A/N: Sorry for the delay. RL and work and all that jazz.
The first part of the chapter briefly touches on some events of 3b canon, with a few tweaks here and there, up to Stiles going to Melissa at the hospital, then it goes AU! from there.
The scene with Derek and Stiles at the hospital was also inspired by 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World'. I have no shame. The particular words in question feature at the beginning of the chapter.
Also, I may have Stiles refer to Derek as a therapy dog. I mean no offence to Werewolves or therapy dogs ;D
'There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do I'll be right behind you'
He's late arriving to school despite waking early.
His dad's already left by the time he makes it to his jeep which only meant something big must have happened considering he wasn't due to work until later.
When he arrives at school he spots a few cruisers situated in the parking lot and that foreboding feeling, the one he'd been feeling since he woke up, increased within his chest, tightening its hold. He manages to skedaddle past them all and rushes in through the main entrance.
The hallway is pretty much free of any mishap or mayhem, some students going about their daily business, rummaging through lockers, lounging against the wall, talking in hushed whispers. Some hover near door he'd just bolted through and watch the officers vacating their vehicles.
Apart from the cruisers, everything else seemed pretty normal, only Stiles knows that classes should have started by now and that pretty much is the biggest clue that something was wrong.
He spots Lydia by her locker, worrying her lip.
"Hey," he says, skidding to a stop by her, breathless. "What's going on?"
"I'm not sure," she says with a shrug. He furrows his brows at her, concerned. Lydia looks pristine as usual – she has the cutest sweater on (that he knows she probably meticulously picked) and perfectly applied make up – but she's strikingly pale. Too pale. "I'm guessing it's to do with the Barrow situation."
"Barrow?"
"Don't you watch the news?" Lydia asks, giving him a surprised look. "It's all over it."
"I crashed pretty early," Stiles says with a shrug and then quirks a sheepish smile. "I slept all night."
Lydia breaks into a smile, a genuine happy and relieved look spreading out across her face. She punches him lightly in his arm. "Really? I'm proud of you, Stilinski. Keep it up."
"So, Barrow?" Stiles prompts her, rubbing at his arm in mock pain.
"Oh, right," Lydia nods and then she's back to being distracted, worrying her lip again. "Eichen house patient. Escaped from Beacon Hills hospital last night. Likes to blow kids up with nail bombs."
"Nice," Stiles whistles, shaking his head. He spots his dad and Agent McCall at the end of the hallway in a heated discussion. "Sounds serious."
"Hmm," Lydia hums in agreement, rubbing at her temple.
"You okay?"
"Wha-," she says, startled, looking around her. "- yeah, sure… it's just the buzzing, like a damn fly." She swats at her head.
Stiles catches her hand mid-swat.
"There's no fly, Lyds…" Stiles says, entwining their hands together.
"Of course there is," Lydia immediately says firmly and then looks around them, less sure. "You can't hear the buzzing?"
"I don't think anyone hears what you hear," he tells her.
They end up on lockdown which epically fails due to Stiles fire alarm shenanigans.
He knows, when it's all over, that he's going to end up with a shit-load of detentions to tend with, but it's something he has to do, for all their sakes.
He had taken one look at Lydia's face and just knew.
It's Barrow, she says. He's here. I know it.
When his dad had failed to listen he'd been left with no other option than to set off the alarm and deal with the consequences later.
It worked – everyone ended up outside and then it was deemed to be safer if everyone was in their own homes.
Lydia comes home with him and studies his unsolvable board, wrapping endless red string around her own fingers. He can't bear to see her look so miserable. "You're never wrong about these things. I trust your instincts."
Lydia raises unconvinced eyes at him from his bed.
"If you want I'll go back to the school right now and search all night. If you tell me he's there, then he's there."
They both go and Stiles follows Lydia unquestionably when she leads both of them to the chemistry room.
"What the hell is that?" Stiles asks, looking at a column of numbers on the chalk board.
"It's an atomic code," Lydia breathes. She pulls her phone out and snaps a picture.
"Can you send me that?" Stiles asks, rummaging through his pant leg. "I think I left my phone at home."
She nods and hits a few buttons, "Done."
Stiles walks closer to the board, "So it's a code for something?" Stiles asks nervously, "Like what?"
Lydia shakes her head.
"Not something," she says. "Someone."
He watches her as Lydia writes the letters against each number, recognition hitting him.
The find Scott easily enough and Lydia realises the buzzing flies were not flies at all, but electricity.
It doesn't take long for Stiles to figure out Barrow + electricity = the old electricity plant.
