Title: Temporary Scars
Summary: The sheriff's wife was a beautiful woman, once upon a time.
Character(s): Stilinski family
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Notes: Lyrics from Beyoncé. Posted on ao3 in Jan 2014. Set before "Joy in Being," cis-swapped Stiles, canonical character death. Not entirely canon-compliant.
What goes up, ghost around
Goes around around around around
A few years before a tragic fire gripped Beacon Hills, there was smaller level tragedy unfolding in the home of newly-elected Sheriff Stilinski, whose wife had fallen sick. Her joint pain wasn't dehydration, wasn't arthritis; rather, it was a diagnosis of chondrosarcoma, in the hips and pelvis and spreading. In those days it was summer, a few months before their daughter would turn ten, looking more like her sick mother with each passing day.
The week before sixth grade started, G. Stilinski, who answered to "honey" when her father called, and her given name only when her mother did, made the executive decision to shave her head. By then her mother had been sick a year and the doctors were getting quieter with every subsequent visit, their eyes almost as weary as Mrs. Stilinski's, whose skin was aging faster than it should and whose wrists were more delicate than ever. G. Stilinski was a precarious child, hyperactive and too sharp for her classmates. She wouldn't become 'Stiles' for a while yet. She'd been diagnosed with ADHD during second grade, the disorder just barely being managed now that the added stress of a sick mother. Her father would constantly tell her not to worry, that she was too young to be so frenetic, but that didn't stop the breath-crushing episodes she would still experience after a particularly harrowing night of listening to her mother dry-heave in the bathroom. Regardless, the second-to-last Monday before school, as they were walking down the hospital halls to the cancer unit, the then-unnamed Stiles said to her father, "Can you shave my head?"
The Sheriff stumbled on a nonexistent bump in the tiles, inhaling sharply. Stiles paused, waiting for him to catch his bearings once more, and when he made no move to continue their foray into the hospital she frowned.
"Dad," she said, far too serious for any average eleven-year-old—which she wasn't, her parents knew that—"come on. We came to see Mom."
"You want to cut your hair?" the Sheriff said to her, mouth trembling. He was still in uniform, had picked Stiles up from the babysitter straight after work. The night before had been tumultuous, because everyone involved knew that the chemo wasn't doing enough anymore, would never be the lifesaver they so desperately needed.
Stiles made a face, said, "Not just cut it, but we could do that first so it's easier. I want to shave my head."
"You want to shave your head," he repeated, and Stiles just nodded.
"Can we go see Mom now?" she asked, and the Sheriff took her hand in his, an action he hadn't been able to get away with since his wife was first diagnosed.
When they entered the room labeled Stilinski, Stiles was chipper, greeting her mother with a bright hello and a kiss to both cheeks. She took a seat at the foot of the tiny bed, and her mother turned to the Sheriff for his own set of kisses, but before he could even think of giving her one he blurted out, "She wants to cut off all her hair."
His wife's eyes went wide, even as Stiles rolled hers.
"Shave it," she said, and turned to face her mother. "It's temporary," she said to the ailing Mrs. Stilinski, who smiled sadly in response, "that way, we can grow our hair back out together," and here, the smile faded. The Sheriff looked worriedly between both his girls. His wife, always slender, was all sharp angles now, the weight slipping from the very beginning with no signs of stopping. Her hair is shorn short, a choppy pixie cut that she'd adopted the last winter, when she could no longer cling to her long locks.
The Sheriff's wife was a beautiful woman, once upon a time. She still was, to her family, but she was wilting away before their very eyes. Stiles had her hair and eye color, but even with the exaggerated thinness making her eyes more pronounced it looked off, somehow, wrong in the way they sat in the Sheriff's wife's face and peered out, losing luster as cancer ravaged her body. When they had first married, the tiny Stilinski family had been a beautiful pair, ski-slope noses and full mouths, young and eager to be a part of Beacon Hills. The Sheriff had moved to the town after college, looking for a place to build a home there. His future-wife had been born and raised, a few years younger than he and they had met on a rainy night, running into each other while picking up take-out.
She'd been wearing a black raincoat and her long hair loose, a brilliant smile on her painted lips even after he nearly knocked her over. He saw her again, later, when shopping for food for the tiny apartment he and a friend (who was also a Beacon Hills native, the very one who had convinced his friend to look for work in town), and when he sparked conversation she sparked right back, and two years later when she had her bachelor's in education they were wed in a picturesque June wedding, with pink carnations and ribbons in the flower girls' hair.
When he looks at Stiles, the Sheriff can see his wife's face, and it makes his heart clench with the terror of having to see her grow into a woman without his wife there, a promise of what will come with age. In the present, his wife, his beautiful perseverant brilliantly strong wife peered into the face of their daughter and said, "You want to shave your head? Okay. We'll shave it when I'm back home."
It took a bit longer to finally get around to cutting off Stiles' hair. When the missus got home on Tuesday she was nauseous, and it's not until Thursday, six days before school starts, that all three of them crowded into the bathroom to shave her head. Delicately, as if she were sitting on a throne, Mrs. Stilinski perched on the closed lid of the toilet, with Stiles mirroring the position on the counter. Across from them, nearly pressed to the wall, the Sheriff watched them. His wife's hands, as bird-thin and translucent, carefully clipped away Stiles' hair at the nape, having been washed and braided just that morning. Stiles had beautiful hair, too, down her back even though she hated to brush it and would only ever let her mother do it nicely. It was time for a haircut, yes, but the Sheriff had not expect one so drastic, nor for it to have caused a heavy feeling in his belly as he watched his tiny family.
