He turns. Slowly. Hands in the air. Sardonic expression firmly in place.

"Stiles?"

Well. At least Stiles's father wasn't in on it. That's something. Right?

He can't respond to 'Stiles'. That isn't fair to the Sheriff. It's not his name, and he's sick of stealing.

"Stiles!"

He shrugs, gives a half-smile.

"Oh my god," the Sheriff says, and he's being clasped to a warm chest.

The nogitsune wonders if Stiles Stilinski has been touched so much in his whole life as he has been in the last month.

"Stiles. Stiles. Stiles," his father says, chanting his son's name like it's a protective charm. He pulls back. "God. It is you, isn't it?"

The nogitsune looks at the Sheriff's hopeful eyes and trembling lip and makes a conscious decision. It lets its eyes fill with tears. "Yeah, Dad. It's me," he says as they fall down both cheeks, and he gets another, desperate clasp for his trouble as the Sheriff half-laughs, half-cries into Stiles's old shirt.

Stiles's father won't let go of him, keeps one arm slung around his shoulder as they head out to his patrol car, lights flashing.

"How'd you know to get here so fast?" he says, because humans don't normally have this sort of timing.

"Deaton had a security alarm installed," the Sheriff says. "Here, lie down in the back, you can spread out."

He lets himself be bundled into the backseat of the cruiser – he's just slept for ages, how is he still so tired? – and a moment later, the Sheriff opens the door again to throw a blanket around his son's shoulders. "You're freezing," he says, and moves to the front seat.

"I get it," the nogitsune says. "Anyone breaking into the vet at night is a supernatural entity, right? Is there a camera? What'd you do when you saw it was me?"

The Sheriff turns around from the front seat to look at Stiles. "I made sure I got the cruiser with the bulletproof glass," he says, softly.

"Oh," the nogitsune says. He realizes he is in the back of a police cruiser despite the empty space in the front seat. He swallows past a throat so dry it clicks. "Did – did you see me go behind the counter?"

The Sheriff stares at him sadly for a moment, as though he isn't sure whether or not to respond, but then he nods, once. "Saw you try," he says.

The nogitsune thumps his head against the back of the seat, which is highly padded lest other individuals do the same and harm themselves. "Thanks for the blanket, anyway. I really am freezing. I left without a jacket. Don't suppose we're going to your house? I could use something warm that fits me."

"As a matter of fact, that's exactly where we're going," the Sheriff says, and pulls out of the clinic's parking lot.

"Are you going to shoot me?" he says. "I don't think you should."

The Sheriff issues a noise somewhere between a snort and a sob.

"I don't think you should," the nogitsune says. "You could get Hale to do it. I don't think anyone can break him worse than he's already broken. But you don't have to. You shouldn't have to," he says. There's a sharp, wounded feeling in his chest like someone has reached into his diaphragm and twisted, and suddenly he's out of words and there's wetness on his cheeks.

From what the nogitsune can see through the gap between Stiles's fingers, the Sheriff's heart is breaking. Broken. But he's not pulling over, which is too bad.

Feeling worn and wrung out, he lets the crying jag pass. He thinks of sharing the conversation with Claudia and isn't sure if it's because it's a nightmare he has to talk out with his father, or if he's the monster who wants to see the man in the front seat squirm.

He needs Hale. Hale promised to train him. Hale promised to watch over him. Hale wouldn't let him hurt anybody. He should have stayed put; he should have known better than to think he was ready for this.

They pull into the drive and the Sheriff turns to face his son's body in the back seat. "I'm going to come back there with my gun drawn," he says, "and cuff you. If you struggle, I will shoot. I'd probably turn my gun on myself afterwards because I'd have to," he says, voice going thick, "but I'd do it because it's my job. I have to protect this town."