They go there to save the day, only Kira electrifies everything, including Barrow.
It's only after that Stiles realises he's lost his bat.
He should probably be more concerned about Kira and what she might be but he's got his own shit to deal with and he's pretty much content to let Scott figure it all out while he stays out of it. Firmly out of it.
He's most certainly not going to help them break into the sheriff's office and delete some incriminating photos. Especially when Scott's dad is intent on getting his dad fired.
Nope. Not happening.
Only it's Scott and damn it to hell.
The thing is, Stiles isn't an over thinker.
Oh, he's more than a little drunk when he giggles against Caitlin's lips, who am I kidding? I am the biggest over thinker to ever over think.
The thing is, he starts over in his head, he shouldn't be thinking about anything other than Caitlin's explorative mouth and flighty hands.
But he can't get those damn numbers and letters out of his head. K. . K. . K. . Kira. She's safe. She's right over there with Scott. But he just can't shake the weird, restless feeling, that had been with him ever since he and Lydia found the code in the first place.
He breaks away from the cute, petite girl in front of him, coming up for air. It distracts Caitlin enough to spot the keys in his hands and then she's talking about phosphors and the conversation gets strangely scientific, despite the tipsiness between them.
Stiles sobers quickly with a dawning fear of realisation rising within him.
The numbers and Lydia's handwriting are still there.
He writes the numbers next to the original ones. He rushes towards the end, his hands a shaking mess. It's no mistake, they're not complete matches, but Stiles can see it now, see the familiarity to it.
It was him.
He wrote the code to kill Kira.
The code has gone when Stiles tries to show Scott a few hours later.
Stiles must look and sound a mess because Scott's insisting he go home and take a sick day.
He goes to the hospital instead.
There's something wrong with his head.
He knows it.
He can feel it.
"Stiles? Are you okay?" Melissa asks him, standing in concern.
He steps away from her, stuttering a few responses, and shakes his head.
"I guess not really," he finally says. His whole body is shaking and his heart rate sky rockets.
"Okay, kiddo…" Melissa nods reassuringly, sliding her arm around his back as she leads to an empty room.
He tells her his symptoms and he knows she's worried, even though she doesn't voice it and then she midazolam's him into unconsciousness and everything gets fuzzy after that.
Stiles wakes sometime later. He knows it's late. The room is dark, there's a warm glow from the hallway coming through the open doorway. It's just enough to show Scott sitting on the edge of his bed, hand distractedly playing with the blanket
"Hey," he slurs tiredly, still half-under the effects of the drug. He tugs Scott's arm closer, squinting his eyes, trying to focus on his sleeve. "Y'got blood on you."
"It's fine," Scott says, pulling his arm back and patting Stiles leg through the blanket. "There was a little incident at my house. My dad got hurt. He's fine now. He's in a room down the hall."
"Wha' –cident," Stiles fumbles over his words, licking his lips. His eyes slide shut against his will.
"It's nothing," Scott says.
"It's never nothing," Stiles mumbles sleepily.
"I'll tell you in the morning," Scott promises. He feels his leg being squeezed. "It's late, bro. You need to get some more sleep."
"Hmm," Stiles doesn't argue there.
Melissa appears in the doorway and Stiles smiles dopily at her.
"Thanks," he tells her.
"It was nothing, sweetheart…" she tells him, coming over to the bed. She leans down and presses a kiss to his head. "Scott's right. Go back to sleep."
Stiles mumbles half-heartedly and rolls over onto his side, burrowing further under the covers. He feels Melissa rub at his back. It's soothing and lulling and he soon finds himself drifting back to sleep, Melissa's and Scott's voices washing over him.
"It's been hours, Scott. Don't you think something would have happened by now?"
"Maybe. Probably."
"They turned up as soon as it was dark."
"Yeah…"
"And wouldn't it have been easier for them to come here first. When no one was here."
"Lets go home, Scott. Like you said, it's late and you look exhausted."
"I need to check on Kira first. Make sure she got home okay."
"Okay, we'll do it on the way. I'll pick Stiles up in the morning."
Incident? They?
Stiles should be more concerned by this but he's already falling into the abys of sleep.
When he wakes for the second time he's alone and he knows something is wrong.
A shadowy figure passes his door.
Stiles, naturally, gets out of bed and steps closer to the door.
"Hello?" he calls out uncertainly.
There's no one there when he reaches the hallway and he calls out again. No one responds. There's a weird sound that he doesn't know how to describe. Echoe-y and crackling doesn't even cover it.
