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Four – Burning Questions
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For the second time that summer, Stiles finds himself trying to believe he's less creepy than he feels.
He slips out of the police cruiser, shrugging awkwardly at his dad. "I'll be fine," he says.
"I'll be here," his father replies, though from the anxious look on his face, Stiles thinks he probably wants to say something else. Stiles nods and shuts the door.
It's really weird, Stiles thinks, having his dad come with him like this. He'd never imagined that his father might not only agree with Stiles's extracurricular activities, but also support them...sort of. There had been something a little like regret on his father's face, though, or maybe reluctance. From the overbearing coaching he gave Stiles on what to ask and how to ask it, Stiles thinks his dad's first choice is probably not to let him walk up to Myers alone.
It doesn't matter, though. Stiles is good with questions. And he has his trusty bat to back him up, which probably makes his dad feel better, anyway.
He rounds the corner, walks half a block, and strides up to Garrison Myers' house. As he takes the steps up to the porch, he focuses his thoughts intently, peering at the dry cracks and chipped blue paint, about in the place where Myers's face will appear in a second. He rings the doorbell, hoping the general noonday glow will make his own shimmer less conspicuous.
The door swings open. Myers looks just like his picture in the database: lightly greying hair, a small mouth, bushy eyebrows. Stiles feels his powers take hold in the way Myers gapes and won't look away.
"Hello," he says pleasantly. "Can I come in?"
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"I don't know. I don't know why," Myers pleads again. "I'm so sorry." He stands in the middle of the squalid floor, dazed from the heat and a little glassy-eyed.
In the additional research Stiles has done since checking Myers out in the police database, he found that Myers' wife left him some time ago, as Peter had suggested. Probably around the time all that fraud stuff had come out. She'd taken their kids with her.
Stiles wonders if that was before or after Myers let the house go to shit. He feels like he's swimming in filth. Beer cans litter the kitchen floor, and the countertops are piled with plastic bags, takeout containers, and dirty dishes. There are empty cigarette cartons piled on the coffee table, and the smell of something dead or rotting makes Stiles's eyes water. The heat isn't really helping, either, just fermenting the toxic odor.
It's almost enough to make Stiles feel sorry for him. Except that Myers is almost definitely implicated in his mother's death.
Instead, Stiles is burning all over, almost consumed by frustration. "You have to know something. People don't just get phone calls in the middle of the night asking for you to set up something like that."
"I did," the man insisted. "I got them all the time—the three of us were working together, we made a name for ourselves all over the state if you knew where to look. Still get calls sometimes." Stiles's fury rises, and Myers adds timidly, "I haven't taken any. Reddick and Unger, maybe, but I haven't since that night." And again, expression oddly pleading for someone so far under: "I'm so sorry."
"Stop apologizing. Fuck." Stiles groans. The man is sweating, even swaying a little. Stiles rests the bat against the wall, and then he carefully picks his way across the disgusting floor to grab a glass from an open cabinet. He fills it with tap water and hands it to the man. "Sit down. Jesus."
"It was a woman's voice," Myers adds slowly, unsolicited, after he's taken a long drink. "I never met her or got a name, it was all under the table. But she paid us a crazy amount of money, more than we got for the usual...stuff. And half up front. For us, it was too good to pass up."
Stiles waits a beat for him to say more, but it seems like that's all there is.
"I'm so sorry," the man says stupidly. His eyes aren't glassy, Stiles realizes. He's about to start crying. "I'm so sorry."
"Ok. Yeah. Look, anything about the voice? Young, old, background noises?"
"I don't know—not elderly or anything, and not a kid or teenager. Just a woman. I don't remember hearing anything in the background. And she was all business, no side discussion."
Stiles runs a hand through his hair and tries to tone down the heat. "You get this call. Unger and Reddick do the deed, you cover it up. Did you know? That it was...that there were people in the house?"
"That part wasn't on me, I swear. She set it up with them, she told them where and when," the man says desperately.
Stiles weighs this carefully. "Okay. And after that, you mark it down as an accident, she pays the other half. And then what?"
