A/N

Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading! I'm so so so so sorry this chapter took so long! It took me forever to figure out and so of course I had no time to figure it out. I am very sorry but hopefully you guys can forgive me. Anyway, happy belated Halloween! Supernatural is back and awesome and Teen Wolf returns in 11 days. Whoo! So this chapter takes place at the beginning to middle of episode 18, 'Riddled,' and the next chapter will finish up the episode. I hope you guys like it, and hopefully the next chapter won't take a month (it won't.) As always, review, check out my other stories, and enjoy!

Ch. 9

Cold Day In The Sun

"Scott?" Stiles asked shakily, clutching his phone so tightly it was in danger of shattering. He had woken up seconds earlier, eyes watering, shivering on a cold stone floor, wincing as a sharp pain flared in his right leg. He had somehow been wearing his pajamas, and his pockets had been empty save for his phone. A frigid wind had chosen to cut though while he was fishing his phone out, and so, fingers trembling, Stiles had been forced to dial the last person who had called him. Scott.

"Stiles?" Scott's voice crackled back, sounding half-asleep.

"I don't know where I am." Stiles said, as he looked around the bluish-grey basement, trying to keep a lid on his panic. The only light was filtering through from hole-covered tiles on the ceiling, and so all Stiles could make out were the walls, a staircase, several large objects, and only the barest details. "I-I think I was sleepwalking." It was kind of true, considering he hadn't come here awake. Though why the nogitsune had bothered changing into pajamas was beyond him. The thin flannel pants and t-shirt were doing nothing to stop the chill and the wind from seeping into his goosebump-covered skin.

"Stiles!" Scott said, much more awake, and much more panicked.

"It's dark." Stiles barrelled on, trying to make sense of his dim surroundings, talking over Scott, because lucid or not there was something in his head and who knew how long it would let him talk. "It's hard to see. I think-" The call cut out with a snip of static.

"No, no!" Stiles exclaimed, as his heart clenched at the words no signal. "No!"

Deep breaths. Some internal part of him said that sounded an awful lot like Lydia. Deep breaths. You can't afford to have a panic attack here.

"Okay." Stiles muttered to himself, shutting his eyes and tugging on his hair, trying to slow his rapid heart. "Okay. If I move, maybe I'll get a better signal." Slowly, Stiles moved his arms next to his sides, and tried to push himself up. However, he had lifted his torso only an inch off of the cold concrete before his arms began to shake violently, and, unable to support his own weight, he collapsed with an oomph!, making the pain in his leg spike viciously. Stiles let out a frustrated yell that bounced off of the walls and, cautiously, he stretched out his arms in front of him to crawl forward. But of course it wouldn't be that easy. Stiles hadn't dragged himself a centimeter when something yanked on his right leg, releasing pain up and down his entire side, and with an anguished cry Stiles collapsed in a heap on the stone tile, shivering, sobbing, the pain in his leg throbbing in time to his rapid heart.

Oh god, it hurts, it hurts so much. Stiles thought, as he tried and failed to curl into a ball through the pain. He couldn't even roll on his back, or spend time wondering how a cold wind had blown through a windowless room, so much so was the pain. The only thing Stiles could do was blindly reach for his phone and pray the signal had returned.

The screen was a bright halo in the bluish-blackish dark, and so Stiles had to squint for several seconds before he saw the one, flickering bar. Yelping with joy, he frantically dialed, his fingers stepping over each other in their haste.

"Please please please please please..." Stiles muttered, fingers crossed, as the call ran through. Who he was pleading to, Stiles couldn't say. But surely there was one god his brothers hadn't killed yet.

"Stiles?" Scott's voice sounded from the static, worried and confused, and Stiles almost sobbed with joy. Almost.

"I don't think I can get out of here." Stiles replied, as level as he could muster, even as his eyes watered from the pain in his leg and the horrible smell he was just beginning to notice. "I can't move."

"Where are you?"

"I don't know." Think. Come on, think. Tell him something useful. Tell him how to find you.Stiles strained his eyes but only made out the same vague surroundings. "I can't see much. My- my leg's caught on something, I can't move it. God, it hurts."

"Are you okay?" Scott asked, saintly as ever, and Stiles wished more than anything he could say yes. But there was something in his head, and it had dragged him here, and he might never be okay again.

