Help, I'm Alive
By: RavenHeart101
Disclaimer: No, I do not own Teen Wolf. Or, ya know, shit would happen. The title belongs to the song "Help, I'm Alive" by Metric.
Summary: "I lied to you. I'm in some bad shit, Dad. And I'm scared." An accident causes Stiles to take a step back from the things that go bump in the night. The accident also wakes something inside of him, and while the werewolves scramble to figure out who attacked him, he starts dreaming of people long dead. Okay is relative, and normal is simply a state of mind.
Warnings: Maybe pre-slash? Uh, pre-like every pairing probably. Trigger warning for depression, and anxiety and car accidents and some other stuff that comes with that. Swearing, violence, and the tendency to possibly get things wrong.
A: N – Got a better response for the first chapter than I expected. Wow. Thanks guys!
Melissa didn't know what she had expected when she got the call. It certainly wasn't this. No, Melissa had never expected that the person in the rollover would be Stiles – her son's best friend and the boy she avoided saying was like her own some days. But avoid no more, Melissa felt as though her heart was being torn into pieces at the sight of the boy there on the white hospital bed. He had made it through surgery but it had been a struggle.
Melissa remembered being pushed out of the room the first time they had lost him on the table. Forced to go wait with John Stilinski in the waiting room. That was perhaps worse than helping with the surgery.
Melissa sighed and readjusted the sheets around Stiles' body. He looked younger like this, or perhaps he actually looked his age. How long had it been since Stiles had actually acted like he was seventeen, or been treated like he was that old, for that matter? Melissa was ashamed to say that she didn't know.
She had called Scott not too long ago – told him what had happened. She tried to convince him not to come, but it was to no avail, Scott was well on his way to a panic attack and she was sure if she had not told him to take the car he would have shown up full wolf.
Stiles made a noise from the bed and Melissa's hands froze, hovering over his damaged body (three broken ribs, a broken arm, severely bruised lungs, concussion bordering on coma, a gash that went so far into his leg that it cut through muscle and went down to the bone, dozens and dozens of cuts and bruises and stitches that would result in scars). His face was screwed up in pain and she squeezed the emergency call button, sitting down next to him and rubbing his… less damaged arm. Her fingers worked lightly over the skin and she made soothing, hushing sounds. "Shh," She soothed, much like she used to when Scott was a little boy after his father left. "Shh, Stiles. You're okay."
He whimpered again and shifted into her touch rather than away. Her eyes flitted over his face, the stiches that pulled the skin back together on his cheek, the bandage on his forehead, the bruises under his eyes. The only spot on his face that didn't seem an abnormal color were his lips. Melissa frowned as she glanced down at them, and frowned even harder at the way they moved. Like he was trying to say something. She leaned closer. "Mom." And then she leaned back.
"Oh Stiles." She whispered at the thought of what the poor boy must be dreaming of. She had hoped he was at least getting some sort of peaceful sleep. Not that Melissa thought that him dreaming of his mother wouldn't be peaceful. She reached up and brushed back his hair from his forehead. It had gotten longer than the boy would appreciate, Melissa was sure. She should call in someone to cut it in the near future, at least to make him happy when he woke up, get this fringe out of his eyes. "You're okay, sweetheart." She reassured as best she could.
"Mom." His voice was sharper, with a twinge of pain to his voice that had nothing to do with his accident.
She grabbed his hand in her own, paying close attention to the cuts on the back of it. On this particular hand, his right, he had needed a few stitches on one particularly nasty looking cut.
It was crazy to think what damage a car could do to someone.
"Shh, you're okay." She repeated softly, even when her fellow nurse, Cheyanne, walked in and administered the pain medication. "You're okay, Stiles."
Stiles was five years old, and he was baking cookies with his mother. "Stand up straight, baby." She placed a hand on his back, standing behind him as he stood on a stool to roll the cookie dough. He placed an oddly shaped ball of dough on the tray in front of him.
"Momma, when is daddy coming home?" He asked innocently, his blue t-shirt pulling up his back as he stood on his toes to scoop out another handful of dough.
"Well, I don't know, Stiles." She rubbed back his hair, leaning down to peck his forehead. "But the later daddy comes home the more cookies for us." She rubbed down his sides and smiled widely at him.
He smiled back, giggling as she leaned close to help him roll another ball of dough.
