A/N: Set between seasons 3A and 3B for Teen Wolf, late season 3 or otherwise ignoring Phantom Planet for Danny Phantom. Written for the Danny Phantom 2010s crossover angst week. Today's prompt is bleeding out in an alleyway. (It's actually less angsty than the prompt implies.) Standard disclaimers apply.

Danny didn't know where he was.

Maybe that didn't particularly matter, since he knew the important part already: help wasn't coming.

Groaning, Danny pressed himself against the brick wall and tried to push his right hand against his left shoulder without screaming. He failed at keeping quiet, and whatever pressure he was applying wasn't enough. Green seeped through his gloves, the ectoplasm still fresh and bright compared to the dulling stains closer to the front of the alleyway where he'd unintentionally hit the pavement. There had definitely been something on or in that bullet that his body didn't like; his healing abilities would have kicked in by now otherwise.

He should maybe have thought things through a little more before leaving home.

It wasn't that he'd been forced to leave or anything; if Jazz, Sam, and Tucker could keep his cover intact, his parents wouldn't know anything for a couple of days, at least if the others didn't spill the beans when he didn't check in with them later. But when he'd started to feel something he couldn't quite explain, something persistent and attention-grabbing like an itch he couldn't scratch, he'd lasted exactly two weeks before snapping.

He'd needed to get rid of this feeling.

Talking to the other ghosts about it hadn't helped; they hadn't known what it was. At least, if they had, they hadn't admitted to it. And once he'd caved and talked to Vlad, that venture had turned out to be equally useless, because Vlad had blithely told Danny to ignore it.

Maybe this time, going against Vlad's advice had not been the smart move.

Danny, uncaring about how dirty his gloves were, stopped pressing on his bullet wound and tugged the glove free from his useless hand before shoving it between his teeth. He allowed himself three breaths before trying to staunch the bleeding again.

Biting down on the glove helped muffle his screams. A bit.

He'd followed his gut, flying out of town in a vaguely southwest direction, and when the portal had opened up, he'd been an idiot and gone through it. Instead of bringing him into the Ghost Zone like he'd expected, he was pretty sure he'd taken an express shortcut through it; the portal had spat him out into someone's living room. Because he had the worst luck in the world, the room had not been empty, and the people at home had had access to guns—and a lot of other stuff Danny had only narrowly managed to avoid. The random firing off of ghost rays in retaliation might have helped—to blind them if nothing else—since the shields of ectoplasm had not.

Of course, his other powers hadn't helped him as much as they should have, either. The stupid bullet had somehow hit him even though he'd been intangible, burning with an agony that was not unlike getting on the wrong side of some of his parents' (or Valerie's) weapons, and it had stubbornly stayed inside him. On the upside, he'd been fighting long enough to know that his only options then were to dodge whatever else they threw at him. That had mostly amounted to regular dodging, since the pain in his shoulder had made it hard to focus on splitting his body around the various projectiles. He'd escaped with a few more nasty cuts, but the shot to the shoulder was definitely the worst they'd done to him.

On the downside, he couldn't seem to pull his flesh away from the bullet anymore than he could let the bullet drop through his flesh or reach in with an intangible hand to pluck it out. He hadn't even been able to fly through a wall with it in; he'd had to crash through the window to get out of there. He'd been able to go intangible to get the glass out, but it was as if he'd been shot with something that was phase proof.

He really did not need his parents getting any ideas.

Granted, their ecto-weapons didn't use bullets. And if Skulker got the bright idea of treating his missiles, Danny would be sure to use it against him. But he wouldn't put anything past the Guys in White.

Danny breathed around his glove, trying to figure out what his best option was. Contacting anyone back in Amity Park would worry them, but going missing without a word would worry them, too. Then again, even if he stopped putting pressure on the wound long enough to send a text message, what could he tell them besides the fact that he'd managed to get himself shot by people he didn't recognize but—given the stupid bullet—had to be hunters even if they hadn't come to Amity Park the time Vlad had put that bounty on his head?

