The Blame Game

II

He's walking along a dark, foggy road in the middle of the deep beech forest. However, this time around Stiles knows he's dreaming, that whatever is happening around him isn't real. He may have been fooled twice, but third's time is a charm, isn't that what they say?

Dealing with the Nogitstune taught him how to distinguish between dream and reality, and several times now has he stared down at his hands, taking in the bizarre look of six fingers on each hand. He's dreaming. This is a dream. But he can't wake up.

He doesn't know how long he has been walking, but even though his feet are getting tired, he can't seem to get anywhere. He seems stuck in that very spot, and he can't wake up. Twice, he has tried to get off the road, to travel amongst the trees instead of walking along the eerie road, but he quickly realized it was impossible. There's no way to get off the road. It's as if someone's holding him back, strong arms clamping down on his shoulders, sharp nails ripping holes in his skin. So he stays on the road.

It's cold. He's dressed in the clothes he wore when he went to bed, a ratty t-shirt and pants, but the coldness easily seeps through the thin fabric of the clothes. But since it's impossible to make himself wake up, he keeps walking, enduring the cold he knows isn't real.

He stops when he sees two large headlights in front of him. Stiles doesn't move, and instead watch the approaching headlights, and fear grips hold of him as he realizes that a large truck is coming his way. The truck is so large that it's taking up the entire road, and there's nowhere for him to go. When the truck starts honking its horn, Stiles turns around and run.

His heart is beating so fast in his chest that he's afraid it'll break out of his body, and he's running faster than he ever has in a lacrosse game. He's running for his life now, doesn't even think about his pained bare feet. Even though he's sure he's dreaming, he doesn't want to die. But the truck comes closer.

He's running as fast as he can, panicking and struggling to breathe. There's a sharp, throbbing pain in his side, so he buries his nails in the palm of his head, focusing on that pain so that he can keep running. Keep running from the truck.

Stiles can see his own thin shadow in the light of the headlights as the truck approaches. His shadow is running for its life, and he realizes his hands are shaking. He looks back again, but when he realizes the hood of the truck just inches away from his face, he screams. He screams as loud as he can, and then he doesn't see anything else but the hood.

He wakes up. His eyes are wide open, staring into a white ceiling that's not the ceiling of his bedroom. His heart is still beating rapidly in his chest, but he's not dead. He's alive.

Before he can move, a familiar, frowning face appears above him. It's Scott's mom. Quickly taking in the white walls and the uncomfortable, rough bed sheets, he realizes he's in the hospital.

"That's odd," Melissa says, almost as if talking to herself. "You weren't supposed to wake up yet." She glances at his journal while Stiles looks around the room. He sees Scott, slumped in a chair in the corner, fast asleep, and his dad is doing the same, an empty coffee cup resting on the table next to him. Stiles feels a twinge of guilt before staring down at his arm. It's in a cast from the elbow and down to his wrist, and even though he's most likely been given painkillers, it still hurts.

"How do you feel?" Melissa says, her eyes leaving his journal. She smiles at him, a familiar, comforting smiles, and Stiles sighs.

"Better than I thought, after, you know, snapping my arm in two."

"In three, actually," she says. "It's broken in two places."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Peachy," he mutters, but before the two of them can say anything else, Scott stirs before his eyes snap open. When Stiles meet his eyes, the guilt just piles on. Scott looks bad, probably worse than Stiles himself. Scott's face is paler than usual, his eyes slightly red, and he just looks so awfully guilty.

"Stiles…" Scott says, rising from the chair. Stiles smiles.

"Don't worry about it, buddy," he says as the sheriff stirs in his chair, he too waking up.

"I'm really sorry, Stiles, I didn't mean to," Scott says, his voice laced with guilt. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I said it was fine. Really," Stiles says as his dad quickly rises from his chair as he realizes Stiles is awake. He looks worried, and Stiles doesn't know why he just can't get them to stop worrying so much about him. It's a broken arm. Give it a few weeks, then he'd be as good as new. It's not like… it's not like he had been hit by a truck or anything.

"But your arm is broken!" Scott says, seemingly getting more upset, but Stiles smiles. Smile, you idiot, he thinks. Everything's fine.

"Oh come on Scott, we've been through worse. I'll be healed in a jiffy!" He tries to sound upbeat, and he must've sounded convincing, because Scott relaxes and smiles back, and then the sheriff joins them, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He too smiles, looking relieved, but Stiles can't help but to notice that it looks like his dad has aged five years since he last saw him. And he knows why.

He just wonders why he's always the one to be so worthless.

Stiles get discharged a couple of hours later, because really, there's no reason to keep him in the hospital. All they have to do is wait for his arm to heal, so he goes home, and the only thing that annoys him is that he can no longer drive his jeep. Scott has driven it back from the school parking lot and it's now parked outside their house. Stiles is staring at it now, annoyed that he won't be able to drive for a couple for weeks. At least now the jeep can serve as a full-time bed for cats, because the stray cat seems to have taken a liking to it; it's once again sitting on the hood, cleaning its fur.

With a sigh, he returns to bed. It's difficult to fall asleep. Part of it is because he's having trouble finding a comfortable sleeping position, with the broken arm and all. But a part of him is scared of falling asleep, knowing that everytime he closes his eyes and drift off, he'll dream about dying again, dreams that feel so real that he's surprised he doesn't wake up with scars or bruises.

Eventually, though, he drifts off to sleep.

