Chapter Thirty Two:
"I've never been to France," Isaac commented idly one day, apropos of nothing.
They were in the middle of a fierce Tekken tournament, so Stiles felt he should be forgiven for being distracted and unduly confused by the interjection.
"Why, do you want to?"
"Not really."
Isaac grew quiet for a time, fingers expertly tapping out combos that Stiles' reflexes always fumbled over, an agonising battle between technique and manic button-mashing energy. It wasn't like Isaac needed to distract him through conversation in order to win.
"Why did I go to France with Mr Argent?"
Eyes glued to the screen, focus fully on his abysmal performance, Stiles didn't stop to think about why that was a strange question, or if he should even answer it at all; his mouth automatically started giving the explanation his brain supplied him with.
"Because you were both grieving and there wasn't any reason for either of you to stay? I dunno, it's not like we ever talked about it. I'm not sure you actually told anyone anything, to be honest."
The silence that followed wasn't unexpected – they didn't usually talk much while gaming except to throw snide comments to each other about their performance, so if anything it was the questions that were out of place. It was the weight of it that gave Stiles pause.
Glimpsing Isaac's carefully blank expression from the corner of his eye, Stiles mentally replayed the last few minutes in his head, and found himself blanching.
Oh no.
Hysteria tinged the laugh he forced out. "I mean, what? You've never been to France. That would be weird. Why would you go to France? I think I had a dream like that a little while ago, sorry. I get a little mixed up sometimes. You should know better than to blindly believe everything I say when I'm distracted!"
In actuality, it was the things he spouted off while distracted that tended to hold the most truths. Stiles could only hope that Isaac hadn't noticed that fact yet.
Very pointedly, Isaac set his controller down on the coffee table in front of them. With no easy way out – aside from just jumping to his feet and running for the hills, which was starting to feel like a good idea if not for the fact that he would eventually have to return home, where Isaac would still be waiting for him – Stiles reluctantly paused the game and tossed aside his own controller.
"You're not lying about getting mixed up. That much I can believe. But this has never been an issue about distinguishing dreams from the waking world, has it?"
Through some gargantuan feat of self-control, Isaac didn't even sound accusatory when he spoke. Stiles felt as though he ought to. Would this whole situation be less bewildering if he was angry instead of painfully nonchalant?
"What makes you say that?" Stiles hedged, because there was absolutely no way he wanted to dig himself a deeper hole. He wouldn't address anything that Isaac didn't bring up himself, and maybe not even then.
"You've never kept a dream journal. You told me that yourself."
A memory of a quiet breakfast conversation blossomed in the back of Stiles' mind.
"That's… true, I guess."
Stiles chanced a glance to the side and found Isaac turned entirely towards him, watching him with an unusually serious expression. He immediately returned his gaze towards the TV.
"Which means that, by your own assertion, what I found was not a dream journal."
Oh dear god please tell me he didn't just say what I think he just said.
Stiles forced back the full-body flinch those words elicited. This was definitely not his day.
"Ah." He tried for another chuckle, but instead of the embarrassment he was aiming for it came out weak and shaky. "You found my notes then? They're… plot notes. And stuff. For a story. Little bits and pieces. You know."
The judgmental silence that followed was honestly well-deserved.
"You? Writing RPF? No. I know you're a weird guy, Stilinski, but you're not 'kill off your best friend's girlfriend in a dark fantasy' weird. Or at least, if you are, then you've done a seriously good job of hiding it, and I may have to rethink whether associating with you is worth the stress."
Gods above, Stiles wanted to throw himself into a deep dark hole and never come out. Isaac sure could have a silver tongue when he felt confident about having the high ground in an argument, huh?
He'd known right from the beginning that making that notebook had been an incredibly risky move. His saving grace had mostly been that his dad would never go snooping about in his bedroom – or even come inside if Stiles wasn't there – unless he went missing and he needed to look for potential clues.
The notebook had never been a necessity. It had mostly been the result of panic. Since his bout of possession, occasionally Stiles would have trouble trusting his own memory. It wasn't that it happened frequently, and it usually concerned memories from That Time, so it made sense and all, but paranoia isn't rational. Compound an untrustworthy memory with a sudden chronological shift, and Stiles liked to think he could be forgiven for wanting to have something physical to help him keep the details straight.
