Silence was deafening.

Though voices occasionally fought to interrupt it, for sixteen hours nothing had successfully broken through the deafening scream of silence Rachel heard. It was constant, never faltering even when she herself attempted to speak, to question why the minutes passed by & nothing changed. The clock continued to tick, never missing a beat with each passing second, but still, nothing changed.

Rachel knew things did change— but not the things that mattered to her. Mundane things. It began once an hour passed, Lydia stopped asking when they were going to wake up. Deaton left for exactly four minutes & thirty seven seconds to make coffee. Isaac asked Rachel if she was okay. Exactly twelve minutes & twenty two seconds later, he asked again. Forty three minutes & seven seconds after that, Lydia left. She went out to the waiting room, presumably to sleep; something she couldn't do in the same room as her three dead friends.

Seven minutes after Lydia left, Isaac asked if she was okay again. Rachel ignored him. Three minutes & twelve seconds after that, Deaton asked if she was okay. She ignored him, too. She didn't give any indication that she wasn't okay; she was sitting in the counter, as still as a statue, as she had been for over two hours. Her breathing was calm, as was her heart rate. She had surpassed the stage of panic.

An hour & thirty eight minutes later, Isaac left. He didn't go far, just out to the waiting room with Lydia. It was late at night, Rachel didn't blame them for being tired. Two minutes & eight seconds after he left, Deaton asked if she was okay again. He tried to encourage her to go sit with them, or to go back to the break room & try to sleep. She remained still. He tried again less than a minute later, suggesting she go for a walk if she didn't feel like sleeping. Rachel didn't move.

For sixteen hours, Rachel didn't move.

She didn't eat or drink anything. She didn't look at her phone, and for fifteen & a half of those hours, she didn't speak. She didn't think about sleeping, nor did she feel tired. The only thing she felt was darkness. Emptiness. Rachel couldn't explain the feeling in any other way— it was like a canvas painted pure black. Framed with the dread that overtook her when she reflected Lydia's banshee abilities.

It wasn't entirely from the temporary deaths. Rachel could lie to herself & pretend like it was, but she knew a fair amount of it was caused by what Deaton had said to her prior to the sacrifices. She was trying to push the thoughts away, to bury them deep in the back of her mind with all the other things she didn't want to think about, but they fought hard to remain her primary focus as silence threatened to swallow her whole.

Deaton knew the truth. He knew she wasn't a reflector. He admitted it without ever saying the words. All this time, he'd known the truth & never told her— all this time he had been helping Scott & guiding them in the right direction as an emissary was designed to, but never disclosed the heart wrenching truth that everything Rachel thought of herself was a lie. Maybe not everything, but enough.

It was funny in the most disgusting way, how it all bombarded her at once when she was left to herself. Without any of her friends. Her mind was Walmart, the thoughts were the shoppers & it was Black Friday— there was no keeping the savages out. They were angry, sad, scared; every horrible emotion she didn't want to feel was screaming at her to pay attention to it & all she wanted to do was scream louder. To drown out her own inner demons, and to finally be free from the sickening silence if only for a few seconds.

Rachel had always known she wasn't a reflector. It was simply a name Cora had given her. Rachel should have expected this at some point, but she didn't. She let herself believe for the longest time that she was in fact a reflector, a supernatural mirror, a special little abomination. It was what she was, it was who she was— even if a part of her had always known it wasn't really.

Without a label, a definitive term to describe her unique abilities, she felt lost. She could no longer pretend as though she had a clue what she was, because she sure as hell didn't. She had heard of one twin being born human & the other werewolf, but never one a werewolf & the other an enigma unknown to everyone. The supernatural world had rules— everyone was a someone, everything was a something. There were no mistakes, it was an ingenious code without a chance of flaws sneaking in.

Everything existed purely by design, and Rachel refused to believe she was the exception to that rule.

For fifteen & a half hours, these thoughts simmered in her mind. Rachel's mind searched for an explanation, but each glimmer of light led to the same dead end. Every last piece of knowledge from every book she'd ever read proved just as useless as her, on this particular occasion. Stiles, Scott & Allison were still dead. Rachel was now certain Deaton was beginning to second guess whether or not they were going to wake up at all.

Exactly fifteen hours, thirty four minutes & ten seconds after Scott, Stiles & Allison had died, Rachel finally could no longer take it any longer. She had been calm up until this point, sitting on the counter contemplating what horrendous higher power could have cursed her to become an abomination like no other, but as her gaze drifted from the floor beneath her feet to the metal tubs in the centre of the room, she could no longer stand it.

