WARNINGS/TRIGGERS: suicidal ideation, psychological manipulation
It opens its eyes to blackness.
There is rough stone at his back, and when his fingers scramble for purchase, it can tell that the floor is some kind of stone, too –
(Sedimentary. Clastic, the only kind of rock not composed of crystals, but fragments of other rocks that have been shattered and fused together. Clast, Latin, broken. Also in 'iconoclast', the destruction of religious icons at a time of great change. An iconoclast, a person who challenges the status quo.)
It shakes his head, pressing palm to temple, before the word Byzantine can take shape behind his eyes (and all of its attendant connections) and it seems to work, re-orienting him. Stiles Stilinski is nothing if not a font of useless knowledge, pictures pinned to the walls of his mind and pulled taut together with arteries of red string.
It's why the nogitsune likes his new home so much.
The cave – it is a cave, he thinks – is less comfortable. This body is weak and trembling (147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bone) and it feels cold and dampish and acutely uncomfortable. Its left side is trembling and vibrating in a way that is really, really worrying, until his human mind supplies that it's blood loss to the area (pins and needles), from lying on his side for who-knows-how-long on a slab of hard, cold stone.
Sniffing the air gets it nothing: it smells like metal and rock and a little like mold, the stench of rotten, damp things. It isn't familiar from any of Stiles's jaunts into the woods, although he must be close to Stiles's old haunts because where else in Beacon Hills has enough wide open space to house a cave? Except maybe he isn't in Beacon Hills? He has no idea where he is.
It's awesome. It's the best.
Then it gets even better when Derek Hale waltzes into view, the darkness drawing away from him like a blanket pulling back from his cheekbones, his clavicle, his shoulders, the cleft in his chin. This body doesn't have werewolf hearing or sense of smell; Hale could've been there all along. In fact, it's likely, because Stiles sees no way in or out, although there must be one somewhere. Unless werewolves have cultivated teleportation skills, which would also be awesome.
"This is fantastic," he enthuses. "Really. I'm impressed. Did you do this all yourself? Big bad Alpha, trapping Little Red…"
Derek narrows his eyes. This is something that Stiles never liked about the werewolf: he doesn't betray much. His face has a flatness that only disappears when he laughs, and the human Stiles has only seen that twice, ever. "You sound like him," Derek says, eventually.
It's unpredictable and strange as opening gambits go, which means his stomach does a little flip of startled delight, like a bird swooping for prey. "Well, yeah, sure," he says, spreading his hands out before him. "Wouldn't be much use if I didn't, right?" It occurs to him to look straight up for the first time, and when he does: wow. There's an opening up above – high up above – and there are no handholds. The sides of the aperture have been smoothed by werewolf claws. He jumps up and tries them, just in case, but his blunted human fingers slide right off and he lands, hard, on his ass.
"Here," Hale says, and tosses something shining and cylindrical through the air.
He catches it one-handed: a bottle of water. "Thanks," he says, looking up at Hale a little sideways, out of the corner of one eye.
"So you do have manners," Hale says.
"When I want them," he replies. His eyes skim the opening up through the earth, but it's too dark to examine very closely. "When they make things more interesting, or are in the best interests of survival. And I'd like to survive. I'd like it very much."
"Tears won't work on me like they did on Melissa," Hale warns him.
"Friendly advice," the nogitsune says. "Tell me more. Tell me what you want, because it isn't to kill me." He grins. "Who could hurt this face?"
"Why you picked it," Hale says.
"That's right," he says, satisfied. "That, and…"
"…and?"
He examines Hale in the low light. Somehow, no matter where Hale stands, the thin light seems to illuminate his gaze. It gives the impression of a floating pair of eyes in the dark, a trick of the light meant to intimidate. But he feels generous. Hale has surprised him, and surprise is… just fantastic.
So, "…and because of his brain," he says, wandering around the cave and trailing his fingers around the edges of the prison. He doesn't look back at Derek as he goes: there's no need to keep something that isn't a danger in his sights, and meanwhile it must exasperate the wolf how little he smells of fear, how little he looks like it.
