a/n: Oh man. So this is really obviously inspired by Stiles and Allison in a "Supernatural" setting, with Stiles acting as Sam (someone who wants a life of his own, to not hunt anymore), Allison as Dean (someone who very much wants revenge- early s2 Dean, really). And if you don't know the show Supernatural, it obviously doesn't matter! But I love Stiles and Allison teaming up to do anything, so.

If I continue with this, getting to Scott might not be 'til the end of chapter 2. This first chapter acts as what catalyzes Stiles and Allison beginning their team-up. The story will largely take place in the summer before college would start, I believe. Also, in this AU, Stiles and Allison are not in Beacon Hills and did not go to high school there, but will go there soon.

A scholarship to Stanford University.

Not everyone put in the work to receive something like that. And as Stiles held the paper in his hands, the figurative gateway to a relatively financially stress-free ride to a very prestigious university, he realized he was surprised that he actually had been able to put in that much work.

Stiles Stilinski wasn't exactly always known for his attention span. He used to have a hard time focusing, a hard time staying on track.

But something had changed during the first year of his high school career. Maybe it was the fact that his dad had stopped hunting, and so he had stopped hunting, too. Maybe it was the fact with his mom dead, he needed something to focus all of his attention on, to put everything into. So he'd put everything into getting into Stanford.

Still, it was hard to believe that he'd actually made it. He'd achieved what he'd work for so diligently toward the last few years.

Yes, Stiles had certainly made it.

So why did he feel so goddamn empty?

One. Two. Three.

The already worn wooden target that hung on the oak tree was now looking dangerously close to crumbling completely, due to the hoard of arrows that had at one point pierced it.

Allison grinned at her easy precision and lowered her bow, wiping the sweat off of her forehead. She grabbed the water bottle that sat on the ground next to her and took a swig; it didn't quench her completely, though, and she poured the remaining water over her head, letting it run through her hair and down her neck, under her cotton tank.

Practicing archery was getting to be too easy, as of late, and Allison kept longing for new challenges.

But she supposed that came with the territory of being a hunter.

She started to make her way up the forest path, back into the suburban world (the normal world) and down the sidewalk to her house. The sky was clear, and it was warm, but not too warm; nice, mild Northern California weather.

When she reached the house, Allison paused at the door and wondered if her dad was home. It was only three in the afternoon, but it wasn't unusual for him to come home at random intervals now. He'd taken a job (a normal job) and it was weird and unlike him and she worried. She knew he worried, too, which was completely uncalled for: it's not as if she was going to go on a psycho, revenge-seeking rampage just because her mother had been killed by a werewolf six months prior.

Well. She might have wanted revenge, just a little.

Maybe there was a sort of pit of anguish that hollowed out her insides and made her unable to feel much else.

But she wasn't going to let her dad know that. So she acted like everything was okay, while she graduated high school, and he didn't hunt, and he got a real (seriously, a normal) job. And they were normal.

Except nothing was normal. Not at all.

Graduation was really not as exciting as people gave it credit for.

Well, the after-party should be interesting, and some of the speeches were well done. But the calling of names just went on and on.

Stiles shifted in his chair for what was probably the hundredth time that evening, glancing at the people close to him. They looked as bored as he probably did. Since they did it in alphabetical order, he was rather far down the line to formally "graduate". And North Pines High had well over two thousand students, so it was going to take a while. They'd done this whole thing already at graduation rehearsal earlier, but somehow this made it even more interminable.

And they were still only on the A's.

Sighing and fiddling with the gaping sleeves of his robe, Stiles watched the students passively as they grinned from the stage and shook hands with the school faculty. He saw a tall girl with brown, wavy hair walk across stage with a confident stride and he thought he'd seen her before. Her name was Allison, or something. But this school was too big and the classes had been too crowded; he forgot a lot of people.

Stiles amused himself by letting his mind wander and imagining some crazy scenario happening to disrupt the entire ceremony. But while other people would think of students tripping and knocking over the podium, or someone breaking down and hysterically crying, or something going very wrong with the sound system, Stiles thought of terrorizing ghosts filled with vengeance or victim-seeking demons.

Yeah, Stiles was a bit different from other kids. But it was his upbringing's fault. It's not as if he had asked to be raised learning that salt kept out demons (no, really, it did) or that burning a body's remains sent a ghost to peace. It's not as if he had asked to actually deal with those things, to see those things, to hunt those things.

Truthfully, he wasn't even that skilled in the hunting department. It was the research he was most fascinated by: where it came from, why it was happening, which legends were real, which had become grossly exaggerated. Sure, he'd handled a gun before, and he'd stabbed a few creatures in his time. But his dad had always been close behind him, and now… well, they hadn't gone on a hunt in years.

