Part Two: Joker's View

They were moved to another cellblock, moving at the center of a squad of soldier-types with brown-and-white uniforms and loaded firearms. Stiles stumbled with exhaustion, and Derek put an arm around him for stability. He still smelled of soap. They passed by cells like the ones in the freezer block, but nearly all of them were taken. Stiles wondered what they did to the prisoners here. Then he noticed how the pairs filled their cells. The cold cells had pushed cellmates together, but these were pushed apart as far as space allowed. The wolves' eyes glowed with their distrust.

Stiles wondered if jerking each other off in the shower had maybe been going too far. Apparently they'd been moved from the cuddle-bug cells to the enemies-in-a-room-together cells. He pointed it out to Derek and got a nod in return. He'd noticed. Stiles was tempted to act out again, to grope Derek or kiss him or fall to his knees and blow him, but he thought it might be a bit late for that to have much impact other than a bullet's impact with his back.

The soldier-types shoved Stiles forward into an occupied cell and then pushed Derek into a cell across the way. There was just barely enough space between opposite cells for the soldier-types to walk side-by-side at the center of the way without being reached by any prisoner's outstretched arms. The werewolf in the cell ignored Stiles, but his eyes tracked Derek. Across the way, the human kept her eyes on Derek as well.

"Is she your partner?" Stiles asked even though he could see the answer.

"Keep your mouth shut, human, or I'll kill you."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Unlikely since you killing me means my partner killing her."

The werewolf eyed him with a frown. He turned his back on Derek and walked to the back wall. When he set a hand against it, the wall became nearly invisible. They were high up. Below them was a circular sand arena with a cement wall around it. It was empty now. Stiles gaped. He'd noticed the path curving as they approached the cell, but none of the reasons he thought of had related to the arena where he killed people.

The werewolf pulled his hand away. "They can't see from their side," he said with a nod to Derek and the human he shared a cell with, "But I can see. I know you."

Stiles watched him. "But what is it you think you know?"

"You play this game too well for someone who sees through it so clearly."

"Either that or not well enough." Stiles chanced a glance at Derek. They should have lasted longer, stayed in the cold cells. He shook his head. A few warm showers wouldn't have been enough; he knew that. Even though he didn't know what waited for him in these cells, Stiles doubted it was more coldness. Maybe he could heal. He would fight better healthy.

"They did move you here, after all." The werewolf smirked.

Stiles turned back to the wall and set a hand against it. The glass became clear. "I always thought we were fighting for the audience's twisted amusement."

"I don't think we're the only ones watching." The werewolf laughed without humor, and Stiles joined him.

"What do they want with us?" he asked.

The werewolf shrugged. "If there's a level where they tell us that, I haven't seen it yet." He eyed Stiles, sliding his gaze from head to toe. "Speaking of levels, you never show their signs. Where have they been hiding you?"

Stiles returned the werewolf's look and then turned to study his human. She had scars running along her arms and burns on her cheeks. There was an intermittent twitch in her left hand, and she kept staring at a shadow that never moved. He counted three levels on her and wondered which one they were in now, or had she just come here, making this her fourth?

"You don't trust me enough to tell."

"Are you surprised?" Stiles shrugged and smiled, hoping his eyes were suitably cold. He had too much practice faking at happiness for his father. Coldness was harder to reach, but he thought maybe murder had made it easier.

"You know I'll find out." Stiles could guess at levels seconds after meeting a person despite never having been in any cellblock but the cold one. So, yeah, the werewolf would figure him out eventually. But seconds counted in the arena, and Stiles saw no point to making things easier for a man who would try to kill him before much longer.

"But the guessing part is just so much fun."

Across the way, Derek snorted. The girl sharing his cell flinched, pressing herself against the wall. Despite her fear, her fingers twitched in a way that spoke of killing to Stiles. The werewolf stepped forward at her yelp, but he only gritted his teeth and clenched his hands into fists. Derek never moved. He stood at the forward edge of his cell, right behind the bars, staring out at Stiles. He leaned his forehead against the metal and smirked. Stiles remembered rolling his face against the bars of their cell on their first night here and figured Derek meant it for a joke.