"I don't know." Dear lord, what was that smell? It was utterly repulsive, but now that Stiles focused on it, there was another smell underneath it. Coppery, and salty, and very very strong. "There's blood. There's a lot of blood. Something smells terrible down here. My eyes are watering."

"Let me call your dad." Scott offered, and panic closed around Stiles like a vice. Suddenly Stiles couldn't be bothered to make out the stone walls and the singular staircase and the lurking figure slouching in the corner, because suddenly all he could see was that dreadful vision of him being found out. His dad. Scott couldn't call his dad, because he knew things and he would know what this really meant, would know what this is, would see through the lies and the blackouts to what was really wrong with him. And then Isaac and Aiden would hold him down while Scott clawed out his insides.

"NO!" Stiles shouted as he pictured that horrible scene again, again and again as Lydia stood idly by and Allison-had-shot-him- "No Scott, you can't tell him. Please please don't call him, I'm begging you!" His dad, his real dad, his dad would know what was wrong with him and nothing got through John Winchester, not now, not ever, and Scott couldn't tell him.

"Well what if I can't find you?" Scott asked frantically, and only then did the vision erase to Stiles' dim surroundings.

"You can do it, Scott." Stiles said, mustering conviction through his shivering, his idle arm rubbing quickly up and down the one holding the phone, trying to fabricate even an iota of warmth. "You can find me."

"I-" Scott was starting to say in reply, but a haze of static muddled his would-be words, and Stiles pulled the phone away to see that the call had cut out once again.

"Dammit." Stiles muttered, his chattering teeth butchering the word. Another wind blew through the- basement, this was definitely some sort of basement. "Ok," Stiles murmured, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the figure in the corner. "Ok. Basement. That's something." Another wind ripped through the room, rustling the leaves nearby, and in the back of his mind somewhere Stiles probably knew that there was something wrong with this picture. There were things, important things he was glossing over, and details he was focusing on that couldn't matter less. His left leg wasn't hurting so much now that he wasn't moving, so that was something. "Scott can do this. Ok, there can't be very many industrial grade basements within walking distance of my house. Scott can just get my dad to draft a list and-" and nope. Because Stiles had told Scott not to tell his dad.

Ok, what had that been about? Stiles likes to think of himself as a rational person, and any rational person would not have jumped to the conclusion he just had, duress or no. There was really only one explanation. The nogitsune, even if he couldn't feel it, was still in his head, and it had hijacked his emotions somehow,, made him believe that telling his dad would make the vision come true. That was... That was concerning. Stiles tried to shiver but couldn't, and he knew that was a bad sign. It was too cold down here, he was getting hypothermia. And with his dad out of the loop Stiles could only hope that Scott had enough sense to go to his bedroom and see the wall, connect the dots... from the coyote trap to the chalkboard to-

"Eichen house." Stiles realized with finality. "I'm in Eichen house." Of course. It made so much sense. Why would a trickster allow Stiles to leave a worthless clue? Eichen house was one of the final dots on his wall, the mental facility that had housed the nogitsune's first pawn. Eichen house was, arguably, where this whole mess started. And, Stiles realized with a jolt, the nogitsune's home turf.

A shrill tone cut off Stiles' despondent thinking, and Stiles lunged for his phone, causing his leg anguish again, and he fumbled through the pain before answering the call.

"Did you call him? Did you call my dad?" Please say yes please say yes please say yes-

"No, just Isaac." Scott reassured, and Stiles' heart plummeted to the floor. "We're going to come get you."

"I'm in a basement." Stiles said hurriedly, softly so as to not wake the figure lurking in the corner. He didn't dare say Eichen house, he knew what would happen. "It's industrial. The walls are made of either stone or concrete, I can't tell. There's small holes in the ceiling, like I'm under a grate. It's the only light I have. And, there's large pipes along one wall, and they lead to-" Stiles froze in horror as his brain finally caught up with his eyes. The large pipes along the wall lead to a dark corner. Where something very humanoid was crouching.

-the figure lurking in the corner-

How had he missed this?

"Why are you whispering?" Scott asked, and Stiles saw the figure twitch before the awkward angle of his neck forced him back on his side.

"Because-" Stiles breathed, as panic shot through him. "Because I think there's someone here with me."

The call cut out.

The call cut out, and Scott nearly tossed his phone to the wall in frustration. But that would do no one good, least of all Stiles.

