Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4542870.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M, F/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Stiles_Stilinski/Derek_Hale, Allison_Argent/Scott_Mc_Call, Scott_Mc_Call/
      Issac_Lahey, Stiles_Stilinski_&_Lydia_Martin, Lydia_Martin/Jackson
      Whittemore, Peter_Hale_&_Stiles_Stilinski, Background_Allison/Isaac/
      Scott, Vernon_Boyd/Erica_Reyes
  Character:
      Stiles_Stilinski, Derek_Hale, Lydia_Martin, Scott_Mc_Call, Sheriff
      Stlinski, Allison_Argent, Issac_Lahey, Erica_Reyes, Vernon_Boyd, Jackson
      Whittemore, Peter_Hale, Melissa_Mc_Call, Danny_Mahealani, Chris_Argent
  Additional Tags:
      BAMF!Stiles, Mage!Stiles, Stiles_is_awesome, Derek's_an_asshole,
      Mentioned_Character_Death, not_permanent, Somewhere_in_the_middle_of
      season_3, Abusing_the_timelines_like_whoa, Whatever_I_do_what_I_want,
      Lydia_is_a_BAMF, Lydia_Is_So_Done, Stiles_and_Lydia_are_besties, Scott's
      clueless, stiles_is_kicked_out_of_the_pack, Derek_is_Alpha, Scarring,
      Scott_is_literally_a_puppy, Derek_is_in_denial, Demons_Are_Assholes,
      Possession_of_Stiles_is_stupid, Sarcastic_comments_turn_Derek_on, Stiles
      doesn't_take_care_of_himself, Derek_is_pining, The_pack_are_all_adorable,
      Derek_realises_his_mistake, Stiles_is_snarky, Stiles_Feels, Mentioned
      previous_underage, Stiles_is_Not_a_Virgin, Danny_is_hilarious, Everyone
      in_the_pack_is_a_Senior!, except_Derek, obviously, Rebuilt_Hale_House,
      Mentioned_Substance_Abuse, Underage_substance_abuse, Illegal/Unknwon
      substance_abuse, Underage_Drinking, Magical_hangover_removal_powers,
      Stiles_is_seriously_and_unhealthily_addicted_to_coffee, Danny_is_Part_of
      the_Pack, Stiles_has_trouble_dealing_with_emotions, Danny_sticks_up_for
      Stiles, Interspecies_Relationships, Pixies_are_awesome, bisexual!Stiles,
      Actually_just_sexual_Stiles, Stiles_hates_demons, Torture, Stiles_will_do
      anything_to_protect_everyone, Stiles_had_a_pseudo_pack_in_New_York,
      Stiles_centric, Very_very_slow_burn_Sterek, Like_dysmally_slow, sorry_i
      guess, All_about_the_Stiles, Nice_Peter, Dead_hunters, Background_Poly,
      Allison/Isaac/Scott, UST, Then_RST, Frottage, hand-jobs, talk_of
      switching, Stiles_glows, Stiles_Has_Panic_Attacks, The_Sheriff's_first
      name_is_John, i_still_don't_know_what_i'm_doing, Isn't_that_great?,
      Stiles_Has_Nightmares, Derek_is_maybe_only_partially_a_failwolf,
      #Progress, vampires_are_real, But_they_do_NOT_sparkle, looking_at_you,
      twilight_-_Freeform, This_Is_Why_We_Can't_Have_Nice_Things, That_last_one
      was_recommended, But_it_fit, What_is_this_'tag_limit', Finished, Both_the
      tags_and_the_story, Sorry_Not_Sorry
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-08-10 Completed: 2016-11-14 Chapters: 18/18 Words: 113567
****** And miles to go before I sleep ******
by Heart_Of_Steel_And_Fandoms
Summary
     Stiles leaves Beacon Hills at the end of Sophomore year. He's been
     abandoned by the pack, scarred by the hunters, and carries the
     equivalent of a volcano of magic inside him. Needless to say, his
     life sucks. But when Stiles comes back to Beacon Hills, over a year
     later and with a new persona, he isn't the same powerless human the
     pack remembers. And when demons threaten Beacon Hills, he proves to
     everyone that sarcasm isn't his only defence.
     *Currently under Construction- I'm editing the earlier chapters bit
     by bit, though the overall content will not change. Thanks for
     checking out this story!*
Notes
     Hey guys! Sorry my summary sucks, writing them is definitely not my
     forte! So this is my first *real* work on AO3, and it's going to be
     pretty so-so, but I'm writing it because I think the world needs more
     BAMF!Stiles with an attitude. updates will be slow, but please leave
     a comment if you liked it or thought it was even remotely good!
     I do not own any of the characters or place names.
     Tags will be added as the story progresses.
     A/N- I've tagged this as explicit just in case, because at the very
     least it's mature but I'd rather be safe and go for Explicit. Hope
     you enjoy! :D
***** The scars I have aren't just physical. Will you-! Scott, stop trying to
scent mark me I'm trying to be mysterious! *****
In hindsight, Stiles supposed he probably should have expected it. If he had,
maybe he could have prepared for this bone deep, heart wrenching, all-consuming
pain that followed the Alpha’s words. His heart tripped on a beat in his chest
and he felt as if a hunter had stabbed him through with a cattle rod. Again.
Scratch that. He didn’t think anything could have prepared him for this.
“What?” The word slips from between his lips quicker than his brain can catch
up, full of a sickening amount of disbelief, because there’s no way he heard
what he thought he heard. No way Derek, of all people, would even think about
doing this to him. Not now, when his ribs were still bruised and the scars from
the hunters' knives burned at every movement, and not ever.
But the words had been said and now hung between them, ominous, brutal, and the
rest of the Pack were deadly silent. No one moved.
“You’re not Pack, Stiles.” Four words. It took four words for Stiles’ heart to
shatter in his chest, four words for his brain to completely revaluate
everything he thought he knew. God, he had been so stupid. Believing that he
could have this. Believing, for one second, that he was anything more than just
a liability to them. Weak, useless, human Stiles.
He took one step back, then another, then another, his footsteps loud and harsh
on the pine floor, and Scott whined from across the room- no doubt sensing
Stiles’ entire world crumbling down around him. His best friend was perceptive
like that, though it wasn't as though they'd spent enough time around each
other recently to still be considered "best friends".
Stiles forced his eyes away from the floor, where they had taken residence as
soon as he felt the light atmosphere of a few moments ago change into something
more sinister. If Derek was going to kick him out, Stiles had no intention of
making it any easier for him- he stared straight into the Alpha's eyes,
allowing none of his hurt to shine through.
Derek’s eyes hadn’t even bothered shifting to red, because this was Stiles,
Stiles who wasn't a wolf, who didn't pose any threat, and who didn't even have
the luxury of being labelled an omega now. He was just- human. Packless,
pointless, human. Stiles straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. There
was no way he was going to give Derek the satisfaction of seeing him break
down, of seeing the effect his words had, even as his mind revolted and his
chest was weighed down by emotions he'd prefer to ignore.
That was when the anger kicked in. A swirl of anger and bitterness and
contempt- the ugly emotions that Stiles had always felt too readily for his own
comfort, the ones he pretended he never experienced. But this; this pushed his
ability, his willingness, to bury those feelings as he always did. Stiles was
done. Finished. He was sick of being forgotten and ignored and used as it
suited for research or bait. He was just- human. Done.
Stiles glanced around the room briefly at the people he had considered friends.
At the people he was beginning to view as family, that scary word that prompted
the insane loyalty and vicious protectiveness Stiles had only ever felt before
for his mother, his dad, and Scott. They all avoided his gaze. Even Scott,
clasping Allison’s left hand between his own, refused to meet his eye, though
he had to have felt Stiles' gaze. So much for ten years’ worth of friendship,
Stiles thought to himself bitterly, a sharp throb that felt like disappointment
pounding beneath his heart.
“You’re human, and a liability. You get hurt too easily, and we can’t waste
resources on protecting you during a battle-” Derek continued, blissfully
unaware of the fact that Stiles had accepted it already, speaking as if he
expected to be argued with, as if Stiles would want to stay with people who
evidently had no interest in him. He wasn't quite that desperate for
companionship.
He held up a hand to cut off Derek’s litany of excuses. There was nothing that
could convince him that this was even remotely a good idea, driving him away,
wilfully ignoring how much he had sacrificed in the past for the pack, so if
that was what Derek was trying to accomplish, he was wasting his breath.
Stiles shook his head ruefully, the ever present smirk sharper than usual on
his face, like cut glass. Wearing a mask had always been far easier than being
vulnerable to other people. Stiles had a lot of experience with masks.
“Wow, Derek.” Stiles said, his calm lowered voice in sharp contrast with the
way his upper lip curled in disgust. “You even seem to be buying your own
bullshit.” The Alpha’s nostrils flared at the blatant insult, but wisely he
said nothing. Any other day, any other time when Stiles' head wasn’t pounding
at him, and his recent injures weren’t attempting to strangle him with the
pain, and he had a bit of space to actually stop and just think for a moment,
perhaps Stiles would’ve argued. But maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe this was
where he was always headed, from that very first night in the preserve when he
and Scott set things into motion, from throwing lacrosse balls to test control
and throwing Derek under the bus for a murder he didn't commit. Maybe. But it's
not like it matters now.
Better to get this over with, and leave him with some semblance of control over
the entire situation. “But that's alright. I happen to agree with you. So it's
fine.”
Derek was frozen mid tirade, his mouth still open in such a way that were it
were any other situation, Stiles might have found it comical. As it was, Stiles
felt like he was going to throw up everything in his stomach, his blood, his
organs. His heart was threatening to rip itself out of his chest with every
staccato beat, and he could hear the pained whimpers from the wolf-members of
the Pack echoing in the room.
So this is what leaving your pack felt like. At least he wasn’t the only one
experiencing this. Not like the stoic Alpha in front of him would ever show the
slightest bit of pain for his actions, or remorse, or genuine human emotion. Of
course not, not when he was the big bad Alpha in control.
“Fine?” Derek repeated, and Stiles shrugged, carelessly blase.
“Sure, whatever. No longer in the Pack, got it. That means no freebies, dude.
Can’t come crawling into my room at all hours of the night because you got
yourselves another murderous creature. If I’m out, I’m out. You deal with the
fall back.”
Jesus, this hurt like a bitch. All he wanted to do was crawl back to the Pack
and bury himself in them, wrap spindly limbs around them all and not let them
go, refuse to leave because they were his damn it, and he knew they could feel
it too. But he couldn’t do that. Not when he was barely treated like pack
normally. Seemed it took him leaving before his so called ‘pack-mates’
remembered about him at all. Stiles was not bitter, at all. Nor did he feel the
irrational urge to growl aloud at the very thought of leaving them.
Well. Maybe a little. But he had more control over himself than that.
Derek- the Alpha- seemed shocked with how easy he had capitulated, and it
further drove home how little any of them knew him, but honestly, what did they
expect? That Stiles was just going to sit around and be their human punching
bag forever, content with an in-between status, forever drawn in by his
knowledge of the supernatural but forever kept away by his humanity?
He had more self-respect than that. At least, he hoped he did, which was sort
of the same thing.
The pain in his chest grew even worse, and he viciously hoped it was as
painful, if not more, for everyone else. Because even though they were whining,
and wolfing out and making all sorts of kicked-puppy noises- no one, not one,
said anything to stop him. To stop Derek kicking him out, or to stop Stiles
leaving.
The message came through loud and clear.
Swallowing audibly Stiles simply nodded and set his jaw tight. He would walk
out of here with his head held high. He wouldn’t cry, or yell, or show
weakness. Because Stiles had spent enough time around wolves to know it was
never a good idea to show vulnerability. Showing your neck got it ripped out.
And showing your pressure point got you killed.
The room was thick with the tension of emotional werewolves, and Stiles took a
few seconds to look around and commit them all to memory. Because he sure a
fuck was not going to pine after them all like a desperate puppy. He wasn’t one
of the dogs here. The joke brought a pained smile to his face, so similar to
ones he had voiced before, always met with groans and reluctant laughter, but
this time he didn’t voice it aloud. Didn’t think he could bare it.
Stiles looked at Boyd, and Erica, and Isaac, and recalled how they had each
matured and grown up in their own ways since becoming werewolves, came into
their own and flourished within the pack. Remembered laughing movie nights and
whispered confessions and PlayStation games where Erica could beat them all
single-handedly.
Looked at Jackson, who was still the world’s biggest douche, but had somehow
become someone Stiles could actually talk to, and Lydia, who turned out to be
better suited to the friend role then not-so-secret-secret crush. Who had
stayed up with him at all hours of the night to research and plan, at least
until a few months ago, who had been one of the last to draw away from him, and
the most visibly reluctant to do so.
Looked at Allison, and, as per usual, saw Scott not more than a metre away,
never far away, and had to fight to dismiss the flare of bitterness in his
chest at the sight. Scott, who was possibly the only reason Stiles had stayed
sane this long, who he shared so many giddy and painful and angry and emotional
memories with, but who had still followed the pack’s lead in ignoring him.
Dismissing him as worthless.
And finally at Derek. Derek, who he had saved, turned in, trapped, lost, almost
gotten him killed, too many times to think about. Who he had held up for hours
in a pool, who he had given away under torture and then saved, who he had
planned against and planned with, fought and argued with, who he had pulled out
of his shell and finally, finally, thought he was getting somewhere. Who he had
accidently and without restraint or conscious thought fallen in love with. And
who stood in front of him as he broke his heart.
Their pack. His pack. But not anymore. Stiles had to go, now, before he burst
into tears, couldn’t bear the idea of showing them anymore vulnerability than
he already had, consciously or no. They weren’t pack, his brain insisted, but
his instincts were telling him otherwise and it was crazy and strange and he
couldn’t deal with this right now, just couldn’t.
Eyes fluttered briefly shut, before snapping open with resolve. If that’s how
they wanted to play it. So be it. They made their choice.
Turning his back to the pack in the utmost disrespect, Stiles sauntered out of
the Hale house like he hadn’t a care in the world. Like the memories of putting
this place back together, brick by brick, and pizza nights with celebratory
snacks and drinks, and sleeping spread out on the crappy couch in the sitting
room in one big dog pile because they were too lazy to bother moving weren’t
suffocating him. Like he wasn’t haunted by the memories of pack.
To his relief, Stiles only fumbled his Jeep’s keys once before unlocking the
door, before escaping into the darkened cabin. But he still didn’t break down.
Not yet, his brain whispered, not when they can hear you.
Numb fingers turned the key in the ignition, sightless eyes guided the Jeep
down the secret road only known to the pack itself, and, now, Stiles.
He made it halfway down the main road before the tears started falling. Made it
another 100 metres before pulling in and all but collapsing over the wheel. It
hurt bad, awful, like knives being stabbed into his chest over, and over. Like
his brain being squeezed and ripped into by barbed rusty hooks. Surely it
wasn’t supposed to feel like this. How could anyone ever bear it? Some people
choose this.
Stiles spent a long time crying. He cried for the pack, and himself, and Beacon
Hills, and his dad, and his mom, and anyone who had ever been hurt in all of
history. He cried because it hurt, and it would hurt even more tomorrow, and
the future seemed prolonged and empty with only the promise of this almost
hollow pain.
Tears slipped unbidden down his cheeks, and his dry, heaving sobs could be
heard oh so clearly in the confines of the vehicle. Stiles cried like it was
the end of his entire world, because it was.
And then, when all the tears that could fall from his eyes had, and all the
sobs that could be wracked from his body passed, he sat up, wiped his cheeks,
and calmly turned the jeep’s engine on. He was never going to cry for them
again, he thought vehemently, and if he was surprised by the acidity of his own
mental voice then he didn’t let himself think of it.
The drive back to the Stilinski house went by quickly, and the next thing
Stiles knew he was pushing the front door open. He couldn’t remember the drive
back, couldn’t remember how he had managed to make his way home at all, but the
evidence of time passing was irrefutable, even if he couldn't remember it.
His dad wasn’t home, and Stiles let out a breath of relief. He didn’t think he
could deal with his father right now, not without breaking down and he’d
already sworn to himself he wouldn’t. Deep breaths, Stilinkski.
Can’t afford a panic attack now.
It wasn't even like him being kicked out of the pack was a surprise. If he's
being honest with himself, which is not something he has ever enjoyed, it had
been a few months in coming. At first after everything had settled down
somewhat, things were going well, no- they were going brilliantly. Stiles had a
new pack, new friends, made connections with people not Scott or his dad. He
let people in, and for a while it was amazing.
Looking back, there wasn’t a specific time when everything changed. It wasn’t
like one morning Stiles woke up part of a pack and the next as a stranger. It
was more… gradual. Slow.
Things really came to a head when the rogue hunters kidnapped him a few weeks
ago, but even before then the pack had treated him differently.
They started forgetting to invite him to meetings, to training sessions, to
pack nights. They stopped randomly showing up at his door, though more commonly
his window, to hang out, stopped unconsciously touching him as they passed to
reassure themselves that yes, he was still pack, he was still there. Stopped
scent-marking him.
It took him longer than it should have, just over a week, to recognise the
signs. He was, slowly but surely, being abandoned. Being left. It wouldn’t be
the first time.
Fast forward two months and Stiles could barely remember the last time he had
talked with any of them beyond simple greetings, couldn’t remember the last
time he had hung out with them as part of the pack. Prior awareness or no,
Derek telling him he was no longer pack still hurt like getting shot in the
gut. Stiles would know.
The jagged edges of the fresh wound burned with each reminder, every memory
pouring salt and acid on open flesh, and Stiles stumbled up the stairs to his
room, eyes blurry with unshed tears that he was absolutely refusing to let
fall. Was this what Omegas felt like, he wondered bleakly, clutching at his
skin as if it was going to crawl away from him, when they lost their pack?
It couldn’t possibly be. It was too intense, too permanent, too much-just- just
too much. Stiles was hyperventilating before he could stop himself, aching
breaths in and spotty vision that fed the panic in his chest which sped up his
breath, a familiar never-ending cycle.
Scrambling at his bedside table for the light, his fingernails scratched
against a round metallic capsule he had forgotten to put away the night before
when he was examining it. Suddenly, abruptly, his breathing calmed. Grasping at
it, Stiles held it in front of his face reverently. Wolfsbane bullet. One he
had found on the floor after one of the more heated battles, and for reasons
unbeknownst to even himself, had picked up and shoved in his hoodie.
Between the stench of blood and wounds and victory, none of the wolves had been
able to call him out on it. As soon as he had gotten home, Stiles had infused
it with mountain ash using a spell Deaton had taught him, hiding its scent.
Perhaps hiding a bullet in his room was the pinnacle of suspicious behaviour,
but it wasn’t like his dad checked his room for weapons. At least, not often.
And not successfully.
Stiles was many things, but he could never be called stupid, and he definitely
wasn’t stupid enough to leave his weapons lying around for just anyone to see.
They were hidden under a loose board in his wardrobe. Cliché, but effective.
Stiles lay down gingerly on the bed, crossing his arms above his pillow, and
stared blankly at the ceiling. There was still a mark on it from Isaac throwing
his controller away in disgust at Erica's unbeatable high score.
His heart ached and his head pounded. He needed to do something. Something
definitive, final, that would get the message across to his stupid heart. His
thumb rolled over the bullet still in his hand. Something that would get the
message to the pack too that he was deadly serious. His hands clenched into
fists when the thought came to him. He would go see Deaton tomorrow. He would
get mountain ash, and make a circle around the house, because he meant what he
had said. If he was out of the Pack, then they could damn well stay the fuck
away from him, and away from his dad.
He would go to Deaton, and he would ask about the Spark that the vet claimed to
have seen in him. He would tell his dad everything, because now his dad was the
only family he had left, and Stiles was sick of the lies. And if Deaton
couldn’t help him use his Spark, then he would find someone who could. There
was nothing left for him in Beacon Hills.
…
With the next morning dawned the realisation that the day before had, in fact,
actually happened and wasn’t just some nightmare he had thought up. That was a
sucky moment.
Stiles groaned as he pulled himself off the bed, hands going immediately to his
throbbing ribs. The pillow he had slept on was damp, but it wouldn’t have been
the first time he cried in his sleep.
Just the first time in years.
Rubbing a fist over his heart trying, in vain, to ease the ache there, Stiles
stumbled to the bathroom, eyes crusty with sleep. The closing of the bathroom
door shook him out of the daze and he casually flicked on the light.
No one would have seen that he avoided the mirror unless they were looking for
it. After his mom had died, and back when he still had panic attacks every day,
Stiles never looked in the mirror.
Avoided it like the plague, because just because you lose something doesn’t
mean it’s not still part of you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t leave scars. And
Stiles had more than his fair share of scars.
Steeling himself, Stiles lifted his gaze to his reflection, and froze. Because
he barely even recognised himself anymore.
Instead of the mumbling, clumsy, weak liability, Stiles saw someone he could
never have anticipated. He saw someone older, harder, stronger, someone who
fought with wolves and still made it out alive. Someone he never dreamed of
being.
Because Stiles was fine with being the comedian. The joker, the comic relief,
the human in the bunch of misfits and monsters.
Okay, maybe ‘fine’ is a bit of a stretch, but the point was that he wasn’t
trying to change himself!
But, looking in the mirror, Stiles wondered how the hell he thought he wouldn’t
change.
There were scars decorating most of his body now. The slashes just above his
ribs from the Alpha’s claws all those weeks ago, the red burned scar tissue
from taking down the faeries, the claw mark imprinted right under his left
collarbone from that rogue Omega. Then there were the multitude of small
slashes, the bruises that never fully healed, the trail of dots down his
breastplate from being shot. Twice. With those special hunter bullets. (Boy,
was that hard to explain to his dad!)
And that was just the front of him. On his back, from the tip of his shoulder
plate down to his hip bone, was one big scar, about half an inch thick and
deep. That particular one had almost killed him. It was only by luck, and
Melissa McCall’s quick thinking, that he had escaped with his life. He couldn’t
even remember which lie he had told his dad for that one, only that it hadn’t
been the truth.
Obviously he hadn’t told him that it had been Gerard, Scott’s girlfriend
Allison’s crazy grandfather who tried to kill everyone so he could get the bite
from an Alpha werewolf and not die himself, who had hurt him.
His father probably would have snapped and sent him to a physiatrist for that
one.
But underneath that, behind all the scars and the bruises and the pain, Stiles
was actually… pretty damn hot, if he did say so himself. He had a six-pack, and
while he was still lean, you couldn’t call him lanky anymore.
He wasn’t Derek hot, but he wasn’t as skinny as he had been, what, a year ago?
Was that all? Damn, a lot had happened in a year, Stiles thought, still trying
to come to terms with
his new physique.
His arms had actual muscle tone, his chest had filled out and the ever-present
baby fat on his body had been stripped away, replaced by muscle from training
with the Pack, and learning how to use his weakness to his advantage and
running. A hell of a lot of running.
Pity no one had ever seen how he had turned out. As a general rule, Stiles kept
his shirt on, both around the house and the Pack, because looking at scars made
people uncomfortable, and showing his scrawny body off to werewolves made
Stiles uncomfortable.
Two birds with one stone.
Except now, now, with no werewolf feelings to worry about hurting, or
protective instincts to speak off, Stiles had no reason to hide. Excluding his
dad, but that particular bag of cats would be dealt with later.
Stiles grinned at the mirror, and was pleased with how it looked slightly
homicidal. Huh. Looked like hanging around all day with werewolves rubbed off
on people. Who knew?
Stiles was still pondering this new information as he pushed the door open. And
he came face to face with his dad. “Stiles?” his dad asked, brows furrowing,
and for one brief second Stiles had the crazy thought that he might get away
with it, that his dad might not notice the crazy ass battle wounds winding all
the way around Stiles’ torso. But his dad was a cop, and apparently the Powers-
That-Be had it out for him because the Sheriff took only a few seconds to
notice the fact that his son looked like he had been through a god damn war.
Well, technically, Stiles had been through one. Or two. Really the details
didn’t matter.
What mattered was, at that precise second, Sheriff Stilinski saw the meat-
grinder that was his son’s skin and his eyes practically popped out of his
head. This was so not going to go well.
“Hey dad,” Stiles began nervously, running his fingers through his new long
hair, “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you…”
…
“Werewolves.” Stated the Sheriff, simply and with just enough condescension to
raise Stiles’ temper. He tried to lessen it, for his dad’s sake, but found
himself more and more angry with each second that went past.
“Yeah dad,” he confirmed, wetting his lips. What would he do if his dad didn’t
believe him? He didn’t have Scott to call on anymore, no one he could use as
proof. How do you show someone werewolves exist without the use of actual
werewolves?
The Sheriff just breathed a deep breath out, clearly tired with his son, and,
for a split second, Stiles was beyond pissed at him. He knew, boy did he, that
he hadn’t been honest with his dad in months. He had lied, and sure, it was for
his dad’s own good, but his dad didn’t know that, did he?
And Stiles had seen, no matter how much the Sheriff had tried to hide it, how
he had slowly given up on Stiles. Given up on ever learning the truth. And it
had hurt Stiles in a deep way, had physically pained him that he had caused the
look of weary resignation on his own dad’s face.
But.
But the Sheriff just immediately believed the worst in him. Couldn’t see the
truth right in front of his own eyes, that for once, for fucking once, Stiles
was telling him the absolute truth, no matter how hard to believe.
And that hurt.
“Look, Stiles,” His dad began, and even with just those words Stiles could hear
the futility, the fact that his dad had stopped even trying to believe him.
“Just stop, okay?” And Stiles’ heart stopped beating. Because he still held
himself responsible, with the guilt and pain filled reasoning of an eight year
old, for his mom’s death. And he had waited, with bated breath, for months on
end for his father to look at him with hate, or anger because he had killed his
mother.
Logically, Stiles knew it wasn’t true. Knew his father thought nothing of the
sort, and never had. But for that second in between words, that one breath,
Stiles prepared himself to be abandoned by someone else.
“Stop with the lies, and, since you’re obviously intent on keeping them up,
just stop thinking I’m a fool, okay? Stop with,” his dad waved a hand in the
air indicating the current conversation topic, “all this. Just stop.”
And Stiles’ guilt slid away like quicksand, replaced by a terrible ferocious
anger. At himself, at his dad, at Derek and Scott and werewolves in general who
put him in this position, at the world at large for being totally unfair.
His breath sped up, and it felt almost like a panic attack, except it seemed
like the very air they breathed was on fire, and it was too much, and the wind
through his hair turned vicious, and the house began to shake at its
foundations and everything seemed like nothing that happened in the blink of an
eye.
It took a slap to bring him back to awareness, and the pain of it barely even
registered on his pain scale anymore, and how terrible was his life that he had
a freaking pain scale, and that a human slap from a Sheriff didn’t even show
like a blip on his radar.
Judging by the way his dad worriedly held the slapped cheek in his hand, he
didn’t echo the sentiment. Stiles’ vision was blurry, and he felt completely
drained, like he had just gone 3 days on snack food and no sleep before a four
hour battle with an elf.
He even fucking knew what that felt like. Again, what the hell was his life?
Another slap, this time between his shoulder blades, sent a burst of adrenaline
through his body, and he had tensed and reached for the knife ever present in
his pocket before he registered that (a) this was his dad (b) he was still
shirtless and his knife wasn’t in his pocket and (c) he had just pushed enough
magic out of himself that he really should be dead.
Waving that thought away, because obsessing with it wouldn’t change the fact
that he was in fact very much alive, it registered that he hadn’t actually
pushed the magic out of himself as much as… drew everything else in.
Technicalities.
The kitchen, where Stiles had moved after his dad had seen his scars because,
for some completely unknown reason, it seemed like the perfect place to explain
to someone about the supernatural horrors that lived and hunted in Beacon
Hills, looked like a bomb site.
And not that quaint little cliché parents told their children about untidy
bedrooms. It literally looked like a bomb had landed and blown it apart.
“Shit.” Stiles muttered, mostly to himself, before sweeping a hand like they
did in Harry Potter to put everything back the way it was. He definitely was
not expecting it would work, because, hello, Harry freakin’ Potter, but
apparently J.K.Rowling got something right as the kitchen magically put itself
to rights under his, admittedly rather confused, eyes.
While it took a lot less effort to put everything back the way it had been as
it had to blow it all up (heh, irony) by the end of it he was pretty ready to
pass out. And then eat a whole cow. And shower.
Probably not it that order. But, hey, weirder things have happened right?
Stiles sighed and sagged against the wall that he somehow ended up leaning on.
The Sheriff sat in front of him, on his hunches, a disbelieving expression of
mild panic and oh-fuck-I-think-he-was-actually-serious-shit-what-the-hell-do-I-
do on his face. Stiles owns that particular look after running with wolves for
a year. Like, he had it trademarked by him. When people wear that look other
people think of him.
Query. Can you get a concussion from magical voodoo shit? Because he is having
mental-verbal diarrhoea and the only possible conclusion is that he has a
concussion.
Or maybe he’s just nervous. Yeah, it’s probably that.
If his laugh is a little touch hysterical when he pushes himself off the floor
and spends a good thirty seconds swaying, well, no one can blame him.
“So dad,” he said, hiccups interrupting his speech as he tried really hard not
to pass out as it would probably push his dad past his breaking point, “You
believe me now?”
Sheriff Stilinski’s stunned nod is the only reply he gets. Whatever, he’ll take
it and count it as a win. He can’t really afford to be picky at the moment
anyway.
…
“Deaton!” Stiles called out loudly, bypassing the bell on the door in favour of
banging angrily. His head was throbbing because apparently the backlash of
using magic is like a really bad hangover. And Stiles had had his fair share of
bad hangovers.
Because of course werewolves were practically immune to hangovers, but still
loved alcohol. Oh the irony.
If his dad found out he would absolutely freak, but, on the long, long list of
things that would freak his dad out, Stiles had the suspicion that underage
drinking wasn’t a major priority.
Not like almost dying a couple of times a month, being friends with murderers
(though technically they weren’t exactly murderers of humans) and the fact that
he could tell you exactly where in the human body to pierce if you wanted
someone to die in seconds.
Compared to all that, a little bit of alcohol isn’t that big of a deal.
The vet/ex-emissary/guy-who-seems-to-enjoy-being-cryptic-and-elusive answers
Stiles’ heavy handed knock with a bemused smile, eyes blinking slowly in a way
that seems almost catatonic.
“You said I had the Spark.” Stiles says without further ado, not bothering with
pleasantries because this is Deaton, and he probably doesn’t even care if
Stiles forgets to say hello.
Then Deaton got this slightly pinched look on his face like he did care, and
Stiles had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He failed.
One exaggerated eye roll later, just because Stiles was a snarky bastard at the
best of times, he pushed past Deaton into the back, which had unofficially
become the secret location for all the pack’s supernatural needs.
Stiles himself had spent more time than the others there, except maybe Scott,
because it was often left to him to procure the necessary ingredients for any
spells that had to happen. The pack had also noticed, by way of trial and
error, that Deaton seemed less inclined to be his usual mysterious, emotionless
self around Stiles.
Of course, Stiles was absolutely delighted when they discovered this. Having to
spend more time with the vet seemed to him a sick, sick punishment, if only
because it meant a lot of unanswered questions and half-hearted replies.
Stiles was a hyper-active teenager with ADHD and an affinity for running his
mouth. Silence wasn’t, and never would be, his friend, but it seemed second
nature to Deaton. There were a lot of awkward one-sided conversations. More
than either party really cared to admit.
“You have a spark, yes.” Deaton confirmed using his usual calm tone, but
somehow Stiles noticed, or thought he did, an undercurrent of tension. Huh.
Either hanging out with Deaton had made him desperate to see some actual
emotion in the man, or it had made him more aware of the unspoken emotions that
barely flickered across his face.
Either way, there was a tension in the air that whispered of more than just a
friendly conversation between two people.
People, friends, acquaintances, not-quite-enemies, friend-of-a-friend, enemy-
of-my-enemy? How exactly would one describe their relationship? A mutually
beneficial partnership?
Wait, focus, Stilinski. See, this was what he meant by ‘hyper-active’.
Inability to focus could also be a good description.
“Well, I want to learn more about my Spark, so…” He let the sentence hang, and
noted the smallest furrow of Deaton’s brow.
The flash of pride he felt that Deaton showed some emotion was ridiculous and
must never be mentioned. Ever. Under any circumstances.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you Stiles.” Deaton told him, and the man did look
genuinely sorry about it, enough so that Stiles’ wayward magic didn’t explode
at the emotional response from his next question. “And what about your pack?
Have you consulted them in this wish?”
Oh so now he had to ask them for permission to learn more about his own
abilities? Fuck that.
“They no longer hold any weight in my decisions.” Stiles stated stiffly, and it
occurred to him that maybe he watched too many sci-fi movies because his voice
took on that polite, regency era tone when he was really mad. And he maybe had
a soft spot for Downton Abbey, not that he would ever, ever, confirm it if
asked. He still had some sense of dignity left.
Admittedly not much, but still, in principle.
Deaton turned too knowledgeable eyes to him, and Stiles fought the urge to
blush under his scrutiny. He had nothing to be embarrassed about, he reminded
himself, it was their fault. They kicked him out, not the other way around.
But the vet only let out a soft sound of understanding in the back of his
throat before turning away.
“I can give you the address of a friend of mine up north.” He told him,
clearing his throat pointedly at seeing Stiles’ bemused expression, “Yes,
Stiles, I have in fact got friends.”
Murmuring something under his breath that sounded a lot like ‘child’, Deaton
continued. “But I will need time to contact her first to ask for her
permission. If granted, she will train you and show you everything you need to
know.”
Stiles simply nodded his thanks, but didn’t move from his place in the middle
of the floor. “Anything else?” Deaton questioned, eyebrows marginally higher up
his forehead than usual.
He must have been really ruffled to be showing this much emotion, Stiles
thought, somewhat nastily in the privacy of his own head.
“Yeah, actually,” he managed to say, the words forming themselves in his mouth
as if he had planned this. He really hadn’t. “I was wondering if you could give
me some mountain ash.” Okay, he had planned that, but he quietly wished he
could have been smoother about it, rather than just blurting out the request.
Deaton’s hands stilled where they were straightening out the instruments on the
table, but his face, when he turned to Stiles, was as still and solemn as ever.
“Are you sure?” Came the quiet question, and Stiles gritted his teeth. The pack
made their choice, Stiles repeated to himself, so there was no point in feeling
guilty.
Mind made up, Stiles jerked his head in a flimsy portrayal of a nod, and Deaton
reached under his desk to withdraw a small, grey pouch. It was unassuming, but
Stiles had worked with mountain ash before, and knew exactly the power held in
its atoms.
Weighing the package in his hand, Stiles guessed it would weigh at no more than
20g. Hopefully his spark would help stretch it to line the house. It should,
but Stiles had had enough experience with magic to know it was never completely
reliable.
With one final nod to Deaton, and forcing himself out the door, Stiles gripped
the bag tighter in his hand and left. If there was any luck left in the
universe, Deaton’s contact would get back to him sooner rather than later, with
confirmation, and then Stiles could leave all this behind him.
Maybe the distance would kill the pain in his heart where the Pack Bond used to
be, but somehow Stiles doubted it.
…
Stiles drove around Beacon Hills aimlessly for about an hour, because even if
this thing with Deaton’s friend went south there was no way he was staying in
Beacon Hills.
And he supposed, in some sort of morbid way, he wanted to say goodbye to the
town and its inhabitants.
The scenery passed by the window in a mindless blur, the people faring no
better, and Stiles’ long fingers drummed impatiently against the steering
wheel.
In the back of his head, just at the base of his skull, throbbed the incessant
need to leave, to just get away, and Stiles was powerless to resist.
It was just beginning to turn dark when Stiles’ jeep pulled into the driveway
of the house. There was another car already there, and Stiles stumbled as he
stepped out of the jeep onto the smooth driveway. That car looked really
familiar…
His curiousity was sated as he pushed open the front door to the sight of his
ex-crush and ex-research partner leaning casually on the counter top, looking
stunning as usual in a thigh high black skirt, ankle boots and a red glittering
top. Under normal circumstances, Stiles would say as much, lavishing her with
compliments if only as a joke, because his infatuation with her had ended
months previous. Around the same time his infatuation with the hot, broody
Alpha had begun.
Seemed Stiles was eternally cursed to fall for the unattainable, and he had
long given up hope on the romantic front. But Lydia had turned out to be a
brilliant friend, so at least he could say he had good taste with the first
hopeless crush.
Not so much with the second.
Stiles dumped his backpack down on the floor beside the table, ignoring the
gaze boring into the side of his skull. He tried for casual and picked up an
apple, the deep red of it bringing back memories of blood, but could tell
straight off that he had failed miserably.
Giving up all pretence of casualness, Stiles hopped up on the counter and met
her gaze. He could remember clearly the conversation he had had with Scott, all
those months ago, when Scott had been lamenting having to group date with
Jackson and Lydia, and when they had discussed the implications of the phrase
‘hang out’.
Because he and Lydia did hang out now, as platonic as two people can be, and he
was, rather ironically in his opinion, pretty much now her ‘gay best friend’,
like he had said back when.
Oh, the irony.
“What do you want, Lydia?” he demanded bluntly, tried and sore and wanting to
crawl into bed. He fingered the mountain ash burning a hole in his pocket, and
toyed momentarily with the idea of flinging some at her, but she wasn’t a wolf,
so it probably wouldn’t work.
She was a banshee though, so maybe it would still mess up her head.
Lydia had the gall to look hurt by his question, and Stiles rolled his eyes.
“I came to see you, Stiles.” A pouty smile formed on her face as she spoke, and
Stiles shook his head. A year ago he would have done anything to get Lydia to
look at him, to speak to him and now that she had all Stiles wanted her to do
was go away and let him sleep.
“Stop with the act, Lydia. We both know you’re better than this… façade. You’re
intelligent, you’re ambitious, and you can go far in the world. So, again, why
are you here?”
Lydia frowned, and just like that the perfect girl everyone saw vanished before
his eyes, leaving behind someone who was a little more broken, a little more
approachable. A little more, for wont of a better word, human. And it made
Stiles smile despite himself.
“Hey, Lyds.” He watched her as she watched him, neither giving an inch. Seconds
turned to minutes which turned to seemingly endless hours upon hours.
“How are you, Stiles?” she asked him, eyes searching his for any hint of a lie.
Stiles smirked at her and broke eye contact, biting into the apple a tad more
viciously then the situation warranted. “Peachy, Lydia. Ecstatic to finally be
free of the pack of mongrels. I mean, the shedding was kind of ridiculous. Not
to mention the wet dog smell.”
Stiles scrunched his nose up in mock horror at some imagined smell, but Lydia
merely continued staring at him. She stood up from where she was leaning and
walked round the table to stand at his side. Reaching a hand out, she clasped
his shoulder roughly, voice thick when she finally spoke.
“Don’t do that, Stiles. Don’t hide from me. I know you better than that. Don’t
pretend like you’re not hurting when I can see you are.”
Stiles let his head fall forward to his chest, unable to convincingly lie to
her like he could to everyone else, even Scott. Her hand tightened around his
shoulder, and Stiles gripped it tight with his other hand, needing the purchase
it gave him.
“I’m sorry, Stiles.” Lydia murmured into his ear, and he nodded stiffly. She
drew her hand loose from his grip and gave him a one-armed hug. Sighing, he
relaxed into the embrace, burying his head into her shoulder. God, if one year
ago Stiles could see him now…
Stiles took a step back, away from the comfort that only a good friend could
provide and back into a place where he could think rationally and not want to
dissolve into a million angry tears.
Crap. Distance did nothing. He still wanted to burst into a million angry
tears. Or two million.
“So, all messing aside,” Stiles said, and if Lydia noticed the dampness of his
eyes she was considerate enough not to mention it, “Why are you here?”
Lydia took a deep breath and swung her legs over a nearby chair, almost
knocking it off its legs in the process. She laid her head on her arms and
watched him with her head at an angle.
“I think Derek made a mistake.” This was said without a hint of her usual
snark, painfully honest and hit Stiles right in the chest. He struggled to take
a breath. “I think they are all incredibly stupid to leave you out, and they
will all end up dead without you there. I don’t intend to be one of them.”
Her gaze softened on him, and she let compassion soften her features. “Also I
would miss you and all your dorkiness.” She took a deep breath again and seemed
to visibly brace herself. “I’m going to leave the Pack.”
…
They were right in the middle of watching a movie (The Notebook, because Lydia
insisted and Stiles was a masochist) when Deaton called. “It’s Deaton.” He told
Lydia, hand over the microphone as he pressed ‘answer’.
“Get some popcorn while you’re up, Stiles! Make it butter!” Lydia yelled over
at him as he crossed the sitting room into the kitchen for privacy, not that he
didn’t trust Lydia with his life or anything, just because it felt nice to do
something normal for once.
Lydia seemed to understand because her tone held no anger, only amusement when
he flipped her a one fingered solute.
“Deaton, hey.” Stiles said, and he could hear himself and tell that he sounded
a little more like usual then he had earlier, spurred on by Lydia’s company.
And popcorn. Because popcorn helps everything.
“Stiles.” Deaton replied, tone as bland and relaxed as Stiles had come to
expect from the man. “I got in touch with my friend. She says she is willing to
meet you and discuss options, if you want.”
Stiles felt his throat closing up. He had never thought, even for a second if
he was honest with himself, that she would actually agree to train him. Had
figured best case scenario left him wandering around the continent with his
jeep and a shitload of baggage. Not to mention a handgun and wolfsbane laced
bullets in case things got interesting.
But this… this was better than he could have dreamed of. “Yeah,” he managed,
drawing in long breaths of oxygen into his lungs, “Yeah I would really like
that.”
The microwave dinged on the counter with the now finished popcorn and Stiles
absentmindedly pulled it out and poured the popcorn into a waiting bowl.
“Great. If you could stop by tomorrow I’ll tell you everything you need to
know.”
In his disbelief, Stiles forgot that Deaton couldn’t actually see him through
the phone, instead nodding numbly. “Sure,” he stuttered out when the silence
had grown too loaded and painful between them, and as soon as he realised he
hadn’t answered Deaton’s not-request yet.
The dial tone signalled the end of the call, and Stiles gently placed the cell
face down on the table before somehow making his way back into the sitting
room.
“Well?” Lydia asked, not taking her eyes of the screen. It took her a few nano-
seconds to sense something wrong, and then her gaze flicked to his smoothly.
“She agreed to train me.” Stiles mumbled only half coherently, and Lydia
immediately knew what he was talking about, having been filled in over coffee
before the movie.
She took stock of his shell-shocked expression, the glaze over his eyes, and
pushed him down to the couch. Placing her feet in his lap imperiously, Stiles
started rubbing them automatically. His expression was torn between wary
excitement, and devastating loss. Lydia could sympathise.
“Hey,” she called to him, and he lifted his still glazed over eyes to hers.
“This is good. This is good, Stiles. You can learn more about your Spark, can
learn magic. I’m jealous.”
Stiles let out a huff of a laugh, and his eyes brightened. Yes, this was a good
thing, Lydia thought as Sties’ face filled with the previously missing
excitement that came from learning more about himself, it was just a pity Derek
had to be such a monumental asshole for it to happen.
Fingers moving consciously now, Lydia suppressed a groan as he dug gently into
the arch of her foot. Stiles gave the best massages of anyone, anywhere. The
pack had been beyond stupid to give him up just because they thought he was
powerless. In truth, he was far from it.
Lydia was pleasantly surprised when she stumbled upon the realisation that she
was going to miss him. All his clumsy, dorky, nerdy self, that she had been too
self-obsessed to value back before the supernatural in Beacon Hills brought
them together.
If Stiles was straight, Lydia decided, he would have made the perfect
boyfriend. As it was, Lydia felt only derision for the person Stiles had
confessed to having feelings for. If Derek gave up the chance at this with
Stiles, she thought to herself, all because he was human, then he didn’t
deserve Stiles in the first place. Seemed Stiles had a habit of falling in love
with those sort of people, she mused.
Stiles smiled at her from the other side of the couch, his hands still doing
amazing things to the aches and pains that were caused by killer heels. Yes,
Lydia decided as she let her head fall back onto the couch cushions, The
Notebook running forgotten in the background, she was going to miss Stiles.
…
Stiles Stilinski left Beacon Hills at the end of Sophomore Year.
The only people who knew where a local vet named Deaton, a young red-headed
banshee by the name of Lydia Martin, and Stiles’ own father.
It took the local werewolf pack three days to notice his absence, and they
started to search, led by the Alpha, Derek Hale, and his second, Scott Mc Call.
When they found no sign of him, they brought the case to the Chief of Police,
also Stiles’ father, who told them in no uncertain terms that Stiles had left,
and that they were to leave
him alone.
Lydia Martin stayed with the Pack under the request of Stiles himself, but she
never mentioned her involvement in Stiles’ abrupt departure to anyone but the
Sheriff.
Beacon Hills experienced a drastic increase in supernatural activity a few
weeks after Stiles’ departure from the town, but, just as drastically, the
number was lowered a mere week later.
The local wolf pack suffered no casualties.
A rumour began to spread all across the world in supernatural communities of a
person that went by the name of ‘Red Hood’ who had single-handedly wiped out a
coven of murderous witches.
More rumours were passed from mouth to mouth of the mysterious ‘Red Hood’ who
was, if the rumours were to be believed, more powerful than anyone the
Supernatural
Community had ever seen.
A year passed since the disappearance of one Stiles Stilinski, and he still did
not return.
Members of the local wolf pack finished junior year with only four breakdowns
and one almost-murder. It was a new record.
The Red Hood used a spell to banish a demon back to hell, wiping out an entire
army of stolen souls as he did so.
The Beacon Hills pack were attacked by a group of pixies a week before the
start of Senior Year. None were lost in the attack, but they were sorely
outnumbered and suffered grave injuries.
The Pack Second, Scott Mc Call, went to the local vet Deaton for assistance,
who mentioned that he had an old friend who owed him a favour.
The Beacon Hills pack were informed that he had asked the infamous Red Hood for
assistance, and all of them were shocked, excluding one banshee, who
disappeared to contact a friend.
The Red Hood paused outside of the town known as Beacon Hills before making his
way to the agreed upon meeting place.
Stiles Stilinski had returned to Beacon Hills.
***** I am 99% sure all werewolves have fleas. Yeah, even you Scott. No don't
give me those puppy dog eyes, I'm mad at you. *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles is back in Beacon Hills, no longer the same boy who left.
     Derek and the pack realise their mistake, helped along by Lydia. Who
     is really very scary, ask anyone.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Derek pulled the jacket tighter around himself as he stepped out of the car
onto the sidewalk. A revving engine behind him drew his attention to the bigger
vehicle that held the rest of his pack, all of them looking slightly worse for
wear with bleary eyes from tiredness and fading flashes of pain.
Derek cursed the pixies again. For creatures no bigger than his thumb, they
were downright vicious. His ribs creaked in protest at the movement which was
walking and Derek barely withheld a groan.
Werewolf healing or no, it took longer than a day to heal from numerous bites
and a couple of broken ribs.
No one in the pack had fared much better, except for Lydia who seemed to never
get hurt, at least not by anything supernatural.
The Hale house still had the dent in the wall from when she had broken her
ankle on ice and gotten pissed off with something Jackson had said to her. She
had a mean right hook, and the wall had suffered the extent of her wrath.
Not that it hadn’t been hilarious for the Betas.
At that very moment, Lydia herself hopped gracefully, because if such a thing
was even possible Lydia Martin would be the one to do it, down from the
passenger side door and landed gently on the pavement.
She was quickly followed by Jackson, who had grown quiet and less arrogant in
the months since… the thing…., and Allison. Both with whom she linked arms and
then proceeded to strut towards the building like she owned the place.
Well, as the pack’s resident magic-wielder, she had more connections to it than
the rest of them, so Derek supposed she kind of did.
Scott rushed out of the car after Allison tripping over his feet and looking
like a lost puppy, a comparison that brought no end of amusement to the rest of
the pack at regular intervals, and behind him, at a much more reasonable pace,
Isaac, Boyd and Erica.
Derek gazed around at the entire pack, at his pack, and felt the familiar
twinge of longing.
Shoving it down to the deepest realms of his psyche, where it belonged, he made
his way into the vet’s building like they all weren’t silently thinking of
their missing pack-mate.
Who Derek had kicked out. For all the wrong reasons.
The pain was common enough now, melded with the memories of sarcasm and long
agile fingers, but it had never gotten easier to bear.
If anything, it had only served as a reminder of what he had lost, of what he
had driven away.
But it had had to be done. Derek refused to lose someone else.
The bell over the door clanged their arrival, and they were soon greeted by
Deaton, with his trademark I-know-more-than-you-but-won’t-tell-you-so-there
smile. Maybe Derek was just still bitter from the pixie fiasco.
Meh, he probably was.
They had come a long way from that first meeting where Derek tied him to a
chair and knocked him out cold, but Derek still didn’t trust the vet as far as
he could throw him.
“Derek.” The vet greeted him, scrabbling with something behind his back, “Good
to see you.”
Derek felt his eyebrows scrunch up on his forehead. Deaton was acting very
suspicious for someone who usually had so much control over their body
language.
As if hearing that loose mental remark, Deaton’s body relaxed marginally, his
face smoothing into an expression of slightly amused tranquillity. Nothing new
here, it seemed to say.
Gesturing the pack forward with his hand, Derek made his way to the nearest
wall and leaned against it, arms folded up on his chest and muscles bunched
tight.
“So were you able to get in contact with your friend?” Scott asked eagerly,
leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He was sitting on a plain metal
chair that seemed to appear from nowhere, and Derek internally sighed at his
eagerness. Subtlety or patience never had been Scott’s strong suit.
Deaton only nodded, before sharing a rushed look with Lydia that made Derek
perk forward in suppressed interest. There was something else going on here, he
thought to himself.
“Yes. I believe you have heard of him. The Red Hood.” It wasn’t a question, and
Derek’s angry jolt from the wall was hidden by the thump of Scott promptly
falling off his chair.
“The Red Hood?” Scott gaped up at them from his place on the floor, limbs
steady as he held himself up from the ground. “You… how do you…. What?”
Derek frowned as he stared down at him, anger momentarily forgotten. For a
werewolf, Scott Mc Call was exceptionally clumsy when not fighting. Then again,
Scott had been bitten, not born like Derek, and still suffered with the fact
that he was what some people considered ‘a monster’.
So there was that.
In a rare feeling of almost guilt that Derek was in no mood to examine, he bent
down and offered a hand to his second. With only a second of hesitation, a huge
improvement of
Scott’s general attitude towards him, Scott clasped his wrist wordlessly, a
smile of gratitude on his face that almost reached his eyes. Progress.
He easily lifted Scott up and set him with the pack, all sporting matching
forehead creases and crossed arms. All except Lydia, apparently, who was
practically vibrating with barely restrained excitement.
Derek raised one eyebrow at her in silent question and she shrugged,
unrepentant.
Deaton lay the cell phone in his hands down on the table, what he had obviously
been fiddling with when Derek had come in, and faced them with a determined set
in his shoulders.
“Yes, the Red Hood. Let’s just say he owed me a favour, and I cashed in. He
should be here in,” Deaton glanced at his wrist as if his mind was miles away,
and it was only then that
Derek noticed that 1; Deaton wasn’t wearing a watch, and 2; He was acting
different, movements jerky and uncoordinated, as if nervous.
That was a shock all on its own, and coupled with the light blush that crossed
the man’s cheeks when he realised his watchlessness, it put Derek on edge.
Correcting his mistake hastily, Deaton glanced at the clock on the wall and
muttered something under his breath before returning his gaze to the wolves.
“Five minutes.”
Derek would have had to be human, deaf and blind to not notice the uptake in
Lydia’s pulse, followed by her rushed retreat with only a quiet murmured, “I
need to go make a phone call.”
Around him, the pack exploded excitedly, sharing rumours of the mysterious
mage’s powers and tales of his achievements, while Derek blocked them all out
in favour of listening in to Lydia’s phone call.
He had never claimed to have high morals, and anything that got his Beta all
wound up was worth investigating.
The dial tone rang for a few seconds in the other room, and then, “Hey S!”
Derek missed the response on the other end, but Lydia obviously didn’t if her
laugh was anything to go by. She sounded genuinely happy, Derek thought to
himself somewhat confusedly, happier than she had sounded around the pack in
months.
“Yeah well there’s a bunch of werewolves outside the door that are PROBABLY
EAVESDROPPING LIKE THE DOGS THEY ARE!”
The last part was yelled out the door, and Derek looked up from where he had
been glaring at the floor, only to see the abashed faces of his pack, who had
evidently stopped conversing among themselves about the mage’s arrival as soon
as Lydia had picked up the phone to call some mysterious friend.
No one ever claimed werewolves weren’t nosy bastards. And if they had, they’d
have been wrong.
Judging by the determined but also kind of nauseous expressions on his pack
mates’ faces, they were going to risk the banshee’s wrath and listen into the
phone call even after being called out on it, probably from a mix of genuine
concern and unwavering nosiness.
While Derek was proud of how his Betas had acclimated to wolf life, they were
all still a bunch of teenagers. Teenagers who dealt with all the creatures that
went bump in the night and a few that didn’t, perhaps, but still.
They worried about things like grades, and Senior Year, and Relationships with
a capital R, and, Derek shuddered in his head, Prom.
His own Prom had been less than happy, but very, very memorable. It had been on
the anniversary of the fire, he had been uncontrolled, explosive, dangerous.
Derek still had no clue why Laura thought it would be a good idea for him to
‘distract himself’ with prom, but it’s not like he could just ring her up and
ask or anything.
He had showed up in loose-fitting jeans and a cheap suit jacket, drank a lot
more alcohol than advisable if you didn’t want your liver to fail, but was
still only pleasantly buzzed when the trouble started. A lot of pitying looks
and one snide remark later there was a guy in the hospital and Laura was beyond
mad at him.
People don’t like being reminded of sad things, of death or loss or pain, and
that was basically all Derek had felt for his last few years of high school.
And guilt. Endless guilt.
He had barely even cared that the principal was mad at him, hadn’t cared that
he was given multiple detentions that extended to the end of the school year,
because school felt so superficial and pointless to him then. But Derek
supposed his Betas still believed school was important. And not to forget the
mess that was ‘social skills’.
Like Derek had any.
It took Derek a few more comments of a one-sided conversation from Lydia before
he realised that the person she was talking to must have spelled their phone
with the silence spell, which made it impossible to hear who was on the other
end of a call, and vice versa.
Derek had to admit, he was reluctantly impressed. Very reluctantly.
It took his pack mates a little longer to realise, and they all looked faintly
disappointed when they did. Damn nosy werewolves, Derek thought sarcastically
to himself, since the person he usually talked sarcasm with had been absent
from his life for over a year now.
Because Derek had chosen to let him go.
Sometimes, in the privacy of his own head, Derek wondered if that had been more
for his own good than Stiles’.
“Okay. Yeah. Of course!” Lydia laughed again, a light-hearted, happy sound that
made Derek’s chest ache, but that pulled his mind away from the more dangerous
places. “Right. See you soon!” There was a pause, and when Lydia spoke again
her voice was softer, more meaningful. “Love you too, you big softie. Alright,
I know. You’re one to talk! Okay, okay. Bye.”
The phone call ended abruptly then, and seconds later Lydia came strolling out
of the back office, phone in hand, expression somewhere between highly amused
and deeply irritated. It wasn’t an unfamiliar look on the red head’s face.
The Betas immediately scrambled to make it look like they hadn’t just been
listening intently into her private conversation, but Derek didn’t even bother
trying to hide it.
Lydia shot them a look that proclaimed them idiots, a sentiment Derek could get
on board with 99% of the time, before turning to face him, an eyebrow raised.
“Is there no such thing as privacy anymore?” She asked, feigning outrage. Then
again, she might not have been feigning it. The pack had had to get used to the
lack of privacy relatively quickly when practically everyone had super hearing
and reflexes, and Derek would be the first to admit there were a couple of
awkward breakfasts after people heard things they probably shouldn't have
heard, or seen things they definitely shouldn't have seen (the bathroom lock
was no match for sleepy werewolf strength to everyone's dismay), but the girls
perhaps the least. It was very, very quickly understood that all three of them
had weapons hidden in multiple places around their persons and barging in on
them showering by accident would get you a very thorough example of how well
they could handle them.
Actually, the first rule of pack life was basically if any of the female pack
members tell you to do something, either do it or expect pain. Allison was fond
of arrows (obviously), Erica her claws and Lydia anything she could cook up in
a lab (the list was shockingly numerous) thrown at you or hidden somewhere you
would least expect it.
Their significant others could testify to this.
Derek only looked at Lydia in the face of her probably feigned outrage with
what his pack had fondly named the ‘Derek Hale look of infinite boredom and oh-
really-just-how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am’ glance. It was funny how they forget
he could actually hear them from another room.
Come to think of it, it had been Stiles who named that look. As well at 17
others. He made a chart.
Derek’s heart hurt.
“Lydia.” Was all Derek said to her, and they both stood in stand-off without
speaking for a few tense, awkward seconds as if sizing each other up, before
Scott broke the silence that was beginning to become uncomfortable.
“Guys, there’s a new car outside!” Instantaneously, the atmosphere shifted into
one of anticipation, and Derek could tell his Betas were resisting the urge to
run to the window like little kids in the hopes they could catch a glimpse of
the infamous magic user.
Only pride and a twisted sense of fear kept them in place, lounging about the
reception, the only signs of their unease their fast beating hearts and
clenched fists.
When there was no movement outside, they all glanced to Deaton in confusion,
but the old emissary only smiled benignly at them.
A loud thump drew their attention to the back room, and werewolf senses went
off like copper wires in a thunder storm, because the scent that now filled the
small room was electric.
It smelled of electricity, and fireworks, and, somehow, towering waves of
turquoise ocean that broke the shoreline.
Beneath all that, however, beneath the unique taste of magic that clung to all
those who dabbled in it, the scent was as familiar to Derek as his own, and
made him freeze in place.
This was why, when Stiles Stilinski appeared in the doorway, hands loose and
open at his side, Derek was the only one who didn’t outwardly react.
Scott promptly fell over again.
 
…
 
Stiles had changed. He wasn’t the same human boy who left Beacon Hills with a
broken heart and a body of scars, okay?
He had learned, and grew, and became more powerful than he had ever dreamed of
being, and it was an improvement.
This didn’t change the fact that Stiles was more nervous than he had been when
he took down his first Demon.
Which made no sense, because demon-killing? Obviously much more scary than
returning to your old town at the request of your old pack who kicked you out.
Who, incidentally, didn’t know your actual identity other than a cheesy
nickname.
Stiles’ fingers drummed on the steering wheel of his new car, reminiscent of
that evening a year and a bit ago before his entire life and view of himself
changed.
Okay, he was adult enough to admit he was nervous. That was common enough
though, right? Stiles was often nervous. Nervous was like his secondary state
of being. Talking to the pretty girl who worked at the café down from where he
stored his jeep made him nervous, as did talking the equally as pretty boy that
delivered his pizza on Wednesdays and alternate Fridays. He had just gotten
much better at hiding it. When he wasn’t around werewolves that could sense all
his emotions, Stiles found out he actually had a pretty good poker face.
He was still pissed as hell at the pack, both for kicking him out in the first
place and for then being annoyed that he had left (No one ever claimed
werewolves were logical, in fact the exact opposite was often truth), but there
was also that traitorous little voice in the back of his head that wanted them
to see how he had changed, that wanted, curse his heart, respect from the
people he had once considered family. Stiles hated that little voice.
At least Lydia had understood his reasons for leaving. Stiles’ heart warmed at
the mention of his best friend, who had been with him digitally through it all.
The call from her a few minutes ago had helped ease the nerves, and the ache in
his heart that had sprung on him as it always did when he thought of Beacon
Hills. Now that he was back it was a million times worse.
Lydia had been the one who picked up his phone calls at 3 a.m., who skyped with
him whenever he needed a pick me up, and who had almost single-handedly created
his entire reputation.
The truth was, brace yourselves, Stiles didn’t in fact bathe in the blood of
his enemies.
And it wasn’t like he resisted the urge out of some idiotic moral stand or
anything either, it was simply that he had no inclination to.
But tales of his savageness were good for business, so Lydia was sure to always
extend the truth a little. Or a lot, depending on which tale you ask about.
And it wasn’t like Stiles wasn’t super powerful or anything, he was, it was
just that he was also… Stiles, and blood was a bitch to get out of clothes.
I guess I could always bathe naked, Stiles mused, a sure sign that his nerves
were getting the better of him.
And here’s the thing; Stiles liked being the Red Hood. Liked the sense of
purpose it gave him. He was more confident and comfortable in his own skin now
than he had ever been, and that was always a good thing.
But, and here was the clincher, he was also still that hyperactive spaz with
too short an attention span and a tendency for sarcastic replies.
It was just now he could back that up with a fistful of magic and advanced
weapons training.
Turns out people were a lot less likely to make fun of you with those things on
your side.
He didn’t need anybody’s help, not that he had ever been very good at accepting
it, and he hadn’t for months now.
Nor did he need anybody’s approval. When Stiles looked in the mirror, he saw
someone he could be proud of, someone he was proud of. It had taken months of
vigorous, often painful training to get to where he was now, but Stiles
wouldn’t change any of it for anything in the world.
He had earned his powers in sweat, blood and tears, and it didn’t matter what
some arrogant, self-righteous, pompous werewolves thought.
He was still nervous though.
Stiles sighed as he pulled into the clinic, the runes on his skin glowing in
time with the beating of his overactive heart, but a spell he had cast earlier
hid his arrival from the pack.
He observed them through the wide, glass window, eyes flicking over Allison,
Boyd, Erica and Isaac, taking them in one by one. They all seemed relatively
healthy, if not a bit
miserable, but Stiles attributed it to the pixie fight and subsequent injuries
more than anything else.
Almost against his will, Stiles’ gaze focused on Scott, his ex-best friend. Did
he still have a penchant for trouble? Still have a hard time controlling the
wolf?
Lydia had kept him informed on pack matters, but it was very different hearing
about the trials of the pack second hand and experiencing them yourself.
And then there was Derek. Sourwolf. Alpha. Otherwise known as Stiles’ ex-crush.
He still looked as brooding, and naturally miserable, as always, as if someone
had just kicked his favourite puppy.
Turns out the tall, dark and silent guys were his type, because Stiles could
count on one hand the guys he had hooked up while away with that didn’t fit
that stereotype. Wait, no, he needed two hands.
He had forgotten Mark.
Closing his eyes, Stiles absorbed the magic hiding him from sight back inside
his body and used it to transport himself outside the back door.
He would have transported the whole way, but it took a lot more energy to get
from England to America then it did a few dozen metres.
He had been in England recovering from a… particularly taxing spell. It
completely wasn’t his fault that while he was there, (under strict instructions
from a close friend to ‘relax and recuperate or so help me Stiles I will glue
you to a bed’ to which Stiles had replied ‘Kinky, but not objectionable’
because he was just that sort of person) he had been viciously accosted by a
tribe of flesh-eating mummies.
What, did you think Egypt was the only place with those fashion-behind lumps of
clay? Turns out they, or more accurately the complete idiot controlling them,
liked the wet, rainy climate of Britain.
Idiot because, as everyone with any brains knows, mummies bandages dissolve in
water. They had been little puddles of lumpy mud after the first shower. Stiles
had gotten
soaked, but it was well worth it to see the look of dejected betrayal on the
dude’s face. As if the sky had personally offended him.
In a way, Stiles guessed it had.
Mummies and stupid evil doers aside, (like seriously, it made Stiles almost
yearn for some semi intelligent people to fight, what happened to all the good
sci-fi villains, people? Was there no standard for evil anymore?) Stiles had to
take a brief pause outside the locked door, resting his head on the cool metal
before gathering what was left of his strength and sweeping in dramatically.
What? It had been a very taxing spell, and it had only been a week since then.
Sometimes simple dramatics were the best way to go.
Especially when dealing with situations like this. Then again, there were no
situations like this. The impossibility of preparation was making Stiles' skin
crawl.
He could sense all the wolves with his magic, the stretching of mental feelers
out in exploration like the burn of a well-used muscle.
Even though his magic had only barely been a spark the last time he saw any of
them, the particular twinge of their life lights were ones he could pick up
anywhere. Even Derek.
Especially Derek.
Stiles ruined his no-nonsense-take-no-prisoners arrival when the first thing he
put his hand on clanged to the ground. He barely restrained a sigh.
Doesn’t matter how many weapons he had mastered, or how graceful (if other
people’s accounts were to be believed) he was while fighting, his hand still
managed to find the least stable things in the area to brush on when he was
caught off guard.
And Stiles was very caught off guard, because the pack bond that had broken
when he left Beacon Hills was springing back into place, and Stiles was lucky
he had a lot of experience dealing with pain because he was sure he would have
groaned aloud otherwise.
Maybe ‘lucky’ wasn’t the right word.
For now it seemed to only be affecting his end, and Stiles silently pleaded
that it would stay that way. He really was not interested in explaining to a
bunch of pissed off werewolves how that pesky pack bond managed to tie them
together without either party’s permission. Sometimes Stiles was sure his magic
was out to get him. Which would be funny happening to anyone else, but to
himself? Not so much.
Giving up all hopes of a smooth entry, Stiles wrapped himself with a veritable
cocoon of magic, forcing the seeking tendrils of the bond down, beneath layer
after layer of thick, immovable power.
As soon as he was out of town he’d crush it like he had the first time. It had
taken him two whole weeks and a lot of writhing in pain, but he had managed it.
Damn it, he fucking knew coming back to Beacon Hills was a bad idea.
But the protective boundary he had cast around the town had broken, so it left
Stiles stuck there until he could get it back online.
Stepping into a room with a bunched of shocked werewolves, and a huntress who
still carried loaded weapons, was not his idea of fun.
This was going to take forever. Stiles just knew it.
 
