I couldn't stop myself from writing this.

Although I wanted to do something with romance in it for TW, I wanted to do something Stiles-centric to help myself get into writing for this show, so yeah, please be gentle when you judge this, please?

Sorry if this seems a little OOC; super tired and marathoned the entire show in four days, so it may be a little rocky.

Set a week after "Anchors".

The thought of darkness hadn't been so intimidating when it meant saving his father's life. In fact, the idea of taking on a permanent harrowing blackness around his heart in trade of the safety of others seemed heroic enough for him to excuse the pitiful pull in his stomach with his oddly arranged Pack being advanced in fighting skills or somehow supernaturally upped while he remained the intelligent human.

But now, after weeks of nightmares, hoarse tones from screaming, and his own claw marks staining his arms - just to name a few symptoms - he lived in the darkness more than anything.

People would speak and their lips would move, but it would be a muddled bunch of nonsense to go along with the unreadable lines of language that would disappear no matter how hard he blinked.

He remembered, vaguely, of a time when he proposed the idea of looking out for each other, and they were all doing it so well; until the day everything they did no longer made any sense to him.

"Stiles! Stiles! You're not asleep! Com'n, Stiles!"

(Was that what his name sounded like?)

Stiles blinked.

Again.

and

Again.

and

Again.

The outline of Scott's face came into view, like a fuzzy photograph slowly being developed. His eyes, fortunately a dark brown highlight by creeping moonlight, were wide with alarm. His hands pinned Stiles' arms to his side.

(Had he been moving them?)

Suddenly there was a fringe of reality in his grasp: papers rustling beneath his body; the sharp bump of a pencil pinned under his elbow; his mouth cracked open in a frozen scream.

The signs of studying flashed across his eyes, as did the memory of collapsing with his friend in Scott's room after school.

(But where is all the time after that?)

"Stiles, can you hear me?" Scott asked softly, bringing him up into a sitting position.

Stiles nodded, muttering a word of assurance dimly.

"I don't want you sleeping at your house tonight," his friend said quietly. "I think you should be here, in case some medical care is needed, yeah?"

Again, he nodded, because his tongue felt like dead weight and sat against his clenched teeth awkwardly, like a ball of softened rubber in his mouth.

Scott frowned further at him as he helped Stiles off the floor, muttering a promise of being gone for only a second to tell his mother that he was staying over, but when Stiles woke up the next morning, tucked in Scott's bed while he slept tensely on the floor beside him, he didn't remember changing into his friend's clothes, or getting under the familiar sheets, or falling asleep.

he couldn't remember a thing.

(What's going on?

What day is it?

Who is it beside him?)

Although each second he walked, talked, breathed, lived was possessed by puzzling languages and backward visions, it struck him that he should at least remember going to the hospital due to a fainting spell in the middle of class.

That was the only explanation he could put together from the killer pounding in his head and the huge lump that currently occupied the back of his head, but Allison was too busy speaking with Melissa to confirm his personal diagnosis.

(Had he been in a class? What

was he doing then?)

He looked again, squinting to make out the blurred images. Allison seemed to be alone with Melissa just outside the room, and if someone else was with him in the room then he wouldn't be able to hear his heartbeat as loudly as he could.

heartbeats aren't supposed to be this loud.

The only class he had with Allison alone was American Government, his class after lunch.

(Shouldn't he remember sitting with his friends at lunch?

Shouldn't the shadows go away when he was with friends?)

Another sliver of memory that brought an ache to the lump on the back of his head. With shaking fingers he reached up to rub some of the pain away.

It took another moments of shushed conversation and soothing hands holding tight grips on anxious shoulders before they were finished talking.

Allison came back into the room, seeing his open eyes with her own, glimmering with relief.

"You wrote something on the board before you went down," she told him softly, holding out his phone for him to see.

Stiles looked at the screen, plainly. It was same kind of backward writing he experienced any other time he wasn't gripping onto someone's raft of reality, except this time bluntly scrawled out in his own large, wobbly hand.

"I know those words," he mumbled dazedly, because they were the same ones he wrote properly, saw etched into his head all the time, burning through him day and night like an incessant flame.

wake up.

