Malia clenched her hand around the little item so tightly, as though afraid it'd escape her grasp. She held it up, very close to her face, to her mouth as the object had a special place in her heart.
Only she knew the importance of it. Only she knew how to cherish it.
Time had always seemed like a luxury beyond Malia's living means, especially in the more recent years.
But she'd still take the short moments she got to have with Scott any day over their situation right there.
Those little breaks they'd managed to catch here and there, minutes they'd steal while on their quests.
She'd constantly complained about how short the time they got to spend together was, but she'd have taken her words back… She'd have apologized and begged for those moments back if it'd changed anything at all.
The nogitsuné's words on that cursed day replayed over and over again in her head. Their enemy had concocted the perfect plan and followed it with the perfect execution.
Exploiting Scott's greatest weakness, they'd successfully deprived them of their leader.
Those days, it felt to them as though they were walking around without a head on their shoulders, leaving them completely scattered without a beacon to turn to.
The young woman didn't even get the chance to see him one last time, before he… Became what he became, the beast he always dreaded.
Malia's eyes traveled around the room only to end their journey on Lydia's figure, seated at a table, quiet, her back towards her friend.
The banshee seemed very busy and she, indeed, was. It was the sole reason Malia had agreed to give her some space, promising to do her fidgeting in the furthest corner of the room away from her.
Lydia took the task of locating Scott upon herself, believing she was the only one capable of doing so in the shortest span of time.
Of course, the rest of the pack weren't sitting around, twiddling their thumbs. They'd mobilized their efforts, utilizing every gift they were bestowed, all of their skills and senses to find his trace.
Malia's gaze then left Lydia for the sight of Maylee as she laid unconscious on a bed, in a different corner of the room.
If stares could kill… Malia would have seen no difference, Maylee was already as good as dead anyways.
She was overcome with this urge to just stomp over in her direction, grab her by the shoulders and shake her out of that coma. God knew they needed every helping hand in order to crawl out of the hole they'd been buried deep into.
But that wouldn't have done it, and things only promised to get harder for them.
"Still nothing?" Melissa's voice yanked Malia out of her train of thoughts, her head snapping towards the woman.
Malia cleared her throat, a bit awkward at the fact that Melissa had caught her by surprise, "No… Nothing since you left us,"
Melissa's eyes went down to the floor as a short sigh escaped her. She stood by Malia, not knowing where the conversation should go from there.
Melissa had come in just in order to ask the question she'd already asked, and she'd gotten her answer, but for some reason, leaving the room without exchanging more words with Malia felt heavier on her heart.
Malia had never been the best conversation starter either. She'd always been the straight to the point kind of person.
And so, both women stood next to each other in complete silence until Melissa's gaze landed on Malia's clutched hand.
"What's that you're holding?"
In response, and as though broken out of a daze, Malia's furrowing eyebrows relaxed a bit when she opened her hand in front of Melissa, "Scott gave it to me two years ago," the small keychain laid in the palm of her hand as she spoke, "He had it custom made for our one-year anniversary together,"
Melissa's insides ached, her eyes glued to the little item. Two somewhat thin circle lines, both colored black. The bigger circle enclosed the smaller one within it. She very well knew what the symbol represented but felt the need to voice her thoughts about it, "It's the symbol of Scott's pack, your pack," she'd half asked, half stated.
"Yeah…," Malia had managed to mutter as she began to toy with the keychain between her fingers, seemingly entranced by it.
The defeat in the coyote's voice prompted Melissa to put a hand on her shoulder, "Hey… We will find him," she paused, seeing that she caught Malia's complete attention, "We will bring him back. You know that, right?" she stared straight into Malia's eyes while speaking.
"How would you know that?" despite her best efforts to contain her nerves, Malia's tone was just a little shy of combative.
"I am sure of it. We'll make it happen," Melissa stood firm by her words.
"If you say so,"
How could she be so optimistic? With everything that had been going on. With everything they had to face. In the wake of everything?
Malia's lips drew the weakest of smiles; if anyone could sound like Scott MCcall then it, for sure, had to be his mother. She'd raised him after all, and she'd done a damn great job at it as well.
"What about Parrish? Any change?" Malia then decided to broach a different topic.
"I went by the Hales' vault before coming here. Rafael is keeping an eye on the body,"
"Why isn't he coming back to life? I don't understand. You took the bullet out of his head. He should have been up by now," Malia couldn't hold her questions anymore, just like she could no longer hold in place, folding her arms and unfolding them within seconds.
"I am still running tests on that bullet. According to Chris, it would have looked something like the wolfsbane bullets the hunters used, but it wasn't wolfsbane they shot Parrish with," Melissa's eyes were on Maylee as she spoke.
"What was it then?"
"The results are inconclusive. Definitely a substance I've never handled before,"
"That bullshit elixir that the other guy, Danny, had brought didn't work," Malia was of course referring to the substance that Danny had handed Lydia, a little before the outbreak happened at the hospital, "It didn't work on Maylee either. Stiles said that there must've been something in common between them,"
"I know. At first, I suspected Maylee might have been injected with the same substance that was in the bullet but… I found no trace of it in her body,"
After another moment of silence, Melissa spoke again, "Speaking of Stiles, how has he been?"
Their attention then turned towards one of the corners in the room, where Stiles sat under thin sheets, asleep.
Melissa hadn't seen him in a few days, but it seemed as though he'd aged decades within that short span.
The purple bags hanging under his eyes told her he wasn't getting enough sleep.
"Well, he's managed to stay asleep this time so… I consider it progress,"
"He hasn't been able to sleep," the nurse half asked.
"Not as much as he should but, who can blame him?" said Malia.
"I thought he'd be by his father's side,"
"He tried, but Stilinski convinced him there was nothing he could do if he stayed there," Malia's eyebrows furrowed a little more at that thought, "What about this virus, by the way? How does it work?"
"Well, it…-" Melissa had started, but she immediately interrupted herself upon hearing the noise coming from Lydia's direction.
The sound of scribbling and scratching overtook the room. It started low but grew louder with each second.
Malia and Melissa watched as Lydia's arm jittered erratically. Just like the sound, her movement further intensified, shaking the entirety of her upper body in the process.
The two women approached her very slowly, having a rather clear idea of what was going on. Sure enough, the moment they circled around the banshee, they caught sight of the pen in her hand, dancing and jumping from one end of the paper to another, leaving ink behind as a reminder of where it had been.
Every time a sheet of paper seemed full enough, Lydia involuntarily pushed it to the ground in order to continue her writing on a brand new one.
"What do these mean?" Malia picked a sheet up and scrutinized it in an attempt to make sense out of its content.
"I am… Not sure," same as Malia, Melissa was gathering the papers from the floor, comparing the writing on each page.
Eyes still shut, Lydia continued on with her frantic motions, surrounding herself with the papers she'd thrown to the ground.
Malia's eyes were becoming as fidgety as Lydia's arm, leaping from one corner to another, "What do these numbers mean?"
"I don't know,"
"They're coordinates,"
Both Malia and Melissa froze, their full attention on Lydia. They hadn't even noticed that she'd ceased all movement which invited silence back into the place.