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a warm gun
chapter two
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 two.
previously
“Mommy?” His throat closed halfway through talking, unsure how this was possible, what was going on, but there was his mother, standing in the den as if she hadn’t been dead for nearly nine years.
She turned completely, her eyes shining and head tilting as she looked him over properly for the first time since he was nine years old. “My God, you’ve gotten so big.”
Stiles felt like everything was collapsing around him, a black hole sucking his universe out from underneath his feet. This couldn’t be possible. There were just some things that weren’t possible! He’d already gone down that road, researching online not long after finding out about the existence of werewolves. Resurrections, ghosts, those weren’t real.
He staggered back, the sharp edge of the counter digging painfully into the small of his back as he inched further and further away from his advancing mother. “Who are you?”
“It’s me, honey.” Her voice wavered, the tears in her eyes choking her voice as she tried to reach out to him.
“No. No. You… my mother died. There was barely even enough of her body to properly bury. We put a coffin in the ground. So don’t you dare come into my home and tell me that you’re her.” Stiles feebly felt along the countertops, searching for a good weapon. The only things he came up with were dirty spoons and a spice rack. His mind couldn’t process more than the thought that this isn’t right, it’s not her, it can’t be her over and over.
She took a deep breath, fiddling absentmindedly with a chain around her neck as she contemplated a way to prove that it was her. “I used to watch you like a hawk. Even when you were a seasoned pro at walking, and could talk on your own and hold conversations, I would always keep an eye on you. It drove your dad crazy,” she chuckled with an air of nostalgia, “The first time I finally took your father’s advice to let boys be boys, you were six. Scott and Jackson had the chickenpox, so it was just you and Danny. You were in the backyard in the tree house and you fell, broke your wrist. I was so furious at myself for not being there, feeling like a bad mother for talking with Danny’s mother, and the whole ride to the hospital, I kept telling myself that I was never going to let you out of my sight again. It took hours between getting admitted and tests and getting your cast, that I just about designed a room for you with padded walls, barred windows, and was measuring in my head how much extra it’d cost to widen the doorways and halls so that I could put you in a plastic, protective bubble.
“Then you asked the doctor if you could get a copy of the x-ray so that you could make copies and show everyone at school. I could just imagine you showing Danny and Scott and Jackson, preening over the break in your bone, and I was relieved. Because even though you’d been hurt badly for the first time, you were still you, it hadn’t tainted you. The next day, you were climbing right back up into that tree house, one handed, with Danny laughing at you and refusing to help give you a boost because it meant having to touch your butt. You were strong, a survivor, and I knew that you’d be okay no matter what.”
Stiles felt like everything was tipping sharply in one direction as he remembered the day perfectly from over ten years ago. He and Danny had been complaining about being kept from their other two best friends because they hadn’t had the chickenpox yet, and he’d flung himself down dramatically. His six-year-old self had misjudged how close he was to the ‘escape hatch’ entrance, and fell through the opening. It’d hurt, but it’d been cool to see his arm illuminated in an x-ray, especially with a clean break in the bone.
His knees finally gave way, causing him to slide uncomfortably against the cabinets, the knob dragging up his spine painfully as he sunk to the floor. “I don’t understand…”
“I know, sweetie, I know.” She empathized, getting to her knees on the floor in front of him.
He watched as she hesitated in reaching out to touch him, her face looking pained as if she needed to be holding him at that very moment. It wasn’t until he looked into her eyes, the eyes which is mirrored that his father mournfully tells him every time he’s drunk are so much like his mothers, that he realized he needed that too.
With a choked sob, his arms snapped out clumsily to grab his mother; touching her, hugging her, smelling her, for the first time in almost nine years. He inhaled as sobs wracked through both of them, the familiar perfume bringing back all sorts of memories. Times when she’d make him homemade soup while he was sick, times when she’d take him bowling after his father had to go off on a case that left his family worrying, times when she’d sing him to sleep after nightmares.
But it brought to the forefront the memories of the scent slowly fading away and becoming a distant memory that he tried so hard to cling to in the weeks after she’d died. Sobbing into shirts and pillowcases that held traces of it, looking for that bit of comfort when a nine year old couldn’t understand how he’d never see his Mommy again, why his Daddy couldn’t look at him without crying. He remembered the scent of lilies and roses overpowering the perfume all over his home in the days after her accident. The condolences, the pity, the way they couldn’t open the coffin, but the charred smell had drifted through it regardless.
