Unbroken ▹ Teen Wolf [02]

22; sixteen hours

Silence was deafening.

Though voices occasionally fought to interrupt it, for sixteen hours nothing had successfully broken through the deafening scream of silence Rachel heard. It was constant, never faltering even when she herself attempted to speak, to question why the minutes passed by & nothing changed. The clock continued to tick, never missing a beat with each passing second, but still, nothing changed.

Rachel knew things did change— but not the things that mattered to her. Mundane things. It began once an hour passed, Lydia stopped asking when they were going to wake up. Deaton left for exactly four minutes & thirty seven seconds to make coffee. Isaac asked Rachel if she was okay. Exactly twelve minutes & twenty two seconds later, he asked again. Forty three minutes & seven seconds after that, Lydia left. She went out to the waiting room, presumably to sleep; something she couldn't do in the same room as her three dead friends.

Seven minutes after Lydia left, Isaac asked if she was okay again. Rachel ignored him. Three minutes & twelve seconds after that, Deaton asked if she was okay. She ignored him, too. She didn't give any indication that she wasn't okay; she was sitting in the counter, as still as a statue, as she had been for over two hours. Her breathing was calm, as was her heart rate. She had surpassed the stage of panic.

An hour & thirty eight minutes later, Isaac left. He didn't go far, just out to the waiting room with Lydia. It was late at night, Rachel didn't blame them for being tired. Two minutes & eight seconds after he left, Deaton asked if she was okay again. He tried to encourage her to go sit with them, or to go back to the break room & try to sleep. She remained still. He tried again less than a minute later, suggesting she go for a walk if she didn't feel like sleeping. Rachel didn't move.

For sixteen hours, Rachel didn't move.

She didn't eat or drink anything. She didn't look at her phone, and for fifteen & a half of those hours, she didn't speak. She didn't think about sleeping, nor did she feel tired. The only thing she felt was darkness. Emptiness. Rachel couldn't explain the feeling in any other way— it was like a canvas painted pure black. Framed with the dread that overtook her when she reflected Lydia's banshee abilities.

It wasn't entirely from the temporary deaths. Rachel could lie to herself & pretend like it was, but she knew a fair amount of it was caused by what Deaton had said to her prior to the sacrifices. She was trying to push the thoughts away, to bury them deep in the back of her mind with all the other things she didn't want to think about, but they fought hard to remain her primary focus as silence threatened to swallow her whole.

Deaton knew the truth. He knew she wasn't a reflector. He admitted it without ever saying the words. All this time, he'd known the truth & never told her— all this time he had been helping Scott & guiding them in the right direction as an emissary was designed to, but never disclosed the heart wrenching truth that everything Rachel thought of herself was a lie. Maybe not everything, but enough.