FIC: Intangibles 3/? l PG-13 l Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale l Teen Wolf
Title: Sinking
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence; gore.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show or the characters; I make no profit from this work of fiction.
Summary: Since Stiles couldn’t tell his father everything he wanted to, he went to his mother’s grave. He sat down in front of her tombstone, perched his elbows on his knees and told her everything.
Since Stiles couldn’t tell his father everything he wanted to, he went to his mother’s grave. He sat down in front of her tombstone, perched his elbows on his knees and told her everything. Every single detail. Even the details he hadn’t told Scott. He told her about killing a man - Peter Hale - and added the ‘don’t worry though, evidently he’s not so dead anymore anyway.’ He told her about how that made him feel that night. Going home in his suit from the dance - now dirty and used. How happy he had been that morning - an almost-but-not-really-date with Lydia Martin. The thing he’d dreamed about for years. Wanted for years. And how that date hadn’t even been so bad. Sure she was concerned about Jackson, but they’d danced and everything. More than once, even. She’d put her head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck and didn’t say anything when he’d accidentally stepped on her feet. More than once. She’d smiled even, when he’d profusely apologized. How he had stood in the shower for two hours afterward, until the cold water had sufficiently sunk into his bones, before crawling into bed and trying to disappear forever beneath the weight of his oversized hoody. How he’d pulled his blanket down over him tight, like a cage and cried. He told her what it felt like to end a man’s life - whether he deserved it or not, and told her that he’d probably do it again, all over, no matter what. Because this man had locked them in a school. Had killed people in front of them. Had attacked Lydia. Had forced Stiles into helping him.
Had referred to Stiles as the clever one. Even though Stiles couldn’t focus worth shit. Even though he had a chemistry teacher hell bent on reminding him that he was so pathetically stupid. Even though nobody else - except for maybe Scott - thought he was clever at all. This killer. This villain. The stuff of movies. Had offered him the very thing he wanted, the very thing nobody else had thought to offer him, and then laughed at him for lying to himself and refusing it. This man - even after his death, even after his resurrection - made Stiles constantly doubt himself. And he told his mother all of this, and begged her not to think less of him. He apologized to her, for being such a crap son, for disappointing her, for the lies and the sins and every single thing he’d ever done wrong.
He told her about Derek. And how they were evidently talking now. Behind his best friend’s back, because his best friend had drawn the line in the sand, but Stiles was too terrified - terrified of life, terrified of dying - to adhere to that line. He told her about Derek killing Peter. Technically. It was Stiles who came up with the idea to catch the man on fire. And what kind of a dickmove was that anyway? Catching a burn victim on fire? That was horrible.
He recounted their last conversation to his mother. The sudden realization. “How long have you known about this pack of Alphas?” Silence. “Derek? Have you known about it since before the Kanima? Since before Peter? Derek?” Silence. He told her about how Derek spoke with his posture more than his voice and how he’d been watching national geographic shows on wolf packs and hierarchy and how he thinks he might know why that is. He told her about how Derek had killed Peter to take the Alpha position - he knew that if Scott became Alpha he wouldn’t stand a chance against the pack. Then he demanded she tell him just what the fuck he was supposed to do with that kind of knowledge? Was he supposed to stop viewing Derek as the bad guy? Did he even still view Derek as the bad guy anymore? Just who the hell was this guy - and what fucking right did he have to force that kind of emotion onto Stiles? What fucking right did he have to force any kind of emotion onto Stiles? Stiles was doing just fine - caring about his father and Scott and Lydia. That was all the people he needed. He didn’t need Derek.
----
Stiles found a flower tacked to Derek’s door. Wolfsbane. He tore the flower down and walked half a mile into the forest to deposit it, then he returned to Derek’s house and walked in. “Dude, they’re leaving you flowers now? Maybe they just wanna go steady. Compare their alpha notes with your alpha notes and see if you can’t all just be better alphas for it.” Unlike Scott, Stiles didn’t shout. Anywhere in the house, Derek would hear him.
Derek appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing his usual frown like a beloved accessory. “It’s a warning,” he said, slowly coming down the stairs.
“Ballsy too,” Stiles commented distractedly. “They must’ve worn gloves. Using their own weakness against you - the weakness of my enemy is my strength sort of gist. Nice,” he said approvingly.
