Reading Time: 150 Minutes
Title: Hard to Kill
Author: Lalaith Quetzalli
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Established Relationship, Family, Romance, Slash
Relationship(s): Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Background Relationships
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Hate Speech, Violence-Graphic, Violence-Against Children/Child Abuse. Death-Minor Character, Discussion-Hate Crimes, Discussion-Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Murder, Racism.
Beta: CorgiQueen14
Word Count: 72795
Summary: Mieczyslaw Jan Gajos Stilinski was born into a lineage of power, and duty. With the power and will to carry on the legacy of his ancestors, and more. And no matter who gets in his way, who tries to push him back, to take him down, in the end he will always be the last one standing. For even if he might be only human, in this world of magic and monsters, he knows that humans can sometimes be stronger than even gods…
Artist: Halestrom
Part II. The Rumor.
He’s in the locker-room and he doesn’t know why. Then again, why wouldn’t he be in the locker-room? (Aside from the fact that it’s a high-school locker-room, and he’s very much not in high-school anymore!).
“Why am I here?” he asks out loud to no one in particular.
The last thing he expects, is when he actually gets an answer:
“Why wouldn’t you be here?” a voice he knows all-too-well asks in return.
And yeah, Stiles had already asked himself that very question inside his head… is he inside his head? But that’s not the point. No, the point is who exactly is asking the question.
“Derek?” Stiles turns around, following his voice. “Why are you here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be here?” Derek asks in return.
“Yeah, nope,” Stiles shakes his head. “If you know me at all, if you’re real at all, you must know answering a question with another question doesn’t work for me.” Not unless he’s the one doing exactly that, in any case.
“Not unless you’re the one doing it,” Derek smirks at him.
“Yeah man, whatever,” Stiles shrugs. “Answer the question!”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Derek inquires. “I’m here because you are here, Stiles.”
That… tickles at something in the back of Stiles’ mind. He remembers a story Derek told him, during their trip to New York, about the time the Calaveras attacked him in his loft, and then Kata kidnapped him. How he was unconscious at one point and he had some sort of… dream? Imagined encounter? Hallucination? A bit of everything?! He’d been in the locker-room, and Stiles was there, and they talked about what was happening to Derek. That it was Stiles (or Derek’s memory of him, or whatever) that helped the wolf process what was going on. It was then Derek realized that at some point Stiles had become his anchor…
Stiles doesn’t need Derek… or this imprint/dream/whatever version of his lover to talk about dreams, about what’s real and what isn’t. Stiles doesn’t even need to count his fingers (he’s learned a lot since the nogitsune), he knows he’s dreaming. But that’s okay, because that’s not the point of all of this.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Dream-Derek asks him.
The last thing he remembers… New York, Eli, Mirele, sharing an apartment with Derek. Feeling like he could live like that for the rest of his life…
But no, that was before.
He left NY, returned to DC. As much as he loves Derek, wanted to stay with him, he needed to finish college, needed to make a plan as to what he was actually going to do with his life, since the FBI was no longer an option.
Then… exiting the building his studio apartment is on to attend a late morning class. Only, he never made it to campus, did he?
“No good deed goes unpunished…” he murmurs under his breath.
The memories hit him then: the woman with the fake badge, all the men and women in that alley. No, not just men and women… hunters.
They were armed to the teeth, yet they weren’t trying to kill him, they were looking to take him.
He fought, he fought like hell…
And he lost.
Something else hits him then.
“Derek!” he cries out, turning to the wolf.
“Stiles…?” The wolf looks honestly surprised by the sudden shift in Stiles.
“I need you to listen to me sourwolf, listen to me very carefully…” Stiles murmurs.
Something, something Stiles cannot name or describe seems to change in Derek’s eyes, and in that moment Stiles is really, truly, absolutely certain that it’s all more than just a dream…
“Mischief…?” Derek asks, so very, very softly.
“Listen to me, sourwolf,” Stiles insists. “I’m not abandoning you, okay?”
“What…?”
“I’m not leaving you, I’d never do that. Nothing could ever keep me from you for long, alright? Even… even if things might happen, if I might not be able to come back to you for a little while, trust me when I tell you I will find my way back to you.”
“I…”
“Trust me!”
“I do, I trust you Stiles, always.”
“I will find you!”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
Stiles wakes up with a gasp.
