Voices in the Dark, a teen wolf fanfic

Title: Voices in the Dark

Rating: M (18+) [for violence]

Summary: Stiles would do anything to protect his Pack. He would even lie, if he thought telling the truth would do them more harm than good. Even if it means slowly falling apart at the seams, himself.

Warnings: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Torture, PTSD, Mates (both platonic and romantic), Pack!Jackson, evil!Peter, BAMF!Stiles, Sheriff learns about werewolves, it doesn't go well, the Pack is oblivious, Magic!Stiles, fanon eye-color explanation, not season 3 compliant, the Alpha Twins aren't so bad, EVIL evil!Gerard, triggers, unBeta'd, language, pre-Sterek, mild Jackson/Lydia, mild Scott/Allison/Isaac, pre-Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes

A/N: The kinkmeme prompt I did this for (which was filled before I completed this, but oh well) is: (dotcom) ?thread=359017#t359017

This isn't a big romance-centered fic - if you come seeking lots of immediate Sterek feels, sorry, but no.

As always, reviews are much appreciated!

ETA (9/21/14): Thanks goes to AO3 user Ash_Cassidy97, for showing me a typo. It has now been fixed; thanks!

-VitD-

Pinned unwillingly against Peter with a clawed warning hand at his throat, Stiles decided he, himself, was the only sane man in the bunch.

Boyd and Erica both were blood-streaked, and hovering near Stiles with ferocious snarls, too weak to take on Peter after tag-teaming to end Kali.

Ethan and Aiden, willingly bound and carefully watched, were naïve and reckless, a spot of uncertainty where the end of the fighting was concerned.

Ennis was dead, killed at the start of the battle, and had been a power-hungry, situationally-blind, beta-level-in-an-Alpha-Pack Alpha idiot.

Kali – still warm, but most assuredly dead – had been a manipulative, flexible bitch, and Stiles had the fresh toe-claw-marks across his stomach to prove it.

Deucalion was crazed, a creature so boozed on the druid-drugs provided by his Emissary that it was going to take four times as much of anything to kill him as it normally would.

Peter was, Stiles was tired of mincing words around the subject, a motherfucking sick psycho-bastard. Really, that was it.

And then Peter decided he needed to move, so his free clawed hand grabbed Stiles' wrist, with the intention of dragging it up behind his back for leverage. Stiles froze, silence roaring in his ears, and unconsciously dove into the place where his Spark lived, flinging it outward in blind panic.

The resulting blast knocked over a couple of trees at the edge of the clearing, twenty feet away.

-VitD-

The crowd had been cheering - cheering for him, for Stiles Stilinski – and he had been frenetic, more than can be accounted to his ADHD, or the Adderall, or the recent game. Warmth thrummed through his body. Excitement buzzed in the back of his brain, right next to that space where his thoughts never shut off while forever searching for more stimulation. The shouts of the crowd, the feel of his teammates piling close in the excitement… it was all wonderful.

Until the lights went out. Then the screams became panicked. Then the crush of fellow players backed off, as everyone rushed onto the field, and everyone tried to find their bearings in the dark. For a second, in contrast, his mind had one of those rare moments – when it was such a drastic change in in-put that his under-stimulated mind was suddenly given something with which it could completely focus on – when his mind seemed to go blank and still.

It was in this moment that hands grabbed him and herded him away. He followed them for a good distance, disoriented and with eyes still adjusting to the dark. When he tripped, and slowed down for just a second to balance, the hands on him grew punishing, and he knew he was in trouble. His yelp mixed with the cacophony of the crowd, indistinct and unknown; it was immediately muffled anyway as he was hoisted up on a shoulder, arms pinned to his sides and face stuffed against a hard back.

A van door slid back, and Stiles was sent flying. He landed hard in the van; before he could get his legs under him, a skilled hand painfully pinched just above his collarbone and he blacked out.

-VitD-

"… and, just… God, Frank, if any of the—" Stiles heard his Dad take a violently shuddering breath before continuing, tense, "If any of the hospitals call about, about Stiles, um, just—just let me know, alright?"

Stiles breathed deeply, himself, and steeled himself against the pain. He'd done this before – hidden evidence of Pack life and danger from his Dad – and he could do it again. No big deal, he reassured himself, hating how hollow it sounded even in his own head, just hold it until Dad leaves the room. As ready as he'd ever be, Stiles stepped into his bedroom doorway in time to see his Dad pacing in front of the night-darkened window, face drawn and pale. Then he – wincing and looking down, once he heard (not unlike he'd been chewing on nails while developing a head cold) the roughness of his own voice – said, "'M here, Dad."

John Stilinski whipped around, dropping the phone from his face. "Oh, my God! Stiles!"

He blinked and, remembering himself, breathed shakily back into the phone, "I've got him, Frank. Stiles is here. I've got him. Thanks." He hung up just as hastily, without taking his eyes from Stiles. The phone dropped for real, this time.

John surged forward, wrapping his arms around Stiles' neck. It took everything Stiles had not to cry out or jerk away. He thanked the stars that his Dad was shaking too badly to feel Stiles' own reaction. Finally John pulled away, and ran a tender finger over Stiles' face, tracing the black and blue bruise that puffed out Stiles right cheek around a small Band-Aid beneath his eye, a bandaged cut over the bridge of his nose, and the butterfly bandages on the right side of his mouth that held a spit in his top and bottom lips closed. John's expressive brown eyes had grown wide.

"Stiles…! What the hell happened to you?!"

Before his Dad could start checking him over for other injuries – find the bigger bandages, touch him again – Stiles stepped back, shaking his head with a strained but sheepish smile. He believed that the roughness would fade from his voice, and focused on short sentences; the pain he was experiencing wasn't something John would notice as long as he didn't show it, but a croaky-voice victim, he would. "T's okay, Dad. 'M okay. It was, uh, just some guys… from the other team. Pissed 'bout losing, y'know? No big deal."

"Who the hell were they, son?" John growled. "Just tell me what they looked like, and I swear I'll—"

"Geeze, Dad. Told you: 'm fine. Just – y'know me; got mouthy. Pissed 'em off. Roughed me up a bit…"

"A bit?" John stepped away, twisting on his heel and tugging at his nonexistent hair. "God damn it, Stiles!" he burst out, furious. His hand flashed out, pointing a trembling finger at Stiles, and the teen couldn't count the ways in which he was grateful that John was obviously much too far away to even attempt to touch him; it would set off all kinds of alarms in the older man for Stiles to flinch, right now. "You've been missing since the game yesterday! Missing, Stiles, for two days!"

Stiles shuffled nervously, mind racing, and responded automatically, blithely, "Well, technically, it was last night. Only off the radar for a day. Mostly."

John glowered at him. "Do not play with me, son. I am not in the mood! You are my son, and I was out of my mind with worry for over twenty hours! The only thing to come out of your mouth right now will be the truth, or so help me…!"

"Th-the truth. Right." Stiles geared up, took a deep breath, and pressed belief at his Dad with a quiet desperation. He was unaccountably glad that John had yet to notice that the jeans he was wearing were Chris Argent's, the hoodie he was wearing was actually Boyd's, or that the too large garments hid most of his skin from his Dad's scrutiny. "So, one 'f 'em clocked me, knocked me out. When I woke up, it was already dawn. I got to the Jeep, drove over to Scott's – phone was dead, 'n' his house was closer. But Mrs. McCall's been at work since pre-dawn, 'n' she didn't get back 'til late afternoon. Scott hadn't been in either; guess she didn't know, mistook me for him, 'cause I fell asleep in his bed. Came over as soon as I woke up. That's it."

The entire time, Stiles looked his Dad in the eye, and believed that John would hear him and take it for the truth; not look any further, not question it. When he finished, his Dad opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but he frowned and shook his head as his eyes glazed over. He blinked, sighed, and clapped Stiles on the shoulder on the way out (didn't notice the way Stiles' eyes squeezed shut, the way he held his breath, tightened white-knuckled fists, went pale as a sheet, for as long as there was contact). "If you say so, son. But next time, I don't care if I'm in the office – you come to me. Clear?"

"Sure, Dad."

"And you're alright?"

"Said I was, didn't I? All it is's a few scrapes, a bump – stuff, y'know. 'M fine." One last push, and the Spark in him warmed with use, and then sputtered out, worn-out from the last twenty-two hours' unusual use. Once more John's eyes glazed; he nodded distractedly, and left. Stiles sighed in relief, and collapsed onto his bed.

Belatedly, he started shaking as reality crashed over him in the safety of his own room.

-VitD-

A rhythmic swinging as he was carried was what roused him at first; being unceremoniously shoved down a flight of stairs into a pitch-dark room came next. Stiles can attest that losing all sense of direction while huddled in massive pain, in an unknown, totally dark room, is one of the worst things in the world. He had no sense of reference for how to react at all.

He groaned, one arm twisting around his bruised ribs, the other hand coming up to cradle his head. Blearily, he turned in what he hoped was the direction of the door (unable to see the stairs he'd just tumbled down), and snarked, "You might want to rethink your bell-boys! The service in this hotel sucks!"

A shaky whimper distracted him from his rant, and his head whipped around, eyes searching futilely in the dark. The idea that there might be others here – besides himself and his upstairs captors – was at once comforting and horrifying.

"Hello?" he pitched his voice quieter than the shout he'd offered earlier, not sure he wanted his captors to know he knew someone else was down here. "Who's there?"

A deeper, muffled noise answered him, followed by the rather ominous clink of chains.

So. His companions – because one person could not make those two distinct pitches – were bound. That was… not exactly promising. But he couldn't just sit there and not do anything, either. If hanging around with werewolves had taught him anything, it was that he couldn't resist the urge to protect people. "Hang on. I'm gonna try to find you. Just hang in there."

He stood up, and chuckled nervously to himself because, God, he felt like an idiot doing this… Holding his hands out, literally blind, he shuffled forward one inch at a time, searching helplessly.

When at last he came into contact with something that might have been human – a fact underlined by the pained moan that issued at his touch – he jerked back with a hiss of his own. A loose wire caught between the body and his palm, and his hands tingled now, burned and numbed by exposure to electricity. It didn't take a genius to note that no human could remain conscious through a constant physical barrage of electrical current, and only a moment after that to think of the one werewolf pair that had gone missing. His knees buckled, and he widened his eyes as he tilted his head back, futilely willing his human eyes to adjust to the darkness and find a familiar face.

"Erica!" He cocked his head, focusing his hearing over the thin buzzing current he could now not unhear, and sought out the second ragged breather, "Boyd!"

He was horrified enough, understanding what was going on right in front of him – but sort of wished he could see it, too, because his imagination would always trump the truth these days, with what he knew the supernatural world to be capable of. But he didn't panic. The thin whimpers he'd heard so far spoke volumes for how undone these two were; the last thing they needed was another panic-inducer. Instead he took a deep breath, and tried to channel two-parts Sheriff Stilinski during crisis and one-part Derek Hale composure. They needed him, his rationality, even if he was only the token human who was not even part of the Pack. Even if he couldn't see them.

As soon as his wish to know solidified, suddenly, he could see.

It was a strange sort-of night vision, all in shades of the honey-gold of his own eyes in the mirror, but he could see. And – where before, he'd only known about his Spark because Deaton had told him of it, and he'd believed the Ash into stretching – now he could feel the tiny pinprick of warmth and promise and power in his chest. He had to forcibly remind himself of his vow to be calm in order to maintain himself at the sight that met him, though.

Erica and Boyd had both been strung up to the ceiling of the basement with silver-dipped chains that burned the flesh they touched, and those had been wrapped in live wires. The current was enough to keep either of them from wolfing out and tearing out the moorings of their bonds, and the sliver coating kept them from simply breaking their bonds. Each of them had duct tape gags, as well.

Erica's hair hung lankly in her face, and her eyes were dull – she showed signs of being beaten, bruises blooming and blood streaking her pale skin, her usually immaculate clothes torn and dirty. Boyd was in no better shape, and his wounds suggested someone had recently tried to turn him into an arrow-sized pincushion. Stiles felt sick.

"Oh my God," he choked. "Boyd. Erica. What happened to you?"

With his gold-tinted vision, Stiles could see the nasty burn decorating his palm; there was no way he'd be able to free them on his own. So he did what little he could, and gently pulled the tape from their mouths. Neither made a move to speak, but both seemed to sag a little heavier in their chains for a moment, in relief. Stiles settled himself cross-legged on the floor in front of them and reached out to rest a hand on their calves. He bit his lip to keep from crying, and ducked his head. He had to stay strong, or he'd drive himself crazy.

"We will get out of here. I swear it. Just hang in there, okay, guys? Just hang in there."

-VitD-

Stiles would spend the next couple of days making sure his wounds were healing, and that he stayed away from… everyone. He was self-aware enough to know that he didn't have the strength to even contemplate being in physical contact with another person yet.

It took three days to approach the Pack, and discover the other side of the story. In his, Erica's, and Boyd's absence – the Pack still managed to subdue Jackson. Apparently, Jackson was not dead, but molting. Peter, Derek, and Scott had all hit a dead-end as to how to deal with him, and as Gerard had approached, they'd all been more-than ready to kill both him and Jackson. It was only the impromptu arrival of Isaac with Allison – and Lydia – that stopped them.

Scott had a deal with Gerard that he fouled on purpose, switching the cancer-inflicted man's pills with wolfsbane so that when he forced Derek to give the Bite to Gerard, his body rejected it. Stiles had to admit that it was a brilliant move on his best friend's part. And while Scott was still not entirely comfortable with Derek, he finally admitted that being part of Derek's Pack (he'd stressed this part, determined to point out that Peter was no longer Alpha) was for the best.

With Gerard gone, and Masterless, Jackson started tearing everything apart, but Lydia saved the day (though Isaac had to deal from being almost completely gutted, and Allison would always have a vivid scar along the length of her right forearm). Stiles was also pleased to learn that when Derek took Jackson and Lydia under his wing – Lydia came with Jackson, because Lydia was Jackson's Mate, no one had the courage to separate them (because you never try to take a werewolf's Mate from them. A Mate was not a choice but a bond. A Mate was not necessarily a lover, though they couldbe – they were an anchor.) – Peter was weakened. Proximity to his life-giver was, apparently, unhealthy for him.