“This isn’t a movie, Stiles,” Derek snapped, his patience for the entire situation obviously wearing thin.
“When art reflects life, life starts to reflect art, grasshopper,” Stiles dismissed. “So why don’t we just do that?” He gestured between Derek and himself with his index finger. “Embrace your weakness. Use it to your advantage? What kills you - will kill them too. You already know everything you need to know so why don’t we start using it? What do you know? How do hunters kill you?”
Derek frowned at him. He didn’t want to give Stiles that kind of ammunition. For a minute, it looked like he wasn’t going to answer, but then he relinquished. Because this would all help him in the end. How many times had he asked Scott for help? Maybe now it was time to ask Stiles. “One by one,” he answered. “Because werewolves are naturally stronger than humans. They regenerate faster. They move faster. They process sounds, sights, smells faster. It’s easier to gang up on one and take the pack down individually. With each member killed, the pack becomes weaker. Until there’s just the alpha - and when an alpha doesn’t have a pack, he’s not an Alpha. He’s an Omega.”
Stiles nodded. He was really loving this information sharing thing they had going on. “Okay, that’s good. An entire pack of Alphas will be stronger than you too, even though you’re an Alpha. They’ll be stronger since they literally have no weak member. So you take them down one by one. Do you have any clue what happened to Erica and Boyd?”
Derek shook his head. “They left. They went Omega.”
“Before or after the lacrosse game?” Stiles asked, cocking an eyebrow. These questions all felt too little, too late. They should have covered it over a month ago.
Derek didn’t look interested in the conversation. “During. Why?”
“Because after the lacrosse game, Gerard Argent had them tied up in his basement. I don’t know what happened to them after that - but that’s where they were when we were fighting the Kanima. Do you have any idea what happened to them?” He repeated, more pressing this time.
Derek shook his head. “No.” Derek turned on Stiles, poking a finger his chest. “The Alpha pack is encroaching on my territory. I can smell them everywhere. It’s possible they took them as a warning.” Stiles went with the point, rubbing his chest. “Is that what happened to your face? Gerard Argent?”
“No. A warning?” Stiles echoed, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yes. You’re only as strong as your weakest member, and my weakest members are omegas. They left me. You’re lying.”
“Do you think that means… they’re dead?” Stiles asked slowly, uncrossing his arms and wringing his hands. This was his fault. If he had just told them what had happened - instead of moping in his room… if he had just tried harder…
“No,” Derek said, eyeing Stiles closely, as if he could read the expressions on Stiles’s face. It made Stiles want to back up; to hide his face; to keep that one simple privacy to himself. “I bit them. Whether or not I’m their Alpha, I would feel it. They don’t feel dead. What are you lying?”
Stiles breathed easier. “Okay. Good. Well for this tactic to work - you kind of need more than Isaac. Not that he isn’t doing awesome with his whole werewolfness now… Because I don’t feel comfortable I got my ass kicked by a ninety year old man, obviously.”
“Why do you care?” Derek asked. He leaned back against the burnt frame of the doorway. It took Stiles a moment to realize Derek wasn’t talking about Gerard with that question. “What happens. Scott’s not a part of it anymore. Nothing ties you to this - you don’t need to be involved.”
“I have to do something.”
“But why?” Derek pressed. There was a weight to the gaze he pinned on Stiles that made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t stay still.
“Because people die. People always die. And I have this feeling that it’s going to be bad this time. It isn’t going to be about vengeance this time. It’s just going to be mindless murder. I can’t just sit still and wait for these murders to completely drown my town, okay? I have to do something this time.”
Derek was quiet for a moment, just watching Stiles. “Stiles, you think you didn’t do something the other -?” A sound tore through the silence of the house. It was an arrow. “Cover your eyes!” Derek shouted, diving for Stiles. Stiles made an ‘oomph’ sound as Derek hit him and they both hit the ground hard. Derek’s body pinned Stiles to the ground, shielding him. Stiles threw a hand over his eyes as his head hit the ground. The arrow lodged itself in a wall and a bright flash erupted around it, lighting up the entire house briefly. White shone against his eyelids before fading. There was a stillness and into that stillness, Stiles asked, “hunters?”
“No.”
