Chapter Text
Match, Spark, and Gasoline
A 00Q James Bond A/U
By Sif Shadowheart
Prologue: A Matter of Cunning Wolves, Void Foxes, and Snarky Sparks
Beacon Hills, California, April 2002
Peter Hale and Stiles Stilinski becoming best friends made absolutely no sense in reality and on paper, but also all the sense when who they were was taken into the same consideration as a list of dry facts.
Peter Hale was two years older than Stiles, a surprise baby for his werewolf parents that came as they were edging into their golden years, one far closer in age to his niblings than his siblings.
Stiles was the younger of the pair, the only child of second-generation immigrants, and knew nothing about the supernatural.
They weren’t supposed to be friends, let alone become intrinsically interposed in each other’s lives after Stiles’s parents relocated from San Diego after his father’s discharge from the Marine Corps. Mr. Stilinski took up a position with the Beacon County Sheriff’s Department as a deputy. Mrs. Stilinski worked part-time as an assistant librarian - and from there, the first domino fell.
It was the unquantifiable pieces of Peter - already being considered for either a position as a future enforcer or even left-hand of his pack at the ripe age of seven years old - and Stiles, all of five and known as “hard to handle” for his energy and curiosity by both his parents and teachers, that set them on a collision course to mutual interest and friendship.
Neither of them, to put it bluntly, had ever met someone else who could keep up with themselves until they met each other at the Beacon Hills library.
Both of them brought there by exasperated guardians - Peter, his sister; Stiles, his father - in hopes of being distracted if not outright entertained by the lush options of reading material collected on the shelves.
Peter’s sister, and Alpha, Talia had long given up on trying to police Peter’s reading habits.
Stiles’s father, Noah, was distracted in turn by flirting with his lovely wife at the circulation desk after dropping Stiles off in the children’s area for storytime.
Neither of them were supposed to be anywhere near the true crime section, let alone both of them, and yet, there they were: a pair of too-smart-for-their-own-good children who were about to become the first real person to understand each other they’d ever met. United in despair for the “adults” around them and being baffled by the idea of morals. Kept together despite varied interests - Peter a budding con-artist turned lawyer, Stiles fascinated in equal measure by science, technology, and puzzles - because variation ensured that they didn’t devolve into boredom and frustration.
As well as always having a listening ear to bounce ideas off of, even if it meant having to keep certain secrets to themselves and their families alike.
They were best friends, almost as close as brothers, even when they entered high school - Stiles skipping grades and Peter refusing to so that they could remain together - and Peter’s natural athleticism and popularity far outstripped Stiles’s own. That was ok. Stiles was willing to take a hit to being as popular as his best friend if it meant people left him alone to work on keeping his late mother’s Jeep running and run a thriving academic fraud business selling papers to fund the same.
Everything was as close to perfect as it could get.
Then Talia Hale took on a new emissary when the one who’d served her own mother retired, and that “everything” promptly went to utter shit.
Peter Hale paced in circles around the pack’s living room, infuriated down to his bones over events leading him – them all – to this moment.
He’d always liked Stiles.
Far more than his blood-siblings, worlds beyond his annoying niece Laura who had an alpha-heir-sized stick up her ass.
Definitely more than the disaster of a druid that Talia had brought in as emissary after their mother’s former emissary finally retired, clearing the way for the fuck-up Alan Deaton to get his claws into the Hale Pack.
Peter would be taking the “mistake” that Deaton made - interfering with the Nematon, trying to hide it (or so he said) from being found - that unleashed a motherfucking Nogitsune on Beacon Hills out of Deaton’s hide. It was his duty as Left Hand, to be sure. The youngest Left Hand in all the Americas.
But because it was Stiles, his Stiles who’d been taken as the Nogitsune’s host as a result of Deaton’s ill-calculated interference with a power nexus, it would be a genuine pleasure to take that smug head right off of the druid’s shoulders.
Once the asshole helped fix what Deaton broke, anyway.
Couple that with Stiles being the only form of well-rounded intelligence in his life as well as being a snarky little bastard among his other charms, and Peter was ready to draw blood, only holding back out of pragmatism and his sister’s alpha-order.
Stiles was interesting.
Bold red in a world of bland beige and boring.
Still, even Peter could admit that Laura hadn’t been wrong – per se – to doubt that Stiles was the Nogitsune, or rather its host.
When anyone from their pack looked around the players in Beacon Hills or even the surrounding county, there were far more obvious choices for the power to cause damage than Stiles with his pale skin and sarcasm.
Peter had never been one to take things at face value.
There was a reason that Stiles had been his best - some would say his only - friend since they were in elementary school.
If there was anyone remaining in this godforsaken town worthy of the gift of the Bite, someone who would make a marvelous wolf, it was unassuming Stiles Stilinski with his cunning mind, insatiable thirst for knowledge, and drive to protect what was his.
Add in that Spark that anyone with any real knowledge of the supernatural could see if they were looking and well…
Peter wasn’t surprised in the least that Stiles ended up being the host all along or that he’d managed to fight it and limit the damage the Nogitsune was capable of meting out for a solid six months before the events of the last few weeks.
Really, until the Oni came calling and gave the Nogitsune a reason to fight Stiles harder than it had ever done before.
And even that was a credit to the skinny teen that everyone always overlooked when it came to threat assessment - despite being the known best friend of the Hale Pack’s left hand.
As if Peter Hale would ever be friends with someone as truly harmless as Stiles pretended to be underneath the hyperactivity and questioning mind.
The Nogitsune cared as much about fucking with Stiles and keeping him off-balance, weakening him, as it did all the rest of the pack combined and if that wasn’t a compliment to how dangerous his snarky little shit was, Peter didn’t know what would be.
One thing was for certain however as Peter took in the wounded form on their couch being kept weakened by Deaton’s knowledge of supernatural pharmacology and silent via duct-tape: the Nogitsune wasn’t taking good care of its host.
A heartening sign, even if the others were too big of dolts to realize it.
If it had to run down its host, keep Stiles from resting and eating or injured, then he was still strong, still capable of fighting.
They just had to make Stiles see that too.
Which, really, was where the pack had finally made a smart decision for once in listening to Peter instead of Deaton.
Because if there was anything he knew how to do it was manipulate a situation to his advantage.
“He doesn’t look like he’d survive a slap across the face, let alone a werewolf bite.” Peter commented as he bent over to get a better look at those normally bright amber eyes that were dark and dim under the control of the fox demon.
“You don’t think it would work?” Talia asked, willing to play nice with her asshole of a little brother if it meant saving an innocent life.
“This is more a war of the mind than the body.” Peter said, still searching for any hint of Stiles in the creature driving his body around like a rental car it had every intention of totaling. He straightened up, decision made. “There are better methods for winning this battle.”
“What kind of methods?” Alan Deaton, vet, druid, emissary, asked one of the most dangerous wolves he ever had the misfortune to know. Peter had always been dangerous, even before he started devoting his free time to training as the Hale Left Hand. Afterwards…well. He was just content that for the moment Peter was willing to play nice. It was when that period of armistice lapsed that he was worried over - more for himself than anyone else.
For all that Peter Hale had his disagreements with his family, his loyalty was unquestioned and renowned.
Peter smirked right down into those might-as-well-be-dead brown eyes, taking hold of Talia’s wrist and flicking her hand, unleashing the Alpha’s claws.
“We’re going to get into his head.”
Ah, finally, a reaction.
Peter held in a victorious grin as the creature wearing Stiles’s face lifted his brows in interest, eyes flashing for a split-second.
“Do you have a plan beyond messing around in an already traumatized and warring mind?” Alan asked drily, eyeing Peter with unabated suspicion as the werewolf circled around to the back of the couch after they re-dosed the Nogitsune with a concoction to keep him weak and paralyzed.
