Oh my GOD, I have so many other things I need to be writing. Sooooooo many other things. God, seriously, I need to just stay the hell off kink memes. I just wanted to write thiiiiiiiiiiisssssss.

Any road, meh...this is taking place in an alternate season three timeline. No Alpha pack, Peter got resurrected, but appears to be playing nice with everyone, and Jackson is a werewolf. Okay? Okay.

Title is (slightly paraphrased) from 'Feels Like Today' by Rascal Flatts, if anyone is curious.

There are faeries in Beacon Hills.

Honest-to-God faeries. With the weird spelling and the magic and the unearthly, glowing beauty and the seriously motherfucking nasty and highly developed sense of vengeance.

Stiles knows there are currently faeries in Beacon Hills because Allison's father had been honorable enough to give Derek a head's up that a group of rather-less-scrupulous-than-he hunters were rolling into town on the trail of a cadre of them. He knows about the weird spelling because he's been up to his eyeballs in research (most of which had been confined to a series of increasingly dusty and moldered books provided by Deaton due to the fact that actual information on faeries is even harder to come by than actual information on werewolves on the internet) for the past week trying to figure out why a group of faeries were flitting about the woods of Beacon Hills when they haven't even been seen in California for going on a hundred years. He knows about the unearthly, glowing beauty because he just spent half an hour in a clearing in the forest trying not to stare like a twelve-year-old boy at a Hooter's bar while Derek and Peter tried to talk the faerie queen (an actual, honest-to-God faerie queen!) into moving on before her group brought even more hunters pouring into Beacon Hills.

And he knows about the motherfucking nasty and highly developed sense of vengeance because he is currently running for his life after having just watched a motherfucking tree lift itself out of the ground and eat somebody.

Granted, that somebody was one of the rogue hunters that Argent had warned them about, and he and his buddies had just crashed the negotiations and started shooting at everyone. Stiles can't really find it in his heart to feel sorry for the bastard.

But now, the bastard's friends are out for blood, the woods have become a war zone, he's managed to get separated from the rest of his friends, and somehow, he doubts that the faerie queen and her retinue are looking very closely at which humans they are making Treebeard and his friends fucking eat.

Hence, the running.

He's pretty sure he's running in the general direction of his jeep. Scott had been beside him when Derek called the general retreat, but he split off about ten minutes ago to try and lead some of the hunters away from Stiles. He hasn't seen Derek or Peter since they raced away from the clearing. A sudden shout to his left pulls him up short, and he throws himself against the nearest tree, flattening himself as best he can against the trunk and praying to anyone who might be listening that this tree doesn't sprout fangs and claws like the ones in the clearing had.

Struggling to quiet his ragged breathing as much as he can, he peeks around the edge of the tree. He flinches back when he catches sight of two large men—obviously part of the hunter group—tramping through the underbrush just a few yards away from him. One of them is cursing savagely, dragging something behind him while the other scans the woods back and forth, a mean-looking rifle with a scope in his hands. Stiles frowns as they draw closer and he can see a length of heavy chain in the first man's hands. He'd bet anything it's made of pure iron and as he follows the length of it back to whatever they're dragging, his gut twists unpleasantly.

Oh. Oh.

It's a child. One of three faerie children that had been running and playing in the clearing when they had arrived to seek an audience with the queen. They had been hustled away quickly by two adults once they'd announced their presence, but Stiles recognizes this one. It's a little girl…God knows how old for real, but she doesn't look to be more than five or six. The chain is wrapped around her upper body, pulled so tight he can see it cutting into the skin of her bare arms. Everywhere it's touching her, Stiles can see angry, smoking welts rising on her moon-pale skin. Her silvery hair is coming loose from its intricate braids and even from a distance, her face is stained with tears and what looks like blood. She's terrified, crying and struggling, and babbling words Stiles can't understand in a high, clear voice.

His fists clench against the rough bark of the tree. He should keep running, try to find his jeep and rendezvous with Derek and the others—tellthem about the child. Even as the thought occurs to him, though, he knows he's not going to do it. There's no telling how long it will be before he can find Scott, Derek, or Peter. He dropped his phone in the initial rush of the hunters' attack, and whatever it is these two want with the little girl, Stiles knows it's nothing good. He might be the only chance she has.

What he's going to do against two armed hunters, he has no idea…but he has to try.