And then there was movement and Derek was torn from his body and flung back across the room, crashing through a wall that did little to slow his momentum. Stiles barely had time to get a glimpse of the man who had thrown Derek, and then the man moved - away from Stiles and after Derek. Stiles scrambled to his hands and knees, and frantically searched for a weapon. He found a hand held axe by the fireplace - why? Who the hell used this fire place anymore? - and snatched it up.
So much for attacking this pack individually. The man who had thrown Derek came crashing back through the wall, creating a second hole, and shaking the entire structure of the building. Derek stood on the other side of the wall. “Run,” he growled. He had already shifted.
Stiles tore out of the door, axe in hand, the voice in the back of his head reminding him what happened when you ran with scissors probably also happened when you ran with axes. Halfway down the dirt path, he physically ran right into Isaac and jumped back, lifting the axe to strike him. Isaac caught his swinging arm and they both stared at each other with wide eyes, resembling two frightened animals.
“Derek -” Isaac began.
“House - Alpha pack - go,” Stiles said, panting, waving back at the house in the distance with his free arm. “Scott -”
“Behind me,” Isaac said back. “Got Jackson. Get out of here.”
Stiles nodded. Okay. That was good. Okay. Isaac took a step toward the house. His hand left Stiles’s arm for just a second.
The night was silent. Whatever natural insect life existed in this part of the woods had been chased away by encroaching predators. The sound of an arrow ripping through the still air was loud, and Isaac had a second to act. He jerked Stiles by the arm, hard, and shoved him to the ground. The axe left Stiles’s hand and Isaac threw it - flung it into the darkness, using his sense of hearing and nothing else. The arrow missed Stiles and buried itself in Isaac’s shoulder about the same time that a muffled scream tore through the still forest, but it wasn’t Isaac who had screamed. There was a heavy second, where Isaac stared down at the arrow, wide eyed, before he collapsed backward, dropping like a weight. The ground he hit gave way beneath him, and he fell down into a pit. A blanket of grass must have covered it before, because there definitely had not been a fucking hole there before.
Stiles scrambled to his knees, and crawled to the edge of the pit, and stopped. Inside of the pit were a dozen stakes - and on one of the stakes - Isaac was impaled. Even in the dark, even from here, Stiles could see the tip of the stake jutting out from Isaac’s stomach. He could see the blood gushing from the boy’s mouth.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
He heaved himself over the edge of the pit and dropped down, clinging to the side because wouldn’t that just be his luck to accidentally impale himself on a stake? Stiles rushed to Isaac’s side and floundered - what the fuck was he supposed to do? “Shit.”
“I think there’s…” Isaac’s entire face screwed up as he swallowed blood, choked, and then swallowed some more blood. “Something off. I can - hn - burning my insides.” His breath rattled in his chest, and came out wet. His eyelids fluttered, and closed for a long moment before he managed to force them back open.
“Holy fucking hell,” Stiles muttered. “Wolfsbane.” He touched the stake with his bare hands and tried to push it, but it was embedded too well into the ground. He paused, took a breath and then rammed into the stake. Isaac made a sound that was stuck somewhere between a moan and a whimper as the stake moved, but it didn’t move enough. So Stiles rammed into it again and again until his entire side was numbed, until he uprooted the stake enough that it tipped over.
Isaac hit the dirt packed floor and Stiles stopped, hunched over and panting. His arm hurt, but he ignored it. He pulled the stake of Isaac and dropped it. “Isaac, buddy, hey, Isaac -” He knelt, rolling Isaac onto his back. The wound in his gut wasn’t healing. “Isaac, get up - you gotta get up dude -”
“Still burns,” Isaac said so faintly, the only way Stiles knew he’d spoken at all was that his lips had moved.
“Dere-” Stiles started in a shout, rising to his feet. Then he stopped, because there was the steel tip of a knife pressed against his jaw, and a suddenly solid body behind him.
“You’re not a wolf,” a voice purred behind him. She was smiling, he could hear it in her voice. He could feel it in her chest, pressed up against his back. “Little Red Riding Hood. You’re not a wolf.” A hand on his arm spun him around, and away from Isaac, to face the person behind him.