“We’re going to go digging through pale and sickly Evil-Stiles, here,” Peter looked down at the slim form on the couch. “To unearth pale and sickly Real-Stiles then coax him back from the depths of his own subconscious.”
He sighed at the blank faces he was treated to at that save for that of Alan, gesturing the gathered members out of the room along with Talia and leaving the malevolent kitsune to be watched over by Laura and out of hearing range for anything supernatural – including a fox spirit.
“But, you can’t do it alone.” He allowed, eyeing his sister as they reconvened in the alpha’s soundproofed office.
“What do you mean?” Talia frowned, clearly confused.
“Somebody who actually knows a thing or two about the mind and mental battles is going to have to go in with you.” Peter told her honestly, then gestured towards the Banshee he’d called in a favor to have participate in his plan. “Normally I would suggest Mrs. Martin but,” he took the formed-wax earplugs that worked the best at protecting a wolf’s hearing from things like gunfire – or the shriek of a Banshee, from one of the cargo pockets of his tactical pants. “If this is going to work we’ll need her on the outside to scream for Stiles.”
“Scream for the young man?” Lorraine Martin’s eyes shot wide. This was not what they’d agreed on when she’d with Peter when the wolf bargained for her help.
“Not like that.” Peter rolled his eyes. Always with the distrust these people. Damn, he can’t wait for Stiles to come back. Real Stiles, anyway. “If the goal is to split Stiles and the Nogitsune so the Nogitsune can be killed without damaging Stiles any further then there is going to be a catalyst needed. A trigger.”
“A scream.” Lorraine nodded reluctantly. “You’ve given the Nogitsune a reason to want to leave with its entrapment, now it just needs a bit of impetus.”
“The problem is,” Peter continued with a nod for the red-head. “That from what I understand of the scrolls and Nogitsune lore, they’ll look identical. We won’t know which is the right Stiles and which is his evil twin.” The possible outcomes of a battle between the two…well. He’d keep that to himself. Not his fault if they didn’t do the assigned reading on Nogitsune once they discovered what they had causing chaos on their hands. “Stiles doesn’t just have to battle the Nogitsune in a battlefield under his own control once we remind him of that but in the physical world as well.”
“What do you mean?” Deaton asked, perplexed. “The scroll only spoke of changing the host to kill the Nogitsune.”
“And do we really want to rely on intelligence hundreds of years old?” Peter arched his brows condescendingly. “Yes, that might work. Or it might not. Maybe it only expels the Nogitsune from the host. Maybe it doesn’t work at all. But all the lore is clear in that there are only two certain ways to kill a Nogitsune: a foxfire blade that we don’t have and the Oni. Of the two uncertain methods are a battle between host and spirit or changing the host. And at least the former is a confirmed method and not just guesswork.”
“Why are you pushing so hard for this?” Talia asked with an unimpressed look in her dark eyes. “When the Bite is an easier option?” She’d long thought that Peter was going to ask to bring his best friend into the secret and receive the Bite. That now he was pushing so hard against it was suspicious.
“Stiles is my favorite, my best friend.” Peter shrugged completely unrepentantly. “I’d like to have him back in as good of condition as possible and he made it quite clear over the last year that he doesn’t want the Bite.”
“What?” Talia blinked, exasperation mingled with anger darkening her tone. “Peter, what did you do?”
“Told him when he got suspicious.” Peter smirked at the shocked look on the group of goody-goody faces, including his brother-in-law and the astonished Mrs. Martin. “When I offered. I respected his declination then and I’ll respect it now.”
“Peter…” Talia’s voice was all angry-alpha, before her erstwhile emissary stepped into the powder-keg conversation.
“Bickering aside.” Alan steered them back onto course. Though he wasn’t any more pleased at the left hand’s words and their implied disrespect than his alpha was. “Who do you suggest accompanies Talia rather than Lorraine?”
“I will.” Peter sighed as if put upon. “Since unless I’m mistaken I’m the only person any of you know that is both aware of the supernatural and familiar with Stiles on a personal level. Unlike his father, who might have been newly-inducted because of the Nogitsune, but has no real idea of how to handle our part of the world. If you have any better or more experienced candidates in mind, Alan.” Peter arched a smug brow. “I’m all ears.”
Alpha and Emissary exchanged conceding grimaces, Peter grinning smarmily and clapping his hands.
“Right.” He faux-cheered. “Let’s get this plan started shall we?” He eyed the light outside. “Sundown isn’t as far away as I’d like and having the Oni show up mid-mind-meld won’t be good for anyone involved.”
Once more in the living room, Talia stood behind the couch directly between the paralyzed form of her little brother’s possessed best-friend and where Peter would be sitting, a simple wooden ladder-back chair taken from the dining room placed in front of, as Peter put it, pale-sickly-Evil-Stiles for Lorraine to sit and wait for the urge to scream, which Peter assured would come.
Talia placed her bared claws to the side of Evil-Stiles’s neck, then did the same for Peter’s own.
“If this works,” Peter warned the others as Alan – on his advice – circled the couch and Lorraine’s chair with mountain ash. She would be able to leave the circle but the rest of them…not so much. “Or even if it doesn’t. We’re all going to come out of it disoriented. Whatever you do: don’t break the circle or the Nogitsune is going to take off.”
The somehow-haughty-snarky expression on the Nogitsune’s face at that was nothing but confirmation that without the druid’s concoction holding him down a tactical retreat was exactly what it had in mind.
And with or without Stiles working against the fox spirit at every turn, possessed or dispossessed, that was something they couldn’t afford.
With no more build up or warning, Talia plunged her claws into the spinal cords of both Stiles and Peter, sending their vision sparking nothing but white for a long moment then clearing.
Blinking, Talia frowned in confusion at the feeling of restraints strapping her down to a cold table in a dingy, dimly lit brick room.
A groan caught his attention next, the alpha werewolf turning her head slowly to see the form of Peter strapped down to a metal exam table beside her – but only for a moment.
Not even a full minute passed before Peter’s eyes were snapping open and his arms were flexing and wrenching upwards, snapping the restraints like they were made of tinfoil instead of iron shackles, spinning to sit up and staring expectantly at Talia.
“C’mon almighty Alpha.” Peter joked relentlessly, a superior smirk on his handsome face. “Time might pass differently in the mind but we don’t have all day for you to remember your wolf-given strength.”
Growly lowly, Talia echoed Peter’s move, freeing herself and sitting up then asking: “Where are we?”
Looking around, Peter pursed his lips a moment before venturing a guess.
“Eichen House.” He rolled his shoulders, hopping down from the exam table. “Though whether our less-than-warm welcome was on the part of the Nogitsune or Stiles using that impressive mind and imagination to teach himself mental traps and guards is hard to say.”
Talia let that process a moment as she followed the younger wolf over to a massive steel door inset in one wall.
“Stiles…” She blinked, holding in a chuckle as it clicked. “Taught himself Occlumency?” Then she smirked at her baby brother. “Or both of you did?”
Peter arched a brow, a hint of a grin on his own face, then nodded.
“We don’t call it that, but the method of loci is an old discipline.” He studied the locked door for a long moment. “Far older than the Harry Potter books. And we all know what Stiles is like when he gets an idea in his head. With his IQ and research habits – one of the only people I’ve ever met able to parse factual and useful information on werewolves from the internet of all places – I’d have been shocked if we didn’t run into mental defenses after everything he’s been through the last six months.” Unleashing his claws, Peter shredded the lock on the door then pulled it open. “Stiles’s mind has always been his greatest strength. He just needs reminding of that.” He tilted his head towards the pitch-black corridor revealed by the opened door. “Shall we?”
Eyes lit Alpha-red to see in through the darkness of the construct, Talia nodded and followed her brother into the dark.
Which was a mistake, as it turned out, as no sooner had she stepped into the corridor than it disappeared Peter along with it, and a dark portion of the preserve took its place filled with the sounds of a chilling howl that still haunted her nightmares: trying to outrun hunters who were after her brother and son.
