This one was incredibly hard to write, and i hope i did okay with it. Also- so sorry it took so long. Illness an a holiday messed with my writing schedual.
Stiles looks strangely calm in the wake of this new development, a kind of be-all-end-all resignation falls over her as Derek and Deaton stare at her. It's unnerving.
"Okay." Is all she says, causing both the men to frown at her. Stiles looks like she is considering something, deeply, before she looks directly at Deaton.
"Okay, do it. Get it out of me." The mage looks frozen, usual peacefulness replaced with a gentle kind of horror at what Stiles is saying. That she would chose to rid herself of this child, at the risk of her own life. At the risk of everything.
"Stiles, you really need to consider this-"
"What is there to consider?" She cuts Deaton off, displeasure flashing across her face. "I was attacked, I did not willingly consent to that, never mind a child. I don't want a reminder of it, of them everyday. Get it out of me." Derek lets out some kind of strangled whine, trying to hold it back. Debating with himself as to whether to pull Stiles closer or take his hands off her completely. He can't believe she is even considering this. Can't believe she thinks it's even an option, to put her life at risk after everything they had gone through to get to here.
She had held him up in a pool for two hours and he had taken a bullet for her in the uneasy times before the hunter-pack treaty. Now she was giving that up because of this? Something that could probably be solved some other, safer way.
"I can't, Derek." He shakes his head and decides on pulling away from her, getting off the bed to pace behind Deaton who is still looking vaguely shell-shocked.
"You can. You don't even have to keep the baby, adoption could be considered. We could- I mean, there is probably ways to suppress the magic if you're dead set on this. Don't just give up now." She looks at Deaton like he has all the answers, but before he could even say anything Derek can see an idea brighten in her eyes, can feel the way she is twitching beneath her skin.
"Turn me." Stiles demands, attention back on him and he splutters. There isn't a blip in her heartbeat like there is whenever they talk about this. Why would she even want this? His glance at Deaton shows him a closed off expression as he stares at Stiles.
"Why do you want me to turn you?" His voice is wrecked, and not in the way he usually likes. It's dry and scratchy and he thinks that in this moment he could probably admit that he's terrified. Terrified for her, and of her.
"You can either be a mage or a werewolf, can't be both. I turn, I'm no longer magic and you can get this… thing out of me relatively safely. Right, Deaton?" They both stare at him until he gives a tense nod, glancing at Derek out of the corner of his eyes. There's a look that Derek can't quite understand, but he's fairly sure it's begging him to find a way out of this.
"I won't bite you for this." Derek tells her, just as Deaton sighs and tells her;
"I won't perform the abortion." Stiles deflates, and he can see that underneath all of this heartless demanding, she's just as terrified and horrified as she was when they first found her behind that building. The shaking in her shoulders is almost imperceptible until he hears the first sob and she's curling up into herself. He watches as she lets out a gasp of pain as her rib protests, and then her fingers slip against the gash in her side. Watches as she digs her fingers into it, curls further into herself. Causes herself pain. He does nothing, stands there frozen as she shakes, sobs, begs them.
He still won't do it. Neither will Deaton.
Derek can feel the pain, terror, sickness rolling off her and he doesn't know what to do. There is no way he could get close enough to touch her, comfort her right now. They have both just taken away all of her options, and it's something he didn't want to do to her, ever. Somewhere inside he knows he had to, couldn't risk her in exchange of getting this baby out of her. Eventually, Deaton turns stiffly and leaves them to it, unsure of how to proceed from here. Leaving Derek staring at a sobbing Stiles, a Stiles who is inflicting pain upon herself as some kind of sick punishment. Unsure of what to do.
Eventually, Stiles had fallen asleep still curled up and sobbing to herself. Once he knew she was deeply enough asleep to not be terrified of his approach, he straightens her out a little so that she is no longer injuring herself anymore. He can feel how weak she is beneath his fingertips, can feel the tremors still running beneath her skin. There is an overwhelming urge to gather her into his arms, to tell her that yes, yes he will do anything for her if she would just be okay again. He'd turn her, he'd find someone else to do the procedure. Anything, if he could just have the old Stiles back.
