"They'd deal with it when they came to it" was the dumbest idea that they had ever agreed to.

Ever.

It took them over four hours to reach the main road, twisting and turning through the trees, slamming on the breaks, backing up, hitting the trees, painfully listening to the thorn bushes as they scraped along the jeep's metal sides, and nearly running over a stray rabbit that had jumped out of a hidden bush. Scott had to act as spotter nearly every time Stiles had to back up, and they'd gotten the tires jammed on overturned trees and stumps so many times that Stiles had been near ready to scream; if it wasn't for Scott's strength freeing the jeep each time, they'd have never made it out.

By the time they did make it out, it was after five-o'clock and both boys were ready to tear each other apart. When Stiles finally drove the jeep onto the road Scott immediately got out, got on his motorbike, and left.

The weekend passed uneventfully – which Stiles had never been more thankful for – and Monday came quickly. John sat Stiles down the night before and told him straight that if he didn't want to go to school, he didn't have to. But Stiles wasn't an idiot; he understood that it was senior year and that if he didn't pass his courses or get enough credits, he wouldn't graduate. He'd already missed an entire week of school and hadn't been paying the least bit attention to the one before that, so he knew it was time to start picking up the slack. He couldn't stay hiding forever; while he knew that life would never go back to the way it had been, he had to start picking up the pieces somewhere – so he might as well start now.

Besides, life hadn't been the way it was for a very long time now.

So Monday morning came and Stiles got out of bed, put on clean clothes, got in his jeep, and drove to school. When he arrived, Scott was waiting for him by their lockers, turning his head when he caught Stiles' scent after he walked through the door. A few students glanced at him but gave him nothing more than that; on the one hand Stiles couldn't help but be a bit miffed at their lack of courtesy to at least acknowledge that he'd been gone for over a week, but on the other – well… he and Scott had never been that popular anyways.

"Hey man," Scott greeted as Stiles walked up to him. He opened his locker, shoving his bag inside and taking out his notebook and textbook for his first-period class. It felt a bit odd to be doing something so normal, something he had done a thousand times before, but he was determined to push through it, because normal – what was left of it, anyways – was exactly what he was trying to get to.

"Hey," Stiles replied. He looked up at Scott and rolled his eyes when he saw the very poorly-disguised concern that was marked across his face. "Scott, we went through this last night – don't worry about it."

"Who's worried?" Scott asked, quickly trying to school his features into something that wasn't such a dead-giveaway of his feelings. "I'm not worried, I'm just waiting for you to get your things so we can go to class."

Stiles rolled his eyes again and pushed his locker closed. The two milled into the throng of students and made their way to first-period biology. Stiles let out a sigh as they walked. "You can't treat me like I'm fragile forever, Scott – or one of us will break and it won't be pretty."

"I just think we need to take it easy, that's all. You're still not fully healed, and running through that house didn't help –."

"I'm completely fine, Scott. Your exaggerating –."

"– and you're still trying to figure out," Scott glanced briefly at Stiles' hands, then back up to his face, "you know; and I know you're not sleeping well –."

"Hey now, I sleep just fine –."

"You sleep on the floor, Stiles!"

"So what, you're spying on me now?"

"I'm not saying you can't sleep there, with everything you've gone through it's understandable, but it's not exactly a sign of a healthy –."

"– because I have to say, Scott, that's a little creepy. Mothering me like a hen is one thing –."

"– so I'm just saying you don't have to act like everything's normal or that everything's okay, because it's not okay, and that's okay that it's not okay, okay?"

"– but hovering over me like crazed mother-bear protecting her cub is going to drive me crazy, all right? I understand you're like, part animal and all, but can we please tone down the psycho-instincts, huh? Just for a while? And then –"

"What?"

"What?"

The two paused for a moment and Scott frowned. "Did you… did you just say I was a mother bear?"

"I said you're like a mother bear, not that you are one." Stiles patted Scott on the shoulder as the two arrived at the classroom. "Don't worry Scotty, I know what kind of animal you really are. Literally."