Peter had always liked Stiles.
Even when he was a hyperactive little kid that drove his niece nuts in their kindergarten class with too much energy, too much intelligence, and the attention span of a goldfish, before Peter met him for himself.
Information had always, even back when Stiles was a child running around the library under the amused eyes of his mother or the sheriff’s department under those of his father, been Stiles’s drug of choice.
A self-defense mechanism at its very finest in a place that wouldn’t – or simply couldn’t – feed the mind of someone with the intelligence of Stiles or Peter himself, they’d both come up with their own methods to learn what they wanted to know and keep their minds occupied.
Small towns were marvelous places to raise children in many ways.
When it came to nurturing genius however, often both parents and educators alike were left scratching their heads.
What that meant now, for Peter trying to unlock Stiles’s active mind and free him from the control of the Nogitsune, was that while the trickster spirit might think it had Stiles under wraps, he was willing to bet otherwise.
From everything Peter knew about the malevolent kitsune, they were called down – summoned – by those desiring to unleash chaos in one form or another on those around them.
To Peter, that meant that the Nogitsune had likely never met a mind like Stiles’s before.
After all, when one had a mind like Stiles’s or Peter’s, one didn’t need help sowing chaos, discord, and pain if that was their desire.
They were more than capable of it all on their own.
Somewhere in his mind he was willing to bet – and bet quite a bit – that the real Stiles was waiting and watching everything while some shadow of himself kept the Nogitsune occupied, planning and scheming and using every bit of that need to know to find a way out of the trap that Alan’s little misstep had caused.
Maybe, perhaps, even to set a trap or two of his own.
Peter just had to find Stiles before Talia managed to find the Nogitsune.
Which, considering how linear his sister tended to be, probably wouldn’t take much to manage.
Peter lowered himself into a lotus position on the tangible-intangible not-a-floor of Stiles’s current mental construct of Claudia’s hospital room which told him more than anything that while the Nogitsune might think it was in charge there was a definite tang of Stiles pulling strings in the background and closed his eyes, concentrating on what he knew about Stiles.
About where Stiles would feel safe and in control.
It certainly wasn’t in the halls of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital where some of his worst memories had been given life and heft and form.
No, not there.
Not the school where he’d played games with everyone around him and learned to hide his intellect.
Not the Hale house where Laura didn’t know when to stop.
Definitely not the sheriff’s department where he’d taken refuge after his mother’s death and his father’s dive into the bottle.
No…Peter smiled, eyes snapping open and turning towards the closed door of the hospital room.
There was just one place where Stiles had always been safe.
A place where he had more control, more power, than anywhere else no matter what the good Sheriff liked to tell himself.
Reaching out, Peter lifted the handle on the door with a significant click, focusing all the while on what he wanted to see on the other side.
After all, while Talia might be the one connecting them and Stiles who they wanted to find, at the moment all three of them were linked – and that gave Peter just as much power to play with the constructs around him as anyone else.
As the door opened, revealing a room that wasn’t quite what he’d been seeking but similar enough, a head with messy brown hair turned – just slightly – from watching the wall of a dozen screens that filled a space that in real life contained a bedroom wall with a window.
“Took you long enough.” Stiles sassed his brother-from-another-mother, looking over his shoulder at the smirking visage of his best friend because who else was going to manage to find him? “I was starting to wonder if you were all talk after all, Big Bad.”
Stiles grinned, unrepentantly incandescently, happy for a fraction of a second that seemed to last a lifetime and no time at all in the secure – once Peter closed the door behind him and it disappeared, leaving a seamless wall behind it as if it had never been in the first place – core of his very self.
Finally, finally things were moving in a direction that he could use.
It was about damn time even if it took Deaton’s help to manage it and you better believe he’d be getting to the bottom of what that asshole had done to the Nematon when he woke up.
But first, some exposition just so he and his bestie were on the same page.
“Ten months ago,” he began, sobering and turning back to the dozens of smaller screens that made up his wall-of-watching. “Give or take, you handed me a bag of mountain ash and told me to believe that it would work to form a barrier impossible for the supernatural to cross. Now, you can call me many things, but naïve has never been one of them.”
No, his naivete had died on a hospital rooftop at ten years old listening to his mother insist that he was trying to kill her, thanks.
That was the sort of childhood trauma that left scars and altered you forever.
The sort of thing there really was no coming back from.
Even before he ended up being the only one in the room when she died and was forced to wait for his dad to show up for hours in the cold and humorless waiting room of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.
“Afterwards you said I had a spark and proceeded to answer rest of my questions and give me a book on magic.” Stiles continued, eyes flicking from one screen to another to another, all of them physical representations of information his brain was processing and sorting and storing, deleting useless and extraneous information like memories of each time he went to the bathroom – or similar memories from those he was connected to, the banks of monitors on the walls to his right and left that formed the interior curve of the sickle-shaped wall new additions thanks to Peter’s little trick with Talia’s alpha claws.
“But you’ve never been one to take the easy road.” Peter noted for himself, arching a brow as he caught some of the images and information flicking by at rapid speed on the screens, sitting in the free computer chair that just appeared next to Stiles’s own rather than sit on the unmade bed that was a replica of the one sitting temporarily abandoned in the Stilinski family home in the real world. “Have you?”
“No, that I’m not.” Stiles smiled grimly. “You were right after all: we found the method of loci useful after reading about it in Harris’s Hannibal Rising and how fictional Dr. Lecter used his memory palace. Considering my ADHD and the sort of random facts and figures I run into, it was one of the most useful things we’ve ever researched and taught ourselves. Add in the idea that magic is real thanks to Deaton existing and,” he waved his hand in a lackadaisical ta-da! gesture. “Here we are. You guys had it mostly right. Occlumency traps in part inspired more by Harry Potter fanfiction than the stories themselves combined with method of loci on my part and the Nogitsune being an epic dick on their part was why you were dropped into restraints at Eichen House. How you managed to cut through the bullshit to come straight here I’m banking on you being an entirely too cunning asshole since you didn’t tell Talia how to manage it herself.”
“I have missed you Stiles.” Peter smiled wistfully at the genius teen. “Your shadow of yourself that you’ve had piloting your body around and playing with the Nogitsune just isn’t the same. I mean: Eichen House, really?”
“Shut up, Wolfy.” Stiles batted at him ineffectually. “Not other-me’s fault that I had all of a second to lock real-me away when I felt something gross trying to burrow into my head six months ago.” He sighed, flicking a wrist at the banks of screens as he sat back. “I’m going to need so much therapy after six months of basically being in two places at once. My little command center was in its nascent stages when the Nogitsune invaded. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to secure myself and keep him from being able to run me around like a meat puppet at the same time. Outsmarting a thousand-year-old malevolent fox spirit isn’t exactly easy even when it doesn’t know you technically exist.”
“The chess pieces.” Peter nodded. “The locker key. The automatic writing. You’ve been leaving yourself bread crumbs, not us.”
“After a fashion,” Stiles jerked a shoulder, keeping an eye on Talia’s progress. “If you guys caught on then good. If not then the waking-me would hopefully not do anything too stupidly self-sacrificing before I figured out a way to get the Nogitsune out of us.”
“You’ve been learning all this time.” Peter said, admiration ripe in his tone as he continued to study the screens. “Watching and listening to everything around your body,” he pointed at a trio of screens. “Delving through the Nogitsune’s memories and knowledge,” then the main bank of monitors. “Everything you already knew,” another section of the wall. “And now everything Talia and I know.” Peter arched his brows with a bright grin. “Nice.”
“It’s a work in progress.” Stiles sighed, weary to his soul. “When I’m locked in here I don’t have shit for control of my body. Bread crumbs, whispers of ideas, it was the best I could do until I had an actual plan.”
