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Life. A beautiful thing, a miracle. Something short but long simultaneously. Something filled with connection and love and happiness and family. Something also filled with pain and suffering and sadness and grief. Life. Something worth living. Something worth.
For some life would be easy, every breath just like the last, a happy, carefree and beautiful time. For others, life would be harder, filled with pitying looks and Doctors talking about you but not to you. Cruel lights that are always to bright and white walls that never feel like home, walls that feel like death in a box. Unfortunately for Theo, he was granted the latter, a life of pain and hardship and surgery after surgery.
He see's the sad, grief stricken, looks on his parents faces after the finish talking to Doctors after his heart acts up again. Feels the way Tara pulls him closer and holds him tighter, like she's scared she'll lose him. Watches the Doctor's worry over him and his broken heart, discussing but never seeing him.
The first person to see him was his nurse. Melissa McCall is a sweet woman, a caring and motherly woman that saw Theo as a human rather than just another patient. She'd let him hold her hand as she recounted her day, helping him ignore the fear and nerves of being in the hospital. She'd tell him small secrets about her life while stroking his hair soothingly, telling him about her son and his friends childlike shenanigans and some of her fears and worries.
Melissa McCall was a good person to Theo. A mother he needed since his own was too busy looking at medical bills than her sick child. Melissa helped Theo make his first friends and gave him a sticker and some candy when he was discharged from his hospital stay.
Whenever he would have sleepovers with Scott and Stiles, Theo would join Melissa in cooking, watching her as she prepared their lunches and dinner's even helping when she kindly instructed him to do so.
For a child Theo was strikingly quiet. Light on his feet. He would move around the world like a feather, like someone who could easily slip under the radar if no one looked.
It's no surprise when he starts to have nightmares. Dreaming up these big scary people in lab coats and mysterious masks. They scare him, heavy feet dragging against his floor and clicking noise ringing in his head permanently, leaving no trace when he wakes up. He talks to Tara about his dreams and she laughs at him, a small offhand comment about his imagination and then ignores him in favor of her diary.
These figures start showing up more frequently after that. Talking to him in muffled and robotic sounds. They never touch him, never stand next to him, only ever at the foot of his bed, watching him. They tell him that they're Doctors, that they're here to help him.
They stop showing up in dreams and start showing up when he's awake. It leaves Theo unfocused and paranoid. He doesn't laugh with Stiles and Scott anymore. Doesn't partake in their favorite games at recess, doesn't join them at sleepovers.
His heart acts up again landing Theo back in the hospital. The Doctors talk. Tell him that they're here to help him, that they want to help him, they care about him. They show up at night to tell him the same things. Theo confides in Melissa one night, too scared to sleep but too tired to fight the drowsy feeling off. She gives him her signature kind smile, smooths a hand over his head. Her reply is something Theo would never forget. "Don't worry about the Doctor's sweetie, they're here to keep you safe."
When they show up again that night Theo finally listen to them. Succumbs to their words and takes the hand of the shortest in his. In his dream they take him to their surgery room, they show him things they've collected, the power they have stored in tanks and their scalpels. They tell him about his dying heart. They whisper thoughts into his head, ones of his future, the pain and misery and the burdens he will bring.
So when they tell him that his sister wants him to be happy and have her heart. He believes them.
So on that cold November night, the day after his birthday, he begs for Tara to go on a walk with him. Bugs and annoys her until she says yes and then takes her out to where the Doctors had instructed. The air runs cold as he watches her fall into the river. Breath leaving his lungs as he watches, panic rising through his veins. There isn't much Theo can do to help, already a lost cause as he sees her skin grow paler and her lips turn blue.
One of the Doctors take his hand after Tara dies and the other two stand over his sister's body, scalpels in hand, ready. Theo watches as they extract his sister's heart from her chest, leaving a cavity gaping and her body in the water before handing the organ off to the Doctor holding Theo's hand tightly, he convinces himself that it was for comfort, protection. It wasn't. They were protecting their project, preventing it from running off, him.
The Doctor drags him away from the scene while the other two dispose of the body. Dispose of Tara, like she meant nothing, was nothing.