…
 
The room was eerily silent for a few moments, the shocked faces of the pack and
uneven breaths the only indicators that something was amiss.
Stiles was standing confidently in the back of the room, face open but blank,
limbs no longer twitching with frantic energy that needed to be spent.
Derek found that he missed it.
He was wearing clothes so unlike Stiles that it gave Derek pause, stopped him
from demanding an explanation as to where he had been the last year, and Derek
had to remind the pacing animal inside him that he had no right to any
information from Stiles. All he received in response was a growl.
Black leather skinny jeans were accompanied by a red hoodie, the red hoodie,
Derek realised with a jolt, the one that had earned him the nickname in the
first place, and Derek didn’t know what to make of the fact that it was the
same one he had been wearing the last time he had seen him.
His ears were pierced now, and a matching set of black runes hung from them,
and an insane, reckless part of Derek itched to touch them.
Two black boots completed the ensemble, and, loath as he was to admit it, the
new look suited Stiles. He had always been fire in human form, and now the
whole world could see it.
Derek was nowhere near ready to admit to the pang of jealousy that thought
caused him.
“St... Stiles?!” Scott’s shocked voice broke the silence, the small scrape of
his clothes on the linoleum floor seemingly the sign everyone was waiting for
that this, Stiles, wasn’t some sort of dream.
Or nightmare, depending on who you were asking.
Lydia was the first to move, bounding up to Stiles with a wide grin and
outstretched arms.
Derek could see comprehension dawn on the pack when the hug they shared was one
speaking of a lot more friendship then people who hadn’t spoken in over a year.
Derek was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one feeling betrayed then.
The two eventually stopped hugging, but Stiles swung a casual arm around her
shoulders instead, easy contact that seemed to comfort them both, and faced
Deaton, ignoring the rest of them in a way Derek could only assume was
intentional.
“Pixies?” He asked once, and Deaton nodded his head, clarifying unnecessarily.
Even his voice had changed, becoming deeper, more musical, as if you could hear
whispered Latin spells and chants behind every word. It was unsettling, to say
the least.
“A whole tribe.”
Stiles frowned, deep in thought, then shook it away with a physical roll of his
shoulders. The shoulders that were nearly as broad as Derek’s own, and pressed
tightly against the fabric in a way that could be called obscene.
He didn’t look like a 17 year old, or an 18 year old, or even a 19 year old. If
anything, he looked ageless, timeless, as if someone had taken an old soul and
shoved it into a young body then left it for a few decades. Stiles had always
looked something like that, but it had never been as blatantly obvious as it
was then.
Stiles pressed a quick kiss to the side of Lydia’s head, before lifting his arm
from her shoulders so she could step back, his face as emotionless as Deaton’s
when he faced them.
When Stiles finally faced them properly, Derek wasn’t the only one who took a
shocked inhale.
His eyes were glowing.
They weren’t even glowing like werewolves’ eyes do, instead their natural
colour, that Derek would swear to his grave he didn’t remember in embarrassing
detail even after all that time, seemed brighter, as if someone was holding a
torch to them from the inside of his head.
It was amazing, and equally as terrifying.
“How did you… what are … why… what?” Came Scott’s indignant questions, his
voice reaching a pitch that made all the werewolves in the room grimace.
Shooting them an apologetic look, he tried to lower it to a more acceptable
tone, but failed miserably.
In fairness, and in Scott’s defence, it wasn’t every day that your long lost
best friend came back changed enough to basically be a new person.
“You’re the Red Hood?” He squeaked out finally, and Allison patted Scott’s hand
in pride that he had managed a complete sentence, but Stiles himself only
smiled derisively.
With a dangerously mocking half bow, Stiles clasped his hand to his chest,
sleeve slipping down just enough for Derek to see a black tendril etched on his
skin that almost seemed to be searching for something.
Before he could do much more than notice it however, Stiles pulled his sleeve
down in a way that made it seem non-intentional. Derek knew better.
“The Red Hood, at your request.” It seemed sarcasm was still Stiles’ second
language, no matter what happened. It came as a relief to hear something so
familiar.
Derek took a quiet moment to register all the changes in Stiles. The more
obvious ones, like the rod straight spine and new casualness in the way he held
his body, as well as the power in the muscles that were hid so easily behind
the loose fitting hoodie, were all physical, but Derek had spent the better
part of a year obsessing over the human, and that wasn’t all he noticed.
He saw the dark shadows that coloured under his eyes, the almost-bruises that
spoke of too many late nights and early mornings, saw the faded red marks on
the visible skin as if burned, and the tousled hair from fingers running
through it.
Noticed the strong demeanour of someplace between confidence and arrogance, the
upward tilt of his lips, the stance his body had taken unconsciously as if
prepped for a fight.
His hand unknowingly reaching for his thigh seeking reassurance of the weapons
there, an action his body was so used to, so comfortable with, that it made
Derek see red.
This Stiles was danger and magic and electricity, and the easy way with which
he hid his emotions made Derek want to punch something until it stopped moving.
The irony of the fact that he had caused that change was not lost on him.
Stiles turned to him then, one eyebrow raised, and Derek was thrown back
violently into a memory of Stiles complaining about how often he did that,
telling him it made him look ‘like he never had any emotions other than boredom
or condescension’. Looking at the calmness of Stiles’ pale face, the lack of
any emotion distinguishable or note-worthy, Derek silently agreed with him.
“Where did they assault you?” Derek bristled at the implication behind the
question, and the slightest hint of a smirk behind Stiles’ professional façade.
Granted, the idea of a couple of pixies taking down a pack of werewolves was
objectively funny, but the pain in his ribs said otherwise.
And it hadn’t just been a couple. It had been at least a hundred of the demon
bugs. He was beyond tempted to say as much, but doubted it would actually do
much good except to amuse Stiles further.
“The woods.” At Stiles’ completely unimpressed look, Derek gave in. “About a
mile from the main road, 20 minutes by foot from the town.”
Stiles snorted at his unwillingness to provide information before
absentmindedly swiping a finger under his sleeve. Derek had no doubt that he
was tracing the design he had seen earlier, the design which looked
suspiciously like a tattoo.
But it wasn’t his place to ask.
No matter how much he wanted to.
Stiles suddenly clapped his hands together, and the Betas jumped in shock from
the echo of it.
“I’ll take care of it. Stay out of the woods ‘til I contact you.”
With a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, Stiles blew a one-handed kiss at
Lydia before vanishing. Literally. One second he was standing in front of them,
the next he was gone.
Derek pushed himself off of the wall he had been subconsciously slouching
against, body taunt with adrenaline.
The squeal of tires outside the clinic drew his attention, and he could just
see the back of a sleek, navy car as it drove away.
So at least Stiles hadn’t been stolen by some magic-wielding witch with a death
wish. Small mercies.
Jackson was, surprisingly, the first one to break the silence. “Was he… Did
that just happen?”
Isaac looked like he was going to be sick, so like the way he had looked the
last time they all shared a room, when Derek had decided that for his own good
Stiles had to stay away.
Erica looked torn between running after Stiles begging his forgiveness or
slapping him for leaving. Probably both, in that order.
Boyd, in a shocking turn of events, looked genuinely sad, a touch guilty, and
very wistful. It was more emotion then Derek had ever managed to get out of
him, even when he offered him the bite.
How was it that Stiles knew and affected his Betas more than Derek did even
though he hadn’t seen them in a year? He had more influence over them than
anybody else. And that was definitely not jealousy that Derek was feeling.
Definitely.
Scott was looking dazed and anxious, a combination that was never a good sign.
Derek silently prayed Scott wouldn’t wolf out in the middle of the clinic.
At least Allison was here to calm him down. The last time Scott had gotten out
of control and feral a couple of trees got destroyed and they almost got yelled
at by some environmentalist activists.
The Sheriff had given Derek his look after he had growled at them, but,
honestly, what did he expect Derek to do?
Allison had taken an hour to arrive at the scene, but luckily just hearing her
voice and heartbeat through the phone calmed Scott enough that all he did was
lie down on the ground and whimper pathetically.
Teenagers and their love lives. It gave Derek a headache more often than not
just thinking about it, never mind living it or feeling it second hand through
the pack bond.
Sometimes he questioned his wisdom in turning a bunch of teenagers. He had
forgotten the drama that was their entire lives. Everything was the end of the
world with high schoolers.
All it did was make Derek want to roll his eyes.
Lydia cleared her throat in the doorway, looking over from where she had been
silently communicating via facial expressions and hand gestures with the vet,
before smirking at them.
“So are we just going to stand here like idiots or are we going to move anytime
soon?”
Almost as one the pack turned to face her, expressions ranging from intrigued
and curious, to suspicious and betrayed. The latter featured more on Scott and
the Betas, while the former was entertained by Allison and Jackson. Derek kept
his face deliberately blank.
“You knew?!” That was Scott, face twisted into a mask of barely concealed anger
at the deception. Erica and Isaac followed his example, focusing accusing eyes
on Lydia.
She just rolled her eyes. “Yes, I knew. Now are we going to go, because hanging
out in an animal clinic is not my idea of a good time.” A quick glance over to
where the vet stood. “No offense, Dr. Deaton.”
The vet smiled at her warmly and tilted his head. “None taken, Lydia.”
Scott suddenly crashed his hand against the floor, the force pushing him up
onto his knees and glared at them all in turn. “NO! No one is going anywhere
until I find out why Lydia knew my best friend was leaving, why she probably
knew where he has been for the past year, and how the hell Stiles, clumsy, ADHD
Stiles, managed to become one of the most feared mages in all of history!”
Lydia’s smirk changed into an angry one in the blink of an eye, and she marched
over to Scott, anger radiating from every pore. Despite himself, Scott flinched
back a little.
They all were shocked back into freezing for the second time when Lydia slapped
him. Painfully, hard, and right across his cheek. The sound of it made Isaac
flinch.
With one sharp fingernail digging into his chest, Lydia hissed, “You don’t get
to make demands of anyone Scott Mc Call, not me, and certainly not Stiles. You
didn’t care enough to say anything when you all left Stiles on his own, and it
wasn’t until he left that you started noticing him again. You are like a
toddler who drops a toy and then cries when someone else picks it up. You are
pathetic.”
Lydia turned ice-cold eyes to them, her glare harsher than wolfsbane bullets in
its intensity.
“You are all pathetic. Stiles saved your lives, he made you a pack, he helped
you, befriended you, cared for you. And you kick him out because of something
that is both out of his control and his greatest strength. Then you have a
hissy fit like a bunch of little kids because he comes back different. The only
fucking reason I’m still in this pack is because Stiles asked me to be. And he
asked me to be because he cared for me and my safety more than his pride. I
left, all right, I left the pack the same day you choose to kick him out. So
you all can take your preconceived notions on what you have a right to demand
of either of us and you can shove it up your ass before Stiles does it for you.
And if he doesn’t, I will.”
The door slammed behind her, her departure accompanied by several seconds of
tense shock. Deaton was mixing something on the counter but he spared a second
to glance at them, disapproval etched in every wrinkle of his face.
“Not that it’s any of my business,” he said genially, “But I do agree with
her.”
With that he shooed them with his hands out the door, bell ringing overhead.
They stood in a group on the sidewalk, no sign of either Stiles of Lydia apart
from lingering scents of thunderstorms and strawberries respectively.
Boyd stood deadly still and muttered, “Am I the only one feeling ashamed,
guilty and like a really, really horrible friend?”
Everyone shook their heads in unison as if puppets being controlled. Derek felt
the beginnings of nausea stir in his gut as the full ramifications of what they
had done hit him.
The drive back to the Hale house passed in silence.
Chapter End Notes
     This chapter came out much different than I expected it to, but...
     better?... than I hoped. With the way I was writing it and the way I
     want the story to go this felt more right. But I guess I'll have to
     wait and see!
     So it turns out Derek kicked Stiles out for his own protection,
     though the exact reason is still a mystery, and the pack went along
     with it because they all love Stiles and didn't want to see him hurt.
     Lydia didn't either, but she was the only one who didn't see him as a
     fragile human, again, for reasons that are yet unknown.
     I put in that bit with Stiles in the middle so you guys could see his
     mindset going back to Beacon Hills, and also because I'm kinda sorta
     expecting him to be a bit of a jerk to them for a while (he has
     earned it!) and this way no one will hate him! Two birds one stone.
     This is completely un beta'd so any and all mistakes are my own.
     Also, amazing response to the first chapter! Mind is blown, guys!
     Thank you all so much, you have made my year!
     I'm going to get at least one chapter done a week, but other than
     that schedule will be all over the place and I'm really sorry for
     that.
     Hope you liked it so far, so please leave a comment and tell me!
     Later!
***** I like pixies. I do! They're awesome, they can fly, their wings make that
musical fluttering sound. What's not to like? Oh yeah, I guess they did beat
you guys up pretty bad... Did I say like? I meant, I love pixies. *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles makes friends with some pixies, Latin is spoken, and the pack
     order crazy amounts of pizza. Plus no one is more surprised than
     Derek himself when he ends up doing a bit of pixie research.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The pack made a unanimous decision without speaking to spend the night at the
Hale house, each person or couple disappearing into their respective rooms as
the night continued.
 
By 1 o’clock, Derek was the only one still up.
 
Sleep eluded him, so he made his way to the sitting room and sat on the
armchair in the darkness, thinking.
 
It was funny really. In trying to protect Stiles, he had somehow managed to put
him under more danger. It seemed like he did everything wrong, no matter how
hard he tried or what he did. Maybe he was just cursed.
 
The darkness pressed down on him, making him doubt and second guess every
decision he had ever made.
 
It wasn’t even five minutes later that Scott showed up, trailed for once by
Allison rather than the other way around. They said nothing, just fell down
onto the couch, knees touching, heads resting on each other’s shoulders in a
sickeningly cute display. It comforted Derek in a more than logical way,
knowing his pack was right there.
 
A few minutes later came Jackson, followed by Isaac, both of whom sat down on
the wooden floor in silence and laid their heads on the couch cushions.
 
The love seat was soon occupied by Erica and Boyd, but still no one said
anything. The night passed like that, a pack coming together to silently
remember everything that had happened, everything they had done.
 
By morning a plan of action had been decided, all without any words needed or
spoken. The pack bond grew stronger and more obvious, the wears and tears from
the past year and few months beginning to be smoothed over. Seemed Stiles
always had that effect on his pack, Derek thought as pack mates stretched their
stiff limbs around him, he pulled them all together before to make them work as
a group and now he was doing it again, without even being present.
 
With Stiles in possession of magic, he was always going to be in the line of
fire. That fact had to be accepted before anything else could be done. The best
way to protect him was to give him back up, in the form of a pack. Derek
wondered how he ever could have thought, for even a second, that Stiles would
do anything other than find a way to become stronger than all of them.
 
When Stiles felt something was right, didn’t matter the consequences to him as
long as his friends and family were safe. It was an admirable trait, one Derek
could empathise with, but that made him nearly impossible to protect.
 
He had no survival instinct, not when it involved someone else's safety,
someone he loved, and, really, it had left Derek no choice. Or at least, that
was the thought he comforted himself with on the nights Stiles’ absence had
stretched the pack bond to its limit.
 
The first sound of the morning, the metallic twang of the industrial sized
toaster as it popped, seemed to shake everyone out of that semi-conscious zone
people disappear to after a long night of not sleeping. They all had a lot of
experience with that. None more so than Derek.
 
The kitchen was soon filled with typical morning sights and smells, and to
werewolves those smells were especially potent. It was generally taken in the
mornings that the pack stayed over that they all had to fend for themselves
where food was involved. Otherwise people just got into fights.
 
Isaac and Derek both lived at the Hale house permanently, and Erica and Boyd
lived there about half the time. Jackson, Lydia, Scott and Allison only spent
the nights on those evenings after an activity, with Jackson and Lydia telling
lies to their parents, and Scott and Allison telling theirs it was pack night.
 
Things had definitely gotten a lot easier for the pack since Ms. Mc Call found
out about werewolves.
 
And even though Allison’s father disapproved of werewolves in general as a
rule, he knew that being in the pack meant his daughter had more people vested
in her safety, which was something he couldn’t really complain about. The
pack’s alliance with the Argents was unusual to say the least, occasionally
unethical and hard to explain to an outsider, but both parties gained from it
so no one ever questioned it.
 
The pack, or more precisely, Scott, got Allison, and by extension her father,
who had sworn not to hunt them and were, very, proficient in many forms of
weaponry, and the Argents got supernatural back-up who helped them if the need
arose. They also were able to keep the territory out of the watchful eyes of
other hunters who might try and overthrow them. It was a win-win situation.
 
Derek, for his part, still refused to trust either of them for the same reason
they didn’t trust werewolves, but he was getting there.
 
He didn’t think he would ever be in a place mentally or emotionally where he
could completely trust anyone, not again, but the pack were the ones he trusted
most.
 
With practically living together some days, and spending a bit of time outside
of life or death situations hanging together, they had all gotten to know each
other better.
 
More than just who was the best to use in a surprise attack or who was better
with knives. They learned things like how Erica was useless in the mornings
without a cup of coffee first, or how Jackson could eat his body weight in
toast. Silly, useless things on one level, but on a sublevel with the pack bond
involved, the knowledge strengthened them as a unit.
 
It was a good thing Derek was practically rich now because food costs alone in
the pack were astronomical. The amount of money that went into weekly shopping,
and even occasionally daily shopping, was ridiculous. It was one of those easy,
domestic things that made Derek feel like he really was part of a pack. He’d
missed it.
 
The smell of burning toast filled the kitchen as Boyd scrambled around, cursing
under his breath that everyone could hear. “Sorry! Sorry!” He yelled out
unnecessarily to the various bodies sprawled across the sitting room floor.
Great, Derek thought as a dark, heavy smoke burned his airways, we’re all going
to die a toast-related death. That would be a fun funeral.
 
We are here to remember the Beacon Hills pack, who were so stupid they burned
down the newly built Hale house because some toast was burned. May they rest in
peace.
 
Derek grabbed an apple from the wooden bowl on the counter and went to stand by
the wall, watching as his pack flopped down on the various surfaces to eat.
 
Milk was poured into bowls on top of cereal, toast was buttered and jammed, and
fruit was munched on. Someone had turned the TV on and left it on a cartoon
channel that no one could be bothered to change. Derek felt the tension in the
air, still left over from yesterday’s events, slowly start to melt away under
the face of normality, but the silence that refused to be broken said it all.
 
There was a knock on the door around noon, and the wolves perked up at the
familiar scent. Jackson almost fell over as he practically ran to the door.
Lydia was standing on the porch, arms crossed. She smelled of Stiles. It made
Derek’s wolf pace.
 
“I just want to say that the only reason I’m here is to deliver a message for
Stiles and then I’m leaving again.”
 
Derek felt a sudden need to step forward, to speak. His wolf growled at him to
stop before he even opened his mouth, but this was important. “Look, Lydia, if
Stiles is making you leave the pack then maybe we can help you and…”
 
As one, the pack flinched as Lydia slapped him across the face. With werewolf
healing it didn’t hurt, but the meaning was clear. Derek resisted the urge to
rub at it where he could already feel the redness receding.
 
“How dare you.” Lydia said, watching him straight in the eye. Her voice was
calm and steely like the centre of a hurricane. “First, how dare you imply I
would do anything I didn’t want to do and that anyone would have that much
power over me as to make me leave the pack? Second, how the fuck do you have
the balls to try and claim that Stiles would make anyone do anything they
didn’t first want to do, that, what, he would force me? Did you miss the part
yesterday when I told you all that Stiles' asking was the only reason I stayed
this long in the pack in the first place? You’ve got a lot of nerve, Derek.”
 
Derek only stretched his jaw and nodded once. He didn’t think Stiles would have
done it, but lingering resentment of the fact he left in the first place had
pushed him to ask.
 
Lydia clamped her hand around Jackson’s possessively, then threw a bag of some
light dust at his chest.
 
Derek caught it one-handed, and stared down at it before raising his eyes back
to hers. “Gift from Stiles.” She said, looking pleased with herself as the pack
took a step away from Derek and, by proxy, the bag, in unison as if it were
about to explode. She rolled her eyes instead of showing the malicious smile
pulling the corners of her mouth, and Jackson took that as permission to wrap
his arms around her. Derek wasn’t sure how that equalled to permission, but
this was Lydia.
 
Rolling her eyes probably was her way of saying it was okay.
 
When she didn’t immediately attack him, Jackson’s arms went tighter and he
buried his face in her hair, making soft little snuffling sounds. Derek
wondered idly for a second if Stiles’ scent on Lydia was bothering him, but
soon dismissed it. No one in their right mind would see Stiles as that sort of
threat, especially not when the scent he and Lydia shared wasn’t a sexual one
at all.
 
If anything, their mixed scent seemed to scream platonic friendship. But,
still, it bothered Derek more than he cared to examine that Stiles' scent was
all over her.
 
“Pixies are taken care of.” Lydia stated firmly, and Scott finally looked at
her from where he had been avoiding meeting her eye, suitably chastised from
yesterday’s declaration.
 
“You mean Stiles went into the forest all alone?! What was he thinking?!”
 
Lydia raised one impressively picked eyebrow at him, before waving her hand in
the air.
 
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean, and you will have to ask him. I don’t presume
to try and make sense of his thought patterns. I doubt he’ll give you answers,
but it’s worth a shot, right?” Her tongue dripped with sarcasm. Derek privately
thought that she was spending too much time around Stiles.
 
“What’s in the bag?” He asked her instead of saying anything that would get him
another slap. He might be the Alpha, but he wasn’t stupid.
 
“I didn’t ask. Though my guess would be pixie dust. Can be used as a concealer,
deterrent or healing salve if mixed with the bark from an ash tree in liquid
form. Hard to find, expensive to buy legally, and priceless on the black
market. You’re lucky to have it. I don’t know why he is giving it to you,
because if I was in his position I most certainly wouldn’t. My advice? Don’t
waste it.”
 
Scott, who had been following the conversation with the same intensity reserved
for a tennis match, spoke up. “Why would we use it to wash our clothes?”
 
The collected sigh almost raised the roof, and Derek worried briefly Lydia’s
eyes might roll right out of her head.
 
“Deterrent, not detergent. God, you’re all idiots.”
 
Isaac glanced at her from where he had been ignoring the conversation in favour
of watching the cartoons still playing on the screen, and had to raise his
voice to be heard over the muffled explosions on the TV. Why were cartoons so
violent? Derek wondered. He didn’t remember them being this bad when he was
younger.
 
Granted, when he was at the age he thought cartoons were the coolest thing ever
he was a small bit preoccupied with playing catch in the woods or learning how
to be a werewolf. Both activities that were not always mutually exclusive.
 
“Hey, I really don’t think it’s fair to judge us all by the intelligence of
Scott. No offense, Scott, but you’re not exactly the brightest crayon in the
box, if you know what I mean.”
 
Scot scowled at him, but said nothing.
 
Lydia tugged at Jackson’s hand once more before taking small steps back through
the front door. “Right then. I’m going to go now, and, for your own sakes,
please don’t do anything stupid. I just finished painting my nails a new
colour, and I really don’t need to have to clean blood from them again.” There
was a collective shudder as the pack remembered the events that led up to that
and Lydia’s subsequent rage. “Bye now! I will tell Stiles you send your
regards!”
 
Jackson followed her out without a word, only one nod in Derek’s general
direction, before the door closed and they were plunged into silence again.
 
Derek fingered the small bag of dust carefully in his hand. Why had Stiles
given them this if it was a valuable as Lydia claimed? Derek had never been a
scholar, and he knew next to nothing about pixie dust even with Lydia’s vague
and short explanation.
 
Mind made up, Derek left the sitting room for the office to learn more about
the properties of pixie dust. Wow, he would never have thought that he would
use that sentence.
 
The rest of the pack slowly settled down back into the lazy morning routine,
and not one of them mentioned the fact that Stiles had gotten rid of the pixies
in less than 24 hours and all they’d been able to do in three days was try not
to get attacked too often. But they were all thinking it.
 
…
 
Stiles was having a bad morning. Granted, with his life, that could be anywhere
from I-am-being-possessed-and-need-a-really-good-spell-before-I-kill-everybody
to I-left-my-car-keys-at-home-and-the-coffee-machine-isn’t-working.
Unfortunately for him, his bad days had been more of the ‘running for your
life’ type than he would have liked the last few weeks.
 
But he had only died once, so you know, silver linings. Today was a bad day
because it wasn’t even noon and someone, or in this case multiple someones, had
tried to kill him. God, sometimes Stiles hated his life.
 
A root in the middle of the path tripped him up suddenly, sending him scrawling
across the dirt path. Damn it, just a few more metres…
 
There! In one quick jump, Stiles managed to make it over the speeding river and
onto the bank on the other side.
 
He took a few seconds to get his bearings, heart palpitating wilder in his
chest. If his plan didn’t work, there was always Plan B. Elemental magic was
tricky, but with the right push…
 
A vicious buzzing sound broke him from his thoughts, and Stiles stood up
straight. He had managed to gain a rather impressive reputation after all, and
that didn’t happen without some knowledge of intimidation techniques.
 
With one flick of his wrist the hoodie he was wearing transformed into a long,
elegant red cloak. It had been Lydia’s idea, and worked much better than just
jeans and a hoodie when he needed to express to someone how much of a bad idea
it would be to cross him.
 
Contrary to what the rumour mill would have you believe, he had solved a lot of
problems by first convincing the 'enemy' that he was the one with the bigger
stick, to paraphrase Iron Man.
 
Hey, Stiles had never claimed he wasn't a nerd. Or geek. Or whatever people
called it now. Terminology hadn't really been high on his list of priorities
while he was away fighting evil creatures.
 
Plus the cape made for a great Halloween costume.
 
It left his chest and torso bare to the sight, but that was all part of the
intimidation.
 
Stiles left the hood down, exposing his head and waited.
 
A few seconds later the buzz increased in volume and the first signs of life
appeared across the river. Stiles flicked his hand out to raise a couple of
leaves and swirl them in the air above his fingers, an impressive display to
anyone who didn’t have magic.
 
Basic levitation was something any three year old with a spark could do.
Granted it was harder to control specific objects in a continuous pattern, but
to Stiles this was as easy as flipping a pen over his fingers.
 
On the other side of the river, the pixies paused.
 
Stiles murmured the incantation under his breath that would magnify his
hearing, and suddenly everything became a lot louder.
 
The rushing of the river, the rustle of the leaves, the tinkle of the wings on
the pixies’ backs. All the sounds sharpened and exploded in his ear, but he
kept his face impassive.
 
The pixies muttered among themselves, Stiles catching only odd words here and
there. His understanding of the language was crappy at best, but he was almost
fluent in speaking both Latin and Faerie, two languages that pixies definitely
spoke, or at least they had the last time Stiles was involved with them.
 
Deciding to use Latin, Stiles let the leaves floating fall to the ground and
dropped his hands his sides.
 
Revertar in pace.
 
The pixies froze, and turned to him as one. That particular skill had always
freaked him out when dealing with pixies before. The ability to act in unison
without any outward sign.
 
Quid? Hey, it was a good thing these pixies spoke Latin. For a minute there
Stiles was worried.
 
Huh, EGO coniecto pixies non adepto pop culturae references. Quid aliud voluit,
non ad pugnam. What? Stiles was snarky at the best of times and it’s not like
he meant it as an insult or anything, just an observation.
 
Quid hic agis? Wow, wasn’t that a loaded question. What was he doing here?
Trying to stop Derek getting the pack black listed by the pixies, probably.
 
And maybe he was looking forward to seeing the looks on their faces when he
managed what they couldn’t. Not that he was planning on going to visit them,
but it was a nice thought to have.
 
Deprecarentur. Well, it was true in a sense. He was also there to calculate how
big of threat the pixies were, but they didn’t need to know that.
 
The faint buzzing on the far side of the river paused for a split second before
increasing. Stiles got the feeling they didn’t know what he was talking about.
Wasn’t that a first.
 
Culpam deprecari pro loci Beacon Hills pack interpellandi posueris nidum tuum.
There, all clarified. And, bonus points for saying ‘Beacon Hills Pack’ and not
my pack, or the pack.
 
Stiles really didn’t need everyone knowing who he was and what his relationship
with the pack was. As far as anyone knew, he was just a powerful mage from
Beacon Hills with the habit of getting into fights with ‘evil’ creatures. That
was all they needed to know.
 
Irati sunt valde rudis. Nec illud quidem paenitet! Aww, that was kind of
adorable. Not that the pixies were angry, but because they felt so strongly
about people in the wrong saying sorry.
 
Stiles himself was bit more cynical, but, if it could prevent the pack being
killed…
 
Scio ego feci eis. Tantum te oro ut desineres LXXIV hanc et beneficio accepto
et dabo vobis quamdiu non vultis carmine obesse aliud animal. Hey, don’t blame
him! Pixies were kind of cute, once you got past that whole tiny creature with
fangs deal. Really, really sharp fangs.
 
It made Stiles just want to wrap them up in a blanket and hide them away from
the world. Plus, the pack had kind of insulted them, no matter how
unintentional, so offering his assistance was the least he could do.
 
Consentimus. See? All good with the pixies, and all he had to do was sign his
soul over to the devil. Not really, obviously.
 
And, in all fairness, an apology and a favour weren’t that big of a deal. They
had accepted his offer very easily, and quickly. There had been several more
things he could have used as leverage if it had come to that but Stiles was
glad he didn’t have to.
 
This tribe seemed calmer than most, and more cultured somehow than the wild
tribes he usually encountered. He was just about to say thank you when…
 
Sed habemus unum. Of course they do. It was always one question, no one can
ever just accept something good when they heard it. What was that proverb?
Never look a gift horse in the mouth? If the supernatural community at large
could commit that to heart it would save Stiles so much time.
 
But there was no point being rude. He could answer the nice pixies’ question.
 
Quid?  Honestly, Stiles was trying to be polite, but he was tired, and bruised,
and there was only so much patience in his body.
 
Quis enim es tu? Ah, that question. Now, there was no way Stiles was going to
tell them his actual name, he wasn’t stupid, but there was always the risk that
if he said his nickname they’d take fright.
 
Caught between a rock and a hard place. Oh, what the hell the cape kind of gave
it away anyway.
 
Rubra feror Rubrum. There, he said it. Many of the pixies jumped back in
surprise, causing an interesting rippling effect. Stiles watched it, entranced,
for a few seconds before shaking himself back into focus. Damn his ADHD.
 
Tu es qui profuisse domina Etiam me. Well, damn. No wonder these pixies were
so, for lack of a better term, civilised. If they were charges of the Pixie
Court…
 
Stiles remembered the mission that had left him fighting alongside the Pixie
Queen. That one had been a blast.
 
He had also, somehow, managed to save her life in passing, which had earned him
a grateful head nod in the middle of the fight and a formal thank you later on.
Stiles was fairly sure he was an honorary member of the court, which was always
a bonus if he needed some allies.
 
The Queen herself had been possibly one of the nicest people Stiles had ever
met, so even if the banquet held after wasn’t really suited to someone of his
height, he had found himself promising to go back and visit.
 
If these pixies were anything like their queen, then the pack really must have
insulted them to get so vicious an attack. Good to confirm his suspicions.
 
Pretium non opus est, pro nostra et regine nostre et tribus doni cum dicimus.
Stiles held out a hand as a lone pixie flitted across the river and dropped a
light silver packet in his open palm. They quickly returned to the rest of the
tribe, but not before Stiles caught the nervous little smile on their, her,
face.
 
Wow. Apparently news of his friendship and accidental saving of the pixie Queen
had spread. They weren’t even asking for what was owed to them!
 
Any other situation, any other creature, maybe Stiles would have just let it go
and move on. But, he had promised, and the pixies were still genuinely nice to
forget the pack’s unfortunate slight so soon.
 
Gratias tibi aget. Sed votum est promissio. Ego sum multis rogatu tuo. It was a
bit risky stating a thing that could be so easily interpreted, and if they
wanted to ask for something he wouldn’t normally do he now had no choice.
 
But, Stiles trusted the queen, and subsequently her subjects. If this ended
badly he would deal with it later.
 
Optime, et gratias tibi aget. As soon as speaking that the pixies turned and
left as smoothly as they’d arrived.
 
Stiles was left standing in the forest with a handful of magic pixie dust and a
red cape billowing around his ankles.
 
Without even thinking, Stiles made the decision to give the dust to the pack.
He still had a pouch of it at home from the incident with the courts, and even
though pixie dust was a powerful tie in many spells, he just didn’t need it.
 
He knew of many casters and mages alike who sought out pixies just for their
dust, along with fairies for their wings and elves for their hair. The buying
and selling of magical creatures and their magics was strictly illegal, but on
the black market you could buy almost anything. If you knew where to look.
 
Vale. He whispered once, before turning around and walking back into the town.
 
Another flick of his wrist transformed the cape back into a hoodie, because his
waist was chilled and also because he didn’t want to look insane going into
town wearing nothing but a cape and jeans. Plus, no one needed to see what was
going on with his chest.
 
That was between him and occasionally whatever guy he picked up in a bar. Or
girl, but that occurred significantly less often.
 
All the girls he picked up in bars or liked the look of ended up becoming his
closest friends, and that was just way too awkward a relationship. Not that it
hadn’t worked out for him time and again, but Stiles was hoping to limit the
amount of complicated in his life with returning home. It seemed like even
after more than a year he still considered Beacon Hills home. He just couldn’t
seem to shake it.
 
Stiles strolled along in the forest, the bag of magic dust small in his pocket.
The pixies must have been beyond grateful to gift him with this. It was a heavy
responsibility on his shoulders, that trust.
 
Stiles hoped it hadn’t been misplaced.
 
Well, at least the day hadn’t turned out to be so bad after all.
 
Who knew?
 
…
 
Derek sighed loudly and leaned back into the chair. His hands went up
subconsciously to his tired eyes, and he let his head lean on his palms for a
few minutes, just focusing on his breaths.
 
Five hours of research and study, and all he’d managed to achieve was the
knowledge that Stiles had been an idiot to give away the pixie dust.
 
It wasn’t news to Derek, since he had already had Lydia’s input.
 
Huffing out a breath between his cheeks Derek used the tips of his fingers to
root around in the pile of loose pages he had copied relevant information onto
to.
 
The office Derek currently resided in held, courtesy of Deaton, Lydia and E-
Bay, a veritable library of books on supernatural creatures. There were
multiple bestiaries, diaries, notes, textbooks, spell books, anything and
everything the pack could get their hands on.
 
Not that they had needed it much in the last year, but Lydia for one had spent
an inordinate amount of time researching. With the new information come to
light about Stiles being the equivalent of the supernatural police/mercenary
and Lydia’s assistance, Derek was almost sure that she had been researching for
Stiles the entire time.
 
Maybe Stiles was the reason they had all this information in the first place. A
lot of the newer diaries and things that Derek by all accounts shouldn’t have,
had come from Lydia.
 
And Lydia had gotten them from a friend.
 
Derek wondered why he had never thought to question that, but knew the answer
was because it helped him, and Derek was too used to bad things to question
when something good happened.
 
Even with all the books surrounding him, their information on pixies was sorely
lacking. They were mentioned in passing, in various diary accounts, and even a
few friendly pixies had been observed. One diary in particular called them
‘elegant and courteous people, with a fondness for the arts’.
 
Derek hadn’t met a lot of pixies, but the ones he had had most certainly not
fit that description.
 
What no book was able to tell him, however, was how to get rid of them.
 
Derek glanced at the bag of pixie dust sitting on the corner of the table.
Stiles had somehow managed it, but if there was a way or a spell, Derek had had
no luck in finding it.
 
Pixie dust, on the other hand, was mentioned everywhere. It was used for
spells, and chants, and charms. It could strengthen pretty much all types of
magic when used correctly.
 
And Lydia had been right, as always (not that Derek would ever admit to
thinking that) when she said that pixie dust, when used in the right way, had
the ability to hide people or places from all senses, and it was known to be
used incredibly successfully in healing.
 
It had even been recorded once for speeding up the healing of wolfsbane
poisoning in werewolves, or iron in fairies. It was notoriously hard to get a
hold of, and Derek had only found one mention of someone receiving it in a way
that wasn’t horrific torture on the pixies’ part.
 
And torture just didn’t seem Stiles’ style.
 
Derek resigned himself to not knowing, a situation he was never comfortable in
but that seemed to happen with increasing regularity whenever Stiles was
involved, and the papers in his hand fluttered in the breeze as he walked down
the stairs and into the sitting room cum meeting room.
 
Scott and Allison had left hours previous, something about lunch at the Argents
house, and Erica and Boyd were too busy making out on the couch to look up at
his abrupt reappearance.
 
The pack were well used to his particular quirks at this point. One of which
was spontaneously getting up and moving to a different room with no outward
indication of a motive. Derek knew for a fact they just assumed he liked
constantly knowing what was happening in all of the houses’ rooms. The sad
reality was that he often just forgot there was anyone to tell who would care.
 
Isaac was passed out eagle spread in his bedroom, his right arm just touching
the floor and his opposite leg hanging over the other side. Derek knew it had
taken a long time for Isaac to get comfortable with doing that, his father
having enforced on him from a young age the need to be neat, but Isaac’s new
room expressed his recovery more than anything else ever could.
 
Derek could barely have stepped one foot into the room without something, or a
pile of somethings, toppling over, and a small part of him recognised this as a
defensive action, letting Isaac know the second someone approached him, but the
bigger part of him was just glad Isaac felt comfortable enough to be messy and
uncoordinated sometimes. It was a vast improvement from the troubled teen he
had once been, often seemingly scared of his own shadow.
 
It hadn’t taken long to figure out his triggers, like the sound of breaking
glass or raised voices, and after that he had gotten much better in a shorter
period of time. Derek was just glad they were through the worst of it. Hearing
Isaac’s nightmares every night and being unable to help him had been a torture
all in its own for the protective Alpha.
 
Once Erica and Boyd had gotten over their fall into teenage hormones -did Derek
sound bitter? He felt bitter- Derek threw a handful of take-out menus at them.
 
The pack were regulars at every fast food place in town. The Chinese, Burger
Joint and Pizza Palace had their orders memorised.
 
Their usual order was too much food for eight people (but barely enough for
their pack of assorted supernatural creatures), so Derek knew a lot of the
delivery people just assumed they were throwing a party when they showed up at
the huge house with enough food for an entire football team, and friends.
 
There might not be any loud music, dancing people or general party atmosphere,
but there were other kinds of parties.
 
The pack had had the cops called on them no less than 22 times. It was a good
thing the Sheriff knew what was going on with them so he could sooth the
ruffled feathers.
 
For the last five months the pack had just been sending someone to pick it up
in town instead. Less questions asked that way.
 
This time was Derek’s turn, but first they had to choose between the,
admittedly many, options. And they had to know if Scott, Allison and Jackson
were going to be there too. Derek was not suicidal or fool-hardly enough to ask
Lydia, and figured that he would just let Jackson ask instead.
 
Cowardly? Definitely. Possibly the smartest idea he had ever had? Without a
doubt.
 
Derek pulled out his phone, a newer make touch and fired of a quick group text
to the three of them.
 
Contrary to what his pack seemed to believe, Derek was not in fact
technologically challenged and was fully capable of handling a touch phone.
 
If he accidently deleted a couple of contacts when he bumped the screen-the how
was anyone’s guess- none of them had to know. It’s not like the numbers were
for anything important anyway, Derek thought. Derek hoped.
 
Derek’s challenges with simple everyday things were on a need-to-know basis
only.
 
Apparently his self-inflicted recluse habits in the weeks/years after the fire
and prior to the forming of the pack weren’t healthy. It had never caused him
any trouble before, but unfortunately for Derek he had bitten some very strong
willed teenagers once they grew into themselves. He sure knew how to pick them.
 
A text buzzed his phone in his hand, and a glance down told him that Scott and
Allison were going to join, but Jackson would come alone. Lydia was most likely
going to be spending the evening with Stiles. Derek tried very hard to convince
himself that that thought didn’t make him want to punch something.
 
He almost managed it, but it was harder to lie to yourself than it was to lie
to someone else. Someone who couldn’t hear your heartbeat, anyways.
 
Erica, Boyd and Isaac, his original three Betas as he thought of them, finally
decided on pizza, for the simple reason that Chinese was ‘too complicated to
eat with your hands’, and Isaac wanted garlic bread. That was pretty much how
they made decisions in the Hale pack.
 
A mixture of laziness and someone’s craving. It was a good system. Maybe ‘good’
wasn’t the right word, but it worked for them.
 
And that was what mattered.
 
Scott and Allison showed up a half an hour later with the matching painful
grins on their faces they always got after any interactions with Allison’s dad.
 
His attitude towards werewolves and supernatural beings in general had improved
drastically since the whole deal with Gerard, but he had still been force fed
bigotry at least half his life, if not more. That much inbred hatred and
mistrust was hard to just forget, especially when one such being was dating
your daughter.
 
But Chris Argent was trying, and it put a few of Derek’s fears to rest.
 
Not all of them, and not even half of them, but some.
 
Jackson arrived soon after, with no sign of Lydia or Stiles. Even though he
knew it had been pointless and a long-shot, Derek felt his hopes diminish in
his chest.
 
Even their scents were missing from him, as if forcefully washed away, and if
Derek hadn’t already known Jackson had spent time with them there would be no
outwardly indication. It was a useful skill, and one Derek hadn’t known Lydia
possessed.
 
The thought didn’t cross his mind until later that it might have been Stiles
who had done it, and by then it was almost too late.
 
The toppings were decided upon, the movie picked, and Derek soon found himself
driving from the preserve into the town of Beacon Hills, with a list the length
of his forearm in Boyd’s huge, messy scrawl.
 
Derek didn’t know why Isaac, whose writing was insanely easy to read every time
he picked up a pen, didn’t just write everything, but some part of him
recognised that shoving writing duty onto Isaac’s shoulders the whole time
would be unfair.
 
The other part of him was still trying to read the writing on the list.
 
“What is that?” Derek muttered quietly to himself, eyes flicking between the
road and the paper with a casual easiness that came from experience. “Is that a
p…? No wait, it looks like an f… what topping starts with an f?”
 
Throwing the towel in (figuratively, of course. Derek might have good reflexes
but having no hands on the wheel would still cause an accident) on trying to
translate the writing, Derek just ordered their usual when he arrived at the
restaurant. With extra garlic bread. Because sometimes he did pay attention to
what was going on around him other than listening for potential threats.
 
It took Derek a second to catch it, under the smells of pizza, and the other
customers, that filled the small area, but he could just make out the faint
thrum of power he now associated with Stiles underneath it all.
 
Logically, Derek shouldn’t have been able to. Not when the scent was hours old
and people were constantly moving in and out of the building, but catch it he
did. Logic had never really applied to things concerning Stiles where Derek was
involved.
 
The knowledge that Stiles had been there, that he was real in an actual,
discernible way, it calmed his wolf side in a manner Derek hadn’t even known he
needed.
 
The scent was just similar enough to Stiles’ old one that it still brought back
memories of being a pack, of Stiles.
 
Derek let out a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding for the past year
and three months. Something settled in his chest, and ordinarily Derek would
have been terrified of it, because it felt almost like happiness. Genuine, deep
happiness.
 
But the buzz he got from smelling Stiles again, and the high from spending time
with his pack allowed him to just be in a way he hadn’t in years.
 
The man at the counter calling out his order brutally reminded him of reality,
but Derek felt lighter than he had since Stiles left, and, honestly, since
Laura was killed. It was if a weight had been removed from his chest, and the
sensation made Derek feel giddy.
 
When the man handed him his multitude of boxes and bags, all Derek got was a
slightly confused look before the guy moved on to the next customer. That was
why Derek loved college students in this town. They had already seen so much
weird and fantastical shit that a lone guy ordering 15 pizzas, 7 garlic breads,
10 bags of chips and 8 portions of chicken pieces was barely worth the energy
to notice, let alone question. It made Derek’s life much easier, that was for
sure.
 
At the pay-area Derek somehow managed to pull out his wallet, and he barely
blinked at the price. He left a generous tip before leaving the shop, his car
keys pressing tightly into the palm of his hand.
 
It was at times like these that werewolf strength became more useful for
everyday things, rather than just ripping guys’ body parts of when they cross
you. Not that that couldn’t be fun too.
 
With a muffled groan that was only mostly exaggerated, Derek dumped the junk
food in the passenger side seat and silently prayed it wouldn’t fall over while
he was driving. The last thing he needed was to have to scrape pizza of the
floor of his Camaro.
 
Again.
 
Derek sighed once, before turning the key in the ignition. It might be a lot of
work, but Derek wouldn’t give up his pack for the world.
 
And, now that Stiles was back and stronger than ever, Derek had no intention of
giving him up either.
 
He caught himself humming as he drove back to the house. For the first time in
a long while, things didn’t seem so bleak to him. It was a good feeling.
 
He recognised the song he was humming as ‘Radioactive’ by Imagine Dragons. So
sue him, Erica liked listening to pop music and sometimes he found himself
liking the songs.
 
He was still humming as he pulled up to the Hale house. Movement in the window
caught his eye, and Derek supressed a groan. Damn Erica and her wolf hearing.
She was never going to let him hear the end of this.
 
Derek wouldn’t have it any other way.
Chapter End Notes
     So yeah, this chapter came out a lot different then I thought it
     would. Originally it was supposed to be a fight with the pixies, but
     instead, this happened. My brain does weird things.
     Mention of Stiles saving someone's life, Derek feeling guilty then
     happy, and pizza is purchased with Derek's funds that are insanely
     big (I'm going to go right ahead and just say Derek is rich.
     Apologies for all uncanon-ness). Translations from English to Latin
     were found online (NOT Google Translate, I learned my lesson before)
     but if anybody can speak Latin feel free to correct me if it's wrong!
     English translation here;
     I come in peace.
     What?
     Huh, I guess pixies don't get pop culture references. What I meant
     was, I am not here to fight you.
     Why are you here?
     To apologize.
     To apologize on behalf of the local Beacon Hills pack for
     interrupting your nest.
     They were very rude. They didn't even say sorry!
     I know, and I have dealt with them. All I ask is that you cease this
     vendetta, and, in return, I will grant you a spell of your choice as
     long as it does not cause harm to any other living creature.
     We agree.
     ...
     But we have one question.
     What?
     Who are you?
     I am known as the Red Hood.
     You are the one who helped our queen!
     Yes, that was me.
     No payment is necessary, and, on behalf of our tribe and our queen we
     gift you with this.
     Thank you. But a promise is a promise. I am at your request.
     Very well, and thank you.
     Farewell.
     Finally... the response to this story has been FREAKING AMAZING. I
     want to point out that the original end notes I just deleted had a
     lot more exclamation points and capital letters. Seriously, though,
     thank you so much to everyone who read this story, bookmarked it,
     gave it kudos, or commented. It really helps me keep writing, and I
     love hearing what you all think of it!
     Once again, this fic is unbeta'd, so any and all mistakes are my own.
     Next chapter will have the return to school, senior year, and Stiles
     is going to wreck peoples' heads! Literally, cannot wait to write it.
     Classes begin again Tuesday week, so I don't know if I will be able
     to write as often, or as long, chapters (currently trying to keep
     them to 6,000+), but I'm still going to try and get them out at least
     once a week.
     Thank you all for your support, and hope you liked this chapter!
     Laters!
***** I've said it before and I'll say it again. High school sucks. I mean, I'm
an all powerful mage that battles demons and monsters, shouldn't that at least
get me out of Harris' classes? Anybody? No? Of course, you choose now to keep
quiet. Typical. *****
Chapter Summary
     Danny is secretly super observant, Stiles and the pack have the first
     day of Senior Year, Stiles gets angry and then revenge, and Derek
     decides the best way to deal with Stiles' return is anger. Yeah, like
     that'll end well.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Danny was looking forward to senior year. He was finally going to be 18, which
had been a long, long time in coming. The lacrosse team last year had gotten to
the finals, and this year Danny figured they actually had a pretty good chance
of winning, especially if Mc Call and Lahey got their act together.
He had passed all his tests last year with flying colours, even the subjects he
hated, so that had been cool.
He had looked into various colleges and found a few that offered brilliant IT
courses, and had signed up for consideration for a scholarship.
He had money as well, not a lot, but his summer job of helping people with
their electronics and hacking onto the school database went way, way better
than he thought it would.
It hadn’t been strictly speaking illegal, but hey, there was decent money
involved.
Plus, his asshole of an ex had been dumped by the guy he had been cheating on
him with. Brutally, if Facebook was anything to go by. And that had put him in
a really good mood.
So all in all, Danny was expecting senior year at Beacon Hills to be a little
boring, and little slow, nothing really interesting or exceptional happening,
not like Sophomore Year when there were all those attacks and deaths in the
town.
So of course, he had to go and jinx it.
His homeroom teacher this year was, to his dismay, Mr. Harris, who was still as
much of a dick as he had been the year before, and the year before that, and
probably every year since he became a teacher.
The first five minutes of class went by insanely slowly, with the usual back-
to-school bustle and teacher having trouble controlling the class, but Danny
prided himself on noticing things others didn’t. Like how Scott refused to look
anyone in the eye, and Lydia was sitting by Jackson but glaring steadily at the
rest of their group.
And with school started again, and with no job to distract him, Danny
remembered how last year at the beginning of the semester a seemingly random
bunch of people had become a group.
There was Lydia, and Jackson, his best friend who had changed a scary amount,
Scott Mc Call, the up and coming Lacrosse champion who was, frankly, one of the
weirdest people Danny knew which was saying something, and Allison Argent, the
still-kind-of-new-girl-even-after-two-years that was practically attached at
the hip with Scott.
Plus, there was Erica, the girl with epilepsy that one day came into school
looking and acting nothing she had, Boyd, who everyone knew as the loner guy
who sat alone but helped them win the lacrosse game that one time, and Isaac,
the quiet kid who played lacrosse and who had been arrested under suspicion for
killing his father, which Danny thought a little extreme.
Before Isaac had come back to school as one of the leather brigade. One of
Derek Hale’s, who was unfairly hot even with his t-shirt on and when Stiles
tried to convince him his name was ‘Miguel’, lap dogs.
The entire circle of unlikely friends had all come back to school subdued, and
it had only taken Danny a few classes to realise there was someone missing.
Stiles.
It was strange, really, but by end of the first week of their Junior Year all
anybody had been able to talk about was Stiles’ absence. For someone that
hadn’t hung around with too many people, he was surprisingly well known.
Stiles hadn’t shown up for the whole year, but the entire group, all of the
people who he had hung out with, had been eerily silent in and about his
absence. The rumours went from mundane, that a member of his family had fallen
ill and he had gone to help them recover (even though everyone, or maybe just
Danny, knew that Stiles' had no living relatives except for his dad and people
he hadn't spoken to his entire life), to the fantastical, that Stiles had
gotten arrested for doing drugs and sent to juvie (which was flat out
ridiculous because Stiles acted high already without the need for chemicals,
but Danny could sort of see where the confusion lay) to the plain insane, which
involved some plt about aliens and government conspiracies.
Danny was pretty sure Greenberg had started that one. But he wouldn't put in
past Stiles to end up in that situation. He had a knack for it from what Danny
remembered.
So, of course, taking all of that into account, it took Danny two glances to
fully understand what he was seeing when Stiles Stilinski walked into his
homeroom.
It was a shock, seeing him again. Danny had all but forgotten how he used to
look, but in the face of him then he found it hard to forget.
He was there, but not. It wasn’t the same Stiles that left Beacon Hills
sophomore year, that was for sure.
His hair was longer, falling loose over his forehead, in that casual way like
he had just raked his fingers through it, or as if he had forgotten to brush it
once getting out of bed. He was wearing form fitting black jeans, paired with a
blood red long sleeved top and a black leather jacket that fell to just above
his hips. Danny was mature enough to admit that he looked hot. And Danny had
never imagined he would apply that word to Stiles Stilinski, but there they
were.
On his neck Danny could just make out stretching tendrils in black ink that
spread all the way down to his wrists if the black lines there were any
indication.
Under his shirt, for anyone to see, bunched tight muscles that rivalled
anything you could see in the boys’ locker room. But it wasn't the sort of
muscles people got from working out. Stiles was leaner, muscles that were put
into actual use on a daily basis. He looked like he could out-strengthen
everybody on the lacrosse team, and that was very hard to do.
He looked like another one of Derek’s, where someone randomly comes back into
school looking like the bad-ass version of themselves, but judging by the mixed
surprised and ecstatic faces on his old group apart from, surprisingly, Lydia
and Jackson, and the almost derisive way Stiles glanced over his former
friends, Danny thought otherwise.
But by far the biggest difference was his attitude. Stiles had never been one
for subtlety or embarrassment, not even when logic or high school dictated he
should, but now he exuded confidence, borderline arrogance, and an exciting
danger that made everybody in the room catch their breath.
He was as different from the old Stiles as night and day, but the fact that
everyone in the class was promptly ignored except for Lydia, who smiled in
response to Stiles’ gentle smile aimed at her, and Jackson, who got a smirk
that could rival Jackson’s own, and himself, who was quickly at the receiving
end of a contemplative look that put him on edge, made everything that much
more strange.
Danny tried not to squirm in his seat at the intense gaze, and was grateful,
for once, when Mr Harris drew Stiles’ too focused gaze to the front of the
room.
“Mr. Stilinski!”
Stiles turned a lazy gaze over to the desk where Harris sat, already making his
way to the back of the room and sitting down, bag slung casually over one
shoulder.
“’S’up?” Even his voice was different, low and husky, hauntingly musical, like
you could hear it echo through your head. It was borderline hypnotic, weaving a
careful trance over everyone who heard him speak. Danny had to shake his head a
few times to clear it, feeling vaguely punch drunk for no discernible reason.
If the befuddled expressions on his classmates' faces were anything to go by,
they were as affected by Stiles' voice as he was.
Stiles lifted his feet up onto the desk he was sitting at, his hands behind his
head, the picture of relaxed. In front of him, Danny could hear the hushed
voices of Scott, Isaac and Allison, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of what
they were saying.
“What’s up is that you have been missing from my classes for over a year and
you cannot just walk into my classroom and assume I will not notice!”
Stiles didn’t look at all bothered, instead just gesturing with one hand to the
laptop on the desk as he tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, as if it
had suddenly developed something fascinating that was worthy of his complete
attention. “Of course not, Sir.” And was it only Danny or did that sound more
like mocking than anything else?
“But you’ll find, if you look closely, that the reason for my absence has been
taken care of and I am, in fact, signed into the required classes. So I’m
afraid your objections to me being here aren’t valid objections. Who could have
known?”
Mr Harris looked like he had just choked on a lemon, before he scowled at the
entire class.
“It says here family trouble.” He said to Stiles, his glasses slipping down his
face from the force of his frown.
Stiles smirked at him once, before pulling his feet down from the desk and
slouching back in his seat.
“Of a sort.” Was all he said, and Harris seemed to really hate that answer if
the way he glared at Stiles was any indication. Danny was watching the
encounter with probably too much amusement, but this was Beacon Hills. Nothing
exciting had happened in over a year.
Actually, come to think of it, nothing exciting had happened since Stiles left.
That seemed like too much of a coincidence to just ignore.
“Well, Mr. Stilinski, where have you been then?”
Almost by accident, unconsciously, the entire class leaned forward to hear,
because this Stiles was apparently worthy of their attention.
Stiles himself leaned forward, eyes alight, face suddenly engaged in his
surroundings.
“You want to know?” His voice was quiet, calm, but deadly. It made Danny want
to flinch back, because this Stiles? This Stiles seemed like he could kill
everyone in the room with no more than a thought, and still smile sweetly at
whoever survived.
Stiles’ fingers pressed against each other as if in prayer, fingertips barely
grazing as he held his hands suspended in the air, but his smirk widened in the
face of everybody’s interest.
His voice became dark and held an almost bedroom quality that was completely
inappropriate for a classroom, but that held everyone's attention, even those
who appeared to be avoiding blatantly listening in, his eyes almost glowing a
rich, golden hazel that made Danny double take because that wasn’t normal,
wasn’t human.
“I was gone, because of something that is completely out of your understanding.
Now, if you don’t mind, I really would appreciate it if you all minded your own
business.”
Danny couldn’t help it, he laughed. He regretted it an instant later, because
it drew everyone’s attention to him. Danny didn’t mind being the centre of
attention usually, but it felt somehow loaded in that moment.
He wasn’t the only one who laughed, however. A couple of people copied him a
second later, watching the interaction between the kid that looked like Stiles
but acted like someone completely different, and the people he used to be
inseparable from that all looked stricken, because it was clear to anyone in
the room with a brain that that last comment had been aimed at them no matter
who Stiles had been watching. Plus, Harris, who was generally considered as an
all-round dick was finally being treated how he treated students.
A few seats away from him, Stiles turned and grinned at him. In the row in
front, Scott, Boyd, Erica and Allison all turned to him but left their
unblinking eyes on Stiles. The act-in-unison thing was freaky.
Mr Harris thumped a hand down on the desk in front of him to get everybody’s
attention back to the front of the classroom, before pointing one finger at
Stiles, who was still nonchalantly smiling with one side of his mouth.
“Detention for tardiness, Mr Stilinski. You can’t come into my class late and
then disrupt the other students.”
Stiles shrugged one shoulder, and it occurred to Danny then that Stiles
literally did not care. It wasn’t like when someone faked it, when they
rebelled but really wanted approval, this was different.
Danny suddenly got the feeling that it didn’t matter what they threatened
Stiles with, he would just do whatever he wanted. There was none of that fear,
none of that lingering sense that there was a line he wouldn’t cross. This
Stiles was unpredictable, would do anything.
Harris seemed to see it too, because he quickly changed the subject back to
school, and avoided Stiles’ eyes for the rest for the class.
Within an hour after that, it seemed that practically the whole school knew of
Stiles’ return, and how he was basically a different guy.
It wasn’t until lunchtime that Danny noticed something weird, well, weirder.
All the people Stiles used to associate with, all of the group, looked, the
word wretched came to mind.
They looked like they had just been told someone died.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later that Danny discovered that none of them
were anywhere to be found.
And, because he was a nosy bastard at the best of times, Danny spent a good ten
minutes wandering around the school looking for them.
He found Jackson pretty quickly, him and Lydia sitting quietly side by side in
an abandoned classroom, and Danny very quickly and gently shut the door behind
him.
He didn’t really want to intrude on someone else’s private moment, even for the
sake of satisfying his curiosity.
He was five minutes away from just calling it quits and heading back down to
the cafeteria when the bang of a door down the hall caught his attention.
He turned the corner just in time to see Stiles storm out of a classroom, his
footsteps loud and imposing in the empty hallway.
He was followed after a few moments by the rest of the group, all of them
looking completely devastated and damp eyed.
Danny didn’t know what Stiles had said to get that reaction from them, and
judging by Stiles’ venomous glare to Scott when they passed each other in the
hallway on the way to their next class after lunch, he shouldn’t want to.
Apart from the drama that was Stiles' return, nothing interesting at all
happened the entire day. They go slightly more respect from the teachers for
being Seniors, maybe, and the Freshman looked absolutely terrified of them
which was funny to see, but it felt like just another day.
It happened then at the end of the day, the jinx factor that he was expecting
that would make this year abnormal. Stiles came up behind him and gently took
him by the arm.
“Danny!” He exclaimed, and Danny got a sudden burst of déjà vu. That same tone
of voice, as if saying something louder and in a higher pitch made people more
willing to listen, had gotten him into a lot of trouble before.
Stiles continued, his eyes fever bright with a decidedly insane edge to them,
the intensity of his gaze so different than it used to be. The grin on his face
looked borderline homicidal, dosed with a fair amount of plotting revenge.
There was absolutely no reason why that should have made Danny suddenly eager
for something fun and hopefully dangerous to do. But it did.
For a Sheriff’s son, Stiles could be a really bad influence.
“Just the guy I wanted to see…”
 
…
 
Stiles was fucking pissed as hell, all right? He hadn’t wanted to come back to
school, had quite enjoyed his extended vacation for the last year, thank you
very much.
But his dad had asked him, and Stiles still felt so guilty from leaving and
lying to him that he had folded like a house of cards and agreed to go, even
though he couldn’t learn anything he didn’t already know.
Then that asshole Harris had tried to pull his usual shit. Stiles was tired,
and angry, and all grown up, and if Harris wanted to be a sonofabitch then he
could damn well try it on someone else, because there was no way he was going
to let anyone talk to him like that. Not again.
The idea of actually attending the detention was laughable, after that.
So, of course, the pack had to try and corner him at lunch when Stiles was
quite happy to continue to pretend they didn’t exist in the same time zone, let
alone the same school.
They got him into an empty classroom, and their pleading looks just made him
want to laugh. But then Scott had to slam him into a wall. Okay, now he was
mad.
Stiles let him for the simple reason that he didn’t want any of the pack to
find out how strong he was until he wanted them to, and because there were
other methods to use before things got physical.
“Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me.” He growled at Scott, punctuating each word with a
magic jab that was the equivalent of a punch.
Scott stumbled backwards, his face a mask of shock that for once, for fucking
once, Stiles had actually stood up for himself.
Well, his look wasn’t the only thing that had changed.
When Stiles glanced around at the gathered people, he realised that the only
one who wasn’t there was Jackson, and wasn’t that ironic? That his least
favourite person had quickly become the only person he could trust not to try
and corner him in an empty classroom the moment of his return.
Well, if they thought he was just going to sit there and listen to their shit,
they could shove it like Harris had to.
“You don’t have the fucking right to touch me.” Stiles said to him, upper lip
curled because this was Scott, and if he hadn’t cared a year ago why on earth
would he care now? Actually, why the hell should Stiles care? His so called
best friend who had barely even been a friend in the months before he left, let
alone the brother he used to be.
So Scott could suck it up and face the fact that he screwed up. Big time.
They were all watching him with wide eyes, and Stiles could practically feel
them judging him. Well they could all go fuck themselves for all he cared.
“Stiles…” That was Allison, always the voice of reason, trying to convince him
that he was overreacting. Stiles called bullshit.
Stiles stood up dead straight, forcing a smirk on his face, glaring them hard
in the eye until they submitted and turned their eyes to the floor.
When he spoke, he knew from experience it came out like barbs, knew that if he
emphasized his words just this way it made everything sound like a threat.
“I don’t care about whatever bullshit excuse you all have prepared. I really
don’t. I don’t give a fuck that I’m not in the pack, don’t care that you all
decided since I was human I wasn’t good enough, or that you had all just gotten
sick of me, or whatever bull crap excuse you want me to believe. There is
literally nothing you could say to make everything all right. So save your
fucking breath, and go find someone else to bother who actually gives a damn
what you have to say.”
Scott had the absolute balls to look hurt by this, like Stiles wasn’t the one
who was abandoned, like he was the one who had to sit through four fucking
months of nightmares before eventually just drugging himself to sleep when it
became completely unavoidable.
And Stiles just… broke.
He slammed a fist into the side of Scott’s face, uncaring that he was showing
just how strong he’d become when it didn’t immediately heal, not caring that
they were all watching him with bated breath for his next move.
He grabbed Scott by the front of his shirt and pushed him against the wall,
positions reversed, his voice low so that only those nearest could hear it.
“No, Scott. You don’t get to look fucking wounded. You don’t have the right to
look at me like I’m the one in the wrong here. You didn’t care when Gerard beat
the ever loving shit out of me to get to you, didn’t notice the fact that I
flinched whenever a light flickered, didn’t notice that I had been captured
again by hunters until I was so broken I ended up in a freaking coma, because
you,” And there he jabbed one finger into Scott’s chest, anger overpowering
everything in his need to make Scott feel even a pinch of the pain he had felt
for so long, “You were too busy pissing on your territory with Derek to notice.
And when I needed you most, when I had nightmares every. Damn. Night. Of
drowning, of Gerard, of my dad being killed because I was too invested in
keeping your fucking secret, and everyone dying because I wasn’t strong enough,
you weren't there. And the nightmares kept coming, because I didn’t have
powers, or supernatural strength, or advanced healing, I was just human, and
somehow the universe fucked up enough to leave me responsible. To leave me with
a bunch of people who obviously didn’t care enough about me when I cared too
much about them. Who used me for research, for information, but who couldn’t
even care enough about me to show one second of gratitude, who didn’t respect
me enough to trust that I could actually take care of myself. And then, when I
was tortured for information I didn’t have because YOU kept me out of the loop,
because YOU decided with no prior evidence that I wasn’t good enough to know
what was going on, to know what could kill me, or someone I loved, I had to
find my own fucking way out. My own way to survive. And I still didn’t tell
them anything I knew. Not one word, because I was so sure, so certain that
someone would show up to help me, someone would either rescue me or put me out
of my misery. But no one did. No one noticed I was gone until it was
practically too late, until I had broken bones and an even more broken spirit.
And I crawled out of the building I lit in flames, because I somehow managed to
think through my delirium and light those bastards on fire. And where were you?
Where were the pack? Where were the people I trusted to get me out of there?!
You didn’t come to the hospital where I was practically dead, not once, not
even to tell me that ‘hey, everybody survived’, and I spent two whole fucking
weeks trapped in my own head, unable to move a finger, thinking that I held out
for nothing. That someone had died even though I didn’t say anything. And,
finally, finally, after being buried in my own grief and guilt, thinking that
maybe you had all been killed, I get out, only to have to deal with your shit,
with the fact that you managed, again, to piss off someone stronger than you
because you just couldn’t admit you were wrong. And I didn’t even get an
apology. Ten years, Scott. Ten years of friendship down the drain because you
were too wrapped up in all your shit to realise that maybe I was broken too. To
realise that there was stuff going on without you involved, that maybe the
human might have been considered the easiest target and used because of it. To
understand that you weren’t the only one with scars, and that the rest of us
don’t have your ability to heal. So, no. You don’t get to play the victim here.
This is all. On. You.”
Stiles released him then, and turned to face the rest of the pack, who were
watching him with various expressions of astonishment, crippling guilt and even
nausea.
Good, Stiles thought viciously, they deserve to feel guilty.
And he was just about to leave, had managed to pull himself together enough to
go, but Allison had to step forward and try and grab is arm. And whatever
control he had was lost in that second.
He gripped her arm, preventing her from reaching for the weapon that was
strapped to her thigh. “Allison.” She froze at the sound of her name, and
looked at him like he was going to take a bite out of her. He was, just not
physically. “The huntress. The Juliet to Scott’s Romeo. The person who just
couldn’t accept that there were other people who needed help too. Did you know
your grandfather beat me? Did you know, when he was punching me downstairs,
that it was happening? That Erica and Boyd were being tortured all because of
what they were? Did you even care? You pretend to be so innocent, so pure, but
when the fight’s on you are out there with the rest of them, the rest of the
people soaked in blood, with no thought to those caught helpless in the
crossfire. Someone points a target out to you and you have no problem shooting.
That, at least, I can respect. You do what needs to be done to keep your family
safe. But what about everybody else’s family? For every single person that you
kill, you are hurting their loved ones, their friends. Every single person that
winds up with an arrow where there shouldn’t be had someone who will die every
day for the rest of their lives along with them. You, who should’ve known what
it feels like to be a human in a pack of wolves, who should’ve been the first
to know that not all humans are helpless creatures that need saving. So, don’t
try and stop me from leaving when I want to leave. Remember that every time you
choose to slip away, to let your dark side out, you are not the only one who
feels the consequences. You’re not the only one who can get hurt.”
Stiles dropped her arm like it scalded him then, and, because he was still
burning with energy that needed to be used up, he turned to Erica, Boyd and
Isaac.
“Don’t look at me like I’m the one who screwed up, Erica. Don’t even think of
getting indignant. You were there. I saw you flinching and looking away for
every time his fist touched my face. But what do you do? You take the first
available chance, and you fucking run. You run, and wind up caught by the
Alphas, and no one even mentions the fact that we were all broken long before
they came along. You all blame them, for everything that happened, but here’s
the thing. You weren’t the one who was tortured for being human. None of you
were the ones who had to live through their special brand of psychosis. And
you, you knew. You heard my nightmares every night, you saw the debilitating
panic attacks that rendered me in tears, screaming. You were right there,
metres away, when the hunters dragged me by my wrists and beat me over the head
with a baseball bat. And you ran. You didn’t stop by to my hospital room,
didn’t think to tell me that you were still alive, didn’t have the guts to be
there when I woke up, choking on air. You think you had it bad with Gerard? You
didn’t have to live through two weeks being unable to move, but crying, fucking
screaming on the inside because there was only the thought that everyone worth
anything to you was dead, had been killed because you just couldn’t help them.
So, just don’t. You might be Catwoman, but I am not your Batman.”
His words were coming through gritted teeth now, forced out by over a year of
anger and pain. His voice was ice, and ashes, and death, and everything bad
that had happened to him and everybody he loved. His eyes flicked to Boyd then,
and he bitterly remembered the first time Boyd had opened up to him. Looked
like that hadn't lasted.
“I trusted you, Boyd. God, I don’t even know why, but I did. And I would have
done anything, anything, to keep any of the pack safe. I suffered through a
week of torture by the hunters, and unspeakable things from the Alphas, and so
many different types of suffering from so many different people. From Derek,
from Peter, from Jackson, from Kate, from Gerard, from Matt, from all the
supernatural shit that decides this town is worth their time. I mean, how could
any of you possibly think I wasn’t strong enough to be in the pack? You were
there too. You were watching as I was used as a sign, as a messenger. You were
there as I tried to save you only to get beaten down. But it turned out the
only two people who knew I had been there in the first place, knew of Gerard
and what he was capable of, ran off the second they got a chance. And then came
the Alphas, and the rescue, and somehow me getting myself captured to be used
as a message. Again. I helped you, I taught you, I learned to see you for what
you did and not what you said. I saw you as friend, and a pack mate, and then
you decide to ignore all the evidence to the contrary, everything I had lived
through, and believe me weak anyway, forgetting that I had been through more
shit than you, been hurt more that you could ever think to have a nightmare
about. Turns out my trust was misplaced. I hope having people to sit with at
lunch was worth it.”
Stiles didn’t even feel that angry anymore, just overwhelming tiredness and a
bone deep weariness that came from having to deal with all this shit on top of
an already crappy day.
He faced Isaac and huffed out a bitter laugh.
“Isaac. The pack puppy. The one who somehow always seems to be vulnerable. I
helped you. I trained you. I taught you everything I could, that a human could.
I let you get it all out, all the stuff buried inside about your father. We
became the unlikeliest of friends, but somehow it worked. I was the one who you
could call during a nightmare, the one you trusted to be there as quickly as
physically possible to see you fall apart at the seams, and carefully sew you
back together. Yet still, when I needed you, when I needed somebody that I
could trust, you weren’t there. No one was there. You know the hunters had a
special interest in you? The boy with the abusive father, Derek’s protégé,
second only to me when connecting everybody together. Yeah, they had this
special little trick for whenever they wanted information about you, in
particular. It involved a knife, a coin, and the option of help, of an ending,
that I never gave in to, because I refused to tell them anything. I was ready
to die, and they were ready to let me, and all I had to tell them was where to
find you and all your weaknesses. You were going to be their next target. But I
couldn’t put anybody through what I was going through, let alone a friend, so I
said Nothing. Not one damn word. But you, you stuck around for Scott, and I can
admire that, respect that out of all the people to cling to you picked him. But
what I can’t accept, what I find, and found, so hard to understand, was that I
was of just as much of use to you as the rest of them. I was means to an end,
if that. And that hurt. Because out of the whole pack, out of everybody, I
guess I expected you to understand. To know how much I needed just one word,
one confirmation when I was lying prone in that hospital bed that I hadn’t been
tortured for nothing, that you were all still alive. But you go ahead and
follow the pack’s lead, follow Derek’s lead. And I find that hard to forgive.”
Stiles took a step back then, drained of everything but the need to leave,
because they were all staring at him, equal parts horror and devastation
crossing their features as they understood, probably for the first time, that
Stiles wasn’t just going to forgive them.
Couldn’t just forget that their stubbornness and idiocy had driven him from
Beacon Hills in the first place. He didn't know if he would ever be able to.
“None of you have any right to judge me or my actions. And you can tell Derek
fucking Hale that I said that, because I sure as hell won’t. I’m here until I
get the boundary line back up to protect my town and my dad, and until then you
stay the fuck out of my way of I swear I will hurt you beyond all belief. Just
stay the fuck away from me. And don’t even bother trying to convince me that
kicking me out was for my own good. The only good that came from this was
because of me, because I left and learned to see myself as more than any of you
ever did. You don’t get to take the credit for that.”
And with that Stiles stormed out of the class, unable to stay there a second
longer. He had said everything he needed to say, and that was that.
If they came near him again he would just zap their asses with enough magic to
give them a few broken bones. They would heal.
Probably.
His magic wound itself around his body, comforting him in ways he hadn’t even
known existed before he could feel his magic. It took a few beats of his heart
where he savoured the anger, tasted its remains on his tongue, before he could
let it go.
He caught sight of Danny at the edge of the hall, and a brilliant idea began to
sneak its way inside his head. Like all his best ideas, that one came
completely out of nowhere.
Sometimes, Stiles loved his brain.
 