Occupied with Allison's crisis of faith, Scott never realized that Stiles had not been found by John that night. Occupied with ensuring that their new Pack member wasn't about to go on a rampage, neither did Derek or Isaac. So they were all surprised when he showed up asking about everyone. He gave them the same excuse he offered John, not wanting to relive it all (and spitefully grateful that Gerard Agent was dead after all, the mother fucker).

In the week since being told about the events of that night, Stiles' physical wounds had begun to diminish at last… and he had been doing everything in his power to disguise his mental wounds. What had gone on down there was no business of theirs; it was over and done with, and Stiles just wanted to forget it ever happened. Though, it hadn't helped anything that Boyd and Erica had yet to be spotted. It just wasn't Pack without them.

So Stiles occupied himself with their lives, and focused on the Pack problems, and hoped that it would eventually drown out his own issues. Going to Deaton on the sly, and asking for help to train his Spark was just another thing to keep his mind off it all.

-VitD-

In the dark and the silence, Stiles estimated it had been about two hours since he'd been thrown into the basement. His Spark-given sight had lasted maybe half an hour before he began to feel the Spark-equivalent of winded, eyes overtaxed and aching, so he turned it off, saving the rest of the Spark as well as he could. He was new to this whole 'having powers' business, and without training couldn't do too much with what power he did have (he'd already tried believing his wounds out of existence; he could erase the physical evidence, like a glamour, but he couldn't heal).

It was only the feel of living flesh, the sound of ragged but constant breathing, that kept him from totally flipping his lid. Keeping calm was overrated right now, apparently. Surrounded on all sides by darkness, and never sure when the Hunters upstairs would make their first move had him strung even tighter than piano wire.

"Stiles."

Boyd's voice was quiet and rough, not to mention surprising, after the silence of the basement. Stiles' head jerked up and his heart hammered that much harder in his chest.

"Stiles, you n-need to calm down. You're going… to g-give yourself a panic attack," he advised, a bit too late. Even in the darkness, lights were sparkling in Stiles' vision as it became nearly impossible to drag air into his lungs. He was really sorry he couldn't do this any better; their chains started clattering as they fussed, and their breathing filled with various sounds of pain, and he knew this was the last thing they need. But he couldn't help it, and the panic consumed him.

"Come on, Stilinski," Erica murmured, breathless and pained, "breathe. In-two-three-four, out-two-three-four. With m-me. In-two-three-four, Out-two-three-four. You… can do it. Breathe. T-that's it."

He hated that she was the one who's comforting him – he wasn't the one strung up by his wrists to an electrical current, more helpless than he'd ever been before! But it worked, and Stiles managed to find the air coming to him in shaky gasps.

"Sorry."

"What for?"

"You don't need me panicking on top of everything else."

Boyd snorted, and Erica scoffed, "Yeah right! What, we're a-allowed to be affected, but you're su-supposed to… be indestructible? Hate to say it, but even Batman had b-bad days, Stiles. It's… 'nough that you're here."

Stiles didn't have anything to say to that. The silence pressed back in around them again. It wasn't as oppressive as it had been, somehow, and Stiles couldn't have been more grateful.

-VitD-

Stiles knows what people are looking for when they see him. They're looking for limbs that won't stay still, eyes that see too much, a mouth that never shuts up (always seeing the motion, and never the frustration behind those attempts to occupy his ADHD). They're looking for the best friend of Scott McCall (the one that doesn't care if he's become a third-wheel), the bench-warmer who has a few surprises up his sleeve (but only since that last game and his miraculous saves), the hyper genius who doesn't get less than 95 percent on his work (and it's always really only been Lydia who gave him a run for his money). They're looking for the Spark that doesn't give up (because being the fragile human didn't ever stop him from doing insane shit), the human among wolves who uses sarcasm and wit like weapons (though, he was starting to discover, baseball bats with iron cores and specially-treated wood wouldn't go amiss), the link between the world that they once were part of and the world they now exist in (as if being a human, being someone who once couldn't be convinced he was Pack, actually made him less Pack and more human).

He knows how to give people what they want (even if, suddenly, all he wants is to be still, unnoticed and unmissed, unimportant).

So he babbles on about everything (and nothing); gets his homework done (even when it amounts to a great big nothing in the grand scheme of his life right now); makes sure John eats right (not that he'd ever really try to disappoint Stiles, though it's the game they play); attends Pack meetings (and he gets it now: he is part of the Pack, even if none of them has ever said it out loud); trains with Deaton and Lydia (when all he wants to do is burrow under the bed and stay there); attends practice (the bench was easier); and banters with everyone (though it takes so much energy to come up with appropriate responses to everyone, everything).

It's still wrong (because he avoids being touched like the plague – does everything he can to make it inconspicuous and knows if everyone weren't so preoccupied, they'd notice), off (because loud noises and quick movement make him flinch, hard), weird (because he's more prone to being outside now than playing video games or researching; he doesn't want to feel trapped ever again).

But it works (and he's silently let down).

-VitD-

It was a half an hour more in the dark before the lights flickered on with a buzz, momentarily blinding Stiles, Boyd, and Erica. When their collective hiss of pain drew a dark chuckle from the direction of the stairs, Stiles realized that if it hadn't been nerve-wracking before, it was probably going to get a whole lot worse. Instead of the impending panic he expected, he felt his own eyes narrow, and a human – but still impressive, if he did say so himself, for all his actual wolfy-lackingness – snarl ripped threateningly from his throat. He stood and braced himself in front of his dangling companions.

"What do you think you're doing with my Pack?" he snapped. It wouldn't even occur to him what he'd said – admitted – until later.

Gerard – the 'feeble' old Hunter left over from the latest generation of Argents – slowly descended the wooden steps that Stiles' side reminded him he'd been pushed down not too long ago, actually. The ease with which the old man did it really belied his age, Stiles could admit. Gerard didn't answer; he just kept walking, until he was nearly nose-to-nose with a vibrating Stiles (rage, fear, or both, the teen didn't know).

All at once, Stiles found himself seeing stars, and staring even further up at the taller old man. It took far too long to realize he'd been struck hard enough to be knocked off his feet, though for the moment Gerard was patient enough to allow the boy to grab his bearings. Probably something about proving how much stronger he was than the little human, Stiles supposed. A scare tactic.

Well, Stiles would have news for him: If Derek Hale couldn't intimidate him that first night in the woods, an old man sure as Hell couldn't! He was proud of himself for not giving into the urge to stick his tongue out at the Hunter; he had enough presence of mind to realize such a move could only get him into worse danger. Wiping his split lip on his jacket sleeve as he stood up, Stiles felt an eyebrow rise in silent challenge… He'd obviously been spending way too much time around Derek if that was his automatic response. Still, he couldn't deny that, at the moment, Erica and Boyd were both in desperate need of protection – if he could fill that position long enough for them all to escape, he would try.

"Such loyalty from one so young," Gerard praised in a voice more befitting a candy-giving grandfather than this sick parody of elderly wisdom, "I am impressed. My son has a tendency for… stretching the truth when it comes to younger, 'untainted' werewolves. Too soft-hearted, too little like his sister. I wouldn't have believed this alliance if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

"What of it?" Stiles challenged, almost surprised by the steel in his voice. Almost.

"It's a pity, is all. If we'd had your loyalties, you could have been spared." He said it clearly, dispassionately, the same way housewives sighed, Well I suppose it's time to wash the dishes. It made Stiles feel ill, though he did his best to hide it. "But you're already too wrapped up in their ways; even if we got you into our fold, it would be too much of a gamble to think that you wouldn't let your time with them influence your Hunting, your opinion of your fellow Hunters, your prey. It would be much too easy to fall back into old ways."

"As it is," the old man sighed, beginning to circle Stiles like a cobra waiting to strike, "I can't recruit you, and I still need you to tell me what you know about the surviving Hale Pack. Those two won't – their loyalty to their Alpha is hardwired into their instincts – but not in yours. It's a shame. I liked this shirt, and bloodstains are so hard to remove."

Stiles' eyes widened, but he held his ground. Right now, Gerard was focused on him and not the wolves – whatever Stiles could do to keep it that way, he would.

A gnarled hand whipped out and wrapped too tight around his throat, and Gerard, eyes flashing madly, snarled, "Tell me what you know of the Hale Pack, Stiles."

Screwing up his face and dragging as much of a breath as he could beyond the constricting hold, Stiles spat at the furious face, and rasped, "Fuck you, old man!"

As much as he'd like to pretend he knew what he was getting into most of the time, when the Pack led him into trouble, Stiles wasn't prepared for the fist that crashed into the side of his skull.

-VitD-

If anyone was equipped to notice things were wrong, it might have once been John. But a rift had been torn in their relationship on the night that he and Scott went looking for Laura in the woods, and has only grown exponentially. John might like to think he knows his son – and Stiles really, really hopes John still actually does, because it would hurt more than he'd like to admit if they've grown so irreversibly far apart that they aren't even the same people anymore – but right now, even that didn't matter. That is: John has to be around for him to notice anything. Stiles doesn't fault him for it – the man was fired for a short time, over something Stiles had done – but it still added up to the truth that John was just as oblivious as everyone else in the wake of Stiles' time spent in the Argent basement.

A couple of months ago, Stiles would have then said – if John weren't able to notice a major change in his son's life – Scott would, hands down. Then the boy met Allison. It wasn't like Stiles fell out of his life… It was more like Stiles became the estranged Teen Titans Robin to Scott's Superman, instead of the faithful Dark Knight – that is: Scott generally knew of his existence. He once again became more than a prop friend in that interesting time when Chris denied Allison the right to date Scott. Behind the lines he was there as emotional- and bro-support when Scott felt particularly down. But then Allison and Scott ignored the Romeo-Juliet thing and kind of just got back together behind the scenes anyway. Stiles will always consider Scott his best friend because he is – who else wanted to hang out with the hyper kid in elementary school, was there for him to cry on when his mother died, would put up with him during all those middle school med adjustments, and then follow him out to random crime scenes in high school – but there are lines. The day that Scott hung up on him while he struggled with a paralyzed Derek for two hours was the day that Stiles realized that, just because Scott was his best friend didn't mean that he was dependable. At the moment, all Scott could do was mourn the loss of Allison, and that was very peripheral to the issues in Stiles' life; he felt bad foisting Scott off on Isaac, but he couldn't deal with that drama on top of his own, and Isaac seemed willing enough to be an ear for the broken-hearted.

Isaac – since Stiles has known him, anyway, not just known of him – has always been a bit more sensitive to the moods of those around him. Looking back, Stiles can say it probably came from being abused, and thus developing a need to be aware of the moods of people close to him to be prepared for the worst. But Isaac and Stiles had yet to get particularly close; Stiles figured it would probably happen, based on the fact of, well, Pack, but it wasn't something that had occurred yet. Isaac looked up to Derek, and did his best to remain in the Alpha's good graces. And at heart, Stiles knows, Isaac is a softie – give the kid someone to hover over, and it sends him to seventh heaven. Stiles, when he spent the effort, could see just how much Isaac has begun to reorder his world around Scott, even so. Nothing outside of Scott – except an Alpha order – would get his attention right now.

Lydia had never noticed him except for just recently. Jackson had only noticed him enough to either bully him, or (more on Stiles' own head) demand a restraining order. The day either of them cared about his immediate well-being was the day Lydia got a fifty on school work, or the day that Jackson started ignoring lacrosse. All in all, it was probably better that they were wrapped up in each other, anyway; Stiles did not want to be cornered by a blood-thirsty kanima again, if that was even something that could happen (and with Stiles' luck, it wasn't, but Jackson would find a way anyhow).

Stiles didn't even want to think about what Peter thought of all this. Stiles had never trusted him to begin with, and coming back from the dead was really the final straw. He'd be glad if the older man just… disappeared. It didn't help that – in spite of getting weaker because of Lydia's presence – Peter had only gotten more… sneaky. Everyone knew he was up to something.

And Derek. Derek was never meant to be an Alpha – that was a post that should have gone to Laura, had gone to Laura, but was stolen by Peter – but circumstances being what they were, there it was. Derek had to care about the Pack first, and he hadn't yet figured out how to monitor the individuals at the same time. The last one he was going to worry about was the one human who was still a for-sure part of the Pack all on his own (Allison had a lot to work out and Lydia at least for now was just present because of Jackson, after all). And when he wasn't busy worrying about the welfare of the Pack, Derek was actually more busy trying to figure out just what his uncle was up to then anything.

Stiles didn't want to air his dirty laundry – hell, he wanted to forget! But it still hurt that he could be so transparent (he knew he wasn't hiding it well enough), and still not be noticed. He was, at this point just waiting for Erica and Boyd to show up.

(There was one place it was different. Where he was, ironically, peaceful. In spite of going to Deaton for training on a regular basis, the older man was as tight-lipped as always. His eyes – and his actions – told Stiles that he knew of the teen's hardships… but he never chose to speak a word of it, or to hint of it to any of Stiles' oblivious Packmates. It was surprising to find that it was a relief to just focus on his abilities, learn about wards and runes and words of power, without worrying that he would be expected to do or say something like pre-basement Stiles. He had long-since learned that if the good doctor cared to press anyone because he was worried about them, it was Scott; there was no pressure on either side to be something they weren't, other than student and teacher.)

-VitD-

Stiles came back around with a moan, the insistent throbbing of his cheek and eye beating an unfair tattoo in his skin, in time to a steady ache near the back of his head. A shaky hand was carding through his hair, and a warm, solid presence made itself known at his back.

His eyes snapped open, and he shot bolt upright. Instead of sitting up though, he ended up jack-knifing when his ribs violently protested. A warm hand pressed against the pain, and a rumbling voice murmured, "Easy, Stiles. We've got you. Easy."

A numbing spread from the point of the hand on his ribs, and settled in a feeling not unlike getting a drip of morphine, without the sleepy after-effects. As the pain in his ribs faded, Stiles realized that he was still faintly dizzy from shooting up so fast, and that the minor light of the basement would have made his head throb worse – as it was, the sense of numbness just deepened. He looked down at Boyd's hand in shock; he'd thought Scott could only do that with animals. But black veins of stolen pain were disappearing over his dark, burned wrist around thick sliver cuffs, and Stiles gaped up into slightly dulled golden eyes.

