A/N

Hey guys! I'm back! To my awesome readers, I suppose I owe you all an apology for my absence. Real life hit and it kind of hit hard, and so I took a break. But I'm back now! I probably won't be updating weekly, but I'm back, and I have a new story for you! (In regards to my other story, 'When the Levee Breaks, there's a more detailed explanation on my profile but the short version is it will be altered and re-published sometime after November to fit into TW season six.) So, here's the deal with this story. This is the long awaited rewrite of TW season 3b, with Sam, Dean, and Stiles Winchester, complete with the nogitsune. Even though this is technically the sixth 'Stiles Winchester' story, it is a direct sequel to 'Blood on my Name.' If that doesn't sound familiar to you, please read it before this one. Actually, I would recommend re-reading the last chapter of 'Blood on my Name,' so the transition is more seamless. This story will cover and alter 3b, but the main focus will be the space between episode 18 and 19, the 60-hour or so time gap that Stiles goes missing in the show, and what happens after that. The stuff that happens during episodes, especially episodes 13-18, will be recapped, but the stuff not involving Stiles will be skated over or ignored, since this story, unlike previous ones, is so far exclusively from Stiles' point of view. Even the stuff involving Stiles that I choose not to elaborate on will be mentioned only quickly. Because of this I recommend rewatching 3b to avoid confusion (and cause it's awesome.)So, does that make sense? No? Excellent.

So, this chapter: This chapter starts off with a bit of a preview from the aforementioned 60-hour-disappearance time gap, then recaps 'Blood on my Name,' then goes into the two-week time gap I have created between the end of my story and episode 13. It then recaps and expands on episodes 13 and 14. Since this story integrates with the actual season, it takes time to write and get right. I'm going to take my time on this story, and hopefully by doing that, it will turn out really well. So, the updates probably won't be weekly, but they will exist. Thanks for reading this exhaustive authors note, and enjoy!

Ch. 1

End Over End

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Okay, fine. Stiles could get behind that. He'd seen it firsthand. Even from afar, it had been pretty hard to miss his brothers dragging themselves there, all with the guise of 'good intentions.' His brothers, yes, but never him.

Never him.

This, though, this was hell.

This was locked-in-your-own-body hell. And it wasn't like demon possession, where the victim was asleep for most of it, oh no. No, if only it were that easy. No, Stiles was awake. For all of it. The demon hadn't let him sleep before it had made itself known, it was unlikely to change that now. Stiles had been foolish to think otherwise. And he didn't just see it. He felt it, too. He felt everything. It wasn't his body killing people and playing these sick games, it was him, too.

This wasn't just hell. This was the-blood-is-on-your-hands-and-you-felt-yourself-wash-it-off hell. This was a nightmare from which there is no waking up, because the demon hadn't let him sleep in 48 fucking hours! Ever since the hospital!

And it had been the best intentions, too.

Stiles would like to say that it was fear and the urgency of the situation that moved him to drown himself in a pool of ice, but that's not the truth. He was calm the whole time. He was level headed. He was thinking clearly, clearer than the water that killed him. He had just wanted to save his dad, save Beacon Hills.

And here he was. In hell.

It really was like Bobby always said. "Family don't end with blood..." well, his blood is frozen and sluggish, his body is failing around him, his organs are screaming for sleep and his hands are acting of their own accord. And there's a fox who narrates the whole wonderful experience for him.

"Now, Stiles, now we're setting up a decoy trap in the woods so the real tripwire won't be noticed. I'm predicting my unlucky victim will be the coach but we'll have to see..."

Stiles tried to squeeze his eyes shut among the familiar forest landscape but his eyes acted of their own accord. The nemeton was a few yards off. He could feel it, down to his bones, and it made him want to cut all 206 of them out of his body.

His blood may be frozen, but it was Winchester blood, through and through. Stiles wanted to slap whoever would consider that a blessing. Winchesters never seem to be pinned down, but there is one place they are bound to end up eventually.

Hell.

And here we are.

But maybe Stiles is getting a little ahead of himself.

It goes like this.

