zeegoeshere

My Chain Hits My Chest
By Zee

Summary: Argent-focused episode tag for 2x10, ~1000 words. “So then what’s all this supposed to be for me—dress-up? Play-acting, or maybe Girl Scouts? Do I get a merit badge if I set Derek Hale on fire?”
Notes: Set immediately after the end of 2x10. No warnings--roughly canon levels of disturbing/creepy/sadmaking.

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Her father lays her down quickly in the back seat, not bothering to make her comfortable, not bothering to sit her up so that she can at least have her eyes on what’s around her, rather than a view of the car ceiling. He gets in the driver’s seat and when he twists the key in the ignition, he lets it linger too long in the starter position so that the engine screams. Then they get the hell out.

Allison stares up and wiggles her big toe.

“Did Mom really write that letter?” she asks. It hadn’t seemed important to answer that question a few hours ago, but now it digs at her.

If she strains her neck muscles, she can see part of her dad’s facial expression in the rearview mirror. His brows furrow like he wants to ask how the hell she can even question that, but all he says is, “Yes. She was determined to let you know everything in her own words.”

Allison nods as much as she's able to.

"If you had only let me handle the kanima, you could have gone after Derek yourself," her dad says, like he's reading her mind, like he knows that she’s thinking of how she never even got Derek in her sights. "In combat we have to be able to trust each other as soldiers, not family."

"You're my dad. And the kanima was as much of a target as Derek." She knows that she would make the same decision, if she could do it again. But she is plenty angry at herself, and her dad should know by now that he doesn't need to shove her failures in her face to make her see them.

Allison wishes that she'd been able to face off with Derek, because she wants to know if she could actually take that shot. If she could turn what’s inside her into a willingness to kill. She wants to know what her limits are.

Chris's phone buzzes, and she hears him dig it out of his pocket to look at the message.

"Gerard got to Matt and took him out. The kanima escaped."

So Jackson is still alive. Hearing that Matt isn't makes Allison feel a little better, but it doesn't ease the memory of him crouching over her while she was immobile, brimming with adrenaline, and as helpless as she’s ever been.

“Then he doesn’t have a master anymore. What’s our next move?”

“We rest and regroup. You don’t need to be thinking about strategy right now.”

It’s his Protective Father voice, the same voice that comes out with every boy she’s ever let him meet, the same one he uses when he doesn’t want to let her out of his car to face the world.

“Okay. So then what’s all this supposed to be for me—dress-up? Play-acting, or maybe Girl Scouts? Do I get a merit badge if I set Derek Hale on fire?”

She doesn’t have to look for his expression in the rearview mirror to know the way he’s scowling. “Don’t be childish.”

“Don’t tell me that I don’t need to think about strategy.”

He doesn’t bother rebuking her again. Allison hates the way her voice sounds to her own ears, angry but high-pitched; she can imagine what she must sound like to her father.

By the time they get home, Allison has managed to push herself up to almost a sitting position, with her elbow shoved against the seat cushionand the armrest against her neck. When Chris opens the door, she thinks about telling him not to carry her, but she can’t walk, and it would be more humiliating to refuse the help and then need it anyway. She can’t deny that it’s comforting to be carried by her father through their front door, the same way it was comforting to be carried by him after Matt nearly killed her, the same way it was comforting to hear Scott’s voice when the air was filled with gunshots and smoke and reptilian screams.

Her father sets her down in a chair at the dining room table, where Gerard is already waiting. Allison has enough control by now to keep her head from lolling uselessly to the side. She can look him in the eye.

“I know that you’re probably focusing on all the ways that tonight went wrong,” Gerard says. “But there are some definite upsides.”

“Derek is still alive,” Allison says. “It’s hard for me to find the silver lining of that.” Her father nods in agreement.

“Derek has become a wounded dog in a corner. He’ll let base instinct guide his actions, and those instincts will lead us to his pack.” Gerard leans forward, his eyes bright and shining. “You’re not going to listen to your instincts. You’re going to let him deliver himself to you.”

Gerard could have been a pastor, Allison thinks. There’s an echo of her earlier bloodthirst that responds to his words, but not much more. Grief and exhaustion are threatening to swamp her conviction.

Does Gerard notice her lack of response, does he think anything of it? She’s not sure. Her dad speaks. “Do you know if we have anything in our medical supplies that could hasten her recovery from the venom?”

Gerard nods. “I’ll comb through everything we have. There might be a few things we can try.”

“Thanks.” She gives her dad a small smile, grateful that he at least knows her well enough to know how much she hates this, how badly she needs the paralysis to be over.

Gerard leans back in his chair and stretches his arms out in front of him, then behind his neck. His bones crack. “Well! Shall we go over our observations from tonight and hammer out our next move, or call it a night and reconvene tomorrow?”

It feels like she’s trying to bench-press twice her own body weight, but she manages to raise both arms enough to place her hands flat on the table. “We rest.”

Gerard inclines his head towards her, deferential, and Allison feels a chill.