As Dani woke up from yet another strange dream to her 7am alarm, a dream where she was holding another version of the boy who looked like Isaac Lahey as he died from what her best guess was the Spanish flu, she registered the fact that there was a small puddle of blood soaking into her pillow. She frowned and brought her fingers up to her nose, pulling them away and finding the tips coated in red.

Of course, she thought, immediately stumbling past a very confused towel-bearing Hayes and shutting the bathroom door behind her. I just had to dream about the Spanish flu. Because that totally makes sense.

Just as she tossed out a third tissue that showed the steady stream of blood was slowly dissipating, a strange feeling rolled around in her stomach. Then she was doubled over in front of the toilet, throwing up. Great. She shakily wiped her hand along the bottom of her chin. Perfect start to a Monday morning.

She shakily stood up in front of the bathroom mirror and hesitantly looked at her reflection, cringing at what she saw. Limp brown hair hanging in dull waves with the occasional know down to her breasts. She was pale and gaunt, skin tugging back at her cheekbones like she hadn't eaten in days, which was only partially true. She'd skipped dinner the previous night to stay with Lydia, and I'm the aftermath of what had happened, she'd forgotten to eat once she was home. Dark bruise-like spots had appeared on her cheeks and circles under her eyes, trails of dried blood around her mouth and nose from where it had crusted as she slept.

She could still see the four pink lines on her throat, which she found mildly concerning, but those were old news by now.

All she could focus on, was the fact that she looked as if she was dying.

Frantically she took a shower, scrubbing her face and conditioning her hair until she looked like a somewhat healthy person. She knew she could blame the dark circles at her eyes on lack of sleep from worrying about Lydia, and any blood left behind on a normal nose bleed — which it essentially was — but the rest would be difficult to explain.

Specifically, the scratches.

"Everything okay in there?" Hayes called awkwardly. "Are you...um...are you throwing up again? Do you need me to call dad?"

"I'm fine," she called back weakly. "Just stressed about Lydia, that's all. You don't need to call dad, I'm all good."

"Okay." It was obvious he didn't believe her, but she just rinsed the bad taste out of her mouth and pretended she couldn't tell. "Well, just make sure you eat something while I'm in the shower, alright?"

Dani opened the door and nodded weakly at him, then wandered down the hall so he could do his own morning routine.

After all of the strange things that happened in their first semester of tenth grade, like being locked in the school with a psychotic...thing, and hearing about the series of murders that finally ended with Allison's aunt, the weird and uncomfortable dreams had become more and more frequent.

The one at the hospital was just the most vivid.

She absentmindedly made herself a smoothie and a cup of peppermint tea to start off her morning, and picked out her outfit for the day as she waited for the kettle to boil. Their Dad had left for an early shift at the Prep School out in Devonford, where he taught chemistry, and had left them money for the bus on the kitchen table. When she'd finished eating and was dressed, she wandered in the direction of the bathroom just as Hayes was leaving.

"I had a smoothie," she told him before he could ask, rolling her eyes when he raised his brows. "The blender and cup are in the sink, you can look for yourself."

Then she closed the bathroom door behind herself again.

She applied her makeup the way she always did, then paused when she realized that the only reason she did it that way was because Avery had mentioned liking it on another girl. Dani pursed her lips and looked down at her outfit, realizing she had those clothes for that exact reason.

So she did her make up differently than she usually did, something she had always wanted to try but was never able to find the courage to actually do. She made sure the faded slashes on her neck were hidden with foundation, then went ahead and dug through her closet and dresser for a different outfit.

When she was actually ready to leave the house, Dani was dressed in a loose floral skirt with a white top and black heels to match. She curled her hair loosely behind her shoulders, twisting the two front pieces away from her face with a pair of small clips.

And she felt good.

Just as she was about to leave her room she paused at the sight of a faded grey sweater hanging over her desk chair in the corner of her room. Softly, hands trembling, she crossed her room to stand in front of it and carefully lifted it into her grasp.

In her dream, his name had been David.

She'd held his hand while his lungs slowly flooded with fluid and his body drowned itself in illness, still trying to heave out wheezy and nearly incomprehensible sentences of how much he loved and cared for her while she was hours away from meeting the same fate.

Dani could remember his brown eyes and the way that he'd looked at her; as if she were the most magnificent thing in that day and age. But the grief she'd felt when he passed...it was as if she'd lost part of her, and the half within herself didn't want to live without him.

She brought the sweater up closer to her face and found, almost surprisingly, that it smelled almost exactly the same as David had when she'd hidden her dream-self's face in his chest as it stopped rising. A sadness for a man she couldn't ever remember knowing flooded her body, and without hesitating for a moment she grabbed her backpack and stuffed the sweater inside.

She was only mildly surprised to find Hayes sitting outside on the front step waiting for her, brows drawn close together. Her heart sunk slightly, noticing the concerned look on his face, and she sighed. "I though you left like twenty minutes ago?"

"You holding up okay?"

"Yeah, I am...considering my best friend is missing and I just got dumped. Why?"

But he just stared at her, biting his bottom lip like he wasn't sure as to what he wanted to say....no...like he knew what he wanted to say, but wasn't sure if he should actually say it out loud. "You're not making yourself throw up again, are you?" He asked hesitantly, holding tightly to the straps of his backpack. "Because I know you worked through that last year, but—"

"—Hayes, I'm not bulimic again," Dani promised him unevenly, a hand absentmindedly resting over her flat stomach. "No, I wasn't lying to you, I'm just...I'm really stressed out about the whole Lydia thing."

"You promise?" Hayes asked again, his eyes wary. Even though they were only a few months apart in age with her being older, he still held a familiar childish glint in his eye that she hoped would never leave.

