Author's Note: Comments are always welcome! I've had this idea running around in my head for a while, and with the start of Season 4 i decided to finally sit down and write it out. Please, leae a review and let me know what you think of the story!

Stiles is alive.

The text message came out of nowhere, and Scott McCall stared at in confusion and rising anger for several seconds before the next one stopped him in his tracks.

It was an image this time, showing the body of his best friend connected to a series of tubes and IVs as he laid on a hospital bed. The text has come from Derek, but John Stilinski sat in a chair next to Stiles' bed, his hand laid upon his son's as he stared unerringly at the teenager.

Where? How?

Oregon. Don't know.

Scott very nearly growled in frustration, but held himself back as he caught up to his girlfriend, Kira. Kira stared at the picture for several seconds, his hands curling around the phone tightly before she passed the phone without a word to Lyrdia, the only other member of their group who had known Stiles since he was a child. Malia stared at the phone over Lydia's shoulder, her brown hair properly brushed for once and falling down around her shoulders in gentle waves.

Malia had come a long way since she had first been transformed from a wolf back into a human after years of living in the wild. Idea like friendship had been hard for the young woman to understand - the idea of having people around her that she would never give up on, no matter how dire the circumstances. Stiles had taught her that, and his death had hit her hard.

But she had been a wild creature once, and she knew how to move on. She had lost her mother, her sister, but more than that she had been responsible for their deaths. If she could move on from that, she could move on from the loss of Stiles. And for the most part, she had. But in her heart, she had known that nobody would ever replace Stiles.

There was silence in the small group, even as the other students of Beacon Hills High School continued to move around them, flowing like a river around the small group of somber teenagers.

"How?" Malia finally spoke, her eyes moving from the picture to Stiles. Malia Tate had never been one to beat around the bush or allow emotions to get in the way of what she knew she had to do. She hadn't hesitated when it came to returning home to her father, no matter how scared she might have been. She hadn't hesitated when it had come to the nogitsune hidden away within Stiles, hadn't hesitated when it came to rescuing Derek Hale from Mexico. And she certainly wasn't going to hesitate now.

"I don't know. Derek said they're in Oregon, but he didn't say where."

"Find out." Malia demanded, raising one eyebrow at him. When he didn't move automatically, however, she pulled out her own mobile phone and hit Derek's number from her contacts.

When Derek didn't answer, however, she gave a growl of frustration. "Where in Oregon?" She demanded into his voicemail. "Call us back. With more detail this time." With that she hung up, turning away from Scott and the others as she started to make her way out of the school.

"Wait! Malia!" Kira hurried after her, grabbing onto the other girls arm near the entrance to the highschool. "Where are you going?"

Malia still had her cell phone out, keyed to a search engine. "Checking the internet. If he was found, there will be a police report. If there is a police report, there will be a new article - and the news article will tell us where he is." Malia explained, as if she were talking to a child. "Once we know where he is, we can go to him, without waiting for Hale to get back to us."

Kira blinked, releasing her arm. "Oh. Well, wait for us." Behind her, Scott nodded while Lydia merely followed behind him, silent.

. . .

Stiles Stilinski had never enjoyed waiting before. He had never been one for remaining still, for patiently waiting to see a problem resolved. He had always been one for action, even if that action was research more often than not.

Now, however, as he laid on a hospital bed with a doctor checking his vital signs, he couldn't force himself to care. He would be okay, of that he had little doubt. It would be sort of redundant to die now, after everything he had survived these past couple of months. Now, he just wanted the quiet. Wanted to silence to engulf him, in a way it never had before, Even his dreams had been chaotic these past couple of months, filled with death and pain and suffering - a reflection of his waking moments.

The doctor was silent as he worked, motioning John out of the room with a crook of his finger at the end of it. And as much as Stiles wanted to know what they were talking about, it wasn't enough to break his self imposed silence.

. . .

"His cuts are healing nicely, and I haven't found any bruising aside from that around his ankles and wrists. I take it you are the police officer in charge of his case?"

John was still wearing his sheriff's get-up, so he could understand the man's confusion. "No, I'm his father."

The man's eyes widened. "I apologize. You're uniform . . . "

John waved a hand, shaking his head. It's fine. You were saying?"

"The bruising will heal over time, though I can prescribe an ointment to help speed up the process. The most immediate concern is the chunk of flesh taken out of his side." The doctor paused, drawing a deep breath. "There are no signs of infection, but I am going to prescribe a round of antibiotics anyway. It certainly won't harm him. He is seriously underweight, even by the standards sent over by his primary care physician."

"What about his voice? He hasn't spoken since he woke up."

"We haven't found anything physical to explain your son's refusal to speak." The way the doctor stressed that word - physical - set off alarm bells in John's head. "It's entirely possible Mr. Stilinski is fully capable of speaking, and simply hasn't chosen to do so yet."

Nodding his head in thanks, John pressed a hand to the man's head with a smile he didn't really feel as he stepped back into the hotel room.

The idea of his son not speaking for more than ten minutes was a foreign concept to John. The fact that Stiles had remained silent for nearly twenty four hours since first waking up had become a reality he was forced to accept, however.