…
 
For the pack, the next few days after the pixie fiasco were a rush of trying
not to shift uncontrollably, trying, in vain, to catch either Stiles or Lydia
on their own, and everybody but Derek preparing for senior year. It was a
stressful few days, to say the least.
Stiles had come back to Beacon Hills on a Wednesday, so by Monday Derek hadn’t
seen or heard from Stiles in over four days. That was more than 96 hours.
If it wasn’t for sporadic, vague comments from Jackson, and accidently catching
Stiles’ scent around town, Derek would have been inclined to think he had
already left.
Which was why he was surprised when, within a half an hour of bidding the pack
goodbye so they could attend school (which Derek still saw as superfluous for a
pack of werewolves with bigger issues to worry about), he got five separate
text messages from all of his Betas informing him in various terms that Stiles
had apparently shown up to school as if he hadn’t, according to Scott,
‘completely vanished for over a year without leaving a note with anyone like
some sort of time traveller, or something’. Scott didn’t really have a way with
words.
But what really got his attention was, within minutes of receiving a text from
Scott saying they were going to try and get Stiles’ forgiveness, turning his
phone on to find several missed phone calls and over twenty texts.
The texts got increasingly incoherent in the short span of ten minutes, and
Derek gathered pretty quickly that something must have gone very, very wrong.
Call it intuition, but really all it was reading Boyd’s text that said ‘I think
I might get sick.’
Boyd was the only member of the pack except for Allison who used whole words
while texting. It was a nice change from Scott’s ‘Stls is nvr goin 2 4gve us’.
Derek’s first thought, interestingly enough, when he discovered the abundance
of failed communication was that his entire pack had been kidnapped. It really
went a long way to showing what their lives had been like. But that thought
went out of the window as soon as he began reading the texts.
Apparently confronting Stiles hadn’t gone so good. To be honest, Derek hadn’t
really expected it to.
But then he got the first waves of guilt and pain and loss and desperation
through the bond, overpowering and stronger than it had ever been, and it
turned out that he hadn’t expected it to be that bad. Couldn’t have dreamed it
would hurt that much.
He was in debilitating pain for a few agonising minutes, having fallen to the
ground when it first happened. But Derek had been in a lot of pain in his life,
and he managed to pull himself to the kitchen through five people’s worth of
emotions. Hitting himself over the head with a frying pan seemed the lesser of
two evils after that. The brief splash of physical plain yanked his focus back
to his own consciousness, which was a relief to say the very least.
Unfortunately the frying pan had a dent in it. If Stiles were there he would
have undoubtedly made some inappropriate comment about big heads and
stubbornness.
But Stiles wasn’t there. Hadn’t been for over a year. And for the first time it
occurred to Derek that maybe what they had done was inexcusable, unforgivable.
That maybe Stiles wasn’t going to just forget it had ever happened.
The still echoing waves of pain and loss and breath taking guilt that his pack
felt only cemented his fear that Stiles was never going to forgive them.
That maybe this screw up wasn’t fixable. The empty place in the back bond where
Stiles and Lydia should have been throbbed brutally at his psyche. His wolf
howled at him to be let out, to have the ability to tear someone to pieces. But
Derek couldn’t afford to let go. Could never afford it, and he knew it.
Derek somehow managed to make it through the rest of the day on his own, but
within literally seconds of the pack pulling up he was scrambling outside in an
undignified manner, because last he heard most if not all of them were kind of
falling apart.
They looked it too. Isaac looked more vulnerable than he had been since his
father died, head cowed and fists clenched at his side. Boyd was less of a
statue than he had ever been, his face brutally honest in a way Derek had never
seen except in the mirror right after he found out Peter killed Laura, cut open
and raw from emotions too powerful to keep locked up. Erica looked like she was
going to puke, red lined eyes tearing up and being wiped carelessly in a
repetitive motion, over and over. Allison looked downright homicidal, for
Stiles or for something evil to shoot full of arrows Derek didn’t know, but he
was beyond glad that the pack had forced a ‘no weapons bigger than your arm’
policy at school. Allison could still kill someone with the knife Derek knew
she hid in her boot, but it was marginally better than a crossbow.
Scott looked the worst out of all of them, if how depressed and devastated
someone looked could be turned into a competition, with wide teary eyes and an
expression on his face Derek associated with being stabbed through the chest
repeatedly.
A feeling Derek was oh too familiar with.
He not only looked like someone had kicked his puppy, but also stole, brutally
murdered, stuffed, disrespected and then waved in front of his face. It was
only slightly worse than Allison’s murderous tendencies. It made a sick sort of
sense. After all, he had been Stiles' est friend, had known him longer than
everybody else, had spent enough time with him that when Derek first met the
two their scents were intermingled, overlapping.
They stumbled inside, barely avoiding breaking themselves or someone else with
their detached clumsiness, heads hanging low and wretched.
They looked, in that moment, like the bunch of broken teenagers they really
were, even Scott, arguably the least damaged of them.
It was somehow left to Derek as the adult and Alpha to comfort them, and
somewhere in the universe, Derek was sure, someone was laughing at him.
Because this was Derek. Derek Hale. The last even partially sane member of his
family. In charge of a bunch of kids, who, no matter how many bad guys they
fought or injuries they sustained, were just that. Kids.
Derek could hardly have been depended on to comfort anyone, had dealt with his
own baggage by shoving it down until it morphed into a revenge driven mind and
slightly suicidal tendencies.
Derek was not the person to come to when you needed help, let alone when you
needed someone to comfort you.
Yet there they were. Five people who actually needed him, for once, to do it
right. It was a scary responsibility. The irony that it was Stiles who had the
ability to do that, Stiles who with one word could comfort anyone, but had
still caused this in the pack all because they had thought it best Stiles stay
away for his own protection was a bitter taste in his mouth.
And Derek found himself getting angry. Couldn’t Stiles see, even for a moment,
that they had his best interests at heart? They only wanted to protect him!
Which they wouldn’t even have to do if he could just keep himself safe. Rather
than running head first into whatever danger they faced, without thought for
himself.
It wasn’t that hard to stop and think!
Derek knew he was being unfair, and narrow minded even as he mentally ranted
on, but seeing his pack in this condition because Stiles couldn’t grow up and
act mature made him so angry his claws unsheathed themselves.
It took him a few minutes of long deep breaths before he could get it under
control.
The pack had taken to the couches, curled up on top of each other as if they
needed the support, and Derek felt that same flash of uncontrollable anger.
Derek sat down cautiously on the other end of the couch, instincts screaming at
him to help, to provide for his pack, but he was at a loss.
And that was very hard to admit.
He tentatively stretched one hand out and let it rest on Isaac’s shoulder,
visible under the pile of bodies all seeking reassurance. A tension-filled sigh
could be heard as it was released, and soon after the pack unfurled from where
they had been bundled together.
Derek left his hand on Isaac’s shoulder, and reached his other to leave it on
Erica’s knee. Comfort through touch. A natural wolf instinct, and one even
Derek, emotionally constipated as he was, could provide.
They sat like that in silence for the better part of ten minutes, just
breathing in the same air and keeping close physical contact the whole time.
Derek couldn’t help but feel angry again at Stiles for doing this in the first
place. Couldn’t he just feel grateful that they had tried to help him? That
they had cared enough to separate themselves from him even though it hurt?
But, no, he couldn’t. Had to go and hurt his pack. Thinking back over that
sentence, Derek couldn’t be sure whether he meant his own pack, or Stiles’.
They would have sat like that for longer, but a sudden surge of scent outside
forcefully dragged Derek’s attention. He knew that scent, but couldn’t quiet
identify it…
Next thing Derek knew, Scott was at the door, his face a mask of shock and a
small amount of horror. “Danny?!” He exclaimed, and when the boy pushed himself
into the room it took a few seconds for the name and face to register.
“So,” Danny began, fidgeting lightly under the combined scrutiny of five
werewolves and a hunter. He continued, pausing mid-way to emphasize the fact
that he was quoting. “All I know is Stiles telling me ‘Hey, Danny, werewolves
are real, Scott was bitten two years ago’, which frankly explains everything so
much better than just a sudden growth spurt, ‘Then Jackson, then Isaac, Erica
and Boyd. They all share a pack with Allison, who’s a werewolf hunter, don’t
even get me started on the complexities of that, and fight supernatural crime.
I think it’s time you were brought into the fold, because seriously, dude, the
things you can do with a computer are amazing and they could really use your
help’.”
Danny looked around at them somewhat helplessly, as if both contemplating the
meaning of Stiles’ statement and trying to convey his complete lack of
understanding Stiles in general simultaneously.
All Derek could focus on was the fact that Stiles had used ‘they’ not ‘we’.
Danny suddenly stared right at him and said, “Also Stiles asked me to tell you,
and I quote, ‘If you bite him Derek I will kill you’.” Danny glanced at them
all from the corner of his eye. “And I really want to know what that means, but
if it’s some kinky werewolf thing, don’t tell me. And from the way Stiles said
it I wouldn’t put it past him to kill you, so, and I can’t believe I’m saying
this, maybe you should do what he says.”
Derek took a deep breath in through his nose. He didn’t know what the hell
Stiles thought he was doing, telling Danny everything, but if he vouched for
him then Derek didn’t really want to get on Stiles’ bad side by killing Danny,
not that he would. Had never wanted to be on Stiles’ bad side, but somehow
always ended up there.
Derek took a second to glance around at his pack, and then back at Danny.
Jackson was going to be delighted.
And, it was true that they could use the help.
So why did Derek feel like he was just a pawn in Stiles’ plan?
Chapter End Notes
     Hey people of earth! Or maybe you're not from earth, I don't mean to
     discriminate.
     So yeah, this chapter was fun to write, because Stiles finally
     *finally* gives the pack a piece of his mind which I've been waiting
     for since Season 1, and still hasn't happened yet, sigh.
     But anyway, yeah, I decided to bring Danny into the fold because hey,
     Danny's awesome, okay?
     For the purposes of this fic everybody is the same age, as tagged
     above, because I really wanted them all in the school and Senior Year
     seemed like the perfect choice.
     My sincere apologies to everybody who likes the canon version, but
     it's not that big of a change... I don't think.
     But I digress.
     Stiles goes into vivid detail about his torture at the hands of, well
     everybody, but I think most of it is more on the emotional side of
     things? Warnings for graphic descriptions of violence, PTSD (kinda)
     and canon typical levels of violence in speech.
     Plus, I wanted Derek to get angry so that later on when he and Stiles
     hash out their issues Derek honestly believes in what he's saying.
     But don't worry! Stiles is not going to let him get away with it like
     a lot of people commenting are worrying about!
     Speaking of commenting, I want to say a huge, gigantic, offer-you-my-
     first-born THANK YOU to every single amazing person who read, gave
     kudos, bookmarked, subscribed or commented. Anybody will tell you how
     much easier that makes it to keep writing.
     If you can't already tell, I'm terrible at the notes part of things
     so if I missed anything that needs a mention drop a comment and I'll
     put it in!
     A final thank you, and now I have to go get something to eat before I
     decide to just screw it and order pizza. Not that I don't like pizza
     (I really, really do), but I figure it's important to have something
     relatively healthy once in a while.
     Relatively.
     So bye, and hope you enjoyed this chapter! Next one should be up in a
     few days (I want to say Thursday...?), which will have the first week
     of school and a meeting with Deaton for supplies!
     Laters!
***** We are watching reruns of old Joss Whedon shows and eating ice cream in
our underpants because that is what friends are for. Well, I'm in my underpants
but the meaning's the same. Hey, Lydia? Have you heard from Danny? Bet he's
regretting that tequila... *****
Chapter Summary
     Danny speaks wise words, Stiles both opens up and hides, and Deaton
     gets an unusual request. Plus, a little more on what Stiles is
     planning...
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Danny took to the pack like a fish to water. Or maybe a wolf to a forest. Or
virus to a computer. Or…
It was quite possible Derek was spending too much time thinking of metaphors.
But it wasn’t like anybody could prove anything.
Danny did fit in well with the pack though, acclimating as if he was born to
and getting on with everyone.
Scott and Isaac spent hours discussing Lacrosse with him, talking over the
‘finer points’ of the game. It was a language Derek just didn’t understand. To
his ever-lasting joy.
Boyd liked him because he didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with
mindless chatter, much the same reason Derek liked him.
Erica liked him because his eyes didn’t immediately zero onto her chest
whenever she wore tight clothes like most boys his age, and also because he got
on with Boyd on more than on just a casual acquaintance level, which was rare.
Allison liked Danny because it turned out he was outrageously funny, with a dry
sense of humour that she could associate with even when she was in one of her
darker moods.
He seemed like the perfect friend and pack mate.
So naturally Derek was suspicious. He knew Stiles, or at least he had, and
there was no way he had done what he did without some ulterior motive. Which
meant he just had to figure out what it was.
It was harder than he would have thought.
Danny had been unofficially part of the pack for a week, his membership
beginning as soon as Stiles left him on the porch step, before he asked the
question they had all been dreading.
“So,” he began, and every wolf in the room heard the way his heart lightly
increased its tempo, “What’s the deal with Stiles?”
The low background hum of conversation stopped, the topic they had all been
avoiding talking about finally out in the open, for better or for worse.
Derek was fairly certain it was going to be for worse.
When no one answered after a few seconds of tense silence where everyone
avoided eye contact Derek let out a breath. Of course it was going to be down
to him. He mentally cursed his pack for putting him in that position, but if
they heard him they showed no sign of it. Seemed like telepathy was still
beyond his reach.
“What do you mean?” Derek asked eventually, lips pursed. No one ever said he
was too proud to try plausible deniability. And if it could get him out of
answering the question that had been echoing through his brain for over a year,
then of course he was going to give it a shot. But no such luck, and Danny
refused to be swayed.
“You know exactly what I mean. What the hell happened to him, why are you all
avoiding talking about him, and why is it that when he sees any of you all he
does is ignore you or glare at you like you’re mortal enemies rather than
friends?”
Scott mumbled something into the coach cushion. It made Derek grimace slightly,
but since Danny didn’t possess super wolfy hearing Scott had to repeat himself
loud enough for human ears to catch. Hearing it a second time didn’t make it
easier.
“We’re not friends. Not anymore.”
Rather than look ashamed at his question Danny just swirled a hand at him to
continue. “And you’re not friends anymore because…” He prompted when no one
spoke, his face a canvas of frustration.
Isaac laughed from the couch, a bitter unhappy sound that seemed to convey
everything and nothing at the same time.
Danny nodded sagely. “That bad, huh?” He sounded so empathetic, so
understanding, that Scott couldn’t help but speak up, buoyed on by the response
they’d gotten so far.
“Yeah! I mean, Stiles was always getting himself into trouble, not thinking and
running headfirst into danger, so we thought he’d be safer if he wasn’t in the
pack, so we just-“
“Wait,” And that was Danny, his expression partway between incredulousness and
mild horror, his hand coming up as if he could force Scott’s words to stop
flowing with only his hand. “You… you forced him out of the pack?”
Scott looked defensive, in fact, everyone looked defensive, bodies tense and
prepared for a fight that wouldn’t come. Derek stayed silent in the shadows,
glad for once that he wasn’t in the thick of things.
“Well, yeah, but it was for his own protection and-“
To all of their surprise, Danny started laughing. Full on body-shaking,
hysterical laughing. “Oh my god.” He muttered to himself over and over, “Holy
shit.”
The pack shared a look of concern and uneasiness, because out of all the
scenarios they expected after telling Danny the truth, this had never been one
of them.
Finally collecting himself, and seemingly done with laughing, Danny raised his
head. Not that they could see his eyes, they all flinched back. Danny looked
furious.
“So, tell me if I have this right,” Derek got ready to intervene if Danny
accidently set one of the wolves off enough to shift. They had all been on edge
lately, and it might only take one poorly worded comment to set them off.
“Stiles, from what you have told me and what I’ve figured out myself, was the
one who figured out the existence of werewolves, the fact that you, Scott, are
one, the whole deal with Derek, how the help Erica and Boyd free from to the
Alphas, basically everything supernatural. He risked himself countless times to
save the pack, and I’m going to go right ahead and assume torture was involved
at least once, and somehow that translates into you kicking him out of the
pack? I just have one question. How stupid are you?”
Scott frowned at him, but the blush that lit his face was impossible to miss.
“You don’t get it! It was for his own good!” Scott’s exclamation was met by
vigorous nods from all pack members, leaning forward and trying to convince
Danny that what they’d done was the right thing. Their only choice.
Danny sat back into the couch, shaking his head and huffing out a laugh. He
rolled his eyes to the ceiling and clasped his hands together. “Maybe to you.
But does he know that?”
Scott stopped where he was, face frozen as what Danny said sunk in. Derek was
just about to dismiss the thought, because of course he did, but then…
Stiles wouldn’t know, would he? They had never thought to tell him. Had never
deemed it necessary. But this was Stiles. To him, everything was his fault even
if it wasn’t. Especially when it wasn’t.
For all Stiles knew they had let him go just because he was human, and humans
were generally weak. How could he have known better?
But Derek just shook his head. Obviously Stiles knew. They had been pack for
ages before he left, of course he knew just how important he was to them.
But the sinking realisation that came over Derek said otherwise. It swirled up
in him, made him feel sick, because maybe Stiles didn’t know.
After all, when had they taken the time to show him? They had never said it,
never acknowledged the fact that Stiles was so vital to their survival and
happiness.
And Derek hated himself for it, in that moment. Out of all people, he should
have taken the time to stop and tell Stiles what he meant to them, what he
meant to Derek.
But he hadn’t, and he hated that he had let Stiles believe for even a second
that he wasn’t the reason they were all still alive. That he hadn’t saved them
all individually and together by just being himself.
Scott looked devastated too, and all of the pack went through the same phases
as Derek had. Disbelief, contemplation, and, finally, horror.
Danny was still angry, practically steaming with it, and Derek admitted to
himself that they all deserved it.
“I’m going.” Scott‘s head shot up from where he had been cradling it in his
hands, turning to look back at Danny with eyes that emulated a begging puppy’s.
“What?” he yelped, and Isaac swallowed audibly. Scott shot him an apologetic
look, before hurrying to ask again. “Where are you going?”
Danny laughed at him, audibly and with no little amount of vindictiveness. “I’m
going to go apologize to Stiles for thinking it was his fault for him leaving,
then I’m going to spend the next few hours getting him drunk and complaining
with him about all you idiots. That ok? Yeah? Thanks.”
Scott whimpered from the couch, and Erica and Isaac’s eyes widened to the point
of comicalness. Danny softened when he looked at all of them, and sighed as if
the weight of his world was on his shoulders.
“Right, guys, I’m going to tell you something that on your own would take you
forever to figure out. You’re wrong, Stiles is right. He might not accept your
apology, but it’s better than nothing. And I’m not leaving the pack, so stop
looking like someone was just killed. You might have been in the wrong, but as
cliché as it is, your hearts were in the right place. So for God’s sake don’t
act high and mighty, you get down on your knees and beg for his forgiveness,
because that’s the only way you have a chance at it. I’ll talk to you all
later.”
Derek was silent where he was leaning against the wall, listening to Danny’s
fading footsteps as he walked to his car and stepped inside.
Scott was biting at his thumb nail, the little furrow between his brow the main
indication that he was thinking fiercely. Isaac, Erica and Boyd were exchanging
looks, and Allison was nibbling on her bottom lip.
They were all deep in thought, and Derek could only assume from the pensiveness
of the room and the vague emotions he could feel through the bond that they
were all concentrating on what Danny had told them, and, almost against his
will he began to feel bitter.
They all seemed to be forgetting that Stiles had left. Had left them, left
Beacon Hills. He could have stayed, could have fought to stay in the pack, but
instead he just left!
He didn’t leave a note, there was no reason for his disappearance, they were on
the verge of panic when he just vanished with no sign and, what? That was just
okay?
They were only trying to protect him! And he had no right to be angry, anyway.
Derek’s thoughts were going around in circles, echoing and repeating and
bouncing off each other like birds in the whirl of a hurricane.
So he tried to shut them up by announcing an impromptu training session to his
silent Betas. Maybe throwing people around and getting rid of some of that
restless energy would help shut up the voices in his head.
And that sounded a lot crazier when he put it in words.
Why is it that that always happened?
 
…
 
“Stiles!” Lydia came marching into the house, waking him up from his light
doze. His eyes were bleary and the world around him was blurry and unfocused.
“Waz’at?” He rasped. Wow, god, what time was it? And why was he on the couch?
His memories of the night before were fuzzy. And non-existent, if he was being
honest.
Lydia tapped into the sitting room, the clack of her heels on the hardwood
floor brutally pounding into his brain. Stiles could just see her feet from
where she paused at the edge of the couch, his head pillowed on his arms.
“Stiles.” She said, her voice softer, before gently pulling his face out from
where he had been hiding from life.
He groaned at the brightness, and then half-heartedly pushed himself into an
upright position. Lydia primly used the edge of a blanket to clean the couch
beside him, and then sat down just as primly.
“So…” she said, observing the empty bottles of liquor and, for some strange
reason, boxes of cereal that were littered on the floor around the couch.
“Aw, crap.” Stiles muttered as he looked at the mayhem that used to be a usable
living room rather than the kitchen of a frat house. His dad would freak if he
saw it like that. Good thing he had magic.
One anticlimactic hand wave later the waste and mess were sitting in a black
bin bag by the back door and the fresh scent of vanilla permeated the house.
In his hungover, partially conscious brain Stiles wondered briefly why it was
that his magic always smelled of vanilla. He knew some of his friends that had
different, for lack of a better word, flavours, of magic, but his hadn’t
changed since he first began proper magic training.
Stiles lifted a hand to his throbbing head, and wiped his fore and middle
finger across his forehead. A sigh of relief escaped him before he could
contain it. Hangover removal was just one of the added perks that came from
being a powerful mage. He could even do it for other people.
As soon as his head wasn’t trying to implode, and his pulse wasn’t trying to
beat through his brain and make his ears bleed, Stiles finally looked at
Lydia’s face.
She was watching him with something that looked remarkably like empathy in her
eyes, a small smile lifting the sides of her lips.
She looked just as put together as always, make-up tastefully done, casual
clothes that erred just on the line of too fancy. Stiles couldn’t help but
smile back at her.
He himself was wearing only boxer pants, but was as comfortable in his quasi-
nudity with Lydia as he had ever been. They had only seen each other a few
times over the course of his training, the six months feeling like so much more
time than it was when faced with not seeing your best friend, but after that
they had met up at least once a fortnight, more if they could manage it and
depending on what area Stiles was working in at the time.
They had shared hotel rooms, went swimming in their underwear at the beach,
gone to the movies. Lydia had been there when Stiles officially graduated from
his training, had been the first to congratulate him for getting his tattoo,
and they were as close as to people could possibly be without being in a
romantic relationship.
In a weird way, they were even closer than he and Scott had ever been, their
friendship based more on mutual trust, communication and interest in the same
things.
So, yeah, Stiles was comfortable being bare chested in front of her. What he
wasn’t comfortable with, however, was feeling even more vulnerable than he had
ever felt when fully nude. But Lydia saw everything he was burying, and not a
word was spoken as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
It was an awkward hug, his height meaning he had to bend down and rest his head
on her shoulders so she could reach around, but the comforting feeling of
friend was worth every uncomfortable spasm of his muscles.
Stiles sighed and stuck a cheery smile of his face, trying to muster the cocky
attitude that had gotten him his reputation. Judging by Lydia’s sympathetic
smile he failed, but he felt marginally better for doing it.
Lydia, bless her, seemed to recognize that he needed to fake it for the day,
and didn’t say anything.
Instead, she rolled her eyes at the now-clean room and raised her eyes at him.
“So what was with the frat boy’s room?”
Stiles turned a full smile at her, because they were just that in sync. Any
rooms full of alcohol and empty bottles were tied tightly with memories of a
college party they had crashed back in the spring.
Stiles had gotten laid there. Twice. The first time by a guy he didn’t catch
the name of, and the second time by a girl that turned out to be a faerie and
the morning after was spent gleefully comparing spells and powers. He still had
her number, and they occasionally met up to talk magic.
He had helped her out a few weeks later by getting rid of the Kelpie that was
killing a lot of the locals in a nearby lake. She had repaid him by giving him
a copy of her father’s bestiary, one that full to the brim with hundreds of
supernatural creatures.
Lydia and he had spent hours one day pouring over it, learning all the traits
and tricks that were useful in staying alive in the supernatural world. There
was a lot of caffeine drunk, and a fair amount of whining that a certain
creature was actually real. The whining had all been Stiles.
But, hey, flying heads that eat dead bodies? Skinless horses with human torsos
on their backs that spread death? Cockerels with serpents’ tails that can kill
you with a single look?
You couldn’t make that stuff up, and excuse him if he wanted to have a minor
freak-out for every new species he found that could easily kill him with one
stroke of bad luck.
But then came the Red Hood, and he found he could fight them all if he knew
enough. When things got dangerous, or more accurately, more dangerous than
usual, he was sure to send all the valuable things he had collected to Lydia to
take care of.
Like the hair from a unicorn’s tail, the shell from an underwater castle that
was given to him by a mermaid with bright gold eyes, the smallest scale off of
the dragon’s underbelly that he got when he saved his life… Precious things
because of their meaning to him, rather than the price they could fetch.
And he had enough money to put himself through college ten times over at this
rate. People might be surprised by how desperate some people were to avoid
confrontation. A lot of creatures just wanted to do their own thing, avoid
interacting with other species’, like the merpeople, the centaurs, the nymphs.
But sometimes they didn’t get what they want, and some creatures lived to cause
chaos and pain. That was why he was there. Demons, in particular, were his
specialty.
But he was different that a lot of other mage mercenaries that had come before
him. If there wasn’t proof of guilt, he wouldn’t go near them. Residual ideas
of justice and what was right that were left over from growing up with the
Sheriff as a dad.
Some of the creatures he was called about were just looking for a bit of fun. A
bit of action in their otherwise dull lives. And it seemed hypercritical of him
to judge them for acting up when him acting up had started the whole werewolf
fiasco in the first place.
If he hadn’t snuck out that night to find the body in the woods, then Scott
would never have been bitten. Derek would never have met them. Stiles would
never have realised how much potential he had. And he would never have met the
amazing people, and lived through the amazing experiences that he had. It
seemed, to him, a small price to pay.
So unless they were actively and knowingly killing other beings, or causing
excess pain or harm, then Stiles let them be. Supernatural creatures go through
their rebellious teenage years too, right?
And the nymphs were fully capable of berating the dragon twins for nearly
burning down the forest. He hadn’t been needed, and if there was no trouble
then he didn’t want to butt in where he didn’t belong. But Lydia had nearly
killed him for it afterwards.
How was he to know that there was a special maths award ceremony being held in
a hotel nearby that was cancelled because of the fire? It wasn’t like he heard
about those sort of things through the magic-users grapevine.
Although in fairness, he had heard about the faun that had run away with the
elf, which was an equally as useless subject, and the vampire that seemed to
have a drinking kink for alcoholics.
Personally Stiles just felt that he should go out and get wasted if he liked
the taste so much, but apparently the blood ‘really brings out the whiskey, you
know’? That encounter had been definitely in his top ten weirdest.
Stiles was almost certain that the vampire had been drunk and high when he had
showed up, because he fingered his fangs for a good 20 minutes, but he didn’t
know a lot of vampires, so maybe they were all like that all the time.
Hell, he might have looked like a teenager, but as far as Stiles was concerned
he was the man/corpse of 234 that his girlfriend claimed. His girlfriend who
was very much not a vampire. So very much not a vampire in fact, that she was a
seal by birth. Stiles’ first introduction to a selkie and there had been a
snoring vampire addict in the same room.
Yep, vampires snore. And when they consumed enough alcohol by proxy through
blood, they apparently slept too, no matter what Twilight said.
One thing about immersing himself in the supernatural world was that Stiles
could no longer read any fantasy or mythical books without laughing at all the
inaccuracies.
It was really hard to find any correct information. But a surprising amount of
supernatural creatures became fantasy authors.
Stiles liked to think it was to throw the humans off of their scents but it was
probably just because they liked writing and got bored like every author ever.
Elves in particular seemed to have a flair for the more dramatic
misconceptions. It was like a game. Who can become the most famous by using the
most incorrect facts and information?
Technically, Stiles was part of an ongoing, and ever-growing betting pool that
tried to guess who it would be. When he was at the place last the highest bet
had been over one hundred thousand on an author nobody had ever heard of, but
if google was anything to be go by that young Djinn was becoming quite well
known for her fantasy series.
Stiles wasn’t sure why he went into training thinking it was all going to be
pure and magical, but seriously, he was so wrong.
There was a whole week of training where all his teacher Miranda had him do was
take different drugs and supernatural concoctions and then try and use magic
clearly.
In her defence, it was now impossible for him to become so distracted, drunk or
high that he couldn’t use his magic in the same amount of time and with the
same amount of skill as he would if he was fully focused.
But it was still a miracle he hadn’t died.
Lydia coughed lightly and drew his attention back to the land of the living,
pulling him out from where he had disappeared into his own head. She had a
knack for it.
“So, what happened here last night?” She asked instead of questioning what he
had been thinking of, something that he was insanely grateful for. It was too
early and he was too un-caffeinated to try and explain his rambling train of
thought.
Stiles screwed his face up in consideration and then relaxed. Searching his
mind, he felt only somewhat better when he realised the night before hadn’t
been quite as sad as he was dreading.
Then a heavy feeling rolled up in his chest.
“Danny came over and we got drunk. Turns out the pack kicked me out for my own
good. Or at least that’s what they claimed.”
Stiles didn’t want to see Lydia’s sympathetic face, didn’t want to have to deal
with what that meant, so he stood up and deliberated between getting another
bottle of whiskey and getting coffee.
Scanning his mind quickly for last night’s memories he remembered they had
emptied the liquor cabinet and he would have to get more before his dad found
out.
Coffee it was.
Two steaming hot cups of black heaven later he settled back onto the couch with
a two more, these two creamy and pale as tea. He handed one over to Lydia who
took it and sipped once before leaving it down in the side table.
Stiles had a tradition when it came to coffee.
Two cups completely black to wake himself up in the mornings, followed by a
creamy one that softened the buzz. Then regular cups at whatever intervals,
usually black with just a spoon of sugar that got him through the day.
Depending in how much sleep he was running on, and how much stress, he could
have up to and including four cups an hour.
He might have a small addiction.
Lydia looked him over as he swallowed down the mercifully sweet coffee as it
was a healing salve, looked over his scars that had been joined by a new one
since the last time they had seen each other, two criss-crossing lines in the
shape of an ‘x’ that was roughly the size of a handprint, right where his heart
was.
That had been a killer fight. Stiles chucked macabrely at his thin joke, hand
coming up without thinking to rub at the scar as if it pained him.
It did, just more in a phantom reminder than any physical ache. Lydia knew
vaguely what had happened when he had gone to face the demon, knew that he had
managed to send it back to hell before anybody had died, but she didn’t know
the exact details. She didn’t know that that was why he was here. Nobody did.
And that was the way it had to be.
Because he was leaving when all this was over. And they would never see him
again. It was the only way.
Stiles shook himself from his grim brain and took another sip of coffee, trying
to ignore Lydia’s eyes as they watched his every move. If someone had told him
back when he still had a crush on her, before all this… this craziness that had
become his life, that one day he would be sitting in his underwear on a couch
with Lydia Martin drinking coffee, he would have called his dad and got them
tested for illegal substances.
Gotten them arrested if they had gone on to say he wouldn’t try and kiss her.
But there they were.
“So, Stiles, what’s the deal with Danny?” Lydia looked at him in such a way
that made him think that this was her actual reason for coming, that she had
only stopped herself from asking before by sheer strength of will.
Stiles loved her all the more for it. He leaned his head into her lap and swung
his legs up to rest on the arm of the couch, an action that would have caused
past-Stiles to have a heart attack, but that now just made him feel calm.
She dramatically raised an arm and let it fall on his head, and slowly began
running her fingers through his longer hair.
He let out a sigh as her fingernails scratched his scalp, reflecting on her
question and how he was going to answer it.
“Danny’s a good guy.” He said finally, because it was true. Truth, no matter,
what anybody tells you, is always easier to tell if you start with simple
facts. Known facts. It takes a while to build up to feelings.
“He’s kind, and he deserves to know about Jackson, because they’re best
friends. He was going to figure it out eventually, and this way he doesn’t have
to feel left out or alone. Plus, have you ever pissed off Danny? He screws up
all your electronics, and sooner or later the pack will annoy him and then
mischief and mayhem are the themes of the day.”
Lydia’s fingers stopped where they were gently massaging his head, and she
looked down at him sceptically. Stiles had to try really hard not to fidget
under her assessing gaze, before she eventually continued her actions. Stiles
didn’t release his breath though, because one of the most used and successful
strategies was lure the enemy into a false sense of security.
And in a situation where she was trying to get him to open up, and he refused,
they were enemies. For the moment.
A few minutes passed, and Stiles found himself drifting into that strange place
in between sleep and awake. Unfortunately for him, that was where the
nightmares lived.
The nightmares of death and chaos and blackness that prevented him from getting
any real peace.
In reality only a few seconds passed, but it felt like a small infinity. Stiles
could feel his physical heart increasing its tempo just before a spell pulled
him conscious. That spell had been one of the first he’d cast, a few days after
turning up at the doorstep of the woman who would help him control and utilise
his magic. It registered his body’s anxiety levels and pulse and woke him up if
he accidently fell asleep, and consequently dreamed. Dream, nightmare, at this
point for him they were one and the same.
The only sure fire way for him to get a dreamless sleep was a spell, or
drinking so much that he passed out. Actions that he had taken multiple times
when it became too much. His body had quickly adjusted to caffeine, and where
before he would take a few cups before bed and sleep easy he was at this point
left with alcohol or nothing. Too bad his tolerance was sky high.
Sties had a lot of practice hiding things, so when he next opened his eyes
barely five minutes from the end of their conversation the only indication that
he had ever fallen asleep, never mind almost had a panic attack, was his raised
heartbeat that took a mere couple of seconds to lower again.
Controlling your body’s reactions to inward and outward stimuli had been
another phase of his training. Not a very enjoyable one, but necessary none the
less.
But just his luck, Lydia had seen the briefest spasm that flitted across his
face from waking in an environment that wasn’t heavily cordoned with magic, or
at least, wasn’t as heavily cordoned with magic as his apartment back in New
York, his base of operations, and had pounced on the opportunity.
“Stiles? Stiles when was the last time you ate anything?” Stiles frowned at her
upside down then smirked and said it was this morning.
“Coffee doesn’t count.” Was the received reply, and he grimaced.
“Then it was last night.” He hoped that his tone sounded flippant and casual,
rather than carefully crafted to be a believable deceit.
The truth was he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten but it definitely
wasn’t last night. Unless shots and copious amounts of alcohol counted.
Lydia didn’t call him out on his blatant lie, but she didn’t seem happy at all.
“So why did you introduce Danny to the pack? The truth, Stiles.” The truth? He
couldn’t tell her the truth, not really, so he told her the next best thing.
“Fine. I don’t hate the pack. I should, and I did, but I’m over it. Just
because they fucked up with me doesn’t mean they’re not good in their own ways,
and they deserve to have Danny there to keep their heads on straight. I haven’t
forgiven them for it, but I can understand where they were coming from, they
were just coming from the wrong direction. If there’s a chance that having
Danny with them will up their chances of survival? Then who am I to say
different?”
Lydia observed him quietly, her head tilted to one side as she considered what
he’d said.
“You still care about them.” She mustered up finally, no small amount of
surprise and mild admiration in her voice, because all this time he had been
acting like he hated them when nothing could be further from the truth.
Stiles smirked self-depreciatingly. “What can I say? I have a fascination with
people who treat me like shit. But, yeah, I do. Against my better judgement,
and I can’t just let them die. I don’t forgive them, I can’t, but I won’t be
around forever and they’re going to need the help.”
Lydia had no idea how true that was. But Stiles preferred it that way. It was
less dismal when people didn’t know you were going to leave again.
And Stiles could use a little more happiness in his life.
 
…
 
Stiles was sitting on the counter when Deaton walked in, his back to the wall
and observing some very interesting herbs in jars. He led one such jar up to
the light, watching the glittering flashes that reacted with the manufactured
brightness of the florescent lights.
The vet sighed as he walked in, before knocking once on the steel table.
Stiles’ whole body perked up and he hopped off the counter with an unconscious
grace he had never possessed before, but that suited him.
“Deaton!” Stiles greeted, his teeth flashing as his face opened into a genuine
smile. Deaton found himself smiling back, trapped in the face of the boundless
energy and enthusiasm that had allowed Stiles to complete a decade’s worth of
training in half a year.
Deaton was only a little scared of him.
“Stiles.” He replied, amusement and fondness lacing his tone without thought.
They had corresponded a lot during the year Stiles had been away, and Stiles
had answered a few of his questions regarding his experiences and magic. For
his part, Deaton had kept Stiles well informed on the supernatural life in
Beacon Hills, which, after that first disastrous two weeks, had been holding
steady at the wolf pack and minor clashes.
The pixies had been the first real antagonistic force for more than a year.
Stiles slapped his pockets exaggeratedly as if searching for something, then
waved a piece of paper in the air triumphantly as soon as he found what he had
evidently been searching for.
Deaton merely smiled at the childish antics that seemed both out of place and
completely at home on Stiles.
Deaton wasn’t sure what the paper was, or what was written on it, but knowing
Stiles it could be anything from a list of ingredients he needed to a joke he
printed off and wanted Deaton to see.
Unpredictability was the theme of the day when dealing with Stiles, even before
you threw magic in the mix.
Deaton carefully moved the still open jars of herbs into the cache in the back
of a press, where he stored all of his magic equipment that he might need
quickly.
One of the jars sparked briefly, light shining a heavy hazel, before returning
to normal. Deaton raised an eyebrow at Stiles’ carefully crafted innocent face
before just shaking his head.
If Stiles wanted to imbue his herbs with extra magic then the retired magic
user sure wasn’t going to stop him. His protective spells could use the extra
little kick.
“So, Deaton, out of idle curiousity, if I gave you a list of equipment I
needed, well, yesterday if I’m honest, but didn’t tell you the reason, would
you still get me the things I need?”
Deaton was about to shoot back a cursory reply, before catching sight of
Stiles’ face in the reflection of the glass. Stiles’ deadly serious, fight to
the death face that was carefully and obscurely registering everything Deaton
was doing as he thought over the request.
Deaton would like to say that such a request was unusual, but coming from
Stiles? There had been weirder requests. Granted, he had never not known what
the items would be used for, but if there was anybody worth trusting in the
world when it came to the proper use of magic, then it was Stiles.
Still, Deaton thought carefully before replying. There were very few reasons
for someone to actively hide what spell they were preforming, and even fewer
that might realistically apply to Stiles. There was blood magic, an ancient art
that, as the name suggested, required the blood of the caster to work, and
dimension magic, which caused the multiple universes to collide and had only
happened once in all of history.
But as far as Deaton was aware both those practices had been lost centuries
ago. It was much more likely that the spell was a simple one, maybe one that
Sties was embarrassed for casting, or even a basic revenge hex for the pack.
But then again, if anyone was capable of finding obscure texts that told of
forbidden magics it was Stiles.
Deaton finally decided to take the list, because he did trust Stiles, and also
because there was always the chance he would recognise the spell from the
ingredients.
He nodded eventually, and held out his hand for the list. Stiles still didn’t
hand it over immediately however, and his searching gaze bored into Deaton’s
head with an intensity the old Stiles would never have been able to pull off.
“And, if by some crazy chance you figure out what the spell does, you must
swear that you will not tell a soul. Not matter what.”
This was harder to agree to, because for all he knew the spell could kill
anyone who came within five feet of Stiles with no warning, or even cause some
apocalyptic event to unfold.
Deaton watched Stiles as he held deathly still, paper held reverently between
his fingers like it held the very answer to the universe, and for all the
information Deaton held it very well could.
It only took Deaton a few seconds to nod his head brusquely as a response,
because if Stiles didn’t get the necessary equipment from him he would just go
somewhere else. He had mildly unlimited resources at his disposal. For a human
that was pretty new to the supernatural world he had contacts everywhere, and
was remarkably connected to just about every species.
And, no matter what his training told him about blind trust and faith, Deaton
fully believed and trusted Stiles. It might kill him, someday, that trust, but
if anyone was deserving of it then Stiles had proved himself ten times over.
Stiles shoulders finally relaxed, dropping him back into the relaxed mage
Deaton recognised, and he handed over the paper with a flourish that barely
concealed the unwilling twitch of his fingers.
For whatever reason, Stiles was uncomfortable with parting from the paper, so
Deaton gently raised it up to eye level to inspect.
He read down the list of ingredients, eyes widening at each new piece, jaw
dropping at the sheer complexity and size of such a spell that it needed all
these specific herbs and talismans.
This was the magical equivalent to a nuclear bomb. Deaton had never heard of
someone who might risk it, never mind someone with the capability for it. There
were rumours but…
“Don’t worry, I’ve done the spell before.” Deaton nearly fainted. To perform a
spell of this magnitude, not once, but twice? And Stiles was obviously trying
to be reassuring.
Okay, the fact that the first time hadn’t resulted in death was a good enough
sign that doing it again wouldn’t kill either him or whoever the spell was
meant for, but still.
If Deaton had to guess, he would say that the spell was a protective one, going
on some of the items on the list that were usually reserved for defensive
magic.
Maybe it was a spell that would protect Stiles? It wasn’t an unreasonable
assumption, and Deaton felt slightly better for the thought.
Then it occurred to him that Stiles had to repeat the spell, so either it
hadn’t taken affect the first time, or, terrifyingly, he had been under so much
danger that it had broken.
Maybe it had even taken him back from the dead.
But, when he started thinking about it, Deaton felt marginally better that
Stiles was going to be alive for as long as possible.
He was their first, and only, line of defence when it came to the bigger
things.
The longer he was alive and functioning, the safer for everyone.
Deaton lowered the paper and caught Stiles’ eyes. “I can have them for you in
two weeks, one if you’re willing to go local for some of these.”
Stiles immediately shook his head. “No, take as long as is needed, but they
have to be in perfect condition. I can’t risk this spell going wrong.”
Deaton only nodded. If his protection was on the line he would want to be
certain too.
“Two weeks it is.” He confirmed, and Stiles sent him a relieved grin.
“Awesome!”
Deaton watched as he walked out of the clinic, light on his feet and a grin on
his face.
He looked down at the list again, and sighed. He really hoped Stiles knew what
he was doing.
He flipped the closed sign on the door and disappeared back into the back room.
He had a lot of phone calls to make.
Chapter End Notes
     Hey guys!
     So sorry about the wait for this chapter, couldn't get my head out of
     my ass long enough to write it until Wednesday, and then was busy all
     day Thursday and Friday, so I literally only wrote this one at a
     restaurant a few hours ago.
     Hope you are all happy, you are making me be antisocial (even more
     than usual)!
     All that aside, my classes are beginning again on Tuesday so what I
     might do is try and get a chapter a week? It'll depend, but I might
     just set a day that I post on, but I will get back to you on that!
     Okay, wow, there's a lot in this chapter.
     There are, not in any particular order, mentions of underage
     substance abuse, the taking of drugs or other substances as a
     learning experience for Stiles' magic, underage drinking, and there
     will be more!, a lot of caffeine drinking by Stiles, and just
     generally he takes really bad care about himself.
     There are nightmares, a brief sentence to previous character death, a
     seriously epic, if I do say so myself, Lydia and Stiles bromance
     going on, and multiple new creatures.
     Here are some of the ones I threw at you today!
     The flying heads; In Bali mythology, Leyaks are hideous creatures
     that haunt graveyards and feed on dead bodies by night, but appear as
     ordinary humans by day.
     Horse with a human torso sticking out of its back; In Celtic
     mythology, the Nuckelavee is a terrible sea creature, possessing legs
     which are partly finned, a horse's body, and a human head and torso
     growing out of its back. It was one single red eye, and has no skin
     anywhere once it's body. Said to be unable to cross running water,
     such as rivers. In folklore, it spreads disease and plague and causes
     crops to die.
     Cockerel with a serpent's tail; One of the most feared Chimera
     (Creatures made of the parts of different animals) is the cockatrice.
     Resembles a large cockerel, with dragon's wings and a serpent's tail.
     Possesses a deadly stare that can kill people or turn them to stone
     ( A/N-Harry Potter fans in the audience will remember the Basilisk,
     and they're said to be closely related) and can only be killed by
     seeing its own eyes in a reflection., or if it hears a cockerel crow.
     Kelpies; A mythical water horse that originates from Scotland. It
     lures a human onto it's back, and then dives into the deepest lake
     and drowns the victim. Said to take the form of a horse.
     Nymphs; Minor female Greek nature deities that are generally regarded
     as divine spirits who animate nature, and often take the form of
     young beautiful women. They are said to be very sexually aware, and
     often can be found singing or dancing. (Percy Jackson fans know what
     I'm taking about...)
     Selkies; Selkies originate from Scottish legend, and are said to have
     the ability to transform themselves from seals into humans. To do
     this, they have to take off their seal skins, then put them back on
     to turn into seals again.
     Djinn; In the Islamic religion, Djinn are invisible beings created
     from fire. They can be either good or evil, having the same free will
     as humans and every other creature. Djinn's are more commonly known
     as Genies, but fortunately for them do not occupy magic lamps and
     forced servitude.
     I'm just going to assume you all know what unicorns, centaurs,
     fairies, pixies, vampires, elves, dragons, fauns and mages are, but
     seriously, if you want to know more you'd be amazed at what google
     knows! ;) Personally, I'm fascinated with the things that go bump in
     the night.
     Maybe I should clarify how the supernatural stuff works. In this fic,
     magic and supernatural beings are everywhere. They mainly keep to
     themselves, and don't interact with other species. Case in point,
     werewolves. There are a few packs, covens and tribes that have
     different species in them, the Hale's being one of them. Because of
     who he was, Stiles helped lots of different people and species,
     therefore he was very well connected. Mages have their own training
     system that they all have to go through, but Stiles, because of his
     power, managed it in half a year. Some of the people do interact with
     other's outside their own, and interspecies relationships or
     friendships are fairly common and accepted, except ones with humans.
     No species is fully 'evil', not even demons as will be demonstrated
     later. If anyone had any questions on this universe then drop a
     comment and I will answer it as quickly as possible.
     Okay, now that I've poured over my book on 'the illustrated guide to
     mythical creatures', I'm pretty much done.
     As always, a huge, unbelievably big thank you to every single person
     who read, kudos'ed, commented, bookmarked or just liked my fic. It
     means so much to me that I'm getting such a warm response!
     Next chapter will be in a few days, and Stiles is going to call in a
     favour. Chapters might be shorter some days because of classes, but I
     will try my best to keep tem consistent!
     I love you all, and hope you liked this chapter!
***** You don't want to go into the future. I've seen it, and all it is is
blood and battles and death. The only way to prevent that is to live in the
present, and to fight for what you want the future to be like. It's a pity that
few people understand that. *****
Chapter Summary
     Isaac breaks down, Stiles admits that he isn't angry, and a flash
     from the past leads to troubling news for Stiles.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Isaac was the first of the pack to break. It was midway through Stiles’ third
week back in Beacon Hills, and there had been little to no interaction between
the pack and Stiles since that disastrous meeting when they cornered him.
Which, for the record, had not been Isaac’s idea at all. And his objections
proved to be right, but at that point he was in no mood to point it out.
Stiles’ statements had cut brutally close to the bone, but he could hardly be
angry at Stiles for feeling like that. Not with every wolf instinct he had
constantly whining to fix it, and, if the unusual radio silence from the rest
of the pack was anything to go by, their wolves were reacting the same.
So as soon as his opportunity came, he grabbed it and held it with both hands
and all of his werewolf strength.
The last bell had just rung, and Isaac was just about to head outside to beg a
lift off of Scott when he heard it. The slightest uptick in Stiles’ heartbeat
at the opposite end of the school, barely noticeable, hardly any cause for
concern except that this Stiles, new Stiles, had the utmost control over his
body and his reactions. Isaac knew that even after only spending a few hours
with him in total.
Isaac was too embarrassed to ever admit out loud how he carefully tracked that
specific heartbeat around the school every day, keeping half an ear out
constantly, his mind always partially connected to the soothing thrum like it
was a second beat in his own chest.
It soothed his wolf, and, if he was being honest, it soothed him.
Too many people had left him or hurt him over the years, Stiles had been one of
the first not to and he had formed an attachment to him. Hadn’t really had a
choice in the matter, what with everything that made him a werewolf screaming
at him to get as close to Stiles as possible.
Until he had left. But it was different, in a way, when they had left him
first. Isaac wasn’t sure how, but it was.
His wolf, for some bizarre reason, still felt as if Stiles was pack, and that
only made it all the more difficult not to touch him every time they passed
each other in the hall. It had been hard enough, nigh impossible, the first
time around, and it was a special kind of torture after not seeing him for over
a year to have to refuse his basest instincts again. For no good reason this
time apart from his pride.
Which, let’s face it, wasn’t all that important to him to begin with.
So when that distinct heartbeat skipped a beat, he wasted no time at all in
following it back to its owner with no plan of action just responses.
He found Stiles bent over against a wall, clutching his chest as if it pained
him, face contorted. His breath was coming in long even inhales, and shaky
exhales. His heart had returned to normal, but Isaac could smell the pain still
clinging to him. Every hair on his body stood on end in the forced stillness of
the room, the slight vanilla smell that lingered in the air.
Stiles was hurting. Stiles was Hurting, and that was not okay. That was
unforgivable, and Isaac would gladly hunt down and rip apart anyone who dared
to harm him, even if he could defend himself.
The whole point of pack was that you didn’t have to.
Isaac hesitated a second before announcing his presence, even though his wolf
howled at him to make sure his pack mate and friend was okay. It hadn’t seemed
to register with the wolf yet that Stiles wanted, rightfully and
understandably, nothing to do with any of the pack, let alone him.
But Stiles was in pain, and that went against everything both the wolf and the
man wanted, so Isaac cleared his throat.
“Stiles?” Stiles shot up like a cannon, face smoothed out and hand dropping
back to his side as if nothing had happened.
“Isaac,” He greeted, and Isaac felt his heart clench up from the coldness he
heard in his voice, the lack of the fondness that had always been aimed at him
disorientating.
Isaac wanted to simultaneously curl up at Stiles’ feet and go off and kill
everything that ever hurt him.
That indecision was what brought his mind back to what Danny had told them, and
next thing he knew he was in front of Stiles with his arms wrapped around his
waist, knees beginning to burn on the floor through his jeans from the rapid
slide on the floor. They would heal though, and he couldn’t bring himself to
care.
The scent that he had always associated with Stiles, with home and safety and
comfort, filled his nose and he breathed out what felt like his first full
breath since the day Derek had told them his plan to keep Stiles safe.
Isaac might be selfish, because he would much rather have Stiles with them then
safe at home, even if it put him in danger. And Stiles could take care of
himself.
Even more now than ever before with his magic, and it made Isaac feel insanely
happy that Stiles was more than capable of keeping himself safe, that he
wouldn’t have to lose him.
“Stiles.” He said, face pressed into Stiles stomach, delighting in the contact
in the way only pack could, and his wolf wanted to roll over when Stiles’ arms
came around him and hugged him. The hug was full of unspoken emotions, full of
regret and hope and comfort.
“I’m so sorry.” Isaac found himself saying, the words pouring out of him before
he could censor them in any way, a pure unadulterated plea.
“I’m so sorry, Stiles. I didn’t want you to get hurt but I didn’t think about
it carefully enough and I couldn’t handle losing someone else, and I’m so sorry
and I understand if you never forgive me but I needed to say it and tell you
how much you helped me and I don’t care if you’re human, I never cared at all,
because you are one of the best people I ever met and I’m so sorry and I never
wanted to lose you or hurt you in any way and I really hope you had so much fun
while you were away and I hope you met new people, much nicer people that us
that deserve you but please don’t leave please please-“
Isaac was rambling, and his eyes were damp even though he couldn’t remember
when he started crying, but this was the person who had helped him. Who had
seen how damaged he was and didn’t flinch away. His friend, and for all intents
and purposes, his brother.
Isaac wasn’t ashamed of his reaction. Stiles had been one of his closest
friends, more family that anything else, and he was everything Isaac wasn’t.
Brave, selfless, intelligent. The irony was that Isaac had been trying to
emulate him when they left Stiles out of the pack, trying to focus on what
would be good for Stiles and not what he wanted.
Isaac’s arms clutched tighter, and Stiles gently stroked his hair in his
fingers and it made Isaac think of pack and home. The torrent of words didn’t
cease, the weight lifting off of his chest with every syllable that fell from
his lips.
“I can never tell you how sorry I am and I can’t expect you to forgive me but I
still think you’re pack and it was killing me knowing I might have hurt you at
all and I was trying to be like you and selfless but I still think you’re pack
and you’ll always be my pack and my friend and I’m so sorry that we were so
stupid and we should have talked to you and thank you for saving us again with
the pixies like you used to and I’m sorry I never visited you in the hospital
but I was terrified you might be angry at me for letting you get caught and I
thought if I didn’t see you then you couldn’t tell me you didn’t want to be
friends anymore and I didn’t want to bother you so please please don’t go again
and I know it’s unfair to ask you that but even just hate me but stay and
you’re like my brother and-“
He was cut off by Stiles raising him up by the shoulders. Isaac felt so guilty
and ashamed that he avoided looking at Stiles at all, preferring to try and
savour the contact before Stiles was going to yell at him.
But Stiles just clasped his neck and commanded in a low voice, but not unkind,
“Look at me, Isaac.”
Isaac was helpless to resist it, like the command of an Alpha, and slowly
raised his eyes to Stiles’ expecting anger and hatred.
But there was none, and Stiles searched his eyes in silence for a few seconds
before folding him into a hug again, Isaac’s head at the junction between his
neck and shoulder. Stiles’ pack scent, filtered with traces of magic and power
that sent Isaac’s blood abuzz and his wolf lowering its head in submission,
comforted him in ways a non-pack member could never dream of understanding.
“I don’t forgive you.” Stiles murmured into his ear, and Isaac stiffened at the
declaration, sure that Stiles was going to sneer and yell at him again, but
Stiles rubbed his back until he calmed into the touch once more, “But I can
understand why you did what you did.”
Isaac let out a shaky breath, relief filling him like nothing he had ever felt.
Tears kept slipping from his eyes and he knew that if his father could see him
now he would have gotten the beating of a lifetime.
But his father wasn’t around to control him anymore, and Stiles was still
hugging him, and it made the world a little brighter than it had been before.
Isaac openly wept into Stiles’ shoulder, and it didn’t occur to him until much
later that he had been treating Stiles like his Alpha. But by that point it was
practically too late.
 
…
 
Stiles was… well, maybe happy wasn’t the right word for it, but he was
comfortable for the first time since his return.
Things with Isaac, after he had apologised profusely every few minutes to the
point where Stiles threatened to lock him out of his house and ‘leave his
werewolf ass to fend for himself’, had been very pack-like and soothing.
Isaac had, completely of his own accord, trailed Stiles home after the tears at
school and looked so miserable that Stiles cracked and invited him inside the
house.
It took a few seconds to allow him to cross the mountain ash barrier that
surrounded the entire house, but Stiles was nothing if not in control of his
own magic and powers, and they were both safely encased inside the house before
the drops of rain that had just begun to darken the clouds began to fall on the
pavement.
They had started an Iron Movie marathon, because Stiles had been both outraged
and personally offended that Isaac hadn’t seen any of them, and for the
duration of the entire three movies, and four bags of popcorn, Isaac kept close
physical contact with Stiles.
Including, but not limited to, resting his head on Stiles’ shoulder or thigh,
leaning back against his legs from the floor, or wrapping his arms around
Stiles’ neck like if he could just hold on that much tighter he would never
leave again. Stiles allowed himself a moment to pointlessly wish the same
thing.
Having dealt with both Scott, who even as a human had been touchy feely and
barnacle-ish, and the pack before, he knew that it was a very important part of
being a pack, that contact. And Isaac whined pathetically whenever he moved
away, so in the end Stiles just laughed and pulled Isaac’s head onto his lap,
stroking his hair as he did so.
He felt a strange surge of protectiveness when Isaac closed his eyes, a mixture
of the trust he was being shown and the memories of what Isaac had had to live
through before, and even after becoming a werewolf.
He kept his hand on Isaac’s head for the rest of the movies, and that was the
way Lydia found them an hour later, Stiles passed out on the couch and Isaac
happily asleep.
The nightmares that came in that hour were barely terrifying, nothing like the
ones he had had before, so his heartbeat was steady and his magic didn’t
activate.
That was until he was shocked rudely awake by someone throwing something sharp
at his face. His wards warned him before it got even half a foot up to his
face, and stopped the object mere millimetres from his eye.
Raising one eyebrow, Stiles turned to face the owner of the high heel, which he
knew because he could actually see again, that was floating in the air where it
would have impaled him if he was any slower.
Lydia was sitting unrepentant on the armchair, arms crossed over her chest.
She glared at him, her eyebrows scrunched up on her face in an expression that
Stiles was very familiar with. It was the same one she’d worn the first time
he’s taken down a rogue omega by himself, the same one that had been mixed with
incredulousness and disgust when he decided to have a pizza with everything on
it.
It was Lydia’s trademark, what-the-hell-are-you-thinking-Stiles, usually
followed by snarky comments and thrown objects.
Or, in this case, the object throwing came first.
Stiles flicked her shoe back at her, watched as it slowly passed through the
air and came to a halt above her hand, floating as if it was a perfectly
natural thing to do. She had known it wouldn’t touch him, but that his magic
would wake him regardless in the face of a threat, no matter how miniature.
Looking down at the still sleeping Isaac, whose face was slack in the throes of
sleep, Stiles flashed a grateful smile at her for not waking him up with her
usual fanfare.
With his hearing, no doubt any voice at all would raise Isaac from his sleep,
and it was nice that even while beyond mad at the pack Lydia could understand
and changer her actions to suit that.
Lydia frowned at him while she reached out and wrapped her hand around the
floating shoe, but she released a small smile when the shoe resisted her pull
and instead slid down to her feet and slipped onto her heel.
Stiles grinned at her, and proceeded to mentally warn his fifteen year old self
how one day he would put Lydia Martin’s shoe on her like some sort of
Cinderella tableau. Without using his hands.
But if he told his teenage self that it was more than likely he would take it
completely the wrong way. Without using any part of his body. That sounded
marginally less sexual, and therefore better when talking about your closest
friend.
Lydia jerked a head towards Isaac’s sleeping form, then the kitchen. Stiles
nodded once then carefully extricated himself from the werewolf clinging to him
like a leech, putting a pillow underneath his head in lieu of his torso. Isaac
mumbled incoherently in his sleep and snuggled further into the pillow, his
head burrowing into the fabric with all the cuteness of a fluffy, adorable
kitten.
It seemed like that at least hadn’t changed while he was gone.
Stiles followed Lydia into the kitchen, the clacking of her high heels muffled
by the carpet.
They reached the kitchen, and took their usual places at the table. Stiles
absentmindedly weaved ropes of air together under his fingers, their iridescent
shimmering strands joining and separating like melted quicksilver.
Lydia looked pointedly at the braid made from magic, and Stiles blushed. He
hadn’t even realised he had been doing it. The nervous twitch had been
developed somewhere around his second incubus, a way for him to confirm that
reality was still what he saw. Maybe using magic to determine reality was a
little bit crazy, but no one could recreate the braids he made, and therefore
it was a trusty fail safe.
The braid dissipated into thin air (because that was what it was made of) and
Stiles and Lydia shared a mutually challenging staring contest.
A few years ago, hell, a few months ago, Stiles would have cracked ten seconds
in, if he even lasted that long. But he had faced far worse, with far more dire
potential consequences, than Lydia Martin.
Few came to mind, but Stiles was fairly certain they were there. Probably.
They both conceded a draw when their competition reached the embarrassing
length of ten minutes, a personal best. Not ten minutes without blinking, but
ten minutes without looking away from the other’s eyes.
The worst thing with their contest was resisting the urge to laugh, but it was
a good peace-keeper, in a way. Whoever lasted long enough got to decide the
outcome of whatever they had been arguing about.
That was how Stiles had gotten Lydia to watch Star Wars (she loved it, but
hated that she loved it, and Stiles had discovered his copies missing the next
time he went back to his apartment), and how Lydia had managed to get Stiles to
get a manicure with her (He had been planning on going with her anyway, but she
didn’t need to know that).
But there did come a certain point when the game had to be called off, no
matter if there wasn’t a winner, and that point was when the rest of the world
began to blur around the edges and Stiles panicked because it was like the
demon all over again.
Lydia graciously didn’t mention it when he flinched and his magic left a
scarlet trail in the air above his heart.
After a few silent seconds of calming himself -the heck down, relax you’re not
in danger here-, Lydia spoke up.
“So… Isaac, huh?”
Stiles smiled with false bravado, and quirked an eyebrow.
“Isaac.” He confirmed, tone carefully neutral because he knew it would drive
her nuts.
It did. “Really?” she asked, voice brokering no argument but her eyebrows so
scrunched up she reminded Stiles of Derek. Who he definitely wasn’t going to
think about. “That’s all you have to say? The pack were assholes to you and you
just forgive them? I thought better of you, thought you had more self-respect!”
Stiles flexed his jaw once and kept watching her. “You done?” he asked finally,
and Lydia jerkily nodded at him, face still a mask of confusion and anger.
“First of all, it’s just Isaac, and it’s only because he apologised. He
apologised, Lydia,” he repeated, upon seeing Lydia’s doubtful face, “And this
is Isaac. He was scared for me, and yeah, he made some pretty shitty decisions
with how to deal with that, but he’s practically a puppy with how he acts. And
I’ve missed him. The pack bond is still there, broken, but there, and I never
said I forgave him. But I can understand why he did what he did, and how many
times did I lie to my dad to keep him safe? He could’ve chosen not to trust me
again, but instead he accepted that I’d done it for good reasons, and I
accepted I was in the wrong. How could I be so hypocritical that I didn’t offer
Isaac the same courtesy?” Stiles looked away then, quietly finishing his short
speech. “And it’s not like I’ll be around long enough for him to get more
attached, anyway.”
Lydia sighed at him, her eyes wide with compassion and understanding. She,
better than anyone, knew what it was like to feel like you had no choice but to
accept the situation, but she was a brilliant example of getting your shit
together and dealing with whatever the universe threw your way. Lydia had
managed to pull through everything even with no plan, and if it left her a bit
of a preparation maniac, then she had every right.
Stiles already had a plan. A shitty one, a desperate one, but a plan none the
less.
“Okay, Stiles. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Stiles rubbed one hand over his face and through his longer than before hair,
and let his head fall back until he was watching the ceiling instead of the
banshee who could see right through him. Just in case she saw something he
didn’t want her to.
There was a part of him, albeit a small one, that wanted to confess everything,
confess to his idiotic plan, to the danger they were all in if he didn’t pull
it off, to how much he wished there was a better way, and easier one. But life
didn’t work like that, didn’t give out perfect solutions whenever things were
bad, and Stiles stayed silent.
He could hear Lydia walking back into the sitting room, and took the moment
alone in the kitchen to wallow in the crappitude that was his life.
“Me too.” He murmured, but no one was around to hear.
 
…
 
*15 MONTHS AGO*
Stiles hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Getting any sleep at all was a difficult
enough feat to accomplish when sleeping in the back of a jeep, never mind with
the increasing nightmares that had haunted him since he left Beacon Hills.
Nightmares of the pack being killed, his dad being murdered, his magic going
berserk and killing everybody, Beacon Hills in flames, monsters of all breeds
going on murderous sprees every waking hour…
He was lucky to fit in any peace at all, between the hellish nights and the
days when he couldn’t face what his life had become.
His phone, in that first week, had been bombarded with texts from everyone, the
bi-hourly ones if he was lucky from Scott, from Isaac, from Erica, and the
daily ones from Allison, and Jackson and Derek. He didn’t even bother opening
them as his phone dinged away.
The only ones he responded to were Lydia and his dad, brief, one worded
responses to questions of well-being.
He had typed ‘fine’ more in the last week than ever before, and never had he
meant it so little.
It was starting to get to him.
Deaton had given him the address of his contact, so there he was, driving up
this enormous fucking driveway at five o’clock in the afternoon because he
hadn’t slept in three days and was surviving on cheap truck stop caffeine that
came in those terrible plastic cups that were of no use to anybody.
It seemed that college had come early on that front.
The front gate had (creepily) opened automatically when he pulled up to it,
which was about 2 minutes ago. And he was still driving up the lane.
God, this driveway was long. And he couldn’t even see the house, because he was
surrounded on both sides by trees and a forest. It reminded him of the
Preserve, and he gunned the jeep’s engine in response to the unwanted reminder
of the reality of his life.
No thinking about Beacon Hills. Beacon Hills was off limits. Thoughts of the
pack were forbidden.
But because Stiles had never been good at following orders, he couldn’t prevent
the steady stream of consciousness devoted to the pack and all he had left
behind.
The same thought would be wondering what his father had had for dinner when he
wasn’t there to force him to eat healthy food, and berating himself over ever
trusting the wolves.
It was an emotional rollercoaster, and Stiles hated every second of it.
So, naturally, as soon as he started treading dangerous territory, the house
came into view.
But Deaton had seriously, really, grossly understated it. The ‘house’ was more
like a mansion. In fact, and Stiles had no shame in admitting it, his first
thought was that it looked like the Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters, and
really considering his current situation that was way too ridiculous.
He sternly told himself that when he met Deaton’s ‘friend’ he wound refrain
from mentioning the startling resemblance her home had to the one in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe.
It probably even had secret passage-ways.
Damn it, brain, stop picturing the similarities between a home/school for
mutants and a… home/school for supernatural beings.
If Stiles was in X-men, did that mean Derek was Logan?
Wait, no the D-word was forbidden! Stop thinking about it!
Luckily, he was knocked off his self-abuse by the fact that he had reached the
end of the road, so to speak.
The house looked condemned from this close, empty and unused. Stiles frowned
and reached into his bag for the paper that Deaton had scrawled address on, but
as soon as he turned his head, the entire scene outside his window changed.
Perplexed, Stiles faced outwards again, only to see the same dreary dilapidated
house he had originally. Slowly, he twisted his neck around until he could only
see it from the very corner of his eye, and right at that point the house’s
appearance changed again, now bright and welcoming.
Stiles smiled for the first time in over a week, and even though it was weak
compared to his usual ones, it still felt like a huge achievement.
Clambering out of his jeep with no further thought, Stiles walked right up to
the front door and though the mountain ash barrier that he could feel as it
slithered across his skin, raising every hair on his arms and the back of his
neck.
It felt vaguely as if someone had rubbed slime all over his body, and it was
completely by accident that his magic too offense and reached out.
He didn’t even realise it was happening until he felt the barrier snap back,
the uncomfortable feeling of being slowly inspected from the inside out
thankfully vanishing.
The house resumed its natural state, and Stiles was standing in the hallway of
probably the nicest mansion he had ever been in. Well, technically, the only
mansion he had ever been in. But who was being technical?
A woman stood at the foot of a great staircase, gazing at him unblinkingly. He
started guiltily, and his magic felt almost sheepish as it slithered back into
his body. Sometimes his magic felt like more of a corporeal being that he did,
even if it did retain many of his attributes, including some of the most
annoying ones.
Like tact. Point him at a house and he could level it in a heartbeat if he was
in the right shape of mind and his magic felt like cooperating, but the smaller
things that involved delicacy?
He was more likely to light the tree on fire than break a branch.
How he knew this was from trial and error on his unplanned road trip, stopping
every few hundred miles for food and ‘training’. He wasn’t arrogant enough to
believe he didn’t need help.
“You must be Stiles.” The woman said, and regardless of the fact that it
clearly wasn’t a question he nodded. Her voice was musical, and echoed through
his ears like she continued speaking in his head. She was wearing simple
clothes, loose fitting black pants and a tank top. Her hair was pulled up in a
loose bun, short strands of it framing her slightly wrinkled face.
At a push, Stiles would say she was no older than 40, but something in her eyes
told of a lot more experience that her image would suggest.
“And how was your trip?” She had a manner of speaking that seemed to avoid
questions, and for a long second he was unsure if she wanted an answer or not.
Deciding to do what he did best and speak, Stiles cleared his throat once,
shocked to realise that he hadn’t spoken a word since his teary goodbye to his
father eight days ago.
When his voice did come out, it was hoarse from lack of use, and thick with
emotions he had more trouble restraining than his magic.
“F…Fine.” He croaked, but even a non werewolf could tell the lie and she was
shooting him an unimpressed look that reminded him too much of Lydia, and home,
so he quickly elaborated.
“I mean, the nightmares every night were pretty shitty. And sleeping in my jeep
was harsh on my neck, but other than that I can’t complain.”
Instead of smirking at him, or smiling like he expected her to, the woman
immediately frowned and looked worried.
“Nightmares?” She questioned, and her tone of voice made Stiles jolt abruptly.
Because that tone never delivered good news.
“What kind of nightmares?”
Stiles watched her anxiously, his voice coming out more harried than he would
have liked. “Of monsters tearing my home town and my family apart.” Family
meant so much more than pack.
The mage wiggled her fingers at him, gesturing towards his head as she asked,
“May I?”
Lost, but too worried to deny her even under the risk that it was a trap of
some kind, Stiles practically ran towards her as response.
She raised her hands to his head, forehead furrowed in concentration, and the
world was eerily quiet as she did so.
The she gasped, and paled, and took a step backwards, almost tripping over the
thick carpet.
“No, no.” She murmured to herself, her eyes glazed over. Stiles felt the
beginnings of a panic attack coming over him, and he barely resisted the urge
to shake her and demand answers.
“No, that can’t be true, that can’t happen. It must just be a possibility,
there must be something that can be done.”
“What?” Stiles’ fists curled at his sides, his magic sparking and igniting
without any thought from him. “What’s going on, what’s happening?”
She seemed to shake herself, composing her face into one of edgy tranquillity.
“Just a thing. Nothing to worry about.”
Before Stiles could think over it, his magic had exploded out of him, shaking
the house at its foundations. He was so sick of people lying to him! He knew
that something had happened, and he needed to know what it was so he could fix
it!
The woman grabbed his arm in one fluid movement, jerking him from his magic. He
looked down at her, her fingers tight against his skin as she watched him with
unflinching eyes.
“What you saw was no nightmare. There’s a story, nothing more than myth really,
a fairy tale, that very powerful mages have the ability to see the future. But
even then it would be nothing more than fragments, then possibilities. Nothing
in the future is set in stone, so just because you know the trajectory you’re
one doesn’t mean you can’t change it. There’s nothing to worry about, and in
all likelihood they were just nightmares, not foreshadowing.”
But Stiles had a sinking feeling deep in his chest, an instinct that was
telling him the truth of the matter, the same one that had warned him of Scott
being a werewolf, and Derek being a ‘good guy’.
And that instinct was ringing like church bells at a funeral.
“What…” he began, but his voice broke and he had to start again, “What would
that future be?”
The mage, the woman who would become his trainer glanced away. “Beacon Hills as
a war zone and a graveyard. That was the image you saw.”
Stiles released the breath that had been holding itself for forever in his
chest. The woman was quick to reassure him.
“But it was just a nightmare. No one with clairvoyant abilities has ever been
recorded, and the idea of it is little more than fantasy.”
Stiles murmured an assent, and felt glad that no werewolves were there to catch
the lie in his heartbeat. Resolution settled firmly in his chest even as her
face relaxed and she began the tour, showing him the room he would live in, and
the gym and the surrounding gardens.
Stiles’ mind was only half listening, the other half busy jumping around and
trying to find a way out of the hell he had glimpsed.
It was no good, he needed more information. “What about a library?” He asked
Miranda (she had introduced herself along the way), trying to keep his voice
light and unassuming. She smiled at him, so she must have feel for it.
Stiles was going to find a way to save Beacon Hills if it killed him.
 