"I do...I do promise," She nodded, and a blue jeep swerved onto the boulevard in front of their house, causing her brows to raise. Dani knew what Stiles' jeep looked like, she'd seen Hayes leave with him and Scott to go off adventuring somewhere, but she'd thought that because he waited, they were walking or taking the bus together. "I'll see you at school, then?"

"Nope," Hayes smiled, popping the p. "We, are getting a ride today."

Dani smiled faintly and followed him over to the jeep — he walked across the lawn but she went around to ensure her shoes didn't get muddy and that she didn't fall — and when she got there, Scott had given up the front seat for her. "You didn't have to do that," she smiled softly at him, hesitating on getting in.

He just shrugged. "I don't mind." Then he glanced at the seat. "You need a hand getting in?"

"No I'm good, but thank you."

The moment the door had shut, Stiles turned his upper body to look her in the eye. "So how's your neck?"

Dani's hand flew up to her throat to feel the four scratches she'd covered with foundation that morning, and she continued to smile though it was much more forced now. "It's fine," she responded carefully after a moment, grimacing as they lurched out into the road and away from their house. "Like I said, I just scratched myself in my sleep...it's gone now, so I'm not worried about it," she lied easily.

As horrible as it was, while dating Avery she'd become unbelievably good at lying.

"You've never done that before, though," Hayes frowned from the seat behind her.

"Well, I guess I do now."

🧠🐺🥍

Dani had spent the majority of the day practically clinging to Allison, the both of them too worried about Lydia to even think straight. Her friend was also terrified to go to her aunt Kate's funeral, now that word had gotten out that she'd been responsible fort he Hale house fire all those years ago, and the town had taken it upon itself to not-so-discretely pass judgment.

But as someone who's family family had once been the talk of the town as well, Dani understood. She was able to provide Allison with some advice that she found helped her through her middle school terror years; if you're a mess, then be a hot mess, but don't forget your worth.

They'd had lunch together, and shared some tears through it, and then had gone to their afternoon classes like nothing was wrong because it was expected of them.

When the day ended, Dani was surprised to find Hayes, Stiles and Scott waiting for her at her locker, hissing out rushed words to each other that made no sense.

Derek.

Lydia.

Bite.

Missing.

Instincts.

What the hell could any of those possibly have I'm coming with Lydia? And who was Derek?

Admittedly, Dani hadn't met a lot of her brothers friends, just Isaac, Scott and Stiles. But that was only because he'd known them for forever, had even seen them sneak into his bedroom window in the middle of the night. She'd never told her dad about it because, since she'd been sneaking Avery in for two years, it just seemed hypocritical.

But now, ever since the start of the semester when Scott had been appointed as co-captain of the team with Jackson, he'd been acting weird. All three of them had.

Nevertheless, she smiled politely at the three of them and twisted in the combination that opened her locker. "You should text dad what time you'll be home," she told him softly as she put her textbooks in the organized space that Avery used to make fun of her for. "He's working late tonight, too."

"Actually," Stiles cut her brother off, ignoring what he was trying to say. "We we're gonna give you a ride home since...you know...I drove you here. This morning. In my Jeep. Yeah."

As odd as this kind of behaviour was for a teenager, Dani knew that it wasn't anything to worry about. Stiles was just weird. "I don't mind taking the bus," she promised him awkwardly.

But she found herself sitting in the passenger seat again just a few minutes later. Scott had carried her bag and thanked her profusely for sticking with Allison, even with everything that was going on surrounding her at the moment, while Stiles and Hayes had argued ten feet ahead of them the whole way to the parking lot. To say the least, things with her brother and his friends weren't boring.

Stiles had flailed in front of them all to open the door for her, then smiled awkwardly when she asked what he was doing because she'd never had anyone do that for her that wasn't in one of her strange dreams. He'd just ushered her inside the jeep, and then they were driving.

They'd passed Isaac on their way out of the parking-lot, and she found he was watching her with unbelievably sad eyes and look on his face that was nothing short of condensed fear. Her mind automatically drifted to the sweater in her bag, then the dream she'd had the previous night, and felt her heart break a little bit. Not knowing what to do she offered him a tiny smile as they passed, though it didn't reach her eyes.

She didn't feel bad, though, because his returning one didn't either.

Then, they were out of sight. Dani found she could distract herself easily with the patches of forest passing by, and the uneasy chatter Stiles was providing, seemingly out of nervousness though what he had to be nervous about she wasn't all that sure. All she knew was that she was really hoping he'd drop the topic of her scratched neck because she really didn't want to talk about it.

Apparently, he didn't seem capable of that. "So uh...Danielle...Dani, you uh — you mind if I call you Dani?" He didn't wait for her answer. "Dani, have you noticed anything that isn't, um...normal? Anything abnormal happening around here, like uh...I don't know...maybe something to do with Lydia? Or the Hale house? Just a thought..."

She rolled her lips inwards but felt her heartrate pick up at the mention of the word abnormal, because she knew that what she was experiencing was, at the very least, abnormal.

She though back to her dreams, of La Bête and the bracelet appearing on her wrist...the horrible one she'd had of the lizard having paralyzed her husband, of having woken up that morning to a bloody nose from dreaming about the Spanish flu. But she knew that even if she told them what was happening to her, they wouldn't believe her.

Who would?

Who could possibly believe that, while dreaming of the supernatural world, parts of her subconscious were bleeding through into reality and leaving behind things like bracelets and scratches?

Both Scott and her brother were watching her curiously, as if they knew something she didn't, and it made her swallow her discomfort. "No, Stiles," she murmured softly, smoothing out her skirt before looking back out the window. "I really haven't."