He ducks down a little, pressing himself even more tightly against the tree as the hunters pass a few feet away from him. The child is thrashing and struggling on the ground as her captor drags her, and it's enough to cover his clumsy footsteps as he slips from tree to tree, following. He keeps them in sight as they crash through the woods for another several minutes, eventually stopping in an area where the ground starts to slope down into a small ravine. The man dragging the little girl stops to wrap his end of the chain around the trunk of a half-grown tree several times, and Stiles breathes a little sigh of relief when the man doesn't bother to padlock it or anything. He creeps a little closer, settling against another thick tree trunk as the man stands, brushing his hands off on his pants as he moves to stand next to his companion.

"You sure this is where Jim said to meet?" he asks gruffly. The one with the rifle shrugs one shoulder.

"Close enough."

The first man runs his hand back over close-cropped, dark hair, blowing out a gusty sigh. "Jesus…I knew those fuckers could fight, but did you see what they did to Rick?"

The second man tenses, and spits on the ground as he glares at the weakly struggling child. "Magic ain't just for fairy tales—these things are vicious. Told that dumbass to watch his back."

Stiles would lay odds 'Rick' is the guy who got ripped to shreds by a pissed off oak tree. He licks his lips a little, eyes darting around for anything he can use as a weapon. A hefty tree branch, a rock, anything. Hell, maybe he can throw a stick somewhere off in the brush and these two will trot off to investigate. So far, all the horror movie clichés that have turned out to be real are the scary ones…surely to God, one of the helpful ones has to be real sooner or later, right?

His search turns up nothing, though—none of the branches around him are thick enough to be used as a club and the only rocks he sees look too heavy to lift. Desperation starts to rise in him…he's apparently managed to stumble onto the hunters' meeting place. Which means any of them who survived the faeries could be arriving at any moment. Before he can gear himself up to do something stupid, though, fortune decides to smile on him.

There is a scream from somewhere off to their right. It sounds far-off to Stiles, but voices echo strangely in these woods. Wherever it is, it's loud and long and human, and the two hunters evidently recognize the voice. They share one startled glance, and then the one with the gun turns to look at the little girl. His lip curls and he curses violently.

"Jesus, come on…it's not goin' anywhere," he grunts, and takes off towards the screams. The other guy's eyes dart between the girl and his companion's retreating back a few times, before he seems to come to a decision…and runs off after him.

Stiles is moving almost before their footsteps fade into the darkness, scrambling towards the prone body of the child. He hits his knees beside her, and she startles violently, squealing in fright. She scrambles back from him as best she can, her movements hampered by the heavy chain wound around her, by the evident pain she's in from the burns inflicted by the iron. Stiles hisses as he reaches forward and starts pulling at the chain as gently as he can.

"It's okay, it's okay…I'm gonna get you out of here, all right? I'll take you back home, I promise." He has no idea if she can even understand what he's saying, but he keeps his voice low and gentle in the hopes that she can at least understand his tone. He pulls at the chain binding her until it starts to come loose from her chest and arms. The girl inhales sharply as it starts to fall away from her, her wide-set eyes flying up to fix on his face. He smiles at her reassuringly, one ear cocked for any sounds of the hunters coming back.

At last, the chain is loose enough for her to wiggle out of its loops. Stiles winces at the angry, weeping burns that are covering her arms and part of her neck. She's only wearing a sleeveless little dress made of some thin, smooth cloth. There are burns all up and down her bare arms and legs. As soon as she is free, she practically throws herself into his arms, her little hands clutching at his shoulders, her damp face pressing against the crook of his neck.

"Whoa! Whoa, hey, okay…uh…all right, let's just…yeah, let's go," he mutters, looking around somewhat helplessly. He stands awkwardly, the girl clinging like a limpet, winding her legs around his waist. He shifts her onto his hip, biting his lip as his eyes dart around the woods, trying to decide what to do.

He thinks he can still find his way back to the jeep from here…but what then? He can't go back towards the clearing where he had last seen the child's—family? Clan? Cadre? Whatever the faeries were to each other, the clearing was a no-go. There was no telling how many hunters (and, more importantly, how many guns) were scattered through the woods going back that way. He has no idea where Scott, Derek, and Peter are…and frankly, he's not sure how safe it would be to just go looking for any of the faeries. He has a feeling most of them are going to be in a 'magically sick trees on the humans first, ask questions later' kind of mood for a while.

Unfortunately, before he can come to a decision, it's taken out of his hands.

"Hey! You! What the fuck are you doing?!"

The girl screams again at the harsh shout, her arms growing even tighter around his neck. Stiles whirls to see one of the girl's captors coming back towards them, racing towards them with a pistol drawn and waving in the air. Stiles sucks in a breath, pulls the girl more tightly against his chest.

Then he does the only thing he can. He starts running.