“And you do now?” Peter sent an expectant look at his cleverer other-half, who met his gaze with a calm that belied any anxiety the younger teen might be feeling. And it had to be there, though in a world under Stiles’s control more than any other he couldn’t read his heart or his chemosignals to tell. No, all signs to the opposite, the world in Stiles’s head was totally mental. Not a physical sign to be seen of Stiles’s state other than what he let Peter see.
“Have you been following the bread crumbs?" He asked then met Peter's own grin with one of his own before adding: "You know it would work, right?” Stiles asked expectantly. “Giving the Nogitsune the bite. It’d work. What it would call a divine move.”
“But Go isn’t your game, Stiles.” Peter countered, smirk once more reappearing as Talia managed to fight her way to yet another door. The one that they’d been waiting for her to find. “Chess is. What sort of trap have you set for a creature that thought it could take you over – body, mind, and soul – and use you to hurt everyone and everything you care about Stiles?”
The smile that crossed that handsome, pale face was nothing less than wickedly dark and sent a chill racing down Peter’s spine.
“The best kind.” Stiles said, snapping his fingers and dismissing all but a single computer screen sitting innocently on his bedroom desk, lines of symbols and code and images continuing to race past. “The kind an adversary never expects.”
Then with another snap of his fingers, the room was gone and Peter appeared in a white room standing beside Talia and staring down the long room at the Nemeton stump with the figure of – as Stiles had put it – waking-Stiles playing Go with a bandage-wrapped personification of the Nogitsune.
Trading a glance with Talia and showing none of the time he’d spent talking to Real-Stiles, Peter started sprinting for the pair on the stump, only to notice within moments that he wasn’t getting any closer.
Stopping with a frown, he glanced around the white-room out and slapping a hand against Talia’s chest.
“Stop.” He said, pieces starting to snick together into a complete picture. Stiles hadn’t told him what his plan was which meant it was most likely predicated on following through with his plan. Which meant getting the attention of the plaid-clad form playing Go with a monster. “We’re not making any progress that way and he can’t hear me screaming for him.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Talia asked snippily, hands propped on her hips. “You’re here to guide us, so guide already.”
“In the mental plane all of us have equal control.” Peter said a moment later, studying the pair on the stump. “But in the end it’s still Stiles’s head no matter how much control of it the Nogitsune has taken. It won’t let us closer…but we don’t need to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“How does an alpha alert members of their pack, Tali?”
“They…”
“They howl .” Peter smirked, tilting his head towards the players – including the Nogitsune who’d turned to face them. “Go on then, Alpha. Send a message to one of our own. Tell him it’s time to wake the fuck up.”
“Language, Peter.” Talia said disapprovingly, then closed her eyes and cracked her neck, Talia reaching down for the alpha power, then when she opened her eyes once more they were brilliant red.
Sucking in a deep breath, she held it a long moment praying that Peter’s latest idea would work, (she didn’t want to kill her brother’s only friend) then unleashed a howl that reverberated through the plain, nearly empty room.
Moments later, almost like a miracle, Stiles’s head turned.
Looking back from the pair of wolves that were once more running – this time with actual progress – towards them, Stiles smiled and reached out with both arms, violently scattering the Go pieces and throwing the board off the Nemeton as the Nogitsune roared in rage as a banshee’s scream sent shockwaves like an earthquake through the Nemeton room.
“You know you made a mistake right?” Stiles asked, reaching out and shoving his fist wrist-deep into the bandage-clad monster in the instant it was concerned more about peripheral players than the adversary in front of it. The adversary it thought it’d already conquered and humbled. Proof positive that trickery didn’t always require ultimate cunning. “A divine move is only divine when the other player doesn’t see it coming.” He smirked, pulling his arm back with a pulsing black mass trapped within his fist, a duplicate of the Nogitsune’s lethal strike against the Oni at the hospital. “And you haven’t done one damn unseen thing since you set up shop inside my head.”
Shoved out of Stiles’s head and back to reality, Talia and Peter gasped for breath as they were thrown back in a shockwave of power along with the Nogitsune’s roar of rage.
“Lorraine get out!” Talia ordered as she clambered around to the front of the couch, the red-head rushing to obey and taking the chair she’d sat upon with her to clear some of the area in the mountain ash circle. “Did it work?” Talia demanded, kneeling before the younger teen’s form and ripping the duct tape away from his mouth. “Did it work?!”
Oily, noxious smoke poured out from between Stiles’s lips and Peter grabbed Talia, pulling the alpha away and leaping back behind the couch to put them both out of the direct line of conflict as Stiles’s body seized and the smoke roiled and formed into a duplicate of Stiles down to the rip in his shirt on the floor.
Falling forward with one last choking cough, Stiles lifted his head amber eyes alive for the first time in weeks or maybe even months, and his hand snapped up catching the ink-black tanto blade Peter launched towards him as the lids over dark, lightless eyes that were twins to his own snapped open.
“Divine move?” The Nogitsune wearing his face sprang to his feet, the two Stileses circling each other as everyone else watched in horror and the two wolves trapped with them tried to stay the hell out of the way. “Divine move? You think you have any moves at all? I’m a thousand-years-old, you can’t kill me!” The thing shouted in Stiles’s voice.
Stiles just smiled darkly and darted forward with a skill he didn’t possess six months before, tanto blade flashing as the Nogitsune blocked and hissed, eyes flaring at the sight of the weapon in his hand.
A weapon it thought it had hidden after using it to cut its host’s body open in a gory facsimile of a smile across his belly.
“Well, at least we know which one is which.” Deaton muttered, rolling his eyes at the little outburst from Evil-Stiles, sending a bitchy look at Peter who’d armed one of them without hesitation despite saying that they wouldn’t know which was which.
The Nogitsune spun, throwing Stiles into the barrier made by the mountain ash in an absent expression of supernatural strength.
The others blinked as Stiles bounced off the barrier.
“Maybe not.” Deaton frowned. “Why is Stiles being repelled by mountain ash?”
None of the others answered the druid, focusing instead on the ongoing back-and-forth of strikes and blocks and dodges as the pair of – for all intents and purposes – identical twins circled each other over and over, one landing a glancing blow then the other but neither gaining much ground against the other which worried most of their watchful audience and sent a thrill down Peter’s spine.
Stiles had confirmed his supposition after all, though without giving voice to the exact detail that he’d been focused on.
The younger man had never wanted to be a werewolf, as Peter had told them.
But a fox wasn’t a wolf.
A kitsune’s powers weren’t contrary to what Stiles already was.
And more than anything else: a kitsune doesn’t require an alpha or anyone to control them.
It was no wonder that Stiles was willing to go along with Peter’s plan with the prize it carried for him at the end, if, as he hypothesized, that if a Nogitsune could create a duplicate of their host and then kill the original host to gain a permanent physical form that the reverse might also be true.
That if the host expelled and killed the Nogitsune, they in turn kept the spirit’s powers.
Only a hypothesis based on supposition given that no host in any record of the Japanese spirits had managed it but Peter had faith in Stiles.
And the lengths Stiles would go to protect those few people in this world he gave half a damn about.
“I never was one for GO.” Stiles snarked back at the evil thing wearing his face, fainting high then taking out the creature with a kick to the side of its knee, sending it tumbling and jumping on top of it, pinning its shoulders to the floor as it struggled. “Downside of creating a duplicate.” He continued, using his free arm to pin the Nogitsune’s copy of his face to the floor and baring its temple. “Weakness. You’re not used to fighting things on an even playing field or being outmatched: I am. You think I’ve had a wolf for a best friend most of my life and not picked up a few things? Had access to your every thought and memory and didn’t take notes?” He snorted derisively, flipping the tanto in his hold and then stabbing down straight through the weakness in a human skull: the temple. “I’m a chess man myself. I favor a sacrifice to create a trap my opponent can’t escape.”