She was tall, and built, and blonde. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy bun, tendrils of hair slithering down the back of her neck and over her shoulders. And the knife hadn’t left his jaw. “Leather jacket,” Stiles said, and his voice only wavered a little bit. “Do all the werewolves have meetings on dress codes or is that just a personal preference? For every werewolf. In existence. Ever. Do they hand out leather jackets when you’re turned or…”
The edge of the knife dug into the curve of his jaw and he swallowed hard. “When you run with wolves, human, you better learn how to howl…” The knife trailed - mockingly - down his throat, and then his chest. “Poor sheep, out of his depth, among wolves. Don’t you know that you shouldn’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong?” Then the knife plunged into his stomach and Stiles sucked in a startled gasp, eyes going wide. His hands came down, hovered around the hand clutching the knife - trembling, twitching, shaking - but it was like he couldn’t reach her hand. Like he’d forgotten how to. His entire body caved in around that single point, his back going rigid. “Howl for me,” she murmured, and yanked the knife out of him.
Air whooshed out of Stiles’s gaping mouth, a raw, high-pitched whimper, and then he fell back, crashing to the ground beneath him. Isaac was somewhere beside him, but he had forgotten all about Isaac. He touched his stomach, trembling fingers skimming over the quickly soaking sweat shirt. Blood gushed through his fingers, as pain radiated out from the hole in him. It wasn’t the cut that hurt though - his entire stomach felt like he’d taken a couple dozen punches to the gut.
He stared up at the dark sky. He thought about how light had a speed limit. About how all the stars he was staring up at were already dead. Walking corpses, still shining. How if a civilization 65 million light years away were to look through a telescope, they wouldn’t see Earth inhabited by giant skyscrapers and billions of humans. They would have a front row seat to the extinction of the dinosaurs. They would see everything die. They would see that meteorite - a meteorite that no longer existed - plow into Earth. That’s why the whole theory of aliens coming to earth to colonize humans didn’t really stick. Because to aliens - humans were blips in a radar that didn’t even see them - not yet.
To aliens, humans didn’t matter.
“Stiles.” Someone was shaking him, and he lifted a hand to weakly bat the offensive hand away, but he didn’t quite make the contact. He peeled open his eyes and Scott swam in front of his eyes. He blinked several times, really slowly; with each blink his eyes grew more unwilling to open again. Scott had a hand on his stomach, pressing down over Stiles’s hand. “Stiles. Hey. Stay with me. It’s okay. You’re okay. Stiles!”
Stiles snapped his eyes open again. “I got fucking stabbed, dude.” He sounded drunk. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth. Dry. It reminded me of a slug once you dump salt on it. God, did he pity the slug. His pain felt too far away. His voice sounded thrashed - all high-pitched and uncontrolled. “Dinosaurs are extinct, but the aliens don’t know that, man… They don’t know how small everything’s gotten, man. Small.”
Scott shot a glance to the side. “Jackson - fucking step on it -”
“I’m going as fast as humanly possible,” Jackson shouted back over his seat.
Stiles wasn’t sure if now was the time to laugh or not, but he did anyway. Weak and breathless and it made everything hurt more. Jackson wasn’t a human. “It’s okay,” Scott told Stiles, ignoring Jackson. “We’re getting you to the hospital. Just don’t pass out.”
“I don’t think you have control over passing out,” Stiles pointed out distantly. “I mean I don’t. I don’t have control.” His mouth was dry. “Isaac -”
“Isaac’s fine,” Scott said quickly. “We got him, don’t worry.”
Stiles nodded and felt sleep. “Mmkay,” he agreed.
“Stiles!” Scott slapped him and Stiles’s eyes snapped open again. “What did I just say? Don’t fucking pass out!”
“Okay, okay,” Stiles said sleeping. “Calm down. Was it - that woman - she -” He tilted his head to look down at his stomach. His entire shirt was drenched in blood. It was sticking to his stomach, heavy, water logged.
“It wasn’t the Argents,” Scott said.
“But wolfsbane -”
“I know,” Scott said. “It was werewolves using wolfsbane.”
“That was my fucking idea,” Stiles said. “Are we in a car?” Stiles asked, finally realizing that he was rocking slightly, back and forth, the motion threatening to lull him to sleep.
“Derek’s, yeah,” Scott said. “Just… could you just hold on for a little while longer? We’re almost there.”
“I been holding on all year, Scott,” Stiles said, growing more distant. His fingers twitched beneath Scott’s hand. “Feel like I’m choking. Can’t breathe. Hurts. All year.”
Stiles didn’t take in much after that. He felt himself lifted from the car and carried into the hospital. The whites all blurred together as he was wheeled down the hall and only then did he finally drag in a drowning breath, swallowing water and choking, and passed out.