A gust of wind roared through the cellblock. It pushed Stiles back and left him gasping for breath, which left him coughing until his knees hit the floor. When he could breathe again, he looked up. Derek was gripping the bars of his cage in both hands, knuckles white. His cellmate was on her hands and knees giving Stiles a wicked smile. She knew his weakness now. He turned to find the werewolf grinning too.

"Nasty cough you got there." He chuckled. "Hard to believe they moved someone straight from the Freezer to the View."

During their stay, no one else had been placed in the cold cells. Stiles wondered how many actually went there, but clearly this werewolf knew about them. The werewolf and her human from across the wide way were still there. Jorge had been there until Derek ripped out his throat.

"What does that mean?" Stiles asked. "And what was that gust?" The werewolf's secrets danced in his eyes in time with the upward tilt of his lips. "Really? You're clamming up now?"

"Well, I got what I wanted from you." He said it like something special, like Stiles hadn't gotten the same thing from the girl in Derek's cell with only a glance.

"Yeah, yeah, you've read my scars and know my weakness, but have I ever let a fight last long enough for it to matter?" Stiles forced himself to bare his teeth in a way he'd learned from watching Derek. By the werewolf's hesitation, Stiles knew it had worked.

"Good point," he admitted.

The wall went clear on its own before he could say more. When Stiles looked through the glass, he saw two partner-sets shoved onto the sand. One pair he recognized from the cold cells. He wondered if they'd gotten new neighbors yet and wished he'd learned their names. The human moved without focus. The werewolf looked almost ready to kill him herself as she pulled his attention back to the impending death match. These two lost the day Jorge did; they just refused to admit it. The other set had rope burns on their skin and moved like their joints had forgotten they were meant to bend and turn. Stiles winced. That was one of the worst levels. It left them nearly useless in combat. Maybe the partners across the way would live to see another day. Stiles grinned to himself over his rhyme.

Stiles couldn't hear the voice that always told them to fight to the death, but both teams charged at once. They went for the humans first, but the werewolves cut each other off. Stiles rolled his eyes at the familiar tactic. Every fight here seemed to boil down to human-on-human and werewolf-on-werewolf, separate fights in the same ring.

Desperation and adrenaline lent the rope-burn partners strength and speed to stand against the partners across the way. Even so, the fight should have been quick. It dragged on. The humans fought defensively, driving each other back, trying to hold on just a few moments longer. The werewolves slashed madly, desperate to land a fatal blow. Stiles thought they should have been better at killing given how much of it each pair should have done by now. He wondered how they expected to win that way, but then he remembered the teams he and Derek had beaten already. This tired, pitiful fight was not unique. This was how everyone fought. Try to kill the human. Get paired by species. The humans stall each other. One wolf kills the other. That wolf kills the other human too. Someone lives and someone dies, and the human thanks fate that there was a werewolf there to save the day.

"You see it now," the werewolf said. The fight stretched out into the silence Stiles left him. "Those of us in the View have changed since you got here. You taught us the importance of murder." Stiles tore his eyes from the beatings below to look at the werewolf's face. He'd feared some sort of maniacal grin and found instead weariness and hatred. "Maybe that's why they put you here. We're the only ones who could kill you now." Stiles thought of the humans he had passed on his way here. How many of them had waited for backup before? How many of them would kill him outright now?

Stiles leaned against the glass as the werewolf across the way finally killed her opponent. Then she bolted to her human's side and killed his opponent too. They stumbled away together through a door that slid shut behind them. Stiles pulled away from the glass, and its surface took on the color and texture of a cement wall. Light still passed through though. Stiles wondered why he hadn't noticed it sooner, but, of course, he'd been eying his potential opponent, not the shadows on the floor.

"You never explained the wind," he said.

The werewolf shrugged. "It's a mind-game level. What can I say?"

~.x.~

The rules against yelling in the Freezer had no bearing in the View. Stiles thought part of the game here involved making them think they knew the game. The thought made him laugh and wish for the weight of Derek's arms at night while the walls whispered to him. The man standing across from him now had told Stiles that everyone heard the walls, just no one heard the same words from them. He thought it was a drug. His partner thought it was low-volume speakers and stress. Derek said it reminded him of his uncle and chuckled with the bitterness and hatred of betrayal. No one said what it meant to hear maddening lies and be reminded of family, but Stiles felt the others weighing it against Derek's strength. Some of these people might have felt sorry for him once, but now they only picked out weaknesses.

