Chasing Shadows

Everyone has it but no one can lose it. Everyone has it but no one can lose it. Everyone has it but no one can lose it. The riddle ran around Stiles head over and over and over. "But I lost it." He whispered as Melissa continued her at-home examination. "Everyone has it but no one can lose it. I lost it. I'm no one?" He mumbled to himself staring at the wall with a scared expression on his face, ignoring the concerned looks he was getting. "Or I never lost it. I still have it?" He tried to bite on his finger nails but Melissa held his hand down.

"Stiles, sweetie, are you okay?" Melissa looked right into his eyes, amazed at the fact that he was still awake and breathing. "Stiles?" She couldn't believe the trauma the kids had just gone through.

Ignoring the question Stiles continued his thought process as if everything might fall apart if he let his mind wander off onto something else. "Peter Pan lost it. How did he find it? That makes no sense Stiles, he's a story in a book." Stiles ran a hand through his hair, or as least as far as the IV would allow him to. "What if…"His voice broke off as his eyes continued to follow the shadows dancing the wall, chasing after them as the light caused them to move around the room.

"Stiles!" Melissa's outburst made the teen jump. "Are you okay?"

With big eyes Stiles stared at her for a minute. "Isn't that what you're supposed to be figuring out?" He blinked a few times as Melissa let out a light laugh. "My neck hurts." He only now seemed to notice his horse voice. "Scott…and then…" His mind started to go over the past events finally. He'd focused on the riddle to keep it from washing over him but now came the tidal wave. "Allison. It's my fault. I didn't stop him. She's dead." Stiles looked down at his worn body and the IV Melissa had forced upon him along with all the medicines. "It would only be good news if I was dying too."

A tear ran down Melissa's face, it hurt her to see Stiles like this. "Stiles, don't say that. We need you. Scott needs you, just like he needed to today. He's going to need you even more now. He just lost his first love." She put a motherly hand on his shoulder. "It wasn't your fault Stiles. It was the Nogitsune. Blaming yourself does nothing Stiles." Melissa wiped her face and grabbed the food she had prepared for Stiles. "Now stop being selfish, man up, and let me help you get better. Okay?"

In response Stiles just nodded and laid back on the pillows propping him up and let Melissa feed him as he went back to watching the shadows on the walls. Once his stomach couldn't handle anymore he put a hand up stopping the spoon. "Melissa, if no one can lose it how could I?" He looked up at Melissa with scared and tired eyes.

Melissa ran her fingers through his hair. "You haven't lost anything Stiles." Her words were the last thing Stiles heard before drifting off to sleep.

Scott sat in the sheriff's station reciting the words Chris had stuck in his head. "We were in the parking lot. It all happened so fast…so fast." It was like a dream. He couldn't believe it. Allison was dead. He had loved her so much, had mourned the loss of her love, and now he was mourning just her loss. His mind just couldn't process that information. How could she be dead? Allison was the strong brunette hunter who could shoot an arrow and hold her own in a fight against a werewolf. She was only a kid. She's not supposed to be dead. How could she be… "It all just happened so fast."

After finally leaving the police station Scott made his way to see Stiles to find his mom waiting for him, wrapping her motherly arms around him in a hug like nothing he had had since he was a kid. "She's dead mom." He let the tears fall for the first time. "And Stiles…Mom tell me he's going to be okay. Tell me he's not mad at me. This is all my fault. If I had only had more control…" Before he could continue there was a slap to the back of his head.

Melissa pulled away from her son only slightly. "The two of you, you're unbelievable, blaming yourselves…" She shook her head. "You can't do that. You have to just be there for each other. Stop taking the blame and just defeat this thing once and for all." Melissa gave her son a kiss on the cheek. "Go check on him Scott, I think you both need it." She gave him a slight push towards the bedroom.

Hesitantly, Scott opened the door where Stiles was twitching and mumbling in his sleep with an IV in his arm and a barely eaten from bowl of soup on the nightstand. "No, no, don't kill her…please don't…" Stiles' mumbles became more frantic and he started flailing more than a kid in his state should. "Scott…" His voice was strained and hurt. Scott instantly went to the bed, waking Stiles as gently as possible but Stiles still jumped at being taken from his nightmare. "Scott?" His voice cracked.

Trying to smile and be comforting Scott nodded. "Yeah, I'm here buddy, it's okay."

"No it's not." Stiles turned away from his friend. "It's not okay. Allison is dead, and it's my fault." He didn't cry. He was too sad for tears. Instead Stiles watched the shadows playing on the wall. "I lost it, and then I lost the game." Stiles shut his eyes. "Scott, I told you before. I can't do the things you can do. I'm not a hero. I can never be the hero. You're a hero Scott. You have to fix this." Stiles turned around, his face deadly calm. "You have to stop him. And there's only one way to get rid of a shadow you've lost. You have to get rid of the body creating the shadow. You have to kill me. He can't exist without me."

Of all the things Scott was expecting, this was not it. The seriousness in Stiles voice caused a shiver of fear to run down Scott's spine. "No, Stiles, I won't do that." He looked around the room, seeing pieces of his friend, pieces of their friendship over the years thrown around. Little bits of evidence of their crazy past: Lydia's drawing, pages of werewolf lore, even a drawing of the Kanima, and then there was a picture of the two of them after a lacrosse game before Scott had ever been turned. "Stiles, a hero doesn't kill his sidekick when he needs him the most. There is another way to kill a shadow. Like a smart kid once told me, there's always a Plan B."

"Yeah, but maybe there isn't this time."