"Bo—" Stiles rapidly backtracked. Using the other teen's last name when it was clear that he was protecting Stiles from pain when he himself was also clearly in so much more agony didn't seem right. "Vernon?"

For a moment, the surprise meant that the gold fell right out of his dark eyes, and then Boyd wuffed softly in one part amusement and two parts annoyance, the silver collar around his neck clinking gently. "Call me 'Boyd', Stiles; I hate my first name, you know that. And yeah, it's me. How're you doing? It looked like that bastard hit you pretty hard."

"…'That bastard'? I—I'm fine, all things considered. I might have a concussion; I don't' know." he offered, eyes darting to take in Erica – still petting one side of his head with one hand, the other busy pressing his own (removed) shirt to the throbbing lump on the back of his head, and with a set of silver manacles and collar of her own – before asking, "What—How are you—Why did—?"

"Gerard. And 'why did they let us out of those chains', you mean?" Erica volunteered softly. Gingerly Stiles sat up, nodding – slowly, in concession to his throbbing head.

"While you were out," she pulled her petting hand away and offered up her arm for him to inspect. A pinprick of black blood had beaded at the crook of her elbow, and angry blue-black veins radiated over her skin from what was obviously a needle prick, now that he was looking at it, "they injected us with wolfsbane. We're weak as newborn pups right now, and the silver doesn't help."

Rage and terror warred for precedence in his head, and he settled on terror, hands snapping forward to quickly-gently cradle Erica's arm, almost missing his target. He could feel the blood drain from his face, and he looked at her with too wide eyes, head whipping around in spite of his dizziness, to take in a gaunt Boyd and spy the darker wolf's own needle mark. Were they going to die, right here, where he could do nothing except watch them slowly, painfully expire?

Even if his emotions hadn't been so prominently displayed on his face, his heartbeat, the tremor in his hands, and the scent of shock and horror would have been broadcasting him to their senses anyway. Boyd moved forward to reclaim his place right behind Stiles, a steady presence at his back and a slow breath above his ear, and Erica gathered his face in her palms, abandoning the makeshift bandage, forcing him to look her in the eye.

"Stiles," she insisted firmly, "We're not going to die. They don't want that; they want us around, if only to use as collateral for either you or Derek." She smirked grimly, eye blank and distant, before she distractedly shook her head and focused back on the human in front of her. "They know what they're doing. While you were out, Gerard told us that they've been experimenting on werewolves as a Hunting family for centuries. They know how far they can go without killing Boyd and I; we're not dead yet."

Stiles searched her eyes for any hint of false bravado, finally relaxing when he only caught vicious anger at her captors. She was still fighting. And if Erica was fighting, Stiles had noticed over the months, it was almost guaranteed that Boyd would be right there. So for now, they were alright – hurt, tired, and imprisoned, but as well as circumstances and emotional state could lend.

He leaned a bit back into Boyd's warmth, and brought a hand up to catch Erica and reel her in as well. It was well-known that wolves were social creatures, and – while Derek had insisted several times that werewolves were not wolves, and that he had no desire to 'cuddle' with his growing Pack – Stiles had caught the way that (after the older man was done freaking out over skin contact) Derek would relax in the physical presence of his Pack members. There was a need in the werewolf psyche for touch, and right now that was all they had available to them in this basement. Stiles would do what he could, be what he could, for these two.

"Alright, okay. I'm okay," he soothed, though he didn't relinquish his hold. "And we're going to make it through this – all three of us. Sound good?"

In spite of having been the one to convince Stiles they were not dying while he watched, Erica said nothing, burying deeper into Stiles' shoulder instead. Boyd's arms tightened minutely around Stiles' waist, dark knuckles going pale where they fisted in the back of Erica's shirt. It was this display, as nothing else had, that informed Stiles just how lost they were. Sometimes Stiles was quick to pick up on things no one else would think of, and sometimes he was slow with the most obvious things. This was one of those times.

What Boyd and Erica needed wasn't someone to be strong for them. They didn't need somebody to take blows for them. They didn't need a master-planner to get them out of this. They needed all that. They needed an Alpha.

And he'd already sworn to be what he could be for them.

"Hey!"

Two heads jerked up, eyes gold with the adrenaline his snapping tone had conjured. He let belief take over, hoping that the months of hanging around a Pack had impressed itself well enough on his psyche. It wouldn't be perfect, because he was human and using the direction provided by the Spark as opposed to his own instincts, but he hoped it would work well enough to serve his purposes. He met their eyes and centered himself, and believed. "Are you listening to me?"

They nodded, bewildered.

"We. Are. Going. To. Live. Got it?" He couldn't growl like a wolf, but he could make a good impression; and his eyes wouldn't glow red, but he could glower with the best of them – thank you, Derek. The Spark in his chest warmed subtly, and then dimmed again; their reactions to his actions would be their own, and he'd have it no other way. When they both shifted from staring at him to unconsciously bearing their throats, he knew he'd won them over.

Imitating the power-show he'd seen from wolves on a nature documentary once, he slipped his fingertips over Erica's throat – and felt her shiver, then relax in submission – and kept moving his hand until he'd wrapped his whole hand comfortably around the back of her neck, instead. He did the same to Boyd. They submitted to him, and in turn he'd done his best to show them that he both understood, and didn't devalue them for submitting to a human. They were his Pack, however temporarily, not his underlings.

"First thing's first," he murmured, and was gratified to feel the weight lift from their shoulders. They had an Alpha – however weak his sway over them was, being only human – and were getting orders they could follow. They didn't have to worry about this all on their own. "Boyd, Erica, I want you to try and get some shut-eye. I'll keep watch… Doubtless you'll hear anyone coming before I do, though."

He'd meant it as an order, but he was still surprised by their responses. Nobody ever really obeyed him without some kind of fight, and the responses they offered him proved just how desperate they were for guidance.

"Alright, Alpha," Erica muttered softly before practically going boneless in his lap. Boyd's grip shifted so it was looser, more comfortable, around Stiles' waist, and he pressed his cheek into Stiles' shoulder blade, breath fanning over Stiles' neck and shoulder, "Yes Alpha."

It was utterly strange for a werewolf-to-human interaction. Maybe he was better at this than he thought? At least he could offer them some kind of comfort in this place.

-VitD-

Two weeks after his return home, Stiles was driving down to the old Hale house – the Pack's designated training ground, while the loft was their less formal meeting place – when a familiar-voiced howl had him breaking, and scrambling out of his beloved Jeep. Moments later, a wolfed-out Erica barreled through the tree line and skid to a stop right in front of him. More quietly but just as fast, Boyd followed, taking a cue from Erica and stopping in front of Stiles. For a long moment, the three of them stood close, just looking at and breathing each other's air, as Stiles' shoulders loosened and the other two reverted to human.

Then Stiles breathed a shuddering sigh, and slipped a hand around the back of Boyd and Erica's necks, drawing them forward to press both of their foreheads to his shoulders. They let him guide the motions, and made sure that they never touched Stiles' forearms (he'd gotten better – he had been frantic about touch two weeks ago; now, if he was initiating, he could be… okay). He turned his head and buried his nose in each of their necks, taking in their scents when they took in his. It was more of a comfort thing for him than it was for them – for them it was instinct and grounding – but that didn't mean it didn't help calm him.

"Boyd. Erica. I'm glad you're alright. I was getting worried."

Erica didn't bother to lift her head, choosing to mutter into his skin, "Sorry, Al—"

"Erica," he berated firmly, "remember what we talked about."

This time she did lift her head; her eyes, brown now, were two parts chagrined and one part fond, "Yeah. I'm sorry we worried you."

"Sorry," Boyd grunted, dark eyes deeply sincere, his expression, like always, making up for his lack of words. For once, Stiles let emotions rule his spontaneity, instead of his mind, and framed Boyd's face with gentle hands, thumbs rubbing careful circles over the werewolf's cheeckbones. Boyd's expression softened even more, and he rumbled, "I'm fine, Stiles. We're sorry."

He found himself grinning softly, and pulled them back down for a moment, arms around them both once again. Then he pulled away and ushered them into the Jeep with a quiet, "Don't worry about it; you're here now. That's what matters."

Stiles maneuvered his Jeep over the familiar forest road, a true smile on his face for the first time in a week and a half. When he finally broke into the clearing, the rest of the Pack were all there, and their attention was all riveted on his arrival – no doubt drawn by the fresh scents of their formerly-missing wolves. When the three of them got out, Boyd quietly greeted everyone in his usual detached manner, and Erica greeted everyone, unusually, in the same way. The Pack was glad enough to be whole again that nobody paid too much attention to the withdrawn behavior of the two teens, perhaps chalking it up to the last couple of weeks and stress.

Soon enough, training was once again under way. Derek continued to train his pups; Stiles and Lydia each worked on their own abilities (guns and fire-starting, respectively); and Peter stood back and took it all in, leering especially at the 'defenseless' humans. If Boyd and Erica stayed a little closer to Stiles than they would have before, no one noticed, and if their concentration was a little shot, everyone let it slide.

Stiles, personally, was just glad of two pairs of eyes who didn't just watch, but saw.

-VitD-

According to Erica's watch, they'd been trapped in the basement for going on five hours when Gerard showed up for a second time. Stiles' body was ahead of his brain: he was swaying but on his feet, fist clenched and teeth bared in a vicious human snarl, before he could process it. He tilted his head back toward his pseudo-Pack, and murmured quickly, "Don't say anything, alright?"

As Gerard came into full view, Stiles directed his attention there without seeing whether or not Boyd and Erica had agreed to his order; he had to trust that they knew he knew what he was doing. Furiously, he barked, "What do you want now?"

"I want," Gerard sighed, shaking his head in mock disappointment, "what I wanted before. I want all the information you have on that flea-ridden Pack of yours. I was, perhaps, a bit too overzealous in my last attempt," His eyes gleamed with menace as he flashed a rigid grin at his prey, "I promise I'll be more careful this time."

Stiles wondered mildly if he'd regret this. "And what makes you think now is any different than last time? I will never betray my Pack like that!"

"I have my ways, son."

He gestured at the top of the stairs, and two Hunters stomped down clothed in dark pants, shirts, and sunglasses – like some kind of hitmen or bouncers. They kicked the poisoned Erica and Boyd aside, obviously relishing in their stolen power and the tiny yelps their actions drew, before swooping in to each grab one of Stiles' arms. He twisted painfully, trying to lay eyes on his tiny Pack.

"If you hurt them, so help me, you assholes—!" he growled. In response, his arms were manhandled painfully upwards, tied in place to the rafters like Boyd and Erica had been earlier (minus the electrical current). The position forced him onto his toes, and offered him only the view of a calmly approaching Hunter, instead of the other two teens.

The flat of Gerard's hand rapped against his injured ribs, tearing an unwilling cry from his throat. The old Hunter made use of his distraction to ask mildly, "Tell me about Derek. Was he the one to kill my daughter?"

He growled, accidentally creating an animalistic harmony with the two crouched far behind him. Without warning, a gravelly voice barked, "Answer him, cur!" before a hand with too-long, ragged human nails gripped his hip hard enough to draw blood. Staunchly Stiles remained quiet. Even though Derek hadn't been the one to kill Kate, to tell one thing to these Hunters would be to open the floodgate, and he wouldn't do that.

From behind him, Stiles heard Erica snarl fitfully, sounding ready to attack. Fear lent him strength as he twisted and writhed wildly on his own arms, drawing attention to himself, "No, Erica! Stay there, both of you!"

The growling didn't stop until the free-handed of Gerard's helpers walked out of Stiles' line of sight, and – presumably – kicked Erica. There was a small scuffle, some whimpers, and then the man returned, smug.

"What, don't want your little 'friends' to defend you?" the man sneered, glaring into the corner where Boyd and Erica were curled up. Stiles dignified that by spitting in the man's face, earning himself a curse and a kick to his knee. And then the questions really began.

"What about that Alpha, before the Hale boy; who was he?"

"How many members are in that Pack you're part of, Stiles?"

"How has that Scott brainwashed my granddaughter so well against her father?"

"How many innocent people have those monsters in your precious Pack slaughtered?"

"What are they to you that you would be so loyal, Stiles?"

Some of the questions were shouted, furious, searching; some were smothered in honey, coaxing and gentle; all sought his breaking point. Every touch that landed on his skin brought pain. Eventually they graduated from their fists to their feet, then added a cattle prod to that, too. Stiles screamed until he was hoarse – sometimes insults, sometimes begging, sometimes just wordless cries of pain. But no matter what abuse they visited on him, Stiles refused to tell them anything of significance.

Eventually they left again, and Stiles remained strung up. Bruises were blooming, dark and ugly, all over his torso and arms; small cuts and vicious burns littered his skin; and streams of blood poured from the deeper wounds inflicted on his torso. When the door shut, he flinched at the noise. He let his head flop forward onto his chest, and his eyes closed.

When a warm pair of hands wrapped around his wrists, he jerked away with a whimper (though, with such a hoarse voice, it was more a squeaky breath of air), bracing himself for pain. In the time it took for the fog to clear from his mind, Boyd had already untied the simple rope knots keeping Stiles suspended, and gingerly lowered the human teen to the ground. Reminded of why he was fighting so hard to be the center of the Hunters' ire, Stiles' eyes raked feverishly over his charges – aside from some bruising where they'd been kicked aside occasionally over the course of Stiles' torture, they were just as they had been. Stiles relaxed gratefully.

"Alpha…?" Erica whined, worried. She and Boyd both laid hands over Stiles' skin – he couldn't hold back a violent flinch, but he forced himself to acknowledge who was touching him, and it was… okay. The numbness of taken pain began to seep into him, allowing him to honestly relax for the first time in a few hours. It was enough to temporarily bring him back in touch with reality.

"Wh—" trying to speak, he dissolved into painful, tearing coughs instead. He felt himself rolled on his side, and Boyd's large hand rubbing the parts of his shoulders that weren't injured firmly while Erica gingerly mopped at his face and neck with the remains of his shirt, swiping pain-leeching fingers over his throat at irregular intervals. Swallowing drily once the fit had passed, he tried again, with more success (wondering if speaking was so wise though he couldn't bring himself to shut up, even if he couldn't feel the pain).