Stiles' cellmate had been right. These humans were different. Most of them had twitches and neuroses, but they went for the kill the way his first opponent had. They were stronger though. Some of them didn't sleep, and some of them didn't eat, but some of them did both. Today, Stiles' opponent was bigger than he was, stronger. Stiles knew he liked to work out in his cell even though some of the others found the noise of his counting annoying or maddening or a bit of both.

Stiles brushed his fingers against Derek's hand. "Trade you," he whispered. Derek looked at him like he'd suggested lying down in the sand and hoping they won by default because no one could see them. His confusion faded as he considered Stiles' suggestion longer. Then he nodded, and Stiles caught a hint of a smirk at the edge of his lips. He wanted to bite and lick the smirk away until he left Derek open-mouthed and panting. Stiles licked his own lips and wished reminding himself that he only cared because he associated Derek with survival would make him stop wanting him so badly. He wondered what it was like for the werewolves, how they became so obsessed with protecting their humans even though the humans typically did very little.

The voice told them the rules, and Derek charged for the human just like everyone always did. Stiles crossed behind him, aiming for the wolf. Stiles almost thought he wouldn't take the bait, but he saw Stiles running at him, unprotected, and charged. Derek reached the other human first, having never lost that split-second to hesitation. As his opponent neared, Stiles hit the ground and slid through the sand with no intention of attacking a werewolf head-on.

The human was dead the moment Derek reached him.

Stiles scrambled in the sand to regain his footing as the werewolf spun, screaming. He would smell his partner's blood even if he'd missed the dying, and Stiles knew most of the pairs in the View were either in love or close enough that it didn't matter. Derek spun, drenched in blood and flinging it out into the sand with his motion. Mad with grief and rage, the werewolf attacked him instead of Stiles. Derek braced himself against the attack, and Stiles ran forward. He leapt onto the werewolf's back. One arm stretched around the wolf's neck to hold him close. With the hand of the other arm, Stiles dug a finger into the wolf's eye. He screamed and clawed at Stiles' hand long enough for Derek to drive a hand into his chest and rip out his heart. Stiles thought that might have been a bit excessive but imagined the crowd going wild with freshly-sated bloodlust.

Stiles spun, staring at the glass above the cement, but he couldn't tell which side his cell was on. Now that he looked more carefully, he thought there was more than one level of glass. His cellmate had said he thought there were others watching. Stiles decided that based on the doors it was one of two locations and waved to them both. Then Derek pulled him away to their shower.

They ignored the soldier-types in favor of kissing. Stiles relished the heat of Derek's body. Even though they'd been out of the Freezer for a while now, he still associated body heat with survival. He pressed as close against Derek as he could while trying to get them both undressed. His hand, where the werewolf had clawed him at the end, bled all over their uniforms, but Stiles knew they'd get fresh ones after their shower. He unbuttoned Derek's pants and shoved his good hand inside. One of the soldier-types cleared her throat, but Stiles ignored her.

"I see you two have gotten very... close." Stiles knew that voice. He pulled back from Derek to find the woman who had spoken to Jorge. She had her arms crossed and studied them with a look on her face that said they could never measure up. Stiles couldn't guess at her standard.

Derek pulled Stiles against his chest again and rumbled at her. Stiles shivered with the vibrations of Derek's growl and leaned against him. He didn't have anything to say to this woman. He understood just enough to know he understood too little. Anything he said to her could be a mistake, and Stiles had enough disadvantages as it was.

"Not afraid anymore?" she asked. Her laugh was mocking. "You think a few little fights make you strong enough to stand to me?"

"That would be much more meaningful if I knew who you were," said Stiles, even though he'd told himself to keep his mouth shut for once.

"I would comment on your nerve, but that seems to be all anyone can say about you these days, Stiles." She smiled. "Especially after this last match. You're beginning to get noticed."