He wasn't exactly sure how much he minded. Throughout high school, Stiles had kept telling himself that he'd always wanted a normal life; he wanted to go to college and stop feeling like freak, to stop hiding things from people. But occasionally he'd see something in the paper. A death by a weird accident, or mysterious killings that didn't add up to anything that appeared… human. And he'd feel a little guilt well up inside him- just a little, but enough to make him wonder if he was doing the right thing by avoiding the life that his father had set out for him.

But then he remembered his mom, lying in the hospital bed, her eyes swimming with unshed tears and her hands grasping his. He remembered how she told him to be happy, to please, do it for her, have a happy life. He remembered crying and saying that he would, he would do it for her, of course he would. And he knew she never really agreed with the hunting lifestyle.

Besides, Stiles wanted to something for himself. His father had always meant well, had never pushed him into anything that he hadn't wanted to see in the first place (Stiles had always been excited by the occult and the legends and the morbid sort of excitement that all this was real), but he'd never really gotten the chance to set his own path. Until now.

Because now he was graduating high school, now he was on his way to Stanford University in the fall. He was going to be normal.

At least, that's what his mindset was until someone screamed.

Allison whipped her hand to her side out of sheer instinct until she remembered that she was at her high school graduation ceremony and she wouldn't be carrying around a gun or a bow and arrow.

The source of the scream had come from behind the stage, but she couldn't see what was going on because the great wooden platform was in the way. She started to make her way around back, pushing past people who were hurrying to the scene, their voices loud and shrill in the height of panic.

It was horrible, though Allison had seen worse. Much worse. Not that she was proud of that fact. He was one of the students but Allison didn't recognize him. His body was strewn haphazardly over the sound equipment wires, limbs entangled, eyes open wide.

Killed on the day that you graduate high school. How morbidly ironic.

As people hurriedly pushed past her along with the paramedics (though it was too late for that), she scanned the area for anything weird. Any sign at all of abnormality.

It was only when she turned her attention back to the victim that she realized it. There was no obvious cause of of the paramedics that was leaning over the body stood up and she saw his mouth form the words "heart attack".

Then Allison remembered the student that had died from the heart attack last week at their high school. It'd been weird, because heart attacks rarely afflicted the young, but she'd passed it off as a strange, random death.

Now there was a second heart attack, also a student from their school. And if there was one thing Allison didn't believe in easily, it was coincidence.

"It's a vengeful spirit, all right."

Allison nearly jumped out of her skin at the whispered statement, because she knew it certainly hadn't come from her, and she turned quickly. A fellow student had come up from behind; she didn't know him, but she thought she'd seen him around. Allison wasn't sure if he'd realized that he'd said anything aloud, because he wasn't looking at her. Instead, his eyes were quickly scanning the surroundings, up the walls and around the floor, looking for strange signs, just like Allison had.

Somehow, this guy knew about spirits and their tendency to kill innocent people. Somehow, this guy knew spirits existed.

And it was freaking Allison the hell out.

She continued to stare at him, dumbfounded, until he finally noticed her, his face breaking concentration and molding into a look of confused surprise. Then he donned a look of panic, as if he'd realized he'd said the word "vengeful spirit" out loud, and now had to explain that he wasn't insane or that he'd actually said something else.

But before he could, without thinking, Allison said shortly, "Come with me," and grabbed the guy by the arm, pulling him away from the crowd.

Stiles winced at the girl's (her name was Allison, right?) tight grip on his arm, pulling him away from the frenzy and hysteria- and the grieved wailing that Stiles had tried to learn to block out from his experiences at scenes of death, but it still affected him anyway- and into a secluded corner behind some ringed curtains that hid away storage.

"What did you say back there?" the girl asked, her expression dead serious.

"Uh…" Stiles let his mouth hang open, trying to think of a way to weasel out of this. Because for some reason, this girl had overheard him say something that could be very well classified as sounding insane, but instead of backing away slowly, she'd pulled him away for a rendezvous.

"Because I think you said spirit," she continued slowly, leaning into him, and Stiles instinctively took a step back, his heart pounding, his senses heightened. He was definitely nervous, but in more ways than one because this girl was currently emulating the sweet scent of soap mixed with gentle perfume and her hair was hanging over her shoulders in soft waves and her eyelashes were long and curled- basically she was really fucking pretty and Stiles wasn't used to girls being this close to him. "Which means… you're a hunter, too."

Stiles had to steady himself at this, breaking out of his reverie. "Wait… what? You know about-" He gestured vaguely, as if that hand movement encompassed all things horrifying and deadly and unbeknownst to ninety five percent of the world's population.