That night, November 24th, 2003, Theo Raeken was made into a monster.
—
When Theo turned ten, the Doctors would become cruel.
They would chain him up and starve him, watching for his reaction and his bodies reaction, recording the results of their experiments and how far they could push Theo to the brink of death before bringing him back like a chained animal, not letting their precious little experiment escape from their clutches.
They would strap him down to the surgery table and watch as he convulsed with fear. Watched as his body writhed with pain as they stabbed at him, as they connected him to wires and sent pulses of electricity through his body, torture.
If he cried or shouted or screamed too loud, or at all even, they would strap a muzzle over his mouth forcing him to be quiet as they pushed his body and mind further over the edge. They rarely talked to him, save for a few scoldings here and there, no sweet words like before in Theo's dreams. No promises to keep him safe, which would be broken regardless. They ignored him until they needed him for one of their twisted ideas.
They would watch as his body rejected the mountain ash they poured into wounds they placed upon him, always pulling him back and giving him a short recovery period before starting their next torture session. They would watch as his world spun and he lost consciousness at the wolfsbane they pumped into his veins.
At thirteen Theo realizes that his life isn't normal. Normal children don't have three Doctors as parent that never show their faces. Normal kids don't get locked in cages when they can't fully control themselves. Normal kids don't get experimented on while asleep and wake up to a scalpels cutting through their abdomen.
He watches the Dread Doctors work over chemicals and blood, watches as they poke and prod at organs, watches as they hold down people and extract claws and talons, flinches at their screams of pain and terror. He watches as they put those same claws into someone else's skin, watches as that person slowly dies on the cold floor of the lab.
They pick at him and prod at him more times than Theo can recall. He swallows back his nausea as he feels them peel back his skin and move his organs around. Swallows back the yelp of pain that almost escapes his mouth when they snap his bones, remove his ribs only to force them back in later.
If Theo gets irritated by the Doctor's and their experiments he's shoved into his cage of a room and starved for the week. The snap at him and raise their hands to get him to obey their commands, never striking Theo directly but threatening such.
The Surgeon is the worst out of them. Cold and cut of from the world, uncaring of Theo's presence at all besides getting his hands on him and making Theo his puppet. When Theo was Eleven he had made the mistake of getting frustrated at the Doctor, shoving him away from him and trying to turn back to his book in peace. Theo will never make that mistake again. The Surgeon had grabbed him by the wrist tightly, fracturing the bones and leaving it with an angry purple bruise. He had shoved Theo against the wall and pressed his needle into Theo's neck, watching with sadistic glee as Theo went limp in his arms. Theo woke up six hours later with an angry scar trailing down his back and a misplaced kidney.
The Pathologist wasn't as bad, but he wasn't good by any means. He talked to Theo sometimes, not always punishing, about his next experiment and organs and chemicals. He had been the one to gift Theo some books, books Theo didn't understand but read anyway.
However, there was a certain way that the Pathologist ticked. Made his victims trust him before taking full advantage of them. He would often dig his hand into Theo's shoulders, controlling, and watch as Theo tensed, happily leaving indents in Theo's skin, a cruel reminder of who he killed his sister for.
The Pathologist was methodical, would often lie to get his own way. Promise Theo things and never deliver. Theo had asked if the could go to a restaurant after he had successfully captured and killed a rabbit, the Surgeon had scoffed and walked away, but the Pathologist had promised him a nice trip out. Theo had been so excited, jittering about with nerves and joy all day, but that trip never came. Instead they had injected him with something that had made his bones feel like they were breaking and his skin feels skirmish. He had fallen down, knee's giving out from beneath him as pain over takes his mind.
He had woke up afraid and tired and unusually warm against the lab floor. Theo had tried to stand, the watchful gaze of the Doctors making him shiver, but found it nearly impossible, his limbs weak. The Pathologist came up behind him, hand curling around his neck, and pulled him up into his feet. Theo was disoriented as he stood on four paws instead of two feet. His eyes had wandered to his body, the black fur that covered him and the intense ache of his bones.
The Doctors had been proud. Happy. Theo felt good, validated, seen. The Pathologist had gotten him a treat for his small victory.