Then Stiles found he couldn’t speak at all as lightning arched up from the convulsing body beneath him, a body created by the Nogitsune’s power and will and impaled with the oldest and strongest tail of a kitsune, slamming into his body and pinning him in turn to the wooden floor of the Hale home.
The others screamed in shock as Stiles convulsed, power in the form of lightning pinning him to the floor of the Hale home and arching his back involuntarily as pain and power commingled ripped through his body.
None of them had any clue what was happening.
If that really was Stiles who’d driven a tanto blade through the Nogitsune’s skull or just another one of the trickster’s mind-fucks.
Stiles’s little rant during and after killing his opponent didn’t exactly fill them with the warm-fuzzies.
None of them, that is, but Peter.
“What’s happening to him?” Laura screamed as Peter and Talia rushed from around the back of the couch, still contained inside the mountain ash barrier that Deaton kept Lorraine from breaking.
“I-I don’t know.” Talia said helplessly, not even able to hold onto the seizing teen as Stiles convulsed lest the lightning jump from one form to the other – and electricity in any form was one of the few things capable of weakening even an Alpha werewolf. “I don’t know what’s happening! Peter?!”
“A divine move.” Peter said with total honesty, then added. “Though Stiles would probably prefer to call it a Légal Trap. Leading the other to believe they were winning before reversing the game and making a lethal strike. The Nogitsune never expected Stiles – or anyone – capable of putting together enough information to kill it. Especially in the slim window while it was weakened by splitting from its host.”
“Stiles was weaker than the Nogitsune.” Deaton commented, observing the finally-dissipating arcs of visible power with a frown. “By far, according to everything – little as it is – we know about the process.”
“Did you all see the same fight I did?” Damian Hale, Talia’s husband, asked, lips pursed as he took in the state of the boy who’d been in and out of their house as much as his brother-in-law since he was five years old. Though he couldn’t really argue the safety precaution of the mountain ash, being kept from someone who’d been near-lethally injured only that morning and faced off against a millennium-old embodiment of chaos chafed for the right-hand. “They didn’t seem all that mismatched.”
Nothing more on the subject was said at that moment, as no sooner had the last of the shivers and shudders wracking Stiles’s body ceased than the form of his duplicate-evil-twin visibly cracked and crumbled into ash and dust and then nothing at all.
As if it had never been in the first place.
Sucking in a panicked breath, Stiles forced open his eyes even as Peter’s arms and legs constricted around him with the immense strength of a werewolf, shoving aside the agony still throbbing through his body cell-by-cell as power that once wasn’t his but now was as familiar to him as the latent flame of his Spark, new drives and instincts slotting into place as the power of a millennium-old Nogitsune seared through him, making and unmaking him all in the same moment.
It was more…violent than even the Bite and the change that went with it.
But at the same time it was just more.
After all, kitsune weren’t made, they were born, and that is a thing of blood and violence and pain and tears unlike anything else in the world.
But by the same token that the power changed him, he changed it.
Stiles didn’t feed off of strife and pain.
He wasn’t Nogitsune, the common name for a Yako or malevolent kitsune, for all that he’d been possessed by one for six months he would never forget but that he was already certain would haunt him for years and years to come.
He couldn’t say for as long as he lived as one thing had been made clear over the weeks as they researched kitsunes in every shape and form: unless they chose to destroy their tails, kitsune were eternal if not unkillable.
Unless he chose – which at the moment was a bit much to even consider – to make his tails into physical manifestations of his power and then break them, he was effectively immortal unless killed.
It was a head trip and a half which coming from him was really saying something given his ability to outthink and run mental rings around everyone around him but Peter.
At the moment, however, there was still an emergent issue otherwise known as the Oni that were going to try and kill him unless they managed to convince Noshiko, a supposedly "good" celestial kitsune, to call them off.
Kitsune fell into two types based on their actions: either Yako, malevolent kitsune, or Zenko good and/or neutral kitsune, above and beyond the thirteen classifications of their powers.
The Nogitsune originally summoned by Noshiko in 1943 and trapped under the Nemeton was a Yako Kukan, an evil dark or void kitsune.
What Stiles would be…well, that remained to be seen.
First, he had to convince everyone around him – and more than a few who weren’t in his immediate vicinity – that he might be fucked up but he wasn’t evil.
He could fall apart later.
“Peter,” he coughed, lifting one arm and tapping on his best-bro’s wolf-tight hold. “Need to breathe.”
“Stiles?” Peter called weakly, blinking back tears before shaking off the weakness and letting his best friend out of his hold, Stiles sitting up with his help.
“How do we know it’s not just another trick?” Laura asked, eyes narrowed as she locked onto the trio remaining inside the mountain ash barrier with laser-locked focus. “A bunch of lights and sound effects to convince us Stiles was back?”
Stiles grinned at Laura, eyes dancing, as he lifted his hands, slapping them together and then forcing them out and breaking the mountain ash barrier without ever having to touch it.
Everyone blinked, shocked to their toes at the nonchalant use of power – of magic – from a person who’d, to most of their knowledge, never used it before in his life.
“Yeah, that’s not really reassuring.” Laura noted drily even as Peter helped Stiles fend Talia off of him with more than one sharp nudge or pinch from werewolf claws. “Since phenomenal cosmic powers had never really been Stiles’s purview.”
“That’s…” Peter admitted, tone nothing less than bland. “Not entirely accurate.”
“I’ve been awesome this whole time but Doc there,” he jerked his head towards the emissary as he swayed on his feet, the rush of adrenaline and power finally fading enough for him to feel the weakness left behind by the duplication, fight, and subsequent rush of power remaking him, Peter steadying him with one hand on his arm not still holding a tanto. Noshiko’s oldest tail and the bargaining chip he’d need to force the old bitch to listen to him instead of having her demon pets gut him.
Again.
Though arguably, the Nogitsune had eviscerated him the first time.
“Didn’t deign to say anything.”
“My duty is to the Hale Pack.” Alan arched a brow. “You were always the one quickest to dismiss yourself as nothing but human.”
“The part that kills me though, Doc.” Stiles waved that off, knowing it was true enough. Though it mostly had to do with him not trusting the cryptic druid asshole. Which since he caused the issue by fucking around with the Nematon was an understatement. “Is that you should’ve known that a spark would attract a creature like the Nogitsune and you didn’t say shit. Again.”
“Is that true?” Talia turned furious eyes on Deaton. “Did you know that Stiles was the most likely to be possessed this whole time?”
“I had guesses.” Deaton shrugged, watching the wolves - and a single, silently observing banshee in Lorraine - carefully. “Questions. Nothing concrete. I didn’t want to mislead anyone or be the cause of anymore innocent blood being spilled because I was wrong. I have to keep the balance, Talia.” He shook his head, looking away from the disappointment written on the alpha’s face. “Concealing the existence of a Nematon in Beacon Hills is in the best interest of the territory and worth the sacrifice required.”
“What,” Damian swallowed harshly as he stared at the form of a child he’d watched grow alongside his own as Stiles seemed to grow in strength and health as they all watched. Minutes after standing and breaking a mountain ash line and he didn’t need Peter’s support to stay steady on his feet. Bruises he’d gained in his fight against his evil twin faded. “What sacrifice?”
“My humanity.” Stiles managed to force out from his desert-dry throat, moving towards the kitchen where water and sweet blessed food waited now that the mountain ash wasn’t containing him or his evil twin any longer. “Or at least part of it. And my mortality.”
“What does he mean?” Talia asked, grabbing hold of Deaton’s arm, nearing rage as she watched Stiles pound all of the water in the half-gallon filter-pitcher they kept in their fridge before going after the cheese and lunch meat and leftover lasagna. “Deaton, what does he mean?”
“He’s not human anymore.” Peter said, satisfaction oozing from every pore at the change in his best friend. “He’s a kitsune.”
