Chapter Text
Rumors were being thrown around the school like it was nobody's business. Which it was, mind you. It was nobody's business to know what had happened to Jackson or how he miraculously recovered after everything that happened on the Lacrosse field that night. The stories were getting more and more ridiculous as time went on.
For the first few weeks of school starting back up, Jackson wasn't there. Nobody knew anything, nobody knew where he was or how he was doing - nobody knew if he was okay.
Unsurprisingly, everyone turned to Lydia for information and she came up blank. Jackson wasn't answering his messages, wasn't answering the door - even his parents were coming up with excuses as to why he hadn't shown up for class for over three weeks.
Four weeks and still no sign, no word of Jackson. Some people were starting to get worried, those some people being Scott and Allison. Even with everything they'd all been through together, they still cared about Jackson - still worried about him and his well being.
Eventually, Jackson did come back to school. Resumed classes. Became just like every other student in the school. If he were anyone else, that might have been okay - it might have been normal. But this was Jackson, the guy that was loud and obnoxious and rude at any given chance. The guy that never paid attention to a single class in his life was doing just that. Paying attention to classes, studying - keeping his head down.
Very unlike Jackson. So much so that Scott was worried, exceptionally worried. It was like Jackson had become a completely different person in the span of a month. Scott needed to find out what had happened, what had caused Jackson to change so drastically. He'd expected Jackson to go right back to normal, he'd expected Jackson to go back to being the popular kid, the King of the school and the co-captain of Lacrosse.
When that hadn't happened, alarm bells began to ring in Scott's head. Apparently Allison had the same worries.
"You should talk to him." Allison said quietly, looking up from her desk to Jackson who was sat right in front of her - shoulders hunched over, head down... clearly focusing on his work.
"And say what?" Scott whispered, following Allison's gaze to Jackson's back. He was focusing, he was actually studying.
"You could ask him how he is," she looked back down to her paperwork, "he's been gone for over a month, Scott. He could probably use a friend or two."
Allison was right, of course. She was always right when it came to stuff like this. She was a friendly person, she was the kind of person that just radiated kindness, happiness - she was like a bright light in a dark room. Scott knew that she was right, that Jackson probably needed a friend after everything he'd gone through - from being mind controlled to being impaled, to coming back to life... not to mention anything else he might've gone through while they weren't looking.
Thankfully for Scott, he had another class with Jackson before the day was up - which meant he had one last chance to talk to him because he knew that there was no way Jackson would talk to him during their lunch break. Hell, Scott wasn't even sure where Jackson went for his lunch break. He'd even tried looking for Jackson during their lunch break but he came up empty.
The bell rang for the next class and Scott parted ways with the rest of the pack and promised to fill them in should he get any information from Jackson. Which he hoped that he would. As much as he might hate to admit it, Jackson was alone right now. He had no friends, he had nobody to talk to about what had happened to him - the supernatural things that had no doubt messed him up mentally.
Students began to filter into the classroom, picking out their seats for the lesson. Thankfully (and unsurprisingly), nobody chose to sit next to Jackson. So Scott did. He made his way to the back of the class and pulled out the chair, cringing as the feet of the chair scraped along the floor. He sat down and looked to Jackson from the corner of his eye, to see how he responded. Nothing. Not even a twitch or a flinch.
"Hey," Scott spoke quietly, "-Jackson? Are you okay?"
The only reason he was asking was because Jackson looked a little dead. He looked pale and he was unresponsive for the most part, other than the fact that his eyes were following the teacher. His mouth was moving slightly, like he was copying what the teacher was saying so that it stuck with him a little longer.
"Jackson!" Scott whisper-shouted, eyes narrowing and brows furrowing. His nose creased and scrunched up in distaste at the lack of an answer once again and he was just about ready to grab Jackson by the shoulders and shake him until he snapped out of whatever trance he was in.
The teacher spoke up at that exact moment, to let everyone know that they were going to be doing an oral practise, to really get their pronunciations and diction correct for the upcoming oral test. Just that information alone had half the class groaning in distaste and the second half of the class started groaning unhappily when they were assigned to the people sat next to them.
Everyone seemed unhappy, all but one person. Scott. It meant that he had the time and excuse to talk to Jackson under the guise of learning how to speak French properly when in fact, he was going to use the time to talk to Jackson and find out what the hell had happened, what the hell was going on.
The chairs and tables were moved and rearranged so that everyone had more space to sit face to face, paper in hand, ready to reel off sayings to translate or be translated. Luckily for both Jackson and Scott, they had super hearing which meant they didn't need to speak all that loudly.
"Jackson, at some point you need to tell me what's going on. What happened to you?" Scott looked down to his paperwork and then back up to Jackson, acting like he was reading from the paper. Radio silence. It was like trying to get blood from a stone.
"At some point, you will have to talk to me." Scott didn't know that for sure. He didn't know that for certain. Jackson could very well ignore him until the end of time. If that was what he wanted to do then he could. He was an incredibly stubborn soul, wasn't he?
Minutes passed and Scott was left there, staring at Jackson incredulously - worried that he might not ever speak again. Scott was almost entirely sure that he might stay like this. Zombie-like, walking dead-esque.
"Are we doing to do this or not?" Jackson finally spoke up, giving the paper an aggressive wave in Scott's direction. All about the work, focused all too much on the work in front of him instead of talking to Scott about his feelings. That part checked out, that part was the most Jackson-thing he'd seen all day.
"Jackson, I just want to talk to you-"
"That's a not, then." With that, Jackson pushed the chair back and stood up. Even though his tone sounded angry, his face said otherwise. He still seemed nonchalant as ever, deadpan in the face with eyes that seemed to have lost any kind of sparkle they might have once held.
