Author: Sparkle Itamashii

Title: Helpless

Notes: Written with permission off of this prompt: neverafuckgiven dot tumblr dot com slash post/29370223386

Chapter Ten

When he finally got home, Stiles immediately darted upstairs, past his father who was watching TV, and entered the phone number into Google. It pulled up several pages, the first of which belonged to a plant nursery in England. He clicked around the site, but there was not very much information. If he had to make a guess, they had a store front for the real world and a back way into a nursery full of fairy tales and nightmares. The number Peter had given him was located on a page which exclaimed "Don't see what you're hunting for? Give us a call!"

Stiles scowled at the not very subtle reference.

He went through the process of calling another country from the phone card he had picked up before coming home - he was sharp enough to recognize that the number had more than the American 10 digits - and listened to the other side ring. And ring. And ring. When a metallic recorded voice asked him to leave a message, he only did because it might just be the only way to contact this particular line. It was late for them, though, and probably closed because it was Sunday.

A rough sound scratched Stiles' throat. Only Sunday. Less than 48 hours since he'd taken the wolfsbane. It seemed like a week.

He was in the middle of scribbling a note to himself to call back later when the soft knock on his door came. The door didn't immediately open, which meant his father was willing to respect his privacy if he chose not to answer. Stiles didn't really want to have another Talk, but he also didn't want to push away his father again. There had been enough distance put between them for the past few months.

"Come in," he called, setting the note on his keyboard so that he would see it later.

The door clicked, cracked open enough for his father to poke his head through. He tossed a glance around the room, as if checking for other occupants or some sign that he was interrupting, and then met Stiles' eyes. "Is everything ok?" he asked, opening the door wider. "You didn't say anything when you got home."

Stiles winced. He had just rushed in, right past his dad. "Sorry, Dad." He hoped his guilt was evident in his tone. "I just had a phone call to make."

"Ah," said his father, though he probably didn't understand. "Anyone important?"

For a moment, a flippant lie sat on the tip of Stiles' tongue as he stared at his father. An excuse, a diversion from the truth, the same as he'd been doing since Scott was bitten, the sort that had been digging the rift between them wider every time, and he was tired of it. There was so much else going on, so much else he had to deal with in his crazy, werewolf-filled life, that lying to his father this time was just too much.

So instead of lying, Stiles just sighed and slumped against the back of his computer chair. "Actually, yeah," Stiles admitted. He was mildly surprised by how good it felt, by how much he had missed seriously talking with his father about something that mattered. "I was trying to get hold of someone at the nursery we think Gerard was heading for, over in England. I thought if I could find out the name of the original plant the wolfsbane was hybridized to, we might be able to find a counter agent. Or something, anything, that might help."

His father blinked owlishly, taken aback by how much information his son was suddenly spilling. "Oh," he said after a moment. "I take it no one answered? Seeing as it is..." he looked at his watch. "Eleven o'clock at night there?"

"Yeah," Stiles said. "I'll set an alarm and call back when they're open."

The sheriff's brow drew together. "This is really important, isn't it?" he asked. Stiles had used the urgent tone, the tone that meant someone was in danger, that someone might be dying, the tone that he'd used when helping solve the murders that had turned out to be a result of all of his crazy werewolf business.

"Yeah," Stiles agreed, dropping his gaze. "You know how all those people died because of the kanima? Because Matt and Gerard had control of Jackson?"

His father nodded.

"Yeah, well, Gerard is trying to get control of the Pack now. All of them," he emphasized. "He took control of Jackson so that he could overpower Derek, because Derek is the alpha wolf. Because he wanted Derek to bite him."

He swallowed, throat closing as he remembered everything that had happened that night. Erica and Boyd strung up like animals. The beating he'd endured. The rejection by Lydia, watching her give everything to Jackson after they had all watched him die. After Derek had buried his claws in Jackson's chest, taken on the role of monster to save them. The horror of knowing Gerard escaped, was on the loose.

"He's not a werewolf," his dad said quietly. "Right? Derek didn't bite him."

Stiles shook his head. "He did, Scott made him, because Scott had dosed Gerard with mountain ash without telling anyone. It's like poison to them, I guess. He thought it would kill Gerard, but it just... it just burned the infection out of him. When you get bit, you either turn wolf or you die, but it just... it just burned out of him. So now he's trying to get control again, so he can become a werewolf."

