Author's Note: Hello again, my lovelies! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are enjoying the New Year!
Enjoy your update!
Throwing down the thick, leather-bound book he'd been using for translating Prince's gift, Stiles winced when the loud thwack made Isaac startle, his shoulders going tight where he leaned over the table, doodling absently on a scrap of paper.
"Sorry." Stiles sighed tiredly, dropping his face into his hands, the heels of his palms fitting into the sockets of his eyes. He rubbed his eyes hard, not stopping until he had a veritable disco of lights behind his lids. "How are you two so calm right now?" he asked, pulling his hands away from his face and blinking rapidly to clear his vision.
Isaac snorted, a rather undignified sound that made Lydia roll her eyes. "We're not calm." She gave a small sigh of her own, leaning back in her chair. "We're just better at containing our nerves than you are."
Isaac nodded his agreement. "We're worried too, Stiles." he said, frowning down at the notebook page he'd littered with random sketches.
"I know." Stiles rolled his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tightness in them. "Ugh, I know. I just have this feeling, you know? Like, this pit in my stomach that keeps growing and growing the longer we don't hear from them."
"It's only been an hour or so." Lydia pointed out, tapping her phone's screen. "I'm sure we'll hear something as soon as there's something to hear. Read me what you've got." she demanded, pointing to the notebook Stiles had laying open on the table by his elbow, the page filled with his haphazard scrawl.
He knew she was just trying to distract him, to make him refocus on the task at hand, but he did as she told him without putting up a fight.
"Far as I can tell," he chewed his bottom lip, squinting down at his translation, "Parrish's blood is supposed to act like some kind of ignition agent to whatever's in the bag."
"Like a spark?" Isaac asked, standing to walk around the table so he could read over Stiles' shoulder.
Stiles nodded. "Yeah, basically." he agreed. "There are a ton of other steps before the phoenix thing, though. I wasn't entirely wrong before, when I said it was a list of ingredients; it just isn't for laundry detergent."
"What is it then?"
"It's an elixir." Lydia said, dipping her chin in approval of Stiles' translation. "Meant to inoculate supernatural beings from the effects of an entire spectrum of substances, up to and including the particular blend in the Kearney's bullets."
Isaac's face looked like it was fighting between looking hopeful and not wanting to believe what he was hearing for fear of having misunderstood. "So, you're saying..."
"It's a cure." Stiles grinned through his exhaustion, ignoring the lingering pain pressing jaggedly beneath his skin. "Or, more accurately, it's a cure for someone who has already been exposed. It's more like a vaccine, though, for everyone else."
"Okay, so what else do we need-"
Lydia made a sound - a soft almost-whine that sounded uncomfortably close to the sound a wounded animal would make - pulling Stiles and Isaac's eyes to her.
"What?" Stiles asked, brows drawing down in concern. "Lydia, what is it? What's wrong?"
Lips pressed so tightly together they were going bloodless white around the edges, Lydia shook her head defiantly, almost desperately. It took a moment for Stiles to understand, to figure out what was putting that haunted, hunted look in Lydia's saucer-wide eyes. It was too late by then, Lydia unable to hold back the scream pent up in her throat. She couldn't stop it anymore, couldn't keep it in.
Lydia opened her mouth and a soul-rending, goosebump-inducing scream poured out. Stiles and Isaac both shrank away from the shrillness of her scream, pressing their hands over their ears in a useless attempt to muffle it.
As soon as the scream petered out, leaving Lydia looking pallid and stricken, Stiles reached across the table, taking her hand in his.
"Where?" he questioned, knowing his eyes had to be wild, panicked. "Where are they? Is it- Do you know who?"
Lydia was already shaking her head, lips clamped back together like she was trying to take back the scream she'd already put voice to.
"Come on, Lyds, help me out here." Stiles begged, unable to shake the wave of cold that had washed over him.
"I don't know." she whispered shakily, apologetic for something Stiles knew would never, could never be her fault. "I'm sorry, I don't-"
The rest of Lydia's words were eaten up by the roar of a distant explosion. The sound was thunderous, loud enough to make the ground tremble, the blast's shock wave chasing close on its heels. The boom reverberated through Stiles' chest, a jolting bolt of rampaging energy that he felt down to his bones. The house around them shook with the force of it, a few photos in the entryway crashing to the floor as windows rattled in their panes.
Stiles, Lydia, and Isaac stared at one another in fixed horror as a deafening silence crushed in around them, making their ears ring. It took a few excruciating seconds for sound to bleed back in, the first thing to pierce the soundless fog a chorus of car alarms blaring from outside.
