Hey guys and gals. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm feeling a lot better, so writing is going back to normal for me, so guess who's having a lot of late nights to get back on track? ME! But it will be worth it.

There are a couple of funny bits in here, but Stiles' letter was so hard to write. Even harder then the one I had to write in So Long, and that was hard for me.

Anyway, on with the chapter. Thanks for everybody who's reviewed, followed, favourited, and everything else.

Please R&R if you want.

T.C

~oOo~

Chapter 4

Missing

POV - Scott

When I woke up the morning after the failed night out to the club, I noticed a persistent buzzing coming from the floor of my bedroom. I was just going to ignore it, but no sooner had it stopped, it started up again.

I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach, snatching up my phone, pressing the answer button, and bringing it up to my ear.

"What?"

"Pack meeting. Get here as quick as you can." Derek's gruff voice came through the speakers of my phone.

"Alright." I said, getting out of bed and walking to my dresser, grabbing the first clothes that came to hand, "Give me half and hour."

"You have twenty." And he hung up.

It was times like this that I didn't like him. He never seemed to sleep, and he expected everyone to drop everything to come at his command. But we always did it anyway, no matter what we were doing, or where we were.

And by the time I'd got dressed, downstairs and out to my dirt bike, I had used up about five minutes of my allotted time to get to Derek's. Oh well, he could wait, start without me, or just tell me later. Serves him right for giving me a time to get there after keeping me up most of the night.

To be honest, it didn't matter that I was later then Derek wanted me to be. I made it to his loft eventually, and that was what mattered. It also didn't help that the lift in his building was out, and I had to run up the stairs.

"You're late." Was the first thing I heard when I tripped through the door thirty-five minutes after the original call.

"Well, I'm sorry that I live at least twenty-five minutes away from your place without breaking any speeding laws, and that your lift is out – again." I dropped down on the couch next to Allison, putting my arm round her shoulder and looking round the room, "And I'm not the only one who's not here."

On my glance around the room, I noticed that my loud mouth, sarcastic best friend was nowhere to be seen, along with Peter, but he never really came to Pack meetings. He just turned up whenever he fancied.

"I don't think she's gonna be here." Danny groaned, laying down and putting his head in Ethan's lap, "She was pretty smashed last night, and I'd be surprised if she was in any fit state to open her eyes, let alone get out of bed."

In the middle of the room, Derek stood with his arms folded and a scowl on his face. Everyone in the Pack – even the twins who hadn't been with us that long – knew that this was his 'shut up and listen' face.

"Now that Scott's here…"

A groan from Danny interrupted what Derek was going to say.

"Is the room spinning to anyone else, or is that just me?" He asked, as Lydia got up to get him a glass of water.

"It's not spinning Danny." Ethan told him, running his fingers through his boyfriends' short hair, "How much did you have to drink last night?"

"I don't know." He said, taking the glass of Lydia, "I gave up counting after Stiles ordered the fifth round of shots, and we were pretty drunk by that point anyway. How she could still stand when she left, I have no idea."

"If you were feeling this bad, why did you come?"

"Cause Ethan carried me from my nice, warm bed, put me over his shoulder, and man-handled me into a taxi."

Derek shook his head and went to continue what he was going to say the first time, when he was interrupted again by a knock on the door.

Aiden, who happened to be the closest, got up and pulled the door open. We were all shocked to see the Sheriff, or Stiles' father, standing there. He wasn't wearing his uniform, but jeans and a shirt.

"Is Stiles here?" He asked, peering round Aiden's shoulders to see into the room.

"No." I told him, getting up to offer him my seat as he entered the room, "Danny said they were up pretty late last night and…"

"I know where she was Scott. Don't lie to me." He pointed at Danny, who looked as bad as he probably felt.

"She left before me. I wanted to go with her, but she gave me the slip. Said she'd get the bus home. The others had been called away, so we were on our own, but she said she'd be fine."

"But you're certain that she made it home safe?"

"She sent me a text saying so."

"Is there any chance she could be on her way here?"

"Not with the amount she drank last night. She had more than me, and I feel like death warmed over."

The Sheriff took a deep breath in, closing his eyes briefly before speaking again.

"Well, she left me a not saying she was going to be here. So, if she's not here and there's no way she could be on her way, where is she?"

He handed over a piece of paper, which had Stiles' messy writing on it – Pack meeting at Derek's. Be home soon. Love you.

"It's not just this. I looked into her room earlier to see if she was there, and something seemed off. It didn't click until I was on my way here, but her pillow and a few other things are gone."

Stiles' room was, what you could call, organized chaos. Everything of significance had its place, and her Murder Board was ingenious and creepy at the same time.

"She can't sleep without her pillow." I told the others, our Pack meeting completely abandoned, "But what else is missing?"

"Pictures, school bag, clothes, books. Her cell and laptop were left in her room. She left anything we could use to trace her, apart from her Jeep."

"But she's smart. She'll hide it when she's not driving it."

"Or change the license plate." Danny piped up, looking no better then he had before the Sheriff came in, "Cops tend to search licenses, cause a lot of cars get mistaken for others."

"And she knows how cops act, given how she basically grew up in a police station." The Sheriff pointed out, getting up and pulling his phone from his pocket, "But a Jeep as old as hers will stick out like a sore thumb. I'll have Parrish put out an APB for it."

Through all of this, Derek had remained silent; a look of worry and panic on his face. I knew he wouldn't admit it, but he liked Stiles. I knew Stiles felt the same way about him, but over the past few weeks, things had been different. They only talked when they had to, were only in the same room when needed. Something had happened between them, and neither of them was talking about it.

