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Stiles was sitting in a dingy motel room. It had that distinctive smell of cleaning products that didn’t really mask the scent of mildew and ingrained cigarette smoke. He didn’t care, he didn’t have any werewolves with him and he could ignore the smell. The room was cheap and he was not staying long. At least he hoped that he would not stay long. He was sure that he would find what he was searching for in the next day or so. If not he would have to leave anyway, and try again.
He wasn’t really sure when this had all started. They had managed to survive high school somehow and Stiles had even been confident enough in his dad’s abilities to keep the town safe to venture out and actually learn to use his spark properly. Deaton had never really been helpful with that. Stiles kind of suspected that Deaton didn’t really know a lot of how sparks worked but couldn’t confess to that since that would hurt his reputation as a mysterious cryptic all knowing druid. Bastard. At least he had given Stiles pointers in the whole Emissary business.
It had been hard to leave the pack for his years studying. Especially since they all stayed close to home and together. But it had been necessary, and he had learned so much. He even managed to find a spark that could help his control of his magic. He had spent a year with her. Belief was a wonderful source for magic, but he had found out that some rituals and spells went a long way to cement that belief. Or maybe it was his belief that the rituals or spells should work that made them work. It was a tossup. He had come back to Beacon Hills three years after he left, more confident in his abilities and a whole lot more powerful. He had especially gotten really good at making healing tinctures, he made quite the comfortable living on it too.
And it had been a few good years. He had reintegrated with the pack, the years apart had probably been good for them. The last tension between him and Scott had vanished. It seemed like they didn’t have the ghost of Allison between them anymore. She was never forgotten but both had accepted that Stiles had done everything he could to stop it. It had probably taken Stiles longer than Scott. Scott had just needed time to process, it was not easy seeing an evil fox spirit with your best friends face murdering your first love after all. But it was harder to live it.
There had been surprisingly few supernatural incidents in the following years. Now when Stiles looked back on it, that was probably when this all started. They didn’t really notice what was wrong before Deaton disappeared. But Stiles was certain that he wasn’t the first one. There had been some drifters vanishing and one or two searches for kids hitchhiking, but it had never pinged their radar since it was never established that they gone through Beacon Hills, and drifters and hitchhikers disappeared all the time. Most times they even showed up again. But Deaton had not planned to leave.
There had been no signs of violence, no signs of foul play at all. If Scott hadn’t asked Deaton to help with an operation they would probably not realized he was gone for a few days. He had taken to wander the Preserve and leaving most work at the clinic to Scott a few months before disappearing. But he never missed an appointment.
At first they had been sure that he had just had an accident or something in the forest. The wolves had searched for him but found nothing. Sure, they could sniff out where he had walked a lot, but they couldn’t find him. He was just gone. And he stayed gone. And then nothing happened for a few months. It had been odd, but they gathered that life went on. And there were the normal stuff, like trying to get to know the nearest packs, it was never a bad thing gathering allies, and either help or get rid of the odd creature that came through. Stiles took care of most of the killing, and only when nothing Scott tried worked. Scott’s way worked a whole lot more than Stiles would ever have thought. Maybe it was that Scott just oozed goodness, people didn’t want to disappoint him. But maybe it was just another sign that something was wrong.
A few months later a witch disappeared. That was normally not a problem, witches could be tricky. But this one hade got permission from the pack to open up a bookstore and stay in Beacon Hills. Stiles had made her swear an oath to not cause harm to any living being other than in self defense and he had the power to enforce that people kept their word. That was probably another thing that made Scott’s way work. Sure, the one swearing the oath had to do it willingly, but Stiles could tell if it took or not. So the witch got to stay and her store had been quite a success. And then she just vanished. One day the store just didn’t open anymore. And sure, it could be that she just fell ill or something, but she wasn’t in her apartment and when Stiles finally got a hold of her family nobody had heard from her for a while. And all her stuff was still there. There were no signs of foul play anywhere, just no witch.
This had been too similar to Deaton’s disappearance too Stiles liking so he had taken up the research again. He even reached out to Danny, who had left Beacon Hills for greener pastures in New York to get help getting all available missing cases in the area. Sure, he already had a lot of that information from his dad, but Danny could sniff out the unreported ones. He didn’t even need to do anything particularly illegal, so Stiles didn’t have any trouble convincing him to help.
It had been a lot of cases. Most of them were not related, but at least a few of them had been headed in the direction of Beacon Hills. Scott started to patrol the area with the pack. Stiles strengthen the wards surrounding the town. Nothing helped. The pack couldn’t find out what was wrong. Everything was fine most of the time but every few months someone disappeared. It was mostly somebody with a connection to the supernatural, but the pack had been left alone in the beginning.
This continued for over a year, and it was only the pack that noticed that it was happening. The rest of the town all seemed to invent reasons for the people leaving. Even Stiles’ dad had a hard time believing that there was something wrong. He did when he was with the pack, but as soon as he left he kind of just stopped thinking about it. It was disconcerting to say the least. Stiles had started to believe that a fey court had made Beacon Hills their home and wanted people to play with. But he could find no signs of magic. The only magic in the Preserve was the Nemeton, and he had been sure that the Nemeton and he had an agreement. He performed rituals to keep the tree happy, and the Nemeton stopped drawing in every stupid supernatural threat in existence.
