Neither Laura nor Derek ever call, email, or send a letter. They're just gone and Stiles feels like another rift in his life has opened up because everyone who understands is gone, or in Scott's case, absolutely atrocious at gaging what his best friend's new needs are. There's only so much he can do. Stiles appreciates the effort, he really does, but after about four awkward attempts on Scott's part to convey that should Stiles ever need anything like to talk about it, Stiles tells him to give up. The result is that Scott is just there, sort of, mostly. They never talk about it and his best friend seems honestly relieved. The sheriff drops into his son's world every now and again, and it's, nearly to the T of Scott's attempts, mostly entirely unsuccessful.
Years go by in this awkwardly frozen phase of transition (three to be exact), and then Stiles gets a poorly timed phone call while attempting to eavesdrop on his father's private conversation. Pressed against the wall next to the den's closed door, Stiles nearly drops the glass cup he's attempting to maneuver into a proper eavesdropping position when his pocket starts to vibrate and all sound in the room goes dead. As Stiles fumbles with the glass and his pocket, the door opens. The sheriff, looking as worn and weary as the Night of Reckoning (as Stiles has come to refer to it as), rubs his eyes and stares wearily down at the son he doesn't know what to do with, and sometimes doesn't even recognize. Refusing to feel guilty, Stiles answers his phone and doesn't look at the sheriff.
Licking his lips he says, "Hello?" as awkwardly as physically possible.
The voice on the other end is not one he ever expected to hear again. "I need your help."
Narrowly managing to avoid dropping the phone, Stiles fumbles with it and then pushes it against his chest, still refusing to glance at his father, and then puts it against his ear again and shoves himself up the wall roughly and stalks away from the sheriff, the den—and when he wrenches the door open and doesn't bother to shut it—the house. The other side waits patiently as all of this happens. Standing in the middle of his walkway, Stiles tears a hand across his scalp and then covers his head with that same hand. When he does finally manage to say something, it comes out more sarcastic than he intends.
"Well hello to you too," he says and then he can't stop, "it's been what, three years? Damn how time flies when your life sucks. How's your sister by the way? I imagine packing up and leaving did wonders for you guys."
Derek doesn't even growl. "Laura's missing, I think… I'm pretty sure she's…"
Dead hangs in the air.
Stiles tears another hand across his buzz cut and thinks he swears unintelligibly for a moment or two, and then presses a hand to his mouth so he can shut up and listen to Derek explain. After a moment, the older man does. It comes out quietly, roughly, and the story that unfolds is painfully domestic and full of holes, but Stiles lets Derek tell him about New York and Chicago; England; Texas; Michigan; and finally Beacon Hills, California. When Derek arrives at the phone call that made Laura leave in the middle of the night, all Stiles can think is that's a lot of Chinese food because it is and also because what else can he possibly think about the nomadic asshole on the phone with him, the same one who thinks his last remaining batch of family is a corpse in the woods somewhere. It's more than either of them can bear. Stiles closes his eyes and thinks, haven't we seen enough death?
"Okay," Stiles whispers into his phone, "give me a few minutes. Are you at…" he chokes. "the house?" the Hale house?
Derek breathes evenly. "Yeah."
"Okay," Stiles repeats and hangs up the phone.
He stares at the ended call for long enough that the sheriff catches up with him and demands to know what's going on.
"It's nothing dad," and Stiles will never admit that his voice caught on the word.
The drive to Derek's is short and filled with silence because Stiles doesn't have the energy to turn the radio on. He feels like someone's thrust him back into limbo. Derek, he thinks, must be in rougher shape than him because it isn't Stiles' sister who's probably dead somewhere in the woods. It's Derek's sister that died, probably alone.
They rendezvous at the house and then span out into the woods. Each is armed with a flashlight, a cellphone, and Stiles takes a bat because well, truthfully, you can never be too careful.
He walks for about an hour before he catches a hint of something. It smells oddly sweet and sounds like flies. The scent of rot hits him before he sees the corpse. It's the scent of decay just beginning to set in, when the bugs have laid their first few hundred eggs and only the outer layers of skin have been disturbed. Pressing his lips together and muscling through his gag reflex, Stiles follows the scent. Derek is on the other side of the forest, but Stiles screams, he'll hear it. When the smell is so strong Stiles almost can bear it, he knows he's close. He pushes aside a bush and finds it.