"Stiles's brain," Derek says, "going in a million different directions at once."
He's getting tired of talking to Hale, who seems content to observe him and make self-evident commentary. He looks at the water bottle and untwists the cap. Briefly considers refusing to drink from it, to die of thirst while Hale watches, but he's still curious, so he takes a large swallow, and some of the tension inside his stupid, human body eases. "So why am I down in the dirt? Wondering if Stiles is still in here?" He taps at his temple with a furious energy – so much in this form, it's a high, almost – and grins, lopsided. "I'm not sure what would cause you more pain, to say he is here or to say he isn't. If I say he is – then he's suffering, isn't he? Because he would suffer. His heart would break if he could remember everything I've done. But at the very least, there's still hope.
"If, on the other hand," he says, striding in the other direction, "I tell you he isn't… your friend is dead. You can mourn him, but only after you've killed a creature with his face. That has to hurt, doesn't it? What to choose…"
"The truth?" Hale suggests.
The nogitsune looks up with a grin, and shakes his head from side to side, his finger up and down at Derek Hale. "Wow, that's optimistic for you, Sourwolf." The thought of optimism brings a flash of shy smile to Stiles's eidetic brain. "Where is Scott, anyhow?"
Hale tilts his head to one side. "Scott couldn't handle you right now."
He approaches the werewolf, making sure his eyes are at their emptiest. "Handle me?" he says, smile twitching. Hale draws back a hair, and that makes something in this body sing. (Adrenaline, noradrenaline. Dopamine, serotonin. A rush.) "I'm a nogitsune. No one can handle me."
Hale reaches out and snags his hoodie, drawing him close.
He looks down at the hand, gives a mental shrug at its presence. He thinks he does something with his chin, too – a slight tilt of disinterest – that seems to come naturally to this body. (Muscle memory. The pathways used for motor memory are separate from the medial temporal lobe pathways used for declarative memory. Rather, declarative memory is concerned with facts that can be recalled. It can be further divided into episodic memory, concerned with personal experiences; and semantic memory, concerned with pure data.)
"I can handle you just fine," Derek says. His features don't wolf out. They look flat, disaffected as ever, but then there's a flash of pity.
"Feel sorry for him?" the nogitsune says.
"I do," Derek says. "My family was my identity. I know what it's like to have that stripped away."
They're still very close. He tries to take in Hale's face, but he can't see all of it at once, and it's closed off again anyway, bolts sliding home. "I'll bet they screamed," the nogitsune says, reaching out to squeeze Derek's shoulder, because, after all, if they're gonna be this close he's going to go full-on Stiles-bonhomie. Because it hurts them more. "How do a bunch of full-on werewolves let themselves get trapped in their own basement and not, like, knock down a wall, or jump through the flames or anything? Your family must've been really, really slow, huh?" He makes sure his expression looks empathetic: easy to do with these eyes, this mouth. "But take heart. It's nature at its finest, weeding out the weak. Although maybe it wasn't working for your family, huh, if you're the survivor. Since you can't even keep a bunch of teenagers from destroying themselves." He keeps his hand on Derek's shoulder and gestures with the other towards himself, towards Stiles Stilinski, just a little shell, just a pretty covering, just the wrapping paper around the sharp, splintered shrapnel inside. "After all, look what became of me."
Derek huffs a breath. He removes his hand from Stiles's hoodie and moves it to the side of the nogitsune's neck, mirroring. He squeezes, as though the nogitsune is the one who is in need of comfort. The nogitsune feels something in its chest turn over, and involuntary reaction has him blinking several times in a row in surprise.
It's not frustration, yet. He knows humans find it frustrating not to understand everything right away. But for the nogitsune, it still smacks of novelty, and he's so bored that for a moment he doesn't struggle.
It must be the boredom, because there's this moment when he doesn't question Hale's motives at all, just sways in the direction of the touch, and his mind is… quiet.
