They pulled into the Hale Auto parking lot by the time it was nearly pitch black outside and growing closer and closer to midnight; despite that, the singular light coming from the lounge made Stiles optimistic that Malia was inside.
'Maybe she's ready to talk.'
"You may wanna go in there carefully," Eli spoke up as he fiddled with his seatbelt, which gained Stiles' attention quickly, "Malia and that deputy, Parrish? Very physical relationship. Knock before you open any doors."
"Malia and Parrish?" Stiles repeated, trying to force his tongue to form the names in any way other than acquaintances while unbuckling his seatbelt, "What the hell happened in the last fifteen years?"
"Just be careful. My dad and I have both made the mistake of walking in on them."
Stiles nodded and got out of the car before walking into the garage; it was surprisingly unlocked, which baffled him more than his ex-girlfriend's current relationship, but he made his way to the room where the light was shining and knocked on the door, hoping that she hadn't fallen asleep.
"You can come in, Eli. Parrish left an hour ago." Malia called out so Stiles opened the door to see her sitting on the small couch, his stomach twisting when he saw her frown as she added, "oh, it's you."
"Can we talk?" He asked, only to be met with a glare as she stood up to put away what looked like an oil cloth and responded.
"Says the one who changed all of his contact information as soon as he found a clear shot out of Beacon Hills."
"I needed to heal from everything this place did to me," Stiles admitted, wringing his hands together as he tried to figure out how to convince her to hear him out; the last thing he expected was for her voice to get choked up as a response.
"You left me, Stiles. We said that we would never leave each other behind and that we didn't want to lose touch with our high school friends after senior year. But you, Liam, Lydia, Scott …" she trailed off to wipe her tears on her sleeve which made Stiles' heart ache painfully in his chest. He had given up on his vision after Kira went into the desert, but he didn't expect anyone to still remember it fourteen years later, "You all left me. Lydia was the only one who said goodbye."
'I can't believe that I did this, that I hurt her like this. I just left and didn't even say goodbye, even after what we've been through together.'
"But what I want to know is what brought you back?" She finished after physically scrubbing her face free of tear tracks.
"Derek, Lydia…trying to pull my life back together again." Stiles swallowed, grasping his hands tightly before looking back up at her, "and the nightmares are back."
In his mind, he knew that they were similar to the trauma-induced ones he had suffered from for the majority of their relationship, where she would hold him close so he could hear her heartbeat and tell himself that his dreams weren't some sort of twisted reality and it wasn't still living inside of him, waiting for the perfect moment to make good on its promise to kill off everyone he loved.
That's why he shouldn't have been shocked when Malia's face turned serious as she demanded to know just how bad they were. Given her sense of smell and control over her enhanced hearing, he also knew that trying to lie would get him nowhere so he took a deep breath and managed to speak.
"They all start differently. I'm in bed with Lydia, I'm in the jeep with Scott, or I'm in the preserve with you but they all end the same. Me and the Nogitsune at the Nemeton," after she tried to kill him earlier, the last thing he expected from her was her warm, comforting embrace that had gotten him through the end of his junior year, "it's not the worst I've had."
"Reliving your trauma fifteen years later isn't the best either." she protested, still holding onto him; it wasn't until he brought up the fact that he had spent the afternoon in Los Angeles talking to Deaton that she pulled away, "what did he say?"
"That Derek is stuck in Bardo with the Nogitsune, and that I'm the only one who can bring him back."
"How can I help?" She asked immediately, ready to unleash the full coyote powers onto whoever they needed to be used on, but Stiles gently put his hand on her shoulder and explained,
"Deaton thinks that I need to reconcile with my past. Move past what the Nogitsune did and make amends with Scott, with Allison, with Lydia…," he stopped to look into her brown eyes, "and with you."
