Unknown Subject
The first thing Reid notices is that there is blood everywhere.
It's dark in there – far enough from the small town they tracked the unsub to that the screams wouldn't be heard, and he has seen five other crime scenes left by this one to know that there would be screams.
He's been killing them by hacking them to pieces with an axe. Moving too fast for them to get a proper reading on him, not knowing quite well what his angle is, what he wants. Garcia didn't even have the time to give them a background – in fourteen hours he's killed six people. He hasn't stopped, and neither have they, and now he's just… here.
Blood, so much blood.
He's sitting in the middle of it. There's a leg about 2 feet from him, and the head is smashed in and thrown the furthest from him. He's covered in bruises and cuts and blood. And now he's sitting in the middle of it.
He's… younger than Reid by a few years. Twenty-four, twenty-five, tops. Dark hair, shorter than his, in complete disarray now. Eyes blood shot.
Tears.
So many tears.
Their eyes meet, and Reid takes in a deep breath.
"Put your hands where I can see them and drop your weapons" Morgan says, and the unsub looks at him then, tilting his head and putting his hands up.
"I don't have any weapons on me. The axe is by the door, it's covered in my digitals and my blood, so just pack it up and take it as evidence or something."
This feels strange, this… surrendering. They thought they were dealing with an unsub in a killing spree. They left that morning with a desperate call, because in five hours this man, this boy, had already killed three people.
They didn't even know his name by then. Still don't now.
And now here he is, surrendering.
Morgan kneels behind him, puts the cuffs around his wrists, and the boy is crying. Freely, as if he's grieving for something. The older agent rises from the floor and brings the kid with him. He's a little shorter than Reid, more built than him, though, and their eyes meet again.
"What's your name?" Reid whispers, because he wants to know.
"Stilinski. Stiles Stilinski" the kid says. He looks down then, and goes without a fuss, without complaints, with nothing.
They caught the unsub. He's going to jail for the murder of at least seven people, and it should feel right.
Somehow, it just feels… empty.
X
When they finally decided to move out from California to Washington, he knew he wouldn't be as close to Scott as they were then, but it was the price to pay. Scott was a good Alpha, but he and Derek couldn't co-exist in the same town, and honestly, after his senior year in High School, Stiles was more than ready to leave Beacon Hills behind.
"Ready?" Peter asks, and Stiles sends him a little smirk.
"Yeah" he answers.
Peter gets into the small truck they rented to bring their stuff up North. Derek is waiting in the Camaro, and Stiles gets in with a sigh, waving one last time at Allison and Scott (and, creepily enough, Chris).
"Let's get out of here" Derek says, squeezing his hand.
"No time like the present" he answers, smiling back.
It's the last time he actually sees Scott. They talk some over the phone, and they communicate a lot on Facebook, but they never see each other again.
He doesn't really regret it, though.
He wouldn't change those six years for the world. He would only change the past two days.
X
They get back home, and he knows things are still weird for all of them. This unsub feels wrong somehow. As if they caught the wrong person, even if they know he killed all those people.
"I have something to show you" Garcia says in that tone of voice that makes them all nervous – she's done something either illegal or that they won't appreciate, but Reid knows she caught it too. She knows something is wrong too.