But surely if she really was struggling with being around Derek, or just the Pack in general, she would've just told us. Gone and sorted it out with the co-Alpha. Told her best friend what was going on.

However, the only thing that Stiles seemed to be interested in doing these past few weeks, was go out to clubs and get drunk. She'd been out with Danny more then once, and kept planning nights out with all of us. Was this all because of whatever happened between her and Derek?

"I'll take her room. See if I can catch her sent." Derek murmured, heading towards the loft door."

This was my chance to get him alone. My chance to figure out what really happened between the two of them. I wanted to know what had made my best friend, my sister, so sad that she couldn't even look him in the eyes.

"I'll come with you." Derek raised one of his communicative eyebrows at me, "What? I know her better then anybody, apart from maybe her father. She might've hidden something in her room, and I'm the only person who knows where it could be."

~oOo~

We couldn't pick up anything. We could barely pick up her scent anywhere in the house, and as soon as we got outside, it disappeared entirely. It was almost as if she had just vanished into thin air.

"How is that even possible?" I asked, slamming the front door as I walked back in, "She's lived in this house her whole life, and now it's like she hasn't been here in weeks. I was here, last night, with her and the guys to go out. Her scent was everywhere."

"I have a theory on that."

"Care to share?"

"It was the morning Stiles and I had a fight…"

"You had a fight with her!" He scowled at me, "Sorry, continue."

"Yes, I argued with her. She hit me a few times, it did nothing. However, the angrier she got, the more force her punches had. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but she almost knocked me to the ground."

What did this have to do with his theory? I thought. This must've shown on my face, because he started talking again.

"Her eyes changed colour, Scott. And I don't mean that they went a darker brown. I mean that they changed like ours do. They were this… Purple on the outside of the iris, and they went to a pink the closer to the pupil it got."

No. She's not like us. Stiles is the normal one, the human who uses her wit like a shield and her sarcasm as her defense. There was only one thing I could think to do.

I bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time as I ran towards Stiles' room. If she had noticed anything strange going on with her, she would've written it in her diary. Her greatest fear was ending up like her mother.

"Where are you going?" Derek asked, following me upstairs and into Stiles' room. He found me lying on the floor, with half of my body under her bed, "And what are you doing? Do you really think you're going to find anything under there?"

"Yes." I grunted, getting the loose board up, "Cause she's always hidden stuff here. Anything secret or important goes under the floorboard, so maybe she put something in here. Something she knew I'd find."

Although I didn't find the diary, I did find an envelope with 'The Pack' written on the front. And when I shimmied my way from under the bed, I found Derek leaning on the doorframe; his arms folded. The look on his face was one of amusement, or at least the closest Derek Hale could get to a look of amusement.

"That doesn't look like a diary to me." He said, stepping into the room.

"It's not. Just a letter addressed to us. Maybe it will mention something in here."

"I doubt it."

"Is this to do with your theory?"

He nodded, lowering himself onto her bed. He remained silent for a few minutes, almost as if he was trying to get his thoughts in order.

"I think she's a Spark. We call them that, cause they're so rare that nobody has been able to study them properly. And I mean one in a million rare."

"Care to elaborate a bit more?" I asked, sitting down next to him.

"I talked to Deaton as soon as she left after our fight, and he told me that it's normally genetic, but it can stay dormant for generations. So I took a look through the old Hale books, and it said that Sparks are as rare, if not rarer, than True Alphas. To be honest, I don't even know how her power would present itself or if she'd even notice."

Wow. Best friends, just as rare as each other. If you would've told us that a couple years back, we wouldn't have believed you.

I looked at the envelope and turned it in my hands, opening it carefully; my hands shaking as I unfolded the paper.

~oOo~

Hey guys.

If you've found this letter, then my dad has come to you or you've gotten worried about me and come to check. Also, if this has been found, it means that it has been noticed that I am no longer around.

Obviously Scott found it, cause he's the only one who knows where I hide all me sentimental stuff. It's been the same ever since we became best friends all those years back.

A few weeks back, something happened. It changed how I saw things. But I came along to meetings, I helped when I could, researched what I was asked to, and put myself in danger.

And I got to thinking. How much did you really need me? Danny is good with computers, Allison is a badass hunter, Lydia is smart and a banshee, and everybody else is some supernatural creature. I'm just the human that bad luck and misery seems to follow.

But then something else happened. We were all suppose to have fun, but you couldn't even be given one night off. And because of that, nobody was there to help me when I needed it.

So I've decided to leave. I don't want to leave my dad, or any of you behind, but I have to get away. I have to make sense of what's happened.

Please don't look for me. I'll return if, and when, I want to. Please respect my decision, just like I would do, and have done, for all of you.

Love, Stiles.

~oOo~

We waited until we got back to the loft before we told the Pack about the letter from Stiles. How could you really explain something like this over the phone? About how a Pack member had left without a word of warning.

Allison and Lydia started crying, Aiden punched a hole in the wall, and Danny sat in a numb shock, a little like Derek and I were after reading the letter ourselves. He was the last of us to see her.

"Does anybody know what she means when she said about 'happened'?"

There was a lot of headshaking. It was news to us. And although I did think about what Derek had said about them fighting, but they had done that plenty of times in the past. What would make this time any different from those times?

But by what she had put in her letter, we all knew that she meant what she put. Stiles was gone, and who knows for how long?