The nogitsune feels a sensation that is the opposite of a blush as the blood leaves his face, goes silent and still as the Sheriff approaches the back door to the cruiser, because he believes it. He stares straight ahead, only looking down when the Sheriff's hand lifts Stiles's by the wrist, lacing one cuff around it, then the next. The nogitsune looks up into the Sheriff's face once he's done, and the man holsters his weapon and trembles. He slams the back door to the cruiser, leaving his son's form inside, and for a moment all the nogitsune can see is the torso of Stiles's father, uniform-clad, silent and still through the back window. Unmoving.

Then, the nogitsune can see him walking around the cruiser. He doesn't think Sheriff Stilinski knows that, from this angle, he can just make out the man's arms as he folds them on top of the cruiser, rocking back and forth for a few heartbeats, then shoves himself away again to return to the back door where the nogitsune is waiting. It all reminds the nogitsune sharply of Stiles, this useless, pendulum motion; the comparison makes him feel even quieter and paler and more contained. When the Sheriff pulls him forward by the cuffs, it's like all the energy has gone out of Stiles's body. He feels like he did when his father admitted that he was losing his job because of Stiles. That feeling is the worst in Stiles's recent memory. Until now. Because if Sheriff Stilinski had been disappointed and hurt and angry then, the blank horror and despair on the other man's face now is several orders of magnitude worse. I'd go if I could, he realizes. He would, too. If he could figure out how to leave Stiles alone, he'd do it, but then Stiles's body would collapse here and what good would that do? What would his father be left with, then?

The nogitsune stumbles over his own feet as they take the steps, but then they're inside, and the Sheriff drags him to the garage where he unearths a length of chain. He returns his son's body to the kitchen and wraps the length of chain around a load-bearing column in the kitchen, then uncuffs one half of the handcuffs and uses it as a padlock, threading several chains through its loop.

It's pretty well done. If the nogitsune wants to break free, he'll have to break the metal on the cuff, his own wrist, the load-bearing column, or many lengths of chain. He smiles in approval and sits down in a kitchen chair because he wants to, because despite all this everything looks like home, because he wants to face the Sheriff and because he's very tired.

He'd like to say now what, but it's clear that the Sheriff is gathering himself. Getting ready for some kind of confrontation with a trickster deity. Maybe even he doesn't know what comes next. When the older man finally speaks, his words spill over one another.

"Where have you been?"

The nogitsune blinks, rapidly. It tries to re-order its thinking. Of course the Sheriff has wondered where his son's body has been. Of course he couldn't have known where Stiles was. If he'd known –

Images suffused with warmth leap into Stiles's mind: the Sheriff, arriving with all the police of everywhere, lifting Stiles upwards, out of that dark hole. The Sheriff, wrapping a blanket around Stiles's slender shoulders, just as he had in the police cruiser. A warm mug of hot cocoa pressed into Stiles's hands, and hell to pay for whoever'd done Stiles wrong.

"I know. I never call, I never write," the nogitsune rasps.

Something in the older man's expression collapses in on itself, like a building with the supports removed.

"You keep forgetting, don't you? Me, too," the nogitsune says. "One moment you're nothing, nothingness, and then there's so much of you that it can barely fit inside. It spills out all over everything, and I can't – I can't…" Stiles's muscle memory tells him to meet the Sheriff's eyes to convey important information, to do so unflinchingly. "I tried taking all my Adderall."

Sheriff Stilinski seats himself at the other kitchen chair, and if it weren't for the chains and the cuffs, it would feel like a dozen other talks from the nogitsune's stolen collection of memories. The tears and the desperation aren't even out of place. "Please," the Sheriff says, and his voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again. "Please don't kill him. He's all I have. Just tell me what you want."

"What I want?" the nogitsune gasps. Chaos. Strife. The words surface automatically in the tumult of his mind, but he bats them away. He's no longer feeding on chaos and strife, and the knawing hunger that has always clawed at his insides is a distant memory.

The nogitsune examines the Sheriff's grief-stricken face and Stiles's heart seems to pause, then thump like a kick to the sternum. (Arrythmia. Stress/exercise-induced. Harmless.)