"I know you caught the guy from two days ago, and thank God you did, because that amount of killing" she shudders a bit, but keeps going, staring at all of them around the table, "But something was bugging me and I had to dig some things up" she shrugs, as if apologizing, "The blood and DNA tests came back this morning and Stiles Stilinski didn't kill the first victim. His throat was… ripped out, literally, ripped out, by someone's bare hands, and those hands weren't Stilinski's. The DNA found in Derek Hale's body actually belonged to his uncle, the second dead body found, Peter Hale. Peter killed Derek. That was Stiles stresser, seeing as they were engaged, and waiting to get their papers approved for an adoption. They have been together for six years, now, dated ever since Stiles was still in High School" she clicks a button then, and an image of a boy with a goofy smile and somber looking man side by side appears on the screen, "Stiles's father had a heart attack when he was just starting his Senior year. He's been living with the Hales ever since, Peter, as far as I can tell, judging by the pictures and the conversations I had with a few close friends of theirs, has been acting as a father-figure for Stiles ever since" another click, and, this time, a smirking Peter shows up, holding Stiles by the scruff of his t-shirt, while the boy smiles again. It's strained, but it's happy. Another click and the three men show up together in a simple frame – a house in the background, a moving truck to the side, boxes around them, a moving in day. Derek has his arms around Stiles, and the younger man looks happy, content, leaning back against Derek, while Peter smirks beside them, "The five other victims were in some sort of gang. I tracked several phone calls between them and Peter – the man killed his nephew to get an in with them. I talked to a Scott McCall and a Chris Argent, both of whom told me this gang had targeted Derek back when they still lived in California, but then backed away for no apparent reason. They moved away, and, apparently, forgot about it, until Peter made his move. I looked into their backgrounds, and there's a whole trail of murder and weird disappearances everywhere those five go. They live somewhat like nomads, going from town to town, and I have no idea how Stiles tracked them down so fast, but he obviously found out what Peter did, and that's what set him on that spree."
"It explains why he stopped the killings right after he finished with them" Morgan says after a few seconds, "He wasn't in a psychopathic killing spree, he was in a grieving killing spree."
It doesn't make it any better, but it explains.
Reid thinks that maybe he'll be able to get it now, why this feels so wrong.
He looks again at the screen.
Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale stare back at him, smiling away in their own little world, while Peter stares, smirking in the background.
X
He didn't really ask for the bite as much as he knew it would happen.
He would never do it if his dad was still alive, but with the way things were, it was really the only thing that made sense for them.
Stiles was a weird wolf. He knew it, and Derek knew it, but they never really told Peter about it, because it just seemed… wrong.
His feelings for Peter were mixed and strange back then – he couldn't bring himself to trust the man, but he had grown to love him somehow. Like Derek did, maybe. He was family, and they didn't have much of that left to just toss away or disregard what little they did keep close. Peter was there to go with him to his parent-teacher meetings after his dad died. Peter was there when Derek tried to deny that they could be together. Peter was there to smack Derek on the head when he was being an idiot, even if Derek was the Alpha.
And yet they never told him how sometimes Stiles's eyes would shine red instead of bright amber. How they could feel each other to the point of being able to tell exactly what the other was feeling, where the other was, if they were safe. It was strange, and Peter probably knew something about it, but they didn't want to tell him, so they didn't.
Stiles was leaving the social worker's office when he felt it. He could almost see Peter smirking, his whispered finally, the way he kept waiting for his eyes to shine red and the power to surge within him.
Instead, Stiles dropped to his knees on the ground for a whole minute, just waiting for the terror and fear to pass, and then he ran home.
He had the axe in his hands even before he knew what he was doing. It was carved from a time when Deaton still helped them, hidden away in the shed. Peter was so confused by not turning into an Alpha he didn't even see Stiles until the axe was buried into his back.
He didn't plead or cry or try to explain – he died. Stiles tore him to pieces, as simple as that, with no grand moments, as if the only thing keeping him together was Peter's pain.
He knew suddenly, why the Alphas had gone away. Why they had given up – because Peter had given them a better deal, he would kill Derek himself and join them. Digging through Peter's cell, he found where they were supposed to meet, and he went there.
Four of them got away, but one was torn apart, just like he was inside.
What surprised him most at that moment was that they ran from him instead of killing him, trying to kill him.
He found the second and third together, the twins. They went down fighting, but they went down.
He doesn't really remember much from that point on. He remembers the twins confessing where the others would be hiding, and then he remembers listening to the door of the warehouse opening and the FBI people coming in.
He knows he's done for, and he knows it's going to be bad. He's a werewolf – he's an Alpha werewolf – arrested and thrown in prison, and this is going to end badly for everyone involved, unless he manages to put an end to his own life, and soon.
He doesn't know if he can, though.
It doesn't really matter anymore.
Nothing does.
X
"If it's bothering you this much, why don't you go see him?" Derek, his Derek, asks one morning, about a month after the Stiles Case.