"That's it. That's the end, all I know."
Stiles nods. "Does the name Claudia Stilinski mean anything to you?"
Through his stupor, the man blinks slowly. "Stilinski...like the Sheriff? No. Is she the one who called?"
It's not feigned, Stiles can tell. He isn't sure whether he's disappointed or not, finding that this man has no idea who his mother was. The connection between her and the Hale house fire is still tenuous, then, without anything to really link them.
"You're sure you never had any further contact?" he asks, frustrated. "You don't know anything else?"
"No," Myers says quietly. "Are you going to kill me?"
A part of Stiles wishes he was. "No. As long as you keep this to yourself—I'll know about it if you don't." The man's focus is solemn, studious. His eyes are very, very blue. "And if you ever do anything like this again, I'll make you wish you were dead."
Myers sits back a little in his seat. "Don't worry," he says miserably. "I already do."
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"Dead end," Stiles announces wearily the instant he clambers back into the car. He shoves his bat between the seat and the console, mostly to make himself busy: he almost can't take the concern in his dad's face. "Dude, I'm fine, everything's fine. I'm bitter, not injured."
"Don't call me 'dude.' And don't give me that. It takes something out of you, doesn't it?"
"No more than lacrosse practice," Stiles protests. Truth is, he was too distracted to feel the fatigue, but now it washes over him all at once, along with a cold chill. He shivers as he buckles his seat belt, and his dad glances around nonchalantly before pulling out into the street. No one's looking, though. No one's suspicious, not in broad daylight, and not in a middle-class neighborhood in boring Beacon Hills.
Stiles recounts his conversation with Myers, the man's lifeless expression, the obvious fact that he has no idea who Claudia Stilinski was.
His dad doesn't say something right away, probably just as disappointed as Stiles is. When he finally speaks, Stiles isn't surprised to find him trying for the optimistic route, probably to make them both feel better. "It's not nothing," he says at last, taking them out onto the main road toward the center of the city. "The person who set this up was a woman. She gave more information to Unger and Reddick. It's a start, Stiles."
"Yeah, I know. It's just…"
"We were hoping for more."
"I was hoping it would bust this case wide open," Stiles exclaims, flailing his arms in a way guaranteed to make his dad crack a smile.
"Welcome to police work," his dad chuckles. "Slow, steady, and sometimes painful."
"Peter needs to know. About the woman calling, I mean."
His dad doesn't say anything for a while, and when Stiles glances at him, he's making the face he sometimes makes when he's going to say something Stiles won't like and doesn't know how to word it. "I don't know if I like you sharing information like this with someone like Peter Hale."
"I don't know if I like me sharing it with someone like Peter Hale," Stiles admits. "But if we're going off the deep end, we might as well go all the way. Peter's got...whatever supernatural connections he's got. And we might need them, Dad. If it's something beyond like, werewolves and me that did this to her, we have absolutely zero knowledge on how to deal. And besides, information goes both ways: if he finds out something, we want him to tell us."
His dad sighs. "I thought you said you can't lie to a werewolf, anyway," he says. "I thought they were like you."
Stiles hums. "Yeah, kinda. Tell me I'm not allowed to tell him anything except the stuff about the woman on the phone. Then I'll tell him that's what you told me."
His dad tilts his head, trying to figure out Stiles's game. He dutifully repeats the phrase. "Their, uh, lie detectors are that basic?"
"Pretty sure, yeah."
"Hmm. Hey, Stiles? Don't...don't tell them what you are. It just sounds like you're starting to trust them. And you're not wrong, if there's more supernatural stuff out there we need to deal with, it'll help to have them to back you up. But I want you to stay safe. And give it time. I want you to be sure."
"I don't—trust them," Stiles protests, but he realizes as he's saying it that it's not the whole answer. His dad glances at him knowingly. "Okay, I don't know. But I definitely wasn't gonna tell them anything. I haven't even told Scott, no way am I telling the Hales."
