From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski [#𝟏]

𝐟𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 [ choices. ]

A/N: Here we go.

Song Recommendation ["Goner" - Twenty One Pilots]

☽ † ☾

"Watchers try to control, try to predict. But in the end, we Slayers have to learn that all you can do is react and hope you win.

I've been racked with turmoil this whole time about what it means to be a Slayer. But one thing is clear to me now, without question-I want this. I can do this. I'm proud of what I am.

And I'm ready."

- Slayer, Kiersten White

☽ † ☾

Before

When you wake up from a traumatic experience in an entirely different place, it can be disorientating. A hole in your memory, but not quite empty. A photo, overexposed, filled with too much violent light. There's no way to recover overexposed film and, for all intents and purposes the memories could never click into place the way the typically did. Sometimes, not all of it comes back and Maddie was sure she was missing a lot.

Her senses took too long to come back, or maybe they came back in rapid succession. Her brain was a disjointed mess of thought and memory, a stopper unplugged as the water circled the drain. The closest pieces were the furthest to get to and vice versa.

First to come back was her sight and a fuzzy white world blinded her. Too many lights. Overhead fluorescents. Not outside. Not her room. Something equally familiar but the memory was too far to reach.

It took her awhile, hours or days or maybe minutes, to realize it why she was in bed. It wasn't until the all over stinging narrowed to her stomach with such merciless precision that she knew why she was shaking. It was raining. She felt the need to wretch and the muscle spasm that came with it created a sharp pang in her stomach, a tearing sensation like cheap fabric being pulled apart, revealing the thin, threadbare weakness of her own skin.

Her hearing was next and her head throbbed at the muffled shouts, a sensation like being underwater. Maybe they were shouting for her, worried for her. Maybe she was Dorothy waking up from a topsy-turvy nightmare too bright and vibrant and dangerous to be real.

The clearer the voices, to more her head pulsed. Anger was there, a sore, jagged rip in someone's throat. This was not a dream.

"What the hell happened out there?!" A feminine voice full of gravel and a hint of a Boston accent, like words becoming fat and flattened before they left her mouth.

"What do you mean, what happened?" A man's voice, harsher but not in a natural way. The edge sounding forced through a voice known for its easy humor. Panic. "It's pretty obvious! She's lucky to be alive! And those kids..."