The memory started to fade around the edges, until it was completely black and suddenly he was seventeen again, instead of five, and he was standing in the middle of his kitchen, dough long gone from his hands, and pain all over his body. He let out a shout and collapsed to the ground.
His breath was short and he pressed a hand against his leg, a sharp, wet pain resonating within him. He pulled his hand away with a surprised shout. It was sticky and red and with fear Stiles looked down at the gash that was cut through his thigh.
"Stiles." When he looked up he was outside and it was dark. There were woods all around him and large, beautiful house stood off to the side. It seemed familiar in a way that somewhere in a dream might. It was large and painted white, big enough for a big family, and around three cars were parked out front. Good, sturdy looking cars. "Stiles." He jumped and spun away from the house.
And there, walking towards him was his own mother. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders, a chestnut brown like his own, but her eyes were a bright green, his own a more muted color like his father. She smiled and held her arms out wide and, if Stiles could, he would have run to her and into her arms.
"Mom?" But he still had to be sure. He hadn't seen her in so long and he prayed that she could take away his pain, just like a mother always is supposed to do.
"Baby." She walked closer, kneeling down next to him and leaning close to touch his arm. "Oh my baby, what have they done to you?"
He shut his eyes and leaned in close to her, the warmth of her body running through his own. "Mom."
Only when he opened them she was no longer there. He winced and turned his head away from the bright lights of the room he was in. "Stiles?" The voice was familiar, one he had heard too many times. Scott.
"No." He didn't want to be back. Why couldn't he have stayed with her, just a while longer?
"Oh my god, Stiles." Scott was holding onto his hand and leaning across him for something. "You're okay. You're safe now."
He gasped as a press of pain passed down his abdomen and through his arm, down to his leg, up into his head. It was all through his body. All consuming and too much. He gasped.
"I can help, I can help." Scott rushed to put a hand on his chest but Stiles thrashed against it.
"No!" He cried out.
"Let me help you, please!" Scott begged.
"Scott!" A rougher voice, deeper, darker, holding a tone of warning, and yet Stiles welcomed it because still, that voice had yet to change. He opened his eyes when he friend's body was gone from his. In a darkened corner of his room Derek stood, an arm braced tightly over Scott's chest. "You're not helping him if he doesn't want it."
"But I can make the pain go away!" Scott insisted.
The door to the room opened and a nurse was at his side. Melissa. That woman was like a second mother to him, kind and gentle where others were not. There for him when his father would spend late nights at work. "Scott, if you can't calm down leave the room." She leaned close and stuck a needle in his IV, the pain medication kicking in not too long after that.
"Mom, please." Scott moaned and Stiles should feel bad, he should. It was obvious that Scott only wanted to help. "I can help him."
"No more." Stiles gasped out as the edges of his vision started to fade again. "No more, please." Tears prickled in his eyes. It felt final – more final than Matt's death had felt. It felt as though he were ending something that had barely even begun.
The room was silent after that and Stiles watched as Derek slowly let go of Scott, his own eyes watching him. "Okay." Derek nodded and turned to walk away, stopping in the doorway as though he had more to say. But then he simply shook his head and continued on his way out.
Scott, on the other hand, rushed to his side. "Stiles, come on. Let me help. Please."
"Go away." He turned his head away from his closest friend. "Just go away." He cried softly and Melissa held onto his hand, shooing Scott away with the other before placing it on his cheek and rubbing it gently with the pad of her thumb.
Scott didn't leave though, instead he stayed, slumped back down in the seat he had been in before. Silent, yet obviously pained. Melissa soothed as best she could. "I'm going to go get your dad, okay, Stiles?" And didn't that sound like music to his ears? Crying like a scared fool like he was, Stiles wanted nothing more than the safe touch of his father, holding him tight and making him feel as though nothing, not even ten thousand werewolves, could harm him.
"Why won't you let me help you, Stiles?" Scott asked after his mother left the room, misery etched into his voice.
Stiles didn't answer because he wasn't so sure himself. All he knew was that he wanted to be just plain human Stiles once more. He didn't want to be the Stiles that knew all about the world within their own. He wanted to go back to worrying about school and homework and college and how to get Lydia Martin to notice him (not that he was into Lydia now, he had gotten over that somewhere between Jackson becoming a kanima and Jackson becoming a wolf).
His father walked into the room, swiftly sitting at his side and holding onto his hand. He felt safer now. It was odd how his father could do that. Still, he drifted off into a medicated sleep, his father's hand in his own and a grief that he could not control entering into his body. Where it came from he wasn't sure.
