"Nothing Left to Say"

Lucawindmover

Prologue

"The shadows on my wall don't sleep. They keep calling me…Beckoning…"

Imagine Dragons "Nothing Left to Say"

Stiles Stilinski expected to feel like he was drowning.

He'd researched it once. During one of his hyper-attentive episodes when he should have been doing math homework or studying for his chemistry test, he'd read for hours about drowning instead. His father called him a procrastinator and was frustrated with the C average Stiles continued to pull in most of his classes. If he'd spent half the time on his homework that he spent learning every detail about things as ridiculous as traumatic death or the deciduous tree life cycle or the complete history of circumcision, maybe he'd manage an A or two.

Stiles did research to calm his mind, to keep his hands from shaking, to keep himself on track. He hated his medication for ADHD. He could never sleep right when he took it. Either he was exhausted at all hours of the day or he couldn't sleep at all. Between that and the dry mouth and the sensitive stomach, the side effects weren't worth the marginal increase in his ability to focus. When he could find alternative methods to combat his spastic brain he didn't have to take the medicine. So he researched instead. A lot.

When drowning, a person's first instinct is panic. The panicking usually results in rapid movements that consume oxygen more quickly. Carbon dioxide then builds up in the body which triggers the body's fight or flight response. Eventually an involuntary breath is taken. This causes coughing which leads to more water being ingested. The throat spasms in an attempt to block water from entering the lungs meaning the stomach fills instead. Finally the body loses consciousness and the throat relaxes and water fills the lungs. The whole progression is painful and terrifying. Stiles remembered recounting the process to Ms. Morell in the guidance office once.

So, as the herb-filled, druid sacrifice water closed over his face and Lydia Martin's tiny hands on his shoulders held him under, Stiles expected to feel panic. He knew the process of drowning well enough to assume his body would reject the tight space, the freezing water, the lack of oxygen.

The nothing of it all bothered him far more than the panic would have. He had dealt with panic before. But nothing...not so much.

He didn't know how long he'd been floating beneath the surface. He had no means of telling how much time was passing and he was anxious for this part to be over. They had to find the nemeton stump and their parents before Jennifer Black had her way and sacrificed them for power. At the same time, he was afraid if he came up too soon he'd ruin the whole ritual. Deaton hadn't given them much to go on. If he was supposed to be waiting on some sign, he was sure he'd missed it.

Eventually the concern for his father became overwhelming and he lurched forward, sloshing through the icy water. Somehow this was exactly the right moment because to either side of him Allison and Scott came up splashing as well.

He might not have been able to feel the oxygen deprivation while he was under the water but now that he'd surfaced his lungs burned with the need to breathe and he took several gasping breaths as he blinked water out of his eyes.

Stiles reached up and pushed his sodden hair back, attempting unsuccessfully to dry his face with an equally wet hand. To his left, Scott was already climbing out of his tub and Stiles scrambled to do the same. He winced slightly as his bare feet hit the cold floor and tightened his grip on the edge of the tub to keep himself from slipping in the puddle accumulating beneath him. The sloshing of water was the only sound in the room as they vacated their tubs and took in their surroundings.

Stiles had never seen so much white in one place before, and this from a kid who'd spent an awful lot of time in hospitals. The room was finite. It had walls and edges. However, as the three of them turned and began moving toward the ancient nemeton stump rising through a section of crumbling tiles, the walls didn't seem to get any closer. They passed under bank after bank of harsh lights, the rows seeming to extend endlessly.

Stiles couldn't remember the last time he'd managed to endure silence for this length of time. He itched to break it somehow. It wouldn't take much…a squeak of his wet foot against the floor, a cough, an ill-timed joke that would somehow both relieve and annoy his friends. But he couldn't. It could have been their dire need to find their parents or some residual effect of the drowning ritual but whatever the cause, Stiles found his tongue felt like lead in his mouth.

Once his eyes had located the stump it had felt like a line through his navel was pulling him forward, an invisible rope drawing him in at a steady pace. He had no desire to fight that tugging sensation and he imagined his friends felt the same way. From the corners of his eyes he could see them moving in much the same manner.