"When they come back, I need you to stay out of it, alright? They're gonna beat me to a pulp, and the two of you are already weakened enough. We need someone who can still function, when we get a chance to get out of here. That's more likely to be one of you, as the supernatural creatures here."

He rolled his head to get both Boyd and Erica in his sights when neither of them answered. "I said: is that clear?" he growled, voice even more gravelly thanks to his current state. They both reluctantly nodded, "Yes, Alpha."

He winced, and thought of something else. "And I need you to stop calling me your Alpha, okay?"

Their distressed whimpers tugged at his heart, and he spoke hurriedly over them, "No, no, no – not like that. I'm not gonna die, and I'm not abandoning you; we're all getting out of here together. I promise. I accepted the position – I'm not denying or rethinking it – but the Hunters can't know just how much we mean to each other. We can't give them a foothold like that. And, you know… I'm only human; your true Alpha is still Derek. Just – please remember that, okay?"

Slowly, Boyd nodded, and rumbled, "Alright, Al—Stiles. We will."

Erica shot the dark wolf a glare, and grumbled under her breath – like the teenager she should have been, without epilepsy or lycanthropy – "Fine. Whatever."

-VitD-

Over the next couple of weeks, Stiles was both flattered and worried by Erica and Boyd's actions.

Whenever Derek texted to call a meeting, Boyd and Erica would both text Stiles immediately after, to confirm whether or not he was coming. He kept saying 'yes' because he had the sneaking suspicion that if he didn't show up, they wouldn't bother to, either. It was strange to honestly feel like part of the Pack, when – before Gerard – he would have laid all his money on just apparently being the token human sidekick. Granted, he only felt the part because he was so in-tune with Erica and Boyd, and they kept convincing him to come hang out, but the others were slowly (unknowingly) warming him to the idea, too.

During training sessions, if Derek offered suggestions – in his gruff, quiet, no-nonsense, brisk way – as to their form or strategy, everyone nodded and took it into account… but moments later, one after the other, Boyd and Erica would both shoot Stiles a quick look, as if to say, 'Did he make a good point? Or should we just nod to humor him, but ignore him when the going gets real?' It had taken Stiles off guard the first time it happened, but he nodded to them once he understood what they were looking for. After that, he always seriously took Derek's suggestions under consideration; so far, he'd (very discreetly) shaken his head only once. It was a little intimidating to be reminded how much they were proving they depended on them.

He'd been worried that they'd forgotten the fact that he was human – and thus couldn't be the true Alpha their inner werewolf's needed – and that they would look to him for everything. In fact, their eyes had recently gone from the gold of Omegas (Packless Omegas were more brown, and he was glad that none of the Pack had ever sported that), to the bright blue of an Alpha's chosen Beta – it was odd that Derek had chosen two, but nobody in the Pack was contesting it. Stiles knew that meant that Derek trusted them to follow him, knew that their eye-change meant they acknowledged and accepted the role, and knew that their moments of doubt would be noticed. So he was more than a bit relieved when, during a pixie attack, when Derek gave orders, they didn't take a precious moment to clear it with Stiles.

(The incident also served to reassure Derek somewhat. The man wasn't blind, and Stiles had cringed, to watch his shoulders get tighter and tighter every time members of his Pack – his own Betas – turned right around to get the approval of someone else over him. It had made the Stiles-Derek relations, as of late, a little tense.)

One of the good consequences of this 'Betas-follow-Stiles' development was that, as long as Stiles remained suspicious of Peter, neither of his fellow survivors liked the older, reanimated wolf either. The rest of the Pack was getting edgy around the man – he wasn't really going to very great lengths to hide his leers in the humans' directions, wasn't trying to dampen his creeper vibe, and wasn't doing much to hide the fact that he was hiding something from the Pack – so it wasn't that big of a development… But with Erica and Boyd firmly on his side, he knew he had someone in the Pack to work with, aside from the cautious uncertainty that was held about Peter by Isaac and Derek; the wavering uncertainty-slash-anger held by the two who had been done wrong by Peter, Scott and Lydia; and the general unconcerned, I-am-not-a-part-of-this-madness, as held by Jackson, the prick.

Whenever Jackson approached him, and tried to pull the old bully-Stiles routine, too, Erica and-or Boyd were there, hovering and growling. They gave the sense that if Jackson tried anything other than speaking, he would be forced to eat his actions (and maybe more). After a while, Jackson just retreated and kept to the tiny bubble that was himself and Lydia.

When Stiles tried to hang out with Scott – like the bros they were – it became awkward, because of each of their hangers-on. Isaac was always one step behind Scott these days, like a puppy; anywhere and anything Scott did, now it was Isaac who was there instead of Stiles. And – like run-ins with Jackson – either Erica or Boyd were there for Stiles. He wasn't complaining (most of the time it was Erica, and what red-blooded, possibly-bi young man would complain about a hot girl tailing him?), because their constant presence was both comforting and gave him a sense of safety that Pack no long quite managed.

If Peter got within five feet of, or stared without relenting for over ten minutes at, Stiles, both Erica and Boyd were there, without question. They flanked him and growled sub-vocally at Peter until he backed off, and then still hovered protectively for a while. Each time.

When Allison – sheepish, guilty, lonely (because apparently the need for regular contact that comes with being Pack affects even humans, after a long enough absence) – showed up one day, Erica and Boyd both shadowed Stiles all day. Scott was cautious, and stuck close to Isaac. She didn't make Stiles nervous (or angry or sad or scared) because she had been ignorant of her family, and having yet another human around was actually reassuring, so eventually his companions chilled out. He laughed on the sidelines as Isaac and Scott awkwardly tag-teamed Allison – the one to keep a worried eye on the other, and the other to try desperately to reconcile. Stiles was curious to see where Isaac would fit in – because he and Scott fit well together, and Stiles could see how he could fit with Allison, too, oddly.

His interactions with Derek were a bit different than with any of the others. They'd been stilted since Erica and Boyd showed back up, for how few and far between their one-on-one interactions had been, anyway. Most of the time, if he was caught alone by Derek, one of the other two would shoot him a look – as though asking, You got this, or you want back-up? – and if he looked a little lost, they would amble close. If he shook his head, they respected his wishes, but still stayed a bit closer than normal. But if Derek was especially irritable, he'd growl an Alpha order and they'd run off with the others.

Most of their conversations were simple, as though Derek had come over with a plan only to forget it the moment he showed up, but didn't want to look stupid. But on one occasion a while ago, Derek squared his shoulders, huffed threateningly (though what he was thinking, Stiles wasn't sure, because Stiles hadn't legitimately been frightened of his tough-guy act in months), and spoke sense. It'd gone something like this:

"Hey, Derek! What's up?" Grin, wave, keep out of range.

"They're my Betas." Glower.

"Um… yeah. Of course they are," Shuffle confusedly. "Why are you telling me?"

"Boyd. Erica." Grumble, stalk a little closer. "They're my Betas."

"I know." Raise patient eyebrow, offer nervous deflection. "I didn't teach 'em to do this; it's all them."

"Mine."

"Yeah, Derek, I get that!" Annoyance. "Look… I'll—I'll talk to them, okay?"

Grunt. Stalk off.

And that was all she wrote. He hadn't approached Stiles with that line of conversation since.

Stiles had brought it up in passing to both Boyd and Erica, just so his heartbeat wouldn't betray a lie if he had to tell Derek that he had spoken to the two. Both had blinked, and then nodded, nervous and fidgety. Then Erica had quickly explained – when Stiles wouldn't quit pinning them under a 'mom' gaze – that well, yeah, they were Derek's Betas; they weren't planning to discard that. Much. It was just… They wanted to keep making sure Stiles was okay.

Really, Stiles – still avoiding all involuntary touch to his forearms and hands, still jumpy, still plagued with nightmares and running on too little sleep as a consequence, still just a little achy in the places where he'd been the very worst hurt – had no problem with that. Might have even been a little pleased, a little (lot) grateful for their particular knowing attention. Enough that he'd waved off their nervousness, hugged them in gratitude, and changed the subject.

Whatever happened, they were there. No matter what, no matter who, they had his back. And it was fun to be so close that he got to watch as they awkwardly danced around each other, too.

-VitD-

When the Hunters returned, with Gerard in tow, they came armed with liquid wolfsbane in spray bottles. The instant Erica leapt to her feet to defend Stiles, they caught her in the face. When the boys' attention was stolen by the way she went down with an ice-cracking shriek, the misted liquid flew again, striking Boyd.

Kneeling weakly in the center of two writhing, chained, black-vein-laced werewolves, Stiles growled ineffectually at their attackers. His will wouldn't be broken – not by this, not by them!… Still, when one reached for him, he flinched.

They cackled, pleased that their work has left its own mark. Then they leaned forward and caught Stiles' arms up again, manually pulling them above his head.

Gerard looked him over, eyes traveling and considering, emotionless as a cook cataloguing a side of beef. His cold blue eyes landed on Stiles' own, and they were heartless and calculating. He flapped a hand at his minions, and they stepped lightly over the moaning forms of Stiles' wolves, dragging Stiles along for the ride. They didn't bother to tie him up, the heat of their bodies pressing against his sides, their sweaty palms too tight on his wrists. Gerard grinned, merciless.

"You're strong willed, young man. I had not expected that. You won't tell me anything, will you?"

Stiles almost – almost – didn't have enough spit in his mouth to take the shot. He got slapped for his aim.

"No, you won't. Too loyal. That's why we're here to have some fun, instead. Right boys?"

One grinned, snapped his teeth closed entirely too close to Stiles' ear for comfort, and just about purred, "That's right, Boss."

The other nodded, ominous and silent.

Stiles let himself hang in their grip even though the pressure hurt, focusing on not whimpering, not giving these bastards what they want.

"I've learned, Stiles, in my many, many years as a Hunter, and an information gatherer," Gerard continued, hands clasped loosely behind his back, pacing slowly, eyes never leaving the tableau of Stiles framed by his hired Hunters, "that with the tough ones, sometimes you have to break them before you can get anything useful out of them."

He turned around to bend over his bag of tools, and Stiles wasn't an idiot: a veiled threat like that wouldn't make it over his head. He was aware where this was going, and he could only pray like Hell that someone – anyone – would realize he's missing, damn it! Or, that he could hang in there long enough to get a way out for Boyd and Erica, at the very least.

He quickly lost track of time.

They weren't looking for lasting or obvious injuries – they were looking for ways to hurt him, and the smaller or less lasting the wound, the longer they could 'play', the more canvas of his skin they had to deal with. He ended up with tiny scrapes, sealed with salt; vicious friction burns, stroked at odd intervals with various abrading materials; strips of burn from the last session, alternately treated with direct ice or heat; long, thin slices on the bottoms of his feet, making every shift of his weight painful.

But even when they take small breaks, the dull burn of his over-stressed shoulders, the ache of joints pull tight by his full weight, and the sweaty, nearly-numb hot-spots of the hands of his captors on his wrists and forearms, was a constant reminder as nothing else was. Every time the hands squeezed, he sobbed. Every jostle of his arms left him breathless. Every involuntary spasm of his muscles made him cry out.

By the time they dropped him where he hung, he had been reduced to a desperate waterfall of words. He's not sure what he said – except that it was a benediction for his release. He can't remember any of the words – except that none of them concerned Erica or Boyd; he forgot them. He just knew – again and again, a mental loop he couldn't tune out – that whatever he screamed, whatever he sobbed, whatever he tried to use as collateral, coercion, bribery… none of it was about Pack. He had to protect the Pack from these monsters. Don't talk about the Pack. Again and again and again, until the words lost meaning, and his subconscious was left to decipher the pieces.

When a trembling hand reached out to touch his shoulder, he didn't even have time to process the feeling of numbness before he choked off a scream, inched sideways (too weak to power the full-body lurch he'd been aiming for), and blacked out.

His arms were a no-go area.

-VitD-

It had been almost three months since Stiles, Erica, and Boyd were held in the Argent's basement, and almost a month since Allison cautiously showed back up. Derek had gotten it into his head that the humans and wolves should start being put through the same paces, as befit a Pack.

While Peter loved to stare at (and consequently, upset) the humans, he really didn't see the point in training with them if they weren't going to be Bitten… that, and, with Lydia still around, he just wasn't a match for most of the younger wolves, let alone Derek. He slipped away often without too much notice, made easier by these two facts, and his recent not-so-stellar standing with his nephew.

The effect of the group training was multipurpose. For one, the humans got a larger workout than they ever managed on their own – and this meant, in the grand scheme of things, that they could keep up with their Pack in dangerous situations more easily. For another, the wolves and the humans all became familiar with each others' fighting styles, learned each others' weaknesses, and were able to come up with plans of attack based on whose style fit with whose, for any number of emergency situations. And lastly, it meant that the Pack bonded – and closer Pack bonds meant that they were more in-tune with each other, more willing to forgive old hurts and learn to live and work together, more aware of any one person's emotional and physical wellbeing at any one time, more conscious of missing spaces in the Pack when someone didn't show, and stronger as a whole.

As a result, they discovered flaws in their styles – ways that certain members fit together than others, things that others were better or worse at for any given mission. They learned that – no matter what – Jackson would always fret over Lydia, Scott would always fret over Allison (and increasingly Isaac), and Boyd and Erica would always fret over each other and Stiles in equal measure (Nobody noticed if anything set Derek off; these hypothetical exercises always made him tense). If they were doing something that might be dangerous, Derek tried not to put any of those combinations together, not wanting to end up with a scouting group (or whatever) to fail because they were frozen by a scratch on their attached companion, or something. But worse (or better, Stiles didn't really know), some of the other Pack members were also beginning to cotton on to the fact that Stiles wasn't as fine as he made himself out to be.

Not that it mattered in the long run, though: an accident ruined all the secrecy Stiles had coveted.