He won't though, because he can't risk her. With a sigh, he heads out into the main offices to find Deaton.
"How is she?" The mage asks once Derek closes the door behind himself.
"Sleeping now." He responds, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed against his chest. He drops his head and takes a deep breath before he looks back up at him.
"Is there anything we can do? At all. I don't think- She wont cope with this." Derek shakes his head sharply, trying to dislodge the images that flash through his mind of Stiles back on the roof; hanging from the ceiling fan in the sitting room, unconscious in the bathtub filled with blood and stinking of alcohol and medication.
"Nothing that won't risk her, Derek. I'm sorry, but either Stiles tries to get what she wants other ways and risks herself, or she learns to cope. There is no other way."
"What if I did turn her, would you do it then?" There is a desperation, badly concealed, in his voice. Something raw that he hasn't heard since he walked up to a fire fighter and asked if his family had gotten out before the fire. Deaton shakes his head.
"In Stiles' current state, she probably won't even make the transition. Even if she did, she isn't in the right state of mind to make these decisions. I can't, in good conscience, do it." Derek deflates, knowing that there is nothing else he can do is not something he likes to admit. He knows that this will either make or break Stiles, and he's edging towards break. Through everything, all the pain and anguish in his life, he doesn't think he can watch her go through this. But he's going to have to, or risk losing her forever.
"Take her home, Derek. You can figure this out between the pack. Just, keep her as calm as you can." There is a brief pat on his tense forearm before Deaton leaves the office. Derek can hear him walking into Stiles room, checking the vitals on the screens beside her bed and sighing heavily. Once Stiles woke up, he would take her back to the Hale house and try to talk to her again about this. Until then, he needed to talk to the pack.
The Sheriff throws his whiskey glass across the room when Derek tells the pack. They're stood in the Stilinski kitchen, each in a state of shock, horror, disgust.
"How can this be happening?" Stiles' father roars, drawing a whimper from Isaac. He can feel the sadness washing over the pack as John begins to breathe deeply, fists clenched at his sides. They can smell the tears in his eyes and the pain flowing from him.
"What did my daughter do to deserve this?" Derek hears him whisper to himself and he wants to fall to his knee's and beg for this mans forgiveness. Forgiveness for ever dragging Stiles into this mess, for letting it happen, for not having the solution or the answers. Instead he blinks away his own burning tears and lifts his head to meet the Sheriff's gaze.
"We can't let her do what she wants to do about this." He says, blank and emotionless as the pack glances between the both of them. John takes a step forward, knuckles white with the strength he is clenching his fists.
"You taking her choices away too now, Hale? Hasn't she had people making her do things she doesn't want to do too many times recently?" He spits out. Derek wants to take a step back, wants to tell him that he doesn't want to do this. Doesn't want to take the choices away. That if he could, if it didn't mean risking everything that was good in all of their lives, he would do what Stiles had asked without hesitation.
"If I don't, she will die."
"If you don't, she's probably going to die anyways. It'll just be slower, we'll all have to watch her fade away." Isaac whispers into Danny's shoulder, and at any other time Derek would be interested in how those two have gotten so close, but now is not that time.
"What do you want me to do? I can't risk her, we can't lose her. There's no other option."
"You figure this out, Derek." The Sheriff moves closer and closer until he is toe to toe with Derek. "You fix this, because this is your fault. You dragged her into this, you goddamn fix it." Derek drops his head, defeated and exhausted, and nods.
"I know." He whispers back. "I know."
Stiles says absolutely nothing to any of them the next day. Not when Deaton gives her a list of things to eat, not eat, to do and what not to do. Not when Erica and Lydia come in to help her change into clean clothes brought from her own house. Not when Derek helps her out to the car. There is hardly even a glance in their direction, like she is lost again in her own thoughts.