(It was a week later when Stiles delivered to her the good news that the
nightmares had ended, and even though she had flat out denied the plausibility
of someone having teh ability to see the future she looked relieved.
He very purposefully didn’t mention how he had managed to change what should
have happened, and he said nothing about how his own future became impossible
to read after changing Beacon Hills’ intended destruction.
But he saw enough of the future to know that the spell would work, had worked,
that Beacon Hills would be saved, and that gave him the strength to do what was
needed.
And if he still had nightmares, of blackness and inky nothing, it was a small
price to pay.
A small price to pay indeed.)
Chapter End Notes
     God I am so sorry for the delay in this! I already have the ending
     planned out, I'm sorry it will be angsty, and it's just about
     figuring out how to get there.
     The last week has been insanely busy for me, and all anyone had been
     talking about have been the exams, which are 9 months away!! It is
     seriously freaking me out, and updates will be a lot slower now with
     assignments and essays to do. :(
     But I will try my very best to update as often as possible!
     This chapter is shorter than all the others, and I just hope it's not
     lacking.
     The real fun begins with the next update, with some action, and fic
     length wise at the moment I'm lingering on around 15 chapters?
     Oh! So the main point to this fic is that by the end of it the whole
     pack are reconciliated, and there will be one person every update who
     joins the *new* pack/Stiles 'pack', but really all it is is that they
     do their own version of grovelling liek Danny told them to, because
     hello, Danny's a genius. Who do you guys think will be next?
     It won't be easy, automatic forgiveness though, so if any of you are
     worried about that don't be!
     I did the whole flashback thing because it will be important for the
     story later on.
     Also, I have no idea where Peter is in this fic, I suppose that he's
     gone off to some other country and is living a semi-decent life
     there. (He might join the story later on, I'm not sure yet)
     Okay, I have to go now because I have this 12-week project due in
     four weeks and I haven't even got half of it done. Procrastination is
     my middle name.
     Hope you liked this chapter, and any more notes that I can think of
     at a better time will be posted soon!
     Love you all millions!
     H.S.F
***** If I had to choose between being a monster and being ignorant, I'd choose
monster. Because chosing ignorance would rob other people of their freedom to
choose, and what kind of a world would we live in if that happened? *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles strengthens his circle, is forced to see the school
     counsellor, and Erica realises how much had changed.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
School the next day was hard to go through. If anyone noticed the sudden
appearance of Isaac back into the circle Stiles communicated with, no one dared
to speak of it. Stiles was liking his new found ability to produce fear in even
the most popular of seniors.
They were people who belittled him for most of his middle and high school
career. Turnabout would be fair play, but that was much too much effort to
expand on them. Stiles had other, more important, things to focus on than petty
high school revenge.
Somehow, Stiles had gone from being the intimidating Senior who only spoke to
Jackson and Lydia, to the still terrifying Senior who sat with Lydia, Jackson,
Danny and Isaac at lunchtime. It kind of went against his plans, but he wasn't
really in the mood to tell Lydia that. He probably would never be.
He had heard some very interesting rumours about the five of them, like that
they were all in a polyamorous relationship, or that he was supplying them with
drugs, or, Stiles' favourite, that they were in a secret band that no one knew
of.
Not that the Freshmen who had been comparing ideas knew he was listening at the
time. The expression on their faces when they realised he was behind them the
entire time they had been talking was priceless.
But anyway, Isaac had apologized, and though the look Scott shot him was almost
betrayed and definitely jealous when he sat next to Stiles and received no
protest, both Erica and Boyd ignored them. For the most part. There was that
one moment in chemistry when Stiles had looked up, feeling eyes on him, to
Erica's searching gaze. He smirked at her, enjoying the quickest flash of her
golden eyes before she hastily turned away.
But apart from that they hadn't been bothered, and Isaac had somehow managed to
wrangle staying at Stiles' place for the night, which led to Stiles' nightly
trek in the forests being later than it usually was.
Which lead to being raced down a steep ravine by a horde of angry ogres. The
shitty thing was that it wasn't even his first time, but his previous
experience definitely helped in terms of getting rid of them.
He lost them only a few minutes after picking them up, and retraced his steps
back to his original destination. Deep in the preserves that surrounded Beacon
Hills, lay a clearing that was never bothered, never found by anyone unless
Stiles wanted it to be.
It was were the original boundary spell was cast and held, and, strategically
speaking, the safest place in the entire town. And it was where Stiles would
renew the spell that would save Beacon Hills.
He had been going every night for as long as he had been in town, having given
up on sleep as soon as setting foot into Beacon Hills, apart from the
occasional unplanned naps, and drug or magic induced all night comas. The
latter was more common than the former.
And every night he showed up, he would pour just enough of his magic into the
circle that there was no risk it would ever break, unlike the first one. But
the circumstances where different now, and the circle he was creating for the
second time had no chance of ever breaking.
It wouldn't be complete for another two weeks, at least, more if Deaton
couldn't get the right equipment. The longer Stiles siphoned magic into it the
better, but the other side of that was that he would have to be in Beacon Hills
for however long it took.
Because of the last spell's failure, Stiles was taking no risk this time
around, double checking and perfecting his own notes. The risk of it being a
spell he had found from millennia ago and interpreted himself was much lower
than the potential circumstances if he didn't cast it. The nightmares from the
first time he left Beacon Hills, the visions, they were as true now as they had
been when he swore he'd protect his town, and his promise still as binding.
Creating new bonds with his friends and re-establishing old had never been in
the playing cards, never an aspect he had considered. And every day he spent
not casting the spell was another day were someone got attached, and inevitably
hurt in the future. His return had never been a permanent thing.
The sooner everyone accepted that, the better.
But Stiles was by no means selfless. If he was, he would have cut off all
contact, ignored Lydia's insistence and his dad's wide eyes, the pack's begging
and Danny's plight, locked himself in his room and completed the spell. That
would have been the right thing to do, where no one but him got hurt.
But he hadn't done that, and he was neck deep in emotional attachments that he
was going to have to snap to do what he came here to do. It sucked majorly, but
it was better than the alternative. People would get over him, move on with
their lives.
Lydia would become a famous mathematician and win the Fields medal, and Jackson
would go off and be a famous sports player, or... an underwear model, and
Allison and Scott would have a bunch of adorable kids running around with claws
and arrows while Scott taught them how to control the shift and Allison showed
them all how to handle guns, and Danny would go on to be, he didn't know, some
super genius computer technician for NASA or something, Isaac would bond with
someone outside of pack or Stiles and fall in love, and get to live the real
college student experience, Boyd would finally get his head out of his ass and
ask Erica out on a date (if Erica didn't get to him first), and Derek would
stop blaming himself for Kate and the fire.
Yeah, Stiles had figured Derek's history with Kate out. He wasn't stupid, you
know.
So that's what he would happen when he was gone, when they all realised they
were better off without him. What should have been happening right then. But
Stiles wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He was selfish, and he
wanted to be near them all while he still could.
He had obligations outside of the pack, and no matter what, he knew, he would
be gone forever when it was all over, but rather than save everyone the pain,
he had caved. He knew he would regret it later. Would curse that the thought
ever crossed his mind, that he had ever let them back in again.
But later wasn't then, and as Stiles siphoned his magic into the circle he was
feeling morbid enough to think about it. He finally stopped, after draining as
much magic as possible without killing himself (and wasn't that a funny
thought), before he closed the circle behind him, hiding his secret once more
in the shadows.
The trolls had long since vanished, just passing through, but Stiles knew they
were only the beginning. Beacon Hills was going to get busy as the mixture of
his stagnant magic in the circle and his live magic in his body acted as a
super-powered magnet for supernatural creatures.
Stiles would be lying if he said he wasn't aching for a good fight. And he
figured there was enough lies in his life without one to himself being thrown
on top of the list. It was just a matter of making sure the pack didn't try and
involve themselves in his battles.
Yeah, Stiles knew he was being optimistic. So sue him.
...
Stiles wasn't heartless. Sure, he had made some morally grey decisions in his
life, but that happened to everybody even when it wasn't their profession. He
tried to be 'good', whatever that meant, and he didn't kill anyone unless he
had to. He ate his vegetables, and he buckled his seatbelt, and he occasionally
donated obscene amounts of money to charity. Okay, yes, technically he tended
to waver on more the 'dark' side of the spectrum, but that wasn't that big of a
deal when faced with the destruction of the world.
He wasn't boy next door innocent like Scott, or puppy dog adorable like Isaac,
but he wasn't exactly Peter levels of psychopathy either. The point was, that
Stiles suffered from guilt and regret just like everyone else. He had just
gotten better at controlling it in the heat of the moment.
So he was fully capable of killing someone without flinching, burning something
to crisp or shooting them through their heart with magic. He could, and had,
done it before, and no doubt he'd do it again. But that didn't mean he was
emotionless.
There were days, if he cared to remember them, when Stiles barely gathered the
energy to get out of bed. When his actions weighed down on him so much more
than any demon had ever done.
And there were days when he overcompensated. When he bounded out of his
apartment with a huge grin and a burning inside his mind.
In a word, Stiles was damaged. Damaged goods, damaged mind, just damaged. And
it was funny, honestly, how very broken he'd been even before the werewolf
fiasco. He knew it, his dad knew it, his therapist when he was ten and guilt
ridden knew it. But Stiles was very good at hiding it. Had gotten even better
over the years.
But what had never left him, was his ability to see the damage in others too.
It was what first led him to condemn Derek for the murder of his sister,
because he could feel his self-loathing in a way that wasn't quite human,
wasn't normal. Derek was damaged too.
And so was Lydia, and Erica, and Isaac, and Allison, and Boyd, and Jackson, and
Peter, and even Scott, in his own way. They were all so damaged, so broken,
that the idea of completeness was nothing more than a fantasy, a whimsy that
seemed so far off.
And how could Stiles be mad at them still? None of them were okay, in any sense
of the word, he least of all. But the pack had each other, and Stiles couldn't
afford to let anyone in when he was just going to leave again.
The idea that a human, a high-school counsellor, could understand any of that,
was laughable.
Stiles didn't want to be there. Didn't want to be sitting in that office,
surrounded by encouraging posters with slogans like 'Believe in yourself' or,
'Tell someone how you feel'. Didn't want to be facing someone so ignorant that
they assumed they weren't, while he was silently screaming inside. So Stiles
did what he did best. He bullshitted.
"So, Mr. Stilinski," she began, and Stiles was silently listing all the
different ways he'd get back at the school for this, because it was a complete
travesty and he had places to be, damn it. "Why are you here?"
And he knew that whatever he said would be recorded, written down in her
sparkly pink notebook with careful notes on tone and body language, and really,
the only place he would be sent if he told her the truth was a psychiatric
ward. "Why am I here?" he asked, deliberately slowly and with a dangerous smirk
hiding as a smile lifting the corners of his lips, "The real question is, why
are you here?"
The counsellor, an older woman with a name tag that read 'Mrs. Markey', forgot
herself for a moment and frowned at him disapprovingly over the rims of her
oval glasses. "What do you mean, Mr. Stilinski?"
Stiles kept his smirk, knowing that every second he prolonged the silence was
another that made her uncomfortable. "Why are you here? In this school, in this
room, on this planet, whatever way you want to interpret the question. My
reasons for being here are not what is truly fascinating about the human mind,
but is rather a sub-reaction of the neurobiological and social expectations
that our society encourages in children and adolescents, until we have adults
that are incapable of conceiving of a higher notion than the one right in front
of their eyes. I'm asking you why you are here, to demonstrate the single
mindedness to which all people fall prey to eventually. Because your first
thought on my question was not to answer it as you understood it, but to
receive clarification on the question itself. Which shows that we as a culture
need strict guidelines and rules to function because that was how we were born
and raised to be. But if I don't clarify, if you had to answer my question
solely upon the question alone, I'm curious as to what your answer would be."
Her eyes bugged behind her glasses, and Stiles sighed. Obviously no one had
informed her of just how annoying and mentally whiplashing he could be, when he
put his mind to it. Irritate Stiles enough, and give him time to run his mouth,
and he would talk your ear and sanity off in the same breath.
But, Mrs. Markey was obviously a professional, and she shook off his statement
with only minimal difficulty.
"Studies show that the people who talk the most are the people who have
something to hide." She said, looking for all the world as if it was personally
offending her to have to speak to him. Her attitude had changed remarkably
quickly.
"Look, Mrs. Markey. I have places to be, and things to do, and none of them
involve being psycho-analysed by a woman who looks as if she understands the
brain of a teenager as much as we understand the basest functions of the
universe. I understand the school insists I go to these little meetings, but I
assure you there is literally nothing you can say or do that would convince me
to suddenly pour out my heart and burst into tears, expressing how grateful I
am to you for 'helping me overcome my scars'. You are incapable of
understanding what I am, let alone what I feel, so I suggest we just end the
entire enterprise. If it helps, I'll even say you made me realise things about
myself I didn't know before, but right now I haven't got the time to deal with
your pride and shallow ego."
With that final jab, Stiles stood up, unfolding his lanky body gracefully. He
shouldn't have said any of that, but right then he couldn't bring himself to
care. Without a word, he left the too brightly coloured office and stepped
quickly out to where his jeep was parked.
He was on edge, shoulders tight and jaw clenched. But he wasn't too stressed to
not pay attention to his surroundings.
He heard the almost silent footfalls and gentle swoosh of air before they got
even a metre into his space. He waited, not acknowledging their presence until
they were right behind him. His body was thrumming with the need to engage, to
fight, to do something rather than sit on his ass and spread his magic.
Stiles had spent the last year in an almost constant state of alive-ness,
adrenaline and giddy laughter all rolled into one, and he hadn't had a decent
fight for weeks. It was beginning to drive him insane.
So when the strange person behind him moved as if to sweep his feet from under
him, it was with an inappropriate sort of glee that he kicked himself off the
ground and head first over their shoulders, until he was standing behind them.
With a move that would have made amateurs cry, he smoothly swiped his
attacker's feet from under them until they were both scrawled over the ground,
a fistful of hair in Stiles' hand. With a grin, Stiles flipped the knife from
under his jacket into the crevice of their neck.
"Now," he breathed, and his attacker shifted beneath him, obviously
uncomfortable, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
It was in that breath that he recognised the energy beneath him, and he was up
off his knees and at the other side of the jeep before Erica could get up from
the ground.
"What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded angrily, fists still clenching
with the need for a good fight. His body had gone from thrumming to flat out
buzzing, and if he didn't get away soon he was going to blow. "I could have
killed you!" he yelled at her, because it was true and she-they needed to
understand that. Stiles wasn't the same, and sneaking up wouldn't get the
reaction it used to. It was more likely to get them seriously hurt.
Stiles had no excuse for what happened next. Maybe it was how little psychical
activity he'd gotten apart from trooping through the forest. Maybe it was more
to do with the magic he hadn't used except for basics in weeks. Or maybe he was
just having a bad day. They happened to everyone, you know.
Whatever the reason, when Boyd came up behind him, with Stiles' attention
focused on Erica, and tapped on his shoulder, Stiles snapped.
...
Erica and Boyd didn't mean to cause the apocalypse. Truly.
Okay, so maybe trying to corner Stiles (again) wasn't the greatest idea in the
world, especially when the memories of the last time they'd tried to were still
fresh in everyone's mind. And Erica highly doubted that the fact they hadn't
mean to do it would hold any sway in front of a jury of their peers.
But Isaac had barely been going to pack meetings, and whenever he did show up
he smelled so distinctly of Stiles that it was driving them all crazy. The pack
puppy had never looked happier, and even though he hadn't been outright
avoiding them he spent most of his time with Stiles, doing whatever it was they
did, than with them. Erica wasn't sure whether to be jealous or betrayed. The
two were not mutually exclusive.
There was a small part of her, very small, that was beyond happy that Isaac had
Stiles. That Stiles had Isaac. But the rest of her was way too emotionally
involved in the entire situation to think rationally.
So Erica would be the first to admit that trying to catch Stiles unawares
wasn't her smartest plan of action. But it had worked, hadn't it? Admittedly,
she had planned to be conscious, but hey, you can't have everything, right?
That statement was never more true than when she began to wake up.
Coming back to consciousness hurt. Like, a lot. She almost wished she didn't
have to.
Her skin felt raw and itchy where it had pieced back together, her bones
rattled and mushy. Moving was too much effort to even contemplate. And just the
idea of speaking was rubbing her throat raw.
She felt as if someone had scrubbed her body with sandpaper, and, with her
luck, it wouldn't be far from the truth.
But with the return of consciousness came the return of memories, and Erica
almost groaned. How long was she out? And where was she? The last thing she
remembered, apart from bright lights and pain, was the eerie glow of Stiles'
eyes when he flung them all backwards. In an explosion.
That might possibly have taken place just outside the school for anybody to
see. As long as no one had caught it on camera, they'd be safe. Great, now she
had to go online and search through YouTube to make sure. Her to-do list kept
getting bigger and bigger.
It took her a few long seconds to work up the will to open her eyes. A few
seconds after that before she could see anything.
She was lying alone in a room, a room she quickly recognised as Stiles'
bedroom. The sheets below her were a deep blue, and she could hardly turn her
head. With a painful twist of her neck, she glanced over to the side only to
see the revelation that she wasn't as alone as she'd thought.
Boyd was lying on another bed a few metres from her, his face blank, but his
chest rose and fell with each inhale. The last time she had been in Stiles'
room, it had only one bed and the walls were covered with the usual teenage
tack, posters and sheets, all jumbled with the occasional police report or
mystery.
Now, though, it was different. Very different. There were the two beds, small
but neat, with army style tucked in covers and matching plain blue sheets. The
walls were painted white, and on one whole wall stretched a giant map of the
world, with little thumbtacks and notes stuck seemingly randomly all over. The
notes, Erica could see, read something like this, '23-1-15---Coven, fourteen,
pg.67 in J1, Mark 94 with a confirmed BSX, Status-Complete' and, '07-5-15---
Demon, army, pg.45 in J3, Mark 01 with possible ZNH and confirmed UKL. Status-
Mostly completed, follow K-Lead with requested confirmation, waiting response'.
It seemed liked gibberish, the occasional letters and numbers and signals all
laid over and over each other, littering every part of the globe. But there was
a method to the madness. Stiles was using codes, police, and Morse, and others
Erica had never seen. It was a confounding mix of regular, sociopath, and
Stiles. Erica was kind of in awe at it all.
Apart from the wall, the room was stripped bare of all personal touches,
excluding a large desk that posed as a investigation board cum first aid area.
Stiles had enough medical equipment to run a small clinic. It was slightly
worrying how well used the equipment seemed to be, particularly the needles and
a black leather slab, around the size of Erica's middle and pointer fingers,
that had human bite marks indented deep enough on it to leave permanent marks.
Erica swallowed down the guilt at the reminder of what Stiles had had to live
through.
Without warning, Stiles himself came strolling into the room, body fizzing with
energy that, if she was in wolf form, would have made her fur stand on end.
His expression was carefully closed off, but his blank façade shifted
infinitesimally when she saw she was awake. His shoulders loosened with
something akin to relief, and Erica comforted herself with the knowledge that
at least he wasn't actively trying to kill her. Small mercies.
"You good?" Stiles asked finally, avoiding her eyes in favour of scrutinising
the map. Erica had no idea what he saw that she didn't, what connections or
links could be made in the hodgepodge of Stiles' indecipherable writing. But he
obviously saw something, clearly understood the deeper discrepancies and hidden
meanings behind every point.
Erica nodded in response to his question, but still didn't sit up. If she was
being honest, she was pretty sure she couldn't.
Stiles swallowed once and clucked his tongue, jerking his head back to the
bathroom. "Umm, well, cool. I, uh, I gotta go make a call."
Erica nodded again, at loss for what to say. The tension in the air was
palpable, she could probably cut through it with a knife. "Stiles," she called,
because for some reason she couldn't just let him go, she had to say something,
and instead of something reasonable came out, "Why'd you change your room?"
Stiles face twisted in a grimace, and it took Erica a second to realise that he
felt guilty, that he blamed himself for what had happened at the school.
"Really, Erica? You want to talk about my room? I could've killed you! I nearly
did! I'm not the same guy I once was, and you have to stop treating me like I
am!"
Stiles' yell echoed and bounced off the walls, reverberating in Erica's ears.
His voice was angry and indignant, but underneath it ran a current of fear,
pain and guilt Erica was only all too familiar with.
"I know." She said instead, and it was if Stiles could read her sincerity
because he forced himself to calm down, running long fingers through his hair.
"I'm going to go out for a walk." He muttered into the air, and Erica frowned.
She didn't know what time it was, but what with both her and Boyd taking up
Stiles' beds he most likely hadn't slept since the school. He needed to get
some sleep.
She didn't say as much to him of course, but he did bark out a self-
depreciating laugh as if he'd heard her all the same. Maybe he had.
"Trust me," Stiles smirked, and for the first time Erica truly noticed the dark
bags under his eyes and the paleness of his skin, "If I could sleep I'd be out
for the count. I'm going to go take my walk, and I'll be back within an hour,
and then I have to make a call but if you still want to talk after that we
will, okay? Feel free to eat whatever you find and use whatever you can touch
in this room and the bathroom. I'll be back in a bit."
With no further comments Stiles left, leaving Erica to wistfully remember a
time when everything was better, easier between them. But sitting around being
wistful never helped anybody.
The thought of moving still hurt, and with nothing to distract her or draw her
attention, Erica quickly drifted back to sleep.
Her last conscious thought was of the sticky note on the map in red, with one
word written on it and a bracketed exclamation point.
Demon.
Chapter End Notes
     It's late, I'm tired, I haven't read this over and I'm sorry, I'll
     probably write the proper notes tomorrow and fix it up but I wanted
     to get it out today so here even though it's 11 minutes past
     midnight. Sorry for the delay and hope you like this chapter!
***** Hey Mr. Argent! Still the sanest person in your family I see. Just
thought I'd tell you that there's a couple of unconscious hunters in a downtown
warehouse. Hmm? Oh, no, they're all alive. Wait, scratch that, this one's dead.
Sorry. *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles makes call to a friend, complains about the lack of evil
     available, then gets captured by a bunch of incompetent hunters and
     realises a demon from his past is not quite as 'in the past' as he
     would like.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Stiles' feet slapped the ground with a frantic energy he couldn't hide. The sun
barely lit the sky, its first rays just illuminating the tips of the taller
trees.
But no matter how hard he pushed, or how fast he sprinted, his mind still
returned to yesterday's events. There had been a moment, a brief, terrible,
shattering moment, when Stiles thought he had killed them. Erica and Boyd. He
thought that his wayward magic had stolen their lives, and it had been easily
the worst moment of his life. Even dying couldn't compare.
His knees had given out, and for a long broken second his lungs had been
incapable of taking in air.
But then Erica had breathed in a huge gasp of air, and Boyd had twitched, and
suddenly Stiles could breathe again. His lungs had expanded painfully, but
Stiles was grateful for the pain. Grateful, because he deserved it. God, he had
almost killed them.
Stiles' already too fast sprint turned into a blur, his arms and legs pushing
himself further with each passing second. The wind whistled through his ears as
he ran, and he could no longer tell if it was adrenaline, muscle or magic
fuelling his desperate desire to run. But running away from your problems never
solved anything. No matter how much you wanted it to.
He didn't know what time it was when he stopped running, had no idea how long
he had been away from the house for, but the sun was well and truly up in the
sky. It shone down fiercely, burning the pavement. His breath came in huffy
little pants, his head swimming, but he felt better than he had when he was
talking to Erica that morning. And that had to count for something.
When he finally stopped running, both literally and metaphorically because he
was just that good, it occurred to him that maybe sprinting blindly past the
houses hadn't been his best idea. So he was lost. But it wasn't like he was
going to panic.
Stiles began jogging again, relying on his magic and his sense of direction
(admittedly non existent before leaving Beacon Hills) to get him to the
Stilinski house. Nobody but him was awake, save for the occasional slipper and
nightgown clothed old-age pensioner, or stressed parent trying to wrestle their
hyperactive kids into their mini-vans. Stiles gave them a nod, or a small wave,
and then continued on.
By the time he reached the house, six hours later than when he had left and
calmer than he had been in a while, there were signs of life in practically
every home. Lights being lit, curtains being pulled, mail being fetched. It was
domestic, and strangely peaceful even with all the noise.
Stiles was an active person by nature. He was constantly learning, or training,
or fighting. He hadn't conventionally 'relaxed' in... well, ever probably. He
was pretty sure being legally dead for a while didn't count.
Stiles pushed his way past the front door and quietened his footsteps as he
slowly walked up the stairs. No doubt Erica could hear him, what with her
werewolfy-super hearing, but the longer Stiles could delay his dad finding out
about how fucked up he really was, the better for all involved.
And while Stiles had always been a strange child, probably could have been the
poster child for repressed childhood emotional trauma, up at all hours of the
night and with a tendency to switch to tangents when he got distracted, that is
to say, always, this was a new low.
To his dad at least. Stiles was beyond used to it at this point. He could
probably count on one hand the number of times he had gotten a 'proper' night's
sleep. It should have worried him, but it didn't. Sleep was overrated when you
had lives to save.
Stiles quickly thumbed through his contacts on his phone, searching for the
name he wanted to talk to. He strolled past his closed bedroom door, knowing
that mere metres away was a very impatient Erica. He knew she knew that he was
there, but he had just calmed himself down and was in so state to talk to her
again.
Instead, he locked himself in the bathroom and paced as the cell rang. Up and
down, and up and down, avoiding the mirrors and any reflective surfaces.
"'S this?" Came a croaked, strained voice over the line, and Stiles couldn't
stop the sigh of relief. It felt so good to hear the familiar voice.
Silence for a second, then a choked, disbelieving, "Stiles??"
Stiles couldn't help it, he laughed. "Me." He replied, a grin lightening his
features without thought. There was a thump on the other end, then cursing.
Stiles' lips quirked upwards in a smile. "You okay there?" He teased, the
gesture easy and comfortable in a way it hadn't been with any of the pack.
"You complete fucking asshole of a damned nymph what the hell sort of shit do
you think you're doing do you know how goddamned worried I've been fuck you
dude, why didn't you just fucking contact me you've been gone for weeks!" The
spiel he received wasn't exactly unexpected, or unwelcome, It was nice
sometimes to get evidence of how some people still cared. Never the less, this
was a conversation best kept private, and there was no doubt in Stiles' mind
that they were currently been listened in on by a very nosy werewolf.
Unfortunately for Stiles, once they were in his house his privacy spell on his
phone ceased working. It truly was the b-word.
"A, A, I know, okay? But now's not the time. We got a K9 within earshot and I
did call you for a reason. You can beat me up later."
"You mean I can try." Came the grumpy reply, before the voice acquiesced.
"Fine, fine. What's the sitrep? We talking full out C, or partial?"
Stiles pondered for a moment about how much he really wanted the let the pack
know, and landed on zilch. Nada. Nothing. Just because he wanted to keep them
safe and alive didn't mean they had any right to know what his life was like.
Full code it was, then.
"Full. I got a problem, A. Defcon 1."
More cursing. Stiles didn't know whether he naturally gravitated towards people
with a tendency to curse, or whether his own rubbed off on his friends. Either
way, put them all together in a room and they had worse potty-mouths than a
ship of sailors. None of them were very bothered by it, though.
Stiles, for all his quirks, seemed to be almost popular with supernatural
creatures. It was strange. He had made friends at the school, people who, like
him, were studying and learning about both magic and themselves, and then
during training, and then jobs.
A week after Lydia had proposed using his new found skills to help people with
their supernatural problems, Stiles had found himself drunkenly telling his
group of friends that they should help him with it. To his everlasting
surprise, they had said yes.
All that meant, really, was keeping an eye out for disturbances in whatever
area they were in, and back up if necessary. Stiles knew of at least four of
his friends that had full time careers outside of his business, and that was
brilliant.
He was also aware that just recently two of his closer friends had gotten
married in Dublin, in fact, he had been the best man. It was definitely a good
start to gay marriage being legal in Ireland, what with an succubus and a
faerie getting hitched.
Stiles had given them a spelled vibrator that would never run out of power and
automatically changed to suit its owner's (or in this case owners') likes.
Yeah, that was well received. To anyone else, that might have been a bit of an
unconventional gift, but it spoke a lot about the people Stiles hung out with
when the two stars of the show opened the gift in front of everyone and then
declared they were going to their bedroom to test it for a few hours.
The werewolves in the room, and everyone who possessed keener senses than
humans', had rolled their eyes. It had been very funny. Especially when the
wives had descended hours later, flushed and grinning, and Rebecca, full time
faerie and only part time pervert, walked straight over to him and thanked him.
Profusely. She also hugged him. Nostalgia was a weird emotion, wasn't it?
Their base of operations for the Red Hood was in New York, and all of them
(commonly around 15 strong depending on how big of a disaster it was) had their
own apartments in the city. They were all close, practically living in each
others' pockets- more like a family or a pack than just friends- close enough
that within mere hours of Stiles leaving for Beacon Hills they had known about
it.
He had avoided contacting them, for a couple of reasons. Namely, what they knew
about his past was limited to drunk stories or personal knowledge of
experiences a human shouldn't have (Kanimas and the Alpha Pack sprang into
mind) and he liked to keep his past and present separate. Less complicated that
way. But the two worlds were going to have to collide, even briefly, if he had
any hope of doing what was needed. Didn't mean it wasn't sucky, though.
"Defcon 1? How bad we talking? From July levels of apocalypse to Easter."
Stiles shuddered. Easter had been an interesting occasion (if by interesting
you meant slightly scarring for life- seriously the guy was brutally killing
bunnies of all things, too bad he turned out to just be a psychopath who hadn't
transitioned to killing humans yet- but not very challenging), but July...
Stiles didn't want to think about July, because every time he did it was like
dying all over again. Goddamned demons.
So it was with great reluctance and mental pain that Stiles admitted the truth.
"Last two weeks in July. With easily 10000 C4s, and some local K9s. Also a B2.
Plan in way as repeated boundary, a couple of rogue O6s and a tribe of P4S,
both handled. We got ourselves a Buffy."
Well, Beacon Hills wasn't literally a Buffy (read; hellmouth) but with all of
Stiles' magic focused in one place it might as well have been.
More cursing, which Stiles felt was totally justified considering the
situation.
"Ok, Cap'n. What's the plan?" Stiles huffed out a laugh at the nickname, and
his chest swelled with relief. It was good to talk to someone who had never
known him before, someone who thought how he was then was how he's always been.
It had been stressful to keep up the charade in front of everyone.
Stiles' one track mind abruptly switched to tactics, and he found himself
spouting instructions within seconds. "This isn't a job for the whole team,
same mission parameters as the last. I need you down here as quick as you can,
my magic's acting all FUBAR and the sooner I get Dark Knight into my hands, the
better." Stiles rubbed the edges of his eyes, before sighing.
"Have I told you how very nerdy out nicknames sound? I mean, my weapon of
choice is named after a Batman Movie."
A pleased chuff could be heard over the line. "Like you weren't the one to
instigate the whole thing."
Stiles grinned with all teeth. "I never said I didn't like it."
They both dissolved into gentle laughs for a minute, enjoying the silence and
the companionship, even if it was over the phone. Stiles filled his chest with
air, then tightened his hold on the phone.
"And bring Him with you." That was risky, could go either way. Could be the
greatest decision of Stiles' life, or the crappiest. But they could use his
help.
"You sure about this Stiles?" The voice was unsure, hesitant, but Stiles knew
if he confirmed it then he wouldn't be questioned. He had earned all his
friends' loyalty, and they his. If Stiles said he needed something, there
wasn't one of them who would refuse it to him. He himself would cut off his arm
before letting any of them down, and it was a sentiment shared by every last
one of them.
It was nice to know you could depend on someone no matter what fucked up shit
you got yourself entangled in. Useful as well when Stiles' day-job involved
monsters and killing, that was for sure.
"Yeah," He said finally, voice not betraying how nervous he was over the
decision-even if he still felt it was the right one-, an he was grateful for
it. "I'm sure."
Stiles could practically feel the head nod through the connection. "Okay.
You're the boss. We'll be down in three days."
Stiles frowned. "48 hours, and feel free to use our funds. Tell everyone I said
hi, and take care. And that I miss them. I'll hopefully head up to see you all
sooner rather than later, depending how this goes."
"Yeah, I'll pass it on." The voice got impossibly gentler here, layered with
genuine compassion and worry. "You watch out for yourself, all right? Don't go
being all martyr on us now. You'll be wanted up here, what with Lexi's
pregnancy and all."
Stiles smiled at the reminder. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Don't go getting yourselves
killed in my absence. I might wind up missing your ugly face if you do."
Another laugh, this one slightly more real. "Same to you. You know how to
contact me, and don't hesitate to call."
"See ya."
Stiles stared down at the phone after hanging up, his brows furrowed. He didn't
want to get his friends involved at all, but he couldn't leave Beacon Hills
yet. The sooner Stiles got his magic back under control, the better.
Stiles straightened his shoulders and exited the bathroom. Fucking nosy
werewolves. He just hoped Erica wouldn't ask him any questions. He was not in
the mood to see her face when she shot her down, but he was in even less of a
mood to talk to her about it.
What were the chances she had minded her own business and not listened in?
Zero, most likely.
Fucking nosy werewolves.
...
Stiles was cursed. That was the only reason for how often he attracted trouble,
even while doing innocuous things like shopping. He didn't even do it on
purpose (thank you, Lydia), so it wasn't like he was to blame. There had been
so many nights where Stiles had gone to a bar to pick someone up, and instead
left with a black eye and a split lip. On the bright side, he usually left with
a phone number as well.
That said, he did also sometimes, less rarely than he might like to say, go out
looking for trouble. Mostly for good reasons, occasionally for ethically and
morally questionable ones, and even out of boredom on occasion. Stiles had this
burning desire to save people, like, constantly. And when he wasn't helping
people, or learning things that would help people, of training so he could help
people, things got dull really fast.
He didn't know if a sudden moral compass and heroic tendencies came naturally
with vigilante-y type work, or if he was just lucky. Or unlucky, as the case
may be.
Whatever the reason, Stiles was out, in the forest, at 2 o'clock, looking for
something evil to beat the snot out of. So it was just his luck that all
'something evil's had apparently decided to abandon Beacon Hills for the
foreseeable future.
So there he was, following the cold trail of an Omega just for something to do.
Something to take his mind off of this morning's (yesterday's? It was
technically past twelve) events, and the phone call. Hearing his friend's voice
again had reminded him of life away from Beacon Hills, and how easy it had been
to forget.
Stiles loved New York, loved the busy streets and the artists and the
constantly busy traffic. Loved being who he was, and forever learning new
things.
And being back, back in Beacon Hills, it distanced him from his life in a way
he hadn't anticipated. Yes, Stiles loved living in New York and having the
freedom he did, loved his friends and his job and his life. But that didn't
mean he didn't still have nightmares, or anxiety attacks, or sometimes go out
and beat the shit out of something just because he needed to. Needed to feel
useful.
And being where he was, wasn't helping, Sure, he had made links with some
people from his past again, fell back into the routine of pretending to care
about school or college or high school drama. But god, he was slowly falling
apart.
Stiles had had plans in New York for how he wanted to spend the rest of his
life. Not exceptionally detailed, or hopeful, plans. In fact, it had been a
pretty early idea that he most likely wouldn't make it to 40. But they had been
there, constantly reassuring in the back of his mind in a way small town life
had never been.
And then Deaton called, and Stiles was dragged right back to where he started.
He didn't hate the pack. He should, perhaps, but when there was no risk of
staying when it was all over, why bother wasting energy. He wasn't sorry for
leaving, wasn't regretful, wasn't even angry at them anymore.
But he didn't forgive them. Not by a long shot.
Stiles knew the trail of the Omega wouldn't lead him anywhere, but he followed
regardless. There was a constant throbbing in the back of his skull, an
insistent demand that he use his magic.
Just draining it, no training, for a few weeks hadn't been enough. He felt like
a volcano about to erupt. Which, actually, when he thought about, was a pretty
apt description.
So it was all his luck when there was nothing- Nothing, with a capital N- to be
found. No evil witches, no Omegas, not even a fucking harpy. So Stiles cursed
when he was frustrated, get over it.
Stiles was literally seconds away from creating a goddamned enemy to fight-
which, believe him, would so not have turned out well. For ANYBODY- when he was
suddenly hit with a crowbar.
Well, aimed at with a crowbar. His magic stopped it before it became to close.
But Stiles was so bored (and he really needed to go see a shrink or something
because self-destructive behaviour was NOT something he needed when he had at
least a dozen things out to kill him at all times) that he forced his barriers
to drop.
It collided with the back of his head, and Stiles felt vaguely irritated that
it hadn't hurt more, because, hello? Weak much?
Was it bad that, to him, getting whacked over the head with a metal object
barely even registered as pain? Okay, that was definitely going to go on 'the
list of things Stiles refused think of'.
So it was with a little (Okay, a lot) of help from Stiles' own magic that he
forced himself to slip into unconsciousness like a normal human would.
At least he couldn't say things were boring anymore. Not that hunters (they
were obviously hunters, Stiles could sense the wolfsbane bullets from that
distance, and he would have sensed any supernatural creature near him) were
much of a threat to him.
But he was feeling reckless, and impulsive, and he could not wait to see the
looks of their faces when they realised who it was they had tried to capture.
His last thought as he let the darkness overwhelm him (with something almost
akin to glee-he so needed to see a shrink-) was that the hunters obviously
didn't know he was a mage, let alone the most powerful mage in centuries.
Yep, Stiles was most definitely going to enjoy giving them first hand knowledge
of it.
It was going to be so much fun!
...
Stiles was shocked awake by a faint thrumming in his chest. His hands were tied
behind his back, his legs individually tied to the legs of the chair he was
sitting on. That was it.
No circle, no gag, no magic herb soaked rope or perimeter of even kitchen salt,
all of which would have slowed him down for a few minutes. Probably less, but
still better than nothing. No, Stiles was restrained by only common, everyday
rope one could buy for a few dollars in a hardware shop.
For a minute he was too shocked to do anything, then he laughed. Loudly. It
echoed off of the grimy dirt caked walls, and caught the attention of whatever
stupid hunter had tried to hold him.
God, this was the funniest thing Stiles had seen in weeks.
He found himself grinning as a man, wearing ripped overalls and pulling off the
badass vibe about a million times worse than Stiles himself, stepped forward
out of the darkness. How very cliché. Stiles didn't understand villains'-no
matter how useless- love for dark things, not when Stiles thrived in the dark.
The dark was where he preferred to be, hiding in plain sight, his magic burning
through anything in its path. By comparison, this guy's attempt at intimidation
was easily the most entertaining thing Stiles had ever seen.
"S'up?" He called out, hands slowly wriggling around in the rope. He could have
used his magic to burn through them in nothing flat, but it felt almost
cheating, unsportsmanlike. Stiles was going to do this the old-fashioned way,
with a little bit of help from his intensive training in pretty much every form
of martial arts or self-defence ever.
The hunters wouldn't even know what hit them.
The man frowned at him, silent, before being joined by another man- this one in
cut, muddy jeans and a camouflage jacket. Both of them said nothing, standing
and staring at him. He felt completely justified in grinning back at them
manically, eyes alight with humour.
He might have been disappointed by the complete lack of a challenge they
presented, if the two weren't quickly followed by a least another dozen, all
wearing clothes that had seen better days.
Stiles' smile only got impossibly bigger.
"Hey guys!" He began cheerfully, and received a well-timed (and rude!) punch to
the face for his troubles. Stiles flung his head back dramatically, using the
new view point to carefully and meticulously note the exits and the roof.
"You don't get to speak to me, dog." The one who slapped him sneered, face
contorted in disgust. Okay, whoa, not cool, dude. So not cool.
Stiles dropped the smile and frowned at him, eyes like daggers. He hated
everyone who hunted, sure, but there was a special little place in his heart
for douchbag, Alpha male, species-ist assholes. By special place he meant he
liked to rip them apart. Some people were romantics, and some were psychopaths.
"You need to get your facts straight, asshole. Not a werewolf, here. Which
you'd know if you were in contact with the resident hunters of this town, the
Argents. So that tells me you're not working for them at least, and that brings
me to my next question." Stiles shoved his face upwards, getting right into the
guy's face, barely restraining his magic enough not to combust. "What the hell
are you doing in my town?"
The guy stepped back unconsciously, before turning to face his comrades, face
pinched into one of confusion. Stiles mentally groaned.
First of all, Stiles was not a wolf. By any stretch of the imagination. And the
idea that he had been taken for one was hilarious.
But for fuck's sake, you did not automatically believe what a person you
kidnapped told you! That didn't mean Stiles didn't want to be taken at face
value, but he hadn't expected it in the slightest. He was pretty sure that if
there was a kidnapper's handbook, they wouldn't even have bothered putting that
little clue in, because it was just common sense.
Christ, it felt almost cruel to take these hunters out now. That didn't mean he
wasn't going to do it though. With a smile on his face. Stiles could be truly
terrifying when he put his mind to it.
Stiles rolled his eyes and fidgeted with the rope around his wrists some more.
It was slowly coming loose, slipping further down his arms as gravity took
affect.
"I don't believe you!" About damn time. Stiles turned to glare up at the
flushed hunter, one eyebrow raised. He was sure judgement was written all over
his face.
"Of course you don't believe me!" Wrists nearly freed now. "I never expected
you to believe me!" Almost...there. "I'd be embarrassed for you if you did
believe me!" Bingo.
Stiles kept talking, running his mouth and elaborating on all the ways he never
expected to be believed as he oh so slowly reached down to the band of his
jeans and got a handle on the knife hidden there. They hadn't even fucking
searched him for weapons.
The Argents would never have been this stupid. Stiles knew things were bad when
he was actually missing Gerard's diabolicalness. He did keep things
interesting, though.
Stiles slid the knife upwards until it held easily in the palm of his hand, tip
barely grazing his fingertips. He casually stretched his leg muscles, loosening
the ropes around his shins enough that it was barely noticeable but inarguably
there. The hunters still watched his face, expressions shifting from anger and
disgust to confusion and shock and back again.
He just had that affect on people.
"Well," Stiles said, smiling up at the assembled group of hunters benignly,
"Not that this wasn't fun or anything, but well, it really wasn't. I mean, you
tied up a mage-and I'm not trying to brag here but you tied up the singular
most powerful mage in recorded history, actually you know what, this is totally
me bragging- with ordinary rope. No gag. No magical boundary. Seriously, I'd be
insulted if I wasn't laughing too hard internally to care. This has got to be
the funniest thing that has happened to me in ages, so, you know, thank you for
that. Now, down to business."
In one swift move, Stiles stepped out from the chair, fingers buzzing with
restrained magic. Looked like not using his powers was not an option if he
didn't want to blow up the whole goddamned building. Wait, did he want to blow
up the building...?
Stiles pursed his lips as he brought his fisted hand around to crack the side
of the guys head. The hunter dropped like a stone with nary a sound, body going
lax. No, no he didn't want to blow up the building. Goddamn it. That would have
been a great way to release excess energy.
Stiles stepped over the unmoving body of the unconscious hunter and faced the
larger group. There were more than a dozen now, all staring at him in shock.
Stiles fist pumped the air once. "Yes! That's what I'm talking about! Okay to
make this fair I promise I won't use either fire or water magic." Stiles
frowned once, quickly, before pouting. "However, I do have to get back to the
house before my departure is noted, so you know, no hard feelings!"
The hunters shook off their shock, and, as one, rushed him, pulling assorted
knives and guns out of various places on their bodies. Stiles clapped his hands
together.
When the first hunter reached him, Stiles grabbed the back of his shirt and
flung him across the room, causing a cloud of dust to rise form the ground. The
down-for-the-count hunter groaned before going silent. One.
Two more came at him from opposite sides, and Stiles used their momentum to
push himself off of their shoulders and into the air. He landed behind them,
and forcefully slammed their heads together, a slight thumping sound the only
thing before they both crumpled to the ground. Two. Three.
Hunters four and five respectively tried to sneak up behind him and press a
dagger to his throat, and slam into his midriff like a forward tackle. Four was
flipped over Stiles' head by his armpits and given a long drag of the knife
down his torso for his troubles, and five got a knee to the groin and a broken
wrist.
That all occurred in forty seconds, five prone bodies and twelve hunters still
standing. Stiles bounced on his heels. That had been easy, too easy, but if the
cautiousness of the rest of the hunters was any indication they were going to
do better. Fingers crossed.
The next hunter to attack him used a different tactic, all swirling blades and
fast footwork, and Stiles felt so ecstatically alive.
Stiles dropped down low to the ground, sweeping the blade-dude's legs from
under him, shaking his hand into a fist that was shoved straight into his
stomach like Stiles was trying to give him the Heimlich. The man rolled on the
floor, breathing laboured, winded and out of commission. Six. And not even a
sweat.
Fuck yeah, Stiles still had it.
Number seven was more careful, but still not careful enough. She (and that
threw Stiles for a loop for a second, because he thought the women were the
leaders in hunter groups, but whatever that didn't mean they didn't fight
(Allison being a prime example of that)) stepped around him, holding a long
steel stick that literally buzzed with electricity. Stiles could feel the
energy, and he was suddenly, perversely, desperate to get hit by it.
The last time he had gotten shocked, he had managed to take out four upper
class demons in five seconds. Stiles mentally compared it to the affect Thor's
lightning had on Tony's suit in the Avengers, because, yes, he was that big of
a nerd and anyone who claimed otherwise obviously didn't know him,
Never the less, with his magic at such a volatile state (a really nice way of
saying it was probably going to kill everyone if it got stronger) Stiles
instead feinted a hit at her shoulder, jabbed her in the other, twisted the
wrist that held the cattle rod (who even used cattle rods anymore??) until she
released it with a cry, then struck her with her own weapon. She contorted on
the ground. Seven. How strong had she had the thing on?
The answer when Stiles looked at the dial? The highest. Any pity he might have
had for her disappeared and he jabbed her with it again. He was likely to take
it personal when you tried to shoot him up with enough power to cause an entire
fucking city to black out.
He supposed it was a flaw of his.
After that things became a whirl of pulled punches (because no matter how much
he complained he didn't really want to see them dead), muttered expletives and
manic laughs. It wasn't until number thirteen (ha, unlucky number thirteen)
that he was shot at.
Slowly, very very slowly, Stiles turned to glare at the hunter. The man was
shaking, hands fiddling with the trigger of the gun. If Stiles' shields hadn't
been up it would've burrowed right through his shoulder. That was it. He was
done with the bullshit.
Stiles stalked angrily towards the hunter, conjuring up dark tendrils of vines
to strangle the living daylights out of him, when another bullet just passed by
his arm. Not enough that they were all taking a leaf out of their ally's book
and shooting at him, but they all had to be crap shots too.
Stiles was seeing red, his fists clenched into his sides. Maybe it was growing
up with a sheriff for a dad, and friends who were shot multiple times, but any
time someone pulled out a gun Stiles lost any semblance of humour. He was
proficient in them, downright scary with a rifle, but always preferred using
blades or magic or his own body, if the situation called for it.
And the hunters, or at least the four left, all had firearms pulled on him,
their smirking faces further inducing his ire.
Stiles smiled darkly at them, and his eyes flashed pure white, before hundred
of twisting vines exploded out of the ground. The hunters yelled in panic,
their weapons abandoned with no more thought, as Stiles constricted the living
ropes around them further. And further.
Stiles' magic had a mind of his own as the shifting vines sported barbs, an
inch thick and hooked, that dug into their skin. With a push, Stiles managed to
take control of his magic long enough to pull the sharp thorns back into the
vines themselves. The hunters wiggled and struggled, their clothes in even more
disarray, and Stiles finally slammed them all into the earth hard enough to
knock them out. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen.
He turned back to number thirteen, the sneaking plants behind him slipping back
into their original forms, and formed a cloud of deep, entwined, living smoke
in the palm of his hand.
 