"Scott doesn't know yet?" the sheriff asks, surprised. Then he backtracks, seeing the guilt that's probably plastered all over Stiles's face. "I just figured, now that he's a werewolf and all, you probably told him."
"Well...no. I mean, he was going through a lot, and my powers, uh...I don't know. I didn't want to drag him into this."
His dad opens his mouth to talk, but his cell phone buzzes. At the next red light, he glances at the message.
"This has been fun family bonding time," Stiles remarks, glancing at his own phone to shoot off a text. His dad sighs. "Scott's at the Hales' place. Drop me off?"
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Stiles gets weird looks when he shows up at the Hale house, his unsmiling father in the driver's seat of the cruiser. It's fortunate that Laura has a hard rule against wolfing out anywhere in sight of the dirt road and driveway, although no one knows they don't need to bother with that for his dad's sake at this point.
"Stilinski, you can't just bring random humans here," Jackson protests. As if he wasn't human himself once. Training is winding down, and he and Derek are watching Laura shout at the other betas across the field. "It's not exactly the place for them. Jesus."
Stiles catches himself before he says something stupid like I'm a human, and instead throws his arms open. "Can't help what I am, dude," he exclaims.
"I, for one, remember a moment in time when fully a third of the pack was human," Peter says mildly. Stiles hadn't seen him at first: he's under the shaded porch, perched on an aged wicker chair.
Jackson blanches a little at the realization that he'd accidentally insulted the family of a pretty unstable man, and turns back to spectating. Stiles turns as well to wave at Scott, who looks surprisingly stubborn in the face of Laura's criticism. Scott grins and waves back. Laura turns to scowl at the interruption, but Stiles pretends not to see.
"Got a sec?" he asks Peter, muffling a yawn.
"For a valued human pack member, I have more than a sec."
"Laying it on thick," Stiles replies in amusement, glancing back to see that Jackson's ears are still pink.
"I don't appreciate intolerance among the pack," Peter replies easily, leading him inside.
"A surprisingly sunshine and rainbows philosophy," Stiles returns. "Coming from you, anyway. Okay. I told my dad," he adds as soon as the door to Peter's office closes.
"Which I believe is exactly what we agreed we wouldn't do."
"Yeah. But Dad and I can take care of ourselves," he says firmly. "And...he wasn't looking into mom's death so much at first, and I wasn't going to bring it up without any evidence. But now that there's a lead, I had to say something. Wouldn't you want to know, if it was you? Even if it might get you hurt?"
Peter doesn't answer this, but he sighs. "Your decision," he says at last. "Well. What's the update, then?"
"He said I'm not allowed to tell you much. Couple things: he ran checks on the Argents, like, all of them, but they're squeaky clean. Which you probably expected. The other thing is that Myers got a call from a woman to set the whole thing up. She was all business, and he doesn't know much because he was only in on the payout and insurance deal, but she definitely also called Unger and Reddick with more information. That's all I've got."
Peter is completely still. His eyes are oddly wide, like a cat watching an insect on the windowsill. "And how did you find this information?" he asks.
"That's all I've got," Stiles repeats. "Dad says that's all I'm allowed to dish out."
"Hm," Peter considers. "Is Myers under arrest?"
Stiles shifts uncomfortably. "Not exactly."
"Interesting. So this wasn't official business, then. Obviously the smartest thing to do at this point is to keep things quiet, so we can flush out the brains behind all of this, but still...interesting that the Sheriff would go down avenues that are less public."
"It's not just anyone who died, for us. Don't pretend you wouldn't do the same."
Peter holds his hands up, smirking. "I'm also not the sheriff. Just trying to figure the two of you out, Stiles. A mystery in and of itself. At any rate," he adds, "a woman's voice. I wonder...if I were to provide a voice recording, do you think your father could have Myers listen to see if he could positively identify it?"
Stiles shrugs. "Can't see why not. It's been years, but I guess he could at least tell us if he thinks there's even a chance it's the same voice. But...whose voice recording? Do you know something?"