He backs up around the corner into the next hallway.
The sound reverberates again. Louder than before, like it's literally behind him.
Stiles whirls around.
And comes face to face with a fucking goddamn Ninja.
Derek isn't a stalker, no matter what Stiles had to say. Okay, so he had followed Scott all day, but that was for the kid's own good.
It wasn't even creeping. It was being stealthy. Something he probably needed to teach Stiles about.
And he wasn't creeping on Stiles either, despite the fact that he was sat in his SUV in the parking lot of the hospital. Scott had practically invited him to watch over a sleeping Stiles.
[Scott] Checking on Kira. Stiles still sleeping.
Okay, so maybe Scott hadn't actually typed the words, but the implication had been there, and if he was being honest with himself, he was worried about the kid. Especially when Stiles was pretty much defenceless in a drug induced sleep.
He's disrupted out of his thoughts by his phone ringing, Stiles name flashing up on the screen.
He answers immediately.
"Stiles?"
"I'm freaking losing my mind," Stiles harsh voice cuts in before he can even ask what's wrong. "First I write a code that's meant to kill Kira…"
"What…?" he starts to ask.
"And then it was gone this morning, like it was never there in the first place," Stiles continues, breathless voice pitching high in his ear. "And Scott thinks I'm going mad and maybe I am because Mrs McCall midazolamed me and I might have been able to figure some of this out if I hadn't been sleeping through it…"
"Stiles! Stop!" he snaps and strangely he does. "Breathe." He hears a shuddering breath through the phone. "Good. Now tell me what the hell you're talking about."
"Ninjas, Derek. Fucking Ninjas," he says as though they've always been a problem.
"Shit," Derek breathes out, already out of the car and halfway across the parking lot. Of course it all has to kick off once Scott has left. "Okay, I'm already here actually."
"You are?" Stiles asks with a suspicious tone. "Why don't you sound surprised?" He hears a grunt and then it alarmingly goes silent.
"Stiles? What's going on?" he snaps into the phone, worry making his voice sound angry and irritated.
"- Sorry, sorry…" Stiles pants a second later. "I dropped my phone. Had you worried there for a sec, Sourwolf? My bad."
"Where the hell are you?" he growls into the phone, rolling his eyes.
"Under the nurses station," Stiles him. "It's not my best decision ever, but did I mention there's ninjas, Derek. And swords…"
"Just stay where you are," Derek tells him.
Predictably, Stiles doesn't stay under the nurse's station.
Derek finds him midway down the hallway, back to him. One of the Oni's is at the other end. Two more burst out of nowhere in an inky appearance, swirling into a solid form. Stiles jumps in surprise and stumbles back.
Derek gathers speed and reaches Stiles before the younger boy even realises he's there. He shoves him roughly into the hallway that intercepts between the two and Stiles lets out a small unmanly shriek.
Derek presses both their bodies up against the wall, sliding his hand up and over Stiles too loud mouth.
"Derek?" Stiles mumbles quietly behind his hand.
"Shh," Derek quietly hushes him. "Quiet."
They watch as the Oni silently move past the hallway, the inkiness swirling with their moves, their crackling, eerie noise drifting with it.
When they have each passed, Derek silently pulls Stiles backwards, hand still pressed over his mouth until they reach a room. It's dark enough that they might not be seen. He shoves Stiles away. He doesn't even try to stop his momentum and sinks to the floor, body pressed against the hospital room wall.
"What's going on, Derek?" Stiles whispers furiously, eyes glinting up at him from the darkness. "What are they?"
"They're called the Oni," Derek tells him quietly. He's standing between Stiles and the door, looking over his shoulder at him. "They're here to find someone who's not themselves.
Stiles frowns up at him. "Like possessed?"
"Kind of," Derek nods. "They turned up at the rave last night and this evening at Scott's."
"Everyone's okay though, right?" Stiles asks, worriedly.
"Yeah," Derek nods down reassuringly. "Everyone's fine, but we've got to keep quiet okay."
Stiles nods at him before his eyes widen in fear. Derek whirls back to see an Oni pass the closed door.
The noise crackles again, louder still, almost melodic.
"Can you hear that?" Stiles hisses in fear. He feels a hand grab the bottom of his pant leg and twist.
"The noise?" Derek asks, nodding. "Yeah."
"No," Stiles shakes his head aggressively. "They're saying 'who are we after' over and over."
"I can't hear that, Stiles…" Derek shakes his head. "You've got to keep quiet."