He let his eyes switch over to killer-wolf-blue and took in the beautiful, dark aura of living shadows forming a humanoid fox that overwrote Stiles for a moment before fading away, Talia following his lead and seeing the same before blinking and allowing her eyes to fade back to human brown, frustration over all the manipulations rife in the air filling her from head to toe.
Which, Stiles being Stiles, he caught from the corner of his eye.
“Hey, Mrs. Hale.” He frowned, trying to soothe but not really being, well, equipped at the moment since clean-up after his very-much-not-welcome-roommate and dealing with Noshiko was going to take all of his remaining fucks to give for the rest of the day until he could faceplant into his mattress and sleep for twenty hours straight. Sleep having become just as much a prized commodity during the last six months – and particularly the last few weeks – as water and food. “Don’t freak out, I’m still me. Just with an upgrade.”
“Question.” Laura pressed. “How did Stiles break the mountain ash line when the Nogitsune couldn’t?”
Stiles gestured to Deaton to take that one as he took the half-gallon of orange juice Damian – who was still watching him with a combination of care and caution – handed him once he’d finished off the water to wash down his protein-heavy snack to replenish his energy after major healing and use of powers.
Even if most of it was done by his former hitchhiker, it was still mostly his body that’d borne the burden of the powers and energy used.
“I imagine because Stiles retained his spark powers despite subsuming the Nogitsune via an ancient ritual of mortal combat.” Deaton postulated, turning events and everything said between the two beings over in his head and trying to make sense of them. “Sparks, druids, even darachs are all forms of a very human natural power. Whatever type of kitsune he is now must not be at odds with that power.”
Which was one hell of an advantage Stiles would possess over most other supernatural creatures.
“Dark kitsune.” Talia and Peter answered in unison as the others – including Stiles – turned to them in wordless question over what form of kitsune aura they saw via their werewolf sight.
“A neutral one, naturally.” Peter continued with a shrug as he leaned against the kitchen wall, gaze locked on his best friend even as he gave the other teen a bit of space to stabilize after everything he’d been through. “Given there was none of the sense of decay or malevolence that surrounded the Nogitsune.”
“Then I would imagine,” Deaton extrapolated. “That human realms of magic that tend towards neutral or darker arts would be the easiest for Mr. Stilinski to learn given the new bent to his self.”
Stiles and Peter snorted, getting incredulous looks from the others before Stiles explained what likely they both were thinking.
“You’re talking about me like I didn’t – willingly – become best friends with chaos-incarnate via Peter at all of five years old.” Stiles said, sitting back in relief that his gnawing hunger had finally been abated after laying waste to most of the easily-consumed contents of the Hale Pack fridge. “I’ve always been morally-ambivalent at best and violently-leaning at worst. It’s not exactly a change for me, Doc.”
“We get it,” Laura sighed, rolling her eyes. “The Nogitsune went for the most powerful host it could find that wasn’t a supernatural creature it couldn’t possess. Stiles’s moral-compass or lack thereof isn’t an issue anymore now than it was a year ago since he’d rather face Mom in a rage than disappoint his dad.”
“Alright.” Damian held up a hand before it could devolve into a snark fest in his kitchen as the two best friends opened their mouths to protest Laura’s summation of Stiles’s moral code or lack thereof. “Stiles needs a shower and then an exam. We don’t know how all,” he waved vaguely in the direction of the living room. “That affected him. Everyone not Peter or Stiles needs to go find the others, especially since they should’ve been here by now.”
“And we’ll need them if Noshiko isn’t inclined to listening to hold off the Oni until I can prove I’m not the Nogitsune.” Stiles added – helpfully he thought though the exasperated look Talia shot him said otherwise.
“You’re visibly malnourished and dehydrated.” Damian summed up his findings after Stiles stripped down in Peter’s bedroom to his boxers and let him go through a basic exam, including unwrapping his bandages from being eviscerated to reveal a simple half-moon scar cutting across his lower abdomen that looked healed for months instead of a gaping wound from the night before. “You’ve lost thirty pounds in the last six months, at least half of that in the last couple of weeks. Stiles.”
Amber eyes lifted from studying his hands to meet a concerned blue-hazel gaze that Damian shared with his only son Derek.
“You need to rest and eat and hydrate.” He told him even as Damian knew it was likely to fly in one ear and out the other as long as the Oni were still a threat. “Seriously: you have to sleep.”
“The second I sleep the persona from the last six months – that I’m keeping back through sheer will at the moment,” Stiles spoke lowly, trying to keep a worriedly-pacing Peter down in the kitchen from overhearing him. Though the younger niblings had arrived not long after Damian had hauled him upstairs, so Peter was at least partially distracted chivving them down into the safety of the basement until Noshiko was dealt with. “Will merge with the core me that’s talking to you right now.” His smile was nothing short of bitter. “I have to deal with Noshiko with a clear head untainted by the trauma of being mentally and emotionally abused by an evil fox spirit for the last six months, ok? I’ll fall apart and put myself back together later.”
Damian shook his head, already knowing it was a losing battle and just not having the capacity at the moment to fight it anyway.
“Sometimes you’re so much like your Dad it’s uncanny.” Was all he could say in the face of that implacable Stilinski resolve.
“Yeah.” Stiles chuckled drily, reaching out for a clean t-shirt that Damian had gotten from his stash of clothes in Peter’s closet while he was in the shower, washing off days of grime and sweat since his body hadn’t been bathed since the Nogitsune had escaped Eichen House. “Had to get it from somewhere, right?”
“I’m going to tell him what I just told you.” Damian shut down any hint at keeping Stiles’s state of health from his father before the notion could fully form. “Rest, food, water or sports drinks, and repeat. Once the latest crisis is cleared it’s going to be nothing but tv, Gatorade, and a meal plan from the hospital nutritionist for you, brat.”
“Yeah yeah yeah.” Stiles snarked, settling the t-shirt that shouldn’t bag on him as much as it did, the damn thing was like a tent, on his shoulders, catching sight of the Lichtenberg figure scarring creeping up his neck. A reminder along with the smile on his stomach of a time he’d never be able to forget. He blinked, shaking it off. Freak out later. Dealing with Noshiko now. “I hear you, Mr. Hale.”
“Good.” Damian arched an unimpressed brow at his semi-adopted second brother. “You better hear me or I’ll check you into Beacon Memorial myself to ensure you get the care your body needs after the punishment it’s been put through by that evil bastard.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Hale.” Stiles unfurled a lanky arm and hauled him in for a one-armed hug. “TV, Gatorade, got it.”
Rounding the curve of the staircase, he saw why he hadn’t heard much from the downstairs.
Standing in an impasse with Talia and Peter was none other than the vengeful – and positively brimming with regret – Noshiko Yukimura, though as the sun hadn’t yet set her demonic minions weren’t yet present and accounted for.
“Mrs. Yukimura.” He tilted his head to the side, allowing his eyes to flare with orange flames for a split-second that she caught from the infinitesimal widening of her eyes. “Late, and unhelpful as always.”
“Stiles.” Talia and Damian chided him in eerie unison even as the latter shoved passed his still form standing on the bottom stair.
Stiles crossed his arms and arched an unrepentant brow.
It wasn’t like what he’d said wasn’t true after all.
“That’s not the boy.” Noshiko scoffed, unsheathing her katana from her back. “That’s the demon.”
Stiles made an annoying buzzer sound, shaking his head even as the others rolled their eyes at his antics.
Though they couldn’t get truly mad at him.
Not at the moment.
Not when they just got him back – truly back – for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Try again.” Stiles cracked his neck and allowed his aura to truly flare out around him, Noshiko gasping at the sight.
“Kyubi no Kitsune.” Noshiko stared at the nine perfectly intact and undamaged tails surrounding the impertinent child. For all its age, the Nogitsune hadn’t possessed all nine of its tails, one being lost long before Noshiko summoned it to rain down pain and chaos on the terrible soldiers at Oak Creek Concentration Camp. “Either you’ve regained a tail or…”
“Or done the impossible?” Stiles suggested, moving his hand from behind his back and showing what he held – her own oldest tail in physical form. “With a little help, naturally.”
