A/N: the previous chapter has been edited and 500 words have been added to the word count, but you don't need to reread it to understand this chapter.
The drive isn't a long one, highways quickly turning to dirt roads, dust and small rocks kicking up from under the tires. Evergreen trees line his vision with shades of brown and bright yellowing greens that trap the fading sunlight, dispersing it in blotches of burnt orange and gold against the mud below. He rolls down his windows just enough to hear the rustling of the wind between the trees and the babbling of a stream just barely out of sight. It's peaceful, the smell of pine and dirt still sodden from recent rainfall leaking its way into the car, surrounding him. It's too easy to forget why he's here amongst the calm of the surrounding forest, but ultimately the serenity is the entire reason he doesn't forget. The calm sets him on edge, makes his usually steady fingers tap skittishly against the steering wheel as he goes.
The problem with peacefulness is that it never lasts, there's no good reason to settle and get comfortable in it, comfort is a weakness above all else. Even if this particular car ride isn't interrupted by bright explosions or machine gun fire it doesn't mean it isn't coming, eventually. The calm always breaks and the calm is oftentimes the worst place to be, he's all too aware he's sitting in the eye of the storm.
The calm will break.
He parks up on the side of the dirt road, a little more than a minute outside of the town and checks his gun is fully loaded with silver rounds and the bestiary is safely in a bag slung across his shoulder before slipping out of the jeep. The sound of the car door slamming shut behind him is loud, scattered by the trees as the branches seem to shake and rustle around him. He tucks his weapon into the waistband of his jeans, resting cool against the small of his back as he makes his way into the tranquillity that lay around him.
He can't help the paranoid feeling that the forest doesn't want him here, as though it senses danger in him, like maybe he'll be the one to lay waste to the peace that resides here. If the forest really was capable of thinking such things he's not sure he could blame it.
He should be heading to the morgue but there's something he needs to see first, he needs to know where it happened. Who knows, maybe the beasts that attacked here left signs, tracks in the mud or claw marks against bark that scream 'There were definitely werewolves here!'
Although, if he's honest with himself this is much less about looking for clues and more about holding himself accountable, because if he'd just worked a little quicker, more efficiently then maybe no one would've died in these woods yesterday. If he hadn't got so caught up in Beacon Hills and Dad and Pack, if he has just done something better (even if he doesn't know what that something is) maybe he would've caught who was after the bestiary already and he wouldn't have to be here at all. It's absurd, it's irrational and it's crushing him inside, beating him down a little more each time but he never claimed to be all that rational at all. Well, he did, does every time he has his psych check but that's different. They can't know what's going on inside his mind, they'd stop him, pull him out and he can't stop, not now he can't. He likes to hope that's because he urges to do better, more good, and make the world a safer place, but honestly? There's a sickening suspicion inside that's telling him he can't stop because he enjoys it, the killing, that by now he'd be nothing without it. That, while the weight of death on his soul is pulling him down, it's also the only thing that assures him that he has something of a soul at all.
That if he stops for long enough he'll crumble into nothing at all.
So, as it is, he weaves his way through the forest to the attack site so he can stand there and feel, so he can be there and know.
All the spirits of those he's left behind him flow through the wind beside him, chastising, not that he can hear them.
He thinks he can, sometimes, often when he's laying in bed at night in whatever low-budget hotel room he'd ended up in that night. He thinks he can hear them in the quiet, in the calm. They remind him he's no hero, that he's as much of a monster as all those he's killed, asking why they got caught in the crossfire, why me Mitch? Why me?
YOU ARE READING
𝑅𝐸𝑄𝑈𝐼𝐸𝑀 - M.R.
Fanfiction[Teen Wolf x American Assassin Crossover] "and the kindest thing you can do for a rabid dog?" "put it down." --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Not long after defeating the nogitsune, Stiles flees Beacon Hills without so much...
