Chapter Twenty-Six: Claudia

"Been trying so hard not to let it show.

But you got me feeling like

I'm stepping on buildings, cars and boats

I swear I could touch the sky."

Ten Feet Tall ~ Afrojack

Those turquoise eyes narrowed even further, his brows furrowed as the kid glared. He definitely was glaring, not gaping or staring like people seemed to do around me since my abilities became more pronounced.

Offended at the glower, I shot him a menacing one in return. I made sure to think of Derek's face and all that I learned from his sour expressions. Yeah, Hale scowls are the greatest scowls, mother fucker.

But our staring contest was interrupted as flailing object morphed before my vision. Stiles.

"Hey babe," he greeted with a frown. He glanced behind him. "What are you looking at like that? That look is terrifying."

I shoved his shoulder aside to look behind him. "That guy…"

Said guy smirked.

Stiles blocked my vision of him once more as he rotated his neck, but said guy was gone.

Of course.

Like a fucking horror film.

Great.

"What guy?"

Surprise, he's hiding in the backseat of Derek's Camaro waiting to chop me up into little pieces!

"It's nobody. Just some asshole."

He bobbed his head. Then he pointed to the sea of bodies. "Ready to go?"

Holding out my hand, he gripped it with a proud grin. I leaned into his shoulder so that we were closer as we pushed past the students.

"Scott had a bit of a red eyed issue in the hallway earlier after first period."
I raised a brow. "What?"

"He started changing and couldn't control it. It was like when he was first turned."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah… yeah… he's fine now."

The worry was clear on his face. I squeezed his hand. "Do you want to sleep over tonight?"

"Ugh, my dad is kinda, um, I-I don't think I can." He nervously ran a hand through his hair causing it to stick up. "Do-do you want to sleep over mine?"

"Will your dad mind?"

He shrugged. "He just wants me home."

Understandable. You would have to be completely oblivious not to notice Stiles current insomnia and skittish behavior.

"Okay. I actually have spare clothes in my car because Lydia forced me to wear hers today, so I don't even need to go home!"

"Great!" He paused. "There's, um, something my dad and I do once a month that we are going to be doing today…" Stiles stopped in the middle of the hall. I guided him towards the row of lockers so that we weren't blocking traffic. Whatever he had to say was causing him to fidget. "My-my mom passed away and we always bring her flowers. We are supposed to do that today."

Nodding slowly in understanding, "I can come by after-"

"No." Whiskey eyes locked with mine. Stiles looked anxious as he stuttered out his next sentence. "I was hoping you would come with."

"Of course."

~o~

Lydia ended up texting me that she would be getting a ride home with Allison. Something about an arrow and her best friend being a lunatic. This lead me to following behind Stiles jeep in the Camaro in the direction of his house so that we could consolidate to one car.

He drove us to a flower shop, and I couldn't help how nervous it made me as he muttered to himself. It was like I wasn't even there. I wanted to ask him if he was okay… but he seemed so… hostile? No, that wasn't right. Defensive. Passive aggressive? He was just off.

We entered a little boutique with elaborate floral arrangements. I tagged behind Stiles a few steps. A woman of hispanic decent immediately spotted us and waved her hand at my boyfriend warmly. She was a little taller than me, a little round in the middle, and had a lot of curly raven hair. Probably around Stiles father's age, if I was guessing accurately.

"Hola mi niño," she greeted, her thin lips stretching out into a wide grin. Stiles seemed to finally come back to reality. He bore a pleasant smile as she tugged him into a quick hug. "Como estas?"

"Estoy bein, y tu?"

"Excelente!" She released him to rub my arm. I had no idea what she said, but I figured she wanted to know my name. "Quién es este?"

I held out my hand. "Lilly."

She slapped it away and brought me into a short hug. I yelped at the action, which caused my boyfriend to laugh as I glared at him. "Esta es su novia?"

"Sí señora."

She made a humming noise, a smirk growing on her lips. "Ella es hermosa!"

He winked. "Lo se."

"Un momento, muchacho. Voy a ir a buscar las flores."

I elbowed him when the women stepped away into a backroom of the shop. "I didn't know you spoke Spanish."

"Two years of AP Spanish, what up!" he held up his hand and I high-five-d him.

The woman brought out a large floral pot. It had a assortment of flowers that were absolutely gorgeous. She handed them to Stiles who had a tiny grin as he stared down at them.

"¿No son hermosas?"

"Sí," he smirked.
He motioned for me to follow him to the register. I hovered nearby, but started gazing at the different arrangements. They were all wonderful. I've never been a huge flower fan. Why would you want to give someone something that would eventually die? Why would you give the dead such a mocking thing? To show them that this flower will die just like them.

"Cien dólares y veintisiete centavos , muchacho."

"Muchas gracias María. Sé que Mom les habría amado."

It shouldn't be so hot to hear Stiles talking in Spanish. It really shouldn't.