Maybe he shouldn't have continued to add additions to the notebook about the current timeline, and maybe he should've bought a lockbox or something to hide it away in, or maybe he should've just burnt the whole thing after he'd gotten his thoughts straight and settled into this 'new' life, but what mattered right now was that he had done none of those things.
He had been careless, and he should have at the very least made a better effort of hiding it once Isaac started living with them, but he hadn't, and now his own recklessness was making itself known in the worst way.
(Okay, there were a few people he could list that would've been far more dangerous adversaries with their hands on the notebook, Kate Argent for one, but anyone finding it was still bad.)
Taking a deep, calming breath, Stiles squared his shoulders and turned to face Isaac.
"How much of it did you read?"
There was no point asking how he'd found it. That part wasn't important. Isaac wasn't unduly or excessively nosy, so whatever the scenario the blame laid solely on Stiles' shoulders.
"Enough."
Enough what? Enough to know Stiles had killed a man? To know his guilt? His grief? At the very least, enough to be curious, to be suspicious.
"Okay. Fine." Stiles clenched his fists, claw-sharp nails biting uncomfortably into his palms. "Ask your questions."
Isaac's serious look faltered for a moment. Had he been anticipating more resistance? For Stiles to dance around it until Isaac would rather stab him than listen to another word from his mouth? Neither of those things was entirely out of character, sure, but Stiles just didn't have it in him right then.
Because he wasn't lying. Isaac was right. He still got mixed up sometimes – although usually only in the moments just after waking, the feeling of disconnect trapped inside of his head and not out in the open for people to observe and comment upon. And he was tired. Tired of some part of his brain having to be on guard constantly as he separated Now from Then.
Would it really be so bad for someone to just know?
Even if Isaac walked away from this having decided that Stiles was crazy, there would still now be someone in this world who knew of the things Stiles had gone through.
Would that be worth it?
"… Why did I go to France?" Isaac eventually repeated. He obviously wasn't sure where to start, so he was just cycling back to the beginning of this particular interrogation.
"After Allison… died, you didn't want to stay in Beacon Hills. I really don't know the particulars. It didn't really have to be France, there's probably a whole bunch of places you could've gone. If I had to guess, looking back on it, you might've wanted to be away from the situation, but you didn't want to be alone with the knowledge of it. I don't know if you went to Argent or if he offered, but either way you ended up leaving together. Never saw you again."
Chris had never offered any updates on Isaac's wellbeing when they called him for advice, and no one had really asked. To the best of his knowledge – meaning, no one had mentioned anything about it – no one had been in contact with Isaac himself either.
"What about my, uh, dad?" Isaac asked slowly, hesitantly. "He just let that happen?"
Ah, right.
"Not exactly." For a moment he considered simply not answering the question – what good would that knowledge do him? – but what was the point in being evasive now? "There was an, well, an incident a few months prior. He… passed away. I don't know if you actually talked about the move with Melissa though. Oh, Melissa is Scott's mother. You stayed with them afterwards."
Isaac didn't need to know about the in-between period when he'd been staying with Derek living in the great outdoors.
"Dead?" He muttered, looking down at his hands.
Isaac was visibly conflicted about that particular info drop. Stiles couldn't say he blamed him. When you had a complicated relationship with someone, it was one thing to occasionally wish they were gone and another to find out they truly were.
"Tell me what happened," Isaac eventually demanded. Is this avoidable? He did not ask, but surely implied.
Funny, that he was more interested in what had happened and not, say, in how Stiles had come about this information, or if there was any verifiable truth to any of his words.
"If you're certain you want the details," Stiles began, "then there are some important facts you first need to know. I'm sure you've read all sorts of fantastical things in my journal, which may have already brought you to the same conclusion that I'm about to tell you, but they still need to be said. In the reality we live in, there are supernatural forces and beings that co-exist with us."
He elaborated with a quick 'Intro to Supernatural Creatures 101' overview, naming no names but his own as a real life example. He gave his demonstrations. All the while Isaac watched him in an inscrutable silence.
"You… don't seem very bothered by any of this," Stiles observed somewhat helplessly.
Isaac waved a dismissive hand in his direction. "Well, I knew something was going on. Surely you're not dumb enough to think I would take your childish platitudes about 'magic hands' at face value? You didn't seem inclined to explain, and since I was benefiting from it there was no sense in pushing for answers. And it has been a little while since I found that ridiculous notebook, so the idea has had time to settle."