He needed to figure out where he was first.

He needed to get up and move.

Or fly. That should be easier than walking. He just needed to float up, turn invisible, go check out the nearest street corner for signs and try to find a newspaper stand or a library or school or something that might give him some idea of where he was….

Danny sagged, sliding in nearly imperceptible increments down the rough brick.

Moving was hard.

Maybe he should just rest here for a bit.

Finding out where he was could wait a few minutes for him to get a second wind.

Besides, it wasn't like he wouldn't be able to find out anything. He'd discover the name of this place eventually. He had to. Because wherever this was? This was the place that had been calling to him; he could feel it resonating in his bones, a deep sort of hum that rattled his very essence but seemed to calm him at the same time. This was the place that—twisted as it seemed considering he hadn't been here two minutes before getting shot—almost felt like it could be home. Or a home, anyway. Not entirely safe—though to be fair, his sense of safety had been out of whack for years anyway—but somehow comforting.

Wherever he was, he was meant to be here.

Lydia blinked and realized that she had not, in fact, driven to Allison's like she'd meant to.

Instead, she was standing in the mouth of an alleyway, close enough to some fast food joint that her nose was mercifully filled with the scent of fryer oil instead of the reek of blood or death that usually ended up permeating these situations. Granted, it wasn't unlike when all she'd been able to smell was the chlorine from the pool until she'd—

Lydia let out a breath.

This kept happening, and she wanted it to stop. She'd thought it would stop, now that she…knew. Or at least now that no one was trying to sacrifice anyone.

Then again, that had been a fool's hope more than anything else.

She hadn't lost time, exactly—it was still light enough out that she could see clearly—but at some point, she'd stopped paying attention again. She could feel the press of her car keys into her right hand, but she had no idea where she'd parked or which street she was standing on without looking, and she couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes away from the boy in front of her long enough to do that.

He wasn't young young. If he wasn't her age, she doubted more than a year or two separated them. Still, even if he was a freshman, he wasn't from here. She'd spent enough time looking for distractions to be well aware of all the possibilities who walked the halls of Beacon Hills High School. He wasn't new unless this was his first day in town.

And what a rough first day that must have been.

A hideous mixture of red and green pooled around him—far too much for a body to lose and remain alive, were it blood alone—and streaks of that same green substance laid out a clear enough path of his trajectory. She didn't know if the street behind her had a similar treatment. Considering no one else had found him, it might not.

Part of her wanted to scream.

Part of her wanted to cry.

She forced herself to walk forward instead, but she couldn't shake the feeling of death that surrounded her. The goosebumps and shivers the feeling gave her was the least of it, really. The gnawing dread, the unerring certainty—

And something else, too, now that she was closer. The same sense of wrongness that Peter Hale had about him. Or—similar, anyway, if not exactly the same. She stopped, waiting, but it didn't abate.

She couldn't wait for it to go away. "Hello?"

No response.

She couldn't tell if he was alive. The dark-haired figure didn't stir, but if that was blood….

Then again, even if that was blood, the green sheen of the other substance practically screamed supernatural creature. He was either part of that world or knew about it like she did—or, she supposed, he'd come to a rather rude realization of their reality. She wasn't close enough to tell whether he was bleeding red or green; his once-white t-shirt looked to be soaked with both colours, but if he'd fallen into that green puddle….

Against her better judgement, she crouched only a foot away from him, just at the edge of the spreading pool. Whatever that green stuff was, it looked more viscous than blood, but the two kept separate like oil and water. "Hello?" she called again as she reached out a tentative hand. Not towards the wound in his shoulder where the concentration of blood was heaviest, no, but even if she could simply—

The boy's eyes shot open, flaring an unnatural green, and they both screamed.

