Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Grief/Mourning is a major theme of this one, and consequentially, so is the canon child abandonment. Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: This is yet another sad one with probably one of the oldest appearances of Stiles that is going to happen in this collection. Fortunately for my heart all the other parts that are close to wrapping up are a bit happier, if only because the tiny kids are legit feral creatures, I swear.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts 2.0 (Term 01); RAVEN (2023); MC4A (Wi-Y6)
Individual Challenges: Red Instead; Straight Outta Myth; Condiment Shelf; Missing Link; Pet Food; Vegetable Broth; Coupons; Gift Wrapped; Fruit Stand; Purple Scholar; Feather Head; Magical MC; No School MC; New Fandom Smell; Cinematic; Binger; Alpha & Omega; Feathers & Such; Dreamers; Nonhuman MC; Shifter MC; Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion; Short Jog; Bucket Listing; The Story Goes On; Eating Cake (Y); Exchange (Y); Greatest Gift; Green Ribbon; Two Cakes (Y); Vial Collector; Outer; Zed Era; Rainbow Connection; Hold the Mayo
Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
Assignment: Term 01-08
Subject [Task (Prompt)]: Ancient Studies [Task#2 (something important is forgotten)]
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Gather [Wizard (Necromancer)](Graveyard/Cemetery)
RAVEN Challenges: Colors [37](Cream); Items [61](Hoodie); Settings [88](Lonely)
Other MC4A Challenges: Chim [Bugwort]("The Anonymous Ones" – Dear Evan Hansen; Turned Left Instead AU; Race Bend); Hunt [Fa Set (Rain); Fa Items (Messenger Bag)]; Fire [x3](); Garden [Scope (ADHD); Statuary (Satchel/Bag); Aya's Blend (Neurodivergent); Aya's Redux Blend (Fusion); Tropes (Because of Canon); Pot Garden (Cold)]; Harvest [Tropes (Lost Love; A-Plus Parenting); Set (Rainy; Breezy); C&CT (Omega; Polish; Scrawny); A&B (Walking)]; Hang [Phrase#2](n/a); Soup [N (Noise)]; Shop [Neu (Depression)]; Swap [Outerwear (Oversized Hoodie)]
Representation(s): Mieczyslaw "Stiles" Stilinski & Noah Stilinski; Jewish Stilinskis; Yortseyt
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Esbat; Hot Stuff; Toto's Tribute; Second Verse (Nontraditional; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice; Brooms Only; Lovely Coconuts; Trickster's Union; Lyre Liar; Most Human Bean; Hot Apple; Dog Star; Under the Bridge); Chorus (Wabi Sabi; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; A Long Dog; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Creature Feature; Abandoned Ship; In the Trench; Piper Mix; Some Beach); Demo 2p (Tied & Died)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Spare); O3 (Oath); SHoE (n/a); AC (Sacrosanct; Orchard; Rampant); War (Sanctuary; Ennui); TY (Slainte; Ntaiv; Enfant); Mea (Ennui; Rampant); Wings (Bower); Share (Dragoman; Augur); DP (Keen; Yearn)
Space Address (Prompt): FaB [4D](Candle); Set [4E](Conference/Seminar); Wi [2A](Shivering); Vocab [5A](Catatonic);
Word Count: 1299 words
(^^)
Carry Them Well
(^^)
Stiles placed the flat stone into the tray on the front of his mother's marker. His right hand stayed clenched at his side as his left drifted over the other stones already resting there. There was an extra one but it was the cream-colored kind that decorated the few other graves in this section, probably left by the rabbi from the Redding synagogue. The Jewish section of the Beacon Hills cemetery was rather small with only a handful of graves. Most were buried in the bigger one in Redding, near where the synagogue was.
He settled down on the bench nearby with his legs folded and crossed at the ankles. He shifted the messenger bag that had brought with him to sit in the bowl his legs made. The cold from the stone beneath him seeped through his clothing. No matter how warm it was elsewhere, here in this place, it always felt cold. Maybe that was just in his head. He huddled into the BHSD hoodie that he had snagged from his father even though it swamped his smaller frame.
"Scott is thinking of moving back to Beacon Hills," Stiles said. His voice broke the quiet that blanketed the cemetery as much as the fallen leaves did. "I guess things aren't really working out with his dad in Redding. While that sucks, it will be nice to have him closer again."
