Chapter Three: I've lived this life a thousand times (but it has never come to this before)
Nightmares are a tricky thing. If Stiles was Sigmund Freud, which, ew, hell-to-the-fuck-no because what kind of a dude sits around sniffing cocaine and comes up with things like an Oedipus complex? Anyway, if Stiles was into the whole psychoanalyzing of dreams then he'd wake up to a soft-padded room and a strait jacket. No, Stiles kind of knows that these nightmares aren't really grotesque dreams of macabre and horror.
These are much worse. These? These are fucking memories.
There's the Alpha twins, growling at him over Erica's bloody and still healing body, eyes redder than the crimson oozing from his pack mate's massive wounds.
Then there's the Alpha female, Alpha-of-Alpha's, with her teeth bared and her eyes bleeding, claws clenched around Boyd's throat.
Then there's his father, hacking and bleeding on the sidewalk, just outside of their home.
There are wisps of flames scorching his clothes, licking at his skin and brushing against his face. Someone is holding him back, even as he shouts that his father is still in there. They pull him back, the image of black arms, some bloody and others just too dark to see, wrap around his torso, his own arms, all pulling and dragging a frantic Stiles away into the shadows.
The alpha stands before the pack. He spits out curses as his underlings all whine. A room away, two of the pack lay unconscious, healing better with their pack around them.
The alpha looks at Stiles.
Stiles feels empty, as if his own heart has stopped beating. Icy numbness spreads through his limbs; the Alpha speaks but Stiles can't hear a thing.
Stiles is eighteen when he's kicked out of the pack for endangering the pack and going against the Alpha's orders. It doesn't matter that he's homeless. It doesn't matter that he's all alone now. An Alpha's word is final; the pack doesn't fight for him. Not that they can't, they cower as Stiles walks out of the den. It's not that they can't stand up for Stiles; they don't want to.
They hammer in another nail onto Stiles' coffin. He's stuck in the darkness and each memory that plays in his mind's eye is pulling the air from his lungs, leaving him trapped in this torture of his own making.
Erica visits Stiles a month later. He's renting a single, living off of the insurance his dad had (being sheriff and all). They talk. She cries, smiles, says she always figured it'd be Batman to come save her.
A week later, Boyd comes in. Erica is already there, curled up in Stiles' bed. Boyd doesn't say thank you but the amount of gratitude in his eyes is heartbreaking. Stiles' smile is watery when Boyd climbs onto the bed.
Lydia hasn't stopped calling him.
Two months into Pack-Exile, Erica tells him that Allison is gone and she's taken the Bestiary. Derek is livid.
Stiles can't help but think, well, maybe there's something there. Something he isn't seeing. Like a grand tapestry, a pattern that's underlying all of these situations.
He takes down a pack of vampires that have killed a whole family and bled them dry in the living room.
Lydia smirks when Stiles walks out of the abandoned warehouse with nothing more than a nod; he's soaked in dead blood, the stolen blood of the family across the street and Derek doesn't look twice at him. Erica looks like she wants to check him for wounds but Stiles just waves her off.
When he gets home he sits in the shower for an hour, way after the water drains out a diluted redish-orange.
("You don't have to be pack to fight and protect," Allison says with a smile, dropping a heavy metal box onto Stiles' beat up coffee table. "You don't need pack, Stiles. You have me."
And for a week it's enough. But Stiles is a tragedy bottled up in an eighteen year old's body. He's death and murder and anger and depression retagged as sarcasm, snark and smarts.)
When the final nail is placed on his coffin and the images stop all Stiles can think is he was waiting for his last belonging to be taken as well: his humanity.
Stiles wakes up breathing hard and sweating; his cheeks are still slick with bitter tears and the sheets are restricting. He doesn't move, though. There are sprinkles of mountain ash on his windowsill (and Stiles is glad he found a job and applied to school; the old apartment is too chock-full of memories he doesn't want anymore), there's the unmistakable stench of what he think might be garlic and Stiles doesn't know if he should laugh or cry because clearly someone's been reading the classics if the ground-out tinge to the garlic is anything to go by.
