For those of you following along with my obnoxiously slow updates, I made a couple adjustments to the end of the last chapter because I forgot what my plan was until it was too late lol. And if I don't forget my plan, there should just be one more chapter after this one. Thanks for sticking with me this long! Especially given how slow I update.
xix.
jaguar
"I thought you would have made it here sooner, but I guess I shouldn't have expected more from a jumped up teenager with bad hair. I have to admit, though, it was delicious watching you run around the city trying to find me, even more delicious than watching you fall apart after your precious Derek's death. That was an inspired bit, wasn't it? I just wish I could have been there to see it in person…"
The box in his mind explodes. Stiles doesn't even have to do anything, and the lid blows off its hinges with a concussive blast. The darkness floods out. It envelops him in a rush, coating his limbs in warmth and pooling in his skull like a promise. He hears buzzing all around him as he lifts into the air. Every nerve is on fire, his scars alight, and there are voices clamoring for his attention, urging him to do all sorts of gloriously awful things. He tastes tar and bone dust in his mouth, and he can feel each pinprick of life in the cavern with him. The aliens, so vastly different from each other as one glows with the light of the sun, the other a null space in the cavern, noticeable only through its absence.
And the blonde Jaguar. An evil pit that sucks all light and goodness inside of it and snuffs it out. He can hear her heart beating. He can taste her fear and surprise in the air as he raises a hand to point at her, to send his darkness racing down to consume her mind, body, and soul. He can taste her impending death.
And it is delicious.
A shape blurs through the air to his left, but time is slow for him now, and he turns in mid-air to see the Essyolyte lunging toward him under the direction of the Jaguar's pointed arm. There are a couple other minds in the room that he can sense, too, but there's no animosity there, just a deep, abiding fear, so he ignores them, reaching out with his mind to cut the strings of the Essyolyte.
The Essyolyte's own telepathic powers slam into his and sends a shockwave through the room, though only one person gets bowled over and is quickly caught by another. He's not sure who. Nor does he care.
The landscape changes, the warehouse disappearing for the vast, blackened expanse of space. Color slowly pinpricks into the world around them, constellations that erupt from a single point until they're suspended in a red and gray nebula. He and the Essyolyte crash together, scaly limbs against scrawny human ones, and he goes for the jugular with his teeth. Claws spike into his sides and dig deep, but in the mindscape, no blood flows.
He lashes out, seeking to get past the bony plates of the Essyolyte's skull to reach its mind, and a wave of thought pushes against him, bringing with it the taste of rotten flesh and a wash of fear that rolls right off his back. He's past such paltry things as emotions now. Except for the anger, of course. That fills him from toe to head, swells his insides, shoving his organs to the side to make room for all that it contains. He can feel himself burning, blazing in the vacuum despite the lack of oxygen, but he'll turn himself to ash to see this thing through.
He drives a spike of black, buzzing thought into the Essyolyte's skull, and its mind collides with his. He sees it meet the Jaguar for the first time, loping in the woods when she tackled it, asserting her dominance with a growl and a flash of white teeth and blue skin. He sees the party in the woods from the Essyolyte's point of view, a bunch of kids cavorting and laughing like they haven't a care in the world because for this night, they don't. He sees his old self, long limbed and fuller of face, no bags under his eyes, his skin a normal shade of pale instead of deathly. He sees the Essyolyte tear into the man with the black hair, sees claws rend flesh, sees blood flow and glowing red eyes fade. Pain rips through him, hot and bitter, carving paths through him for the anger to flow down. It bites into him, lighting up every one of his synapses, and he screams as he clutches the Essyolyte to him, sees red eyes lose their glow again and again, feeding constant fuel to his flames. The Essyolyte's scales crack under his fingers, and wave after wave of dark fear washes over him without touching him. He seizes control of that fear and turns it back on the Essyolyte, driving it deep into the alien's mind until he feels its whole body quiver, and it begins to gibber.
The expanse of space around the two of them cracks, and red light bleeds through. It burns where it touches his skin, but he ignores that pain. It is but a mite, nipping and pricking for his attention, not that he cares. He has his hooks in the Essyolyte now, and if he destroys himself in the process, so be it. At least he will take the alien down with him.
The two of them plummet downward, into the light and that fire it brings with it. He digs in deeper, flaying through the Essyolyte's scales into the dark flesh underneath. He seeks out blood and tendon, sinew and bone, and he rips at the nerve bundles collected through its body. It claws cut into him in return, he cannot tell. He is not real enough for that kind of physical sensation. Once he pries past the Essyolyte's flesh, he reaches into its mind. His fingers, now formed of long, blackened talons with oozing cracks shot through them, touch gray brain matter, so he squeezes tight. The Essyolyte shrieks, and the sound slices through him, trying to rend him to pieces, but he holds himself together through sheer force of will even though he has long since lost awareness of his body. Maybe that helps. He only has to worry about holding his mind together.