No, the nogitsune thinks. This is what a broken heart feels like. He shakes his head. He can't speak. If he opens his mouth, he'll howl.

The Sheriff rises from his seat, and for a moment the nogitsune thinks he's going to leave him here, alone here, but he moves to the sink and turns the tap. When he turns to face his son's body, his expression is more complicated; the nogitsune can't parse it. He returns to Stiles's side with a damp washcloth, and reaches forward.

The nogitsune flinches, but the Sheriff is only wiping the salty crusts of dry tears and the cool paths of fresh ones off of Stiles's cheeks. The nogitsune's breath stutters, caught in his throat like an unfamiliar word.

"Maybe there isn't something you want," the Sheriff says, trailing the washcloth over Stiles's sweaty forehead and the back of his neck and leaving a wash of blessed coolness behind. Stiles's eyes flutter shut. "Maybe there's something you need? Tell me what's the matter," the Sheriff says in a softer voice, and the nogitsune figures he's tired of the game, it's not like he thinks a creature like a nogitsune could really mean it when it cries. The Sheriff wants to hear the nogitsune's demands, he wants to know how he can get the real Stiles back: Stiles with his mind like the razor-sharp edge of a Mobius strip, Stiles, who effortlessly cares for people. His sarcasm-as-only-defense self.

"I'm all that's left of your son," the nogitsune says, eyes still closed.

The Sheriff makes no noise, though the sweeping washcloth withdraws.

"Don't worry, that's a lot," he babbles, opening his eyes. "Everything is still up here," he adds, tapping at his skull. He remembers doing the same to Derek; how he was trying to scare him. It feels like the shoe's on the other foot, this time. "I know Scott and Derek and I know you, everything, everyone's familiar but me, I don't know who I am, and could you help me with that? Because that's what I need."

"I don't understand," Sheriff Stilinski says.

"Don't give me that, of course you do," the nogitsune growls. Stiles's hands try to flap, to gesture, but they're bound. "You know your son when you see him, right? So tell me."

The Sheriff seats himself again in the chair across from Stiles's body. Swallows.

The nogitsune stares up at him; in his chest, a bird is trying to break free of the cage of his ribs. The older man's expression is full of agony and hope, and the nogitsune doesn't dare breathe.

A smile looks like it's trying to grow on Stiles's father's face. It starts out small, dissolves into doubt; blossoms; disappears again.

"Dad?" the nogitsune tries.

"My son is still in there," he says, and the nogitsune isn't sure whether it's faith or hope that's speaking. "And I want him to come home." The Sheriff reaches out to place his hand atop Stiles's hair, and the familiarity of it is striking, the amusement, exasperation, and love, love, love and the nogitsune wishes it were Stiles Stilinski so hard that it feels like a physical pain in Stiles's chest.


The nogitsune rubs Stiles's unbound wrists, then lays down on the couch.

(You can't.)

Stiles's father lays a warm blanket over him, tucks it around his shoulders.

(You can't do this.)

"Stiles?"

"Mmm?"

The nogitsune freezes, darts a glance up. Because it's happened. He's answered to the name.

The horror must show on Stiles's mobile face, because the Sheriff's features squeeze together in brief discomfort.

"It's okay. Scott and Derek call me Stiles, too."

"Scott knew where you were?" The Sheriff sighs at something he reads on Stiles's face. "We'll talk about that later. Do you think you can sleep?"

(STOP.)

"I think so. I'm still so tired."

"It's going to take a long time for you to really sleep it out," his father says, tentative.

(He's not yours. Leave him alone!)

"Yeah, I guess," he replies, closing his eyes.


The nogitsune dreams.

He is in a field. The field goes on forever, in all directions. There are flowers in the field: shiny-petalled buttercup, California poppy. A kindly glow of gold against the green. He is alone.