"No." Stiles gasped, heart racing in his chest and still humming with the force of the blast.
He was already on his feet, knees wobbling beneath him in his rush to stand. Lydia hurried around the table, quickly reached out to steady him, catching him up under the armpit. Stiles slung his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. He didn't miss the sheen of tears glistening in her eyes, nor the low, pitiful whimper of sound vibrating in Isaac's throat behind them.
"Call Scott." Stiles ordered, whipping his head around to meet Isaac's wide-eyed stare. "On the way." he added, already trying to drag Lydia toward the door.
"Wait!" Lydia planted her feet, making Stiles swing around. "Maybe we should wait here. We don't know how much damage is-" She cut herself off, swallowing around the thickness of tears. "What if we can't get close? Or, if the pack comes looking for us!"
"I am not sitting here waiting for someone to come and tell me my pack is dead, Lydia!" Stiles shouted, fear and adrenaline warring inside him. "We have to go, and we have to go now! Call Deaton, make sure he's on his way. We're gonna need him."
Lydia nodded, already pulling her phone from the pocket of her dress. "Okay, okay." Her fingers shook as she dialed, but Stiles grabbed up her other hand, snatching her purse up from the back of her chair and digging through it one-handed, in search of her keys.
Lydia didn't argue when Stiles made a beeline straight for the driver's seat, just slid into the passenger seat while Isaac clamored into the back. Stiles whipped the car out of the Argent's driveway, heading toward the city proper while Lydia repeatedly tried to reach the pack. No one was answering their phones, not even the Sherrif or Parrish. Trying not to assume the worst wasn't something Stiles had ever been all that great at, but he focused on Derek - his anchor even if Stiles wasn't all that wolfie at the moment - and tried to will away the panic attack he could feel simmering in his chest. He didn't have time to panic, not when they had an entire pack to worry about.
Even if they hadn't had Lydia's supernatural death location ability, finding the blast site wouldn't have been all that difficult. Considering the amount of emergency vehicles rushing toward Beacon Square and the unnatural glow lighting the sky overhead, all Stiles had to do was follow them.
Forced to pull over half a dozen blocks away from where they needed to be, Stiles threw the car in park and slammed the door behind him. "We're gonna have to run the rest of the way." he told Lydia and Isaac decisively.
He met Lydia at the front of the car, waited just long enough to lace their fingers together again, and took off toward the square with what felt like a solid twenty pound ball of lead in his gut. They had to dodge police and emergency responders the closer they got to the blast site, but Stiles had a lifetime of experience ducking his father's people, so it wasn't all that difficult to avoid them.
What was more difficult to avoid was the sheer amount of destruction around them. The three of them had to carefully pick their way over ground littered with rubble and debris, the scattered remains of buildings caught in the explosion. Every step closer to the square brought with it thicker layers of wreckage and brought Stiles closer to the edge of panic. All he could think about was his pack, his family. How close had they been when the bomb went off? How many of them were hurt, injured or even dying among the bits of brick and mortar, remnants of buildings they'd all grown up seeing?
Lydia's grip tightened around Stiles' hand before she released it to let Isaac help her over a downed tree. There were power lines down too, some still live and sparking on the blacktop. Stiles pulled his shirt up over his nose, gesturing for the others to do the same. It was hard to breathe through the dense cloud of dust and smoke hanging in the air, harder yet to see through it. Stiles eyes burned with it, with the wolfsbane he could smell and the iron he could taste, making him squint as tears flooded his vision and his throat tightened with every breath. His skin - no doubt Isaac's as well – burned, just a fraction of how badly the reaction would have been if they were both connected with their wolves. Their bodies reacted to the poison regardless, and Stiles couldn't help but think how much the others must be suffering, being directly exposed to airborne wolfsbane with their wolves fully intact.
It was complete and total chaos when they finally reached the square. Stiles' heart stopped, whatever air left in his lungs feeling as though it had been sucked out without warning. The amount of devastation around them was incredible, almost too much for Stiles' mind to even begin to comprehend. First responders were everywhere, none of them even paying the slightest bit of attention to three teenagers who obviously weren't there when the bomb went off. There were cars resting on their roofs, trees and utility poles snapped in half and lying on the ground. The windows of every building still standing were blown out, a few of them sporting half-destroyed facades. Each of the buildings nearest the center of the square were nearly leveled, some with just one or two interior walls protruding from the ruins.