He pours himself into the Essyolyte, forcing himself into every crack he's made in its mind and body, and he lets his rage expand. He draws the red light into himself and lets it fuel his fury, then shoves it out of himself and through the Essyolyte. He feels it begin to come apart, and he only pushes harder. He conjures up an image of a black-haired man with sharp cheekbones, and grief wells up to give shape and form to the anger surging through him. He rips and tears and bats claws away from himself as they continue to fall, and there is a scream building in his throat, building and building and building until it will tear him apart if he holds onto it any longer, so he opens his mouth and releases it.
He dissolves into the sound. The Essyolyte dissolves, too, but it disappears with such a blip that he doesn't really notice it going. Every neuron of his self sings with sensation, and that red, burning light gives way to darkness as his long, drawn-out scream cracks and dies out, and he turns hollow as it fades to nothing, and he feels the darkness creeping over him. He would like to let it take him away. He would like to sink into the shadows where nothing else exists. That sounds wonderfully nice, but there are voices on the periphery of his awareness, and he can feel them drawing him down, down, down, like he's a swirl of water in a sink drain, and suddenly…
He's standing on a concrete floor.
He looks at his hand. Because he does have hands. The fingers are long and thin. They are splattered with viscera. The nails are black, the rot spreading across the skin. He follows the fingers to his hands, then to his wrists. The gore travels past his elbows, and he places his hands to his chest. The fabric of his shirt squishes and runs red. He slides his palm up to his face and digs his nails into the viscera caked to his cheeks, drawing sharp lines down to his chin.
This body… It is… It has to be his. He's moving these hands, after all, so there can't be another explanation, but all he feels is disconnect. He doesn't recognize any of it. He should exist within the ether, not resting in this prison of flesh and bone.
Something scuffs behind him, and he whips around, his limbs akimbo as he forgets how they work. There are four people staring at him. One has two faces overlaid atop each other—one green and ridged, the other dark-skinned and serious. The woman beside him is dressed in black and points a gun his way. The other woman is a riot of color—red and blue and gold—and she matches the final man who's face—
Who's face.
Looking at that black hair, those cheekbones, it all comes crashing back—or most of it, anyway. He still does not have a name or identity past the rage and grief inside of him. He remembers the four people in front of him. He remembers the Essyolyte which has been turned to mush and is now fully splattered all across his body. And he remembers her.
His head snaps round, his eyes searching the dim warehouse for a flash of blonde hair and glowing green eyes. The Essyolyte is dead, but it doesn't make him feel any kind of way, not like he thought it would. There should be substance filling the holes inside him, but there's nothing there, and if anything, he only feels emptier. He needs more. He needs the Jaguar's blood on his hands and caked through his hair, and he will have it. He will.
"Stiles," Kara—Supergirl—the purest one amongst them—says.
Oh yeah. He has a name, doesn't he? He rejects it.
"Where did she go?" he growls. They may be his friends—or they were at one point—but he will get what he needs from them.
"She's gone," J'onn says.
His head snaps toward the alien. He reaches for J'onn's mind but encounters a stone block instead, built up and up and up with great care. He will need time to break past it with his own thoughts intact, but break through it he will.
"And you let her go?" he snarls.
"We were a bit more concerned by the alien unraveling in front of our eyes," Alex snaps. "And three seconds later, she was gone."
There's fury in him, burning bright, lifting his toes off the ground as energy crackles around him. These people are—were—supposed to be his friends, and they let the object of his revenge get away scot-free. They let that Jaguar walk out of here, and she'll disappear, and she'll do it laughing at him.
His feet lift off the ground, and he rises into the air. There's a buzzing in his head like flies, drowning out any and all other thought or emotion. Three of his former friends rise with him, and a small part of him remembers that he doesn't want to hurt them, but it's a very, very small part of his brain that, no matter how much it screams, quickly gets overrun by the flies.
He throws out a hand, and a wash of shadowy energy strikes Superdouche in the chest and flings him across the room. A mind spike spears into his thoughts, but he shunts it to the side. Kara rushes him next while Alex fires shot after shot at him from her night-night gun, and he bats each one away with a flick of his hand, but Kara gets in close and tackles him. The two of them crash to the ground. He puts his hand on her sternum and reaches into her mind to find her fears, her anger, her pain, but at the last second, he… balks. The small part of him that still holds that name doesn't want to do that to his friends, can't do that to his friends, and that part of him has just enough strength to stay his hand.
"Stiles, please," Kara begs as she holds him down, her blue eyes wide and imploring. He struggles to buck her off, but with the Name part of himself keeping his powers in check, he can't fight her strength, not without activating one of the runes carved into his flesh, and she has his hands locked down tight.