"Sure…"
"If I start having nightmares about getting mauled to death by werewolves I'm sure you'll be the first to know."
That was probably true. Isaac snuck into his room in the middle of the night from time to time when the Sheriff was on night shift, to reassure himself on bad nights.
"But," Isaac continued sternly, "You still haven't told me what happened to my dad."
Stile sighed through his nose, gnawing briefly at his lip.
"Fine." He turned away again. He wasn't interested in staring Isaac down while discussing his dad's alternate timeline death. "There was a creature which lacked a will of its own, and a person with a grudge who discovered how to control them. You don't have to worry too much about the finer details, because I have zero intention of allowing that creature to plague the town again."
Isaac scoffed. "Who did it?" There was an undeniably bitter tone to his voice.
Stiles hesitated, but, "I won't tell you. Knowing that he died is a big enough burden by itself. Telling you who was involved won't help anyone. You'll just get angry, and that kind of anger can be hard to let go of."
"Why tell me at all then?"
He wasn't even trying to hide the bitterness that time.
"Because it would have been obvious if I stalled trying to come up with a lie, and you would have forced it out of me anyway only you'd have the extra emotional weight of 'angry I tried to lie to you' on top of all of this. From the person who knows the most about it, trust me when I say that knowing the details won't positively benefit you in any way. It will only serve to put you on guard against invisible and non-existent threats, and that's not an easy way to live life."
Stiles jerked a little to the side as Isaac's weight suddenly left the couch.
"I'm going for a walk," he announced.
Stiles nodded listlessly as Isaac stomped towards the front door.
That was probably for the best. Isaac could go cool his head and Stiles could sit here and berate himself some more about being so god damned careless with his notes, and for not better choosing his words. Isaac was in the middle of proceedings to have his father tried in a court of law. There were few worse times to find out that, two steps to the left, there was a world where his father was instead straight up murdered.
Stiles turned the tv off. They wouldn't be coming back to that any time soon.
oOoOo
"How do you know all those things?" Isaac asked a few nights later, lying atop Stiles' bed, their arms pressed together from elbow to shoulder. "Or would it be better to ask how you ended up here?"
Stiles hummed thoughtfully, staring up at the dark ceiling.
"Do you want the short answer or the shorter one?"
Isaac smacked him in the stomach. Stiles laughed.
"Okay, okay. Short answer: time travel, maybe. Honest answer? I really don't know. I mean I know how it started, but hell, I don't even know if I just got hurled back in time, or if this is a parallel universe or alternate dimension or something else altogether. I could be dead and this could either be a weird-ass afterlife or some sort of fever dream stretching out eternally in that brief moment between dying and dead."
"And the boy awoke, and discovered it had all been just a dream?"
Stiles elbowed Isaac in the ribs.
"That is somehow the worst of the options, yes."
"Still," Isaac murmured. "Time travel, huh? I mean, I sort of assumed it was something along those lines, but hearing it out loud is really something. Either that, or you're seven shades of insane and I've been suckered into your delusions."
Unbidden, Stiles' mind went to memories of the Nogitsune. He shuddered.
"Full disclosure. There are days when I'd prefer the insanity theory. Unfortunately for all that, werewolves are, in fact, still a real thing, and I've seen nothing to suggest that any of the rest of it is suddenly false either."
"Talk about a cheat code."
Stiles wasn't sure if Isaac meant the 'sort of knowing the future' thing or the supernatural powers thing.
"Hold on." Isaac rose up on an elbow and looked down at Stiles. "Is that why you quit the lacrosse team? Because you powered up?"
The choice of wording startled a laugh out of him.
"Yeah, pretty much. That team really was a hotbed for supernatural players for a little while. It was like watching a train wreck. They never could keep themselves in check all of the time. So I decided, for once, that it was better to play it safe and remove myself from the equation before I had to really discover if I could keep my cool in the middle of a match. Of course, that would mean I'd have to put on a better showing during practice so Coach would actually let me play in the first place, so maybe it wouldn't have been so hard to avoid after all. Still. It's less stressful this way."
"That's such bullshit." Isaac flopped back down onto the mattress. "You could've put Whittemore in his place."
Stiles cringed.
"Yeah, been there done that. It just makes Jackson angrier, and an angry Jackson is a Jackson determined to get answers. Definitely don't need to be on his radar any more than I already am."
"That bad?" Isaac asked, then scoffed at his own questions. "Never mind. Dumb question. It's Jackson Whittemore, of course it was that bad."
