What Could Have Been [Thiam Rewrites]

Chapter 24: The Reckoning

A/N: Please note that the first thing I did after getting back from camping for two days was not shower or eat, but upload this chapter... that I wrote a majority of in the woods.

Please note that this chapter includes non-explicit spice.

Suggested song pairing: Chord Overstreet, Hold On

Theo

Despite the sky brightening as the eclipse faded, Theo was engulfed in darkness. He didn't recognize the world around him. Everything was off kilter, not quite the way it had been seconds before.

He stared at his hands, slick with Liam's blood, and they moved without his command, stroking across the peak of Liam's cheekbones.

"Bring him back," Theo whispered, the words leaving his raw, aching throat too quietly. No one moved. No one breathed. "Bring. Him. Back."

The pack had circled around the Nemeton, and their expressions were a myriad of shock and grief. Mason was sobbing into Corey's shoulder, and Stiles shifted closer to Lydia. Theo sought out Scott and Derek, whose eyes were filled with something worse than grief—pity. They both understood the sheer destruction of holding the love of their life in their arms as the life slipped away from them.

"Theo," Scott said, his voice faltering. Isaac reached for his boyfriend, threading their fingers together. "We can't—"

But he'd heard of it happening. Lydia had brought Peter back from the dead after months in the ground. Fuck, everything they thought impossible had just been proven wrong. Imara had been immortal. She'd defied death a hundred times over. There had to be away.

"BRING. HIM. BACK!" Theo screamed, the shards of his heart scraping against his ribcage as he frantically tried to hold himself together.

Scrambling to his feet, he fisted his hand in Imara's shirt. "You don't get to die. Not until you bring him back."

"Nothing can help him, now," Imara said, her voice so matter-of-fact that Theo nearly ripped her throat out right then and there.

"No," he snarled from deep in his chest. "If you don't find a way to bring him back, I will make this world a living, breathing hell scape. Take it from someone who's been there, it'll make the last 900 years of your pathetic life seem like a walk in the fucking park."

"Do it," Imara challenged. "I won't live long enough to see it."

"You're not dying until I say you die," Theo snarled. "I'll keep you alive just to torture you until Liam is breathing again."

"I don't care what you do to me, and I certainly don't care what happens to your precious lover."

"Call. On. The. Wolf. God," Theo snapped.

"Theo," Derek said, dropping a hand to his shoulder.

"Don't—" Theo hissed, recoiling from the contact. The last person who'd touched him had been Liam, and his touch, the feel of him, was already fading. The look in Derek's eye, broken and grieving, was enough that Theo nearly lost his grip on reality. "Don't tell me to stop. I can't. I won't."

Theo collapsed onto his knees, biting back the anguish rising his throat and the tears that built in his eyes. He caressed Liam's cheek, his warmth already slipping away.

"Baby," he whispered. "Baby, you have to come back. You have to come back to me."

But Liam was still. His heart unmoving beneath his ribs, beneath the blood dripping from the side of his throat. Theo rocked back on his heels and stared out at the trees. Even the forest seemed to be silently mourning.