As they neared the nemeton, he and Allison hesitated but Scott didn't. He continued forward, making a connection between the bands of his tattoo with the rings of the tree. He reached down and placed his hand on the stump. For a moment nothing happened. Stiles narrowed his eyes and was about to comment on this when Scott seemed to shimmer, his form blinking in and out a few times before disappearing altogether.

Stiles gaped at the empty space before letting his eyes land on the equally stricken features of Allison next to him. "What the hell was that?" he shouted, gesturing wildly to the space their friend no longer occupied. He expected his voice to echo in the large, empty space and it was disconcerting when it didn't.

"I don't know!" Allison replied, her voice pitched an octave higher than usual. "Was that supposed to happen?"

"We're not even supposed to be here," Stiles answered, balling his shaking hands into fists. "I don't think 'supposed to' applies in this place. Wherever we are."

Allison worried her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, deliberating. "Maybe we should touch it, too. It might take us to Scott."

She held her hand out and took a step toward the tree but Stiles moved to intercept her immediately. "How do you know that thing didn't kill Scott?" he demanded, his fingers clutching her wrist. "It could have blinked him out of existence, just like that." He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

"Well we can't just do nothing," Allison countered, gently pulling her wrist free of his grasp.

"I can't let you do that though," Stiles said, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. "He would never forgive me if I let something happen to you."

"He?" she asked with a frown. "You mean Scott?"

Stiles threw his hands up. "Of course I mean Scott."

Allison's face was unreadable as her eyes darted away from his. "Scott is not my protector you know."

"Well he thinks he is," Stiles said, pointing to the stump as if it was Scott. "And it's not just you. He thinks he's supposed to protect everyone."

"He can't possibly do that."

"Yeah well. You try reasoning with him," he said with a sigh. "Because he won't listen to me."

Allison turned away, bumping her closed fists against her thighs, thinking. Stiles couldn't think. He wanted to but his brain felt fuzzy, his chest tight.

"What do you propose we do?" she asked. She was still facing away from him but judging by the crack in her voice and the quick swipe of her hands across her cheeks, she was crying. "We have to find out parents, Stiles. We're running out of time."

Stiles took a deep breath, as deep a breath as his anxiety-constricted lungs would let him. "I'll go," he said, watching as Allison whirled back around. "I'll go next."

Allison regarded him for a moment. "What if you don't come back?" she asked. "What if neither of you come back? You can't just leave me here."

Stiles shrugged. "Then we go through together," he replied. "Or out. Or wherever the hell this thing goes."

Allison furrowed her brow. "Together?"

"Yeah," he said. He gestured for her to give him her hand. "Put your hand like this." He arranged her right hand next to his left, touching from wrist to fingertip. "We go at the same time. Nobody gets left behind."

She smirked which wasn't a whole smile but close enough in Stiles' book. With a last deep breath and his right fist clenching his father's badge, they reached forward together and placed their hands on the rough surface of the stump.

He felt frozen for an instant before blinking his eyes and finding himself somewhere else altogether, Allison nowhere to be seen.

It was the forest, the Beacon Hills Preserve. He was out in the woods at night. Stiles turned around at the sound of a voice in the distance in time to see himself run past.

It was a younger version of himself and he immediately recognized this as the night he and Scott had gone looking for trouble and found a lifetime of it. He could hear his father berating the him and calling out for Scott in the darkness. Stiles swallowed hard at the idea of never getting another lecture from his father. If they didn't find the damn stump in the real world it was a likely scenario.

Stiles let the past fade and turned his attention to the search for the nemeton stump. His eyes scanned the darkness as he took a couple of steps backwards and nearly fell on the object in question.

The night Scott became a werewolf they had practically stumbled over the stupid thing. He knew where this was. He would be able to find this on the other side for sure.

"So now what?" he muttered to himself. He put his hands on the stump, expecting to be whisked away again. Maybe to the present forest, the white room, back to the animal clinic. He didn't know where exactly but he expected something.

Instead he got nothing. Not a damn thing.