Alexander died of a single gunshot wound at a spectacular sunset, and the next 24 hours were certainly strange. Stiles blew his cover, alienated his friends, unmasked his brothers to a pack of werewolves, somehow got on Chris Argent's good side, gained all of his friends back, and defeated a pack of demons. Frankly, it was exhausting. After that, and after he had settled affairs with Scott, his brothers, Allison, and whoever the hell else had a problem, after that, Stiles had gone to sleep. And then the weird dreams started. Dreams where he was at the nemeton with flashing lights all around him, and a branch reached out to wrap around his wrist and drag him down. Dreams where he felt something sneak over his shoulder, only when he turned around, nothing was there. And finally, the worst dream of them all. He and Scott were walking through the woods, a vivid imitation of what had happened hours earlier, and Stiles could have sworn on whatever pagan god you pleased that it was real. But he had to be sure. So he counted his fingers.

Eleven. Twelve.

And Stiles woke up screaming.

The day after Alexander, a sleep-denied Stiles left the house only to find Allison standing in front of him, skin pale, eyes gaunt, and unfocused. Even so, she tilted her head to the side and analyzed him with disturbing accuracy. Stiles winced as he felt all of his emotions rise to the surface and lay themselves bare, exposed for her to comb through. Instead of calling him out on his anxiety and worry and dread, however, Allison merely smiled softly, and the creases in her forehead abated slightly. She almost looked... Relieved.

"Stiles." she said softly in greeting, running a hand up and down her messenger bag in slight agitation.

"Allison." he replied. Despite their newly discovered common hobby, he and Allison hadn't talked much. Stiles suspected it had to do less with their relationship, and more with the fact that the both of them and Scott were probably dealing with weird side effects of the nemeton-sacrifice-thing. He certainly was, and Allison didn't exactly look great. But he said nothing of the sort, sensing that, like him, they each wanted to triumph over it alone. Instead, he asked, "want a ride to school?" and she nodded and accepted.

The two of them clamored into Stiles' jeep, and once settled, Allison took a deep breath and turned toward him. His eyes were on the road but out of the corner of his eye he could make out her expression of heartbreak and fear. "Stiles." she murmured. "You have to promise me something."

After that conversation, Stiles went to school, and Stiles told Scott about his dream, and carried on.

Two weeks passed since Alexander, three since the Darach, and in those two weeks, Stiles felt foreboding creep up on him. His bad dreams didn't go away, if anything, they got worse. His sleep was being haunted by images of Alexander's face melting off, of Stiles' own hands drenched in blood, of Scott, Lydia, Allison, Isaac, Derek being shot in the chest, with his own hand on the trigger. Of a faceless voice laughing in the background of his own head, taunting him just out of sight. Walking in the school barefoot at night, only to run into the nemeton, glaring lights aimed at his head as he screamed to wake up. The nemeton lurked around every corner in his dreams, and that was only the ones he knew were dreams.

Too often, Stiles would find himself in school, in class, or at home organizing his hunting gear without remembering how he got there, only to find himself screaming awake. It had felt so real, too. The lines were beginning to blur. He would doze off in class and wake up startled, only for Scott to assure him that he had been awake the whole time. Sometimes, his notebook would be covered in his own handwriting, telling himself to wake up.

The first time this happened was the Friday after Alexander. That Sunday, like he had promised, Stiles called his brothers. The conversation went a little something like this:

"Stiles." Dean answered, but his voice sounded flat. "Everything ok?"

"I'm... I'm not sure." Stiles began, and he winced upon hearing how shaky and weak his own voice sounded.

"Stiles, what's wrong?" Dean asked, alarmed. "There aren't any more demons, are there?"

"No, nothing like that. I..." Stiles took a deep breath. "I told you when you were here that I wasn't sleeping much. It's getting worse. And not only that, but I'm having horrible dreams. Dreams that feel so real, even when I scream myself awake, I'm not sure I'm out of them. And sometimes I'm not. It's been happening during the day, too."

"Stiles, I'm here for you, man." Dean said, and Stiles flinched, because that had been what Dean had said in his dream the previous night. Right before Dean had slit his throat. "But I got to be honest, maybe you should talk to your dad. Or a doctor. This sounds serious, but not supernatural."