Stiles suspected he did not want to be noticed, but he wanted to be killed even less. The woman turned and left without explanation, and Derek's hand slid down past the waistband of Stiles' pants when she was gone. He let Derek touch him even though he'd just remembered they wouldn't be doing this if they were free. He kissed Derek without loving him because they needed each other, and when they were put into their separate cells, he felt like he'd been split in two even though he knew they would never be close again if they managed to escape.

Derek stood at the front of his cell with his forehead pressed against the bars. He stood like that for hours, like he always did, watching Stiles train alone since he didn't have Derek to spar with anymore and didn't trust his cellmate not to hurt him. By the time the walls started talking to him and the shadows reached out to coax him to lie on the cool cement, Stiles realized Derek was even more lost in this than he was.

~.x.~

The guards came for Stiles while the walls still whispered. Night was the time for torments, not for killing. Stiles blinked groggily, shushing the walls when they drowned out what he hoped was an explanation. In the opposite cell, Derek pressed himself against the bars, growling threats, while the human huddled against the wall pretending to be asleep. Stiles caught her peeking through her eyelashes. When the soldier-types got fed up with his confusion and sluggishness, the guards sent one of their own into the cell to carry Stiles out. They had their guns trained on the werewolf, so Stiles grabbed the soldier who had come in by the collar of his uniform and smashed his face against the wall just because he could.

The guns swung to him, but Stiles only laughed until his sides hurt and he worried his cough would return. No one laughed with him, not even the walls. Stiles let the laughter fall away into a smirk and followed the soldiers out of his cell. They kept their distance, even with their superior numbers and firepower.

They left Derek behind.

Stiles crammed his fists into the pockets of his prison-uniform to keep his hands from shaking and told himself he didn't need Derek. He wanted Derek, and that was fine. But he didn't need him. Even without saying the words aloud, Stiles tasted the salt of lies on his tongue. He would be dead now without Derek.

At first Stiles tried to memorize the path they took, but he lost track. He couldn't tell if the halls all looked the same or if the soldier-types led him through the same halls multiple times to confuse him. They opened a door that looked like dozens of other doors they had walked by, and behind it was a staircase. They climbed upward. No one would tell Stiles their name, quest, favorite color, or anything at all about swallows.

Behind another door that they reached after another maze of hallways, these with smooth white walls and white floor tiles that reminded Stiles of a hospital, stood a man. He wore a lab coat and a name badge that just said, "Haha, No." Stiles chuckled at that, and the man smiled appreciatively.

He turned and motioned to a chair at the center of too many metal contraptions for comfort. "Please, sit."

This was a different kind of movie than the gladiator films Stiles had been stuck in with Derek. Stiles eyed the needles and knives suspiciously. There were machines too, the kind he suspected beeped and gave readings about important things that only the man in the lab coat would understand. Stiles shook his head. "No thanks, I'd rather stand."

"You know perfectly well that we can make you sit."

"And I'm sure you know perfectly well that I have a few behavioral issues that I never quite worked through." Stiles waited for the soldier-types to make him sit.

The man with the lab coat sighed and waved a hand. When the first soldier-type touched him, Stiles threw him to the floor. Then the others had him by his arms and by his fear of gunshots to the face. They wrestled him into the chair and strapped him in. Stiles tried not to think of all the things that could be in the syringes around him. It was probably some sort of anesthetic, but his brain kept oscillating between zombie virus and metamorphosing serum. He couldn't decide which one would be more awesome any more than he could decide which one would be more terrible.

"This is going to sting," the man said, brushing his hands off on his lab coat before lifting some sort of suction cup with a tiny needle attached toward Stiles' face.

"You are not sticking that in me are you?"

"Of course I'm sticking this in you. Haven't you ever seen a creepy, illegal science facility before?" He pressed the needle into Stiles' temple and held it until the suction cup had a good hold on Stiles' skin. There were others for his other temple, neck, and chest. Stiles imagined himself as Frankenstein's creature and groaned appropriately until the scientist laughed. "I didn't expect you to be in such good spirits, what with my kidnapping you for strange and mysterious experiments."

Stiles shrugged, but it earned him a firm pat on the shoulder since it messed up Haha, No's attempt to draw a sample of his blood. "I compensate with humor."

"We've been watching, and you don't so much compensate as obliterate anyone matched against you." He got the blood sample and grinned at it briefly before moving on. "This might hurt a little," he warned, pressing his finger against a button on the machine connected to Stiles via suctioned needles.