The Geneticist was much nicer, maternal of sorts compared to the cruel stare of the Surgeon and manipulative nature of the Pathologist. She crept around, quiet on her feet and always slipping through cracks, popping up unexpectedly. She had taught Theo how to do the same. To go unnoticed by everyone.
She had taught him how to control the shift, focusing on each element that made up the monstrous creature he was, punishing him when he failed to meet the time requirements she set him. She would pluck at him like Theo's a fiddle that she plays, pulling at each string with precision and keen focus.
Sometimes, she would have a thought that she couldn't get out of her mind and would use Theo for her own personal ideas. She would extract DNA from him, blood, hair, skin cells, all for the purpose of her testing and hypothesis's.
However, through all the stuff she did, the Geneticist cared for him the most. Like he was a caged animal that she wanted to keep alive and observe. The Geneticist supplied him with food and water, clothes to go on his back, some books more suitable for kids his age. She had a theory that if her subject was happy then her experiments would be easier to conduct. In a weird way, Theo would prove her correct, feeling safer around her, more willing.
When Theo turned fourteen the Pathologist and Geneticist would convince the Surgeon to trust Theo with a mission. "He can slip under the radar easily, no one would suspect an innocent kid." They had said. Theo had listened in on their conversation, covering up the way his heart wanted to beat faster with his nerves.
When the Surgeon finally relented, Theo had been dragged away by the Pathologist, the Geneticist following them closely behind and shoved into a stair way. He curled in on himself as the crackled out instructions. "Go up there." The Pathologist had said. "Observe the pack we're tracking, you should be able to smell them. Report back to us tonight." The Geneticist had added, kinder.
Theo had followed their instructions to a T, desperate to impress his guardians, craving their attention and questionable love. He watched the pack, stalked their every move, learning their scents, their sounds and their patterns. Later when he had relayed that information back to the Geneticist and the Surgeon he would be patted on the back and given a compliment.
After that, Theo had become an intricate part of their plans, planning each new idea they would stumble over around him and his rapidly improving skills. They would put their trust in him to acquire new victims for their torment, each new location resulting in a missing child, often deceased in an abandoned operating theater.
The Doctors got braver, pushing Theo further into their projects, asking more of him, of his own manipulation tactics and stalking habits. They would ask for more, more children to make their pet projects, more information, more.
Theo had done as told. Given into what the Doctors wanted. Delivered more unconscious bodies to the theater. Handed over Intel after Intel. Stealing things they asked him to take. Disposing of missing children's bodies when they were too wrapped up in their experiments to do so.
At fifteen Theo Raeken had become the monster his captures wanted him to be. Ruthless, cold, controlled. Evil. Right after his fifteenth birthday, Theo would commit his second murder. This one at the unforgiving mercy of his own hands. Stained with blood and skin cells making their way under his claws. The girl had begged, begged him not to, begged him to help her, but Theo had unlearnt human empathy and remorse years ago.
November 28th 2009. Theo Raeken's hands would be tarnished in blood and tragedy.
—
Returning to Beacon Hills had felt weird. It made Theo feel a permanent itch beneath his skin. Nerves bloomed in his stomach and nausea cloud his mind. He controlled it, kept his anxieties hidden from everyone, from the Doctors. He was seventeen but being back had made him feel like the same eight year old boy who just wanted a friend. Wanted to be noticed.
When he returned to the operation theater two days later, the Doctors were experimenting on Tracy, injecting her body with kanima venom and inserting claws into her hand. They had ignored him. Theo was glad they did. He'd gone to his 'room' and broke down, quiet, heavy breaths and tears streamed down his face, staining his cheeks. He had seen Melissa McCall, been hugged by her. It had thrown a wrench into his plans, made his heart pound in his ears before he regained his control.
He did what the Doctors ask. Inserted himself into the McCall pack, reuniting with his old friends. He targeted Malia, using his identity as a coyote to manipulate her, befriend her, gain her trust. She did. Theo saw this as a success. He reported back to the Doctor's but they weren't satisfied, told him to become one of them, join them. Be them. Theo tries, tempts Malia with his own body. Offers support to Scott and Malia and Liam and even Kira. Was kind to Stiles, ignored what he said and didn't let it affect him or his plans. But that didn't work. The Doctors were disappointed in him. They threw him in a cage with some other chimeras.