His dad took a deep breath, moved farther into the room, took a seat on Stiles' bed. He leaned back against the headboard as Stiles swiveled the chair to face him. "I thought he was one of the uh..." He waved his hand as if he could pluck the word from the air. "The hunters. Werewolf killers."

"Yeah," Stiles told him. "Yeah, he is. He was. But he's..." Stiles trailed off. He's dying of cancer. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't say it, couldn't speak through the way the past crushed at his chest.

All he could think of was his mother in her hospital bed, the cancer eating away at her with nothing they could do to stop it.

There were no werewolves to save her.

"He's sick, and he thinks becoming a werewolf will save him," he managed at last. An expression flickered over his father's face that told him he'd guessed what plagued Gerard. Stiles swallowed his regret and continued. "I don't think he'll stop at just getting bit," he said. "I think he'll hurt more people. I think it will be like when Laura Hale died, and Peter became the alpha, and all those people got hurt. Gerard will turn people, but they won't be nice people like Scott. They'll be killers too."

"That's why- why you ate the wolfsbane," his father guessed, drawing on what Deaton had told him. "Because you want to stop him."

"I have to stop him," Stiles said firmly, leaving no room for question. "They're my friends, Dad."

"Your Pack," his dad suggested, glad to be able to connect some of the dots.

A smile twitched the corner of Stiles' lips. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah, they're my pack. And I've got to protect them, if I can."

The sheriff nodded, taking all of it in, carefully filing the information in case he needed it later. Stiles let him, because he knew the process, because he had learned the process from his father. He could practically see his father spreading all the information on a mental table, sorting it into categories, marking which bits he thought were most important, putting together pieces that fit with what he already knew. Finally he took a breath, and looked up to meet his son's gaze.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "About this morning. About... Derek," he clarified. "He's part of your pack, right? You're protecting him too."

Stiles nodded, chest tight. "Yeah."

His father studied him for a moment, and then added: "And you care about him. As more than a friend."

"Ye- no- I don't know," Stiles admitted, fear climbing up his throat at the thought of talking to Derek again. "Maybe I'd just- I'd really like for both of us to be alive to figure it out, you know? Like if maybe everything could stop trying to kill us for five seconds so we could at least talk." He chuckled, but it was weak and ended with an almost desperate sigh. He swallowed and took a deep breath. "I don't even know how I let it get like this. All of it. I should have told you, I just-"

"Stiles," his father said, halting him. "It's ok. I wish you had told me and let me help, too. Let's start with this time, shall we? Is there anything I can do?"

That caught Stiles up short. He had always wondered what it would be like to have his father know about all of this, about the werewolves and the danger and the hunters and the insanity. Now here he was, sitting in his room, talking about wolfsbane and falling in love with werewolves and his dad was asking to help, and he had no idea where to begin. "Uh," he said intelligently.

"Gerard's human right?" his father prompted. "You said he was traveling to England? By plane, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles agreed, spinning around in his chair to face his computer. He shoved aside the note and began pulling up the e-mail Allison had sent his way the night before. "He bought a one way ticket to London, out of the airport outside of town."

"Ok. So maybe I can put a watch out for him coming back," his father suggested. "That will give you guys a heads up. Is there anything I can have him detained for?"

Stiles pursed his lips, tried to think. Was there anything Gerard had done that could get him arrested, without revealing anything about the pack? "Probably not," he admitted. "He'll stay as under the radar as he can. The laws he'll break... you'd have to give away the pack to arrest him for them."

For a split second, he saw the war going on inside of his father. He knew why, and it was one of the reasons he hadn't been able to talk to him before. His father was the sheriff, upholder of all human laws, and ignoring the law just because the perpetrators were involved in supernatural things went against everything he stood for. It hurt him, to know that his son was involved, that he was probably breaking laws because there was a need in order to survive.

Then his face cleared, and his father nodded. There were two ways for him to handle the situation, and he wasn't going to arrest Stiles for doing what was right. He couldn't. He didn't have to be involved directly to know that the things Stiles had been doing, the laws he had broken since January, had saved lives. If he couldn't be free of the red tape of the law himself, he could at least make sure that his son was able to protect those in need. He rolled off the edge of the bed and got to his feet.