She finally understood why Isaac & Lydia had left so long ago— she finally felt it. The suffocating weight of reality hitting her at full force. Her friends were dead. There was a very real possibility they would not wake up. She had known that all along, but the true weight of it had yet to hit her up until this very moment, as had the realization that she could no longer breathe.

"Rachel?" Deaton questioned as the girl hopped down from the counter for the first time in over fifteen hours. He was concerned for her & had attempted multiple times to get her to at least drink some water, but she refused. She hadn't even moved, as far as he could remember.

"I need some air." She muttered, her words rushed & barely understandable as she hurried through the doorway & out into the waiting room. Lydia was sitting in one of the chairs, awake & flipping through a magazine— though the distant look in her eyes told Rachel immediately that the strawberry blonde wasn't reading a thing. Isaac was nowhere in sight, which, wasn't all that surprising to her.

Rachel didn't stop to talk to Lydia. Admittedly, she was rather curious of how the girl was doing, but was too consumed by her need for air to stop & ask. She hurried out the front door of the clinic, gasping in the cool fall air. It didn't help as much as she was hoping. Her hands searched her pockets, retrieving the keys to her Porsche & pressing the button to unlock it as she stumbled over to where she had parked.

She practically fell into the vehicle as soon as she door was opened, slamming it shut behind her. The small space didn't provide any comfort, but the peaceful silence of it worked wonders for allowing her to collect her thoughts & force them into a relatively decent order. They were nowhere close to being in well enough order for her to be considered in a sane state of mind, but they were ordered enough for her to focus. Sort of.

"Calm the fuck down." Rachel mumbled to herself, reaching for the button to roll down the window but pulling back. She still felt like she was suffocating to some extent, but for some unknown reason desired the silence over oxygen. It was the same silence that had driven her to this point within the clinic, but outside in her car it brought her a sense of comfort. She felt a strange calmness.

And then, it was gone.

The calm came over her like a shooting star & vanished equally as fast; the silence was now the opposite. It no longer sounded like silence to Rachel, instead it slowly shifted to something much more bitter. It started as faint whispers, but within a minute had escalated to screaming. Rachel couldn't decipher any words, all she could hear were bloodcurdling screams of complete & utter horror.

Every scream she had ever heard; the pain, the loss, the worst pain imaginable. They were all compiled together to create the most deafening sound— one of which Rachel had no desire to run from. She didn't reach for the car door, despite knowing it was an easy escape. All she had to do was open the door to be greeted by the peaceful sound of wind & autumn leaves. She didn't even consider it.

Rachel knew what she had to do to stop the screaming. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. It was as though her conscience now had a mind of its own to advise her of exactly how to handle her latest supernatural issue. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just her. She could feel it in her throat— it was why she couldn't breathe. She wanted to scream louder than the others, she needed to.

She needed to make them shut the hell up so she could hear what was beyond them. Rachel didn't know how or why, but somehow she'd managed to reflect Lydia & this was the result. This wasn't just a feeling she had, it was a banshee feeling & she needed to listen to it. No matter how wrong it felt, deep down inside. No matter how she couldn't for the life of her remember reflecting Lydia. She needed to listen to it, to give in to it & scream.

So she did. Rachel gave up the fight against herself, she gave in to the burning desire & screamed bloody murder. She screamed not only for the lives at stake, but for those already gone; those of whom she had never gotten to scream for at the time. Those she pretended to be strong & careless for. The lives she inadvertently ended, and the lives she would continue to inadvertently end because that was what she did— she ended lives without ever actually killing someone. She may not have been a reflector, but she could safely proclaim herself an omen.

When she finally ran out of air in her lungs & could scream no longer, she inhaled sharply as silence took hold once more. The only sound she could hear was her own breathing as she sunk back against the seat, her eyes closed. Rachel focused on the silence, listening for something, anything, but furrowed her brows as she heard nothing. She hadn't heard anything within her own scream & had assumed it would come afterwards; but it was silent. There was nothing.

"Rachel?" The voice startled her, making the brunette jump. She opened her eyes to see Isaac standing beside the Porsche, looking in at her with deep concern. It took Rachel a minute to realize just why he was so concerned— there was no glass separating them. She never rolled down the window.

The brunette's gaze instantly moved down, where she found glass scattered absolutely everywhere. On the ground outside, mixed in with the dead leaves littering the clinic's parking lot. On the floor of her Porsche, on her jeans— there were even a few shards in her hair. As Rachel looked around at the mess, she soon realized that it wasn't just the drivers' side window that had been shattered by her scream.

It was every window in the car, even the windshield. She had shattered every last piece of glass surrounding her, all with a scream. Even stranger, Rachel didn't even feel alarmed by it, as she very much should have. It should have terrified her. She still couldn't recall reflecting Lydia, and even though the possibility of having done it accidentally existed, she couldn't shake the feeling of knowing she didn't. She shouldn't have been able to do this. But she did.