Maria, apparently, held Stiles hands with her own. I wasn't sure what they were saying, I didn't speak Spanish, but it obviously was something profound by the amount of passion she expressed on her face. "Su madre estaría muy orgullosa de ti, Stiles. Ella te amaba tanto. La echo de menos todos los días…"

Stiles looked down at their hands. Maria gave him one last pat before she winked. She motioned to me. "Usted debe comprar a su novia una flor bonita . Hermosas chicas merecen hermosas flores."

"Lillies?" asked Stiles.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What?"

He waved a hand at me. "Not you."

Rolling my eyes I went back to viewing the flowers. Finally, the transaction was finished and Stiles picked up the massive arrangement of flowers. He sniffed them with a familiar smile.

"Voy a estar en breve, Maria," he said. Maria in turn darted around the counter and grabbed Stiles cheeks pressing kisses to either side.

"Adiós mi amor!"

"Nice to meet you," I grinned.

"You too, darling," Maria said in return.

I frowned as Stiles led me out of the shop. "She speaks English?"

"Fluently," my boyfriend stated.

Huh.

"Here." A golden hued lily was held before me. "A lily for my Lilly."

His Lilly.

"Thanks." Because I had no other words to express the amount of emotions bubbling in my gut.

~o~

Stiles carried the flowers into the Sheriff's office. He was waved in, like a freaking celebrity, and deputies greeted him warmly as we walked by. I made sure to look around to make sure there wasn't a WANTED picture with my face on it. I'm sure John Stilinski would have mentioned that to his son at some point though.

We entered the Sheriff's office. I stared wide eyed at the mess around us. Stiles hadn't realized it yet, too focused on the flowers in his hands. "You know, the last time we brought one of these to her grave it was stolen the same day." He set the plot down on the desk in the only spot that had any empty space.

"What assholes," I commented. Because really? Who the hell goes picking for flowers in a cemetery. If you're going to be that cheap pick some fucking weeds.

Stiles bobbed his head in agreement. "I know, right? Hundred bucks down the drain." He finally realized his dad was sitting on the floor surrounded by a skew of papers. "Hey, Dad." The sheriff gazed up at us blearily. He appeared to be getting as much sleep as his son. There were bags under his bright blue eyes and his uniform was ruffled from shifting around the hard ground. "Hi, what are you-what are you doing down there?"

"Working," he grunted. Then he started going back to his paperwork. "And hey, if somebody wants the flowers that badly, they can have them. It's the gesture."

"What is all this?" Stiles asked. There were boxes upon boxes of case files filtered around the room that the Sheriff was in the process of digging through.

"I've been looking over some old cases from a more illuminated perspective, if you know what I mean."

"Strange sighting of bipedal lizard man sprinting across freeway," read Stiles from a stack of papers.

"Kanima pile," John said as he smacked a huge stack of papers. I winced at that. Had that many people really witnessed their apparent old teammate running around as a giant lizard? I'm surprised Dean and Sam haven't shown up already, seriously. But then I'd have leave Stiles, because Dean- he's like, the love of my life. Swoon.

Stiles crouched down so that he was level with his father. "Dad, you're not going back through all your old cases seeing if any of them had something to do with the supernatural, are you?"

The man sighed heavily, as if the weight of all this was pulling him down. I admit the recent opening of my eyes to the greater mysteries of the universe has got me… reassessing. There's at least 100 cases here where I look at the details and I can ask myself, If I knew then what I know now."

Somberly, Stiles met his fathers intense stare. "Right, but are you sure you wanna go down that path?"

"Do I have a choice?" And that felt like a ton of bricks being perched on my shoulders. None of us had a choice. "There's one case in particular that I can't get out of my head." He held out one of the files to Stiles who started to flip through it. I peered over his shoulder down at the pictures of a little girl. "Eight years ago, I was elected Sheriff of County, my first official duty was to tell a man that not only had his wife and two kids died in a car accident, but, as best we could tell, the body of his had been dragged from the wreck by coyotes."

"You mean dragged and eaten?"

I moved the picture of the girl to see a picture of the accident. There were two bodies mangled and bloodied, a few bugs even visible in the photograph. My stomach twisted. "Oh gross."

Stiles slid the picture of the girl back over to hide it from view.

"We didn't find the car until three days after the crash. They had driven off the road into a pretty deep ravine. Two bodies that were still in the car were covered in bites and slashes."

"So you're thinking bites and claw marks, probably a werewolf attack?"

"Maybe."

"But coyotes, they scavenge, right? So, couldn't they have just left the bites and the slashes?"

"Absolutely. But guess what night the accident occurred on?"

Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose. "The night of a full moon."

"Yeah."

He closed the file and handed it back to his father. Then his whiskey eyes narrowed at all of the paperwork. "Hey, Dad, where are all these going?"

John pursed his lips. "Yeah, we, uh We probably need to talk about that."