The Sheriff sat back in the uncomfortable chair, his son's hand in his own, not as limp as it had been in the accident, but still limp from sleep. His head was turned towards him, as though scared that if he wasn't looking at him he would leave. He had been dreaming of his mother, the Sheriff had heard that much from Melissa. It wasn't that that disturbed him, it simply worried him.
A lot worried him.
A lot more should be worrying him.
He should probably go home and grab a change of clothes. Should probably go home and check in at the station. Should find out why Stiles had been calling Derek Hale. Should figure out who had hit his son's car and why they had walked away. Should figure out what Stiles had been lying to him about.
But, instead, he was more worried about his son simply making it through the next night. He couldn't help it – his little boy looked so much smaller than he had for the last three years. He had been growing; the Sheriff knew that all boys grew. But nothing managed to make him look more aged than when he looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. The Sheriff had seen the same look on Scott a few times, seen the same look on Allison and Jackson. But there was nothing quite like seeing it on his son.
Nothing was more terrifying than the thought that his son may have made enemies with the wrong sort of people and ended getting himself into the wrong sort of trouble.
The Sheriff sighed and leaned closer. "What are you hiding, Stiles?" He asked softly.
He had sent Scott home not too long ago – told him to leave and get some sleep and that he would see him tomorrow, after school. Not that the Sheriff believed that Scott would actually be going to school. As a matter of a fact, the Sheriff was expecting that Stiles would have his best friend camped out at his bedside again the moment visiting hours started.
Melissa had gone home with Scott, urging the Sheriff to do the same. He had turned her down, though. He was more worried about what may happen to his son overnight to leave him all alone. And since he was the Sheriff he was allowed to stay – no one would question something like this.
Stiles was sleeping soundly as far as the Sheriff could tell, dreaming, not a nightmare since he wasn't twitching. His breathing was normal, vitals as normal as they could be considering the circumstances. It would probably be more than okay for the Sheriff to get some sleep too.
He just wasn't sure if he would like what he would see when he closed his eyes.
Odd to think that it had only been a day since the accident now, when it felt like it had been four years. The Sheriff felt as though he had aged one hundred years simply waiting to hear from the doctors about his son. Felt as though his own life had been torn from him when he heard that they had almost lost him twice on the table. The Sheriff still got terrified to think about it. If Stiles had died than he had failed his wife. He had promised her that he would keep Stiles safe until he was someone else's responsibility. Which the Sheriff and his wife had jokingly said would be never.
He dragged a hand down his face and squeezed the hand in his own. The Sheriff settled back into his chair, his head sliding down to rest on his chest and his eyes shutting just as his son's opened for a moment.
In the dark, Stiles caught a glimpse of something – of someone – standing behind his father. A young boy, with dark hair and a burn down his face. He smiled and held out his hand, a golden chain dropping down from his fingers, a silver wolf dangling from the end. The little boy held up a finger to his lips before dropping it into Stiles' free hand. Stiles blinked at the cold, smooth edges under his fingertips. When he opened his eyes the boy was gone, but the chain remained, a heavy weight in his hand.
"Do we know who did it?" Isaac asked from his corner of the flat, his body stiff and rigid in his chair. His back was ramrod straight and his hair was a mess. Boyd wasn't much better, though he fared better in the hair department simply because he had none, standing by the bookshelf with his arms across his chest and a frown on his face. Erica seemed to be composing herself better, though not by much. She hadn't bothered with makeup today, instead she had left herself natural with her hair in a quick pony tail.
None of them had gotten much sleep.
"I'm guessing a rival pack." Peter spoke for Derek who, instead, was sitting in his own seat, brooding more than usual.
"Why would a rival pack attack Stiles?" Erica asked when no one else seemed to question it.
Even Peter didn't seem to know how to answer that one, looking at his nephew, the alpha, for assistance. "Stiles is an asset." Derek spoke slowly.
"A human amongst wolves." Peter said in understanding.
"I don't get why that's important." Isaac responded. "Why not go after Lydia? Or Allison? Why him?"
"Because he's important." Derek snapped, and Isaac retreated.
"How?" Boyd asked after a moment of silence.
Derek took a swing of the drink in front of him, not looking at any of his pack and, instead, staring at the swirls in the wooden table. "I'm not sure how yet."
A:N – And that is chapter two! Hope I've kept everyone in character….