"Dean, it started the day after we repowered the nemeton!" Stiles protested. "That is not a coincidence."

"Hey." Dean said soothingly. "I hear you. Look, you're worried, I understand, you're trying to make sense of this the only way you can. You're right, the timing is fishy. Look, talk to your dad, talk to Scott's mom, Sam and I will try to look into it after we deal with Cas."

"Cas?" Stiles asked. "What's wrong with Cas?"

"Turns out Cas was lying to us for months and wants to open purgatory with Crowley." Dean said nonchalantly, but Stiles could hear the hurt behind it. "But we'll deal with it. Don't worry about it, get some rest. As for the vivid dreams, the not knowing if you're awake or not? Dad taught me a trick, supposedly it also works if you're caught by a djinn. Count your fingers. In dreams, you have extra fingers. If you have ten fingers, you're awake."

"I think I already knew that..." Stiles mumbled, thinking back to the first bad dream, with Scott in the woods a week prior.

"Smartass." Dean grumbled fondly. "Well, try this on for size: you can't read in dreams."

"Really?" Stiles asked, for once surprised. Huh.

"Yes, really." Dean taunted. "Sam's visions being the remarkable exception."

Stiles frowned thoughtfully. "You know, I never really thought about it, but Sam's attention to detail in those is really kind of bizarre. But Dean, how do you know this? Why did John teach you to count your fingers?"

Dean was silent for a moment, and Stiles wondered if he had crossed a line. The silence over the phone was taut and heavy, and only released once Dean spoke again.

"Stiles... The things we hunt like to mess with our heads. It's helpful to know what is and isn't real, is all."

"Dean." Stiles said firmly. He didn't want to press, not now, but he could feel the truth lurking behind his brother's empty words. "Come on. Tell me the real reason."

"Really?" Dean asked, not unkindly, but not nicely, either. The pressure he was facing with Cas and Crowley was beginning to bleed through. "You really want to know the reason? Cause it's not going to make you feel better. Here's why I don't think your problem is supernatural, Stiles. The things we hunt like to mess with our heads and it works." Stiles blanched, but Dean couldn't see that over the phone, and he kept talking. "Let me take a wild guess. You're dreaming about hurting your friends. You dream about their bodies at your feet, your blood on their hands. That they're dead, and it's your fault. I bet most of those dreams take place in Derek's loft. I bet most of those dreams have you holding the Colt. Am I right, Stiles?"

"Y-yeah." Stiles said with surprise. "How'd you know?"

"How'd I know?" Dean asked incredulously, almost offended. "Because I go through the exact same thing! So does Sam! Because at night my head goes through a rotation of being back in Hell, watching Dad get possessed by Yellow Eyes, watching Sam tumble into the cage, and coming back to Beacon Hills for your funeral because I wasn't fast enough to save you!"

"Dean..." Stiles began, alarmed at the emotion rolling from Dean's voice. He hadn't been expecting this.

But Dean wasn't done. "Our whole life is a nightmare, Stiles!" he roared. "You think that's just going to go away when we're asleep? It sucks but that's what hunting does to you, and you find a way to deal. So yeah, when I see you ripped apart by a pack of wolves for the eleven millionth time, I count my fingers and am more than happy to wake up in a world where I can actually do something about the monsters." Dean stopped now, breathing heavily, and Stiles didn't dare say a word. "Look," Dean began again, softer now. "In the span of two weeks you died and trusted your very dangerous friends with a secret you had been repressing for years. Under duress, I might add. It's not going to go away like that. You're worried about the side effects of your freaky sacrifice, you're worried about what your friends think of you, you're worried about accidentally hurting them. Those feelings get transported into your dreams. There's nothing supernatural about it. But Stiles, the more you talk about it, the more you confront your fears about your new situation, the more it'll probably go away. And Sam or I are a phone call away."

"Dean... thank you." Stiles said softly, at a loss for any other words, beginning to feel hopeful.

"Anytime." Dean said. "Call me if anything changes. You're going to be fine, Stiles. Now go to sleep."