Because of the Pack bonding, Jackson had become closer to everyone (and less of an asshole, for what it was worth); Derek had loosened up some; relations all around with Allison were easier, and Scott announced that they were Mates; Isaac was trying his hand at covertly wooing the duo, though Stiles was pretty sure he was the only one that noticed; Stiles got slowly used to approaching and being approached by others once more; and Boyd and Erica realized they were so close because they were Mates (platonically, though not for long, Stiles knew). It was good for morale all over.

When Derek spontaneously declared it to be a fun day, not a training day, Stiles got into it with the best of them. Stiles and Jackson had slowly been growing more cordial, without a middle-man to balance them out, and had faced one another playfully when the opportunity presented itself. However, when Jackson began roughhousing with Stiles, it all went to pot.

Everyone thought it was okay. Everyone was having fun (especially in Peter's absence and Derek's newly-revived inner child). Stiles was man enough to put up with some playful wolves (it helped that he'd gotten over how jumpy most involuntary touches made him). Jackson was aware enough of human fragility to play lightly, where Stiles was concerned. Play-wrestling – or puppy scuffles, as it was known affectionately by the humans – was a common, harmless game.

In an effort to get leverage without hurting his weaker human opponent, using a fair and common move, Jackson pinned Stiles arms above his head in the dirt. All hell broke loose.

As far as Stiles was aware, the moment a pair of hands wrapped around his wrists, he lost all track of time. His breath froze in his chest, his body went rigid, his sight blurred, noises telescoped meaninglessly, and his conscious world narrowed down to the feel of that tight, sweaty, painfully enduring (loose, mild, gone as soon as his heart spiked) grip on his arms. He wasn't aware of the faltering, keening whimper pulling itself from his painfully tight throat, even if everyone else was. The moment Jackson (was tossed away by an unconscious, directionless Spark flare), Stiles curled up, hands tucked to his chest, though his mind didn't register the loss of grip or his own movement.

The moment Stiles' Spark roared to life, throwing Jackson into a tree with splintering force, Boyd and Erica leapt into action. The sharp, cloying tang of mindless terror in the air did its best to pull them into flashbacks as well, though it was less successful than it had been on Stiles: they were still marginally aware of their surroundings. Erica roared furiously, a mother bear protecting her cub; Boyd howled viciously, a rabid dog on the hunt. Eyes flashing a dangerous bright blue, she'd crouched low in front of Stiles' shaking body, snarling violently at anyone who moved closer. Boyd – eyes also blue, and coldly furious – slowly pulled an unresisting Stiles into his arms. He buried his nose in the hair on top of Stiles' head, without taking his eyes off of the 'danger' that the other wolves represented, and let a low, rumbling growl be his voice. Erica backed up, and settled down beside her two companions, voice lowered to her own growl, and began carding clawed fingers through Stiles' hair, all her attention now focused on him once she was assured that Boyd was on watch.

"Stiles, baby, it's alright. You're okay. We're here. Shh-shh-shh." Erica crooned softly. "It's over; we're here. Feel the sun, Stiles, feel my hands? You're not there anymore. Whatever your head's showing you, it's not real anymore, Alpha."

When she slipped up, Derek automatically growled and stepped forward, unaware that he'd defended his post until Boyd's head snapped completely up and he barred his teeth with a fierce snarl. Those blue eyes showed no recognition at all; that was what frightened Derek the most. He backed up (though he kept his eyes on Boyd's; he was not going to submit to his own Beta), backing up behind his startled Pack. It seemed to appease Boyd, because the young man laid his face back in Stiles' hair, his disconcertingly-focused eyes once more the only things showing.

For all the strength of the charge of shock that had rippled through the Pack, Erica – hyper-focused on Stiles – had noticed nothing of the exchange. She merely continued to murmur endlessly to her trembling human, gently petting him, waiting with all the patience of one who had experienced this before, for Stiles to reemerge from his comatose state.

Though Scott was Stiles' best friend, when he stepped forward in concern, he got a similar warning reaction from Boyd, not quite as vicious but still eerily defensive. So did everyone who tried to get close. It was really becoming clear to the Pack just how close Stiles was with Erica and Boyd… and no one could figure out why.

Erica kept murmuring; kept stroking Stiles' hair, face, neck; kept her attention focused, laser-like, on Stiles. Boyd kept watch, slowly – slowly – coming down from the adrenaline, beginning to recognize Pack again… but still no more willing to let anyone else closer. Stiles remained a trembling, unresponsive collection of nerves in Boyd's arms. The Pack – none of them daring to draw Boyd's ire, but just as unwilling to leave – stayed still as the long minutes passed, steady as cooled molasses.

Slow enough that at first, even Erica didn't notice, Stiles came back around. His hands tightened convulsively around Boyd's wrist, his eyes blinked and focused up at Erica, his muscles relaxing one-by-one. After twenty long minutes of worry and tension, the teen stiffly pushed himself up into a sitting position, and caught sight of the lingering Pack. He blinked, long and slow, like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

"Aw, shit," he sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. His hands traveled up into his hair, and his nails raked over the back of his head, the thin buzz-cut not enough to protect the skin of his scalp from developing bright red welts in their wake.

"Stiles?" Boyd pressed quietly; Stiles knew, if he just asked it of them, Boyd and Erica would pack their things and be gone with him in under an hour, no question, to anywhere and for any length of time he wanted. That kind of faith – that kind of caring – was a heavy burden. He pressed himself against Boyd, his back against Boyd's front, and pulled Erica against his up-drawn knees. If he was going to do this, he needed them as close as possible. No reason to fall into a debilitating flashback minutes into the telling.

He opened his mouth to start explaining… and ended up simply gaping like a fish. He tried again, and got the same result. Finally he just buried his face in Erica's hair, and let her do the talking.

"We were with Stiles the night he disappeared," and she was good at pretending that Stiles wasn't shaking apart directly behind her. Her poker face, Stiles mused hysterically, must be awesome. "Or, rather – he was with us…"

-VitD-

"…'ll use…"

"…antiseptic spari…"

"…rful! It's not as bad for him as it…"

"…on't want to bind it too tight; don't forget – he's only human."

Stiles woke slowly, the world wavering in and out like a bad radio signal. But for the last… however long, it had just been the one voice speaking. Quiet, male, calm and clear, focused. It took another couple of minutes until Stiles realized that he was hearing Chris Argent, and still more to determine that the older man was talking someone through the basics of first aid. Stiles didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because – of course – the only one with decent first-aid skills in this hell would be a Hunter related to his tormentor…!

As Chris commented about bindings, Stiles felt bandages tighten carefully around his chest. He looked blearily down, and saw a familiar pair of female hands working on his wounds. Allison's dad was talking his wolves through the proper care of their injured human. It took some effort, but he was able to move his focus up, and ended staring at Boyd. Specifically at Boyd's downturned, black-lined face. He looked like, if his eyes hadn't been so unfocused, he'd have been watching Stiles. As it was…

Boyd was blinded by the wolfsbane. Stiles… couldn't bring himself to understand.

He must've made a noise or something, because suddenly Erica's focused eyes were on him. In the background, he could hear Chris protesting calmly, "He really shouldn't be awake yet; can you put him back—? No, look at him! He's panicking too much," and Erica was laying her hands flat on his chest, sending out such numbing waves of werewolf morphine that he slipped back under before he could help himself. And that was okay. He didn't want to recognize what they'd done to Boyd (even if he already had; denial was easier).

-VitD-

Haltingly, taking turns where one knew more than the others (because of relative injury and level of consciousness at the point-in-time being discussed), Erica, Boyd, and Stiles revealed the story of their capture, torture, and escape at the hands of Gerard and Chris Argent. Stiles, for the most part, stayed silent, and let Boyd and Erica narrate.

Everyone had sat down, and most postures indicated discomfort – legs up-drawn, arms wrapped around them, shoulders hunched. Stiles didn't blame them, but he really couldn't sympathize right now, either. He'd lived this, not just listened to it in the aftermath, and he'd not had any support afterwards for too long. That wasn't to say some vindictive part of him believed they deserved this – no, none of them did – it just wasn't worth the effort to feel bad for them. Not when it was taking everything he had not to drown again. He was too cold to feel much at all right now, in fact. And Boyd and Erica kept talking.

-VitD-

When he woke for a second time, the process was much quicker, he was incredibly more lucid, and only a dull throb resounded throughout his body.

Slowly, Stiles levered himself up on his elbows, and when that didn't hurt too bad, continued all the way into a fully-vertical position. He could feel the scratchy friction of bandages wrapped over various parts of his torso, even if Boyd's hoodie got in the way of actually seeing any of it. His lacrosse pants, too, had been ruined by blood and mud and more, so somehow they'd managed to get him into a strange pair of jeans, presumably Chris'. At least he could assume he looked mildly put-together now, and wouldn't just fit right in on the set of a bloody horror movie.

Curled up in mere inches from Stiles was a two-person puppy pile of his wolves. Seeing the glint of silver chains, burns, and the remainder of wolfsbane poisoning made Stiles ache for Boyd and Erica. The turning of a page in the still room drew his attention away from them. Immediately, he locked eyes on the quiet form of Chris Argent some feet away, settled calmly in a folding chair, with a paperback in his hands and the remains of a first aid kit leaning against his chair.

"You."

Stiles didn't realize he'd spoken until Chris looked up; Stiles reached back mindlessly and smoothed a quick, trembling hand through Erica's curls and over Boyd's head. They still needed him, and all three of them were still captive; this was no time to let fear get in his way.

"You're awake. I'm glad. You've been out of it a while."

Stiles didn't both to dampen his incredulous-furious-terrified stare.

"My father left in kind of a rush; he asked me to make sure our 'guests' didn't get out, but not to bother myself with them directly. It wasn't hard to put two and two together and realize that he was 'interrogating' someone. Even if he doesn't take the Code seriously, I do; I had to make sure he was being fair," Chris' stare intensified, as though he could convince Stiles to believe him based on eye-contact. "When I came down here and saw that he'd been 'talking' to you, and not your… friends, I had to do something."

For a moment, the silence hung heavy in the air between them. Chris winced, and jumped to defend himself from Stiles' condemning look. "You're just a kid! You haven't even killed anyone! And you're not even a werewolf! Look – I know my father wouldn't like you just on principle. You've aligned yourself with them from day one. His attitude towards you, and your Pack, didn't surprise me. But I couldn't just let you die in here, either."

"So you have no plans to let us go?"

Chris shifted, eyes flickering over the half-sleeping, half-unconscious forms of Boyd and Erica. Stiles felt his anger grow. "Oh hell no. Hell no! You do not get to be like that! Let us go! Can't you see just how sick that bastard is?!"

"Excuse me, but that's my fa—!"

"Screw you, buddy!" Stiles snarled from where he knelt, keeping his voice to a low hiss in deference to both the worn out wolves at his back, and the raw hamburger in his throat. Fury was a roiling ball of fire in his belly, and he finally had a target that wasn't intent on turning him into a human bruise. "You saw what that beast did to me! You can see what he's done to Boyd and Erica! You can't sit there and tell me with a straight fucking face that they deserved one second of this! They're just kids, Chris!"

The emotions dancing over the older man's face were hard to read, so Stiles didn't bother. He was on a roll, anyway. "They're your daughter's age. We all are. And you're entertaining that son of a bitch under your roof, with your food, and your guest rooms, while he comes down here and—and does this to us!"

The Hunter was looking distinctly pale now, and Stiles went for the jugular. "And if he can do this to me, knowing I'm human," Stiles lower his voice to a hollow whisper, "What do you think he has done, to innocent others… might even do to Allison, when she remembers – because she will, you know it's inevitable – what life-with-Scott versus life-without-Scott is like?"

"No!" Judging by the look on his face, Chris hadn't meant to say that out loud, and surprised himself just as much as he didn't surprise Stiles. If there was one thing the boy knew, it was the lengths a widowed father would go to protect their only child. "… No. He—he wouldn't do that. Not to his own granddaughter."

"Wouldn't he?"

Stiles sighed, and shook his head, backing off. "Look, you know what side of things I fall on – I'm no Hunter, and my best friend is a werewolf. That probably tips the balance some, and I never claimed to be Switzerland. But all you have to do is look around you to see that your… father… has done more than just tarnish your 'Code'. He's gone way too far for whatever he's after, and I'll bet my entire DC Comics collection that he's willing to go a whole lot farther. He's using Allison, Chris. He's using the fact that you're unwilling to stand up to him, and still looking for guidance without your wife. He's using this whole mess with Jackson and the Change. You have to draw the line somewhere."

Stiles looked down at Erica's hand where it'd curled instinctively around his own. The bright blistering and darkly crusted variations of burn around her wrist where stomach churning. He placed his hands on either side of the silver manacle, making sure to avoid the burn, and looked back up at Chris.

"This," he nodded downward, and dark eyes were drawn to the injury he'd framed, "is not something you do to an ostracized, lonely, recently-healed teenage girl, Chris. The person who did this? That is not the kind of person I'd want to have influence of either my daughter's life, or mine."

He hated the vulnerable look he could see creeping pas the Hunter's mask, into his eyes, but it had to be done. Slowly, so very slowly, Chris nodded, biting his lip in indecision.

"You're—I—Yeah, you're right. I was willfully blind to this, because I thought… Allison would appreciate some stable family in her life that wasn't me, after—after Vi—her mother."

"Chris," Stiles murmured, putting desperation and pain into his voice, "please. Let us go. Not one of us has ever hurt another human, and I'm not even a werewolf. We're hurting. And – God! Our parents… well, my Dad and Erica's folks, anyway… They'll be worried about us. Please. Let us go, and stop Gerard. Before he does something you can't make up for."

The sounds of vulnerability in his voice did what their earlier heated argument had not, and woke both Erica and Boyd. They crowded around close to him, loyal as ever. Something about them seemed to finally strike a chord with Chris, because he was riffling though his key ring with an urgency that Stiles usually only saw out of nurses at the hospital on emergency duty. He tossed a silver key at Stiles even as he stood, and took a couple of steps toward the stairs before he turned around.

"Get out of here; I don't know how well I'll be able to stop him. You can't be anywhere near here if he comes back. I'm going to try and save my daughter." He gripped the handrail with white knuckles, and ducked his head, "I'm so sorry. That doesn't make up for what he did to you… but I'm so sorry."

And then he was gone.

