WHATEVER ONE SOWS, WILL HE ALSO REAP

by whoscountinganyway

Summary:

Two things are incapable of occupying the same space at the same time, it’s a law of physics. Derek is trying his best and making it really hard for Stiles to think that’s true.

**

After being pushed out of Scott's pack after the Nogitsune, Stiles finds a once in a century chance to bring not only Allison and Erica back but the Hale Pack too.

Notes:

i really hope that y'all like this, it's going to be a long, multi-fic ride, probably. i hope not. oh well, good luck

Chapter 1: windows to the soul

The alpha pack happens. 

Erica dies.

Boyd barely makes it out alive but no longer resembles the quiet and strong boy he was beforehand; Peter says it’s beyond rare that someone can live or function after their mate dies. Their lack of official bond may have saved Boyd’s life, but he might not wish it had.

Cora lives.

It’s like a kick in the gut—the Hale’s are happy about the return of the long lost sister and niece but the newly formed, thread-bare bond can only do so much to sate the grief Erica’s death brought. Like losing a limb, that’s what Derek said. How could you begin to compare the gaining of anything to that, especially when Stiles is sure that losing Cora still hurts, too.

Reparation can only go so far, especially when their alpha is blaming himself (when let’s be real, he’s not the problem here. Jennifer, anyone?), and Stiles can also only do so much when any time he’s at a pack meeting someone has to bring up how, as a human, he’s not really much help. 

Stiles doesn’t think that’s true at all because seriously, he’s the only one sometimes helping. If anything, they need him around more!

During this time, Stiles and Dad’s relationship gets really, really bad.

Stiles has to lie about everything . Because if he doesn’t lie, his dad’s going to get involved with all the paranormal-werewolf bullshit going on in Beacon Hills and if that happens, look at the Hale’s, look at Heather, they’re prime examples and his father is not allowed to become another tally on a wall.

This is why he stays quiet through Gerard’s kidnapping.

Why he goes through everything on his own.

There’s so many ways in which his father is all that Stiles has left and he knows that’s not fair because he knows that Stiles is also all his dad has left, but he thinks of it like this: people need the sheriff more than they need some spastic teenage boy. So he makes the choice to keep quiet.

Even if he hates every second of it.

He’s on his way home from the loft ( another awry pack meeting) when he sees the tale-tell flash of red and blue in his rearview mirror—c’mon, he wasn’t even speeding!—followed by the flare of a siren, just once, and then the sight of his dad’s cruiser pulling in behind him, probably having been laying in wait.

Which means he tracked him to the loft in the first place.

Great .

Stiles groans, face planting as he tries to think of an explanation why he’s coming out of the west side this late at night but doesn’t come up with anything other than pretending he has a girlfriend by the time his dad is by his window. And plans need to be believable, anyway, so that’s not even workable. 

He gulps and rolls the window half down, not prepared for the flashlight shined directly on his face.

“Augh!” Stiles yelps. “What the h—Dad!”

“Window.” Dad taps on the glass. “Now.”

“No license and registration, keep your hands where I can see them, hi son, how are you, no sudden movements?” Stiles grumbles while rolling down the window, happy not having automatic windows so the strength of him rolling them down can show his aggression, unhappy because after a long night ow, my muscles . “I can explain-”

“I’ll stop you right there.”

Thank god, because he definitely couldn’t explain. 

More time is good for him to create a more believable lie, but Dad knows that, so Stiles squints at him suspiciously. There’s no way that he’d pull him over just to let him go—he’s not into weird power plays like that and if he really wanted to corner him, he’d do it at home before he had his morning caffeine boost but after he took his adderall.

“If you tell me one more lie, Stiles, I just-” This seems to catch them both off guard because while his dad sighs and pinches his nose, Stiles gapes open mouthed. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to distrust you, kid, but I’m there. Don’t lie to me. If you can’t tell me the truth then tell me that, but don’t lie to me.”

Oh that’s—that’s not what he expected at all. 

So Stiles just nods, gulping. “I… I can’t tell you what I was doing. I—I’m just trying to, uh, I’m trying to do the right thing, Dad. I want to protect you.”

“That’s not your job, kid.” Dad shakes his head. “You aren’t protecting anyone by keeping them in the dark. That’s not how you prepare someone for what’s going on around them. I run this town, son, I can tell when something is happening and if my head keeps getting shoved in the sand, bad things could happen.”

Maybe Stiles is a little useless, because he never really thought about the other end of this all, the legal end.

The end that watches kids disappear and they either wind up dead, killed without explanation like Heather and Matt, or returned in worse shape like Stiles and Allison. He doesn’t think he’s actually fooling his dad, he knows he earned Sheriff after being a detective for a decade and the day after, when the emotion cleared, Stiles knows he doesn’t believe him.

Because he’s the one that has to tell the mayor he doesn’t know what’s killing the kids. He has to tell the mayor about kids breaking into armored vehicles and tying up their high school rivals, about bus drivers torn to shreds, homicidal aunts that never really stay dead and deranged high school teachers.

He’s the one who has to knock on the doors and hold weeping family members.

“C’mon Mieczy,” Dad mutters, hand firmly on Stiles’ shoulder. He takes in a deep, chilling breath and lets the touch ground him. “Don’t panic on me now.”

Nodding, Stiles takes a few moments to ground himself and breathe deeply, holding onto his dad’s arm for support. “Sorry, daddio.” He laughs after a tense minute. “It’s just a lot.”

Dad nods, blue eyes flicking between his brown ones; serious. “It seems like it’s been a lot for a while.” 

Tears prick at his eyes but Stiles manages to blink them away, he still needs to keep his head enough to go home and research the Oni and on top of that, kistune’s, now that they fully know not only what Kira is but how beings like her (who can live for so many decades) can go wrong.

Because something is happening and nobody knows where the eye of the hurricane is yet.

They have to be able to prevent it.

“I’ll pull your head out of the sand soon.” Stiles promises because Dad’s probably right—as annoying as that is—keeping people in the dark rarely, if ever, keeps them safe. Melissa can prove that. And it would, for no other reason, help to have someone’s arms to fall into so he can finally cry over Erica.

“Keep that promise.” Dad says, giving Stiles’ shoulder one last squeeze before pointing the flashlight at his face a second time and heading back to his cruiser. He sits there and waits for Stiles to pull himself together all the way, as put-together is how he likes to drive, before starting up and revving off in the other direction.

Stiles drives back home thinking of ways to start a conversation that starts with ‘werewolves are real’ and ends with ‘so are a thousand other supernatural things and they all want to kill us’ that won’t end with his dad taking up arms and getting himself killed in the process.

Because that would be the end of Stiles too.

 

---

 

Another pack meeting happens.

Deaton is convinced that Scott could be the mysterious and sole True Alpha that he’s the only druid to ever come across the definition of and Peter is convinced that’s full of shit and Derek is convinced that whether it’s shit or not it doesn’t matter because he’s still the alpha.

Until Scott also becomes an alpha.

And suddenly there’s two alphas for one pack and that’s sort of fine but it’s also not because power dynamics between alphas go crazy, but at least they can keep each other under control and Scott won’t go around offering any random teenager a bite or murdering people to fulfil The Urges.

But that’s not Stiles’ problem.

Nothing but the lost time and the not knowing what’s happening, the nightmares and day sweats, and never knowing if he’s asleep or not. That’s Stiles’ problem. Looking at a crime scene and wondering if his body was there, even if he wasn’t. That’s Stiles’ problem. Looking at his dad asleep on the couch after a long shift and hearing a voice in the back of his head telling him to slit his throat. That’s Stiles’ problem.

The first reprieve he gets is Melissa drugging him.

It says a lot about a person when someone giving them sedatives without their permission is the most relaxing thing that can happen to them that week.

Scott looks at him and says Stiles, you were awake the whole time and it makes something terrible drop in his stomach, and he feels like he’s losing his mind when he wakes up from a dream only to wake up from a nightmare screaming at the top of his lungs in his dad’s arms and he knows for a fact he’s gone when Derek’s in his dream asking how do you know?

He’s not his mother.

He’s not her brand of sick.

Stiles tries to remember that every time he wakes up and didn’t know he was asleep in the first place. He tries to remember it when his dad looks at him like he doesn’t know him and Stiles first thought is maybe he doesn’t followed very closely by maybe I don’t anymore, either .

There’s something wrong with him. He feels energy, for lack of a better word, buried very deeply within him and it feels… bad; like grief. Every time he looks in the mirror he swears there’s someone else there, hovering over his shoulder but he doesn’t actually ever see anyone.

Eyes are the doorway to the soul, right?

His look darker every day.

What does that say?

 

---

 

“Kid,” His dad says one day. “I’m really worried about you.”

“I know.” Stiles replies. “I think it’s time to pull your head from the sand.” He spends hours going over everything with his father.

The first two hours would have gone a lot easier if Scott or Derek or hell, even Peter, was there to flash their cheek hair and glowing eyes, maybe even growl a little over the top but convincingly because with the way he’s been lately, Dad thought he was having a mental break instead of telling the truth.

Which—yeah, that’s fair enough. At least he gets Dad to try and listen to everything under the assumption that he wasn’t going bat-shit, the sheriff took notes and everything,

He sets up a chess board with everything they know so far.

The white queen is The Big Unknown. Mainly because Stiles doesn’t know anything important enough to it to call it the king. It wants to kill. He feels it. 

Its rooks are the Oni and the Argent family, with Kate, Chris and Victoria as pawns and Gerard and Allison as knights. In the middle, there’s Jackson as a pawn, Deaton as a bishop. By Jackson is Lydia, another bishop, and by Deaton, between Derek and Isaac, is Scott, a knight.

On the other side is Derek, his king.

Stiles is the queen because he understands to protect the alpha is to protect them all. Peter and Boyd are his rook, Erica, Isaac and the twins are the pawns. His father is a bishop, but he’s off the board. It’s all metaphorical, of course, but it helps the understanding.

Deaton, he stacks on two packs of sticky notes because he’s so ‘above it all’ for the same reason.

“Werewolves?” Dad asks for the fifth time, eyes flicking to the ceiling.

Stiles nods. “Awoo, moonlight, growling.”

“I think I’m gonna need some proof.”

That’s how they end up inviting Derek Hale through the front door of the Stilinski household for the first time that next morning, his dad letting him in through the front door while Stiles hides the shotgun and the pistol just slightly out of reach because if he knows anything about his paternal bloodline, it’s where he got the ‘react first, think later’ gene from.

“Alright.” Stiles motions towards Derek, who quirks an eyebrow like that’s a full sentence. “Well? Wolf out!”

There’s a faint ringing in his ears, like a school bell. 

Stiles ignores it—he’s gotten really good about that. Ignoring what’s not right in front of him, and why he can’t think about some things no matter how hard he tries. His hands have been shaking for days now. He doesn’t look down in case he has too many fingers. Or not enough.

“Wolf out?” Derek says, clearly unimpressed.

His eyes flash for a second but dad doesn’t react. 

Stiles sighs and finally looks down, finding himself with two thumbs on each hand and wonders how long he’s been dreaming. 

He watches Derek wolf out with a vague sense of this isn’t right and I’m not really even here and when he comes-to, Coach is pacing at the head of the room saying “And don’t get me started on how lactic acid failed me in my youth!” and when Stiles looks towards Scott, Scott doesn’t even notice that anything is wrong.

Proof, that’s what his dad said he needed. But proof of what?

Werewolves? Or that Stiles is losing his mind?