"Yes," the girl said, straightening up and running both hands through her hair, shaking the waves out. "Yes, I know." She was silent for a second, and then laughed, shaking her head. "This is crazy. I had no idea there were any more hunters in this town beside my family- let alone someone in my high school."

"Well, hunter is a term I wouldn't really use." Stiles shifted his weight onto his other foot nervously, his mind reeling with the fact that this girl he had thought was just normal, a regular high school girl preparing to go off to college, was actually just like him. "I mean, I haven't done any of this stuff in years. And I was always better at the research."

The girl was still staring at him, head moving from side to side slowly like she had just seen an alien, but the alien was beautiful and awe-inspiring. (Incidentally, with what Stiles had witnessed in his rather short-lived hunting career, the prospect of an alien wasn't too far-fetched). "My name is Allison," she said, holding out her hand.

Stiles took it, mentally congratulating himself that he'd (kind of) remembered her name. "I'm Stiles," he offered. This was definitely the weirdest first introduction he'd ever experienced.

"So, a spirit just killed one of our graduating classmates."

"Looks like it," Stiles agreed, letting out a shaky breath, feeling a tug of sadness for whoever that poor kid was, and his family.

Allison began to pace the area, approaching the curtains and pulling them away so she could scan the scene of the victim. "And it killed one last week, too. So now we just have to figure out the connection here. Why our school, and why these two people?"

"Woah, woah, woah, hold up-" Stiles frantically held his hands out in a gesture of "holding up" but sort accidentally stepped forward a couple times in the process, causing him to be close- very close- to Allison again (that damn perfume); he immediately shot up and flailed around while he backed away, and she raised an eyebrow, looking confused but also as if she was trying not to laugh. "We-" Stiles emphasized, "-are not doing anything. You are. I'm not a part of this… this whole… hunting thing anymore."

"What?" Allison shook her head, disbelief plain on her face. "You're telling me you can just watch a ghost kill someone and let it go by without wanting to do anything to help? I mean, I thought I was on my own here- my dad, he doesn't hunt anymore- but I cannot rest knowing all this evil is around me while I have the knowledge to stop it. So I finally find another hunter, someone my age, no less, and you're just going to sit by and watch this happen?"

Stiles swallowed hard, his eyes flickering down to avoid her penetrating glare. "I can't…" he trailed off, shifting his weight.

"Why? Because you're scared?"

Stiles snapped his head up at Allison's tone- it sounded so patronizing that he actually took a step forward this time, feeling a surge of anger run through him. But he softened his glower when he saw her expression was more confusion than belittlement.

"No," Stiles said, his gaze returning to the floor, running a hand through his hair, the short buzz a reminder of why he'd cut it in the first place, a reminder of his mother. "It's not that. I just… I promised someone."

Allison cocked her head and looked as if she was going to say something else, when her eyes caught something past Stiles' right shoulder. Confused, he turned around, following her line of vision.

It was the ghost.

Well, they weren't wrong. A ghost was definitely the cause of the two random heart attacks.

It didn't exactly look like a particularly menacing ghost, though. The ghost was there only for a second, but Allison was able to decipher, along with Stiles, that it was a young girl- probably about their age- wearing a graduation gown and cap, with short, primly curled hair and a very made-up face. She looked all ready to graduate.

That is, until she died.

Allison let out an exasperated huff as she lowered her hand; she'd instinctively brought it to her hip again, obviously not finding any sort of weapon, but the gesture proved futile anyway sine the ghost had gone as quickly as it had come. Stiles turned around, looking more distressed, probably now that he'd actually seen the ghost, proof that this was a real job.

"So we were right," Stiles said, his voice sounding a bit higher than it'd been before. "This is definitely the work of a ghost."

"Look," Allison started, but stopped again because the spirit was back, this time less than a foot away from her face. Instinctively, Allison stepped back without anticipating there was going to be a chair behind her, and her reflexes really must have been getting rusty without hunting regularly because the sudden obstacle caused her to stumble backward, and then the spirit was close- too close- and Allison had no way of getting out of this-

There was a swipe of something dark through the ghost and then it was gone. Letting out a breath, Allison looked up to see Stiles gripping a metal pole, panting slightly, his eyes wide.

"Iron," he said simply, with a shrug.

Gripping the chair to help her up, Allison stood and smoothed her hair away from her face and studied the boy in front of her. He was wary now, his posture tense; she knew he probably half-regretted showing any sign of being a hunter, even though in this case it had been necessary. "Stiles," she began again. "I could really use your help here."

Stiles was silent for a moment later, and then folded in on himself like he was tired of being defiant. Shoulders slumped, he lamented, "Okay, okay. Where do we start?"

a/n: reviews would be lovely!