Another short chapter, plus I'll be out of town this weekend, so have an extra today! I'll post again tomorrow (Wednesday), but probably not Thursday through Sunday. I've also added a note to ch1 specifying that this is a Steter endgame fic.
7 Void
Scott hovered over Stiles.
"Don't try to speak or move your head," he ordered.
Darting his eyes around didn't award Stiles much of a view. He lay on his back. Scott was backlit. The ceiling was concrete.
"I'm going to take my hand off you for a moment," Scott said. Stiles became aware of Scott's hand on his right shoulder. "If it hurts too much, wave your hands or something. Just nothing with your neck."
Black veins climbed Scott's forearm. Stiles wondered how much pain he was taking for Stiles to feel nothing.
Scott took his hand away.
Stiles clamped his teeth around a scream. He clenched his fists against the pain. His neck burned. He remembered the raven's talons tearing through him, felt them in his throat still. His back and arm were still wounded too.
Scott returned. Stiles barely held back a sigh. The pain faded to a dull throb. Stiles knew Scott would take care of him. He hurt now, but he was safe. The pack would give him time to heal.
Stiles wondered when he'd come to trust this Scott.
"I have water for you," Scott said. "I'm going to help you sit up and take a sip. It's room temperature, but swallowing will still hurt. I need to start taking less pain, so it will hurt a lot."
Stiles thought, Okay, really loudly and hoped it showed on his face.
With a single firm nod, Scott helped Stiles sit. He brought a glass of water to Stiles' lips and tilted it enough to let a sip pass through. Stiles felt like he swallowed half his throat along with it, or at the very least, a ball of barbed wire.
"That's good. Just a little more."
Scott gave Stiles several more sips of water before lying him down to sleep again. Stiles had just enough time to worry pain would keep him up before he fell asleep.
Derek was there the next time Stiles woke. He flipped one-handed through a romance novel for several pages before noticing Stiles was up. When he did, he smiled encouragingly and set aside his book without marking the page.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty." He spoke softly, like Stiles' ears hurt instead of his throat. "I have broth for you. I'll be right back."
He pulled his hand from Stiles' shoulder. Stiles clenched his teeth against the pain until Derek returned to feed him spoonfuls of barely warm broth.
"Scott thinks you'll be able to speak within the next day or two," Derek said. "That seems too fast, but the ink spread pretty far. Maybe he's right."
Stiles couldn't ask for an explanation, and Derek either missed or ignored his eyebrow messages. Derek had mentioned ink, so Stiles assumed Peter understood that extending his first fingers had meant he chose the first option: ink. He didn't want the bite, and he refused to sacrifice another life for his own.
"You should sleep," Derek said when he was done. "The ink will work faster if you're not fighting it."
Since Derek ignored another round of furrowing brows, Stiles took advantage of the peace having his pain taken afforded him to sleep.
Someone shook Stiles awake. He grumbled weakly. It burned his throat, but less than he thought it would.
"Wake up," Peter ordered. "You're healed enough to speak."
Stiles squinted up at his scowling face. "How did you get electric lighting in your batcave? Does it have a dimmer?" His voice was hoarse, but it worked and with minimal pain.
"Carefully, and no." Peter helped Stiles sit. He didn't take any pain, but Stiles felt safe and calm at his touch all the same. "You feel it, right? This is our pack bond." He ran his fingers down Stiles' arm to his wrist and lifted it for Stiles to see. A spiral had been tattooed on the inside of Stiles' wrist. "This is our pack symbol."
Somehow, that didn't surprise Stiles. "This is what you meant by 'ink'?"
"Not quite, though I'm glad you remember that. The ink only works after we accept you into the pack, and being accepted makes the first injection form the spiral. We had to give you a second dose after you had been—primed, so to speak. There's a much larger tattoo on your back. Malia took a picture on her phone. Would you like to see?"
Scowling, Stiles nodded. He wished he hadn't moved his neck.
Peter held up a cell phone showing an image of Stiles' back. The lightning scars were gone, but a tattoo had taken their place. A mass of black ink marred his skin, shaped like a writhing hoard of lines in motion. Threads stretched from the edges, reaching outward like the ink wanted to crawl over more of his skin.
"I hate it," Stiles said.
Peter shrugged. "You're stuck with it."
Stiles traced his thumb over the spiral inside his wrist.
"It won't keep you from returning to your old pack when we get you back home," Peter said.
"Have you found anything?" Stiles' voice came out as a croak.
Peter waited to answer until he'd gotten Stiles a drink of water. "No."
Stiles frowned down at his wrist tattoo.
"We'll take care of you until we do," Peter promised. He set a hand over the spiral on Stiles' wrist. Stiles believed him, trusted him.
Stiles pulled away from Peter's touch. The trust didn't fade completely, but it lessened enough to ignore. "Can that be turned off?" He had a feeling Peter would know what he meant.
"Only if broken, but that would stop your healing. It's not a option." At Stiles' scowl, he shook his head and sighed. "I don't have to touch you, Stiles. That's the part that bothers you, isn't it?"
"We're not friends where I'm from."
"I'm not him."
"You are. Things just worked in your favor here."
Peter chuckled. "I guess that's fair. I'd like to point out that the shape your ink has taken is one it never would for the other you."
Stiles took another sip of water. "What does that mean?"
"What do you think it means?"
Stiles glared at him, but Peter smirked back unconcerned. Stiles asked, "How are the tattoos formed?"
"I thought you would ask." Peter pulled a glass vial filled with black liquid from his pocket. "This is our ink. We inject it into the skin at a single point, and it takes shape on its own. First it forms the spiral. It can only succeed if we accept you as pack, and the ink can only take other forms if you already have our spiral."
"Do I want to know how that works or how the ink is made?"
"It involves blood."
Stiles cringed.
"The tattoo shape differs from person to person, though its purpose may be the same. Even the spiral can vary; Cora's wraps around her arm."
"So what does it mean if I differ from myself?"
"Perhaps you are not the same person after all."
Stiles narrowed his eyes. "Which would make it possible that you are not the same as the Peter Hale I know."
Depending on how much Peter had guessed or stolen through his claws in Stiles' neck, he could be acting so helpfully informative to seem different from his other self. More likely, he had calculated how much information it took to compensate for a near-death and forced pack induction. It was a lot, but Peter had already given a lot, including a promise.
Peter shrugged, but the smirk never fell from his lips. "Now you know us both."
"You're both annoying. I need to sleep." Stiles didn't have the energy to sort through Peter's motivations. He was still healing.
Peter nodded his acceptance and left Stiles alone. Looking around, Stiles found he was in something like a doctor's office, though they had him on a couch against the wall instead of the examination table at the room's center. The thought of standing up to look around left Stiles exhausted, so he leaned back against the couch cushions to go to sleep.