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence; gore.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show or the characters; I make no profit from this work of fiction.
Summary: Since Stiles couldn’t tell his father everything he wanted to, he went to his mother’s grave. He sat down in front of her tombstone, perched his elbows on his knees and told her everything.
Since Stiles couldn’t tell his father everything he wanted to, he went to his mother’s grave. He sat down in front of her tombstone, perched his elbows on his knees and told her everything. Every single detail. Even the details he hadn’t told Scott. He told her about killing a man - Peter Hale - and added the ‘don’t worry though, evidently he’s not so dead anymore anyway.’ He told her about how that made him feel that night. Going home in his suit from the dance - now dirty and used. How happy he had been that morning - an almost-but-not-really-date with Lydia Martin. The thing he’d dreamed about for years. Wanted for years. And how that date hadn’t even been so bad. Sure she was concerned about Jackson, but they’d danced and everything. More than once, even. She’d put her head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck and didn’t say anything when he’d accidentally stepped on her feet. More than once. She’d smiled even, when he’d profusely apologized. How he had stood in the shower for two hours afterward, until the cold water had sufficiently sunk into his bones, before crawling into bed and trying to disappear forever beneath the weight of his oversized hoody. How he’d pulled his blanket down over him tight, like a cage and cried. He told her what it felt like to end a man’s life - whether he deserved it or not, and told her that he’d probably do it again, all over, no matter what. Because this man had locked them in a school. Had killed people in front of them. Had attacked Lydia. Had forced Stiles into helping him.
Had referred to Stiles as the clever one. Even though Stiles couldn’t focus worth shit. Even though he had a chemistry teacher hell bent on reminding him that he was so pathetically stupid. Even though nobody else - except for maybe Scott - thought he was clever at all. This killer. This villain. The stuff of movies. Had offered him the very thing he wanted, the very thing nobody else had thought to offer him, and then laughed at him for lying to himself and refusing it. This man - even after his death, even after his resurrection - made Stiles constantly doubt himself. And he told his mother all of this, and begged her not to think less of him. He apologized to her, for being such a crap son, for disappointing her, for the lies and the sins and every single thing he’d ever done wrong.
He told her about Derek. And how they were evidently talking now. Behind his best friend’s back, because his best friend had drawn the line in the sand, but Stiles was too terrified - terrified of life, terrified of dying - to adhere to that line. He told her about Derek killing Peter. Technically. It was Stiles who came up with the idea to catch the man on fire. And what kind of a dickmove was that anyway? Catching a burn victim on fire? That was horrible.
He recounted their last conversation to his mother. The sudden realization. “How long have you known about this pack of Alphas?” Silence. “Derek? Have you known about it since before the Kanima? Since before Peter? Derek?” Silence. He told her about how Derek spoke with his posture more than his voice and how he’d been watching national geographic shows on wolf packs and hierarchy and how he thinks he might know why that is. He told her about how Derek had killed Peter to take the Alpha position - he knew that if Scott became Alpha he wouldn’t stand a chance against the pack. Then he demanded she tell him just what the fuck he was supposed to do with that kind of knowledge? Was he supposed to stop viewing Derek as the bad guy? Did he even still view Derek as the bad guy anymore? Just who the hell was this guy - and what fucking right did he have to force that kind of emotion onto Stiles? What fucking right did he have to force any kind of emotion onto Stiles? Stiles was doing just fine - caring about his father and Scott and Lydia. That was all the people he needed. He didn’t need Derek.
----
Stiles found a flower tacked to Derek’s door. Wolfsbane. He tore the flower down and walked half a mile into the forest to deposit it, then he returned to Derek’s house and walked in. “Dude, they’re leaving you flowers now? Maybe they just wanna go steady. Compare their alpha notes with your alpha notes and see if you can’t all just be better alphas for it.” Unlike Scott, Stiles didn’t shout. Anywhere in the house, Derek would hear him.
Derek appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing his usual frown like a beloved accessory. “It’s a warning,” he said, slowly coming down the stairs.
“Ballsy too,” Stiles commented distractedly. “They must’ve worn gloves. Using their own weakness against you - the weakness of my enemy is my strength sort of gist. Nice,” he said approvingly.
“This isn’t a movie, Stiles,” Derek snapped, his patience for the entire situation obviously wearing thin.