When Stiles looked away from where she'd been watching her mother's face as she worked, she turned her gaze to him, a frighteningly open and honest look on her face. She smiled, and the Sheriff could see the space of a missing molar on the right side of her mouth. "Is it too short?" she asked him, and he wanted to say yes. He wanted to say that cutting it so short was a bad idea. He wanted to say they didn't need to match.
He couldn't lose the both of them.
Instead, he said, "You could go a little shorter," and both his girls smiled with all of their teeth. Stiles jumped down from the counter and turned, faced the mirror, and not once did her gaze waver as her hair fell down around her.
Stiles tried her best to ignore all the looks she received as school began at 8:30 on a late August Wednesday. She was a bit cranky, having had trouble falling asleep. All she could think about was the way her mother had complained about a headache the night before, and how she'd gone to bed just after dinner, barely seven o'clock and too exhausted to do anything else. She hadn't been working since the diagnosis a year ago. No one ever really talked about what that meant.
Of all the reactions, Lydia Martin's was probably the nicest, or perhaps the meanest. She took one look at Stiles, and then looked away, pulling various friends from the years before to a place somewhere halfway to the parking lot and halfway to the door. Stiles was standing alone, closer to the door than not, in nice pants and a shirt with a patterned collar, which her mother had smoothed over lovingly in the morning, just barely able to drag herself out of bed to see off her only daughter to her first day of middle school.
Stiles was terrified, and with nothing to do about it. She stood outside the school for exactly fourteen minutes, and when there are only two left for the bell to ring, a boy came up to her. His hair was shaggy, too long, and his jaw wasn't quite even, and he wouldn't look her in the eye.
"Hi," he said, and when Stiles didn't answer right away, continued in a rush, "I like your haircut."
That surprised her, and she said, half-suspicious and rather mean, "You know I'm a girl, right?" and the boy blushed, embarrassed.
"I know. I know," he said, louder the second time when all she did was raise an eyebrow at him. He had been mumbling. He hesitated for a moment before telling her, "My name is Scott. My mom works at the hospital. My dad works at the police station," and Stiles got it. She pursed her lips.
"What's your name?" he said after an awkward moment, and Stiles wanted to send him away, wanted nothing to do with anyone. Instead she said, "My dad's the sheriff. And only my mom really knows my name." And Scott's eyes widened.
"Wow," he said, "oh, okay, I get it." He went quiet, then asked, "What should I call you?" and she almost smiled.
"My last name's Stilinski," she offered, and Scott nodded. She thought he looked like a puppy.
"Can I call you Stiles?" he asked her, and she only needed half a second to think about it.
"Yeah," she said, "Stiles works."
Stiles' mother died on a Tuesday, but before that, Scott had asked her what made her want to cut her hair.
"My mom hates cutting her hair," he had said, and then winced, which Stiles thought was stupid. It wasn't his fault his mom wasn't sick; and Stiles was glad she wasn't, too, because Melissa McCall was one of the nicest people she'd ever met, and loved to have Stiles over.
They had only known each other well for a few months, even if they had had shared several classes since kindergarten. Scott had gone to preschool full time, and Stiles only half. Both of her parents had taken time off to take care of her, or at least drop her off at her Nana's, who had passed away when she was in second grade. Stiles didn't like to think about her, because behind all the happy memories of cookies and dress-up is a portrait of her mother crying, still pretty and healthy, but now she was finally alone, with only her husband and daughter left. Her father, Stiles' grandpa who she was partially named after, had died while she'd been pregnant, and so there was no one left to remind her of the old songs or tell funny stories in an accent too rich to be forgotten.
But even if they hadn't known each other long, Stiles knew that Scott was her best friend. And that they would be friends forever, no matter what might happen between then and now. He had terrible asthma, something she'd had the misfortune of witnessing one day in October, when they'd been brainstorming Halloween costume ideas. He'd inhaled oddly, choking, and then he was gasping something about an inhaler in the kitchen drawers, and Stiles had torn all of them open and made a mess before she could finally find it in the one near the fridge. Deputy McCall had been upstairs at the time, so when he came downstairs to find the kitchen a mess and the kids huddled together outside, he had been less than impressed.
But after he had asked her, Stiles had told him, "It's not like its permanent. It'll grow back."
"So like a scar?" Scott had said, and Stiles had looked at him like he was crazy.
"Scars don't go away," she had told him, and he had gotten a bit red at the cheeks, lips pursed. Stiles had wanted to squeeze his face into a smile.
"No, but, they're not as bad once they're old," he told her, and Stiles had thought on it.
"Sure," she had finally said, eager to placate her friend, who seemed too worried about the topic and what others thought of his ideas, "it's like a temporary scar. It's kinda bad at first but it'll be fine at the end. Right?"
"Right," Scott had echoed, but when Stiles stood in the front pew of the church in late January it didn't seem that way. It couldn't, not when her mother had her barely growing out hair all fanned out on a pillow she didn't really need, not when everyone was crying and Scott had hugged her tight enough to ache, not when Stiles couldn't breathe or even imagine how things could ever stop hurting.
On Sunday, she made Scott cut her hair with his dad's clippers.