Chapter 2: the bear trap

Notes:

I bring you: the start of Sterek & the downfall of the McCall-Hale Pack Unity

There’s officially a Hale pack and a McCall pack.

Thankfully, because of the overlapping betas and general chaos and moreso, being stronger together, the two packs aren’t so much split as they are separately established.

Scott, the True Alpha, no longer even trusts Derek to so much as help when something comes up but Deaton—who, despite Stiles swearing he only ever actually helps Scott—claimed to be the emissary for both packs as an equal helper, and an the Emissary, he maintained the thought that they should all still train together and help each other.

So that’s what they did.

Stiles still loses time, actually, he’s pretty sure lately that he’s never actually awake anymore. If he focuses hard enough he can always hear some sort of background noise. He never remembers waking up anymore. He’s just awake, and it’s a new day.

That’s not something he can focus on because no matter how many times he goes to Deaton, Deaton’s answer is always sometimes those with a spark can sense the energy around them… the energy around you must be dark and that doesn’t help in any way, and Stiles is too scared to go to Peter and see a too understanding look cross his face because when he did, he immediately woke up before the Left Hand could answer his question, and Dad can only do so much.

This is why he just keeps living, going day to day, exhausted and never knowing what’s actually happening.

Everyone else is also separated—but not divided!—between the three sides: 

Scott’s, the Hale Pack’s (which is distinctly different from being on Derek’s side) and a neutral side that is never really fully neutral except for Lydia but rather as close to neutral as possible for a bunch of teenagers with opinions and raging hormones.

As previously stated, Lydia is the only true neutral one. 

Stiles is in both packs (he thinks).

Jackson and the twins are the other neutral parties; somewhere in the confusion Jackson tells Danny but Stiles doesn’t learn that for a neat four weeks but doesn’t say anything in case it was just part of a dream. Peter, Cora and Boyd are Derek’s. Malia and Issac are Scott’s.

Though everyone but Scott seemed to know Malia was just mad at Peter. 

But hell, who isn’t at this point? 

Before he got his head on right—as right as it’s ever going to get, anyway—everyone was scared of Peter. Peter was a loose canon. Peter was terrifying. Now, Peter was simply annoying on a good day (thanks, Derek). That meant that everyone is free to finally be mad and tell him off without fear of retribution. 

Cora got him very good with her right hook for Laura’s death. But they also made up too, which actually made them both better than Derek said he thought they could be.

It’s more than sophomore year Stiles could have ever hoped for.

 

---

 

Stiles thinks he hasn’t woken up in weeks.

He’s exhausted all of the time and things are happening that can’t happen. Which in Beacon Hills, that’s also a loaded statement and can make things confusing at times, but every time he ‘comes to’ (because he never wakes up anymore) he counts his fingers, and then he tries to read the AA pamphlet he pilfered from his dad’s office when this all started just to have something to read.

The text hasn't been clear for a month.

Now, Stiles doesn’t know if in-his-head time is particularly congruent with outside-his-head time, also known as Real Life, but he does know days seem longer when he’s so tired. He never sleeps. It was morning all week last week, and today it’s all night when yesterday was all normal, so he really has no clue what’s going on.

He worries about his dad a lot.

Things might seep through to Real Life, so he tries to do harmless things (because something is doing this to him) not to alert anyone yet, like moving the magnets on the fridge into a joke so maybe his dad will see it and know a bit of his son is still left somewhere behind all this darkness, even if that’s starting to be less true every passing day.

Or leaving voicemails on Scott’s phone—he never picks up, dreaming or not—about what he’s done that day and how he actually misses lacrosse practice. He texts Isaac about study sessions and pats Boyd on the shoulder Erica used to hang off every time he sees him, because he’s still worried about the two ‘wolves falling into themselves.

He doesn’t know what bleeds through.

Stiles is so tired.

Broken leg. Bear trap. Ten fingers.

Scott’s his number two speed dial, it took fifteen seconds. Stiles is so tired.

Stiles is so tired. Stiles thinks he’s dreaming. There’s no AA pamphlet in his back pocket or flannel. He doesn’t have a flannel. There’s no words. Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference. He knows it by heart.

He wakes back up later. 

He wasn’t the one who finished talking to Scott. In a dream his jeep was broken and the spark from the jumper cables felt real. Stiles is so tired. He tries not to wonder what was said because if he ended up in a bear trap and didn’t even wake up from the pain, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to his best friend. 

Bear trap, that’s right.

Stiles is bleeding out. Is that why he’s so tired?

He doesn’t know what’s going on, he doesn’t know why he’s in this—warehouse?—caught in a bear trap. Is it the alpha pack? This isn’t as headstrong and claws-in-his-face as he would have expected. But if they’re trying to lure the pack out and have Derek kill them, it’s perfect.

Wide setting. The smell of human blood to jumpstart bloodlust.

Fuck what, what time of the month is it? 

How close to the full moon?

Even if Boyd or Isaac are lost to it, Derek and Erica could withstand it. They’re both good at controlling themselves, Scott’s the loose canon but for Stiles, Stiles thinks he could do it. He hears a whisper. Stiles is so tired. He realizes with a pit in his chest that someone is here with him.

He just doesn’t know where ‘here’ is.

Stiles is so tired.

 

---

 

Erica is dead. Allison is dead.

Stiles, despite holding Lydia when Allison’s heart stopped and knowing that he and Void aren’t the same, and despite blaming Kali with every fiber of anger and understanding in his being, for some reason both of these avoidable deaths feel like it’s his fault.

He hates avoidable death more than anything.

One of the reasons that Stiles could deal with his mom’s passing is because it was kind of like cancer—you don’t know that it’s going to happen until it happened, and as healthy as you could have lived, there are just some things you can’t really prevent with juice cleanses and giving up smoking.

But Erica should be bouncing down the halls of Beacon Hill High School, blonde hair a curly mess, arm in arm with Boyd and Isaac. After everything she suffered through as a human and everything she went through as a wolf to feel like her she didn’t deserve to die being called another pathetic spare beta .

She wasn’t a spare.

She was Erica.

And Erica was theirs .

Allison, she… Stiles has such complicated feelings about Allison but in no way did he think that she deserved to die. 

He thinks she should have actually apologized to Boyd and Erica when she had the chance but doesn’t fully blame her for the arrow-induced haze against ‘wolves led by Gerard. Scott should have done better for her. She should have never put Isaac between them both, and he’s still glad that Isaac had the experiences he did with her before she passed.

They were both too young and too loved to have died.

He stares in the mirror and sees the dark bags under his eyes and the almost-dead nails that still have to heal on his hands—ten fingers. He counts regularly—and thinks it should have been me . Scott blames him, he can see it in his eyes. He held his first love in his arms as she died and he blames Stiles, Stiles hates the way that he understands it.

Stiles no longer has a place in Scott’s pack, he doesn’t really even remember when that happened, either, and he certainly doesn’t have a place in Derek’s pack. Derek doesn’t like him. Boyd should blame him for Erica, Cora barely knows him and Peter doesn’t want to.

He visits his dad at the station twice before it gets too much.

There’s too many missing deputies and officers. He left both times counting his fingers on the way out and stealing a pamphlet from the front office to read six times in his jeep before believing he’s awake. Stiles feels like all the blood is on his hands, he feels like he has bodies stacked up to his shoulders and he’s drowning in it all.

Then something else comes to light:

Chris Argent is following Stiles Stilinski.

Now, don’t get Stiles wrong, if someone was involved in another death not too long after being possessed by an evil fox spirit that killed his daughter, he would probably keep an eye on them too. Argent lost his wife, father, sister and daughter in a short span and even if the first three were all varying degrees of crazy, they’re still losses.

He keeps to a schedule—home, school, library, home or home, school, home and just at home or visiting the Sheriff’s station on the weekend—and even drives slower through thick traffic sometimes just so Argent’s van can stay within the sight of his rearview.

Maybe that’s the last thing he wants, but Stiles feels bad for him.

At first, after it was just the nogitsune and Allison on Stiles’ consciousness, it was fine. Well. Chris wasn’t fine like gee, everything is normal and happy and peaceful but fine more like I don’t want an excuse to murder this kid , which is becoming Stiles’ more common sense of fine and normal for those around him.

Stiles misses Allison too.

She, even after everything with Gerard, was still his friend. The least he could do for her was keep an eye on her father for her—even if it’s in a really convoluted way. There was nobody else making sure that Chris Argent ate or slept other than him. That’d mean something to Ally. 

And Stiles owes her all he can for not being strong enough to stop what happened to her.

Months pass. Stiles keeps drowning.

 

---

 

Stiles sees Derek again for one of the first times at a diner.

The alpha looks surprised to see him, like he couldn’t smell him or hear him, but then, Stiles probably just smells like vague sweat and his laundry detergent. Scott hasn’t scented him since he could remember and Dad’s been working overtime to clean up the Nogitsune’s mess and compensate for the missing officers, nobody else touches him.

He’s nauseous by the time Derek makes it to his table.

The spark—he found out he is one—is counting his fingers manically when the booth across from him squeaks. He hears a waiter come up but just thinks two thumbs and tries to focus on breathing right. He can read the menu in front of him. One left index, one right index.  

Derek looks concerned; in his dreams Derek is never concerned. 

Both pinkies .

“Stiles.” Derek’s voice finally cuts through the mental barrier.

Stiles inaudibly gasps back to reality.  His hands are shaking but he doesn’t fist them in fear of there being a different amount of fingers.  “Yeah?” He replies, voice cracking. He clears it, surprised but aware about how long it’s been since he’s spoken beyond a grunt as he passes someone in the hallway.

He killed Erica.

It’s all he can think about when he looks at Derek.

“You’re shaking.” Derek says. 

Stiles nods, he knows this. He’s been shaking for days. He doesn’t really remember the last time he ate but in his defense, he hasn’t been needing to eat in his dreams for a whole month. He wasn’t the one taking care of his own body, and now it’s all foreign to him.

“Did you order food?”

He shakes his head. 

The waitress who first approached him was scared off after he didn’t break out of his haze, so the new waiter’s been walking past the table every five minutes or so just in case. Derek was the only thing that really cut through the fog. He doesn’t know why he even came in—he’s just used to being able to do random things like this. 

Inside his head, inside Void , there weren’t many social consequences.

He’s been a person his whole life and it feels stupid, in a way that makes him feel stupid, that a single month could reverse everything he’s learned in seventeen years just because what? Because he got used to it? It all still felt weird. He still knew that it wasn’t right.

Maybe he is stupid. It would make sense.

A hand rests on his and Stiles flinches away, eyes snapping up to meet Derek’s. “Can you eat?” Stiles killed Erica. When he looks up he finds a plate of food in front of them both, simple pancake and eggs for him and two full, diverse plates for the werewolf. 

Derek has coffee and Stiles feels silly for being upset he didn’t know Derek drinks it.

“Does that,” The spark’s voice cracks and he clears it before trying again. “Does that even do anything for you?”

This actually gets Derek’s mouth to quirk up. He shrugs and takes a sip before responding. “Depends on how tired I am… and how much I drink. This is my fifth cup.”

Stiles’ fingers twitch; he wants to start writing things down. 

He wants to test this theory and research it and question how many scientific breakthroughs they could have if werewolves came to light. Now, it’d be impossible without government involvement. The last good chance was with the inhuman breakout when he was a kid—when scientists found ancient human bodies with a little extra DNA. 

“Can you eat?” Derek asks again, eyebrow raised.

“Yeah.” Stiles agrees, shaking hands moving to grab his fork. “Thanks.”