He overcame his detestation for computers to stare at Facebook accounts, and Instagram profiles for hours.
They were so happy. Stiles's pictures making goofy faces and weird eyes at the camera. Derek Hale's weird colored eyes staring at the photographer instead of the camera always, smiling away – a secret sort of smile that Reid only recognizes because he's caught himself doing it around his Derek a time or two. The way they seemed to fit together – Stiles's amber, Derek's hazel. All down the drain, all gone, all thrown away.
Would he be like that? If he and Maeve had been together for that long when the psychopath attacked them? Would he have gone in a mad killing spree if had known what he was losing? Would he have abandoned all hope if Morgan hadn't been there for him?
Maybe that's what was wrong. Maybe this is what he needed to understand.
Maybe he saw a little too much of himself in Stiles's broken and blood covered tears.
"I think I will" he answers, looking back at a printed picture.
Hale and Stiles laugh away, not even knowing that three months later the man taking the picture would have killed one of them, and been murdered by the other in retaliation.
X
Stiles has been transferred to a psychiatric institution after a week of being arrested. His friend Scott had arranged it. Apparently his Lawyer was an intelligent friend of his from High School, now a high end Lawyer in New York, who had come to defend him specially, called Lydia Martin.
Reid put in the request to see him, and she had let him, as long as she was present. They meet in a small, but somewhat comfortable room, and Reid suddenly has no idea why he's here. It's almost like those first few times he had gone to see his mom after he had her committed – he wants to ask so many things, and talk about so much, and has no idea where to start.
"Hello, Agent who arrested me, but never introduced himself" Stiles greets when he enters the room, and the shadow of a smile passes on Miss Martin's face.
"I'm Doctor Spencer Reid" he ends up saying, and Stiles gives him a small smile.
"In other circumstances, I would make a joke about the Doctor coming and rescuing me, but I'm not quite sure that's what you're doing here, right?"
Reid wants to follow that up. Stiles likes Doctor Who. He used to take medication for ADHD but stopped a few years back, right after he started college. He used to be happy.
They stare at each other for a few seconds, and Martin sighs.
"Did you have a purpose for being here?" she ends up asking, and Stiles looks at her with something akin to fondness.
"Come on, Lyds. You can leave us alone. Maybe that's why he hasn't talked yet. I'll be fine" Stiles says in his most convincing voice, and Lydia looks about ready to argue, but gives up.
"Fine" she says shortly, with an icy smile at Stiles. She turns to Reid then, "If you hurt him, I will personally see that everything you hold dear to you is stripped away" she completes with the sweetest smile he has ever seen, and then leaves.
This man in front of him has killed six people with an axe. Hacked them to bits, left them no more than pieces of flesh covered in blood, and yet, his friend is threatening an FBI agent for him.
Reid stares some more, not knowing what to do.
"Why?" he ends up whispering, and Stiles looks down. For a second, it looks as if Stiles's eyes shine red, but he's sure it's a trick of light. When the man looks at him again, there are tears running down his face.
"I don't know" he whispers, "It seemed like the only thing that would take my pain away, you know? They would never have paid for it. They wouldn't have gone to jail, they wouldn't have stayed there. They would have kept living, and Derek can't. I thought it would take my pain away" he looks down again, "I hasn't, though. Nothing will."
He doesn't say anything again, and Reid leaves.
He doesn't get any answers, doesn't have anything to calm this weird sense of wrongness that is still inside of him.
Truth is he's used to monsters. People who kill remorselessly or even have the potential for it. The ones who, even though innocent in their beginning, have acquired the taste for blood and can't seem to make themselves let go after a while, but this one – this one is wrong, because he isn't the monster. He's a normal guy, a normal boy, who had a bright future with the love of his life and the little girl they were planning on adopting. He was happy, he was fine, he doesn't enjoy killing, he's never wanted that for his life.
He's not a monster.
And yet, he was more efficient in his kills than most of the unsubs they've ever hunted down.
Maybe the monsters are there to make us all fear them, but it's the ones who seem to be just like us that we should really be afraid of.
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