Stiles wondered sometimes if a part of him hadn't known that this was coming.

More than two years had passed since Marin Morrell had given him the card, almost three, thick, heavy, gilded letters shiny on the front. She'd still been playing school counselor back then, and he'd still been playing little lost sheep, trying to keep up with the big bad wolves that last time he'd been called down to see her in her office. When she'd slid the card across the desk, the time and location of the next support group scribbled on the back he'd wanted to crumple it in his fist, set it on fire and grind the ashes into the earth with the heel of his boot, but he hadn't.

Instead he stuffed it down into the pocket of his jeans, held on to it, then later slipped it carefully between the ages of a book.

Even though he'd known who she was, that everything she did was to help the Alpha pack and maintain their balance, he'd still kept it.

He supposed that probably meant something.

Then the Nogitsune happened, and the cold and the dissociation and the death, and when he finally came out of it enough to recognize himself they were all too busy running for their lives to think about it.

Now…

Things were different now.

It was kind of funny - when his friends were dying and his town was in danger and he was being possessed by a centuries old demon he had been ok. He'd kept it together, mostly because for a while there he was pretty sure he was the only one making good decisions, the only one keeping all of them alive.

But now things had settled; they had mourned and moved on, gotten things figured out and under control, and now, now Stiles felt like he was about to shake apart.

Now the nemeton was dormant, Scott's status as a True Alpha had spread, and the dark side of the supernatural underbelly had finally stopped coming round every other day looking to take whatever they could.

Now Scott was engaged to Kira and had taken on the responsibility of shepherding Liam through his wolfy changes, Derek had followed Cora to South America to help her get her affairs in order so she could make the permanent move back to Beacon Hills in three months, and Stiles and Lydia had finally figured out their place in the pack as human and Banshee, the most intelligent and the most cunning of them all.

Well, most of them anyway.

Point was, things were good.

No more living in constant fear, no more threats, no more monsters of the month.

Things were calm, quiet, and it looked like they were going to stay that way.

Months passed and they finally relaxed, let go of the anxiety, the paranoia, quit waiting for the other shoe to drop, accepted the fact that maybe things could be ok, that maybe they all deserved a break and that it simply couldn't rain all the time.

All of them except Stiles anyway.

It probably said something that he could handle the fear, the life-and-death, the heart-pounding, gut-wrenching do-or-die of it all.

By now that was nothing, didn't even phase him anymore.

Clawed by a goblin?

Sure, whatever.

Hypnotized by a vampire?

Yeah, ok.

Forced to do an ancient demon's bidding?

Ugh, yawn.

This?

This was messing him up.

He didn't know how to be normal anymore, and sometimes he wondered if this was a little like what Derek had felt all those years ago, when he'd come back from New York to face his demons and tried to explain, tried to make them understand that the world was a bigger, darker, more dangerous place than they knew. Tried to look like any other guy, tried (and failed) to look like the safe bet.

He felt like an imposter in his own body, like his skin was an ill-fitting puppet and he was trying to pull the strings from the inside.

He'd graduated.

Gone to college.

Spent the first four months trying to have the freshman experience he'd always fantasized about, trying to be the new Stiles, Version 2.0 that he'd always wanted to be. He'd dreamed of getting away from Beacon Hills, of spending more time partying and drinking and making friends and making out than he ever did studying, but the Original Stiles was hard to shake.

Not Stiles Lite - that skinny spaz with the buzz cut and the raging ADHD. No, that guy had been easy to get rid of. Take one mad Alpha werewolf, extract one bite, add in a few murders and stir and voila! No more Stiles Lite.

Easy.

But now he was left with the Original Stiles, and that guy had issues too. He was hard and dangerous and a little aggressive, a little too willing to spill blood. Too serious, unable to laugh at jokes or sit anywhere but the back row because he couldn't stand having anyone behind him. He was hypervigilant, suspicious, over analyzed everything, and maybe that was all a holdover from other versions of Stiles, little bits that carried through to this version, but did it really matter?

He was sitting here talking about himself like some kind of fractured personality, like it wasn't him who'd killed, who'd lied, who'd cheated and cursed and stolen, all for the good of the pack. All to save his life and the life of his friends, all to keep himself sane the only way he knew how.

Christ, he was a mess.

He knew who he was, what he'd done and why, and now that things had changed, now that everything had changed, he was scared that he was the only thing that hadn't.

Scared that he couldn't stop.

Couldn't stop worrying, couldn't stop looking over his shoulder, couldn't stop scoping the exits of every room he walked into.

He knew what anxiety was.

He knew what paranoia was.

He knew what post-traumatic stress disorder was.

