I know some people were not pleased with the Stilinski's names as revealed in 6a, but I am using them both because I love them. Writing the sheriff before he had a name was terrible.
4 Dark
Stiles woke with a start. For a moment, he remembered only Lydia standing over him. But she wasn't the Lydia he knew. She was an ally here, as hard as it was to even look at her. He lay in a guest bed at her house. The pack had shared significant looks when Stiles asked why it had to be her house. He guessed they hadn't found a way to explain his appearance, and he hadn't told them he could close the demon eye to make it look and function as a human one or that he could shift the ink of his tattoos to covered skin. He had been too tired after borrowing their broken nemeton's energy to heal his wounds.
Fresh clothes hung over the back of the chair. Stiles' clothes has been ruined in the attack; he wore only his boxers to sleep. The new garments hung loosely off his body, and he wondered if they belonged to this world's Stiles or someone else.
Outside the door, Malia sat on the floor of the hall reading something with pictures of terrible monsters. A bestiary, probably. She stood.
"Were you there all night?" Stiles asked.
"We took turns. Come on. Deaton wants to see you." Malia closed the book without marking her place.
"You have a Deaton?"
"You don't?"
Stiles took a deep breath to steady himself. This girl had Malia's face, name, and directness. She did not have Malia's memories. Stiles would have to take care what he let slip in the future. Scott was alpha of this pack, so Deaton's fate should be worth sympathy. Stiles had gotten lucky.
Stiles said, "He died protecting Scott."
Malia left the book behind on a shelf. "You don't sound very sad."
"I was never close to Deaton, and he refused to train me."
"So you hold a grudge."
Stiles laughed. "Our pack symbol is a spiral."
Malia didn't quite frown, but her eyebrows pulled in. She asked, "Am I in your world?"
"You're in my pack."
She smiled at that. "With Scott, right?"
"And Cora, Derek, and Peter."
Her mouth twisted at Peter's name.
Stiles asked, "He's not dead here, is he?" Stiles hadn't seen Peter yet or heard anyone mention him.
Malia shook her head. "He's complicated. Sometimes he's evil, and I can't tell if he's trying to be better."
Stiles snorted. "I get called evil all the time. Did Peter bother to earn it?"
"Did you?" she asked sincerely when Stiles would have expected flippancy or derision.
"I never struck first, but I struck hard and fast." He felt the spiral tattoo on his back spin. Even though he controlled the ink, sometimes his emotions got away with it.
"Have you killed anyone?"
"Yes, and so have you," Stiles said. She didn't have to flash her pretty blue eyes for him to see them.
Malia nodded without asking how he knew.
A car pulled up in front of the house. Stiles saw the thick mist of Lydia's aura pushing out of the car before she rolled down a window and motioned for them to get in.
"My dad has my car," Malia explained. "They're driving around town looking for Quinn."
"Who?"
"The girl we were looking for in the woods when you showed up."
Stiles shrugged. He'd never heard of her.
As he approached the car, his shoulders tensed. Lydia had helped him last night and let him stay in her house, but she was still Lydia.
"She won't hurt you," Malia promised.
"It'll just take some getting used to," Stiles said.
They climbed into the back seat, and Lydia drove them in silence. Hopefully, Deaton would know how to get Stiles home. If not, Stiles could worry about the enemies he had to ally with here, then.
At the clinic, Deaton waited for Stiles to break the ash line and open the gate. Without a demon eye, Stiles guessed little tests were the only way to be sure of anyone. Scott had reached the clinic ahead of them, and Malia and Lydia joined him to listen in on Stiles' conversation with Deaton. He began by describing what had happened on his own world.
"Is there any chance I caused it?" Stiles asked. "I felt the blood was tainted but used it anyway."
Deaton considered a moment before answering. "It would take an unimaginable amount of power to travel between parallel universes on a spell. I've never heard of it working."
Crossing his arms, Stiles said, "So you have no idea what happened."
"I don't," Deaton confirmed. "But we can start with the shadow aura you described. A supernatural creature may be able to achieve what spell power cannot."
"Do you know of anything with an aura like that?" Stiles asked.