It's Laura. Half of Laura. Stiles almost drops his flashlight in a blustered attempt to cover his mouth before he spews his bile all over her mangled corpse, managing to turn just in time to deposit it into the bushes instead. There's a crash behind him and Derek stumbles through the underbrush. Still gagging on his own vomit, Stiles doesn't have time to tell him to stop, to not look, to wait, so Derek stops dead and looks like he's going to throw up too. Chest heaving, Stiles closes his eyes and tries not to remember what his mother's corpse looked like in the crash. He takes a deep breath and tries to forget about the blood, which is mostly unsuccessful when he can still smell it.
Derek drops to his knees and starts to tremble. It never even occurs to Stiles that Derek might lose control and kill him (probably only mostly accidentally) when he rushes behind the man and drops to his own knees, pulling Derek into his arms and against his chest, wrapping his arms around his stomach and holding him through the tremors. When Derek doesn't slit his throat, Stiles counts it as a win and throws in the vague notion that he appreciates it too. It's dark by the time they get back to the house.
Derek sinks onto the bowing front porch of his burnt shell of a family home and covers his face with his hands, and buries both of them in his knees, staring at the open eyes of his dead sister through his fingers with as much sightlessness as she him. It breaks Stiles' heart a little. Laura won't need a large grave, but she'll need a deep one to keep away the dogs, so Stiles hefts a shovel in the fading light and pulls up his first clump of dirt. Tossing it to the side, almost misses Derek's voice. It's low and rough, but in a strangled sort of way.
"Stiles…"
The boy turns to look at his companion, halfway through retrieving another shovelful of dirt, and his eyebrows shoot to his forehead because can't Derek see he's busy trying to put her to rest (and also get rid of the evidence)? When the older man doesn't say anything else, Stiles returns to his task. After a moment Derek comes up behind him and pulls the other shovel out of the ground, testing its weight in his hands for a moment, weighing something carefully in his mind, before beginning on the other side of the small grave Stiles plotted out. They work together quickly, silent except for the grief stretching between them and the sound of churning earth.
"We have to find the rest of her," Derek says quietly after they've made a hole big enough.
It sits open for a while longer as Stiles and the beta sit quietly next to each other, gazing absently at anywhere but Laura's corpse, both trying to think of something to say to salvage the obvious rift between them. They were friends once, briefly, and grief…
Stiles thinks of his mother's voice.
"You need to lay low for a while. If the cops find her first, they're gonna ID ever eventually, and they'll suspect you. If you're not in town, they can't, right?" Stiles says through squinted eyes as he watches the sun slip beneath the trees.
It's sound logic, but Derek shakes his head.
"I've been all over town trying to catch her scent. People know I'm back."
Well, Stiles thinks, shit. Then it hits him and because Derek and he were friends once, he swallows the mild outrage and sudden guilt that follow his idea. Scott will forgive him because they're still friends.
"So I've got this friend and he's not the brightest bulb in town," Stiles begins with a quirk to his lips, "and we could, you know, go exploring tonight."
Derek doesn't move for a second, then he blinks and looks at the boy next to him. The silence stretches between them, but if Stiles thinks there's a little less grief than before, he doesn't say anything about it and if Derek leans into his side a little and rumbles quietly as the dark settles in, well, he won't say anything about that either. The moon is well on its way to rising when Stiles slips off the porch and walks a few steps down the driveway. He hesitates and half-turns to watch Derek turn to look at his sister.
Lips pressing together, Stiles turns away and ignores the feel of Derek's eyes on his back.
Neither of them notice the yellow eyes on the edge of the property that narrow, or the head that cocks curiously to the side, but Derek does hear the slight ripple of a growl waft up from the trees. His head snaps up as Stiles vanishes from sight down the driveway. There's nothing there. He scans the trees, squinting, eyes flashing blue for better vision but he doesn't see anything. Slipping off the porch he crouches next to his sister and whispers quietly to her body.
"Stars above, moon within, the raging fire has been quenched, so with it—,"
The ancient words of a burial ritual he only mostly remembers slip from his lips and the eyes vanish.
Stiles gets down to his jeep—parked a few feet from the road—before he realizes that with an omega running around it could be dangerous, so he pulls out his phone and sends a quick, short text to Derek, just to be safe. It might not do any good, but better safe than sorry, right?
If something happens call Deaton.
