When Scott said goodbye to Stiles after school he never thought this would happen. He never thought his friend would go missing.
Sure, there was that night where Gerard took him. But this? This was worse.
Scott searched and searched for his best friend. It'd been a month and a half and still no trace. But Scott refused to give up. His grades were slipping and he didn't show up to lacrosse, but that didn't matter to him. He had to find his best friend—his brother.
Three months pass and everyone seems to have forgotten about the missing boy. No one at school brings him up. The letters on Stiles' locker are torn and faded. Scott can't stand to look at these kids anymore. How could they not care? How could they just… forget?
Another three months pass before Stiles shows up. Well, a part of Stiles.
Scott was looking through the woods when he caught a scent of Stiles. What he found was a finger. Scott almost puked but he held the bile down and grabbed his phone out of his pocket to call Stiles dad. With his finger hovering over the sheriff's number, he hesitated and dialed a different number instead.
Twenty minutes later, Lydia was standing by his side examining the finger. "And you're sure it's Stiles'?" she questioned with a raised eyebrow.
Scott growled. "I would know his scent anywhere, Lydia. I just need to know: is he… you know?"
Lydia gave him a sympathetic look. "Scott, I don't know. I can't… I can't tell."
Scott sighed and was about to say something else when the wind lifted up and he caught the familiar sent again. He ran in the direction of the scent, ignoring Lydia's questioning yells. He ran for a few miles before ending up outside of a house that looked in worse shape than the Hale house after the fire. He stepped cautiously up the steps; listening and smelling, seeing if he could catch any other scents, but all he smelled was Stiles.
He burst through the front door, not bothering to be worried about anyone being there. He went through the whole house, but at the top of the stairs he caught a fresh wave of Stiles' scent. But it wasn't right… the scent seemed off somehow.
Worry twisted in his gut as he looked down the long hallway towards the only room at the end of the hall. He took a deep breath and made his way to the door. His fingers hovered over the door as a wave of fear washed over him of what he might find behind the door. But he took a sharp inhale and pushed the door open without a second thought because no matter what he faced, he needed to find Stiles.
A new and stronger wave of scents mixed together assaulted him through the open door; scents of Stiles, blood, and pain. He looked around and didn't see Stiles, but he heard something shuffle in the closet. "Stiles. It's Scott, open the door," Scott called through the door, trying to keep his voice steady and his heart beating hard in his chest. He waited a moment with no response. He knocked. "Stiles, it's okay. Please, if you can open the door…"
It was silent for a long moment before the door opened slowly. What Scott saw made his eyes glow with rage. Stiles was huddled on the floor; his face almost unrecognizable. Deep cuts ran from Stiles' forehead to his chin and across his face. His hair was matted with blood and his hand was wrapped carelessly with a part of his t-shirt.
"Stiles, can you stand?" Scott asked through his teeth. He could barely control himself with the scent of blood so pungent in the air now that the door was open. Stiles stared blankly at him before looking away.
Scott sighed and crouched in front of Stiles, reaching out a hand to him but Stiles flinched away, scrambling back from his touch, screaming: "NO! NO, YOU'RE NOT REAL! YOU'RE NOT REAL!"
Scott's eyebrows furrowed in concern, but the screaming didn't deter him. He crawled on his knees further into the closet and reached out to grab Stiles, dodging his flailing arms as best he could but still catching a hit to the jaw for his efforts. "Stiles! I'm here, I'm Scott. I'm real, I promise," he soothed in the boy's ear once he got his arms firmly around Stiles.
At his words, Stiles seemed to still. Slowly, he looked up at Scott, really looked at him this time. "Scott?" he croaked hoarsely, scared and broken, before fainting in Scott's arms. Slightly panicked, Scott quickly wrestled his phone from his pocket and called the person he should have called to begin with—the sheriff.
When the line clicked over, Scott exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and said without preamble, "I found him." A relieved sigh was his only response before the sheriff told him he was on his way.
Two hours later found Scott and Lydia sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs as the sheriff paced in the waiting room at the hospital with no word on how Stiles was doing. Lydia was staring blankly at a magazine in her lap and Scott had his eyes glued in the direction that they had taken his friend.
The second Scott saw his mother walking towards him he jumped up from his seat. The sheriff caught his movement and turned towards the nurse while Lydia put the magazine away, wringing her hands in her lap, but otherwise staying seated.
