Derek is barely functioning as he stumbles against a stack of moldy boxes near the stairs, blinking sluggishly from the tacky blood covering his hands and shirt to the trio standing not five feet away from him. It's like being high, he thinks, mind slowing to a quiet hum in his skull and all the firing neurons in the world can't change it.
"Erica," he asks, tongue heavy in his mouth. He thinks he might have bitten it at some point, but he can't remember. His time in the chamber is a vague blur dancing just out of his line of sight, a whirring of monochrome colors and Stiles' cooing voice urging for him to stand, for him to hold— And it stops there, just dead ends without any sort of warning.
Nothing but the blood left behind and the remains of Kate Argent he'd found in a metal case, displayed like the statue Peter had loved above all the others.
"Stay where you are!" His thoughts jump back to the present, to the blonde woman aiming a pistol at him. His brows furrow and his hands come up in a gesture of peace on pure instinct rather than any sort of understanding. Can't they see he's unarmed? That there's something horribly wrong in his mind?
"What happened?" He tries to take an unsteady step forward, but Erica shouts again and the muscles in his legs lock into place. "I remember…. I…. Where's Stiles? Why isn't he with you?" Derek takes another few steps forward, more an ambitious shambling than anything.
"I said stay back!"
"But I don't—" Gunfire is shockingly loud in the basement, and Derek can feel the bullet as it grazes his ear and buries itself in the boxes behind him, papers pouring down like an avalanche of snow. He turns to look at them for a moment, thinking of the honeymoon in Bern and the way Stiles had smiled so beautifully in the winter sunlight. "Erica, please—"
The next bullet actually makes him stumble backwards half a foot, knocking the air right out of him. Erica looks terrified across the way, but her hands are steady, and the pistol remains even with his chest. And she fires again and again and again until the magazine is empty, and Derek has collapsed against those boxes, sending more paper sliding to the dirty floor.
The pain is bruising and there's part of his mind that's still functioning that's supremely proud of the sleek Kevlar he has on under his shirt, but the main part of him is just blank surprise. She'd shot him. She'd shot him fourteen goddamn times. He's a little proud of her if he's being completely honest.
Stiles waits where the shadows are thickest as Boyd and Lahey usher Erica up the stairs, each of them gripping one of her arms like they're afraid she'll crumble away into dust if they're not holding her steady. Like she's a kite and they're the line keeping her from floating away on a strong breeze.
His gaze focuses back on his husband, something like sadness pulling on his heart.
Stiles remembers how it felt to be in love, the way his stomach tied itself into knots whenever Derek smiled his way or how he felt like his legs were turning into Jell-O when Derek dropped down to one knee and held up the most gorgeous ring of white gold that Stiles had ever seen. Stiles remembers that and, sometimes, he misses those early days when everything was autumn sunshine and leaves crunching under sneakers.
Fourteen years later all he feels when he looks at Derek is the urge to stab him with a fork.
Instead of acting on the urge, however, Stiles creates walls around himself and watches Derek do the same. There are occasions when the pair get along, destroying a competitor or just wanting an orgasm or two in order to sleep through the night.
And now here they are, Derek slowly bleeding out on a pile of musty documents and Stiles set to inherit a billion in life insurance money and an entire fucking company. He and Cora can split that part of this whole mess, she can return to South America to save the starving puppies or whatever and Stiles can return to Bern and snow-capped mountains.
He moves out of the darkness and over to Derek at a sedate pace, taking his sweet time as he kneels down in front of his husband. The color has drained out of Derek's cheeks, making the black of his short beard look like a pool of ink against fresh paper. He's still warm under Stiles' fingers when he brushes them over the curve of a cheekbone, almost like he's still alive.
"I used to love you, you know," he says, a late confession. "I used to think you hung the moon and all the stars and all the galaxies. We could have parted as friends if you would have just agreed to a divorce." Stiles chuckles, a sound like the shuffling of paper. "Seems like we both cared about the money too much, huh? It always was the more attractive part about you."
"Is that a fact, Princess," Derek growls, a limp hand shooting up to grasp Stiles' wrist. The pain of it is nearly as shocking as Derek's revival, Stiles' mouth falling open in a choked off squawk.
"How the fu—"
"I'm Derek goddamn Hale!" He stands and jerks Stiles up with him, shoving him backwards against a cage. The pain, the violence, is jarring. Derek has never been this rough with him before, not even when Stiles had tried to murder him. It had been their little game and Stiles had won. He had the victory trophy in his hands just two seconds ago.
Stiles pushes away from the metal grating that's digging into his back, making a run for the stairs and getting a whole two feet before a strong hand grabs his neck and pins him back against the cage. The pressure is just enough to make breathing difficult and Derek's eyes seem to glow in the dim light.
