(no subject)
a warm gun
chapter six
The past doesn't always stay there, and the dead don't always stay dead. Stiles is about to learn this the hard way. (sequel to Another Night's Dawn).
derek/stiles. ♢ teen wolf. ♢ pg-13. ♢ pre-slash, sequel to.
if i owned them, my fanfics would actually be episodes.
a warm gun.
chapter six.
previously
Stiles had been apprehensive the whole ride to their destination. Especially when he realized what their destination was. His mother had led him to the vet’s office with the promise of answers.
He was observing the area, noting Scott’s bike missing but an additional SUV parked next to Deaton’s hybrid. It niggled in the back of his mind that he should recognize the car but was too preoccupied. His mother had promised where they were heading would give him the answers, but twenty more had already cropped up. His curiosity about the vet was back tenfold. The man had been avoidant for over eight months about the mountain ash and his knowledge of werewolves, and Derek had commanded them to leave it alone.
While that alone should’ve been a warning that they needed to know more, Scott and Stiles had backed off and let things be with bigger fish to fry as more werewolves tried to invade the town.
Natalie told him to come with her as she opened the door, snapping Stiles from his musings. His stomach was nervous, twisting with each step he took. He was beginning to wish that he’d surreptitiously texted Scott about where he was going once he knew. This could be some sort of elaborate trick. He was the human, the physically weakest link to Derek’s rag tag pack - anyone smart enough would know to go through Stiles and a quick Google search would give them all they needed to manipulate him.
He wasn’t sure what to expect, but seeing Danny and his mother conversing with Deaton over coffee was the last thing he would’ve imagined waiting for him. It stopped him short, freezing halfway into the lobby. “What the hell?”
Danny and his mother, Elizabeth, stood with warm smiles. She and Natalie hugged while their sons stood staring at one another. Danny was staring awkwardly and Stiles was staring in bafflement. Deaton was first to step forward, smiling that calm smile that was more off-putting than anything was for the skittish Stiles. “Stiles,” he greeted, grabbing one of Stiles’ hands in both of his and pulling the teen further into the lobby.
Stiles’ apprehension rose considerably when Deaton managed to arrange himself behind Stiles to lock the door, effectively blocking the quickest escape route. “What’s going on?”
“Obviously you know Danny and his mother,” Deaton said as he finally moved away from the door, opting to stand between Natalie and Elizabeth. “We’re all here at your mother’s request to help you understand.”
“Understand what?” Stiles snapped, his patience finally wearing thin.
“There are things about our family that you don’t know.” His mother started nervously. “Elizabeth and I… we’re…”
“We’re witches, bro.” Danny interrupted Natalie’s stuttering to drop the bomb.
Stiles blinked one, two, three times before inhaling sharply. “You’re all insane. I’m leaving.” He turned towards the door with a stiff spine, hand curling around the deadbolt lock.
“I came back eight months ago because Deaton called and told me you exhibited signs that your powers were coming in.” Natalie spoke in a rush, trying to get it out in a breath before Stiles bolted. “They normally don’t until your eighteenth birthday. By all means, I should have another seven months before I have to have this conversation.”
Stiles tried to think back. Eight months ago, they’d been fighting Peter, trying to make it out of the formal alive. Lydia still hadn’t woken up from the coma, its affects far reaching. Eight months ago, he’s met Brenna and Zane, had been trying to track down Scott to find Peter and Derek so that the betas could team together and attempt to kill the Alpha. It’d been here that he’d tracked Scott to, gotten so angry when his best friend wouldn’t come out, when Deaton wouldn’t let them through. He’d been so angry he even slammed his… fist into the counter and it’d broken. He flashed to another instance where Derek had shoved him angrily against his Jeep, anger had taken over him when the older man had threatened him, threatened to send his father wind chimes made from his bones. The window of his Jeep had imploded despite Derek only using the brute force of a human, not a werewolf, to get his point across, which by all means should’ve left the window in tact in normal circumstances.
He slowly took his hand from the lock, turning to face the four others in the room. His eyes glared into his mother’s, “You’ve had almost nine years to prepare for this so you better have one hell of an explanation other than the fact that I have powers.” Stiles said through gritted teeth. “Because that sounds insane.”
“No more insane than your best friend being a werewolf.” Natalie fired back.
