The name came from the space between them, maybe from the house itself. Stiles felt himself wrapped in the warm affection that emanated from his inhabitant spirit and slid down the wall.
His limbs tingled as he remembered her memories of Laura Hale.
They sat next to a young Laura in a high school chemistry class. Studied together on a bedroom floor. Watched Laura swinging from a rope and jumping into the lake at the state park, laughing hard. Laura helped them move things into a dorm room in a place where lilacs bloomed beneath the window.
Laura shouting into a phone while they tried to hold her hand. Them shouting at Laura while Laura steered a slick black car down the interstate at breakneck speed. They stood beside Laura as bodies were brought out of the ruined house in black bags. Laura curled up in their bed, staring listlessly at the wall, until they set a picture frame in her sight-line.
Light slowly returning to Laura's eyes.
They hugged Laura close after a double feature at a small art house theater, dashing out into a rainy night. They lay beneath a clean white sheet, curled into the crook of Laura's neck, the smell like flowers mingling with the Alpha's earthy scent. Happiness and desire, cooking meals, sharing looks.
Fingers knit together.
A ring wrapped in red silk.
Waves and waves of tremulous warmth rolled over him as the ghostly woman transmitted her history into his mind. The images flashed faster and more scattered as they progressed until the whole series collapsed, and Stiles returned to his own senses against the dining room wall.
The hands at the end of his arms were his own hands again, clutching the red scarf and the little book from the duffel bag. But she was still inside him, and together they flipped through the pages of neatly scrawled notes and photographs. Stiles recognized some of the moments recorded in those photos, and they stopped on one taken the day they'd been swimming at the lake.
The two girls wrapped in bright beach towels. Laura smiling at the camera. The other smiling at Laura. Stiles recognized it as the day his inhabitant had realized she was in love.
They pulled the photo from the book, all the pages after it blank, and reached out for the empty picture frame.
"Why did you come looking for Laura Hale?" Stiles asked the empty room, though he already knew the answer. He heard the sadness in his own voice and looked down.
Stormy blue eyes reflected in the glass of the picture frame as she put the photo back where it belonged.
"If you could show me all those memories, you must be able to see mine." Stiles spoke aloud, not knowing how else to address the girl. "Right?"
He felt the tugging in the pit of his stomach again, and there she was in front of him, mirroring his posture exactly. She nodded.
"So, you know..." Stiles hedged, not wanting to voice what would obviously be painful for the woman. He looked across to her, watching the expression on her face, and the play of light on the wall he could see through her body.
"She's gone," she spoke, the words low, rolling out of her and into Stiles's mind.
The memory of Laura's bisected body lept unbidden to the front of his thoughts, and she cringed away from him as she too experienced that horror.
"I'm sorry," Stiles exclaimed, desperately trying to replace the thought with anything else, but failing.
The Jeep. Scott. Laura Hale's legs.
School. Lacrosse. Laura's wolf-head.
Lydia. The Argents. Laura's dead human eyes.
"Stop it!" the girl shouted, her visible form flickering out of sight and a wave of cold replacing the warmth Stiles had been feeling throughout his body.
"I'm sorry!" Stiles called again, staggering to his feet. But she didn't reappear.
Stiles fumbled the mirror back out of his pocket and looked down into his own golden-brown eyes.
"I know you are, Stiles," she said, breaking him out of his determined stare at himself. But she wasn't there for him to see.
The room was still filled with a grey light, and Stiles's mind struggled with the idea he might actually be asleep again. The blonde girl was nowhere to be seen, but other figures seemed to flit in and out of sight at the corners of his vision.
"Hello?" Stiles called out, tentatively, turning to follow the perception of movement.
A flicker, and there they were. Three children, running in a circuitous path, ducking down as if to crawl under a table that had long since gone. They payed him no attention, instead continuing to chase each other as the echo of far off laughter reached Stiles's ears.
Just as quickly as they'd appeared, they were gone.
Another flicker, and a woman stood just beside Stiles. Not the blonde, but an older woman, with long dark hair. Five others stood around them, hands resting on invisible chair backs as they shared looks back and fourth between themselves. Werewolves. Then all eyes were on the woman beside him, waiting. Stiles also waited, paralyzed, expecting at any moment for the woman – the Alpha, Stiles thought – to speak. But just as the line of her jaw tensed, they too were gone.