"Did you really think I didn't keep tabs on everything you did, Stiles? I have every phone call, every text message you and Jackson ever sent saved on a flash drive just waiting to be handed over to the cops." Stiles kicks out but Derek is already moving, shoving Stiles to the unforgiving concrete.
"Der, please…."
"What is it, dear heart?" Stiles can't get up, not with Derek's foot planted between his shoulder blades. Stiles' face is sore where its pressed against the concrete, the skin red and irritated.
"What are you gonna do to me?" There's a dry chuckle above his head and then the foot is gone, replaced by gripping hands that flip him roughly onto his back so that Stiles can see Derek standing over him. There's a harsh gleam to his eyes, hard as marble and he glares down at Stiles. It's something he's never seen before and the dawning realization is unexpected; all this time, Derek had just been toying with him. He'd never actually wanted to kill Stiles, just torment him. But now, now Stiles is stuck in uncharted territory.
"I'm gonna do what I've already been accused of, Stiles. I'm gonna murder you." He hauls Stiles up by his hair, blunt nails digging punishingly into his scalp until there's blood moving in slow trails along the side of Stiles' head.
"Witnesses!"
"That's the beauty of it! You're already dead!" Stiles lets out a shout of pain as he's tossed against a wall that's halfway sealed off, the bricks crumbling under his weight and sending him back to the floor. Stiles groans low in his throat, eyes squeezed shut as pain bursts along his temple.
His hand moves blindly at his side, pausing a moment as it moves over something brittle. It takes him a good minute to force his eyes open, squinting down at the bed of leaves he's landed on top of. Why the fuck are there leaves in the basement?
"Stiles?" He doesn't respond, just rolls onto his back and brings the leaf up over his head to see it better. The light is dim here, reflecting off something metal on the walls. His gaze flicks to it, finding the rusted leg of a chair poking out from…. Fabric? The whole wall and the ceiling, all of it seems to be made up of mangled straightjackets and office parts and bricks, wheelchairs and busted desks and something that's black and moving.
The thing is sliding over the floor, writhing along the concrete like a particularly fat snake or fog that's not quite strong enough to roll in. It's gaining mass, though, and soon it's thick enough to hide the wet floor from Stiles' gaze. He stands on shaky legs and backs away from it, an old bolt of anxiety spearing through his chest.
Stiles has never been afraid before. He didn't even think he was capable of it until just now. It's like a vice around his spine, freezing him in place even as the dark vapor inches closer and closer, sizzling where it brushes his pants.
"Derek," he asks, voice hoarse," is this one of your tricks?"
"No." The shakiness to Derek's tone has Stiles glancing over at him, taking in the stiff set to his shoulders and the outstretched hand. It's like he's trying to use the Force in order to get Stiles out of that hidden room. Stiles wishes that was possible right about now. "Stiles, you need to get out of there."
"I can't." His back is literally against a wall, the bricks damp with years of muck, seeping through his shirt and making his skin prickle. The vapor is creeping, Stiles knows this, but it seems to move so fast compared to his uncooperating limbs.
"Stiles, move!" But he can't, gaze stuck on that void as it begins to roll over his bare feet. It burns and there's a scream stuck in his throat, but all Stiles can do is watch as the vapor climbs steadily upwards. "Stiles!"
Blistering pain makes Stiles tremble and his knees buckle, sending him falling to the ground with a breathless gasp. The impact seems to knock the scream loose and he lets it out in a bone-shaking howl that makes his throat ache and bleed. He's vaguely aware of another echoing cry, a multitude of them as the darkness slides over his shoulders. The screaming reaches a crescendo and then the vapor is crashing over his head, the noise dimming and dropping away until Stiles can only hear one voice, cold and frighteningly familiar.
Chaos is come again.
Erica is halfway to a nervous breakdown when she hears fists beating against the basement door and a voice screaming to be let in. Is it guilt that's morphing that voice into Derek's? Has this place driven her crazy enough that she's living in some Tell Tale Heart remake? But then Lahey's moving to the door and it's a confirmed fact that he's hearing it too.
"Is that Hale," Boyd asks. The pole he and Lahey have been trying to pry open a steel panel is gripped loosely in one of his hands, the flat tip of it scraped and abused.
"How's he still alive," Lahey asks, wrapping reluctant fingers around the doorknob. There's another vicious thumping on the door and the sound of splintering wood on the other side, urging Lahey into motion. He swings the door open to reveal the yawning mouth of the basement, and Stiles.
The man stands there in quiet for a long moment, the only color on him belonging to the red marks around his throat and the purple bruises under eyes that are totally devoid of life. It's like staring at a walking corpse. Stiles smirks, and then vapor is enveloping him like a Rorschach test made up of spilled oil, tendrils snaking out and yanking Lahey into the heart of the thing too quick for the man to even scream.
