"What am i going to do about school?"
They had been sat watching a movie, all of them together for the first time in what felt like forever, when Stiles had wiggled irritably against Jackson's side. She curled her legs up under herself, cross legged and facing the room at large, while Derek reached out and paused the film on screen.
"What do you mean?" Lydia is laid across Danny, Isaac's head in her lap so that she can scratch gently at his scalp with her fingertips. Stiles throws her a withering look that Lydia returns until Stiles smiles, fingers twisting in the shirt covering her slightly swollen abdomen.
"I'm 17, Lyds. I'm 17, having a baby and almost always unable to leave this house. I had plans! What am i going to do now?" Jackson's hand comes up to pull her into his side but Stiles shakes him off, glaring behind her. She's so tired of being coddled, even if a lot of the time she needs it. Right now, she wants old Stiles back. Wants to be sarcastic and independent and at school. Jackson raises his hands with a smirk on his face, squishing himself back into the corner of the sofa.
"Teenage girls with babies go to school all of the time, Stiles. You don't need to worry about that." Danny pipes up, smiling his ridiculous dimpled smile at her from across the room. Stiles can't bring herself to glare at him, instead she lets her mouth tip down at the corners into a frown, can feel the tense crease between her eyes before she takes a deep breath and counts to ten. One of the many exercises that Deaton had been teaching her to control her magic, her frustration and her fear.
"Beside the fact that i'm not your average teenage girl, i don't think all of the staring and whispering that would go on behind my back would really help with the epic levels of paranoia and fear that has, until recently, kept me locked inside of this house." Stiles' voice gets high and agitated at the end, enough that even Erica and Boyd who are the furthest away from her right now can feel the pin prickle electricity of her magic beginning its slow build. She sees them shiver at him, can feel the change in the air as everyone tenses and gets ready to move or help. Instead, Stiles takes a deep breath, moves slowly so as to not startle any of her hyper-alert pack mates, and touches her hand down on the top of the wooden coffee table in front of her. Derek beside her lets out a breath, and in her peripheral she can see the tiny uptick of his mouth. It's the proud smile; and she focuses' on that as she channels the extra build up of energy through the table and grounds it into the foundations of the house.
"We got all the way out to Verne's-" Derek growls, low and threatening, to stop Isaac from talking. Even without looking at him, Stiles knows that Derek's eyes have bled red, that his claws are digging into his thighs. Through her magic, she can feel his anguish and his fear over what happened when she left, she can feel his self-doubt and hatred, bi-products of his inability to stop it from happening. Without looking at him, Stiles reaches out a hand and lays it over one of his, tangling her fingers around the protruding points of his claws.
"That was different, i was – different. The school.." Stiles can't look at them, gaze focused on her lap and the pattern of the bracelet she's wearing.
"The school has a lot of bad memories for me, from before the- from before it happened, and during. I don't think i can go back there. "
There is a heavy silence, much as she expected, that sits heavy on her chest. From around the room she can feel the conflicting emotions filling up her head. Anger. Upset. Rage. Sympathy. Pain. Understanding.
"You could swap schools, maybe? I'm sure your dad or Derek, maybe, could drive you to the next town over. Or, we could wait until you're feeling better and you can start driving there yourself. You have options, Stiles, it's not going to be too much of a problem." Danny offers with a smile, fingertips tapping on his phone.
"You could get your GED." Derek offers quietly, avoiding the gaze of his pack. His fingers play with Stiles' where they are still intertwined, even if his claws have gone away again.
"When Laura and i moved to New York, i got my GED and went to college. Maybe you could take the online classes and then when you're ready, you can go to college. Your plans don't have to change."
Everyone in the room snaps their attention to him, sitting back into the sofa like he's trying to make himself smaller, gaze focused on Stiles fingers entwined with his.
"You went to college?" Erica blurts out, perplexed. She's leaning forwards out of Boyd's lap, his arm wrapped around her waist so she doesn't flaceplant on the floor. Derek nods, ears growing red as he avoids everyone's gaze.
"What did you study? Where did you study?" Lydia had stilled her fingers in Isaac's hair and she turned to look directly at Derek, who mumbled his answer under his breath. When everyone kept staring at him in silence, Derek's blush spread pink to his cheeks.
"I studied comparative literature and society at Columbia." Stiles spun, getting her knees beneath her, eyes wide as she stared at Derek who was watching her with open vulnerability.
"You went to Columbia?" Derek nodded, confounded. "You went to Columbia and studied lit and society and you didn't tell me? You did it on a GED!" His blush reddened as he pulled his hands out of hers, twisting them uncomfortably in his lap. Stiles felt some of the excitement run out of her, could only just hear Jackson helping Lydia encourage everyone out of the room. The mood had changed; Stiles could feel it in her head like a more suffocating weight. Like the change of air pressure, making her want to shake the feeling from her ears.
"I never finished. When- Laura came back half way through my last year and a week later i followed her out. I went back, once, after i became Alpha so that i could clean out our apartment and defer for a year." Stiles sighed, and the unfolded her knees so that she could lay out along the length of the sofa, twisting to the side to face Derek as she laid her head down against his thigh with a gentle sigh. It had taken them so long for Stiles to get comfortable with just touching him, that this show of submissiveness was a huge jump in whatever was happening between them.