Noshiko’s face hardened as two of her Oni minions materialized flanking her as the sun set, allowing them freedom to roam.
“Never has a host defeated a Nogitsune.” She hissed, flicking her eyes in command towards the Oni who moved forward, the adult wolves of the Hale Pack moving to counter them, only for the creatures to stop in their tracks.
And for good reason, as more than a dozen of their brethren – their stronger brethren – came into being flanking Stiles and ringing the room, all eyes turning to the former Nogitsune host who held the broken pieces of Noshiko’s tail in his hands.
“How does it work again?” Stiles tilted his head slightly in question. “The older the tail, the stronger the Oni? Protect my family and the Hale Pack.” He ordered his summoned demonic minions, never taking his eyes off of Noshiko even as his Oni battled her own back and destroyed them, all others frozen in a tableau in the mere moments it took the stronger brethren to destroy the immediate threat to the Pack and disappear to continue carrying out his command.
“You have no idea what you’ve done!” Noshiko shouted. “The Oni aren’t simple tools you stupid boy, how they carry out your command is entirely up to them!”
“Then call off your Oni.” Stiles demanded. “Release them and send them back to the ether and I’ll do the same.” He clucked his tongue warningly as she hesitated. “Best hurry before my Oni decide that you count as a threat to my family or pack.”
“A host has never defeated a Nogitsune.” Noshiko repeated herself in a broken whisper as a tear tracked down her smooth face.
“Well, to be fair.” Stiles shrugged, knowing what was tearing her apart – that he managed it and her lover didn’t – but not really caring.
She’d brought down pain and suffering on those he cared about because of her calling down the Oni. And that was on top of being the source of the Nogitsune itself. He had sympathy for the pain and rage that brought her to that choice all those years ago but he found himself unable to forgive it all the same. If either of her shitty decisions had cost him someone he cared about he wouldn’t have been nearly so benign or benevolent in his orders to the Oni regarding the now barely-more-than-mortal Noshiko.
“I had help.”
A stream of Japanese passed from between her lips, broken and stuttering in places, but it came nonetheless, echoed moments later by the same spell being given voice by Stiles.
“It is done.” Noshiko announced, giving one last bitter glance at the boy and the last remnants of her power that he still held in his grasp. “Kyubi no Kitsune.”
“Zenko kukan, to be exact.” Stiles shot at her back, enjoying her flinch almost despite himself. “Neutrality to the Nogitsune’s malevolence.”
She nodded, once, without turning back to face him and strode away.
“That’s it?” Laura almost couldn’t believe it, after everything they’d gone through thanks to Noshiko, that it was just done. “It’s over?”
“Except for the clean-up.” Stiles sighed, rolling his head on his shoulders and dropping the shards of the tanto, allowing them to crumble and fade away now that the power that it represented was dead and gone. “Yeah. It’s over.”
Years later, Stiles would look back at a five-minute window on an April day and take a count of the people who’d died of beheading via Oni.
He knew it would never be a complete list, but given that his dad had told the pack within a day of the “mysterious” murders of a group of mercenaries aligned with the Argent hunting clan whose bodies were found in the preserve, he at least was at peace with the knowledge that whoever the people killed during that five-minute standoff with Noshiko were they were a legitimate threat to the people he cared about.
His verbal command to the Oni might have been vague and open to interpretation.
Yes, this was true.
But what Noshiko couldn’t know was that because Stiles had been watching everything around his body whether his persona or the Nogitsune were in control of it as well as dredging through the Nogitsune’s memories, he knew that the Oni were his to command beyond that initial order until the moment the initial order was completed or he dismissed them.
Orders that didn’t have to be verbal, as the connection between Oni and summoner was almost entirely mental and certainly magical.
He knew he would never have a full accounting as Oni had a freedom of instantaneous movement and powers that even as their summoner he couldn’t fully comprehend.
Names on his accounting included the seemingly-mundane such as orderly Brunski from Eichen House who proved during the investigation into his murder to be a serial killer, a mentally unstable banshee who’d escaped along with the Nogitsune named Meredith, and several of the Eichen House staff or inmates in the supernatural jail it contained; to the familiar form of Alan Deaton much to Peter’s dismay as the wolf had had plans for the druid.
All dead of the same cause: an Oni’s blade severing their neck from their spine.
From what Stiles could surmise using hindsight, the Oni had operated on two very different and distinct levels when it came to carrying out his orders.
First were the immediate, localized threats: the Argent hunters, Alan Deaton, etc.
What he didn’t anticipate, and yeah his bad though it was very much a case of sorry-not-sorry for the oversight, were the opposites of the immediate and localized threats: the global, looming threats that were comprised from the information he gained access to later in life, of international criminals and terrorists. Gerard and Kate Argent, heads of the hunting clan. Threats that he had no idea of even existing. But the Oni did. How, he couldn’t say even with his knowledge of the Japanese demons. They just…did and took action according to the threat and his orders.
As long as, that is, the Oni’s selected targets were within their strike zone: between sunset and sunrise.
Of everyone killed under his command to the Oni, only Meredith and a few of the Eichen House inmates Stiles ever felt anything approaching sympathy for.
Yes, they were dangerous and apparently threats to the people he cared about.
But in their cases, at least, they often couldn’t help it because of their mental states.
So, he mourned their deaths.
But he never regretted them, not even for a moment.
Sheriff Noah Stilinski pulled up into his own driveway with a feeling of tense fear that hadn’t dissipated despite all of Talia’s assurances that Stiles was back.
That it was really Stiles.
That in the words of Peter it was all over.
The hell it was.
The battle might be over, even the war, but the aftermath?
That had just begun.
Damian had given him the rundown: undernourished, dehydrated, dropped thirty pounds and in desperate need of a week’s sleep plus several new scars; his kid, his son, when it came to Stiles it was nowhere near over.
And really, in the wake of everything else that had happened, it gave him only one place to turn to.
Pulling up a contact that he never failed to move over no matter how many times he replaced his phone or it ended up damaged or out-and-out destroyed, he set it to ringing as he stared at the warm yellow of square of light coming from the living room window.
“Noah?”
“Hey, Gareth.” Noah blew out a heavy breath, closing his eyes with an equally heavy breath as he knew, down to his bones, that his kid might not ever forgive him for what he was about to do. “I, uh, I need a favor. It’s about Stiles…”
Noah felt a deep wave of soul-deep relief when he walked into his home that April night and saw his son – rundown, visibly exhausted, weary, but alive – sitting at the kitchen table with a cold beer sitting by Noah’s seat, piping-hot plates of cabbage rolls and pierogi waiting for both of them to dig in, and a big plastic bottle of Gatorade with the cap already off sitting next to Stiles’s elbow as bright amber eyes tracked his process across the room with hungry, wounded eyes.
Stiles was looking at him like he was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life.
Unbuckling his gun belt, Noah hung it up on the peg waiting for it on the kitchen wall next to his keys and his Sheriff’s jacket, then held out his arms in silent beckon.
And that was all his kid needed then he was pushing away from the set kitchen table and falling into his embrace, a sob shaking loose from Stiles’s sometimes-frightening level of self-control.
“It’s alright, Stiles, I’ve gotcha.” Noah whispered, holding his son tight and rocking them both back and forth, noticing a few things as he did so.
Jesus, Damian was right.
Stiles was little more than skin, bone, and tightly-wound muscle.
How had he missed that over the last few months?
Was he really that busy?
When had Stiles grown taller than him?
When had his shoulders gotten as wide as his own?
When did his little boy grow up?
Noah had a feeling that the answer to all of those questions were one and the same: when Noah was looking but just not seeing, side by side with being hung up on the fact that a decent portion of Beacon Hills was supernatural or supernaturally-inclined.