Deaton said, "I'll look into it."
Stiles nodded. He hadn't expected more. If they were lucky, something would be in the pack bestiary. More likely, Deaton would have to reach out to contacts he kept to himself because sharing them would put everyone involved in more danger. That was the way with druids and the reason Peter was short an emissary.
Deaton said, "For now, we should prepare for you to be here a while. You may not have classes, but many people around town will recognize you and wonder—"
He cut off as Stiles pulled his ink out of view and closed his demon eye. It still looked open. It looked human. It functioned as a human eye too, meaning he lost his ability to view auras for as long as he kept it closed.
"I can only see as well from this eye as any human would this way, but very few can detect it," he explained.
"Then I leave the rest to Scott," Deaton said.
Scott stepped forward and set a hand on Stiles' shoulder. "We have to tell your dad what happened."
Stiles felt his heart fall to his feet and leap to his throat in a single moment. "My dad's alive?"
Scott responded, but Stiles didn't hear him.
His dad was alive.
They took him to a house that looked exactly like the one Stiles grew up in. He sat on a couch exactly like the one he gave up along with the house. He knew that when the other guy's dad walked through the door, he would look exactly as Stiles' dad used to.
He's not my dad, Stiles reminded himself. He's the other guy's dad.
"He'll be here soon," Scott assured him.
Stiles wondered if his heartbeat or scent gave him away. Scott and Malia were so similar to their counterparts in Stiles' pack that he kept forgetting they were strangers. Since Lydia hadn't come into the house, Stiles had too few reminders. He needed to control himself.
The door opened. Stiles stood even before Noah Stilinski came into view and lunged forward once he had. He wrapped his arms around his father—not my father—and buried his face into his shoulder to hide his tears.
"It's okay, son." After a moment he asked, "What happened to you?"
Stiles shuddered hearing his father's voice. He took a deep breath and stepped back. He had to hold the other guy's father at arms' length to keep him from pulling Stiles in for another hug after seeing his tear-streaked face.
"I'm not your son," Stiles said. He opened his demon eye and let his tattoos surge back into place.
"What the hell?" Noah sounded more fed-up than scared, which Stiles supposed was good.
"I think I'm another version of your son, but we've traded places. He's in my world, and I'm here with you."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Noah asked, "You think?"
"I've never traded places with an alternate version of myself, so I don't know how it's supposed to feel." He paused, studying a man not nearly distraught enough. "You don't believe me. My eye's all scary, and there are magic tattoos covering my face and arms. I know your son doesn't have any of that."
"Your face and voice haven't changed, and you said yourself, you don't know what happened. You've been possessed before, and who knows how much that can change you."
"Seriously? Scott is alpha here, but in my pack he's still a beta. Peter Hale is our alpha. If I was your Stiles, but something strange had happened to me, why would my memories be so different?" Stiles felt the demon eye burn hotter with his anger.
"Really? Peter Hale?" His mouth twisted with distaste at having to hold that name.
Stiles knew he needed to stay cool, but Peter had taken him in after his father died. Peter had changed Scott and Stiles' lives the night he bit Scott in the woods, but he'd protected them from every threat he opened their eyes to. Noah had never liked Peter, but he'd come to understand what Peter meant to his son as his alpha. Stiles stepped back from Noah.
"Yes, Peter," he snarled. "He's like family to me. I owe him my life. I owe him everything."
Noah looked Stiles over, head to toe, raging demon eye to black-inked tattoos. He straightened his back, leaning away from Stiles, as he looked. This was not his son. Stiles wondered if Noah saw it in more than his eye and skin.
"Do you believe me now?" Bitterness sharpened Stiles' voice.
"Almost. What's your first name?" So he doubted Stiles was Stiles at all.
"Mieczysław."
Noah nodded slowly. "How do we trade you back?"
"I don't know yet."
Noah squared his shoulders. "Just one more question then. On your world, what happened to me?"
Stiles looked away. "What makes you think anything did?"
"You were crying, Stiles."
Stiles gritted his teeth against the memory. It was a long moment before he could answer, "You were murdered by Lydia Martin."