"Lydia, calm down," Stiles repeated as he grabbed his keys and headed for his jeep, but she wasn't listening to him. "You said it wasn't a body this time. The guy's still alive. That's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Actively dying isn't much better," she hissed at him. "He's— I don't know. He's something. But he's hurt and I somehow made it worse even though I didn't do anything—"

"Did you touch him?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" He could hear the frustration in her voice, but in the second it took for him to put her on speaker, she'd regained control. "I— I know I didn't. There's enough blood and something else that it would be on my fingers if I had."

He wanted to ask what she meant by 'something else' but asked where she was instead. Not far from Allison's, apparently. Okay. Good. If he didn't hit all the wrong lights, he could get there in under five minutes. "Who else have you called?"

"No one," she said, which was a better answer than 'your dad' but still very much a worse answer than 'Scott' and/or 'Allison'. He supposed he should be glad she'd still called him instead of Aiden, but—

But he shouldn't read into that.

Probably.

"Okay. Just. Hang tight. Don't let the kid run away or anything. I'm coming."

"I know."

"You—?" Oh. He had her on speaker. She'd have heard him starting the jeep. "Right. Sorry. I—"

"Look, don't— Don't call the others. Not yet."

He hadn't been about to suggest that, but he had been about to hang up and do that. "Why? They'll want to know what's going on. They can meet us at the hospital." He'd drive. He didn't want Lydia to drive after this. She got shaken up when this kind of thing happened, and he could hardly blame her. He'd be shaken up, too. Being a surrogate sacrifice was already closer to death than he ever wanted to be; he couldn't imagine how Lydia felt with everything she had going on.

Still, even if this was a person and not a body or a missing person that was bound to turn up as a body….

"I— I don't— It wouldn't help."

"The hospital? Scott's mom's—"

"The others."

"But they'd help. They'd—"

"They'd overwhelm him."

Stiles frowned. Sure, knowing them, that was probably true—it was the reason Melissa kept kicking them out of hospital rooms so her patients could rest—but Lydia was being weirdly insistent about going this alone, and he didn't understand why. There had to be something she wasn't telling him. "I don't—"

"Just promise me you won't call anyone before you get here?"

Maybe it was because she thought she'd made things worse without even touching him. Maybe she was worried introducing a werewolf to whatever the hell this guy was would escalate the situation further. That wouldn't have stopped her from calling Allison, though. Allison might even be able to tell them what was up with this guy. Not as well as someone like Deaton would, but—

"Please?"

Maybe she was trying to keep Allison away from this kind of thing so she could have time to recover. Scott, too. Except, if Lydia were doing that, she wouldn't be calling him, either. Then again, he had asked her to call him if she found another body, and she had in the past, and this was close to a body, so that could be why.

Or maybe he was making up excuses and inventing reasons for something when it was as simple as Lydia being too freaked out to think clearly.

At least she'd called him.

He could simply be thankful that she'd still called him.

"Okay." He didn't know why he was agreeing, but the words were already out of his mouth. "No calling them till after I get there. Promise."

He really hoped the universe—which did not seem to particularly like him at the moment—would not make him eat his words.

The boy was still hunched over, curling into himself and not reacting when she tried to talk to him, so Lydia gave him space and kept an eye on him from the mouth of the alleyway. She'd had to go out there to tell Stiles where she was, and now she could see her car parked just down the street, so she'd at least know where to go to get it tomorrow, since at this rate, she shouldn't be driving.

Stiles arrived with surprisingly little fanfare, waving and sprinting towards her once he'd parked across the street—too close to a fire hydrant not to get a ticket, but hopefully they wouldn't be here much longer.

"What's up?" he asked, peering past her as if trying to spot the bleeding boy. "Why don't you want to call the others?"

"Allison's busy," Lydia said. The text message she'd found on her phone when she'd pulled it out to call Stiles didn't have a lot of detail—just a note that something had come up, that Lydia should stay home, and that Allison would fill her in as soon as she could. "Scott—"

"Scott would try to help! You can't tell me he wouldn't help."