On the one hand, he’s honestly surprised he got to wake up at all, considering what happened in that alley in DC, and the fact that he was knocked out with an electric charge from a cattle-prod.
On the other… he’s not sure being alive is much better. Even if he were the optimist kind, with the whole “where there’s life there is hope” and all that; the fact is that from the start those hunters were trying to take him alive, and not even his taking down so many of them, and killing at least four, was enough to make them slip and actually kill him. He knows from experience that it’s never a good thing when hunters want someone alive.
The first thing he learns is he’s in prison. Or well, he supposes ‘a prison’ would be more accurate. One he’s pretty sure must not be known to the public considering that, as he finds out on his very first day there (the first couple of hours, really) every single inmate is well aware and in some way connected to the supernatural. Most aren’t actually supernatural beings themselves, except perhaps some very low level magic-users (some of which Stiles suspects might not be aware of their own gift), low enough they do not have the power to try and escape, or to fight back against the wardens. Most of the inmates, though, are actually hunters.
Bad hunters (though, thinking back on it, are there any good hunters? Stiles doesn’t think so). Most are there because they were caught by human authorities while ‘doing their duty’ (Stiles has to scoff, loudly, at that one), with enough proof against them that they couldn’t just walk away. The best that could be done, the best the hunters in high enough positions in the government could do, was ensure they were transferred from whatever human prison they were originally sent to, to that one.
The place, as Stiles learns in the following days, is known by most simply as the Citadel. It probably has some more official name, but the inmates either don’t know it or don’t care about it. Everyone refers to the place as the Citadel. It’s completely self-sufficient. Water pumped out of a well (deep enough that they know no one would be insane enough to try and use it as an escape route), electricity provided through solar panels and windmills. There’s farmland all around, where undocumented immigrants are said to work; they earn just enough to provide for their families, and their own legal status means they’re not going to go to the authorities no matter what they see or hear (Stiles cannot say he blames them).
He spends two days in isolation, undergoing a bunch of tests conducted by people in labcoats, and which seems to be their version of a med-eval. He considers briefly waiting for one of the moments when he’s unchained and attack, but in the end decides against it. He doesn’t know how aware the people around him might or might not be regarding his skills, but considering how little he knows of the place where he is, and its surroundings, he decides to not try for an escape until he has more information and is (hopefully) better prepared.
On the third day a sub-dermal tracker is injected to the back of his neck. According to what he’s told, while the prison has wardens, they only really guard the borders of the prison, to ensure no inmates escape (and probably that no outsiders become too interested in the place). Apparently they don’t care much about what might happen inside. The tracker, aside from being able to pinpoint his position at all times (the information going to a computer where a warden keeps an ‘eye’ on the prisoners at all times) also keeps track of Stiles’ vitals. Not, he’s informed, because they particularly care about his health, but just because it’s a fast way for them to know when someone gets killed by another inmate.
A part of Stiles wonders if all those ‘clarifications’ are meant to frighten him, perhaps in an attempt to ensure he’ll give in, just accept his situation and not fight back. Whether they’re being totally honest about all those details or not, it doesn’t matter. Stiles is not the kind of man to back down, he never has been (it’s one of his faults, he knows, and doesn’t really care).
Once the tracker is in place he’s sent to a four-person cell in the ‘general pop’ area of the prison. He has no doubt this was done on purpose, in an attempt to… perhaps not kill him (if they wanted him dead, he’d be dead already) but perhaps to put him down a bit. He refuses to allow it.
He knows what he looks like to other people’s eyes. Always wearing loose clothing, and it’s not like the loose sweatpants, sweatshirt and cloth shoes, all in the exact same shade of gray, are any better. They’re in fact loose enough to show a bit of the big tattoo on his back (which no one thus far has paid much attention to).
“I don’t want any trouble,” he tells the big, burly men who approach him on the yard when the time comes for everyone to spend time outside.
He knows already there’s no point to it. Clearly, the men aren’t known for their brains (if they were caught by human authorities they obviously cannot have been very clever) but still, Stiles makes sure that enough people hear him say the words, let them serve as a warning. Then the moment the first man comes at him, he lets loose.
Almost a dozen men end up in the infirmary that day, Stiles himself included. Though he, unlike most of the others, does end up walking there on his own two feet.
The prison has few guards and none showed any particular interest in breaking up the fight; which Stiles had already known would be the case, what with everything he’d been told even before he was ‘released’ into the general population.