The rest of the day doesn’t really go anywhere, Derek stays with Stiles at the diner in almost silence for the next two hours, scrolling on his phone while Stiles does his best to space out and then he finally stands up to leave to get wherever he needs to go in the first place and pauses.

Stiles is actually here enough to catch it, so he makes a ‘what’ face, open-mouthed.

“Can I scent mark you?” Derek blurts, face turning a little red a second later. Stiles doesn’t get how it’s embarrassing—maybe just because he’s an alpha that likes to be in control, not to mention suave and mysterious. “You don’t smell like anyone.”

That wouldn’t mean much to most humans.

It’s a fact that Stiles realizes immediately. 

Most wouldn’t understand and grasp the importance of this, how it’s basically the alpha saying you’ve been so alone — I can tell you’ve been so alone and that in itself feels terrible. Maybe not so much the loneliness, but the fact that someone else knows how lonely he is.

“Dad, uh,” He stammers in the way of an explanation. “Dad’s been working overtime.”

“Alright.” Derek nods. “Do you want someone at the house with you?”

Stiles’ head snaps up from the spot he sunk in that almost-shame of being alone. “What?”

“Because you’ve been alone? Do you want someone at the house with you? Cora and Peter are having a movie night anyway, and,” The alpha shrugs. “Boyd’s having dinner with Erica’s parents.” After it was all said and done, and the deaths in Beacon Hills were publically under Kate Argent’s belt, the three grew close, especially since Erica’s little brother still wanted to be around Boyd.

Pushing down the bile in his throat at the reminder of it’s my fault , Stiles shrugs. “If you want to come over you can, but, uh,” There’s really no easy way to say this, is there? Fuck it, he’ll just say it. Derek’s an alpha werewolf , he’ll notice either way. “Chris has been sort of… following me? Since Allison, um. You can just ignore him.”

Derek stares for a few seconds before a little growl sounds out from the back of his throat. “Chris Argent ?”

The spark winces. “The very one. He’s not, like, threatening me. He hasn’t really even gotten out of his van much! He’s just, he blames me for Allison,” He’s not the only one. “And so he’s keeping an eye on me. Incase Void comes back, or something. I don’t know.”

“Keeping an eye—you mean stalking you?”

“Well I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but, sure.”

“Come on.” Derek says, jaw clenching like he’s trying to stop himself from shifting, eyes flicking outside to check for Chris and find the van easily waiting in the parking lot. He grabs Stiles’ arm and pulls him out of the restaurant, leaving a wad of cash on the table. 

He doesn’t give Stiles a choice whether or not he takes his own jeep home, instead just shoves him into the passenger seat of the camaro all while baring sharp teeth in Chris’ direction. Instead of being annoyed like he used to, the familiarity of the manhandling actually seems to calm him down.

Stiles feels like this says a lot about him.

Derek climbs in the driver’s seat and slams the door shut, almost immediately pulling out of the parking lot and tearing down the street. Stiles almost wants to tell him to slow down and let Chris follow them, but what comes out instead is, “Where are we going?” 

“Yours.” He says, and Stiles relaxes a bit in his seat. 

Everything is okay, he thinks. I don't have to count my fingers.

Somehow during the drive between the diner and home, Stiles falls asleep. He was probably Pavloved to some degree while in the pack to feel relaxed around Derek, and since he was surrounded by Derek: the alpha himself, his scent, the energy of the camaro, it makes sense his body would finally give out.

Notes:

I hope you enjoyed! yes, if you didn't realize yet this fic WILL be full of angst

also i'm bad at tagging so if any point you think i should add/remove any, lemme know !

Chapter 3: death before inaction

Notes:

i love drama

 

also yippee for the two chapter update !

Derek showing up at the Stilinski house whenever Stiles felt his worse—it’s like he had a sixth sense for it, or someone just told him whenever he looked his shittiest—became a normal. 

He’s come over, let Stiles make him dinner and would even drop off leftovers to Dad half the time when he left, and would stay for a movie, or to watch Stiles blink at his homework. And he’s watched Stiles count his fingers enough times that whenever Stiles looks down to his hands, he says “Ten.” even if he never scent marks him, the reassurance of any alpha, his or not, makes him feel a little more sane.

One of the days, his doorbell rang, which Stiles didn’t even really recognize as a noise anymore due to the months and months of people just walking (or climbing) into his house. Instead of finding a version of Derek who finally chose to be polite on the other side, there was Lydia.

In all of her five-foot six heeled glory, the banshee had one hip cocked out, an impatient look on her face and a bag in her hands.

Instead of responding, he lifted both hands up and counted, two thumbs, left index finger, right index finger , he looks back over to her and notes how her lips are pursed now, but how nothing else has changed, and keeps counting, both pinkies, left middle, right middle —

“Are you just going to stare, or are you going to let me in?”

And this is how their actual friendship started.

It was slow and tedious at first. She had to let him count his fingers and use his spark, he just created a little circle of light next to him, before letting her in for the first three weeks. It always felt like a nightmare, and she didn’t look as On Top of The World as she once did.

They both have had reasons to feel crazy—Void; Peter—and they both have lost someone who felt like a part of them—his mom, Erica; Allison. For some reason, this made them work well together. 

She could study and read her latin books and scroll on Instagram sitting on his bed and he could research the paranormal, do college essays nobody assigned and call his dad from his desk. They rarely talked about anything, but the company was enough.

The days they spent together let her cry without judgement and the nights they spent together curled up on his couch let Stiles sleep. He found a friend in someone he never thought he would, and it’s probably because of that he was able to let go of the ways he used to want her with ease.

They had quiet days with Boyd sometimes, for Erica, and Isaac, for Allison.

Derek too, just when the loss got too much.

During this time, Chris lets up on his stalking a bit. Stiles keeps tabs on him as much as possible and finds himself relieved to find that the Argent is putting all of his energy into making reparations with Isaac. Apparently the change was Dad punching his lights out after finding out he came at Stiles with a pistol when he was late for school one day.

Neither Stiles nor his dad talk about this, but it helps, knowing.

When Dad comes home for the first time to find all of them there, he nods at Derek and raises an eyebrow how Lydia is curled into Stiles’ side, but the spark just shakes his head and motions vaguely around—the rest of them watching Star Trek’s Next Gen on the TV. 

He pats Stiles on the head and instead of laying in bed for the night, comes and sits in the arm chair to watch with them. Stiles smiles to himself and finds that it’s a little easier to breathe than before. He killed Erica. He killed Allison. But he also didn’t. He has ten fingers.

Things take time to make sense.

 

---

 

Stiles is lost between both packs. Neither Derek nor Scott are really his alpha, anymore, after Allison and Erica. He didn’t think that either of them deserved to have someone like him in their packs, even if they both seemed to understand that the nogitsune isn’t Stiles.

He’s so out of it all that he doesn’t even realize when the territory dispute begins.

Before, he’d be on the front line.

Things are the same, not really, but things are better, at least. Stiles still has Dad, and Scott, but now he has Lydia. He can finally hold a non-aggressive conversation with Isaac and helps Boyd with his homework, and he even meets Erica’s parents, who cry when Boyd introduces him as ‘Batman’.

Really, the biggest difference is that Scott is annoying the everloving fuck out of the Hale’s, and threatens to overtake Derek rather consistently. It’s actually a little relieving this time around to be out of all the drama. Stiles isn’t even worried about Peter trying to ‘fix’ things, that’s how much of a threat he doesn’t think Scott is.

Even if he agrees Scott can piss people off with his True Alphaness.

But at least Scott still comes over for dinner with Melissa and Dad, gives Stiles awkward smiles during class, and argues with Derek over which one of them gets to spend more time with Stiles despite never showing up to the stuff they plan because one of his ‘wolves have a problem. 

And at least—at least he still feels like his best friend.

Until Theo Raeken.

See, it doesn’t even really start with Theo. 

The pack divide starts somewhere between Scott biting Liam, Liam becoming the second Isaac (which made Isaac finally get why exactly Stiles—didn’t hate him, it was never hate—disliked Isaac and Scott’s relationship), Deaton not warning them about Theo because “It’s the natural order.” and Scott being fine with that.

How could Scott be fine with that?

After all he’s lost, he should have learned.

And it ends firmly when Mason breaks Isaac’s arm while sparring, sending him into a ‘memory of his shitty and abusive father’ style panic attack and Scott encourages Mason not to apologize then expects Stiles to back him up all while Stiles is helping Isaac take deep breaths, but hey, at least Derek is there to stop Cora from attacking Mason.

Derek ends it by asking for a truce, one that Scott agrees to, thinking himself on top.

This is when Isaac decided he wanted to honor Erica by protecting himself, and that means becoming Derek’s beta again—which makes Scott freak out and actually declares the packs can’t train together like they did when Isaac was Scott’s, but at least there will be no more broken arms.

Something along the lines of ‘nothing screams allied packs like being fine traumatizing the other alpha’s betas’ something, something, blah, blah, blah. 

After this, Chris, who has basically adopted Isaac, helps the boy move into the Argent house and stops stalking Stiles, hopefully for good. He still says he’ll hunt, she’s an Argent afterall, but he’ll follow the code even more strictly than before, and warn other hunters away from Beacon Hills.

Not to mention on top of dealing with all these changes, Stiles is still suspicious about Theo and how Scott suddenly isn’t his best friend and isn’t Isaac’s either, even if when Theo is acting suspicious it just leads right back to Tara but Stiles doesn’t believe that despite what the proof right in front of his eyes are telling him.

He has Liam start the car so Scott can try and talk him down and regrets the because you trust everyone! as soon as it leaves his mouth, not because it hurts Scott’s feelings but because it’s true and Stiles wasn’t ready to admit that yet—that he’s lost parts of himself to protect Scott McCall.

And Scott McCall won’t even try to protect himself!

Thus begins the real divide between the two, now established packs. They’re knee-deep in it when Theo’s addressed as a real problem for the first time, much to both Stiles and Isaac’s relief (for different reasons) but first he has to listen and choose between Scott and his Dad, and the terribleness doesn’t end.

No, in the middle of the pouring rain at night when Stiles just wants to meet with the same best friend that held him through his panic attacks after his mom died, he has to be met with this:

“You killed him?” Scott says. “You killed Donovan.”

“He, he was going to kill my dad.” Stiles says—already feeling like he was out of breath, the panic just below the surface. This isn’t how he plans to have the conversation; when his hands barely feel washed clean of Donovan’s blood. Of Allison’s. Of Erica’s. “Was I supposed to just let him?”

Scott shakes his head, something determined and sad gleaming in those dark eyes. “You weren’t supposed to do this . None of us are.” 

And the spark didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, what? Act in self defense? Take a life? He didn’t murder someone, he, he protected his dad! Just like he didn’t slaughter Erica, he just didn’t get there in time. He didn’t kill Allison, he was just possessed. 

“You think I had a choice?” He could have let Donovan kill him and his dad or Stiles could have done what he did. Taken another life. And none of that even matters now, that choice—two different kinds of sacrifice, from his standpoint—because the damage is already done. 

The rung was pulled, Donovan is dead.

“There’s always a choice.” Scott says.

“Yeah, well, I can’t do what you can, Scott!” Wasn’t that obvious? Wasn’t he aware Stiles can’t defend himself the same way? He had to defend himself how he did. “I know you wouldn’t have done it. You probably would have just figured something out, right?”

He was acting like Stiles wanted to kill Donovan.

Like there weren’t more pleasant options; like he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life remembering the way Donovan spit blood, or the itch of that dark redness on his hands. As if Stiles didn’t have the weight of three people’s deaths on his shoulders, Scott wanted to add guilt too?