Clearly someone either doesn't want him to leave or they don't want something to enter.
Thankfully it's Sunday, a day off from work and his free day from school. This means that he can lay about his bed and house and possibly find something to eat, maybe, because he's pretty famished and on the verge of eating his pillow if it doesn't stop feeling all mushy-marshmallow, pudgy tummy—
Shit.
He just, it's easy to forget that sometimes there's something wrong with thinking about eating someone when you're not exactly fully human anymore. Stiles doesn't even care that someone went against his strict orders of being left alone to stew in his own personal flavor of angst and self-deprecation but if anything it may just be someone that can help him.
Maybe someone that is willing to put him out of his misery like a rabid dog. The idea and following self-image are probably funnier than they should be but whatever, Stiles can think whatever he wants.
"Who dares meander about my most horrendous, frightening abode? My dungeon of dastardly deeds? My-"
"Stiles, you better shut the hell up!" Erika shouts from the living room and Stiles laughs. "I'm just cooking something in your kitchen, feel free to go prowl for some newborns or bloody period-"
"Erika!" Stiles groans and flops around his bed, trying to rub the image out of his eyes of used tampons and such. "Gross, dude, I don't want to picture that crap!" He hears Erika cackling as if she's in the room with him. "Ugh, how the hell do you manage to keep your senses in check, it feels like a thousand things are trying to grab my attention at once. Why can't I just diiiiiieeeee," Stiles grouses and he hears Erika's snort of laughter with a hint of worry somewhere in there. He rises from his bed and makes a noise of disgust at the sight of crusted, dried blood, grime and old sweat on his body.
"Shower, zombie-boy, and then get your fine ass into the kitchen because we're having this discussion, Boyd and Isaac are coming over and we may or may not have a surprise for you." Erika calls out and Stiles groans, knows there really is no way out of this one, and makes his way to the connected restroom.
Physically speaking, Stiles has come a long way from the lanky, gangly limbed teenager he was when Scott was bitten. All the running had made him leaner, faster; after the ordeal with the Alpha's and the resulting banishment, Allison and Chris Argent had set up a strict training régime as Stiles would still be associated with Derek's pack and targeted for being human. In lieu of simmering and decaying in suffocating depression, especially after Allison left, Stiles kept on with the training, working out, running and hunting.
It gave him something to do, a purpose. Something to live for when everything else disappeared before his own eyes.
The shower is a blessing, scorching hot and cleansing. Stiles feels his muscles unwind, feels his troubles slink down his body with the dirt and grime and blood until it all seeps into the drain. He pauses, hand reaching for the soap, when he feels something stir within himself.
It's the wolf, cautiously rearing its head out of Stiles' internal alcove once again, cautious and wary and so very jumpy. Stiles sighs, closes his eyes, feels this being, this part of himself, move about, expand his senses. Stiles is pretty sure that this isn't how it was with Scott or anyone else, this sort of willing extension of senses instead of an onslaught of toomuchnoise, toomanycolors, toomanydetails, toomanyscents.
'This is a part of me,' Stiles thinks, blocking out everything but the cascading heat and the frightened growl that passes his own lips. 'Don't fight it. Don't deny it. This is just as much a part of me as a limb or organ.'
He thinks of Scott, fighting off what he was, hating his wolf instead of embracing it. He thinks of the fear that shot through him each time Scott would glare with those golden eyes. He thinks of all the almost attacks, of bloody school busses and worried nights thinking that maybe tonight. Maybe tonight is the night Scott loses control. Maybe tonight he'll walk through the woods and get killed by his best friend. Maybe tonight he's going to have to prowl through the woods to put down his own best buddy.
Stiles whines and the sound, the low-pitched whimper reverberates through the small bathroom.
