The bullet flies in a clean line, cutting through the dead air. Lands perfectly, too. Bullseye. Right to the boy's retreating back, just a little up and to the left.
The blood starts oozing instantly, and the pale hand that reaches out towards the place where the bullet rests is trembling. The little voice coming from the boy is terrified, "dude? Dude is that a... That's a..."
And time slows down as the voice quivers, then falters, then stops altogether. Then the kid drops to the floor and Gerard sees as in slow motion how the blood starts getting everywhere; the blood falls to the grass in a constant stream pooling around the kid, it stains the kid's clothes, it paints his skin in sickly red rivulets.
And a voice inside Gerard tells him, panicked and young, not a werewolf. The kid is not a werewolf.
Stiles wakes up to pain the likes he's never felt before and to the warmth of a hand laying lovingly on his forehead and a pair of lips resting on his cheek. It feels like his mother, but realism bites him in the ass reminding him that it can't be, that his mother's dead.
It turns out to be Lydia, with her pretty manicured nails and her glossy full lips. Her eyes are fixed on his as she takes her hand off his forehead and settles it on top of one of his.
Stiles' heart does a summersault that is more at the thought of waking up in what clearly is a hospital bed with no recolection of how he even got there than at the thought of the Lydia Martin waiting for him to wake up.
That probably serves as a testament of how radically his life has changed in these past months.
"Hey." Lydia's voice makes him stop focusing so hard on what-the-hell happened and he instead focuses on her eyes as she smiles kindly at him. "You had us pretty worried for a while, Stiles."
"I, ah, I'm sorry?"
"Yes, you are." Her fingers intertwine with his. "But Gerard Argent is probably regretting this more than you right now, seeing as how he not only broke the code but he also harmed a defenseless human."
Gerard Argent...?
It all comes back to him, the leaving the safety of his house against Derek's explicit and rather growly orders to go looking for Scott in the woods and tell him something he'd found out about the Kanima, and the suddenly getting shot and falling to the hard cold ground thinking 'I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna die a virgin. Fuck my life.'
Lydia's smile gets a nasty edge that makes Stiles glad that he's never made her mad before. She would be a ruthless adversary, claws or not.
Claws. Hunters. Argent. Gerard Argent. Who shot him.
"What happened?" That is important. It's important to know, to get ahead of the game, but also... "Wait, why do *you* know anything about Gerard The Creep Argent?"
Lydia frowns a little at him, petulant. Then she says, as if it made any sense, "they had to tell me. It was you, here. They *had* to tell me what was going on."
And it shouldn't make a shred of sense, but the more he thinks about it it does. Lydia and him have been getting closer and closer, not only because he's always thought of her as goddess in a mortal disguise but also because he's pretty much the only one who can understand some of the things that Peter changed in her (if only because he changed them in Stiles too).
So it makes sense that she'd've been worried. And that being the smartest person he's ever met, she would've been able to call bullshit on any half cooked lies Scott or... Or Derek, or anybody else could've come up with.
"Okay. That makes sense." It does, he tells himself, he would've gotten an honest answer too, had it been her in his place.
Her smile loses the nasty edge to gain a fond one.
"Scott and Derek had been out looking for Jacks- for the kanima, when..."
He squeezes her hand when she slips up on Jackson's name, but otherwise lets her keep talking.
Gerard doesn't run away from the bleeding boy, he's not such a heartless beast, he's not an animal. But he doesn't get the opportunity to help him, either; as soon as he's putting his gun down to get closer to him, there's something, some feral creature, pushing him to the ground and drawing blood from where its claws are penetrating skin and flesh mercilessly in his arms. It growls, dangerous, enraged. Killer intent palpable as its thick drool hits his face from its menacing muzzle.
The Alpha, he knows without a doubt. The Hale's kid.
He hears the sounds of a second beast approaching, and surely a few seconds later he can hear the distressed howling sounds that a transformed Scott McCall makes when he finds the body of the Stiles boy.
Gerard maybe feels like a monster for the first time since he picked up the heavy task of hunting werewolves.
"Who brought me to the hospital?" he asks.
"Scott." is Lydia's short answer.
He's not at all disappointed that Derek had been there and hadn't been worried enough to take him to the hospital himself. It's only logical for Scott to take care of him, since he's not even part of Derek's pack.
"I don't know what you see in him but he probably wanted to, you know?" Lydia says half tender and half justifiably bitter and he's not sure if his brain-to-mouth filter has failed him again or if she's just that awesome that she can read him like one of those books of hers. "Scott said he was too out of control. He would have been difficult to explain to the hospital staff. Or to your dad."
"Oh my God, my dad", he says then. Guilt seeps through him that that hadn't been the first of his worries upon waking up.
"He's dealing with Argent. Scott's with him, since he's a witness." Her lips twitch, she looks almost proud. "Derek didn't kill him just because Scott convinced him to hand him over to the police, but I think that your father is going to make him wish that Derek had, indeed, taken him out. He was furious. Scared shitless," the word sounds foreign on her but she doesn't try to cover it up, too keyed up to really care about appropiate language, "but angrier than I've ever seen him."
"Derek, I'm serious. Hand him over, the police is on its way." Is what Scott tells him before leaving with Stiles and the paramedics, and he knows he should, since those men have already seen them. But that doesn't mean his thirst for blood is at all satisfied. He needs to cause pain.
"Do it, beast, I know you want to. I know you want bloodshed." The man tells him, and his nostrils flare, filled with the acrid smell of his remorse.
He wants to, yes. How he wants it. But he realises two things: the first, that death will mean absolution in this man's mind; the second, that the Sheriff deserves to see the face of the man who's hurt his kid and to put him through the brand of justice he believes in.
"I want to," He says, while the police car's siren starts filling the night, "but you deserve worse than that."
Derek still breaks the man's arm, anyway, makes it look like a regular human's handiwork.
His human side may understand, but his wolf won't rest until there's vengeance, until it feels Gerard's heart give out. Death, it claims. Death is the only retaliation suitable enough for harming Stiles, for almost killing Stiles who is loyal kind hearted smart resourceful *his*. Derek can't give it that. But he can at least give it this. Let his wolf drink the man's pain for a while and rejoice in his broken sounds. It's not much, but it'll have to do.
The Sheriff is a pale mess when he arrives. He shows them both his badge, makes his standard speech, when he goes to get Argent handcuffed he notices the broken arm. He looks at Derek knowingly, but doesn't say a thing. Instead, he twists the limb the same way he would've done had it been in perfect condition.
Argent's howl of pain makes Derek's wolf want to wag its tail in sinister approval.
After an hour, more or less, Lydia leaves.
He gets some good stuff from Scott's mom for his wound (Melissa looks wrecked. Before leaving she kisses his forehead motherly. It breaks his heart.). When the pain subsides a little, he falls asleep.
The next time he wakes up, in the middle of the night, Derek's sitting next to him, eyes scanning him over and finally landing on his. One of his hands comes to rest over his heart, fingers just splayed on his chest. As if they belonged there, in some awkward way.
Stiles' heart does summersaults again, but this time around he's well aware of his surroundings.
"Nice to see that you're still as much of a creep as you were before I almost died.." He says, every bit the socially inept teenager he is.
Derek, surprisingly, smiles at him.
"Nice to see that you're still as annoying as you were before you almost died."
The hand resting on him makes a soothing motion, almost like a caress.
Stiles smiles, too.