With fumbling fingers, Stiles fought to unlock his wolves' chains. Heavy, nightmare-inducing clanks echoed around the basement as each manacle fell, and then they were free. Between Stiles and Erica, they managed to guide Boyd out of the house and into the tree line that started in the back yard.

Once they hit the safety of the trees, Stiles backed up rapidly, the weight of Boyd's arm suddenly too much to handle. His heart was racing with dread, and his gut was heavy with responsibility. He swallowed his fears, choked on them, and finally managed to pull himself together into some semblance of respectability and look Erica gravely in the eye.

"Listen to me, both of you: I'm the Sheriff's son, and a human – Gerard can't just snatch me off the street after this, because my Dad will be having fits already, and he's got the pull to get the Department up in arms to protect me. There will be subtle eyes everywhere on me for a while. But the two of you…" he shook his head hopelessly, "You're werewolves, and apparently that's enough for that insane old man. More than that, your folks… Boyd, your mom likely hasn't even realized you've gone missing, with how many nights you spend at various Pack houses these days; and Erica, while you're parents will be worried that you haven't contacted them yet, you have spent the night at some Pack houses and forgotten to call them lately. They won't have probable cause to go to the police, and even if they did, they can't attach a detail to you like my Dad can with me. You'll be sitting ducks; Gerard is a crafty, cruel bastard. He—he can't get his fucking hands on you!"

Stiles paused and took a deep breath, realizing he had to calm down at least a little after his final sentence made Boyd flinch in surprise at the volume. God, his throat hurt.

"Look… I'm gonna use some of my Spark, to ensure that your bodies will be able to purge to wolfsbane. It's just a boost to your natural healing, though – it won't work right away, and I don't have the juice right now to heal you both. After that, I'm going to head home. I need the two of you to run. You understand me?" As he spoke, he lifted his hands up and held them so close to Boyd's face that he could feel the heat (and even that was almost too much, if not for what this could mean for his wolves' survival in the coming days), forcing belief into the darker wolf's skin, that it would be able to expel the poison instead of succumb to it. It left him breathless. He immediately turned to do the same to the black smears over Erica's cheeks, hearing her labored breathing. The fact that he started to sway did nothing to diminish the best Alpha command expression he could muster: Erica paled, and nodded. "You run as far and as fast as you can. You stay in the forest, stay away from people, keep off the trails."

He dragged a shaking hand over his sweaty forehead, grateful for the small drop of Spark he could feel left inside of him – he had a feeling he would need it for his Dad. "I'm—I'm so sorry for what this is going to do to your parents. But we can't risk him getting his hands on you. Either of you. You stay out here, you stay out of sight, stay on the move, cover your trail, until you're both in top health again, yeah?"

Again, Erica nodded, worry in her expressive eyes.

"If you get seen again, it's best if the both of you can manage to defend yourselves. Find caves, tall trees, abandoned cellars, whatever you can to get shelter. I don't want to have saved you from the human element just to lose you to the natural one. Be smart about how and where you hunt; take it easy so you can heal. I'll worry about you until you're both home safe." Paranoid, he glanced back in the direction of the neighborhood where the Argent's house was. He flapped his hands at Erica, shooing.

"Go, go! Be safe. Come back soon. You can do it; I'm so proud of you."

If there was one thing watching Derek had shown him, it was that one of the best things an Alpha could do was let their pups work things out on their own, and make sure they knew they were praised when they did well.

With one last worried, helpless, teary glance back, Erica hauled Boyd's thick arm over her shoulders more firmly, and took off at a steady clip. Their footsteps faded into the distance in seconds. Stiles' heart lurched into his chest, tight with something far deeper than concern; he took another breath and steeled himself against it, because he knew it would be a constant ache until his wolves were back safe in his arms.

Then he turned slowly around, and began a slow jog in the direction of the school, keeping inside the trees. Now, of all times, he was glad that the end of the lacrosse field ended at the edges of this forest – it meant he could reach his Jeep in the parking lot without too many eyes spying his not-so-grand escape. He was headed home.

-VitD-

Allison grew steadily more green, until she darted to the side to throw up, shaking like a leaf and sobbing.

Scott's eyes went wide and wounded, and kept moving over what he could see of Stiles, as though the physical wounds still existed and he could take Stiles to his mom.

Isaac grew wooden, eyes going blank, half present and half returned to the black bleakness that the Pack knew his father had visited on him only in a nebulous way (something, Stiles had once heard in Isaac's sleep, to do, horrifyingly, with a freezer and a padlock).

Lydia – so very composed in some of the worst situations, unless it involved the death of someone she cared about – was cool and dry-eyed; Stiles would have been fooled, had he not known her so well, or seen the fists clenched, shaking, at her sides.

Jackson's face was twisted in a rictus of horror, twitching at every new blow verbally rained down on the narrated Stiles; he was a high school bully, not a psycho torturer-slash-murderer.

Derek's hands were dripping blood, the result of unsheathed claws loosed by fisted hands, his pointed teeth were bared in a snarl, a low-level rumble was shaking his chest, and his eyes remained a narrowed, shiny ruby-red.

Peter, as was his practice lately, was absent.

When the story reached the why's and wherefore's of Stiles aversion to uninitiated hand and forearm touches, Jackson promptly followed Allison to her bush-turned-privy. Bully he might have been, but mindless, heartless Hunter he certainly was not.

By the end of it all, the Pack looked horribly conflicted; Stiles dimly hoped none of them would have nightmares, but knew that – for now – that was just wishful thinking. Stiles knew he would, for sure. Derek seemed to come back to himself, took an appraising look at his shattered Pack, and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to call a Pack sleepover. Everyone would sleep in the Loft tonight, dragging all the available mattresses into the large living room to sleep in one big pile of limbs and blankets. Shakily, heartily, everyone agreed, making whatever arrangements or evasions they had to in order to clear it with their parents; they were all old-hats at this, by now.

-VitD-

Stiles was right. More than one scream, choked off or sobbed, woke the others that night. He hated being right like that. (Even if most of them were his.)

But at least this time there were there to comfort one another. For the first time in too long, the hot press of too many bodies was only startle-worthy, and not panic-inducing.

-VitD-

They barely had a week of reprieve after the full disclosure to settle themselves – to learn how to deal with the gaping emotional hole left in their midst, to learn what pity versus support meant and how each affect the trio of survivors – before school began anew.

And, of course, because the Hale Pack had been fate's chew toy ever since the fire, immediately there was trouble: a pair of new twins in their grade were werewolves. Alpha werewolves.

Derek had been distracted with caring for his Pack – and even if he hadn't been, there hadn't been all that many signals to pick up on in the first place, oddly enough – to realize that an Alpha Pack had entered Beacon Hills territory. When Scott told Stiles what he smelled (because it wasn't like every werewolf wore a freaking badge on their chest for those with human senses to identify!), Stiles had a minor Blue Screen of Death moment.

When he rebooted his brain, and realized just what Scott had told him, his blood boiled. He was sick and tired of everyone and their grandmother marching through Beacon Hills with the intent to do ill will towards his Pack! They'd just had a bonding moment over the last pain-in-the-ass villain – were they allowed no breaks from supernatural death threats?!

So he did what any impulsive teenager with an attention span and self-preservation instincts negatively affected by a combination of ADHD, PTSD, lack of sleep, and too many close encounters of the deadly kind with various and sundry would do. He marched right up to one of the twins, tapped him on the shoulder, waited for the telling flare of nostrils and recognition-narrowed eyes, and then smiled like a shark, and gestured both into the nearest empty classroom.

"Gentlemen, if you would? I so would like a word, on behalf of my Pack."

The door shut firmly before Scott or Isaac could even realize what Stiles had done.

-VitD-

Stiles counted Derek lucky: the older man had been literally getting in his face since day one, and that was one of the only reasons that – as Derek leaned so far forward into Stiles' space that he could see the individual flecks of fluorescent color in the Alpha's red eyes – Stiles did not freak out. In fact – and this was the strange part – having Derek so close was actually helping Stiles keep a clear head.

"What the hell were you thinking, Stiles?! You are a human! They are Alphas; they could kill you without a thought, and you purposefully left yourself alone with them?!" he snarled.

Stiles – feeling more like pre-basement Stiles than he had in months – shrugged blithely, and grinned in a way he knew infuriated Derek. "I was thinking, Sourwolf, that they wouldn't kill me on school grounds in the middle of the day. We didn't know what they wanted from us, but I figured it couldn't be just to kill us, otherwise they would have already engaged; they have a purpose, and getting targeted by LEO's for first-degree murder of the Sheriff's son wouldn't help anyone.

"Besides," he felt his grin grow, and Derek only growled harder, reaching out mindlessly to grip Stiles' collar and shove him up against the wall (it wasn't horrible at all, and Stiles did an inner dance of glee, over the moon to experience a touch without anxiety again), "I found out what they want. Surprise!"

(Reacting in his stead, Erica and Boyd stiffened and frowned; they weren't about to face down their Alpha for their Stiles, but it was only because said human was breezing along just fine. Scott squawked in outrage; Allison winced; Lydia smiled, strangely enough; Isaac squeaked in surprise; Jackson flinched; and Peter out-right laughed. Peter didn't know anything, and it showed.)

Derek huffed a tiny, shocked breath into his face, and his hand clenched a bit tighter in the cloth near Stiles' shoulder, but otherwise he neither moved nor gave any other indication of being shocked. Around the room, however, the others were making their opinions on the matter more well-known.

"You what? Stiles! That's what you were doing?!" Scott sounded like he was one squeak away from a panic attack.

"Stiles!" Allison once would just have commented as Scott's backup; these days, she said it because she truly did care about Stiles' well-being.

"Nicely done, nerd." He was still a little off-balance after the basement-thing, but at the end of the day, Stiles could count on Jackson to be Jackson.

"Oh, yes, very well done, Mr. Stilinski! It takes qualities like that, I keep telling you…" Peter immediately agreed, but had to add his own sick twist to it – Stiles just wondered if he'd ever give into the notion that there were just some people who would never want to be Changed.

"You didn't think at all," Boyd chastised quietly, eyes sharp even from across the room and seen over Derek's shoulder.

"That was dangerous!" Erica was bristling with about as much anger as Derek now; the difference was, he was mad at Stiles, while she was mad at the circumstances surrounding Stiles which had forced him to this new low.

"Oh, Stiles…" Isaac moaned, sounding like he would drown in despair of his reckless family, if only worry didn't choke him off first.

"… the death of me, I swear…" Lydia, goddess of poise and grace, merely sighed in exasperation – she was smart enough to realize that it had already happened, he wasn't dead, and it would do no good to shout at him about decisions long-passed.

Stiles cackled quietly when he got such a diverse range of reactions, pleased with his proverbial haul. It did not improve his Derek-collar-wall situation at all. When a long moment drifted by without anyone asking, a smirking Peter finally voiced the question they all wanted Cheshire-Stiles to answer: "So, what does the Alpha Pack want, Stiles?"

Stiles very manfully resisted the urge to shoot a raspberry at the elder Hale over Derek's shoulder. Derek was Not Pleased, and it would do Stiles' slowly-growing desire to be reunited with gravity no good to level up to Very Not Pleased.

"It's simple: their leader – calls himself the 'Alpha of Alphas', if you can believe it – wants to add Alphas to his Pack," he turned his full attention on Derek, looking him dead in the eye, and dropped the bomb. "That means you, Derek."

Dark brows furrowed. "What?"

Stiles sighed, "They want you to join their Pack. And to do that, you have to kill all of us. Which I'm really thinking you're probably opposed to doing, huh big guy?"

There was a second where even the humans could have heard a pin drop in the next room, and then Derek really did drop Stiles (before he was even done speaking), scrambling backwards so fast that he tripped over the coffee table in the middle of the room and ended propped up on his elbows on the floor on the other side. His eyes were grey-green again, and wide with horror. Stiles pulled himself to his feet with a groan, dusted off the seat of his pants, and aimed a stink eye at his Alpha.

"What the hell, man? I mean, I know I just recently got over most of the bad-touch thing, but seriously? You don't have to drop me on my ass like that!" But most of the fire went out of Stiles when he got closer, and noticed just how pale Derek was. "Derek?"

"I would never—How could they even—There's no way I would—Not to you! Not to them!" Derek choked, green with the implications.

Stiles rolled his eyes and insisted calmly, "Yes, I know. That's—"

"You know?!" Derek sounded caught between panic, relief, confusion, and maybe a little hurt.

"If you would let me finish…" Stiles growled, advancing on his still-shocked Alpha, "That is what I said right before you dropped me. I know you don't want to hurt any of us; no Alpha worth his salt would, and you're a good Alpha."

Derek looked a little shell-shocked.

Slowly, the others dropped their own opinions – once Stiles frowned pointedly at them – and Derek found himself with a Pack that, actually and honestly, accepted his position. Even Scott admitted that he thought Derek made a good Alpha, someone he had found himself over the months, willing to maybe try submitting to. (Nobody noticed Peter leave; what they noticed was how the atmosphere lost a lot of its overcharged intensity).

With everyone from the human who had the hardest time trusting, to the oldest, most stubborn wolf (that wasn't a Hale) accepting him, Derek felt his power as Alpha of the Hale Pack grow and settle.

Stiles huffed good-naturedly as Derek climbed back to his feet. And then whined, as the attention shifted from their Alpha back to their pseudo-suicidal human.

-VitD-

Over the next couple of months, various members of the Alpha Pack approached Derek and tried to convince him to join them.

The first was Kali – a born wolf with a vicious streak as long and awkward as her toenails, and just as well-utilized. She screamed bloody murder at Derek when he held his own; he shouldn't have been able to, wouldn't have without the support given by his whole Pack.

The next was the muscle-bound Ennis. He didn't do much negotiation. Mostly he just charged Derek like a bull. They managed to get away from him after Stiles distracted the crazed Alpha by tossing a red throw-blanket Derek had left on his loft couch over his head as he leapt forward, in fact. The gangly human chattered about the irony all the way to the subway station, until Derek threatened to tear his throat out with his teeth.