“I try.” 

That’s all he has to say: I try .

“Yeah, but you’re Scott McCall!” Everyone loves Scott McCall, he can do no wrong, he would have rather died than kill but he wouldn’t have died because he’s Scott McCall . He’s the true alpha, he’s the golden boy, he’s better than Stiles! “You’re the true alpha! Guess what? All of us can’t be true alphas. Some of us have to make mistakes!”

Some of us, he doesn’t say, can’t pick between proper justice and their family.

“Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes!” Stiles feels manic. 

He can’t process that Scott is placing the blame of the night on him, on the bloody wrench. On his best friend without a moment of doubt. What was Stiles supposed to do? What would Scott have done if it was between Melissa and Donovan? What would he have done if he was human? Because—

“ Some of us, ” Stiles yells. “ Are human! ”

Scott though, he doesn’t think. Doesn’t pause. 

Just stares and asks again, “You had to kill him?”

“Yeah.” Stiles replies just as instantly, heart pounding between his ears. “He was going to kill my dad.”

How can he not understand that Stiles doesn’t want anyone to die, ever. He didn’t want his mom to die. Didn’t want Erica to die. Didn’t want Allison to die. Hell, he didn’t even want to have to kill Gerard or Kate! If there’s a better way, he always wants to do it.

It’s just, sometimes, there’s no better way.

“The way that it happened.” His best friend shakes his head and he was looking at Stiles like he had never seen him before, like he wasn’t the same kid that brushed the grit out of his scraped knees on the playground. “There’s a point where it’s just—it’s not self defense anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

What else could have Stiles done? Even his offense seemed like defense, because it was .

Should he just have laid down and taken it? Hid better? It was a school, there were plenty of places to hide (from a human, maybe. Not a chimera). Should Stiles have let Donovan eat him, gotten it over with? Should he have not messed with the support beam? Not let Parrish take the body, should he have asked Dad to arrest him?

Everything he did, everything he does , Stiles does to survive.

To make sure his dad survives.

He doesn’t want all this blood on his hands!

“I didn’t have a choice, Scott.” Stiles doesn’t know how to say this any plainer. Doesn’t know what about the fight Scott could even think Stiles had a choice. Looking between his dark eyes and the look on Scott’s face, Stiles realizes something. “You don’t even believe me, do you?”

Does he think the spark’s pounding heart is about a lie?

“I want to.” Scott says, and that’s as good as saying I don’t .

“Okay, great. So believe me then.” Is Stiles’ immediate reply. The werewolf wasn’t there, he didn’t see the fight Stiles had to put up. He must smell like desperation at this point, if Scott can smell anything past the rain. They’re best friends and Stiles has never lied before. “Scott, say you believe me.”

But he doesn’t. Scott just stares, head shaking in such a little way, he might not have moved at all.

“Say it.” Stiles begs. His hands fist at his sides, he tries to feel for his fingers. Two thumbs. “Say you believe me.”

“Stiles, we can’t kill people that we’re trying to save.”

He tried to save his dad and himself. Left index finger. He doesn’t know why Scott is taking that as he tried to kill Donovan. Right index Finger.

Stiles steps forward to grab onto Scott like he always does. He looks down; two pinkies, left middle, right middle. They’re each other’s anchors, right? But then—then Scott steps back. Scared. Angry. Confused. And Stiles pauses, hurt and confused, and wonders what kind of monster he has to be if a werewolf is scared of his touch.

He looks down, and finds only two ring fingers, and feels his head spin. This is real. It’s real. This is happening.

It’s one of the first times Stiles wants it to be a dream.

“We can’t kill people.” Scott says again.

Right there and then, Stiles realized that it doesn’t matter what Stiles’ intentions will ever be. 

It doesn’t matter what Stiles will ever need or want or believe. It doesn’t matter that the blood shouldn’t be on his hands. It just matters that he killed Erica. And Allison. And now Donovan. 

Scott’s opinions will come first, and Scott always has come first. It doesn’t matter to Stiles that Theo was pulling on Scott’s puppet strings, it doesn’t matter at all how believable it is whether or not Void had left any stains behind in the park, or anything that Deaton said.

It matters to Stiles that he wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt.

 

---

 

“You don’t want me in your pack.” Stiles confirms quietly one day, sitting across from Scott at lunch outside. 

Scott turns and looks at Stiles, head tilted to the side and face constricted in that kicked puppy, doesn’t want to admit the negative thing he’s thinking because he’s such a good person kind of way. “I… Liam doesn’t really trust you. We know that Theo was… challenged, but, they were really close, so.”

“So because Liam had a crush on a serial killer you don’t want me in your pack.” Stiles sighed out. He’s so tired the sarcasm doesn’t even feel real; probably because the words are all true. God, if werewolves were public knowledge he’d have a hell of an amazing college entrance essay to write. “Got it.”

“Stiles-”

“No, don’t worry about it.” The spark waves Scott off. He doubts Scott would truly protest past I don’t mean this to hurt your feelings anyway, and finds himself barely surprised at the lack of fight. “It wasn’t working anyway, especially between me and Deaton.”

Because the spark is sure he can do more than just make balls of light and mess around with mountain ash, but that’s all that the druid wants to teach him about despite having thousands of years of magical knowledge, books, and spells at his disposal.

He’d rather stay enigmatic and neutral than actually be useful. To Stiles, impassivity is not kind.

As they say, give him death before inaction.

Scott’s shoulders pinch up defensively, proving Stiles’ point. “I don’t know why you don’t trust Deaton. He’s been nothing but helpful. Even if he’s a little evasive, he makes sure that we always got the answer we needed! And he’s dedicated to being my emissary.”

“You don’t get it yet, do you?” Stiles looks up and locks eyes with the true alpha, jaw clenching. “ I was the one who always figured out what the mysterious asshole was telling us. Me. Not him. He never gave second clues, never said anything outright, he couldn’t have cared less whether we made it or not.”

That’s true, isn’t it?

Deaton would rather evade the truth and fake neutrality (he’s on his own side, not nature’s, the goddamn hypocritical druid) and let everything around him burn, just to get his own way. He tells Scott he’s the True Alpha because he wants to be in a true alpha’s pack, not because being an alpha is something Scott should be or is even good at.

Say what you will about him being on the sidelines for years but Stiles has never let anyone take his credit, so why start now.

“And in one, five, ten, twenty years when you finally agree or better yet, figure out he’s using you, you’re not allowed to come crying to me because I have tried so hard to have your best interest in mind but because you think I’m weak, or stupid, or too human, or whatever, you don’t listen to me.”

“Stiles!” Scott, at the very least, manages to look completely affronted. “That’s not—you clearly don’t understand who Deaton is, especially if you think-”

Stiles raises a hand, shaking his head. “I’m done arguing about it, Scottie. I’m so sick of you trusting everyone but me—of you thinking everyone is who they aren’t. This isn’t me debating anything, this is just me telling you ‘I told you so’ in advance, because when you figure it out, I’m not sure I’ll even be around.”

He gets up and ditches school, being far too emotional to so much as have Harris look his way without imploding.

When he gets to his house, he only has enough time to shower and get pajama pants on before Derek is climbing through his window and not even seconds later he hears Cora’s noisy ass destroying his kitchen probably trying to make popcorn again , which means Peter’s also there, just stealthily.

“I look like shit?” Stiles asks, looking down to his shaking hands.

“Ten.” Derek answers, before he can even begin to count.

The spark looks up and realizes that the alpha watching him has his full trust. Through Erica, and the Void, and even Donovan, he was never questioned. Every time it’s come down to it, Derek has trusted Stiles, and even before that, trusted his gut instinct.

So he realizes something, the packs are split and due to his nature, Stiles can never be truly neutral, so why is he attempting to be?

Notes:

sooooo how are we feeling about this :p

Chapter 4: defy the natural order

Stiles promises himself that he’s not going to count his fingers all day. It’s a new challenge. Something that once would have made him think he was crazy for doing makes him feel crazy for not, but he needs to learn and there’s no better time than the present.

He gets all the way to Harris’ class—go figure!—before he starts to feel like he’s losing it.

Scott hasn’t talked to him in weeks now which actually might be a blessing, Lydia has started to nod at him in the hallway which definitely is (when before she was ignoring that he existed still, which he didn’t take personally because her being the hot popular girl in school is pretty much the only thing in her life that’s still normal).

In the class he sits between Harley, man, he misses her, and Danny, who stares at him like he’s lost it every time he fidgets in his seat.

Which, to be fair, he probably has.

Gerard Argent took him before Void invaded his mind. He wonders a lot if that first sign of weakness, the inability not to be taken bonded with the fear and anxiety, is what drew the nogitsune to him in the first place. Everyone thought that Void would have chosen someone strong.

But strength has nothing to do with claws, sharp teeth, or muscles.

It has everything to do with the ability to withstand.

Honestly, everyone should count themselves lucky that Stiles was the one who was chosen instead of Peter, because when he looks at the facts of it, it was between them. They’re the ones who go through anything and turn out, well, not okay, Peter definitely isn’t okay mentally, but he regains his intelligence and always has, even through the haze.

They also don’t rely on anyone else to help them, either.

But when everyone always has and will look at Peter like he’s a villain, so it was a simple choice.

Everything that Stiles did goes back to the nogitsune, goes back to the Argent family, goes back to his mother’s death. None of this is his fault. The blood is still on his hands. Both of these things can still be true. Hands. Fingers. Void. He clenches his fists under the desk, leg bouncing, and forces himself not to start counting. 

Stiles can read the notebook in front of him; everything is fine.

He’s in advanced biology, year four, despite not having taken year one through three. Dad wanted him to aim high this year, so he’s aiming high. He doesn’t even remember picking his classes. From the looks of it, Void and Dad picked what would be the most challenging to a regular person and most annoying to him.

Masters and Johnson’s sexual response cycle has four major stages, his page reads. The words are all in the right order, the letters do not start fading or floating or turning into a terrible sentence he doesn’t want to read. His hands stay clenched under the table. E.P.O.R.

He’s in his senior year, he is no longer the sophomore that was dragged down a back alley and hit over the head. He is not the same sixteen year old boy who was beaten and bruised, who begged to be tortured in place of his friends. Who was tortured in place of his friends.

Stiles is almost eighteen.

It’s almost been two years.

He doesn’t regret taking the shocks for Erica, even if she’s dead now. He doesn’t regret letting Gerard pistol whip him so he wouldn’t kill Boyd, even though he knows that right now Boyd is holding on by a string because he’s missing his mate. The good deeds of the past don’t outweigh the bad ones.

“The most important thing,” Dad said. “Is that you know where your feet fell.”

Stiles remembers stumbling out of the Argent basement and walking home, blood dripping on the concrete below him and thinking that he wishes it was Scott, and then feeling selfish for it. He remembers wanting to defend these thoughts to his dad after he called him a hero, because heroes don’t wish their best friends were tortured.

He had his defense prepared: if it was Scott, Allison would have saved him and he could have howled for Derek. If it was Scott, he would have kept his mouth shut instead of antagonizing Gerard. If it was Scott, Peter could have tracked him. If it was Scott he could have figured something out because that’s the job of a True Alpha.

But if it was Scott, Erica and Boyd would have died.

Scott would have trusted their ability to take it just like Scott would think he could take it. Just like he told Stiles he was glad he could, because most humans wouldn’t have been able to take a werewolf’s amount of torture . So no, looking back, he’s glad that it wasn’t Scott.

Why is he thinking about this?

He’s in his biology class, because he’s a senior.