But he still fights. He twists and bucks his hips. He'll break his wrists if that's what it takes to free himself, but Kara shifts her grip each time he tries. Shadows fall over him, but he's gone rabid and can't focus on anything past the hands holding him down and the rage threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
"Please, Stiles." She tries again. He barely hears her, but that name burns into him.
"I…need…" he grinds out between staunchly gritted teeth. "I need to get her. You have to let me go. I have to finish this. The Essyolyte wasn't enough. I need her. And you let her go."
His anger bubbles up. There shouldn't be this much of it. It's more than any one person should be able to hold, and here it is, all the way inside of him and bubbling out of his cracks, infecting everything around him. The rage pushes the Name part of him down, into the dark, cloying depths of grief, and the buzzing in his head swells and swells, but just as he pushes it out, toward Kara, a question breaks through the fog and stops him.
"Do you even remember who you're doing this for?"
He doesn't even know who asks the question. It doesn't matter. The 'who' arrests him. The buzzing dies all at once, and the rage in him freezes to a solid block of ice that slices everything inside him. He blinks, staring up at Kara who looks down and blinks at him like she's as confused as he is.
Who…
Who…
Who…
The word beats at him, demanding he answer the question. An awful guilt crashes into him, but what makes it worse is that he can't figure out where it comes from. There's something he's forgotten in his anger. Something big. All encompassing. The most important thing in the goddamn world to him, and he's gone ahead and forgotten it like the godawful, insufferable, deranged monster that he is. He has let this 'who' down all for the sake of his anger and vengeance. He's so, so sorry. He just wishes he knows who he should be sorry to.
Kara releases him and scoots to the side. He's too stunned by the question of who to capitalize on the fact that his hands are free.
Then someone else steps into the frame. Thick, black hair. Cut glass cheekbones. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist. Eyes that shift between gray and green.
And he finally remembers a second, identical face, though this one has dark stubble all across his cheeks. And there's a name there. Derek. It tastes delicious in his thoughts, and it pushes the buzzing to the periphery of his mind. All this, he has done for Derek. The blood and viscera of the Essyolyte currently drying on his skin is for Derek. Because the Jaguar took Derek from him, and he can't get Derek back, but he can finish the Jaguar off for good.
Would Derek want this blood as sacrifice? Does Derek care for vengeance? He knows Derek does not, but that doesn't matter. He is in this far too deep to back out now, and if he breaks away, the unfinished business will itch and claw at him until he has to tear it out with blades of steel. He must end it. One way or another. Even if this has gone far, far past the point of what Derek would ever want.
He places his hands flat on the ground and slowly pushes himself upright. The others watch him warily to see what he'll do. So long as they don't get in his way, he won't hurt them. His eyes skim past their shoulders, looking for the exit. He'll pick up Kate's trail somehow, track her down. Finish this.
"Get out of my way," he says to the four heroes standing in front of him. "I don't want to hurt you. I only want her."
"Can't let you do that," J'onn says.
He sneers. "Why? Because it's not heroic, or whatever? Don't worry you're pretty little heads. It's a good thing. Another monster gone so she can't hurt anyone else, and you don't even have to get your hands dirty."
"And what happens to you?" Kara wonders.
That sneer remains on his lips, and he huffs out a chuckle. "What does it matter?"
"It matters," she says. "It matters a lot."
That's what these people don't understand. There's nothing left of him to tarnish that hasn't already been tarnished. He cannot be saved. He could never be saved in the first place, and it never really matter what happens to him. He always knew he wasn't coming out of this one alive. It's just a matter of sealing the deal and making sure he gets what he wants before he goes.
He shakes his head and tries to push past them, but Superdouche and Kara are red and blue brick walls, and Alex shoves her gun in his face. They have three seconds to get out of his way before he starts shoving fears down their throats.
"You may not believe it, but you matter to us," Kara says determinedly. "We're not going to let you throw yourself away for vengeance. You're not a villain or anything like that. you have a place in this world no matter what you think. You don't have to choose blood or death."
No, he doesn't have a place here. He is the Void, sucking more and more light into him with every passing second, and soon, there will be nothing left. He can't do that to everyone around him. It's better this way.
"Move," he says. "Last chance."
"Stiles… This isn't you."
The buzzing swells inside him, and he feels his feet begin to lift off the ground again. Stiles isn't here anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. He's just been acting the part ever since that day in the woods. The mask has simply come off at last.
The sight of Superdouche's face makes him waver, though, makes the part of him that still wants a name try to claw its way back to the surface. He hesitates long enough that he feels a hand touch the back of his skull. A spike drives into his mind, vast and cold and alien, and he gasps as he tears at the edges of it, desperate to pry it free, but before he can, it touches something vital inside of him, and everything shivers. He fights against it, struggling to hang on as the buzzing deafens him, but it's too late, and whatever J'onn has done is too strong, and bit by bit, he slips away.