He should have realized that it had been too easy. The region had calmed down before Stiles retuned after all. So it was not his doing that kept the Nemeton calm. He only managed to protect the pack for a while. The tree ate people. Mostly people with something supernatural about them, but occasionally just the normal mundane human who happened to be available. It had taken years to figure that one out. The tree was sneaky and very careful in the beginning. But it grew greedy and careless, and then started in on the pack. Stiles wasn’t sure why, he did have a connection to the tree after all. Maybe they had just been too tempting. So the tree started to snatch them up, one after the other. It accelerated in speed and range too. But Stiles didn’t realize what was going on until his dad was taken. Maybe he had been in denial before, but after his dad… He had gone to the Nemeton in desperation to find answers. He hadn’t wanted to risk abusing the power of the tree before, didn’t want it to wake up again and adding to their troubles. But when he had searched the tree for answers he had been shocked at what he found. The Nemeton was bursting with power under the surface. It had incased Beacon Hills in a protected cocoon and was slowly increasing its range of influence. It had tried to take Stiles then, but he had managed to get away.
He had broken a bit after that. The Nemeton had not calmed down, it had gone evil. Well, it wasn’t really evil, it did protect the area after all. It just increased its power the best way it knew how, by absorbing living beings. And Stiles couldn’t do anything to stop it. Not at first. He had called an emergency meeting with the pack, and they had sent Stiles away to find answers outside. He had hated to leave them, made them promise to avoid the Preserve, but ultimately he knew it was the best option. He was the only one who had the magic to try and counteract the Nemeton, and probably the only one who would know when he got an answer. So he had headed out, getting in touch with his previous teachers and through them other people who could have answers.
He did get them, and he managed to rein the tree in, but when he finally did half the pack was gone. It was like the Nemeton had realized what would happen and had grabbed as many as it could before it was too late. Scott had tried send everyone away but they refused to leave him, maybe it had been some sort of magic influence from the tree, Stiles didn’t know. Not even the ones with kids had agreed to leave. Scott hadn’t even managed to get Kira and their daughter to leave. And they had been taken. Stiles had gotten home to a broken alpha. He held himself together for the pack, for the town but he didn’t live anymore. The rest of the pack had not been any better, but they didn’t feel responsible as Scott did. Scott who cursed himself for not forcing everyone away even if he couldn’t leave either. Stiles had felt so guilty about everything. If he had only been better, smarter, realized sooner what was going on. He couldn’t even think about everyone he had lost. It was too hard.
The ritual that finally managed to put a stop to the Nemeton had felt like too little too late. They had lost so many. But at least it was over. The pack had healed slowly, there was no gory deaths after all, just an ever present sensation of loss. But Scott didn’t recover, Stiles didn’t either. So Stiles started to find out way to reverse it. The Nemeton was still brimming with power, it should be good for something. So Stiles researched and Scott mourned. And then, after reading some of Deaton’s personal correspondence Stiles had gotten an idea. A reckless mad brilliant idea that would make everything right if it worked.
Time travel.
Scott had scoffed at the mere thought of it, he had lost the will to even hope. But Stiles had been obsessed. He had a whole lot of power and even more belief. He was certain he could manage to send somebody back. He would prefer to go himself, but realized that it would take way more than he was capable of. It was also necessary to have a magic user actually perform the ritual, so he was out of the picture. So they tried sending Scott back. It didn’t work, at all. The only thing that happened was that Stiles managed to knock himself into a coma for a week. Scott had refused to try again after that. But Stiles had been certain that it would work, he was only missing something.
He thought that it could be that Scott was too young. Or maybe Scott was too broken, he only lived for the remains of their pack now, and that obviously wasn’t enough. Stiles wanted them to go back to stop the Hale fire, because if that didn’t happen then maybe the Nemeton wouldn’t go crazy. And maybe, just maybe Scott and Stiles could be kept out of the supernatural world. Maybe his dad would never find out and therefore be kept safe. The Hale pack had been a stabilizing force before they burned after all, Stiles was certain of that. So he needed to save them. So he needed somebody from then, somebody who would do anything necessary.
He needed Peter.
Well, Derek would probably do too, but Peter was a safer bet. Also, Peter had died and forced himself back to life. That kind of dedication was not to be scorned. The only snag in the plan was that Peter had disappeared years ago.
Stiles couldn’t really blame him either, it had been kind of a dick move to lock him up in Eichen, that place was fucked up. But they didn’t really have any better options, so there he had been left. Maybe somebody else than Deaton should have kept an eye on him, but everyone had mostly wanted to forget everything about him. And Stiles had been involved with Malia, who refused to talk about her father. Malia, fierce, brave and oh so determined Malia, who had left to find her mother. They never heard from her again. Stiles didn’t know if it was the Nemeton of the Desert Wolf who got her, but gone she was. He hadn’t even been aware what she was going to do, engulfed in his training as he had been.
How the hell was he going to tell Peter that his daughter who had refused him had probably died? But maybe that would be an extra incentive for Peter to fix things. Or maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Probably better to not mention it if the wolf didn’t ask. Yes, it was better like that. Surely Peter would want to try and save his family no matter what, he had gone to extraordinary lengths to avenge them after all.
Stiles took a deep breath, closed his eyes and started to send feelers out. He needed to find Peter. He believed that he would find Peter. Peter was somewhere close, he only needed a hint. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but at last he felt a brief tug. When he opened his eyes they flashed white, he had a lead.
Grinning he left the room, he didn’t know how long Peter would stay in one place, so he had to hurry. He had a world to fix after all. And he needed a zombiewolf to do it.