Somewhere near by, a raven screeched as if in reply. Stiles jerked his eyes to the oak tree growing between the Jewish section and the rest of the graves. Sure enough, there was the huge thing. It was one of the pied flock that haunted the cemetery. Mr. Lahey hated them but nothing the groundskeeper did could chase them off for long. Stiles suspected that at least a few of the rearrangements the stones on the graves was from the flock mimicking him.
It was fine, because rearranging the stones was all they ever did.
"Lydia is officially dating Jackson," Stiles continued, focusing back on his mother's stones. It was easier than letting his eyes trace the carved symbol and dates on the marker. "That's gonna set back my ten year plan to woo her, but it's not terrible. He's a jerk, yeah—not denying that. Dude's been a jerk since kindergarten when he tried to play keep-away with Scott's inhaler." He rubbed his palms over his jeans. "She's been smiling more since she started letting him carry her bag between classes. There's plenty of time to win her over from the Dark Side. We're only in the eighth grade. It's nice to see her smile anyway."
The silence that followed was heavy with what Stiles had avoided talking about so far. He took a deep breath through his nose to calm the way his stomach was threatening to rebel. The scent of ozone was strong enough that he knew the previous forecast was wrong. A storm had to be imminent. He could almost feel the crackle of lightning in the air.
"Dad's drinking again," he whispered like it was a secret. If his mother truly was watching over him from the afterlife, then she probably already knew. But he still had to get the words out, even if he couldn't bring himself to say them very loud. "It's not as bad as it was right after, after, after— you know. After. It's mostly just if he has to come in to get me from the ward. If I meet him outside on those days, he's fine. They still have Peter in your old room. It's hard on Dad."
Stiles swallowed around the lump in his throat. Sometimes it felt like he had lost a limb when his mother died. Other times, he was relieved that she wasn't around to see what a mess they had become without her. It was complicated all around.
"Peter's still catatonic," he said a little louder. As far as he knew, his mother had never met any of the Hales other than Talia. The two alphas had been something like enemies for as far back as Stiles could remember. Not even all the times that Cora had joined forces for whatever Stiles had gotten into as a kid overcame whatever Cold War rivalry they had had going on. But Stiles had been acting as a surrogate therapy animal for Peter since shortly after his mother's death. The man was as much a part of his life as Scott was. "He's able to sit up on his own, though, and last week, I swear his eyes tracked the starlings in the tree outside his window. I don't think Mayumi believes me, but I still think it's true. Either way, he's not quite as stiff as he was last year.
"His scars are getting better, too. Mayumi gave me a recipe for a balm that I could make using the herbs I get from your garden and some stuff available at the hippy grocer on Hawthorne Road. I'm sure that you remember how weird Mayumi could get. So I know you'd believe me when I tell ya that she gave me the note with the recipe and then held my hand while lookin' all serious and told me that I needed to visualize it working while I mixed it."
Stiles swallowed against another wave of tears that threatened to overwhelm him. To counter it, he took a deep breath and held it for a mental count of three before slowly releasing it again. Mayumi had been working on teaching him even more meditations than he had learned from his mother before she had been too far gone to teach him anything. Honestly, it was just as effective for keeping him functioning as his Adderall was. He rubbed his palms over his thighs again.
"The body," he mouthed as he continued breathing deliberately. He closed his eyes and turned his face towards the afternoon sun that filtered through the clouds. "The mind and the soul. Fitted together like a wheel, going round and round and ever round."
The mantra was as familiar to Stiles as the prayers he would chant later as he lit the yortseytlikht alongside the ones for his sabbat observation. He had been doing them all by himself since his mother had been admitted to the hospital. He loved his dad, but anything resembling a tradition had been something that Stiles had done with his mother. It had meant that Stiles had a lot of things that he had to either do for himself or do without. Stiles suspected that he only got the tefillin he had because the set had been his mother's father's and had been always meant for him.
The raven in the tree screamed again. The noise startled him back to his current surroundings.
"I miss you, Mama," Stiles said, pushing himself to his feet. He brushed his fingertips over the carving of the tree of life encircled by a ring of twelve tiny caims that was on the marker instead of his mother's name. The Gajos family was once a large clan. Now it was just him. He couldn't help but feel like he was failing the legacy he had been left.
Just like he had failed his mother and was currently failing his father.
"I'll try harder this next year," he promised. "Maybe then Dad won't forget the date again."
Then Stiles started his walk home. Even using the shortcut through the Hale section of the Preserve, he was soaked by the steady rain that had begun falling before he had gotten halfway there. That was fine. It should always rain on this day, just like it was raining then.
The house was just as empty as it had been when he had left it.