"Yes. He'd jump in before we even knew what this was. I just…." She glanced back towards the boy. "He's not a werewolf. His eyes shone green. I haven't seen that before."

More to the point, she wanted to know why Allison was busy. As far as Lydia knew, neither Allison nor Chris was hunting as they once had—going out with the intention of protecting people was different, at least in Lydia's book—and Gerard wasn't in good enough shape to do it. Then again, Lydia wasn't sure if Allison had so much as strung her bow in the last couple of weeks.

Even so, Allison wouldn't have to be in the field to help her father, and almost every plan had exceptions. Lydia didn't know how well the new policy was going over with the rest of the Argents. She didn't even know if Allison and Chris had told them yet; Allison had only told Lydia last week. If someone in their family or an old friend had turned up unexpectedly and thrown a wrench into things, they might have needed to pretend that everything was as it had been in order to protect everyone here. If they didn't and someone else decided to step in to take care of things because they weren't being suitable hunters….

Allison might have broken up with Scott, but she still cared about him. She certainly cared about Isaac, even if she wouldn't yet admit that there was anything to it. She'd simply insist that she cared about all of them, which—while undoubtedly true—was hardly the point.

Either way, someone had shot the boy, and now he was bleeding out in the alley.

It wasn't enough evidence to draw conclusions. It could be mere coincidence. But bullets weren't exactly the style of any supernatural creature Lydia had met, and bullets that affected supernatural creatures to this extent weren't carried by normal hunters.

Stiles was staring at her as if he could read her thoughts. "You don't know whether you want to bring Scott or Allison in on this, do you? Or anyone else. Because you want to figure it out first."

Sometimes, Lydia was made painfully aware that Stiles knew her better than she'd like to admit.

"Is Allison even really busy? I thought you guys were going to hang out?"

Lydia knew her smile was tight, but she wore it anyway. "Something came up. For both of us, obviously."

Stiles was nodding, though she wasn't entirely sure if it was in acknowledgement or agreement. "So why do you think you made things worse?"

He was changing the subject because he knew she didn't have a good answer, wasn't he?

She should be grateful.

Lydia turned and walked towards the boy, letting Stiles follow. Some things were easier to show than to explain. "He's conscious but, as far as I can tell, he's not aware of anything. I've tried talking to him. He's not responding."

"That's, uh, a lot of blood. And something else. I know what you mean by that now. There's more of it than the blood."

"I know."

"Some kind of bile, maybe?"

She shrugged. His guess was as good as hers at this point.

"Should he even be alive?"

"He wouldn't be if he were human." She doubted it, at least, but having seen the dead come back to life, she refused to be surprised that this boy was clinging to life.

More than clinging, really.

His colour was a little off, probably paler than usual if the blood loss was any indication, but he wasn't grey. He hadn't lapsed back into unconsciousness—he was still upright and too tense for that—but he hadn't said a word since she'd reached out for him and found herself screaming as those bright green eyes had burned into hers. His own keening had cut off by now, but he'd curled into himself before that had happened.

It felt like this was her fault, somehow.

It shouldn't, but it did.

She was a banshee.

She didn't know what that meant, not really, not beyond folklore that didn't explain enough, but she'd figure it out. And they'd figure this out. That's what they did.

Still, if she'd had this effect on the boy, she didn't want to think about what coming into contact with the others might do.

If they couldn't get a response, though….

It might be a risk they'd have to take.

"You're welcome to try talking to him," she said. "If you don't get a response either, we'll call Scott."

Danny's world was all green light and pain, but on some level, he knew it wasn't really. He knew he wasn't in his parents' lab. He wasn't even in Amity Park.

That didn't mean that the scream echoing in his ears—his own? The girl's? There'd been a girl—didn't try to obliterate his awareness and send him horribly and painfully back to the day of the portal accident.

