OKAY THIS CHAPTER HAS SOME SERIOUS WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS, SO LISTEN UP!

Trigger warnings: Horror themes, graphic depictions of physical, verbal, AND mental/emotional abuse by parents, severe mental torment, distortion of reality, traumatic experiences in general. Please read with caution if you choose to read this chapter. If you don't want to or can't, please feel free to go to the bottom of the page and read a summary of the plot of this chapter instead.

Disclaimer: The first two "events" of this chapter are inspired by canon instances of Stiles' memories of his parents. Certain elements are changed due to plot differences in this AU and a lot of nuances are added due to the different mediums used to tell the different stories (Film for the show, Prose for this AU.), while this technically is my own intellectual property, I do no claim to have come up with all of this, a lot of dialogue is from the show, and yes, that's true of a lot of this story since it follows the TW timeline, but these scenes are pretty far removed from their original context, so I just wanted to make that entirely clear for anyone who wasn't completely aware. The first part is inspired by a scene in TW season 5 episode 06, "Required Reading". The second part is inspired by a scene in TW season 2 episode 09, "Party Guessed".

Timeline Note:This takes place the night prior to the last few chapters with Derek. This (and the next 3 chapters) take place the same night that the car chase takes place.

Fun Note: The second part of this chapter (with Sheriff Stilinski) IS the night prior to chapter 53, "Between Ghost and The Omen but Not Signs", and let me tell you, that chapter is so much fun to read after this chapter, IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW. That is all. Have fun reading!

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Stiles didn't know where he was or what he was doing to any meaningful extent, beyond what looking around told him.

He was climbing stairs.

In a dim and unwelcoming stairwell, as the lights flickered...

Angrily.

Violently.

Desperately.

Occasionally bursting and raining sparks and glass down unto the stairs.

He didn't know why he was climbing them. He couldn't bring himself to conjure the reason. His brain wasn't with him enough to think.

He looked down at the next step. There was blood in the crushed glass.

He looked forward, up the stairs. It was the first time he'd even realized doing so was a possibility.

The silhouette of a woman in a hospital gown rounded the corner to the set of stairs above just as he did, disappearing from sight.

He didn't know when they'd reached the top, but now they were on the roof, the sky black around them. Starless, but no clouds as far as he could tell.

"Mom?" He said as soon as the little consciousness he had came to him, looking up at her on the edge of the roof, pale and thin, hair dark and messy, looking away from him as she shook in place. "Mom, what are you doing?" He heard the stairwell door open and his father yell, already racing past him.

"Claudia!" He heard as his father pushed by him to rush up and grab her. "What are you doing?! Get down from there!" Stiles heard his dad's panicked voice echo on his ears.

"I couldn't stay in that room any longer!" He heard in his mother's panicked sobs. "Not with him looking at me like that!" His dad sighed, exasperated.

"Sweetie, this is just the dementia, it's making you par-"

"No! He's trying to hurt me. I don't care if you don't believe me, he is! He's trying to kill me!" She insisted, shaking him gently by her grip on his arms. Stiles looked at the ground to wipe away his tears, only now realizing how small he was.

"Clau, he's 10 years old…!" His dad tried to reason with her.

"He's killing me!" She insisted still in a growl, Stiles could see her grip tighten on his dad's arms, and still it made him nervous, even knowing she wouldn't hurt him. Not him. "STOP IT!" She roared gutturally, scaring him to attention as he realized she was glaring at him now. She never talked to him like that. At least not before she was sick. "Stop looking at me like that! Stop!" She screamed at him as she ripped herself from his father's arms as if it were nothing, storming towards him.

"Mom, stop! You used to-!"

"Stop looking at me!" She roared again as her razor sharp, brittle nails raked down his cheek, at least one snapping. He could still hear the crisp crack of it, and the tink as it hit the concrete floor of the roof. He flinched as she started hitting him, though he couldn't feel it, as his father tried to pull her back begging her to stop.

He was still crying as he stood in the dining room.