“When art reflects life, life starts to reflect art, grasshopper,” Stiles dismissed. “So why don’t we just do that?” He gestured between Derek and himself with his index finger. “Embrace your weakness. Use it to your advantage? What kills you - will kill them too. You already know everything you need to know so why don’t we start using it? What do you know? How do hunters kill you?”
Derek frowned at him. He didn’t want to give Stiles that kind of ammunition. For a minute, it looked like he wasn’t going to answer, but then he relinquished. Because this would all help him in the end. How many times had he asked Scott for help? Maybe now it was time to ask Stiles. “One by one,” he answered. “Because werewolves are naturally stronger than humans. They regenerate faster. They move faster. They process sounds, sights, smells faster. It’s easier to gang up on one and take the pack down individually. With each member killed, the pack becomes weaker. Until there’s just the alpha - and when an alpha doesn’t have a pack, he’s not an Alpha. He’s an Omega.”
Stiles nodded. He was really loving this information sharing thing they had going on. “Okay, that’s good. An entire pack of Alphas will be stronger than you too, even though you’re an Alpha. They’ll be stronger since they literally have no weak member. So you take them down one by one. Do you have any clue what happened to Erica and Boyd?”
Derek shook his head. “They left. They went Omega.”
“Before or after the lacrosse game?” Stiles asked, cocking an eyebrow. These questions all felt too little, too late. They should have covered it over a month ago.
Derek didn’t look interested in the conversation. “During. Why?”
“Because after the lacrosse game, Gerard Argent had them tied up in his basement. I don’t know what happened to them after that - but that’s where they were when we were fighting the Kanima. Do you have any idea what happened to them?” He repeated, more pressing this time.
Derek shook his head. “No.” Derek turned on Stiles, poking a finger his chest. “The Alpha pack is encroaching on my territory. I can smell them everywhere. It’s possible they took them as a warning.” Stiles went with the point, rubbing his chest. “Is that what happened to your face? Gerard Argent?”
“No. A warning?” Stiles echoed, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yes. You’re only as strong as your weakest member, and my weakest members are omegas. They left me. You’re lying.”
“Do you think that means… they’re dead?” Stiles asked slowly, uncrossing his arms and wringing his hands. This was his fault. If he had just told them what had happened - instead of moping in his room… if he had just tried harder…
“No,” Derek said, eyeing Stiles closely, as if he could read the expressions on Stiles’s face. It made Stiles want to back up; to hide his face; to keep that one simple privacy to himself. “I bit them. Whether or not I’m their Alpha, I would feel it. They don’t feel dead. What are you lying?”
Stiles breathed easier. “Okay. Good. Well for this tactic to work - you kind of need more than Isaac. Not that he isn’t doing awesome with his whole werewolfness now… Because I don’t feel comfortable I got my ass kicked by a ninety year old man, obviously.”
“Why do you care?” Derek asked. He leaned back against the burnt frame of the doorway. It took Stiles a moment to realize Derek wasn’t talking about Gerard with that question. “What happens. Scott’s not a part of it anymore. Nothing ties you to this - you don’t need to be involved.”
“I have to do something.”
“But why?” Derek pressed. There was a weight to the gaze he pinned on Stiles that made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t stay still.
“Because people die. People always die. And I have this feeling that it’s going to be bad this time. It isn’t going to be about vengeance this time. It’s just going to be mindless murder. I can’t just sit still and wait for these murders to completely drown my town, okay? I have to do something this time.”
Derek was quiet for a moment, just watching Stiles. “Stiles, you think you didn’t do something the other -?” A sound tore through the silence of the house. It was an arrow. “Cover your eyes!” Derek shouted, diving for Stiles. Stiles made an ‘oomph’ sound as Derek hit him and they both hit the ground hard. Derek’s body pinned Stiles to the ground, shielding him. Stiles threw a hand over his eyes as his head hit the ground. The arrow lodged itself in a wall and a bright flash erupted around it, lighting up the entire house briefly. White shone against his eyelids before fading. There was a stillness and into that stillness, Stiles asked, “hunters?”
“No.”
And then there was movement and Derek was torn from his body and flung back across the room, crashing through a wall that did little to slow his momentum. Stiles barely had time to get a glimpse of the man who had thrown Derek, and then the man moved - away from Stiles and after Derek. Stiles scrambled to his hands and knees, and frantically searched for a weapon. He found a hand held axe by the fireplace - why? Who the hell used this fire place anymore? - and snatched it up.