And finds himself in the middle of an ocean. Like, literally in the middle of it. There's a full moon above him, and the waves are making him nauseous as he struggles to keep afloat, his clothes making it difficult. He keeps thinking that he shouldn't be in the water with his cast, but when he looks down at it, the cast isn't there and the pain is gone. Another sign he's dreaming.

Stiles yells for help. Yells at the top of his lungs. He doesn't know why, because he's too far away from the shore. He can't even see the stupid shore. The ocean is cold and dark. He's always been frightened of the ocean. Not of the water, not of drowning – something he's probably about to do – but of what's lurking underneath the surface. What's lurking in the deep depths of the ocean, so deep that they're unexplored by humans. That's what scares him.

And when something brushes against his ankle, he starts shaking, and it's not because he's cold. Stiles tries to convince himself that it's simply a fish, or maybe a squid, but when it once again brushes by his ankle, he feels the familiar, panicked sensation of not being able to breathe. He starts to swim, but just as what had happened in the previous dream, he doesn't seem to get anywhere. He seems to be stuck in the same place, and all his efforts do is to make him exhausted.

Then, something touches his ankle again. He yelps, a disgusted, frightened look on his face appearing on his face as he tries to swim faster. It's useless. Suddenly, something is pulling him down. Something has grabbed hold of his ankle, pulling him down as hard as it can. The salty water annoys his eyes as he open them, but he needs to see, needs to at least try to make sense of what's really pulling him down. He can't see much; it's too dark. However, the thing that's pulling him down stands out in the darkness, like a large, black mass. It's so large that Stiles stops struggling out of fear, and he's suddenly afraid that in this dream, he won't die of drowning, but of a heart attack.

His lungs are begging for oxygen. He opens his mouth and screams in panic, but no sound comes out as Stiles feels himself being dragged down to the very bottom of the ocean.

All of a sudden, Stiles wakes up. He's screaming. He can't stop. His heart is racing, and he knows he's panicking, but he can't stop. It's ridiculous, really, because he knows he's back in his own bedroom, knows he's safe, but he just can't seem to stop screaming.

His dad enters the room, his hair standing out in all possible directions and he's wearing that worried look that Stiles has been seeing so often lately. His dad rushes toward him, quickly embracing him in a hug.

"It's okay, Stiles, it's just a nightmare," his dad whispers in his ear. It takes him a while, but eventually, he manages to calm down. It's comforting having his dad's strong arms around him, holding him tight. A long, silent moment passes before his dad reluctantly lets go of him.

"It was just a bad dream, Stiles," he says, watching his sleep-deprived son with the eyes of a worried father.

"I know," Stiles says. "I know that."

There's a calm silence for a moment, their breathing the only sound that can be heard.

Then Stiles open his mouth, his words hesitant. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Do we have any sleeping pills?" He's desperate now. The alarm clock tells him that it's a quarter past two in the morning, and he's desperate for some sleep.

"I think we do," his dad says, quickly disappearing out of the room before returning with two small pills in one of his hands and a glass of water in the other. Stiles closes his eyes in relief, letting go of the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

For the first time in days, Stiles manages to fall asleep after a bad dream, and for the first time, he sleeps without dreaming of of his own death.

When he wakes up the next morning, in a pill-induced haze, he's so relieved he wants to cry.

"I'm really sorry about your arm," Scott says. He's been repeating the same words the entire morning, and every time, Stiles rolls his eyes.

"I said, don't worry about it. It was an accident." He's in a good mood today, and the smile he's giving his best friend is sincere for once, something it hasn't been in days.

"But Stiles, I broke your arm," Scott looks ashamed of himself, but Stiles put his good arm around his shoulders.

"It's not that bad, Scott. Just think of all the perks I'll get. You'll have to carry all my stuff, everyone has to make food for me, and I can get out of doing homework! You know, crying about how much my arm hurts, shed a few fake tears, I think even Coach will let me off…" Stiles rambles, but a small smile appears on Scott's face.

"That's true," Scott says, almost as if trying to convince himself. Stiles grin, but as Scott turn to look at him, a frown appears on the wolf's face.

"Scott?" Stiles asks. "What's wrong?" Scott has a surprised, slightly confused look on his face as he's staring intently on Stiles's neck. For a second, Stiles ponders the thought that Scott has somehow become a hybrid between a wolf and a vampire, before the werewolf opens his mouth.

"Dude, have you been cuddling with a cat lately?" he asks, and now it's Stiles's turn to look confused.

"What are you talking about? No. You know dogs are my favorite," he says, trying to get a look at what Scott's looking at, which, of course, is quite impossible. He heads into the closest bathroom, which just so happens to be empty, and takes a look in the mirror.

At first, he ignores the look of himself, ignores that split second when he thinks he's staring at someone other than himself. He looks horrible, despite the hours of sleep he got tonight. His skin is pale, the dark circles painfully obvious, and he looks weak; he looks pathetic.

Then, his attention switches to the claw marks on his neck. They're bright red, and are, without a shadow of a doubt, from a cat. Three long scratch marks that hurts only when he touches them. Scott's standing next to him, wearing the same confused look on his face that Stiles does.

"Sleepwalking?" he asks. "Cuddling with a cat in your sleep? Weird, even for you."

"Yeah," Stiles mutter, even though he's sure he hasn't been sleepwalking. The only cat that has been close to him in months is the stray cat with gray eyes. But even that one hasn't been within ten feet of him, always hurrying away from him as he approaches, glaring at him as if he's the spawn of the Devil.

But the bright red marks on his neck, they are definitely the doing of a cat. It's freaking him out, and this is perhaps the only time Stiles has wished he'd owned a cat.