Postmortem

Nolan sat quietly in the hallway near Stiles's room, he couldn't bare the sight of a father awaiting for his son to rise awake again. The young man thought he should allow him some space, to express his feelings in the peace and quietude he deserved.

Noah Stilinski had indeed seen and been through his fair share of hardships and struggles, both as a man but also as the sheriff of such town that is Beacon Hills, all of which he had to learn to live with. What he couldn't overcome however, was every parent's fear, a possibility in life that almost all dreaded, outliving their own children, or worse...Having to bury them. Most should agree that nobody needed to go through something like that, yet most should accept that, it will be part of reality for some.

" Stiles... You gotta get up..." he couldn't find better words to utter, as he gazed upon his unconscious son," We need you...We all do, "He wasn't a defeatist by any means, but judging by the abnormally excessive sweating and dark purple circles under Stiles's eyes, Noah knew he could toss the idea of him simply sleeping peacefully out the window.

He could feel his struggle underneath all those deep layers of slumber, " Whatever you're going through, whatever you're seeing deep down there... I know you can beat it; I know you can make it out of there,"

Did he know that for sure? Even he couldn't tell, he just wanted to hold his son, have a conversation with him, hear his voice, see is smile... It had been years since he could do so, but with all that, he still was very proud of his courage and accomplishments, he had doubts about it but when the sheriff looked at the impact Stiles had on so many people's lives around him, he definitely knew he did a good job raising his child.

"I am sorry..." Noah muttered, before turning aside and discretely wiping his tears, he'd heard footsteps coming his way.

Melissa walked into the room and headed straight towards Stiles to check on his state, as she passed Noah, she mustered a little " Hey," and a sympathetic smile on her face.

He returned the gesture then proceeded to ask her," No improvement?"

"I am not sure, to be honest, this doesn't really make any sense, he should be up by now," she said as she examined his vitals.

He took a deep breath, brought his right hand onto his eyelids and massaged them, " So this... is supernatural?" he asked.

"It does seem like it, I am sorry," her answer was brief, then again, she didn't know what else to say, Stilinski was a close friend, she wasn't going to give him the same comfort speech she was used to giving patients and their families.

" I will join you and Deaton at the morgue in a little while," he seemed to catche onto her thoughts, thus, he decided to change the subject.

" Alright, I'll be heading there right now," she said before exiting the room.

As she crossed the door, she came face to face with Chris, who seemed to be looking for her. " Is she up?" asked Melissa about the woman he was keeping an eye on.

" Yeah, she did say some interesting things, but not as much as I'd hoped," he answered before adding, " I need to catch up to Scott, apparently... Monroe is dead,"

A moment of speechlessness followed suite as she took the time to digest the news, it was a rather odd sensation, to hear about the death of the person who had been tormenting them for a major part of the recent past years.

"I need to get going, but...Keep your eyes open...For anything really," his voice snapped her back out to reality, she looked him in the eyes, and he held her gaze, they both could discern all the emotions bottled up deep within themselves, yet very little of those feelings bubbled up to the surface, neither one knew which to express and how.

" I'll go with you," Nolan stood at some distance behind Melissa, he had just broken the intense moment between the two of them.

" Be careful out there," was all she found to say.

" I always am," he replied, before heading towards the exit with Nolan.

****

" It seems you were right Mason, earlier tonight when you made the connection between what happened to Theo and the creatures that attacked these hunters," stated Deaton, as he flipped through the autopsy report's pages, for one of the bodies discovered earlier that night.

" So, the difference may be that Theo is not human," intervened Corey.

" Yeah, the black blood could be his body's attempt at healing," Mason thought back to what Derek had told him about the healing process for supernaturals, more specifically werewolves, he'd explained that when something prevented their healing, the symptoms tended to manifest through the discharge of rancid black blood.

" The others healed up pretty quickly compared to him though," Liam said right as Melissa appeared through the door to the morgue.

She heard the last thing that was said, so she decided to contribute with an answer, " That could be because Theo is not a supernatural, but a chimera,"

" And the hunters died almost immediately..." added Deaton.

They all remained silent for a moment, each dwelling around their own contemplation, until Melissa spoke again, " The autopsy suggests that the cause of death, is the presence of large doses of venom in their systems," that statement opened the doors to a swarm of new possibilities and theories.

" What kind of venom?" Liam asked.

" Scorpion venom," replied Deaton, his eyes happened to fall on the answer right on time for Liam's question.

As if someone lit a lightbulb in Corey's head, he immediately opened his mouth to speak, when he felt he needed to share his realization " I think I experienced this kind of venom before,"

" Lucas..." Uttered Mason.

" The guy we fought at the night club 'cinema'?" Liam remembered that night him and Brett had a confrontation with the scorpion chimera, before Scott and Kira joined them to help.

" The scorpion chimera you told me about?" Alec wasn't sure if they were talking about the encounter he was thinking of, since he was the last to join the party, he could only rely on the tales conveyed by those who had been there before him.

" I remember saying it was sort of a miracle that you were still alive," Melissa spoke, looking in Corey's direction.

" Because he was already a chimera at the time," Mason followed behind her words.

" Didn't stop me from seeing the red rivers of pain from hell," Corey chuckled at his own anecdote.

Another moment of silence fell in the room before Deaton's voice broke it, " The healing process for chimeras is slower and less effective, we did establish that before, with Hayden,"

At those words, Liam proceeded to shed more light on the matter, considering he was one of the only people in that room to have dealt with the said creatures they were speculating about " Yeah, but these didn't look anything like...Luka, or any other chimera we saw, they had unnatural shapes yeah, but they weren't shifters,"

" They were basically just monsters," Alec added.

True that was, their attackers appeared in one shape then departed in that same one, in a way they resembled berserkers, those too didn't seem to have a mind of their own, like they were being controlled by a being of higher intelligence to theirs. But that remained only a theory at that time.