The next morning, Luna had finally decided to take the leap that everyone had been wanting her to take.
Today, she was officially preparing herself to talk to Stiles face to face, properly, about all the feelings she'd tried to figure out about him - but she was petrified, especially as she'd seen him kissing that girl the day before at that stupid party.
Painfully, that was now an image that she just couldn't get out of her head.
So that morning, she made a straight beeline through the school hallways straight over to where she'd spotted her best friend plodding along alone. She plastered a bright smile on her face and immediately fixed her hair the best she could in the few moments she had free leading up to him.
But, to her genuine surprise, he barely even noticed her - in fact, he was on his way to completely passing her by without so much as a glance back in her direction. So she had to forcefully put herself in his eye line and placed a steady hand on his chest. "Hey Stilesy," she beamed, stopping him in his tracks. He blinked at her a few times, seemingly only realising she was there.
And then she properly saw his face.
"Holy shi-"
"Hey, Loo," Stiles murmured croakily, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. "I'm…uh…on my way home. I th-think I should be anyway-"
"Oh my god. Stiles!" Luna hissed before yanking him into the nearest empty classroom and shutting the door behind her to give them some privacy. She tenderly took Stiles' face into her hands again to study him properly and swiftly noticed his eyes fill with tears as soon as they made eye contact for the first time in days.
Her heart broke.
"Oh…oh Stiles…"
"I'm so, freakin' tired, Luna. But I just can't sleep and it's driving me insane," Stiles croaked out helplessly, tearing his gaze from her again. He looked like he wanted to burst into tears then and there, but he was still holding them down well. "And, more importantly, I think I've been killing people in my sleep. Or…telling people to kill people. P-pretty sure the b-bomber was down to me-"
"Huh?" Luna suddenly squinted as she gently moved his head from side to side. He looked completely drawn out, so much so that she quickly convinced herself that anything he was saying was just out of exhaustion rather than him being serious. "Oh Stiles, I really wish you wouldn't take all of this on your shoulders alone! It makes me so incredibly sad-"
"To be honest, I don't usually have people that care enough, so I'm not that used to it," Stiles answered with an honest but tired shrug. "You and Scott are like, the first ones to actually ask if I'm okay half the time…being the only non-mystical one and all." Luna sucked her cheeks in and shook her head.
"Okay, no - that's enough. We're getting you outta here, come on," she nodded, dropping her hands from his face and taking his trembling hand instead. Stiles was far too tired to argue with her at this stage.
"I mean…I was leaving to go home anyway-"
"We're not going home, we're going to the hospital. Stiles, don't take offence by this, but you've never looked so bad for all the years I've known you," Luna murmured quietly.
"Wow. Thanks, Loo," Stiles grumbled, his eyes squinting with irritation.
"I'm sorry, I only say it because I care about you, way too much to see you suffer like this and pretend like it's just sleep that you need when you're clearly not getting any and there's a reason behind that which we are yet to uncover," Luna stated firmly, pulling him down the hall, out of the building and straight towards her car - and Stiles just let her, giving up the fight.
Once they both got to the hospital, Luna practically ran straight for the desk. "Hi, is Dr McCall working today please?" she asked brightly, although she was still tightly clinging onto Stiles' hand from where he was swaying behind her.
"Luna?" came the sudden sound of Melissa's voice from down the hall. Both Luna and Stiles glanced over at her and let out matching sighs of relief, before swiftly following her into a spare room without another word.
Not another word needed to be spoken, in fact.
"So, you wanna tell me what's been going on?" Melissa asked Stiles with a small but considerably worried sigh as soon as the were safely in a room together. Stiles was slumped on the hospital bed and Luna was stood against the wall opposite, patiently waiting for him to talk.
She still didn't know the extent of his own secret suffering, and she was already drowning in guilt because of it.
"Blackouts…but not for that long. And sleepwalking, which I used to do a lot as a kid," Stiles explained shakily, focussing on his still trembling hands as they rested uneasily in his lap. "Um…" He found himself looking up at Luna for support, suddenly feeling completely stumped for some reason.
"From what I can tell, he's also been having some really, really bad anxiety," she jumped in quickly, saving him the stress of speaking about it even more. "Hands shaking, multiple panic attacks a day…it hasn't been good."
"A-and most of them stemmed from the fact that I temporarily lost the ability to read," Stiles added in quietly as it all slowly came back to him. "But apparently that had more to do with the whole giant magic tree and human sacrifice thing…"
"I recall something vaguely about that, yes," Melissa smirked, making both Luna and Stiles smile slightly despite the tension. "So how many hours of sleep are you getting?"
"Eight," Stiles replied without hesitation.