"Can you feel them, Lydia?" Stiles asked, coughing his way through each word while simultaneously trying to focus on anything other than the memories swimming through his head, memories of being the one responsible, being in the middle of a scene eerily similar to this one, just on a much smaller scale. "Whoever-"
She nodded, pointing toward an overturned car laying on its side in the middle of the sidewalk. Tears were streaming freely down her face, her eyes so red and raw that it made Stiles' stomach clench with fear.
As he carefully made his way toward the car, watching each step he took to ensure he didn't step on anything that could actively kill him, Stiles swallowed hard around the knot of terror in his throat. He couldn't help it, kept picturing his dad, or Scott, or Derek laying on the other side of the vehicle. His brain kept flickering between familiar faces, each one covered in soot and ash, each one staring blankly, unseeing into the night sky.
Rounding the rear bumper of the vehicle, Stiles had to take several deep breaths through the filter of his t-shirt. It was a fruitless effort to steady his nerves, a weak attempt to stop the trembling in his legs. He closed his eyes as he stepped around the trunk, one hand braced against the too warm metal to ground him. One last deep breath and Stiles was opening his eyes, a garbled, warbling cry punching out of his chest at the broken, bloodied body laying half-pinned beneath the overturned car.
Isaac, hearing the sound, rushed to Stiles' side, easily catching him before he could hit the ground. He tugged Stiles up, one arm a steadying bar around Stiles' chest. "Deep breath, man, come on."
Stiles nodded frantically, relief surging in his bloodstream at not finding a member of his pack, warring with the shock of grief at seeing one of his father's deputies crushed beneath a car, her eyes still open and looking right at him, empty and hollow. None of her familiar light was in those eyes, none of the smile she wore for her Sheriff's son each and every time he showed up at the station. Stiles had known Deputy Leema since he was too small to see over his father's desk. She'd been the Deputy to sit with him at the station after his mother died, the one who helped Stiles with his homework and made sure he ate dinner on the night's John had to work and Stiles was too young to stay home alone.
"I'm okay." Stiles lied, pushing gently away from the hard reassurance of Isaac's chest at his back, fighting to keep his voice level. "I'll be fine, but we have to find-"
"Isaac!"
All three of them whipped around at the call, stomachs swooping at what greeted them.
"Oh, thank God." Isaac choked out, surging forward to catch Allison as she stumbled forward, Scott a half step behind, his shirt off and tied around the lower half of his face.
They were both covered in grime, faces streaked with blood, and soot, and rubble dust. Allison was limping, a nasty gash up the outside of her right thigh, hair matted to her forehead where a cut was dribbling blood all down the side of her face. Scott looked alright for the most part, a wound that should have already healed down the length of his left bicep and a few scrapes and bruises covering his back and chest.
Stiles watched with fresh moisture in his eyes as the trio embraced, Scott practically sagging into Isaac's arms. Even from a foot or so away, Stiles could hear the rattle of Scott's breathing, could see the blistering of his skin trying to heal only to erupt in blistered, burned redness all over again.
"We're okay." Allison was repeating, all but sobbing the words into Isaac's chest as Scott wrapped himself around her back.
He hated to do it, hated to break up the reunion happening in front of him, but he couldn't stand it any longer. "The rest of the pack?" Stiles asked croakily, every inch of his skin, every fiber of his being throbbing with new and residual pain, and too much worry. "Scott, can you feel them? Derek and my dad-"
Scott turned to face him, eyes glowing red, his words slurred like he was talking through partially extended fangs, though Stiles couldn't see them. "My senses are all screwed up. There's too much iron and wolfsbane in the air, I can't control my shift."
"Shit, the wolfsbane!" Stiles shouted, suddenly realizing exactly what that would mean for the pack. "You guys gotta get out of he-"
"We're not leaving until we find the pack." Scott growled, going into a coughing fit at the end and taking more than a little bit of power out of his assertion.
"Scott, maybe-"
"No." Scott coughed again, shaking his head at Isaac's half-formed protest. "If my pack is here, I'm here. End of story."
Lydia, arms wrapped around Allison's waist and mostly holding her up, looked contemplative for a moment. "Inhalation is different than direct blood contact." she said, her tone making it clear that she was working through her thoughts even as she said them aloud. "It's a slower system of delivery honestly, and this wolfsbane doesn't work quite the same way as the kind we're used to. Given the amount of time since exposure, Scott should have manifested symptoms by now. Since he hasn't, he might not have gotten enough into his system to cause any significant issues, other than the blistering."
