A/N: I meant to update sooner but life likes to tear me a new one sometimes. I love this chapter even though it was so hard to proofread! I think I'm too much of a perfectionist, oh gosh, if you all knew how many times I did rewrites on this, you'd cry and even now I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I couldn't wait any longer to share! I hope you guys like it!

-x-

Derek's picking his way blindly through shrubbery and foliage after losing track of the two witches he'd been trailing when they had suddenly disappeared into thin air. As he swipes at a particularly nasty branch, something pricks at his senses and he pauses quietly to scent the wind.

Aiden.

Grief leaves a hollow pit in his stomach as he approaches the once virile young beta. Lydia's heartfelt scream couldn't have been more appropriate and he closes his eyes for a second, remembering that she still may not know who she'd screamed for.

"Fuck," he breathes in frustration, hanging his head as he crouches beside his friend.

He's just about to decide what to do when he hears a strong roar from beyond the trees.

Scott.

Without a doubt Derek knows it's his alpha, from the way his wolf responds to the sound of the call to the way his fangs try to escape his gums.

Derek turns back to Aiden, lays a quick hand on his ankle telling him silently that he will come back for him – for his body – before turning away and answering Scott's call.

-x-

"Don't! Don't fucking touch him!" Stiles screams, focused on a furious Not-Alice standing face to face with Scott and holding a very sharp knife to his friend's very fragile throat.

Scott's body sways as Not-Alice continues to grip him hard with the force of her magic. His friend had managed to release an angry alpha's roar, but Scott's eyes are still switching uncontrollably, back and forth from brown to red, brown to red. Stiles hadn't been able to tell if the roar was forced or done of his friend's own volition.

Allison and Kira have their hands full with the rest of Circeris' possessed minions and Stiles' hands tremble and shake with the unsteadiness of an addict as his mind begins to play tricks on him.

Where are Derek and Aiden? Which beta did the witches kill in the woods? How much power was he using right now? What will happen if he loses control? What if he kills everyone?

"Look closely, Magician," Not-Alice calls to him, voice no longer recognisable as more of the demon goddess floods through Alice's decaying vessel. "I want you to watch carefully and see yourself fail."

He doesn't have any time left to panic as things start to happen all at once. Not-Alice brings a chalice up to Scott's throat and moves to slice open his neck. Kira desperately calls his name as she struggles with the possessed witches, each endowed with the amplified strength of a demon goddess within them. Isaac is still down for the count, but seeing Not-Alice go for Scott's throat, Allison straightens her stance, swiftly pulls an arrow from her quiver and fires it at Circeris.

Stiles doesn't have a plan of action, all he knows is that he's angry and powerful and he can't let this bitch keep hurting his friends.

He moves in unison with Not-Alice as she drops the knife and chalice to the ground to throw a burst of magic at the arrow flying towards her with one hand and summons two dozen balls of fire with the other, swiftly hurling them in the direction of Kira, Isaac and Allison.

"No!" Stiles snarls as he lets the full force of his magic blast free. Hurls it towards his friends with one hand while sending out another full charge to block Circeris' attack with the other.

He can hear an animalistic sound coming from somewhere and vaguely wonders if Scott's okay, but then he realises that the sound isn't coming from his best friend, it's coming from his own ragged throat.

-x-

Derek sees the lights and hears the screams before he even breaches the tree line to the clearing where Stiles died.

He picks up the pace, is running at full strength, ready for whatever is out there. But when he gets there he is frozen by an unbelievable sight.

Stiles is on one knee, hands outstretched in opposite directions, one towards the rest of the pack and one towards the demon goddess, ex-friend, Alice. The light is coming from the magic flowing out of his hands. One side mixing with the demon's own magic, their powers crashing together in a giant show of fire and light, and the other feeding a dome shaped shield crackling with pure energy surrounding Kira, Isaac and Allison.

Derek recognises Scott - still bound and floating dazedly just behind the demon - and slowly tries to make his way towards the young alpha. He wonders what happened to the rest of the coven, finds no trace or scent of them as he edges his way around Stile and notices with a spike of alarm the kid's eyes, fully engulfed in a dark, soulless shade, no traces of the golden lights he'd glimpsed earlier that day.