"Ok, then," he said, and Stiles hopped to his feet as well. "I'll do what I can, Stiles," he told his son. He wasn't surprised at all when Stiles dove in for a hug, buried his face in his dad's shoulder and clung on as if he wasn't going to let go. He wrapped his arms around Stiles, squeezed back tightly before letting go. "We'll protect your pack, kiddo. Together," he said when he reached the door.

And then he smiled, the same sort of shit-eating grin Stiles was so famous for amongst his friends. "We'll protect your future boyfriend too," he teased gently. "So you can figure it out."

Despite Stiles' furious blush, he nodded. "Thanks, Dad."

His dad smiled and closed the door behind him.

Stiles groaned, wiped a hand down his face and then snatched his phone off the desk top. Without very much grace he threw himself face down on his bed, burying his nose in his pillow until it became hard to breathe, just letting his mind be blank and quiet for a few minutes. Slowly, slowly, he let the gates open, let his thoughts back in as he rolled onto his back, tucked one arm behind the pillow behind his head, and held up his phone so he could see the face of it.

He let himself touch upon the events of the last two days, tried to grasp at what his world had been when he'd set his tray down on the cafeteria table before Allison had dropped the bomb in their laps. It hadn't been simple then either, he decided after a time. There were still werewolves, and Gerard had still been on the loose. There were still hunters and they'd still dealt with crazy Peter and Matt and the kanima. There was always the threat of more danger on the horizon, especially with the alpha pack that was lurking around the edges of their awareness.

He just hadn't expected to deal with Derek on top of the rest of it.

Derek had been an issue he'd put on the back burner. He'd been that small fire in Stiles' gut, the lingering desire he'd set aside because there were more important things at hand. There was Scott, who was trying to handle the semi-breakup with Allison and who came to Stiles to sort out what was going on. There was his father, trying to cope with what he called 'werewolf business' but meant all of Stiles' life. There were days his father didn't handle it very well, days he broke down and asked why Stiles continued keeping his paws in the thick of things; days he didn't understand that Stiles couldn't just quit.

There was Lydia, and almost seven years of emotions Stiles wasn't completely ready to forsake, even if she had never shared a single one of them.

Yet here he was. Lying in bed, mind consumed with worry about how he was going to handle his tenuous situation with Derek. He knew he had to do something about it because they had been avoiding one another to the best of their ability since Friday night. They wouldn't be able to do that forever, especially not if Gerard was going to endanger their pack. At some point they would have to work together and this couldn't be hanging over their heads if they were going to do that.

So, for the good of the pack, he reasoned, he tapped open his contacts, selected Derek's number, and began to type.

Can we talk? Like, before Gerard gets back to mess up everything?

He let the phone fall, cradled in his hand as he dropped his arm to his side. He didn't figure there would be a response. He'd sent dozens of texts to Derek since obtaining the werewolf's number but Derek had only ever sent one back. Usually he called back or showed up if he needed to respond.

I don't like typing. That was the one text he'd ever sent back to Stiles.

At the time, Stiles had laughed, because he'd imagined Derek trying to tap the little letters on his smart phone's display and hitting all the wrong ones and then getting really frustrated- enough that he just called instead. Now he was dreading the phone call that might come because talking out loud was so much harder than writing a text where he could have time to consider whether or not he should stick his foot in his mouth.

So when his phone buzzed, he was surprised that it was with a text instead of a call. He set aside his disappointment when the text was from Allison, but he opened it anyway.

Dad's contact at the airport says Gerard purchased a return ticket. Dad thinks he found the plant.

Stiles cursed, and began to reply when a second text buzzed through.

Family friend says Gerard contacted him... he's looking for company when he gets back. Lots of company.

Stiles closed his eyes, because he knew that Gerard wasn't seeking a happy fun times welcoming committee. He was looking for help. He was looking for an attack force, and Stiles didn't have to guess who they would be hunting.

Notes: Just a few more chapters left! I'm dying to know what people are thinking right now... this really wasn't meant to be this long!