So much for attacking this pack individually. The man who had thrown Derek came crashing back through the wall, creating a second hole, and shaking the entire structure of the building. Derek stood on the other side of the wall. “Run,” he growled. He had already shifted.
Stiles tore out of the door, axe in hand, the voice in the back of his head reminding him what happened when you ran with scissors probably also happened when you ran with axes. Halfway down the dirt path, he physically ran right into Isaac and jumped back, lifting the axe to strike him. Isaac caught his swinging arm and they both stared at each other with wide eyes, resembling two frightened animals.
“Derek -” Isaac began.
“House - Alpha pack - go,” Stiles said, panting, waving back at the house in the distance with his free arm. “Scott -”
“Behind me,” Isaac said back. “Got Jackson. Get out of here.”
Stiles nodded. Okay. That was good. Okay. Isaac took a step toward the house. His hand left Stiles’s arm for just a second.
The night was silent. Whatever natural insect life existed in this part of the woods had been chased away by encroaching predators. The sound of an arrow ripping through the still air was loud, and Isaac had a second to act. He jerked Stiles by the arm, hard, and shoved him to the ground. The axe left Stiles’s hand and Isaac threw it - flung it into the darkness, using his sense of hearing and nothing else. The arrow missed Stiles and buried itself in Isaac’s shoulder about the same time that a muffled scream tore through the still forest, but it wasn’t Isaac who had screamed. There was a heavy second, where Isaac stared down at the arrow, wide eyed, before he collapsed backward, dropping like a weight. The ground he hit gave way beneath him, and he fell down into a pit. A blanket of grass must have covered it before, because there definitely had not been a fucking hole there before.
Stiles scrambled to his knees, and crawled to the edge of the pit, and stopped. Inside of the pit were a dozen stakes - and on one of the stakes - Isaac was impaled. Even in the dark, even from here, Stiles could see the tip of the stake jutting out from Isaac’s stomach. He could see the blood gushing from the boy’s mouth.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
He heaved himself over the edge of the pit and dropped down, clinging to the side because wouldn’t that just be his luck to accidentally impale himself on a stake? Stiles rushed to Isaac’s side and floundered - what the fuck was he supposed to do? “Shit.”
“I think there’s…” Isaac’s entire face screwed up as he swallowed blood, choked, and then swallowed some more blood. “Something off. I can - hn - burning my insides.” His breath rattled in his chest, and came out wet. His eyelids fluttered, and closed for a long moment before he managed to force them back open.
“Holy fucking hell,” Stiles muttered. “Wolfsbane.” He touched the stake with his bare hands and tried to push it, but it was embedded too well into the ground. He paused, took a breath and then rammed into the stake. Isaac made a sound that was stuck somewhere between a moan and a whimper as the stake moved, but it didn’t move enough. So Stiles rammed into it again and again until his entire side was numbed, until he uprooted the stake enough that it tipped over.
Isaac hit the dirt packed floor and Stiles stopped, hunched over and panting. His arm hurt, but he ignored it. He pulled the stake of Isaac and dropped it. “Isaac, buddy, hey, Isaac -” He knelt, rolling Isaac onto his back. The wound in his gut wasn’t healing. “Isaac, get up - you gotta get up dude -”
“Still burns,” Isaac said so faintly, the only way Stiles knew he’d spoken at all was that his lips had moved.
“Dere-” Stiles started in a shout, rising to his feet. Then he stopped, because there was the steel tip of a knife pressed against his jaw, and a suddenly solid body behind him.
“You’re not a wolf,” a voice purred behind him. She was smiling, he could hear it in her voice. He could feel it in her chest, pressed up against his back. “Little Red Riding Hood. You’re not a wolf.” A hand on his arm spun him around, and away from Isaac, to face the person behind him.