"Scott said he and Lydia wouldn't be able to come until after school," Allison explained quietly, perching herself carefully at the foot of his bed. "Isaac's out looking for Derek."

Stiles nodded as if shadows weren't threatening the edge of his vision and about to freeze him cold.

"It's gotten worse, hasn't it?" she asked him in a near whisper. "The visions?"

Stiles avoided her concerned gaze, aiming his eyes at the door behind her shoulders. "There not even hallucinations anymore," he told her quietly, "I don't known if I'm awake right now."

(Was he?

Is the Allison that went unaware of the shadows all around them even real?)

none of it felt real.

Hours later, some time after he feigned fatigue and faked a nap for mostly Allison's sake, he heard the door open.

"Is he sleeping?" Lydia voice asked. Something about it made hearing like listening to a sharp edge slice against an unsuspecting surface.

"He says he doesn't know when he's awake," Allison reported to them tiredly.

Stiles could picture Lydia's brows furrowing and her mouth forming an 'O'; Scott running a hand through his hair.

"He told me something like that before," Scott said. "He said that he hadn't been able to read anything for a couple weeks."

"And you can't read in dreams," Lydia finished. "So he can never tell if he's actually awake."

(But how could he ever be asleep?)

"Is that what happened in class?" Scott asked.

Stiles tried to detect where he was. He seemed to calling over something to ask Allison that stretched as wide as a canyon.

There was a beat of silent that indicated an action being made. "I don't know," Allison responded. Her voice projected thinly, as if worn and pulled like a favorite pair of jeans. "He just went up to the board and wrote something then fell unconscious."

There was a rustle; she must be showing the picture she took.

because he needed to wake up.

but he wasn't asleep.

(Wasn't he, though?)

"What is that?" Scott asked hollowly above him, bouncing off the darkness and slamming back like an echo.

"Wait, give me that." At Lydia's command, another period of silence followed.

"It says wake up," she announced some time later.

"How can you tell?"

"Because when you rotate it, it shows he wrote it backwards."

Stiles decided it was time for him to make his grand entrance, which he did with open eyes and a loud groan he wasn't proud of.

Everyone looked at him with the same gaze they would use when eying an injured animal, using tactics like soothing noises and gestures that made him feel weak.

(Would there ever be an escape?)

"There has to be something you can for him!"

"Honey, you really need to calm down."

In any other ears but Stiles', they would sound like the warning of a mother fending off an oncoming attitude, and not the tip off of claws coming loose.

Stiles had been allowed to leave, with Scott offering to drive him home and was choosing to watch Scott heavily squeeze his fists together in vain as his mother looked with worried eyes.

Distantly, he remembered comforting shoulder pats and goodbyes from Lydia Allison a few hours before Scott the nerve to track down his mother and ask her if there was anything to be done to help with Stiles.

you have to be really messed up to not tell what's real and

what's

not.

"Why don't you take him home, and I'll look over his chart again?" His mother tried to look hopeful, trying not to make the bad news any more evident. "See of Dr. Wells has any suggestions on medicines he could take temporarily?"

(Was there really nothing to do but let him be?

Let him continue to lose his mind?)

Moments later Stiles was tiredly handing over the keys to his jeep, slumping into the passenger seat and miserably staring ahead.

The silence of the ride and the weight of what fucking nothing could carry made Stiles ache all over.

When they pulled to a rumbling stop in front of Stiles' house, but neither moved except when Stiles' eyes watched Scott pull the keys from the ignition.

Finally after what felt like eons to Stiles and his echoing head of shadows and nightmares, Scott spoke, quiet yet determined.

"You know we're going to fix this right?" His eyes burned holes into the side of his head. "You're going to be okay - we're going to be okay."

Stiles turned his head, smiling blandly as they both climbed out of the car.

All the way up to his room, he kept his eyes trained on Scott's back, his promise ringing in his ears.

he doesn't know the worst fear.

(What if it's all just a dream?)

it would just be

one

big

nightmare.

I'm really sorry for how horrible it is, but I will continue to write for this show.

Seriously, Teen Wolf is just...oh my god, I can't even put into words.

And Stiles is just my baby, kay?

Reviews are cool.