"I know nothing. But I have many theories." Peter climbs to his feet and opens the office door. Bewildered, Stiles follows him back downstairs to the living room. Not all of the pack is gathered just yet, but Erica and Lydia are chatting in the doorway, with Scott and Isaac fighting over the remote on the sofa.
"Scott," Peter says pleasantly. Scott, surprised by his sudden arrival, promptly loses the battle. Isaac changes the channel. "How is your girlfriend these days?"
Lydia and Erica grow quiet upon observing this, exchanging looks almost as baffled as Scott's. It doesn't really help that Peter's grin shows too many teeth.
"She—uh, fine?"
"Healthy and happy? Any news?"
Scott glances between Peter and Stiles, who takes pity on his friend. "If I can interpret for a sec," he begins. "Peter is really wondering a more specific question I'm sure he's going to ask you now instead of continuing to act creepy and borderline threatening."
"Not quite as fun, Stiles, but thank you," Peter sighs. "Specifically, if you know the next time her aunt will be visiting?"
"Um, I think so? Yeah. Either she is or she's supposed to be here soon. Allison said her parents are being real weird about it."
"Hm," Peter murmurs. He shoots an intense look at Stiles, sighing upon realizing Stiles is struggling to interpret it. "Possibly she'll be doing damage control. Which means she's heard something. Which means we'll need to be more careful. Wonderful."
"Wonderful?" Scott says suspiciously. "Aren't these the people you guys have been on my back about since day one?"
"And fortunately your reckless stubbornness might pay off for the entire pack. So I'll need you to do me a favor."
Scott looks at Stiles, who shrugs helplessly. It seems to be enough for Scott, though.
"Okay," Scott says finally. "Tell me what you need."
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"Heading out already?" Derek asks, and Stiles jumps a foot in the air. The room is dark enough that he'd thought Derek was sleeping like the others: Isaac and Boyd are splayed across the carpet in front of the TV, Erica having claimed the sofa as her own. They'd been binging episodes of The Walking Dead—which is what had originally pulled Stiles in to sit and watch—but he must have fallen asleep around when Shane died the second time.
"You guys definitely do that on purpose," Stiles hisses, trying to get his thumping heart to chill. He can't really see Derek's face, and he doesn't have those werewolf-y senses or whatever, but he can definitely make out some lingering amusement.
"If you didn't spaz so hard, we wouldn't." He sits in the armchair by the window, but he definitely hadn't been there a while ago when Stiles fell asleep.
"Anyway," Stiles mutters mulishly, hooking his thumbs into his pockets, "I wouldn't say 'already,' it's like one in the morning."
"For pack, it's 'already.' You know you could stay here, right? You're always talking about how empty your house is. Laura doesn't care."
There are so many things going on in that sentence that Stiles doesn't know where to start, but mostly it makes him wonder if he's complaining about his dad more than he realizes. And it's true that it's been...a weirdly nice night. Surprisingly so, considering that Stiles normally would have left ages ago with Scott, who, again, is basically Stiles's only reason for sticking it out in this place. Scott had left to meet with Allison for their date, still dubious about Peter's instructions to subtly record her aunt's voice with his phone at the first opportunity.
Erica, who reveals herself to be more and more cool every time she opens her mouth, proposed a series binge, and Stiles had basically forgotten to head out. It had been nice, actually, watching other peoples' lives go to shit for a change, debating Erica on apocalyptic strategies and topics that have zero bearing on anything in his life.
"I don't know," he says at last, a little uncertain. "I should really get home."
Derek grunts, shifting out of the chair. "Come on," he says, walking toward the door.
"What?"
"I'll drive you. Your Jeep's at your house. Your dad brought you here, remember?"
"Oh—shit. Right. Uh, you don't have to—"
"Come on, Stiles."
The inside of the Camaro turns out to be just what you'd expect from the outside: smooth and sleek, with barely a hint that a human has ever touched it. After a few minutes, Stiles breaks the silence. "Tell me the truth, you got this car because it looks like a leather jacket feels, didn't you?"
Derek doesn't dignify this with a response.