"You became the alpha, what, just under a year ago now? You could finish it Derek." His fingers came down to her head, gentle, as he tugged the hair band holding up her pony tail. His fingertips only just grazed her scalp as he combed it out.
"No i couldn't." Derek sighed out. "I'd have to take the year again, and that means a year away from the pack and territory." Stiles let herself get lost in the feeling of his fingers in her hair, the way his body shifted as he breathed; the flutter inside her stomach as the baby moved. She hummed contentedly, and Derek's fingers stilled in her hair.
"Wha'sup?" She mumbled, eyes closed, pushing her head back into his hand until he started moving his fingers again.
"You're not scared." Stiles took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and shook her head a tiny fraction. "Since we got you back- since- y'know. You always smell like bitter lemons, like fear, pepper in the back of my nose, but it's not- It's gone. You're not scared here anymore."
"Mhm- s'cause i know i don't have to be scared with you." Stiles breathed out lazily, snuggling closer into him. His breath caught in his throat as he watched her, face relaxed. One of her hands was resting in the space between her chest and the still surprisingly small baby bump protruding from her abdomen. Her other was in the process of reaching wildly upwards until she reached one of his wrists, wrapping her long fingers around it and tugging it in until it was cradled so close to her face that he could feel her breath on his skin. Before he could find something to say in reply, Stiles finally settled properly and exhaled softly.
"Talk later." She tapped her fingers against the pulse point in his wrist. "Nap time now."
Since his wife died, John Stilinski has not been a good father. He knows it's true, knows it to be fact even though Stiles has always acted like that was completely untrue. He's lost count of the amount of times Stiles has pried a bottle from his hands, mostly because he can hardly remember half of them. He could count the amount of weekends he's been home with her with his fingers and toes and possibly have a few left over.
But, now, he doesn't know what kind of father he is.
John buries his head in his hands, ignoring the half empty bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him. All he could think of when he'd gone into the station today after a two week leave was that he'd killed two people. He had been there when people tortured them, and then he had killed one of them himself after Derek Hale had killed the other.
What kind of father did that make him?
Was he redeemed, because he'd found a way that meant no one found out and judged Stiles for what she'd been through? That meant those monsters couldn't hurt her or anyone else again? Or was he even more condemned, for leaving the knowledge of his crime in his daughters mind? Was he condemned for letting them anywhere near her in the first place, for not realising, for abandoning his morals to deal with it when he had the opportunity?
John Stilinski; Sheriff, father, widow and murder of rapists. Where was his line between good and evil? How could he have ever taught his daughter right and wrong when he resorted to murder when his little girl was hurt even though he had the literal force of the station behind him at all times?
His wife, precious and strong and beautiful, she would have known how to deal with this. Claudia would have known what was happening, probably would have known about the wolves the minute Stiles had known. She would have figured it out, kept their little girl safe. This would never have happened, if he'd still had her.
John Stilinski was a failure without his wife, and his little girl had paid the price for that.
Every time he closed his eyes, he could see flashes of Claudia lying still and pale on a hospital bed mixed with the image of his baby girl bleeding and in pain in the Hale living room. Whenever he brushed past Stiles' room on his way down the stairs, he thought he could hear the sounds of her tears and the screams that used to accompany the nightmares that he had given up on dealing with.
John hadn't seen his daughter in coming up three weeks, since she had begun to develop her new talents and had disappeared into the bathroom until he left. All he knew was that she could feel what he was feeling, and all of these bad things swirling around inside of him were too wrong for her to experience. He wished he had been given the chance to explain that they were directed at himself and the situation, not at her, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to go back and expose himself to her like that again. Instead, he called once a day and hoped it would be good news so that he would have nothing to hate himself more for.
He knows that he needs to get the fuck over this. Needs to stop drinking and pull all of those bad and ugly emotions under lock and key in his mind, he needs to get back to his daughter. His injured, scared little girl who has only ever wanted her daddy to cuddle her when she's sick and bring her chicken soup and Mr. Men books to read when she was snuggled under blankets new from the dryer. It had been such a long time since she'd had someone other than herself to look out for her. John can't remember the last time he attempted Claudia's recipe for sick soup. John knows, rationally, that the pack is looking after her now and that she couldn't be any more safe, but he also knows that it isn't the same. He had heard Isaac talking to Derek on the phone, hiding in the kitchen under the pretence of making coffee in order to give his alpha a report. He had heard the 'no improvement' and 'he doesn't want to see her yet' and 'give him some time, Derek'.
John knows his little girl wants him. That she needs him.
Taking a deep breath, he lifts his head and reaches out for the bottle in front of him. There is a painful indecision as the scent of whiskey rushes him as he brings it closer, and it takes more willpower than he would ever admit to resist. Instead of giving in and taking a swig from the bottle like every other night, he holds it out at arm's length and heads to the kitchen. He has images in the back of his head of Stiles doing the same as he is now. Heading to the sink and pausing for a moment before unscrewing the lid and upending the bottle. He turns the tap on to wash the alcohol away, turning his head so that he doesn't have to watch his only crutch getting washed down the drain. When it's done, he drops the bottle into the sink and leans heavily against the kitchen counter, breathing deeply.
It's only the first step, but it's one closer to getting his daughter back.