"How is he," Scott rushed to ask once his mom was in ear shot, beating the sheriff to it.
Melissa let out a long exhale of breath, looking from her son to the sheriff to address him first. "The cuts on his face were deep. They'll be scars. Unfortunately, we couldn't attach the finger. And Scott—"she paused and directed her attention to her son with a meaningful look in her eyes "—I think there's something you need to see."
Scott nodded at his mom and then looked to Stiles' dad. The sheriff nodded his head and Scott followed his mom to Stiles' room. The boy looked so peaceful, and Scott felt a wave of relief fall over him until he realized Stiles was lying on his stomach.
"What… What's wrong?" Scott whispered, looking over to his mother. Melissa lifted Stiles gown and Scott almost puked at what he saw underneath. Cut deep into Stiles' back were the words: You are mine McCall.
Melissa lowered the gown and sighed, looking over to her son with a grim expression. "This was never about Stiles. He was a message, Scott. He was a message to you."
Scott's heart started galloping in his chest and he let his finger brush the back of Stiles' hand as he frowned down as his friend. "This is all my fault, Mom. This happened to him because of me," he whispered.
Then something Stiles said to him popped into his head: You're still only human, Scott.
Scott looked up and rounded the bed to hug his mom. She pressed her lips to his forehead and then leveled her gaze on his. "Catch this son of a bitch, Scott."
Scott nodded and pulled away. "You didn't even have to tell me." He walked quickly back to waiting room and let the sheriff know he was allowed to go see his son. The sheriff grabbed his arm. "Scott, what are you going to go do?"
Scott let a low growl rumble in his chest. "What I have to."
The sheriff looked at him like he didn't know the boy, but nodded. "Be careful."
Scott spent days scoping out the house he found Stiles in. The sheriff tried seeing who it belonged to but the house had been abandoned for years. The most troubling part of it all was that Scott recognized the scent of the person who took Stiles, but he just couldn't figure out where he knew it from.
He wouldn't visit Stiles in the hospital; even though the only time Stiles spoke was to question where Scott was.
Still with no leads on who the scent belonged to, Scott finally decided to go see Stiles. When he entered the room, he was relieved to see Stiles' sleeping figure. In an effort not to wake him up, Scott turned on his heel in an effort to slip out but a voice stopped him. Scott paused, body tense as he held his breath.
"I've gotten pretty good at faking being asleep, Scott. I had to. It's the only time he left me alone," Stiles whispered, voice raspy from lack of use, the sound scraping roughly over Scott's sensitive ears.
Scott let out the breath in a slow exhale as he reached out to close the door. He turned and slid into a chair next to his pale best friend. He hated seeing him like this. "Who, Stiles? Who did this?" Scott questioned; his voice a little sharp. He was at a loss, not knowing where to go from here.
Stiles shook his head. "I knew his voice, Scott, but I didn't seem him."
"Who was it?" Scott pressed gently.
"Garrett," Stiles whispered. Scott was up out of his seat with his hand closing on the door handle before the name fully made it past his friend's lips. "Scott, wait. He's dangerous. Scott, you can't take him," Stiles' pleaded, his voice growing stronger in his effort to get Scott to listen to him.
Scott merely turned his head and growled at Stiles. "He fucked with my brother. He has no idea how dangerous I can be." And with that, Scott rushed out of the room with weak yells of his name following him down the hall that he ignored.
All he saw was red.
He had twenty minutes before school started. Scott sped through the street on his bike, weaving through traffic wherever necessary in his made dash towards the school. He managed to put on his break and turn off his bike just before jumping off and making a beeline towards the direction that he could smell that scent that's been taunting him for the past few days.
Scott burst through the boy's locker room and growled over the crack of the door on the wall, "GARRETT!" All the boys looked at him as if he were out of his mind (which he was), and after a second Garrett showed his face.
"McCall?"
Scott immediately grabbed Garrett by the front of the shirt and tossed him against a locker. The other boys jumped up but Garrett waved them off as he gingerly made it to his feet. He stood up and leaned in close to Scott. Scott's nostrils flared, and Garrett laughed. His whispered to Scott, "What are you going to do, McCall? Kill me here in front of everyone?" Garrett's lips pulled back in a smirk, but not for long as Scott slammed him into the locker again.
"If I have to," Scott hissed, feeling his last remaining grip on his self control quickly slipping.