The nogitsune should be wary because this is clearly a trick. Instead, it's as though the touch has given him permission to feel Stiles's exhaustion for the first time, the way that this body hasn't slept in weeks. His heart rate picks up; his respiratory rate increases, and the muscles around his throat constrict and expand unpredictably. The cave tilts, vision narrows. Stiles's memories are a buzzing, insistent, babbling litany in his ear, but he can't can't can't listen, the cave is so small and Derek is everywhere, all in his space, in his air. Suddenly, it comes to him: there's a contact poison, there's kanima venom in Derek's hand. But when Derek moves it, allowing the nogitsune to scrabble back, it grows worse. The heart rate is up again, more, and he's – this fragile human body – he's having a heart attack – he's going to die.
That seems to jolt him out of it. That or Hale again, kneeling in front of him and saying his name over and over.
"Stiles. Stiles. It's a panic attack."
"No," he says, because that is impossible.
"It is," Hale replies. "Drink the water."
"It's in the water – you gave me something. It's in your hands, your hands have something on them –"
"No," Hale says, hands spread wide. "No, it's just water." There's a distinct pause. "Here."
The nogitsune catches a small, plastic container that rattles in his palm. When he opens it, he realizes it's his Adderall.
"Oh thank God," he says, tapping a pill onto his palm and swallowing it with a gulp of the water. "I go out of my mind without these." An instant later, he realizes the humor in this and begins to laugh. "Ha, right, I'm not even in my own mind right now!"
Is that Stiles or him? Because he knows Stiles is still there. Or at least, the facts he knows, (his semantic memory) because Stiles's brain won't stop spitting them out at random. This is what it is to have ADHD and insomnia and an internet connection. He has memories of hunting through Wikipedia until three AM for three schoolnights in a row because he started thinking about circumcision and wondered who the fuck thinks that's a good idea? And then gave the resultant paper to Coach because history sucked that year, they had Miller who put a A- at the top of everyone's paper and never read a word, and also because Stiles was –
Stiles was a trickster demon in his own right. That's exactly why the nogitsune wanted him. He'd liked giving Stiles puzzles to solve: the riddles, the schoolbus. Stiles was good at them, he was so much fun, and now he's gone, and the nogitsune wishes he was still around to play with.
The nogitsune always breaks its toys in the end.
After that, Derek doesn't approach him again. The nogitsune believes it may die of boredom, but it falls asleep before it gets the chance.
Adderall is awesome.
When he wakes up, he feels super-energized, super-focused. He feels so good, so rejuvenated, that he takes another. And then he feels like moving!
He does. He paces. It's morning, Sourwolf nowhere to be found. Which means there's a way out, right? Right!
But that could be straight up for a werewolf, he decides, examining the wall for handholds in the light of day. It's really pretty impressive. Although there's enough roughness for the nogitsune to confirm his suspicion that the opening was made with werewolf claws – multiple werewolves' claws, judging from the variable width, (Lydia would love to measure the difference, probably, sounds like something she would do, totally, she'd have a pair of calipers and everything) there still aren't enough handholds for Stiles-shaped hands, nosir. It's possible, totally possible, that if he were into freeclimbing he could do it – but not with the crappy handholds he's got and no training on how to use them. He gives it a go, because he can do anything! He is awesome! However, as it turns out, he is not quite awesome enough to press his fingers into millimeter-width cracks or to cut chunks out of stone with his 147-pound weakling levels of badassery.
This daunts him for a while, but not for more than a few minutes of frustrated pacing. (Hynes and Doty, in Mythical Trickster Figures (1997) state that every trickster has several of the following six traits:
1) fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous
2) deceiver and trick-player
3) shape-shifter
4) situation-inverter
5) messenger and imitator of the gods
6) bricoleur)
Bricoleur, a word that Stiles Stilinski had looked up immediately on reading it for the first time, means that you assemble things out of no-things, the way he'd made a bomb out of nails, nuts, bolts, a few wires, some chemistry room thefts, and wrapping paper that he'd bought for Coach's gift.