"And I feel fine." Scott argued, rolling his eyes as he coughed and Stiles glared pointedly at the uneven slice in his arm. "Okay, mostly fine. Look, I won't abandon you guys, not ever. You need me here, so here is exactly where I'm going to be."
Stiles looked to Lydia, his eyes begging her to be sure. "You're positive about this?"
Lydia nodded determinedly. "If he starts showing signs of a disconnect, we'll have Deaton sedate him and drag him out of here by his tail."
"Hey!" Scott tried to protest, only to be cut off when another voice rang out.
"Guys!" It was Kira, carrying an unconscious and bloodied Malia in her arms, her own eyes glowing their golden-orange Kitsune shade. "She threw herself over me when the bomb went off, I didn't even have time to- to-"
Stiles and Scott moved as one, taking Malia from Kira's arms and lying her down on the least debris-laden stretch of road they could find while Isaac ran off to find a paramedic. Lydia and Allison pulled a sobbing Kira into their arms, holding her shaking shoulders while Stiles and Scott put pressure on Malia's wounds, all contained to the back-side of her body.
Isaac returned a few minutes later, a pair of medics following along behind him with a backboard carried between them. Stiles and Scott scrambled back, giving the medics room to work. They crouched down on either side of her, one of them carefully slipping her into a neck brace while the other set about assessing her injuries.
Stiles' head was spinning, too much happening for him to process. He couldn't help the urgent, desperate push behind his bellybutton that kept urging him to find Derek, to find his dad, any more than he could stop the tears that kept slipping down his cheeks. He was torn, looking around at the rubble surrounding them, praying to catch just a glimpse of black hair or blue eyes, or the shine of his father's badge, while trying to give his attention to Malia and the rest of the pack huddled around her.
"Wait, where are-"
"Beacon Hills Memorial." The male medic responded, slinging his bag over his shoulder as they lifted Malia between them on the backboard. "You can ride with us, but just one of you."
Kira surged forward, clutching Malia's hand, and walked with them, swiping at the tears on her cheeks as they went.
"Alright." Scott said, clearing his throat with a cough. "We need to spread out, see if we can find the others."
"My dad-" Stiles tried to ask, unable to finish the sentence.
Scott knew anyway, put a hand to the back of Stiles' neck and squeezed. "He was with Derek, on the north side of the fountain. I didn't see them when the bomb went off, Stiles, I'm sorry. I felt the shift in the air a few seconds before the explosion and had just enough time to pull Allison underneath one of the Rescue Squad trucks."
"The trucks..." Stiles was already trying to head that way, his legs wobbly and weak beneath him.
There were two firetrucks standing a good distance away from the Square's center, on the north side where Scott had indicated his dad and Derek had been before the explosion. Stiles picked his way toward the trucks, his breath punching out of him when he saw Parrish's SUV and his father's cruiser both tossed halfway through a store window a few yards away.
"Dad!" Stiles cried out, strangled with panic as he ran for the storefront. "Derek, Jordan!"
Skidding to a stop at the driver's side of his father's cruiser, Stiles leaned into the shattered window, searching the interior wildly. He found no trace of any of them, but thankfully found no blood, either. He made a quick circuit, looking into Parrish's SUV, looking around and under the vehicles.
He had his head half-under Parrish's truck when he heard his name, lifting his head so quickly he beaned himself on the undercarriage. "Shit." he hissed, rubbing hurriedly at the rapidly forming knot on his crown.
"Stiles!"
All at once, Stiles recognized that voice. He jerked around, shoving away from the truck as he did, and promptly tripped right into a very naked Parrish's arms.
"Jordan, holy shit." Stiles gasped, immediately wrapping Parrish in a hug. "Please tell me you're naked because you had to regenerate and not because your clothes were all burnt off in the blast."
"How is regenerating the better option?" Parrish asked.
Stiles could hear the relieved smile in Parrish's voice, the almost tearful crack. "It would be less painful." he shrugged, puling back to look Parrish over, only finding a thin layer of ash and dirt on his otherwise unmarked skin.
"I'm fine, Stiles." he assured, looking over his shoulder toward the center of the Square, where Stiles couldn't see anything but smoke. "The bomb went off right before I reached it, took me out quick and painless. I woke up next to a pile of bomb gear, but my clothes were toast."
"Here." Stiles pulled off his hoodie and handed it over. He turned his eyes away while Parrish pulled it on over his legs, leaving it unzipped enough around his hips that he could wear it almost like a skirt, the sleeves tied tight around his waist. "Have you seen my dad or Derek? Or anybody else, for that matter?"