For all his stand-apart watcher attitude, he's actually useful when it comes to the supernatural, something Stiles has had to come to face more than once. That done he slips his phone into his pocket, freezing when he hears a faint, distant snap of dry twigs beneath—presumably—footsteps. Locking in place, his heart thunders in his chest. Despite his insistence that he remain perfectly still, his body trembles in spite of his desires, and Stiles only prays nothing's actually out there.
If he screams, he knows, Derek will hear it. There's an odd comfort in that passing thought and the roaring in his ears dies down enough for him to listen. Aside from the nighttime grumbling of nature, there's nothing. Pressing his lips together he keeps his eyes open, edging to his jeep as he fishes around in his pocket for his keys, keeping his back flat against the car as he unlocks it and slips inside. As all this is accomplished without incident he breathes, just a little.
It's a short drive to Scott's, but Stiles takes extra precautions and drives slowly enough that anything leaping out in front of the car could be avoided, and his eyes never stop moving as they swing from side to side to the front then flick to the rear-view, where he narrows his eyes at an approaching light. The car behind him passes him and is gone in seconds.
Stiles breathes even more easily when he pulls into Scott's driveway.
Clearly, the best way to get Scott to listen to him is to climb up onto his roof and get at him through the window, which is precisely what Stiles does—or, what he attempts anyway. His foot comes down on a loose shingle and he slips. It's Stiles though, so he doesn't just slip. His ankle twists underneath him and he has a moment of pure terror as he flails on the edge of the roof before, tragically and gracelessly, he plunges over the side of it. Then, also because he's Stiles, his ankle is wrapped up in the climbing vines when he goes over. Jerked to a rough stop, his shout is cut short when Scott comes around the corner with a raised bat.
Staring it down and raising his hands like he didn't expect such a reaction, Stiles flails upside down as his best friend rolls his eyes and then snaps back to attention. Distantly, the paler boy observes that a lapse in defense could end with death. Instead, he grins and waves his arms enthusiastically, explaining that his father got a call about a body in the woods and well, wouldn't it be fun if they went out and found it first? Scott's eyebrows raise a little and he half smiles just thinking about it.
"Come on man," Stiles tells him, "let's go find a body!"
Scott's concerned face spreads into a slow smile and he lowers the bat, looking far more excited about the prospect of trouncing through the woods looking for the other half of Stiles' abandonment issue nightmare than perhaps he should. Stiles turns away from him and flips out his phone.
He agreed, he sends to Derek and tries to choke down his guilt.
It's a long process but then goddamn actual end does eventually happen, and when it does Stiles thinks that he should have predicted it. As he and Scott stumble through the woods, chests heaving, running from something they can't see and trying to avoid the policemen combing the woods in search of a dead body, Stiles realizes he's an idiot. Scott's asthma drives them apart. White fills his eyes and he runs when his friend can't, feeling the ground give way with each pounding footstep and when he ducks behind a tree his feet sink in a little. Aside from the racket in his chest, he can't hear anything. Stiles takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the glare of the flashlights, trying to close his ears off from the sound of his father calling Scott out. There's suspicion in the sheriff's voice and Stiles stuffs a hand in his mouth.
"You're sure you're out here alone?" the sheriff asks.
Stiles bites down. It takes a few moments but then his heart starts to slow.
When Scott doesn't check in and Derek does, Stiles knows it's come. It's the end. A rouge, Derek says, is in town and Laura's dead, and Scott was bit because Derek can smell it, and Stiles just covers his face with his hands. Scott's his best friend, his only friend and he couldn't… he couldn't keep him safe. God he had one fucking job and he couldn't even do that.
Monday morning rolls around and Stiles can't believe he's doing this. He's telling his best friend in the whole wide world that he's been bitten by a werewolf and has, thusly, contracted the lupine virus from which there is no return. Nostrils flaring, he opens his mouth. It comes out more sarcastic than he intends and Scott takes it as a joke. There's a split second where Stiles isn't sure if he should let him live in that ignorance a day or two more, but then he remembers the full moon is only a few days away. Licking his lips and scrunching his nose he takes hold of Scott's arm and yanks him away from the front steps. Scott protests and then catches a look at Stiles' face. He quiets almost instantly, like a small child who has come to recognize the foul outbursts of a parent, and Stiles tries to quell the pounding in his chest. Shoving Scott against the side of the building, he narrows his eyes at him.
"Scott, buddy, I love you, but you need to listen to me," he says.
