"Be honest…is Beacon Hills on a Hellmouth? You can tell me. I feel like this is something I should be aware of, if it is." Stiles broke off briefly to devote his full attention to stepping over a tangle of roots and underbrush, still nearly tripping twice before his feet found firmer ground. It wasn't necessarily less treacherous ground, what with the thick carpet of fallen leaves made slick by a recent rain…but it was firmer. "Seriously," he continued, hunching his shoulders slightly against yet another gust of cool, autumn wind. He was beginning to regret leaving his hoodie in the jeep. "It would explain so much."
Ahead of him, Derek sighed heavily. It was his 'I can't believe you actually just said that' sigh, though, and not the 'I'm about five seconds away from sprouting fang' sigh, so Stiles felt relatively safe in continuing the line of questioning. It was important!
"I mean, we've got werewolves, and supernatural hunters, and zombie uncles, and I don't care what Deaton says, he's totally a witch! Plus, I'm pretty sure that gym substitute last week was an actual demon. Are, like, demons and vampires real? Dude, come on, you can't hold out on me like this!"
This time, the sigh was quite a bit closer to the 'I'm about to demonstrate my breathtaking rage issues' end of the spectrum.
"Stiles," Derek gritted out lowly. "Drop it or I'm leaving you here." As they were something like a mile and a half from his jeep—and he'd been too preoccupied trying to keep his feet under him to make note of directions—Stiles wisely decided to shut his mouth. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, and Stiles tried to occupy himself with figuring out how much farther they might have to the coordinates on the map Deaton had given them. They'd been walking for half an hour or so…surely they had to be close by now.
After a few moments, there was yet another gusty sigh—and possibly a bit of teeth grinding, but Stiles wasn't the one with super senses, so he couldn't be sure—and Derek very obviously forced some of the tension from his shoulders. "There's no such thing as a Hellmouth," he muttered scathingly. "Or vampires. And trust me, you'd know if your gym substitute was a demon."
Stiles had never actually met anyone who could make even the simplest words sound as begrudging as Derek Hale.
Stiles shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans, focusing his gaze on the kinda-sorta path they were following. It was little more than a deer trail, a winding, narrow swath of ground that plunged through some truly hellacious sections of Beacon Hills' brush and bramble. No huge clearings and stately trees here. The forest around them felt different…wilder and older, somehow. The hair on the back of his neck kept prickling, and he couldn't shake the sensation of unfriendly eyes watching him, however much he kept telling himself that Derek would have sensed any danger long before Stiles became aware of it.
All in all, this was not how he'd planned to spend his Monday morning.
He should have known the day was not going to go well when he'd been woken—a full forty five minutes before his alarm was even set to go off—by an impatient tapping on his bedroom window. Honestly, people who needed to access his room via the window never brought anything but trouble. All right, not people. Werewolves. And all right, not werewolves in general. Mostly, it was Derek.
Things had been…tense…since the final confrontation with Gerard Argent last spring. Stiles honestly didn't know why he'd thought it would be over when they'd managed to survive that clusterfuck. Why he'd thought he and Scott would be able to just go back to being the people they'd been before. It had barely taken a week for the full extent of the fallout to make itself known.
There was Jackson. Newly wolfed-out and dealing with what had happened to him as the kanima about as well as one would expect. That is to say, Jackson had reached levels of sheer asshole that Stiles doubted very much had ever been attained by anyone else, and now he had super strength behind his locker shoves and tackles at practice. There was Lydia. Throwing herself headlong into figuring out everything she could about the new, darker world she'd found herself thrust into, something inside of her still so brittle and sharp that it made Stiles' heart hurt just to look at her…and not for any reasons having to do with his lingering feelings for her.
Isaac. Wedging himself more and more firmly between Stiles and Scott, and all the while looking at Scott so tentatively and hopefully that Stiles couldn't even find it in him to be angry at the guy for coming between him and whatever part of his best friend he still had after, well, everything.
Erica and Boyd. Missing for more than a week before they came dragging themselves out of the woods and onto the Hale property—beaten, bitten, and clawed half to death, and both of them with terrified shadows in their eyes that still hadn't dissipated nearly three months later.
Peter. Goddamn, impossible, scary as all fuck Peter.
An Alpha pack. An actual pack comprised entirely of Alphas. How could that even possibly work? Ultimately, it didn't matter. They were here, and though they'd made no overt moves yet beyond letting the other werewolves in town feel their presence, Stiles wasn't naïve enough to think they meant anything but harm.