White-hot agony poured through the needles. Stiles' body convulsed with it. His hands arched into claws, and his arms strained against their bonds to reach the needles and pull them out. He screamed, first with pain and then with rage. His struggles shifted to aim at Haha, No. Stiles snarled past bared teeth, and he stretched his neck, trying to pull away from the needles. Eventually he just shook his head as fast as he could, hoping to shake the pain off. The pain switched off, and Stiles collapsed against the chair in relief.

He coughed, throat suddenly dry. "Yeah, that stung."

"Thank you, Stiles. Honest feedback is always an important part of the scientific process." The machine hummed, and Haha, No turned to it immediately. He scowled.

"Not good, I take it?" Stiles made himself smile even though it hurt. All he wanted to do was collapse somewhere and sleep, preferably with Derek nearby.

"Completely useless," Haha, No agreed. "But still worth studying." He pressed the button again.

~.x.~

"You're not as scary as he is," the girl said. Her voice was young like her face, but her eyes were old. Everyone had old eyes here. She had not spoken since Derek was put into her cell except in startled yelps and midnight whimpers.

Derek sized up Stiles' cellmate. "He's not so tough."

"No, not my partner. Yours. You're not as scary as he is." She looked at Stiles like he was the monster that lived in the shadows of her cell.

Derek looked at her like she was crazy. "He's human."

"I think he's crazy."

Stiles was hurt. A girl who talked to shadows even when the cellblock's game was turned off had just called him crazy.

"At least you get to live over there," her partner said to her.

"You too?" Stiles rolled his eyes.

"You used yourself as bait and then gouged out a werewolf's eye." He tapped his own cheek, just below the eye. "Humans are supposed to fight humans. Otherwise, humans wind up dead. But you're not dead."

Stiles shrugged.

"And he's strong," the girl added. "Most of us aren't anymore, but he is. I've seen the way he practices, and it's not like Cory used to with his counting. He doesn't practice like he wants his body to last. He practices like he wants his body to kill."

Stiles hadn't known exercise boy's name was Cory. The letters crawled under his skin and found a place to latch on at the back of his lungs. They felt like the sickness the Freezer had given him. He cleared his throat and swallowed. His mouth had gone dry.

"I'm Vic," Stiles' cellmate said, "And she's Mirabelle." He grinned. "Usually it's best not to react so visibly when something bothers you."

"You know I'll kill you whether I know your names or not."

Chattering in the cellblock stopped dead. No one talked about killing each other here. It made talking at all too difficult.

Mirabelle pointed at Stiles. "See. Scary."

Conversation picked back up, but Stiles caught a few of them talking about him. He hadn't told anyone his name—the one his mother gave him or the one he'd taken for himself—but he knew the things they called him by now. He grinned widely at Mirabelle until she backed away to the corner of her cell and became quiet again.

Derek was looking at Stiles like he'd never seen him before. He ran a hand up and down the bar of his cell, studying Stiles like a puzzle. Stiles worried what that look could mean, but then he saw the outline of Derek's hardness against the fabric of his pants. Stiles grinned and blew Derek a kiss. Then he turned his back and pressed a hand to the glass wall so he could look out at the arena. There were scratches along the walls, faint things he hardly noticed while on the ground. He only needed another match or two. If he could find a way to have Derek stall a little after Stiles killed their human opponent, he could get a look at the walls and find the place he'd been studying from his cell.

Stiles told the walls to shut up and brushed away a phantom touch against his throat where Haha, No's needle had punctured the skin. He breathed deeply and told himself everything was okay, but no one else was talking to their walls just yet. The games only ever began after dark. There was a twitch in Stiles' eye that wouldn't go away. He thought his last opponent had seen it, but maybe that wasn't so bad. Everyone he fought now was from the View. They all bore View scars. Even Derek had begun growling at things no one else could see. There was breath against the back of Stiles' neck, but it wasn't soothing like Derek's.

"Am I already so bad that it'd be worth losing her to kill me?"

'No," Vic answered. "I'm just starting to worry you will be."