The demon is too engrossed in her battle with Stiles and Derek is able to untie Scott and take him by the shoulders, shake him a little. Scott's eyes slow their flickering until he's able to shake his head hard and squeeze his eyes shut, struggling to regain control of his wolf.

"Are you hurt?" Derek asks quietly. He keeps shifting his eyes back to the battle in front of him as he gives Scott a once over.

"I'm good," Scott croaks.

-x-

Feathers.

Stiles holds his arm out, feels the white fluffiness of the feathers he's levitating brush against the hairs on his arms.

"Tell me how it feels," Malia murmurs from behind him. They stand inside her room, the way they always do when it's one of these lessons.

"Soft, gentle—"

"—Not the feathers, idiot. Come on, be serious."

Stiles grins at her irritation. Anything to get out of talking about how he feels when he uses. But he can only stall for so long and he knows for now, his time is up.

"It feels like – quiet. It makes me calm. Sometimes it's gentle, but other times it makes me feel like I'm screaming and screaming into an endless void. It's…stable and unstable at the same time. When I stray too long away from my vessel, I feel like I could get lost and never return. I feel like I'm floating."

"Do you know when it's the Dark you're using?" Malia questions quietly.

Stiles' forehead wrinkles with his thoughts.

"Sometimes. The Light – it's always warm and soft, it's nice. And the Dark – It's heavy – like – cold and crushing. But it's also nice. I get confused because they both welcome me. They're both…happy to bring me home. They both feel good."

He turns to Malia, and he knows that she can read the confusion written all over his face. "What do I do? You gotta tell me what to do."

Malia sighs and steps forward calmly.

"Listen to me, this is normal when one is coming into their own magic. The Light and the Dark – they're like brother and sister. The line between them is so fine that they could be interchangeable. Their strength is equal in every way and it's not about choosing one or the other, it's about how you use them – your intentions. We call it a choice, but it's more than that. You need to remember who you are, Stiles. Don't lose yourself in what that spark connects you to. Trust what you know, what you feel. Listen to your instincts and what's inside you. Because the Light and Dark aren't inside you. Your spark connects you to them, but that's all. They don't make you who you are."

"That is not going to help me when my magic goes off the rails, Malia!" he snaps in frustration, frowning at her cryptic speech.

"Yes, it is. I swear to you, I'm not just saying these things to make you feel better. It'll all be okay. You're my starburst, remember? You can use the Dark, but you're not of the Dark," she professes emphatically.

He shakes his head at her, looks at the feathers now lying forgotten on the floor and hangs his head with doubt.

-x-

Derek slaps a hand on Scott's back, eyes focused on Stiles and the demon. "We have to do something. What do we do?" he asks.

"I fucking know what to do," Scott answers angrily as he strides forward and picks up the abandoned knife from the ground. Derek watches as Scott wraps a hand around the demon's head and yanks it back almost violently. Before Derek can say anything, Scott drags the knife over her cleanly exposed neck with one quick swipe.

There's no blood. Instead, an impossible screaming starts up and violent black smoke begins to pour out of Stiles' ex-friend, Alice's mouth.

Derek knows why Scott hadn't hesitated. This thing isn't Stiles' friend anymore, he can smell it in the air and see it in her eyes.

He hears Stiles release a pained groan, watches a look of struggle come across Stiles' face before he seems to come to a decision as he quickly takes the shield back from Kira and the others and aims both his hands towards Not-Alice.

"Get back," he snarls, looking at him and Scott with eyes as black as night.

Both of them are frozen in stunned shock and Stiles growls at them again, voice ragged and deep.

"I said get back!"

Derek and Scott grab at each other's shoulders and arms, quickly hauling each other backwards towards the trees.

The dome of energy rematerialises around Stiles, Alice, and the violent, black smoke, trapping them inside a thick transparent wall crackling with static.

"Jesus," he hears Scott mutter from beside him. Derek doesn't say anything, too busy anxiously watching Stiles and his black, black eyes.

There's a guttural chanting coming from Stiles in a voice Derek doesn't recognise and he wonders if this is what had happened the other night. Asks it out loud to Scott.

"No man, this is not what happened last time," Scott exclaims.

Inside the dome is all chaos, wind causing debris to whizz past Stiles and the demon, swiping at their hair and clothes and making the flimsy material flap wildly around them. Stiles' arms are ramrod straight, fingers spread like claws, voice hoarse and raw, face frozen in a pained grimace.

