Full Chapter Title: The Inferno (Do not be afraid; our fate Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift)
Summary:
0-000-000-0000
"Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people"
Story:
Stiles doesn't feel the panic attack coming until Allison is moving from her perch on the seat at the head of the table to wave a hand in front of his vision. It's languid and slow, like her hand is caressing the water, skimming the very top layer and he's watching from below, gazing numbly at the ripples of her hand across the kitchen. His chest feels tight, and each breath he inhales and gulps is filled with the bitter, musky taste of worry and panic.
Apparently, his in-between shifting leaves Stiles with the worse panic attacks since his mother's death and his father's murder.
His breath is uneven, and each lung-full is painful, a sort of agony that burns in his compressed chest and runs up to the base of his skull were it shatters into a million shards that explode in his brain like a thousand spiders crawling through each cell to ignite his nerves on fire. His heart thumps a staccato beat against his ribs, faster and harder, ready to leap from his chest. The pain in each ba-dump is another ante, another layer of torment atop his frayed and tattered mind.
There are spots darkening in his vision, like drip-drops of obscurity, hitting his sights and undulating until his vision is almost completely blotted out.
He breathes in—
-killmekillmebreathebreathebr eathenohurtstoomuchstopbreat hebreathebreathe—
- and it hurts to damn much, so much he can feel like his mind is getting clouded, his brain is stuffed with cotton and Allison is still talking, breathing words into the air; words he cannot see and cannot feel but knows are there, regardless.
He breathes out—
-whynowwhyherewhatamIgoingtod othere'stoomuchtoomuchtoomuchtoomuchtoomuch—
-and there's something in the air that shifts quickly, like the silence after lightning strikes and Stiles wants to lift his head, but his chin dips lower, presses onto his chest and he can't fight the larger gulps of air that tear his chest apart. There's a rough, large hand on his necks that he distinctly infers is not Allison's and a deeper voice speaking something. His heart still races but the pain that was ratcheting up into every cell fiber is diminishing slowly until breathing is just a dull ache. His heartbeat is still thunderous, less agonizing, and the cotton in his mind is slowly but surely clearing away.
After the sound of his blood rushing through his veins stops demanding his full auditory attention, the words coming from the figure beyond Stiles' closed lids come to fruition.
"—just like that, breathe, Stiles. Follow my lead, okay? Just—Jesus—calm down-" It's Derek, probably, considering Scott's voice is still in a perpetual state of awkward, almost- puberty. Stiles chokes on a bark of laughter that maybe gives Derek the wrong signal because the Alpha growls low and angrily. "Get the hell away, what the fuck did you even tell him!?"
"Fuck you, Derek, you don't get to-"
"-Why did you even return-"
"-Allison-"
"-Step away-"
"—fine now, just let us all sit-"
There are so many voices and so many tastes and scents in the air that Stiles feels nausea, an acute sense of toomuch that he felt was missing from earlier, a testament to Scott's ability to reasonably depict his shift in senses post-bite.
"Shut…. Up!" Stiles breathes and if his voice growls on the last syllable, then there's no secret of his impending and delayed change so there's one thing less on the list of "Things Stiles Will Need to Remind Everyone Of". "It's a panic attack you dipshit, not a shot of wolfsbane to the heart now move your god-damned arm or I'll rip it off," Stiles grinds out, shoving away Derek's arm. The rest of the pack is there, Derek's pack, all making a tight almost-circle a few feet away.
Allison is right beside Stiles, though, her hand on Stiles' shoulder. Derek is glaring at the offending limb as if it's made a cheap shot at his mother; Scott is half-gawking beside Lydia who looks equal parts intrigued and annoyed. Boyd, Erika and Isaac are just laying low somewhere between Derek's pack and Stiles' right side, fidgeting.
"Everyone, sit down." Stiles commands and the room suddenly fills with the sound of everyone fulfilling his order. Derek stares at Stiles, like there's something he wants to say but the Alpha takes a deep breath, nods once to himself, and takes a seat on the counter against the wall and besides the table.
Stiles, instead of sitting, quickly makes his way to his restroom, bypassing the befuddled and anxious Betas and his messy room to stand in front of the sink. He looks into his reflection and blinks once, twice, a third time before really observing himself, his still damp hair, the darkness under his eyes (a permanent characteristic for the past few years now) and the stark pallor of his skin.
He splashes warm water on his face, keeps is head bowed and remains leaning forward against the counter, hands bracing the marble surface, as the water continues to gush into the basin and down the drain.
Despite his best efforts, Stiles remembers.
It's eleven P.M on Wednesday night when Stiles realizes that it's getting late out—too late to chase after the Omega that's on the loose. The night air is starting to bite at Stiles' bare arms but he can't return for his hoodie, not when its too far out into the woods for him to find in the dark.