Stiles laughed. He spun around and pushed Vic away from him and advanced, relishing the single backward step Vic took before squaring his shoulders and facing Stiles down. "You worry too much. I'll only kill you in the ring. Otherwise, I'm determined to rescue us all." He grinned and wondered how manic it looked. He'd lost a lot of sleep recently on the nights Haha, No decided to prod, poke, torture, and study him. His favorite part was making Stiles scream.

"I told you he was crazy," Mirabelle muttered from her corner, glaring at Derek. "At least you make some sense."

Derek laughed. Not the dark, bitter laugh that sounded like something dying inside of him, but a thin, terrified laugh that told Stiles Derek had already lost hope. That was okay. Stiles had enough for both of them. He had enough for all of them, and he would scream it every night until his throat gave out because he was tired of resignation to this place.

~.x.~

'Joker' was the name that stuck. The other nicknames faded from use until people started calling Stiles 'Joker' to his face. A woman one cell over tried to call Derek 'Harley,' but after the way he growled, they went with 'Beast' instead. Every once in a while, someone used just the last syllable of Mirabelle's name and thought themselves clever, but no one suspected Derek was interested in anyone other than Stiles. They understood too well what 'partner' meant in this place.

Stiles played up the part. He had already smiled too much, but now he smiled more. He'd taken to calling Derek 'Adam' because that was the Disney version of the Beast's name. Mirabelle caught on immediately and spoiled any chance of someone believing his name was actually Adam. She used that instead of Beast though. When Derek asked why, she giggled and said it suited him better.

The door crashed open. The door always crashed when it opened. Soldier-types marched in. By their footsteps, Stiles knew they were in formation. They only brought this many to let someone out and take them down for a match. The soldiers stopped outside Stiles cell, but they turned toward Derek. Derek tried to step back because they always let the human out first, but the soldiers motioned for him to step out. Then they locked the door, put a guard on Derek, and turned to let Stiles out.

Stiles forced himself to laugh. Even the guards had bought into Mirabelle's claim that Stiles was the scary one. Vic backed away slowly, but by his posture Stiles guessed it was an act for the guards. A guard unlocked the door and slid it open. Stiles stepped out calmly, grinning like the maniac everyone thought he was. A shadow twitched at the corner of his vision, but Stiles ignored it and moved to stand beside Derek. The soldier closed the cell and locked it. They ordered Derek and Stiles to march forward to victory or death.

Once they were out of hearing range, Stiles muttered, "Go in oldschool?" to Derek.

"Nothing fancy?"

"They'll see all my tricks. Gotta save a few."

They reached the arena first and waited for their opponents. Stiles ran his eyes over the cement, looking for his landmarks. Finding his own window wouldn't actually help him escape, but his mind had latched onto it. He needed to get closer. Or farther away and higher up, but that one wasn't exactly an option. Soldier-types would shoot him if he moved too much too soon, so Stiles decided to bolt to the right when the fight began. If he found nothing, he'd try for the left. If that failed, he'd go the other way next time.

They had come through the door with a chip on the bottom right of the frame, Stiles reminded himself. Then a werewolf he called the Witch because of her horrible nighttime cackling and a girl he called Banshee because of her impressive lung capacity and the speed with which she decided shouting was in order entered through the opposite door. That would be the one with a streak of off-color paint on the ceiling at the last intersection before the final stretch of hall. Stiles hoped there was only the one arena.

Banshee was fast. Stiles wouldn't have much time. The Witch was unpredictable. She'd lost her mind entirely to the View. Stiles hoped Derek could keep up with her despite the guessing game she presented. He supposed that was how people felt about him and focused the bitter amusement of that into a laugh, hoping it would make them nervous.

The voice told them the rules—fight to the death—and Stiles charged for the wall. He kept his eyes on it as he approached but recognized nothing. There were marks, just strange ones. He turned to run for the other wall, but Banshee tackled him. The fall took long enough for him to see Derek holding the Witch back, but then Stiles was struggling against Banshee. She knew how to lean her full body into an attack, making it harder to push her off even though she was smaller than Stiles.