Derek doesn't know how long they stand there for, but finally the howling screams and the chanting subsides and the dark smoke that was the demon quickly dissipates into the walls of Stiles' dome. Stiles keeps the dome intact and Derek watches as he raises his hands wearily and starts blindly drawing golden symbols into the air.

When Stiles finishes, he lowers his arms and stares vacantly into the space where the black smoke had been. Derek watches as Stiles shifts his other knee to the ground and sways a little. Alice's body had fallen in front of him as the demon had left it, and Stiles leans over it tenderly, hands caressing over head and shoulders. A trail of black smoke leaves his hands as he runs them over the rest of the body. It swirls around the limbs and seeps into the skin until red sparks like ember begin to materialise from inside it and engulf it until there's nothing left but ash and smoke.

And then there's silence, like a vacuum had submerged the forest. The dome retracts back into Stiles' hands and it's like a rubber band snapping back into place, the way he drops to all fours and starts to shiver and shake.

Derek and Scott both rush forward.

"Don't touch him!" a voice screams from behind them. They both skid to a halt a few paces away from Stiles, still racked with tremors and covered in a light film of sweat.

Derek looks back to see Malia, hunched over with hands on her knees, barely supporting her weight. His wolf eyes detect the remnants of a gold symbol already dissipating into the air.

"Don't touch him," she gasps again, eyes commanding them to listen to her. "He didn't finish it."

"What? What do you mean?" Derek scowls.

"The exorcism, he didn't finish it! He's still got a hold on Circeris and the Magic," she explains as she straightens up and walks towards Stiles slowly. "He's not himself."

As she finishes talking, Stiles finally looks up at them from his place on the ground.

"She's right," he slurs drunkenly. "I'm not myself." And his eyes are an infinite abyss with just two tiny pinpricks of gold in their centres.

Derek's about to protest how harmless Stiles actually is when his ears are suddenly assaulted by the sound of a banshee's tortured scream followed by the sinking of his already grief stricken heart.

Scott gasps beside him. His eyes are trained at something beyond Stiles as he stumbles forward and starts to run towards the three people huddled on the far side of the clearing.

-x-

Stiles may not be of the supernatural canine type but the Magic is still deep inside him, and he hears every, single word.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's perfect. I'm in the arms of my first love. The first person I ever loved. The person I'll always love. I love you, Scott. Scott McCall."

"I-I can't take your pain."

"That's because it doesn't hurt."

He heaves a tortured breath and hangs his head, tries to ignore the pounding agony inside his chest at the sound of Allison dying in Scott's arms.

Not fast enough or strong enough! Couldn't save them—couldn't save them all.

You could have saved them all.

He feels it all the way to the depths of his being. The loss, the grief beginning to grow. He feels it and he knows it's his fault. The way Isaac's breath hitches as he finally comes to – realises what's happening and starts mumbling a steady stream of no, no, no, no, no.

The way Stiles' ears register the pained howling that starts off in the distance – Ethan – echoing through the trees. And he knows that Lydia knows who she had screamed for that first time.

And who she had screamed for the second time.

"Stiles," Malia murmurs, dropping to her knees in front of him and gently Flashing him every single hug they'd ever shared.

He turns away, blocks out the Flashes like he'd never done before. There's a clamouring inside him that he can't explain. His connection to the universe is open and screaming and there's an asylum in his head that makes his insides spin.

"Stiles, this is not your fault," Malia rasps, voice cracking but gaze steady.

-x-

Derek watches the scene unfold in front of him. Stiles and Malia both on their knees, Stiles with his head turned towards the ground and Malia ducking hers to try and catch his gaze.

She reaches out, tries to take his hand but he pulls it away without letting her make contact.

"Don't touch me," he mutters, voice low and raw.

"Stiles—" She tries again.

"I said don't!" he yells, this time pulling his whole body away from the both of them and violently rising to his feet.

And this time Derek takes a step forward, because even if he's never seen him like this, he's not afraid of Stiles.

"Stiles," Derek calls.

And finds no recognition in the eyes that briefly meet his own before Stiles turns his back on the both of them.

The voice that reaches Derek's ears is almost unrecognisable as it makes the hairs on his arms tingle with the force of its command.

"Stay. Away." Stiles snarls, before disappearing with a flurry of black smoke.