The Twins tried convincing Derek to join them, but they were not such good fighters unless they did this odd body-melding trick (and even then, the one-body seemed to adopt the tricks Ennis favored, making the one-body predictable). When they were clearly out matched by Derek, they fled, and narrowed their focus back to simply keeping the Pack on their toes at school.

When Deucalion finally showed up, it threw Derek for a loop: the man was blind. Who had ever heard of a successful blind werewolf, let alone an Alpha, and certainly let alone an 'Alpha of Alphas'. Still, whatever the man had going for him, even blind he was a match for Derek. He didn't manage to convince Derek to join him, however; it was a furious blind werewolf who stormed from the empty subway, with the airs of a toddler who hadn't gotten an especially coveted toy.

Throughout the encounters, minor moves were made in singles or pairs by the Alpha Pack on his Pack. They tried to figure out his weakness, the link in his Pack that would fold like a stack of cards, the point where his pups would turn on him and force him to defend himself. They never did, but the random attacks did put an undue strain on the members of the Pack, forever looking over their shoulders these days.

(Everyone hated how the pressure was making Stiles backslide, and how his concerns over his Dad were growing. A terrified Stiles was the last thing any of them needed, because when Stiles panicked, they noticed the whole Pack grew uneasy and unbalanced. The more things that happened, the more the Sheriff noticed. Between his worry for his Dad and his anxiety, Stiles was becoming a ball of raw nerves.)

If, Stiles grimly confided in Boyd and Erica, shattering their Pack was Deucalion's goal, he was getting too close for comfort. They had to act, and soon, or risk being slaughtered.

-VitD-

Nobody ever noticed how Peter wasn't around whenever the Alphas attacked. Stiles might have noticed, but he was too busy holding on by the skin of his teeth. Nobody else was quite that suspicious of Peter – or, in Boyd and Erica's case, they were, but they were just too overwhelmed with watching over Stiles to notice much else.

The Sheriff finally demanded an explanation of his jumpy son. Stiles could no longer avoid his Dad's searching face, or the way he was radiating 'PTSD victim' even in his own home, around a seasoned cop. He wearily invited Derek over… and then promptly had to jump between Derek and the Sheriff's gun, as John demanded to know just what this convict-material bastard had done to his son.

Tentatively, he used Derek to show off the existence of werewolves to his Dad. John was shocked. Slowly, Stiles revealed – wincing all the way – how Scott got turned, and how that dragged the unflinchingly loyal Stiles into Scott's turbulent new life. He'd explained about Scott, Derek, the Alpha-who-was-Peter, the Argents, the Hunter-werewolf 'war', the fire, and killing Kate (with the Peter-who-came-back). By that point, John was out of surprise, and was simply listening with a numb sort of acceptance. He heard how Lydia was used, how Jackson was turned, how all the murders connected, why Stiles became the victim of a restraining order, why Matt had happened, and how the kanima had been subdued.

(When Stiles glossed over his capture – outright agreed in a falsely-bright voice that, yeah, Dad, it was weird to be kidnapped by an angry, human lacrosse team, after facing all these supernatural dangers – he could only thank Derek with his eyes when the wolf didn't bother to correct John's line of thinking.)

Then John seemed to shake himself out of his stupor, and demanded to know what was going on now, that had his son up in arms, with little sleep, poor attendance, and jumpy as Hell. Between Derek and Stiles, he learned the basics of the Alpha Pack. He was horrified that Stiles was in the middle of something like that, but when his face hardened, Stiles jumped in, his own face cold, suddenly not at all a paranoid teen who leapt at the smallest provocation (because, right then, he needed to be).

"Dad, you do not get to take me from my Pack," he intercepted.

John huffed, "Son, you live under my roof, and I'd do anything I can t—"

"I won't tell you again, John."

Stiles wasn't looking at him, and his voice was colder, harder, more furious and frightening than the Sheriff had ever heard, in spite of being a bare whisper of noise. When the boy looked up, his eyes were flints of amber, sharp enough to cut, and his rumbling growl was very much not human (to a man who'd never heard a werewolf growl, anyhow). John was forcefully reminded that his son was part of a werewolf Pack, and fought on their side on a regular basis.

"This is my Pack. You don't have the authority to take me from my Pack. Don't try."

Suddenly, Stiles' face cleared, and his eyes grew wide with hurt and horror. It took far too long for him to realize it was because John was steadily backing up. Because he was frightened. Of his own son.

He felt his own expression crumble, but that still wasn't enough (Stiles' broken gasp, "D-Dad, please, I—!") to make him stay. The Sheriff did what he had only done once before, and sworn never to do again (the reason Stiles grew quiet when John got out the shot glass—John's everlasting guilt, buried deep in alcohol—why Stiles thought it was his fault Amanda died, when cancer had done it—John's last emotion-driven decision, because he always thought them through now—why Stiles did his best to protect and love and do almost anything for John to keep his Dad around): he fled his own home, and left his son without a backward glance.

Derek called an emergency Pack meeting, and they all spent the night crammed into Stiles' bedroom, in spite of the tight fit. They willing sprawled over his bed and floor, hands, feet, limbs all finding some way to touch Stiles all night long. (Peter, Stiles was relieved to note, had not been invited. Derek might not have liked Stiles' aversion to his only living family, but he knew and respected how Stiles felt, and that was what mattered.)

-VitD-

John didn't return home all week, though Scott carefully brought back Melissa's condolences – John had tentatively approached her, and she'd reamed him out for his poor decision making. Stiles didn't go back to class, too shaken up by his father's willing abandonment (again).

Derek hovered around Stiles like a worried prairie hen over her chicks. It would have been cute if it hadn't made such a desolate picture. The Pack was out of sorts, because the two forces it revolved around – the Alpha, and Stiles – were both more-or-less out of commission.

So it was really no surprise that none of them had noticed that Peter had gone missing at the same time. And it was just as easy to see, in hind sight, how they made such easy targets. Nine days after Stiles' Dad disappeared – just as Stiles was getting himself back into reasonable conditions, helped by Derek's constant presence – the Pack was ambushed. In front of the old Hale house, too, of the irony.

Erica and Boyd were able, eventually with Allison's help, to take down Kali. It had been close, and vicious, and now the two were lucky to still be standing, let alone guarding Stiles like they were trying to do. Allison was long-range, so she was still unhurt.

Between Isaac, Lydia, and Jackson, Ennis-the-bull was far too easy to kill, though the process was a tedious one, full of far too many bottled explosions. Someone was going to have to teach that girl 'all things in moderation', before she set the forest on fire; Stiles was glad of the eye Jackson kept on her. Isaac just went with the flow, used to their interactions.

The Twins, upon seeing what they were up against in Derek and his Pack, looked at one another, nodded, and charged over enemy lines. There, they dropped to their collective knees in front of a too-tense Scott, and begged mercy and allowance. They hadn't been fond of Deucalion, but once you were recruited, you could only leave the Pack by death, apparently. They offered peace to the Hale Pack – and allegiance to Derek, whether or not they found a Pack of their own – as long as the Pack helped them get away from Deucalion's services. Scott's time was spent (much to his annoyance) 'guarding' the Twins, and keeping an eye on all the other battles.

The Emissary of the Alpha Pack was actually Joanna Morrell – the school counselor. Stiles just about had a heart attack when she stepped out of the trees. He'd told her things! Confided in her!… Apparently, Allison was just as pissed, because Morrell sprouted a throat-arrow before she could take three steps into the clearing.

As soon as the Alpha Pack showed up, Derek began fighting with Deucalion. Nobody had thought a blind man could fight so well; nobody is ever underestimating their enemies ever again. Morrell had given him some sort of druid herb cocktail before the fight, an Emissary looking out for her Pack, and it ended up making him like a human so hyped up on drugs that his body couldn't tell health from injury. The rare humans drugged themselves to the gills so bad as to get police having to gun them down, didn't know when they were supposed to have been dead, their bodies slowly collapsing wither from the overdose or after getting shot a couple dozen times; werewolves drugged that bad, apparently, were simply impervious to everything, and their healing factor kept going.

And then Peter jumped out of the shadows. He wasn't there to help the Hale Pack; he was there because he had led the Alpha Pack to them, the traitor. And all the fighting suddenly paused when he snuck around and grabbed Stiles by the throat.

Stiles, with Peter wrapped around him like a tree around a crashed vehicle, really, really wished it hadn't been so easy for the Alpha Pack (read: mostly Peter) to get through their defenses.

-VitD-

Pinned unwillingly against Peter with a clawed warning hand at his throat, Stiles decided he, himself, was the only sane man in the bunch. (Though, getting over a betrayal like… that, meant he wasn't in such good shape, sane or not. Even when all this mess with the Alpha Pack was over, he didn't know if he had the strength to face his Dad right now.)

Derek was currently torn, head snapping between the captive Stiles and the blood-thirsty 'Alpha of Alphas' like the two were in a tennis match; he couldn't decide whether to go with the instinct to save Stiles, or the instinct to rid his Pack of Deucalion. (And Derek had been more protective of and attentive to Stiles lately, without prompting. It was a much nicer feeling than Stiles thought such a thing should make him feel, having Derek's undivided attention like that.)

Scott, Isaac, and Allison were busy with keeping an eye on the wolfsbane-rope-bound Twins; the only Alphas left alive besides Deucalion weren't yet trusted to not try and attack a random member of the Hale Pack. (If Stiles hadn't watched it develop around the Alpha Pack-crisis over the past couple of months, he wouldn't have recognized what it meant that Scott and Isaac was hovering around Allison, and that Allison was doing the same. Mates were anchors, he'd been told; he'd never heard of multiple anchors, but it didn't seem too far-fetched.)

Boyd and Erica both were blood-streaked, and hovering near Stiles with ferocious snarls, too weak to take on Peter after tag-teaming to end Kali. (The minute he'd been grabbed, it was interesting to watch the way their eyes lit up, the way that energy seemed to flood into them; they cared about him. It still wasn't enough to take on Peter, but it was an admirable effort on his wolves' part.)

Lydia could take any of the Alpha wolves on with one of her Molotov cocktails… if she was also okay with blowing up everyone else in a five-foot radius, having been reduced during the fighting to her most lethal bottles. (Knowing her, she was probably coming up with a hundred-and-one plans on how to get everyone out of the firing range so she could just do it and get it over with. Based on the way she was glaring at Peter, Stiles had the feeling that, really, the only thing keeping her from simply lobbing it at Peter and Deucalion – who were standing in the same vicinity – and screaming at the others to 'duck' was the fact that Peter was glued to Stiles.)

Ethan and Aiden, willingly bound and carefully watched, were naïve and reckless, a spot of uncertainty where the end of the fighting was concerned. (And Stiles still wasn't sure what to think of them. They'd made it pretty clear these past few months that, while they weren't playing nice, perhaps they wouldn't quite play by the Alpha Rules, so there was that… but they'd still attacked the Pack. They had a lot to answer for.)

Ennis was dead, killed at the start of the battle, and had been a power-hungry, situationally-blind, beta-level-in-an-Alpha-Pack Alpha idiot. (Ahh, the 'majestic' bull fights of Spain. Or, well, the stupid trickery of the muscle-bound man with the idiot-ball outside of beacon Hills… It really was pathetic.)

Kali – still warm, but most assuredly dead – had been a manipulative, flexible bitch, and Stiles had the fresh toe-claw-marks across his stomach to prove it. (She really was a bit screw-loose. Really – who brings toenails to a tooth-and-claw fight? Not quite as bad as bringing a knife to a gun fight. But, then again, considering that Allison had helped to bring her down, and used arrows… Stiles was just really glad she was out of the picture.)

Deucalion was crazed, a creature so boozed on the druid-drugs provided by his Emissary that it was going to take four times as much of anything to kill him as it normally would. (Stiles embraced that – by this point, he was glad to have a reason to pull the wolf through the ringer before killing him. He didn't – for obvious reasons – condone torture, but when it comes to mindless bastards like Gerard and Deucalion, who hurt others just because they can, Stiles was willing to make a bit of an exception.)

Peter was, Stiles was tired of mincing words around the subject, a motherfucking sick psycho-bastard. Really, that was it. (He was also a traitor, but Stiles was too hung up on the former, as Peter held him too tight, to care much at the moment about the latter.)

The resulting blast knocked over a couple of trees at the edge of the clearing, twenty feet away. (No, really: Ouch.)

-VitD-

The fight for consciousness was much like swimming up through a vat of Jell-o. Confusing, thick, and messy as hell. He knew he was awake, but he also knew that not much was translating into coherency in his thoughts – it was taking far too long to actually, you know, wake up.

His whole body ached, and even twitching his fingers was a chore. He thought that maybe somebody said something when he did, but he couldn't be sure.

It took him a while because he was really loopy, but eventually he noticed that his Spark was… gone. Not embers, but dark. That did what nothing else had, and filled him with such sudden adrenaline that he jackknifed up in bed. The time in the basement had shown him what that glow felt like, and Deaton had made him even better at sensing it. His Spark had been the constant that he clung to – the one thing that had not changed between pre- and post-basement, the thing he concentrated on while none of his Packmates could figure out that there was anything wrong with him, the thing that kept him sane while he spent weeks worrying about Boyd and Erica. If it was gone, he didn't know what he was going to do. Hands scrabbling ineffectually at the skin of his chest, he blocked out all the other sounds, all the other feelings, until one particularly commanding voice barked, in a tone that expected to be obeyed, "Stiles! Look at me!"

His head snapped around, and he came eye-to-eye with a pair of familiar, stubborn grey-green orbs.

"Alpha?"

When he realized that he'd been the one to speak, he winced at the hoarseness of his voice. And then he realized he'd just called Derek 'Alpha', like one of the wolves. And then he remembered that he'd been panicking over his absent Spark, and felt his expression grow horrified and pleading, "Al—Derek, you've gotta do something! I—I can't feel it! I can't feel my Spark! What the hell happened?!"

But he didn't need anyone to tell him, as it all came rushing back.

"Deucalion! What—?" Stiles brought his right wrist up, unconsciously cradling the limb (decorated with a nearly-gone, yellowing bruise) Peter had abused, interrupting himself and choking in a humiliatingly small voice, "Peter?"

"Stiles," Derek insisted, cutting through his wild thoughts and focusing him. "Stiles, it's okay. They're dead. You're okay, you're safe. Breathe. Stiles, breathe."

