Chapter Text
Theo was encased in darkness. It pressed in on all sides, suffocating him. He breathed in dirt and choked, his lungs burning.
He did not know which was worse; when he was beneath the ground, alone but for his thoughts and the weight of the earth pressing down on his shoulders; or when he ran through the hospital, Tara gleefully ripping her heart from his chest, again and again and again.
Emptiness or pain. There was nothing else, down here in his own personal hell.
There was no way to tell how long he had been down here. Time was meaningless. He drifted in and out of consciousness, teetering on the verge of death but never surrendering to it. Even in hell, Theo was determined to survive.
His actions haunted him. He had too much time to think, to reflect on all of the things he had done. How had he ended up here? How had it all gone so horribly wrong? How had he miscalculated so badly?
He had killed his betas, absorbing their powers, the electricity humming under his skin, and just as he thought he was strong enough, Kira had split open the ground, and Tara had taken him, dragging him to hell.
Theo closed his eyes. When had he opened them? Grit scratched his eyes, making them water. He could not reach up to wipe it away, arms pinned in place by the earth around him. Tara grabbed his foot, dragging him down into the nightmare.
“Theo,” she whispered malevolently. She crawled towards him, enjoying the chase, dragging it out as long as possible, feasting on his fear. She never tired of it, never tired of his begs and pleas for mercy, never tired of piercing his chest with her hand, never tired of his screams of agony as she ripped out his heart. Then it would fade to black, and he would be trapped in the morgue, heart racing, as the nightmare began anew.
His heart was empty, what did it matter if she took it? He had been abandoned down here, the only ones that might have helped him, Scott, Malia, Liam, Lydia, Corey, Mason, all allowing him to rot. Kira, the one who had trapped him down here in the first place, would hardly care, but he had thought Scott, or maybe Liam, would do something.
All he knew was pain.
Hell was hungry, and with each passing moment, Theo felt parts of himself slipping away. Josh’s electricity no longer hummed and sizzled along his skin, absorbed into the earth and drawn away. The poison he had stolen from Tracy had soaked into the ground aeons ago. Even the strength and hyper-awareness of his chimera was dulling more and more, until all that was left him was desperation and the heart thudding slowly in his chest. And Tara was determined not to let him keep it.
Just as he thought he could not bear it a moment longer, as his sanity hung by a single thread, there was a loud crack. There was a burning around his left wrist and a hard jerk on it that nearly dislocated his shoulder.
Theo blinked as stale, sour air swirled around his face. The earth shifted around him, and desperately, he lunged up, clawing his way through the dirt, lungs heaving with exertion. One hand cleared the darkness and gripped the cold, jagged edge of cement, and he pulled himself out of the darkness.
Slowly, he got to his feet, swaying, unsteady, as he stared into the shocked face of Liam, who stood before him, both hands on Kira’s sword, a large crack running between him and Theo. Behind him was Hayden, who glared at him, her lips raised in a sneer.
His heart thudded in his chest as he glanced around quickly, trying to summon powers that were no longer at his beck and call, his will to survive flaring as he tried to dull the panic that threatened to make his hands shake and his knees buckle.
Theo Raeken, newly delivered from hell, once a powerful chimera and bane of the McCall pack’s existence, was now completely and utterly, mundanely, human. And it terrified him.