He looks at his phone, wondering why his father hasn't called, when Scott will start replying to his texts and if, maybe, just someday he can leave this entirely behind. His father has enough of a reputation to move them to LA, if the need be. Hell, Sheriff Stilinski had offered when Stiles finally clambered down his room with red-rimmed eyes, pale skin—it was like an actual physical sickness, the disconnection from the pack.
It's getting dark. Stiles glances down at his phone again, eyebrows scrunching in confusion.
There's a single text message, apparently, as the icon at the drop-down menu reveals, from ten minutes earlier. There is no number, simply 0-000-000-0000 and Stiles absent mindedly clicks the message as he pulls into the main road.
0-000-000-0000
"Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people"
Stiles shivers as he locks his phone and slips it into the center cup holder. There's something off about the night, something strange, and he feels this wave of tension that's wafting through the air and slipping under his skin, like some ethereal hand is holding a blade just above the bob of his throat, waiting patiently for its cue to violently end the ceaseless living.
With another shudder, Stiles picks up his phone single-handedly and steers with the other. He unlocks the screen and goes to a new, blank message. "Something is UP 2night. Heads up. Omega not w/in the woods. Keep u posted." Stiles texts out, sending the humans and werewolves. After a second of hesitation, thumb hovering over the empty box, Stiles checks Derek's name and sends the message to them all.
He looks up into the road, a strange sense of longing and loss sinking into his bones. The whole night seems eerie, silent, and his phone remains dark with the lack of response from his pack friends acquaintances.
Until it rings.
"Al-" Stiles starts but he's cut off by the sound of huffing breaths and panic.
"Stiles—we caught sight of the Omega." Allison huffs out, and she sounds like she's running. Perking his ears and putting more attention to the sounds across the line, Stiles can hear, or not hear, the distinct lack of crunching leaves and snapping twigs underfoot. "He's somewhere in the city."
"So the tracks-"
"Stiles, the Omega is Aiden, Erika recognized the scent and not she and Boyd are holed up in the basement. Stiles, he returned"
Stiles' foot presses down on the break, accelerating well beyond the speed limit as Allison breathes heavily into the phone.
"That's impossible. It's impossible, I thought we burned down their den, that should have been enough for them to leave for at least a year, it hasn't been so long-" his phone chimes and vibrates with an incoming message. Stiles half curses under his breath and makes his turn to enter the residential streets. "—so he's, what, alone now? No one managed to scent Erika or Boyd?" Stiles utters into his speaker, maneuvering the phone so he can still talk to Allison and hear her while viewing the message he received.
0-000-000-0000
"Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the
other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice."
Another shiver crawls down his spine. Another turn and Stiles is almost dropping his phone in his haste to get out of his baby. The sense of wrong is thrumming in his veins now, almost muting Allison's voice as she tells him of another scent, so familiar and not at once. Derek is speaking in the background but Stiles is numbed to anything but the front door, hanging ajar. His hand clenches his phone tightly, and somewhere in his mind he's thinking no no no.
No.
He makes it to the lawn when he notices that the parked car across the street is a wreck, the blue paint dented and the glasses shattered. Even from the front door, with his dull human senses, Stiles can smell the stagnant stench of blood in the air. There's smething else, too, smoky and—
Fire.
Stiles throws open the front door and his father rushes out, coughing, hacking into the lawn. He's so blinded by fury and worry that Stiles doesn't notice the looming shadow that rushes through the rising flames in the stairwell. All he sees is—
Fire. And Smoke. A shadow that falls further than his own in the grass. Arms that pull and push, that drag his bloody and beaten father back into the inferno as another pair try to drag him out. The creature, the werewolf snaps it's jaws at Stiles as he tries to clamber up, ankle throbbing, vision swimming. He doesn't know what's happening now, what's going on, other than the fact that he has to help his father somehow.
"Before me things created were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here!" The figure cackles as it shoves Stiles back into the doorway, hauling his father's body into the living room.
"Don't! Take me!" Stiles shouts, and coughs as thick, putrid smoke fills his lungs. He can't see through the flames and the darkness of the smoke rising from his home, but Stiles hears the assailant as someone grabs him from behind and starts to haul.
"It would be a far too easy to let you die here and now… better yet, I'll let you burn… and once you've been charred… I will make you hurt more… I will numb you until you lose the only treasure you have left: your humanity."
And then, from the flame, there is Peter Hale, staring at Stiles as if he set fire to his own home, as if he, himself, this petulant teen, has killed his own father. And then there was darkness.
In hindsight, Stiles thinks as he wipes his face of the droplets of water that slide down his cheeks (water, he tells himself, from the sink, even though it's off and he hasn't touched it since he first wet his face), maybe that was what Peter wanted to say.
After all, Stiles was the one that put his father in danger. He, in part, killed his own father.
Stiles doesn't look at his reflection when he walks out of the restroom.