His smile was gentle, deceptive as he cocked his head. "Now, I'm going to live
up to the cliché here. Please accept my apologies in advance. But you see,"
Stiles laughed lightly, eyes still burning amber, "I have a powerful need to
know why you're here. As you can see," He gestured flippantly with one hand to
behind him, to the sixteen trained hunters he just incapacitated in under five
minutes, "I am by no means your average run-of-the-mill werewolf. You can't
hope to kill me, can do nothing to hurt me that hasn't already be done. Now,
why are you here?"
The hunter, obviously terrified and shaking with it, spit in his face. "We can
kill those dogs you call friends and all the people who sympathise with them!
There are too many of us! They deserve to die!"
Stiles kept smiling, but his eyes were hard. "So I'm not the only cliché then.
How comforting. Now you listen, and you listen with all the talent your tiny
hunter brain possesses, okay? We can do this the easy way, or my way. No one
has ever survived my way. What's it gonna be?"
The hunter bared his teeth at him, ironically animalistic, before saying, "We
know who you are, Stilinski! Your coward of a dad is next on our list!"
Stiles let the smile slowly fall from his face, eyes glowing painfully golden-
white, lashes thick as he watched the hunter from beneath them. He fingered the
knife in his hand, then drove it straight into the his chest with no warning.
The man's mouth dropped open, gasping through the pain. Stiles' voice was dark
and velvety as he spoke. "You really shouldn't have said that."
He shoved the magic blade in further, knowing that every second it was inside
him it burned like an eternity. "You don't know who I am. How could you?" He
stroked the man's hair faux-gently, another smile already lifting his lips.
Stiles didn't enjoy inflicting pain, per-se, but he found that when people
thought you did things got done a lot quicker.
But the idiot had threatened his dad. He didn't get to live.
Stiles leaned in real close, his breath fanning against the gasping man's ear.
"I am the monster parents warn their children about at night. I am power, and
fear, and hope, all encased in a mortal body. I am your deepest fear, your most
poignant regret. I am your death. My name is the Red Hood," And there the man's
eyes grew triple in size and he moaned out his fear, but Stiles wasn't finished
yet, "And I do, I try to be good. Not to kill. To save people. To help them.
But sometimes, sometimes, I. Just. Slip." Stiles' chuckle was utterly
terrifying in that moment, as he twisted the knife if the man's stomach.
"And when I slip, whoever caused it usually ends up spending an eternity in the
deepest levels of hell. So, let me ask again, one more time."
Stiles fixed the dying hunter with a gaze too intense, too inhuman, for his
age. Too immortal.
"Why. Are. You. Here?"
Each word was emphasised with a thrust of the knife, and it seemed like it
should have come out his back by then with how deep it was going through the
hunter's chest.
The man was outwardly choking on air, unable to make any sounds apart from cut
off whimpers. The thing about Stiles, the thing that was so easily hidden by
his slight frame and innocent-looking eyes, was that he knew pain. Knew how to
feel it, to ignore it, to work with it, to worship it, and how to cause it.
The knife in the chest wouldn't kill the hunter. Oh he would wish it did, the
pain overwhelming by that point, he would beg to die. But part of the magic was
that it would keep him alive. So Stiles could make the pain last for eternity.
It wasn't an empty threat. And the hunter knew it.
Red-rimmed eyes full of pain met Stiles' and the hunter gasped out an answer.
"Heard there was trouble in Beacon Hills. Heard supernatural creatures were
being drawn here. We thought we would be able to take a few of them out."
Stiles growled low in the back of his throat. That was bad, very bad. If news
had already reached the ears of the hunters, there was no telling who would
come next. Stiles needed more information.
"Who told you?" He demanded, but all he got was a pained half sob. "Who told
you?" He yelled, his hand on the knife the only thing holding the hunter up at
all.
A dribble of scarlet blood ran down from the man's mouth. "He said-He said his
name was Baalberith." The man stumbled over the uncommon name, but Stiles felt
his blood run cold all the same. It couldn't be. It was impossible.
"When was this?" He questioned harshly, tone not permitting any argument. The
hunter flinched as the knife pressed deeper into his body.
"Last-Last week."
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck-if he was telling the truth, and Stiles hadn't sensed
a lie, things just got a billion times more complicated. He couldn't help the
derisive laugh that escaped his body.
"Do you know with whom you spoke?" His jaw was clenched, and he didn't expect
an answer, not really. "Baalberith," And his tongue curled around the name like
acid in his mouth, "Is a demon. And not just any demon. He is a chaos demon
that feeds on death and destruction. He is not someone you want to meet. But if
he's sending you in this direction, towards here, he must already know where I
am."
Absently, Stiles pulled the knife out of the man's body, and he immediately
slid to the floor, choking and gasping.
Stiles' heart was frozen in his chest, and he felt a sick sort of fear crawl
over him. He shoved it down, because addressing it then would have done him no
good.
But if Baalberith was coming to Beacon Hills, Stiles would have to change his
plans. There was no way he was letting that demonic bastard even breathe on the
town unless he was dead as all fuck. Then again, Stiles had killed him before
and he had somehow managed to come back.
But if his suspicions were correct (and they generally were), Stiles would be
able to avoid something like that happening again by taking certain measures.
Stiles would do whatever it took to take that death demon down, even if he had
to spend an eternity in hell to do it.
But first, the hunters. He needed to make a phone call. Maybe if the hunter he
had stabbed was lucky he would bleed out before Stiles finished his phone call.
He might just kill him regardless of his morals otherwise, because catching the
attention of a murder demon was a hard feat to accomplish unless you were
particularly evil.
Stiles felt bile rise in his throat, but he pushed it down like he had with the
fear. It wasn't the time or place to freak out.
There might never be a time or place.
...
Allison watched silently from the rafters, hands unsteady on her bow. What the
hell had happened to Stiles? Chatty, silly, clumsy Stiles that could NOT take
down seventeen armed, trained hunters, and would never have dreamed of
torturing anybody.
She didn't know who 'Baalberith' was, but if even Stiles wove tales of fear
about him, she was inclined to be wary of him without needing any more
evidence.
She left the warehouse as quickly as she dared, and so missed the way Stiles
crumpled as soon as he walked away and passed the tree-line. She missed the way
his head pressed low to his chest, or his frantic breaths that sounded painful
in their intensity. She missed the way he fell apart, the same way he did
everything. With abandon and guilt, before forcing himself back together. She
never saw the way he stood up, back bone straight and eyes wiped clear,
banishing any distractions from his mind. She would never know how impossible
it had been in that second for him to push aside the suffocating memories and
focus on saving them, but how he had managed it.
She didn't see the toll being who he was took on him, and if Stiles had been
aware that she could have, he would have been grateful.
Showing his pain had never been an option. Werewolf draining didn't work on
emotions, anyway.
Chapter End Notes
     Wow, okay, I have literally no good reasons for why this took so
     long. One day I look and I haven't updates in two days, the next it's
     twelve, I don't even know.
     I've only been getting like 6 hours sleep for the past few nights
     (Tumblr and late-night studying is so not a good combination, but
     anyway) which I know is bad for me but I still do, just like I always
     buy junk food like pringles if I have the spare money.
     Warnings for this chapter; Where do I even begin, okay:
     Stiles almost killed Erica and Boyd, but they both survive.
     Stiles is not really in a good place mentally, understandably if you
     think about it.
     Stiles is (kinda?) violence-addicted, like he feels as if he's
     useless when he isn't saving people.
     Pretty graphic descriptions of violence as Stiles fights the hunters,
     so there is that.
     Brief mentions of Past!Character Death.
     Stiles like really, really needs a hug.
     Oh, and Stiles tortures a hunter for information with a magic knife
     to the chest. Now that I think about it, that one shoudl probably
     have gone first.
     I'm not that good with triggers otherwise, so, sorry in advance, but
     if there's something I left out that you think should be in here feel
     free to drop a comment!
     Right, well, this chapter was actually pretty difficult to write, for
     reasons unknown. Emm, the whole thing with the demon is *obviously by
     the summary* one of the key points in the entire story so there will
     be more about him later.
     The name I got from literally googling "Evil demons that feed on
     death." I think the site was just his name and wikipedia, but I have
     changed some details to suit the story which will come out later.
     The idea is that Stiles fought Baalberith a few weeks before the
     beginning of this story and finally killed him, and, again, more will
     be explained later about that.
     I just recently learned how to do italics without switching to rich
     text mode- I know, I know, and I thought I was good with technology
     too!- so prepare yourself for a lot of that.
     This, I think, has been one of the longest chapters yet, partly as an
     accidental apology for the delay but also because I've been writing
     the warehouse scene non stop all morning. (I've fallen asleep twice
     now in the past week with my laptop on trying to get this done, so
     there's probably bits of it that aren't that good or coherent but I
     tried to make it as easy as possible to understand.)
     As always, a huge, gigantic thank you to everyone who reads this
     story, gives it kudos, comments, bookmarks or subscribes (though I
     don't know if you do, thank you, AO3), and I hope you like the new
     chapter!
     Love,
     H.S.F
***** Don't look at me with those hangdog eyes, Scott, or I swear to hell I
will make it literal and hang you from a tree with a dog lead. A bright red,
sparkly dog lead. Yeah, I asked Deaton. How do you like me now, wolf-boy? *****
Chapter Summary
     Have some Sterek action, plus Before the argument, and After!
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"He.. just... stabbed him. With the dagger. I would never have thought him
capable of it, but he did. And he took them all out. There were seventeen
hunters, there, Scott. Fully trained, would have been able to completely
overpower the pack if they had any idea, any experience at all. And he floored
them like they were nothing. I've been in the supernatural world two years, but
I've never seen anything like it."
Allison was standing in the middle of the room, facing what was there of the
pack like a criminal before the executioner. Her hands had that stilted
motionless quality that most often meant she was trying incredibly hard not to
fidget.
Her eyes were cast downwards, staring intently at the wooden floor of the
kitchen like it held the answers to all of life's problems. Hell, maybe it did.
What did Derek know?
He thought he knew Stiles, and, yet, there they were.
When Allison had walked into the house, with an unnameable expression on her
face and her hands clasping her bow so tightly Derek was afraid it might break,
his first thought was that something had happened Scott. But then Scott had
walked in after her, face a hurt mixture of confusion and anxiety.
She had walked straight into the sitting room, trailed behind by Derek and his
Beta. With a sicking feeling in his stomach, Derek had sat down on the couch
and braced himself.
But then she'd started talking, and Derek was grateful he's sat down.
Scott was wearing that puppyish, hang-dog expression he wore so well, and was
clinging to Allison's hand like a drowning man to a life jacket. The comparison
wasn't that far off, if Scott was experiencing the very same choking sensation
that Derek himself was fighting.
"Allison," He interrupted, "Does he pose a threat to us?"
Allison was shocked into silence. "What?" She asked, her eyebrows scrunched
together.
She sounded so put out, as if the idea had never occurred to her, would never
occur to her, but it was common sense. If Stiles was capable of what she had
said then it was a valid thought to wonder if he would hurt them next. Even if
everything in Derek said otherwise.
Derek stood up from the couch. "Does." He took a step away from the seat. "He."
Another step, bringing his left foot onto the plush carpet Lydia had demanded
they buy when the house was first rebuilt. "Pose." Both feet on the carpet, his
weight sinking down infinitesimally into the fibres. Allison drew a deep
breath, the inhalation exaggerated by Derek's wolf hearing. "A." He was only a
metre away from her then, and even if he wanted to he couldn't have stopped
himself from continuing forward, because he was this close to losing all
semblance of control. "Threat." His tongue curled over the r, his eyes glowing
slightly redder than their usual colour. Scott growled from beside Allison, but
she shushed him, watching Derek intently. "To. Us."
Allison pressed her lips together, eyes wide. For a second Derek wished they
were wide with fear, but Derek knew his Beta. Allison was angry. And Derek had
no idea why.
"A threat to us?" She demanded, incredulous, pushing back when Derek leaned
into her space. Her voice was hard, a mocking laugh on the tip of her tongue.
"To us?"
She stared him down, jaw clenched. "Why do you think he tortured that hunter,
Derek" The way she said his name was derisive and cruel, and Derek got a sudden
flashback of Kate before being pulled away from his own head.
"Stiles still cares for us. God only knows why, when we have done nothing to
deserve it. I'm here to warn you about something else entirely, something that
was enough for the man who can take down seventeen hunters in five minutes to
worry about. You weren't there, Derek. Stiles may not be out friend anymore,
but he is by no means the enemy. How could you even think that? I mean, Stiles
would kill for us, for this town, he has killed for us. Probably multiple
times. And yet you're asking me if he would hurt us? Just because someone has
power doesn't mean they have no control, or heart. You should know better than
most."
Derek frowned at her angrily, trying to ignore the way his brain insisted he
believe her. The pack came first, and if Stiles was as powerful as Allison
claimed then he needed to be stopped. "What's that supposed to mean?" Derek
flinched as his wolf growled deep and low in his chest. He didn't know whether
it was from Allison's insinuation, or Derek's own stubbornness. Knowing him, it
could be both.
Allison didn't get a chance to answer, the words stuck on the tip of her tongue
like barbs, because no sooner had she opened her mouth to utter them when there
was a *pop* of sound outside, and four very distinct smells hit Derek's nose.
Derek, Scott and a still-angry Allison rushed outside, and were greeted with
tired-looking Erica, Boyd, Isaac and Stiles- Boyd leaning on Erica and Isaac
with an arm thrown around each of their shoulders. The Betas looked worse for
wear, deep bags under the eyes and red marks on what could be seen of their
bodies. Stiles himself looked no different than usual, maybe slightly more
settled than when Derek had seen him last.
Derek tried hard not to think about how killing someone had helped Stiles
settle. He wasn't very good at it.
Boyd was conscious, at least, even with the way the majority of his weight
rested on his pack-mates, a small smile on his face that Derek hadn't been
witness to since the last pack night with Stiles. Erica was smiling widely, at
odds with her tired and hurting scent. Isaac was caught mid-laugh, humour
dancing in his eyes.
Allison hung back as Derek walked in front of them, watching Stiles with the
same focus she usually reserved for fighting. Stiles spared her a mere glance,
meticulously recording her every little reaction, storing it away for future
reference. He swept his eyes over Scott, observing his former best friend with
a coldness Derek had never dreamt Stiles possessed.
Then his eyes hit Derek, and 'hit' was such a perfect description for what
Derek felt with only one touch of Stiles' eyes against his own.
A smirk the size of a mountain changed Stiles' entire face into one eerily
reminiscent of the pre-bite Jackson they all remembered and hated. It wasn't a
good look on him, but it wasn't like Derek had any rights to say as such. No
matter what his wolf and instincts insisted to the contrary.
"Derek." Stiles said, and Derek had missed the way Stiles said his name, missed
in some undiscernible way how Stiles would talk to him, a mixture of sarcasm,
independence, and a You're-Not-My-Alpha attitude that he should never have
enjoyed.
But he did, because good Alphas were supposed to have people who challenged
them, who encouraged them, who forced them to be the best they can be.
And out of all his Betas, all the pack who at different times gave up on him,
Stiles never did. It was weird not having that anymore, and Derek could no more
have helped the residual bitterness that thought encouraged than he could the
redness of his eyes.
Stiles stepped past the Betas, his hands gliding over the exposed skin of their
necks briefly as reassurance. They leaned into his touch, and Derek was so
confused, because how and why did Stiles become a source of comfort?
But that was a stupid question, because Stiles had always been their rock. The
humanity of the pack, maybe not their moral compass, but the reason they stayed
human. He had been their comfort for forever. And Derek had kicked him out. His
reasons were becoming more flimsy in the face of Stiles' return.
Stiles walked up to the front door, a reverse position of when they believed
Lydia was the kanima and Derek tried to kill her. He swept a hand dramatically
behind him, encompassing the three smiling Betas with one flourish.
"Delivery for a Mr. Hale. Are these stray pups yours by any chance?" Erica
responded to that by slapping Stiles on the arm, shooting Stiles a quick
indulgent smile when he mock glared at her. Even with the same old camaradie
between them, Derek saw the hardness in Stiles' eyes that would most likely
never leave. Stiles may be speaking with the three Betas, but they weren't
friends. Not anymore.
"Stiles." He growled out, but was promptly ignored when the mage clapped his
hands and turned back to the wolves.
"All right, on you go then wolves. Stiles has things to do and places to be."
He shooed them with both hands, gesturing widely towards the house. Isaac
whimpered at him, making puppy dog eyes to rival Scott's. Stiles didn't relent,
instead rolling his eyes.
"Fine. I'll see you guys soon, all right?" Erica handed Boyd off to Isaac them
bounded up to Stiles, wrapping an arm around his neck. Stiles hugged her back
just as tightly, and Derek could see that there definitely was something
different about him.
He was more on edge than he had been previously, but at the same time calmer.
It didn't make any sense, how someone could be both at once, but Stiles was.
Something had obviously changed his mind regarding the pack-or at least how to
act with them-, but Derek had no clue what it was.
It irked him.
A lot of things about Stiles irked him.
Always had.
Most likely always would.
That was if Stiles hung around after all was said and done. The thought was
enough to shake him out of his head.
"What happened to them?" He growled again, and Stiles slowly turned back to
him, releasing Erica so she could once again help support Boyd, who still
couldn't stand on his own.
Stiles blanked all emotion from his face, and Derek wanted to shake him, to get
some reaction from him.
"A misunderstanding." Was all Stiles said, his voice controlled, deeper than it
was in Derek's head. The contrast was driving him insane.
Derek strode down the steps and off the porch, movements stiff and coordinated.
His wolf was treating Stiles like a rival Alpha, while at the same time
refusing to do anything to hurt him, and Derek had had enough. In the heat of
the moment, he forgot everything that Allison had told him, all the tales of
Stiles' magical prowess. He saw only the sarcastic boy he remembered.
"What sort of misunderstanding?" He pushed out through gritted teeth, only a
metre away from Stiles by that point. He could feel his eyes glowing red, his
fangs dropping and claws elongating. He managed to compress it enough that he
didn't fully shift, instead straddling that in between place between losing
yourself and losing control.
Stiles didn't move backwards, never took one step, and it threw him for a loop
because he was Alpha damn it, and Stiles should have been able to sense that.
Should have been scared, but his scent just smelled bored.
Stiles tilted his head, observing him like a bug under a microscope. "One that
doesn't concern you. We dealt with it."
Derek bared his fangs at him, ignoring the anxious Betas in the background.
"Like you dealt with those hunters?" He sneered, and it never occurred to him
to stop, and just think.
Stiles smiled at him then, with a murderous edge Derek had never seen before.
"I dealt with the hunters. Your Betas and I dealt with the misunderstanding.
It's an important distinction, that."
Stiles poked him in the shoulder when he said 'your', the word loaded with all
the condescension he possessed.
Derek glared at the finger when it hit him, but all he got was a small electric
shock that fed his irrational anger. He knew it was irrational, but he couldn't
control what he felt.
He batted the hand away with the back of his own, taking another step into
Stiles' space.
"I thought you said to leave you alone." He told him, fists clenched at his
sides.
Stiles chuckled darkly. " I did, but don't you know your wolves are persistent?
Or aren't you Alpha enough to allow them to be independent. Are you so insecure
that you have to know where they are and who're they're with at all times?"
Derek ignored the way Stiles had seen right through him to his deepest fears,
just like he always had, and instead lashed out with his words.
"No, it's because I care about them. Unlike you. You left the pack, Stiles, you
left town! At least I try and keep them safe, keep them alive. What the hell do
you do?!" He was yelling then, anger at Stiles taking over any thought but
making him feel guilt for his departure.
And for the first time in ever Derek was faced with seeing Stiles truly angry,
bereft of any of the control that made him appear normal. It was completely
terrifying, and Derek regretted his words as soon as they dropped from his
lips.
"What do I do, Derek? I'll tell you, shall I? I live through whatever is thrown
my way. Be it demons, or monsters, or being kicked out of the pack of wolves I
called my friends. Being left and abandoned and judged, over and over and over
again." Stiles was talking towards Derek now, eyes glowing profusely.
"I live through over a year of nightmares and death and destruction, without
ever getting any peace, any reprise from the hell that became my life. Because
you are too fucking stubborn to accept that I helped. The pack left me, Derek.
Not the other way around. Never the other way around. I have killed, and
survived, and tortured, and hurt, and helped, and fucking died because of the
pack. So if I want to kill a hunter, if I want to burn down a goddamned
building, if I want to wipe out the entire population of Beacon Hills, I will.
And there is nothing you can do to stop me. So you don't get to judge me or my
actions, you have no right to make assumptions about my character, my choices,
my life. I didn't have to come back to Beacon Hills when Deaton called, I
could've left you all on your own just like you left me. But as it turns out, I
have an unfortunate investment in keeping you all alive. Because I don't, I
can't, forgive any of you for what you have done, for having the absolute gall
to try and make decisions about my life without me. But if you for one second
mistake my unwillingness to see you dead for forgiveness, then you can choke on
your own ego. And if you try and control me, try and restrain me, I will burn
you to the ground and watch as you spend an eternity in hell."
Stiles had a dagger pressed to Derek's throat before he could blink, and it
burned his skin where it touched.
"If I want to spend time with the pack, and if they come looking for me, then I
will. And if you have a problem with that I suggest you get the fuck over it.
You left me, Derek. You are the one who decided I wasn't good enough to be the
in pack. And if you've suddenly changed your mind just because I am powerful,
then you can go drink wolfsbane. Because this," And Stiles pointed the knife
towards himself and the Betas, before pointing it back at Derek. "This is not a
friendship. This is an unfortunate situation where we both want exactly the
same thing, but to do so we have to remain in contact each each other. We are
unwilling allies at best. And trust me, Derek Hale, you don't want to make an
enemy of me." Stiles hissed, before stepping back and shooting Derek a look of
disgust.
Stiles bent down to scoop up something that must have fallen from his pockets
during his speech, before nodding once to the startled Betas and disappearing
without another word. Derek carefully kept his mind blank as he walked back
inside the house, followed by the pack, except for Allison.
He ignored them all and climbed up the stairs to his room, closing the door
firmly shut behind him.
Downstairs, the Betas sat in silence as they listened to their Alpha tear
things apart in his room. With every crash their expressions grew more stony,
every snarl their own wolves rose closer to the surface.
But they weren't angry at Stiles. Instead, all but Scott walked out the door,
and when Derek came back downstairs he was greeted with a forlorn Scott sitting
at the table with an opened bottle of something in front of him.
He raised a glass of the suspicious looking liquid to Derek in salute, before
swallowing it down in one smooth gulp.
He fiddled restlessly with the glass in his hands, the emotions coming off of
him giving Derek a headache.
"I think we have some thinking to do." Scott said, and Derek nodded once. That
was an understatement.
...
BEFORE
Stiles made it back to the house only an hour after being kidnapped in the
first place. It must have been some sort of record or something. Maybe he
should call the Guinness Book of Records.
He thumped up the stairs to his bedroom, only to remember halfway there that
Erica and Boyd were both still in there. He had talked to Erica briefly before
leaving, coasting over the details and expressing the bare minimum, telling her
things on a very strict need-to-know basis.
Then, still feeling pent up and uncomfortable from the altercation with the two
Betas in the first place, he had gone looking for a fight. And a fight he had
found.
As well as the really, really shitty news of a certain demon Stiles had
believed to be out of commission.
All he really wanted at that moment was to disappear into a whirlwind of
researching and plans and preparation, along with spells and magic and avoiding
asking anybody for any help. Which, no, actually all he really wanted at that
moment was to sleep, but he knew that wasn't going to happen.
So he grit his teeth and swept into his bedroom, burying whatever remained of
pain and any indication that his 'walk' was anything but. It was awful how
skilled he had got at it.
Boyd, amazingly, was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings. He and
Erica were both gazing around his room with a barely concealed curiousity.
Stiles carelessly glanced around his room, and wondered what it must look like
to other people. All he saw was what was wouldn't fit in his apartment in New
York. Sure, there were very little 'personal touches' there to give it any
resemblance to what it once looked like, but it wasn't like they were necessary
to his or other people's survival.
Stiles had no energy to spare on useless thoughts.
"Boyd." He inclined his head, watching as Erica and Boyd both startled from
where they had been deep in conversation. "Good to see you awake."
"Thanks to you." Boyd replied, and Stiles tried hard to ignore the sudden flash
of guilt-pain-fear he had felt when Boyd hadn't responded. Because his magic
had caused that damage, his magic was unable to heal it. It was an annoying
little glitch in magic that left Stiles scarily proficient with most forms of
medicine, and vastly knowledgeable about 'What to do when you have a six inch
cut diagonally across your stomach'. Google hadn't been much help with that,
but there had been a useful tutorial on local anaesthetics. In the end he'd
gone without, as watching a thirty minute YouTube video on safety hadn't been
particularly helpful when his intestines were spilling out of his skin. Believe
it or not.
Stiles shrugged one shoulder before dropping it. "It was my fault in the first
place." And he could still smell the herbs and mixtures he had used to help
Boyd, still feel their thick phantom liquid coating his fingers.
Erica and Boyd shared a single look, and Stiles ignored it in favour of
marching to his desk and rifling through the loose papers that lay on top like
fallen leaves, no understandable system of organisation. But there was one. It
just made no sense. Luckily senseless things were Stiles' specialty.
He quickly found the paper he was looking for, and with one hand unfolded it
out, eyes tracking the silver magic line that glittered on a very familiar
path. It was map, one of America, with small, seemingly unimportant areas
marked and larger more well known areas forgotten. It wasn't unlike the map on
his bedroom wall, just smaller.
He watched as the line stretched out suddenly, angling down towards Beacon
Hills, criss-crossing and swerving before finally stopping at the town name. He
instantly mapped out the path on a stray paper lying beside him, a pen
appearing out of nowhere and writing down the town names that the line passed
through.
It was a short enough list, mostly out of the way country towns that had
escaped notice. Beacon Hills was the last name on the list. Which meant the
demon that line tracked, the demon known as Baalberith that Stiles had killed,
was going to make his way to Beacon Hills after stopping at the other places
first.
It had cost Stiles a scar across his shoulder-blades to curse the demon with a
tracing spell. He had certainly never believed he would need to look at that
particular paper again.
But it made Stiles uneasy, not knowing for sure what he was planning. He had
enough experience with the evil son of a bitch to know it was nothing good.
He hated when he had to change his plans.
A cough dragged his eyes from the paper and his brain back to the land of the
living, and he realised that he had forgotten about the Betas' presence at all.
"Oh, right." He muttered, rolling up the two papers and tucking them into the
inner pocket of his jacket, where they were kept along with a flick knife he
used in emergencies and a jar of magic salve that would stop the blood-flow of
any non fatal wound.
What? Blood was a bitch to get out of clothes.
Stiles pursed his lips and contemplated his next plan of action. With the demon
in play, the rules were changed. He was going to have to bring in the pack's
help, or at the very least inform them of the new development. Demons were
nothing to keep to yourself.
"Right." Stiles was just about to teleport them all to Derek's house when Isaac
tumbled through his window.
"Really?" Stiles looked at him blankly, and Isaac hid a grin.
"Fine. Isaac and Erica you two grab an arm of Boyd's each. Get him on his feet.
Boyd," And Stiles took in the boy's pale face when he stood up, the way he
swayed lightly on his feet and leaned heavily on the support he was being
offered.
"Try not to pass out." Isaac's laugh echoed through the room as Stiles
transported them to the Hale house. Time to showdown, Alpha. You'll find I'm
not as quick to capitulate as I once was. Hope you're ready.
...
AFTER
Stiles was going to get drunk. In fact, not only was he going to get drunk, but
Stiles was going to get completely smashed.
The argument with Derek had brought up bad memories, so if he wanted to get any
sleep at all alcohol was the only way to do it. It was at times like those that
Stiles cursed his tolerance. It would take at least five glasses of strong
alcohol to make him tipsy, but since he was going for the full out college loss
of memories experience magic whiskey was the only way to go.
Stiles actually happened to have a bottle of it from New York, a gift he had
graciously accepted from the faeries. It was said to knock a man out cold with
one sip.
Stiles was planning on taking a few, just to be sure. It wasn't like it could
kill him. Although that would be an interesting headstone. "Death by whiskey."
Maybe he should tell someone that was what he wanted as an epigraph when he did
die.
There were worse ones, after all. Death by chickens sprung to mind.
Stiles was walking back into the living room- which for some undiscernible
reason had become his drinking room (don't tell his dad)- when a knock on the
door made him change trajectory.
He opened it up only to see Allison, her jaw clenched and eyes flashing. Stiles
was so not in the mood to deal with anyone that it wasn't even funny.
Unfortunately human interaction was necessary if he wanted to save Beacon
Hills. Sigh.
"Allison." He leaned against the door casually, making no effort to hide the
bottle in his hand. She glanced at it once, very carefully staying silent.
Stiles appreciated her self control. A lecture was the last thing he wanted to
hear right then.
"Derek's an asshole." Stiles had heard worse opening statements. He stayed
silent, tapping the neck of the bottle carelessly with his fingers.
Allison took a deep breath, let it out, and faced him dead on. "We were wrong.
And I'm not just saying that because you're powerful now, because I'm trying to
lure you back into the pack. We were wrong to make any choices about your life,
wrong to try and control you in any way. It was arrogant and presumptuous of us
to do what we did, and I know that me saying this will never make it better.
But I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I have no reasons for doing what I did, and
you were right, I should have known better. It never even occurred to me to
think about how what I was doing would hurt you in any way, which was a
complete and utter hypocritical thing for me to do. As a hunter who runs with
wolves, I feel like it's my obligation to make sure other people stay safe, and
that's all I was focusing on when we did what we did. But I had no right, and
I'm sorry. I don't expect forgiveness, and I won't downplay everything you had
to go through or belittle your experiences by asking for it. I came here to
tell you that I'm sorry, and that's it. No ulterior motive, no plots. Just me
admitting that I'm in the wrong, that we were all in the wrong. And thank you,
for protecting us, even with what we did. I don't know why you care about our
well-being at all, and I'm certain I wouldn't if I was in your shoes, but thank
you none the less. And the rest of them are idiots if they are anything other
than grateful."
With that said, she turned to walk back down the path, hair falling like
curtains over her face. Stiles stared at her retreating back, then down at the
drink in his hand, then back up at her. He sighed loudly.
"Wait." He called out, and Allison stopped walking and turned back around to
face him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Stiles stared at her for a few seconds before stepping aside and gesturing into
the house. Her hesitation was noticeable.
Stiles rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to stab you, Allison. But I am going to
get drunk, so if you want to join me feel free." He left the door open behind
him and strolled into his original destination as if he hadn't a care in the
world. He collapsed onto the couch, taking a long draught of the faerie potion
with his head tilted back.
In complete silence, Allison sat down beside him, motioning wordlessly for the
bottle in his hand. He passed it to her, and smirked at her cough when she took
a large sip.
"What the hell is that?" She gasped, and Stiles knew exactly the burning throat
sensation she was feeling. Intimately.
He lifted the bottle from her loose hands and dragged another gulp down his
throat. "Faerie whiskey." He rasped, and a choked off laugh escaped him when
Allison's eyes grew wide.
She glanced once at him, then to the bottle. "Oh, screw it." She muttered,
before stealing the liquid from his hands and swallowing down a much smaller
amount than he had. Stiles smirked at her and lay his head down on the back of
the couch, watching everything through half-closed lids.
Upside down, Stiles could just make it out when Isaac, Erica and Boyd stumbled
into the room, noses scrunched up from the smell of the mixture. He grinned at
them, a nice haze just settling over his thoughts. With a flick of his fingers,
he got the other bottle of faerie whiskey from his bag upstairs, catching it
deftly as it flew past his face.
Lydia and Jackson, followed by Danny, arrived a few moments later, taking in
the three werewolves, hunter and mage passing back and forth a glittering
liquid with increasing levels of drunkenness. Lydia let out a huff before
appropriating the nearest bottle and gulping it down.
Danny perched on the couch beside Erica, impatiently motioning for the drink.
Stiles watched as they all settled, his brain quiet like it only was under the
influence of magic, drugs or drink. It felt... comfortable. Having them all
there.
Not quite pack, not really friends, but something.
And their something was going to need a lot more booze if the evening was going
to be any fun at all.
Boyd hiccupped beside him, and Stiles laughed quietly.
He was going to get so drunk.
Chapter End Notes
     Hey look! Is that a Sterek argument I see?
     So trigger warnings for this chapter;
     Mentions of previous scars and injuries.
     Stiles' extreme guilt.
     Underage uses of alcohol as a coping method.
     Mentions of nightmares.
     Mild-ish language.
     The hunter Stiles tortured in the last chapter is dead.
     Okay, well that's all I can think off right now. Sorry for the delay,
     and I'm going to try and be quicker about updating but if you're
     reading this you know I don't really have a stellar record when it
     comes to that. Sorry.
     As always, a billion million thanks to everyone who reads, comments,
     bookmarks, kudos or subscribes, you all make my day! Comments are
     forever appreciated, and the reception I've gotten from this story is
     so much better than I ever hoped, so thank you for that!
     Hope you liked this chapter, and if you have any thoughts about the
     story feel free to drop a comment!
     Love you all!
     H.S.F
     P.S. Next chapter we meet a *new* character, Scott and Stiles talk it
     out, and throw in some rogue brainwashed omegas!
***** Werewolves and zombies and mages oh my! Yes, Scott, zombies. Like 28 Days
Later, but with more magical voodoo shit. No, Scott, I don’t have my own army
of zombies. Really, do you think I’d be here if I did? *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles uses magic as an extension of his own body, the pack are
     freaked by the new arrival, and Stiles does not appreciate Derek's
     territorial nature. Oh yeah, and Scott gets taken. Never a dull
     moment.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Stiles had drawn magic before he even fully woke up. It hummed and tingled in
the palms of his hands, rippled pleasantly along his skin as if saying hello.
Then it began to heat up, reacting to his rapidly forming anxiety.
There were people near him. People that weren't Lydia or his dad (the only two
people he didn't mind having near him at all when he was asleep- everyone else
he barely tolerated), who weren't even any of his friends from New York or
anyone whose aura was still lightly touching his- a remainder from two magical
beings having sex (and Stiles only slept with magical creatures, the whole
glowing eyes pleasure thing would be impossible for a normal human to deal
with).
They were lying near him and why were they near him when he was sleeping?
It took him a few long seconds to recognise them- his eyes were still closed- a
few seconds too long if his roiling magic was any indication. Magic didn't like
being held, didn't want to be stagnant. Stiles shivered imperceptibly.
There were warm bodies all around him, over and under and touching, reminding
him of blank eyes and pale faces, and looking up to see the world grow steadily
darker while every beat of his heart burned.
Stiles didn't do well with foreign touches, uninvited contact. Hadn't for
months.
Erica's foot lay under his knees, Isaac's head pillowed on his stomach, Boyd's
elbow in the dip of his collarbone, Allison's back and head rested on his shins
and Jackson's fingers brushed his hip bones.
Too much.
Stiles was careful to be as quiet and gentle as possible given the situation,
but his heartbeat was frantic like a bird's in his ears and it took a touch of
magic to keep the wolves asleep. His magic briefly rejected the wish before
subsiding, reluctant to dismiss the sleeping forms as threats, and preferring
to take the fight to them rather than the other way around.
Stiles forced it down with the smallest clench of his fists.
Once free of the puppy-pile (and he could remember loving them, recall feeling
happy and loved whenever he took part, and it seemed his destiny to eventually
grow to be wary of things he once enjoyed, which was a way too depressing
thought for early in the morning, or, well, ever) Stiles bent over and placed
his arms on his knees.
Breathing deep and even, it would have been impossible for anyone to tell of
the panic attack that squeezed his insides. Deep breaths, he reminded himself,
mentally checking all that his faculties were in order, physical and otherwise,
even though he knew it was stupid.
Even though he knew with every bone in his body that not one member of the pack
in his living room would hurt him (he made no account for the two glaringly
obvious absent members- and ignoring the hurt the pack had already caused).
But over a year of surviving the impossible and almost constantly being alert
forced him to double check, his heart rate refusing to lower while there was
even a shadow of a doubt. He relaxed marginally when the full body check was
complete, all his abilities present and accounted for. No one had slipped him
something to bury his magic, or control his movements, or anything. It was kind
of sad how hard it was for him to believe that.
The raging hangover that should have accompanied the night they'd had (Jackson
had imperiously delivered an entire box of wolfsbane-laced whiskey upon his
arrival) was noticeably absent, replaced by a tender buzzing in the back of his
mind that always followed his magic. It was oddly reassuring at times.
His adrenaline rush and subsequent magical meltdown had served to wipe any
trace of a hangover from his body. He was as functional and coherent as he's
ever been, and his go-to reality I-really-hope-I-haven't-been-possessed-again
check (listing off the 176 different ways to kill a person using only spells
that began with the letter 't'- morbid, yes, but no less efficient for it)
proved that he was actually in the world of the living, which was always nice.
So it was a mere five minutes after his impromptu and borderline dramatic
waking up that Stiles was back to his usual calmness, a feat damn hard to do.
But at least he wasn't being hunted this time. Certainly made it easier.
Stiles glanced down at the sleeping pack, eagle-spread on the sitting room
floor, over-lapping and snoring softly with goofy drunken grins on their faces,
and he'd never felt more alone. He committed the picture to memory, would use
it as an encouragement in hard times and as a reminder of what would be lost
should he fail.
Sighing, he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water,
holding the cool liquid to his forehead before drinking. In one quick gulp, he
swallowed it down, throwing his head back as he did so. It slid easily down the
back of his throat, and helped relieve the feeling of panic that had overtaken
him for that one brief moment.
He pushed his arms into the counter after dropping the glass into the stainless
sink, allowing his head to fall between his arms. He was so tired. Tired of
controlling himself, restraining the magic within that only wanted to be
challenged, tired of the nightmares and the guilt of everything he'd never
managed to do, all those he hadn't been able to save, tired of being so damn
tired all the time.
Didn't matter that he was getting more sleep than he usually did, because it
was only through drinking and while Stiles enjoyed the odd night out as much as
the next all-powerful and responsible bisexual mage, alcoholism had never been
a career path he was interested in.
Unfortunately, as it was one of the, admittedly, few ways he could get any
sleep, it had been more and more common a pattern in his life. He'd deal with
it later. Maybe.
Damn his brain. And he had thought ADHD was bad.
Throw in PTSD, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, paranoia, possible sociopathic
tendencies, a complete lack of any self-preservation to speak of and an
unhealthy addiction to saving people and ignoring his own needs, and Stiles was
a walking-talking baggage filled mess.
But at least he could admit it. Small mercies.
Shooting a last cautious glance at the sleeping bodies, Stiles carefully
stepped up the stairs and into his room, shutting the door behind him with
finality and a released breath of relief.
He leant against it, letting his head thump back on the hard wood and not even
batting an eyelid at the light burst of pain it caused, keeping his breathing
even by counting. One in, two out, three in, four out, five in...
By the time he reached a hundred his mind was clear, his eyes calm and his
shoulders less tense. He was the picture of composed.
With a few quick steps he reached his desk, rifling through the papers looking
for one in particular. Finding it, he materialised a pencil and began making
small notes and adjustments to the spell, scribbling down thoughts he had had
and wisdom he's gained from experience.
The spell was flawed, as they all were, and he could not afford that. It had to
be perfect, infallible, final and absolute. No loop-holes.
He flicked open a nearby book for reference, waving his fingers to quickly skim
over the notes he didn't want, the spells he had no need for. Glancing at it
briefly, he adjusted something else on his spell, exchanging a word while
wordlessly mouthing the line.
Frowning, Stiles flopped down onto the carpeted floor, magically dragging an
old trunk full of other books towards him. He shoved it open and had to refrain
from coughing at the dust- some of the texts were centuries old and prone to
attracting dust molecules like Stiles did trouble. That was to say, a lot.
Pages and books began levitating around him, their pages fluttering like
butterflies wings as he jumped from one to another, his magic judging what was
necessary as much as he was. Books that held no relevant information- like one
he had on unicorns and their powers- were dismissed and packed back into the
box, while others- specifically those that focused on demons and ancient
spells- were left open in the air.
The occasional word or two caught his attention, dragging his gaze from book to
sheet to diary and back again, encouraging him to pluck random items from the
chaos and hunch over them, all the while frantically scribbling and adjusting
his own spell, leaving no room for escape.
The spell he was trying to create was an impossibility, a trap and a death
sentence and a protection all in one. He had to combine a way to get the
boundary around Beacon Hills up, and a way to kill the demon without leaving
anything unaccounted for. It was idiotically dangerous, fool-hardy and
reckless, and might not work at all, but it was their only hope. It had to
work. There was no other option.
Soon he was scrawled on the ground, ancient tomes and priceless manuscripts
dating all the way back to the 14th century spread around him, magical marks
glistening between pages for cross-referencing and noting, Stiles' rushed
script slanted across it all.
His main page was almost indecipherable, things crossed out and written in and
scribbled out so many times it was its own code. A ripped page on hell lay by
his elbow, a huge encyclopaedia on demons floating above his head.
There were still residual marks, left overs from excursions and misadventures
long past, an entire essay on the uses of toadstools in deception spells taking
up a multitude of pages as if he'd written it barely conscious. It wouldn't be
far from the truth.
His eyes flicked from word to word, drinking in the knowledge offered hungrily
and planning his attack, making connections between information and forming
concepts quicker than his own mind could keep up, jumping from idea to idea
like it was all he was put on the earth to do, a floating page above him
keeping track of it all.
Information was compared and displayed, linking with everything else and
expanding, history and theory and facts and experience adding up until it all
made sense, until he couldn't breathe with it all.
It was intoxicating, the feeling, doing the thing he had always been great at,
making leaps of faith based on fact and assumptions that proved to be correct.
It was a incredible system, useful and awe-inspiring in equal measures, more
magic than physical labour.
His eyes read the constantly shifting and changing sentences floating in the
air as easily as they did the ones written on plain paper, finishing thoughts
and conclusions before he even began reading.
There was a method to the madness, a hawk-eyes intensity in how he inspected
all the information at his disposal, a frightening glint of plotting and
planning in his eyes.
Later, he wouldn't be able to say how long he was in that area where reality
meant nothing, time and little things like physical bodies melting away under
the feverish rush of constant magic, the echoing speech and halted sentences of
times long past, speaking of souls departed and spells and cures and
cursesdemonsghostsvisionsdeathlifeend-
The pack found him like that, his eyes glowing, and they were shocked into
silence.
...
Stiles' blatant use of magic, though as natural to him as breathing, was none
the less impressive for it, and none of the gathered pack had seen much more
than the occasional mountain ash line or spelled body.
They'd never seen magic used like Stiles was currently, more like an expansion
of his own body than a tool, rabbit-quick and decisive, flitting and pushing
like Stiles' own brain. They were struck dumb upon first glance, eyeing the
various floating materials that hung suspended by nothing but will, the eerie
blank yet focused expression on Stiles' face.
They didn't want to interrupt him, and he hadn't even noticed them standing not
inconspicuously in the doorway. In the end, though, they didn't have much say
in the matter.
Lydia was heard pulling up outside, then the slam of a door and the pounding
clack of her heels on the floor. She hurried straight up to Stiles' bedroom as
if she knew were they where, ignoring the living room and kitchen, marching
like a woman on a mission.
She stalked past the assembled pack, glaring at them in lieu of any greeting,
and into the storm Stiles' room had become.
She sighed when she saw him. "Oh, Stiles." Came the concerned and sad murmur,
her eyes worried. She carefully picked her way through the room, occasionally
batting away an object of stationary that was determined to whack her head.
She slowed when she reached the centre of the hurricane, kneeling down in front
of Stiles as if he were a child.
"Stiles honey?" She asked, but he didn't respond, still muttering seemingly
random strings of letters and feverishly writing it down on sheets of paper.
His eyes continued to glow, but it looked weaker than it had when they first
arrived. They were hazy, unfocused, as if he was looking somewhere other than
in front of himself.
Lydia pursed her lips, but couldn't hide the worry running rampant through her
face. The pack were only a little bit jealous of her and Stiles' relationship.
A little.
"Stiles?" She tried again, but this time her voice brokered no nonsense, was
resigned rather than upset. When Stiles still gave no response, Lydia cursed
darkly.
Jackson jumped and stared at her, as did the Betas. They’d never really heard
Lydia curse. Always assumed she didn’t.
Allison wasn’t fazed, instead watching the interaction with fascination and
more than a touch concern.
“Stiles, if someone tells you that everything they say is a lie is that the
truth or a lie?”
The pack stare at her in confusion, wondering what the hell that had to do with
anything. When, “S’paradox.”
Stiles’ raspy voice murmured, blinking slowly as the golden haze began to wear
from his iris’.
Lydia didn’t relax then though. “What happens when an unstoppable force meets
an immovable object? “
Stiles blinked rapidly again, and his voice came out stronger and more assured
when he spoke once more.
“It’s a paradox.” He told her with a small smile, and only then did Lydia
relax. She hit him gently on the arm, hiding a smile, before kissing him on the
brow. Stiles leaned into her touch, grabbing her hand as it passed by and
holding it between two of his own.
“I’m okay, Lyds. Just in the zone.”
Lydia waved his reassurances away, but her shoulder dropped an inch more and
her face smoothed out. “’Course you are, Stiles. You’re too stubborn to be
anything else.”
He grinned dopily in response, before making a move to sit up. “Oh.” He
muttered, noticing the still floating objects that hung in the air. He made a
quick gesture with his hand, allowing them to sink slowly towards the floor
before landing with soft thuds on the plush carpet.
In one graceful move, Stiles stood up from his position on the floor but then
he swayed and froze.
“Lydia,” He groaned, and she took a step toward him while the rest of the pack
had to resist the urge to do the same.
“The world is spinning, make it stop spinning.”
The wolves and hunter shared a look. What the fuck did that mean? Was Stiles
delirious?
Lydia, however, didn’t seem to share their confusion, instead rolling her eyes
before reaching forward and slapping Stiles hard across the cheek. The wolves
flinched at the impact and Stiles' head went snapping back, but he made no move
to block the hit.
With a sudden burst of light in his eyes and a clarity in his expression that
had been lacking before, Stiles shook his head and tried to smile.
“Thanks, Lyds. Little help?”
Lydia darted forward under his arm and let him rest his weight on her, her arm
circling his waist while he took a second to close his eyes and wait for the
dizziness to pass.
He took a step forward, paused, grimaced, and took another, ignoring the
worried wolves flitting around the doorway, unsure if their assistance was
required or wanted.
Lydia secured her grip on his shirt and let him lean on her, more than what was
probably necessary to the wolves' eyes. Or maybe it wasn't. It wasn't like they
had any clue.
The pack moved backwards without thinking as the duo stepped into the doorway,
and Lydia stopped to let Stiles rest his head against the plain wooden frame.
He shuddered and gripped the wall with tense, clenched fingers, his Adam's
apple bobbing as he swallowed.
"Stiles?" Lydia asked, and the pack were aware that the exchange was one they
weren't supposed to hear, but they listened anyway,
Stiles tapped his long fingers against the wall instead of responding, thumping
his head back and letting a wry smile cross his features as if he knew the
question Lydia was going to ask him and already had his response prepared.
"When was the last time you ate anything?" Maybe Lydia didn't mean for her
voice and tone to sound so accusatory, but somehow Allison doubted it.
The pack shot each other amused glances. What did she mean by that? Stiles
never stopped eating. It was something they all used to tease him about, how he
had the appetite of a wolf. He was always seen with food nearby or in hand, had
a nearly permanent supply of curly fries for any occasion.
They didn't need to see Stiles to know that that at least would never change.
But they heard Lydia's question, saw the anxious expression on her face, and,
despite themselves, they wondered.
Stiles laughed lightly with just a touch of artfully played surprise, his eyes
glittering with humour, and maybe anybody else wouldn't have seen the smallest
crack in his cheery façade. But Lydia obviously did, and the pack knew her
enough at least to read his response through her.
"Lydia." The chastisement was gentle, as if it was absurd of her to even
suggest such a thing, but Lydia didn't back down.
"Stiles." She rebuked, and Stiles simply rolled his eyes fondly and shrugged a
shoulder, purposefully casual in his movements, deliberately relaxed but
running with an undercurrent of tension that put the animal sides of the pack
present on edge.
Danger!, they seemed to scream, Predator!
"I don't know, Lyds. Who keeps track of when they eat anyway? Probably last
night or something."
You didn't have to be a werewolf to tell the lie. Lydia's sceptical look and
Stiles' own forced nonchalance was enough.
They were interrupted then by the knocking of the front door, and Stiles' face
seemed to go through equal parts relief and wariness before settling on
ambiguousness.
"He's here." He told Lydia, and she scowled at the timely interruption and
flashed him a quick look that the pack correctly translated as this-isn't-over.
She then tilted her chin up and assisted Stiles down the stairs and into the
hall, releasing him with only a slightly unhappy look. The pack tried to
discreetly sniff the air, but there was no scent in the wind. In fact, there
was such a distinct non-scent that it reminded them briefly of...no.
Stiles pulled the door open with one raised eyebrow and crossed his arms.
"Do you have it?" He asked bluntly, and the man in the doorway blinked at him
in reply before stepping into the house smoothly.
"Is that any way to treat a guest, Stiles?" He asked, before smiling his creepy
smile and handing over a black case.
The pack could only stand in shock as Peter Hale nodded his head once to Stiles
and Lydia, before turning to face them. He clapped his hands together once and
grinned. It was rather terrifying.
"So!" His intense eyes alit on all of them in turn. "Do you know where I can
find my nephew? He and I have urgent business to attend to. Like how awfully he
treated Stiles here. Honestly, you'd think he was raised by wolves."
Stiles let out a bark of laughter and shook his head ruefully. "Always the
comedian, aren't you Peter?"
Peter smiled at him with something akin to fondness, and the pack were mildly
astonished at how... alive it made him look.
This was so not going to go down well with their Alpha.
...
Pain laced down his spine. Derek whirled to face the Omega and snarled in
anger, the inch deep claw marks on his ribs burning and itching unpleasantly.
It hurt like a bitch, but even as he lashed out and roared they were healing-
scabbing together to stop the blow flow.
Sometimes being an Alpha had its perks.
The Omega growled at him, eyes yellow, before jumping up and using a nearby
tree as a push off point. He crashed into him, teeth bared and feral.
They rolled around on the ground, fighting for dominance, until Derek caught
him by the shoulders and threw him backwards. He crashed against the ground,
his bones making a snapping noise as he hit the dirt.
Whining pitifully, the Omega clawed the ground and tugged himself forward,
scrabbling on his back.
He let out a loud, desperate howl, which was cut off by Derek’s jaws snapping
shut on his ankle.
The howl trailed off into a coarse groan, his feet kicking uselessly against
the Alpha’s shoulders.
Suddenly, a flare of bright light blinded Derek, who yelped and dropped the
Omega’s leg, clutching at his head.
The last thing he saw before blankness was the limping figure of the lone wolf
as he ran.
…
He woke up sore and angry as all hell, his face pressed flat into the dirt and
the scent of it filling his nostrils. His head snapped up to inspect the
clearing- empty- and his eyes burned crimson.
Snarling, Derek pushed himself off the ground and wiped futilely at the dead
leaves clinging to his skin.
What the hell was that? He wondered, glancing up to try and tell how much time
had passed.
It couldn’t have been that long, the moon was still in roughly the same
position and the cuts on his torso still faded red bruises.
Rolling his shoulders, the Alpha sniffed the air, catching the scent with
relative ease and tilting his lip up to growl.
Fucking Omegas in his territory. If it hadn’t been for that light, he would
have taken down the pup easily.
Might not even have killed him, hadn’t planned in attacking him until he was
provoked. Any Alpha would’ve done the same in his position. Didn’t help the
pacing wolf inside him anxious to tear into the flesh of the wolf who dared
infringe upon his territory any.
Derek prowled after the wolf, all his senses keen and alert, ears pricked for
any sign of danger.
So it was with some surprise and not a small amount of trepidation that he
realised the trail led straight to Stiles’ house.
Stiles, who he hadn’t spoken to since their disastrous meeting the day before.
Stiles, who had rightfully and understandably raged at him, and who he wasn’t
ashamed to admit he was too much of a coward to face so soon.
But if the Omega hurt him…
Derek snarled at the thought. Okay! he thought, note to self- avoid any and all
thoughts about Stiles being-well, yeah.
His wolf huffed in agreement. Temperamental beast.
The trail stopped cold a few scant metres from Stiles’ house, and Derek frowned
past the fangs.
He went to take a step forward, but was prevented from putting his foot on the
ground by a barrier.
Stiles had warded his house. Against Derekincredibly unsuitable for the
situation.
But Stiles looked good in confidence, walked well with surety, and goddamn it
Derek was only human! Or, well, not quite human but the statement stood for
itself.
They stared at each other for far too long, interrupted finally by the
impatient release of breath somewhere behind Stiles.
Erica strode out from behind the door, and Stiles made no move to stop her,
gaze still locked on Derek’s.
“Erica?” Derek asked, and his brow furrowed, the wolf visage he’d been wearing
as protection falling from his now-human face.
Ignoring him, she turned to Stiles. “Look, the UST’s all well and good,” And
Stiles flashed a patient smile at her, not once looking back to Derek once
their eye contact had been broken, “But we do have the matter of our house-
guest to deal with.”
Derek snarled. “You have the Omega?” He demanded, voice guttural. Erica
flinched back at the Alpha command that wasn’t really a command, but Stiles
just shot him a glare.
“Pipe down, Lassie. For your information, your Omega passed through a good half
an hour ago asking for directions and I sent him on his merry-way. With,” He
pointed one long elegant finger at Derek trying for teasing, but his statement
was underlined with real anger and threat that should, if he had any sense of
preservation, have sent Derek and his wolf growling or running (Stiles was
powerful enough to incite both in him, at the same time. It really was
inconvenient) not turning him on. “A magical charm that hides his scent from
you because he really only wanted passage you complete Neanderthal. So don’t
even think about going after him.”
Screw it, he’d never claimed to be logical. Just animal instincts. Survival of
the fittest, and all that. Nothing to see here.
Wait.
“Did you just call me ‘Lassie’?” He asked incredulously.
Stiles sighed with dismay or disgust (the two were not mutually exclusive) and
shook his head to Erica.
“They tell me werewolves have enhanced hearing, but most of the time it seems
more like selective.”
Erica laughed outright.
Slowly, as though aware the danger had passed, the rest of the pack (Derek’s
pack, what the fuck were they doing at Stiles’?) stepped into the yard, the
invisible boundary still separating the Alpha from them.
At least they were safe, he commented idly in his head to his placid should-be-
snarling wolf.
Allison. Isaac. Boyd. Erica. Jackson. Lydia, unsurprisingly. And wait, was
that…?
“Peter?!” Derek burst out, shock lacing his tone and brain scrambling to catch
up with the new development.
Peter glanced at Stiles from the corner of his eye, who nodded absent-mindedly,
before speaking. What was that all about?
“Ah, Nephew. Long-time no see. You and I have a pressing need to discuss some….
things.”
Stiles waved his hand imperiously. “Later, Peter. There’s urgent business that
needs attending to first.”
Derek was expecting Peter to argue and fight, but instead his insane back-from-
the-dead uncle capitulated. He stopped, even though every signal his body was
sending out hinted that stopping was the last thing he wanted to do.
Stiles and Peter? Of course there were worse people for his uncle to listen to,
but really, Peter?
Derek tried to convince himself that what he was feeling wasn’t jealousy, nope,
not at all.
Fuck.
Shaking his head to clear it, he turned his face towards Stiles.
“What’s the business?”
Stiles pursed his lips before shaking his head.
“Get Scott, I’m not going to explain this more than once.”
Derek frowned. “I thought he was with you.”
Stiles slowly froze, all muscles in his body tense. “What do you mean, Derek?”
Derek tried to fight the prickling feeling of danger that ran along the hairs
of his arm and the back of his neck at Stiles’ manner. He was an Alpha damn it.
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday.” Their eyes met again, before Stiles
whirled on his heels and faced the assembled wolves, banshee and hunter.
They shook their heads mutely, and there was a dangerous glint in Stiles’ eyes
when he faced forward again.
“They have him.” His voice resonated deep within, inhuman and void, echoing and
slithering along Derek’s senses.
He didn’t ask who they were, just stood and watched as Stiles’ face shuttered
and he vanished into the wind. Again.
Peter coughed once at some invisible dust in the air before motioning to Lydia
(who rolled her eyes at him) and meandering inside.
Maybe Stiles did the whole ‘vanishing into thin air’ thing a lot. Peter sure
acted like he did, and even Lydia was nonchalant about the whole thing. But
then, she had spent an inordinate amount of time in communication with Stiles.
Peter seemed even less worried about the whole thing, which, if it weren’t for
the smallest hint of fondness in his gaze when he had stood beside Stiles,
Derek might have been inclined to believe was just apathy.
Which brought him right back around to Stiles and Peter.
Sitting on the ground outside Stiles’ house, Derek settled in for a long night.
If it was anyone else, Derek wouldn’t trust them to get his Beta back, but this
was Stiles. If he couldn’t do it, there was no way in hell Derek could do it.
And the fact that he trusted Stiles that much in the first place brought an
anxious pit to his stomach.
It wasn’t like he had a choice, really.
Stiles was going to get Scott back. And then Derek could deal with the fact
that he and his wolf trusted the virtual stranger to keep Derek’s pack safe.
Or maybe he could ignore it.
Yeah. That might be better. No point in making things complicated.
Chapter End Notes
     Here's Peter!
     Sorry, I'm sorry, that was terrible. Also, I'm writing this on 3G
     because my internet is an idiot and I haven't had WiFi for a week and
     a bit, I know that's no excuse, so so sorry.
     Tried to write this a few times but have been completely inspiration-
     less and uninspired for the last month, eventually sat down and
     forced myself to get something out so if it's not up to my usual
     standards I'm sorry. *juts out bottom lip and puppy-dog eyes*
     Plus, some people are wondering why Stiles cares for the pack at all
     so I figure I'd better clarify here. While, yes, the pack made no
     move to stop Stiles leaving, it was genuinely out of concern and the
     key players in kicking him out were Derek and Scott.
     Warnings for language, kinda?-loss of awareness, blatant magic use,
     brief fighting between two half-shifted wolves, and Peter's there so
     that automatically bumps up the crazy to at least 80%. Maybe 84%.
     As forever, the response to this story has been breath-taking, soul-
     saving and generally amazing!! So a million billion thanks to
     everyone who commented, gave kudos, subscribed, spread the word or
     read, it means the world to me! :D
     Updates well, I'm not even going to jinx myself here, so as soon as I
     can get it written it'll be up. Sooner, if I can manage it! ;)
     Okay, think that's all. If I've forgotten anything, drop a comment,
     and all comments are muchly appreciated!
     (Also, who is excited by the Martian??? Haven't seen it yet, might be
     seeing it this weekend, so looking forward to it!)
     Love,
     H.S.F
***** Your stupidity astounds me and exasperates me in equal measures. I don’t
know which to focus on. Give me a minute to think about it. *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles goes and threatens some hunters, Peter and Derek have a
     'family' talk and a pack reunion reveals more than intended.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The thing is, Stiles mused as he cracked a hunter's nose against the curve of
his knee (it gave a gratifying crunch when he did so- he was fairly sure it was
broken, which, you know, could only be a good thing, really) and threw a knife
with devastating accuracy at the reaching hand of another reaching for her gun,
is that the hunters don't even pose a challenge to him anymore.
Which could be seen as equally good or bad, depending on what mood Stiles was
in.
I mean, sure, me, Stiles muttered, low enough under his breath so as not to be
overheard while absentmindedly stamping on someone's ankle and firing a bolt of
lightning in the general direction of a threat, I'll admit I can be a tad,
'imposing', as well as being (luckily) a damn hard person to kill, but come the
fuck on.
They couldn't even hold a damned Beta for longer than eight hours before Stiles
found them. And for seven hours forty-five minutes of that he was unaware there
was even a problem let alone a missing person. That would need to be rectified
immediately. He couldn't afford to go into this not knowing where his people
were.
That would only get them all killed.
Which, typically, would be all Stiles' fault if it happened, not to mention the
fact that he didn't particularly want to be the reason for the deaths of
everyone in Beacon Hills.
But back to the hunters. Wasn't it their job, not that Stiles approved in any
way shape or form but he was aware of the facts, to capture and hold
werewolves? What in hell's name did they do with their time if they couldn't
even do that properly.
Stiles reached behind him and snapped the wrist of a hunter, who howled in pain
and fear. Howling? Who's the wolf now, you son of a demon? Stiles thought
viciously, eyes flaring a deep scarlet as he grinned savagely. This was fun.
He side-stepped an eager, sweaty man running towards him, bringing his hand
around to enclose the man's neck as he did so. His nails dug into the bigot's
skin, leaving half-crescent grooves, and Stiles pushed a current of magic
through the hunter with his hand.
The man froze instantly before falling to the filthy floor with a gasp like a
stranded fish.
Stiles felt a gun being held to the back of his head and he paused.
"Don't move." The hunter's voice shook almost imperceptibly and fuck, he
sounded like a goddamned kid.
The man-boy could have been no older than sixteen, and he sounded terrified,
and he sounded like Scott. Pre-bite Scott, with the hitching uneven breaths and
sniffles, the grim determination to completely bury any lingering feelings or
thoughts that might be perceived as a weakness.
Stiles could remember being that scared, faced with impossible odds and little
to no chances of survival, a best friend turned supernatural creature and
enemies in the hearts of their allies.
Fuck. Fucking hunters. Fucking discrimination. Fucking life.
Stiles whirled around on his toes suddenly, grasped the gun by its muzzle (do
not try at home, seriously) and pointed it directly sky-ward in case the man-
boy decided to fire straight in his face. Stiles didn't doubt that his wards
would stop the speeding metal bullet, but no doubt the boy would then panic and
try to attack, and just waste time. Stiles could not afford to do so.
The young hunter didn't fire, though. He just watched Stiles with wide, fearful
eyes, to young and inexperienced to do anything other than shake. But perhaps
Stiles was being hypocritical, using 'young' as a synonym for inexperienced. He
couldn't particularly talk, when he had fought for his life at the same age and
taken a life himself soon after.
Stiles didn't move, ignoring the groans and whimpers from the incapacitated
idiots behind him. Coming to a decision, he looked the sixteen-year old
straight in the face.
"Find another profession. Do something else with your life. Think for yourself,
and don't just blindly follow orders. Take my advice," Stiles chanced a quick
glance over his shoulder, one of the hunters had rolled do his knees somehow (a
terrible oversight on Stiles' part, truly, he shouldn't have been able to
breathe properly let alone move) and was glaring at him with all the intensity
of a bug.
If looks could kill, Stiles thought, I'd still be alive.
"And just. Get the hell out. I'm not your enemy, kid." He didn't only mean get
out of the building. His unspoken advice hopefully went through loud and clear.
The man-boy started (could you still call someone a boy, Stiles wondered idly,
when they had to do what he did?) when Stiles called him a 'kid', that familiar
spark of defiance in his eyes that spoke of a hidden courage and, oddly, a
hidden morality that many people Stiles fought lacked.
Stiles smirked at him before smoothly, in one twist of his wrist and sudden
jerking motion, cracking him over the back of his head with the butt of his own
gun. Just 'cuz he didn't want to kill the guy didn't mean he was stupid enough
to leave him conscious when the same probably wasn't true in reverse.
Stiles glanced around airily; upon his (swift, punishing and downright brutal)
arrival to the warehouse- which, hello, stereotype much?- the hunters' leaders
had scarpered. Must have heard what had happened to the last arrogant batch of
hunters who thought they could pull something in Stiles' town.
They had hidden in a locked office which, wow, new levels of idiocy, and
fruitlessly hoped that Stiles wouldn't knock out their entire first line of
defence.
Fruitlessly, as, as the motionless bodies of the hunters behind him could
attest, Stiles wasn't about to be taken down by some unintelligent humans. He
had fought demons, monsters, shadows of nightmares, the fears that hid under
beds and the ghosts of evil long gone.
He had faced the impossible, looked death in the face, did all those things
heroes gloried about in fairy-tales and myths, and he had survived.
"Sleep." He told the kneeling hunter. Eyes rolled to the back of his skull and
he collapsed flat on his face. Hunters had zero tolerance for magic. It really
was quite funny. Limited the amount of fight he could get from them, but made
his job a hell of a lot easier. Still boring. Stiles gave his sleeping body the
withering, infamous one-eyebrow raised look that all supernatural creatures
tried (and usually failed) to pull off.
It seemed to be the signature werewolf trait, inspiring fear and anxiety in all
who faced it. Stiles, he felt, had managed quite well for a non-wolf.
With an elegant stretch of his legs, he casually stepped over the bodies on the
floor and strolled over to the door that the leaders were hiding behind, like
cowards and sending their people to their deaths.
Stiles grinned savagely as he burst the door down, hands stretched in front of
him for dramatic flair, eyes flaring golden-crimson-ivy and every colour in
between, a kaleidoscope of magic and power and protectiveness/possessiveness
masquerading as confidence.
He wasn't scared, because the hunters were in his town, and maybe he wasn't on
the best terms with Scott at the moment, but that did not give them the right
to take one of Stiles'.
There was a swift pulsing in the air and in his wards, and then a brief splash
of pain broke through his psyche.
He glanced down, surprised, to see a budding dash of red crimson liquid spill
gently over the fabric of his thin shirt.
He cocked his head and pulled the fabric from his skin, gently probing the
wound and hissing through his teeth when the burn intensified.
Fascinating.
He slowly drew his eyes upwards, fixing the tensed woman in front of him with
an icy chilling smile, eyes alighting on the weapon she held with no small
amount of trepidation. The weapon that was aimed right at his face.
Stiles' eyes flared when he recognised the small, light-weight gun she was
holding. The runes etched into the cold steel mocked him, the pure evil
emanating from it digging deeper into the hole in the side of his chest.
That particular weapon was forged in the very fires of hell- which, fucked up
as it was, wasn't even a joke, or a metaphor. The gun had been literally
created in the deepest, darkest depths of hell, made especially for breaking
through and disintegrating magic defensive shields.
Stiles could have been layered in magic, behind a mountain ash barrier, and
holding a goddamned talisman and the bullets from its chambers still would've
ripped through his flesh. While it was vaguely comforting that his shields
hadn't spontaneously collapsed and left him vulnerable to normal human weapons,
the fact that these hunters possessed a weapon that was so rare few people even
knew of its existence led him right to a conclusion he hadn't wanted to think
of.
They were working for Baalberith. No one else had the power, inclination or
need to own that weapon, not when it should have been safely guarded between
layers of ancient magic so thick it would've taken months, or years to break
through.
Stiles had never seen the bastardised gun before, luckily, because it had been
taken out of commission centuries before he was even a thought in the wind.
Which meant, of course, that somehow his greatest enemy and foe had managed the
impossible.
And if he was so blasé with it as to give it to a group of weak, inexperienced
hunters such as these, that could only mean that he had either no need if it or
that he was in the process or even finished making more.
Stiles wasn't sure which option was more terrifying.
Absently, he wrapped a vein of magic around the fallen silent, cowering adults
behind the woman, restricting the amount of oxygen getting into their lungs and
causing them to lose consciousness.
Her companions collapsed silently one by one, leaving the woman standing
unknowingly alone, the wall to her back covered in the lax bodies of her so-
called 'support'.
Stiles didn't make a move outside tilting his head, eyes caught on the gun
that- had she been a better shot or he a slower target- would have killed him.
It was a freezing thought when he still had so much to do. He couldn't die from
that gun. Wouldn't permit himself to.
He smiled once, benignly at the hunter, utilising every ounce of hyperactive,
teenaged spaz he could.
She lowered her gun when greeted with his tactic, not much, not enough to take
it off his body, not when he was still such a huge threat, but she was
obviously used to dealing with wolves (who although fast wouldn't be able to
move before she got in a shot), and humans' natural discomfort in the face of
either pure evil or pure good encouraged her to dislike the gun automatically,
wanting it as far away from her person as possible.
All this combined made her lower the muzzle, just a centimetre or two, barely
enough. but enough.
Stiles jolted his index finger in a movement too quick to be captured by the
human eye and snapped her wrist with a nearby chair.
She yelled and dropped the gun, and Stiles instantaneously shoved the chair
downwards and over it, shoving them both into the far corner with a pained
flinch when his magic came into contact with the cool steel, seeking and
searching and screamsendlessscreams of painangerfeartormentguilt and the only
possible definition of evil all enclosed in one weapon, maliciously sending
tendrils and stabs into his magic.
Stiles pulled back with a barely restrained sigh of relief, and the hunter's
eyes widened with the realisation that she was now defenceless and powerless.
Suddenly Stiles was angry. No, not just angry. Stiles was pissed. He was
enraged. He was beyond all comprehension of 'just anger'.
His eyes burned out all traces of colours, slipping into the inky blackness he
both hated and felt irreversibly linked to.
"Where. Is. He." His voice trembled with power, but he spoke no louder than
normal, letting his eyes and body-language do all the shouting for him.
The hunter jutted a fearful chin out arrogantly, avoiding his endless pools of
darkness in favour of covering herself with a thin, flimsy layer of fake
confidence.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" She sneered at him, her fear thick and cloying in
the air. Stiles smiled at her gently, but his eyes remained hard.
He grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall, where she tripped
over the limbs of her compatriots, fear twisting a path over her face.
He leaned in close to her face, eyes peering into hers like he could peer into
her soul, voice dangerous.
"Yes, I would. And I will do whatever it takes to get that information."
She battered down her rising hysteria and stamped down on his foot. Stiles
didn't even flinch.
"Why? So you can go drag that dog back by his leash? Is he your friend? Are you
gonna tame him?"
Stiles clenched his fingers on her jugular, eyeing the frail but vital skin
thoughtfully.
"This isn't what that's about." He said finally, pleasantly, as if conversing
the weather. She scrabbled at his unyielding grip, face turning purple.
"At the moment, we're not exactly on the best of terms. Completely his fault of
course. I mean, dumping me for a threesome with Allison and Isaac? Which is
totally happening by the way, no matter what Scott tries to convince himself.
You can practically smell the lust just when Allison and Isaac are in the same
room, and Scott's scent is all over Allison, and Isaac gets this look whenever
either of them are mentioned, so don't even try and convince me it's not
happening. Where was I again? Oh right."
Stiles grinned at her toothily, and if it weren't for the hand at her neck and
the emotionless blackness of his gaze they could have been two friends talking
about school.
"So we're not on the best of terms, and to be honest I don't think we'll ever
be what we once were. Which, you know, sucks, because we had a seriously epic
bromance going on. Like Spock/Kirk levels of bromance. Anyway, so yeah, I may
be beyond unhappy with that idiot's life choices, and right now I'm just as
likely to punch him as I am to hug him, but you see, there's one small problem
with you thinking you can walk right up and take him."
A deep crimson slowly spread over his iris', the black ring receding until his
eyes were equal parts blood and death, a slow promise that could be mistaken as
a caress.
"Beacon Hills is under my protection. The wolves are under my protection. The
pack is under my protection. He is under my protection. For all intents and
purposes, he is one of mine. And those that hurt mine don't live to tell the
tale. I will find him one way or another, and you will die one way or another,
it's only the question of how, and how painful I can make it. So, tell me.
Where is the Beta werewolf you were stupid enough to attempt to capture?"
The hunter gasped for breath when he released pressure on her windpipe enough
for her to be able to speak. She stuttered once, abdomen shaking and shoulders
tensing.
"We- We don't have him." She gasped out finally, arms digging into the skin of
his wrist.
Stiles laughed. "Of course you don't." He told her condescendingly, enjoying
the flash of confusion his statement caused. "But you did. And I want to know
where is he now."
The hunter tightened her jaw and shook her head desperately. "Please...!" She
blurted out and Stiles watched her from under heavy lids.
"He'll kill me!" She cried out, and Stiles swallowed the urge to rip her throat
out with his teeth. Messy? Definitely. Poetically ironic? Depended on your
definition of ironic.
Stiles raised his shoulders in the universal gesture of a shrug.
"He'll kill you anyway." He reasoned, and the hunter widened her eyes. He
scoffed. "Of course he would. He's a demon."
"You-you know him?" She demanded breathlessly, all lingering traces of possible
anger hidden by her need for oxygen.
Stiles smirked at her once. "I killed him. Blew him sky high. Killed myself in
the process." He added as an afterthought, and the hunter shook under his
heavily impossible statement.
"He isn't dead." She said, a sort of sick pride colouring her voice, and Stiles
tightened his grip on her throat in response.
"Regardless. Doesn't matter what you did, he would have killed you. You and
everyone you knew. And he would have made it painful. Would've drawn it out,
with torture and murder and pain. And that's if you helped him. I can hardly
even imagine what he would've done to you had you betrayed him. And I was in
hell myself, for a time." (Nightmares and darkness and nothingness)
He casually used his free hand to push back the hair covering his eyes, but
kept the other secured on her throat.
"Me? If you tell me what I want to know, I'll make it quick, I promise. You
won't even feel it. But if you don't tell me, I'll have to resort to desperate
measures."
Stiles let the smile slowly slide from his face, dropping his head until he was
watching her with intense eyes, the heavy bags under his eyes lit by the
overhead light.
"I don't necessarily like using desperate measures, just like I don't
necessarily like the werewolf you've captured but as I'm here saving his ass
I'm sure you understand how I will do whatever it takes to get him back."
The hunter whimpered as he squeezed his hand tighter. Stiles grinned again
suddenly, the transition terrifying enough in its own right.
"So. Last chance here, hunter. Tell me where he is."
The hunter shakes her head again, fear fighting her irrational loyalty. She
obviously had no sense of self-preservation. She was one of those hunters who
lived only for the destruction of the creatures she fought.
Stiles shoved his free hand into her stomach with a burn of flames, and she
screamed in agony. She doubled over, or tried to, anyway, but remained held up
by his hand on her throat.
He watched her dispassionately, feeling the flickering fire as it sprang into
life inside her. It licked the nerve-endings in her insides, roiled along the
stretched tautness of her skin, boiled the blood in her veins. Tears poured
down her cheeks and Stiles ended the magic.
"Feel like telling me now?" He asked carelessly, as if he had no preference one
way or another.
The hunter gasped for breath under his magic, and there was the undeniable fear
and distinct defiance, but Stiles knew what people looked like when they
reached the end of their rope, and the hunter just had.
"He's still in Beacon Hills. They're shipping him out tonight. There's a- a
file, on the desk, has the location, he's guarded, and I..just- he's going to
die, you all are going to die like the monsters you are."
"'Monsters' is a relative term."
Stiles grit his teeth and snapped her neck. She died as he'd promised, quickly
and painlessly, with only the briefest expression of surprise on her face.
Stiles looked at her lifeless body distastefully. He had long since gotten used
to death, but he never really found pleasure in it. The fight, sure, protecting
those he needed to protect, completely, but death? It was hard to be fond of
something he was so utterly and disastrously familiar with.
Stiles ignored her corpse and walked over to the desk, lifting the paper she
had mentioned. Stuffing it in his pocket, he strolled carefully over to the
chair in the corner of the room and slid his loose shirt off his shoulders.
Moving the chair with a grimace at being exposed to the stifling levels of evil
he was receiving, Stiles dropped the fabric down on the metal, breathing a
weary sigh of relief when it managed to restrict, or at least kind of supress,
the cruel tendrils.
He cautiously bent down and lifted up the shirt, being completely careful not
to let any speck of skin touch any of the metal, but still feeling the rush of
it through the his shirt.
He frowned as he looked around, secured his hold tighter on the fabric that
held the weapon that could kill him, and vanished.
All that was left were a bunch of unconscious hunters and a residual sense of
wrongness in the air.
...
"Derek." Peter's voice was soft but with an edge of hard steel, drawing Derek
back to reality with a harsh yank.
"Peter." He acknowledged the other wolf's presence with a small tilt of his
head, not rude enough to be taken as an insult but in no way submissive.
Derek was an Alpha, anyway. Tilting his head was more than enough for his dead-
not-dead crazy psychotic uncle.
Peter sighed wearily and sat down beside him heavily, shoulders loose and
pliant, arms taking his weight as he let his head fall back.
Derek dared a glance at him through the corner of his eye. Even in his
peripheral, Peter looked... good. Better. Healthy. Alive.
It was a nice change, Derek could admit, from the smoking burnt to a crisp
corpse or the insane power-hungry Alpha. Those particular aspects of his only