"Stiles –." Scott broke off when his eyes caught Stiles' face and saw that he was no longer paying any attention. He followed his eyes to the front of the classroom where the new substitute, who had replaced Givens, sat at the desk. They stood in silence for a few moments before Scott finally spoke, knowing exactly what his friend was thinking. "It's not you're fault, you know."

"Yes it is," Stiles replied. "Givens wanted me, so to get me she killed Mrs. MacMillon. Someone who had literally nothing to do with any of it."

"And she was the one that made that choice. Not you. You weren't even aware that it had happened. So unless you're going to blame yourself for being alive, I'd just accept the fact that none of this was your fault."

Stiles said nothing and a moment later the bell rang, and he and Scott made their way into the classroom and sat down in their seats.


The minutes and hours eventually ticked by and Stiles soon found himself sitting in his fifth-period English class, one of the few he didn't share with Scott or anyone else in the Pack. They opened the novels they'd been reading – a novel Stiles hadn't even cracked open the first page of, much less read the five assigned chapters – and the teacher began dissecting it bit by bit, encouraging the students to interpret what they'd read any which-way they wanted, while at the same time insisting that his own view was the correct one, a bit of an oxymoron that Stiles had never fully been able to comprehend. Which was why, halfway through the class, his attention began to shift, drifting from the classroom to the window, watching as the rain that had been falling for over an hour tapped against the glass.

Stiles stared at the rain, unable to tear his eyes away from it. The wind beating the rain against the window was oddly mesmerising and for a moment, Stiles wanted nothing more than to go outside and enjoy it.

He suddenly blinked and leaned back in his chair, belatedly hearing the thought that had just gone through his mind.

Enjoy it? Sure, he didn't hate rain or thunderstorms, but he wasn't their biggest fan, either. He always preferred the sun to the rain, so why did he suddenly feel the need to go outside right now? To feel the rain fall against his skin, to soak it in, to bask in the water and the air and to feel its power surge through his veins, strengthening him, invigorating him, reviving him –

"Mr. Stilinski?"

Stiles jerked and spun his head around, seeing his English teacher – Mr. Galaway – staring at him with a raised eyebrow, his head slightly tilted up as he peered at Stiles down his nose.

"Um, yes?" Stiles said, glancing around the room in the hopes that someone would hint to him what he should say. They didn't.

Mr. Galaway cleared his throat. "What did you think about the passage where the father and son go into the den?"

Stiles blinked, trying as quickly as he could to come up with an answer. "Um, uh – I thought… I thought it was, um… interesting."

Mr. Galaway gave him a flat look. "Interesting?" he asked. "Care to elaborate?"

Stiles coughed and straightened in his seat, his mind racing to come up with an answer as quick as he could. "Well, I thought the den was pretty… dark," he began. At Galaway's questioning glare, he continued. "Well, when they went into the den, I… I thought maybe that it… that it represented a, um… a prison." Stile thumbed at the book on his desk, flipping its pages over in front of him. "But that… that they didn't know it was. They thought it was just something normal, something safe." Man, this was the worst time ever to get called on in class. Stiles continued, "They didn't realise that by walking into it, they were walking into a trap. That they were walking into a prison. A prison that they would try to leave, but they'd never succeed." Stiles swallowed, suddenly finding his throat had gone dry. "And when they did succeed, they'd only be walking into more danger, but they had to do it." He took a breath. "They had to do it."

"And why did they 'have to do it', as you so succinctly put it?"

Stiles' heart began to beat faster and he suddenly began to feel nervous, though he couldn't tell why. "Because if they didn't, they would die."

"Prisons don't always mean death, though."

"This one did."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because they were drawn there for a reason; they were lured there. They had something everyone else wanted but they didn't know they had, so they went in." The words came faster and faster, tumbling out before he could stop them. "They went in and they shouldn't have, but they did and as a result they got hurt, and the dad… the dad should have known, he should have known something was wrong but he didn't figure it out and because of that the kid got hurt, he was innocent and he got hurt and –."