"A night?" Luna murmured in surprise. "Well that's good-"
"In the last three days," Stiles corrected her smoothly. Melissa looked over at Luna in surprise and she shook her head, the two of them almost immediately knowing what to do without having to say anything to one another. Melissa turned to one of her draws and pulled a needle out as Luna ran her tongue across her teeth and watched her. "What's that…?" Stiles asked anxiously.
"Do you trust me?" Melissa asked quietly. She turned to the apprehensively stood Luna as well. "Both of you?"
"More than most people in this town, yes. I mean, that's why we're here," she nodded back confidently.
"I mean yeah Loo, but that is a freakin' huge ass needle she's got there and it's not going in you," Stiles grumbled, leading Luna to roll her eyes.
"It's Medazolam," Melissa answered swiftly before he freaked out. "A sedative. Because you, Stiles, need rest, you need it now." Luna smiled slightly as Melissa lay Stiles down and pulled the blanket up over him to tuck him in.
Then, Luna herself slipped over to the other side of Stiles' bed to stroke his hair away from his forehead comfortingly, watching him slowly slip away from consciousness.
"Poor guy," Melissa murmured.
"I…I'm gonna wait for him to come back around again," Luna whispered, her eyes still fixed firmly on him. "Could be hours but…he'd wait for me so I'm gonna do it for him." Melissa smiled over at her and nodded as she stood up straight once more.
"You sure love him a lot, huh?"
"So everyone keeps telling me," Luna hummed, leaning her head back against the wall. "Time and time again."
"Does he know…?" Melissa asked curiously.
"Literally…no," Luna smiled lightly, her cheeks flushing red. "Doesn't have a clue. But then again, neither did I till literally the other day."
…
That next night, Luna was fast asleep in her own home once more. When she'd woken up the day before, Stiles was already up and walking again, and must've completely bypassed her to go out with Scott. She hadn't heard from him since, so she just hoped that he was doing better now and she promised herself that she would try and catch up with him later.
And then she jolted herself awake.
Blood was dripping relentlessly from her nostril, onto her lips and into her mouth, the gushing warm iron taste took over her mouth. "No, no not again," she whispered, slamming on her desk light to illuminate her room and taking deep breaths to stop herself from passing out.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door as she scrambled for the tissues that she kept nearby. "Come in?" she called out in a muffled voice through the soft fabric against her nose.
Within seconds, Elsa poked her head around the door, her eyes visibly worried.
"Luna? Your friends are here," she whispered nervously, "And it's…it's about Stiles." Luna's eyes widened and she practically flew out of the bedroom, directly past her mother and straight into the living room where none other but Scott and Isaac stood there, awaiting her arrival, apprehensively.
"Boys?" she began shakily, slowly lowering the clumps of tissue form her nostrils with a final sniff.
"Luna, Stiles…Stiles is missing," Isaac told her calmly, taking a step forward to prepare for her little freakout, because he knew all too well it was coming.
Luna's mouth dropped open.
"My nose…" she whispered hollowly.
Both the guys glanced at each other in brief confusion before looking back at her.
"Did you not hear-?" Scott blinked,
"That's why my nose was bleeding in my sleep! I knew something was wrong, my senses knew, I could feel…" Luna slowly trailed off as her eyes welled up with tears, the reality of the situation slowly settled in. "Why…I mean how d-do you…"
But before she could finish, Scott's phone went off. His eyes widened.
"Its him again," he whispered to Isaac, before answering it swiftly. "Hey, Stiles?" At the mention of his name, Luna let out a gasp strong enough to rock her entire core. She took a hesitant step towards Scott, her hands beginning to tremble with confusion and obvious fear.
"Did you call him? Did you call my dad?" came Stiles' panicked whisper over the line, bleeding through the phone speaker. He sounded terrified - Luna physically clamped her hands over her mouth to prevent herself from making a sound, although she desperately wanted to start hyperventilating with genuine fear.
"No, we didn't call your dad, man. Just Isaac and Luna - don't worry, we're coming to find you," Scott hissed back - but that was clearly the worst thing to say to him in that moment.
"You told LUNA?" Stiles snapped quietly, causing Luna's eyebrows to knit together in confusion. "A-are you insane?!" Before Scott could think to defend himself Luna yanked the phone out of his hand, physically unable to listen to anymore.
"STILES, you are seriously freaking me out. Are you okay? Can are…are you lost? Did you get taken away? I'm petrified-" Scott craned his head over her shoulder so that he could be heard, too, with Isaac leaning in on the other side.
"Try to find something significant that'll tell us where to look, and we'll find you," Scott told Stiles loudly.
"It's a b-b-basement…I don't know, some kind of basement," Stiles croaked out shakily. It sounded like he was crying and it broke Luna's heart in ways she could not comprehend.
"In a house?" Scott clarified.
"No. It looks bigger. Like…industrial," Stiles choked out. "I think there's a furnace but…it's cold. Its freezing down here. I gotta turn the…I gotta turn the phone off Scott, it's gonna die."