He turned around and stared into the darkened trees. The voices of the past were gone now, once again only a memory. The usual chorus of night creatures was conspicuously silent and Stiles ground his teeth together in frustration.

Somewhere out there, in the real world, his father was being held captive by the Darach, the dark druid who had posed as their innocent English teacher, Jennifer Blake. He and Melissa McCall and Chris Argent were likely trussed up and waiting their fate as human sacrifices.

What was Stiles doing here? Waiting for some sign to point the way back to the land of the living? His father could be dying right now. Here he was, stuck in a vision of the past, separated from the only other people who could do anything to save them.

As the useless minutes stretched on endlessly, Stiles became restless, pacing there in the sandy earth surrounding the nemeton. He kicked out at the stump, instantly regretting the action as pain radiated up his leg.

It was when he took a seat on the stump, leaning forward to check his foot and make sure nothing was broken, that he heard the whispering. He stilled, listening carefully. The words were just quiet enough that he couldn't understand them. He tilted his ear closer to the stump and found the more he leaned, the louder the words.

"…she was aware of her heart beating rapidly…had it stopped before…what had…tingling…" the whisper said, causing Stiles to start in alarm.

He jerked away from the stump's surface. That was Allison. It was her voice coming from the other side of the stump. What was she doing? What was she talking about? And where the hell was she?

Stiles leaned over to listen again, this time pressing the side of his face against the exposed wood, straining to make sense of her words.

"…And this feeling of moving with the earth was somewhat like the feeling of being in the ocean, out in the ocean beyond this rising and falling of the breakers, lying on the moving water, pulsing gently with the swells and feeling the gentle, inexorable tug of the moon…"

Stiles recognized this passage. It was from A Wrinkle in Time, a book he'd read more times than he could count. It had been a favorite of his mother's and before she'd gotten sick the two of them had often stayed up late reading it together.

Before Stiles could process the fact that Allison was somehow quoting his favorite book to him through an ancient tree stump, he was jolted up by a familiar tugging sensation just below his navel.

He stood and backed away from the stump but the feeling didn't waver. He felt like he was being pulled, as if a rope was tied around his hips. It was dragging him away from the stump, step by step. It had to be the same tug that had drawn him toward the stump back in the white room.

Not a rope. A tether. And he wasn't being pulled away. He was being pulled back and there was a difference.

It was Lydia. Lydia Martin was at the end, urging him to come back to the other side. He could feel her anxiety traveling across that invisible line and his chest tightened in response. He clamped his eyes shut and stumbled backwards over a root. His back hit the ground with a force that stole the breath from his lungs. He gasped and choked, his head burning at the breathlessness.

"Just open your eyes," Lydia said. He felt her words rather than heard them. They danced behind his eyelids like sparks, blinding him. "Stiles, come on. Please!"

Stiles groaned. He wasn't sure how falling on the ground had entirely disoriented him but his head was spinning and he felt nauseated. "I can't," he grumbled aloud. "I don't feel good."

"I know you don't but you have to do this. We need you," she paused and the space between her words was an unbearable darkness. "Stiles, I need you."

The desperation in her voice stirred him to action and he tried once, twice, three times to fulfill her wishes. He'd do anything for Lydia. He hated to hear her beg. Surely he could open his eyes. His agonizing attempts failed and he took a deep and shuddering breath, tears pooling behind closed lids.

A wordless scream broke the silence across the space between them and that horrifying wail gave him the last push he needed.

He clenched the dry leaves and soil on either side of him and strained his neck forward.

And finally he opened his eyes.

A/N: Welcome to my newest torture device...I mean story. Yeah. STORY.

This is going to be a very emotional journey guys. The story starts with the characters at the darkest and very worst moments in their lives. But as we know, regression to the mean tends to do it's thing so it can't stay all bad indefinitely.

For those of you who came back and finished Moving in the Dark with me, I can never thank you enough. For those of you who are finding me for the first time, WELCOME! I'm super excited to see what you think.

Posting schedule might be a little erratic. My college schedule is more than a little overloaded this semester. But I have this story fully plotted and outlined and have been brainstorming it for closing in on two years. I can't wait to share all of it with you guys.

Thanks again,

Luca