Still, the fight serves its purpose, as most of the other inmates start keeping their distance, some eyeing him either with curiosity or wariness (Stiles doesn’t really care which, as long as they leave him alone). He has no idea just yet how he’s going to make it out of this hellhole, but he will, somehow.
xXx
“Trust me!”
“I do, I trust you Stiles, always.”
“I will find you!”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
Hazel green eyes snap open as Derek wakes up. He makes not a sound as he does. After so many years, with so many nightmares and night-terrors and even plain worries interrupting his sleep he’s long since grown used to keeping any sound to himself.
He can still remember his dream, remember the words said by both him and Stiles in it. And most importantly, regardless of how unlikely it might seem, he knows without a doubt it was all true. Somehow Stiles was there, in his dream, he was there and Derek got to talk to him and… and something is happening to him! Or it already has!
Derek doesn’t even stop to think about it as he rushes out of bed, barely stopping long enough to throw on a pair of jeans and grab his leather jacket, pulling it over the sleeveless t-shirt he went to sleep in as he takes the stairs, several at a time on his way down (the building he’s renting the apartment in has fairly decent services, central air conditioning, even wi-fi (if a bit slow at times) but the elevator has a habit of breaking down every other week. It’s actually why the rent is fairly cheap, despite the pretty decent neighborhood, not many people are willing to traipse up and down more than three flights of stairs. Derek doesn’t mind, and Stiles grew used to it.
The other positive of the building is the car-park in the basement, something pretty rare for NY, and which means Derek makes it to his Camaro in no time at all.
As he goes, Derek ponders on Stiles and when he last heard from his mate. Yeah so, they haven’t talked about it exactly, the difference between being just boyfriends, or lovers, and actually being mates, but Derek had been so afraid of putting too much on the young man too quickly. As reassuring as it had been to know he was as in love with Derek as Derek was with him; even if he only knew that because he happened to overhear a conversation between Stiles and his cousin Mirele (which, he’s pretty certain she arranged for things to be that way!). Still, he hadn’t been ready to broach the topic of mates with Stiles just yet.
It ought to come as no surprise, but after the traumatic death of his first, very human, girlfriend, whom he was forced to kill himself, as a mercy to end her suffering; followed by the psychotic huntress who raped him… And Derek has never been unaware of what Kate did to him, that it was wrong. It just wasn’t enough for the longest time to convince him that she was the only one to blame for the loss of his family, his pack. Laura’s attitude, her refusal to grieve with him, the way she mocked him when he’d grieve Paige at all! It all meant that for years he didn’t really deal with all his feelings regarding all the tragedy and loss he suffered.
The closest he ever came to things was after meeting Mirele. She was… a gentle soul, a friendly face, a woman who exuded peace and kindness and who helped Derek so much, without her realizing it even! She reminded him of Paige, in some ways. It wasn’t just her humanity, and while there was a passing physical resemblance, it wasn’t that either. It was the way she looked at him, smiled at him, the way she believed in him… Just like with Paige, Derek never told Mirele he was a wolf, she just knew, and just like Paige, she accepted him completely.
He was never in love with Mirele. He loved her, still does, there’s no doubt about it. He just was never in love with her, nor she with him. In her own words, love just wasn’t for her, she had no interest in it. Derek suspected her stance on things might be connected to her parents, but just like she’s never asked about his own family, he respected her silence on her own.
So, sex with Mirele was never about love. It was about friendship, and about attraction, and in a certain way, about proving to himself he could actually enjoy sex. That it didn’t have to be the way it was with Kate (all about control, and manipulation and force and pain…).
