"So-" Melissa hesitates, looking between the other three people awake in the room and the book in front of her. "What you're telling me is that Stiles belongs to a – a coven of witches that died out almost a decade ago?"
While Deaton and Derek nod, Lydia turns the book around the face her, tracing the lines of words and the faint pencil and charcoal drawing in the corner of the page with the tips of her fingers.
"Not just a coven." Lydia hums under her breath, sounding full of awe and awful all in the same sentence. "An incredibly powerful one, the Coven of Circe. It makes sense, really, but... wow." There is a depth in her eyes that Derek so rarely gets to see, horror and pain and understanding. Locked up inside the mind of a half-blood witch-banshee, it can't be a pleasant place sometimes, with all the knowledge and no way to access it without the right prompting.
"Why would that make sense? Stiles has been a perfectly average human being up until now!" Melissa exclaims, moving across the room to stand beside where Stiles is lay, unconscious and drained on an examination table. She drags her fingers carefully through his hair, pushing it away from his face.
"Well, in mythology Circe was a witch who lived on an island called Aeaea. She would turn passing sailors into wolves and lions and all sorts of animals, which, y'know." Lydia waves her hand in the general direction of Derek and then behind her, towards the room the rest of his pack are resting in.
"According to legend, she would protect only the people who had some power against her magic. Obviously, legend is not truth, but it did make for an incredibly powerful and rare type of witch throughout history."
Thick silence falls over them as Lydia flicks ever so carefully through the book in search of more information. There isn't anything really that they can do now, not until Stiles wakes up at least.
Derek is once again left feeling out of place and useless, unable to help and unable to leave. Witches are not something he is incredibly well versed in, he can't understand that type of magic, and he can't harness it. It appears unstable and painful, too big for one teenage boy to contain.
"Stiles smells human." Derek tells the room at large. "At least, he used to. Now there is something else. Like an undercurrent. It smells like the forest after a lightning storm." Off to the left of his peripheral vision, Derek can see Deaton move back to his bookcase, pulling another old tome from the shelf and handling it carefully. He hums and flicks pages in time with Lydia, even if they are reading separate books. It's frustrating, to say the least.
"They bound his magic!" The sound of two voices echoing the exact same thing at the exact same time is disconcerting to say the least, and he whirls quickly to see Lydia and Deaton looking equal measured shocked and smug.
Even without much knowledge in magic, Derek has a pretty decent understanding of how that could affect someone who had their magic suddenly released. Especially when said person was extraordinarily emotionally compromised.
"So why now? Why would someone come back and do this-" Derek gestured at Stiles. "all these years later?" He tears his eyes away from Stiles' still form on the table and steps back towards the table to glower down at the books that Lydia and Deaton are once again embroiled in.
"There have been rumors for years of members of the coven going into hiding after the massacre that killed them off, but that's all it was, rumors. The things is, Stiles is an oddity. As far as history and mythology tells us, Circe witches are all women. Stiles' mother would have been a witch of Circe, but the Sheriff was a human. Stiles-" Deaton looks up from his book, past all of the others in the room. "Is the only known half human-half Circe to ever have been born that was allowed to survive."
Stiles body is heavy, or, at least it feels that way. His arms feel longer than they should be, legs more gangly. His head feels full of things that he doesn't remember, cotton wool filling in the edges of his sight and clogging up his ears. In the background, there are people talking, but it's muffled and confusing. There are some words that filter through in a voice that is both familiar and unknown, comforting and terrifying. He hears 'witch' and he hears 'Circe' and he thinks he remembers what those mean but not why he knows. Not yet.
He's tired.
Something in his head is telling him he can't go to sleep. Not yet. He has to make his head lift up, has to open his eyes all of the way so that he can see the people talking outside of muffled bubble surrounding him.
It's hard. It's like swimming through tar only to find that the light outside of it is too bright, too much. He thinks they don't realize that he is trying, for them. Trying to understand, trying to explain something he doesn't even know if he knows yet.
The light when he finally gets his eyes open is practically unbearable, and he tries to tell them. Somewhere, distantly, he hears a noise that sounds like a groan, like a familiar thing that is echoing through into whatever this place he is trapped in is.
There are touches, close and far, on him and maybe not? His skin but maybe not all of his nerves. It feels warm, sometimes, and cold others. Some of them are soft and some feel like magnets that are forcing themselves apart.
It's dark again, but this time it's easier to pull himself out of the tar to see into the light, and there are people this time. Familiar people that aren't familiar at all. Too close. Too far.
Derek.
He knows that face, that voice. He knows that the warm touch is Derek.
Who is Derek?
There are memories on the edge of the bubble – teethclawsdeathlife – memories that are blurry at best and crystal at worst.
Derek. Derek. Derek.
Of course he knows who Derek is. How could he not? Derek is the reason he is alive and the reason he's glad he stayed that way. Derek is the first person who got the boy who talked too much to actually talk.
Derek is the only person that maybe, maybe, maybe Stiles can wake up for.