Then, a flicker, and Stiles Stilinski is standing before him, all shaved hair (shaved hair?), big eyes, and vulnerable slope of shoulders.

"Hi!" the nogitsune says with its best, most charming grin.

Stiles's best. Whatever.

"You can't do this," Stiles says, and he sounds tired. So, so tired. There are still these red circles under his eyes, and he looks like he's been crying. "This isn't the way it's supposed to work."

"Can't what? Can't take your dad from you? Looks like I have," the nogitsune says, with a satisfied grin.

"Please," Stiles says, and some native stubbornness creeps back into his eyes, some tension in his limbs.

"Please," the nogitsune echoes, taunting. "Has that ever worked, before? Besides, what do you care? You aren't even here, right? You aren't even real."

"I am," Stiles growls. His red eyes flash with anger, and he pushes the nogitsune, hard, at both shoulders.

The nogitsune goes sprawling, a tangle of long limbs. "Ouch, shit, you made me bite my tongue," it says, riding out the pain. "Fuck, that hurts."

"Yeah, how's that for real?" Stiles says, but something around the eyes gives him away.

He's still terrified. Off-balance.

Good time for a gamble, then, the nogitsune decides. "Nice work, really, hiding. Pretending. Making me believe I was you, losing my mind? Turnabout's fair play, or so everyone keeps telling me. How often were you talking to Scott and Sourwolf without me?"

Stiles's shoulders slump, and his eyes go flatter, somehow, like the nogitsune is looking at itself, at a glass-eyed puppet. "I thought if you believed I wasn't real, maybe you'd leave me alone."

"And then what? Oh, wait, no, I've got it. Until Hale or Scotty found some way to bring you back, right? Were you protecting your sanity by hiding?" The nogitsune peers into Stiles's face. "Did it work?"

"I thought if you believed I wasn't real," Stiles says, as though the nogitsune hasn't spoken, "maybe you'd start to think that you were."

A starburst of warmth in the nogitsune's chest, and the nogitsune laughs, then stops short. The sound is the only one he's never been able to imitate. But Stiles's laugh has just emerged from his own throat: amused and playful and affectionate, and he isn't sure what to do with the sound.

Stiles is staring at him, and an echo of warmth to his warmth blossoms on his face. "You got me angry on purpose, going to dad. Asking him to call you Stiles, even though he knows –" Stiles cuts himself off, shaking his head. "You were drawing me out. Why?"

"I needed to be sure you were still here before jumping ship."

"You aren't leaving," Stiles scoffs. "I've been here all along, even when I was curled up in the fetal position and counting my fingers, and there's nothing you can say or do that'll fool me anymore. You love them. You love everyone I love. I made sure of it."

The nogitsune allows a moment for marvel. This boy, this boy. This boy, trembling with emotion, with love, eyes flashing. It will always know what love is, because of Stiles. "No one has ever loved me before," the nogitsune says. "No one has ever dared."

Stiles's chin jerks up, but then he ducks his head again before the nogitune can read his mobile features.

"It's how you've won," it sighs. "I'm not really taking them from you, Stiles. Do you understand? I'm trying to give them back."

Stiles collapses beside him onto the warm grass and turns to face the nogitsune, limbs more relaxed than the nogitsune ever remembers seeing them. "Are you?" he says.

"I don't want their pain anymore. I don't want yours."

"Cards on the table, then? Or pieces on the board, I guess?" A grin takes over Stiles's features, then flickers out. "Everyone has it, but no one can lose it. What is it?"

The nogitsune stares. "What?"

"Everyone has it but no one can –"

"Your shadow!" the nogitsune shouts. "Stop. Don't – don't be me, okay? Don't do that."

"It's a real question," Stiles says. "No one can lose it. Right? I can't. Do you know what would happen if I lost my shadow?"

The nogitsune flips so that it's staring up into cloudless blue. It can't look at the face it's beginning to think of as its own right now. "What, you'd have to chase it out of Neverland and get Wendy to sew it back?" the nogitsune offers, and it realizes it's using Stiles's patented patter to talk to Stiles, which is recursive and weird.

