Summary: Apparently head-butting bullets equals amnesia and migraines. Stiles just can't figure out what that's got to do with disappearing werewolves.

Stiles really hates being in the hospital.

It's not a mere dislike, it's not something which comes close to the general feeling of discomfort resulting from being surrounded by strange people and being stuck somewhere that's not home.

No, he really, really hates being here!

Personally he thinks it has a lot to do with the doctor, the one who greets him with "Hi, sweetie" - and Stiles has made the resolution to drag his hurting carcass out of bed and just run or stumble or whatever the next time she does that - and talks to him like he's a small child and treats him like being brained by a bullet is guaranteed to reduce a person to a mindless, blubbering idiot.

So, yeah, OK, a lot of bullet induced head traumas actually do result in diminished mental capacities, and that's a sad fact. Stiles has got Google Fu down to an art - hell, he's probably got a black belt with all kinds of assorted colored tags on it by now - and has researched the shit out of all kinds of injuries caused by every imaginable type of weapon.

Because, well, werewolves attract injuries like flies; or more correctly, werewolves are trouble magnets which results in their human friends to attract injuries like flies; or whatever. So he knows what bullets can do, and he's pretty convinced his knowledge is more extensive than that of his doctor.

I mean, does she know about wolfsbane bullets? Hah! No, but Stiles sure does.

Anyway, only yesterday Doctor McSweetie had deemed him 'awake' enough to explain to him the healing process of his head wound - and why the fuck she thought Stiles was interested in such things as 'granulated tissue' and 'wound drainage' while he couldn't even look that shit up remains a mystery to him - and when she caught his frustrated look - because, hello: laptop and busted fingers! - she immediately started using such simplified terms that he'd expected her to get out a sketchbook and crayons and start drawing him pictures next.

And Stiles, well, Stiles is many things but not an idiot, thank you very much!

Well, maybe he is, but then he is just a very frustrated idiot.

Anyway, fortunately for her, his father apparently recognized his son's increasing distaste and agitation and then willingness to commit a crime, and together with Scott's mom had managed to gently usher the doctor out of the room before he had to arrest his own son for attempted murder.

So yeah, he hates the hospital.

Stiles hates his memory loss even more.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing for him to try and piece together. No memory flashes, no scent induced scenes, no auditory bits that cause him to remember anything about spending his time in a warehouse.

Zilch. Nada.

"I'm sure it'll come back to you, dude," Scott had said a few days before, trying to calm him down when he'd become agitated again. "Mom says there's a good chance you'll remember it. Or, you know, at least part of it."

Grumbling, Stiles had let Scott push him back onto the bed again while Allison went and got him some water so he could take the anti-migraine drug they'd put him because yay! apparently migraines were a side effect of having head-butted a bullet. His question of whether these were temporary or permanently could not be answered by Dr. McSweetie, who managed to catch herself just in time before uttering the despicable endearment again.

The sheriff obviously talked to her.

"So, dude ... where the hell is Derek?"

They're the first words out of Stiles' mouth when Scott comes to visit again, and his friend's reaction is, well ... not quite what Stiles expects to be honest.

Scott's face acquires a deathly pallor - like, white as a fucking sheet! - and he starts panting so hard Stiles thinks he's reverted to being human and having a damn asthma attack. And then his eyes start doing this crazy skittering thing like some tilted pinball machine, and just when Stiles is about to press the call button because he's convinced Scott is having some sort of seizure, he realizes his friend is having a panic attack and ... is actually looking for a way to escape the room!

What the hell?!

"Scott!"

The shout is immediately followed by another headache - and Stiles is really getting sick of those! - but has the desired effect; Scott manages to focus on his friend and stops panting like some spooked horse about to bolt from the stables. And werewolves having panic attacks and then bolting from a hospital room? Like, in an actual hospital filled with weak and sick and defenseless people? Guaranteed to cause mayhem and terror and shit.

Something which definitely should not happen.

So, he's finally gathered both the wits and the courage to ask about the - well, his if he's honest, because that's what it really feels like in his mind - werewolf, because truth be told at first he was just too out of it to even realize that he hadn't seen Derek, and then when he started to become more and more lucid and giving it his everything to try and find out why he was in the hospital in the first place, he hadn't really wondered about McGrumpy's absence.

Yeah, OK, lie right there.

Because of course he has wondered what kept Derek from visiting him. Or why nobody - not even Jerko/Jackson or Isaac, who came to visit as well - has mentioned him, even if it was in passing remarks like that asshole or the creep in the woods or similar endearments.

And it's not like he has been able to ask his dad, because telling the sheriff about the whatever-this-is developing between him and Derek - because coming out to his father by confessing he's dating - dating? occasionally cuddling? engages in spit swapping? - a former murder suspect is just way scarier than telling him Surprise! werewolves actually do exist and are happily cohabiting with us mere humans right here in Beacon Hills, and how about them apples, huh? - and he's pretty certain Buddy-Bro-Scott hasn't picked up any signals yet either, so he's been very reluctant to show any extra curricular interest in the brooding werewolf.

But come on, two weeks?!

Weeks in which there hasn't been a sign, a peep or even a growl from said sourwolf? No lurking in hospital bathrooms, no creepy red eyes glaring from behind curtains as the night nurse makes her last round, no growls from beneath the bed.

Nothing!

"So Scott, you're actually really freaking me out here with that The End Is Near response, you know?"

His friend just stares at him, eyes no longer doing that pinball thing but Stiles doesn't like the look in them.

"Scott? Derek?!"

The empty look - OK, emptier than normal look, let's be honest here - remains on Scott's face, and Stiles is seriously starting to contemplate the possibility that, hey, maybe he does have some minor form of brain damage, and it occasionally causes his words to come out all garbled and weird and maybe that's what has freaked out his friend. So if he writes it down, maybe...

"I don't know."

Right. So maybe the brain damaged one is Scott here, because all that being thrown around and slammed into objects by crazed werewolves and homicidal lizards surely can't be good for even those fast healing critters. He needs Stiles to clarify, needs to hear s-l-o-w words to understand. Stiles can do that.

"I meant..."

Scott beats him to it.

"I know what you meant, Stiles. And I don't know, alright?"

Stiles feels his mouth opening and closing and then opening again like some fish caught out of the water, being deprived of much needed oxygen.

"Du..."

Scott places a hand on his arm, and Stiles looks down, being eerily reminded of those very few instances when he was present while his father had to deliver painful, horrifying news to a family member of a loved one. This is not good!

His friend's next words confirm that.

"Stiles, Derek's gone! Like, nobody has seen him in two weeks. Actually, nobody has seen him since the time they found you in the warehouse. It's ... it's like he disappeared in thin air."

Okidoki.

So this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where Stiles exits stage left, because he has completely lost the plot and his script has become useless.

Because this shit? This 'Broody McGrumpy is gone and I just don't know where he is' crap Scott's feeding him?

What the actual fuck?!