"I can hear it," Stiles shakes his head again, releasing his pant leg to clutch at his head. "Who are we after, who are we after…" his voice catches on a sob and hitches again.
"Stiles," Derek pleads, dropping down to the floor and catching both hands in his own, tugging them away from where he's trying to clutch at his hair. "Be quiet."
"When is a door not a door," Stiles whispers, tears spilling over and down his cheeks. "When is a door not a door. When is a door not a door."
"Shh, Stiles…" Derek tries to soothe him into silence, one hand sliding from the top of his head and down, coming to rest against the back of his clammy neck.
The lamp in the corner of the room suddenly bursts to life, flooding the room with a dull light.
Stiles jumps at the suddenness of it and practically flings himself against Derek.
"A Stilinski," a voice slurs next to the bed. Of course, the room wasn't empty. Derek should have realised this but his senses are completely overwhelmed with all of Stiles. Of all the rooms they could have bundled themselves into it had to be Agent McCall's. "In the middle of it all…"
"It's just a dream," Stiles voice cracks at the agent. He's still pressed a little too closely against him, but Derek doesn't try to push him away. "Go back to sleep."
"Turn the light off," Derek hisses at Agent McCall, glancing back to see if the Oni had returned.
The noise is back before he sees anything.
"Derek," Stiles breathlessly clings to him.
"Turn it off," he hisses again, but he knows it's too late.
The Oni appear, one by one, easily emerging through the door in their inky cloud, wispy tails floating innocuously around them.
"Where's my gun?" McCall slurs from his hospital bed, hand blindly reaching out and striking the lamp to the floor and plunging the room into darkness. Stiles hand immediately grabs at his pant leg again.
"Wait!" Derek barks out, hands out between him and the Oni. There's just enough light from hall to wash over the room. "We're not going to fight you."
"We're not?" Stiles asks in disbelief.
The Oni hesitate in their approach and tilt their heads quizzically in Derek's direction.
"No, we're not," Derek says. There's no point in fighting. Everyone who has had only got hurt. "They tested the others and everyone is fine."
"But what if I'm not, " Stiles says. He twists his pant leg again, tight enough that it pulls at his skin. "What if they actually kill me?"
"Then I'll personally decapitate them with their own swords," Derek promises, looking down at him. He offers a hand, outstretched towards him. "You trust me, right?"
There would have been a time when Stiles would have said no, but he hopes that now wasn't one of them.
"Okay," Stiles says, head bobbing up down. Derek can see that he's still uncertain. He takes the offered hand and raises to his knees.
The Oni once again approaches, forming a V figure, as the one at the front of the formation reaches out a black hand to Stiles exposed neck.
As soon as the hand touches skin, though, something happens. It's not like Scott or Kira, who simply went rigid and then fell limply to the floor. There's an explosion of light that erupts up between Stiles and the Oni, engulfing the black shadowy figure, until light explodes from it's chest and simply evaporates into nothingness.
The force of it wrenches Stiles out of his grasp, sending him sprawling backwards until his body was sliding down the wall in undignified heap.
"What…" Derek asks, immediately dropping to his knees and reaching for him. The only thing that Stiles seemed to share with the others was the freezing skin and the immediate shivering. "The hell just happened?"
Neither of the other two Oni's seem to react at all. They both stood still, unflinching.
One of the Oni steps forwards and Stiles flinches in Derek's hold, aware enough that there was still some level of danger. The Oni crouches slowly, head tilting questionably, hand hovering mid-air over Stiles. The noise from before crackles and pops until it forms into vowels and then the room is filled with a strange stilted and breathless sound. "What. Are. You?"
And then they were gone.
"Fucking Ninjas," McCall mutters to himself before promptly passing out.
"Stiles," Derek ignores the freshly passed out man to the half-passed out teen in his arms, shaking him.
Stiles weakly pushes Derek away, his head lolling heavily against the wall in the opposite direction, mumbling to himself, but loud enough for Derek's wolf-hearing to pick it up.
"Don't let them in in. Don't let them in. Don't let them in…"
Derek drives over to Lydia's when Stiles comes too enough to talk.
Stiles sits slumped in the passenger seat, mumbling about leaving the jeep at that god forsaken place.
"So let me get this right," Derek says, ignoring him. "You think you wrote a code to tell Barrow to go after Kira?"
Stiles nods.
"Because your handwriting matched?"
"Pretty much," Stiles shrugs.
"Pretty much or it is your handwriting?" Derek shakes his head and waves a hand at him. "Because there is a difference, you know."