E.P.O.R. stands for Excitement, Plateau, Orgasm and Resolution. He remembers waking up after being beaten for the first time and wishing that he could have stayed asleep, he didn’t care what they did as long as he was asleep for it. Excitement happens when the body starts to prepare for intercourse. But when he was asleep, they hurt Erica and Boyd.

Stiles doesn’t want to be thinking about Gerard and sex at the same time. Intercourse, not sex. Intercourse is the business version of it, the professional statement. Plateau is when the actual sexual activity happens. He remembers Harley making a joke about calling it a plateau because the start is ‘so boring’. He remembers the crude remarks about Derek.

“Stiles.” A hand on his leg, the bouncing leg that was probably shaking the table at this point, knocks him out of it.

When he looks up and sees the genuine concern in Danny’s brown eyes, his immediate response is to count his fingers. 

Everyone knows what an orgasm is, he can’t believe he wrote that. He’s not allowed to count his fingers today because Stiles is supposed to be getting better, he told his dad he was getting better, but how does he even know if he’s getting better in real life if he can’t count his fingers, and-

“Stilinski.” Danny says again, pulling on his hand. “Come on.”

He follows him without complaint, hears Harris make some snide remark about them getting detention and one of Jackson’s old football buddy wolf whistling in the back when Danny says “Just the bathroom, Mr.” but nothing can really get through.

They end up in the locker room, the spark is placed on a bench leaning back against cool lockers while Danny crouches in front of him.

“I didn’t think I was your type.” Stiles manages to choke out. 

Danny gives him a sharp look and shakes his head. “I know you might not want to talk about this and I only know what Jack filled me in on,” Which, knowing that asshole was: werewolves are real, no, yeah, I was the giant lizard, sorry, no, back to practice? “So I didn’t know you were magic too.”

He takes a deep breath and tries to remind himself that Void is gone. Gone. Not dead. “Too?”

“I’m a witch.” 

“A witch?”

“Witches have magic running in their blood, they’re capable of connecting to the mana, the natural energy and magic, of anything and using that natural pull to guide it. That just means I can do natural magic of preexisting things, like help plants grow or help things heal. There’s a lot more to it.”

“I didn’t think there were any witches in Beacon Hills. What I’ve read so far tells me most witches keep to themselves. Like in the mountains and stuff.” Them talking like nothing is wrong helps, it’s grounding. Because nothing is wrong. There’s no reason to feel like he needs to be sick, there’s no reason to count his fingers right now.

“Most lone witches do.” Grinning, the goalie reaches down his collar and pulls out a simple silver necklace with a sea turtle on it. “It runs in my family—skips a generation each time. My grammie teaches me, and gave me this honu as a symbol of protection not just for me, but those around me. I could sense you from a mile away, though.”

Stiles nods. He already knows he needs to get better at keeping his aura, as Deaton put it, to himself. But, alas, he is simply stuck making balls of light, moving mountain ash and feeling the energy around him so far. “I’m, um, I’m supposed to be learning from Deaton, but I don’t learn well from people I can’t trust.”

“Deaton as in McCall’s boss?”

“Deaton as in Ultra Druid Supreme.”

“Oh shit,” Danny chuckles, clearly caught off guard. He sits back on the floor—he should know better when they both know it probably hasn’t been cleaned in years and they both intimately know how gross their teammates are—and shakes his head. “Nobody can learn from a druid other than another druid.”

“Like nepotism.” Stiles agrees.

Brown eyes regard him questioningly. “So you’re not a druid, then?”

“Do I look like I’m capable of maintaining an air of unhelpful mystery?”

He really hopes that the answer to this is no because Danny moves on without answering, instead he just asks “What are you then?” in reply.

Stiles shrugs, feeling so lame in comparison.

“A spark?” At first, he thinks Danny’s looking at him like this (a little confused, pretty shocked) because he said that like a question—which it’s not, he is a spark—but then he realizes the goalie is a little pale, eyes gone wider than he’s seen. He can’t have broken Danny, everyone loves Danny!

He doesn’t need to count. He could read in class.

Everything is fine because he says it is.

“You’re a spark. Not a druid who has a spark talisman, or, like, I mean, everything deals with sparks, but—you’re like, an actual spark?” Asking so frantically really throws Stiles off because he’s pretty sure that exactly nobody else made a big deal out of this.

Then again, the two people in his life that would know a thing or two about sparks (Deaton, Peter) weren’t exactly in the helpful or informative mood when they discovered this and Peter was told to back off about Stiles’ studies enough that he’s pretty sure even that stubborn ‘wolf has given up.

“Yeah…?” Stiles laughs nervously, digging his nails into his palms. 

“Okay,” Danny takes a deep, steadying breath, and Stiles mimics the movement before he realizes what he’s doing—so used to people trying to lead him through panic that any time someone audibly inhales, he tries to copy them. “You clearly don’t understand how big of a deal that is.”

“What, is it that shocking?” Get it? Spark, shock? 

He should really stop coping with humor.

“No, Stiles, holy shit, shut up.”

“Since you asked so politely, sure.”

Danny fixes him with a stern look and he raises his hands in defense; he quickly counts them before putting them down. Ten. He exhales. He’s fine. He only did it because they were right there. He wasn’t trying . He’s still better . This doesn’t count as cheating.

“Sparks are a once in a century thing-”

“Like the avatar?” He blurts out. Yikes, yep, he forgot his adderall.

Thankfully, Danny sighs—he knows what he’s gotten into, he’s known Stiles since second grade, he knows that he can’t actually shut up. “Yes, like the avatar. It’s a once in a generation type thing, except sparks are so rare in general and so… sought after, that they typically don’t have children with the gift.”

“My mom wasn’t a spark.” Stiles quickly defends, then frowns. “At least, I don’t think so.”

If his mom was magical she definitely would have told Dad, and he’d have told Stiles.

Danny shakes his head. “She didn’t need to be. It sometimes just… shows up. Think of being a spark like having a really recessive but really powerful gene. It only takes one spark ancestor to have made you, and it could have been many generations ago. The gift picks when to show itself in the worthy. They’re not like me, or druids, who manipulate the existing sparks in things, who have a tiny little spark themself to control and do minor magic with. They are magic.”

“Shouldn’t I be better at it then?” He immediately asks. If Stiles is a spark, shouldn’t he be, like, super over powered then? And like, super talented. It sucked trying to build the single ash barrier, you’d think if he was magic then the rest would just follow. “Deaton could be wrong with the whole magical creature diagnosis thing. I kind of suck.”

He’s the furthest thing from worthy .

“ That’s why you’re not powerful.” Danny immediately says.

“And what does that mean?” Brown eyes roll before he can help himself. He was definitely misdiagnosed. Is diagnosed even the right word? “My crippling self esteem is stopping me from being able to perform spells as magic myself that a non magical being who just happened to study the thing could?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Sparks are so powerful because them being magic themselves allows them to break all the rules the rest of us magic users have to follow. Druids have to follow spells and guides and have to study just to do minor things, because they’re born human, and witches can only interact and changes things in nature that can change naturally on their own. Sparks don’t.”

Stiles looks at him with a frown. “I don’t understand.”

“You can do anything with your magic that you believe that you can do.” He explains. Stiles can feel the excited energy flowing out of him, but it seems to radiate out of the—honu? “You don’t need to follow spells, you can defy the natural order. You can do anything.”

“That’s why you said sparks are sought after?”

He’s the Sheriff’s son; he knows when he hears power to immediately think danger .

Danny winces. “I mean, if you get a spark bound to you that means that you basically have someone who can do anything for you. You should really be careful, Stiles. Be careful around anyone who actively seeks you out to be around if they know, or even if they don’t. Especially alphas.”

“Can they, um, ‘bind’ me to them if I don’t want them to?” Stiles thinks he wouldn’t mind being bound to Derek. Then he thinks of the pool, those cold two hours, and thinks again. 

Derek would definitely mind.

“No, you have to join the pack willingly and magically assert yourself, just like any emissary would. But there’s ways to get around every rule like that, and it’s not just alphas who could want you. It could also be druids or even witches or anything who just want an energy boost, or a weapon.”

“I’m not a weapon.” Stiles says.

Danny blinks at him. “You could be.”

He thinks about the way that Peter only gave him the choice of the bite out of everyone when he was cracked out on alpha juice—even Lydia, who he wanted to keep liking him because that sort of manipulation can’t be easily replaced, and thinks yeah, that could be true .

Which means he really has to talk to Peter about being a spark.

He knew before Deaton what Stiles was and now that Stiles refuses to be a part of the McCall pack (and the McCall pack refuses to take him) he has no ties left to stop him from doing so, either. Peter will tell it to him straight, at least compared to a druid.

“Your belief is what allows you to do anything.” Danny reiterates. “What do you believe you can do so far?”

“Make orbs of light, move mountain ash, feel the vibe.” Stiles instantly recites because, yep, that’s about it.

The witch—which Stiles is surprised about but isn’t shocked over because this is Beacon Hills , of course someone as random and uncoincidental as Danny is a witch, which just makes him smarter than everyone else for being able to stay out of their bullshit for so long, no thanks to Jackson—shakes his head.

“That’s all?” He asks in disbelief. 

Stiles nods and Danny runs a hand down his face. 

“Alright, okay, um, do you want to come over to my house at some point? My grammie can give you books on sparks and maybe a honu of your own to block your energy until you’re able to do that yourself. You really don’t want any magic user to be able to sense how strong you are.”

“Um,” There’s probably countless and better books in the ancient Hale vault but that requires gaining access and permission to it, if he doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of an angry ‘wolf pack, so he’s not going to pass this up when it’s basically free information. “Sure. Will Jackass be there?”

“Until he tells Grammie that he’s a werewolf he gets the equivalent of werewolf ipacac whenever he steps towards the house.” Despite this being about his best friend, Danny’s grinning the entire time he speaks. “I keep telling him witches don’t take kindly to those who don’t announce your nature, but he’s stubborn.”

Stiles nods, tilting his head at the other boy. “You’re a witch, were you mad at him for keeping it all a secret?”

“No.” Danny shrugs. “I’m pretty sure everything thinking I was ignorant to everything saved my life more than once.”

The spark thinks of Gerard Argent, of the Alpha Pack, and even of Void who saw everyone as a threat and agrees. 

In Beacon Hills, those on the sidelines become two things: victims, or spares. He’d rather be a spare any time of day. Being magical, Danny could make sure he doesn’t turn into a victim (more than he did) without drawing attention to himself, which was beyond intelligent.

“Yeah,” He laughs awkwardly, leaning fully back against the cold lockers. “I bet it did.”

When Stiles looks down next he realizes he hasn’t needed to count in a while.

 

---

 

Stiles is allowed to defy the natural order.

That’s what Danny had said and for some reason he believes it.

He doesn’t tell anyone about what he and Danny talked about and hopes that Danny won’t either. Neither of them asked the other to keep their status a secret but there’s an inherent trust between not magic users, but boys who’ve known each other since they were snot nosed brats not to betray one another.

To figure out what this means, he tries to define what the natural order actually is.

Here is where he drives over to the address that Danny sent him, introduces himself as someone who doesn’t quite know what he is yet, gets a cup of tea, a pinch on the cheek and enough books, printed blogs and journals made by magic users and from the Mahealani family to make an illiterate blush.

“Next time,” The Mahealani crone says, eyeing Stiles throat in a way that makes goosebumps rise on his skin. “I’ll have something for you.”

“T-thanks.” He stammered out, arms full and retreating to his jeep as fast as possible.