Garrett laughed, his eyes glinting at the older boy. "You wouldn't dare," he challenged.
Scott bared his teeth. "You hurt Stiles. I'm not sure what I'll do," Scott said, giving his neck a hard queeze before letting go of him.
Garrett laughed again, and somewhere deep in Scott he was delighted that the sound has a wheezing aspect to it now. "All big and bad in a crowd. How about you meet me alone tonight at ten at the house you found the weasel in. Come alone, McCall."
Scott nodded once, flashed his eyes quickly just for Garrett before turning on his heel and walked out, ignoring Coach's call of "Get your ass back here, McCall." He didn't have time for the Coach today, not with his wolf running wild under his skin and threatening to tear him apart at the seams and wanting to sink his teeth into the blond boys neck for what he did to his packmate—his brother. Instead, he stormed out of the school, fingers flying over his phone to makes some calls. Garrett would pay for this.
Ten came around and Scott was standing outside the house when Garrett came walking up with at least ten other people Scott assumed were hunters. "You didn't think I'd come alone, did you?" Garrett called.
Scott's lips curled back in a slow smirk, his dimples showing as he leveled his gaze on the other boy. "You didn't think I would, did you?" At that, Scott's pack came out from their various hiding places around the house – Kira, Lydia, Malia, Chris, Derek, and even Peter. "You had him," Scott began, stepping down from the steps he'd been standing on. He moved closer to Garrett step by step. "For six months. Tortured him for six months," Scott said in a low voice, almost snarling.
"This is great," Garrett said cheerfully as if Scott hadn't said anything and this was just a nice chat. "Now I can take all of you out." The boy laughed again, but was cut off by the sound of a low howl coming from Scott as he launched himself at Garrett. His wolf took pleasure in hearing the sound get choked in the boy's throat, hearing his pulse rising and the scent of fear flaring up.
But before he could reach the boy, a girl that had to be only sixteen years old stepped up and tried to stop him, but Scott ran into her, pausing only to smack the girl across the face and she collapsed on the ground. He didn't have time for anyone but Garrett, no one but the one who had tried to kill his best friend, his brother, his pack mate. His wolf wanted blood.
The clearing was quiet for a moment, everyone suspended in time until Garrett broke the silence with a scream. His back up sprang into action then, running towards the group of supernaturals.
Kira was the first to go down. A girl had caught her off guard with a dagger and Kira was out. Lydia quickly ran to her aid. Scott couldn't focus on anything but fighting Garrett. The boy was good but Scott was angry and all of his self control was gone as he let his wolf get what it wanted.
Within minutes the fight was over.
The only one left was Garrett for his side. The boy lay on the ground bloody and mangled, Scott towering over him. "Scott, please. I didn't—I didn't kill him!" the boy pleaded.
"No, I didn't give you that chance." Scott brought his claws down across Garrett's face and the boy sank to the ground all the way. Scott stood there for a second, chest heaving as he tried to reign his wolf back under control. Then everything crashed over him – the realization of what he had just done, and the unwanted guilt of stooping so low crushed him and he fell to his knees, head in his hands. His breaths came became shallow and rapid, his throat closing as the guilt gripped him. He stayed there for a while, trying to breathe and thankful that no one bothered him as they cleaned up.
Chris said to not worry about the bodies, that he knew a place. Scott didn't even want to ask; didn't even have the energy to focus on anything but his breathing. After a while his breathing returned to normal and he stood up on shaky legs, but his face was composed as he turned to assess the group. He was an Alpha now; it was his responsibility to take care of his pack no matter what he was feeling.
Kira was up and fine, Peter was gone (unsurprisingly), but the rest had stuck around.
"Stiles is one of us. He will always be one of us," Scott said in a hoarse voice, then walked away without another word. He had to get to the hospital to see Stiles. The bike ride to the hospital helped Scott compose himself so that by the time he made it to his friend's room and Stiles asked what had happened, Scott gave him one of his signature smiles and said, "It's taken care of."
Stiles tried to cut in but Scott stopped him with a shake of his head. "Stiles, you're my brother. I wasn't going to let him get away with that. I just couldn't."
"Scott you can't save everyone," Stiles insisted.
"But you're not everyone, Stiles."
Stiles grinned and patted his bed and Scott crawled in next to him. "You're the best friend anyone could ask for, Scott."
Scott's smile widened, and this time it was genuine. "You too, Stiles. You too."