But did any of those apply when the shit you were afraid of, the shit that haunted your nightmares was real?

Stiles could quote the DSM front to back, but he wasn't sure he was the best person to ask about anything you might find between its covers.

So here he was, sitting in a hard, molded-plastic chair the color of leftover pea soup in the basement of a church four towns away, his hands resting on his knees in a white-knuckled grip.

He'd been to therapy before, knew how it worked, had even been dragged along to a few of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings his dad had gone to after Stiles' mother's death. He understood the set up and the process of the group, knew how he'd eventually ended up here. He knew that these people, the ones sitting to his left and right and in front of him weren't exactly human, knew that they were all familiar with the supernatural in one way or another and that in a way this made them safe to talk to, safe to talk in front of, but knowing all of that didn't make him any more comfortable.

He didn't know what he planned to do here tonight, didn't know if he planned to stand up and share or not. He hadn't planned anything really, not anything more than showing up, and that was unusual for him. All he knew was that, after only three days back home in Beacon Hills for the Christmas holiday, he could hardly stand it anymore, sure that he would snap with the frenetic speed and tangle of all the things crashing around in his brain. It made him feel out of control and after the nogitsune that was the one thing that Stiles absolutely could not tolerate, so he did the only thing he could think of and dug up the referral Morrell had left him with.

So he came and he sat and he waited, watched silently as the room slowly filled up with faces he didn't recognize and who wouldn't recognize him in return. For a while he played a little game - guessing at what each person was that walked in, what they could do or cause or turn into, what color their eyes would be. There had to be at least a few that were guilty of something, who'd killed, and for half a second that thought was comforting before he started analyzing his own relief.

Jesus, what was going on with him?

Since when did he need to imagine everyone around him as a serial killer to feel better about himself?

Crossing his arms over his chest, Stiles slouched low in his seat, tried to disappear into the light jacket he wore, hood tugged low over his eyes. A big part of him didn't want to be here, didn't know if he was forcing himself or if he really needed this or what, but there was something sitting heavy in the pit of his belly, tingling up and down his spine and raising the hair on the back of his neck. It was his fellow therapy-goers he knew that, even though it shouldn't be, wasn't fair. His fingers itched for his baseball bat, for some mountain ash, and damn it, it wasn't paranoia but this was an actual thing right? He could feel eyes on him, but as he ran his gaze around the room he didn't see anyone looking back, no one…

Wait.

Was that…

Holy shit, that was Peter Hale.

Dropping his gaze in horror Stiles froze, a deer in the headlights, prey. His heart was pounding and all of a sudden he felt damp with panic-sweat, and more than a few people flicked a glance in his direction, but he didn't care, couldn't think.

This wasn't a coincidence, there was no way…

Ok.

Ok, ok, ok.

This was… this was kind of a disaster but he could fix this. Could play it off, or slip out the back and pretend it had never happened, or threaten to send the werewolf back to the grave he'd crawled out of if he ever opened his mouth…

Because this had to be a joke right? Some kind of sick, twisted prank.

Later he'd feel like a real jackass for that thought.

No one could blame him for it; it was exactly the kind of shit that Peter would pull - follow him here, poke at his weaknesses, assess him, tease him, test him.

But it wasn't fair either, and Stiles knew that.

Still, in the moment, once the reactionary panic had worn off, he was left with anger, a hot, biting fury that he was being intruded on here just because Peter Hale felt like coming out to smirk at him. If the situation weren't so serious, he would've gotten up and walked right back out the door. But he needed this, felt like he was dangling dangerously close to the end of his rope, and he wasn't sure that he wouldn't do something stupid if he didn't find some kind of outlet soon. His pride snapped at his heels, keeping him in his seat, and the rest was just knowing that he needed someone, anyone to unload his secrets on. The pack, his father, his best friend; everyone was pulling away from him and he felt lost, isolated, mired down in the guilt of the wake of the Nogitsune and the unnatural course of life that had turned him from a naïve, ridiculous child into a young man on the cusp of adulthood, cold and hard and more aware of the world around him than anyone should ever be.

So if that meant spilling his guts to a room full of strangers and Peter Hale then so be it.

Course decided, commitment made, he was almost disappointed that he never got the chance to get up and share, because by the time he tuned back in and started paying attention, the meeting had begun and introductions had been made and to his shock, his last surprise, Peter Hale was standing up and walking to the front, leaping lightly up the three short steps to the podium and clearing his throat. He wore an expression that Stiles had never seen on his face before and it cut at the anger in him, burned away the hate and left him with a quiet sort of awed sadness.

"It was her birthday yesterday."