"What do we do now?" Isaac asked amid the sea of red strings clinging to his shoulders. Scott sighed as he took in once again the insanity that was Stiles' room. It looked, for lack of a better word, ransacked. The door to Stiles' closet was flung wide open, and most of the drawers were open too, spilling clothes and books onto the floor. Scott glanced at the one closest to his feet and saw that it was a book about Japanese mythology. He scoffed, because of course Stiles hadn't taken a night off like suggested, and had kept the best research material for himself. Glancing away from the book, Scott also noticed that Stiles' desk was also chaotic, as if everything on it had been unsettled with one sweep of a powerful arm. And if that was chaos, it was nothing compared to the wall.

The wall hurt to look at. It wasn't just the sheer unorganized mania about it, or the plethora of bright red thread that assaulted Scott's eyes, it was more than that. It hurt to look at because it was finally concrete evidence of how much pain Stiles had been going through the past weeks. Scott could see, as he stepped forward, that the tension of each thread was equal to the tension in Stiles' shoulders, that all these pictures and facts and information and clutter had been weighing him down so much it had been a miracle that he hadn't sunk through the floor. And the shears. The shears were like a knife through Scott's heart, because there was so much anguish around them, it bordered on insanity.

"We need to find him." Scott said urgently, his eyes glued to those metal shears. There was something he was missing, some clue he was supposed to understand, because rarely did Stiles do anything without intent. But for the life of him, Scott was utterly lost. And those shears might as well be impaled in his best friend's chest, and not his mattress, for all the good Scott was to him. "There must be something here that can help us."

"How?" Isaac challenged as he looked around, clearly still bitter from his failed mission earlier. "It's all just a bunch of nonsense."

Aiden nodded in agreement and Isaac grimaced.

"You promised not to call his dad." Lydia mused, reaching for her phone. "I didn't."

"Wait." Scott said, reaching out to stop her. "Don't call him. Let's go to the station and tell him ourselves. This way we can help the police look."

Lydia frowned and gave him a searching look, before nodding and putting away her phone.

"Alright, let's go." Scott said in relief, more than happy to leave the board, and the misery embedded in it. Isaac turned to leave, as did Aiden, but Lydia stayed in place, looking both confused and determined.

"You guys go ahead." she said tentatively, and Aiden looked ready to argue, but Lydia shot Scott a look that almost made him fall over in relief.

There's some clue here. Lydia seemed to say. And I'm going to find it. Scott nodded his approval, and then he and Isaac were off, away from the board and down the stairs, out the door, and into the night. Scott hastened to start the bike while Isaac dug out a flashlight from his backpack and started to test it.

The flashlight flickered to life, and Scott sighed in anguish.

The flashlight flickered to life, and Stiles whimpered in pain. Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself off of his stomach and onto his side, even as his left leg flared. Taking a deep, rattling breath, Stiles clutched the flashlight as tightly as his shaking fingers could muster as he began to sweep it around to his leg. What he saw on the way was unremarkable. There were dead leaves strewn on the floor. The concrete walls were just that. But his leg-

-his leg was in shambles. Immobile. Covered in enough blood to fill a river. And in the jaws of a wide coyote trap.

"Augh!" Stiles cried out, because seeing it somehow made the pain that much harsher. He shut his eyes, and noticed tears were trapped between them. Stiles breathed out a couple heavy, dry sobs, waiting for the bite in his right leg to die down. But it was when he tried to sit up that he heard it. Someone else, breathing harshly.

"Who's there?" Stiles spat. He got no response, of course, but faintly, so faintly he might have imagined it, he heard the figure in the corner shuffle around.

"I know you're there, I can hear you." Stiles tried again, trying to ignore how his voice shook. Gingerly, he cast the flashlight along the pipe, over to the dark, shadowy corner. At first he saw nothing but concrete and more pipes, but then something shifted, and Stiles' breath hitched when he saw it. It- it wasn't human, but it was certainly shaped like one, though far too bulky, as if the figure were wrapped in several layers of cloth. Its profile was aimed at him, and its mouth open, and Stiles shuddered as he realized the figure had no face and gleaming silver teeth.

"Who are you?" Stiles whispered as his hands shook. The figure did not respond, instead it held something small in its thick hand for Stiles to see. His stomach curdled when he realized it was a thin piece of chalk.