'This is a part of me. This wolf is my instincts. My feelings. Safety. Stiles.' The water is soothing, like a liquid blanket that runs down his body. Stiles turns his head to face the blast of the showerhead, eyes closed. 'The wolf does not control me. I am Stiles, and I am some weird pseudo vampire werewolf thing. I. Am. Stiles, and I am still human at heart.'
Stiles thinks about Derek, how he would growl and bare his fangs like a neanderthal. He thinks of those times they would fight and his Alpha would run out of the den, half-transformed, anchorless. More wolf than human. Stiles thinks of Peter Hale, of burnt bodies, magic and destroyed bodies. (He thinks of Lydia, mangled and bruised and sobbing and so very broken; he pictures Scott, hearing the call of his alpha, the howl of the omega. He thinks of the death and carnage; the corpses. He thinks of Laura, so beautiful and young So very dead. He thinks of the poor teens that were parked across the street, innocent and young and ignorant. He thinks of his dad, dying with smoke inhalation, burning, Peter Hale's face as he's engulfed by fire again, clawing at Stiles' ankle. He thinks of the Alpha's, the blood. He thinks of Erika, Isaac and Scott, and Lydia, and Jackson, and Derek, and Laura, and knows, knows deep in his heart and the heart of his wolf, the hearts that beat as one and fill with ire and compassion and protective strength that he will never, ever allow himself to be lost to his wolf. )
The wolf howls, paws at the earth of Stiles' consciousness. Its head bows, the beautiful, the long extinct Armbruster's Wolf bows it's head. Stiles feels his own head bow, and the water is starting to cool.
When Stiles opens his eyes, he knows they've changed color. He doesn't know what shade they are (though he prays to whatever gods are listening that they're not omega gold, god, that'd be freakin' terrible in every way possible) but he knows that they're not the same, and he grins because at least this is one thing down, right?
He scrubs himself down with vigor and energy, washes off the lingering soap and turns off the shower. He towels himself down and walks buck naked into his room—Stiles is a firm believer that if you're in your own house, you have the right to walk in whatever state of dress or undress you want. He changes into some sweats anyway, though, with the smell of food and the removal of the ground garlic juices (well, the majority of it, Stiles can still sort of taste it in the air, along with excitement, worry and a twinge of panic) and the introduction of brighter scents, like meat and onions and bell peppers.
He can hear Erika and Boyd together, whispering amongst themselves, and Isaac humming to a song buzzing through the small portable radio on one of the small counter tops. Stiles tip-toes his way to the table and sits on the top, feels a grin spread across his lips and just watches.
Erika and Boyd are whispering over some cooking meat, the blonde's hip cocked towards the taller wolf flirtatiously. Boyd's hand is on her shoulder and she says something that has him jerking her back with a chuckle. Isaac is humming along to the radio, hips swaying to the bass as Ke$ha's autotuned chorus slips into the mix. He's pouring drinks and lost in his own little world when Stiles clears his throat.
He can feel the tension instantly, like a pair of arms wrapped around his entire body. (Residual, he thinks, simply the spontaneous recovery of old stimuli because he's in a terse situation; it's a PTSD kind of reaction, Stiles tells himself, it has nothing to do with anything, it doesn't, it doesn't…)
"Hey, Batman," Erika starts and her lips twitch in an aborted smile, "how you holding up?"
"Well, besides the fact that I have no idea what will happen, have had extensive emotional trauma and got my phone smashed, I feel pretty good." Stiles deadpans and Isaac snorts. The tension in the air declines and is replaced with a sense of comfort and this, this is what Stiles needs, a little of the same instead of pity or worry or falseness. "But I'm starving, you guys are hungry like the wolves and I heard 'surprise' before I showered and I want." Stiles grins and the trio of wolves all glance at each other nervously.
He can taste their fear, their trepidation in the air.
"Guys?" Stiles half-asks, half-groans. He really just wants to eat and google what the hell he can do but apparently his luck has gone from shit-out to "HAHAHA FILTHY PEASANT YOU SHALL SUFFER FOR BREATHING THE AIR AND BLINKING".