He shoved away from her, sliding away to the side and scrambling to stand as the realization hit him. “You left us. You didn’t die, you left us.”
“There’s so much to explain, I know.” Her tears left tracks through her make-up, mascara beginning to follow the wet trails as she sniffled. “I wanted to come back,” she started to say, but cut herself off when she saw the way Stiles was shaking his head. “Honey…”
“No.” He tried to quell the emotions that were raging through him. He was so happy, so happy, to see his mother again after so long. Nonetheless, crushed tremendously at the implications that were bounding through his head. If she hadn’t died, which she obviously hadn’t, then she’d abandoned him and his father, her family. He was enraged that she put them through the grief and pain. However, the contradictory hope that maybe things could be okay for them again was still there. He stood angrily however, holding onto the facts in his head instead of the hope in his heart, “You wanted to come back.” He stated slowly, mulling the words, “Well, why didn’t you? Where were you that you couldn’t call or text or send a freakin’ carrier pigeon?”
“There are things that happened and I’ll explain them if you’ll watch your mouth, young man.”
“Don’t pull that on me.” He spat back angrily, momentarily pleased with the shocked expression on her face. Damn straight. He wasn’t some kid that would hold his tongue when scolded anymore. “I’m not nine years old anymore. I’m almost eighteen now, in case you’ve lost track. You can’t pull the ‘you’re too young’ card when you disappeared for half my life. We thought you were dead. We had a funeral. There is a headstone that I visit every birthday and Christmas and stupid random Sunday morning when I miss your pancakes. Do you even care?”
“Of course I care! I wish I could…”
“Well, I don’t care. Not about your excuses. I want you to leave. You don’t belong here, so don’t even think about seeing Dad. He’s moved on. He’s fine.” He’s lying. “We’re okay, just me and him. Go back to wherever you’ve been. We don’t need you.” Stiles crossed his arms resolutely over his chest, refusing to look her in the eye as his harsh words sunk in. They were lies - neither of the Stilinski men were okay without the matriarch, but if she’d abandoned them, left them to think she’d burned to death in a car accident, then they definitely didn’t need her.
“I’ll be in town, because I’m not leaving again. You’ll know how to find me when you really want to.” She said cryptically, hesitating a moment before slipping out the back door.
Stiles lasted a few heartbeats before he found himself on his hands and knees, dry heaving over the linoleum. He sank unceremoniously to the floor again. He needed… needed to do something. His mind shut down, slipping into autopilot mode as he looked around at the mess he’d made of the kitchen. He needed to clean the mud, shower, abolish all scents in the air that his mother’s perfume clung on. His dad was on his way home from his shift soon and he couldn’t know, could never find out that his beloved wife was alive and well.
Before he could even fathom how, he’d cleaned the kitchen and was stripping himself to get under the scalding spray of the shower. It burned like miniature fire pokers nagging at his skin as he watched the brown gunk in the drain, bubbling as it tried to go through the small slats, and imagined the flowery scent flowing off his arms, neck, face, everywhere that she’d touched him.
He imagined slamming his fist into the blue tiles of the shower wall in front of him that he used to brace himself up with the flat of his palms. He could envision his blood running swiftly, merging with the rivulets of water as he expressed his rage. It was something he’d seen on TV once, but the person expressing their rage was a super being and could heal. All he’d get for his troubles was a quick release of emotional pain, followed by excruciating physical pain and multiple broken bones.
Stepping from the shower once his skin was splotchy red and feeling raw, he wrapped the towel around his waist and let the air nip at his skin to cool it. He felt impossibly old in the moment he took to breathe. Everything in the last ten months was collapsing in on him. The guilt he felt about Scott being turned, being chased, hounded, threatened repeatedly by a handful of werewolves, having to lie right to his father’s face, using him for information, the Alpha telling him he basically wanted him as his pet, everything with Lydia, and now this.
He felt lightheaded as he thought over the implications of everything. There were so many questions and absolutely no answers. Why would his mother do this? How did she do it? Why come back now? Who in the hell had they buried? How was it possible that the medical examiner had positively identified Natasha Stilinski as the charred remains found in the car at the bottom of the cliff if she’d just been standing downstairs twenty minutes ago?
Stiles sucked in several deep breaths, forcing down his panic as he heard his father call out that he was home from downstairs. He rushed quickly from the bathroom to his bedroom, shouting out a short greeting to let him know that he was home. He was struggling to come up with a plausible lie for his Jeep not being in the driveway - Scott borrowed it ‘cause his bike had a flat tire? Implausible, he never let anyone else drive. He could just go with he had a flat tire, which was the truth, and then have to try to explain how he got home. It was an unsteady stream of crap lie after crap lie, when he caught sight of his keys on his computer desk.