Somehow he managed to excuse himself from the room with his backpack in tow, paperwork in hand. Scott watched with sheer surprise as he walked out of the room. So he waited for a few minutes, then came up with the excuse that he didn't feel too well and he grabbed his backpack and his paperwork and quickly exited the classroom.
Jackson was already making quick work of disappearing down the hallway towards the library and Scott followed in tow, trying to be as quiet as possible (although if Jackson could hear his heart beat then there was a good chance that he already knew he was being followed). If he did know that he was being followed, he was doing a damn good job of acting like he didn't know it.
Scott grabbed his library pass from his pocket and entered the quieter part of the building with a low exhale. He looked around, finding no sign of Jackson. He listened to the room, listened to the very few heartbeats in there. He closed in on Jackson's and followed the sound, thumping hard in his ears like it was his very own heart beating.
He finally found Jackson, sat at one of the furthest seats, hidden away behind one of the stacks of books.
"Jackson," Scott said quietly, "what's going on with you?"
Nothing. He couldn't say that he was surprised. He'd been getting the silent treatment since he started trying. Since he started talking to Jackson. Having a one-sided conversation was getting a little tiresome and Scott was beginning to get annoyed.
"Alright, look." Scott sat down at the table and looked at Jackson, who had his head down. He was writing, furiously, scribbling along the pages of his homework book. Scott put his hand forward and settled it over Jackson's, pressing his hand down against the table to stop him from writing anymore. That seemed to work because Jackson looked up, eyes hollow and cheeks pale. He looked sickly. "I'm not playing this game with you anymore, Jackson. You can't keep ignoring us. You can't keep ignoring the people that care about you."
Jackson made a noise at that, almost like a scoff. "You don't care about me." It was just a few words but it was enough to make Scott's heart twist uncomfortably and he breathed out, hand slowly releasing Jackson's so that he could pull it away from Jackson's.
"We do care about you. Of course we do!" Scott whisper-shouted at Jackson, looking stern and firm. "Of course we care about you, dummy. All we've done for the last month is worry about you. Care about you. We didn't even know if you were going to come back to school. We thought you'd just disappeared."
Jackson still looked emotionless, expression completely deadpan. Scott could tell that Jackson was listening, even if his expression didn't show it. His heart beat did and his chemo signals were giving Scott more than enough to know that he was listening. So he kept going.
"Jackson, we've been so worried about you. We've been so worried about you. Even Stiles has been worried about you." Which was saying something, wasn't it? Stiles liked to pretend that he didn't care about Jackson but Scott had seen that little tear in his eye, the tear he claimed was for his jeep. He knew that it was for Jackson.
Jackson had stopped writing at some point, even put the pencil down on the table. He was sitting a little more upright, giving Scott his full attention. He was properly listening now. He was actually listening to what Scott was saying. Was it actually going into his brain or was it going straight over his head? Did he understand that the pack was worried about him? Did he understand that?
"Jackson... you don't have to go through this alone. Any of this."
Because Jackson had gone through enough of this on his own. Jackson had gone through hell and back on his own. Jackson had gone through the change, he'd turned into some kind of hybrid creature and now ... now he was stuck with that choice for the rest of his life. Because he'd been so obsessed with wanting to fit in, because he wanted to be like Scott? Or because he wanted to be like Derek? Because he wanted to be powerful? Whatever the reason was, he was now stuck with that for the rest of his life.
All Scott wanted to do was help him out, help him through it - to let him know that he wasn't alone. That he wouldn't ever be alone, as long as he accepted the help that Scott was offering to him. There was a 50/50 chance that Jackson might accept or reject the help, depending on how his pride and ego were feeling on that day. It was all about taking a chance and this was one Scott wanted to take, if it meant he could help Jackson through this.
"I want to help you, Jackson. I don't want you to be alone through this. You have people who want to help you. People that are willing to look past everything you've done. People that have forgiven you, that want to look after you and make sure that you're okay through this." Scott said, reaching across the table so that he could give Jackson's hand a gentle and reassuring squeeze.
What he didn't expect was for Jackson to squeeze his hand back. Just as gentle, just as compassionate as Scott had. He really had changed. His entire lifestyle seemed to have changed in just a month. "We want to help you, Jackson." He repeated, giving his hand yet another squeeze - a little more firmly this time, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand.
Eventually, Jackson looked straight at Scott and nodded. That was as good as it was going to get. That was confirmation, that he was going to accept the help. This was good. This was progress. This meant that he'd be able to take care of Jackson, that he'd be able to make sure that he didn't go through anything else alone. Whether Jackson liked it or not, he was part of Scott's pack and Scott took care of his pack no matter what.
"What do you say we get out of here? I don't know about you but I'm starving and I could really go for a cheeseburger." If there was one thing Scott knew about Jackson, it was that he shouldn't push too hard. This was more than what he was expecting, for Jackson to actually take the help. Before everything, Jackson would have told him to shove it somewhere unpleasant but now? Now he was accepting the help without so much as a whine. That was progress.
Even more progress was that Jackson actually smiled at the idea of getting a cheeseburger. Jackson nodded, looking up to Scott. He pulled his hand back slowly, ignoring the warmth that it brought to his entire body. "Uh - yeah, okay. Burgers sound... good."
Scott smiled, brightly and pushed to stand up. His hands moved to grab at his backpack straps, looking like a very eager puppy as he watched Jackson pack his things up and put them in his bag. Scott stepped to the side and waited for Jackson to join his side.
As they walked, Scott took his phone from his pocket and sent out a pack-wide text to let them know that he was okay, that he was with Jackson and he was getting somewhere with all of this. He'd text them later on, to let them know what he knew.
Today was shaping up to be a pretty good day.