hold me closer

65

Stiles covered his face with his hands, overwhelmed by the information about the Anuk-ite. "Lucy, please tell me you made a sketch?" Stiles said to me.

"Stiles, it kills with one look," I reminded him. "How am I supposed to sketch a decent portrait of it? All we know is it used to be two ordinary people, then somehow, it merged. It's made of two faces - one human, the other supernatural."

"It's a shapeshifter, just like us," Scott said, referring to Malia, Derek, and himself. "But it knows what you're afraid of - what you fear most."

"Okay, so you're telling me that we've gotta go up against this thing blind... and face our deepest fear?" Stiles questioned.

"Yeah," Scott replied. "Why, what do you fear most?"

"Blindness," he answered, nervous.

Derek looked amused and incredulous by this answer. "Becoming blind?"

"Yeah, terrified of it," Stiles explained. "Always have been. This just seems to be a situation of unfortunate overlap."

"Lydia, you, Lucy, and Stiles need to find Argent," Scott told us. "Get to the armory and rescue Jackson and Alex."

"I don't think we have time to wait for him," Lydia said. "I've gotten through those doors once anyway. I can do it again."

"I should be there with you," I told Scott, glancing at Malia and Derek. "If the Anuk-ite shows, heightens your fear, I can't help any of you."

"We'll be fine," he assured. "Save your brother first. That's more important."

Before I could answer back, Stiles interrupted saying, "Can we slow it down just for one second to make sure I'm grasping this? So we're talking about actually doing this? We're gonna do exactly what Gerard wants us to? Is that right?"

"If we stop the Anuk-ite, we stop it all," I answered.

"Stopping this thing can stop Gerard and the hunters?" Derek questioned, disbelieving.

"Not all of them are hunters," Scott told him.

He looked uncertain so I said, "No, he's right. Most of them are ordinary people acting out of fear... Monroe's not gonna change. But we think that we can reach the others.

"Most of them, actually," Scott added.

"The Anuk-ite is causing them to come from a place of fear," Lydia finished.

"Well, fear's pretty motivating, especially when it leads to anger," Derek said. "You must've felt it, didn't you?" he asked me.

"Yes, and trust me, if we don't stop it, the odds are not in our favor," I responded. "It'll be the world versus the supernatural - which I don't think there are many of us left."

"If we can take out the fear, we can take out the fight in them, too," Scott said. "They're afraid of us, but they don't have to be. They just have to change their minds."

"We have to change their minds," Derek corrected.

"Okay. We can face the Anuk-ite. We can try to fight it blind," said Malia, looking around at all of us. "We can try to face our fears. But we still need to know how to catch it."

"Yeah, we'll figure that out," Scott assured. "We always do."

"Well, it's nice to see someone hasn't lost their optimism," Derek commented.

Scott gave him a weak smile. "Not yet."

Stiles, who had stared off into the distance for a moment, spoke up. "I have."