It was in his head. Probably. Except he could squeeze his eyes shut and cover one ear and still find himself reliving that moment in a way he never had before.

The fact that the screaming girl was reminiscent of Jazz was a coincidence.

Probably.

He tried to focus on her and claw his way back to the present, but the mental fight simultaneously exhausted him and made the pain worse. Every nerve was on fire, but the worst of it wasn't where he'd pressed that button. It was his shoulder. The bullet wound. (Whatever he'd been shot with had messed things up for him; seriously, if Vlad or the Guys in White ever got a hold of this stuff, he'd be in trouble.)

And, okay, fine. He was aware enough to know his healing abilities hadn't totally abandoned him; he wasn't dead dead even after accidentally shifting back to Fenton and not being able to muster the strength to change back. Plus, now that he'd been sitting here for who knew how long, he was aware enough of the situation that he could think, so his head was clear—clearer than it had been, which meant he was getting better.

For a given value of 'better', considering there was something wrong with him and the echoing scream in his head. It was getting fainter now, though, wasn't it? Unless he was just getting used to it. Was that possible, if the sound didn't still exist for him to hear in the first place? (At least, he was assuming the girl wasn't still screaming. That would be a long time to scream.)

Maybe he'd gotten dosed with some kind of ghost drug, a hallucinogen or something, and the scream had set it off? And he was slowly getting his bearings again because it was wearing off?

"Hey! Hey, can you hear me? Can you look at me?"

That wasn't the girl's voice.

Danny forced his eyes open and blinked, trying to clear away the haze of green that wanted to invade everything and bring him back to—

No, he wasn't going to think about it. He'd lose himself if he—

Focus.

"—okay if you don't want to, but it'd be a lot easier, y'know?"

Oh, he had not been paying attention to the newcomer at all, had he? Danny made himself look at the boy crouched in front of him and the girl hovering over the boy's shoulder. She'd stopped screaming—that much was definitely all in his head—but she still reminded him of Jazz in a way that went beyond the red hair. "What?" His own voice sounded as hoarse as if he'd been the one screaming.

He hadn't been screaming, had he?

Even if he had, he was pretty sure he hadn't been wailing—if only because what looked to be the wall of the building opposite him seemed to be perfectly intact. Good. That was good. Not wailing was good.

"Your name. Y'know, what people call you?"

The girl smacked the boy's upper arm with the back of her hand, making him yelp as she admonished, "Stiles!"

Maybe she reminded him of Sam, too. That was a frightening thought, someone who reminded him of a mix of Jazz and Sam….

Still, he could see his jeans and sneakers, so he hadn't gone through a second costume change when only semi-aware of his surroundings, which made that answer easy enough. "Danny." It was a common enough name, and they didn't need to know his last one.

"Okay. Good. Danny, I'm Stiles. That's Lydia." The boy—Stiles—nodded towards her but kept a wide smile pasted on his face in what Danny assumed was supposed to be an effort to make him feel reassured. "Now, this is going to sound really blunt, but you're not in the best shape right now, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. What are you?"

Danny's brain screeched to a halt. "What?"

"You're—" Stiles waved a hand in Danny's general direction, effectively gesturing to all of him. Or maybe to the mixture of blood and ectoplasm around him. Had that really all come from him? He couldn't remember his ghost sense going off, but—

Stiles was still talking. Danny should really be listening to him.

"—what I'd associate with a normal human, so you're something. Do you know what? Because if you don't want to go to the hospital, our friend Scott, he works at this vet clinic—please don't find that insulting; I'm not calling you an animal—and the doc there knows about…stuff. That might be relevant. But if you're cool with hospitals, Scott's mom's a nurse, and she knows about, uh, this kind of thing. About it existing, I mean, not, like, specifics we don't already know, like Deaton might."

Danny stared, trying to work through all the implications of what Stiles had just said.

