Who: Cora Hale What: Nightmares. So many nightmares. Continuous nightmares. When: Spanning the time of the curse Where: Hale-Martin Apartment Warning: Disturbing imagery (fire, burning people, death) Status: Narrative | Complete
If there was one thing that should be a constant, it was that Cora Hale did not sleep much. An average night of sleep was five to six hours, nor was it a deep sleep. Usually. Whatever had happened though, whatever had taken hold of the county had gotten to Cora as well and now she had no choice but to sleep. To be trapped in her mind. To be powerless.
Time moved strangely while locked in her mind. She couldn't tell what were Dreams, or just influenced by what she had heard. What her mind was warping from what she had already Dreamed. She just knew that she was stuck.
The room was musty and filled with people. It was late at night and most respectable people wouldn’t be in an establishment like this at this time. But Cora wasn’t a respectable person, especially when she was on a job. This one was personal, though. Laura had gotten mistaken for her and was in trouble and Cora needed to save her. She didn’t know how, but she had. It wasn’t right. Laura shouldn’t pay for the choices Cora had made when she was just trying to survive.
Despite the late hour, the temperature outside was hot, sweat beading at the back of her neck. She was on edge. The stench of unwashed humans, too lost in their drink and underhanded dealings was suffocating. God, she hated this village. She had avoided it on all of her jobs. It was as if the worst of the worst made their homes here. If anything, they certainly did their business here. When the clock struck midnight, Cora got up and walked out to the meeting spot behind the building.
She had smelled Laura’s scent and was certain she was in the right place to make the trade, but instead, she felt a needle go into her neck as a familiar voice whispered in her ear, relax, baby girl, it hurts less that way. Looking up, Cora realized Laura was the one to drug her. Right before her head was chopped off and blood spattered on her face. Her mind was screaming, but her body wasn’t responding beyond the sensation of her blood thickening in her veins, slowing, making her heavy.
“As you asked, the She-Wolf”
Uncle Peter. As she began to lose consciousness, Cora could swear she felt someone picking her up and a voice whispering in her ear.
“No hard feelings, Cora, but it was this or be inconvenienced by these people. I’m sure you understand.”
She did. Uncle Peter would betray any of them for his own survival and she was in the way of said survival. (When had that happened? When? Why did she feel like this yet fought so much against it?) She’d been a fool to trust him even remotely. Of course he would sell her out the second it benefited him. Any sign that he might actually care or feel remorse was clearly her starved need for family after being alone for so long and being desperate enough to ignore the fact she didn’t really know if she trust any of them.
The smell of gasoline was the first thing Cora noticed. She could smell the hunters outside. What was this, a fire re-do? Uncle Peter had already sold her out. Why didn’t they just kill her? Blearily opening her eyes, Cora noticed Derek and for a brief moment she thought he was there to get her out of here. Instead he was the one holding the gasoline.
“You should have died in the fire, life would have been so much easier.”
The words stunned her as she watched her brother walk away. Did he really think that? Was that why he had left her behind? Why he hadn't warned her? Laura’s blood was on her. The hunters had gone for them…. did he regret it? Was she really so pathetic that she was nothing more than a pawn and that led to him being in constant danger? Was that why? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wished to have died in the fire but….
Watching Derek walk away from her, Cora struggled in the wolfsbane laced chains, trying to get out. To apologize, something. But when he dropped the match, she screamed his name, the smoke filling the room as the flames started coming towards her. It was from those flames that a familiar form began to take shape.
Stiles
His skin was charred and flaking off as he walked towards her, but she recognized his eyes. Lava and fire seemed to be visible in the cracks on his skin. Struggling for breath, all Cora could do was watch as he came towards her.
“God, I never should have wasted my time on you. You're too damaged to be around people. Miserable, you just brought me headaches.”
With that, the fire monster of Stiles reached out and grabbed her throat, the fire that was pulsing through his veins latching onto her skin. She could feel it boil and burn as it felt like she was becoming ash.....
Only to find herself elsewhere.
There was a darkness around her, inky and not the dark that was familiar. No, this darkness was a darkness which clung to her skin, seeping in slowly to congeal into a black goop, making her limbs heavy and her lungs feeling as if they were going to burst. I don’t want to be here, let me out! The scream was silent in her head as Cora looked around desperately. She was trapped in a basement. Everything hurt.
Nobody likes you, everyone left you...
The air left the teen’s lungs, forced out by an invisible punch to the gut, causing Cora to collapse to the ground. No. She was stronger than this. She was used to being alone. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was fine. But as she kept reaffirming that fact to herself, the tendrils of darkness tightened their hold on her, searing into her skin, the scent of burnt flesh gagging her. All around her was fire and heat and death and she couldn’t get away.
Cora didn’t know where she was, her sense of direction was broken, sounds and scents were distracting and confusing her. Too loud, the screams of the dying. The screams of the remaining. She hadn’t done anything. But the pain that reached in, building a glass cage around her. She felt trapped. She was trapped and every time she punched or kicked, she was cut by the glass. No one saw her, they all had their own lives.
“Derek!”
She could see him, see her brother walking with Laura. Pounding desperately, he looked her way once before continuing on. Leaving her. But then she saw a shadow reach for him, out of nowhere to destroy him and she had to warn him, even if he had left her. Screaming with no sound, Cora struggled even more as her brother was killed right in front of her, looking up desperately as the shadows and oil started coming down around her. It was tar. She was drowning in tar. Gasping, her instincts screamed run and fight despite logic saying the more she fought the more she was weakened.
The trees around her in the forest moaned in the wind, the sound deafening. She wanted it to go away. She could barely see the sky. All she could do was reach for it, as though it would save her. And then, a hand. Familiar. Comforting. Lydia.
Pulled up from the tar, Cora was about to thank her when she realized she was dead. Just standing there, skin rotting off, blood from her eyes and mouth.
“Lydia!”
The name came out in a sob as she tried to reach her, stop the bleeding, fix her, but all it did was speed up the process. She was bleeding out all over her, blood and darkness and guilt.
“No no no….” She couldn’t lose her. She kept losing Derek. She had lost everyone else once already. She didn’t want to keep this up. She was tired.
“Do you like fire?”
“W...what?”
Animated in ways Cora couldn’t understand, she watched as Lydia struck a match, the flames that destroyed her normal life flickering. Laughter and trust… Everything that had died in the fire.. it was engulfing her, trapping her in the darkness.