living blood relative's personality were ones he was in no rush to see again.
Peter sighed at him disparagingly. "What? No comments? No cursing my name or
baring your fangs? That's not the nephew I know."
Derek grit his teeth. "Maybe I'm not him." He said, instead of staying silent,
knowing that in his present mood his deranged uncle would just continue
pestering him until he got an answer.
Silence raged for a few long moments, a few eternal beats of his heart. Derek
tapped his fingers lightly on the ground, uncomfortable with the
uncharacteristic stillness. Peter broke the tense atmosphere first, voice
collected and dry, drawling slightly.
"You're an idiot." He said, and it said something for Derek's life that it
wasn't the first time he'd heard that, even that day.
Derek remained silent, staring resolutely ahead even as he felt Peter's
insanely knowing eyes on him.
"Aren't you even going to ask why?" Peter raised one eyebrow at him mockingly,
and Derek lifted his shoulders higher to his neck.
"I'll tell you then, shall I?" It wasn't a question, and Derek knew that
without needing to ask. His left hand tensed on his thigh, but no sounds
escaped his lips.
"Let me start by telling you what if felt like. Dying. And not the dying I did
when you slit my throat, no, but how it felt when I spent six years in a self-
inflicted healing coma because my wife and kids had been brutally murdered."
His tone was amiable, pleasant, and his body-language and posture remained
relaxed.
"You can imagine that would drive a person to the very edge of rationality, and
I can easily admit that I wasn't in my... best of mind-sets when I was healed.
Turning the boy was, admittedly, an unintelligent move on my part. It was
instinctual, automatic. I don't regret it, per se, as it led to where I am
today, but there were better choices than Scott. However, it did lead Stiles
into the supernatural world, and that is something I cannot help but feel
inordinately proud of."
Derek lifted his lips into a snarl, barely restrained. "Why are you telling me
this?" He blurt out angrily.
Peter showed no sign of acknowledgement that he was bating an angry wolf,
instead just leaning back nonchalantly and gazing at the rapidly gathering
clouds in the dark sky.
"Because I want you to know exactly how stupid you were. I mean, I bit a
sixteen-year old with asthma and a penchant to look more like a puppy than a
predator, with a frankly terrifying best friend, who, I'll have you know,
rejected the bite when I offered it to him, and who somehow managed to get
himself tangled in with hunters."
Derek felt like he couldn't breathe. "You- you offered- Stiles- what?"
Peter rolled his eyes. "Sentences, Derek. Try and form them, please. It'll make
it easier for people to understand you."
Derek just swallowed audibly and fixed his uncle with a look.
Peter rolled his eyes again. "Yes, I offered Stiles the bite. He refused it.
End of story."
"Why didn't you just force the bite on him like you did with Scott?" Derek
asked finally.
Peter tilted his head thoughtfully, gazing into space with a secret grin
pulling the corner of lips up.
"Good question. That was probably the only smart thing I did all year. You see,
Stiles would've made a brilliant wolf. Still would, in fact. He would've been
everything Scott isn't; ruthless, cunning and reckless to the point of
stupidity. He would've fought tooth and claw with every last drop of energy he
had, and even then he would've found more."
Derek couldn't find it within himself to argue, because he knew it was true.
Knew it even as he knew his eyes were red.
"But. Stiles isn't submissive. He, and he alone, trusts himself to take care of
those who mean anything to him. Stiles would've joined me for as long as
necessary and then stabbed me in the back, grinning. He would've researched and
learned until he knew more about being a werewolf than I did, and then he
would've used that against me. Human Stiles is formidable, but werewolf Stiles?
I don't even want to think about that."
Derek opened his mouth to say something, maybe in Stiles' defence, but closed
it again. He couldn't honestly deny anything Peter had said.
Peter smiled at him once, seeming to read his thoughts. "I never said that was
a bad thing. But even in the condition I was in, I could feel a sense of more
about Stiles, and, human or no, Stiles was prepared to kill me to protect his
own. It was an admirable trait, but I wasn't about to accept, let alone create,
a danger in my own inner circle. Stiles is infinitely more wolfish than Scott
while human, I wasn't about to add to his danger-levels."
Derek furrowed his brow and looked at his uncle strangely. And look how well
that turned out, he thought, Stiles is now the most powerful being alive or in
recent history.
"So I wasn't about to bite Stiles. Yes, Stiles is powerful now, but he is also
stronger, braver and harder than he was at sixteen. These years have been cruel
to him, and it's changed him into someone unrecognisable from the boy he used
to be. I have had a small part in this, but I'm not nearly arrogant enough to
claim all the credit. I might have set the ball rolling, but everything after
has been him and you- your pack. But to get at the heart of the matter, your
stupid actions."
Derek bit back a growl and Peter shook his head.
"I don't know what it was that encouraged you to do what you did, and in some
way I can't help but be grateful because if you hadn't I never would have
gotten a chance to re-meet Stiles, but damn, Derek, for someone supposed to be
intelligent you really don't know Stiles if you think saying goodbye will keep
him safe."
Derek started at his uncle's perceptiveness as he says 'safe' like a dirty
word, not something to be desired but rather endured.
"Stiles craves power. But not for himself, not for control or desire to be
better than everyone else. Stiles craves power because he sees that as the only
way to keep those precious to him safe, and he will do anything to do that.
Stiles would die for his loved ones, and you," Peter fixed him with a glare,
"You complete and utter fool, you gave him an excuse to get out of Beacon Hills
and become unbeatable. You cut off his ties to humanity, to the very people he
would do the impossible for. Do you have any idea what a mage like Stiles can
do?! No, of course you don't, because you're an idiot. Stiles is a whole new
level of powerful, and you gave him the opportunity and the reason to become
more powerful. You literally handed the world to him on a silver platter and if
it weren't for his twisted sense of morality that usually leans towards grey
and his undying loyalty to specific people, even if he doesn't particularly
like them very much, Stiles would have become the very being that he fights. So
that is why you're an idiot, Derek. Stiles was never the pack's anchor, holding
you all to your humanity."
Peter stood up and brushed the imaginary dirt from his clothes, hands sweeping
gently over the loose fabric. He took one step away, back towards Stiles'
house, and then another, before turning back around.
"The pack was his."
...
"They're back!"
Isaac was running down the path towards him, and was quickly followed by an
outpour of bodies, squirming and pushing to get a view.
Derek shot upright, hands scrambling in the dirt.
Stiles was standing in the centre of the path, a bleary-eyed weak Scott leaning
on him with an arm thrown over the taller teen's shoulder. Scott was standing,
barely, his head lolling forward and being pulled down by gravity and lack of
strength.
Stiles lifted Scott's arm from his shoulder carefully, passing him off to a
waiting Isaac, who was quickly assisted by Allison, who darted forward to help
hold her boyfriend.
Boyd- still slightly weary and out of it from his own misendeavours- limped
forward to steady Stiles by the arm, but paused just shy of touching him.
Stiles shook his head once, quickly as if to remove cobwebs, and walked
forward, not giving an inch.
Boyd shifted uncomfortably before following him and the trio into the house.
Lydia rushed forward and gripped Stiles by the arm, and Derek saw Stiles smile
at her gratefully.
They began whispering, seemingly nonsensical, but obviously meaning something
to them.
"There's a-" Stiles shot a glance to the wolves behind before suddenly wincing.
His hand shot to his chest, and Derek wasn't the only one who stepped forward
unconsciously.
Stiles jerked a head in negative, before clenching his fists and consciously
unknotting the tension in his shoulders.
Lydia grasped his chin with the fingers of her right hand and twisted his face
until his eyes met hers steadily.
Stiles let his head fall minutely as a yes and Lydia took a deep breath. "Okay.
Okay." She murmured, looking at Stiles with something akin to empathy and worry
in the glint of her eyes.
"I hid it somewhere it won't be found. No chance of it getting into the wrong
hands." Stiles smiled weakly, his tone trying (and failing) for levity.
"How did it get past the shields?" Lydia hissed, and Stiles just shook his
head.
"Luck." He told her, but Derek, and no doubt the rest of the wolves, heard the
skip in his heartbeat.
"Lyds, I'm infallible, remember? Can't get hurt by anything any person can
throw at me."
Was Derek imagining it or was there a slight infliction on the word 'person'
when Stiles spoke?
Lydia seemed to catch it too, because she leaned in closer to him and huffed,
"You and I both now there are other creatures that can't be considered 'people'
out there. And I'm not talking about werewolves."
Stiles grinned at her impishly before squeezing her hand gently as reassurance.
"I'm fine, Lyds. Nothing I haven't handled before."
Stiles turned and walked into the house casually, hands tucked into his pockets
as if to hide his still tight fists.
Lydia stared after him, eyes wide and anxious. "That's what I'm worried about,"
She murmured, and Derek couldn't help but agree.
Even if only in his own head.
The pack walked, or in some cases, limped after Stiles, and Derek found himself
at the tail-end of the group, everyone else using quick steps to reassure
themselves their pack mate was okay. And that Stiles was okay too, inevitably.
They traipsed into the sitting room, where Derek's senses were assaulted with
the stagnant smells of alcohol and junk food, causing him to wrinkle his nose
up.
The others seemed unperturbed by the intense scent, instead grabbing seats as
if it had all been pre-decided. Maybe it had. They had spent the night after
all.
Derek and Stiles were the only two who remained standing, even Scott accepting
the support of the furniture with barely a whisper of complaint.
Derek felt.. uneasy in Stiles' space. Stiles' territory. For all intents and
purposes, Stiles was a rival Alpha, what with all the hold he had in Derek's
own pack, and wasn't that an astonishing discovery in itself.
Derek's wolf complained about being in another Alpha's space, but not in the
way it should have. It wanted (God help him) to be invited to share Stiles'
space, wanted formal acknowledgement that he was allowed and accepted.
Derek shook such thoughts from his head, and instead settled himself with
watching every tiny shift in Stiles' posture for future reference and
understanding.
Stiles paced the length of the living room with frantic desperate jolts of
movement, long legs eating up the ground and head somewhere they couldn't hope
to reach. Lydia stayed sitting, but when he passed her again she reached out
one careful hand and grasped his wrist.
"Stiles." She stated, and that seemed to be enough to shake Stiles from his
self-imposed reverie.
"Right. Well, there's no easy way to say this, I guess."
He spun around on his heel suddenly, clasping his hands together at stomach-
level, pressing them into his stomach as if seeking an anchor.
Derek recalled Peter's parting words, and couldn't help but think that he was
right. A quick glance over at his uncle revealed the wolf staring at Stiles
with a worry matched only by Lydia.
Stiles braced himself and swallowed quietly before he ceased moving. "Beacon
Hills is being targeted by an evil force."
Jackson sprang up with, "It wouldn't be the first time."
Derek almost growled at him because it was not the time to be facetious, but
Stiles laughed tensely as if he appreciated the effort.
The light-hearted move was gone seconds after, though the tenseness between the
people present had lessened somewhat.
"You haven't dealt with anything like this." Stiles told them finally, face
grave.
"He's..." Stiles waved a hand in the air as if trying to find a concept he
couldn't quite put his fingers on.
Laughing at himself self-depreciatingly, Stiles shrugged.
"Well, he's a demon."
It would have been funny if Stiles was joking. Except he really wasn't.
Stupid Beacon Hills. Sometimes Derek seriously thought about moving away.
Maybe somewhere sunny. Where he wasn't fighting for his life every second day.
Somewhere he could get a job, and a tan, thought the two were not mutually
inclusive.
Where he could just be for the first time since the fire.
Derek would be lying he said he didn't want it.
He'd also be lying if he said that that didn't sound boring as all fuck.
Chapter End Notes
     So, okay;
     Stiles causes great bodily harm to some hunters (again!), and
     describes in detail how one of them would be killed before snapping
     her neck, so warning.
     Peter talks of insanity and unstableness, and why exactly he didn't
     bite Stiles that time in season 1 when we all knew he should've
     because Stiles would be a downright brilliant, if terrifying, wolf.
     Just saying. That's my headcanon reason anyway, as you can see!
     The usual; death, gore, violence, evil etc etc.
     An evil weapon that can push through Stiles' defensive shields
     (surprise!).
     So if I've missed anything tell me, and sorry for the wait!
     As always, to my brilliant, amazing readers, THANK YOU! Recently
     found a new OTP (Kirk/Spock if you're wondering, so couldn't resist
     the impulse to stick a little of that in, for those who noticed,
     sorry, no harm meant!) which brings the grand total of slash OTP's
     that break my heart up to 6 (maybe seven).
     For everybody who follows the story, kudos'd or might kudos in the
     future, who sends amazing comments that cheer me up after a shit day,
     or bookmarks or spreads the words or reads, I hope you like this
     chapter and live long, happy, incredibly lives and get all you've
     ever wanted, and here, have a hug!
     *Hugs excitedly*
     So thank you for that, and next chapter the pack find out what's
     coming and Stiles goes and visits Deaton with the weapon-of-mass-
     destruction-forged-from-evil.
     So that's that, talk to you soon, and love you guys millions!
     H.S.F
***** Why is it always me? I mean, I try to be a good person. I eat all my
vegetables, I say please and thank you, well, most of the time anyway, I try
not to kill anybody that doesn’t deserve it. I mean, I don’t always succeed,
but we all have flaws! *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles gets snarky, the bullet's still in his chest, and then Derek
     and Stiles have their first non-argument. It-s fun and frolic all
     around.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"A demon?" Scott asked, voice heavy with disbelief. He sat propped up on either
side by Allison and Isaac, eyes red-rimmed and sore looking, arms folded in the
universal sign of distaste and discomfort.
Derek's wolf growled at the mistreatment of his pack, his beta, at the hands of
humans, and not just any humans but at the hands of hunters, who had already
cost him so much. If he found those hunters he was going to rip their throats
out. That was if his pack, judging by the murderous expressions of their faces,
didn't get to them first. Not to mention Stiles. Who smelled faintly of dried
blood and hours old anger. Which did not make Derek's inner wolf yap in
happiness that his- Stiles was willing to protect their- his pack. At all.
Stiles had been rather vague about what exactly he had done to get Scott back
with them, waving a hand in the air as if the request was nonsensical and
unimportant, when nothing could be further from the truth. Stiles' nonchalant
attitude towards his own abilities and achievements were starting to get on
Derek's nerves. You know, if he had any right to be annoyed. Which he didn't.
At all. The sooner his wolf figured it out the better.
"Yes, Scott a Demon. Eternal damnation in hell, fire and brimstone, horns and
bat wings, do I need to paint you a picture or do you get the idea?" Stiles
practically growled, all lingering patience long since dissipated.
He continued pacing, back and forth, back and forth, carpet fibres giving way
beneath his too-light steps, anxiety lending itself to the almost dead silence
of his movements. He was.. walking wasn't the right word, too tame, too human.
Stiles was prowling, and it made Derek's wolf want to respond in kind.
Stiles sighed for a second and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
"Demons are pure evil, dangerously good at pretending not to be, complete
bastards when it comes to revenge and notoriously hard to kill. I've managed to
piss off quite a few in my limited years on this earth, but none quite so much
as the one out to get me at this moment in time." His admission was mentioned
without a hint of smugness, and more than Stiles' fair share of self-
depreciation.
Lydia's jaw was clenched as she watched Stiles' hands form into fists, and it
occurred to Derek, belatedly, that maybe there was more to the story than
Stiles was telling. But then again, it wasn't like Stiles would ever tell them
anyways. And Derek was 100% not bitter about that. Not even the tiniest trace
of bitterness. Scott seemed to reach this conclusion at the same time as he
did, and was the first one who dared to ask.
"What did you do?" The room was hushed and deadly quiet, everyone waiting with
a shoddily hidden eagerness for Stiles' answer.
He raised his eyes upwards, brow furrowed, before seeming to catch on. He
turned away and let his hand reach out to stroke the peeling painted wall with
two elegant fingers, the slightest sound of his fingertips catching the only
thing to hear.
Stiles laughed humourlessly to himself, lips pursed stiffly, eyes tight with
unspoken emotion.
"What did I do?" He repeated absentmindedly, almost too low to be heard by
anyone in the room, a sick sort of manic glee rising in his iris', the tiniest
smidge of a smirk gracing the corner of his mouth.
Stiles spun on his heels to face them once more, a fake cocky smile twisting
his lips unnaturally, eyes gleaming just lightly golden, as if someone had
dropped a glitter haze under his lids for the sole purpose of making him look
eerie and other-worldly, almost fae.
"Why, I killed him of course."
Utter silence.
"You... killed...him?" Scott sounded shocked, sounded so horribly surprised
that Derek wanted to slap the young Beta across the back of the head.
Stiles snarled at him again. "Yes, Scott, because that is what you tend to do
to someone when they want to wipe humanity off the face of the earth and clear
a path for hell spawn to end all life. Didn't you get the memo?"
Scott looked suitably chastised before countering a moment later.
"Why, though?"
Stiles trapped his tongue between his teeth and dragged his fingers through his
hair, pulling the long strands up taunt vertically from his scalp, a
punishingly tight fist wrapped around the thick hairs.
He lifted the corners of his lips in a crappy imitation of a smile, eyes
shining dangerously bright.
"Scott." His voice was carefully controlled, deliberate, precise and articulate
as he spoke, looking for all the world as if he was about to either offer a cup
of tea or turn feral. "Are you seriously asking me why I would kill a power-
hungry, egomaniacal, sadistic, psychopathic, brutal, cruel, dangerous,
homicidal, murderous and frankly ass-hole of a demon, and if so, what the fuck
Scott?"
Scott flushed a deep scarlet that looked peculiar on his someone of his build
and complexion, but stubbornly held his point.
"No, what I meant was why would he come after you again if you've already
proven yourself stronger than him before?"
Stiles stopped his pacing to turn to his old friend, considering, his head
cocked to one side and brows furrowed. "I guess you did." He murmured, more to
himself than anyone else, sounding almost... pleased? Was that the word Derek
was looking for?
It didn't last long however, and Stiles soon returned to his pacing with vigour
and quick steps, clasped hands lifted to his mouth and pressed against his
lips.
He hummed lightly, air musical under the vibrations, fingers firmly linked and
entwined.
Stiles huffed out a breath that could have been a laugh, were he anybody else
and the situation any different, and his jaw was hard and tense.
"I don't know, Scott. People, and, strangely enough, even demons tend to get a
little defensive and upset when you kill them. I suppose you could call it the
fatal flaw of life."
Stiles clenched his right fist suddenly and turned away. Derek caught only the
quickest shut of his eyes in pain, his left hand rising to his temples as if to
ward away a headache.
"Now, if you excuse me, I do have things to do so we don't all die."
Stiles practically ran from the room, body stiff and expression suddenly grim.
The pack looked at each other in confusion. What was that about?
...
Stiles collapsed back against the door of the bathroom with a dull thud, hands
crushed into fists pressed tightly into his burning side to stop himself from
screaming. He vaguely recalled clicking the lock into place with his magic the
second he entered, hands moving in the air of their own accord and the words
forming swiftly and silently on his tongue, heavy like lead and stones.
He rammed his skull back hard against the smooth pale wood of the door and
clammed his mouth shut with jaws clenched tight to prevent any noises escaping,
even the barest whisper of sound.
Gods, it burned.
With stiff, fumbling fingers Stiles cursed and yanked his overly starched shirt
from his over-heated skin, pulled it over his shoulders in haste and hissing as
the actions caused splashes of nerve-filled heat to wash up and down his spine,
and shot it quickly in a random direction.
And he knew he had aroused suspicion, knew he shouldn't have ran out of that
room like the hounds of hell were on his tail, should have walked calmly or
something.
But he was on fire.
Stiles clasped shaky hands behind his head, dug his nails into the hard flesh
of his knuckles and felt the first few watery drops of blood slip down his
wrist. His vision blacked out as his forearm strained with the pain, the
bathroom and its white tiles swimming before his eyes.
Against his will Stiles groaned, and the sound echoed around the room before he
could catch it once more between his teeth.
Bracing himself, Stiles glanced down at his chest and his injury that was
burning him from the inside out. "Oh, fuck." He breathed, and if it sounded
almost like a hysterical laugh he could be excused
The wound from earlier was bleeding again, a small rivulet of dark scarlet
blood trailing a path down past the waistband of his jeans and across his lower
stomach, staining his sweat-soaked skin almost pink. That wasn't what worried
him, though.
Stiles had dealt with more than his fair share of blood (because when was life,
especially his, ever truly fair) and even seeing his own barely even fazed him.
No, what was far, far more worrying were the long, seeking grey tendrils that
were steadily forging a slow path up his chest and towards his heart.
The damn bullet was cursed.
Well shit.
Stiles let out a string of profanity under his breath, impressive enough to
scar children everywhere, before releasing a long exhale.
"Fucking demons and their fucking egos and goddamn fucking werewolves that
can't just accept things as bloody truth without conclusive proof that 'oh yes,
of course Stiles will just happen to have lying around, you know how he likes
doing that, oh wait, you don't because you haven't spoken to him in over a
fucking year' and mother-fucking people who won't leave me alone, because it's
not like I have a fucking hole in my goddamn side or anything!" Stiles blurted
viciously, still staring down at the sickly grey roots under his skin.
But cursing out everyone else in the entire world just as some sort of delay
tactic would not heal him, and, left to its own devices, the wound and the
bullet still festering inside his side would kill him, which wasn't exactly how
he was hoping to go out.
Stiles' shoulders tensed just at the thought, but something had to be done.
Making a snap decision, he slapped his hand to the wall and switched the shower
on, giving plausible credence to his locking of himself in the bathroom as well
as both hushing his sounds from listening ears and keeping his temperature
down.
Stiles left his jeans on and tried to psyche himself up enough to move, to push
himself into the shower, knowing it would hurt like nothing else but just as
aware that he didn't really have any other option.
Pain sucked.
Stiles shoved himself off of the door and across the short distance to the
shower, every vein in his body protesting, every nerve rebelling. He couldn't
think, couldn't see, couldn't breathe with the pain, so much pain.
Gasping, he let his head fall back against the smooth, cool tiles of the shower
wall, and grit his teeth at the sudden influx of debilitating agony that the
action caused him. Through the heavy pounding of his heart in his ears, that
constant beating thrum against his ear drums, Stiles heard a muffled knock on
the door and a whispered question.
"Stiles?" And when lifting his head to investigate and even reply forced a
groan from the back of his throat, Stiles was happy he'd had the foresight to
turn on the shower so that the noise from the water would cover any and all
involuntary noises he couldn't control.
No point in starting a siege of bodies beating down the door.
The water practically sizzled as it came into contact with his heated skin, and
Stiles somehow managed to turn himself around without slipping into the
increasingly tempting blank of unconsciousness. But if he did slip away, if he
let the darkness cover his vision and his mind fall away, he was almost
completely certain he would never wake up again.
Stiles glanced down at his chest again, where the twisting grey lines were
slowly but surely carving their significant way up his skin, at least half a
centimetre further up his bloodstream than they had been mere minutes before.
Think! He muttered harshly to himself.
Wracking his brain furiously (or as furiously as he was able, considering the
situation and pain he was under) Stiles froze when the thought finally occurred
to him. He couldn't heal himself using magic with the bullet still inside his
body (insidiously infectious, poisoning his very blood, his organs, his brain),
but maybe if he were able to take it out...?
Holding his breath (at least figuratively, on the outside and in reality his
shoulders were heaving with strain and exertion, deep panting breaths that
almost gave him less air than short frantic ones), Stiles shifted until his
hands sat clasped over the wound.
He murmured a few soft, gently spoken words, and a faint gold glow entered the
gaping hole underneath his ribcage and seemed to make him glow from the inside
out; like when he was younger and innocent and used to hold torches to the tips
of his fingers and watch the light shine through. Before everything that made
him bitter and tense. Before, well, before life.
The gold light travelled into his chest and then stopped. Suddenly, a burst of
liquid ice ran through his veins and Stiles arched from the wall and bit his
lip until he tasted the iron tang of blood, everything in him objecting to the
magic, as if barbed wires of acid were stuck straight through his skin, bones
filled with metallic burning smoke. His legs buckled beneath him and he slid
down the wall, shoulders so tense he felt as if he could have broken straight
through the wall with the smallest amount of pressure.
Stiles hastily yanked his magic back out of his body, and the ensuing,
overwhelming relief from that terrible devastating freeze made him release a
half sob half laugh, and every tiny movement of his body lit his nerve endings
on fire.
"Okay... okay, fuck, fuck, okay, no magic, good to know, fuck... okay." The
words jumbled and twisted as they fell from his cracked and bloody lips, barely
audible beneath the constant swirling mass and rush of water that sluiced over
his head and down his bare shoulders, the fabric of his jeans growing
uncomfortably tight and water-logged, sticking to his legs like a second skin.
Stiles forced deep, long breaths in and out of his lungs and ignored the light
thumping on the door signalling the impatience of whatever wolf had come to
investigate.
There was no other option, no alternative. He didn't have a choice.
Gods, but this was going to hurt.
Stiles lifted one shaking fist up to his mouth and bit down heavily on his
forefinger, small crescents of pink raised skin on his knuckles from his nails
long since washed clean of blood. With his right hand, he gently probed the
tips of the damage on his stomach, and bit down harder on his finger when the
touch made him want to scream out loud.
Shoving his knuckle further into his mouth, and clenching his teeth harder on
the skin, Stiles bit the sinew hard enough to indent and felt his shoulders
tense impossibly, illogically further.
If he didn't stop the curse making its way to his heart, screw the demon he was
going to die right there right then, half naked and bleeding in a frigid shower
stall.
Thanks to the complete fail of his magic, he did have a very rough idea of
where the bullet was currently staining his innards, and since magic wouldn't
work and he didn't have the time, patience or energy to wait and somehow find
his way to the hospital all those miles away...
Yeah, there really was no other option.
The water overhead flattened his hair straight down his forehead, weighing his
eyelashes down and pouring past the crevice of his ears.
He was shaking, he realised idly somewhere in the back of his head, abs
contracting and releasing habitually with every breath, pushing more blood out
and down his skin and outlining his hipbone, darkening the waistband of his
jeans crimson.
The water whirling down the drain was tinged pink, and the grey tendrils were
lining his ribs already.
The contrast between the pitch black inky tattoos decorating and practically
dancing across his neck, chest and shoulders, and the sickly grey pallor of the
cursed bullet's infection were enough to make his mind up for him.
Fist still blocking the groans, whimpers and pain-filled exclamations that
begged to escape and slip from his lips, Stiles didn't wait a second before
carefully plunging his fingers into his side.
He might have blacked out after that, might have shut his eyes and lost feeling
in his limbs, could possibly have collapsed backward and let his loose, pliant
body empty of consciousness.
When he came to a few seconds later, vision bleary and unfocused, the hammering
on the door had reached a new height, with various overlapping voices of all
timbres and meanings calling his name in rushed, frantic emotion.
His fist had fallen with the bloody teeth-marks to the floor by his side, but
his right hand was still partway in his stomach, almost cradling his wound with
cupped fingers, deep under his skin. Heh, under his skin. Gods, he was
delirious.
Stiles pressed his head against the cool glass of the shower, shoved his legs
tight against the opposite wall (and when had he slipped to the floor? When,
exactly, had his legs stopped holding his weight, because the last while had
been too much of a blur to make out) and pressed his fingers even deeper.
The pain was over-powering, over-whelming, blocking all of his senses and
making his heart thud erratically, almost worryingly, in his chest.
Eyes closed against the steady and constant drops of water, Stiles forced his
fingers to keep moving, to not stop because of a little thing like unending,
torturous pain.
Pain was useful, pain could be controlled, harnessed; pain was a force of
strength and a depth of energy all on its own.
But this was something different. Something more.
Every breath, every tiny flex or stretch of muscles hurt, but Stiles (stubborn
asshole that he was) just grit his teeth harder and continued to dig inside his
body for the bullet.
When his finger-tips began to burn, fiery crescendos in a burning wasteland,
Stiles (had he been a praying or even faintly religious man) would have thanked
whatever the hell deity watched over damaged mages who found demons and used to
run with wolves.
Then his fractured and fragile nerves met with the one spot of complete ice in
his body, and his only thought was, Bingo.
Devastatingly, eternally slowly, Stiles ignored and dismissed the pain as best
he could, to the extent of his abilities, and trapped the bullet between two
jerky fingers, and just as agonisingly slowly began to tug it out.
One false move, one slip up, one mistake and Stiles wouldn't have the time left
to live to try and remove it again.
Finally, after what felt like eons of small shifting movements and jaggedly
harsh breaths, Stiles slipped the bullet from the folds of his skin and threw
it as far away from himself as physically possible, the sheer strength of his
eagerness to be rid of the thing not even minutely hidden.
Collapsing forward to the floor of the shower, arms and muscles twitching and
giving way beneath him, Stiles let out a shaky laugh that was at least half a
sob, hand coming up and vertically to prevent his own face smashing into the
slippery, wet plastic shower bottom.
He rested his free hand against the tiled wall and hiccupped another pained
laugh, barely believing his own luck.
"Talk about leaving it to the last minute." Stiles murmured blearily, and felt
his shoulder dip, relaxed for the first time since entering the bathroom. His
hand was covered in blood, pools of it, and he still had to heal his side
before he bled to death on the floor of the shower.
Which would have been almost hilariously ironic, pulling the bullet out through
the pain only to bleed out as if it were a common injury and he an ordinary
person, but Stiles was not, and never would be, a big advocate of dying for the
sake of comedic value or poetic irony.
Pulling his tired and unresponsive body from where he was sprawled against the
floor to his feet proved to be an exhausting and herculean task, but Stiles
managed it eventually, leaning heavily against the square tiles and feeling the
heavy droplets of cold water splash down his neck and back, mixing with sweat
and blood.
The heavy pounding on the door matched the consistent beating of his heart,
and, had he any energy to be wasted or squandered at all, Stiles would have
rolled his eyes.
Lifting his hand to cover his bloody side once more, Stiles pulled his eyebrows
together and grasped the two sides of his wound together, forcing bright white
pure magic to tunnel down his arm and into his stomach.
The entry would closed over, fresh pink skin forming and torn muscles grafting
together to fill in for the missing matter.
It was a languorous and laborious process, and his vision was mostly black
spots and dancing white lights for most of it, but finally it was completed and
he was no longer on the verge of death. At least for one more day.
Stiles reached out one shaky hand and turned off the shower, leaning back
heavily against the wall when the act of moving seemed to drain all the energy
he possessed. Shakily, Stiles almost fell out of the cubicle, using the walls
as leverage when his legs threatened to give way beneath him.
The banging on the door never ceased his entire journey, and eventually when
his patience gave out Stiles yelled back through gritted teeth and false
aggravation (he was too tired to feel any real sense of annoyance).
"I'm fine, jeez! Just taking a bloody shower, or is that forbidden with you oh
mighty wolves?"
His sarcasm seemed to reassure them, ironically enough, and they moved from the
door, grumbling indiscernibly.
Stiles ran his fingers through his damp hair and winced when it caused his
muscles to twinge.
He glanced in the mirror warily, noting the patchwork scars and curved tattoos,
the beading water droplets and defined muscles honed from over two years of
fighting the unbeatable.
His deep hazel-gold eyes spoke of too many trials faced, too much death and
misery and pain, and Stiles turned away, unwilling to face his own image any
longer.
Growing up hurt.
Quickly materialising a shirt and jumper, Stiles took a deep breath in, tried
to tap into any lingering reserves of previously unused energy he possessed,
and flung open the door to face the wolves.
...
Derek started to his feet when the bathroom door was abruptly pulled open from
the inside, his undignified scrambling thankfully hidden by the fact that
everyone else was doing the same. Excluding Lydia, who stepped gracefully to
her feet but was the first to Stiles' side. Somehow. Derek suspected magic was
involved.
Stiles snorted at seeing them all and rolled his eyes, but to Derek the act
seemed painfully forced and almost as if Stiles was behaving like they expected
him to just to stop them asking why the hell they had heard his pain-filled
groan that tore the very fabric of Derek's being not even moments before.
He was not going to get away that easily.
"What happened?" Isaac beat him to the punch, and Scott looked momentarily put
out that he hadn't been the one to bring it up before his concern overcame his
trepidation.
Stiles smirked evenly at them, and Derek noticed the wet waistband of his
jeans, the faint lingering scent of blood, and the almost unnoticeable tremor
in Stiles' hands.
"Mage business." He responded dryly, before reaching suddenly for something in
his pocket and pulling out a single cigarette, lighting it with a flame from
the tips of his fingers.
Stiles lifted it to his lips (hands still shaking, Derek noticed with concern)
and drew in one long breath.
"When did you start smoking?" Scott said accusatorily, and Stiles blinked at
him for a long moment. Derek wanted to bang his head against the wall at the
beta's stupidity.
"Probably around the same time I stopped giving a damn what people think of me,
which, was, hmmm... a month after I left here? That would make it over a year
after risking my life became commonplace, and this way I figure if supernatural
shit doesn't kill me at least lung cancer will. Thank heavens for small
mercies, eh?"
Stiles shrugged off Lydia's placating arm on his elbow and stalked off to the
porch, shooting one last lingering dirty look at them all. Lydia growled low in
the back of her throat. "Idiot." She snarled at Scott, who watched, nonplussed,
and Lydia turned to go back upstairs.
"Aren't you going to go after him?" Screw banging his head against the wall,
Derek wanted to bang his head against a fucking cliff.
Lydia rolled her eyes. "Yes, Scott, because Stiles is a naughty toddler who is
going off in a huff. No I bloody well am not going after him! In this mood, he
is not in the mood for company, and I'm not going to impose and force my
company on him. Stiles is an adult. He doesn't need me trying to hold his hand.
You might want to ;earn from that."
Slowly the pack dispersed back to their rooms, and, bracing himself, Derek
stepped outside to stand beside the mage, forearms resting on the smooth wood
of the railing.
Stiles didn't glance over at him. They stood like that, in silence, for a
while.
Finally, Stiles broke it. "You coming out to criticise my life and health
choices too?"
Derek almost jumped. In the peace and quiet, he's nearly forgotten words were a
thing people did at all.
Deliberately stalling over his words, Derek didn't turn to look at the man
beside him, instead gazing out into the surrounding forest.
"Nah." He said finally. "It would be a bit hypocritical of me. I'm not exactly
the poster-boy for positive coping mechanisms."
Stiles snorted back a laugh. "Understatement." He agreed under his breath, and
Derek held back a smile.
Stiles glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "This is the first time since
I've come back that we've been alone." He told Derek, who nodded. It was nice.
More relaxed than he'd expected it to be. Than it had any right to be.
"And the first time we've been in each others' company where we haven't argued,
disagreed, scarred or otherwise caused tension since pretty much the first time
we met." Stiles continued, and Derek didn't try to hold back his smile that
time.
"I'm feeling a bit of tension." He teased, just to see if they were there yet,
if they could tease each other without it ending in figurative and occasionally
literal violence.
Stiles huffed, but his mouth curled up in a smile and they sank back into the
comfort of not speaking with all the ease of friends. Even though they were
both fully aware that they weren't. Not truly.
There were a few more seconds of relaxed silence, before, "S'not real, you
know."
Derek furrowed his eyebrows and risked a glance at the mage beside him, who's
cigarette was hanging limply between his lips. His eyes looked a million miles
away, and made Derek want to draw him back, to pull him home.
"What?" He asked instead, because contrary to popular belief he did not have a
death wish.
Stiles slipped the item in question between two fingers, which Derek was
pleased to see no longer shook, and then flicked it into nonexistence.
"The cigarette." He explained unnecessarily. "Never existed. Not really.
Created of magic, and so has to return to magic. Most important rule of the old
ways. Everything that is done has to be undone. All actions have an equal and
opposite reaction. Everything has an end, eventually."
"Isaac Newton." Derek noted, and Stiles nodded.
"Nothing lasts forever." He said softly, and it felt to Derek almost like a
confession.
Chapter End Notes
     God, it's late and I'm wrecked and a little bit out of my mind but
     finally posted this chapter!
     So sorry 'bout the delay, no excuses, just been insanely hectic with
     essays and projects and homework and birthdays and things.
     Ugh, anyways.
     Thank you so much to all of you guys (and girls, and non-binary
     peoples, and both, neither, other, aliens, I might be just a little
     bit crazy, my apologies in advance). Support has been massive for
     this, and I never expected it to go so well, so thank you all!!!
     A huge, ginormous thanks to all who subscribed, kudos'd, commented,
     bookmarked, read and spread the word!
     As always, not beta'd, so all mistakes are my own. And, no,
     unfortunately I don't own Teen Wolf or Tyler Hoechlin would never
     have left and Stiles would be even more of a Bamf and have long hair
     and and... And I'm going to stop before this becomes more of a tirade
     than a note!
     Warnings for;
     Snark
     Sarcasm (c'mon, this is a Stiles-fic, what did you expect?)
     Demon bashing
     Talk of killing
     Stiles sticks his hand inside his own body (Gross, I know, but
     necessary)
     Magic, evil bullets
     Cursing, pretty heavy (see two above)
     Stiles smokes (but not really, read it and find out)
     Blood and gore
     Graphic descriptions of... I don't know... doctoring...? Sorta?
     And that's all folks!
     So drop a comment, tell me what you think, tell your friends
     (shameless self advertising), etc etc and updates as soon as I can
     get my shit in gear!
     Love to you all!
     H.S.F
     P.S. Today is my birthday!!! 13th of December. I feel a day older
     than I did yesterday, and that day makes all the difference in the
     world. (In case it doesn't come through in my writing I was being
     sarcastic) :P
***** I have friends in high places. No, you don’t get to growl at me,
sourwolf. I will castrate you and whack you over the head with your own balls.
*****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles talks to Deaton, and Chris, and then to everybody at once.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Alan Deaton was just writing down the report for his last client of the day (a
German Shepherd who had somehow managed to get a open ended tin can trapped
around his muzzle) when the bell above his door clanged in welcome.
Not looking up, he huffed out a sigh and continued scribbling on his notebook.
"Sorry, we're closed." He said, eyes fixated on his paperwork.
"Even for an old friend, Alan? I'm deeply hurt." The smile was already pulling
the corners of his lips into an unusual and out of character grin before he had
finished lifting his head.
"Stiles." He greeted warmly, eyes open and friendly. The young man in question
grinned back at him, all giddy excited awareness and bright hazel eyes, but he
looked tired. Even more so than usual, more than was the norm for the powerful
but stretched thin mage.
Stiles sauntered over to the counter elegantly, and, with a quick flick of his
wrist, successfully removed the invisible mountain ash barrier that was
supposed to prevent unpermitted magical beings from gaining access to all the
rare and special items he had hidden in the backroom.
As a powerful and 'unknown' magic user, the ash wouldn't have, or, perhaps more
correctly, shouldn't have allowed him to do what he had just done, but little
things like the laws of magic had never stopped Stiles before and seemed
unlikely to affect him now.
Stiles vaulted over the countertop and flicked the barrier back into place with
a swish of his fingers, brown hair tussled and looking windswept.
"What can I do for you?" The vet asked, instead of the question about the
mage's well being that was on the tip of his tongue begging to be asked,
because he knew that even if he did ask Stiles would just deflect. He was
terribly good at that.
Stiles nodded jerkily to the back room and continued on his trajectory without
pause, sending an absent-minded pulse of magic out to the startled animals in
their cages. They settled down immediately, comforted by Stiles' presence like
they had never been with any of the wolves.
Deaton held back a sigh that was more fond than exasperated. He cared for
Stiles as a friend, a... colleague (for want of a better and more accurate
word) and almost like an uncle, but the man often held the ability to drive him
insane.
Were it anyone else, Deaton might have thought it was intentional, or that the
sanity in leaving them alone with a roomful of overtly and incredibly powerful
magical objects (mishaps, catastrophes and apocalypses just waiting to happen)
was, well, not.
But it wasn't anyone else, this was Stiles, who held the most power in his body
since ever, and if he couldn't be trusted to not explode or collapse the
building around them then Deaton seriously doubted anyone would.
Following the mage-understandably wary of what exactly he might have gotten up
to, even it had only been a few seconds (you might be surprised what magic and
ADHD could do in such a short frame of time, there was a warehouse in Atlantis
that could attest to that)-, Deaton shut the door connecting the two rooms
quietly behind him and turned around.
Stiles was leaning semi-casually against the wall, throwing a glass orb from
hand to hand idly, eyebrows furrowed and eyes drawn almost magnetically to the
floor. Deaton had to resist the ridiculous urge to run over, grab the encircled
potion and cradle it to his chest.
But if Stiles dropped it he would be made to re-sort the entire contents of the
clinic's store room. Without magic. Though how Deaton would be able to tell if
the crafty teen was using magic was as of yet unknown.
"Careful you don't drop that. It contains a flesh-eating curse I've been
working on for almost a decade."
Stiles put down the sphere so fast his hands were just a blur and a swish in
the air. Deaton barely withheld the urge to chuckle. In reality it was nothing
more than an everyday healing potion, but they did say that a little bit of
caution never hurt anybody.
And the whole thing about cats and curiousity wouldn't have hurt Stiles to
learn either.
Deaton crossed his arms over his chest. All light-hearted levity aside, while
he and Stiles could loosely be considered 'friends' and definitely enjoyed each
others' company, they didn't directly seek the other out unless they needed
help.
If Stiles was here, now, and if the dark worried look in his eyes was any
indication, this was much more than just a social call.
"What do you need, Stiles?" He asked gently, repeating his earlier question but
this time not allowing Stiles any leeway to avoid it. Dealing with the mage
could sometimes be likened with dealing with a startled animal. One wrong move
and you ended up on your back with a knife to your throat.
Or, Deaton remembered, there was that one time it had been a potted plant. One
does not forget being threatened with shrubbery very quickly.
Stiles took a few long seconds to gather his thoughts before asking abruptly,
"What do you know of the recent surge in demonic activity?"
Deaton frowned. Demons were by no means his area of expertise, but he'd heard
enough to know it meant DANGER. As the foremost expert in demons on the planet
(should such a title be in any way real), however, if was... odd that Stiles
would be coming to him.
"Enough." Deaton answered cautiously, eyes never leaving his one-time protégé's
face. "I am aware of it, as is anyone with any semblance of magical awareness
or knowledge. It's consequences are beyond me, but I know enough to fear the
repercussions."
"Do you know of its origin?" As always with Stiles, the question was borderline
rudely abrupt. It was nice to know he could be depended upon to forget or
ignore (the line wavered) basic manners in times of emergency.
"I don't. And as far as my contacts go, neither do they. It seems to be a
spontaneous event unrelated to the actions of any one being or group. Perhaps
it could be linked to the heating of the globe or the advancement in
technology, but neither of those seem particularly plausible to me." Catching
how Stiles bit his lower lip in secrets unsaid (it was a common enough trait
among those burdened with magic) Deaton inclined his head. "However, I don't
pretend to know enough about ethereal realms to make an educated decision. You
yourself happen to be my resident expert. Any insights you wish to share?"
Stiles blinked twice before smiling ruefully. "Nothing gets past you does it,
Alan?" Deaton decided to take that as the compliment it was intended as rather
than an insult he knew some people might take it as.
Stiles puffed his cheeks out before releasing them in a steady inhale. Seeming
to make up his mind, he drummed his fingers hard against the countertop.
"Nothing to share at the moment, no. Soon though. Your particular brand of
experience might be able to help me. Or at least," The mage cocked an eyebrow
almost in a challenge, "I hope it could."
Deaton hid his smile behind his hand. "Be that as it may, you are here now, so
I can only assume there is something for which you want my 'particular brand of
expertise'." He raised both eyebrows. "Am I wrong?"
"No, you're not wrong." Stiles chuckled, before becoming serious once more.
Reaching into the carrier bag slung low off his shoulder (which Deaton was
fairly certain had not been there for the majority of their conversation) he
pulled out an object wrapped tightly in a shirt that fairly sang with magic.
Stiles' smile did not reach his eyes. "You might want to step back." He
advised, and Deaton did so hurriedly.
Carefully, but also in a way that made the move seem oddly and bemusedly
defiant, Stiles set it down on the table before taking a large step back
himself.
Deaton had only a split second to witness Stiles bracing himself against the
hard edge of the table and casting a quick spell of protection on the various
potions and magical artefacts lining the room (Deaton made a mental note to
thank him for it later) before he dropped the magic binding the shirt and its
contents.
Nothing happened. Deaton raised his eyes to Stiles in confusion. Stiles was
faintly pale under the bright white lights of the clinic, small beads of sweat
rolling almost unnoticeable down his forehead, his light grey pallor nearly
indistinguishable from his usual skin tone. Nearly. Shifting his gaze back to
the table, Deaton looked at the gun, lying there innocent and innocuous, like
any other ordinary, run-of-the-mill metal firearm.
But it was almost impossible to tell of any in-discrepancies from mere sight
alone.
Stepping forward, he extended an arm as if to touch it, to pick it up and bring
it closer to his face for inspection. Immediately his arm was frozen in place
with a sharp tang of magic, and Stiles let out an exclaimed, startled yell as
response.
"Don't!"
His fingers were frozen not a yard from the firearm. Stiles' hand was reaching
forward when he yelled, as if to grab and restrain his wrist, prevent him from
making contact with the sleek metal.
Stiles' breathing was laboured, then, and shallow, and the dark bags under his
eyes looked somehow impossibly larger over the span of a few seconds.
"What is it, Stiles?" The vet asked calmly, hand still frozen and extended in
little in front of his body. The man in question glanced up sharply.
"Don't you know enough not to just go around touching strange or foreign
magical objects?! What if it turned you to dust, or poisoned you, or just out
and out killed you?! Where the hell would that leave us?" He demanded of the
vet harshly, and his breath came in funny little bursts that echoed in his
chest like wheezes.
Deaton felt his eyebrows draw together.
"My apologies. I assumed, perhaps rashly, that since you were the one to carry
it and bring it here that it was safe. You are right, however, caution is never
unwarranted and one must always be on guard in the world we live in."
Stiles relaxed then, and when Deaton felt the magic release him he pulled him
arm back within the relative safety of his side. Gently flexing the kinks out
of his muscles, he tried to pre-emptively dissuade the pins and needles
sensation he could practically feel inching its way up his older, calloused
fingers.
His eyes flicked to the item in question, where it lay unmoved and unbothered
by what went on around it. A creeping sensation drifted across the ex-
emissary's shoulder-blades, and he was suddenly immensely grateful for Stiles'
timely interruption.
Why, he was unsure, but Deaton had learned to trust his instincts and at that
moment they were screaming at him to get as far away from the gun as he could.
Restraining himself, Deaton slowly walked around the edge of the table, careful
so as not to disturb it so much as an inch.
He grasped Stiles' shoulder with his hand. "What is going on?" He asked gently,
voice low, and Stiles' weary glittering eyes raised to his with something akin
to reluctance and despair.
The mage clasped his hand over the older man's, and swallowed.
"That, my friend, is the weapon that can kill us all. You've heard of it of
course, though the significance and true identity has not yet hit you. I'll
help."
Stiles dropped his hand and pulled away from the vet's touch, gold tinted hazel
eyes fixated on the table. He walked around to the opposite side before raising
his head, gaze flying to Deaton's once more.
"It cannot be destroyed, only hidden. Can't be stopped, only unused, abandoned,
forgotten. This has the power to kill anyone, at any time, with only one hit,
one shot and you're dead. One bullet can tear through shields, barriers,
defensive magic, offensive magic, anything it could possibly face, anything
that could be used as protection. Right now it's taken the form of a common
gun, nothing particularly special or eye-catching, but I imagine you know of it
as something far different- something far more ancient. It wouldn't be a very
good idea to speak it's name, not here, not... with everything that's happening
in the world. I've managed to direct most of it's impact into me, and since you
deal mostly with herbal or defensive magic you are not predisposed to feeling
it, unlike the rest of us. You should still feel it though, just a little,
something slimy and slick along your senses, something unnatural and wrong,
creeping its way where it shouldn't and whispering where it has no right. Pure,
malicious, unfiltered evil. Or at least, that's what it would be were I not
absorbing as much of it as I can. So, Alan." And Stiles' smile in that moment
was layered with emotions too powerful to name, too numerous to mention, an
ironic twist of unfiltered lips and callous, bitter memory. "Do you know it
yet? Does it ring any bells?"
Deaton gaped at the mage, disbelief etched in every tired wrinkled of his face.
"It can't be..." He murmured finally, eyes irrefutably drawn against his will
to the table in front of him and the weapon not a metre away.
Silence reigned for a few long tense seconds, both magic wielder's eyes on the
steel operating table.
"It is impossible." Deaton murmured finally, head shaking lightly as if he
could deny the proof in front of his eyes by will alone.
Stiles smiled a bitter smile, one corner of his mouth pulled higher than the
other with a self-depreciating tinge to his expression. "Didn't you hear,
Alan?" He asked, a small huff of angry laughter escaping from his lips, eyes
flaring and jaw clenched tight. "Nothing is impossible."
Deaton frowned, attention trained on the young mage pacing across from him.
Voice quiet, the vet asked, "What do you need me to do?"
Stiles' breath rushed from his body in one loud whoosh, and he braced himself
on the counter, forearms straining, head hanging low between his elbows.
Then he pushed himself back up to standing, fingers going up to his dark hair
and teasing the strands between nimble fingers, eyes clasped firmly shut.
Deaton kept his silence and didn't speak a word, too familiar with Stiles'
particular brand of thinking to be stupid enough to try and interrupt his
thought process.
His eyes finally fluttered open. "Nothing." He answered, as if declaring some
major feat, some impossible task.
"At least, not yet. Not for this." Stiles quickly corrected himself, folding
his arms over his chest and letting his head fall back against the plain even
brick.
"So why are you here?" Rude? Perhaps. But Deaton had found straight up direct
questions were often the best way to get honest replies. And Stiles had never
been one to stand on ceremony, at least as long as the vet had known him.
Stiles rubbed a hand over his eyes, sighing, before resting his fist on his
forehead. "Figured something like this was going down you'd want to know. Also
to invite you to a special little war council/pow-wow later with the wolves-
the best way to prepare for what's coming is, ironically enough, to tell you
all about what's already happened."
Deaton pursed his lips. "Anything else?" He asked, feeling as if something went
unsaid.
Stiles grinned at him, but his elation didn't reach his eyes. "You know me so
well." Sobering, the young mage made sure to lock his eyes with the vet's,
trying to impart the seriousness of his request to him.
"They can't know about this. Technically, you don't either, so if you could
keep it on the down low that I told you I'd appreciate it. I don't know how
this is going to turn out, and I've got plans to deal with this," His upper lip
curled as he gaze strayed to the gun both had been trying to ignore,
"aberration, but if, for some reason, I can't get it back after all is said and
done I need you to make contact with someone for me. They'll know what to do."
"Why not just tell them now?"
Stiles snorted. "And risk them coming all the way here to drag my sorry ass
somewhere that didn't cause me emotional, psychological and mental stress for
over a year? Not a chance. I've got a job to do, and I'm not about to just
abandon an entire town to the mercy of one of the demons of my past."
Stiles seemed oddly pleased and proud of himself for the double meaning, but it
soon vanished beneath his weary expression. "I can give you the details later,
but for now this meeting, hell, even the fact that we talked, never happened.
You know nothing, I told you nothing, and maybe if we're lucky we'll both live
to fight again another day."
Walking the step over to the table, Stiles grimaced as he threw the tattered
shirt over the weapon, pale skin growing paler as he picked it up carefully in
one hand, as if it were a lit fuse or dynamite.
The mage went to disappear then, hand raised in the universal symbol of
goodbye, but at the last second he paused.
"8 o'clock, Hale house, don't be late. Also if you happen to have any tincture
of poppy or essence of hydrilla, I would really appreciate you bringing it
along. 'Till then!"
With no more pomp than a muttered word Stiles vanished, and the only sense that
he was ever there was the lingering sense of wrongness in the air and the
magical boundary protecting all his herbs.
Deaton sighed. "Poppy and hydrilla. For the sake of all of us I hope he knows
what he's doing."
...
A knock on the door drew Chris Argent from the kitchen, where he had been
chopping vegetables for his and Allison's dinner.
Rubbing hands slightly damp from the tap against the front of his trousers,
Chris' eyebrows drew together. Who the hell could that be? Allison was with the
wolves, and even if she wasn't she had a key. The pack didn't really come to
his house, and other hunters would call before entering his turf never mind his
house.
Casually reaching one hand behind him to grasp his gun, he reached the other
forward and pulled open the door.
"Hey Chris! Can I call you Chris? Awesome, well I was just in the
neighbourhood, and you know me I love talking to people so I thought, 'Hey, why
not drop in on our resident papa-hunter and see how everything's going'? And
then, well, I had to talk to you anyway about the whole apocalypse deal, and I
kind of need to ask a favour, so two birds one stone I suppose!"
Stiles paused for breath, cheeks flushed and body relaxed. Chris blinked. And
blinked again. "Stiles?" He asked disbelievingly, and Stiles shot him a hundred
watt grin.
"Yep, that'd be me! Mage extraordinaire and avid comic fan, self-called geek
and somehow the only person other than Allison who can pull off the whole, 'I'm
a funny, sarcastic, nice person but if you cross me I will shoot you repeatedly
through the chest with arrows', successfully, which, you know, is kinda cool
and all, except bows and arrows aren't really my thing. You gonna invite me
inside or what?"
Chris blinked once more before stepping aside to let the teenager through the
door. Stiles strolled in, shutting the door firmly behind him. "Is there
somewhere we can talk, Chris?" He asked quietly, his entire demeanour changed
to one of business. Chris shook his head to clear it and nodded jerkily.
"Sitting room. And don't call me that." He muttered, still trying to wrap his
head around the fact he had somehow let Stiles into his house. Was it magic?
Did he get spelled?
Watching Stiles warily with one eye, he nearly missed it when the young mage
rolled his eyes and ignored his admonishment. "No, I didn't spell you or use
magic or slip you something."
Chris startled, hand reaching behind for his gun without his permission. Stiles
sighed and collapsed dramatically back on the cream couch, limbs all akimbo.
"God, you hunters are all so damn suspicious. No, I am not psychic, nor have I
possessed or ever wanted any form of telepathy or psychic ability. I didn't
spell you, or drug you, or in any way shape or form impair your judgement. And
I know what went through your head because contrary to what you like to
believe, yes, you are that easy to read."
Chris forced his body to smoothen and relax, un-tensing each muscle until he
felt less like a live wire. Stiles waited, head thrown back on the back of the
couch, fingers tapping an unconscious rhythm that betrayed his impatience.
"Why are you here, Stiles?" He asked gruffly, voice stern and unyielding, the
voice that sent hunters into military mode and Scott into panic.
Unfortunately, he wasn't lucky enough for it to have any such effect on Stiles.
The man seemed almost amused.
Goddamn it.
"I am here to offer my assistance." He declared proudly, arm thrown casually
over the back of the couch and wide uneven smirk lifting his mouth at the
corners. Chris restrained the urge to tell him to get his boots off the coffee
table. Barely.
"With what?" The hunter asked uneasily, vivid recollections of the battle he
had told him about running in the background of his mind. If you could even
call it a 'battle' with such uneven odds. In Stiles' favour, from what he had
been told. And then again with the other batch of hunters who tried to screw
with the mage and ended up either a splatter on the wall or unconscious on the
dirt.
"Welp," Stiles popped the last letter, resounding 'p' sounding faintly like
mockery, before lounging even, impossibly further into the couch. For a moment
Chris worried he'd sink into it and never be seen again. A mage was probably
harder to get out of a couch then a wine stain.
"I couldn't help but notice that, during that whole 'kanima' deal a while back,
when we had to get a hold of your family's bestiary, well, while I wouldn't
dare insult a hunter on their personal family kill-list, that's just begging
for trouble, I do have to say that it is no where near the level of standard
I've gotten used to in the Big Apple. So I figured, I already have to ask Chris
to come to the war council thingy this evening, why don't I suggest touching up
his little diary o' horrors while I'm at it? Not that I'm judging you guys for
not having anything on, like, 60% of supernatural creatures even if you are
supposed to be one of the strongest hunter families in the world and all that
jazz, I mean, about a third of the people I meet don't tell just anyone about
their species so they're hardly gonna tell the people who's job it is to kill
them. Right? Don't take it personally, Silver, I'm one of the lucky ones."
Chris found himself resorting back to just blinking once more. "Silver?" He
asked as his mind caught up, brain tripping over that little name he was fairly
certain Stiles' had applied to him. Undeterred, the mage continued.
"I mean, obviously I won't be putting everything that I know in there, and some
species are gonna remain secret, but for the files and things you already have
I could probably get them up to date, add new and relevant information, yada
yada you get the idea."
"Silver?" Chris asked again incredulously, and Stiles finally blinked up at him
in surprise.
"Huh?" The mage's face twisted in confusion before suddenly smoothing out in
realisation. He snorted. "Well your name's Argent, isn't it? Argent is Silver
in a bunch of languages so it seemed like the logical next step."
Chris frowned. "Well don't call me that. It's not my name."
Stiles smirked at him. "Okay, Chris."
Chris was left with the distinct impression he was just played by a teenager.
He didn't appreciate it, but after living with Alison all her life it was an
intimately familiar sensation. Same snark, different package.
Knowing a lost cause when he saw one (at least half the time, anyway), Chris
thought back over Stiles' offer. It was kind. Almost too kind.
Squinting his eyes at the teen suspiciously, Chris tried to think of anything
he had the mage might want. Nothing sprang to mind that Stiles couldn't just
get some easier way. This seemed an unnecessarily difficult way to get
information.
"What's the catch?"
Stiles spluttered in indignation, but there was crinkle of amusement and... was
that approval?... in his eyes when he answered.
"What makes you think there's a catch? Maybe I'm doing this out of the goodness
of my heart, what then?"
Chris sighed, barely resisting the infantile urge to roll his eyes. He was not
going to sink to their levels. Emotions (and especially exasperation) could be
conveyed without flicking his eyes to the sky. He hoped.
"But you're not." He insisted, and Stiles laughed.
"Okay, you caught me. I want to have a look at an entry in your bestiary and
figured you were unlikely to just loan me it. But since I don't plan on
sticking around after this mess is all cleaned up and off the streets it would
probably be prudent for you to accept my help in updating your book anyway.
It's a win-win scenario here."
Chris looked at the mage carefully for any signs of deceit, but the man just
watched him back, face an open book.
Chris was pathologically distrustful of open books. But then again, this was
Stiles. If he didn't accept his help or at the very least thank him for the
offer Allison would kill him for it. And an angry Allison meant a lot of
passive aggressive werewolf sleepovers with Scott, which he did not want to
think about, in any lifetime.
"What about those hunters you fought?" The older man asked, one eyebrow raised,
because having been the one to deal with a bunch of terrified leaderless
hunters standing on his porch with all their weapons gone and pupils as wide as
abyss', well, it made a man cautious.
Stiles shrugged nonchalantly. "Hey, they attacked first, not the other way
around. Not my problem if some of you guys want to be dicks, but I'm not going
to sit back and make like I can't or won't stand my ground and knock you out."
"What about the ones you killed?" In his mind's eye, Chris could still see the
wall painted red, body laying where it had fallen and mouth wide in horror at
the realisation of impending doom.
Stiles scoffed as if his body count wasn't slowly adding up. "Come on, you
can't say the bastards didn't deserve it."
Chris tightened his jaw. "And you can?" He demanded loudly, eyes unfocused and
memories of blood splattered walls and an old enemy with a black pitiless gaze
running behind his lids. "What, are you judge, jury and executioner now? Who
are you to make those sort of decisions? What gives you the right to decide who
lives, and who dies? Or is that what you do now? Kill whoever you want and damn
the consequences? The ends justify the means? Who the hell do you think you
are?"
Painfully, terribly slowly, Stiles raised his head until his eyes bore into the
hunter's with a ferocity borne of nightmares; all levity gone from every line
of his body.
"Who am I?" He repeated quietly, head tilted at just the slightest angle, lips
curling around the words like a lover's caress. "I'm the only one who can,
Argent. I'm the only one who can see the bigger picture and is willing to do
whatever it takes to prevent it. You think you have the inhumanity to be me?
Because someone has to. Someone has to make the shitty decisions, the no-win
scenarios, the lesser of two evils. And if you think you have what it takes,
then by all means you take over. Because this?" He gestured angrily to his
chest, to the damning black lines Chris only just now noticed crawling their
way over the tip of his shirt, etched like wounds and burned like brands into
his skin.
"Me? This isn't one of those stories where the hero," He said the word like a
curse, spitting it out, every letter dripping with malice, "Gets a 'Happily
Ever After'. This. Doesn't. End. And maybe we stop the apocalypse, maybe this
town lives to see another summer, and maybe if you are all incredibly,
unbelievably lucky this is the last truly evil thing you will have to deal
with. But me?"
Stiles laughed, a bitter, harsh sound, and it echoed through the room like a
gunshot. "I don't get out of this. I'm in this for life. Do you get that? For.
Life. I will be fighting every day of my life to make sure people like you get
to have one. I will be who I am and do what I do until the day I die so that
somebody else doesn't have to. So don't come up to me, all judgemental and
hypocritical, and expect me to defend my actions to you. Don't bother wasting
the breath."
Stiles stood up abruptly, long legs making him tower over the still seated
hunter.
"There's a meeting to talk about the end of the world at the Hale house, 20:00.
My offer still stands, and I'll see you there."
And then he was gone, like a whisper in the wind. Chris rubbed one calloused
hand over his chin, pondering the mage's last statement which sounded more like
a threat then a reassurance.
He felt as if he should apologise, and what was worse was that only half of his
reason to apologise was his daughter. The other half was the roiling mass of
fuck it, he's right sitting heavy in his stomach.
Glancing at the clock, Chris sighed before heading back to the kitchen to
finish up dinner. He could apologise later; right now, he had vegetables to
chop and a lot of time to think.
...
Derek sat back in his chair, arms folded and brows furrowed into a creased 'v'.
Around the table, all sat in their own seat with their own almost identical
mirrored frowns.
All, that was, except for Stiles and Lydia, who stood conversing quietly at the
foot of the table, thoroughly ignoring everyone around them. Derek listened to
their hushed speech, and his frown deepened.
What the hell? Was that... were they talking in Latin? Wasn't that supposed to
be a dead language, as in, no one spoke it anymore? Incredulous, Derek turned
beseeching eyes to his pack, who responded with slightly awe-filled looks at
the two.
At the bottom of the table, nearest to Lydia, with one seat in between them,
sat Jackson, his hands fiddling with something Derek couldn't see, arguably the
only one among them who was completely unsurprised by Stiles and Lydia's
conversing in another language. On the chair beside him Erica sat, filing her
nails with a knife casually and her long hair lying loosely over her shoulder.
Beside her, one arm resting over the back of her chair, Boyd stared intently at
the table, as if filing every crease, every line, away for further analysis.
Next to them Isaac sat with his head fallen back, eyes staring at the ceiling
and shoulders loose on the wooden slats of the chair, awareness focused on the
two people on his left even if he didn't know it himself.
On his left, hands clasped together and fingers linked tightly, were Scott and
Allison. Scott's head rested on Allison's bare shoulder, her free hand running
through his hair, his eyes closed and a small, weary smile on his lips.
Across from them was a glaring Chris Argent, eyes drifting between watching his
daughter and her boyfriend with a hawk-eyed intensity and flicking over to
Stiles, expression almost contrite. Derek pondered the significance of that for
a second, before allowing his gaze to drift to Deaton, sitting almost separate,
hands steepled on the table in front of him as if he were praying.
Hell, maybe he was.
At the far end of the table, a shit-eating smirk on his face and an eager glint
in his eye, Peter lounged back into his seat as if it were a throne and he a
king, and all of them, excepting Stiles and Lydia, his subjects. Those two he
treated with a hard-earned respect, and, in Stiles' case at least, with a
deferential snarkiness Stiles seemed to enjoy. Probably because it was how he
himself used to act with Derek- but with less deferential-ness and a hell of a
lot more sarcasm. And it may sound like Derek was bitter, but, truly, he
preferred it. Even Alphas make mistakes.
And Peter, for all his short-comings and bad habits, got on with Stiles in a
way Peter rarely did, sitting on the chair closest to where he was standing and
smiling like he knew the secrets of the universe.
And then there was Derek. Arms still folded, one clenched fist crushed into his
side, eyes boring holes into the back of Stiles' head as he and Lydia continued
their conversation, oblivious to the rising discomfort and tense silence of the
others in the room.
Finally, after what felt like a muffled eternity, Stiles turned back around. He
flashed a quick, false smile, and Lydia's jaw clenched as she took her seat
beside him.
"You're probably wondering why I gathered you all here today." Stiles began in
a sombre voice, and for a split second Derek was sure that was some sort of pop
culture reference he couldn't possibly know but sounded vaguely familiar, but
Stiles continued speaking before he could wonder further.
"So, to give you all a brief summary." Stiles held up his hand and ticked off
each finger as he mentioned something new, voice ridiculously cheerful for the
topic at hand. "One. I kill a demon. 2. That demon comes back. 3. Said demon
wants to destroy Beacon Hills as some sort of revenge move. Four. Obviously,
that ain't going to happen. So here we are at five, with me telling you how
this is going to go down. But before I do, I unfortunately have go into a bit
of detail about the how, just because if any of you ask my questions later I
will not be responsible for my actions. We clear? Good."
Stiles spared a second to flash his golden-tinted eyes at the group, before his
gaze hardened and he leaned one hip against the table.
"I have died twice in my entire life." Stiles ignored the startled jumps of the
people before him, their wide eyes and disbelieving expressions. "The first
time was a month after I left here. There was a..." His gaze darted to Lydia,
once, just briefly, just quick enough that anyone normal, anyone human wouldn't
have seen it. She reacted just as quickly, jaw tightening before relaxing in
the same instant. He seemed to read into it, it seemed to meansomething to him.
Stiles coughed to hide the spilt second delay, before speaking again in the
same tone, a frightening levity and joviality being forced out between clenched
teeth.
"Well, let's just say there was an incident. My heart stopped beating. I was
legally dead for what, three, four minutes? Something like that, anyway. S'not
important. The important thing is that for those few minutes my, soul, for lack
of a better word, wasn't in my body. And since it wasn't in my body it had to
be somewhere else, right?"
Stiles paused for a moment, pressing his joined hands to his face and pulling
downwards until the tips of his fingers rested on his chin, thumbs just beneath
his Adam's apple. And Derek felt absolutely no inclination to have his hands
where Stiles' where. At all.
Shut up.
Stiles let out a long breath, before his hands dropped down to rest palm-down
on the table. He lifted his eyes, looking up at them from beneath long
eyelashes, one lock of hair falling across his right eye and obscuring his
view. He blew it back with a burst of exhale from the corner of his mouth, tip
of his tongue peering out from between his lips.
"Imagine for a second that our reality is a single plane of existence. This,"
Stiles gestured around them, loose hand movement encompassing everything they
saw. "Is our plane, the base plane. Now, beside this plane is another one,
which is where magic comes into it. Mages, sorcerers, magicians, call them what
you will, they are capable of accessing this plane. Most humans aren't. Any
supernatural creatures, werewolves, fairies, banshees, they can all touch this
other plane, to various degrees. The third plane, and the last one that any of
you will ever need to know, is the demonic plane, also known as hell. Special
people, psychics, clairvoyants, can, commonly through dreams or seizures or
visions, see into this plane, which is where the religious concept of hell
comes from. When I died, because of who I am," And again he shot a glance at
Lydia, that split second meeting of eyes more telling than a declaration, "And
what I do, my spirit went there. Fortunately for me, a friend was there to zap
my ass with magic and restore my life. Unfortunately for the rest of the world,
when I was brought back it opened up a hole in the," Stiles fumbled a bit with
his words, almost as if he were translating it from another language. "Curtain
between planes."
There was a rising tide of dismay in the group, and Stiles ignored it with his
usual lack of fanfare.
"It wasn't big, " He explained, pained smile on his face, "But it was enough
that when a certain demon decided he wanted to wreak havoc on the world he was
able to slip through. That demon is the one we face today, and, trust me, you
really don't want to know his name. Due to the circumstances, and his lack of
strength from his passage through to our plane, we didn't get out first meeting
until a few weeks before I arrived back. Short version is this; we fought, he
died, and I moved on to other pursuits, other jobs. Except now he's back, and I
am the only one who has any chance of defeating him. I have a plan all
prepared, so don't worry about that, but your assistance would be valuable in
this endeavour. Of course, I'm not going to force you to do anything. That's
why we're here. So I can ask- who will stay, and who will go? Leaving does not
make certain your survival, but staying really lowers your odds. If you're
gonna go, if this is too much, I will not judge you harshly for it. This is not
your battle. So if," Stiles paused, and his eyes made contact with the eyes' of
everyone at the table, startlingly and feverishly bright, "If you're not going
to stay and fight with every breath in your body, I suggest you walk out that
door right now and don't look back. I don't have the time to cater to anybody
who won't give their all, and for that I'm sorry. Stay or go. It is your
decision."
No one moved a muscle. All eyes stayed on the mage, Derek's included, no one
even contemplating the idea of walking out now. Stiles smiled, an echo of his
old one that made Derek's heart ache in his chest, and sat down with a finality
everyone recognised.
They were all in now, like it or not. There was no backing out now, and the
weighted gazes of everyone at the table knew it.
Stiles clapped his hands together loudly, breaking the harsh silence when the
echo if it rebounded through the small room. Derek averted his eyes from
Stiles' flushed cheeks and star-bright eyes, forcing a scowl onto his face so
he could ignore the wolf whining inside him.
"All righty then, now that that's settled, I was thin-"
Boyd's voice cut across Stiles', thick with confusion and reluctance and an
eerily familiar determinism, like Derek had just offered him the bite all over
again.
"Wait, you said 'twice'. I mean, you said you've died twice, and that's only
once. What was the other time?" Stiles' words halted, and Derek found himself
holding his breath for the answer. He didn't really want to know, didn't want
to think about or consider the fact that driving Stiles away had only resulted
in his death at least once, but he felt as if he had to know.
Something flashed in Stiles eyes, but his smile stayed on his face throughout
Boyd's question, and, when he spoke, his voice was steady. "That's a story for
another time, guys. Definitely not now. Anyway, as I was saying, this demon
will want to attack us in such a way that we know he's coming. He's big on
dramatics. Now, luckily for us he hasn't got corporeal form, but I know he'll
be looking for a dead body to inhabit. I'm hoping that if we...-"
Derek zoned out a little as Stiles' calm, capable voice washed over him, out-
lining plans and schemes and possible scenarios with the occasional
interjection of one of the gathered people.
It seemed that Stiles already had everything planned out, every last possible
event and circumstance crafted down into a tee. It was a simple plan, banking
on the demon's predictability and Stiles' power, as well as the pack's fighting
skills, to see them through. They'd attract the demon to a place nearby with a
strategically located corpse he could inhabit that would increase his power,
Stiles would attack him while he was weak, and the pack would make sure Stiles
stayed safe and prevent any demons or creatures under the other demons command
from escaping to wreak havoc on the town.
There were a lot of holes though. A lot of what-if's. And maybe if Derek didn't
have this leaden rock in his stomach telling him that there was something else
at play here he might be as easily convinced as the others at the table.
But experience, and instinct, and pure dumb luck had brought him this far, and
they were all telling him the same thing.
Stiles was hiding something, and Derek would have bet his life it was to do
with the second time he died. His eyes caught hold of Stiles' and held, green
meeting hazel, wolf meeting magic, and all he could think was that he was
putting a lot of faith into someone to keep his pack, his town, and the entire
world safe.
And there wasn't a single bone in his body that regretted it.
Chapter End Notes
     Wow it's late, I'm tired, I'm sorry, I've only had like 5/6 hours
     sleep a night for the last week and only 3 last Monday (late night
     netflix is not good for my soul).
     This chapter was incredibly hard to write and took forever (as you
     all know), so once again I'm sorry for the delay. Forgive me? *puppy
     dog eyes*
     There are only going to be a few chapters more before all this is
     done, and i have a rough draft of them in my head ready to be typed!
     This is kind of a filler chapter, more to explain things later on or
     things that have already happened, but next chapter will be
     different! Promise!
     My sincere apologies for all incoherencies, in-discrepancies,
     problems, but I havent read over it in one go and i wont for a few
     more days at least. Yep, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. ;)
     Okay, warnings for pain-ish, memories of violence, memories of death
     (non-graphic) and, uh, general shitty life? I dont even know anymore
     *shakes head dejectedly*.
     So thats all, and if ive missed anything drop a comment and ill fix
     it asap. Like ever before, no Beta here so all mistake are on me!
     Thank you everyone who read, commented, kudos'd, subscribed and
     spread the word, I never thought this would get this kind of
     reception from you all! More than 900 kudos and 20,000 reads!!
     Honestly it means so much to me, so i will try and get the next
     chapter up much much sooner, but I do have exams next week and the
     week after so well have to see how they go! Wish me luck!
     Love as always,
     H.S.F
***** Excuse me? I happen to have loads of friends. Tons. And some of them are
actual human friends too. Yeah, beat that Mr I-only-need-my-pack-for-company.
*****
Chapter Summary
     The pack fight some baddies, learn about griffins, bond, and Derek's
     libido is a problem, but not necessarily in that order.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The house was quiet the morning after the meeting. It was ten going on eleven,
and most everyone was still asleep after a long night of planning and general
seriousness. It had taken Stiles until twelve to outline his plan, and the pack
a few hours longer to convince themselves of its validity.
Boyd and Erica had ascended to their room around four, quickly and eagerly
followed by Allison, Scott and Isaac. Peter had disappeared not long after,
Derek had no idea when Deaton left but he wasn't currently in the house so he
had to have gone at some point in the early hours of the morning, and Stiles
had departed with Chris with only a few muttered words to Lydia, saying
something about a job and a promise. Derek tried not to think that was ominous.
Really.
Lydia had been up until five, a perpetual cup of coffee sitting constantly in
front of her as she leafed through heavy tomes and think waxy books. Jackson
had eventually dragged her off with the promise of watching the Notebook in
their room, but Derek had heard the deep and easy breaths of sleep from the two
of them a few minutes later.
He himself had managed to grab a couple of hours in between all the insanity of
demons and the arrival of the sun, and his werewolf stamina was probably the
only reason why he wasn't currently comatose with sleep deprivation. He was
damn close, though.
Derek was just putting some bacon on a pan- idly wondering if the sizzling
sound and greasy smell would be enough to wake his pack- when Stiles trounced-
trounced- into the living room. Derek hadn't even heard the front door open.
Come to think of it, he was fairly certain it hadn't been. Goddamn mages.
Stiles looked about as tired as he felt, but his actions and expressions were
as precise and awake as ever. Leaning over the table on one foot the teenager
snagged Lydia's now cold cup of coffee in his left hand, bringing it to his
lips while murmuring a soft incantation. As Derek watched in the six seconds it
took the mug to reach Stiles' lips, steam could be seen rising from the
suddenly boiling liquid. Derek hadn't ever seen magic used in that way before,
as easy and second-nature as blinking yet strangely hypnotic, as if Stiles was
murmuring to him and him only.
His dick twitched. No, no, it did not, because Derek was not listening to his
whining wolf and he had better control over his reactions and watching Stiles'
long fingers as they wrapped around the mug was not making him think dirty
thoughts. God, Derek hated himself sometimes.
"G' Morning.'' The greeting slid from his lips like honey, and there was no way
he was imagining the tension in the air, was there? Or the way Stiles'
shoulders tightened just a little at the sound of his voice, like he hadn't
even known Derek was there at all.
"'Lo." Stiles responded with a quick nod, cup still pressed against his lips,
before he dropped his head back and drained the coffee in one swift gulp. For a
split second, Derek worried about him burning his throat before he remembered.
Right. Magic.
Maybe the exhaustion was effecting him more than he had originally thought.
That was a much preferable reason to the way Stiles' messy hair made Derek itch
to run his fingers through it, and the way his too bright eyes looked like
beacons in the bright sunlight pouring through the windows. He was so screwed.
Derek kept his eyes glued to his pan, and Stiles to his coffee. The space
between them felt uncomfortably thick with words unspoken and emotions Derek
couldn't put his finger on.
I should probably say something.
Derek had just opened his mouth to speak- what, he had no idea, and in
hindsight the interruption probably saved his life because anything he would've
said in that moment was not going to be good- when a stumbling troop of
teenaged werewolves, hunter and banshee sniffed their way to the kitchen.
Judging by Allison, Isaac and Boyd's pleading faces when they entered the
kitchen, they were all spending much too much time around Scott.
And, judging by the way Derek sighed and handed over his food before opening up
another packet, he was a complete and utter push over. Not that that had been
particularly surprising to anyone who had put any thought into it.
The pack settled themselves easily into the kitchen, bodies and minds familiar
enough with the routine to do it without conscious thought. Stiles hovered
purposefully on the outskirts of the room, as if he were one beat ahead of the
song they were singing and completely unapologetic for it.
The way he leaned casually against the light wood door- the coffee mug vanished