So, what does he have?
The cave is swept free of anything useful. Its floor is constructed of stone, and stone only. There is one stray rock someone has missed; the nogitsune pockets it.
He has Stiles's hoodie. He removes the strings and contemplates them. Then stuffs them in his pocket.
The Adderall bottle. The pills themselves. The water bottle.
Huh. Could he poison Derek Hale?
Probably. What good would it do? He might get to feed off of Derek's suffering – briefly – but a hyped-up, Adderall'd Derek Hale wouldn't get him out of this mess. If anything, Derek might shake him around a little for his trouble.
Perhaps he could fashion the stone into some kind of weapon. Could he manage to swallow it? If he could swallow it, he would be rushed off to Melissa and safety, and damn the consequences. The very fact that he is still alive down here says that they mean to keep him. Cure him?
Gosh, they sure are persistent!
The stone is too big to swallow, so that's out. But maybe… wow, maybe that was too much Adderall, because his thoughts are flying around like…
Too much Adderall.
The bottle of pills gleams beckoningly in the low light.
At first, he's tempted to tip the whole bottle in his mouth: see how Sourwolf likes that. But that could be overdoing it (toxic symptoms from taking an overdose of Adderall can come at low doses) and the nogitsune likes Stiles's brain, the twisting circuitous cleverness of it, like a Mobius strip with one, razor-sharp edge, and he wants to keep it. If he overdoses, he's out of a body and Stiles is dead and the game is over. He likes the game to be tilted in his favor; it's fun, it's a rush. But he likes it even better when he can feel the people around him learning, growing, getting bigger and better and faster because of him, offering him a real challenge. If he stretches out the game, this could grow to be his favoritest ever.
Stiles Stilinski looked up overdose information on Adderall; of course he did, he's Stiles Stilinski, and he was taking the stuff, and if that wasn't enough, the stray thoughts he hears now confirm it. The nogitsune just has to access it. Stiles, he tries. Stiles, come on. Come out and play again. I won't bite. Promise?
But there's nothing, no conscious response at all, and the nogitsune feels a stab of panic; breathes through it, because the panic attack the day before is not something it wants to experience again.
Stiles. Adderall. Come on. You don't want us to take too many, do you?
A storm of emotion comes from deep within Stiles Stilinski's body, rising up within him like a tsunami of grief and fear and horror, and the nogitsune should be thrilled, should be feeding, but this isn't someone else's distress, confusion, or chaos: it's coming from inside his own body, and it's making his heartbeat accelerate, and his vision grow dim, and inciting him to want, need to leave, to run, because of all the (adrenaline) prey-fear in his body telling him he has to leave, telling him fight-or-flight, but there's neither, here, neither, and –
(TAKE THEM ALL.)
The nogitsune stares at the pill bottle in his hands; he watches his hands. The left hand holds the bottle, firmly. The right, pushes down and turns, and the top pops off and lands on the floor. He's opened the bottle without thinking about it.
Hasn't he?
(TAKE THEM ALL.)
The pills shake out into his hand. There are eight of them. Eight at fifteen milligrams each, which is, is that fatal?
(TAKE THEM ALL.)
Eight times fifteen, eight times fifteen. Why can't he do that in his head? It should be easy, but he's too focused on the way that his hand is lifting up to his mouth, inch at a time. This can't be happening. Stiles can't be this strong, still. He hasn't heard a peep from him in what seems like forever. Not one, conscious word, choice, emotion, and he's all up in the nogitsune's face all of a sudden –
He feels a sharp sensation in the meat of his palm and the pills go flying. Derek Hale is standing in front of him, breathing heavily.
For once, the nogitsune has no words. He stares at Hale as if he fell out of the sky, which – he kind of did do.
"How many did you take?" Hale demands, grabbing him by the shoulders. "How many, Stiles?"
"Two," the nogitsune says. "Two, two, stop shaking me!"
"You were gonna take them all, of course I'm shaking you!"
