Author's Note: First all new update in years! Wow! I'm hoping to continue this story in a more sustainable way and see it through to completion. If you are returning to this story and haven't re-read the first five chapters, I encourage you to do so. They were recently edited and slightly reworked to accommodate cannon, although this piece diverges from cannon as of the end of season 2. Thank you for reading!
"STILES!" Sheriff Stilinski's voice echoed through the house as his son woke with a start. The alarm clock was going off, but the face already read 8:14am.
"Shit!" Stiles swore under his breath, groggily leaping out of bed and grabbing for the closest clothing he could get his hands on. "I'm up dad! Go!" he shouted through his open door to the hallway. He heard the sounds of his father leaving the house and the cruiser pulling out of the driveway as he rushed to get his books together and tie shoes to his feet.
He paused briefly in the kitchen to grab a muffin and caught sight of himself in the mirror in the entryway, mouth full, as he dashed through the door. A blonde woman's smile shimmered behind him in the reflection.
1000111010
"Dude, what happened? What's going on?" Scott accosted Stiles as he slid into a seat beside his friend at lunch time. "You missed homeroom entirely this morning!"
"Yeah, I overslept. Lydia suggested sleeping pills, and I slept straight through my alarm."
"Lydia? Wait, did you talk to her about it?" Scott's face scrunched into the part confused, part unhappy look Stiles knew all too well.
"Yeah, yeah, but that's not the point. She has a very insightful perspective. The point is, the girl wasn't a creature. I mean, not exactly. It wasn't like a transformation bite. It was like an identification bite." Stiles shoveled fruit salad into his mouth, still vaguely aware of how jittery the dregs of the ZzzQuil had made him. Scott continued to eye him with concern.
"What do you mean? What was she?"
"Just a girl," Stiles choked out around a peeled grape. "The important one is the girl from my dreams."
"So, what is she?" Scott forked a tater-tot into his mouth, eyes wide.
"She's a ghost."
1000111010
Stiles was very selective about how much he told Scott. As it was, his best friend had already flipped out about allowing himself to be "possessed" by a random werewolf-seeking woman, but Stiles didn't care. Aside from asking Stiles to give someone else the mother of all hickies, what harm could an incorporeal girl do? He'd read enough crack-pot articles on ghosts and exorcisms the night before that one of them had to actually work if he ended up needing out. But Stiles seriously doubted that he would. The way he explained it to Scott was that he'd help this girl find her werewolf friends, or whatever, and then she'd be gone, and that was it. And if she could offer insight through Stiles, it might even help the pack, and Scott accepted that.
The part he couldn't tell Scott, the part his friend would never understand, was the other possibility that his role as conduit presented.
The possibility that Stiles might be able to see his mom again.
Stiles tried not to think about it, but it was a hard thought to let go.
1000111010
So far, the only change he'd noticed was the occasional flash of blonde hair and blue eyes when Stiles passed by a reflective surface. He'd thought he was seeing some dark shape standing at the back of the chemistry lab at the end of the day, but it was just the shadow of a cabinet when he turned to face it.
He was worried that if she was revealing herself to him, even just glimpses, she'd be able to read him too. And if she knew his thoughts, she'd tell Stiles his mother was gone. And he wouldn't be able to take that.
But it didn't seem to work like that. Maybe it didn't work at all, and he was entirely crazy. Stiles wouldn't allow himself to harbor that paranoid thought for even a split second. This was just what life was like in Beacon Hills: bizarre as fuck.
1000111010
Stiles was absentmindedly wondering if he'd only be able to communicate with the girl through sleep still, as well as curiously realizing that he still didn't know her name. He was considering going to the long row of mirrors in the boys' locker room and trying to talk to her phantom reflexion when Danny clapped a firm hand against his shoulder.
"You doing alright?" the goalie asked, his face stoic and almost emotionless. His once-over of the shorter boy again spoke volumes where his voice did not, though.
"Yeah, Danny. Thanks," Stiles insisted. "Nothing to worry about."