In the gathered texts, Stiles finds examples about life cycles of everything from elephants to plants, photosynthesis and crystallization of butterflies, about the changing seasons and weather patterns, about reversing gravitational pulls and thermodynamics, about the sunsets and rises, and the moon cycles.

Then Stiles finds a very old and very intriguing journal from someone who calls themselves ‘Nature’s Rogue’ on the cover but Wise, which was probably her surname, on the pages in the giant pile of texts. She talks about  general life and death as an unlabeled magic user. 

It was dated in the late 1910’s, when the United States was still pretending it wasn’t intentionally gearing up for the first world war. 

The author talks about being raised and living in the Appalachians—she was probably a native melungeon, if her descriptions are accurate—and discovering that she could ‘do anything she set her mind to,’ including once ‘at the peak of the moon’ bringing back her dearest friend Dorothea, who had been killed the week before.

‘it’s possible ,’ Wise writes, ‘ that something like this could be done perhaps once a century. the shift in fate, the power from the earth that’s drained… too soon would result in the death of the magic user, no doubt. it is no question of why I have stayed here, in the terrible sanctuary imprisonment of these mountains. 

there are scarier men than there are monsters.

if I’m still alive in 100 years I’m sure that I will try again. for my lovely mother and eldest brother, Maverick, had passed this winter from the unsettling cold, found skinny to the bone. one of those terrible creatures i dare not invoke had kept them from leaving the house for timber nor to hunt. I agree with their decision. 

better to starve than be eaten.’

Stiles starts to spiral. 

There’s this voice that sounds a little too much like Peter in the back of his head that tells him he could right the wrong and another voice that sounds like Void’s growl that says even if you can undo some of what we did, the blood will still be on our hands because that’s true, isn’t it?

No matter what he fixes, he still has killed Erica. Somehow. And Allison, and the deputies. Donovan.

That stains, it weighs him down.

He remembers his dad, who was born catholic but became loosely atheist and vaguely spiritual after marrying Mom, talking to him about what will happen once she passes. Stiles remembers asking about the big letters: DNR. Dad said, “Your mom believes that this is not the only plane people live on. That once she passes, she’ll move on to the next. So she doesn’t want to come back because once she’s there, she thinks that’s where she’s supposed to be.”

Remembering this makes him groan. 

He starts pacing all around and probably smells like nervous sweats and anxiety from a mile away.

Not only could the possibilities of doing this be something extremely selfish on his end but he has no way of knowing those who’ve passed have found a better life on another plane. But what if they don’t believe in that? What if belief isn’t important here? Stiles has no idea why he’s worrying about this.

It’s not like he’s strong enough to do anything about it.

Chapter 5: wrongful deaths

Notes:

so it's been a while but i've been going through a lot (nobody warned me the ao3 author's curse was real :'( soooo). I really hope you guys enjoy, i hope to write more soon!

Laying in bed, Stiles begins to test the magic belief system sparks supposedly have.

Light orbs he knows he can make, but now he thinks about turning them different colors. It can’t be that much more magical of him to do, right? He ends up with a strobe light that makes him dizzy and has to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on the color green for it to hold still.

Stiles figures at some point he’ll have to start keeping his eyes open.

But he’s not quite at that level of belief yet where he thinks it’ll still happen if he’s watching.

His whole room ends up an ethereal color, a dark green with little flecks of gold within it, illuminating the space just enough to allow him to see everything. It cures the pain behind his eyes in a second; Stiles hadn’t been aware that he’d been tiredly squinting.

Mountain ash is something that he has to lay down in lines.

Lines that he walks down, dropping slowly from his hands.

Deaton has always had him walk along the space that he’s trying to protect, slowly and with a focus that is normally hard or interrupted by his overactive brain, often making him feel stupid. Well. It’s not the interruption that makes him feel stupid, he could always just pick back up.

It’s more so the way that Deaton looks at him with pursed lips as if he’s saying I could be teaching someone so much better than you . As if Stiles is a burden. As if he’s only doing it because the spark fell into his lap, and not because he went out of his way to invite him into his office.

This time he gathered up a little bit in his palm—so he pilfered the vet’s office the last time he was there for emergencies, so what? (and so what if this isn’t an emergency!)—and believes that because he can create long lines from too little ash, he can do this. 

Because magic. 

Because ‘magic’ is the best explanation he needs now, apparently.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Stiles throws the mountain ash down and imagines it forming in a perfect line around his window, breeze notwithstanding. When the spark blinks his eyes open, two things happen: the first is he sees the line of mountain ash perfectly laid down, not a speck out of place.

The second is that he watches in slow motion horror as Derek’s perfect, alpha, manly figure tries to jump onto his open window only to hit the barrier, make a hilariously shocked face, and fall straight down. He lets out a laugh and thinks about the line breaking itself and when he looks down, there’s a break in it. 

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and imagines the ash putting itself back into the container.

And to his amazement, that happens too!

Cracking his window open wider (Stiles isn’t sure when one of the ‘wolves removed his screen but figures if he didn’t notice right away it’s not actually that important, right?) Stiles sticks his head out with a victorious grin, looking down to where Derek and his mighty eyebrows are glaring at him.

“I think I found a way to make you knock like a normal person.” Stiles calls down. Derek opens his mouth but he waves one hand, cutting him off. “Wait, wait, let me guess what you’ll say.” He inhales like he’s about to yell and then, in a quiet voice asks, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”

Surprisingly, Derek barks out a laugh (get it, barks ). “Shut up.”

“Hey, buddy.” He raises his hands defensively. “You’re the one that said it.”

“I am not —whatever.” Stiles is pretty sure that he’s the only one who can get the alpha to cave so easily, and sure, it’s because he’s really annoying but it still happens. Truly, that has to count for something. “Why was there mountain ash in your window?”

Stiles means to just tell him that he’s practicing magic but he ends up telling Derek everything about what he learned—keeping Danny’s name out of it—and how he can apparently do anything he wants too (even if he doesn’t really believe that). 

“It’s definitely a good thing I found this out after Scott lost influence over me.” He jokes.

It’s not that he thinks that Scott would have used him, per se, but he does think that because Scott trusted Deaton more than him that he would have gone along with any plan Deaton made that would have ended up with them using Stiles for more than he’s comfortable with.

And Stiles is famously bad at saying ‘no’ when he wants to.

Nodding, Derek tilts his head to the side. “So sparks are the true alpha of magic users?”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”

Derek gives him a look. “Are you doing a project about Shakespeare?”

“Charlotte Perkins Gilman, actually.” This gets him blank looks. “The yellow wallpaper? You know, you’re locked in a room and you go a little crazy? But only if someone else locked you in there.” He shrugs, flopping back onto his desk share, slouched. “Gilman knows what’s up.”

“You’re so weird.” Derek says, nose wrinkling—but there’s this certain fondness that makes Stiles grin, instead of the typical twisted gut feeling he gets when someone calls him that. “Alright, Gilman.” The alpha sits down on the edge of his bed. Then he blurts: “Isaac has been sad lately.”

“Well ‘the anniversary’ is coming up, so I’m sure he’s being reminded of all the shit that’s hard to get through.”

“Anniversary?” Asking this, Derek’s head tilts enough like a dog that it’s endearing instead of goofy.

Stiles spins around in his desk chair as he answers with “His brother’s death.” because if it’s not the first thing that comes to Derek’s mind, he’s not sure how much he should say. At the same time, he’s Isaac’s alpha now (for good) and that comes with some level of responsibility towards Isaac’s well being and mental health.

“Ah.” Derek makes a face, and his shoulders pinch up. The alpha, unfortunately, knows what it feels like.

“If anyone can relate, it’s you.” He says carefully. “It could be helpful to remind him about that.”

“Maybe.” He agrees, and Stiles lets him leave it at that.

 

---

 

The next time that Stiles comes across a spell that could actually resurrect someone—because bringing life back to a corpse is completely different than revival —it’s from the daughter of an ancient Mahealani witch who claims her mother is half fae and she’s recording her doings for her.

He hesitates to ask Grammie Mahealani if that’s true at all, the spark has heard countless stories throughout the years of fae reproducing with humans but he (probably thankfully) hasn’t had any reason yet to suspect that the fae are real, least of all by the fair court standard.

Stiles supposes that it doesn’t actually matter if it’s true or not.

The spell is the most important part here.

In her writing, the half fae’s daughter calls it Soul Resurrection. They were figuring out a way to save her baby who had died from what sounds like an allergic reaction they didn’t know existed at the time and when trying to raise him, raised her uncle, the half fae’s brother, instead. 

The brother had been killed by an archer while foraging using his magic, an unjust death.

Here is where Stiles starts to come across that particular conundrum:

Fateful death, apparently, is much more difficult (impossible sounding, even) to reverse than wrongful death—death brought on by unfated injustice. There is a reason that those who were raised were some version of murdered and close or related to the magic user.

Blood connection seems important.

Unfair death seems even more-so.

And while the murder of the Hale family is unjust, there’s not one drop of Hale blood in all of Stiles’ body (unless he can figure out if a blood ritual counts, and if so, if Derek, Peter or Cora are willing). But Deaton has said there’s a way to perform a spell through—he thinks?—someone, so maybe he can do that too?

Something else is that he would want to bring back Erica and Allison, and while Mr. Argent might be willing to do a spell if it means having his daughter back, bringing the Reyes family into this world would be more dangerous for them than anything else he could think of. 

Maybe a mate would count? He hopes. Or he could steal some of her brother’s blood… Okay, maybe Stiles shouldn’t take it that far. He just finally wants to do some good. 

The thing is that Stiles is the one who killed Erica.

The most he could do is bring her back.

 

---

 

Claudia Magdalene Gajos was a member of the Great Gajos Pack in Poland.

In 1972, she was born, twenty-five years later, Stiles was. By the time he was eight, their pack that had consisted of over fifty werewolves, druids, vampires and rusalkas (which apparently he’s also part of, given his grandmother was one?) had been hunted down into the single digits.

Her life was saved when she married Dad at twenty-one, but one of the reasons she got so sick so fast (deteriorated completely by the time Stiles was twelve) was because of the pack sickness from being torn away from all her bonds. It didn’t matter that she was ‘human’—as close to a human as the mother of spark could get.

Stiles, in searching for any notes from the Gajos Pack things he inherited—there’s an entire safe room in the Stilinski basement that’s full of stuff—comes across notes from an emissary from a few centuries ago, one of his great, great, great, great, great, rusalka ancestors that realized they ‘could do more than any natural siren could’.

Their pet seal (cool, by the way) was slaughtered by the hunters in an attempt to kill him.

Eaten, too.

When he raised the seal back from the dead, using the moon cycles and water (somehow he already seemed to understand it had to be a wrongful death? But Stiles couldn’t find any records of someone in the Gajos pack performing necromancy) it did something else too.

It killed all of the hunters that had eaten the animal, and a single one who didn’t.

Which now makes Stiles nervous that Peter—for Laura—would also die. What if he just kills Peter instead of raising anyone? All he’s doing then is just causing more problems! And sure, Peter isn’t the best person ever, but he’s still a really important person in Derek’s life.

There’s a reason Stiles, before killing Erica and Alison, before he was packless, made a point to get alone. Well. Get alone in the way that one can get along with Peter. He grows more frustrated with every passing day. Finally, he gives himself permission to drive to Derek’s loft (when he knows the alpha isn’t there).

More so, he gives himself permission to see Peter.

The creep is there waiting for him already by the time Stiles can even see the parking lot, which is concerning because he’s pretty sure Roscoe isn’t running rough enough to be told apart from other cars—and it’s not like he was singing to himself.