"I thought that once, but you proved me wrong." Scott reached over for the still warm soup. "Let me return the favor." He held the spoon up to Stiles' mouth.

The Nogitsune cracked his neck, smiling at the chaos he was causing. He could feel the pain, emotional and physical, flowing from Stiles to him directly. So much strife. When he closed his eyes and focused really hard he could hear not only the conversations Stiles was having but the conversations taking place around the boy. It was like he was still riding along in the teen's head. It was chaos. It was wonderful. It was everything he wanted. He turned to the "old friend" he had caught coming back to Beacon Hills. The timing was perfect. And then he looked down at the bone mask in his hands. "So many games yet to play." He laughed as he watched from his perch just outside of Derek's loft.

Stiles rolled around on the bathroom floor trying to stop the ache in his stomach. "I ate too much." He groaned.

Laughing sadly Scott knelt down, handing Stiles a damp wash cloth. "You barely finished your soup Stiles, I don't think that's it." He learned against the bathroom wall as he watched Stiles' eyes glaze over and drift back and forth over his head on the wall. "Stiles, are you okay? What's wrong?"

An eerie laugh escaped Stiles' lips. "I don't think I'm ever going to be okay again Scotty." He went to the toilet again but only let go one dry heave. "Scott, they won't stop mocking me." Stiles put his hands over his ears. "They keep dancing around, laughing, telling me that he's won. They tell me…" Tears went down his cheeks. "They keep talking about Allison, they won't stop. They dance around and chant little riddles, just like he did." His eyes went back to the wall, moving around as if following something awful.

Scott scooted closer. "Who? Who keeps mocking you Stiles? Who are you looking at?"

His voice came out as a strained whisper. "The shadows." He brought his knees up to his chest, burying his face in them as he finally shut his eyes tight. "I can see all of them now. At first I thought that it was because I didn't have one. But Scott, what if I'm the shadow? What if I'm his shadow? That's why I can see them, because I'm one of them." Stiles' whole body shook. "A shadow can't be an anchor."

"And a clumsy, C-average, once benchwarmer can't be a True Alpha. But I manage, don't you think?" Scott smiled. Noticing that Stiles wasn't listening to him Scott stood up and turned off the light, finally getting Stiles' attention. The boy on the floor looked up completely shocked. "What? If there's no light then there are no shadows, right?"

It was as if a light bulb finally went off in Stiles' head and he could think clearly for the first time in years. "Turn off the light." He started laughing a little uncontrollably. "I am the first you ever saw, what greets you every morning and what goes out in the end. What am I?" He looked up at Scott.

"I don't know?" Scott worried a bit more about his friend.

"Light. And light was what made the shadows possible. But there's something else." Stiles relaxed against the wall. "You cannot see me, hear me, or touch me. I lie behind the stars and alter what is real, I am what you really fear. Close your eyes and I come near. What am I?"

Trying really hard to concentrate Scott thought about the riddle. "The dark?" His voice went up a pitch in question.

Nodding enthusiastically Stiles closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the wall. "There are no shadows in the dark because they're apart of the dark. Take away the light, take away their power." Suddenly Stiles jumped up. "Take away the light, take away the power. If there's no light then there are no shadows Scott!" He smiled, really truly smiled. "I have to take away the light, then there will be no shadow."

Worry evident on Scott's face, he scooted forward and put a hand on Stiles' knee. "Stiles, we talked about this. You're not going to die. You're going to make it through this. We need you…"

"No." Stiles waved a hand in the air. "That's not what I'm saying. Listen to me Scott, come on. You're smarter than everyone thinks you are, I promise. A shadow needs light to live, there is no dark without light. What does a Nogitsune need to live?" He paused hoping that Scott would catch on. "You need happy to have sad. You need good to have bad. He lives on chaos, pain, and strife. He's been draining it all directly from me. So, let's take away his food supply. Let's stop chasing the shadows on the wall and turn out the light." He smiled, acting more like the Stiles Scott knew.

Scott nodded, still a little unsure. "Okay, how do we do that?'

The only response he got was Stiles trying to get up on his own, but failing and needing Scott's help, then tripping all the way back to his room to find his phone. "We need Derek." His fingers fumbled around the phone to type out a message. Stiles looked up at Scott, finally ready to explain because Scott just wasn't going to get it on his own. "The Nogitsune is getting power from hurting my loved ones and using them against me. He's using my memories against me. I've had to watch my mom die over and over. I've had to relive the last week every night. I live in fear of each and every one of you dying in some terrible way by my hands, unsure if this time is real or a hallucination. He came up with a dumb game to make me choose between my loved ones. He's feeding off of this. It's giving him power. So what happens if I don't have any loved ones? What happens when I have no memories?"

"You want Derek to take your memories?" Scott couldn't believe what he was hearing. Stiles was the one who was pissed for months when he lost only a few hours of memory after hitting his head in lacrosse practice. There was no way he was suggesting this.

Nodding Stiles sent a message to Derek telling him to come over ASAP. "I want Derek to take the bullets out of the gun. I won't be his weapon anymore. I'm done chasing shadows." His eyes lingered on the wall across the room a little too long, seeing things no one else could see, things that weren't there. "Let's take away the light." And when there was no response from the older werewolf, the two boys left and made their way to the loft.

/Sorry it's been so long, but you were warned. I hopefully will have the next chapter up soon because I've started it already and I know what the next two chapters will be for the most part. More action is to come, more fighting. Anyways, thanks for reading, review pretty please, and have a great day! :)