Stiles made himself laugh again, and Banshee tensed at the sound. That gave him an opening to push her off and scramble to his feet. He ran for the other wall, searching it for his shapes, but these seemed strange too. Banshee caught up and slammed him face-first against the wall with one of her signature shrieks. Stiles pushed off the wall and jammed his elbows backward. One of them caught Banshee. He spun, hoping she was stunned or forced back, and caught her mid-spin, using his momentum to slam her against the wall too. He grabbed her by her hair, pulled her head back, and smashed her face against the cement as hard as he could. It crunched. He did it again. And again. And again, staring at the wall. His angle was all wrong, but when he tried to reimaging these marks, they didn't feel right. He threw what was left of Banshee into the sand and walked calmly to the other side while Derek fought the Witch.

He took his time staring at the wall this time. It was still off, but then he moved farther down the wall and found them. He's misjudged the angle of his view slightly, probably because it was hard to get a good look at the cracked-frame door from his window. Now that he knew where he was, Stiles turned and point a finger like the barrel of a gun at the place he knew Vic liked to watch from. Then he pretended to fire it as Derek gutted the Witch.

"I thought you said no tricks." Derek didn't sound angry despite his words as he joined Stiles.

Stiles shrugged. "I was wrong."

~.x.~

"If you're studying the connection, why only examine the human?" Stiles slumped in Haha, No's chair of extremely painful science. His voice was a croaking that caught in his throat before exploding past his lips in a dry wheeze. Stiles had waited until he was all but certain before saying anything, and the shock on the scientist's face was prize and confirmation in one. Unfortunately, he'd also given away that he only knew part of it. Stiles doubted he'd ever know more than just part of it.

"Do you really think that's all we're studying?" The scientist rolled his eyes, but it was overdone.

"Of course not." Stiles left it at that. Better they didn't know quite how much he had pieced together or quite how much he hadn't. He knew a close bond with a werewolf did something to some of the humans. By Haha, No's constant disappointment in him, Stiles guessed he hadn't properly bonded with Derek. Maybe that was why they hadn't bothered moving him through different levels like they did with others. They couldn't test if having a werewolf for a pet affected his resistance to torture when he had missed out on the memo to make Derek his.

Stiles assumed they used tests on him to determine factors of resistance to the bonds they wanted to create. He remembered thinking it had been about dependence and manipulated intimacy. In a way it had, but they'd wanted something more, a new level of connection that Stiles and Derek never achieved. Thinking of their failure made Stiles smile. Then Haha, No hit his magic pain button and wiped the smile off Stiles' face.

"Come on, Stiles. You've made yourself out to be such a smart cookie. Let's have a test, shall we?"

"I forgot to study." His throat was shredded from screaming. He wheezed, trying to carry air to his lungs without pulling it against the edges of his throat.

"What sorts of factors usually prevent a connection?" He stood still, watching Stiles expectantly.

"You actually expect me to answer?"

"Either that or..." He hovered a hand over the pain button.

"Prior connection, emotional ambivalence or detachment, insufficient motivation..." Stiles shrugged. There was probably more.

"What about your case?"

"By your muttering, I gather that I'm perfect except for not being perfect, so... whatever."

Haha, No hit the button. Stiles screamed and strained against his bonds, desperate for relief.

"He's a smug fucking bastard. Why would I want to have a magical werewolf bond with him?" It was the first thing Stiles thought of, and he hoped it was enough.

"You're claiming you don't like him enough?" He waited for Stiles to nod. "I've got some footage of you two in the shower. Shall I play it to prove you wrong?"

"Only if you want me horny. Is that a new part of your game?" A fit of painful coughing ruined Stiles' tone somewhat. It was so hard to mock people with your body convinced it was slowly dying.

"Tell me about the rest of your pack."

"They're wolves." Well, not all of them. "You think I'm connected to one of them instead?"

The man in the lab coat didn't answer. He stared at Stiles with inner debate obvious in his eyes. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head.

"Oh, is the test done? Then maybe you can help me with my notes." Stiles knew he was pushing it, so he made sure to smile past the blood he'd coughed onto his lips. "I thought wolves were pack animals. Why would they bond with just one person?" Stiles remembered something bitten by a wolf that bonded only one person and shivered against his bonds. "Unless it's not really wolves you're interested in."

Haha, No slammed his fist against the pain button. Stiles screamed until he passed out. The darkness rushing over him felt like victory even if it smelled like dying.