Stiles opened his mouth to deny, eyes snapping from Elizabeth to Deaton and finally to Danny, none of whom seemed fazed by the revelation. He snapped his jaw closed, teeth aching with the force. “Answers. Now.” He demanded, sitting down in the closest lobby chair. His whole body was tight, muscles so tense he worried they might cramp up.
The adults in the room shared looks before a collective sigh came from the mothers as they all took a seat.
Natalie opened her mouth to begin, pausing to swallow before she delved in. “We know Scott is a werewolf because we’re… sort of born from the same fruit. There are certain genetic mutations in certain families. It’s to keep things balanced. To have a euphoric world is not possible. There has to be evil for every good. Yin and yang. Once the lycan mutation became active for the first time, so did a gene that we possess. We’ve been called many things through the centuries, but nowadays, you’d call them witches or, as in your case, warlocks. When there was no war and it seemed like most of the families from all the sides had gone extinct, those of us left became con-folk in travelling shows, tourist attractions.”
“Us? Who’s ‘us’?” Stiles wondered during a lull in the conversation. Natalie looked to Elizabeth, who opened her mouth in turn to pick up the explanation. “No.” Stiles cut off firmly. “No offense, but this is something my mother needs to explain to me.” He curled his fingers into tighter fists, the balls of tense muscles shaking under the strain before releasing them slowly to the repeat the process.
“Our family were gypsies and Elizabeth’s, Danny’s, were shamans.” Natalie finally said the words. She watched Stiles’ emotions roll across his face, his anger slowly building up until electricity seemed to crackle in the air. “Feel that?” She inquired with pride, “It builds with emotion. For the untrained, anger is the most effective.”
“It’s different with everyone though.” Danny interjected quickly, noting the pinched look on Stiles’ face. “Witches, gypsies, shamans, whatever you want to call it, we all have different triggers and aspects that we’re good at. It’s just about the person.”
Stiles swallowed. He wasn’t an angry person, never had been, but over the last few months… the last year almost since everything with Scott and the werewolves began to happen, he could feel something simmering underneath the surface. Some kind of odd rage. Was this the cause, the explanation? He didn’t like it, didn’t want it. If what they were telling him was true, he didn’t want it.
“Anger’s not your official trigger,” Elizabeth hastened to add, “You’re not supposed to have your powers until you’re eighteen. It’s strange that you’re both experiencing a power spike prematurely. We’ve never really seen it, or heard of it, before. Let alone by two people, in the same town, who have been friends? It’s strange.”
Deaton hummed in agreement, “And I think we can all agree that we’re familiar with all sorts of ‘strange’ at this point.” He murmured, “Your trigger won’t be fully decided until you’ve reached maturity. Until then, anything can and will affect your growing gift.”
Stiles felt all the blood rushing to his head, the room seesawing back and forth as everything tried to sink in at once. There were just some things that had to be too ridiculous. Derek had told him several things of the bump in the night variety were just myths. He’d researched until he was able to call bull just from the Google summary. Searching for ‘witches’ had brought up a lot about television shows and tween novel series’, nothing even remotely credible.
“How do I get rid of it?” They were all surprised by the question, no one more so than Stiles himself. For so long, he’d wanted to be extraordinary. But faced with the possibility now, of having powers and responsibilities to them, not to mention the fear that maybe there were witch hunters out there like the Argents hunted werewolves, he just wanted the multiple choice answers to getting rid of them.
“You don’t give it away. This is a gift. It’s been passed through our family for centuries. You will not just give up your birthright like that.” Natalie snapped her annoyance at her son.
“I can damn well do as I please.” He fired right back, “You’ve been lying to me and dad since day one about this. I’ve spent the last year trying to protect him from the supernatural crap in this town. I’ve gone to lengths to make sure he’s been protected only to find out now that because of you he’s been in more danger than I thought all along.”
“You mean Derek Hale, nephew of the Alpha who bit Scott.” Natalie snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s hardly capable of protecting your father from anyone that wants at him. He’s a puppy compared to an Alpha’s strength.”
“And what would you know? You faked your death and ran from your family like a coward. He’s not perfect, but when it counted, Derek was the one there to protect me and Scott, along with two other werewolves.” Stiles felt angered that his mother had to gall to judge the wolves. She didn’t even know them. Brenna risked her life to save his, Derek too when they’d first found out who the Alpha truly was. In his book, the wolves were more trustworthy than his mother. “I’m going to get rid of this so called birthright, and then you’re going to get the hell out of town. You don’t need to cause dad any more pain than you already have.”