The other boy's eyebrows go up and he opens his mouth to say something along the lines of, I am listening to you Stiles, what are you talking about? Stiles cuts him off with a hand and shakes his head.
"Scott, listen," He insists, "you're a werewolf."
Leaning in, as if sharing some private joke, Scott says, "Um, Stiles, werewolves aren't real," with the biggest, most idiotic grin he can muster and it just makes his friend want to beat him. Pushing his hands against his forehead, Stiles thinks. It's a long moment before Scott interrupts the silence to ask another question, which he only gets partway out because Stiles' eyes light up and he silences him again.
"Scott, shut up." Stiles says and pulls out his phone.
By the third ring he's positively certain no one's going to pick up, but then, by some miracle previously unknown to the mortal races, a gruff voice rumbles on the other side of the phone with a ridiculously sullen, "Hello?"
"I need your help," is all Stiles can manage before he hits the ground.
Derek's voice is suddenly loud through the phone and he's shouting, asking for Stiles, but the boy is unconscious, his head lolling to the side and his teeth bleeding. Scott makes a pass for the lithe man whose hands are clutching the boy, but he's knocked backwards faster than he can really follow and when he's stumbled to the ground his breath is knocked out of him too. Sucking in a rough breath of air, Scott has a moment to realize he doesn't feel like his inhaler. He fumbles for it anyway and takes in a long drag. The increasingly upset voice on the phone draws his attention and he reaches forward with a trembling hand to grab it.
"…hello?" he asks.
"Who is this? Where's Stiles?"
The voice is rough and demanding but Scott can hear the thinly veiled concern.
"Stiles he… I don't know. Something grabbed him. He's gone."
Silence doesn't have even a moment to build on the other side of the line.
"Who are you?"
Scott licks his lips before answering because this feels serious enough that he should answer straight. "My name's Scott McCall. I'm Stiles' best friend."
The voice on the other end hesitates. "Scott? You're the one who got attacked?"
Drawing his eyebrows together, the boy frowns and glances at the phone for a moment before saying, "Yeah. How'd you know that?"
The voice dismisses it. "Stiles told me. Listen, I need you to go to the vet."
Scott draws his brow together even tight and asks, "Deaton's? Why? Shouldn't we be looking for Stiles?"
A drawn out inhale hisses on the other end of the line and the voice sounds ragged. "I can't explain it right now. Stiles said that if anything happened I was to call Deaton. Get to the clinic, Scott. I'm not asking."
The line goes dead before Scott has a chance to ask who he was that he had a right to demand things, and then he remembers that Stiles has just been kidnapped and he should probably go to Stiles' dad. Scott shifts from foot to foot, face scrunched. Just as he is almost convinced to go and find the sheriff, he realizes there had been something wrong with the assailant's eyes. They'd been yellow, and he'd smelled… off, like rotting meat and flies, or something hung out in the sun for too long. Deliberating for just a second longer, Scott lets out an exaggerated sigh and slips into the woods.
School will have to wait.
There's a black Camaro parked when Scott careens into the clinic's parking lot but he barely pays it any mind. He finds Derek already at the back door.
"Deaton!" Derek roars as he pounds it. "Get out here!"
Scott runs up and grabs the man's shoulder saying, "Dude, calm down. It's way after hours. He probably not even here."
Derek eyes flicker when he looks at the boy, who swears they were blue for an instant, and growls, "Oh he's here. I can hear him." He turns back to the door and slams his fist on it again, causing the glass to groan underneath his skin and a foray of minute slivers to wind up through the edges. "You hear that, Deaton? I can hear you in there!"
Less than a second later a light goes on inside and Scott would be lying if he said he wasn't impressed. Deaton's worn, slightly weary face appears in the glass above the door and he unlocks it but doesn't bother to open it, turning away even as Derek wrenches open the door. Once he's inside, he doesn't shout. He does, however, follow the vet's heels as they wind their way to the back office of the clinic, Scott following sullenly, still not sure why he's even there. Deaton pause as he unlocks his office door and turns to the teenager. He blinks.
"Scott? What are you…" he glances at Derek and his eyebrows shoot up. "I see."
"I'm here for Stiles," Scott pipes in, feeling strongly that he's missed something, "he's been kidnapped!"
Deaton's eyebrows raise another impossible scant centimeters and he looks at Derek for confirmation, and the man gives a terse nod, every muscle in his body outlined with stress and anxiety that is, presumably, for Stiles' wellbeing. It all makes no sense to Scott who's never even heard of Derek. Stiles never mentioned him.