Theo had wanted to cry, wanted to throw up and tear of his own skin as a peace offering to his protectors but he hadn't. Too busy observing the state of the others, beth, Theo remembered her, had been the one to take her from her own bed late at night, she was out cold, sleeping. The other, Zack, Theo had watched as he screamed in agony as the Surgeon attached a pair of wings to his back, didn't stop the Pathologist from holding him down harshly, painfully . Theo had just stared. Zack was looking back at Theo, staring, dead on his feet and pale. Pain, it's excruciating and all consuming but makes you human. Theo is no longer human. Zack asked him to cut off his wings, put him out of his misery. Theo didn't hesitate to do so.
The McCall pack are intelligent, they saw right through the cracks forming in Theo. His story, his persona, him. He had maimed and manipulated his way through each of them. Sent Malia off to her mother, landed Lydia in the mental hospital, comatose, used Liam's anger as a tool, a weapon. Killed the son of the woman he had once trusted most. Made his own makeshift pack when he couldn't infiltrate one. Injected corpses and demanded their loyalty.
The beast came and went and took with it the Surgeon. Theo was finally free. Free of their torment, their constant watching, their intense gaze. His abusers fell and he was free.
However, through his survival, Theo had become all the same. Kira came to sentence him to his own damnation, her sword plunging into the ground and sending Theo tumbling into his own nightmare, his screams and pleads for help ignored.
He was still trapped. Only this time, it was with himself .
—
Eternal damnation is not kind to Theo, as expected.
Tara comes back. Her touch having haunted Theo for years. The tears in her eyes as she whispered her final words to him, forgotten. Theo was aware that the dread Doctors had tampered with his memories, he barely remembers what his parents were like. But the worst they ever messed with was Tara's final moments.
Tara asks. She examines. Invades Theo until he's nothing but a pleading mess of himself on the morgue floor. She hurts him just like he hurt her.
The nightmare repeats, over and over and over and over.
Theo learns to hate. Not Tara, never Tara. He hates his parents who let their own kids slip through the cracks of safety. Hates the Doctor's who hadn't seen him as human. Hates the Surgeon for his words and cold exterior. Hates the Geneticist for her performative kindness. Hates the Pathologist for his manipulation and violent threats.
Most of all.
Theo Raeken hates himself.
When he pulls himself out of the crack in the ground he doesn't expect to see Liam and Hayden. He didn't expect to be free from his permanent cage of torment. Although, he expects the glare and the looks of pure hatred on their faces.
They free him, only for their own gain, and lock him in another cage. Handcuff him and lock him down with the threat of the sword. They drag him around like he's an animal. They don't care for his safety, ignoring him when he's hurt. Theo deserves their treatment. He treated them all the same. He isn't the only one to hate Theo Raeken. Doesn't need to be.
He sacrifices himself to save someone else. Someone more important and more valuable than Theo is. Someone who has people. Someone liked. He saves Liam, again and again. Liam seems to appreciate the effort. His threats of hell ceasing as they defeat the Wild Hunt together.
They leave him alone. Leave him to pick up the shreds of his old life. Pick up where he left of even if he doesn't want to be that person again. Ignore him like the Doctors had. Theo tells himself that he deserves this. Believes his thoughts and ignores the pain in his chest. The Surgeon always said emotion was weakness. Theo believes that too.
The nightmares never stop. Tara finds a way to haunt her murderer even in his subconscious. He rarely sleeps, can't bring himself to see her face again. The trust, the hate, the terror. He succumbs to the need eventually, startling awake just as Tara takes her heart back to the knock of deputies at his window. He suffers. He still suffers.
The hunters come, annoying as ever and incompetent. They aim to kill but only ever injure, guns at the ready, yielded by scared teens and power hungry adults. Theo sees himself in the people trying to kill him, wishes they'd have better aim and would succeed.