"Good," Danny stared at Stiles for half a second longer before returning to his locker.
Stiles finished re-dressing and decided against confronting his reflexion in a place where he might be so easily interrupted. A senior stalked through the door, narrowly missing Sties with his bag as he swooped by. Danny followed close behind, holding the door open for Stiles, again staring enigmatically into Stiles's face.
"Are you wearing contacts?" he asked as Stiles slipped past.
"Uh, no?"
"Huh. I could've sworn your eyes were light brown..." Danny mumbled as he too turned down the hall.
"They are!" Stiles called after him
1000111010
Stiles clasped the small compact mirror he'd begged off Lydia against the steering wheel as he approached the clearing. His eyes had remained a stormy blue every time he glanced into his reflection. Her eyes.
"How's it going so far?"
Stiles wasn't sure why Lydia had taken such an interest in his problems recently, but he honestly couldn't complain. She sounded a little bored.
"Um... I don't know. I just got here. I don't think he's here."
"His car's not there?"
"No," Stiles craned his head around the side of his battered Jeep. "Nope."
"Well... What's it smell like?"
"Ew, Lydia," Stiles exclaimed, but simultaneously took a surreptitious sniff of the air anyway. There was the obvious scent of dry earth, dust, and moldering leaves, but also something else. A sharp, bleak smell of burning. The charred shell of the Hale House rose from the wooded hills, looming tall and broken over Stiles.
"Whatever," Lydia breathed through the phone. But Stiles wasn't registering the adorable redhead in his ear because under the musk of woods and the sting of ash and soot, there was something sweet and familiar slipping into Stile's senses.
"Lydia, I'll see you at school," he said and ended the call.
1000111010
He avoided the ruined shade of the front porch and circled around the house to the devastated and scorched space that had been the back wall of the once majestic Hale home. The dark hole gaped like the forlorn mouth of some perpetually howling beast. This side more than the front drive smelled overwhelmingly of the long dead fire and the mildew of things growing in the damp that hadn't saved Derek Hale's family in time.
Stiles continued a slow circumnavigation of the house, gazing up into the hollow corpse of the place. As he came back around to the front porch the hint of something familiar returned to Stiles's nose. It was strange to him that he could pick up on the slight change, and the thought of some sort of extrasensory ghost abilities briefly fluttered through his mind. He gazed up at the fragments of broken window in the burnt out second story and caught the briefest of flashes.
It was probably a bird reflecting in the light, he told himself. Or maybe it was her. The ghost girl. She was there and she wasn't.
He took another careful breath in, held it, and slowly blew out as he mounted the steps to the door. It wasn't locked – there was no point to locking it now – and he quickly pushed his way into the forlorn and abandoned Hale House.
1000111010
The house was full of the same singed scent, but the underlying note, the one that Stiles was beginning to associate with the wide stares and flared nostrils of the pack, was stronger here.
Stiles' eyes scanned through the gloom from the entry way, cataloging the familiar damage that littered the house. The place on the stairs where Derek had confronted the Argents. The hole in the living room where the re-embodied Peter Hale had been birthed from beneath the floor boards. Claw marks and bullet holes.
He side-stepped the hole and wandered toward the more burned and destroyed back side of the house. He called out, weakly, as he progressed through the creaking rooms, but it was clear he was alone in the empty ruin.
The hall from the front to the room that might have been the kitchen was partially obstructed by a fallen lintel. He ducked around it and headed in deeper, steeling himself for any sudden movements or unseen pitfalls. The kitchen was recognizable only by the soot stained marble island and the melted hulk of what had probably been the stove. There was no getting through from here, and Stiles retreated back toward the front hall.
Across from the living room, and once connected to the kitchen, lay the dining room. There was a stirring in the shadows along the hall toward it, and on instinct Stiles found himself propelled forward.