And she felt better as a result. She no longer felt like she was in some sort of trance, hypnotized by her own mind to believe something terrible was about to happen. Rachel no longer felt as worried as before, and as she moved to exit the vehicle she realized she no longer felt pain. Her headache was gone, everything was peaceful. Her thoughts were no longer racing supernaturally, and has resorted back to their normal level of chaos.

Rachel didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing after what had just happened. Being that she didn't feel the agony she knew she would feel had the pain been taken by death rather than Derek, she deemed it good. Her brother had finally managed to do something right for a change. She hoped. Rachel didn't want to stand there & ponder the additional possibilities. 

"I'm okay now." Rachel assured Isaac, who was still looking at her as though she'd committed a massacre. What she had done was admittedly equally shocking, but it was something that could be discussed later. She didn't give him the option of replying before she started off towards the clinic, brushing the pieces of glass from her clothes. She could feel a couple pieces falling from her hair as the wind blew past.

"Rachel." Isaac repeated, following after her. She may not have been taking time to think, but he was, and he was pretty damn concerned with the result of that thinking. There was something wrong with her, whether she was willing to admit it or not. She was off, and it wasn't just because of her sister or the sacrifices. He could tell simply by the distant look in her eyes that there was something else.

"It's okay." She shook her head. It wasn't at all okay— but on her list of problems, shattering every window in her car via scream was about two centimetres off the ground. Right next to the revelation that she's not a reflector. It wasn't something she could take time to focus on, because as soon as she did it would throw her back into her previous mindset of fear & worry about herself. Fearing for her own life was a luxury she couldn't afford when she had dead friends to worry about.

"Your neck is bleeding."

Her hand flew up to the side of her neck, where it quickly met a trail of blood. It led up to behind her ear, where she could feel a small circular cut. Her brows furrowed slightly as she curiously pressed her finger on it, ignoring the sting of pain the action caused. It felt like a puncture wound, more so than a cut caused by shattering glass— it was deep. She couldn't tell how far inwards it went, but she doubted it was too bad being that it was on her head. She wasn't unconscious, so it had to feel worse than it really was.

"Probably from the glass." Rachel shrugged it off, wiping the blood on her jeans as she pushed through the clinic door with her shoulder. It would heal.

As soon as she was through the doors, the sound of water sloshing caught her attention & she bolted to the back, skidding to a stop in the doorway. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she saw her friends standing in the tubs rather than floating beneath the water, shaking & shivering from the cold.

"I saw it! I know where it is!" Scott informed them, still taking in deep gasps of air.

Stiles picked up where he left off. "We passed it. There's- there's a stump, this huge tree. Well, it's not huge anymore. It was cut down. But it's still big, though, very big."

"It was the night we were looking for the body." Scott continued the explanation, his gaze drifting over to Stiles beside him.

"Yeah," the boy nodded. "The same night you were bit by Peter."

"I was there too, in the car with my mother." Allison added in, teeth chattering as soon as she paused. "We almost hit someone."

"It was me, you almost hit me!" Scott explained, putting the last piece in place that connected all three of their encounters with the nemeton. "We can find it."

Not everyone looked as sure as Scott did, though. Rachel wore a grim expression, one that practically said it all whilst Lydia & Isaac stood beside her looking relatively the same. Even Deaton looked less than hopeful, which was especially unusual being that his plan had been successful; they now knew the nemeton's location & could find their parents. Why was everyone looking as though all hope was lost?

"What?" Allison questioned them, doubting anyone would spill the reason behind their despair without prompting. 

"You guys were out for a long time." Isaac commented, annoyingly unspecific.

"How long is a long time?" Stiles asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. He looked confused, yet concerned at the same time; it was evident he was conflicted of whether or not he actually wanted to know the answer to his question.

"Sixteen hours." Rachel muttered. Fifteen hours, fifty eight minutes & thirty two seconds, to be exact, but she doubted they'd care. It was all the same.

"We've been in the water for sixteen hours?" Scott repeated, as if clarifying would somehow change the answer.

Rachel nodded. "And the full moon rises in less than four."

—

UNEDITED.

lol how did i turn like a few minutes into 3k words? what did i even do¿ who knows (not rachel, ha!)

so who wants to talk about that premiere because i sure do. lowkey salty we didn't get to see more of malia relearning her ability to transform into a coyote, but i'm still so happy. her entrance though. that's my goddamn queen. i love her so much. if she dies i swear i'll riot. i'm not even joking i will lose my shit if malia dies because she has been through so much & she deserves to be happy. also, i still miss isaac. a lot.