From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski [#𝟏]

𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 [ the storm. ]

A/N: Okay, so...planning an out of state move with depression and anxiety surprisingly doesn't make for a good writing environment. I have been stuck on this thing for months.

Then, I decided it was actually two chapters. So yeah.

I have to edit the chapter after this but, oh my god, I'm ahead. Also, I apologize for the content. This is going to be rough. WARNING - this chapter does contain mildly graphic depictions of torture.

Song Recommendation ["The World is Unraveling" - Milck]

NOTE: For the full experience, I do personally suggest seeking out each song rec.

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Where does your darkest regret lie: in your heart with everything you never did or in a grave with all your ghosts?

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Before

There was a time when Maddie knew she could do anything if she wanted it enough. Not because of something like 'special permissions' or having the brute force or even something uplifting that a mentor may have told her since she didn't actually have any of that.

Special permissions usually meant money and, from what she could remember, the two bedroom and two bathroom house her family rented was deep in the part of town where they never fixed the roads and the doors always had to be locked. She shared a bedroom with her older brother, as well as a closet and a bunk bed. Their backyard wasn't even a backyard but a patch of dirt with a rotted fence and a mud-crusted trampoline about the size of a kiddie pool.

Maddie never considered that maybe other kids didn't live that way until Marie began talking about her family's summer home and overseas vacations. She didn't have the guts to bring up that the only vacation she recalled was to Milwaukee to see her grandparents who lived out of an apartment in a similar neighborhood to hers. She never openly compared Marie's talk of after school ballet lessons with Maddie's sometimes extensive afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club.

She didn't have the brute force either; she was always small and scrawny. Weak as a human being, hiding from her attackers in classrooms during lunch and recess; mediocre as a Slayer, training for longer hours than anyone else on her team to catch up to them.

The reason she could do just about anything was because no one really paid attention to her. She was one unremarkable face in thousands, regardless of where she lived or what she was. Jack's quiet little sister. Marie's wet blanket of a sidekick. Elliott's flavor of the month. Just another slayer in a world full of them already. Only a handful really stood out or could be called something more, maybe even superheroes. For Madeline Hayes, being a slayer didn't feel like it made her different, only more of the same.