This room smelled more strongly of dog, and Stiles wondered if this had been where Derek had holed up upon returning to Beacon Hills. There was something more alive about the space, even singed as it was on the edges. The floor creaked as Stiles slid, slow and careful, across the planks, and something in the far side wall cracked as he reached the center of the once majestic room. It was as if someone had been just outside, attempting to force the window open.
Stiles went to it, but there was no one beyond the cracked and sooty glass. Just trees and the warm light of afternoon trying hard to re-enliven this dead space. He looked down into the little mirror still clutched in his hand and saw the blue grey eyes staring back at him. She was there, with him or inside of him, he wasn't sure, but there. Silently watching. He put the mirror in his pocket.
Stiles turned with the thought of venturing into the upper reaches of the house, but caught the toe of his sneaker against a warped baseboard. There was a dip just along the outer edge of the room, and the same squeak of swollen wood on wood sounded again.
Stiles crouched low, feeling along the baseboard in the shallow space. His fingers caught on the edge of something that felt like it wanted to give way. He grasped weakly with the tips of his fingers until the plank nearest the wall came away entirely, clattering toward him.
The tarnished glint of something metallic shown in the empty space left by the missing plank, and without a second thought Stiles grabbed for it, pulling the hidden handle up to uncover a space beneath the floor, somehow entirely unseen before. The aged wood complained as Stiles pulled, but it still came away, despite the tortured skeleton of the house.
The opening wasn't deep or wide. A person couldn't have fit inside, a small child, maybe.
But warm light streamed through the dirty window and illuminated a reflective something. A bag, mildewed and speckled by moisture, and an empty picture frame. With the opening of the hidden compartment also came a flood of the sweet, rich scent that had been teasing him since he'd arrived.
Stiles reached into the dim space and pulled the canvas bag up, and a great wave of heat roll over him.
10001110101
"What's going on?" Stiles yelled into the grey space between them. The girl was there, the room the same as he'd left it. But with her appearance he wasn't sure if he was awake or asleep. "Did I just pass out?"
"No, you're still right here," she said, voice crackling with something like anticipation.
"I realize that. But am I awake?"
"Basically, yes. Stop fighting me, Stiles."
"What?"
She disappeared again, but was not entirely gone, he could tell. He could smell her like the scent that mingled with the scarred wood of the house.
"Stiles, relax. I'm here," he heard her voice in his head.
Stiles felt a tight little pull in the pit behind his navel and tipped forward. He watched his feet pull him toward the bag on the ground, saw his hand reach out to loop its handles.
But it wasn't quite his hand. It was his arm, his freckles, but his fingers weren't that slender, and he didn't recall having ever painted his fingernails black. It was like her hand was protruding from his arm, and it felt unbearably surreal to think he was living through her the way she had been moving through him.
He tried to relax. He let her take over, and her memories flooded into his. She picked carefully through the shirts and garments. She pulled a little book out and set it on the weathered floor. Stiles wanted to know what was inside that book, because she did too, but she was looking for something else as well.
At the bottom of the bag was a bright scrap of red silk. Her hand hesitated for the briefest of moments before closing around the bright spot and pulling it out.
It was a scarf, comprised of many scarlet and crimson silk remnants stitched together in intricate patterns. Another hot wave rolled over Stiles' body as she brought the fabric close to their eyes. Stiles had a feeling they were going to sniff it, and they did, she burying their face in the soft textile.
Here the sweet scent was strongest. It was rich and heady like lilacs on a humid afternoon. Like the immense garden at his great aunt's house after the memorial service for his mother. But it wasn't only heat and flowers, there was another familiar note mingling in folds of the fine colored thing.
"Derek," Stiles breathed, and he could feel her smile on his face.
"Almost," She whispered.
She was right, of course. When he really let the scent overtake him he could pick out the note that wasn't quite Derek. It was so close, though, that it was easy to mistake.
"Who," he began, but she cut him off again with a wave of warmth that sent him rocking back on his heels.
He reached back to steady himself against the wall beneath the window, and felt her leave his body again, though both their hands still clasped the scarf in their fingers.
"Laura."