Then there were Scott and Derek. Truthfully, Stiles didn't even know what to think where Scott and Derek were concerned anymore.
He and Scott—he loved Scott like a brother. Hell, Scott was his brother in every way that counted. He'd always forgive Scott anything. He'd already forgiven him for not letting Stiles in on his plan to stop Gerard. He's forgiven Scott for not noticing when Gerard's men had snatched him right off the field. He'd forgiven Scott for taking hours that night to ask, "dude, are you okay? What happened to your face?" He'd forgiven.
He just couldn't forget. And he couldn't shake the feeling that while it was true that Scott would always have him, no matter what…the same could not necessarily be said of him having Scott. He hated feeling like that, but he didn't know how to fix it. If it could even be fixed.
Derek was another matter entirely. Stiles had allowed himself to believe that they might well and truly be done dealing with Derek after that night at the warehouse. Scott had made his position clear, and really, what could any association with Derek really offer them? Scott was in control of himself…they didn't need Derek. And Stiles was nowhere near prepared to trust him after what he had tried to do to Lydia. He'd been perfectly prepared—eager even—for Derek Hale to just fade into the background. Stiles had been pretty sure he could live his life quite happily without ever having to talk to Derek again.
Then Isaac had started to become a more permanent fixture in their lives, and Stiles had accepted that Derek was at least going to be on the periphery, as Isaac refused to leave Derek's pack (what little was left of it). After Erica and Boyd had returned to them, he'd accepted that Derek was going to be a little more than periphery if Stiles wanted to keep up with the tentative friendship that had blossomed between him and Erica. The day Derek had sent him a text asking (demanding) that Stiles meet him on the field behind the school and brusquely informed him about the Alpha pack, though, Stiles had mentally thrown up his hands in surrender.
Really, he supposed he should have just realized that there was no closing Pandora's Box once it had been opened.
A tentative—really, really tentative…like tissue-paper-thin tentative—truce had formed between Derek and Scott, neither of them happy with having to work with the other, but neither of them foolish enough to think they could face down an entire pack of Alphas alone. Deaton had agreed to help them as much as he could, Chris Argent promised to try and steer the hunters that had remained in town towards the Alphas, Peter appeared to be mostly sane (though no less creepy) and willing to help, and Stiles…
Stiles got to be the go-between for all of them. The neutral party. The only goddamned one who seemed to have enough maturity to ignore his own hang-ups and work with people in the name of keeping himself and everyone he cared about alive.
And he was self-aware enough to realize that him being the mature one in their little supernatural drama was a damn scary thought, thank you very much.
Still, there was the whole 'keeping himself and everyone he cared about alive' thing to consider, and so he damned well was the mature one. He carried messages between Deaton and Derek; he forced himself to sit in the same room as Peter Hale and combine their (admittedly, impressive) research skills; he made sure Scott actually went to meetings Derek scheduled; he did his best to help Erica and Boyd get through whatever trauma they were still dealing with.
Somewhere along the way, he'd found himself working with Derek more and more often. He supposed it made some kind of sense—Scott certainly still had trouble working with Derek one on one, and while Isaac was certainly loyal, he still let his baser instincts override his good sense too often. Erica and Boyd were barely holding it together, and Peter…well, at least Stiles and Derek could agree on a mutual mistrust of Derek's uncle. It had gotten to the point that Stiles didn't even really bother to be surprised when Derek came knocking on his window anymore. Case in point? When Derek had woken him up this morning at the ass crack of dawn—seriously, forty-five minutes before he was even supposed to be up!—Stiles hadn't questioned it. He'd just rolled out of bed, thrown his clothes on, and tramped down to his jeep.
He still wasn't exactly sure what they were looking for. Something Deaton wanted Derek to retrieve for him to use against the Alphas (or possibly simply to keep the Alphas from getting whatever it was themselves), and for some reason, Deaton had insisted Derek take Stiles along. Whatever. Stiles had given up on trying to get a straight answer out of Scott's boss.
"Hey, how much farther do we have to go? I have to be at school in—" he glanced down at his watch and winced, "—now," he trailed off lamely. "Great."
Seriously, what even was his life anymore?
Ahead of him, Derek's footsteps stalled briefly. He threw a glance over his shoulder, frowning, and then glanced back down at the hand-drawn map in his hands. Stiles cocked an eyebrow, waiting for the inevitable growl, or cutting remark about him needing to 'keep up' if he had places to be. To his surprise, though, Derek did neither. His jaw clenched a little, and he glared down at the map as though it had done him some personal injury.