"Wait, wait, wait!" Scott hissed quickly as Luna's hands started to itch with discomfort. "What else-"
"I gotta go, I-I g-gotta go. P-please-"
"Stiles, why are you whispering?" Scott suddenly asked shakily.
"Because I think there's someone in here with me," Stiles spluttered, sounding beyond terrified. Luna's eyes immediately welled up with tears, and she took a helpless seat on her sofa as the phone call finally went dead. She held her head in her hands with a loud, gut wrenching groan.
"Alright we gotta move, now. We need to start the search at his house," Isaac decided with a firm nod, breaking the tense silence that Stiles had left behind. Luna looked up immediately and started to stand.
"I'm coming with you-"
"No, you're absolutely not," Scott told her firmly as Isaac nodded supportively behind his back. "Luna, if he turns up here, you need to be here to keep him safe, okay? Alternatively, if you have any thoughts about where he is, or if Lydia thinks of…"
But Luna didn't even need to hear all that spiel at that stage.
"I get it. J-just please tell me if he's anywhere near-"
"Of course we will, Luna. We're not gonna leave you hanging here, okay? Not when it's about Stiles. We know how much he means to you," Isaac promised her, squeezing her slender shoulder in support. Luna bit down on her cheeks and nodded weakly, before grabbing a blanket and wrapping herself up right there on the sofa whilst Scott and Isaac hurried away.
Within seconds, Elsa walked back into the living room with a hot chocolate for her daughter, hoping that it would ease her nerves and help with the shock.
"Michael told me he'd let me know of any updates as and when," she comforted her daughter lightly, perching on the arm of the sofa beside her and rubbing her shoulder. Luna nodded feebly and said nothing more, which broke Elsa's heart even more so. "Luna, he can't have gone far."
"It's not the distance that's the problem - he's not well, Ma," Luna wept, now besides herself with worry. "He could be stuck anywhere-"
"But he won't be! He will be somewhere - and he will be found, it's Stiles - he is somehow always okay," Elsa nodded comfortingly, giving her back a soothing stroke.
Then she froze.
"Wait, when you said he wasn't well, what did you mean?" she suddenly frowned.
"Before I left him at the hospital, he said that he thought he'd somehow instructed the shrapnel bomber to kill someone," Luna explained darkly, much to Elsa's horror. "I put it down to exhaustion on the day, but now I think there's something way darker going on b-because he is far too-"
Suddenly, without warning, she burst into fresh tears all over again, covering her face with her hands. Elsa jumped into action immediately, holding her close and kissing the top of her head repeatedly.
"Mom, he needs to be found," Luna sobbed weakly as the tears ran hurriedly into her mouth, "I-I c-c-c-"
"He will be. You know he will. It's okay, baby girl. He's okay."
The night continued to plod along and Luna's nerves continued to grate at her by the second. Her eyes were now rimmed red with sheer exhaustion, but there was nothing that she could do to fix it.
She refused to do a single thing, in fact, until her best friend was found again.
Suddenly, her phone went off - and it was Isaac. She picked it up within seconds, holding her breath. "Isaac?"
"Luna?! We found him, we've got him, and they're bringing him straight to the hospital," came Isaac's reassuring but hurried voice. It was as if the heaviest weight had just been yanked off of Luna's chest as she breathed out shakily and threw her head back in relief.
"And…and he's okay? He's not hurt?" she clarified in surprise.
"He's not…physically hurt as far as we can tell, but they're running a few tests on him just to double check," Isaac explained calmly whilst Luna leapt up and grabbed her coat and car keys. "He's speaking and coherent so if you wanna talk to him, now is the time."
"God. Thank you so much, Isaac," she breathed before cupping her mouth and bellowing across the apartment,
"Mama? Mom, we're going to the hospital!"
…
Once Luna skidded onto the hospital grounds, she was informed that Stiles was in the MRI room, so she made her way over there speedily with her mother close behind her.
And, true to their word, there he was - sat on the bed with Scott stood beside him. Luna burst through the doors and Stiles looked up to see her there - and he couldn't help but smile slightly in relief. "Loo," he croaked out as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his neck. Stiles frowned as he lifted his hand and ran it through her hair comfortingly, whilst using the other to rub her back. "You're okay!"
"No, you're okay! I'm way happier over you being okay than me being okay, trust me," Luna sniffed, letting go of him again. "Stiles, I was so freakin' scared-"
"Me and you both Loo," Stiles whispered hollowly, his face still completely drawn out. "I hope you didn't panic too bad. That's part of the reason why I didn't want them to tell you in the first place-" But Luna simply sniffed with a small smile and shook her head.