from his hands as if it had never been there-, his eyes tracing the co-
ordinated movements and easy familiarity the pack shared, a small smirk on his
face and one hand pressed very lightly against his stomach, told a better story
than his disparages and sneers ever could; Stiles, for better or worse, refused
to include himself as part of the pack.
Derek could hardly blame him. He had been having a hard enough time the last
few weeks himself remembering their- at the time seemingly valid- reasons for
kicking Stiles from the pack. It had only been with the intention of his
safety, Derek could recall that much, but it was mildly embarrassing how much
of it was, in hindsight, fear and worry.
Fear of Stiles dying, or growing to resent them (him) for removing his chance
at a normal life; sans werewolves and full moon calendars and hunters who go
after stronger things than deer. Worry that Stiles' innate sense of
responsibility and his tendency to sacrifice himself would get him killed- a
suspicion which had proven true after hearing Stiles' story.
For the human and worst fighter among them, Stiles had an absolutely horrible
habit of getting himself in situations where fighting skills were needed-
whether with Peter, Jackson as the kanima in the Pool Incident that definitely
deserved capital letters, a wolfy Scott, the Argents (both pre, post, and
during Gerard) and then again every time something dangerous reared it's head.
When it came down to it, Stiles was a fighter by nature, hell, an Alpha by
nature. He didn't take orders well, he didn't care for a lot of people but
those he did care for had a protector for life, he spent as much time, if not
more, solving other people's problems and putting to rest other people's fears
as he did his own.
To put it simply; Stiles was a human running with wolves, and if they kept
going the way they were going something had to give. When Derek was faced with
that being Stiles' life or his place in the pack, it had seemed a ridiculously
easy and simple choice.
Stiles would have been pissed, hurt, angry, sarcastic, hateful, depressed,
lonely; but at least he would have been alive.
Derek had never counted on Stiles leaving, and, ironically enough, it was only
after the object of his affections left that he realised his feelings for the
teenager. It had probably worked out better that way. There was an entire ocean
of reasons why he and Stiles wouldn't have made a good couple- their
conflicting personalities, the age difference, the fact that Stiles' dad was
the Sheriff and Derek a fugitive not even a few months previous to name a few-
and their situation now was not much better for romance.
There were so many reasons why he and Stiles were just not going to happen. The
sooner his boner and whining wolf got the message, the better.
...
It was three o'clock in the afternoon before anything happened. They were all
in small groups in the living room- that had morphed into a meeting room
somewhere along the way-, bodies relaxed and conversation at a lull. School had
been out for the break for over four days thankfully, which meant no awkward
classes or rushed conversations or pretending to give a damn about Pythagoras'
Theorem.
Derek raised his head to watch his pack and Stiles interact- Lydia's reassuring
hand on the mage's arm, Isaac's back tucked against his legs, Allison's almost
physical itch to ask questions even as Scott refused himself all but the most
forlorn of glances.
Jackson's head rested on Lydia's lap- the teen for once unashamed to show
emotion in a way that would have proven impossible for him before the bite-,
and Erica and Boyd lay a little way off, their hands clasped and Erica's head
resting on Stiles' shoulder. It looked so terribly cosy, as if Stiles was as
much a part of the pack as he has been before, and it physically hurt Derek to
see.
He'd missed it. Missed Stiles, even if he could only admit it in the privacy of
his own head, where nobody would ever know. Stiles, as if sensing his gaze,
lifted his glittering hazel eyes to Derek's, and watched him, expression
closed.
They stared at each other, neither wanting to look away, yet knowing they
couldn't remain as they were forever. Derek licked his lips, and for the
smallest of seconds Derek could have sworn Stiles' focus followed the movement;
but it was so brief the chances of it being merely wishful thinking were
incredibly high. And Stiles- while he might not hate Derek anymore, as
evidenced by their discussion two days ago that Derek still wasn't sure he
understood-, Stiles did. Not. Like. Derek.
That had been very clear from practically the moment they had met. At least not
in that way. Sure, Stiles saved his life (more times than he had been willing
to admit back when pride seemed so important), and their trademark snarky
sarcasm could make even the most stoic person shake their heads in
exasperation, but for one, Stiles had been the number one fan of the brutally
female Lydia Martin for years. How was Derek supposed to compete with that?
And Stiles had never showed the slightest interest in men or people of the male
persuasion- that, at least, Derek was pretty sure he would have been able to
smell- while in Beacon Hills. Admittedly, Stiles might have explored his
sexuality and/or expanded his horizons while away, but even then Stiles had
never shown any indication Derek was his type.
The staring thing they currently had going on was merely a representation of
the amount of stress they were both currently under. it did not mean Derek
wanted to do anything inappropriate, or sexual, or erotic, or... anything that
he wouldn't otherwise do. Okay?
Even if Stiles looked terrifyingly good in red.
Fuck, Derek was so screwed.
Their intense staring-into-each-other's-eyes-but-not-in-a-eye-fucking-way
moment was broken by Isaac, who had apparently just thought up an urgent
question that demanded and immediate response. Was Derek bitter at their eye
contact being broken? No.
Was that a complete and total lie because Derek's new favourite hobby was
staring at the little golden and green sparks in the mage's eyes?
Derek tried not to think about it. That way lead only to embarrassment, pity,
and awkward boners.
"Hey, has anyone seen Danny?" A few of the pack hummed a negative, but Derek
saw Stiles' head nod once.
"I asked him to do something for me with Chris. He's updating the bestiary and
getting himself caught up with who's who in the supernatural world. When I left
this morning he was drooling over griffins, but I didn't have the heart to tell
him they've been endangered since the 20th century."
No one said anything, until, very hesitantly, Allison spoke up with what they
were all thinking. "Griffins?" She asked, and Stiles' snort was not attractive,
and his eye roll did not make Derek want to kiss him, and denial is not only a
river in Egypt.
"Yeah, griffins. You know, part lion, part eagle, part horse?" Erica imitated
Stiles with a snort, and Allison looked like she was contemplating
strangulation. Whether of herself or Stiles, Derek was unsure.
"We know what griffins are, Stiles. We've all see Prisoner of Azkaban, even if
their take on werewolves is ridiculously archaic and hunter-ish." It spoke a
lot about Allison's development as a person that she didn't immediately shoot
an arrow into Erica's eye.
Stiles shrugged. "Hey don't get all judgey on me, dude. I don't know what you
all got up to in the year I was gone." The room went awkwardly silent once
more, before Lydia's heartfelt and exasperated groan.
"They want to know if griffins are real, Stiles." Stiles blinked suddenly as if
the concept of them not being aware of griffins' existence was truly
inconceivable.
"Oh!" He exclaimed, and then it slid into a smirk as the mage shifted around
until he could lean comfortably against the back of the couch.
"Of course they're real. I mean, they were almost hunted to extinction in the
40's and as far as I've been informed there were only around 50 of them left by
the turn of the century- which is part of the reason why they haven't been
discovered yet. A friend of mine up north was the one who put the concealment
spell on them so their population could rebuild, and thankfully their numbers
have increased. I think they're in the low hundreds now. You ever seen a
griffin up close? They're pretty awesome, I have to admit."
Everyone pondered this information in their own heads slowly. "So what else is
real?" Scott spoke for the first time since breakfast, and Stiles replied
amicably enough, even if his tone was a little more cold than it had been
towards the others.
Derek could understand why- to Stiles, Scott must have betrayed countless years
of friendship in one foul swoop.
"Well, from the top of my head, there are kelpies, wyverns, will-o'-the-wisps,
unicorns, mermaids, dragons, centaurs, nymphs, selkies, fauns, elves, mages,
pixies, faeries, vampires, demons and, obviously, werewolves. You name it, it
existed somewhere, at sometime, in some plane. Where do you think all the myths
and legends come from? Humans aren't that creative."
There was a beat or two of complete, shocked silence. "Holy fuck." Scott looked
as surprised as everyone else that he had spoken. Stiles laughed suddenly.
"Angels are a no-show, unfortunately." He had a small, secretive smile on as he
said it, and Derek found himself doubting his words, which was probably exactly
what Stiles wanted in the first place. Stupid genius teenagers. And, yes, Derek
was fully aware that that was an oxymoron but he said it anyway because he's a
stubborn bastard at the best of times.
And Stiles was brilliant at manipulation. It was why they often butted heads.
Well, no, they often butted heads because Derek had a hard on for the underage,
son-of-the-sheriff, best friend of the new werewolf, sarcastic, bitchy and
spastic human known as Stiles that he didn't want to admit to. Refused to admit
to, actually, until said spastic teenager was no longer around and there was a
gaping hole in his chest and the desire to shift into his beta form at the
slightest trigger.
Derek was never the best at being honest when it came to emotions. Neither was
Stiles. In that way they had always been horribly alike.
Scott stood up from his place beside Allison to make his way to the bathroom,
and Derek watched as the space he had previously occupied became filled once
more, the pack and Stiles' bodies moulding to cover the gap. Derek from his
place on the far couch was reluctantly impressed.
"So what are the other creatures like?" Erica asked suddenly, legs moved to
rest in Boyd's lap and head between Stiles' shoulder and the couch. She sounded
idly curious, as if it was clear no other creature was as interesting as wolves
by virtue of skill alone. Derek, having grown up aware of many of the other
creatures out there in the wide world, was not so sure, but he wasn't about to
be the one to tell his Beta that. He'd leave that particular job to the expert
in the room.
Cowardly? Maybe. But he was more likely to live another day and that counted as
a job well done in his book.
Stiles just shook his head. "That's like asking what werewolves are like. Some
are assholes, some are awesome, some are my friends. And I don't know them all,
so I can't exactly make judgements on an entire species just from my own
personal and biased experience with them. Having said that, avoid wyverns. You
see one, you run as fast as you fucking can in the opposite direction, because
they're downright murderous. The first time I met one I was-"
"Stiles?" Scott walked back into the living room, expression closed off and
worried, and trailing behind him was the much too familiar and common scents of
iron and blood. Derek flinched, but it didn't smell like his Beta's. It smelled
like... magic. He held up a single bronze bullet between his thumb and fore-
finger, and his eyes looked vaguely pained but incredibly determined.
Stiles didn't look up, too absorbed in telling the story- Derek wasn't paying
attention, but he had heard something about wings, and claws, and getting
slammed into the side of a cliff. He made a mental note to heed Stiles' advice
and avoid wyverns in the future.
"What's up, dude?" Stiles' voice was carefully relaxed and controlled, and
Derek had the urge to hurry Scott out of the room before the mage looked up, to
prevent Stiles from ever seeing whatever it was that Scott held.
But, before Derek could move, Stiles glanced up. His eyes focused first on
Scott's face, and he had obviously heard the stiff edge when the Beta spoke if
his bewildered interest was any indication. The room felt tense- all the
werewolves could feel that tingling, creeping sensation dragging almost
painfully across their skin, and smell the iron-rich scent that spoke of death
and fire. It was as if they were all waiting for Stiles to notice, for his
reaction.
Then Stiles' hazel, amber, golden, bright and magic eyes flicked to the bullet
Scott clasped. Recognition dawned in his face, and the room went 30° colder.
Stiles' face shut down. "Where did you get that?" Derek shivered at the slow,
toneless question, layered with demand and venom and something else Derek
couldn't quite name but sounded way too much like terror for the Alpha's
comfort.
Scott's jaw clenched- whether at the question or the tone or the bullet itself
Derek had no idea. "It was lying on the bathroom floor. It's covered in blood,
Stiles." Scott took a deep breath in, seemingly to brace himself, before
releasing it out in one long exhale. His eyes were hard with concern.
"The bullet is covered in your blood, Stiles. Why is there a bullet coated in
your blood sitting in my hand?"
Stiles stood up slowly, ignoring Erica's small yowl at being misplaced and
Lydia's huff of displeasure and took a step towards the Beta, eyes fixated on
the bronze orb. Scott was holding it as far from his body as possible, but in a
way that made the move seem unintended, unconscious. Derek could smell his
unease from the couch.
Stiles swallowed thickly, and his smile was uneasy, but Derek could just about
see a suddenly calculating gleam in the mage's eyes. That was the only thing he
could call it. Stiles' face had taken on a peculiar sort of plotting
expression- and not in an obvious way.
Derek was sure most people wouldn't have seen it- the slightest raise in one
eyebrow, the tilt of his lips, the way his eyes tightened infinitesimally. The
sight of a planning Stiles made Derek uncomfortably aware that he didn't know
half the things Stiles could do, let alone what the mage had already done.
The thought of finding out- of intimacy, that thing both he and Stiles avoided-
shouldn't have been as tempting as it was to the Alpha. And it most definitely
shouldn't have made his wolf sit up and pay attention. Great. So apparently
intimacy kink was a thing.
Fuck his life.
Seriously. Fuck. His. Life.
Stiles swished a hand in the air, and Derek watched carefully as thin fibres
began weaving themselves together to from a small pouch. He held it out to
Scott, gesturing for the Beta to drop the bullet into the scarlet bag, which
the teen did willingly.
Scott kept his eyes glued to Stiles' form, and his eyes were accusatory,
blaming, guilty and anxious all at once. Stiles only grinned at him, muscles in
his jaw tense, and one hand clenched into a fist by his side.
The mage rolled his eyes. "So what? I got shot going after some hunters, but I
got the bullet out. I must have forgot it in the bathroom. No big deal, guys,
I've had worse."
Scott spluttered, and Derek saw Lydia frown at the dark bag that hung jauntily
from Stiles' wrist. Her eyes widened suddenly, and Derek could only see a blur
as she leapt off the couch to stand in front of the mage.
Her hand whipped forward, and Stiles' neck cracked with the force of her slap.
Before any of the wolves could even react- or think about reacting- Lydia's
arms were thrown around Stiles' shoulders and her fists pressed like stones
into his back, and her words were undecipherable as she muttered them into
Stiles' leather jacket.
Lydia pulled back a little, and gripped Stiles' chin and jaw in her hand. "You
complete and utter idiot. God, you're such an asshole." She hugged him again,
and there were tiny tears clinging to her lashes when she pulled back. When she
spoke, her voice cracked, "I don't know how the hell you're alive, and someday
soon you're gonna tell me the whole goddamn story, but fuck am I glad that you
managed to do the impossible again."
Stile looked apologetic- but Derek figured anyone would be in the face of Lydia
Martin's fury and worry. And that was before she became a banshee. "It's no big
deal, Lyds."
Lydia had switched back from concern to apoplectic rage- and Derek wasn't sure
who was scarier, Stiles or Lydia, but his money was on Lydia because Stiles
didn't wear stilettos tall enough to skewer a person with one well aimed kick.
At least, Derek didn't think he did. Again, horizons, expanded, yada yada and
New York was a crazy place even without throwing magic and teenage hormones
into the mix. His wolf growled. Possessive, sanctimonious bastard.
"No big deal? That bullet could have killed you, Stiles. You know that."
Stiles tilted his head, and his eyebrows furrowed on his brow. "It didn't,
Lydia. I'm alive. I'm fine. The bullet only grazed me."
"Don't lie to me, jerk." The red-head mumbled into the mage's neck, and Stiles
just nodded semi-stiffly into her hair in lieu of a response.
Scott was still standing awkwardly beside them. "What did she mean, it could
have killed you? I thought you had your shields up, or whatever."
Stiles released Lydia, who, although she glared at him, went to sit back down
on the couch, and Derek didn't envy Stiles the dressing down he would no doubt
receive later. The mage laughed- the sound forced and pained and bittersweet-,
and Derek thought privately that if he rolled his eyes any harder he would get
them stuck.
Was that a parent thing to think? God, Derek hoped not.
"It's not Star Trek, Scotty. And yeah, the bullet could have killed me, but it
didn't."
No one spoke for a few seconds, until Boyd flicked his eyes resolutely over to
the mage's tall form. "Was that from the evening you told us about the demon?"
Derek flinched, because fuck, that made an awful amount of sense. The shaking
hands, the smoking, the too-tense, too-cheerful, too-everything expression. The
cryptic comments.
Stiles clapped his hands sarcastically, before forming his hands into little
guns and making teeny pew noises. "A-star, Boyd. Your deduction skills are top-
notch. You could make a career out of it." The sarcasm was biting and heavy,
and it made the mage seem even less approachable than usual, which was most
likely Stiles' intention.
The teenager sighed once, loudly and wearily, and his eyes were too old for his
body where they glittered underneath his long lashes. He shrugged, hands
spreading out in a gesture of helplessness to his sides, and Derek could
practically see the veil drop down between them and Stiles- the way his posture
went formal and loose and too bloody relaxed when Derek knew that was the very
opposite of what Stiles truly felt.
"Look, getting shot is part of the job. If I die, I die. Nothing anybody can do
to stop it, what with fate, and destiny, and all that crap. I'm not going to
live forever. And keeping me in a locked box just makes me want to break it
down. Now, if you excuse me, I have business to attend to concerning, oh, I
don't know, the fate of the world."
The pack remained quiet, lost in thought and in the lingering scent of the
mage's blood that filled their noses like hot oil, and Stiles made a motion
with his hands to Lydia too quick for even Derek to see.
The blood-red bag containing the bullet dripping with Stiles' blood still hung
innocuously and innocently from the mage's right wrist- and Derek wanted
nothing more than to rip it away, tear it, burn it, destroy it and dismember it
until nothing remained- not a shred of fabric nor shard of metal, not the
blood, or the magic, or the danger Derek knew lay within the soft folds of
cloth.
And the worst thing was he would never be able to do it.
He hadn't moved from his place on the couch in what felt like hours, and Stiles
was a metre away from walking out the door, and Scott had sat back down beside
his girlfriend as if nothing had happened- except for the way all their eyes
tracked the mage's movements, and the air was still weighed down with the
scents of a thousand and one emotions none of them could name, let alone
control.
Stiles suddenly released a startled cry, falling to one knee with both of his
hands cradling his head before anyone could consider movement, and the tall
lamp beside the doorway cracked before going out. The air hummed, the room
stank of ozone and worry and blood, and Stiles' hands were still clasped to his
ears as if bells were ringing inside his skull.
Lydia darted like lightning towards the fallen mage- the Betas had made aborted
movements as if to rise before being cut off by the blur of pale skin and
scarlet hair that was their banshee-, and she skidded to her knees on the floor
beside Stiles like a baseball player sliding into home.
Stiles still didn't move, but Derek could see the way his eyes were scrunched
tight and the sharp crescents of his nails drive jagged cuts into his skull.
Eyes snapping open in a burst of golden light that cleared the mage's face of
all lingering traces of pain, Stiles jolted unsteadily to his feet and swayed,
shaking his head as if to try and persuade the room to stop spinning.
Like a man possessed, he ignored them all in their positions throughout the
room and stumbled to the doorway, hands grabbing at the wooden panels in what
appeared to be a vague attempt to keep himself upright- Derek couldn't be sure,
but he was pretty sure Stiles was going to fall over if he strayed too far from
the support the solid walls offered.
The small bag caught on the rim of Stiles' sleeve, and the mage snarled-
snarled, and that really shouldn't have been attractive, it shouldn't have, but
apparently Derek was bloody cursed or something-, and the bullet in its soft
luxury disappeared with as little fanfare as the bag had arrived- a low puff of
sound as Stiles shoved himself further to his feet and forced co-operation from
his weary body.
Lydia rose from the floor, and her dark eyes bore into Stiles', and their
conversation was only between them in the way Derek could only admire and envy
in the silence.
Stiles' voice, when he spoke, was gritty and tired and overwhelmed and sounded
as if it dragged against the skin of his throat on every syllable- almost like
speaking was more pain than it was worth-, and the message it carried made
Derek's wolf bay for blood.
It also terrified him, but, hey, Stiles was scary enough without his eyes
glowing, or his face tight, or an aura of danger and violence emanating from
him as much as the smell of his eagerness for a fight was.
Okay, Stiles was definitely the scarier of the two. Don't tell Lydia Derek said
that, because he happened to like having his head attached to his body.
"We've got company."
...
They waited in the forest, with a sort of weary impatience masquerading itself
as calm. It was quiet. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, too quiet. Derek
settled himself back onto his heels, allowing his arms to fall loose and pliant
to his sides.
He wasn't entirely sure what they were doing here. He only knew that Stiles
had, somehow sensed an intrusion onto pack land, and, after a brief stop at the
mage's house where he spent a good ten minutes disabling wards and barriers and
spells to get at something in his room (from all the fuss Derek had kinda hoped
it was going to be something deadly they could use- a spell, or spelled object,
or missile launcher or something, so he had been mildly disappointed when all
Stiles appeared with was a plain black box about the length of his arm), Stiles
had transported them all to some random clearing in the preserve.
Apart from the preliminary instructions ("Wait for my signal, they'll be here
soon.") Stiles hadn't spoken a word since, and it made Derek... uneasy. Not at
all like he missed the sound of the teenager's voice, because that would be
stupid. And pathetic. And stupidly pathetic.
(And maybe true, but Derek would never admit it).
The smallest twitch in a nearby bush was all the warning they received before
the first enemy descended, a strange man with deep, bottomless black eyes who's
lips were curved into a cruel smirk.
He twitched, and Scott slammed into a tree on the outskirts of the clearing,
collapsing into a heap at the roots the next second.
Derek growled menacingly, but the stranger's eyes had only just turned to him
when he gasped, eyes wide, and looked down to see the tip of a long elegant
sword driven straight through where his heart should have been.
The blade twisted, and the man was dead before his body hit the ground. Behind
the unmoving corpse, Stiles made a face as he wiped his sword against the
ground, but his eyes glowed with a fire so sharp Derek thought he might be
burned up and reduced to naught but ashes.
The sword danced between Stiles' fingers like an extension of his arm, and
Derek could trace the sigils and symbols up along its centre with his eyes even
as it danced in the dusky sunset painted night.
"One down." Stiles remarked casually, and Derek felt a pang of regret for his
actions that led to the eighteen year old standing in front of him to be so
familiar with death- his own, and others'.
"How many are there?" Out of breath from his brief flying adventure, Scott
stood a hair's throw from Allison, Erica, Isaac and Boyd, the hunter's hand
steady on his arm from where she'd helped him up.
Stiles shrugged, but Derek noticed that his usual hostility towards Scott had
toned down considerably.
"No idea." The cheerfulness in his voice was akin to watching a psychopath
grin- alarming and sending warning trills up and down the spine- but Stiles
just moved the black case, now empty, over and out of the way, and Derek
remembered hoping for a weapon and thought, oh.
"Won't be that much, this here is just the scouting party. The real deal will
come later, I'd say within days. This is more of a training session than
anything else." Stiles continued, except suddenly there was a flash and a thud,
and another body hit the ground at Derek's feet from where she had been hidden
in the foliage above them waiting to strike. There was a sizzling hole about
one inch in diameter burned into the space just above the bridge of her nose,
and Derek could see the vibrant green grass through the other side of her
skull.
"Demons?" Derek asked, because he had heard of a lot of things in his long life
as a werewolf but a creature with black eyes had never been one of them. Stiles
nodded, and the sword at his side shimmered- Derek blinked and resisted the
urge to rub his eyes- until it roughly resembled a wooden baseball bat, its
handle smooth and fitted perfectly for Stiles' hand.
"Yep. Lucky for you lot they're just the lower level sons of bitches. I'm
curious how you fare against them, I mean, during the real deal most, if not
all, of my energies will be focused on preventing the bigger demons from wiping
Beacon Hills off the map."
Lydia- with her arms folded and face set in a small grimace- let out a weak
snort, and Stiles shot her an amused glance.
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of three more demons; One with
shoulder length scarlet curls and a malicious smirk, the other two with
matching spikes of dirty blonde hair and tattered suits.
They slid to a halt on the grass, their dark empty gazes passing over the
wolves, and the hunter, and the banshee, to settle on Stiles, and when they did
their lips curled into harsh smirks that were tempered with a wild dose of
fear.
Yep. Stiles was definitely the scariest among them all.
The mage twirled the bat until it rested over both his shoulders- his arms
slung over it and hip cocked at a jaunty angle as he grinned with eyes the
colour of honey- and gestured with one finger towards the waiting demons.
"You gonna stand there all day? Or are you going to come and die?" And fuck,
Stiles sounded almost sympathetic, and his eyes were wide and innocent and
friendly even as the dead bodies of two of their comrades lay eagle spread
behind him.
He sounded experienced.
The taller of the two male demons flexed his fists, and Derek's breath was
knocked out of him as the pack were shoved backwards across the clearing until
their backs were pressed against hard bark- unable to move, or intervene as the
trio surrounded Stiles.
Stiles was unafraid, even as the demons formed a loose triangle with him as the
centre, and his arms remained draped casually over the smooth wood laying
across his shoulders.
Derek swore inwardly and clenched his muscles, the tendons in his arms and legs
straining to move from the tree he was forced against to no avail. He thumped
his head back dejectedly, and from his peripheral vision he saw his pack mates
try and follow his example before failing.
Stiles stood still, and the leaves in the tree tops above them swayed once,
twice, thrice before a particularly harsh gust of wind that made Derek's eyes
sting and the few loose leaves that littered the ground flutter into the mage
before being carried off once more.
The demons glanced at each other, and charged at Stiles in unison. A yell of
warning got caught on Derek's tongue, but he needn't have bothered. Stiles knew
exactly what they were doing.
The smaller male reached Stiles first, and the mage swung around with eyes
aflame, his movements like liquid and spilled oil as he slammed the bat into
the demon's stomach, clasped the back of his neck, and twisted. The resounding
crack of his neck breaking could be heard even without enhanced hearing, and
Stiles shoved the body away from him in disgust just as the female demon leapt
at his throat.
With her hands locked and restricting both his breath and the blood flow to his
brain, Stiles was in no position to fight and Derek struggled all the more,
desperation a constant thrum in every failed attempt at movement.
Until, that was, Stiles reached behind himself and ran the clinging demon
through with the sword that he had somehow managed to manoeuvre into a position
he could use. The demon made a brittle choking sound before releasing Stiles,
who turned on his heel in time to jab the sword through her chest and into the
ground below. Small rivulets of black blood ran from the side of her mouth, and
Stiles grinned savagely as he pushed down harder on the sword until its hilt
was jammed right up to the demon's ribs.
There was a movement behind Stiles- who lay atop his sword, separated from the
demon by mere centimetres and close enough a stranger might consider them some
type of twisted lovers were it not for the metal brand speared through the
woman's heart- and Derek had only time to gurgle a warning before the tallest
demon attacked.
He tackled Stiles to the ground, the silver dagger in his hand shining much too
bright in the half moonlight- the sun having disappeared without Derek's
notice-, too bright to be completely natural. They rolled around on the ground,
and damp leaves clung to the fabric of their clothes and angry snarls
emphasised every punch and jab and kick, and Derek could catch only snippets.
The demon, both hands pressing down on the dagger and Stiles, face set with
determination, gripping the blade tight between both fists even as the smell of
his blood filled the clearing. The wrench of Stiles' arms as he elbowed the
demon in the throat and used his distraction to fling the dagger away.
The even, predatory way these two otherworldly beings circled each other,
centre of gravity low and hands dipping to caress the grass as if it were a
tool to be used, even as Stiles looked so dangerously ecstatic and happy whilst
the demon's frustration only grew with every aborted movement and blocked
punch.
Finally, he growled low in the depths of his stomach and ran at Stiles, fancier
weapons forgotten in favour of using his own hands. Gracefully and easily
Stiles side-stepped his attacker, and, in the time it took Derek to inhale in
relief, flipped the demon's dagger from where it had been hidden under his
jacket in order to drive it through the demon's hand and into the ground-
reminiscent of what he had done earlier to the other one.
The demon howled in pain, and his other hand reached across to yank the blade
from his arm in vain. Stiles stood up, ignored his own harsh breathing, and
stepped in small precise steps over to the female- dead- demon. He pulled his
long, glinting sword from her chest, and her body slid down the silver metal so
easily Derek knew it had to involve magic.
Stiles walked back over to the last demon, who was struggling for freedom like
an animal caught in a trap, and who raised black, emotionless eyes to Stiles in
terror as the mage stood above him, sword still dripping with the blood of the
last.
Stiles' eyes glowed like stars and his lips were curved into a smile, and he
lifted the sword high over his head before slamming it down on the demon's neck
with all the finality of an executioner.
The weight holding them in place disappeared, and Derek collapsed forward to
the ground only to catch himself at the last moment with one hand. He raised
his head warily, and there Stiles stood, with one arm at an uneven angle to his
body, the other clasped tight around the hilt of a silver sword dripping black
blood to the grass, eyes bright, clothes grass stained and covered in blood and
dirt, hair all tussled and messy, three dead demons not even a stone's throw
from his black biker boots, and the biggest smile Derek had yet to see him wear
gracing his face.
"Well." The teenager said, leaning down to wipe his sword in the grass, flecks
of blood adorning his cheeks and forehead like freckles, "That was cathartic."
It was possibly the most attractive Stiles had ever been.
Lydia grumbled as she hauled herself to her feet. "You were just showing off,
Stiles. You didn't even use magic."
Stiles just laughed, head flung back, and when he settled again his eyes were
sparkling, and it almost looked as if he were ignorant of the blood and the
grime and the dead bodies.
But he wasn't. He really wasn't.
And as Derek watched Stiles straighten, the tip of his sword just dragging in
the blades of grass, standing before them unrepentant and unashamed, like some
fucking avenging angel or fearless warrior or minor god, he thought privately
that he was wrong.
This was definitely the most attractive Stiles had ever been.
And it was so messed up.
Chapter End Notes
     Guys. GUYS. There are over 1000 kudos on this story!!!!!!
     *undecipherable squeals of glee*
     But honestly, I don't even have the words for how much that amazes
     me. The reception to this story has been utterly wonderful, so I want
     to thank each and every one of you for reading, commenting, giving
     kudos, subscribing or spreading the word.
     Seriously. Thank you.
     Okay, for warnings (where the hell do I begin???)
     Uhh, fighting.
     Demons.
     Blood.
     Someone might get stabbed. Once or twice. (And maybe more than one
     person)
     Feelings.
     Derek's inappropriate boner.
     Intimacy kink! (Is that a thing? Screw it, I'm saying it is)
     Griffins.
     Coffee.
     The pack really like Stiles and Derek does too (And, yes, that is
     deserving of a warning)
     Kinda non-graphic talk of getting shot.
     Stiles talks about dying.
     Emotionally repressed everyone, except Jackson, ironically.
     Magic mage blood (which is a lot more surprising than it has any
     right to be)
     So that's all, me thinks! If I missed anything blatantly obvious drop
     a comment and I'll fix it, and, hell, just drop a comment for the
     hell of it. I'd love to hear from you! :D
     As always, I don't have the pleasure of a Beta unless you count
     Windows, and I do not own Teen Wolf or any of the characters except
     using them for my own twisted enjoyment.
     Hope you like the latest chapter (hope the latest chapter makes
     sense) and new one will be up (eventually, I'm sorry, I'm terrible at
     keeping it updated. Forgive me?).
     Good news and bad news, this story will be wrapped up within three
     more chapters! (I just totally jinxed myself, didn't I? Sigh)
     So thank you all again, hugs and kisses to all, peace out and enjoy
     life!
     H.S.F.
     P.S. The Deadpool movie. Need I say more?
     P.P.S. Okay, it turns out I do for my own peace of mind. If you
     haven't seen the complete genius that is Ryan Reynold's new Deadpool
     film, go see it right now. Immediately. I'm not joking. It's funny,
     it's dirty, it completely wipes the fourth wall from existence, it's
     packed full of enough action to sate even the most bloodthirsty of
     fans and, best of all, it makes me forget Deadpool (or Fox's jacked
     up imitation) was ever in Wolverine Origins. Hell, it makes me forget
     there ever was a Wolverine Origins. Yeah. It's that good. Don't
     believe me? Go see the Deadpool movie.
***** Derek, I'm sorry. For everything shitty that's happened to you in your
life, I'm sorry. Why? Because I don't think anyone's ever said that to you
before, and I think somebody should. *****
Chapter Summary
     The pack play 'Never have I ever', Stiles and Derek deal with their
     UST, and that complicates things, and yes, in that order.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Stiles had a problem. Hell, Stiles had a ton of problems, but the one he was
currently fixated on was tall, dark and brooding. And so stupidly attractive he
sort of wanted to claw his own eyes out.
Fucking Derek.
Well, not literally (unfortunately), no matter how hard his libido raged and
pushed all the blood in his body to the most awkward place it could. Stiles
shifted on the couch, and resisted the urge to bang his head repeatedly against
the wall, because, well, that never helped anyone, did it? Might knock the
dirty, r-rated images out of his head.
Oh, who he was kidding? Those images weren't going anywhere. Fucking Derek and
his stupid fucking face.
Fuck, Stiles never cursed this much. He blamed New York. When in doubt, blame
the people who couldn't defend themselves. A-fucking-plus work there, Stiles.
Really fucking mature.
....fuck.
"So do you do that sort of thing often?" Stiles raised his head to focus on
Scott, who's hands were wrapped around Allison's like she was the last life-
raft on the Titanic. Stiles was just tipsy enough on magic, coffee and the
whiskey he had been downing for the last 20 minutes for him to acknowledge how
much he envied them both. They'd had their ups and downs (heh, understatement),
but hey, at the end of the day they were still together and reasonably sane. It
was more than Stiles had ever gotten.
"What?" He asked, because he had no idea what the question was and it might
have been a good idea to sober up just a little bit, but then he caught Derek's
eyes (for fuck's sake, libido) from across the room where the Alpha sat talking
to Erica and Boyd, and he took another swallow of the bitter alcohol even as it
burned his throat and his vision blurred at the edges.
If he could die from alcohol poisoning he would probably have been concerned.
Instead, he just took another swig.
Scott gestured with one hand into the air, but didn't repeat the question, and
Stiles wasn't sure if that meant Scott didn't know the question himself or if
the hand-waving-thing was supposed to be the question.
Regardless, the mage didn't have an answer. Stiles shrugged and looked
helplessly at Allison for a translation. Were Lydia and Jackson not in the
kitchen (if he focused he could hear their low murmuring voices and the sound
of kissing but he didn't because ewww) he probably would have looked to her,
but Allison most likely had more of a chance of deciphering the incoherent
Scott-speak. After all, she had more incentive to learn.
Allison smiled softly and translated, "He means do you have fights like the one
earlier very often?"
Stiles was pretty impressed with the ease with which she knew immediately what
the Beta meant, but the admiration was layered thickly with the knowledge that
not even two years ago he wouldn't have needed the help.
Stiles just shrugged again in response, and his head ached a little with
exhaustion. He was running on no more than six hours sleep in the last week,
and, for him, that was almost good. Fuck, that was great. He hadn't slept that
much since New Jersey and the kelpie, and since most people didn't count
unconsciousness as sleep it had probably been even before that.
"I guess so. I mean, the way it ends depends on what I'm fighting, but most of
them follow the same sort of monotonous pattern. I show up, there's some form
of banter or insults, we fight, I win, I leave. It's pretty simple, really. And
the most dependable thing in my life to date."
Stiles hated the sympathetic and piteous expression gracing the huntress' face.
To change the direction of the conversation, he stood up brusquely and downed
the last remnants of his drink, letting the glass fall with a ting to the table
beneath his hand.
"All right everyone!" He amplified his voice, even though he knew it was
superfluous when there were more wolves than humans present. It helped add an
air of command to his words. "Grab a seat and a glass. We're playing a drinking
game. No but's, no if's, and absolutely no talk of demons. This is distraction,
plain and simple, and I will personally inebriate anyone who remains halfway
sober at the end of this evening."
This was a terrible, terrible, awful idea. He was so going to regret this in
the morning, he just knew it.
Lydia walked in from the kitchen, one hand clasped around Jackson's and the
other around the neck of a fancy, rich wine Stiles had received from one of his
more colourful excursions, and she sat down on the couch with her two feet
crossed beneath her before she lowered the bottle to the coffee table.
The pack settled themselves on the couches easily, except for one awkward
moment when it looked as if Derek was going to have to sit beside Stiles. The
mage was saved, however, by Lydia gesturing him to take a seat at her left, on
the far end of the couch.
If Derek noticed it, he didn't mention it, a fact for which Stiles was
immeasurably grateful. He didn't want to have to explain how much it hurt to
have to talk to Derek- not when he was inebriated and uninhibited enough to
actually feel the emotions he'd been repressing for months concerning the
Alpha.
Anger he could handle. Lust, desire, they were things Stiles was used to. He
wasn't sure what to call the thing he felt for Derek, but he was much too
terrified to even attempt it.
Why risk rejection after all?
"So what's the game?" Erica asked, suitably unimpressed with it all, eyeing the
bottles on the table like they held the secrets to all of life's mysteries.
Stiles could not honestly disagree with that. Not without being the most
hypocritical hypocrite to ever hypocrite.
Huh.
He should probably stop drinking.
Stiles glanced up, saw Derek, and poured himself another glass. He deserved it.
Shooting a sly glance towards Lydia, Stiles decided to be a masochist and
recommend the one game that would guarantee he get smashed. Because why not? It
wasn't like he was trying to not be obvious about how stupidly in lov-lust he
was with Derek or anything.
Smooth, Stiles. Real fucking smooth.
God, he needed another drink.
"We're going to play 'Never Have I Ever'. 'm gonna go right ahead and assume
you've all played before?"
Nods and affirmations all around; Great. Stiles needed a shovel to move all the
dirt away from the hole he just dug for himself.
"Glasses on the table!" He ordered, and the amber liquid splashed and stained
the wood as he poured it down the line of glasses- most of it captured where he
wanted it to go but a fair amount poured down the sides of their drinks and
onto the table.
"Who's going first?" Stiles asked, and the only reason his words weren't all
slurred to hell was because he had lots of practice getting shit-faced and a
ridiculously high metabolism. It helped that at this point his blood was
probably around 70% caffeine and 20% magic (or was it 70% magic and 20%
caffeine?).
Lydia would kill him if she knew.
Hence the distraction.
Stiles wanted to laugh at the complete lack of eager volunteers, but he felt
that it might be rude to do so- Human, or werewolf, as the case may be,
interaction was something he had never been particularly good at; and that was
before his attitude terrified and aroused most everyone in equal measure.
Funnily enough, the two were not always exclusive for him. Case in point, one
sexy Alpha sourwolf with a penchant for shoving Stiles into walls and
threatening to rip his throat out. Stiles had always wanted what he could never
have.
Call it a fatal flaw.
"Fine, since there's such an abundance of choice, I guess I'll have to go
first." Stiles smirked- he was at least going to try and get everyone as drunk
as him. "Never have I ever been a werewolf."
Lydia snorted, one hand smothering the sound as Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Scott,
Derek and Jackson all drank, matching prissy expressions on their faces. Stiles
refilled their glasses with glee, and if anyone noticed the fact that his arm
was completely healed they were intelligent enough to figure it out for
themselves and not bother him with stupid questions.
Boyd went next, and his gaze was way too steady for someone who'd supposedly
been drinking all evening, and god-fucking-dammit Stiles knew he should've
gotten the wolfsbane laced tequila out rather than the wine.
Stupid werewolves and their stupid, annoying alcohol resistance and stupid
Derek and his irksome attractiveness.
Stiles regretted everything.
Boyd tapped the rim of his glass thoughtfully, and the rhythm seared into
Stiles' brain, as if Boyd was mapping out the beats of his heart. "Never have I
ever used magic." The teen declared finally, and Stiles didn't bother with a
dirty look- he just reached forward and downed his glass, watching from the
corner of his eye as Lydia imitated his movements. She winched lightly as she
drank and Stiles shot her a shit-eating grin.
The banshee just rolled her eyes in response.
At the far end of the couch Derek also drank, and his only answer to the
questioning, curious and borderline accusing stares was a half-hearted,
uncomfortable shrug. Jackson opened his mouth, and it probably would have been
something rude or offensive or even mean (come on, this was Jackson they were
talking about) so Stiles quickly cut him up before any words escaped the ex-
kanima's lips.
"Erica, you're up." He might not like Derek all that much (though his dick
would disagree), but it was ridiculously clear that Derek didn't want to talk
about magic and hell, Stiles had more than his fair share of topics he refused
to talk about. They all had something.
Perks of being supernatural.
Stiles tried to pretend he didn't see the small grateful glance Derek sent
Stiles' way (he probably hadn't even realised he had reacted at all), or the
suspicious one-eyebrow-raise that made Lydia so terrifying.
Stiles was very good at denial. Ask anyone.
Erica smiled toothily, and she looked like a siren planning her next kill- a
description so apt it was downright poetic (Beat that, Shakespeare. Stiles'
life was more tragic than Romeo and Juliet had ever been- and Hamlet had
nothing on him).
"Never have I ever played lacrosse." All the guys drank, as did Lydia and
Allison. Erica looked mildly put out for a moment. "Does this mean I'm the only
one here who's never played the game?"
Everyone just shrugged, and Erica laughed, looking peculiarly proud of herself.
Stiles shook his head, long since given up trying to understand how people's
brains work. He'd seen too many of them in his line of work to ever have an
interest in worrying about them in his downtime (the little that he permitted
himself).
His was all screwed to hell anyway- it'd make little sense for Stiles to start
giving advice on other people's minds when his own was such chaos.
Not that anything he did ever made much sense.
Case in point- his stupid, infuriating, masochistic crush on Derek. Which he
didn't talk about. Ever.
Fuck his life.
Just- fuck it. He was too drunk and not drunk enough and much too damn horny.
Isaac grinned at Derek suddenly, like there were a hundred inside jokes
bouncing around his skull, and Stiles felt a bitter twinge of jealousy- which
he adamantly crushed, because Derek was not his. He just wasn't.
"Never have I ever finished high school." Isaac laughed when Derek took a shot,
throat bared temptingly, skin pulled taunt across the alpha's Adam's apple, and
Stiles wanted to bite and suck.
Fuck.
To distract himself, the teenage mage downed his shot, and he barely winced at
the burn- but the startled glances that fell his way when he slammed his glass
back down on the table made him wish he could have been ridiculously smashed
for this conversation.
Or, preferably, every conversation he had to have with the pack for the
foreseeable future.
Just to cover all his bases. Couldn't be too careful.
"You're finished high school?" Allison asked, eyes widened just a small amount,
and the only one who didn't seem even a little surprised was Lydia- who was as
poised and elegant as ever in a pair of ratty sweatpants and one of Stiles' old
hoodies. Stiles liked all the different facets of Lydia's personality- witty
and sensitive teenager, genius and nerdy student, loyal and dedicated best
friend, terrifying and in control warrior, and even fashionable and graceful
queen (because let's be honest, there was no way she was settling for mere
princess).
But he liked the current one the best. Liked the way she could get him to laugh
like no one else and find humour in the strangest of circumstances. Liked how
she could be strangely overprotective, and didn't mind when he was either.
He just liked her. It wasn't a friendship he'd anticipated, but it was one he
felt honoured to ever have a chance to experience.
Having said that, there were times-like, now, that all he really wanted was to
strangle her.
"Oh sure!" Lydia exclaimed, and Stiles felt the beginnings of nausea stir in
his stomach at the glint in her eye. "Stiles finished high school ages ago. He
did a lot of incredible things while he was away. Did you know he can legally
fly a plane now? And that he's the world's leading advisor on the supernatural
world? He has a website and everything. Has saved thousands upon thousands of
lives. But you guys wouldn't know anything about that, since you kicked him out
and all."
Forget a knife, you would've needed a machete to carve through the sudden
tension in the air.
"Lydia," He said softly, and his best friend deflated.
She smiled at him wryly. "Like you'd act any different if it'd been me."
Stiles' lips curved into half a smile, and he didn't refute her statement.
"Friends, remember?" He tried to sound more optimistic than he did, but Lydia
seemed to get the message loud and clear.
"I'll try." Was all the reply he got, but hell, that was still more than he
expected. He'd take what he could get in situations like this.
No one seemed sure how to break the silence after that, and Stiles just wanted
someone to do something. Talk, sing, tell an embarrassing story. Anything.
Through some miracle (though Stiles didn't believe in a god after all he'd seen
and done), Scott- awkward, uncomfortable Stiles-might-have-to-kiss-after-in-a-
totally-platonic-way Scott- spoke up, and the game started again.
"Never have I ever stolen something."
Fuck kissing Scott. Stiles was going to kill him. That sneaky rotten
bastard.... Stiles thought, but he was oddly impressed.
To keep up appearances, he glared at Scott, but the beta only smirked. He kept
up the glare even as he lifted the glass to his lips.
Allison looked between them with confusion, and Stiles dropped the glass down
to point one menacing finger at her boyfriend. "Don't you dare." He threatened,
voice low, and Scott snorted loudly.
Allison looked vaguely amused at the beta's reaction, and she shook her head
slowly, still smiling. "Actually you know what? I don't want to know."
Lydia laughed, and drank. Derek swallowed his shot, and Stiles watched, amused,
as he was followed quickly by Isaac, Erica, Danny, Jackson and Allison herself.
Scott looked betrayed.
Stiles just laughed, nicely hazed.
"Never have I ever been to a college party." Allison announced, and Stiles and
Lydia turned their heads to each other almost simultaneously, grinning at the
shared memory.
"Together?" Stiles asked, and Lydia's smile softened until it felt like a
treasured inside joke, only for themselves.
"As usual."
They toasted each other before knocking their heads back, and Stiles allowed
himself a bark of laughter at the face Lydia pulled in response to the taste.
She shoved his shoulder playfully, and Stiles fell to the side with the
momentum, easy grin still stretching the corners of his mouth upwards.
"Asshole." Lydia muttered, but there was no real heat behind it and Stiles felt
no shame in batting his eyes at her, bottom lip jutting out in a parody of a
pout.
"You love me anyways." He countered, and it wasn't a question. They'd seen the
best, worst, silliest, saddest, happiest, biggest and angriest moments of each
other. It was impossible to go through what they had without loving the other
(and hating them too, but that was something else entirely).
Derek cleared his throat. "Never have I ever been human." He declared gravely,
and Erica tilted her head to him as if saying touché.
Stiles drank with everyone else, but to be honest he wasn't sure if he
should've. He'd always been a spark. Didn't that mean he'd never been human?
Stiles didn't want to think about it. And, with the sort of useful skill that'd
saved his life and his sanity too many times to bare thinking of, he pushed the
thought- the concern- deep down inside his chest.
No use dwelling on the past when the future was so uncertain.
Danny frowned uncertainly, before snapping his fingers and grinning. "Never
have I ever been attracted to someone of the opposite gender." That little
shit, Stiles thought admiringly, and if Danny were at all his type Stiles would
have no problem getting some of that.
Everyone else drank, and Danny looked triumphant. Stiles realised- a little
belatedly, he would grudgingly admit, but it wasn't like he hadn't got other
things to think about in fairness- that everyone was trying to one-up each
other.
And just like that, his competitive nature kicked in. He was so predictable it
hurt sometimes.
"Never have I ever picked a fight with someone twice my size." Jackson said,
smirking, and Stiles just sighed.
He had the sneaking suspicion he was going to lose the game. Between being a
mage, being best friends with Lydia, fighting supernatural forces like a
Winchester and being an eighteen year old horny reasonably attractive bisexual,
Stiles had pretty much done it all.
Stiles knocked back another shot, and Erica looked like she wanted to ask but
was simultaneously terrified of the answer.
"Never have I ever slept with someone of the same gender." If Stiles had laser
beams for eyes, there would be a three inch hole in the side of Lydia's head by
now.
Fuck, if Stiles had laser beams for eyes, his problems would be a hell of a lot
easier to solve. Just, zap. Enemies killed. World saved.
Although it never did work out that way for Cyclops.
Somehow, and Stiles was not entirely sure how but he supposed a bunch of
hormone driven teens would find a way- the game had dissolved entirely into
questions pertaining to sex. Really, he should've anticipated it. Between the
wolves' curiousity (fuck curiousity killed the cat, Stiles killed the
werewolves for getting nosy and poking around in his business) and Lydia's
seemingly insatiable need to put him in uncomfortable situations -Friday the
12th of February. That one dare. Stiles was saying no more under pain of
death-, the game really had no alternative but to turn into a verbal sex-fest.
Stiles frowned inwardly. That sounded better in his head.
The thing was that Stiles never meant to hide his bisexuality. It just kind
of... happened. And he'd forgotten there'd still been people to tell, honestly,
since most of New York knew, Lydia knew, his dad knew, his network of people
spread around the country either knew first hand or had heard it from him-
Stiles wasn't good at keeping secrets that didn't threaten the safety of the
known world.
He wasn't the quiet type, never had been, and he'd come on to most of his
friends at different points in their relationships. It was just who he was.
Hell, he'd slept with probably half of his friends in New York. Sex was just
sex. Fun, sure. A way to spend a few hours, definitely. But it didn't mean more
to him than that. It couldn't.
That wasn't to say he couldn't take a hint if someone wasn't interested. He was
a staunch believer in 'No means No', and while he'd flirt with anything that
had a pulse he'd back off just as quick if the person started getting
uncomfortable.
He wasn't in it to ruin anybody else's fun.
But he was getting off topic. The point was; he had forgotten than his sexual
preferences were something that needed to be told to other people, too used to
introducing himself anew to strangers as who he he wanted to be in different
towns and cities, which meant, of course, that he was sitting in a room full of
people that assumed he was heterosexual.
Awkward.
What the hell, Stiles thought, trying to push down the faint traces of nerves
that he adamantly did not feel, No time like the present.
He reached forward to lift a glass, aware of Danny two people over doing
likewise, and he lifted his glass to him in a mock toast, amber liquid sloshing
along the sides at the jolting movements.
He drank, ignoring the feeling of eyes on his body, and swore at the taste,
eyes watering slightly. "Fuck!" He exclaimed, and Lydia beside him laughed.
He side-eyed her, and squinted with the realisation he'd been played. "You
switched the fucking drinks, didn't you?"
Lydia smirked at him, tossing him a swift one-armed salute, and Stiles decided
that there was no way he was helping her out with her hangover tomorrow.
Which was, of course, a complete and utter lie.
He ignored that too.
When he raised his eyes, it was just in time to see Derek's shocked face, his
hand halfway to his mouth, glass tilted in a way that was going to spill out
all the contents if the Alpha wasn't careful...
Glass. Derek.
What.
Stiles opened his mouth- to say what he wasn't sure, but it would have no doubt
been high pitched and squeaky and along the lines of "How long have you been
interested in guys because I kind of hate you but I'd do you in a fucking
heartbeat if you were interested?", and, in hindsight, he was ridiculously glad
he had been interrupted because that would have been wildly embarrassing-, but
Derek beat him to the punch.
"You like men?" Derek's voice was just on this side of squeaky, and Stiles
suppressed a grin.
"Well, sure. I mean technically the term is bisexual, but really I'm just
attracted to people, I guess? I'm not sure if that makes me more pansexual, but
like, I've slept with people of both genders and some people I don't know that
well so I usually just say bisexual because it's more relevant to my actions,
you know?" Stiles was rambling, now, he could tell, but Derek was nodding like
he did, in fact, know, and that was probably because Derek was still holding
the fucking glass because apparently the Alpha liked men.
As in, people of the male persuasion.
Guys.
Dick.
Stiles took back everything he ever said about this being a terrible game, it
was bloody brilliant, because, okay, Stiles didn't like Derek all that much (he
would keep telling himself that until it sounded less like a lie or denial in
his mind), but hate sex sounded pretty fan-fucking-tastic, pun definitely
intended.
Drunk Stiles made terrible life choices.
Sober Stiles was going to kill him. (Sober Stiles could suck it).
The bare skin of Derek's throat was bared temptingly as he swallowed the- what
were they drinking, anyway? Stiles had lost track of the different bottles
somewhere around the third question.
Wait, what was he thinking about? Right, Derek's throat.
Derek's chest.
Derek's dick.
Derek's smile when the wolf was happy that made Stiles' heart swell in his
chest- no.
No, no, no, no and no. Think about dick, Stiles. It's safer.
Less likely to get you hurt in the long run.
Stiles caught Derek's eyes, and neither of them were willing to look away.
Between the sexual tension, the alcohol and the atmosphere of them all fighting
for their lives; well. Sober Stiles was going to have a shit-ton of problems.
Drunk Stiles liked making life difficult for Sober Stiles. It was funny.
Drunk Stiles was also drunk enough to admit that he liked Derek. And by 'like',
he meant climb him like a goddamned tree.
There was no way this is going to end well.
...
They stumbled into Derek's room, so drunk the world was spinning around their
heads and the only stable handholds were each other.
Derek felt himself being shoved backwards against the white wall, and then
Stiles was on him- hands mapping the planes of Derek's body like it was all
they were ever meant to do-, hot lips pressing pseudo close-mouthed kisses in
trails up and around Derek's collarbone, above where his shirt ended and
flushed skin began.
"Stiles." Derek groaned, low and guttural, because Stiles was kissing him but
he wasn't kissing him, the mage's mouth achingly absent from Derek's own, and
Derek wanted Stiles' lips on his forever ago.
Stiles grinned wolfishly at him (Derek was so fuckin' screwed), and pulled back
until his chest wasn't pressing into Derek, until he could slip one strong
thigh between Derek's legs, their hips grinding together to a non-existent
beat, and Derek couldn't resist turning them over until Stiles was the one with
his back to the wall, eyes dark with lust and magic and whatever the hell else
it was that made Derek's cock ache in his pants whenever he looked into Stiles'
eyes.
Derek pressed himself into Stiles' space, hands braced above the teen's head,
felt the proof of Stiles' interest against his hip and thanked every deity he
could think of that Stiles was legal because he didn't know if he could stop-
didn't think he'd be capable of not finishing what had been building up for
months.
Derek was dizzy with it all, with everything he wanted and with knowing Stiles
wanted it too, with the phantom lingering sensation of Stiles' long fingers
grazing his hipbones.
He wanted to fuck Stiles, wanted to feel the mage pressing into him, wanted
Stiles' kiss bruised mouth wrapped around him and wanted to get his mouth on
Stiles' cock- Derek wanted everything, everything he had imagined during late
night touches and wet gasps in the shower, wanted the grinding and friction and
Stiles' tongue licking the insides of his mouth, because he was drunk and had
wanted this for longer than he cared to consider.
He was going to come embarrassingly quickly, he knew it- he was already hard
and sore and desperate from just thinking about his fantasy becoming reality.
They fell backwards onto Derek's bed, the blue comforter a sharp contrast to
the red flush of Stiles' cheeks, and Derek dipped his head down to bite and
suckle at the teen's lips, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping himself
up.
Stiles rolled them over then, thighs bracing against Derek's, hands tightening
in the hair at the back of Derek's head until the pleasure-edged-pain made
Derek groan aloud, the fluid undulation of Stiles' hips causing friction and
pressure in all the right places, and he was looking up at the mage through
heavy-lidded eyes, unable to withhold the small moans that escaped with every
movement of Stiles' body.
Stiles tasted like coffee and rich alcohol and lightning sparks of magic
against Derek's tongue even as his lips pressed sore bruising kisses onto
Derek's own, and Derek thought privately of how easy it would be to get
addicted to the flavour, how he was already- if he were honest- halfway there.
When Stiles drew back everything in Derek violently rebelled at his absence,
and Derek chased the taste with his tongue, nipping and sucking at the pale,
mole-dotted skin of Stiles' throat, and Stiles let out a rumbling growl that
made Derek's cock stiffen impossibly further until it was painfully hard and
leaking against the fabric of his jeans.
Stiles leveraged himself off of the bed, and Derek growled at him loudly,
enjoying the full body shudder that earned, and he opened his mouth to say
something but was cut off by the bare skin of Stiles' chest as he drew his
shirt over his head.
Stiles flung the offensive item across the room, and bent down to lock his lips
to Derek's once again, but Derek lifted one hand to stop him and instead
started tracing the symbols and lines imprinted into Stiles' skin with his
fingers, watching the myriad of emotions that flickered over Stiles' face
before settling on aroused, and Derek tried to focus on the black sprawling ink
and not the burns, the scars, the diagonal slice across the mage's chest.
Derek raised his head to press a kiss to the space just above Stiles' heart.
I'm sorry, went unsaid, and Stiles sighed lightly at Derek's touch, causing the
Alpha to continue his kissing- down across Stiles' ribs, following the path of
the spirals etched into Stiles' skin, up to the place where neck met shoulder
and his scent was purest, an unspoken apology in every brush of his lips to
Stiles' skin.
"Clothes off." Stiles finally groaned, and Derek sat up, all too eager to rip
the fabric from his over-heated skin, and watched the way Stiles' fingers
twitched like he wanted to be the one to do it.
Stiles' eyes were glowing- a strange sort of silver (or was it gold?)- and
Derek quickly rid himself of his jeans. Stiles' tongue darted out to lick his
lip, but Derek wanted Stiles naked.
"Your turn." He said, and he was pretty sure his eyes were Alpha red and
commanding, but Stiles just grinned at him, ran a hand down the front of his
chest, pulled one side of his jeans down to expose his thigh and winked because
he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Stiles." Derek groaned, and there was a flash of black that tore through the
silver of his eyes before the teen was dragging the jeans off his hips and
stepping out of them, happy trail pointing down like an arrow to where his cock
stood, long and hard and dripping, and Derek was relieved to know he wasn't the
only one between them as affected as he was.
There was a rush of movement then, the feeling of Stiles' skin dragging against
his as they fought for dominance, and it was unbearable and too much and not
enough all at once.
Stiles wound up on top, chest heaving with sudden darts of breath, lips curled
up in a feral smile and Derek's chest rumbled with a growl he couldn't have
held back even if he wanted to.
Stiles slid a hand down his chest, pausing to rub smooth circles into his hip
bone, and wrapped it around Derek's cock; Derek's vision blanked out for a
moment, because Stiles' rhythmic strokes from base to tip were driving him
insane- the way he thumbed at the slit and at the vein underneath and dragged
the tips of his fingertips down his balls- the way he smiled down at Derek like
he wasn't giving Derek the best hand-job he'd ever gotten- and Derek couldn't
catch his breath, pleasure over-riding every nerve of his body, couldn't stop
his hips from stuttering upwards into Stiles' fingers.
Stiles thrust suddenly against his thigh, like he'd forgotten his erection
until it forcibly reminded him, and the small, stuttering whine he made into
the skin of Derek's neck was enough to push Derek suddenly over the edge- he
threw his head back against the bed, tore half moon crescents into the skin of
Stiles' back, Stiles' lightning and vanilla scent filling his nose until the
mage was all he could smell and taste.
Derek came back to earth with a groan- thighs sticky, muscles lax, and Stiles
was shuddering above him, so close that Derek could count the individual curves
of his lashes.
He started when Derek got a hand around him, moaned into the juncture of
Derek's neck and shoulder, braced his arms either side of Derek's head. Derek
tightened his grip, and Stiles let out a sort of whining growl, and the words,
"Fuck, Derek," were hardly distinguishable amid the pleasure, but Stiles'
little whimpers as his hips stuttered had no right to be as fucking hot as they
were.
Derek wanted to lean upwards and bury his face in the mage's neck- wanted to
scent him until both of their smells mingled underneath the other's skin.
He didn't, barely, but the broken little gasps as Stiles thrust into his hand
made it nearly impossible to resist, so he couldn't prevent the way his fingers
closed tighter around Stiles' cock, his free hand reached up to slide his
fingers into the teen's curly hair, and he murmured, "Maybe later," in a voice
so thick with sated lust he could barely recognise it as his own.
Stiles came.
All over Derek's hand and the drying mess of their stomachs, muffling his
disjointed cry in Derek's shoulder, skin so bright Derek had to squint.
Fuck, Stiles was glowing, his skin incandescent and golden, like a slice of the
sun had fallen to earth and melted into Stiles' body. Derek could scarcely
breathe.
The glow finally faded, leaving Stiles panting and exhausted sprawled over
Derek's chest, skin still faintly shimmering as if someone had up ended a
container of glitter all over him.
Stiles rolled over onto his back, a grunt escaping him at the movement, and
Derek's eyes were closing entirely of their own accord, his body demanding
sleep.
"This doesn't change anything." Stiles said, voice heavy with the need to rest,
and Derek felt like that was something he should probably pay attention to so
he forced his eyes to open, taking in the open window and the smashed bulb in
his ceiling light.
Derek tried to remember if the bulb had been broken when they came in, but
can't quite recall thinking about anything except getting his mouth on Stiles
as quickly as possible.
"I'm still leaving when all of this is over." Stiles insisted, and okay, that
was definitely important, and Derek tried to get his weary body to respond
because the idea of Stiles leaving physically pained him- was enough to remove
all traces of sleepiness from his mind.
But when he finally pushed himself up, he looked over to find that Stiles had
fallen asleep, mouth open, hair tussled and looking like sex, and Derek felt
the faintest traces of pride at the light bruises dotting up and down the
mage's skin.
Derek fell asleep to the even breaths of Stiles beside him, and tried not to
think about Stiles' last words.
Stiles couldn't leave. He couldn't.
Except that he, of course, could, and Derek had no right to ask him to stay.
Sure, they'd slept together, but that didn't mean Derek had a claim, no matter
what his wolf was insisting.
Derek was going to get his heart broken, but he didn't regret a moment of it.
...
Stiles woke up in a unfamiliar bed, with an unfamiliar head next to his, and
the extremely familiar sensation of panic blocking his throat. He stumbled off
of the bed soundlessly and made his way to the window, ignoring his nudity in
favour of gulping down deep breaths of cold night air.
In and out.
In and out.
When he dug his nails into the soft skin of his forearm it hurt, and Stiles
felt the last vestiges of panic leave. He clenched his fists together, and
dropped his head between his arms, braced as they were on the wall.
In and out.
When he turned around, he was greeted with the sight of Derek, lying on his
stomach, head resting on his folded arms. Stiles resisted the urge to beat his
head against the wall when the memories of the night before came through.
He fucked Derek. Actually, his brain was quick to remind him, there was no
actual fucking involved.
Wonderful. He gave and received a band job from Derek, the Alpha, the asshole,
the person Stiles had been doing a fantastic job of decidedly not screwing.
That made everything so much better.
In and out.
In and out.
Panic began crawling up his insides again, and Stiles shoved it downwards
savagely, refusing to panic over something as normal as sex. Even if this
complicated things. Even if Stiles had wanted Derek since that first moment in
the forest. Even if his treacherous heart wanted more than just one drunken
night.
In and out.
Fuck.
Chapter End Notes
     Okay so long story short; there's been some shit that's happened in
     my life recently, and it's taken me ages to get back into writing
     with any consistency again. So I'm sorry for the delay, but I feel
     that if I'd tried to write earlier it wouldn't have been to the
     standard you guys deserve, and I didn't want that.
     But on to the good stuff-
     Stiles and Derek finally get together in the chapter! I was toying
     with the idea of writing actual sex (AKA penetration) but I think
     that neither characters are ready at this point in the story. Also, I
     am a wuss who has never posted smut before. Tell me how I did!
     As always, I don't have a Beta and Teen Wolf does not belong to me
     (let's face it, if it did, it wouldn't be called 'fiction' it would
     be called 'canon'.
     Thank you all for you massive support, and it just blows me away.
     This story is for all of you out there who took the time to read it,
     kudos, comment and subscribe. I love you all!
     There will be three more chapters, I think, with the second-to-last
     being shorter than the other two.
     Honestly, I can't believe this story ever made it this far. I owe it
     to all of you for your support!
     Love and long life,
     H.S.F
***** I'm not scared of dying. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time, and it's
kinda like riding a rollercoaster, you know? After the third time it's just
boring. (And yes, that's the story I'm going with. If I'm going to die at least
let me have this.) *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles fulfils his debt to the pixies, the pack enjoy their final
     hours, and Stiles finally talks with his dad. Everything's a long
     time in coming.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Stiles woke up to a dull, throbbing pain in his hand. The early light of the
sun was seeping through the hastily closed curtains, and for a minute he
squinted against the rays, unable to see.
Then the minute passed, and he pushed himself clumsily off of the floor, limbs
stiff and sore from sitting that way for fuck knows how many hours. The window
above him was still open, and outside the house he could hear the birds and the
trees and the idyllic woodland sounds that don't exactly proclaim the arrival
of the end of the world.
And he could feel it, too. The thrumming in the air. The perverse stickiness
latching onto his skin, like month old bad milk.
It seemed like they didn't have as long as they'd planned on, and not nearly
enough time to train the wolves. He'd hoped- well, Stiles had hoped for a lot
of things. And even though, intellectually, he's known they were unlikely, it
didn't prevent the way his stomach sank down to his toes upon awaking and
knowing it was going to happen today.
He raised his hand to drag his fingers through his hair, pulling at the roots
to get a better grasp of himself and his emotions. Okay, he though calmly, you
knew it was coming, and everything's set up- as ready as it'll ever be. The
pack know what to do, you know what to do, and who knows what might've happened
if you waited longer. Just breathe, Stiles. Panicking will help no one and
solve nothing..
It was only then, when he'd gotten that brief momentary doubt and fear out of
his system, that he noticed two things.
1. Derek was still in the bed. Naked, but for the strategically placed sheet
falling over his thighs and midway up his back. Then the night's... activities
came rushing back, and Stiles scrubbed his face with both of his hands, despair
and self-anger and regret overwhelming him, warring with the small but
undeniably there amount of delight and pride. And something else, but Stiles
was avoiding the L-word like he avoided hunters. That is to say; he attempted
to, but every so often it came back and slapped him in the face.
That brought him to the second point of interest; 2. His burning hand. He
lifted it curiously in front of his face, watching as the skin at the base of
his index finger began to redden and blister, roughly in the shape of a ring.
He suddenly understood, and silently Stiles made his way across the room, using
magic to clean himself off and conjuring clothes while he was at it to cover
his nakedness.
He glanced back, once, to look at Derek's sleeping face, and he could have
thought something cliché about innocence in sleep and Derek looking like he was
at peace, but the truth was, the wolf looked neither. The Alpha looked calm,
yes, but his brows were furrowed together and his mouth was slack as the air
whistled past his teeth. He looked so terribly human, and that made everything
so much worse.
Gently, Stiles pulled the door shut behind him, unwilling to wake Derek and
have to deal with the confrontation. Cowardly? Yes. But he did have somewhere
to be, after all.
Stiles descended the stairs, his sock-clad feet eerily loud in the silence. It
was early- too early, Stiles figured, for anyone but him to be up and about. In
fact, he was counting on it. It probably wasn't even six yet.
Stiles was not a morning person. But beggars couldn't be choosers, so he made
his way as quietly as possibly to the kitchen for a drink before leaving. He
was as yet undecided whether that drink would be alcohol or coffee, though he
was leaning towards coffee if only to remove the taste of bad life choices from
his mouth.
He wished he could say it was a new flavour.
Standing in the empty kitchen, mug of coffee in hand, the quiet morning
pervading through the entire house, Stiles was struck by the feeling that this-
the waking up early and the pack and Derek, looking out at green leafy foliage
and cloudy blue skies-, this was something he could be happy doing.
As soon as he thought it Stiles promptly shoved it to the furthest reaches of
his mind, the corner reserved for hopes like a decent Percy Jackson movie and
world peace and his dad never eating fatty foods again, and living past twenty
(it wasn't exactly something common in their world, particularly for those who
do what Stiles does).
He drained his morning caffeine shot and left through the back door, closing it
firmly behind him. He could teleport, of course, and it'd be a lot quicker and
easier, and it wasn't like they had a lot of time to waste, but he just...
couldn't. Not when his time here was short.
Beacon Hills was beautiful. New York was beautiful too, of course, and Stiles
could admit he loved it there. Loved the bustle and the crowds and the parks
and the tall buildings, loved the restaurants with foreign patrons and the
shopping sprees near holidays and the rush of looking out over a city that was
so alive.
He loved his friends and his job and the way they almost resembled a pack,
loved learning new things and fighting evil (for a given definition of the
term). He loved the wildness of it all, of leaving for weeks on end for strange
new places and being able to return and tell his stories without anyone judging
him or thinking him incapable.
New York was a beautiful concrete jungle, full of adventure and atmosphere if
you knew where to look, and Stiles did miss it. He missed everything he'd made
for himself in a different world, and he'd expected it even before he left.
But he'd missed Beacon Hills, like a phantom limb that, though removed,
continued to fester. He'd missed his dad and the town and the freedom of
running in the Preserve, he'd missed researching in his room and Lydia (God,
how he'd missed Lydia) and even, when he allowed himself, the pack as well.
He'd missed the feeling of being around people he'd known his entire life, even
if most of them still saw him as little more than the Sheriff's kid.
So yeah, he'd missed Beacon Hills. Didn't mean he wasn't still saying goodbye
to it. Was probably (were he being honest) part of the reason he was leaving in
the first place.
But he was going to enjoy the walk while it lasted, enjoy the peace and quiet,
even as the sense of wrongness filling the air threatened to choke him. It took
a little less than a quarter of an hour for him to reach his destination, as
told by the heightened intensity of the burn on his left hand.
He entered the clearing loudly, announcing his presence with the brush of the
branches away from his face, and he walked confidently to the centre, where a
patch of grass about two metres wide was flattened down like it had been used
as a landing pad.
"Hic sum ad explendum meum debitum." (I am here to fulfil my debt.) Stiles
announced into the empty clearing, and his voice echoed oddly against the
trees, giving the appearance of multiple Stiles' all speaking in unison.
Suddenly, there was a movement at the other end of the circle, and a steady
stream of blue pixies wove their way through the trees. They danced around him,
so much more at ease in his company compared to their last meeting, and Stiles
thought he should probably begin all meetings with his achievements just in
case a similar circumstance can be achieved every time.
Who ever said he wasn't a diplomat can blow him.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit, amicus magus. Nos sunt laetus accepit, nuntius noster."
(Welcome, friend mage. We are glad you received our message) Came from his
left, and his right, and somewhere behind him, and Stiles thought privately
that at least when they were wary of him they were in one big group and their
hive mind speech hadn't made his head ache.
Right now, he was exhausted and hungry and trying not to panic about fighting
the demon who killed him, and Stiles never wanted to be a politician anyway,
even if that was sometimes part of his job description.
"Quid exigis a me?" (What is it you require from me?) It was said briskly,
though he did try and tone down the rudeness of it. The pixies seemed to
understand though, because none of them swooped down to start clawing at his
eyes.
He was glad, because Stiles was rather fond of his eyes. He'd prefer to keep
them in optimal condition as long as possible, thanks.
"Quid est nos omnes vis? Praesidium. Salus. Ibi est multum de malo in his
silvis nuper, videtur. Populo nostro tantum vult esse solus." (What is it we
all want? Protection. Safety. There is a great deal of evil in these woods
recently, it seems. Our people only want to be left alone.) There was an
agitated rustle among the pixies, like a wave of their wings, and Stiles
followed the motion with his gaze even as his gut clenched with empathy.
Pixies were a generally peaceful species. Scary motherfuckers, but peaceful.
They had a matriarchal classing system, each clan ruled by a chosen female, and
all the clans ruled over by the Queen, and outside of that every pixie had a
right to whatever job they wished. Stiles had seen a variety of different
careers while he was with their Queen, like warriors and scholars and young-
carers.
It was, and continued to be, one of the most successful working societal
systems Stiles had ever seen. Much more effective than humans, that was for
certain. All working towards a common goal, all so closely linked in intimate
ways via telepathy that the idea of causing purposeful harm- whether emotional
or physical or mental- towards another was... abhorrent. They didn't even have
law based punishments, and instead an individual's actions were talked about
and considered and solved within their smaller family unit.
Theirs wasn't a perfect system, but it was as close as was possible to be. In
case it wasn't clear, Stiles had a lot of respect for pixies.
"Ego sum paenitet enim malo, quod, ut quidam propter meam praesentiam hic. Erat
numquam ab intentione faciat populum tuum molestiae in aliquo, amen dico
vobis." (I am sorry for the evil, as some of it is because of my presence here.
It was never by intent to cause your people discomfort in any way, I assure
you.)The pixies rippled again, and Stiles didn't know if it was because of his
admission or the true regret in his voice. He had never meant to harm them.
Perhaps it was a mixture of both.
"Cum loqueris, fidem, quid est, quod vis?" (When you speak of protection, what
exactly is it you desire?) Stiles asks before they respond, because he has a
rough idea but he wants confirmation, wants to be sure they're all going into
this with the same thing in mind. Spells are tricky like that. For him, they
were about intention. He'd made mistakes before, caused accidents, when his
entire focus wasn't on the spell at hand.
"Volumus ire, ignorabitur, nisi nos cupiditas. Et scimus, quod est taxatione
carmine, et non vis infirmare tibi, sed nobis populus ad primum venire." (We
wish to go unnoticed unless we desire it. We are aware that it is a taxing
spell, and don't want to weaken you, but our people have to come first.) It's
good to know, Stiles muses, that at least some beings will be getting out of
this fight alive. It's a fair enough request, and in any other situation he
wouldn't be hesitating at all, would probably have already jumped into the
spell.
But this wasn't any other situation. He had, arguably, the biggest fight off
his life later today- or at least the one on which the most depended. He
couldn't afford to give his energy to a spell as trivial at this, one that
wouldn't serve their plan. At the same time, he couldn't not help. Their
predicament was, after all, almost entirely his fault.
And he might have started off doing what he does out of desperation and pride,
but he'd quickly come to love the rush of helping people. The spread of his
magic, humming and alive, down his fingers, lighting up like golden sparks as
it hurried to do his bidding- and there'd always been a bigger joy in
protection spells, anyway.
He could do offensive magic, obviously, and he was good at it too, but there
was never a time when offensive magic called to him as much as defensive magic
did. Still, he had to ask.
"Ego intellegere. Et non considerare relicto enim tutius silvis?" (I
understand. And you will not consider leaving for safer woods?) Stiles knew
what the answer will be before they even began to consider his question, and
there was a part of him that was inordinately proud at their response.
"Non. Hoc est, nostrum, ut dictum est, pro centuries. Nihilominus, illic est
parum ad tempus tuto et efficaciter organize discessum." (No. This is our home,
as it has been for centuries. Regardless, there is too little time to safely
and efficiently organise departure.) It was a good point, that much Stiles
could admit graciously. It didn't make his life any easier, but then he'd never
been a big fan of easy anyway.
"Ego conveniunt. Et hoc est, quod velis ad usum meum debitum?" (I agree. And
this is what you wish to use my debt for?)
"Sic." (Yes.) Stiles took a moment to consider idly that there should probably
be dramatic music playing in the background at their decision, all bass and
high spikes of notes. Maybe the Jaws theme song. Or Star Wars. Yes, he was a
nerd. He'd covered this already. Keep up.
"Valde bene. Ego mittitur in carmine, et populum tuum erit tutum." (Very well.
I will cast the spell and your people will be safe.) Stiles brought his hands
in front of his chest, feeling the pressure build-up of magic in his
fingertips, waiting to be released.
"Custodi tuto." (Keep a safe distance.) He told them as an afterthought, and
after they'd retreated to the outlying trees he took a deep breath in, his
entire body relaxing on the exhale, sinking into the ground.
He allowed a small trickle of energy to escape his hands, watched in his mental
eye as it danced toward the pixies, winding its way around the group. He let
loose another, and then another, and suddenly the air was full of them, visible
now, a multitude of colours and shapes falling over each other, iridescent in
the sunlight, like flames or moonbeams against the green backdrop.
He felt more than heard the pixies' collective inhale of breath, felt more than
saw the shuddering of the trees as the magic entwined with their branches, and
it took more focus than usual to draw it back towards where it was supposed to
be.
He could feel the wrongness just outside the clearing, and the hair on the back
of his neck rose as it slithered across the ground, but no, focus Stiles,
protection, safety, you can do it.
Where offensive magic was like an arrow, or a sword, all sharp edges and clear
paths, laying waste, defensive magic was like- it was like ribbons, or lego
blocks, and every sliver of magic built upon the last until suddenly there was
a wall of ribbons, all different colours, all with different textures, tying
together into a unpredictably strong woven cloth.
Stiles stopped the flow of magic, and reached out to feel for any
inconsistencies in the fabric, to feel for weak spots that could be exploited.
There were none, and, when he opened his eyes, the world seemed a lot darker
without his magic swirling in the air.
"Meum debitum vobis fuit solutum. Nos sunt, non ligatum. Securus, et fortasse
dicemus, obviam iterum." (My debt to you has been paid. We are no longer tied.
Stay safe, and maybe we shall meet again.) He said finally, and he wasn't
drained by the magic, as such, but he was definitely weaker than he'd been. Not
significantly, but noticeably. It worried him, but he didn't regret it.
"Gratias vobis agimus. Donec tempus, honorari amicus. Nos spes vestra pugna est
prospere." (We thank you. Until the next time, honoured friend. We hope your
fight is successful.) The pixies came and circled him once more, a few of the
braver ones daring to dart close and inspect his face, and their silvery wings
tickled his skin, leaving shimmering traces of pixie dust streaked across his
face.
Then they left, their sudden departure making the woods seem even darker, and
were Stiles the human he'd been but two years ago he might be nervous about his
solitude this deep in the forest.
But he wasn't. Instead, he dug his hands into his pocket and set off on a
course away from the house. He had things to do before returning to the pack.
He just hoped they all went as well as the pixies did.
...
When Allison woke up, Scott splayed across her chest, breathing softly, her
hunter senses went nuts. Her heartbeat must have ratcheted upwards, because
Scott was immediately alert, darting forward and almost falling off the bed in
his hurry to see the danger.
The problem was that it wasn't anything she could quantify. The room was
exactly as they left it before going asleep, the curtains still drawn and
creased in the middle, the floor an explosion of clothes all tangled up exactly
where they'd left them in a fit of exhaustion, and the house was silent.
