I said I'd never do this, and yet… here we go. I think it was important to give some more. I don't know if I'll be able to continue not to work on this. I like it too much.
Let's see how this goes.
Part Two
by ChasetheWindTouchtheSky
When facing a traumatic experience, it's normal to experience the world in flashes. Time will jump back and forth in order to more sense of it. Because when you look at the specific linear timeline, everything is scarier. Everything is harder to manage. Everything is…
Too much.
XXX
When he wakes up, the world is on fire.
Stiles coughs, his lungs screaming at him, but the world is nothing but a cloud of thick, black smoke. His eyes burn when he looks around, trying to figure out what brought him here and why the world was falling apart.
Something makes a horrible noise above him – something that tells him that the world may not be literally falling apart, but something is and if he doesn't get out soon, he's probably going to die. That's when he starts to notice it. When he's able to look past the fire and the smoke, he sees his father's tool chest. He sees the parts of the Jeep he had specially ordered. He sees the box of old pictures his father had been keeping down here since his mother died. "Oh god," Stiles chokes when it occurs to him.
He's in his own basement.
Stiles gets onto his forearms to try and get himself up, but it's a feat in itself. He struggles, the world choking him, but he manages. He's been able to stand up in many situations before where he's certain people wouldn't blame him for staying down. So he channels everything he's fought for into standing up.
Standing up is often the hardest.
But once he does, he realizes that in this situation, that isn't entirely true. He takes a step forward, nearly falling back to the ground, but catches himself on a metal table. He cries out, but has to steady himself before letting go, trying to ignore the smell of his own burning flesh.
Stiles tells himself not to look at his hands.
He makes it to the window, his fingers fumbling with the latch. Skin hangs off his fingers and he feels his stomach turn. Every touch of the metal makes him whimper and a part of him thanks God Isaac's not here to hear that.
But he can't do it.
Not because his hands won't work or that his fingers are too sensitive, but because the latch won't budge. Stiles tries again and again, but there isn't even the slightest of movement.
He looks up to see flashing golden eyes and he nearly flails backwards until he sees who owns them.
Theo waves to him from the other side of the glass, a group of figures behind him. Stiles' eyes widen, not even registering the sound of the floor starting to collapse above him. He takes his hands of the metal latch.
They still burn.
XXX
Stiles sits in the waiting room, a place he's all too familiar with, but desperately wishes he could forget.
There are two empty chairs surrounding him and in the dark corners of his mind, someone's telling him to get used to this. Get used to this feeling. This feeling of emptiness and being alone.
Even if his father makes it out of surgery, it doesn't matter – Theo's damage had fractured everything. His own father thinks he's a murderer. Scott kicked him out of the pack. He's not with Malia. Lydia's gone.
Stiles sucks in a breath and tries to ignore how shaky it is.
His hands are still covered in his father's blood, but he can't make himself get up from the chair and wash it off. Instead, it sticks to his skin, pulling and searing in a way that reminds him that this will be stamped on his hands forever.
"Stiles?"
Stiles barely hears the voice, but glances up. Of all people who he expected, the person hesitantly making his way forward was one of the last people he expected.
"Stiles," Liam says quietly, his hands behind his back like he was hiding something. Perhaps he was. Something that couldn't simply be cleaned off. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he responds – too quickly and too wooden to ever be taken for truth.
Liam looks at the empty chairs surrounding either side of Stiles and make a motion to sit in one, but seems to go through a wild range of conflict in this one action. He finally takes his place in one. Their knees touch, but Stiles doesn't move. He's not sure he can.
"How's your dad?"
"Dying." He states.
It's harder to say aloud than he expected. His voice catches on the word, but Liam doesn't say anything about it.
Stiles hears Liam take a breath next to him like he's preparing for something and then the words tumble out, "I'msorrynoonelistenedtoyou." Liam must realize that it sounded completely unintelligible, because he repeats, "I'm sorry no one listened to you."