For some reason, Theo gains Liam's trust. Helps him through their fights and his anger. He turns Liam's anger towards him, making it so the only person that gets hurt is a monster. Liam confides in him, Theo can't figure out why. He tells Liam things, let's himself feel around Liam. He trusts Liam too.
No one else trust's Theo. Mason constantly watches his every move. Malia threatens him, always quick to snap just like Theo was quick to pull the trigger on her. He doesn't talk to Corey, no words come to mind to mend the hurt he caused. Scott trusts him with Liam, Liam's anger, but he doesn't trust Theo, always watching him from his periphery.
He saves Liam again, dragging him into the same elevator that had first marked his new life, a new Theo. Liam, as impulsive as ever, kisses him. Theo thinks his brain stops for a minute. Liam's watching him, worried. He attaches his hands to the back of Liam's neck and pulls him back in, attaching their lips together. Liam smiles into the kiss, relieved. Theo smiles back, human.
The hunters fall easily. Theo takes Gabe's pain, his own experience reflected in that of the dying boy before him.
Theo's human again. Is trying to be human again at least. He holds Liam's hand tightly at the pack meeting.
—
Melissa is the first to find out about his homelessness. She digs into Theo, tearing him a new one. He's horrified. She sets him up in the spare bedroom and glares at him until he accepts the invitation, the aid, the charity.
Liam finds out next. As expected he's angry, picking fight after fight with Theo until he's exhausted all the threats and questions in his mind. Mostly though, Liam is sad. It reeks, setting on Theo's skin uncomfortably, laying itself on Theo lungs, suffocating, wrapping itself around Tara's heart, all encompassing. He apologizes, sobs and begs for forgiveness. Liam holds him in his arms, holding the shattered pieces of Theo's porcelain together.
The pack have sad faces when they see him. Eyes full of upset and pity. Grief. Grief for a child trapped in the cages of his own body, of his mind. For a childhood Theo never could've or would've had.
They see him, right through him.
—
"Do you remember when you took care of me in the hospital before my ninth birthday?" Theo asks Melissa over breakfast.
Her eyes widen in shock. No. In horror. She remembers, her words, his words. She knows. Melissa frowns at him. "I do."
Theo nods. He hesitates to say more but she's watching him, expectant. He gulps down his tears, the lump in his throat making itself known. "So you remember what I told you?" He asks.
Tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Theo hadn't wanted that, guilt takes over his body.
Melissa nods at him. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you that day." She says, choking on a sob, a shiver wracking it's way through her body.
Theo shakes his head at her. "No." He states firmly. "Do not blame yourself for that, you couldn't have known." The knot in his throat is getting tighter with each word, choking him slowly.
Melissa stands from her seat. Briefly Theo thinks he's fucked everything up, ruined his relationship with Melissa forever. She rounds the corner of the table and stops in front of him. She places her hands on his shoulders, rubbing over his collar bones, soothing.
"Don't blame yourself either." She says like she knows Theo. Like she's been in Theo's own head and learnt everything about him. She has. "You were a child. Do not blame yourself for the actions of your abuser's."
The knot unravels as quickly as it had coiled. He sobs, tears running paths down from his eyes. "I chose to go with them." He sobs out. Melissa kneels in front of him, pulling him onto her neck, letting him cry on her shoulder.
"You were a child. You were surviving." She says.
Theo holds onto her like a lifeline. Like she's the mother he needs, needed all those years ago.
"Do you think she hates me? Tara?"
"No." Melissa says. Her hand flattens it's self over the back of his head, rubbing in soothing motions. "I don't think she'll ever be able to hate you.
"I killed her. I killed her. I killed her." He rambles.
Melissa hugs him tighter. She pulls him away from her, holding his face tightly, looking directly into his eyes.
"No you didn't. They hurt you, both of you." She says. She lets him fall back into her, holding onto him like she wants to protect him, needs to save him. "You were children." A sob wracks through her body and they both cling into each other tighter.
Life isn't simple. There is good. There is evil. There is the tortured. It's grief riddled and a mission of survival.
Mostly, life just is. Theo is worthy of living his. His sister held in his chest with grief and happiness. Theo is worth something to people. Human, a person, someone. He's finally free.