Hale Auto stayed silent for a long time aside from the sound of Malia mindlessly putting things away, which made Stiles fully expect her to start yelling or worse, attack him with pure rage. The time passed slowly in the quiet until finally, she broke through with her voice just above a whisper.
"I think I understand why you left," she stopped to take a few steps to close the gap and grasp onto his hand, "I just wish you would have said goodbye. After Scott left, I felt so alone. Like I had lost my family all over again."
Stiles' heart twinged in his chest with sympathetic pain, but he knew it was best to stay quiet and let her finish before he begged for her forgiveness.
"I spiraled for a bit after he left and dropped out of college. I ended up in this partying tailspin where I'd stay out late, wake up in the afternoon and head back out. Derek was raising Eli, he couldn't raise me too."
She stopped to take a deep breath, her eyes going from teary to almost dreamy as soon as she said his name.
"But Parrish stayed. He made sure I got home safe every night, stayed with me when I had drank so much just to feel a smidge of a hangover," she stopped to take another shaky breath, looking down at the ground, "eventually your dad gave me an ultimatum, said he was going to check me into rehab if I didn't stop showing up at the parties he busted. So I stopped."
"I should have been here for you," Stiles insisted, his throat getting choked as he tried to picture Malia in that raw, vulnerable state, stumbling over her feet when she shouldn't have even been able to feel drunk without an amount that should have been lethal for a human, "I should have tried to reach out. You needed me."
"No, I just needed someone. That's who Parrish is for me now," she insisted as she grabbed his hands and made eye contact with him again, "we all tried to forget with our own methods. Derek's was Eli, most of you left and I turned to the bottle," she stopped to wrap her arms around his neck in a hug, standing on her tiptoes as he wrapped his arms around her abdomen, "but between you and me, I'm glad that it failed."
Stiles nodded against her shoulder, taking in the familiar woodsy scent that had lingered on her even after she became human again.
"But you have to keep in touch this time. Just because I have Parrish doesn't mean that I don't need you to and if you don't," she demanded as she let go of him, "I will rip your throat out."
"Of course," Stiles insisted, deciding against telling her that Derek had said the same thing to him sixteen years ago, "do you want my phone number?"
"Yeah, that'd be nice," she nodded and he turned to scribble it down on the notepad before tearing it off and handing it to her, "so where are you going next? Scott?"
"No, I gotta get some sleep after I drop Eli off. Even with the nightmares, this whole thing requires me to think clearly."
"Well, if I can help with anything else-"
"With Derek?" He asked as he stepped forward to wrap her into another warm hug, "Or in general?"
She took the hint and wrapped her arms around him as she asked softly, "Is both okay?"
"Both are good. I like both."
"Do you wanna drop Eli off here?"
It was as if saying his name brought him to them as he slammed open the door which effectively broke off the hug and made Stiles realize he was holding a lacrosse stick in the same manner he had held a baseball bat in self-defense many times.
"I've been out there for a while, thought you had ripped out his throat," Eli explained while lowering the lacrosse stick as Malia raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
"Why didn't you just listen in?"
"I don't have control over the hearing yet."
"I'm gonna go get some sleep," Stiles explained as he rubbed his eyes quickly while turning to Eli, "you need sleep too."
"Do you need to crash here?" Malia asked softly as she put her hand on Eli's shoulder, "there's a bed in the back room and I can take the couch."
Eli stayed silent for a few minutes as he looked down at the ground; Stiles had been in that position as well when he had wanted to explain something to his dad but he didn't know anything about the supernatural. Seeing Eli treat him like that made his stomach twist in discomfort.
But when Eli finally looked up, he made a comment that broke the tension immediately and made Stiles have to fight to hold a laugh in his chest.
"As long as you warn me before inviting over Parrish."
As soon as the teenager said that, Stiles offered them a nod of goodbye and made his way to the jeep to drive over to his dad's house and take Rowen to Derek's with the lingering thought in the back of his mind fighting to the surface.
'Hopefully, Lydia is asleep.'