"You didn't have to drive me. I guess it would've been easier if I'd stayed."
"You don't want to."
"No, I don't." Stiles wonders what Derek hears when he says this, whether his heartbeat ticks up just a little. He isn't sure himself, these days.
"Why not?"
"I don't know."
Derek rolls his eyes. After a few more minutes, he breaks the silence again. "Laura and I went a long time without rebuilding the house," he says at last. "Peter was...like, in and out, never really around for long, and we didn't really know what we were doing. We have the money, but we just thought maybe it didn't make sense, rebuilding. It felt like we were changing something that...I don't know." He pauses. "But eventually, we realized we were always at the house, in the woods, never at the apartment we were renting while we figured our shit out."
This time, Derek's quiet for a long time. Stiles eventually wonders if that's all there is to it. "So you rebuilt," he prompts.
"Sometimes, it felt better," Derek says at last. "Being in the place where our old pack was, even if it wasn't there anymore. Took me a while figuring that out. Like, before we could figure out our shit, we had to just…"
"Stay where your family was," Stiles finishes, realizing what Derek's trying to say. "Yeah, I guess I'm...it doesn't make sense, but I…"
"It makes sense. It's where your mom was. No one can change that, but...if you ever need to get out of your own head, that's what the pack's here for."
"Is that why Laura bit them?" Stiles counters. "To—" he realizes he's about to insinuate that Laura made new betas to replace her pack, which isn't what he thinks. Not anymore, at least. He backtracks. "To help you guys against the Argents, or anyone else?"
"Is that really what you think?" Derek asks coolly.
"I don't know! I don't know what to think. I've never asked because until recently I thought you guys were a necessary evil we needed so Scott wouldn't go feral, and I'm pretty sure you guys either hated me, in Laura's case, or just tolerated me as Scott's tag-along friend. I'm still on the fence about that one."
Derek sighs. "It's not like that. We didn't know you guys. Laura didn't pick either of you, so it was all unexpected. No one hates you...and yeah, it seems weird if you don't know pack dynamics, but packs are usually big, like seven to fifteen on average. Laura and I decided to offer the bite to people we thought needed it, and who'd fit in with us. And also Jackson," he adds.
Stiles pauses. "Was that a joke?"
"Technically he asked for the bite, so Laura didn't offer it first," Derek says, probably knowing he's dodging the question if his grin's anything to go by. "You and Peter found something."
Stiles tilts his head at the sudden topic shift. "Yeah. Or not exactly, but...maybe a lead? I don't know." He sighs. "It doesn't feel like much, but Peter thinks we can maybe connect Kate Argent, Allison's aunt, to someone who's admitted involvement in the arson."
Derek swears quietly under his breath. "I was hoping it wasn't the Argents," he admits. "I've never met them in person, but I remember my mom telling us to stay away from them—they're real pieces of work."
"That's what Peter says, too."
At this, Derek looks at Stiles, just for a second or two, and then back at the road. "Hey Stiles?" he says, "Look out for Peter. Look out for yourself, too, but…" he sighs. "I don't know what I'm asking, but he really needs this. And he talks to you more than anyone, which is good. He's been hanging on his own for a while."
Stiles absorbs this information as they pull into his subdivision, the streetlights bathing the street in gold. It's just before two, and Stiles can feel sleep tugging at him the closer he gets to his own bed.
"So am I really pack?" Stiles blurts suddenly, surprising even himself. "I mean, I'm not a werewolf. And Laura's always kind of insinuated...but then, you and Peter seem to act like I am. I don't know."
"Both. Neither." Derek says slowly, just as they pull in front of Stiles's house. "It depends."
"Depends on what?"
"On whether you want to be."
There's nothing Stiles can say to that, because he doesn't know the answer. Instead, he slides out of the car and toward his home.
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Stiles hates answering the door at the best of times, but a knock at the door at three in the morning is even worse. Nothing good can possibly come at this hour.
He'd been nursing a quickly cooling cup of tea after Derek dropped him off, somehow wide awake and anxious. But now, he stands and creeps to the door.
