the amount of times you've won, Scott. The statistics aren't working in your favor right now. Besides, there's really nothing you can do anyway. I'm, like, three minutes away from your house."

"Sage, my mom just got home. You're not going to be able to come into the house once she sets up the barrier of mountain ash," Scott said, the sound of footsteps thudding down the stairs was present as well as the faint voice of Kira in the background. "Just go home, alright? I don't want you getting hurt."

"Then, stop putting yourself in situations where you're going to get hurt," Sage hissed through the other end of the phone, not wanting the boy injured due to all of his attempts to keep everyone else safe. "I'm about to pull into your neighborhood. Don't you dare put that barrier up until I'm in that house. You got it, McCall?"

There wasn't a response on the other end of the phone, just the faint sound of Scott's voice shouting out an inaudible question before the line went dead. Sage's mouth opened wide before it shut in frustration, her phone being thrown in the passenger's seat as she pressed harder on the gas so that she would get to the McCall house even faster than the rate she was going.

By the time she ended up at his house, which was much faster due to the three stop signs that she ignored, she took note of the two different cars in the parking lot. One of them she knew belonged to Melissa, having seen it parked in the same place every time she came over to the house and Scott's mother was home, but the second one made her stomach drop. The only other time she saw that exact car was last night at the station, and the person who owned it was even more disastrous.

"Oh, hell," Sage muttered, quickly grabbing her phone before turning the car off, keys going into her pockets as she slammed the car door shut.

Her pace would be considered in between a jog and a run as she cut through the McCall's yard, the gun that she got from Argent digging into her back as she realized there might actually be a reason for her to use the thing tonight. She hasn't even touched it since she shot Jennifer Blake the night of the lunar eclipse, and since then, it only seemed to repulse her to look in the same direction of it. She realized that having the strength of a human could only do so much when fighting against a group of black, hooded, unstoppable, demonic figures that could very easily have the profession as ninjas.

Now, maybe the blonde was overreacting the extremity of the situation at the time, especially when she came barging through the door and nearly ran into the body of Melissa McCall, but it seemed like she walked into a heated family discussion rather than a battle between demonic ninjas, the McCall family, and the human battery. Just to make matters worse, the abrupt entrance of herself seemed to make everything much worse considering the last time Sage saw Agent McCall, her ex-boyfriend was threatening him. Maybe she does fit in with the heated family discussion.

"What, did the two of you involve her in this, as well?" Agent McCall asked, turning to face Kira and Scott again while his hand gestured out towards Sage. "I'm not leaving here until one of you gives me a proper explanation as to what you were doing in my office."

Sage noticed how everyone's attention fell solely on the darkness that was encasing the room as the sunset disappeared, leaving them all to stare at each other without a shadow behind their backs. Everyone, including Agent McCall, seemed to realize that there was something else going on with the wide-eyed looks that began to develop on each of the teens' faces.

"Scott," Kira muttered, the boy's name nearly getting caught in her throat as she watched Sage begin to edge forward, moving closer so that she was standing alongside of Scott rather than at the door.

The faces of Sage's nightmares had once again come to life, the girl instinctively letting her hand fall to the back of her shirt to grip the gun when she saw one of the figures materialize out of thin air directly in the McCall living room. The three teenagers knew well enough that making a single move was only going to influence them even more, which was the very reason that they were all frozen still as it was a battle between who would make the fist move.

However, the initiator happened to be someone that didn't have a place on either side, Agent McCall's voice ringing throughout the cold, silent room. "Who the hell is this?"

The moment that Scott saw his father begin to advance on the figures, his heart practically lodged itself in his throat as he realized the actual possibility of his father getting hurt by one of these things was much more possible than himself. No matter what his father has done in the past, no matter the absence of him in Scott's life, there wasn't a single bone in the boy's body that wished for the man to be injured. Which, Scott supposed, is why his words could barely reach his lips. "Dad, no! Dad, wait!"

It hadn't been a single second later that the sound of a blade running through skin pierced Sage's ears, and the horrific reminder that the hallucinations that used to be just a haunting nightmare were now her reality taunted her the moment that she saw everything she feared turning true right before her eyes. Just like in her dreams, the only thing that brought her back had been pain, and as the girl bit down on her tongue so harshly that blood was drawn, she realized that no amount of pain could take her away from this.

This was real.

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HA CRYING.