There was a small part of Stiles that wanted to rise to Jackson's defence – that boy had a mountain of personal issues himself, after all. But that sort of internal angst wasn't something that you were meant to throw at other people left right and centre, and Jackson had never really stopped doing that, even after everything. He didn't need to play devil's advocate here.
Instead, he dropped the topic entirely.
"Hey. You won't tell anyone about all this will you?"
Isaac responded with vehement denial. "Hell no! If I start talking about shit like this then I'm the one who looks crazy. I don't need that on top of everything else."
Oh, to live in a world where that last sentence didn't exist.
"Don't worry. I'm fine with being the crazy one in this relationship."
"Aren't you just the crazy one full stop?"
Stiles turned his head lazily, staring at the side of Isaac's face and adopting a tone of offense. "Don't think I won't kick you out of this room. You know my mattress is better than yours. You should be thanking me instead."
Unfortunately for Stiles, Isaac was stretched out along the wall, so Stiles couldn't push him off the bed when he started mocking him. The guy picked his battles well.
oOoOo
"Does anyone else know?"
Stiles smacked his forehead into the steering wheel with a dull thud. At the very least, he supposed he should be grateful that if this was destined to be another in-car conversation Isaac had waited until they were home first.
"Know what?"
"You know. About your temporal…" Stiles glanced across at the passenger seat to see Isaac wiggling his fingers. "…Issues."
"Dude."
Isaac stared at him, unrepentant.
"Listen. It's bad enough trying to tell people about the supernatural when I have actual physical evidence for them to examine. Do you really think it would be worth the stress to go around trying to tell people that I'm not living in the right time period? I don't need to get laughed at or sent to Eichen House again, thanks."
The Eichen comment got him a raised eyebrow, but Stiles wasn't in the mood to elaborate. Would never be in the mood.
"Point taken," Isaac conceded. "It's kinda cool though."
"What is?"
"Being the only person in on such a massive secret. Might be even cooler if you actually told me how you got here."
"It's not like I did it on purpose."
"Yeah yeah. So you keep saying. Fine, keep your secrets."
oOoOo
There was no denying that Isaac's newfound knowledge had caused a shift in their dynamic.
Maybe there was a strange sense of security that came hand in hand with the knowledge that the world was stranger and more messed up than you realised. More likely, Isaac felt empowered by having stumbled into the position of Stiles' sole confidant re: his temporal displacement.
For the Isaac of old, Stiles would wager that it was through becoming a werewolf that he found his boundless confidence and sense of self-security. For the non-physically resilient human Isaac, perhaps knowledge would become his power base.
It was about time someone realised the true importance of information. All the better, Stiles supposed, if they were someone living beneath the same roof as himself.
All in all, it was as if some sort of barrier between the two of them had shifted. Stiles was leery of claiming it gone altogether – having walls wasn't inherently a bad thing; he might actually be more concerned if it seemed Isaac suddenly opened up to him 100% - but the difference was important.
Despite all of the things accumulating between them, Isaac had previously still been skittish about him in small ways. He was ashamed of the way he sometimes sought out Stiles' presence in the dead of night, for one.
(Isaac thought he was hiding that well, but Stiles had been watching for that sort of thing in order to figure out silent boundaries when Isaac wasn't willing to ask for them himself.)
Hand in hand with that shame was the shadow of doubt, of suspicion, in Isaac's eyes whenever he looked at Stiles. Constantly trying to unravel Stiles' motive, what he thought he was going to get out of helping Isaac, how this would benefit him. Stiles had accepted that scrutiny without comment, because yeah, he could totally understand how strange some of his actions might seem from someone else's perspective.
Isaac hadn't been unwilling to spend time with him, but he had been unwilling to commit to trusting Stiles, maintaining a distance between them whenever he wasn't feeling vulnerable enough to cave to the urge for comfort or understanding.
It was the atmosphere between them, Stiles supposed, that had changed the most.
A lot of the underlying tension surrounding them had faded away, and their interactions felt more genuine and less like they were fumbling around the edges of a minefield.
More than that, Erica didn't even need to drag Isaac around anymore. It was hard to tell whether Isaac had simply accepted his fate in that regard or if he had actively decided it was okay to hang out with them now, but either way it was a positive shift.
It was a good time for it too. Isaac needed more distractions from the business with his father.