-19 53 88 19 53 88 19 53 88 19 53 88 19 53 88-

The figure was crouched by a blank expanse of wall, and Stiles watched, horrified, as it slowly pressed the chalk to it and drew a singular symbol that resembled a backwards five.

"No." Stiles whispered to himself, because he knew that symbol, had been taunted by it in the pages of his brothers' lore books. It was a Japanese symbol, a kanji, and it meant the most tempting thing in the world.

Self.

Another cold wind cut through the windowless room, and Stiles watched as the kanji was erased to a wisp of smoke.

Fitting. Stiles thought bitterly as the figure turned its head towards him. The oni are looking for someone who is no longer themselves. The are no more and neither am I. Already Stiles could feel the effects of the hypothermia, and it was becoming obvious that the nogitsune had taken him here to kill him.

Stiles closed his eyes and took a deep breath, but when he opened them all he saw was bluish-black. His phone had died.

"No, no, no!" Stiles whispered desperately. He threw his phone to the side in anger but did not even hear it hit the concrete. Another wind cut through the room as he squinted, trying to make out the figure.

I have to get out of here.

Siles lunged for the trap on his right leg and tugged, but all that was accomplished was the wail that was ripped from his lips. "WHO ARE YOU?" he shouted into the dark, desperately, he knew, but he was going to die so it was about damn time for some desperation.

Stiles was mad. Chilled to the bone with cold fury, he tugged and tugged on his leg again, trying to ignore the pins of pain up and down his left leg. He sobbed himself to hysterics with his frantic motions and he felt his leg get more and more sliced open, and the scent of blood grew stronger and stronger. Stiles was just beginning to wonder if he was actually going to tear off his own leg when that thing in the corner started speaking and suddenly he couldn't move.

The words sounded like sandpaper over ice, nonsensical to Stiles' ears but recognizable as Japanese.

"What?" Stiles murmured, not sure he wanted to know.

"Not who are you, Stiles..." the thing muttered in its unpleasantly gravelly voice. "Who are we?"

What?

"Have you felt how cold it is, Stiles?" the thing continued, and something about it seemed unsettlingly familiar to Stiles. Something about that voice, the cadence, the rhythm. He had heard that voice before. But where? "You've noticed that we've stopped shivering. Do you know why, Stiles?"

He did. He could remember it like yesterday. November 12th, 2004. Some wayward campsite in Colorado. One of John Winchester's more creative hunting lessons.

He was standing barefoot at the campsite, while Dean was putting out the fire and packing up the tent. John stood in front of him, arms crossed, impervious to Stiles' shivering.

"Ok, but why can't I put on my shoes?" Stiles questioned as he nudged woodchip with his toe. His jeans and long-sleeve shirt would keep him warm enough for the moment, but Stiles knew that all too soon that would no longer be true.

"To make a point, Stiles." John said, and behind his shoulder, Stiles could see Dean stomping out ashes with unnecessary vigor, his expression troubled. "Since you do not come with Dean and I on the majority of our hunts, we have to expedite your training. Now, Wendigos are crafty creatures. They're just as smart as humans, and faster, too. It doesn't take them long to realize when a hunter is after them, and when they do, it gets messy, fast. If a hunter is lucky, he ends up with a destroyed campsite and no survival supplies. If he's unlucky, well, those supplies won't do him much good anyway."

"Ok," Stiles said as a cold wind blew around his goosebumped shoulders, rustling the leaves on the forest floor. "So, find the wendigo as quickly as possible, try to avoid more than a one-day trip, and triple the protection symbols around if you have to sleep."

John nodded. "All important, Stiles, but not the point of this lesson. Wendigos are clever, and it is more than likely that they will successfully lure you away from the symbols. And if it attacks, and you're lucky, then you have more than one problem. You have a creature trying to kill you, yes, but your other enemy is probably the greater threat. A night alone in a cold climate."

"Okay." Stiles said. "So?"

"So," John said with a challenging gleam in his eyes. "What do you know about hypothermia?"

Yes. Yes he did know why.

"My third grade science project." Stiles mumbled, because it was kinda true. Even if the experiment had been involuntary and his mom had blown a gasket when he'd gotten home. "Hypothermia. We stop sh-shivering because it's the-the body's way of conserving energy."

"Our feet are starting to thicken." the thing drawled, and something about those words unsettled Stiles to the very core. There was something very wrong going on here. "Then comes fatigue, confusion."