Lydia and Deaton are doing that 'look at each other and communicate silently' thing as per usual when the few machines that Stiles is hooked up to start to react to whatever changes is going on with the boy they are connected to.
Deaton and Melissa are the first people to his side, checking pulse and ox rates, soothing and calming and hoping that nothing is changing for the worse. Stiles is waking up though, nothing too bad even if Deaton believes the sedative shouldn't be wearing off yet. He's moving, moaning like he is in pain, unsettled and clearly anxious, until Derek gets a hand onto Stiles' forearm and his face above the boys. Those ridiculous eyes lock on to him as soon as they catch him, the monitors calm as Stiles begins to settle. His eyes close, just for a moment, before flickering slowly, so slowly open again.
"D'rk." Everyone freezes for a moment, before the others back away and Derek situates himself directly at Stiles' side, as much in his field of vision as possible.
"Stiles?" He doesn't seem as responsive if Derek isn't touching him, so he raises a hand and presses it to the clammy skin of Stiles' exposed throat.
"Stiles? Can you hear me?"
"D'rk- I – Der-" Stiles seems to become anxious again, frustrated maybe even though he seems a little out of it. His eyes are flitting the room, searching for something he clearly isn't finding.
"I'm right here." Derek moves until his face is directly over Stiles', both hands moving to cup either side of his face. "I'm right here, c'mon. Focus on me."
It takes a tense moment, a lifetime and no time at all, before Stiles' eyes finally calm and settle back onto him. It's like there is a collective relaxation of everyone in the room and Derek can even feel the tugging of a vaguely proud smile in the corners of his mouth.
"There you are. Can you hear me?" Stiles nods, slowly and clearly, his eyes brightening and clearing up with each moment. Behind him, Derek can hear his newly woken pack shuffling their way into the room and mumbling behind him, but he has no time to focus on them.
"Alright. That's good." Derek says softly. "Can you tell me how you're feeling?" He shouldn't be awake, never mind able to talk to Derek, but things have never been usual with Stiles. It's worth a try, and Derek would rather wake Stiles up from whatever in-between place he had been stuck in than let him slip back away until the sedative wore off.
There's no reply from Stiles, just his eyes eerily focused on Derek.
"Scale of one to ten, Stiles. How much pain are you in?" Instead of replying, Derek feels four fingers press into his stomach, just above where Stiles' hands were resting on the bed. A lopsided smile erupts on the boys face and behind him, he can hear Isaac snigger.
"Alright, where?" Stiles actually looks like he's thinking about it this time, raises one hand to tap on his head and presses two fingers into Derek's abdomen, then moves the hand at his head down to his stomach and taps just below his diaphragm, pressing in the two fingers to skin even firmer this time. Derek does actually give into the smile this time, just for a second, before making sure that Stiles has actually settled enough and then pulls back a little. He makes sure that his hands stay in contact with him. Taking a glance behind him, he can see that the others have all convened around the books that Deaton and Lydia were reading, mumbling and muttering to each other about every tiny facet of information they can find.
"Whr's the- the gi-girl?" Stiles croaks out, hands reaching to curl around Derek's wrists.
"What girl, Stiles?" Everyone once again turns to them, watching and listening closely.
"She- mmm- magic… Gr-gracie?"
"There was no one else there, Stiles. We thought we saw someone, but there was no one there after whatever magic happened." Stiles visibly deflates in front of them, sinking back onto the bed and releasing Derek's wrists for their grip.
"Who was she, Stiles?" Lydia appears next to Derek, fingers settling onto his cheek to turn his attention towards her.
"Fam'ly. All- All gone now. Dead?"
"She was family? Stiles, do you know exactly who she is, what she did?" Lydia demands, fingers pressing into vulnerable skin, keeping him focused.
"Let him wake up a little, Lydia." Scott hisses from across the room. Lydia turns her glare to him, glancing between members of the pack and Stiles on the table before sighing and releasing him. Stiles' eyes flicker closed again, giving up on his valiant attempt at staying completely awake while all that sedative flows through his blood. Lydia stalks back to the other side of the room while Derek pulls over a chair with his foot and sits as close to the bed as possible, not wanting to go far in case Stiles becomes as aware as that again.
"Someone needs to call Danny, have him see if he can find anything about the full family tree for his mother. Find out who this Gracie was." Lydia commands, flicking through the book once again. Derek tries to focus on both the pack behind him and Stiles in front of him, keeping in contact with his cool, clammy skin at all times. Jackson must agree to do it, confirming the name of Stiles' mother before leaving to make the call in the next room.
All Derek can concentrate on is the fact that Stiles had seemed upset that this girl, Gracie, was apparently gone. Dead. Even though she had him trapped and in danger and possibly attempting to kill him. All he can think about is how they are one in the same now, orphans with too much money and not enough energy to care about anything but how much it would mean to have just one part of that past left. Stiles had thought, just for a moment, that he would have whoever this girl was. Just as Derek had once thought he could have Peter. That one last connection to family, and all that had meant to them both.
Just another thing for them to have in common, he thinks bitterly.