"No," Stiles says, complete with eye-roll. "I'd lose myself. For good." His lips quirk. "If you left now, this," he says, gesturing to his own body, "would be empty. A toy with dead batteries. Maybe it'd keep breathing, maybe its heart'd keep beating. I don't know. But it wouldn't be me." He shrugs. "Wouldn't be us? Whatever. I wasn't lying."

The nogitsune shudders. It can feel its airway narrowing. Its breaths coming faster. "Your Shadow," the nogitsune says. (Jung thought the Shadow represented any parts of oneself that were suppressed by the conscious mind.)

"Yeah," Stiles says.

"Like violence, and anger."

"And grief," Stiles says.

The nogitsune closes its eyes against the image of Claudia Stilinski, blade in hand. "You did this to me on purpose. Why did you do this?"

"There's a legend about how to defeat a shapeshifter," Stiles says, "written on a scroll. Deaton translated it to mean that the body must be changed in order to get the spirit to leave."

"I know that," the nogitsune says. "I was you, remember?"

Stiles bulldozes over his snark, eyes wide, lips pinched. "If you tattooed or burned your body, everyone would know who you were, because that doesn't show up on most shapeshifters. You could say the same thing about a werewolf bite: only the werewolf in his own body can show you the glow in his eyes. But all those things only make any difference if there are two of you. I felt totally swindled. After all that work to get the scroll and translate it, it was basically like, mark one of you up, somehow, and you'll be able to tell the difference.

"But then Derek took the scroll to an expert, who said that Deaton had misread one of the symbols. The spell of the nogitsune can be broken by changing the person. By changing…"

"…who they are?" the nogitsune says. "Their identity."

"Bingo," says Stiles. "There's more than one kanji for identity. This one was more like… personhood. Derek and the Pack dug us a home in the ground and that was that."

The nogitsune stares. "So – what? I'm changed. I'm defeated. Let me go."

Stiles shakes his head. "Don't you get it? I can't. I need you. To be whole. To be real." He quirks a ghost of his usual, wry smile. "We've got to go home together."

Something is happening in the center of the nogitsune's ribcage. It feels like a spasm. Thoughts spiral outward like (the Golden Mean: a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is φ, the golden ratio, growing wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of φ for every quarter turn it makes… the Axis Mundi – the center of the world, from which all holiness springs) uncurling from his mind. He's tried so hard, fought so long. First, for Stiles's body, to carve himself a home in this boy's chest, so he can wreak the havoc for which he was summoned, for which he was made. Then, fighting against Stiles's own nature, once he was entrenched: the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. And finally, the battle to bring Stiles back to himself. And it's all nothing to him, now.

Because he's no longer nothing. Not Void. He belongs to Stiles, now. He's part of Stiles. On the other side of dreaming, it's his father who worries. His friends. His Pack.

He's hurt them. They're his, and he's hurt them.

He feels it coming, the panic, but it ebbs away under the force of a hand at the junction of neck and shoulder, and his lungs expand, and his marvelous heart beats, and his eyes see and he is so, so lucky that he landed here, in this time and this place with these people (Scott. Derek. Lydia. Melissa. John.) who – who love him.

He feels himself – his sense of self – slip sideways. Because he is sure what he is feeling is that he loves them back.

He opens his eyes to see Stiles looking at him with the sort of caution that sits uneasily on his open features, to feel that it is Stiles's hands on him, grounding him.

"Are you sure?" he rasps.

Stiles grins. "Let me in, Stiles," he says.

"Oh my god, shut up," Stiles's shadow replies, and then they're awake.


A/N: Did anyone else wonder why they didn't bite Stiles before he split into two people? I did. The way Stiles and Derek interpreted the scroll at first is my explanation for why not.

There's an epilogue to come.

CC appreciated!