"Don't you fucking look at me like that…" His father snarled in a slurred pointed at him. "It's you… It's aaaaaall you…." His father said spitefully, seeming displeased when he didn't react. "You know, everyday I saw her lyin' in that hospital bed slowly dying… I thought 'How the hell am I supposed to raise this stupid kid on my own?' This hyperactive little bastard that keeps ruining my life!" His father stopped for a moment just to dump more whiskey into his glass before slamming the bottle down with a clink, making Stiles flinch a bit. He took a long swig, almost downing the entirety of what he'd just poured. "It's all you…. It's all you Stiles…" He hissed mockingly, before pointing at him again. "You… You killed your mother…. And now you're killing me!" His father threw his half empty glass. Stiles flinched out of the way, letting out a sob. As the glass shattered against a framed family photo, the rest of the photos around the room, seemingly the entire house, echoed with the same ear splitting noise, and the bottle on the table shattered in place on the table. His mind trying to the memory as terrifying now as it was from his childhood perspective, he assumed. But his father cursed angrily as what little was left in the bottle stained his paperwork, and Stiles fell to the ground in fear, sobbing, even though he was well aware it was just a dream at this point.

"Fuckin' hell, you little piece of- Look what you fucking did! Just- Go to your fucking room… God fucking damn it…." Stiles didn't get up, just as he hadn't that night. He cried looking over at his dad, looking over his damaged paperwork as if he didn't give a damn about him. His father sneered looking back up at him. "Are you fucking deaf? I said go!"

As his father whipped a file at him, the scene disappeared to an imperceivable void, that seemed to switch between white and black and pure unknown depending on how he thought about it. He chose black. And hid him from the world as he sobbed where he laid. He jerked to look as he heard his mother's voice calm and comforting despite what it said.

"You killed me, Mischief…" She said standing there, skin ashen, almost grey, gaunt with black bags under her shining eyes. Suddenly his father was beside her, blood soaking the front of his uniform, insides almost visible. "You killed us both." His father's voice said, but…. It felt like the same voice, just different sounding. Suddenly they were Cas and Dean instead. "Just like you'll kill us." They both said. Then they were Sam and Lucifer and Crowley. "And us." And then Tara. "And me…" Then Melissa. "Don't forget me." Then Lydia and Jackson. "What about us?" Lydia said. "You're going to kill us all, Mischief…" Jackson said. Now it was Scott walking towards him. "Is that what you want? To eat us all alive?" It turned into a little boy. A friend of his when he was little. He fell off the jungle gym and broke his neck. "Like you did…" It took the form of his childhood babysitter, after she'd gotten hit by a car. "To us?" It turned into a man in a police uniform he didn't recognized, that like he'd been mauled. "To all of us?" And suddenly it was Derek but it was so….. wrong. Those scheming eyes, that devilish smile. "Are you really ready to pay that price, Mischief?" He cackled an out of place, sinister sounding laugh. "And for what?"

"Fuck you…" He sobbed.

"Are you really that much of a coward, Mischief?"

"Fuck…." He tried to repeat himself. Block it out. But he felt so weak. It laughed his laugh, mocking him with his own face.

"Are you that afraid of us, Mischief?"

"Fuck you!" He shouted in response, as he felt something pulling him to consciousness.

CHAPTER PLOT SUMMARY:

Basically, Stiles has a horrible nightmare, first remembering times when his mother and father had abused/assaulted him, either in the throws of dementia and illness, or alcoholism and grief, both telling him their impending deaths are his fault.

Once the memories end, he dreams of people who've died in his life, some surprising and out of place, including a childhood friend who fell off the monkey bars when they were kids, a babysitter of his who was hit by a car, a coworker of his father's who he doesn't remember but seems to have been mauled, and of course his parents. They all blame him for their deaths.

He then dreams of people he loves, telling him that he'll kill them too. Dean, Cas, Sam, Crowley, Lucifer, his dad's friend and coworker Tara, Scott's mom Melissa, Lydia, Jackson, and finally Scott and then Derek.

And then he dreams of himself standing over him as he cries on the ground, asking him if he's enough of a coward to let them die, asks "Are you that afraid of us, Mischief?" using the name his mother called him. He responds by telling this version of himself "Fuck you" repeatedly.