“I’m here, son.” Noah continued to reassure his boy, lifting one hand and running it over the shaggy brown hair that had grown out since the summer. “I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”
Stiles almost choked on a laughing sob at that.
“No, Dad.” He laugh-sobbed into the Sheriff’s uniform shirt. “I really don’t think anything is going to be okay anytime soon.”
“Alright.” Noah nodded, jaw firming and eyes flashing over his kid’s shoulder where the perceptive little shit couldn’t see it. If he’d been unsure of his decision walking into the house to see Stiles waiting for him hopefully, he damn sure wasn’t anymore. “Then talk to me and between us we’ll see what we can do to make it okay.”
“Yeah,” Stiles backed up a step, scrubbing away the tear-tracks from his cheeks with the heel of his palms. “Yeah, that sounds…that sounds like a plan.”
Heavy discussion was shelved at the Stilinski household in preference for a quiet meal and no discussion of crises, drama, or trauma.
Just father and son, eating dinner and enjoying a meal together before they had to face the consequences of recent events and quite possibly have the bottom drop out of their moment of make believe.
A nervous tension ran underneath the soft chatter and laughs, mostly about Peter’s love of getting himself gleefully into and out of trouble or reminisces from when Stiles was little.
For both of them.
Each had things to divulge to the other that left them feeling uncertain and off-balance, fearful that despite the strong bond and love between them that recent events might finally be that last thing, the tipping point, that shattered their relationship once and for all.
Once the plates were cleared and seconds were had, both men feeling stuffed beyond the point of no return and lethargic with it, Stiles rose with a sigh and rinsed the dishes before loading the dishwasher and setting it to run, his father rising and getting himself a second beer before retreating to the living room, allowing his son to collect himself and ready himself before the conversation they needed to have.
Stiles braced his hands on the edge of the sink, leaning forward and bowing his head for a long moment, then rose and straightened up, staring at the shadowy reflection of himself in the glass of the kitchen window then setting his shoulders and grabbing a new bottle of Gatorade – Mr. Hale’s orders having been heard – and strode into the living room just a notch easier than he would up the stairs to a gallows.
Well, he could be accused of a lot, but being undramatic had never been one of them.
He was a teenager, recent possession and assimilation of a millennium’s worth of memories aside, he was allowed his moments of melodrama.
Cracking open his sport’s drink, he settled into his regular spot on the couch facing his dad in his chair and asked:
“How much did the others tell you?”
“Mark Hale,” another of Talia’s brothers. “Fished dead flies out of Derek, Cora, and Taren at the school.” Noah reported, though he knew at least some of it wouldn’t be news to his kid. “They’re recovering after trying to kill each other under the Nogitsune’s possession. There was a mass-sighting of the Oni at Eichen House, they tore through over a dozen staff and inmates in the supernatural supermax under the basement level that Talia is calling in help to clean up. Oh,” Noah arched a brow. “And apparently Peter Hale managed to – somehow – get his sister to hijack your head to dig you out from under the Nogitsune’s control then you had a death-match which you won with the thing, and then not even an hour later won a stand-off with Mrs. Yukimura. There was also something about you using her tail to kill the Nogitsune and summon then dismiss the Oni but that part’s a little fuzzy. And Damian says you need R&R to do with something about fractures in your psyche in need of healing. How’d I do?”
Stiles took a long swallow of Gatorade then set the bottle down on the coffee table with a resolute click.
“Pretty good summary of today, actually.” Stiles said, rubbing his hands over his face, feeling a million years old and weary to the bone. “Want me to fill in some of those gaps?”
“Please.” Noah heaved a weighty breath, taking a pull of his beer. “The Hales weren’t exactly heartening.”
“Yeah, we kinda leave the sunshine-and-unicorns to the kids.” Stiles bit at his cheek, thinking a million miles an hour of how to explain something that he barely knew how to put into words let alone make sense to his grounded, pragmatic dad. At the beginning, he supposed, then went on to tell his dad almost the exact same thing as he’d said to Peter regarding his mental shields and learning from the Nogitsune, finishing with: “Peter knew enough about how I think to follow my bread crumbs and plan accordingly.”
“The mental link and the kitsune tail.” Noah frowned, nodding slowly and turning it all over in his head. “And the cracks Damian mentioned?”
A bittersweet smile curved over Stiles’s mouth.
“C’mon Dad.” He shrugged, looking away from those pained blue eyes. “I already had issues after Mom. Having to squirrel away the core of myself to keep the Nogitsune from taking full control of me and my abilities certainly didn’t help. I have to re-assimilate the part of me that actively dealt with the possession while the rest of me worked to undermine it. Saying I have a few cracks in my psyche is like saying the meteor that took out the dinos was a bit devastating.” His laugh was both self-deprecating and dark. “I’m not going to be okay again for a long time.”
“You’re talking about DID.” Noah realized with an internal scream of rage that he hid – successfully – from his kid who’d lived through so much shit Noah barely knew where to start shoveling to get Stiles some breathing room.
DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, was a mental disorder that psychologists the world-over debated the validity of.
Given the hell the Nogitsune had made them all live for weeks and weeks, Noah knew a few things about trauma affecting the mind as he’d tried to figure out what was going on with his son.
“Not really.” Stiles frowned, trying to figure out how to explain it. What he’d done to part of himself in order to protect the whole of himself. “It’s more like, I made a 3D copy of myself in my head and let it run around and keep the Nogitsune busy. It was still me, just a me that only served that specific purpose. A duplicate, only mental instead of the physical copy the Nogitsune made to try and gain control of my body and abilities permanently.”
“And that’s something a, a spark can do?” Noah double-checked. “Just make a copy of yourself to pilot your body while you-you is busy with research or whatever inside your head?”
Stiles puffed out his cheeks, tilting his head from side to side.
“One with a genius IQ, training in the method of loci, who’s read too much Harry Potter and associated fanfiction, and the belief to make it work: yeah.” He shrugged. “Not that I ever plan to do it again. It’s…uncomfortable to say the least. Like being a stranger or an observer in my own life. Not cool.”
“But necessary at the time.” Noah scrubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus, Stiles. What kind of side-effects is that going to have?”
“Wellp.” Stiles winced. “It’s probably a good thing you’re already used to me having nightmares, I can say that much for certain. It’ll be a couple of weeks before I can get everything sorted out upstairs,” he tapped a finger against his temple. “Then they should calm down at least a little.”
“Jesus, Stiles.” Noah shook his head, flabbergasted that this was his kid’s reality to the point that his son didn’t even register how nuts that was. That Noah was supposed to just be okay with his kid doing himself possibly irreparable damage because a now-dead druid decided to play God. “And when the next crisis attacks, what then? You jump right back into the fray despite only being sixteen and a high school senior? Despite the fact that what you’ve already been through has done you real and significant harm? When there’s functioning adults to handle it?”
“Tell that to the Nemeton.” Stiles said bitterly, even as he sunk into the warmth of his father’s embrace.
“If I thought the magic tree stump in the preserve was willing to listen to me bitch at it to cut its shit out, believe me I would.” Noah enjoyed the snort of laughter that pulled from his weary and damaged son. His baby boy. Claudia’s baby boy. Oh, yeah, Stiles isn’t going to like his solution to this mess at all.
That said, his kid was still a minor and was shit out of luck when it came to effectively negating his dad’s wishes concerning his welfare until he turned eighteen.
“I’ll be okay, Dad.” Stiles sighed. “Like Mr. Hale said: some R&R and I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will be.” Noah snorted. “Which is a good thing you’ll be able to get it in London with your Uncle Gareth.”
Stiles started to nod, almost drifting off to sleep, when what his Dad said penetrated his weariness and had him sitting up straight and staring at his old man with wide eyes.
Wait.
Uncle Gareth, London.
What?