"Yeah well," he states. "It's nothing new."
He feels Liam stiffen beside him. "You were right."
"I know."
"About me too," Liam chokes. "I tried to kill Scott tonight."
That's what makes Stiles turn his head. His heart stutters over the sentence and feels like it shatters even more than before. He didn't realize that was possible. "You what?" Stiles asks, his voice hollow.
Liam looks at him, tears in his eyes. "I tried to kill him because Hayden died and he did nothing."
Stiles stares at him. He wants to feel anger toward the kid, he wants to throw him out, but instead he just feels tired. "Did you?"
"He's alive."
A strange answer to a strange question.
Stiles turns back to glaring at the emergency doors straight ahead. "I think you should go, Liam."
"But Stiles—"
Stiles doesn't answer. He can't help Liam. He can't help anyone. There's too much blood on his hands at this point. "Scott wouldn't want you with me anyways."
"W-What? Why?"
"Didn't you hear? I'm not pack anymore."
Stiles looks at his father's blood on his hands.
"Maybe I never was."
XXX
He doesn't know this, but it takes almost two days after the fire for Stiles to wake up.
When he does, he wishes he hadn't.
His head lolls to the right and he makes out the white bandage wrapped around his fingers and the silver cuffs around his wrists. It takes him impossibly long to realize he's on a metal table.
For one horrifying moment, he wonders if he's awaken in his own surgery.
"Beautiful that everything's come to this."
Stiles sees Theo approach his side and the nausea rising in his stomach won't settle. He wonders what the consequence would be for vomiting on a Chimera. Instead, he chooses not to say anything.
"What Stiles? No smartass comments this time? Is it because you know that I've out-tricked the trickster?" Theo taunts, walking around his head. "Is it because you know that in the course of a month, I've turned your own father and best friend against you? And now here we are. Your father's dying and Scott's dead. Just admit it, you're slightly impressed."
Stiles' heart leaps in his chest and he hopes Theo is unsure of why. So Theo doesn't know Scott's alive. Well, small victories. If there are such a thing when strapped to a table with a sociopathic chimera.
"Admit it!" Theo shouts, lunging too close for Stiles' comfort. "You know that if you would willingly join my pack, we would be unstoppable. We would be able to control everything!"
Stiles turns his head so that Theo's out of his eyesight, but he merely walks to the other side of his head.
"And now your house has burned to the ground and everyone thinks you're dead. No one will find you, Stiles, because no one is looking." Theo smirks. "Good thing you made sure I had an extra body lying around."
XXX
Stiles sees Scott once more after he throws him on the ground. Scott isn't as discreet as he always thought he was.
To be honest, he thinks he imagines it. Scott's at the nurses station talking with his mom. The two glance his way and then whip their heads back around when they see him looking.
He thought they were family once.
Funny how things change.
XXX
All that's going through his head is the mantra of getoutgetoutgetoutgetout. His brain is whipping faster than he can catch up with and it occurs to him he hasn't taken his Adderall in days. He looks up the stairs where the door is, knowing that it's probably jammed shut, just like the windows.
A bat in the corner of the room catches his eye.
XXX
When he's alone in the room with his father, tubes coming from his body and wrapped around his head, it reminds Stiles of his mother in the worst ways.
He holds his father's hand and closes his eyes, desperately pleading that this is nothing more than a terrible dream. He did that when he was younger and his mother thought he was trying to kill her. It didn't work then.
It didn't work now either.
It's odd, but Stiles thinks back to his conversation with Scott as he tried to fix his Jeep, all those days ago. About how the world had settled and for the first time, the two felt as if it wasn't as hard to keep grounded. He remembers them talking about how it was about to get really good, or…
It was foolish to think their lives would do anything other than take a turn for the worst.
He grabs his father's hand and ignores how cold it is. Too cold for a living human.
Tears crowd his eyes and he can't see anymore. Before he knows it, his chest seizes and his hands start to shake. The world tilts like it always does, making him losing his footing and suddenly the world is no longer safe again.