He recognizes the dark-haired woman from the police office; her cruiser sits in the street behind her. Stiles opens the door, his heart thudding in his chest. "Deputy Vargas," he says quickly. "Is everything ok? Is my dad…?"
The woman swallows, and the look she gives him is reluctant, pitying. "He's still alive," she says quickly, wringing her hands. "But there's been an incident, and...maybe it's better if I come in."
They sit together in the living room, Stiles's tea abandoned on the coffee table. He distantly thinks that probably he's supposed to offer her something to drink, but his mind is in a haze. "What happened to him?"
"Actually, this isn't about him," Vargas says. "This is about you." Before he can work out what she means by this, she slowly slips her Glock from its holster, clicking off the safety and pulling back the slide to chamber a round. She rests the gun sideways on her knee, still pointing it in his direction. With great effort, he pulls his eyes from the gun barrel to her face.
"What the actual fuck."
"You visited Myers."
"Is that illegal? Also, what the fuck. Also, how could you know that?"
"Camera installed outside his house."
Stiles's eyes bug out. "You're watching him on camera?"
"Not until recently. Not until I realized you'd used the office computer to access his file, along with Reddick and Unger."
It's taking his brain too long to catch up with this, like he's wading through tar. He takes a deep breath and holds it, then lets it go. Vargas is still staring at him intently, having dropped the pitying expression as soon as she'd pulled her gun. "My dad isn't hurt."
"No," she says. "Not yet."
"He has nothing to do with this."
Vargas shrugs.
No. What? Stiles has to think. He has to think. He's not a human, though he uses his powers so infrequently that it takes him a moment to remember it. He pulls them out now, a surge of heat. He's not sure he can manage to capture her gaze like he normally does—his thoughts are spilling out so rapidly that he can't force himself into the calm, forceful frame of mind just yet—but he'll try. She hasn't killed him yet, which means she might not know how much he knows. Or...
"You're here because you want to find out if anyone else knows," he guesses. Vargas says nothing, and Stiles shakes his head, realizing he has to get on top of this and ask her a question. He steadies himself, trying to calm his nerves—is he on fire? He might be on fire. "Why are you here?"
"I need some answers," she answers, frowning as she wipes sweat from her brow. "What does your father know? And why did you get out of Derek Hale's car earlier?"
"My dad doesn't know anything. Are you watching me?"
She shrugs again. "Camera on your house, too. Can't be too careful." Her gaze is watchful now, curious.
"You can't hurt my dad," he says, voice cracking a little. He shakes his head, the fire in his chest building until he can throw out another question. "Are you going to hurt my dad?"
Vargas pulls at the collar of her white button-up. "I'm not going to, Stiles. I just need you to tell me what you know."
She's lying. He wouldn't need to be a poludnica to know.
This isn't working. He can't focus, can barely funnel his magic the way he needs to. His mind is moving too fast to concentrate. A thought occurs to him. "Myers said a woman called him on the phone, back when the Hale house burned. Was that you?"
Vargas's smile turns into a smirk. "Not me. I wonder if you know who it was yet."
"Was it Kate Argent?"
She blinks in surprise, and that's when Stiles takes his chance. He lunges over and grabs her hand, the one holding the gun, twisting it aside and letting it sear. She screams, and the gun gives a loud crack, but the bullet goes just past his leg.
And then they're fighting for control of the gun, all elbows and sharp edges. Stiles is burning, Vargas is shrieking. They spill onto the floor. Not for nothing is Vargas a police officer; he may have a hand on one wrist, but that leaves her a fist and two legs to pummel him hard. Trying to recover from a punch to the face, Stiles burns any inch of skin he can get a hand on, his right hand still forcing the gun away from his core.
"What are you, what are you?" Vargas screams, her face red. At last, he hurts her hand enough that she has to let go of the gun, but in doing so she somehow manages to knock it away from them both, and it skitters across the floor and into the low bookshelf on the far wall.