Stiles closed his eyes, let his forehead fall against Derek's leather-clothed shoulder, and did as his Alpha asked. As his heart began to calm, and his blood pressure lowered, Stiles gained enough presence of mind to notice that the area around him didn't seem like a hospital, even though he hurt badly enough for one. He gathered his courage, and released a muffled, "Happened?" at Derek.

"What happened is that my uncle was an idiot as well as a jackass. He held you by the wrist; you… freaked out."

"'Freaked out'? Derek?" Stiles' voice went high was concern and self-consciousness, still muffled in a shoulder, "What do you mean, I 'freaked out'?"

Derek hummed noncommittally, avoiding the question, and Stiles forcefully removed himself from Derek's person. Looking around explained the lack of hospital at least: he was in one of Deaton's back rooms, the ones kept clear for touchy animal patients as well as the more unconventionally humanoid patients. The whole Pack was, actually. Stiles'd been laid on a metal examining table, shirtless, and the rough linens of a bandage wrapped around his neck, his ribs, and his right forearm. Derek had been sitting in the chair beside his head, but he'd stood up when Stiles started freaking out. He was almost shirtless, and what clothing he did have on was torn, dirt-smeared, and bloody; his skin was the drawn grey of a werewolf recently healed, and was still healing (what had been reduced by this point) to scrapes here and there, in fact.

Lydia lay on the other table, her head propped against Jackson's thighs, critically inspecting her face in a compact mirror (and subtly looking over at Stiles in the reflection, when she thought he wasn't watching). A slowly-deepening bruise was blossoming on her cheekbone, a band aide closed a small cut on the back of her hand, and her left pant-leg had been rolled up to make room for a bandage – already stained faintly pink – over her calf. Jackson, his hand twisted possessively in her curls, looked displeased, and Stiles guessed it was because he'd tried to protect his Mate and girlfriend, and she'd still gotten injured.

Allison – with a butterfly bandage over a cut on her forearm, and a couple of mild scrapes scattered here and there – lay in a pile of limbs in the corner, comfortably wrapped in Scott and Isaac. The two wolves looked more pleased than Jackson, that their human was in better shape… though, based on the deep color beneath their eyes and the grey pallor of their faces, their bodies had only just caught up with the healing process. They'd probably done their best to physically shield her from whatever had happened; their clothes were pretty beaten up. All three were focused on Stiles, worried – Scott was his friend, and what Scott cared about, so did the other two – and they looked like the commotion had startled them from a hazy nap.

Erica and Boyd were both settled against the wall behind Derek; surprising Stiles, they were letting their Alpha handle him, this time. Their eyes were still cautious, and they looked like if he asked, they'd get up and come to him, though, so he felt better about the situation. Both of them looked a bit more ragged than Derek, still.

The last group Stiles noticed were the Twins – who were near the door, nervous and unbound. Apparently, they passed whatever test Derek had set; they were alive, and (strangest of all) Derek had let them near his injured Pack. Seeing as they'd surrendered almost as soon as the fighting began, they weren't really any worse for wear. Stiles didn't know them and so couldn't find it in himself to feel pity for them, and the anxiety they felt by consciously remaining around a Pack they had been at odds with.

His gaze returned – cool and demanding – to his Alpha, and growled, "Derek. What do you mean, I freaked out?"

"Your Spark expanded," a new voice offered. Stiles whipped around, eyes flying to the now-open door, and the ever-composed man that it framed. Mildly, Deaton continued, "It's rare for anyone to have a Spark, and rarer still for just the right set of circumstances to go off, in order to facilitate an unlocking of potential."

He made his way into the room, unbothered by all the eyes on him as he spoke. Stiles would have been annoyed by this, if the vet wasn't busy revealing important things, for once. "Because that is really all a Spark is, unless it's harnessed: potential. Your particular circumstances were… rather grievous, but it still did the trick. Your Spark is now a Blaze – or it will be, once your energy returns after this latest use.

"When Peter surprised you," and Stiles didn't bother to hold back a sarcastic snort; 'surprised' indeed! "You went for your Spark. It responded by, essentially, exploding. The members of the Pack – as well as possible allies, it seems – were identified as non-threats, and just buffeted by very strong winds. The bodies of the dead Alphas weren't seen as a big threat, so they were mostly tossed aside, and burned a little bit. The clearing in front of the old Hale house – including some of the structural integrity left in the house itself – was decimated. But the biggest threats – Peter and Deucalion – were both targeted so fiercely that all that was left of them were two very charred spots of grass. You wanted neither of them to ever be able to come back around, and wanted your Pack safe, I assume?"

Stiles, still trying to process a power that would wreck hundred-year-old trees, and burn two powerful and cunning werewolves to powder, numbly nodded.

"That was what your power did. That was the direction you gave yourself. Like my training – you gave yourself a goal, and focused on it. And the amount of focus, timing, desperation, situation, and fear that went into your attack all came together to force more out of your potential Spark than it could handle. It blossomed into a Blaze. You'll be fine after some rest."

Weakly, Stiles turned toward Derek, seeking… something, he didn't know what. He ignored the sounds of Deaton returning to his patients in the other room. Derek was grim when he nodded – yes, Stiles had done all that. He didn't realize his hands were shaking until Derek had enveloped him in a stiff hug. Shocked, Stiles sputtered, "D-Derek, wha—?!"

"Shut up," he grumbled softly, and Stiles could hear the faintest hint of affection and worry in his tone. "Take the hug or don't; I don't care."

"Liar!" Erica sung in an evil, knowing voice. Bewildered (and more calm than he'd have thought he would be, surrounded by Derek), Stiles peeked over a muscled shoulder at the blonde. She caught his look, and her grin became positively shark-like. "Tell him, Derek. We found out – in spite of your efforts of repression, I might add. Tell him, like you said you would, because you're not an idiot – or, I didn't take you for one – and can see that he needs it! I saw to God, if I have to be the one to spill the beans,you'll regret it!"

Stiles thought that maybe Derek didn't have to turn around to see the way her eyes flashed ice-blue at his back. His grip got a bit tighter, and he mumbled in a rush, "We found your Dad. He didn't stay gone of his own accord: Deucalion had him tied up back at their Pack's motel room."

"Derek!" Erica snarled, no longer sounding like she was playing around, even a little. Boyd's hackles were up, too, and he was glaring at Derek's back.

From behind him, Stiles listened as Lydia's voice – full of the 'I have seen horrors and I know how to visit them on you' tone most of the rest of the Pack could put into play. Scott was the only innocent of that tone, even as he carried the potential to be a good Alpha, given half a chance. "Derek, I know Stiles. I don't know him as well as Scott, but he still did moon over me long enough to take notice of him and his habits, and we are part of the same Pack. Tell him. Hell, at this point, you both probably need it – he's a basket case because he's Stiles, and if you tell me you don't have issues after the fire, I will laugh. Tell him."

Stiles… could understand the 'basket case' thing for himself – after some of the stuff he'd put Scott through over the years, it was only true – but… the rest was kind of a low blow. He was just about to pull back and whine at the fire-starter (and, honestly, had he really been about to whine to the goddess Lydia about Derek, of all people?), when Derek spoke again, slow and sure and nervous and laid-bare.

"You're my anchor, Stiles. My Mate."

In the interest of staying sane, Stiles rewound, and focused on the one bit that made sense. "Deucalion had my Dad?"

(A small part of him cringed away from the way Derek went stiff, and he felt bad… but the rest of him was still catching up, and couldn't be bothered. It felt a whole lot like a breathable panic attack.)

"He's with Melissa now, making sure his time in unwilling werewolf captivity won't leave its mark on him," Boyd rumbled, his voice subdued. The whole room was buzzing with tension.

The room was quiet as Stiles digested this. He pulled away from Derek (who, in spite of himself, whined under his breath), and rubbed a hand over his face. "Why?"

"Peter told the Alphas that you were a key part of how this Pack functioned. He saw… what was in Derek, before any of us," Erica offered. Stiles had never been so glad to have friends that could read him at the drop of a hat. "They figured, if they had John, they could get to you, and if they got you it would definitely get to us. We all care about you, and worry for you would leave us all a little out of sorts. But having Derek freak out about you – because he would, Stiles, don't you get it?" she pressed, a little desperate, a little frantic, channeling her Alpha's hurt because Derek couldn't, "It would really send us into a tail spin; we depend on him to guide us when none of us can guide ourselves. Having John would eventually get them Derek, just like they wanted."

"How did you find out?"

"We," a tentative voice stuttered, and Stiles met one of the Twins' eyes, "We told. He's your dad, you're the Hale Pack Alpha's Mate; we'd be crazy to keep a human's whereabouts secret from a Pack we're trying to make amends with. Your Alpha got him out right after we were coherent enough – after your explosion – to say something.

The other one spoke up, meek and miserable, "On behalf of our former Alpha, Deucalion, Stiles Stilinski, we beg your forgiveness."

"Huh. Sure," Stiles offered, distantly. His heart was still hammering in his chest, and his brain was still spinning. Probably feeling (at last) like they'd overstayed their welcome, having said what they needed to say, the Twins slipped out the door. At last it was just Pack.

"… Stiles?" He was kind of surprised that Derek's voice could be that vulnerable, that quiet, that desperate. Usually the man was a bastion of stoicism and uncaring draped tastefully in leather and fangs. He let his head drop back down, forehead gently striking Derek's shoulder, and brought his hands up to clutch (wow, his hands were kind of shaking) at strong shoulders.

"Genim."

"Holy shit," Scott breathed, stealing the room's attention. Stiles could see the goofball blushing, even as he pulled himself together. Hastily, he began ushering the other side of his trio, along with Boyd, Erica, Jackson, and Lydia, out of the room. Of course he would. Aside from John, Scott was the only one who would know the significance of Stiles' answer. Somehow he did it, too: a moment later, the room was clear.

"Are you going to explain that?" Derek asked blankly.

"It's my name."

"It's your—oh." Derek stumbled his way through that thought. He cleared his throat, still obviously only half on the wagon. "And… Scott?"

"My mom's last word was my name."

Derek didn't understand the significance yet, but his arms still tightened around Stiles as he waited, understanding at least the scent of sorrow.

"I… for her, I—Every time I hear it, she—"

"It reminds you of her." Derek could be intuitive when he wanted to be. Stiles nodded, throat tight.

"Because of that… I don't like people to know my name. They would just… use it, and not understand. What it means. But the two people who know it – Dad and Scott – they get it. They are—I don't really trust all that easily." Derek breathed like he wanted to say something, and Stiles thumped his shoulder, hard. He stayed quiet.

"I babble. I never shut up. But I never talk about the important stuff, either. I know the art of verbal evasion like I invented it. And I don't trust easily. I don't… care about people – really care about them – like I probably should. Only two people had earned that in my life."

"Scott and your father."

"Yeah. And they know the deepest parts of me, because of that. They know who I am, and I trust that—that they'll know how to use that, how to handle me. Because, let's face it, I'm not exactly a five-piece puzzle, here. So…"

"So… You're giving me your name."

"Yeah." It was hard to say that.

"Your trust." Derek's voice was tight and wavering.

"Yup." It was even harder to admit that.

"Your—"

"Yes, yes, whatever!" He wasn't quite there yet. He hoped Derek understood. Based on the tight grip, the scenting snuffle into his hair, the faint whine, Stiles was pretty sure Derek did. "I'm consenting."

"To being my Mate?" Stiles was gratified to hear a smile in Derek's voice. "I don't think that's something you can consent to, Stiles. You just are."

"Shut up; I'm allowing it."

"Right."

There was a long, long stretch of silence. It was warm and comfortable. Stiles really wasn't too keen on moving, and he said so. Derek merely grunted (it was nice to hear the familiar sound after so much uncharacteristic soul-baring) and shuffled closer.

Scott was okay – better than okay, what with his evolving threesome, if Stiles had to guess. Boyd and Erica were doing better every day (better than him), adjusting well after their trauma. Jackson was showing no signs of wanting to either revert or defect, and Lydia was happy to be the fire-starter human of the Pack. Derek was healing, if admitting he had a Mate, someone emotionally close, was any indication. John knew about werewolves, so Stiles didn't have to keep lying (and he didn't hate Stiles, after all; that incident would take some time to process and forget). Peter was gone. And Stiles was Pack – really, really Pack, because as far as Pack dynamics went, as the Alpha's Mate, the Pack would look to him before the Beta's if Derek went out of commission.

Stiles was Derek's Mate.

That was… good. Mates didn't automatically mean lovers – and that was really good, because Stiles wasn't really for that – but it did mean closeness. He and Derek both needed someone to be close to, without worrying about family ties or friendship/Bitten obligations. Besides, it had the potential to grow into more. And Stiles apparently knew all about potential.

"I think the Twins are okay."

Derek made a sleepy noise of curious acknowledgement.

"They could have held my Dad hostage for their own uses after the Alpha Pack was gone. There was no reason to hand him over while the Pack was still weak and out of sorts. They're gonna be good allies if we call on them, given time, I think."

Derek hummed.

"And… I'm Pack."

A faint sigh over his pulse point made him blush, and Derek rumbled possessively, "Yes."

"I would have given my life for Boyd or Erica; they proved the same. And Pack is… for most of us, when our human families were uncaring, or shit, or just not there, Pack was family. Pack is—Pack means we won't leave. Pack means we always have each others' backs. The Alpha fight – hell, my own Spar—er, Blaze – showed me that."

Derek pulled away, a little confused and a little concerned, but hiding it for his own sense of dignity very well. And Stiles would only get better at reading him! "Stiles? Where are you going with this, exactly?"

"I think… in the morning, I'm gonna tell—Well, I'm gonna tell the Pack my name. They deserve that. It's time I… trusted them. It's what Pack means."

Stiles had avoided Derek's gaze while he spoke, and Derek's fingers gently steered Stiles' chin up. Derek waited patiently, and when Stiles nervously met his gaze, he murmured reverently, softly, "Thank you. Thank you for giving me my family back."

Stiles wasn't really sure that the sudden warmth in his chest was the embers of his Blaze coming back to life.

"You're welcome. Thank you for giving me mine."