"What are you trying to imply?" Stiles sighs. "That someone tried to make it look like my handwriting?"
"I'm just trying to get things straight in my head," Derek tells him. "That's all."
"It's not even straight in my own head!" Stiles laughs a little hysterically, hand fluttering up to his face.
"I know," Derek says, resting a hand on the boys shoulder and squeezing. "I know. Don't start freaking out on me."
"Again, you mean…" Stiles mutters miserably. Derek tries to keep it light and offers a smirk. They both know Stiles has done enough freaking out to last a lifetime.
"So, we're going to Lydia's to prove you wrote it?"
"No," Stiles shakes his head at him, like he's stupid. "We're going there to prove it was there in the first place."
"I saw your photo, Stiles. You don't have to prove anything to me."
"I know," Stiles says after a stretched silence. "But she might be able to help me." He shakes his head, rubbing his face tiredly. "This isn't normal," he pauses and laughs into his hands. "I mean, on contrast to everyone else, this is abnormally abnormal."
"We'll figure it out," Derek says as he pulls up outside Lydia's house.
Lydia's mom answers the door.
"Stiles…"She greets him warmly as she always does. Her eyes shift over to Derek. "And…?"
"Derek," Stiles fills in for her. "I had a weird seizure the other day. You heard about that, right?" Stiles rambles at her, not really giving her the chance to reply. "Idiopathic, you know. Right out of the blue. Dad's a little nervous of me out on my own, so Derek's like my version of a therapy dog, in case anything happens again…"
Derek smiles at her, only chancing a glare at Stiles when she glances away.
"Oh, sure…" Mrs Martin nods. "Makes sense."
"Mom," Lydia calls, appearing in the hall behind her. "It's fine. Stiles text me to say Derek was bringing him over.
"It's late," Mrs Martin frowns. "Really late."
"I know, I know..." Lydia says, rolling her eyes. "I left one of my essays at Stiles place and I've been nagging him all day to bring it over."
"Okay," Mrs Martin frowns at them all and Stiles tries to smile the biggest smile he could muster. All Derek can see is how brittle it looks. "Five minutes and then bed."
"Thanks Mom," Lydia says brightly.
"Therapy dog?" Derek hisses at Stiles quietly, once Lydia's mom had disappeared upstairs.
Stiles flashes a grin at him and lets Lydia manhandle him into the dining room.
"Okay, what hell happened and why does he look like total shit?" Lydia says, directing a stony glare at Derek. She pushes Stiles into the first available chair.
Stiles gives her the cliff-note version and Derek cuts in with the more specific details, her eyes widening in surprise. He watches as she immediately reaches out and grabs his arm.
"So, you're not tested yet," she finally says when they both come to a stop.
"I don't think it could test me," Stiles says.
"Lydia?" Derek says, drawing her attention away from her friend. "Stiles showed me the photo."
"What photo?"
"The one you took the night that you found the code."
"I didn't take a photo," Lydia shakes her head, confused.
"What are you talking about?" Stiles straightens up. "You were there. You sent it to me because I had forgotten my phone."
Lydia's looking at both of them even more confused than before.
"I was there, Stiles. I saw the code," she pauses and glances between the two of them. "But I didn't take a photo."
Her eyes crinkle in concern when Stiles starts shaking his head, hands reaching up to clutch it again. Muttering "it doesn't make sense. You sent it to me."
"Stiles, give me your phone," she orders sharply, practically snatching it from his shaking hands as soon as he fumbles it out of his pockets.
"Hey, it's okay…" Derek whispers, hand going to rest against the back of Stiles neck again. He still feels freezing to the touch. He glances over to Lydia who's scrolling through Stiles photos until she finds what she's looking for, thumb hovering over it. She pales instantly. "Lydia?"
"This wasn't even taken the night we were there," she says.
"What do you mean?" Stiles voice cracks. He tries to surge forward but Derek easily pulls him back and takes the phone from Lydia's hand.
"Derek?" Stiles asks, voice broken, lost of any optimism he might still have had.
"She's right," Derek finally says. "The timestamp is different."
Derek turns the phone to show Stiles the photo details. He watches what color was left drain from his face, jumping up from the chair and knocking it over as he scrambles backwards. He's gone and out of the front door before either Derek or Lydia can react.
Derek jumps up sprinting after his retreating form, but even with his speed, he's not quick enough to catch the SUV from peeling away.
"Stiles!" Lydia yells, hot on his heels.
Derek stares down at the timestamp again.
The timestamp that says the photo was taken 24 hours earlier than Stiles could recall.
tbc