Or maybe nothing was wrong and Stiles was just dying and hallucinating. Again.

The thing moved closer, close enough that Stiles could make it out even in the dense blue-black. It ambled with an uneven gait, and up close, Stiles could see that it really was covered in tattered, yellow bandages. He drew away in revulsion.

"We're going to die if we don't get out of here." the thing muttered, and Stiles wanted to argue that it could get out just fine, Stiles was the one connected to a freaking coyote trap, but just as the thought occurred to him, something else clicked that his cold-sluggish brain had been too slow to notice.

We stop shivering. Our feet are starting to thicken.

"Stop saying that, stop saying we." Stiles mumbled. The kanji burned neon-bright in his brain.

The thing ignored him. "We have to get out of here." it stated, in that awful, familiar voice.

No freaking duh. Stiles thought, but another twinge in his left leg drew him back to anger.

"HOW, there's a steel jaw trap in my leg!" Stiles shouted, and he knew, he knew that his voice broke at the end, he knew there were tears in his eyes, but suddenly it was all a bit much because first the pain and now the 'we' and that word made Stiles grow cold inside because he wasn't himself, not anymore, he would always be 'we', and John had taught him about hypothermia but John would also shoot-him-in-the-chest-

"Are you sure about that, Stiles?"

What?

Stiles looked down at the metal mess on his left leg. Yeah, he was pretty sure. But right as the thought occurred to him, his vision blurred, and the trap seemed to...move... from his left leg to his right... But no that wasn't possible, it was on his left, had always been on his left... But now there was pain in his right leg, pure agony...but no, now it was in his left...and if Stiles squinted through the blurriness it looked almost like the trap wasn't on either of his legs at all but lying next to him harmlessly.

"The trap was on your left leg before, wasn't it?" the thing said smugly, and Stiles jolted as he realized why it sounded so unsettlingly familiar. It was true, pain was now shooting up his right leg, but a lot of things were true now that shouldn't be.

Like how it was so cold in an insulated basement.

Like how the memory of hypothermia had dropped into his head.

Like how this wasn't the first time the trap had switched legs.

Like how things here were far too familiar. Like the kanji. Like the chalk.

Like how the light here was the same blue-black as the hospital.

Like how a wind had cut through a windowless room.

And, finally, horrifically,

Like how the voice of the thing in this room was identical to the voice of the thing in his head.

"We're trying to save you, Stiles." The nogitsune murmured dramatically but the effect was lost on Stiles now, and replaced with dull horror. "We're trying to save your life."

"You have a funny way of showing it." Stiles muttered as he gazed at the bandage-wrapped demon, as he thought of the one clue he left his friends that was now useless. "I'm not in Eichen House, am I?"

The nogitsune shook its head. "You don't understand, do you Stiles." It drawled. "It's a riddle. Do you know any riddles?"

Of course he did. Like how the hell would Scott find him now? Tears stung in Stiles' eyes as the hopelessness of his situation set in.

"What gets bigger the more you take away?" The nogitsune asked.

"A hole." Stiles replied. A grave. Stiles couldn't help but think instead.

"What gets wetter the more it dries?"

"A towel."

"Everyone has it, but no one can lose it."

"A-" A soul, Stiles was tempted to say, but no, that wasn't true.

"Everyone has it, but no one can lose it."

"I- I don't know-"

"Everyone has it, but no one can lose it." The nogitsune said again, testier now.

"I don't know!" Stiles said, and maybe it was the cold or the exhaustion or the fear but his brain was blank-

"EVERYONE HAS IT, BUT NO ONE CAN LOSE IT!" The nogitsune roared, and Stiles flinched, and he wasn't scared often but he was trapped unalone in his own head-

"I DON'T KNOW!" Stiles roared right back, his voice leaching desperation, but that did not stop the nogitsune from snaking a bandaged arm around the coyote trap and giving it a vicious tug-

"NO PLEASE NO-" Stiles yelled as the pain turned from anguishing to blinding, as he was pulled helplessly along the room as smooth concrete turned to rough ground and the leaves rustled and the wind blew with a source and that smell was unbearable and he was awake now, but it hardly mattered because the thing in his head was tugging him along by the foot-

Stiles screamed and wailed and screamed again as he was pulled from the cave, out of his mind but locked in his head and before the hysteria left him completely he thought of how vindictively perfect that the first person he saw coming out of his madness was Agent McCall.