"Well, we may or may not have information to help you and maybe get you, if not back to normal at least wolfy, but it's the source that we're worried about." Boyd says in all frankness, but Stiles can taste the anxiety, the dread.
"Source?" Stiles presses on.
"Yeah, we thought it might be too much of a coincidence but she said that she was on her way back here anyway. Says it was an urgent finding so she was on her way here," Isaac shrugs. "I don't trust her more than I'd bite her, but, well, Erika…" Isaac looks over at the grimacing blonde.
"Erika, who the hell are you guys talking about?" Stiles' voice is low, feral. Erika sighs, drops her head and scampers to the door. She keeps her hand on the knob for a second before turning to look at Stiles.
"You have to understand, Stiles, I know you won't accept Derek's help, and you won't bother Scott, but we're not going to abandon you. You're pack to us and we need help. We just want you to live through this, and we just want all this shit to be over for you. If there's anyone here that deserves to actually be happy, it's you." Erika looks beseechingly at Stiles. "Understand that under ordinary circumstances, I would kill her on the spot, but right now we need her, and the Beastiary."
Shit.
"Stiles," Allison gasps, tears in her eyes. She changed from the last Stiles saw her, long dark hair lopped off into a wavy sort of boy-cut, her blouses and jackets exchanged for a dirty button up white shirt and tight fitting blue jeans. Her eyes, though, they're the same, cheerfully shaped but so full of history. "Stiles, I can't, there's just—I'm so, so sorry for leaving but this is important, so damn important." Allison actually cries, and it's messy and awkward and Stiles doesn't really know how to react.
Part of him wants to hug her, soothe away her tears and try to calm her down. Another part wants to shout and make her know just how much her abandonment screwed with Stiles. And in the end it's just that, abandonment, because she left him alone and betrayed his trust and never sent word. Never said why.
He's saved a choice as Allison runs inside, throws herself at him and sobs, almost parallel to the night Stiles showed up on her step, smoky and reeking of death. She's almost hysterical so he puts an arm around her, lets his fingers rest on the short strands of hair against her neck.
"Stiles, they—it was planned, they wanted you, always you, it was him, and he's coming back, he's on his way here, and he wants revenge, wants you-" Allison babbles and Stiles shoots Erika a frightened look that she mirrors back. "Stiles, get out of here, you need, stay somewhere, somewhere safe, go to Derek or Scott but you need… someone… at all… times?" Allison stills, body rigid in Stiles' loose hold.
"Stiles, you..?" She hesitates and Stiles breathes in through his mouth, senses only confusion and the original panic and worry and fear but nothing else, nothing other than befuddlement towards him.
"Boyd?" Stiles calls out, meeting Allison's wide gaze.
"Yeah?"
Stiles hates this. Hates that it's going to come to this and that his life is officially a crappy soap opera, complete with reuniting ex-lovers and drama and shouting that will come. He hates that this is his life, that nothing is clean and everything is messy and he can't control a thing because he's weak. Being a werewolf-vampire thing won't ever change that.
"Call Derek, tell him to get his ass here, bring Jackson and Lydia and Scott, too." Stiles closes his eyes when Boyd pulls out his phone and starts dialing.
"Okay, now we're going to have a nice, long chat about everything." Stiles says calmly as he looks at the three still in the kitchen-dining room. "Everything. Since the start. And you," Stiles squeezes his hold on Allison to get her attention. "Who?"
"Stiles, maybe I should wait, then-" Allison stammers and Stiles squeezes her sides again.
"Please, just give me a name." Stiles whispers. Isaac moves to sit on the couch, drags Erika with him to leave the two alone.
"Stiles…" Allison whispers, pressing her forehead onto his shoulder. Stiles barely holds back a smile at the old, familiar action.
"Please" He whispers back, thumping his chin against her short hair.
"Peter Hale."
Well…
…fuck.