"It shouldn't be much longer. You'll probably be able to make third period."
Stiles did some quick calculations in his head. He could, plausibly, claim a flat tire or something if the school called his dad. He'd still get the unexcused absence in his first two periods, but what the hell? It wasn't like he could really do much more to disappoint his father.
He consciously shut down that line of thinking before it could really take hold. Priorities. If this Alpha pack shredded them all into mincemeat, shoddy attendance wouldn't matter a damn bit, and he wouldn't be around for his father to be disappointed in.
Derek abruptly picked up his pace a bit, striding through the thick brush as easily as though he was taking a stroll in a well-manicured park. Stiles huffed a little and jogged after him, reaching up with one hand to rub at the back of his neck. The prickling sensation was getting worse. He glanced over his shoulder a couple of times, half-expecting to see something glaring at him menacingly…but the woods around them were quiet.
"Here…it should be just over here," Derek called back suddenly, leaping over a fallen, half-rotted log with an easy grace that shouldn't even be legal. Stiles followed as best he could, stalled a bit when the tail of his shirt got caught on a tangle of dead branches at the log's base. When he'd freed himself, he looked up to see where Deaton's map had led them.
Immediately, the sense of foreboding increased by about a factor of a zillion.
"Derek…" he called uneasily, slowing his steps a bit. They had come upon a clearing, such as they hadn't seen for almost forty-five minutes now. It was only about the size of Stiles' living room, the ground covered by a thick carpet of fallen leaves. There was nothing remarkable about it, except for a smallish rock formation at the center of it. Two small boulders, upon which a flat stone slab, about the size of a serving platter, was balanced.
It looked entirely too much like some kind of altar for Stiles' taste.
The feeling of being watched was nearly overwhelming now, and every nerve in Stiles' body was starting to hum with a sense of danger. Derek was standing at the very edge of the clearing, glancing around suspiciously—but he didn't look nearly as alarmed as Stiles felt. "Derek!" he called again. "Dude, something's not right."
He didn't care that Derek was the one with the werewolf nose, and the werewolf eyes, and the highly-developed sense of paranoia. He didn't care that Deaton was their ally, and even if Stiles suspected he often kept pertinent information to himself, he wouldn't send them into harm's way without a warning. His instincts were screaming at him that something was very fucking wrong and after everything with Scott, everything with Matt and the kanima, he was fucking done with not listening to his instincts.
"We need to get that slab," Derek said as Stiles came up behind him. He turned to stare at Stiles, frowning. "What's wrong with you?"
Stiles just shook his head, the prickling, pinching, needling sensation of being watched trickling from his neck down his spine. "We shouldn't be here," he said, and had no idea where the words came from. He wasn't sure he'd even meant to say them…but he knew they were true. Derek, though, just rolled his eyes.
"Just let me get Deaton his rock," he muttered, and stalked forward.
"Derek, wait!" Stiles shouted, darting forward and seizing Derek by the shoulder. Stepping one foot into the clearing as he did so.
The instant they breached the clearing's threshold, the sense of something staring at him became unbearable. The air seemed to press down on him, weighty and solid and—for a brief, insane moment-alive. He gasped, feeling Derek freeze beside him. For a few terrible heartbeats, he couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. Couldn't make himself take one more step forward or back.
The stones at the center of the clearing began to glow. Of .course they began to glow—veins of silvery-blue light spider webbing through their surfaces and growing brighter by the second. The slab that they were supposed to take was glowing the brightest of all.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
He was dimly aware of Derek suddenly wrenching himself into motion as a wind suddenly whipped up out of nowhere, throwing the leaves on the clearing floor up into a mad frenzy. The slab of stone started to pulse like a miniature star, and Stiles felt like he was choking on the wind buffeting them, on the phantom pressure surrounding him, on his own breath in his throat. He heard Derek shout his name, and he just wanted it to stop.
All of it. God, he was so tired of this. So, so tired and he needed it to just stop.
The glow of the stones grew bright enough that he had to shut his eyes against it, and a high-pitched whine started to fill the air.
Stop. He wanted it to stop.
There was an almighty crack of thunder, loud enough that he swore he felt his insides vibrate. Derek shouted at him again, and then he felt the werewolf's body slam into his, taking them both to the ground.
Just stop.
Everything went black.