Yep, and they still don't compare to the Darkness. Unleash that and we're all screwed.
Lahey's words from earlier make all the sense in the world now, but they're too late to do him any good as the mass of writhing shadows is sucked back down into the basement. Derek lurches out into the hall seconds before the door is slammed shut, his shirt ripped at the collar and stained with filth.
"Run," he shrieks, sprinting for the stairs. "Have to get out!" Down the hall, the door is pulsing outwards, like a beating heart.
"I say we follow Hale," Erica says, barely more than a whisper. Boyd nods and grabs Erica's wrist, the pole left behind as they follow after Derek. It's like being stuck in a nightmare, the sensation of not being able to run fast enough, to get away from the monster she knows is waiting for her down in the dark.
"Come on! We need to move!" The architecture has changed again, halls shifted as the oil-slick creature snakes after them along the floor, spilling out over splintered wood and crumbling stone. Everything it touches goes up in smoke, burning away until it's consumed into the Darkness.
"What's going on?"
"The house is alive and we're all going to die!" Derek rounds a corner a little too sharply, nearly losing his balance before Boyd and Erica each grab onto his arm. Derek looks ready to explain in vivid detail, but the words seem to die on his tongue as crackling starts up down the hall. Back the way they came, the Darkness is seeping into the walls, the architecture crumbling in on itself until it forms a mouth, wooden beams gnashing together like teeth.
"Attic," Boyd asks, already pulling on Erica's wrist.
"Attic sounds good, yeah." Derek takes off down the hall again, sprinting ahead of them and totally missing the way the floor begins to explode outward what the actual fuck?
Boyd tightens his hold on her and doesn't let go, taking random turns until the pair of them finally—finally—make it back into the lobby. There's still glass scattered over the floor from the broken mural, a large shard sticking up out of the table where Stiles had nearly died hours ago.
God, how long have they been stuck in this house?
"Up here," Derek hollers, head poking out of the ceiling on the second-floor landing. "And you'd better hurry!" Boyd and Erica take the stairs two at a time, barely registering the fact that the howling wind has disappeared with a faint pop like a champagne cork.
"Erica, where are you going," a voice asks.
Erica pauses near the top of the staircase, daring a look over her shoulder. Kate is standing at the bottom of the stairs, more a black and white projection than anything. She flickers in an out of view, face slowly changing until suddenly it's Stiles that's looking up at them.
"You can run," he says, a low drawl that rolls off his tongue like molasses. He's smirking, but his eyes are dead, just black sockets in a gray face. A skeleton. "But you can't hide. I'll find you, Eri, and then I'll burn you just like the others."
"Fucking try it," Erica screams down at it. Rage swallows up her fear as the thing shifts again, Jackson grinning up at them. His teeth are too sharp and his eyes flicker first green and then black. Fear is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.
"Come on," Boyd urges, tugging her along the rest of the way up the stairs.
The ladder that leads up into the attic is a rickety thing that leaves a nasty splinter in Erica's palm, but that's nothing compared to the stitch in her side. Every breath she manages to suck in burns, like her lungs are overfull and not nearly full enough. It's an agony she's never felt before, not like the deep ache of her muscles after she's had a seizure.
Boyd pulls the ladder up after them once they get to solid ground again, the trap door slamming shut and the metal latch holding when she slides it home.
The attic itself is nothing to write home about, missing the grand archways and artfully styled theme of downstairs. The floor is simple planks of wood and the only clutter seems to be machinery that controls the metal plates; giant cogs and wheels and pulleys, one section raised just enough for a person to slip out of.
"Light," she says, smacking at Boyd's arm until he's following her gaze. "We got light! We got a way out!" It's held open by one of the pulleys, a wonderfully simple thing made up of rope and sheet of metal to serve as a counterweight. "Come on, we can make it."
"Wait, where's Derek?"
"A little busy at the moment," Derek yells. He's across the basement, twenty feet away from the opening and covered in dust. Between them, snaking between the planks and boxes, the Darkness is unfurling into the room. "I'm not gonna make it…." He looks resigned to the fact, a grim set to his mouth as he stands there and just watches as his death rolls through the floor like mist.
"Just run, man! C'mon!" Derek shakes his head, squaring his shoulders. "Come on, Eri. I'm getting you out." She hesitates for a moment, watches as Derek's sucked into the Darkness with a faint hiss of smoke. There's a moment where they can see an outline of Derek, a faint silhouette inside the void, and then there's nothing left behind but ash that's swept through the opening.