She was tall, and built, and blonde. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy bun, tendrils of hair slithering down the back of her neck and over her shoulders. And the knife hadn’t left his jaw. “Leather jacket,” Stiles said, and his voice only wavered a little bit. “Do all the werewolves have meetings on dress codes or is that just a personal preference? For every werewolf. In existence. Ever. Do they hand out leather jackets when you’re turned or…”
The edge of the knife dug into the curve of his jaw and he swallowed hard. “When you run with wolves, human, you better learn how to howl…” The knife trailed - mockingly - down his throat, and then his chest. “Poor sheep, out of his depth, among wolves. Don’t you know that you shouldn’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong?” Then the knife plunged into his stomach and Stiles sucked in a startled gasp, eyes going wide. His hands came down, hovered around the hand clutching the knife - trembling, twitching, shaking - but it was like he couldn’t reach her hand. Like he’d forgotten how to. His entire body caved in around that single point, his back going rigid. “Howl for me,” she murmured, and yanked the knife out of him.
Air whooshed out of Stiles’s gaping mouth, a raw, high-pitched whimper, and then he fell back, crashing to the ground beneath him. Isaac was somewhere beside him, but he had forgotten all about Isaac. He touched his stomach, trembling fingers skimming over the quickly soaking sweat shirt. Blood gushed through his fingers, as pain radiated out from the hole in him. It wasn’t the cut that hurt though - his entire stomach felt like he’d taken a couple dozen punches to the gut.
He stared up at the dark sky. He thought about how light had a speed limit. About how all the stars he was staring up at were already dead. Walking corpses, still shining. How if a civilization 65 million light years away were to look through a telescope, they wouldn’t see Earth inhabited by giant skyscrapers and billions of humans. They would have a front row seat to the extinction of the dinosaurs. They would see everything die. They would see that meteorite - a meteorite that no longer existed - plow into Earth. That’s why the whole theory of aliens coming to earth to colonize humans didn’t really stick. Because to aliens - humans were blips in a radar that didn’t even see them - not yet.
To aliens, humans didn’t matter.
“Stiles.” Someone was shaking him, and he lifted a hand to weakly bat the offensive hand away, but he didn’t quite make the contact. He peeled open his eyes and Scott swam in front of his eyes. He blinked several times, really slowly; with each blink his eyes grew more unwilling to open again. Scott had a hand on his stomach, pressing down over Stiles’s hand. “Stiles. Hey. Stay with me. It’s okay. You’re okay. Stiles!”
Stiles snapped his eyes open again. “I got fucking stabbed, dude.” He sounded drunk. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth. Dry. It reminded me of a slug once you dump salt on it. God, did he pity the slug. His pain felt too far away. His voice sounded thrashed - all high-pitched and uncontrolled. “Dinosaurs are extinct, but the aliens don’t know that, man… They don’t know how small everything’s gotten, man. Small.”
Scott shot a glance to the side. “Jackson - fucking step on it -”
“I’m going as fast as humanly possible,” Jackson shouted back over his seat.
Stiles wasn’t sure if now was the time to laugh or not, but he did anyway. Weak and breathless and it made everything hurt more. Jackson wasn’t a human. “It’s okay,” Scott told Stiles, ignoring Jackson. “We’re getting you to the hospital. Just don’t pass out.”
“I don’t think you have control over passing out,” Stiles pointed out distantly. “I mean I don’t. I don’t have control.” His mouth was dry. “Isaac -”
“Isaac’s fine,” Scott said quickly. “We got him, don’t worry.”
Stiles nodded and felt sleep. “Mmkay,” he agreed.
“Stiles!” Scott slapped him and Stiles’s eyes snapped open again. “What did I just say? Don’t fucking pass out!”
“Okay, okay,” Stiles said sleeping. “Calm down. Was it - that woman - she -” He tilted his head to look down at his stomach. His entire shirt was drenched in blood. It was sticking to his stomach, heavy, water logged.
“It wasn’t the Argents,” Scott said.
“But wolfsbane -”
“I know,” Scott said. “It was werewolves using wolfsbane.”
“That was my fucking idea,” Stiles said. “Are we in a car?” Stiles asked, finally realizing that he was rocking slightly, back and forth, the motion threatening to lull him to sleep.
“Derek’s, yeah,” Scott said. “Just… could you just hold on for a little while longer? We’re almost there.”
“I been holding on all year, Scott,” Stiles said, growing more distant. His fingers twitched beneath Scott’s hand. “Feel like I’m choking. Can’t breathe. Hurts. All year.”
Stiles didn’t take in much after that. He felt himself lifted from the car and carried into the hospital. The whites all blurred together as he was wheeled down the hall and only then did he finally drag in a drowning breath, swallowing water and choking, and passed out.