Taking a deep breath, Stiles touches each one of his fingers, only counts two thumbs , and then exits the car.

“Uncle Pete.” He greets, slinging his research-filled backpack over one shoulder.

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Why are you here, Stiles?”

“I’m a spark.” Stiles declares.

The door swings open.

Notes:

thoughts?

Chapter 6: crossed off names

Notes:

this is TRULY the start of it all! enjoy <3

Peter is all on board for the revival plan.

Which, as someone who’s come back more times than anyone else wanted, makes quite a lot of sense. After helping Stiles break into the Hale vault—there is so much good information—he stays up with him for a few days gathering information, and charting a plan.

He seems a lot more like the uncle Derek talks about having as a kid than the one Stiles has experienced.

Derek himself doesn’t seem to understand why Stiles would tell Creepy Wolf something that he wouldn’t tell him, but he respects it and doesn’t go into Peter’s office, though Peter says the scent of his curiosity has started to turn into the sour of desperation.

It’s only a little funny to Stiles.

Derek is nosy.

And it’s not that Stiles doesn’t want to tell Derek, either, it’s just… he can’t get his hopes up, yet. He can’t look the alpha in the eye and say your family could live and be wrong about it. It would destroy Derek, and Cora, and even hurt Malia. It would be cruel.

Peter is different.

From the start Peter has said that he won’t be bringing his mate back. It’s complicated bringing back someone who is pregnant, in the first place, but if he feels their bond for even one second and then the spell fails, it would destroy him more than the fire did.

Demon Alpha Peter was something else.

Stiles doesn’t want to meet a worse thing.

They decide to use the moon phase information that’s in almost every source, especially because Beacon Hills is very much connected to the moon via the Nemeton. Then Peter lets him go through the Hale family tree, he gives him the documents that charts times of deaths, autopsies and burials.

Most of them were just bones, or ash.

But most of everyone was found.

During this time, Stiles kicks himself out of the Hale loft. It just seems… insensitive, to look at these things around them. Dragging up old memories, invalidating the source of their pain by melting down everyone they loved to the titles like: Body 9, Bones, Grandmother. 

Informing Danny’s grandmother of what he was planning to do when a lot less smack on the back of the head and yelling as he expected. Instead she gave him books on how to grow his power, things that can be needed for and aid blood and life spells, and how to draw proper energy from this earth.

He didn’t even realize that he could kill himself so easily.

But he starts practicing immediately.

This is so when Stiles finally tells his dad what he’s doing, he can show off and build confidence, and not make that worried look Dad always gets when he’s about to do something risky. “It’ll take at least two months to prepare.” Stiles tells him, a firm line in his mouth. “But we can do it. I just need help.”

“With?” Dad asks, looking a bit surprised.

It’s fair—there’s not much in the supernatural world he can help with other than support and maybe shooting at things to scare them away.

Stiles answers slowly, and with a wince. “...Chris Argent?”

It’s kind of down hill from there.

Mostly because it’s hard to explain that yes, he wants Allison back not because she just deserves to live and he misses her, but because it’s her blood on his hands. Erica’s too. He needs to raise them back or die trying, he can’t go on like this. He desperately wishes Void didn’t exist.

Or he wishes he died before it got to him.

 

---

 

Dad makes Chris strip down before inviting him into the house.

Stiles is there in the living room, anxious, and biting at his nails, and completely understanding if Chris still decides to run to the kitchen and grab a knife. He killed his daughter. Celebrated when his father and sister died. Tried to change Chris’ truth about his wife’s death.

He would deserve it.

He’d deserve it.

“We’re going to talk about Allison.” Dad says. 

Chris immediately straightens up, pausing where he’s buttoning up his shirt. He eyes where Dad’s hand is still on his pistol and sighs. “I’m not going to hurt Stiles, Noah. I understand you being protective, trust me. I’ve made as much amends as I can.”

“As we can.” Stiles mumbles. 

“Forgive me for not taking chances.” Dad says sarcastically.

The Argent man is directed to take a seat and he does. They sit in silence while Dad pours two cups of black coffee for them, and brings Stiles a can of ginger beer. Good thing, because Stiles is feeling nauseous right about now. He keeps resisting the urge to look down and count.

Maybe he should have told Lydia what’s going on before this.

“What are we talking about exactly?”

Stiles takes a breath and asks “How’s Isaac?” as a way to stall.

Chris raises an eyebrow at him, but answers nonetheless. “Derek helped him through more than I thought he would through this last month. I can help, but sometimes I’m not enough. Not with Isaac’s past and all my issues. Derek… offered me a place in the pack, to be Isaac’s guardian all around.”

“You considering it?” Noah asks—the exact same question on Stiles’ tongue.

“It goes against my very being to think of myself as part of a pack.” He explains. “But I have a son now, and he’s a ‘wolf, so… parenting is about adapting. But I haven’t talked to Isaac about what he wants. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants some degree of separation, after everything.”

After Boyd.

After Erica.

Stiles flinches and turns his head to their living room bookshelf, reading the different titles as fast as he can. He can read. Everything is fine. He doesn’t have to count his fingers because his dad is right here, he’s not losing time, and everything sucks but it’s real.

And Stiles just needs to focus on that.

He takes a deep breath and pushes his nervous energy down—past the wood, and the pipes, and the concrete, and into the earth. He brings back calm, grounding energy, and lets himself feel everything for a moment before breathing back out. He’s okay.

His energy hasn’t been let out in over a week.

Danny says he can’t sense magic at all.

And apparently, that’s a really good thing!

In the time Stiles is calming down, Dad keeps the small talk focused on Isaac and doing what’s right for kids, and anything that he thinks he should say. Chris is polite the whole time, and the crazy, grief-like look in his eye doesn’t make an appearance once.

Finally, Stiles is ready.

“There’s a spell.” Is how he decides to start, getting the attention of both men. “And I’m pretty sure I can do it.”

Chris looks less than optimistic. “I’m not interested in anything that would let me talk to my daughter in the afterlife. I’m under the belief that Ally has peace right now, and I’m not looking to disturb that. My little girl has been through enough, hasn’t she?”

“No.” Stiles says.

Chris’ jaw clenches.

“She hasn’t graduated high school or, or bought a car. She didn’t get to walk down the aisle, or have children, and watch you grow old. She didn’t get to buy the new bow she wanted or the promise rings Lydia had been looking at. No.” He repeats, shaking his head. “There’s a thousand more moments of joy, and pain, and grief that she deserves to go through. She hasn’t been through enough. She’s only seventeen.”

There’s silence for a moment and tears in Chris’ blue eyes, then he clears his throat and asks, “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Like I said, there’s a spell…”

 

---

 

Stiles and Peter decide to raise the majority of the family back up.

There’s some specifics that they decide not to do, like Peter bringing back his mate, Eve. He tried to give his suggestion and accept everything Peter decided; for once it was best to have him in control. Others wouldn’t be bright back, too. Stiles will try to raise Peter’s sisters, Talia and Lorie, as well as Ana, Lorie’s wife. But he’s not going to focus on Talia’s first trimester or Ana’s second trimester pregnancies.

If  the pregnancies are viable after the spell and he can help more, the spark would love that… but attempting to revive a life within a life isn’t something Stiles is confident about.

He doesn’t want to risk leaving any of the women dead because of it.

Peter knew both Talia and Ana well enough to say they’d prefer being saved over the fetus, which he really did try to take into account, but the more and more this plan goes on, the more guilty Stiles feels about everyone that he’s intentionally leaving behind, born or not.

He’s playing god just like Void.

It’s easier than letting go of the potential of bringing Eve and Ursie, their daughter, back. She was in her late third trimester and it would be much easier to bring back the fetus in good health, given she could have already been born as well. 

But Peter doesn’t want to risk it.

So Stiles isn’t going to.

There’s others who were burned in the fire that won’t make it. Or, the chance of them making it is so low that it could kill Stiles to try (a ledge Peter had to tell his father about in order to talk Stiles off of. It just didn’t seem right).

Like Oliver, David’s—Derek’s dad—brother, or Grace, Eve’s human sister.

Neither was in the pack, which is intrinsically tied to the spell (which is why Allison has to be raised last and as fast as possible once the pack’s part is done), but none of the pack still alive was close to either, and while they could use the Hale children for their blood relation to Oliver, nobody has one to Grace.

On top of that, Oliver’s mate took her own life (she lived in a nearby California pack) afterwards. There wouldn’t be much for him left that’d be worth it.

Chances are he would end up buried again anyway. 

Peter truly was an exception.

Every time someone is raised, it will drain the life and energy and power from whoever raises them enough to bring them back—with a group, this won’t kill someone, and this will make it as easy as possible to raise multiple people. But the energy is finite, and it’s precious.

Stiles can’t waste a single ounce of it.

But there’s so many more he will try for.

He has to remind himself of this every time the spark looks at the list of crossed-off names. He will raise Talia and David.  All of Derek’s siblings that passed: August, Laura, Tyler, Tobias, Jason, Owen and Dorothy. His grandparents, Ursula and Laurence. His Aunt Lorie and Ana, and their children, Laurence II and Leah. If there’s energy after, he will try for Oliver, for Grace. 

For every life lost.

Allison.

Erica.

Anyone and everyone that passed in a grievous way. Anyone who they can give justice to, they will. They’ll try their best, and that might hurt, they might still have so much to grieve—of course they will—but they could rebuild more. Could live again, live better, safer.

That’s good enough for Stiles.

Notes:

hope this was okay.... ?

Chapter 7: almost funny

Notes:

two chapters in two days? look at me go!

Stiles is meeting Scott and Deaton.

Two thumbs, he counts while checking the time. They’re five minutes late. Left index finger, right index finger. Dad promised to stay in the parking lot the whole time. Both pinkies, he doesn’t doubt that Peter’s there too, listening to the plan, ready to jump in to defend the chance for his family to live.

Left middle, Scott’s always late. 

Right middle, Deaton isn’t trustworthy.

Lydia’s perfectly manicured hand lands on Stiles’ forearm, making him jump. She says nothing, just throws her hair over her shoulder and goes back to swiping on her phone but the contact is enough to ground him. The valedictorian is here not just as a source of support. 

She’s here to prove to Deaton that with or without his support, Stiles has someone with enough magic to be a good back-up, to prove that they can make it work. To prove that he’s willing to go through with it either way. As a druid, Deaton isn’t going to want to defy the natural order of anything. 

Lydia is here to remind him he’s not just a druid.

He was the emissary of the Hale pack. 

Deaton didn’t protect the pack back then and she is one of the only people who feels the weight of their deaths hanging around her enough to truly and as insultingly as possible point that out to him. He owes them and it’s about time the dead collect on it.

Plus Scott has always been kind of scared of her. 

Stiles isn’t intimidating or smart enough or good enough of a spark to do anything like this in his eyes. Having someone like Lydia next to him, an out-of-pack alliance nonetheless, also helps prove that they’re ready—they hope to pry on Allison’s death as a last resort.

He shouldn’t be there just for Allison’s sake.

It would impact the whole spell.

Half an hour late, Scott finally walks in with his head held high, Deaton on one side and Liam on the other. Stiles waves at them, the thumb of his other hand already between his teeth, and glances out into the parking lot to double check that the cruiser is still there.

And of course, it is.

The thing about his dad, Stiles knew, the thing about his dad is that he was the perfect movie sheriff. 

He walked the cop walk, talked the cop talk. He was calm and composed, he was stern and intense. He had an air that made people shut up and listen. He was a crack shot even from too far away. He was a smooth talker. He was intimidating as hell when he was angry.