"Outside," Erica says, shoving and pulling until Boyd is kneeling down next to their escape route. Tendrils reach out, wrapping around the rope and starting to burn through it. Erica presses her shoulder into Boyd's back, pushing him outside right as the panel slides shut.
She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out through her nose, leaning her back against the cold metal. Boyd made it out alive and that's all that matters to her. As long as he's safe, she can face down this thing and have zero regrets. Erica can feel the corner of her mouth lift in a smile, a smug thing as Stiles appears in front of her again.
"Did you really think I'd let you get away that easily," he asks.
"Can we just skip the monologue, buddy?" His head tilts to the side, a vulpine movement of curiosity. She can practically see the questions behind his eyes, in the way he tilts his body forward just the slightest bit. It makes her feel powerful, the sway she has over this thing even if it's only infinitesimal.
"You're not scared?"
"I've made it a point not to let little bitches like you intimidate me."
"Hey, asshole," calls another voice, one Erica never thought she'd hear again. It gets Stiles' attention as well, the possessed body turning to find Lahey standing a few feet away. He's got the remains of the pulley clenched in his fists, glimmering in and out of focus. "I hope you're prepared to deal with a thousand years of bad Star Trek puns and sass 'cause you're stuck with me now."
"No!" Lahey yanks down on the rope and the plate slides upwards, a pair of strong arms wrapping around Erica's waist and yanking her outside seconds before the panel slides shut again.
Erica breathes in deep gulps of fresh air, smelling salt and water on the breeze from the beach below. Overhead, the sky has begun to turn blue with the pink and orange of sunrise melting away, the precursor to a warm afternoon. She and Boyd lay against each other on the ledge, two hundred feet in the air and unable to muster a single fuck about anything.
When the sun is high in the sky and stratus clouds are floating lazily in front of it, a car pulls up in the driveway. After that, it takes about an hour for the fire department to arrive and another hour on top of that for Erica and Boyd to be on actual ground again, Erica's cheeks red and her lips chapped.
The police come after that, Erica and Boyd doing their best to give out statements that won't get them locked away in a mental institution. They've had enough of those for two lifetimes, thanks very much. After it's all done, when they're just about ready to get in a taxi and head back to Beacon Hills, something poking out of the sand catches Erica's attention.
"What's that," Boyd asks. He's got the door of the taxi opened and is waiting for her to climb in first. Erica shrugs, unsure at first until she opens the envelop and pulls out five bank drafts with Derek Hale's signature on the dotted line.
"Well," she says, waving the drafts with a grin. "At least we don't have to worry about cab fare for a while."
Five Years Later
The house they end up buying is nothing special, a fixer-upper with two-stories and no basement. There's four bedrooms in all, two baths, and a spacious backyard for the twins to play lacrosse in. It's down the street from Boyd's parents and three blocks from Erica's mom, a perfect location with a flowerbed out front and a paved walkway.
Erica's in the kitchen when she hears footsteps coming her way, and she doesn't even flinch when she feels cold fingers on her shoulder. It's winter now, after all, and those fingers belong to Boyd, not an age-old creature with an ax to grind. He's grinning when she turns to look at him, the twins standing in the doorway.
Aiden's coat seems to be wriggling, so he's either smuggling something or he's learned a new trick to communicate that he's in urgent need of spaghetti. Honestly, it could go either way with that kid, and she's torn on whether she should toss him a piece of garlic bread or not.
"So," Boyd says, shuffling his feet. "The boys and I were helping out at the vet earlier, like we do every Tuesday."
"Uh-huh," Erica nods. It was a bonding experience for the boys, no one can hang onto anger when they're handling small animals. It's science.
"And this puppy was brought in from an abusive home." And, goddammit, she can already see where this is going. They've talked about having a baby but decided it would cost too much if they want to save up a nice amount for the twins' college funds. Ethan's suggestion was an animal of some sort, something that won't take up as much space or fuck up their sleep schedules.
"Please tell me you didn't pay for a damn dog."
"We didn't pay for the dog."
"I smuggled it out when Deaton wasn't looking," Aiden says succinctly. He looks proud about it too and Erica should probably think up some reasons why stealing animals is bad, but Deaton's an asshole. She'll let it slide this one time, but she's going to make the little shit wash the supper dishes for a week as revenge. "It's a chihuahua." He brings the little guy out of his jacket, brown with huge eyes and…. Is the dog fucking smiling at her?
"We named him Scott," Ethan adds.
Later that night, once everyone's in their pajamas and relaxing in the living room, Erica smiles as she takes in her family. The twins have piled on the couch near the fireplace, Scott snuggled between them and soaking up their combined warmth; Boyd is sitting in the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him as their favorite show comes to a close with the final monologue. It's perfect, like a storybook ending, and Erica wouldn't change it for anything.
"Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And those who walk there, walk together…."