The Sheriff refuses to tag along to the Hale house, and tells them to keep Stiles there. Because as much as he loves his daughter, they all know he can not deal right now. It's okay, the pack will deal for him until he is ready.
At least, they would if Stiles would just tell them what she needed. When Isaac had asked her where she had wanted to go, when they got back to the house, she had told him in few words to take her to her own room in the house. Then she had glared at Isaac, and everyone else, until they left her alone on the window seat. He knows Jackson made sure all of the upstairs window were key-locked before they got back this morning, so at least that isn't a possibility. And they'd hear her if she left the room. Even so, each of them took turns sitting outside of her room.
Lydia had talked to her about the new clothes she had bought last week, and Jackson read to her with Isaac. Danny explained how to create a fake ID, Erica and Boyd sang funny made up duets. Derek did nothing, until he heard her call him in to the room more than eleven hours after they brought her home. He heard the pack stop what they were doing, currently making dinner in the kitchen, to listen to their conversation once he had closed the door softly. Stiles was still sat on the window seat, only now she looked slightly more peaceful than she had when they had left her alone all those hours ago.
"Do you need something?" He asks hesitantly, unsure of what she called him in here for. Stiles' room is a mess of colours and pictures, books strewn out over ever surface. All things she had left here after late nights of pack bonding and research during the Alpha Pack attack. She looks back over her shoulder to him, and he can still see the stifling pain, the horror and fear she is still feeling, but underneath that is a kind of acceptance. A reluctant one, like she isn't quite sure of what she has decided, but it makes him hopeful anyway.
"What I said last night.. I was in shock, it was heartless.. I-" Stiles looked down at her hands, twisted together and clenched in a way that must have been painful. Derek took a tentative step towards her, brushing her fingers lightly in hope that it would loosen them. He didn't think he could sit and watch her cause herself anymore pain.
"It was a huge shock, and I don't think there is anything wrong with the way you reacted." Stiles shoots him a tiny smile that makes his stomach flutter, the first he's seen in so long.
"I don't- I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this, but.. It's not the- the babies fault who it's father is or how it was conceived, right? So maybe.. I don't know. If you will help me? Maybe I could." Derek sits down in the space at the end of the window seat, back against the wall as he watches her.
"I don't want you to feel like you have no choices here, but Stiles. I'm not going to risk losing you again. I told you that yesterday, and I meant it." She relaxes her hands and grasps his fingers, still lingering gently over her own.
"But you'll help me?" Her voice is so tiny and meek, and Derek is reminded that this is just a young girl, not even out of high school yet. Only a year older than he was when his family burnt.
"You know I will." Derek replies just as quietly and opens his arms for her as she slowly shifts towards him. She is light, bones and skin and wasting away still. "But you have to help yourself first." He mutters into her hair as she settles her head against his chest.
"What do you mean?" Stiles asks, hand shifting to wrap around his wrist in a way he hadn't thought he had missed last night. He had, of course he had. It's not just Stiles that needs that reassurance now.
"You weight about 90 pounds soaking wet right now, you need to eat. You need to sleep. We need to figure out what it means for you to be a spark." She shivers against him.
"I just.. I feel sick all of the time. And the nightmares, and the panic attacks. I don't know how to anymore." The admission comes buried in his chest, where she has turned her head. He can feel the tears wetting his shirt and sighs, stroking down her arm absently and taking some of her pain with him in dark lines through his veins. Stiles sighs in some relief as she relaxes a little against him. He has missed this Stiles. Missed the one who trusted him, who believed in him to listen to her problems and make them a little better. That Stiles might have only been gone for a night, but it had been a night too long when he considered how long it could have lasted.
"We've got time. You're going to be okay, Gwyn." He whispers the name into her hair like a prayer. He expects her to fly off the handle at him, but she doesn't. Just gives him a tiny smile.
"Promise?" She asks quietly.
"Promise." He replies, and goes back to pulling her pain away a little at a time.