Parrish nodded, jerking his chin toward where Stiles had come from a few minutes before. "Jackson got hit pretty hard, he's over there with Lydia and Deaton. They think he's going to wake up mostly human, like you and Isaac. Liam too, but he saved Chris' life so he might not be as pissed as Jackson's gonna be."
"What about my dad and Derek? Or Erica and Boyd."
Parrish shook his head, frowning apologetically. "I haven't seen them since I went to look at the bomb. Erica and Boyd were with the rest of the pack, but I don't know where they ended up. Your dad and Derek... They were standing next to these," he gestured at the vehicles currently sticking out of the storefront, "but that's the last I saw of them."
Stiles felt panic crest high in his throat and fought to tamp it down.
"I'll help you look for them." Parrish offered gently, making Stiles wince.
That gentle voice made his chest hurt, reminded him too much of the way people talked to him for years after his mother died; like he was made of glass and would shatter with nothing but a stiff breeze.
"Yeah, thanks." he agreed anyway, knowing that Jordan just wanted to help.
They spread out, walking together but a few feet apart. Scanning the ground as they went, eyes and ears open as much as possible given the amount of noise and smoke around them. They covered a lot of ground, closing the distance between where the SUV and the Sheriff's cruiser had come to a rest and where the perimeter around the square started at a decent pace. Still, they didn't find anything, didn't see any trace of Stiles' dad or Derek.
It wasn't until Stiles and Parrish reached the very edge of the first line of the perimeter, where the firetrucks and emergency vehicles formed a barricade around the Square, that Stiles thought he heard something.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, tilting his head to listen better.
Parrish shook his head, cocking it in an effort to hear. "What is it?" he asked, coming around the back of one of the firetrucks that had been rocked over onto its side in the explosion.
Stiles was on the opposite end, ears pricked and listening intently, when he heard it again.
"I think there's someone inside." he called, already trying to scramble up the top of the truck, using the lights and rack to pull himself up to the driver's side door.
"Jesus, Stiles, be careful!" Parrish hollered up after him.
Stiles wasn't really listening, not with the heavy weight that had settled in his gut, like a bag of rocks. He knew before he managed to pry open the door what he would find, but it still knocked the breath out of his lungs when he looked inside and saw it with his own eyes.
"Jordan!" Stiles yelled, leaning back over the top of the truck, meeting Parrish's eyes where he was hauling himself up to where Stiles was. "They're inside! My dad and Derek are inside. Go get a medic, or Deaton or something."
"Are they hurt?" Parrish asked, not even bothering to lower himself back to the ground, just pushing off the top of the truck and dropping down.
Stiles swallowed the nauseous fear in his stomach, fought the tears clogging his throat. "It looks bad, but I can't tell for sure. Neither one of them is conscious, so it has to be bad, right?"
"Calm down, Stiles." Scott said, suddenly appearing by Stiles' side. "Breathe for a minute, okay? I'll climb down to them and see. Just, stay up here and breathe."
Stiles nodded jerkily, heart racing and lungs feeling as though they'd been caught in a vise. "Okay, yeah I can- Breathe, right, I can do that. Just-"
He couldn't finish the thought, not with the images still flashing through his mind. It had been dark inside the truck's cab, not enough light filtering in through the smoke and broken glass, but Stiles knew he'd seen blood. Derek and his father were both unconscious, sprawled against the door lying crumpled against the street below. There was glass everywhere, glittering in the low light where it was dusted over both of their forms. Blood soaked around their bodies, the smell of it obvious in the closed confines of the cab.
"Scott?" Stiles called down, blinking into the dark interior when he realized Scott hadn't called up with any news. "Are they okay? They're alive, right? Please tell me they're alive!"
"You're dad is pretty banged up." Scott said, his voice lower and gruffer than Stiles thought it should be. "Looks like maybe a broken leg, and his arm is twisted funny. Derek..."
Stiles' world went a little lopsided, he had to hold the door's frame to keep himself from falling inside. "What about Derek? Scott, what about him?!"
"He-" Scott coughed and Stiles felt his heart stop, "He smells okay, but-"
"But what?!" Stiles really couldn't help the hysterical edge in his voice, the way it cracked and fractured before it passed his lips. "Scott, please."
"It's bad, Stiles." Scott admitted softly, looking up so that the hint of light coming in behind Stiles illuminated his Red eyes. "We need Deaton. Now."