"Woah, look outside!"

Murmurs and exclamations began buzzing in the room and Stiles turned his head to look at what had so abruptly taken everyone's attention.

The rain that had been lightly tapping against the window before was now pounding against it with the force of a torrential downpour. What had caught everyone's attention, however, was not the rain beating against the window, but the golf-ball sized hail that was throwing itself against it with so much force that they had begun to crack the glass. As they watched, three more cracks appeared, each one greater than the last. The rain and wind were unrelenting and as more hail hit the window, spreading the cracks farther across the pane, Stiles could swear that it was going to break. It was something none of them had ever seen hail do before – not like this. Not with such force, not with such purpose.

Stiles' eyes went wide and every muscle in his body froze, as he suddenly realised what was driving the raging storm.

It was him.

He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He could feel the storm surging through his veins, vibrating beneath his skin as though it were on edge, the charge that he could almost tangibly feel in the air. It was angry, it was fearful – just as he had been moments before. It felt like it was a part of him, like it was reaching towards him, like it was trying to break through the window to get to him –

A larger piece of hail made a particularly loud crack when it hit the glass and Stiles could hear a few of the kids move their chairs back, and it was then that he realised just how silent the room had become. He tore his eyes away from the window and glanced at the rest of his class, all of whom were shifting their gazes between the storm and each other, looking at their teacher every so often in hopes for direction. Mr. Galaway was looking uneasily at the window, but appeared to be trying to gather himself so as not to show his concern in front of the class. "It's all right, class, it's all right," he said. "Just an afternoon hailstorm, that's all. Nothing to panic about."

They were afraid, Stiles realised. They were afraid and it was because of him. He turned back to the window and swallowed.

He had to stop this – now. With a deep breath, Stiles closed his eyes and focused. He opened them after a few moments and stared intently at rain still beating against the window, willing it with all that was within him to slow down and stop.

A heavy weight rested against Stiles' shoulders and he clenched his fists, his teeth gritting together as he searched for the air and wind outside, and took hold.

Like grabbing onto an errant steering-wheel, Stiles suddenly found himself jarringly in control of the storm. It fought against him at first, but Stiles gripped it tighter and forced it to slow down, for the wind to calm and for the rain to cease. His fingers gripped the sides of his desk, his knuckles turned white. At first, nothing happened; then a few moments later the hail slowly began to lessen until it at last it disappeared, and a few minutes after that the pounding of the rain abated until it, too, ceased. Within seconds sunbeams were hitting the window, and all that was left was the steady drip of rain from the roof and the cracks in the window-pane.

The room was utterly quiet as everyone stared out of the window, their expressions a range of shock, fear, and disbelief. A moment later the bell rang, jolting them out of their stupor and onto their feet,. They gathered their bags and quickly left the room, their voices buzzing in excitement and awe over what they'd just seen.

Stiles stayed where he was a few minutes longer in silence, unable to tear his eyes away from the vast myriad of cracks that covered, and had all but destroyed, the window-pane.


Stiles sat stiltedly down into his seat between Scott and Lydia in their last-period class, setting his bags quietly on the floor beside him. Scott shot him a concerned look – or maybe concern was just his default now – but Stiles didn't return his gaze. He was hoping to just lay low for the rest of the class then head home as soon as the bell rang and hopefully pretend like the day had never happened. He wasn't that lucky, though.

"Hey, did you see that storm this afternoon?" Lydia asked, a look of awe on her face. "It was the craziest thing I've ever seen; one moment it was barely raining and the next it was like mother-nature was trying to tear down the school!"

"Yeah, that's… that's definitely weird," Stiles replied, keeping his voice purposefully light. He finally glanced at Scott who, catching his eye, promptly frowned.

"And that's not even the weirdest thing about it! I heard from Jessica that the hail only damaged three windows on the west-side of the school; the rest were just barely scratched!"