"Don't be ridiculous - I was cool as a cucumber," she lied, much to Scott's immediate amusement. Luna tightened her cardigan around herself and glanced up at the machine as if she'd just noticed it was there. "What exactly are they testing you for, by the way?"
Stiles clenched his jaw and dropped his gaze.
"It's called frontotemporal dementia," he murmured, uneasily. "Areas of your brain start to shrink. It's…what my mother had. It's the only form of dementia that can hit teenagers…and there's no cure."
Luna's heart broke. Within seconds, she felt the tears build up again and tried to bite them back in an attempt to be strong for him, but seeing the one tear roll down Scott's face out of the corner of her eye was enough to set her off too. She looked away and held her fist to her mouth whilst Scott rubbed her shoulder in comfort and cleared his throat.
"Stiles, if you have it…" he croaked out, cutting through Luna's swirling thoughts of panic. "We'll do something. I'll do something." Luna let out a quiet sob and clasped her hands behind her head as she watched them hug one another tightly. She couldn't intrude on a moment like this, so she took a shaky step back so that they could embrace and so that she could pull herself together.
Once Scott let go of him, Stiles looked at Luna instead, his eyes raw red.
"Hey," he murmured, taking her trembling hand and pulling her towards him. "I'm usually the one that freaks out. You're not meant to be freaking out - in fact, you never freak out Miss 'Cool as a Cucumber'," he sniffed as he slowly swiped her tears away with his thumbs. Luna nuzzled her face into his palms, the warmth of his skin giving her brief, tender comfort, and shook her head helplessly.
"Dude, of course I'm freaking out!" she hissed through her tears. "I can't…Scott's right. He'll do something if you have this. In fact, we…I'll go and get all the…Moon juice I possibly can in order to keep you safe. I'm sure Helena will give me something after being a loyal servant for so long-"
"Yeeaaah okay, so 'moon juice' sounds kinda wrong, so if it gets to that stage, please don't bring me any of that - but I appreciate the sentiment," Stiles grimaced as Scott smirked and rolled his eyes. "But thanks guys. I…appreciate it. I…love you both."
"We love you so so much," Luna smiled weakly, despite the platonic tone in her mind completely dissolving at that point. Stiles didn't need to know that, though. Not yet, at least. "Good luck, Stilesy."
And with that, she hooked her arm through Scott's and they trudged their way into the waiting room - just to run into none other than Derek. Luna couldn't help but roll her eyes as soon as they locked gazes.
"Oh good. No this is great, in fact it's just what I need," she grumbled as she plonked herself into a seat.
"Nice to see you too, Luna," Derek raised a dark brow back.
"Oh god actually, I'm gonna go get some water. I kinda…don't feel too great," she muttered an excuse, before walking out of the waiting room to fins a vending machine and leaving them to it.
She still couldn't stand him, and her mind was so focussed on her best friend that she didn't even have the energy to stay and put up with his scathing remarks.
Bur her little mission didn't last long. As Luna continued to make her way to the vending machine, the lights suddenly began to flicker. She glanced up in surprise, wondering what was going on, and was quickly met with the vision of patients and doctors alike running through the hospital hallways, panic and distress painted onto their faces. Luna wasn't stupid and she finally had senses her back - she knew this had something to do with the supernatural.
She pulled out her phone and dialled Scott's number without hesitation. "Scott?! What the hell is going on in this hospital?"
"It's a power line issue - Stiles did it," Scott blurted back hurriedly.
"Stiles cut the power?! From inside the damn MRI machine?" Luna repeated as she skidded her way back to the MRI room, running the opposite way to pretty much everyone else .
"Well, he could've done it before. And it's more like whatever is inside him cut the power," Scott answered miserably.
"Whatever is…" Luna trailed off as she skidded into the now empty MRI room. "Oh god. Scott, he's…he's gone."
"What?!" Scott hissed as his own blood ran cold. "Luna…he is doing all this. Stiles has been locked in, fighting with his damn self! Ever since he went into that damn tree-"
"God, oh god - he warned me but I thought it was just his tiredness," Luna winced shakily as her stomach went into knots.
"It gets worse still, Luna - now Isaac's hurt," Scott blurted out quickly.
Now it was getting bad.
"What?! How?! What the hell happened to him?" Luna hissed with widened eyes as she pressed herself up against the wall in an attempt to breathe.
"He got burnt. Luna, I know you're not gonna wanna but…I think it's time you tell the Moon Council what's going on with Stiles. More people are gonna get hurt because of him - more importantly, he is gonna get hurt, too," Scott winced, running his hands through his hair stressfully.
Luna ran her tongue over her teeth as she spotted Isaac get wheeled in on a stretcher by a number of professionals, the side of his face burnt in such a way that almost made her gag, whilst he lay totally unconscious.
"I do have to tell them, I know," she murmured, placing her quivering hand over her forehead. "I know."