“Hey!” Natalie bit out, her accent thickening, changing, “You do not talk to me that way, Aloyoshenka Stilinski! I am still your mother.” She clipped the words out in Russian.
He cringed internally at the use of his full name. It was his Papa’s name, but that didn’t make it any easier on a child in kindergarten trying to learn how to and memorize their name. Stilinski was bad enough. It took a moment for Stiles’ mind to translate the words into English. It was a language that she’d taught him when he was little, bringing him up with it as his second language, the language of her family. It’d been dead to him though for years, since before she died… left, whichever. He stumbled in his head for the right words to retort in, in Russian, “You’re a stranger in my mother’s clothing.”
She swallowed harshly, her eyes twitching with the need to fill with tears, but she kept them at bay. “You’re still my son, whether you think of me as your mother or not.” She ended in Russian, before easily slipping back into English as the others simply stared at their exchange. “This is your birthright.” She paused for a long moment after he scoffed, “Aloyoshenka. Do you know what your name means?”
“It was Papa’s name.” Stiles said carelessly. He knew all about that, already.
“It was my Papa’s name too. The name is given to every first-born male in my family. The first-born male will get the most of the power, he’ll be the strongest. Aloyoshenka means ‘defend of mankind’. It is your birthright, your destiny, to defend the weaker from things like werewolves.” Natalie put the final nail in that coffin.
“This is too much.” Stiles said, vision dancing once again as he tried to sort through all the new information in his head. It wasn’t sinking in properly, it wasn’t digesting all the way. How was someone supposed to deal with being attacked by a werewolf, finding out their mother was alive and a witch, and that he was supposedly destined to keep humanity safe from werewolves? In one day, no less! “I can’t be here anymore.”
Stiles turned hastily, hands fumbling with the deadbolt as the shook from the stress. He needed to get out, but his fingers were slippery on the metal.
“Stiles, wait, please. You have to know about this. You can’t run and hide from it.”
Stiles felt the anger surge at her words, “Like you did?” He spat, turning from the door just before the bolt exploded apart in the doorframe. He looked back in shock at the fragmented metal, looking like a bullet had torn through it. The shock seeped in for a moment, knowing now without a doubt that he’d done that, his anger had, and pushed the door away from the frame to escape into the night.
He got his keys in the ignition quickly, still trembling, before peeling out of the parking lot without a glance back.
----------------
For all that she could do, Natalie couldn’t see into the shadows. They were plenty in the abandoned home, nothing but blackness throughout. She knew she wasn’t alone, however. He was using the shadows as cover to watch, stalk her movements while they also provided him a safety. He knew better than to mess with her. She’d taught him that lesson eight months ago.
She was fed up with him keeping her under his thumb. She’d let him, only because he was the strongest person in Beacon Hills that could protect her family. It’d killed her every day that she was away from them, but their protection mattered most. So she’d kept her mouth shut tightly, done was she was told, ran from the people she loved most in the world. All to keep them safe.
“They’re in danger with you back here.” He spoke, his anger deepening his voice as he paced through the darkness.
“He is my son!” She fired angrily, “You didn’t think word of Beacon Hills would travel down the vine? You’re not nearly that naïve.”
“Word that you’re here will travel just as fast down that vine. It probably already has. They will come. They’ll come and they’ll kill your husband for revenge, kill Stiles for fun.” He stepped forward finally and the annoyance she felt deep within herself when she was near the werewolf flared to life. Looking at him enraged her, made her sleeping powers want to spark to life and fire off.
Her glare pinned him as she made to leave the house, but when she passed by him for the door, he grabbed her by the crook of her arm and forced her farther back into the room. It only made her angrier, stepping right back into his personal space, glaring into the glowing blue eyes. “You’d be smart to mind yourself in front of me, Hale. I’m staying, which means the last thing you want is to be on my bad side.” Once the threat sunk in, she took a step away from Derek. “I will protect my family. And you will stay the hell away from my son.”
next
This chapter is considerably later than I thought it'd be. That's in part because I realized that after this chapter, I only have two more written that are more interludes than anything. So I'll post one this week, probably Wednesday and then one the following Monday, and then it might be a week or two before there's anything else. I go home the weekend of the 18th/19th and will have more time to write after that. :)
Hope y'all enjoyed this one and that it answered some questions for you! More to come.
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