Hello again. I'm thinking this'll be updated on Wednesdays and Saturdays, how does that sound?

I really like this chapter.

Chop, chop, chop.

The blade of his knife hit the cutting board as each new slice of onion joined the growing stack.

"You're good at that," her voice was just as it should be, years of watching her in old home videos and he'd memorized the sound, "Better than your father ever was." Stiles turned his head to see his mother smiling at him. "He used to hand me those in gigantic chunks with eyes redder than a tomato."

He was wholly her son when it came to appearance. Claudia had dazzling brown eyes and hair the same exact shade as his. She smiled a lopsided grin as she rinse a colander full of vegetables and Stiles was star struck.

For once he really understood why his father had such a hard time looking at him after….

"I'm dreaming." He whispered as he wiped a tear from his eyes that hadn't been caused by the onions.

"Or hallucinating, which is highly possible considering what you've been through."

"How did you-"

"Oh sweetie," the look she gave him was one of motherly concern, "I'm not real, remember? I know whatever you do." She walked over to him then and placed a reassuring hand on his cheek. He leaned into the touch despite the cool feel of it. "My hands used to be warm once…"

Without any warning, his mother took the knife from his hands and plunged it into his stomach to the hilt.

A scream tore from his throat as Stiles bolted forward and out of his dream, his nightmare. Immediately, his hands searched for a wound that shouldn't even be there, but still ached. Sweat covered his body and he shivered as the tips of his fingers ghosted over the spot where he felt the knife enter his skin. The spot stung, though it obviously wasn't life threatening, and when they came up his fingers were tipped with blood.

In a slight panic, Stiles got to his feet and rushed to the bathroom. The light was blinding for a moment, but he was soon in front of the mirror, his t-shirt discarded on the floor. There was a cut just above his belly button that hadn't been there when he had fallen asleep. With shaking hands, Stiles opened the medicine cabinet and began to patch himself up with his now overabundant supply of bandages. Placing his hands on the sink when he finished, Stiles tried to calm down.

Nightmares he was used to, dealing creatures of the night and life threatening situations on a nightly basis had the not unheard of side effect of causing bad dreams, but he wasn't used to nightmares like this. Since their sacrifices he'd been having them, but this was the worst by far and he wasn't entirely sure how much more he could take. Having pulled himself back together he reached up with steady hands and shut the mirrored door.

There, over his shoulder, his mother stood smiling sweetly at him. Turning to look behind him, he saw nothing, but her reflection was still there. Clearing his throat, Stiles locked eyes with the apparition, "You're not real." He said, voice raw from screaming.

Suddenly her skin became sunken and all color was drained from it almost as if she was decaying before him. Bone began to show as the flesh that covered it turned to dust. Stiles could only watch in horror as Claudia's corpse began to speak once more.

"She is coming." The words were striking and loud. They reverberated around the room and Stiles had to block he eyes as the mirror in front of him shattered.

A moment later Stiles woke up for the second time that night (Or was it the first? He wasn't entirely sure,) to the sound of a knock at his door.

"Stiles, you ok in there?" his father asked as he slowly pushed open his son's door. Throwing off his covers, the younger Stilinski rushed forward and poked his head into the open space.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Why?"

"I thought I heard….Ya know what? Nevermind, just get back to sleep, you've got school in the morning."

"No problamo," Stiles's replied with the goofiest grin he could muster in his current state.

"Ooook, yeah, goodnight." And with that the Sheriff was off down the hallway toward his own bedroom. Before he was blocked from view, Stiles could see that his father was still in his uniform despite the late hour.

Shutting his door with a sigh, Stiles slid down the cool wood to the floor. He felt feverish and if the stinging pain near his stomach was any indication, he had in fact been wounded in his nightmares.

"Wonderful, just wonderful." he whispered, his voice unusually loud amid the silence of his bedroom. At this point, Deaton teaching him was the only thing Stiles could hope for. Maybe he'd be given a way to protect himself from his dreams.

Shaken, Stiles got to his feet and was just about to head to the bathroom when a buzzing sound made him jump about fifty feet in the air, by his estimation anyway. Once he realized that it was his phone, Stiles let out a relieved laugh and after a quick search under several t-shirts and various pages of research, he finally found his Nokia.

The screen lit up and it showed that Lydia Martin, of all people, sent him a text at 3am.

"Are you ok? I had this weird feeling…"

Stiles had no time to reply before his phone started vibrating in his hands.

"I swear to God if you're dead I'm going to kill you."

And then,

"I refuse to be the one that finds your body. Your dad is the Sheriff, he can handle it."

Even after everything that had just happened, Stiles found himself smiling at his phone. They hadn't talked about his panic attack, but he didn't need them too. Lydia Martin was starting to give a shit about him and that was way more than he expected at this point.

"I'm fine just sleeping. What kind of weird feeling?"

Lying via text was the easiest thing in the world. And make no mistake, Stiles was lying, but she didn't need to know that. No one did, at least not until he figured out how to handle this on his own. The pack didn't need his problems on top of everything else.

"Fine and it was just weird."

"Banshee weird?"

"I don't think so. It was just a bad feeling."

"Alright, thanks for checking on me."

"Thanks for checking up on me? Seriously dude?" Stiles said to himself. Several minutes past and Lydia didn't reply. So Stiles, in a slightly better mood, went and patched himself up (in the bathroom where the mirror was completely intact). When he came back, the screen of his phone was bright with just one final message.

"You're welcome. Goodnight, Stilinski."

For the second time that night, Stiles's mood brightened, but that didn't mean he was willing to try sleeping again. Instead, he grabbed one of his mother's old journals and spent the rest of his night reading.

Claudia- age 10- 1985

Dear Diary,

It's my birthday! Mommy gave you to me as a present. She told me that you were a jurnell and you don't have a key and you aren't pink, but I still want you to be a diary. The other girls in my grade have diarys, but mommy said that I'm not like them.

She is going to start teaching me magic stuff and soon I will get my own grimwaarrre, but until then I'm only allowed to write down all the things she teaches me inside you diary!

We will be spending lots of time together! I promise to take you everywhere!

Love,

Claudia