Stiles ran his hand through his hair. "We should probably get all this cleaned up and into the car before it get's late. We still have to go to the grave…"

"Alright kiddo," John said. "And hello Lilly. Sorry. I should have said that earlier."

"It's okay," I smiled. "Nice to see you Sheriff."

"Let's get started," Stiles muttered, glaring at the mess his father created.

Stiles and I assisted him maneuvering them into certain piles that he created. One for Kanima, one for werewolves, another for unexplained supernatural entities. Then we piled them into the trunk of the Sheriff's company vehicle.

Then we were on our way to the gravesite. I held the plotted plant in my lap as we drove behind the Sheriff's cruiser towards Beacon Hills Cemetery. I've never been to a graveyard before. Dad and I were never close enough to anyone to really know them personally enough to attend. I should have realized that was weird.

I focused my ears on listening to Stiles tapping his fingers against the steering wheel and gaze on the tauntingly gorgeous flowers. I traced one of the soft pedals with my finger. Everything beautiful dies.

The three of us were mostly silent as we made our way past the tombstones. Our shoes crunched against the soiled grass. My skin pricked at the thought of us walking over decaying bodies.

I wonder what they did with my fathers body.

The lily that Stiles gave me was in my hands. I twirled it between my fingertips as I lagged behind father and son. They had started their own conversation quietly. I didn't bother trying to listen in, this was a very intimate moment they were allowing me to accompany them on.

Plus, the idea of Dad was overwhelming. I've been so great at blocking out the sight of his bloody body, his last words, the memories of him.

Stopping at a beautiful tombstone I read the name: Claudia Stilinski. Somehow her name fit so well as Stiles mother. It was such a good mom name. If that makes sense.

Stiles bent over to place the plot down on the grass before it. The sheriff reached over and grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it. Their eyes met in an intense moment of vulnerability. Then John said with such passion, "You were right. She would have believed you, and I am so sorry for ever doubting you."

And Stiles released a shaky sob that was part laughter. They hugged tightly and I gnawed on my lower lip.

I'd never get moments like that with my father again. Shit. It felt too real all over again.

Slender fingers wrapped around my hand, which was in the view of my longing stare at the lily clutched tightly in my palm. Looking up at Stiles, I provided him my blankest stare. He didn't need to know my pain, it wasn't right when he was trying to show me his.

His arm slid around my waist and he tugged me into his side. "Hey mom," Stiles whispered in a shaky voice. "This is Lilly. She's my girlfriend. I know, right?" he laughed to himself in disbelief, while John snorted. "She's beautiful… but she lost someone recently, too. I hope he's there with you."

Then I broke.

My knees gave out, and I couldn't coherently form words or figure out what was going on. All I knew was Stiles supported me as tears poured from my eyes and painful sobs shook my body. Arms were around me and tugging me in close, the scent of Stiles filling my nostrils when my face was shoved into his chest. His hands were rubbing soothing circles onto my back.

"He's dead," I sobbed, my hands twisting into the fabric of Stiles white shirt. "I-I'm never getting him back."

Stiles lips were pressed against my temple. "I know."

I cried harder.

And I didn't stop for who knows how long. My body was mush by the time I started to calm down, only hiccuping at this point.

I didn't want to look at John as I rubbed at my swollen eyes. I know I shouldn't feel embarrassed, but I was.

My eyes met the lily in my hands once more, and I decided something. I bent down to set the flower alongside Stiles elaborate floral piece for his mother. I grabbed for Stiles hand and explained, "For my father, and Claudia."

Then his hands were around me again in a tight hug. His chin rested against the top of my head. My hair started to get wet, and for a moment I thought it was starting to drizzle. But then I realized Stiles had begun to cry. I squeezed him tightly against me.

We all gave ourselves a few moments to compose ourselves, and then we left.

A/N: Well. This chapter was sad. I had so many feels writing it!

Thanks all who reviewed the last chapter! I appreciate it so much you have no idea. WickedlyMinx, InkHeart1212, xXbriannaXx, Rhatc89, Guests (there were quite a few of you, thanks all!), meangirl8, AlexMelRose, M, farahsbc, and MonkeyGoneToHeaven (periods between her UN).

I got so many awesome questions and comments this chapter that I would like to mention.

Q) Who did she run into at the end?
A) You'll have to wait and see ;)

Q) Is said person going to get between Stiles and her?

Not in the way you would think, but it will definitely cause issues within their growing relationship.

Q) When will there be a sex scene?

A} Two chapters from now! You've all waited so patiently, but it's coming (pun intended). And that threesome is going to be coming (pun intended again) shortly after that!

A lot of people said they are interested in seeing the Nogitsune & Lilly have some mind blowing sex. Lemme just say, be prepared for some really interesting stuff when Stiles starts converting. Be expected to see Lilly's powers emerge and some fucked up shit between her and Void Stiles. Literally, it's going to be somewhat disturbing. O_o