Stiles deliberately kept his gaze held forward, but he could still see Scott in his peripheral, who was looking between him and Lydia, his face set in a frown of confusion. Finally, Stiles turned his head slightly and caught his eye. They held their gaze for a few moments, then suddenly Scott's features fell back and he raised his eyebrows slightly in questioning disbelief. Stiles just gave him a quick nod before the bell rang and class began.

After school Scott questioned Stiles ceaselessly and Stiles could only offer a helpless shrug, because how was he supposed to know that his control of the air also included the weather?

The incident freaked Stiles out more than he let on, but he was sure that Scott knew anyway. He could have a weird sixth-sense like that.

Getting back into a routine was both stressful and oddly comforting, as Stiles began to settle into what had become the new normal of his life. He still hadn't told anyone outside of Scott of what had really happened with Givens or the discovery of his gift, and at the moment he really couldn't bring himself to even want to. His powers were still so new that he felt he had a hard enough time convincing himself that they were actually real, much less having to explain and convince them to someone else. So until he knew what he really could do, he didn't plan on telling a single soul.

Wednesday eventually came and went, and Stiles was soon making his way to his locker where he grabbed his bag and keys and began heading towards the front door. With no incidents having shown up since the feral wolf a few weeks ago, the Pack had been using the time to catch up on each of their own schoolwork and classes and any other extracurricular activities they liked to do – besides fighting the supernatural. So it was a bit of a surprise when within minutes all of them showed up, immediately falling into chatter about the week they'd had so far and what they were planning to do for the rest of it.

Scott kissed Kira on the cheek and made his way over to Stiles, a smile spreading wide across his face. "Hey, we're thinking of heading down to the river later this afternoon to do some training; do you wanna join?"

Stiles fought to keep a smile from tugging at his lips. "What, have I leveled up enough now to be around you guys when you fight?" he asked. The question was made mostly in jest, but there was an unexpected bite that hung on at the end. Well, not a bite – a nibble, maybe. A nibble of annoyance and pent-up resentment that Stiles had thought he was over, but suddenly found that maybe he wasn't as over it as he had thought he was.

Scott's smile faded and his eyes hardened slightly with a touch of guilt. "Stiles, you know that's not what I meant –."

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles interrupted, immediately feeling guilty for having made the remark. "I know buddy, I'm just messing with you."

"Because you know I'd have asked you to come, even if…."

"Yes, I know," Stiles said quickly, not wanting the others to hear them. "Its fine, Scott. I was just being an ass."

Scott gave him one last look before everyone started making their way down the hallway and towards the exit. They had nearly made it to the door when Stiles felt Scott shift beside him, and he looked over at his friend to see him looking past his shoulder, his eyes slowly narrowing as wrinkles creased between his brows. Stiles turned his head to see what had caught his attention, and managed to catch the tail end of a two students pushing through the maintenance door that led to the basement and disappearing inside. Stiles looked back to Scott; students weren't allowed in the basement of the school – a myriad of hallways and cement rooms that resembled more of a horror house than anything else – but it wasn't exactly uncommon for them to find their way down there, usually out of a sense of mischief and adventure that school boundaries always seemed to inspire. But nonetheless, something about it had caught Scott's eye.

"What's wrong?" Stiles asked.

Scott's eyes remained steadfast on the door, a frown now set between his eyes. "Did you see the way that kid was holding onto the other one? The older one. He was holding him by the arm, like he was forcing him to move."

Stiles glanced back to the door, then once more back to Scott. He had learned to read Scott's expressions well over the years when it came to his more "special" instincts, and he knew that something wasn't right. "You wanna go check it out?" he asked.

By now the rest of the Pack had stopped walking and were watching Scott, waiting to see what he'd say. He was silent for a moment, then began walking towards the door. "I'll just go and check to see if everything's all right; you guys wait here." He quickly strode over to the maintenance door and disappeared inside.

Scott was their pack leader, their alpha; he always was the first to check and scope out a situation. But still, Stiles didn't like it. Something was wrong, and it almost felt like he could sense it, like he could almost feel it in the air….