Against his brother's wishes, Stiles hit the books, searching for any creature dream-related. Pouring over his books, it took him about an hour to realize that the words on the pages weren't making any sense, weren't actually words at all, just a bunch of jumbled letters. Horrified, Stiles flipped through every page of the book, desperate for some of it to be clear, but every page was the same mumble of jumbled letters. Frantic, Stiles reached for his Calculus textbook, only to find the same horror. Paragraphs of explanations were alphabetic jambalaya, and derivatives and formulas were full of senseless symbols that did not even resemble numbers and variables. Even the graphs were wrong, lines twisted into unrecognizable, meaningless shapes. Stiles shut both books loudly, closing his eyes and leaning forward, trying to calm himself down by listening to his breathing. It wasn't working. Dean said you couldn't read in dreams. But he wasn't dreaming, was he? Was he?

The next morning, Monday, one week after Alexander, Stiles screamed himself awake and went to school, trying to subtly deal with the fact that words were slipping through his fingers. He dozed off in Art class and apologized to the teacher, only for her to assure him that he had been perfectly attentive. He ran his nightmares through his head, and began to notice things during the day. One, there was a new girl in his history class, who was pretty cute but obviously hiding something. It was a shame, Scott seemed to take an interest in her. Two, Scott was acting weird. He was hiding it well, but Stiles was a master at detecting. Scott's palms were weirdly red sometimes, like they had been hurriedly washed of blood, and dried blood was more and more frequently being caked under his fingernails. And every chance he got, he checked his reflection, as if making sure his eyes weren't glowing red. Three: Allison was acting weird, too. She was irritable, and twitchy, and her hands were shaking more often than not. Her eyes would occasionally dart around the room, looking for exits, like a trapped animal. And her pupils were blown wide, as if she were trying to see through the dark, not standing in California sunlight. She looked much worse for wear than when Stiles had taken her to school. Stiles noticed all of this on Monday and confirmed his suspicions on Tuesday. Whatever had happened to him, Scott, and Allison two weeks ago was beginning to affect them seriously, and it looked like both of Stiles' friends were suffering as much as he was. Maybe it was time to stop facing it alone.

Stiles ment to talk to them, he really did. But on Wednesday, he started losing time.

It was little things at first.. Stiles would be eating a sandwich in the kitchen, then standing in his bedroom five minutes later without any memory of walking up the stairs. Stiles would be suffering through his homework only to find himself seconds later reading one of the lore books Sam had given him, strange symbols doodled on the margin in his handwriting. Each instant of lost time was five minutes or less, but it built up enough over the short span of a few days that Stiles was beginning to grow worried. When he went to bed at night, he was afraid of tormenting nightmares, yes, but also the fear that his body might move of its own volition. He spent class the next day trying to read the same lore book he had found himself with, looking for clues, but drawing a blank at the swimming words. A familiar sense of dread was creeping in his gut, and he was meaning to talk to Scott about it, or his brothers...

...But Scott beat him to the punch. After suffering through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with little sleep, noticing his blackouts growing longer and more frequent, words being legible less and less often, Stiles called his brothers on Sunday and got a voicemail. All 27 times. The following day, that Monday, Lydia finally corralled him, Allison, and Scott together to confront their issues, but not before Stiles had a dream that his entire Econ class was speaking to him in sign language. After a brief and irritable discussion at lunch, it turned out Scott was afraid to turn, Allison was seeing apparitions of Kate, and Isaac was fairly certain they were all going crazy.

Isaac seemed to be, for once, the only sane one.

Then that Kira girl came over to their table, the one who was obviously hiding something, and started spouting information about Bardo, and while she was talking, everyone was subtly glancing at Stiles to see if this was true. When she walked away, they all leaned forward to discuss.

"She says we're going to die." Allison said with mortification.

"Stiles, does anything she said sound familiar?" Lydia implored.

Stiles frowned, his sluggish brain doing its best to ponder. "Everything Kira described has been happening to us," he began. "But I've got two brothers who were raised from the dead, and they've never experienced this. Then again, that was Judeo-Christian magic, not Druish magic. I don't think we can base our experiences off of Sam and Dean's. So yes, Kira could be right, and we could die. Again."

