Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf.
Despite considerable objection Stiles knocks on the door of the Argents, not the very next day but the day after that. He is alone and unarmed and completely unconcerned for his own safety. The door swings open and Stiles finds himself face to face with Chris Argent. He gins broadly.
"Hey Mr. Argent," he says, "Can I come in?"
Chris stares at him without expression but then gives a little smile and says, "Sure."
Stiles steps inside and Chris closes the door behind him and ushers him into the kitchen.
"Anything to drink?" Chris asks him in a friendly way.
"Nah," says Stiles, "I just want to talk to Mrs. Argent.
Chris gives him a look of surprise, gives his head a little twist, raises an eyebrow and then calls out, "Victoria, it's for you."
Victoria Argent is not the only one who walks into the kitchen. Various other hunters all come with her and take up positions in the kitchen.
Stiles plops himself on a stool at the island.
Victoria nods at him and said, "If you'll give me a moment…"
She puts on mittens and heads over to the oven where she removes a tray of cookies. She removes the cookies from the tray and puts them on a plate which she brings over to the island. She then fetches herself a glass of wine and settles opposite him across the island.
"Cookie?" she offers.
Stiles can't help but appreciate the way she tries to make him feel as if she had made the cookies for him, as if she knew he had been planning to walk through her front door.
He takes a cookie and bites into it without hesitation. He feels rather than sees the reaction around him. Victoria however acts as if nothing of note has occurred.
"So what is the reason for this visit?" she asks and sips her wine.
"Well I wanted to thank you for not killing us the other night," Stiles said. "We really appreciated it."
"You're not particularly welcome," she says with a slight annoyed twitch of her eyebrow. "I would have rather deal with you as well. It would have been far more practical to have killed you."
"Yes," Stiles aggress, "Yes it would have been a practical plan but," he added not a moral one. Now I know you have some morality," he continued.
"And how are you so sure about that?" She had raised an eyebrow and a little smile edged up one of the corners of her mouth. She was mocking him a little.
"Because Allison would've have killed all of you before she left." Stiles' reply is not mocking and it cuts through the room, though you would have barely noticed it.
Only one person reacted.
"Allison wouldn't do that," Chris objects.
"She would've," Stiles said, "She doesn't know that either yet though."
"Allison," said Victoria, "was weak. She couldn't do what was needed to be done."
"Allison," said Stiles stressing her name, "was not weak. She did you know defy her family, and her upbringing and oh, lost her home, and said family, to do what was right. That's something you would never do so don't call her weak when you don't have the guts to think with your own mind." Stiles is usually all emotion. This time he is cool, calm and yet coiled tightly.
Victoria's grip on the wineglass tightened for the briefest of moments. Then she sipped from it and said calmly, "If you think I would let a werewolf come in here and…" She doesn't get to finish.
"Oh," I 'm not a werewolf," Stiles says and grins like he's found the best prize in the box.
"But," Victoria stats and it's the first time in this whole conversation that she is actually off balance.
Stiles reaches over and grips the rim of her glass. It takes some effort but he snaps part of the glass off and the places carefully next to his vein and presses down. Blood wells as he slices the skin.
"Not a werewolf," he says, "Not a kanima, or even a banshee, just a human."
There is silence and Stiles drops the glass of the island and begins to play with the blood, streaking it across his forearm with a finger. He works his way around the cut streaking lines on his forearm, finally working his way to his palm and streaking blood into it. It hurts a lot and stings like crazy but Stiles does his best not to let it show.
After a moment he stops and reaches out and takes one of Victoria's hands in his, resting the back of her hand in his palm. She doesn't even flinch from the blood but then again Stiles hadn't actually expected her to.
"Allison told me how this goes," he said. "You're a general. You know how to control yourself," A finger traces down her forearm, "and you also know how to control others." The same finger trails over her fingers in an arc. "The pack members are the soldiers; the alpha is the general. Just as you control your soldiers, so does the alpha control the pack."
Victoria says nothing.
Stiles waits and then continues, "You know you call yourselves hunters but you forgot that werewolves are hunters too. You forget, conveniently I might add, that we're more like you than you want to believe. But let's talk about soldiers."
"Alright," says Victoria. It's cool, amused.
"You know soldiers," Stiles says. "Heck you know them better than I might ever do. But you know that you don't give so much power, for so long without losing some of them. Stiles traces his fingers from midway down Victoria's forearm. "I've seen it happen with deputies. They start of great and then the power gets to them and they get strange, dangerous, maybe even a little feral."
Not a muscle in Victoria's body tightens and Stiles smiles grimly. "Yeah, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's seems fast doesn't it? It's faster with soldiers. All of a sudden they just flip," and here his finger twanged over a vein in her arm, "but before there were subtle little signs weren't there? And after so long, after being in charge for so long, you learn to notice them, you could do it in your sleep." He flips her hand over and traces back up her forearm slowly. "You find some of them, rehabilitate, teach them to cope. And you fix some of them don't you? But others you still lose."
"Do you kill them though? When you start seeing the signs? No." and is voice is gentle but so hard. "You take them out of the job, move them away. Killing them, killing them is always a last resort. It's our last resort too."
"I, I'm not a general. "He looks at her earnestly. "I'm the thing that holds generals together." His fingers tap and slide down her forearm, gluing back the signs of brokenness, of instability. "So if you have to kill anyone first," he says, "kill me. Just remember," he adds and drops her arm gently back on the island, "I never hunted you."
He slides back the stool, stands and makes his way to the front door. He is almost there when he hears Victoria call his name.
"Stiles," she says.
He pauses and turns and she walks up to him and hands him an alcohol pad and a band aid.
"Thanks," he says. He turns to go out the door and she says:
"You were hunted."
"We were hunted," Stiles says, and his shoulders hunch down. "Only one of us survived."
When he gets out the front door He finds Derek and Allison propped up on his jeep, waiting for him.
He grins at them and heads over. The two look at the hunters behind him coolly and then get into the jeep.
Chris Argent watches the jeep drive off and then returns inside with Victoria.
They both take a cookie and much on it. After a moment Chris asks, "Are you going to hunt them?"
"No," says Victoria.
"Because of what he said?"
"Because of what they did," she replies.
But Chris Argent knows his wife's eyes, sees himself in Stiles. They're both what holds generals together.
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