And then she was there, before him, his impossible inhabitant. Her stoic expression couldn't hide the pain in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Stiles repeated.
"I know. I am too," she said, stepping forward. "I won't leave you open to that again."
"Who were they?" Stiles asked, watching her loom closer.
She stepped right up to him, searching his eyes, and then stepped through him. A shiver ran the course of his spine. "Just memories."
"Stiles," came a low, gruff voice from somewhere outside the confines of the little moment. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Derek!" Stiles was not proud of the way his voice cracked at the name. He scanned his surroundings, suddenly jolted from the surreal experience, and found the scarf and scrap book in his hand, and Derek Hale glowering in the doorway. The last golden light of evening had chased out the grey.
"I, uh..." No snappy excuses or jokes came to mind. Stiles floundered as he felt redness creeping across his face. All he felt was guilt and confusion.
He looked up at Derek's perpetually scowling face. The scowl was currently directed at the items scattered on the floor and in Stiles's hands.
"Where did you get those?" The Alpha took a step into the room.
"I found them." It was the simplest answer Stiles could give, and it was the closest thing to the truth he could manage without facing an onslaught of questions and criticisms. Although, he would have to face them soon, anyway, he knew.
Stiles felt himself shrinking back to the window as the werewolf approached.
It was a mistake.
Derek stalked closer, closing the gap between them with incredible speed.
He was close. So close. So uncomfortably close that Stiles could hear his pulse pounding in the veins of his neck. He could feel the cool rush of air as Derek inhaled against his neck.
"You smell just like her," Derek growled. The voice rumbled deep in his chest, and Stiles could feel that too.
"Like who?" Stiles managed to ask, willing his voice not to tremble even while his knees threatened to give out under him. If he fell or fainted, he'd be trapped. Between the battered wall and Derek's angry boots. Not where he wanted to be.
Derek inhaled sharply once more and pushed off the wall on either side of Stiles' head.
"Vivian," the Alpha said. The low rumble of the name surprised Stiles.
Laura. It was Laura he must smell like, here amongst her once hidden belongings. It was 'Laura' Stiles had been expecting to hear, and now he was utterly confused.
"Who?" Stiles questioned again as cool air blew through the newly open space between himself and the Alpha. His mind scrambled to understand.
"Vivian," Derek repeated, eyes once more surveying the little array of items scattered about the secret compartment. "But it's not..."
"Who is that?" Stiles asked, watching Derek cautiously from the wall.
The Alpha's eyes were back on him, on the objects still in Stiles's hands.
"Stiles..." he heard the girl's voice whispering his name like a warning in his head.
"She was Laura's- my sister's... girlfriend," the Alpha said.
And it all clicked into place. The memories still floating on the edges of Stiles's thoughts. The ghost girl in his head.
"Girlfriend?" The word squeaked in his mouth, and the room began to spin.
"Stiles, keep it together. Relax," she spoke in his mind.
"Yes, Stiles. Girlfriend," Derek's voice dropped into another growl as he shifted back into Stiles's personal space. "If you make a crack about lesbian werewolves, I'll tear your face off and hide your body. Even Scott will never find you."
Derek's eyes pierced Stiles and ratcheted his heart rate up. He could see blood pounding at the corners of his vision, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be standing for much longer.
"You didn't know?" Stiles heard the words fall from his mouth as his vision darkened.
Stiles's legs crumpled and his sight went black.
A/N: So, I know I said I was hoping to work on this in a sustainable way... and then took three weeks to post again. When I decided to start working on this piece again, I was failing to remember/realize how much of a shambles my life is going to be. I'm traveling to three states, moving back across the country, starting at a new university, and attending a wedding, all in the next two months. I am, going to try to update this is regularly as possible (I was initially thinking every two weeks...), but it might not be possible. I thank you for your patience!
Please feel free to comment and review! New reviews are so encouraging to keep up my writing practice during chaotic times like these! Thank you, again! -The PuffleHuff