But her skin was crawling with something she couldn't name, and she was about
to ask Scott if he was sensing anything with his wolf senses when he froze.
"Scott?" She asked, pulling her body up to lean against the wall, hands
reaching out to help before she realised what they were doing.
"Can you feel that?" He asked, voice thick and eyes heavy, and Allison couldn't
do anything but nod in response.
They got dressed silently, both of them sharing touches as reassurance, and her
hands was itching for her bow and an enemy. Or a target, she wasn't feeling
particularly picky. Nauseous, yes. Weighed down, yes. Picky, no.
They left the unsettling solitude of their room as quickly as possible,
desperate for the comforting companionship of pack. They met Isaac on the
stairs, and Allison couldn't help the rush of affectiondesireneed she felt when
she saw him, and, judging by Scott's exhale beside her, her boyfriend felt the
same way.
Isaac looked comforted by their presence, so Allison stepped forward and
wrapped one arm around his waist, Scott on his other side. They entered the
kitchen that way, and Allison caught the triumphant look on Stiles' face before
the mage quickly shut the feeling down. She tried not to flush under his
suspicion.
Scott failed to suppress his blush, however, and that broke the quiet tenseness
of the room. They were all there, in various positions around the kitchen.
Erica sat on the counter, Boyd beside her, Peter, Lydia and Deaton in deep
conversation beside the fridge, Jackson and Danny throwing spherical fruit back
and forth across the island counter, her dad standing in the far corner, arms
crossed, an expression on his face that suggested disbelief. Not just one
werewolf, it seemed to say to her, no, that would be too easy. Instead she has
to have two werewolves. God help me. I'm never going to hear the end of this.
She hid her grin in Isaac's shoulder, but caught Stiles' eye from where he
stood in front of the sink and shared an conspiratorial smirk. As she looked
around though, she noticed the glaring absence of one particular member. Derek
was nowhere to be seen, but, before she could really think about where he could
be, the Alpha himself walked surely into the room.
There was a collective inhale of breath from the wolves, and that was- yeah,
that was creepy. No way to disguise it as anything else.
Then, almost as one, the wolves stumbled. Not physically, although Scott didn't
look too far away from it (she loved him but he wasn't exactly the most
graceful person on the planet, even before you compare him to werewolves). It
was more that she could see the way all of their brains just sort of- stopped,
like whatever they were smelling was too powerful to understand.
Stiles laughed, and she wasn't surprised that he seemed to understand what was
going on. "I think we might've broken them." He told Derek, lips raised to show
teeth in a soundless snarl, and Allison saw Derek shift awkwardly before
continuing on his trajectory to the coffee machine at the other end of the
kitchen.
Stiles saw her confused expression, and laughed again, a harsh, false sound
that made chills rise on her arms and the back of her neck. "Me and Derek dealt
with some of our repressed emotions last night, got it all clear and in the
air. The pack are simply smelling that."
Allison began to feel the dawning tendrils of comprehension in her mind. Her
face must have still been stuck on confused, as Stiles felt the need to clarify
further.
"We had sex." He said, enunciating each word clearly, and Danny choked
suddenly, eyes darting back and forth between the Alpha and the mage. That
seemed to be sufficient reaction to break the stillness, because there were
suddenly a bombardment of questions and comments rained down on the duo.
"When did this happen?!" Erica exclaimed.
"I thought I heard something!" Yelled Isaac.
"That's interesting." Deaton commented. Of course.
"Congratulations, I suppose." Peter said dryly.
"Stiles, you like Derek?" Asked Scott, eyes wide.
"Does that mean you two are together?" Questioned Boyd, which was possibly the
first reasonable reaction of the morning.
"God, that's hot." Danny blurted, before continuing quickly with, "I mean,
congrats on the resolved sexual tension and everything. But it's still hot."
"And you're telling us why?" Asked a disgusted Jackson.
"And when were you planning on informing me of this, Stiles?" Lydia demanded.
"Called it." Allison found herself saying, and no, what was she doing, stop
talking, "Scott you owe me twenty dollars."
"You made a bet on whether me and Stiles would have sex?" Asked a disturbed
Derek.
Her dad sighed. Loudly. Rude.
"Enough." Stiles commanded quietly, and the voices stopped. "Yes, me and Derek
had sex. No, that does not change anything, and, should it, you will be the
first ones to be informed. Hell, I'll put it in the newspaper. Now if we could
all stop and maybe deal with the fact that unless we win the fight this
evening, Beacon Hills will be destroyed? Thank you.'' Stiles finished
empathetically, and Allison felt just a tiny bit bad, but also rather
impressed.
Stiles would have made one formidable hunter, that was for sure.
"Okay, so everyone knows the plan. Scott and Erica, you guys are on corpse
duty. It'd be worthwhile seeing if Melissa can help on that front, because
otherwise it'd be difficult. Alan and Peter, you're on protection spells for
everyone. You've both done it before, you know how it goes. Oak, holly, the
usual. Oh, and Alan, if you have the poppy and hydrilla now would be the
perfect time for them. Chris, you're on hunter duty. Keep them away, you hear?
I don't care whether you use fists, guns or words, just keep them away from us.
We can't be fighting two battles, and, after last time, I don't trust the other
hunters not to be on their side. Danny, I want you to help Lydia. You know what
to do." Danny and Lydia exchanged a smirk, and for a minute Allison was
objectively terrified of their combination.
"Boyd and Allison you're on scout duty. Keep an eye out, keep everyone else
away, and lay as many fucking booby-traps and dangers as you want all over the
forest. I'd say they're only a few hours away. We've got until five, maybe six.
I want everyone back here for no later than three to get some rest, food, and
whatever the hell else will help you relax."
There were a few loose chuckles among the pack, and Stiles smiled slightly, one
side of his mouth unevenly tipped upwards.
It was only around nine in the morning, the sun still not yet blazing at its
highest. Scott's hand was tense and slightly damp where she held it with hers,
and Allison wished they could've had more time. But her blood was humming in
her veins, and she had too much hunter in her to walk away from a fight.
The demon was on their territory now. Their rules. They were going to win. They
had to.
...
Stiles was the last to arrive back at the house. It'd been a- tough morning.
He'd done his rounds, checked his shields, spent a few hours creating new ones
for the pack that ensured their safety, went for a run to check how his month-
long spell was holding up, dropped by the Argent house to leave the final touch
in the bestiary, and, finally, went to see his dad.
Needless to say, it hadn't exactly cheered him up, but it was something he had
had to do.
(Stiles standing beside his dad's desk, body tense.
"Dad, can I talk to you for a minute?"
The Sheriff looked up, and his eyes went wide when he saw who it was. "Sure,
Stiles. If you give me a minute to finish up this paperwork we can head back
home."
Stiles shook his head stiffly, self-depreciating smile already on his face.
"No, it's fine, I have to head back soon anyway. It's just that-"
He stopped suddenly, furious with himself for being unable to find the right
words. John waited, at least semi-patiently, and Stiles felt a great surge of
love for the man who'd raised him, and it helped him finally speak.
"I know I haven't been around much, since I've been back. I know we haven't
spent nearly as much time together as we should've, and for that I'm sorry. I
know I'm probably not the son you said goodbye to over a year ago, just like I
know you'd never judge me for it. Living the way I've lived, helping people, it
changed me. It was always going to change me. You knew it when I left, knew
what I'd have to do, but you let me go regardless, and I'm just- thank you, for
that. It means... more to me than you know, that you trusted me like that."
John was sitting almost entirely straight in his desk now, and Stiles was
fumbling with his words, knowing that if he didn't get them out now he never
would.
"And I guess it's in my blood, helping people. I did get it from you after all.
So I realise that me, acting as I have the past while, with the- the
disappearing and the late nights and the mud tracked up the stairs, it couldn't
have been easy for you to trust me, especially after I lied to you before. So I
guess I just want to- to say thank you, for that, for letting me do what I
needed, for being there if I wanted to watch a movie at four in the morning.
I'm not the easiest person to live with, I understand that, and even though
you're my dad you're not- you weren't ever- obligated to take care of me, so,
um, I guess I just wanted to, to tell you that I lo-"
Stiles was cut off by a rush of movement and fabric, and suddenly his dad was
out from behind the desk and hugging him like he hadn't done in months. Stiles
sunk into the embrace, and he realised belatedly that his hands were shaking as
he pressed them into his father's back, and he buried his face in the shoulder
of the police uniform he was as familiar with as he was with the deputies in
the station. It was the quietest his mind had been in- in a long time.
"I know, son." John said, and Stiles allowed himself a precious few seconds to
get a better grasp of his emotions before he reluctantly untangled them.
"Well," He said in a joking tone, "Now that that's over with." He wiped his
not-damp eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, and even his father looked
suspiciously bright eyed; but, if asked, it was because of how bright the
lights in the station were.
He gave his father a rough idea of what was happening, skipping over the dying
and the slim likelihood of success and the cold terror he felt low in the pit
of his stomach, instead conveying urgency and battle and importance while
glancing at the door to make sure they weren't being listened in on.
Though he supposed 'demon' could have been a code word.
"How can I help?" John asked immediately once he was finished, and Stiles
smiled ruefully.
"Keep everyone away from the Preserve. There's going to be loud noises,
probably guns, maybe a bomb or two if we can pull it off- there's no telling
what will happen. Help keep the casualties to a minimum and lock down the area.
I don't have the faintest idea of what to tell them; I'll leave the details up
to your expertise."
"Well thanks.'' Came his father's sarcastic response, and Stiles grinned
happily.
"Help Argent, if he needs it. Stay safe and try not to get yourself killed."
John hesitated. "Are you're sure I can't help more, help fight...?"
Stiles loved his father for his courage, but there wasn't a hope in hell
(Stiles would know) of him letting his dad anywhere near the action. "This
isn't a fight for humans, even the police. This isn't the sort of fight that
guns and tasers will be enough. It's why Chris will be elsewhere, and Danny,
Allison and Lydia will be in the trees giving us air support. Alan will be
supplying us with potions, but even he won't be in the main line of fire. If
you came you'd be likely to get yourself, or me, killed." He told him gently,
because his dad knew this, he did, but love did strange things to people.
John smiled, and it wasn't all there but it wasn't completely pained either, so
Stiles counted it as at least a partial win.
"I know." His dad said softly, and Stiles stepped forward to hug him again, the
illusion of stoniness forgotten in favour of comforting the man who'd made him
who he was today.
"I'm scared." Stiles admitted into the juncture between his dad's neck and
shoulder, the words he hadn't dared utter muffled by the thick fabric.
Stiles felt his dad's sad smile against the side of his head, and he squeezed
his eyes shut, wishing, just for a moment, that he wasn't a mage or their only
hope or powerful. Wishing that his biggest concerns were being a loser in
school, or not handing homework in on time, or asking someone out on a date,
rather than the end of the world.
"I know." John said into his hair, and Stiles calmed his breath, pulling back
to watch the Sheriff's face. His dad didn't bother with platitudes or useless
comforts, he just caught Stiles' eyes with his and held them for a few long
seconds. "But would you be able to live with yourself if you didn't go?"
Ruefully, Stiles smiled. "I guess I'm too much like you after all." He
answered, and his mouth was dry with something unnameable but that felt a lot
like terror. He'd faced worse monsters, fought longer battles, battled for days
on end, but he'd never been as scared as he was in that instant.
Fighting alone is easy. Nearly dying... it wasn't something he'd concerned
himself with when he had nothing to lose. Now, though, with this fight, if he
lost he didn't just lose his life, he lost everything. And even if they won,
there was no telling who'd make it out.
There was nothing quite like realising he no longer had nothing to lose. It was
why he's expended so much of his energy- probably too much but it gave him
peace of mind, which was something found few and far between lately- weaving
shields around the pack.
He might not be able to save himself, but he was damned sure he would at the
very least save them.
"No, Stiles." John told him, voice heavy with fear and worry and the emotions
of a parent sending their child off to war, "You've always taken more after
Claudia than me, though I will take credit for your teen years."
Stiles stiffened, and before he could stop himself he found himself letting
slip the question that had been plaguing him for years. "Do you think she'd be
proud of me?" His voice sounded deceptively young right then, nothing like the
weapon he'd trained himself to be, but if ever there was a time for letting his
guard down that it was here, now, with his magic coiling around his veins like
liquid rope and his eyes so feverishly bright they brought to mind insanity.
"I'm certain of it.")
They were all there, standing outside the house, in twos and threes and one
massive group, ranging from Alpha to wolf to hunter to mage to human to banshee
to- pack. They were a pack.
And it was clear, from where Stiles stood, that there were still divisions. And
maybe Chris and Alan and Peter shouldn't have been pack, maybe Stiles was still
wilfully, stubbornly, (uselessly) insisting on his autonomy, and maybe that
didn't matter.
Maybe what truly mattered was the fact that they were all still standing here,
even with the futileness of their fight- that Stiles had to believe they could
win, he just had to- and maybe that choice made them pack, made them more.
But maybe Stiles was feeling sentimental.
He didn't make it to the porch steps before he felt it- lighting crashing down
his spine and the stench of thick ozone in the air, and he knew that this-
these last few months, between dying and this fight, between what was and what
is now, today- between arriving back at Beacon Hills and saying a roundabout
goodbye to his dad just in case- was only the eye of the storm.
The calm before the disaster.
And he was falling to his knees, cry of pain slipping from his lips, and in
slow motion he could see the pack beginning to rush towards him, claws and bow
and hands out ready to fight off some invisible assailant.
But Stiles forces himself to stand, forces words past bloody lips from where he
dug his teeth into their flesh, forces himself to smile regardless of the
crippling sensation of evil ramming down his walls.
Last time, they'd been small.Lesser. Last time they'd slipped under his walls
and he'd felt their presence like needles pressing into his skin, something
inconsistent and wrong in the pattern of his magic. But now, now, since
subtlety is a lost cause, the enemy was crashing head first into his barriers,
like a truck into the side of a building, and Stiles can feel the building
giving way, because it was never meant to hold out against evil of Baalberith's
calibre forever.
There was a swoosh of sound, a blast of cold air to Stiles' face, and he knew
they'd breached his magic.
The pack reached him then, the few eternities of comprehension in Stiles' brain
only seconds in this plane, and he was still standing, he noticed wondrously,
which was a miracle all
on its own.
Stiles waved away their concerned hands and cautious expressions, his hand
tightening on the weapon he'd strapped to his hip before leaving his house. The
other one, his secret weapon, was hidden somewhere only Stiles could access it,
and it had to be at the right time. They couldn't know about it. They couldn't.
It would ruin everything.
"They're here."
Chapter End Notes
     Hey guys! I know it's been forever since I posted, so I'm sorry for
     that, but good (or bad, I guess) news! There are only two more
     chapters, and the next one is one I've been looking forward to
     writing since, like, chapter three.
     Which means that it'll be posted soon! Yay! :P
     Warnings;
     I don't know. Emotional moments? Snark? They talk about Claudia, but
     only briefly. Oh, and the pixies are back, for a few thousand words.
     If I missed anything drop a comment and I'll fix it asap!
     As always, no Beta, and I don't own Teen Wolf, so don't make any
     profits from this, etc etc. God, my disclaimers used to better.
     Anyway, I just want to say a huge, monstrous, amazed, grateful and
     jaw-dropped thank you to every single person who read this story, or
     commented or left kudos or bookmarked or subscribed or rec'd. I don't
     even- you are all wonderful people, and keep me writing. There are no
     words, which, as a writer, probably isn't good.
     So love and long life
     (Enjoy your summer and have fun!)
     H.S.F
     P.S. Captain America: Civil War broke me. Broke. Me. I have the
     sneaking suspicion Star Trek Beyond will do the same. Why do I ship
     so many fictional characters? And why does it hurt so much?
     P.P.S. Made my brother watch Brokeback Mountain. He teared up, made
     an inconsolable wailing sound when it was over, and left the room. I
     think I may have broke him when I said, "Imagine you're OTP." Hint;
     it's Stucky. Was that too evil?
***** "Here lies Stiles Stilinski; Professional Asshole" What? Too soon? Can't
a guy joke about his own death without being frowned upon? *****
Chapter Summary
     The final battle is here. They can only hope they're strong enough.
     Also, questions are answered, but probably not the ones you're
     thinking of.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
On the evening of the 22nd of April, at precisely 5:03 p.m., Stiles Stilinski,
also known as the Red Hood, fell to his knees amid the Beacon Hills wolf-pack.
It took only fourteen seconds until he was standing again, although for those
present it felt like a lifetime.
At 5:16, after a heated discussion between the Alpha of the pack, Derek Hale,
and Stiles himself, Stiles disappeared.
Derek Hale swore, and the wolves began their journey to where Stiles had told
them the fight would occur.
At 5:21, Stiles and the wolves and the hunter and the banshee and the lone
human faced against an army.
Chaos reigned.
...
Derek looked down the line of people, making sure to commit them all to memory
just because (just in case). Peter stood to his left, his claws digging
impatiently into the dirt. It had been a shock, finding out that his uncle had
an actual wolf form like Derek did (after weeks and months of painstaking
labour and crippling pain), but when questioned Peter had only shrugged and
said something irritatingly vague about the power of magic.
To his right, when Derek lifted his shaggy wolf head, he could see Stiles,
standing dead straight, one foot forward as if racing to the finish, eagerness
and impatience in every line of his body. Stiles glanced down briefly, flashed
him a quick smile, before returning to his watching, reminding him of blurry
memories and the taste of lightning on his tongue, heavy and thick and Stiles.
He still wasn't sure what they were, or whether Stiles thought of what they did
as anything other than stress-relief, and the uncertainty made his wolf uneasy.
He knew what he wanted them to be, but Derek learned at a young age that what
he wanted and what came to pass rarely matched up.
But he put it out of his mind, because distraction got you killed on days like
this; when everything was instinct and sure, certain movements, and when
failure or hesitation meant death.
If he focused, he could pick out where Lydia and Allison and Danny were among
the trees, betrayed by shifting leaves out of time with the wind. Deaton was
somewhere far off behind them, chanting and bottling potions for them to use.
They'd all already been given a healing accelerant, and as strong a protective
potion as Deaton dared without impeding their speed.
Argent had left earlier, his focus on the hunters that had heard about the
supernatural activity nearby and come to investigate (the Argents were an old
family, and an older name, so even though their daughter dated a werewolf they
had some standing left). He had departed quickly, if reluctantly; he'd spared a
moment to wrap his daughter in a hug before telling a serious Scott in a grim
voice, "Watch her back."
Scott had nodded, and it seemed like father and boyfriend shared a moment of
understanding- if they all survived, Derek thought that maybe the two might get
along better.
Although that was quite a large 'if'.
Derek caught the faintest traces of blood in the air- metallic and cloying, and
he was on his feet immediately. But when he followed the scent, allowed his
nose to direct hsi head, he was staring right at Stiles.
He gave the mage another once over, sure that he hadn't been wrong, but equally
as sure that Stiles wasn't injured, and the juxtaposition made his head ache.
He whined low in the back of his throat, and Stiles frowned automatically
before he even looked down, reading off of Derek's emotions.
Derek decided to risk bumping his nose against the mage's hip, determined to
get his point across even though part of him froze instinctively at risking the
mage's displeasure. That part was quickly silenced as the only part of him that
had any common sense, and he found he couldn't quite breathe as he waited for
Stiles' reaction.
The teen just sighed, and with one hand he rolled up the right sleeve of his
red hoodie, displaying a clean, white rectangular bandage just below his elbow.
Derek was momentarily pleased about how easily Stiles had understood him- his
wolf panting happily at the back of his mind- but it was quickly replaced by
concern.
Stiles rolled his eyes, but Derek was left with the niggling sensation of
something forgotten scratching away at the back of his mind. He shook his head-
the errant hope that that might encourage the information to fall into place
proving fruitless- and Stiles rolled his sleeve back down to his wrist, fingers
so carefully unhurried Derek just felt more certain that something was up.
"Just a cut, dude. We all get them. Shoulda been more careful with my knife."
It was such a perfectly reasonable explanation that Derek was immediately
suspicious. He expected insults, exaggerations, sarcasm and snark, not...
realism.
It unnerved him, and that just made the tension he felt pre-battle worse. He
would make Stiles tell him after they fought, would demand it even with no
rights to the knowledge.
He knew there was something Stiles wasn't telling them, something that made the
mage's eyes go dark with an unnameable emotion- but Derek just hoped that
Stiles would tell them afterwards, would trust them enough even though they'd
betrayed him.
Erica and Boyd were speaking softly to each other, hushed whispers of
endearments that drifted across the clearing and buoyed all of their spirits,
because this- this was what they were fighting for.
Beacon Hills was theirs.
End of story.
...
Danny could see them coming through the forest, saw hundreds of birds flee from
the trees under which they walked. Could see the trails of dust and ash that
drifted above them, like a damned umbrella, billowing out from the procession.
He couldn't see them though, no matter how much he strained. The trees were too
thick, but he knew they were coming and from where so he yelled it down to
Stiles, ignoring the line of wolves spread out behind the teen.
God, it was fucking surreal.
Stiles had pulled him aside that morning, had looked at him with bright hazel
eyes and wanted to know if he was sure. He wasn't a mage, or a werewolf, or a
hunter, or even a banshee. He was just- just a human.
But Beacon Hills was his home. The pack were his friends. He couldn't in good
conscience leave, even if- maybe especially because- he was terrified. He'd
tried to explain that all to Stiles, but had felt like words were so hopelessly
useless.
Stiles had understood though, had grasped his shoulder and leaned down (when
did he get so tall?), and Danny wondered what had happened to the loud, awkward
teen he went to school with for eleven years.
Now, watching Stiles standing tall and strong and almost regal, surrounded by
the supernatural and looking eerily at home there, Danny thought privately that
maybe that Stiles had never been anything other than preparation for this
Stiles.
Regardless, he yelled down what he saw.
The Betas changed form, Stiles materialised a long silver blade in one hand,
and across from him in the trees he saw Allison prepare an arrow. Across from
her, completing the third point in their triangle (on this Stiles had insisted,
and Danny touched the potion in his pocket) was Lydia, whose hands were
terrifyingly still and calm on the gun she held on her lap.
The plumes of smoke got closer. Danny took a deep breath. He reached out and
grabbed one of he and Lydia's creations from the basket of them he'd secured to
the trunk of the tree as soon as he'd arrived.
He really hoped they survived this. He'd been looking forward to college.
...
Allison readied her bow. Stiles had put a spell on her arrows, so that they
always returned to the quiver after reaching their targets. He'd also run
through a few incantations that, if said while aiming, would kill a demon with
one shot to specific points on their body.
Her hands were steady, and she said a quick prayer to anyone who would listen
for them all to survive this. Danny called out a warning.
Allison lifted her bow.
...
The first demon entered the clearing at full speed, running straight past the
raised grassy dais and the upturned earth where they'd shallowly reburied the
body, only to pause a few feet away.
Seconds passed. The wind blew. More demons filtered in behind the first, all
with various body types and colours and genders and ages- the poor bastards
they were possessing long since dead.
An innumerable age passed. There were easily over a hundred of the demons now,
some grinning maniacally, some blank-faced, some frowning.
Stiles took a minute step forward. A breath. They ran.
...
Peter laughed as he raced forward, meeting the demons head on, his insane
laughter trailing behind him like a cape. If you have to go out, he thought
viciously, taking the first life of the day with a swipe of his claws across
the demon's jugular, then why not with a bang?
...
Scott didn't like taking lives.
He liked people who hurt and threatened his family even less.
He didn't feel any guilt at all when he killed the first demon to step across
his path.
...
It was chaos. Everywhere she looked it was to the pack, claws and teeth out,
the demons vanishing in a swirl of particles after death and Erica had just
enough time to think, Oh, that's new, before she was swept away once more by
the current, Boyd a familiar comfort against her back.
...
It wasn't like playing lacrosse, that was for sure. Jackson spared a second to
look up at Lydia in the trees to his left and watch as she took careful aim
with her gun and fired a volley of spelled bullets into the fray, knowing even
as he did that he was going to leave himself open to attack but needing to know
she was safe.
He turned around just in time to see a demon go down behind him with an arrow
sticking out of its chest, perpendicular to its ribs, before both demon and
arrow disappeared in a swirl of smoke.
He nodded a thanks to Allison and jumped back into the fight.
...
Lydia clipped the last of her bullets into a retreating demon's spine, hissing
out an aggravated breath when she realised she was empty.
She caught Danny's eye and nodded once.
The tech genius grinned savagely, and Lydia echoed the smile.
The bastards were going straight back to hell.
...
Isaac kept a careful eye on Scott to his left while he fought, a good
percentage of his focus on ensuring the Beta was safe. When a demon ran up
behind him, Scott's attention on the two demons facing him, shimmering silver
knife extended, Isaac leapt forward and broke her arm.
He killed her quickly, and Scott turned just in time to catch the throat of the
demon who stood behind Isaac, preparing a fatal strike.
The two shared a heated look (Are you okay? I'm fine. We can do this. Thank
you.) before standing back to back and continuing the fight, even as their
energies wore thin.
Stopping wasn't an option.
...
Stiles was throwing magic out and slicing demons and creating a path of fiery
destruction in his wake but the demons kept coming, pouring into the clearing,
and there were easily five hundred of them now, more coming, and he didn't know
how many were dead except somewhere in the vicinity of not nearly enough.
He used the second of free breath he got to lay his hand on the ground and push
a thrum of energy into the dirt, watched as it rippled out knocking a few dozen
demons off their feet and sucking them into the ground.
They vanished beneath the roiling earth, screaming, and Stiles wavered on his
feet for one moment of exhaustion before shoving it down.
Forty down. Fuck knew how many more to go.
...
There was a loud boom on Derek's left, and when he glanced over he could just
see the faintest traces of dust in the air, all that was left after Danny and
Lydia's little experiments.
Having the two geniuses make bombs was one of Stiles' greatest ideas, and the
pack were getting the luck from that now, as more and more demons disappeared
in a cloud of dust as the duo dropped Molotov cocktails and homemade explosives
on the unsuspecting demons. Lydia had, no doubt, run out of ammo a while ago.
Time had lost all meaning, but Derek knew it had been a while.
There was a sudden pressure at his throat as a demon attempted to crush his
windpipe, a minute where his visions went black and his lungs ached for oxygen,
but before he could even raise a hand to free himself the demon was flung
backwards by some unseen force.
Derek gasped a breath. Between the bombs and Stiles' magic the pack had a bit
more breathing space now, and for a moment it actually looked like they might
be able to win without too bad of casualties.
Derek should know not to get his hopes up in situations like these.
...
Stiles was busy making sure that the pack's wards were all intact when he felt
it. The faintest hint of a tendril drifting across his mind, like a fingertip
trailing down his arm and leaving uncomfortable, uneasy goosebumps in its wake.
He knew immediately what it was, even before the voice began talking. You don't
forget the feel of the being who killed you.
Stiles, it cooed, he cooed, echoing like it was Stiles' own voice in his head
rather than a demon's, like crushed ice and ash and chalk screeching down a
blackboard.
Stiles, he sang, breaking the name into two long syllables, the sharp 't' sound
like having a blade driven through his skull, the rounded 's' trailing off into
a laugh somewhere along the way.
You didn't really think I'd fall for the body, did you? What did you do? Spell
it so that I couldn't leave? So that you could kill my human heart and have me
be truly dead? Tut tut, Stiles. You're losing your edge. The last was sung
again, a baritone and a soprano and a thousand different voices whispering
acidity into his ear about hushed secrets and terrifying dreams.
Stiles clasped his hands to his head as the screaming in his brain got louder,
and among them he could hear the pack, as distinct as a heartbeat, begging for
help and forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut as the pressure grew unbearable,
his sword forgotten at his side.
You're not real, he thought desperately, and he opened his eyes to see the pack
fighting still, more tired than he'd last seen them, hands bloody, and he hoped
that the wards were still intact because he didn't have the energy to check and
the screaming got louder and louder and louder until it felt like a train
crashing through his skull.
Then, abruptly, it stopped.
Stiles stood up.
He looked around.
Everything stood in stark relief, every distinct molecule sharp and precise,
the cross-woven fabric of Derek's jeans harsh against his eyes and the tension
in Allison's bow twanging along his nerve endings, like the world had been
paused and filtered down to the bare essentials, and Stiles felt one, pure,
elated moment of accomplishment before it all sped up once more.
Can't get rid of me that easily, the voice told him, amused and angry and
merciless, and Stiles smiled, laughed, picked up his sword again and thought,
why would I do that when you're exactly where I want you to be?
...
Chris closed the front door with a sigh. Hunters, he thought disgustedly,
except that sounded far too much like a certain Stilinski for his liking.
He sighed and fell on the sofa, hands going to his temples, bones stiff and
unwieldy. The hunters had demanded a more... physical show of intimidation than
he had originally hoped. At least Kevin from the New York branch would probably
get better. Probably. The bullet hadn't hit anything important, anyway. Chris
frowned at his knees. His daughter was out there right now fighting for her
life. He should be there. He should be helping.
But Allison had Scott to help her. And Stiles. And that fluffy haired puppy
kid; Isaac, that's what his name was. And Derek, who, as the Alpha, was
responsible for all the people part of his pack. However much Chris hated to
admit it, Allison was part of Derek's pack.
She'd be protected. She'd be safe.
He couldn't sit still. Agitatedly, the hunter, who, although he wasn't yet
halfway through his forties felt the years more acutely than he ever had
before, pushed himself to his feet. He was about to leave, his hand reaching
out to flick off the lighting, but a blinking yellow light in the sudden
darkness caught his attention.
Curious, Chris turned the overhead light back on, walking to the corner where
the computer lay. He'd never claimed to be a genius at computers, but even he
knew that when a light was flashing it meant the system wasn't fully turned
off.
Most likely Stiles or Danny had simply forgotten to turn it off after the last
time, but still. Call it curiousity.
Chris flicked the mouse once to bring the screen back to life, and as soon as
he did he noticed the video left open in the background. It showed the room
behind him, but judging by the way the light played across the desk it had been
earlier, around noon, that the video had been taken.
Begrudgingly intrigued now, Chris clicked play.
Three minutes later the video was still playing in the background, Stiles'
voice echoing over the speakers, as Chris ran out of the house. The revving of
an engine only barely covered the mage's words, and the computer light was
still blinking.
...
Derek wasn't blind. In fact, since he was a werewolf, he had more than twenty-
twenty vision, but that was neither here nor there.
The point was, Derek could see, very clearly, that no matter how many demons
went down or how many wounds they received, there were always more. Derek could
see that they were losing.
He kept fighting, kept covering himself in the dust of the demons he killed,
kept ignoring the way his ribs burned and his left eye stung from the steady
trickle of blood that dripped down his forehead for longer than it should have
before healing closed, kept pretending he didn't notice that there was no end
to the demons constantly pouring into the clearing.
But they had planned for this. They had. He just had to wait for the signal.
That was all. Then everything would be over.
...
Scott was... Scott was tired. He was exhausted. Isaac was a permanent
comforting weight against his back, but his ankle was still tender and refused
to hold his weight significantly for longer than a few seconds before twinging
in reminder.
The woman in front of him was like all the rest- black eyes and rotting
features, an animated corpse because most lower level demons didn't have the
skill or energy to take a living host.
He allowed himself a moment to think, they're not stopping, before shoving that
thought aside. He had too many people to protect. He couldn't fail. He
couldn't.
He'd never even gotten to apologise to Stiles.
...
Allison aimed, shot, aimed, shot, took stock of where everyone was, aimed,
shot, aimed, shot, aimed-
She'd fallen into the routine of battle.
There was an inch long hole in her lower leg from where a passing demon had
nicked her, but she'd bandaged it with the sleeve of her jacket and she wasn't
planning on bleeding out anytime soon.
Stiles was a blur of motion across the battlefield, a swirl of passing colours
and a constant evolution of dust, and if she'd had time she would've stopped to
appreciate his skill.
But she didn't, so she kept shooting. It was the only thing she could do.
...
Erica pressed a rushed, sloppy kiss to Boyd's slack-jawed mouth, revelling in
his look of confusion before continuing to fight.
"When this is all over we should totally go out on a date!" She yelled across
to him, and even though she knew the entire pack thought they were dating,
they'd just never quite gotten 'round to it.
Kissing, sure, when they were both feeling particularly antsy and hormonal.
Heavy petting, even. But dating? No. They'd never done that.
In the heat of the battle and the rush of adrenaline, she couldn't for the life
of her remember why not.
"What?" Boyd yelled back, his hands wrist deep in demons, and Erica grinned.
"Be my boyfriend?" She practically screamed, and Boyd stopped, paused, and
grinned wide at her, ignoring the press of bodies all around them.
"Sure!" He replied in the same tone, and Erica laughed loudly. The demon
nearest to her watched their interaction like they were both insane.
"We're a work in progress." She told him, before ripping out his spine.
...
Stiles watched the battle go on around him vaguely, knowing that it was
important but not really recalling why.
Just let go, a soft voice insisted, but Stiles refused. It felt wrong. The
entire situation felt wrong.
Relax, the voice tried again, and one of his hands was lifted up without his
permission and aimed at the black and grey wolf tearing into a man a few metres
away.
He's killing him, the voice whispered, and Stiles hesitated, palm still raised,
because everything was cloudy and it was wrong, he knew that, and there was
something he was supposed to do- something important, but he couldn't move his
hands and panic rose like waves in his throat and his vision started blacking
out, and he knew this feeling, he did, he-
He was having a panic attack. The wolf was Derek. He was aiming at Derek.
Stiles shoved his hand back down, his head feeling like it was tearing in two,
and he remembered now, perfectly, how one of the demons had managed to get a
cheap pot shot at him; not enough to hurt, but enough that there'd been a brief
lapse in his mental shields.
Enough that Baalberith had crept in, insidious.
The demon had lodged in his skull, and he remembered now how that'd always been
part of the plan- if not the plan he'd advertised to the pack, the plan he'd
always known he had to use.
Baalberith in his head.
C'mon, Stiles. You're not letting me have any fun. How 'bout one side of your
body? No? Okay, an arm and a leg. Just an arm. A finger? Oh, you're such a
buzzkill. I mean, I've successfully inhabited the most powerful mage in the
universe, I think that's something to celebrate.
Stiles knocked down the dozen demons nearest to him, shooting a shot of energy
at the demon trying to climb up the tree to get at Danny and cleaving the demon
four steps to his left attempting to sneak up on Isaac.
No, he thought resolutely, you have nothing to celebrate. After all, while
you're right in the fact that you're in my body, you've ignored one small,
infinitesimal detail.
Oh? The demon asked, tone dripping with sarcasm, and what's that?
Stiles grinned broadly. You can't leave.
He threw a hand up and gave the signal.
...
Lydia saw it almost immediately, the shower of golden sparks in the air. There
was no gap between her seeing them and her understanding what they meant- she
wasn't a genius for nothing, after all.
She quickly unscrewed the potion Stiles had prepared and started chanting.
The potion abruptly turned a shiny, iridescent gold, much like the sparks
Stiles had shot off into the air.
She threw the potion to the ground and braced herself for impact.
...
Allison and Danny copied her movements exactly before bracing themselves as
well.
The ground fighters fell to their stomachs on the ground when they saw the
sparks.
The demons spared a second for confusion. It was a second too long.
The clearing exploded in a burst of gold.
...
Stiles was the only one left standing upright when the dust cleared. Thousands
of demons. Gone. It was an accomplishment the likes of which no one had ever
seen, but all the mage felt was emptiness at what had to be done.
Baalberith raged, trapped, inside his skull, knowing something was happening
but unsure of exactly what.
Stiles reached for his secret weapon, bending space to fetch it without moving
one step in its direction.
It was time.
...
Derek coughed heavily, lungs gasping for clean air.
He glanced up, and saw the desecration that used to be an army, and could only
feel a sort of weary relief. The triumph and euphoria would no doubt come
later.
He shifted his head around to look for Stiles, taking stock of how the pack
fared- they were all alive they were all alive theywereallalive- and all his
breath whooshed out of him in relief when he saw Stiles still standing.
Quickly, though, upon seeing the long silvery sword he held somewhat awkwardly
in both hands, that shifted to concern, and Derek lifted himself to his knees
just in time to catch Stiles' eye. The mage seemed to hold the sword as far
away from his body as he could, a stark contrast to how he acted with all the
other blades Derek had seen him hold.
But, if he focused, the Alpha could almost sense an odd sort of sense around
the sword, one that tickled vaguely at his subconscious, and suddenly he knew
that it reminded him of that one bullet from a few days ago, the one that Lydia
had seemed so concerned by.
The one that hinted at wrong with every second spent in its presence.
Derek caught Stiles' eye, and the mage seemed to mouth a simple I'm sorry, at
him, except that didn't make any sense, because what was Stiles to be sorry
for? And slowly a cold sort of feeling that mimicked dread crept up Derek's
insides, and he was on his feet and rushing forward, the air incredibly loud in
his ears, the pack's celebrations muted and slow, everything in such vivid
detail that he felt as if he could have counted the individual dust motes in
the air.
Stiles lifted the sword above his head, slowly, so terribly slowly, and he
brought it down again, and it was like some terrible joke, some awful prank,
and he brought it down, and down, and down, and Derek couldn't hear anything
over the rush of blood in his ears and he could feel himself saying something,
yelling something, and he didn't know what it was but his mouth shaped it like
Stiles, his feet tripping over themselves in haste, and Stiles looked so
goddamn fucking apologetic when he caught Derek's eyes again, a nanosecond of
contact that was almost an entire conversation.
Stiles brought the sword down and stabbed himself through the heart.
Derek skidded to a stop.
The blood stopped rushing through his ears, and he could hear the pack's
exclamations and shrieks and yells, feel their pain trickle through the pack-
bond and he didn't move.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't move.
Derek blacked out.
...
{Stiles fiddles with the camera, making the image go blurry and then focus for
a minute, before sitting down in the chair across from the monitor. His smile
is easy.
So hey guys! if you're watching this, then I guess I'm dead! Bummer, and all.
Sorry about that. It wasn't- He stops, breathes, continues after a beat.I never
meant to get you guys hurt by this, honestly, and I meant to keep my distance
this whole time, but I guess I'm not as strong as everyone thinks I am. So, you
know, I'm sorry that my death's gonna hurt you. Is that conceited? It sounds a
little conceited. Anyway.
I guess you're wondering about... a few things. First of all, nothing I told
you was a lie. Just- a part of the truth. For what it's worth. To properly
explain things, I gotta explain about the other time that I died. It's not an
easy story, mind you. It's pretty convoluted, magic wise, and my existence
right now breaks a whole lot of rules previously imagined unbreakable, but-
yeah. Here I am. Or, was. Sorry about that again, by the way.
It was pretty soon after I left here that my mentor told me something. It was
by accident, but she basically told me that a vision I'd been having was going
to come through. It was a vision of Beacon Hills. Burning. So, like the
prodigal son that I am, I couldn't let that happen. It took me a while- several
weeks, a few hundred cups of coffee, a couple of broken rules, and one of two
illegal meetings, but I eventually found it. A protection spell from the late
twelfth century. One, mind you, that was said to be able to hold off a demon.
If you think it sounds too good to be true, you'd be right. I'm gonna skip all
the boring stuff in between, the tests and the practice and the fine tuning,
but suffice it to say that finding the damn spell was the least arduous thing I
had to do for it. But that's besides the point.
The point is that a few months after I left I snuck out to the grounds of the
place I was staying at midnight- for pure theatricality, mind you- to preform
the spell. Bibbity-bobbity-boo, Beacon Hills is protected. Except for one,
small thing. The spell require my life in exchange.
The only reason I survived it is because a friend saw me sneak out, followed
me, and manually kept my heart beating until my magic kicked in. Honestly, I'm
still fuzzy on the details, because heartbeat or no I should've been dead.
Magic is binding. But there's the saying about the gift-horse and the mouth,
and really I was just relieved I was still alive.
Then, demon. You guys know about that particular shit storm. After I died, and
killed the demon, for some reason the spell that had taken my life the first
time decided to give it back, destroying the protective boundary around Beacon
Hills in the process. Think of it like this; the first time I died I left part
of my life-force powering the spell around Beacon Hills, and when I died the
second time that rushed back into its rightful place in my body, leaving the
spell with no power source.
Since no one ever survived the spell before, it was an unprecedented side
effect. You get used to being a commodity after a while.
So I came back to let the boundary up again, and then, demon. Again. I figured
since I killed him last time be wouldn't be happy, and I was right. My best
guess is he'll ignore the corpse and head straight for me, trying to posses my
body. I cut a symbol into my arm that should stop him from fleeing- basically,
where I go, he goes.
If I die, he dies. You see where this is going. It's a good plan. Not one of my
best, but I didn't exactly have loads of time. I'm banking on the fact that I
have an unresistable body. Call it what you will; arrogance, experience,
intelligence, but I know I'm far too good of a catch for him to let pass a
second time.
He will try and control me of course. I have full belief in my own abilities,
but just in case I did give you all special wards. If you were marvelling over
how little you got hurt during the battle, that might be why.
So there you have it. Should answer all of your questions. A few passing notes;
Lydia, I'm so sorry. You know what to do. I'll make it up to you in the next
life, promise. I can be your official slave instead of just your best friend.
Scott, I swear to god if you and Isaac haven't gotten your shit together when
you all die I will kill you again. Isaac, yes they both like you. You're an
awesome person. Allison, good luck dealing with those too. You'll need it.
Danny, have fun being the sane one. Don't let them drive you mad, they tend to
do that. Jackson, you're a grade-A asshole, but you love my best friend. Watch
over her. Boyd, if you hurt Erica I'll rip your heart out through your ass.
Erica, same for you. I don't know if you guys are together yet, but if you're
not then you should be. Peter, you're insane and I love it. Keep up the good
work and try not to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it (and no, you're not a
good judge of that. Find a third party, preferably someone with an actual moral
compass that doesn't point permanently to grey).
Derek- I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. You have no idea. You deserve better
than me. Find someone and fall in love. Make dozens of little werewolf babies
with intense eyebrows. Be happy, man. For me. Stiles scrubs at something in his
eyes, voice gone thick.
Just- take care, all right? All of you. I'll be pissed if I see any of you for
at least seventy, eighty years. Grow old and bald and surround yourself in
whatever makes you smile. Okay, I'm getting sappy now, I'll stop. Live long and
prosper, and all that jazz. And don't touch my stuff. Seriously. Don't. They
could seriously hurt you. Just don't.
The video goes black.}
Chapter End Notes
     It's late, I'm exhausted, major character death, next chapter up
     soon, thank you all a million times, disclaimer, no beta, saw Beyond
     and Suicide Squad and both were amazing, hope you enjoyed, lots of
     love, H.S.F
***** Epilogue- yes, I am aware that is a lazy ending title, and no, I don't
care, Scott. It's my autobiography, I can write what I want. What do you mean
you don't think anyone would buy it?! What's not to love? *****
Chapter Summary
     It's the end. Say goodbye, hug your loved ones, and hang on for the
     ride. The demon's dead, and the pack mourn- but who knows what's
     around the corner?
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
They carry Stiles’ body back to the house. His eyes are closed; Derek wonder
vacantly who closed them because Stiles sure as hell didn’t, because Derek was
watching the whole time, because Stiles was-
There’s this aching hollow behind Derek’s ribs where a working heart should be,
and it almost feels as if Derek was the one stabbed, as if it was his heart
pierced, not-
He doesn’t want to think about that.
They’re halfway back to the house- a heartbroken solemn procession, panic
filled and frozen and incapable of speech- when Derek hears this awful
hiccupping sob- and he blearily lifts his head to investigate only to realise
that it came from him, and he’s never felt this out of control but Stiles’ pale
long-fingered hands dangle like cut strings from his motionless body, and,
really, Derek thought he’d already reached the peak capacity for pain.
Then they’re in the living room, somehow, the journey lost somewhere in the
deep recesses of the Alpha’s psyche, and they lay Stiles down gently on the
threadbare couch, so less vibrant than it had seemed last night, amid the
laughter and the happy smell wrapping itself around Derek’s heart and the
sensation of pack as he hadn’t known in years filling him up from the inside
out.
The room still smells of Stiles and lightning and drunken jokes and the
memories of pack stifle him until Derek can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t see
past the meandering blue veins that run underneath Stiles’ cold skin because
Stiles is dead he’s dead he’s dead he’sdeadhe’sdead.
Isaac is sobbing uncontrollably in the corner of the room, arms wrapped around
his knees, rocking back and forth, looking like the world has crashed around
him, and Derek hasn’t seen him this bad since his last nightmare where his
father was still alive.
Scott is muttering to himself, fists clenched and blood from his claws dripping
down his wrists and onto the floor, staining the carpet, and if Stiles was
here- if Stiles wasn’t lying stiff and cold on the same couch they’d been
sitting on just a few hours ago- if Derek had been smarter or quicker or
better- Derek stops himself. Thinking like that helps no one- least of all
Stiles.
Allison’s still wearing that same mirror of shock that she’d worn when Stiles
first fell- like she’s expecting Stiles to jump up any moment, make a joke,
like the emotion’s so strong it’s cancelled everything else out. Derek can
relate. He’d wandered around Beacon Hills in a daze for the rest of his school
life after the fire.
Erica's pale- almost as pale as Stiles is, and that leaves a sick, unfeeling
burn deep down in Derek, like an eerie sort of jealousy, because Erica doesn't
deserve to look so broken, she isn't the one dead, she isn't the one gone, what
gives her the right-
Boyd hasn't spoken since Stiles hit the ground.
Danny's pacing, looking like he wants to do something- but he's human, so
woefully unprepared for any of this. Derek thinks he should feel bad about
that. He knows he should.
But he doesn't. He's not his mom. He's not Laura. He's not Stiles.
He doesn't feel anything, just this sick plummeting sensation where his stomach
should be.
Deaton never came back to the house- left with only an aborted and rushed
goodbye, hands wrapping his coat closer to himself as if to protect from some
frozen epiphany, something that might have been useful but came far too late,
far too slow.
Lydia stands as still as stone in the doorway to the kitchen, face closed off.
Jackson stands by her side, hand clasped tight around his mate's, and Derek
feels something thick and hot shift inside him in envy or jealousy or anger- he
doesn't know.
Time doesn't really pass- at least not as the laws of physics dictate it
should. The seconds between Isaac's sobs take years, great heaving breaths, but
suddenly it's dark inside and Derek has no idea how it happened, standing as he
is directly over Stiles- Stiles' body- eyes not leaving the teenager' closed
ones.
There's a car driving up outside, the slam of a car door, heavy footsteps
pounding up the wooden porch stairs, the squeak of the front door being shoved
open- Stiles mentioned it in passing yesterday, drunk and loose-tongued, about
how they really should oil it, because it's not like you guys need the early
warning to be aware of intruders, and come on, guys, it's really annoying, how
can you live with it, in a whining drawl, and it's funny because he couldn't,
he couldn't, he couldn't-
And then Chris Argent is standing in the living room, a few steps back from
Stiles- Stiles' body- and Derek can't prevent the growl that rolls out of his
mouth between pinched lips, the rumbling echo picked up by the pack before
anyone even notices the hunter has arrived. Even Allison swings her bow around
to aim at the intruder, and her sights only lower a little when she recognises
her father.
Instinct tells him- tells them- that Chris is not pack, should not be allowed
near an injured pack member (not injured, dead, because Stiles is dead and oh
god Derek can't breathe), and Argent is quick to back up, even as he can't seem
to drag his eyes away from Stiles' prone form.
Derek's wolf doesn't like it, and if Stiles wasn't lying behind him he'd be
across the room, hand wrapped around the hunter's throat, but protection comes
first, and Derek doesn't think he could leave his place safe guarding Stiles-
Stiles' body- even if he wanted to, not when his instincts insist that he
protect. His instincts don't seem to have gotten the message that Stiles is
dead.
Stiles is dead, he's dead, he's dead, Derek failed, he failed, god, Stiles is
dead.
Everyone else is pack, everyone else is safe. But Chris Argent is not pack, has
never been pack, will never be pack- Allison might be because of Scott and
Isaac and even Lydia, but her father is far too old and set in his ways for
Derek's wolf to ever accept him. It eases something in him, actually, to see
his pack standing as one against a possible enemy.
Logically Derek knows that Chris is not Kate, that the hunter would never hurt
Stiles, but wolves don't think in terms of logic. It's simple, really. Chris
isn't pack, Stiles isn't at one hundred percent capacity (he's dead he's dead
and the two words are like a never ending mantra in Derek's head) and the Alpha
can't let him near Stiles. Near Stiles' body,
Chris seems to get it (the perks of your daughter being sickeningly in love
with a werewolf) and he's quick to leave, aware that it is not his place to
grieve. Not now. Not here.
Someone has turned on the light, more for the humans' benefit than the wolves.
Stiles is still as he fell- they had tried to remove the sword from his chest
but it had squelched and stuck and Boyd had stumbled away to get sick in the
bushes and Derek knows that that sound will be on repeat in his nightmares
along with burning flames.
Derek's pretty sure he's crying. His lips taste too salty for him to be
entirely dry eyed.
Suddenly the air behind him ripples, like waves that buffet the harsh curl of
his shoulders and Derek spins around ignoring the minute protest of his muscles
over the movement after hours of stillness. There's a man standing in the
centre of the room, haze locked on Stiles, expression tastefully blank, but the
smell of his anguish lies thick and cloying in the air. Derek growls loudly,
enraged at the stranger's interruption but also a strange sort of grateful
because they could have stayed there in a trapped tableau for far longer than
they did if they hadn't been interrupted.
"Who are you?" He asks brusquely, voice saved from being a bitter croak from
inaction and grief only be werewolf healing. The intruder doesn't answer, just
swings his blue eyes to Derek's face, and somewhere along the way it gets lost
in translation from impassiveness into a glare so sharp Derek is honestly
surprised he isn't bleeding.
"Are you Derek Hale?" The stranger asks instead of answering, in a voice
strangely pitched, too high to truly be threatening but so full of venom it
almost makes Derek flinch regardless.
"Yes." Is the Alpha's cautious answer, and then the stranger's face shifts into
pure, unadulterated rage and his fist is whipping forward to connect with
Derek's face in a solid punch that knocks the breath out of the wolf and belays
the strangers fragile, delicate form.
Erica, Boyd and Isaac scramble to their feet, instinct to protect their Alpha
too strong to ignore, and even Scott and Jackson shift uncomfortably, their
instinct just as strong as the others'. The only ones at all unaffected are
Lydia and Danny- Danny too new and unfamiliar, and Lydia too lost in her own
head.
The stranger levels a glare at all of them, but as soon as his gaze lands on
Stiles' motionless body his face crumples into an emotion so strong Derek feels
as if he's infringing on a private moment. He takes one step forward as if to
touch Stiles' shoulder, but is immediately stopped by the pack, eyes glowing,
barbaric, animalistic growls tripping from grief-stricken throats.
"You don't touch him." Derek says through a mouthful of fangs, blood rushing
fast and hard through his system, adrenaline raising his proverbial hackles.
The stranger bares his flat-edged teeth right back, and his eyes flash a deep
crimson red. Derek almost takes a step back.
"Vampire," he hisses- the pack pause, and is the silence is confusion tinged
hostility, but Derek is suddenly so terribly proud of his pack for holding
their ground even when they have no idea what's going on. It's enough to make
him think that maybe he didn't completely fail, maybe he taught them enough to
survive, and that's all he really ever wanted for them.
The man- vampire- rolls blood crazed eyes and hisses, lips pulling up around
suddenly sharp canines. "If you want him dead than by all means continue
standing in my way."
The room is shocked into silence. Lydia is the one who steps forward, face
sharpened into an icicle, and the pack part for her like a flock of frightened
birds, like a crowd of people who know something is different than they'd
believed all along.
"Lydia," the vampire allows, the tiniest smile on his face, and he shrugs off
the pack's restraining arms as if insulted by their contact with his skin. "I
wish I could say I was pleased to see you, but present circumstances don't
exactly lend themselves to pleasantries."
Lydia's face remains stoic, unsmiling, and there's an eerie sharp thrill of
fear that runs down Derek's spine at the expression on her face- the Alpha is
suddenly, unrepentantly glad that he is not on the banshee's bad side.
"What did you mean, A?"
Her voice is strength and steel and the promise of pain, and she's not
screaming of the deaths her powers foresee but her voice drips with it none the
less, and Derek thinks privately that Stiles wasn't the only one who grew up
and changed while he was away.
He shouldn't feel so proud.
The vampire- A- tilts his head questioningly, and Derek can practically hear
Stile' mocking voice in his head about dogs and genus and monsters- but Stiles
is dead and Derek will never hear his voice again- phantom fingers trailing the
Alpha's jawline and Stiles' laughter heady in his ears like melted caramel.
"You're the one who called me here, Lydia," he reminds her gently, and that
doesn't sound like the Lydia Derek knows but Stiles is dead and the world is
inside out and upside down and maybe he's not the only one affected.
Lydia doesn't move, a stone cold marble statue, face unforgiving, but instead
says, "Can you bring him back?"
Derek doesn't dare breathe, doesn't dare move, doesn't dare hope, because what
if, what if, what if- except that little voice in the back of his head murmurs
that people don't just come back from the dead.
Peter did, a different traitorous voice murmurs, and Derek's head whips around
so fast searching for his uncle that if he were human he'd get whiplash- but
Peter's not there. In fact, Derek hasn't seen him since the fight, since the
end, since the jolt of pain filled hysteria ran straight through his heart and
out the other side.
'A' says nothing.
Gruffly, impatiently, so damn hopefully, Derek asks- demands, really-, "Can
you?"
Utter and complete silence.
Scott, who had started looking interested once more in conversation, the smell
of his hope slowly drifting out from his unclenched hands, leaks bitter
desolate tears. Erica swallows loudly. Isaac sinks further into hunched
shoulders. Jackson- even Jackson- curses bitterly and throws a cup at the wall.
It shatters into a thousand tiny pieces, falling down like snowflakes or stars,
kaleidoscopes of rainbow colour that tinkle as they hit the hard wood panelling
of the floor.
Lydia's unflinching stare burns a hole in the vampire, as powerful as a wooden
stake, and about as effective.
"I don't know." The stranger answers finally, and Derek's heart begins soaring
in his chest, ignoring how hard he tries to suppress it, because that's not a
no, it's a maybe, means there's a possibility for something he hadn't dared let
himself hope for in case it turned out to be a lie.
The vampire shuffles his feet awkwardly, the first truly human action Derek has
seen of him- and says, "I have to touch him."
No one makes a joke. No one finds it funny. The pack look to Lydia then, for
permission, and decorum and pack law says that they should look towards Derek,
towards their Alpha, but he has no claim towards Stiles, no hold except for one
drunken, precious night that the Alpha can't get out of his head.
Lydia nods. The pack move aside to allow the stranger access. Derek- who had
previously retreated back to Stiles' side, drawn into Stiles' orbit like a
planetary body to a star (and it terrifies him, because Stiles shines so bright
even in death and Derek's never been any good at avoiding things that glow and
burn, even when logic says run in the other direction)- is the last to move,
the vamp standing only a foot away, the Alpha his last obstacle, Derek gaining
a perverse sort of pleasure from knowing that he is the larger of the two.
"If you hurt him-" he threatens, which is pointless, it is, he knows this,
because Stiles is already dead and gone and the only thing keeping him together
is the knowledge that he might not be and that his pack depend on him.
The vampire inclines his head, not in respect but in acknowledgement, and,
Derek suspects, no small amount of impatience- Derek reluctantly acquiesces to
Lydia's silent command and moves to stand at Stiles' feet.
The vampire steps forward, eyes fixed on Stiles' pale face, and reaches one
hand forward to rest on the teenager's cold forehead before closing his eyes,
and there's a sickening lurch somewhere low in Derek's abdomen when he realises
their skin tones match.
It's fitting, he thinks, amid the despair and hope and the desire to puke until
Stiles' eyes stop appearing at the back of his eyelids every time he blinks.
Two dead things.
For a few long, interminable, unending minutes nothing happens- but then the
vampire gasps and withdraws his hand so quickly it's as if he's been burned,
and Derek gets the feeling that if the undead could cry the stranger's red eyes
would be overflowing with tears.
A seems to pull himself together, hands fiddling with the hem of his thick
black coat as if for protection, and his voice only just shakes when he murmurs
a low, "If he doesn't wake up in the next twenty-four hours call me. Don't take
out the sword. It's the only thing keeping him alive."
He wraps his barely trembling arms briefly around Lydia, squeezing her close as
if needing something to hold, before disappearing with as little fanfare as
he'd arrived- and it says so much about Derek's life that he doesn't think
teleportation even classifies as strange anymore.
The Alpha wonders, and is terrified of, what exactly caused a vampire- arguably
the most reckless of the supernatural creatures- to be so shook. He's pretty
sure he doesn't want to know.
Eventually, everyone settles back into their original positions for the long
haul, the air only slightly less tumultuous than it had been before the
unexpected arrival, a faint twinge of hope hanging like salvation in the air.
Twenty-four hours. If Derek believed in a God, now would be the time to pray.
Instead he just sends pleas and begs into the universe, promises and hope and-
and love. He's in love with Stiles. If Derek cared to protect himself, he'd
shut that feeling down right now, prepare for disappointment and heart break,
but he doesn't care that Stiles doesn't love him back as long as Stiles is
alive to not love him back.
Please.
They wait.
...
He is burning alive. It’s pitch black and dripping malice and burning and he
can’t see anything but he can feel bitter fingers trailing painful icy paths
down his arms, his legs, his head- he tries to shake them off, to thrash, to
scream, to beat endlessly at the frozen walls of his prison cage- but he can’t
move his fingers, lacks the spindly limbs and fluid muscles that should be so
easily manipulated; and he’s cryingscreaming- or at least he’s trying to, but
although he can feel large globs of warm moisture dripping down his face and
scarring blood scarlet trails down his rib cage, and can feel his throat
protesting at the exertion of yelling himself hoarse, his mouth is firm shut,
his eyes as dry as the desert.
The darkness whispers and coerces and pleads mockingly- hushed whimpers of
please, help me, please
 and just let go, you know you want to, it’s easy, just let go and you’ll get
peace and rest finally, just let go- and he can’t remember who he is or- or
was, or how to form sentences other than begs for mercy and help that he knows
viscerally, with complete certainty, is not coming, is never coming, because
he’s alone- alonealonealonealonealome the word like the tempo beat of his non-
existent heart that thunders like applause in his non-existent ears that he
knows isn’t how it should be- the word loses all meaning beyond the two
syllables that morph and shift and change into the sharp ‘p’ of pain and please
and panic and phantom and- and- and…
Pack. One syllable. Harsh ending, like attack, like go back, like- He can’t
remember. He can’t remember. He’s sure it’s something obvious. He’s sure he
knew it once. He’s sure- he’s sure-
Lingering blackened nails scrapping across the harsh panes of his stomach-
insidious whispers that he should just give up, give up, give up- the blood
dripping from the side of his mouth, lips sealed, his sounds and cries and begs
echoing in his head over and over and over and over-
He screams and knows that nobody can hear him.
...
When he gathers the fortitude to once again enter the house full of aggrieved,
anxious werewolves- Derek is loathe to admit it, but it’s relatively quickly;
he supposes he’d be quick too if his daughter was involved- Chris brings his
laptop and shows them the video.
Scott rips apart the table.
Allison puts three arrows into the wall.
Erica punches several walls in quick succession.
Isaac still hasn’t moved.
Boyd digs his nails into his thigh until the ground beneath his feet is
slippery with his blood.
Danny promptly sits down with his laptop, hacks into some asshole’s high
security bank account and donates all of the money to charity.
Lydia shakes with a rage so potent- driven also, Derek suspects, by
helplessness, which Lydia detests- Jackson has to hold her back from burning
the entire forest and rebuilt Hale house down.
Peter still hasn’t appeared. Derek should care.
They wait.
…
He’s being flayed alive and torn apart and bitten scratched stabbed mocked;
crying and cursing and screaming and laughing, smiling, Derek’s lips too far
from his own, Lydia’s warm arm comfortingly wrapped around hunched up
shoulders, Isaac’s echoing rippling laughter that heals something in him he’d
always imagined to be broken, Scott’s strange lopsided grin when Stiles beats
him at Mario Kart yet again, Scott, damn, don’t you know how to drive? You’re
supposed to avoid the mushrooms, genius! I am supreme ruler of the universe!
Werewolf skills are useless against the might that is Stiles!, Allison’s savage
smile when he tells her that how to kill demons, Erica’s sharp elbow digging
into his laughing side, Boyd’s quiet understanding when they sit in silence,
Jackson’s snarky retorts that lack venom, no matter how hard the ex-kanima
tries to convince himself otherwise, Peter’s sardonic, sarcastic smirk
stretched from ear to ear, Derek’s voice, soft and low and pitched just so that
there’s a direct route to his libido- the wolf’s hands, his stupid hair and
ridiculous teeth and small, private smile that rings every self-preserving
instinct he possesses because he refuses to fall in love with the failwolf even
though he’s intimately aware that it’s far too late for denial now-
And suddenly there’s a name, and Stiles is being yanked upwards and dragged
somewhere new, needle points tearing at his skin and demanding his return- the
darkness hissing and then he’s falling- tumbling head over heels over head,
face first, flying, slamming into something solid the world tilting on its axis
breathing in harsh sudden breaths and the air tastes like salvation.
Stiles breathes.
…
Derek feels it when Stiles comes back to life- like a rippling jolt through the
pack bond, a swift pulse of life on the edge of his consciousness, like the
tumultuous upending of his stomach on a roller coaster.
He’s standing in the sitting room in the point three seconds it takes Stiles to
sit up, heaving, scrabbling at his chest like a man demented, breaths harsh and
eyes wild reminding Derek of nothing other than a cornered animal.
The pack try and hold him down, lying three abreast on his arms to stop him
dislodging the sword, the vampire’s dire warnings clear and forefront in their
minds. There’s no time for relief, no really, not when Stiles is yelling
disjointed phrases and shaking and slamming his body back against the couch
cushions.
Derek knows he should help, knows his superior strength would be of great use
in preventing the mage causing himself even more damage, but all he can see are
the repeated words- He’s alive He’s alive He’s alive-running through his mind
and suddenly he can breathe again.
...
There are hands holding him down, restraining him, burning, and StilesHeMageSon
shakes and twists and turns and pushes desperately, yellingscreaming, the pain
in his chest building like a crescendo, and voices whispering malicious words
of attempted comfort in his ears.
He knows something is different, now, because his voice rumbles through bone
and sinew and muscle to bounce around his brain rather than the other way
around, but his heart feels like it’s being rendered in two and he desperately
fumbles at his shirt, tearing at his skin, the voices getting even louder in
response to his efforts.
He wants to yell at them an endless litany of stops and pleas, and then he
hears his voice aloud and is reminded suddenly that he is no longer helpless,
that here in the real world he is strong, that he doesn’t have to endure the
pain.
With a quick flick of his wrists where they’re shoved up to his chest he feels
all of his attackers go flying back, hears the heavy thuds of their bodies
hitting plaster, and his fingers are instantly reaching for his chest, reaching
around to feel the blade that rests there.
He can’t think- doesn’t know- can’t remember how it happened over the
relentless thrum of pain in his veins, but the how doesn’t matter.
To resounding cries of dismay, StilesFriendSon is able, finally, to pull the
sword from his heart, can feel the brief gap between seconds where his brain
stops, but then his heart pulses blood again, mending itself with magic and
will, and now Stiles can think again, can focus on something other than the
burn of his injuries.
He’s lying on- on a couch. Black cushions. Familiar. Derek’s couch. Which
means- yes. When Stiles looks around, he is lying in the Hale House living
room, the same grey walls and wood panelling.
When he tries to remember how he got here, all he can recall is their fight,
the tremor of magic ain his veins, the way Derek’s eyes looked as he selfishly
stole his last sight, the feeling of the damp grass against the skin of his
hand when he fell to the ground, and- oh.
It all comes rushing back, along with pure, unadulterated panic, and Stiles
falls to the ground when he tries to move, draws himself upwards, stumbles
through open doors and collapsing to his knees on the grass, hands digging deep
into the soft earth, desperate chimes falling from his lips as he seeks out the
magic that sent him to his grave.
It’s with a relieved cry that he finds it, strong as he could ever have
dreamed, and he slumps back onto his heels, all of his hastily gathered energy
depleting once he’s sure the danger’s passed.
Gentle hands wipe the hair from his forehead, and Stiles doesn’t raise his head
as he feels strong arms lift him from his place on the ground, though he
grumbles slightly at the tension sitting thick in the room he’s carried into.
“S’fine,” He mumbles, exhaustion slurring his words slightly, “Spell worked. ‘S
safe now.”
If anything that ratchets the level of unease and discontent even higher, but
the fabric beneath his head is soft and before he knows it Stiles is drifting
off, the faint smell of Lydia’s perfume winding its way to his brain.
He sinks further into the couch and falls into a dreamless sleep for the first
time in months.
…
When Stiles wakes up next, it is to the pack’s concerned faces, a strange
amalgamation of recent grief, confusion, fear, relief- everything, and it makes
his head hurt.
They’re quick to ask questions, always touching him in some way while he
answers, long ones to the easy questions and short to the ones he’d rather not
answer.
“Yes, I feel fine.” Lie. He feels like shit warmed up. But he’s been dead
before, he can deal with it. And group therapy’s never really been his thing.
“Yes, the demon’s gone.” True, as far as he can tell. Which, since he can’t
even make it four steps without needing support, admittedly isn’t very far. He
wouldn’t allow himself even this brief respite if he thought Baalberith was
still out there, though.
“No, I don’t know how.” Lie. He’s got a fairly good idea what happened,
actually- as good as he can manage without checking further, and really, he’s
in no position to be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Best he can figure,
Baalberith and he ended up fighting for possession of his body, and the loser
got tied to the spell. He’s glad he won. Stiles shivers to imagine what the
demon would have done with power like his. If he’d thought there was even the
least chance…
“Yes, this was my plan.” … Lie.
Erica shakes with anger and no little amount of grief at his reply. “Why didn’t
you tell us? We thought you were dead!” All of the pack imitate her, eyes wide
and glossy with fearful hope, and betrayal at his silence of his plans.
This is the part where Stiles lies. Where he begins to distance himself from
them again, preparing for departure, where he undoes the last few months of
companionship. He’s ready for it, even, and opens his mouth for a flippant
reply, but what comes out instead is,
“Because I didn’t know this would happen!” And he curses himself for sounding
angry, for sounding scared, for sounding exactly like the fragile human he is,
even if has enough power to flatten a mountain if he wanted to.
The world goes silent. The pack still. Stiles watches as realisation dawns on
Erica’s face, on all of their faces, and he turns his away to as to avoid the
fall out.
Derek, who has been awfully quiet since Stiles woke up, speaks up now, voice
low.
“What does that mean?”
Stiles refuses to cower away. It was his mistake that brought the demon to this
plane, and it was up to him to fix it. He will not be ashamed for that.
He still can’t quite look them in the eye.
“It means that the chances of my survival were… low.”
“How low?” Lydia asks, with a voice that could cut a man in half, and she too
breaks her silence now where before she said nothing.
Stiles shrugs helplessly, and if anything the banshee gets more focused and
determined with his non-answer.
“How low, Stiles?” She demands, and Stiles finally meets her searching gaze
with an unwavering one of his own. What is his life compared to an entire town?
What is his life compared to the lives of those he cares about?
“Less than 0.03%.” Lydia curses something fierce in Latin, and walks over to
where he lies up against the cushions.
“You bastard.” She tells him matter-of-factly, eyes thick with the emotion her
voice lacks, and she grips his jaw between sharp, manicured nails to look him
straight in the eye. “If you ever do something like that again, I’ll kill you
myself, you hear me? As soon as you can walk we’re going for retail therapy,
and you are buying me so much clothes. A whole new wardrobe, in fact. And
shoes. A lot of shoes. And then you are going to write to your contact in Paris
and get me tickets to the premiere of every new film out this year. And I’m
taking Jackson. Even to the sci-fi ones you love. And you owe me so many foot-
rubs for this.”
Her voice breaks just slightly at the end, and Stiles smiles lopsidedly at her.
“Sure, Lyds. Whatever you want.”
Lydia trembles once before wrapping her arms around him, fists tight at his
back, face pressed into his neck. Stiles does the same, leaden arms eager to
follow his commands for once, his nose pressed into perfect strawberry blonde
hair, only slight disarray to convey the strength of her emotions.
She releases him finally, discreetly wiping at her eyes, and Stiles does the
same with the edge of the blanket beneath him. Composed once more, the banshee
draws back to stand by Jackson’s side, the wolf quick to clasp her hand in his.
The room is quiet for a moment. This time, it’s Derek who is the first to
speak.
“You can’t do that again, Stiles.” The Alpha is deadly serious, but Stiles
can’t help it- he snorts.
“Can you honestly say you’d have done different?” He asks, with not a small
touch of irony.
When Derek tries to protest, Stiles is quick to cut him off. “No, you couldn’t.
If it comes down to it, of course I’m going to give my life for Beacon Hills. I
can’t allow other people to die when I could do something to stop it. But even
excluding the fact that Baalberith would have wiped Beacon Hills off the map,
and then the rest of the world, did you think for a second I would let him
anywhere near any of you? There is only a handful of people in this world I
actually care for- and I will gladly die before I let any of them die because
of something I can prevent. And if this happens again? If it’s between my life
and the lives of those I love? Hell yeah I’m going to sacrifice myself. And
I’ll do it gladly because it means the survival of more important people than
me.”
Speech over, Stiles sits back into the couch. Derek’s face filters through a
variety of different expressions, before settling on fierce.
“And what about the people who you are important to?” The Alpha asks, lowered
head giving away more than he probably meant to, and Stiles forces his eyes to
find a different target than the man he loves, the man that took death for him
to realise his feelings for.
“They’d get over it.” The mage says, thrown by the strength of his own
reaction- hope and terror and guilt that he shouldn’t feel-, certain that his
way was the only one that ended in the pack and his dad alive, and if that
means his death then bring it on.
Derek closes his eyes briefly before leaving the room, the sensation of his
grief grating at the mage’s nerves- and Stiles is reminded suddenly of his own
selfishness. He shouldn’t have dragged them into this at all, shouldn’t have
even spoken to them when he returned. He still shouldn’t. This was a mistake.
It is a mistake.
Maybe he can still fix it.
…
Exactly 38 hours after returning from the dead, Stiles Stilinski leaves Beacon
Hills.
He leaves behind an aimless pack, heartbroken Alpha, and a banshee who hopes he
knows what he’s doing.
Four miles down the interstate, Peter Hale wipes the dirt of his knees and
listens to his nephew’s pining absent-mindedly while congratulating himself on
finding Stiles’ stash of magic. While he’s fairly sure coming back was entirely
the mage’s own doing, he likes to think he played a small part. He’s tired of
Beacon Hills though. Maybe he’ll try France. He’s heard it’s lovely this time
of year.
Heart too weak to teleport, Stiles drives straight to his apartment in New York
without stopping once.
Once there it takes herculean effort to exit his car.
His friends are quick to his aid, and proceed in thoroughly chewing him out for
his recklessness. They can tell something is wrong and don’t just mean the six
inch silvery scar directly over his heart. Love leaves no physical proof, but
they’re his friends. And he’s talked about everyone else but Derek, at this
point. They’re not stupid people. Some of them are actually geniuses. Stiles
may have a type.
Five weeks, four physical therapy sessions, three hours of sleep, two
interventions and one phone call later, Stiles Stilinski drives back into
Beacon Hills.
He is on a mission.
…
Epilogue
Derek sits down at the kitchen counter, newspaper in hand, ears automatically
listening for sound even though he knows the house is empty.
The pack have drifted slightly since- that night-, and the light drizzle
outside perfectly captures Derek’s restless mood, five weeks since, his world
slowly starting to return to its usual pattern.
He skims through the news section, almost smiles at the comics, ignores the
sports- his determination to continue reading newspapers in this digital age is
something he’s been lightly teased for before, but it reminds him of his mom at
the table while his dad cooked breakfast, and besides, he’s alone now.
He can do whatever he wants.
He ignores the ache in his heart at the thought.
He’s just reached the personal ads section when he sees it. Big block capitals.
A simple note.
It reads, “SOURWOLF. I TOLD YOU I’D PUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPER. SORRY IT TOOK SO
LONG. –S.”
Derek doesn’t dare let himself hope, but his treacherous heart ignores his
misgivings for elation. There’s a sudden knock on the door, and he tries to be
smooth as he opens it, just in case.
Stiles is standing there, soaked to the bone, dark shadows under his eyes, pale
skin patched with red splotches. Derek doesn’t say anything, and Stiles’
nervous grin melts what little reserve he may have had left- he had none, just
to be clear, but pride demanded he pretend.
“Go out with me, Derek?” Stiles asks- demands, really, eyes intent, and Derek
should say no for his own well-being. He and Stiles are nothing alike. They
argue like lawyers in a court room, wielding words like knives. They constantly
snip at each other, sarcastic little remarks that shouldn’t make either of them
smile but always do. Stiles lives in New York, Derek in beacon Hills. Stiles is
only eighteen. Derek can’t deal with the people he loves being in danger, while
Stiles’ entire life is rooted in danger and adventure. And the rainy backdrop
is too much of a movie cliché to even consider accepting.
And Derek knows all this. Knows they’ve both hurt each other. They’ve both
fucked up. Knows there is only one way this can end.
But he still wants to kiss Stiles senseless, regardless of everything else.
Stiles stands, wet and cold and shaking- though Derek is fairly sure magic
would have worked to keep him warm and dry- and he knows suddenly that Stiles
only did this for dramatic effect.
All logic dictates he should turn Stiles down and close the door. Derek has
avoided logic before and gotten hurt from it. This should be the moment he
learn. The moment when he stops repeating his mistakes. This is what logic
demands.
Screw logic.
Derek reaches forward at almost the same time as Stiles, and they collide like
opposing waves, like wild animals fighting for dominance, like everything Derek
has ever wanted.
It’s too hard and too long in coming and far too messy, full of bites and
snarls as the rain slicks the way, and it is undeniably, ironically, stupidly
perfect, though he will never tell Stiles as such.
“Is that a yes?” Stiles gasps when they break apart, smile so bright it burns a
path straight down through Derek’s heart, and logic says he should hate fire
but all he can do is whisper, “yes, yes, yes,” against Stiles’ lips as answer,
ignoring how vulnerable he sounds because if there is anyone who can understand
it is Stiles.
Their next kiss is softer, gentle, no less heart shattering for it, and Derek
can feel his entire world being flipped upside down again and he can’t even
bring himself to care.
“You want to come in?” He asks, far too late, aware that both of them are
already soaked to the skin and going indoors now will solve nothing unless they
get changed, and he’s nearly ninety percent sure that Stiles will shake his
head ruefully and explain that he’s only staying in town for a few hours, not
forever, because that’s what makes sense.
Stiles only smiles and nods, lips once again chasing Derek’s, and Derek is
stupidly irrationally happy that he is not the only one who has forgotten logic
somewhere along the way.
He pulls Stiles with him through the door and shuts it firmly behind them.
He’s willing to give them a shot if Stiles is. He thinks, maybe, they might
even be good.
If they don’t kill each other first.
Derek can’t wait.
Chapter End Notes
     Wow. It’s done. Finally. One year and three months after starting
     this story, it’s finished. I’ve got to admit, there were times when I
     wondered if it’d ever get done.
     Okay, to start with, I’d like to apologize for the long, long delay,
     and I’d give you a reason but the only one I have was that life was
     kicking my ass. So. Yeah.
     A million, billion thanks you everyone who’s been here from the
     start, and the people who picked it up along the way- you guys are
     the only reasons it ever got this far, and I couldn’t have dreamed of
     finishing it without all of your constant support. Seriously. Give
     yourselves a cookie, from me.
     To everyone who has read, kudos’d, commented, recc’d, hell, to
     everyone in this entire, awesome fandom that is Teen Wolf I say have
     amazing, fantastic lives, and the support I got here was incredible.
     You guys got me through some pretty tough times, and I can only hope
     that this story did the same for some of you out there.
     Fanfiction is an amazing tool, and generally my experiences have been
     all kinds of awesome, but it can just as easily hurt people as it can
     help them. So just look out for everyone online, yeah? The world is a
     scary place, and the internet is even scarier sometimes.
     But, like anything, it all depends on the people who are part of it-
     and nearly everyone I’ve ever met through fandoms has been kind,
     compassionate, understanding and helpful- and that’s not something a
     lot of sites can boast. However, some people seem to think that
     disrespecting other people’s fandoms and ships somehow makes theirs
     better- and anyone with an ounce of common sense can tell it doesn’t.
     So if someone’s being a prick, say so. Defend people who might not
     otherwise be able to. Help out those who are new and are unsure what
     they’re doing. Be the people we write and read stories about (unless
     you’re part of the Hannibal fandom. Don’t be that).
     “Protect those who can’t protect themselves”, and thanks for your
     time. Thanks for sticking with me, and with Stiles and Derek.
     As always, no Beta, and Teen Wolf does not, unfortunately, belong to
     me, and therefore Stiles and Derek, unfortunately, are not a couple.
     Woe is me.
     Drop me a comment and tell me what you thought- they always make my
     day!
     Much love,
     H.S.F
      
     We might not all be in the same ship, but we all float in the same
     sea.
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