Children of the Moon
-Marcielle's Musings-
"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Arriving at the warehouse where the rave is just starting, Stiles can hear the music blasting from inside the building as he climbs out of the driver's seat of his Jeep. The weight of what his dad had told him before he had left his house to pick up Scott had caused him to be silent the entire drive there, which was unusual for him. Something that Scott had obviously noticed as he asked "You ok?" as Stiles opened up the back of the Jeep to grab the first garbage bag of powdered mountain ash.
"Yeah, why?" Stiles lied.
"It's just, you didn't say anything on the way over here..." Scott replies with a shrug as Stiles stares at him.
"Nah, I'm fine," Stiles lied again, "Would you just grab the other bag?"
"I can't. Remember? Deaton said you have to do it alone," Scott answered as he stared back at Stiles.
Stiles pulls a face. He knows he does. He can feel it – on his face – "Ok, this plan is really starting to suck."
All of a sudden, Scott turns his head away from Stiles and looks towards the door of the warehouse. "No. Not here, not now!" his friend says before he starts running off.
"What? Scott! What am I supposed to..." yells Stiles.
Realising that his friend has ignored everything he just said Stiles shouts at his retreating back, "Ok, plan officially sucks!"
Indignant at being ignored, yet again by Scott, Stiles huffs as he throws the first bag of mountain ash down on the ground and goes back to grab the second bag of powdered mountain ash from the back of his Jeep.
Once the back of the Jeep is closed Stiles used his fingernails and eventually his teeth to rip a small hole in the bottom left corner of the garbage bag. The powdered mountain ash begins to trickle out and Stiles picks up the second garbage bag and starts making his way around the building, a squiggly line trailing behind him like a tail as he walks.
When he reaches the back of the warehouse the first bag is almost empty. Stiles only makes it a few more feet before the last few grains of powdered mountain ash have fallen from the first garbage bag.
'At this rate there won't be enough,' Stiles thinks as he rips a hole in the bottom of the second garbage bag and starts walking again.
It takes another ten minutes for Stiles to get back around to the front of the warehouse again. He can just see the back of his Jeep and the beginning of the line of mountain ash but he can also feel the garbage bag getting lighter and lighter with every step.
'Shit, just a little more! Please be enough' Stiles internally pleads.
Just before he reaches his Jeep, the powder stops flowing from the bag. Lifting the bag up in despair, Stiles places his hand underneath the hole to catch the last trickle that falls from the bag. While shaking the bag to see if any more will magically fall out, it slowly dawns on Stiles that he failed. One thing, that's all he needed to do. Just one thing and he couldn't even do that. Looking at the short distance left to cover, fourteen or fifteen metres at most, Stiles groans.
"Awww, no..." he says, almost in disbelief. To have come this far only to be stopped a few feet away from finishing the barrier.
Frantically, Stiles reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls out his cell phone. Unlocking his phone and quickly scrolling down through his contacts, Stiles jabs his finger down on the touch screen the second Scott's name pops up. Scott's contact page pops open on the small screen and Stiles impatiently stabs his finger down on the call button the second it appears on the screen.
Holding the phone up to his ear Stiles whispers, "Come ON Scott, Pick UP!" while looking around frantically to see if his errant friend was nearby.
The phone rings seven more times before it goes to voicemail.
"Hey, you've reached the voicemail of Scott McCall. Sorry I can't get to the phone right now but if you leave me a message after the beep, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks, bye," Scott's voice floats through the speakers of Stiles' cell.
*beeeeeep* goes the dial tone and Stiles frantically starts talking.
"Scott, pick up. Pick up now," he says as he continues to look around for any sign that his friend is coming. "Look, I got like fifty feet of ash left... and I'm out. Ok? So you gotta get your wolf ass down here to help me, cause I don't know what to do and I'm just standing out here and I'm-"
*bang* A gunshot sounds in the distance.
"and I'm all alone-" Stiles says as he looks around himself even more frantically than before. He can feel the beginnings of a panic attack crawling up on him.
Another gunshot sounds behind him *bang*
"and I'm hearing gunfire... and werewolves and..." Sliles pauses to look around, "and I'm standing here like a friggen idiot all by myself with a handful of magic fairy dust, and I don't have enough...ok?"
Stiles gives up on the message and hangs up. Hopefully Scott will get his message and come help him figure out what the hell he is going to do because at this rate there isn't going to be a Supernatural-Force-Field-Of-Awesomeness only a squiggly line of powdered mountain ash around the warehouse that does absolutely shit all to help the Jackson-Is-The-Kanima-OMFG situation.
Yeah... he wasn't dealing as well as he thought he was.
"Ok, come on, think!" Stiles mutters to himself as he puts his phone back in the front pocket of his jeans and looks at the ground he still has to cover.
"Um, ok... He said you gotta believe. Need to believe. Come on, BELIEVE, Stiles! Just... just picture it!" Stiles says as he tries to focus on what he's saying as his mind jumps in a million different directions.
Stiles has never hated his ADHD any more than in this moment. He just couldn't pull his thoughts together. It was just typical that in the moment he needed to focus his thoughts would scatter and the most random things would interest him.
Like where was Scott? Why has he run off? Where were the other Sour-Pack-Kids (a.k.a. Erica, Boyd and Isaac) and the Sour-Wolf himself? Has the plan worked? Has Jackson killed someone? And, Oh My God, how was he going to apologise to his dad? Let alone, how was he going to make it up to his dad for pretty much getting him fired? And how on earth could one tiny little handful of powdered mountain ash manage to make a line long enough to cover nearly fifty feet and complete the barrier?!
And yeah, he probably should have made sure that he had taken his Adderall before he left his place...
'Focus, Stiles!' he inwardly yelled at himself as if trying to chastise his thoughts for running away like errant children. And yes, he does know that talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity, thank you very much. He had concluded that sanity was overrated years ago.