"We've got more friends who can help," continued Stiles. "Lydia didn't want to call them till we talked to you, but are you fine with us doing that? They can meet us at either place." He paused, though it wasn't long enough for Danny to get in a word. "I mean. It's safe to assume that you're not here to attack everyone or anything, right? Since it looks like you were shot and not clawed up."

Danny swallowed. Clawed up? He'd ask later. "I swear I didn't come here to hurt anyone. I was…." Was there a way to say this that didn't sound insane? Maybe he'd skip the explanation for now and hope they wouldn't notice. "Look, the, um, the people who shot me. They might be looking for me. And check those places. So it's probably not safe to tell everyone you know. I'll be fine anyway."

Why did that sound so much like a lie?

Stiles glanced up at Lydia, but she was the one who said, "What sort of people? Did you escape from somewhere?"

Oh. Okay, then. Maybe they weren't strangers to secret government organizations. Danny really hoped the Guys in White did not have a foothold in this place. "No, I mean— I think they're just regular people." Admitting this wouldn't make him look good, but he needed allies. "I might've crashed into their living room by mistake, and they, um, reacted accordingly."

Stiles looked at Lydia again. "So when Allison told you something had come up—"

"Seems like a safe bet." Lydia's voice was clipped, but she was looking at Danny when she continued, "At least you know they aren't tracking you right now. They'd have found you if they were, and we wouldn't be having this conversation." Stiles was making a face and opening his mouth, but Lydia continued, "Since you caught them by surprise, they're probably preparing. Just in case."

Danny blinked. These people knew the town's hunters. Okay, that maybe shouldn't be too surprising. He knew all the ones back home, too.

He wasn't on friendly terms with them, though.

Not as Phantom, anyway.

If he counted Vlad, he wasn't on friendly terms at all. Technically. Anything his dad said on that front was a lie born from blissful ignorance.

"Or!" added Stiles, the panicky sort of inflection in his voice reminding Danny a bit too much of himself—and Tucker, come to that—for comfort. Whatever he was going to suggest, he either didn't like it or didn't believe it. "Or they could be doing damage control if you did any damage to control."

"I—" Danny broke off. Just because he hadn't been aiming at anyone didn't mean he hadn't hit one of them by mistake. "I don't know." He tried to straighten up, moved his shoulder the wrong way, and immediately regretted his life choices. That might have hurt worse than being shot in the first place. "Okay," he said once he'd recovered his breath, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe vet clinic? If they're open?" However awful an experience it might be, it couldn't be worse than quarantine at the Fenton household.

No HAZMAT suits beyond his, at the very least, which had to be an improvement when he wasn't actually infectious.

"More like if they're closed, but I'll call Scott," Stiles said, straightening from his crouch and pulling out a phone. "Unless you're still not cool with that?"

If they were friends with the hunters, he could probably handle their non-hunter friends. "Go ahead."

Stiles gave him a grin and a thumbs up before walking towards the street.

Lydia was still looking at Danny with a critical, analyzing sort of gaze he was used to getting from Jazz. "You're a lot better than you were. Why?"

She wasn't wrong. He could think a lot more clearly now, and there was no more screaming in his head. Even the pain from moving had died down to something manageable again, although he was under no illusions that it would stay that way the next time he shifted even slightly.

Regardless, he offered Lydia a cheeky smile. Humour always helped in these situations, and he was going to need friends until he could figure out why he'd been drawn here, sort that out, and get back home. Preferably, without any new hunters on his tail. "Natural healing ability?"

Her eyes narrowed. "That wouldn't—" She stopped, taking another step towards him before crouching and pointing towards—

Huh.

That was a bullet.

That was probably the bullet that had been inside of him.

By all accounts, that was a good thing, since it meant his body could heal itself without issue, but Danny was a solid ninety-five percent certain he wasn't the reason it was no longer buried in his flesh.

That was more evidence—not that he'd needed it—that this town and its inhabitants were as normal as everyone back in Amity Park.

Or as normal as the Fentons, anyway.