Stiles knows that really, his dad was a Sheriff for the people of Beacon Hills—not a Sheriff for the written word and arrest rate. He embodied the law but wasn’t above going around it to protect people, which, in retrospect, has made Stiles regret not telling his dad about the supernatural sooner.

It’s something both Scott and Deaton respect.

At least, more than Derek’s alphaship.

(Stiles is planning to tell Derek right after this. He just needs the plan to sound whole, functional, thought-out and possible in a way that Stiles’ plans rarely are when he tells Derek. He needs it to be as thought-out as possible because he needs to show how much he believes this is going to work.

Because Stiles is a spark.

Belief is all it will take.)

“Why’d you call this like it was an official meeting, dude?” Scott asks—his tone, body language, everything is as if everything is normal between them. It astounds Stiles how he’s capable of this.

Lydia scoffs and airily replies, “Take a guess.”

“Technically, this is, kinda, my first official meeting.” Stiles can immediately see the upset in Scott’s eyes, but doesn’t let that stop him. “I actually have a multi-pack proposal for you both.”

“If this is official, shouldn’t you call him alpha?” Liam asks. 

The worst part is that Stiles knows he’s actually curious. It curbs his need to reply sarcastically, just a bit. “Oh, uh, actually Scott is only an alpha technically through ranking title. In order to be a recognized alpha of an existing pack he’d need to formally claim land.”

“We’re working on it.” Deaton casually says, smiling reassuringly at Liam.

Scott then blurts, “A true alpha doesn’t need to claim land to be respected as an alpha.”

“Given there’s never been a true alpha,” Lydia snaps, and Stiles doesn’t miss the present tense of the sentence. She didn’t say before or other than you. Just. There never has been. “That’s not an actual rule. I really would follow your emissary's advice and work on it.”

Deaton murmurs something to the ‘wolves that Stiles doesn’t catch but makes them both take a deep breath and slide to sit across from Stiles in the booth. He doesn’t know whether or not either of them, especially Scott, the all-great alpha, process how obedient they’re being. It takes a lot not to point it out.

Stiles can’t help but to glance out to make sure his dad’s still out there and of course he is.

It’s the reassurance he needs.

“I hope this isn’t a magical proposal.” Deaton says, then sighs like Stiles is stupid when he catches the look on Lydia’s face, if not Stiles’ own. “You haven’t practiced with me in months, you’re just a low-level spark and… anything you saw online is insurmountable to the real thing.”

The spark takes a deep breath before responding. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the journal with a hiding rune Grammie Mahealani taught him (among others) and slides it over to Deaton. He knows the druid won’t be able to read it, but that’s not the point. 

“Feel that?” Stiles asks, letting himself smirk a little.

The little journal is an energy source.

It has all of Stiles’ rune practices, spell ideas and lists of what he’s capable of now that he knows what he can do. Messy scripts noting his frustration at owning such little self esteem making him weak, praises of gaining confidence leading to new abilities he didn’t know he had.

The Stilinski water heater has never worked so well.

Magic is so much more practical for everyday use than anyone had bothered to tell him!

“There is no such thing as a low-level spark.” Stiles states firmly, when Deaton’s eyes look glossy, his jaw tight and hands twitching like he wants to pocket the journal. “Just an unconfident spark with a guy who claims to be his teacher but won’t actually tell him anything.”

“You-” Deaton, clearly off guard, clears his throat. “Practicing and learning alone is dangerous, you could have killed yourself or others. I know my methods were slow but that’s because they were safe. You showing me this—” He waves the journal in the air but puts it back down too close to the edge of the table. “—is just more reason you need my help.”

“Stiles doesn’t. He has the help of a witch who is recognized by the magical community for more decades than you’ve been alive.” Lydia says, rolling her eyes. “And guess what?” She leans forward to examine her nails again. “He’s been thriving ever since he got away from you. Go figure.”

“Don’t talk about him like that.” Scott snaps.

Green eyes blink at him. “Or what?”

Liam growls just a little too loud for a public space.

Stiles tsks. “Down, boy.”

“I am not a dog!” He growls again.

“Go outside Liam.” Scott demands, with not even one move to sooth the pup before sending him out into the wild. Stiles knows Scott refused to be around Derek much but Christ, he should know better. “None of this is making me inclined to agree with your proposal.”

“Yeah, this didn’t start out like I had hoped it would.” Stiles agrees. 

He rubs at his face, glancing at his only ten fingers, before continuing on. 

This is going to be a long day.

“There is a spell that I, as a spark, can perform to raise the dead. The dead in this case being the slain Hale pack. I am going to spell prep for six months to raise enough energy to hopefully not die, including consulting the nemeton. Then I’m going to perform it. “

Scott’s jaw is slack and Deaton looks pissed.

Better now than never, Stiles supposed.

“I would like you both to join me when we do the spell in order to help. As the emissary of the Hale Pack at the time of their deaths, you would be a valuable asset in the spell going smoothly, and you being an alpha on their territory would aid to the spell’s power.”

“I’m sorry,” Scott sputters. “We don’t get a choice in whether or not the spell’s done?”

Lydia actually laughs. “Why would you?”

“Stiles is my pack member.” Scott says this like it’s obvious or perhaps a fact. Like that the sky is blue or werewolves exist. Thankfully Stiles knows he’s not going crazy because even Liam looks confused. “He should know better than to consult his alpha before making decisions like this.”

“He did.” Lydia’s voice is sharp now, once hand on Stiles’ shoulder and the other on the table top between him and Scott. “Because you aren't his alpha. You kicked him out of your pack, remember?”

“I didn’t kick him out!” Scott defends. “We all just needed space from him.”

It makes the spark’s head spin.

He clenches his hand as he feels the magic rise within him—indeed a warm, upset spark in the center of his chest that wants to pool out, grab his childhood best friend and shake sense into him. Standing up, he snaps out “Follow me.” and stalks out of the diner.

Angrily stomping past the door, he goes to the side alley away from prying eyes and leans against the cool wall, breathing hard. His phone rings, his dad’s ring tone, and he jumps but immediately moves to answer it. “Want some back up over there, kid?”

“No I—I’ve got it.”

“...okay.” There’s hesitation, but Dad listens to him, hanging up just as Scott and Lydia round the corner at the same time.

“What the hell man-”

“Be quiet!” Stiles finds himself shouting. 

Scott immediately takes a defensive stance and with Lydia and his dad, and Peter surely somewhere around the corner, the spark can’t find it in himself to care at all. 

“If you’re not pretending not to remember kicking me out of your pack, then you’re just delusional! There’s no other way that the situation could have been understood. You’d rather have Theo’s memory in the pack than your own best friend! Just because you didn’t grab me by the neck and throw me to the curb doesn’t mean you didn’t do it!”

A growl sounds out through the air. “I didn’t. And you know what, Stiles,” Scott snaps. “You’re not exactly known for your stellar choices or memory either.”

Stiles closes his eyes and thinks—believes—that he can show Scott exactly what he did, and feels energy shoot out all around him. He opens his eyes to find the mid-day view of the sky just outside of the lunch room of Beacon Hills. The entire alley is filled with the view, all of them standing inside.

The gaze shifts, and he sees his own memory of that day playing.

“You don’t want me in your pack.” Stiles’s voice rings out as Scott’s face comes into view. 

He tilts his head to the side and gives puppy dog eyes, and this time around, Stiles can catch the way that Liam looks down and away; confirming what Stiles had just said. He knew, Stiles realizes. Liam knew that Scott didn’t want Stiles in his pack before he had even said it. 

“I… Liam doesn’t really trust you.” And at this, Liam’s head shoots up—frowning; confused and defensive. Stiles’ anger grows at the thought that Scott was just using him as an excuse, because if Liam knew why he didn’t want him there why would he seem confused? “We know that Theo was… challenged, but, they were really close, so.”

And he gave a little shrug, then.

As if it wasn’t a big deal.

“So because Liam had a crush on a serial killer you don’t want me in your pack. Got it.” At the time, Stiles didn’t realize how… tired he sounded. How accepting of it he had already been. Scott didn’t even look fazed, in the memory. He looked down at the wooden table. The blue painting was chipping off.

“Stiles-”

“No, don’t worry about it.” In a moment, the view shifts. Liam is looking at Scott confused as Stiles walks away, gaze fixed back on the sky above Beacon Hills High School, glancing down only to start counting his fingertips. Stiles hadn’t realized how not in sync Scott and Liam had been at the time.

Throwing himself out of the memory, Stiles ends up breathing hard against the outer wall of the diner.

“You did.” He blubbers, flailing a bit. “You did kick me out. You saw that, you saw—Liam even knew you were full of shit and, and you trained him to never talk back against you. How didn’t I see that?” Lydia comes to his side but doesn’t say anything, just stands there unsure how to support him. “God Scott, you did.”

The spark doesn’t even have to look up in order to know just how upset Scott is.

“Does it matter now what happened anymore?” Deaton asks, diplomatic and insensitive as always. “It’s in the past and you’re the one asking my alpha for help.”

“Oh your ‘alpha’, huh?” Stiles snarks out, raising his head with a dry laugh. “You saw the memory. Some alpha.”

Growling, Scott steps forward to get in Stiles’ space—to intimidate him and silence him, just like how he does his own pack—when Peter is suddenly in his space, throwing the alpha back against the opposite wall and standing right in front of the spark protectively.

“Stiles is my duty and you will not touch him.” He says. The crazy ‘wolf’s voice isn’t a snarl, just as collected as always, but they all hear the threat in it. Lydia’s back straightens. “He is the Hale emissary, I truly doubt you want to start what would be the end of your pack by laying a hand on him.”

“An emissary, yeah right.” Scott snaps back, but doesn’t move forward; obeying the hand Deaton puts out to signal him to stay put. 

Like a dog. He doesn’t see it, does he? 

God, it’s almost funny.

Deaton lifts his chin. “Are you aware of the ridiculous spell that your little ‘emissary’ is planning?”

“A beautifully complicated spell, yeah.” Peter almost purrs in reply. “Shame that my dear sister wasted so much time having a druid as her emissary, sparks and witches… so much more capable… so much more powerful. Stiles is going to do so much for me, Alan. Can you imagine what he’s capable of now that I’m his teacher?”

This even makes a shiver run up Stiles’ spine.

Yeah. He’s always going to be Creeper Wolf.

“There are some things that nobody, even a spark, should attempt.” Deaton says coldly.

“Why? Because of your little code of doing nothing even for the greater good?” Stiles snaps, stepping forward. Peter being around him (protectively, for once) makes him feel brave, and Lydia only doubles that. “Yeah, we see where that got everyone. Six feet under!”

“You petulant, little-”

“Stiles.” The sheriff’s voice calls firmly, interrupting Deaton’s snap. Everyone turns to look at him from their tense place in the alley, but Dad just sighs and shakes his head, moving a hand out to call him over. “C’mon, son, I got a call and I’m not leaving you here alone. Let’s go.”

Lydia grabs Stiles’ arm and drags him towards his father, heels clicking meaningfully on the floor. “I’ll take him home, Sheriff.”

“Thank you, Miss Martin.” He looks around and shakes his head at the group, and Stiles finds himself actually relieved rather than annoyed that a sensible adult—which Peter nor Deaton is—actually broke up the probably soon to be fight. “You too, Hale, c’mon.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Stilinski?”

“Go home.” He says, tone final.

And that’s that.

Notes:

yippee i love drama

Notes:

i hope you enjoyed!!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of FROM A PURE AND NOBLE HEART