Lydia took a few steps forward, her heels clacking against the tile floor. A look of concern was set deep on her face, her eyes staring off into the distance, seeing something that no one else could; it was then that Stiles knew they had to go after Scott.

Suddenly both Malia and Liam started where they stood, then quickly began making their way towards the door. "Someone just screamed," Malia informed them as she and Liam all but ran through the door. The rest of them quickly followed, nearly falling over their feet as they all but ran down the stairs and into the basement.

The lights were dusted and flickering along the walls, shafts of sunlight touching the floor every so often along the hallway and into the distance. Malia and Liam, catching Scott's scent, immediately began making their way down the hall with everyone else following close behind. After a minute both Liam and Malia came to an abrupt halt, then suddenly veered off down a hallway to the left. The sounds of fighting could be heard echoing through the hallways and Kira and Lydia were about to chase after them when suddenly something slammed into their sides, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The thing that had tackled them got to its feet and Stiles recognised him as the guy who had dragged the smaller student through the door. He was big and bulky, and looked like no one Stiles had ever seen in the school before.

Lydia got to her feet, and turning to their attacker she opened her mouth and let out a terrifying scream. The scream acted like a shockwave, sending the boy flying backwards and crashing into the cement wall. Stiles stared, stunned – when on earth had Lydia learned to do that?!

He didn't have time to contemplate the question, as seconds later the boy was back on his feet and running towards Lydia, his hands raised and his teeth bared. She tried to dodge out of the way but there was no room and the boy grabbed hold of her, his fingernails digging into her arm and throwing her to the ground. She screamed, this time in pain. Stiles jerked towards her, but Kira made it there before him. She already had her weapon out and Stiles felt the air suddenly charge with electricity as she brought the sword down on the attacker's head. The kid disappeared for half a second before reappearing behind Kira and raising his fist, bringing it down on Kira's back and sending her to the ground.

His heart racing, Stiles automatically began looking around, searching for anything that he could use to attack the creature with as he always did in situations like these. Spying a pile of steel pipes around the corner, Stiles quickly ran over to them and took one in his hands, looking quickly back up in search of their attacker. He was leaning over Lydia, his hand squeezing her neck as Kira struggled to regain her senses beside them. Without a second thought Stiles ran forward and raised the pipe, bringing it down on the creature's head as hard as he could.

It was like hitting a cement wall, the pipe bouncing off the guy as though it were made of rubber; nonetheless it turned its attention from Lydia and up towards Stiles. The creature snarled at him, cracking its neck to the side and back again. It was then that Stiles could see just how in-human this "student" really was – its eyes were a dark green and its pupils were thin, black slits. Each of its countless teeth were elongated so much that they resembled a shark, parts of them stained with blood. "You're going to regret that, human," the creature said. Stiles took a few steps back but didn't run away, his fingers gripping the pipe tighter between his hands. The creature discarded Lydia on the ground and Stiles could hear her sudden gasps as she was able to breathe once more.

Kira had just managed to get to her feet when something caught her eye in the hallway to her right and she immediately tensed; a second later something appeared, crashing into her side. Prepared for the impact, Kira grabbed hold of the newcomer and swung it around, sending it crashing into the wall. Stiles looked past the creature in front of him to see what it was that had appeared, only to see that it was –

The creature?

Stiles' wide eyes snapped between the creature attacking Kira and the one coming towards him, and realised with a shock that they were the exact same. A deep shout could be heard from down one of the hallways and a moment later Scott appeared, a creature – the same creature as the other two – right behind him. Stiles continued to move backwards as the creature in front him continued to advance, completely and utterly confused.

What the hell was going on?


A/N: This was the first part of the original single chapter, but it got way too long so I had to cut it down - so that's why it has a bit of an abrupt ending, I'm afraid.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing! Your support is so greatly appreciated. Please feel free to leave a review if you have the time! :) The next part/chapter will be out this week!