The nogitsune looks into Hale's face. He looks about as terrified as the nogitsune feels. But there's nothing to say. "I'd do it again," is what comes out.
Hale has dropped to all fours and is hunting down each pill. "How many were in your hand?"
"Eight times fifteen," he says, which makes no sense at all. Just saying there had been nine would have been enough to make Hale hunt the ground on all fours for hours. Saying there had been far fewer could make Hale stop hunting. Then, the nogitsune could have gathered the hidden extras for later use. Or, if Hale found them, it would be confirming the nogitsune's status as unworthy of trust, which, hardly necessary, right? But still good for screwing with Hale.
"I want you to have the pills. I don't want you to have to go through withdrawal on top of everything else," Hale mutters. "I'll bring it to you every day."
"I'll hide it every day," he blurts. "I'll save them up." His face – he can feel it getting hotter and hotter. Is this what blushing feels like? It's miserable – he can tell his shame is painted across his face.
It's the Adderall's fault. He's blurting the first thing on his mind. He can't seem to stop.
Hale is close, and again, some stray stream of light just seems to find his eyes, and the nogitsune can't look away. "Don't do that. Don't do that," Hale says, helplessly.
The nogitsune shakes his head, side-to-side, and then Derek Hale is clasping him, tight.
He feels the pressure of Hale's arms, and that pressure makes him feel safe (serotonin; oxytocin; dopamine; acceptance: the molecules of Pack) and there's a smell, a familiar smell that makes him bury his nose at Derek's shoulder, even though his own arms stay flat at his sides.
He can do it, this – this human hugging thing. He did it with Sheriff Stilinski – he did it with Scott McCall. He gave Scott a pretty special one, if he did say so, himself, pulling Scott so close to this body that it seemed they were two asymmetrical halves of some piece of modern art that would fall apart if separated to stand alone. But maybe the Adderall is making his behavior more honest than usual, too, because this time he can't wriggle away or press Derek in return. He can only stand there like the shell he is, holding the rotten meat inside.
Derek's hand moves to the back of his head, and the nogitsune realizes a moment later that he is saying something into the fabric of Derek's shirt.
This body talks a lot. (Muscle memory.) And sometimes it doesn't even know it's talking. Sometimes he doesn't know if he's talking aloud or just thinking, and suddenly he feels shaky. The aftermath of the glow of Adderall super-focus seems to be depressive anxiety. His mood has plummeted. He thinks longingly of those hours spent awash in a glow of confident, productive energy, when ODing on Adderall had seemed a brave and genius move and not ugly death, which is what it likely would have been.
Hale draws back, examining his face.
"Stoppit," he orders. "I'm not –"
"You are," Hale says.
"I'm not," the nogitsune replies.
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
He eyes Derek. "I'm not Stiles Stilinski," he says, harsh. His voice sounds like stone-on-stone.
Derek eyes him up and down, and the nogitsune throws his hands down in despair.
"I look like him and sound like him," he says, exasperated. Finally out of patience with this slow, surly human who just won't get it. "But your friend is gone. Let me go," he says. "Let me go and I won't torture you anymore. Promise, swear, on blood, on whatever you like. I'll leave here. I won't harm you or yours. I'm so bored here, Sourwolf. So. Bored."
Derek reaches forward and rests his palm at that juncture of neck and shoulder and, like it's some magic spell, the nogitsune feels itself teeter on the verge of relaxation.
But it's such a long, long way down. Last time he relaxed, it caused a panic attack, as paradoxical as that sounds, and this stupid human body is so fucking nonsense.
It's the worst.
He jerks back.
"Here," Derek says, and his expression barely shifts. "I brought you a sandwich."
The nogitsune examines it carefully. "Are you still trying to please him? Hot ham and cheese is his favorite, right?"
"It's simple biology," Derek replies. "It's what you like because it's what this body can digest best and get the most nutrients. See if it tastes good to you."
He takes a bite of ham and cheese and bread and closes his eyes. "Oh my god," he says. "I'm – I'm really so hungry. I barely let him eat."