Rushing to the slightly ajar window and angling his head, he could spot the taillight to his precious Jeep. He sighed in relief, not even bothering to analyze why he wasn’t surprised or freaked out in the least that Brenna, Zane or Derek had snuck into his room while he was showering and left his keys for him.
“Hey, buddy!” His father shouted as he jogged up the steps.
Stiles rushed around, grabbing up boxers and jeans to pull on quickly, nearly tripping over a leg he hadn’t gotten into fully and caught under the opposite foot in his haste to answer his door. “What’s up dad?” He questioned, slightly out of breath.
“Pizza and the playoff game tonight? I’ll even let you have a beer.” He tried to use the bribe to entice some father-son time. They hadn’t had time for it lately with the ongoing election and trying to be reelected to his position.
Stiles took in the lines around his father’s eyes, the faint parenthesis around his mouth. Marks from a happier time when his mother was alive. Now they expressed his tiredness, his difficult and lonely life. All because his wife had died, as far as he was concerned. But she hadn’t. How the hell was he supposed to keep this from his dad? The only person that actually understood his grief and held him day in and day out and let him curl up in bed with him for weeks after the funeral, after coming home from being bullied by Jackson, after nightmares about burnt zombies chasing him.
“That sounds excellent, daddy-o. I just have to go to Scott’s for an hour or so to wrap up a project for school tomorrow and then it’s you, me, pizza, beers, and the Mets.” Stiles promised, rushing it out in one nervous breath.
“Beer. Singular. You get one beer, kiddo.” The Sheriff corrected, “I made a promise to uphold the law and I’m still the Sheriff, for now at least.”
“You’re a shoo-in for the win. Thompson ain’t got nothin’ on you.” Stiles punched his dad in the shoulder playfully, grimacing through a smile at the awkwardness of it.
“Alright.” He eyed his son curiously, “Good luck with your project. I’ll grab a nap while you’re gone. See you in a few hours, son.”
“Hey dad,” Stiles started as the older man began to walk away. When he stopped and turned to face him, Stiles continued in all seriousness, “I love you.”
The declaration caught him off guard, the sheriff’s mind flashing to his little boy saying that to him for the first time. Back when it was cool for his boy to express things like that daily, before it became dorky as a preteen. “I love you too, Stiles.” He kissed his son on his forehead, running a hand over the rough growth of buzzed hair. “Drive safe.”
Stiles collapsed back against the door, letting out a breath harshly as he tried to calm his heartbeat. He needed to hold it all together. Shove it into a padlocked box in the back of his head until he could get out of the house. Maybe going to Scott’s would be a good thing. His best friend would know what to do, right? Or at the least, he’d keep Stiles from freaking out in such epic proportions that he ended hurting himself or someone else.
With a shirt on and keys in hand, Stiles booked it out of the house. He tried to keep one thought in his mind as he drove at top speed to Scott’s house. Just get to Scott’s and everything will be okay. Just get to Scott’s and everything will be okay. Just get to Scott’s and everything will be okay. He kept repeating it to himself over and over and over until he realized he’d swerved into the oncoming lane and was brought from his mantra by a loud honk.
He moved back into his own lane jerkily, his heart thumping, breaths panting. He had one hilarious thought - he could’ve just died the same way his Mom had.
Only, she hadn’t. It’d all been a lie.
He slammed his foot on the brake, one tire rolling up on the curb outside Scott’s house. His mother wasn’t home, but his bike was thrown haphazardly against the hibiscus bushes lining the front of the house. He felt his chest tightening, gasping for breath as it all started to crash in on him. Reaching the door, he banged the side of his fist against it continuously while his free hand pressed against his chest. He tried to will his heartbeat to calm, to allow him to breathe. His body had other ideas though.
Scott opened the door, pausing for a moment before he was able to take in Stiles freaking out on his doorstep. “Stiles, what’s happened? What’s wrong? Is it your dad? Is he okay?” He grasped his friend’s shoulders, turning him to face him completely so that he could see into his face, his eyes, try to discern what was going on.
“She’s back.” Stiles muttered, “She’s back, Scott, she’s back.”
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Sorry that this is up later! I've been a bit busy. Next one should be up within the next week. :)
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