Stiles' eyes were open when John stepped back into his room, and the teenager made no move to hide it or to pretend that he was asleep. He simply watched John with his eyes, his fingers twisting in the thin blanket that covered him.

John slowly lowered himself into the hard plastic chair beside his son's bed, his eyes flickering over the form of Derek Hale asleep on the only other chair in the room. The man had remained awake all night last night, watching over the two of them as they slept, and he deserved his rest. The sheriff knew all too well that the types of dangers that Derek was on the lookout for were something that the Portland PD would be hard pressed to defend against - if they could at all.

Leaning forward slightly, John took one of his son's hands in his, trying to ignore how Stiles flinched slightly at the touch. "The doctor said you're healing well." John kept his voice down, though he knew it was hopeless - a werewolf's senses were far too keen for it to do any good. Still, he lived in hope that Derek would get a few more moments of sleep, at the very least. "But they can't explain why you won't speak to me."

In the past twenty four hours Stiles had had plenty of opportunities to talk. There had been doctors and nurses coming in and out of his room, a police officer speaking to John outside his room. There had been John outright attempting to garner some sort of response from him. But all he had done was smile and make small motions with his hands or facial expressions in order to get his message across. But not once had he spoken.

Derek had made no such attempts to get Stiles to speak. He had simply ben there, quiet and brooding, watching the comings and goings of hospital personnel with a suspicious glare. In the quiet between visits, however, his gaze was only for Stiles.

Instead of settling himself back into his chair, John paced over to the wide double windows that adorned his son's hospital room. Stiles watched him go silently, his fingers tapping on the blanket that covered him nervously. Though the pain medication in his system was making him more than a little sleepy, he fought against the urge to close his eyes and succumb to sleep. He had slept enough since being rescued, from what he had overheard. And he didn't want to lose this opportunity to simply observe his father.

Even if his father was beginning to become annoyed with his lack of speech.

It wasn't something that Stiles could explain, his hesitation to speak. He was certainly capable; his captors had never touched his throat, had never done anything to permenantly damage any part of his body, actually. They had always stopped short, always careful that he could heal from whatever they did to him.

Stiles shied away from those thoughts, focusing his attention sharply back on his father lest the panic bubble up inside of him. From the other side of the room, however, Derek finally shifted from the position he had been in for the past several hours, coming to lean over Stiles smaller form, one hand braced beside his shoulder. "Stiles, look at me."

Stiles forced himself to look up into the face of the older werewolf, panic rising in his chest. Instead of saying anything, though, Derek simply laid his other hand on Stiles' chest, focusing his energy on the younger man.

Stiles breath caught in his throat as he realized what Derek was doing. He had heard of Scott doing it with Isaac; hell, he had seen the other teenager drawing somebody's pain out. But they could do more than just draw out pain, couldn't they? They could dig down to the root of the problem, discover just what was wrong with a person. While Scott wasn't as good at it as Derek, even he had begun to learn how to hone that particular skill.

Suddenly, Stiles wanted to know where Scott was. Wanted to know that he was okay. Scott, Malia, Lydia. They were all that was important to him, suddenly. Knowing that they were okay, that they hadn't been hurt or hunted down by irate hunters out for blood. There were so many things that could hurt them, so many outside supernatural forces that might have come for them while he had been gone, assumed dead.

But that would mean beaking his self imposed silence. That would mean talking. And as much as he didn't want to do that - as much as he wanted to remain silent - he wanted to know about Scott and the others even more.

One hand reaching around, Stiles grabbed hold of Derek's hand with one of his own, wincing as the IV in his hand pulled and stretched slightly against his skin. "Where is Scott?"

The sudden sound startled both older men, and Deek pulled back slightly in surprise. John whipped around to stare at his son for a second, before hurrying over to his bedside once again. "What did you do?" The question was directed at Derek, who simply shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing that would have forced himt o speak."

Now that he had broken his silence, however, Stiles wouldn't be ignored. "Scott. Where is he? Is he okay?" He glanced between the two men expectantly, annoyed beyond reason when they didn't respond right away. "Lydia, Malia, Kira. Are they all okay?Where are they?"

Derek took a step back, allowing John to move in closer to his son and lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's okay - they're fine. They're probably in class right now."

"I told them. About you." Derek spoke from the foot of the bed, where he stood with his hands braced against the railing, his intense gaze once again locked on Stiles.

Stiles sighed in relief. He thought about asking what had happened to them in the months since he had been missing, but refrained. That could wait. Everything could wait, as long as he knew they were safe.

"Stiles." The sound of his father's voice brought Stiles back to the present, and he turned his gaze on his father hesitantly. Now that he had spoken, there was no excuse to avoid his father's questions, and he knew it.

But John simply smiled, his hand reaching out to touch the side of Stiles' head. "I'm so glad your okay." There was too much emotion in his voice for Stiles to reconcile, but he forced himself to smile back. "I'm okay. Really. I'm just . . . tired."

John nodded, allowing his hand to slip away though his smile had dimmed somwhat. "Get some sleep. We'll be here when you wake up."

And though Stiles wasn't entirely certain that he trusted that promise, he allowed his eyes to close anyway.