Stiles finds himself on top of Vargas, whose eyes are watery and filled with fear, and it's enough to make him hesitate. There's no way to quickly bring her under his spell again now that they've broken eye contact, but he needs to subdue her fast.
Something glints in Vargas's hand, and Stiles has only a split second to flinch out of the way of the knife, which catches him in the side. Pain shoots through him. She grabs his hair and rams his head into the coffee table, hard enough that he can feel his thoughts flicker, like a television going black in a moment of interference. He wrenches out of her way, feeling the knife sweep past the air beside his chest, and then he flings up his arm to block another blow.
The blade cuts a gash in his wrist but doesn't catch. His other hand finds its way onto her throat. He's never used his magic like this, never, but he suddenly knows what to do: he's burning white hot, not sure if he imagines the blinding light in the room. He can see nothing for several beats; all he knows is fire and rage and fear.
Vargas is gagging, feeble, the knife forgotten in her hand, but she's somehow shouting his name—but no. It's not her voice.
It's his dad's. "Stiles!" his father shouts. For a second, Stiles can't even remember where he is, not in this blinding white place with his father's worried face before him, a woman writhing on the floor below. A knife glinting, a fire burning. His father has his gun out, aimed at Vargas's head. With his boot, he knocks the forgotten blade out of the way. "Stiles, it's ok. Stop this—you can stop this."
Stiles doesn't come back to himself for several more breaths. The light fades, and it's just Stiles in his own living room, Vargas sobbing in a heap on the floor. Her face is blotchy and red, her eyes swollen, her skin gleaming with sweat. "Dad?" he croaks.
His father takes that as a signal, quickly rolling Vargas over and whipping out his handcuffs to lock her hands behind her back. Then, he holsters his gun and attacks Stiles with a hug that makes him yelp in pain. His dad pulls back instantly. "You're hurt, where did she…?" He traces the line of Stiles's jaw with his thumb, looks at his temple, which must be starting to bruise. He gently pushes Stiles away by the shoulder and swears at the sight of blood on his left side.
"Don't think she got it in me," Stiles slurs as his dad pulls up his shirt. "Just the side of it."
His dad lets out a shaky breath and pushes Stiles to sit down on the coffee table. "If I hadn't finished up early…" He wraps his hand around the back of Stiles' neck, which will have to do in place of a hug. "Why the hell would she be here? Tell me what happened. Jesus, Stiles."
Stiles gives him the story. "She's involved with the Hale stuff, I don't know how," he finishes dully. "What are we going to say? About her…"
They look down at the burned woman, who's now passed out on the rug. The red marks on her neck and arms look strange, spastic, but some of them clearly look like handprints. Her clothes are burned as well, and she's overheated for sure.
"You let me deal with that part," the Sheriff says firmly, his face furious. "I'll bring her in, they'll have to give her medical attention tonight, and in the morning...we'll find out what else she knows. As for you," he adds slowly, turning to Stiles, "I'd feel better if you didn't get medical attention tonight."
Stiles looks at him funny. "I'd feel better if I got medical attention."
"That's not what I mean. I'm...going to call Melissa. I don't know what's going on, Stiles, I don't understand this, but this is going farther than even I thought, and I can't lose you. When I came in and you were…" he pulls Stiles in for another hug, this one much more gentle. "Someone's trying to hurt you, and I can't lose you. If I have to take care of this, I want you to here with Melissa and Scott, or…" he trails off, pulling away.
"Or what?" Stiles asks, not understanding the look on his dad's face.
"I know all the stuff you said about the Hales...but if you can stay with them while I'm processing her arrest, that would make me feel about ten times better."
At this, Stiles can't help but let out a laugh. He's shivering a little.
"Stiles?" his dad asks, concerned.
"I'm ok," he says hollowly, hearing his voice as though a thousand miles away. "Maybe a little in shock, but—yeah. I guess I'm a part of the pack."
.
.
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A/N: Hopefully that answers some of the questions about the extent of Stiles's powers! He's quite a bit stronger than even he realizes.
Let me know what you thought on the way out!