"I know," Derek says. "Eat your sandwich."
The next day, Derek brings a collection of poetry, and reads in the corner across from the nogitsune. He's brought a reading light so that, even in the dim light of the hole above them, he doesn't have to shift around to find the best spot. He seems to find Stiles's slender, failing body to be no threat at all, if the way that he buries himself inside the book is any indication.
"Poetry, Sourwolf? Figures a sour wolf like you would read poetry."
"Did Stiles ever read poetry?" Derek wonders aloud, and since it's the first thing that Hale has spoken since he arrived, the nogitsune deigns to answer him.
"Stiles read everything he could get his hands on," is the reply, with sharp-toothed grin. "But he didn't like poems."
There is another long silence. Derek turns a page.
Down here with no sensory stimulation of, like, any kind, the nogitsune's senses are even more acute than usual. He can smell the woody pulp of the paper, taste the astringent tang of tannins on his tongue. Wants the knowledge on the page.
He tries to snatch the book away from Hale; but Hale hangs onto it, and it rips in two in an instant.
Derek seems shocked; the nogitsune can't help but laugh, falling backwards and banging his head against the other side of the cave, but he's laughing and exclaiming and holding his head.
Hale quietly reclaims the half that the nogitsune stole and presses the two parts together, looking puzzled, and the nogitsune is taken aback all over again. Even Hale isn't so stupid as to think that pressing the book together with his hands can really reunite two halves to make a whole, so the frown on his face and the puzzlement in his eyes are symbolic. Is he hoping to make Stiles Stilinski whole?
After a moment, Hale sets the first half of the book aside; he must have been nearly done with it anyway. And when the nogitsune lunges forward again, Hale easily presses him out of the way by the simple expedient of holding the top of Stiles's head. "What are you doing?" Hale growls, as though he is a recalcitrant wolf cub and not a demon sent to torment he and his, and something in the nogitsune breaks, and it laughs again.
"Listen," he says. "My kind weren't meant to be in captivity. I'll go Peter-Hale-crazy on your ass. If you think that Kate Argent was a blight on your family, wait until I get out of here. I'll make her look like a fucking girl scout, I swear to God."
Derek blinks slowly in the face of this rage, and then his lips press together and those lips and a squintiness in the eyes makes his face form an honest-to-goodness real expression.
Stiles Stilinski would be proud.
"Here's the thing," Derek says, "and listen, because I don't think you've considered this. My life's already been ruined."
The nogitsune blinks.
"And Scott's. And Allison's. And your father's, too. Do you think you can do worse than making someone with their best friend's face betray them? Watch him slip away, replaced by something bloodthirsty and inhuman? Killing Scott or Mr Stilinski would have been a mercy, the way you made them feel."
There is something large and dry lodged in the nogitsune's throat. "Then what am I doing here? Why aren't I dead?"
Derek shakes his head. "You still don't get it. If we can't save you, we're powerless in this world. We'll die before we give up. All of us."
"I don't see any of them down here," the nogitsune says, quiet. "Just you."
"Who did you want to see?"
"Scott," he says. The name falls off his tongue – muscle memory again, because he's pretty sure he didn't think of advantages or disadvantages when he said it: just a weird longing to see that face, with a jaw that's a little lopsided and eyes that are very earnest.
Derek sighs. "Soon. Come here," he says.
The nogitsune scoots backward until he is sitting a few feet away from Hale, and Hale reads him all of the poetry from the section on wildness. The nogitsune can't help but giggle at the sound of Derek Hale's voice reciting Crazy Dog Events in his flattest, matter-of-fact-est voice, until he gets to the last verse:
4. Paint yourself white, mount a white horse, cover its eyes & make it jump down a steep and rocky bank, until both of you are crushed.
The nogitsune shivers. He is the horse and Derek Hale is the crazy dog riding on his back down, down, until they are both crushed to pieces.
A/N: Cross-posted to ao3; feel free to read or review there as well as here. :)
Reviews are helpful! Read? Review! :D
-K