"And that part about Kate being a demon?" Allison asked.

Stiles shook his head. "The word you're looking for is vengeful spirit, but it doesn't actually matter. Kate is entirely in your imagination, just like my nightmares." But just to be sure, he counted his fingers. Ten, for now.

When he and Scott went to Deaton's later that day, Stiles' horror in finding out there was a door open in his mind was only quelled slightly by the anti-possession symbol inked into his chest. Stiles meant to call his brothers, or Bobby, and tell them that something was wrong with him and he didn't know how to fix it, had no freaking clue, he really did...

...But then his dad approached him about an old case, some family crashing into the woods on the night of a full moon eight years ago. And Stiles, desperate for some normalcy, desperate for something to focus on that wasn't nightmares of him murdering his friends, took the case. And he and Scott were once again going into the woods looking for a dead body, only now they were both a little worse for the wear. Stiles felt like an open wound, like the door ajar in his head or whatever the fuck was happening was an invitation for any one of the powerful enemies his family has made to come and seek revenge. But nothing happened. Until Malia the coyote appeared in the woods, and Scott chased after her. Left behind, Stiles searched the car wreck, looking for anything else of use, when suddenly he wasn't at the car wreck, he was crashing into Scott somewhere else in the woods. He had lost time again, only this time he had taken off running.

The thought chilled Stiles to the core. He was definitely awake during his blackouts, then. This was proof. Everything earlier could have been sleepwalking, even the writing in the notebook, but Scott had said Stiles was actively pursuing him, had tactfully looped around to meet up with him, had been shouting his name. He had to have been conscious to do that, and Stiles grew worried. If he could interact with other people while blacked out, could he accidentally hurt them?

His sleep that night was fitful and miserable, wracked with guilt and fear. The next morning, the hunt for Malia continued, as did the hope that Scott, Stiles, and Allison would snap out of it. He could see how worried Isaac and Lydia were, how they glanced at eachother with heavy concern when they thought he wasn't looking. Kira seemed worried too, especially after the panic attack he had in History and in spite of Malia attacking her at lunch, and Stiles found it nice of her. He even nudged Scott to go talk to her. Heck, she might be hiding things, but then again, so was he.

A fact he was reminded of brutally upon the reappearance of Ethan and Aiden. Ethan and Aiden, who didn't know that Stiles was a hunter, something he was grateful of. When they pounced on Scott in Derek's loft, beating him into submission, trying to get him to transform, Stiles had instinctively grabbed Lydia and backed into a corner, but he couldn't find it in himself to look away. Stiles watched, mesmerized, as Scott's resolve weakened, as his blood was spilt, running off of Derek's table and on to the floor, a river of rubies. It was almost beautiful.

He deserves it.

What? No. Stiles shook his head, clearing it, horrified that the thought had surfaced, wondering where it had come from. Scott didn't deserve this, no one deserved this... actually, this should probably be stopped.

"You help too much." Ethan told Aiden as he dragged back his brother's fist, and Stiles worried that he had helped too little, that he should have broken up the fight sooner.

By the time they were ready to hunt Malia, Stiles was frazzled and irritable and his brain was fried. The drive to the woods had been stressful due to not being able to read street signs, and the total number of hours he had slept since Sunday was probably less than 5. Allison's hands were shaky, Isaac and Lydia were laden with worry, Scott was afraid to do the one thing that would ensure their success, and at this point, Dean's voicemail inbox was full. Yeah, this was going to end well.

And Stiles was spot on. Lydia's foot got caught in the one trap Stiles knew nothing about, and for the first time in years, he felt truly useless. But then he heard Sam's voice in his head, a memory about his older brother explaining springs and gears, and, taking a chance, Stiles actually saved Lydia from getting her leg chopped off. And Allison made the shot. And Scott roared. And they saved Malia, and Stiles could read the rearview mirror.

And Stiles, giddy from the success, made a mistake. Convinced that the door in his mind was shut, convinced that all of his problems over the past two weeks were entirely his tortured brain and not something more sinister, desperate to believe that everything was finally over, Stiles made a very big mistake. He began to relax.

Which is of course when everything went wrong.