He tries to catch his breath, but it's to no avail. But it's okay, he tells himself. This panic will pass. They always do at one point.
He used to stop them by himself all the time when his mom died. Stiles supposes absently that he just got used to someone being there. He's got to ignore that feeling.
He's done it alone before. He can do it again.
Stiles would never say it aloud, but that makes it a little harder.
XXX
The bat hits the door with a resounding smash that almost topples him down the stairs. Wood splinters.
The fire rages on.
XXX
Stiles doesn't know when the doctors entered the room, but he knows they're there now. Their presence is a weight that makes it so he can't breathe.
"You could've joined my pack, Stiles." Theo states. "Willingly."
Stiles hears metal scrape next to him and his breath catches. He wriggles under the metal cuffs around his wrists and ankles, his heart hammering in his chest. "What are you going to do?" He asks, unsure if he wants the answer.
"He speaks!" Theo laughs, undeterred by the unimaginable sharpening sounds around him. "I'm going to do what I've been doing since the beginning. I'm going to make you mine. And then I'll get Liam. And Kira. And finally Lydia. Did you really think I was going to give up? Just because you punched me in the face? If you guys don't follow me willingly, I am going to force you."
Stiles pulls a little harder, even though he knows it's useless.
He's been forced to do something before.
It did not end well.
XXX
When he enters his house, it feels different. Cold. Empty.
The thing is, Stiles has been alone in his house many times before. This isn't an unusual experience. But this time, he doesn't know if his father is coming home. He doesn't know if his life is changing forever. Instead, he sees the furniture and rooms and they do nothing but taunt him. Remind him that now, he'll lose both his parents.
He already lost his mother and his brother.
What happens when he has nothing left?
XXX
The thing about losing everything that people don't talk about is that it makes you hollow. Empty.
It's human nature to want to fill up those gaps.
Stiles closes his eyes to the scraping. He doesn't need a pack, he tells himself.
He doesn't need anyone.
XXX
The door shatters on the third try and stiles tumbles forward. The entire house is ablaze, but he can get out now. That's all he wanted. He just wanted to get out.
XXX
When he awakes he's no longer with the Doctors.
In fact, he doesn't know where he is.
XXX
Stiles clenches his hands into fists as the Doctors come near him. "No," he chokes, see the syringe in their hands. "No, no, no…"
"This is your own doing, Stiles. If you only listened to me." Theo snaps, a glint in his eyes Stiles has only seen a few times. "Aren't you curious what color your eyes will be? Huh? Void Stiles?"
"No!" Stiles screams.
Then the world explodes.
XXX
Time enjoys the jumps. It makes life a little more interesting.
So it jumps ahead. A far time ahead. Far enough to where Scott has Liam and Kira surrounding him. Derek and Chris Argent. Malia and the Sheriff.
"Where's Stiles?" Scott snarls, his eyes blazing a fierce red. "Where is he?"
Theo smirks. "He's dead, didn't you know?"
Every werewolf can hear his heart stutter.
A lie.
XXX
"Where am I?" Stiles cries, scrambling to his feet. He runs until he reaches the bars, slamming his hands against them. There are still bandages on them. "Hello? Hey! Where am I?"
A figure shifts next to him and Stiles flinches. The figure comes closer to him, reaching an arm through the bars and extending it out. "Dude, finally. A cell neighbor."
Stiles takes a few precautionary steps backwards, but the light from the windows shines on his face to reveal another teenager, tall and broad. "Hey, don't freak out. You're fine right now."
"Right now?" Stiles repeats.
The light pours on his face and Stiles chokes down a gasp. Scars run across his face, down to his chest. He nods solemnly. "For now."
XXX
Scott can hear Time laughing this round. Stiles can't. Then again, he's not allowed to hear anything outside the Circle.
That's Rule #6.
Time wins again.
A/N: WHAT AM I DOING. Please let me know your thoughts!