Staring at the ground in front of him, Stiles focuses on where the line of powdered mountain ash begins, trying to convince his brain that one little handful of pixie dust can cover all that distance. 'Faith, trust and pixie dust... I'm freakin' Peter Pan!' thinks Stiles.
"Just imagine it working. Ok. Just..." Stiles' eyes suddenly cease their wandering and focus on the bumper sticker on one of the nearby cars. That's his ADHD for you – can't stay focused on one thing for more than a minute before flitting off to another thing like a friggen' butterfly. A butterfly in his brain...
'FOCUS, Stiles' he mentally yells at himself.
The bumper sticker is a quote by Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge" is some cool pointy font.
And then it suddenly clicks for Stiles. If werewolves and kanimas were real then so was...
"Magic!" says Stiles as it dawns on him.*
Closing his eyes and breathing a calming breath, Stiles focuses his thoughts.
"Think of it like gun powder," Dr. Deaton's voice rings through his head, "It's just powder until a spark ignites it. You need to be that spark, Stiles."
"The best golfers never swing before imagining where they want the ball to go. They see it in their mind and their mind takes over. It can be pretty extraordinary what the force of your own will can accomplish" finishes Dr. Deaton's voice.
Suddenly a woman's voice chimes within his mind. It's a memory. Of when, he can't remember, but for some reason it resounds within him, making everything just fall in place like pieces of a puzzle that he's been trying to put in the wrong place until someone takes them from him and turns them around and suddenly the piece just fits.
"Hey baby," says the unknown woman's voice as she looked down at him with eyes identical to his own, "The world is at your fingertips, my child. All you have to do seize it. Be the change you want to see in the world."
"Be the spark, imagine where you want it to go, visualise it in your mind, and believe it. Be the change you want to see in the world," chants Stiles in his head and suddenly the jumble of thoughts bombarding his brain just... stops. It's like the quiet after a storm. It's peaceful. It's focused and suddenly Stiles eyes are open again and he's walking forward with a determined look on his face.
Slowly the powdered mountain ash trickles out of his clenched fist. Breathing deeply and evenly, Stiles doesn't think about how scientifically this shouldn't work, how it should be impossible. All he thinks about is the two lines of ash connecting to form a protective circle around the warehouse. He can see it in his mind. He can feel a heavy, sort of energy in the air buzzing and whispering in his ears like a soft breeze but the air is still.
Stiles doesn't look at the powder slowly falling out of his hand as he walks forward. He only watches where he has to go. Closing his eyes once more Stiles visualises the two lines meeting just as the last few grains of mountain ash trickles out of his hand. Opening his eyes, Stiles looks up in frustration.
'Were you actually thinking that it would work?' Stiles mentally asks himself as he wipes his now empty hand on his jeans.
Looking down though, Stiles' jaw dropped. The lines were connected! The barrier was complete. Stiles looked amazed, like he couldn't believe that it had worked. In a way he still didn't believe that it had worked even though he knew it had.
"Hahaha, " Stiles laughed in shock as he stared at the completed circle with a huge face-splitting grin.
"Yes!" he shouts, throwing both of his arms in the air in celebration. He'd done it.
Pumping his fist in success, Stiles leaped up onto the back of a nearby car only to scramble back off as the car's alarm went off.
He had done it.
Unfortunately his little success at his first attempt at magic has been the only high of the night. From there everything had gone downhill. Once he has completed the super-awesome-mountain-ash-supernatural-keep-away-barrier he had gone to check up on how subduing Jackson was coming along only to find two thirds of the Sour Pack Kids in a back room with Jackson half unconscious. Only for Jackson, or well not Jackson to wake up and break Isaac's wrist, scare the crap out of them, start tuning into a lizard-man and then break through a wall to go murder the next person.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Scott had gotten kidnapped and was dying, according to Derek. His best friend was dying. So Derek had him break the barrier so he could go save Scott. He was glad that Derek was going to save Scott but it was beginning to seem that nothing he did actually helped...
Isaac, Erica and Stiles had waited anxiously for Derek to return, dragging Scott along with him. Derek had then demanded the keys to Stiles' Jeep so he could take Scott to Dr. Deaton because Boyd had taken his car and once Derek had left, Isaac and Erica had split, not sticking around to find out what Jackson had done, leaving Stiles at the rave to wait for his dad to pick him up. He was definitely going to win the award for 'worst son on the planet' this year.
After a very awkward (understatement!) car ride back to his house with his dad where the only thing his dad had said to him the entire ride home was to ask where his Jeep was.
Stiles had to yet again lie to his dad and say that he had let Scott take his Jeep home earlier because he had gotten upset at seeing Alison with Matt at the rave. His dad had just nodded and continued to drive home in silence.
When Stiles and his dad finally got home, Stiles tromped up the stairs, walked into his room, closed the door and was about to face-plant himself onto his bed when he noticed an old leather suitcase sitting innocently on his bed.
Stiles blinked. He had never seen the suitcase before in his life. It was a pretty big one; more like one of those trunks out of Harry Potter than any suitcase he had seen.
Stumbling over to the bed, Stiles sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the suitcase as if staring at it would force it to reveal its secrets.
He was so done. After everything that had happened in the past few months he just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for the next millennia. The randomly appearing suitcase could wait till morning.
With that, Stiles grabbed the suitcase at either end and lifted it off his bed with a grunt and carried it over to his desk where he placed it on the ground next to it. It had felt pretty light so there couldn't be much in it. He would check it out in the morning.
Little did Stiles know, that his life would never be the same again.
End of chapter notes:
* I do know that what Stiles said in the actual episode was "Imagine" but I tweaked it. And yes, I can do that! Creative licence and all that jazz.