"Kidnapped?" Deaton says again, confused. "Who was there?"
The weight of Derek's stare on him is something Scott doesn't quite understand, but it makes him shift uncomfortably and he raises a hand self-consciously, wilting under the scrutiny of both Derek and Deaton. The vet frowns and opens his office door, ushering them inside. Once in, he locks it behind them.
"Scott, I need you to tell me everything you can about the kidnapper. It's very important. Can you do that?"
Frowning and disliking being treated like a small child, Scott nods. "They—he, he was maybe about my height? A little taller? Darker skin, dark hair—black hair. He was thin but not the way Stiles is though, and his eyes…" Scott trails off as his own widen at the memory. "His eyes, they were yellow, the irises though not the whole eye and he…" it's hard to place the scent, to sort through the vagueness of the memory. It happened so fast that Scott only has a hazy recollection. "He smelled kinda like rotting fruit? Like raw meat? Maybe… copper?"
"Blood. You smelled blood." Derek's voice is soft and strangled.
"Yellow eyes, Derek, "Deaton says thoughtfully, "bitten, not born and probably rouge."
"An omega?" the other man asks, "Can you be sure?"
After a moment, the vet squints and shrugs as he shakes his head. "No, but I haven't caught wind of anything lately, so it's likely. It isn't impossible someone's been covering their tracks but…"
"The beta's sloppy," Derek finishes. "Why would someone cover their tracks only to leave a beta to forge a warpath through Beacon Hills?" he frowns. "Have there been any deaths?"
Again, Deaton shakes his head. "No. Nothing unusual. Actually," the vet frowns, "that in and of itself is unusual."
Derek grunts. "When was the last one?"
The vet seems only slightly hesitant when he says, "Laura."
A soft exhale escapes Derek, like he's been elbowed in the ribs, and he runs a hand down his face when he says, "Right. I'm going to pick up a trail. Call me if…"
"I will. Take Scott with you." Deaton advises him.
Derek grunts again, this time more begrudgingly and eyes the teenager who scowls at him.
"Is anybody gonna fill me in? What's going on here?"
The two men exchange a glance.
"Stiles called to ask my help with something. I assume it's you," Derek says, almost accusingly.
Deaton slips in between them smoothly and asks, "What was the last thing you and Stiles talked about?"
Scott thinks about that. "We were talking about how I got attacked by a dog last night and… well, Stiles was joking about how I was a werewolf now."
Deaton's eyes narrowed. "Joking or telling you?"
"Jo—, telling. He told me I was a werewolf, but that's crazy right? Werewolves aren't real?" he frowns when no one contradicts him. "Right?"
Another disgruntled exhale escapes the grumpy stranger who seemed to know way more about Stiles than he should reasonably know. "Werewolves are real. Get over it. Stiles was kidnapped by one and we have to find him."
"But that's crazy!" Scott protests.
"Do you want Stiles to die?"
"No!" Scott shouts, aghast.
"Then we have to find him," Derek repeats patiently, his tone just short of seething and he gestures to the door, waiting for Deaton to unlock it.
The vet steps around him and unlocks the door and opens it in the same movement, smiling wanly at Scott as he follows Derek out reluctantly. The man is bristling, seeping danger. He looks like he's three seconds from flying off his rocket and murdering something small and fuzzy, and Scott frowns because this is all over Stiles. Nobody cares about Stiles that much, except his dad and maybe him. Deaton stops them.
"Oh, and Derek?"
The man turns sharply on his heel, teeth bared and he snarls under his breath, "What?"
Deaton is, to his credit, completely unflappable. "You might want to check in on your uncle. I hear he's made some remarkable recovery as of late."
The door slams on Derek's face and he stares at it, biting out, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Deaton doesn't answer.
Tearing a hand through his hair, Derek stands next to the entrance dressed in his leather jacket and sneakers, looking every inch like a boy who grew up too fast with too much on his plate and no idea where to start with it. For a brief moment, Scott feels bad for him. In the next second though, Derek turns around and fixes Scott with a cold stare. There's a long stretch of silence. Scott thinks the other man is sizing him up, eyes squinting, narrowing, and flicking back and forth appraisingly and away accordingly. The teenager shifts from side of side.
"We have to find Stiles," Derek says finally, "let's go."
Then he turns and stalks in the opposite direction of the veterinary office, leaving Scott to rush to catch up.