Chapter Text
It was raining on the night that Stiles found herself at Chris Argent’s doorstep. Her hands shook as she warred with herself on whether or not to actually knock on the door. The supplies were ready in her car. They had been ready for months if she was being honest with herself. She didn’t know how they had yet to be used. Another honest and still painful thought was how she wondered why she hadn’t done it herself yet.
“He wants to,” she found herself whispering. “He wants to.”
That was enough to make her lift her hand, form a gentle fist, and rap softly on the door in front of her. It opened within seconds.
“You’ve sure got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here,” Chris seethed, pulling Stiles in by the scruff of her shirt, slamming the door behind her, and shoving her to the wall, his forearm a solid line against her throat.
Stiles for her part did not struggle. She let Chris press his arm harder against her throat, feeling that survival instinct start to flare and shoving it so far down. She let Chris take his time, his eyes flitting back and forth between hers until she looked away to give him a semblance of privacy to figure out what he wanted to do with her.
The crack of his fist against her cheek should not have been a surprise, but her head still whipped to the side and back only to be struck again before she could register that Chris had punched her. And he kept punching her.
As was his right, Stiles thought weakly before the next punch was enough to make the lights go out, darkness overtaking her. She barely registered the contact against the floor as she fell to the ground, but there was something wet in her eye and that was honestly just an excuse to close them and drift off.
Coming to, Stiles noticed she had been moved to the other side of the room. Away from the door. The supplies from her car were now inside, and Chris was rifling through them all with the same pissed off expression on his face she had gotten used to.
It wasn’t always like this. Chris used to look at Stiles with something that felt close to being full of awe. Whether at Stiles seemingly lack of survival instincts or at her burgeoning magical powers. She had finally gotten him to agree to train her, much to the dismay of the others in her Pack.
Not her Pack. Not anymore. She didn’t belong to them. She didn’t belong to anyone anymore.
Not even her father.
“You know, if you were to just disappear one day…I would consider it a gift,” her dad had said, not even looking at her before walking out and slamming the door on any chance they had at saving their relationship. She had been calling him Sheriff for months at this point, the title of Father being taken away. “You’re no daughter of mine.”
He had been the last one. The last person to reject Stiles and cut off ties with her. Chris had been the first. Followed closely by Scott. The rest followed Scott. He was their Alpha after all. They had no choice - well the wolves had no choice if they didn’t want to lose their Alpha and become feral omegas. The others though? Lydia and Malia and Kira? They couldn’t look her in the eye either. Kira was the last one to stop talking to her, stop looking at her. Kira had always been the nicest to her, despite only knowing her for a few weeks before Stiles was cut off from the Pack.
“I don’t trust you. I don’t want you in my Pack. I don’t want you around my Pack. Honestly, I don’t want you in this territory, but Peter said I can’t kick humans out of a territory,” Scott had said, looking everywhere around the room except Stiles. She had tried to find support in the others who surely had to understand that she had been possessed for fuck’s sake. She didn’t want to do the things she did. She had been forced to!
But they too all just looked down or away. Not one of them came after her when she left the Loft, stumbling to her car through blurred eyes full of tears. She managed to drive away and had to pull over because the sobs were too strong to let her keep driving. Arriving home hadn’t helped.
“Well, what did you expect? You murdered his girlfriend. You also murdered lots of other people. I understand why he doesn’t want you around,” her dad had said. He had followed it with the rule that she couldn’t speak to him unless absolutely necessary. And only then she wasn’t allowed to refer to him as family.
“You aren’t family. Your mother was family. You? You were a mistake. I wish -” her dad - the Sheriff - had cut himself off, but Stiles knew what he wanted to say.
“Just say it,” she whispered, knowing that once she heard it, it would be the final nail in her coffin.
“I wish you had died and your mother had lived,” the Sheriff whispered, unable to say it at full volume or with any conviction. The coward.
Except no. He wasn’t the coward. Stiles was. She was the coward. She was desperately and pathetically clinging to relationships with people who couldn’t’ stand the sight of her anymore. They hated her. And the more time that passed, the more she understood why. She had been planning on taking care of things herself when she heard that Chris Argent had come back to town. Six months later, he had come back with Isaac in tow like they had never left. Isaac went back to the Pack seamlessly. Chris became an ally, somewhat begrudgingly to the last people his daughter had cared about.
But that didn’t include Stiles. It would never include her.
So she decided that she would at least give him the option. And if he for whatever unfathomable reason decided not to? She would do it herself.
Chris’s hands against her face brought Stiles back to the present.
“Hey, hey! What is this shit, huh? Why do you have all of this?” He asked, his eyes wide as if he had reason to be scared of Stiles. Like everyone else was scared of Stiles. Like Stiles was scared of Stiles.
Stiles tried to focus more, but the ringing in her ears and the pounding in her head made it difficult.
Chris slapped her again, yelling, “What is this shit?”
“It’s,” Stiles started, coughing and choking a little on what tasted like blood. She swallowed and tried again, “It’s for you.”
Chris went eerily still.
“You brought plastic sheets, lighter fluid, matches, and a knife for me?” He asked, his voice deadly serious.
Stiles caught up to what he was thinking, and tried to move so she could breathe better to be able to explain.
Chris slammed her back down against the floor, his hands around her throat as he squeezed and still demanded answers. He finally let go when Stiles’s vision had all but blacked out.
“Not to kill you,” Stiles wheezed, ducking away from his hands when he reached for her again, “to kill me!”
Chris stilled again.
“I know you want to. Fuck, I am pretty sure everyone wants to. But you…you the most,” Stiles started to explain, not liking the increasing levels of distrust she saw in his eyes.
“The knife? Her knife?” Chris whispered, leaning back just a bit.
Stiles felt her cheeks heat up which was ridiculous that she would be embarrassed and blushing when she was asking the man to kill her.
“I was going to just leave it for the Sheriff to hold on to until you came back,” Stiles said, not missing the way Chris’s eyes narrowed at her use of “Sheriff.”
Stiles swallowed more blood before continuing, “But then you came back. And I was going to leave it on your doorstep, but then I thought you’d want to do it yourself…kill me yourself.”
Chris surged forward, his hands wrapping around Stile’s throat again as he squeezed and screamed words Stiles didn’t understand. Suddenly, he was gone, halfway across the room with his hand over his mouth and tears pouring from his eyes.
“Not like this,” he said, his voice breaking on the words. “I do want to kill you. But not like this. I’ll find you when I am ready,” he finished, his voice a little stronger at the end.
Stiles tried to nod, feeling fear swell at the idea of going back to the Sheriff’s house. No, she wouldn’t go back, she decided as she shakily got to all fours before being able to push herself to standing. Swaying on her feet, she tried to focus on Chris who had about three of him all looking back at her.
“The supplies were taken from trash cans over the past two years. They can’t be traced. And…and…” she started, fighting against the pull of passing out.
“And what?” Chris asked, his voice back to lethal territory, all emotion from before now hidden behind a mask of steel.
“And you don’t have to worry about the police. The Sheriff made it clear. He won’t mind,” Stiles finished after stumbling to the door, looking back over her shoulder, feeling her stomach roil at the turn.
Chris didn’t respond. So Stiles reached for the doorknob, missing a few times due to not knowing which doorknob was the real one. She made it to her car, breathing slowly to stay conscious long enough to pull out of the driveway, taking the closest preserve road and inching along the dirt road until she found a clearing a couple miles in. It was then that she felt the exhaustion really sink in. She was unconscious the moment after she turned the car off, slumping forward over the steering wheel.