The smile he gave Lydia this time was more genuine than the last one. "Um, thanks?"

She'd been reaching towards the bullet but stopped abruptly, jerking her hand back. "I didn't do anything."

If she hadn't, Danny had even more questions.

Those could wait until after he got patched up, though. He could heal a lot faster than normal people, but that would still help. He felt more tired now than he did after being chased by Skulker all night, and since crashing at one of his friends' places for the night wasn't an option, he'd take every little bit of help he could. "You can grab the bullet. We shouldn't leave it behind. The ectoplasm'll dissipate on its own." The blood wouldn't, but without the bullet and the ectoplasm, he could hope no one would notice the blood.

What were the chances, if someone else came across this before the ectoplasm had a chance to dissipate, that they'd think it was paint?

Best not to stick around to find out.

Danny shifted, meaning to get up on his own, and realized that wasn't going to happen without a lot of pain and suffering. He decided his dignity could suffer instead. "Um. I might need some help."

Lydia hadn't moved, not even to pick up the bullet. She was looking at him warily. "Ectoplasm?"

"Ghost stuff." He didn't particularly want to explain this more than once.

"Ghost—?"

"Scott'll meet us there," Stiles interrupted, coming back before Lydia could say anything else. "He's gonna call Deaton to give him a heads up." He frowned at Danny. "You're not going to lose consciousness and bleed all over my jeep, are you?"

Huh. Apparently, he looked as awake as he felt. "If I do, I promise I'll clean it up." Intangibility would make that a quick task once he was up for it.

Stiles helped him up—an excruciating process even before Lydia moved to support his other side—and Danny only looked down long enough to be sure that Lydia had picked up the bullet after all.

He didn't know what was up with this place—wherever he was—but as soon as he was patched up, he was going to find out. And, hopefully, not get himself killed for real in the process. But learning about this town was definitely the first step.

Then again, maybe learning about its hunters should be the first step.

"So, uh, I'm assuming you're friends with Allison?"

"If you're not here to hurt anyone, she's not going to hurt you," Stiles said immediately. "Neither's her dad. They protect people. I mean, they might think they have to protect people from you, given the whole 'home invasion' thing, but—"

Danny winced and jumped in before Stiles could finish. "You should tell them that wasn't intentional. And that I'm sorry. I can say that myself if they promise not to shoot me."

Lydia merely hummed at his words, but Stiles said, "So what did you say brought you here, again? I mean, people don't usually go around accidentally crashing into other people's living rooms, but if it happens, I'm guessing it usually happens when they live on the ground floor. And Allison doesn't. If it was really her place you crashed into."

Danny sucked in a breath, and not just because the bullet wound wasn't healing as fast as he was used to healing. "I don't know."

"What? How can you not know?"

"I just don't. I…. I was looking for somewhere. Or something. I'm not even sure. Whatever it is, it's here. But I don't know why." And no one (namely Clockwork) had conveniently decided to show up and explain things. Or anything. Danny would settle for a partial explanation, but no. He had to go into things blind or Clockwork might be interfering with the timeline—as if he'd never done that before.

Stiles and Lydia exchanged a look Danny couldn't parse.

"Okay," Stiles said slowly, "so, bright side is, you're not dead."

"Might be subjective," Lydia grumbled, and Danny wasn't wholly sure if that was because he'd mentioned ghosts to her earlier.

"Which is good for everyone," Stiles said, slightly louder than before, "because we don't need any more dead bodies showing up."

"More dead bodies? Do I want to ask?"

"No," Stiles said. "Trust me, no. Not if you don't have to."

Danny really, really hoped he wouldn't have to.

Then again, someone—or something—had been drawing him here, so with his luck….

"It's been a rough couple of months," muttered Lydia, which was likely all the explanation Danny would get unless he did ask.

"Welcome to Beacon Hills," added Stiles, his voice full of false brightness, and Danny wondered what the heck he'd gotten himself into.