He never planned on having a kid. Awful as it might sound, that was something that just kind of happened (the how, he doesn’t exactly know, they used protection!). He didn’t even know about it for the longest time. The loss of his bond to Laura made him drop everything and take the first flight to North California. Even knowing it was pointless. That it was too late already, had been far too late the moment the bond to his alpha snapped…
Beacon Hills was a nightmare in so many ways. The place where he lost his first girlfriend (even knowing as he does now that theirs was a puppy-love, that it would have never lasted, there’s a part of him that still loves Paige, that always will; will always love what she represents, and who he was when he was with her); where he was raped and manipulated by a much older, psychopathic predator into betraying his family, his pack. The loss of Laura was… a complicated matter for him. He didn’t mourn her like a brother would mourn a sister; only as a beta mourns an alpha, their last connection to pack, to their humanity, to sanity… Because truth is Laura stopped being his sister the moment she became his alpha, probably even before that. Derek never really told her what happened, about Kate, and yet she blamed him anyway. Blamed him for not being… He doesn’t even know! It’s almost… some might say Laura was blaming him for being just one beta, for not being enough for her, yet it was she who chose to cut the bonds to the other survivors (like Peter, and those non-Hale pack-members who hadn’t been in the Hale house at the time of the fire, and thus didn’t die that night). Derek cannot help but feel that what truly angered Laura was realizing she wasn’t their mother and she would never be; it just was easier to take her anger out on him than on herself.
Throughout the years and his life Derek has had many reasons to hate Peter. It was the man who first suggested turning Paige, telling Derek that Talia would never accept a human into the pack, wouldn’t even agree to read her in, and the secrets would eventually ruin things for them, which was what had happened between Peter and his own… girlfriend? Boyfriend? Derek doesn’t even remember. He supposes it doesn’t really matter, in the grand scheme of things. Derek used to be so close to Peter when he was little, the other wolf being almost more of a big brother than an uncle, and Derek has long since suspected it was that very closeness that prompted his mother to be so hard on him and Cora both, in a way she never was with Laura. Peter was a wild-child in many ways (or so all the adults claimed), and it was like she feared they might end up being too much like him.
Derek always loved Peter, he was his favorite uncle, his second favorite family member, after Cora, but that doesn’t mean Derek was entirely blind to the older man’s faults (or his own). Still, Laura’s death was never something Derek held against Peter. Even that night, he killed Peter because the older wolf was beyond reason. He’d already killed everyone involved with the Hale Fire, and didn’t care, he wasn’t going to stop, so Derek was forced to stop him, as much as it hurt.
And then Peter came back. Derek might never have said it out-loud, but he was glad.
Jennifer Blake’s magical manipulation of him, coupled with Kate’s unexpected return (and everything she did to him) twisted Derek even more. The difference was… he was no longer a child. And he actually had a chance to deal with his own emotions, to heal, from what was done to him, this time around. Even if the betas he gave the bite to chose to abandon him, he had Peter, and Cora (even if she chose to return to South America, deciding Beacon Hills just wasn’t home for her anymore, she did promise she was still his sister, and always would be), and Stiles…
He has Stiles. Derek might never be able to fully understand what has made the human choose him, Derek Hale, of all people, but he’ll never stop thanking Mother Moon for the blessing. It feels odd, in some ways, how their relationship came about, so quick and easy in some respects, so hard and slow in others. He remembers telling the young man (then a teenager) more than once that he did not trust him; Derek was so emphatic when pointing out how they were only helping each other because they needed each other to survive. Truth is Derek doesn’t think that was ever true. Or well, Derek himself certainly needed Stiles, but the wolf’s pretty sure the human would have found a way to survive without Derek. He always does.
As a child, Derek was always so full of curiosity (a characteristic that wasn’t properly appreciated, with an alpha who refused to give explanations to anyone, especially children, and other adults seemingly always too busy to help satisfy his endless curiosity about all sorts of topics). Still, that never truly killed Derek’s curiosity, it just turned it… inwards. Made Derek seek to find the answers he wanted himself, instead of asking questions.
It wasn’t always a good thing. Especially when he might not have the resources to get those answers, or worse even, when he might not know the right question he needs answered. That’s how he failed to see Kate for who and what she was, didn’t realize the danger. No one ever taught him what to look for, not where it concerned a hunter… or a sexual predator.
That same curiosity has led to Derek wondering more than once when exactly it was that Stiles’ and his relationship changed. When they went from antagonistic (“This is private property”) to saving each other’s lives again (in the back of the vet clinic), and again (in the pool), and again (in the elevator), and again (in North Carolina)…
It happened so gradually. Derek knows that the first time he felt anything at all for the young man was after the pool incident. He was so young, and slender and… human, and yet he managed to tread water, while being weighed down both by a paralyzed alpha werewolf, and the heavy clothes they were both wearing, for over two hours! He could have died, yet he never gave up. And Derek knows that Stiles could have run, not just when Derek first told him to, but even later on, the kanima was after the wolf, not the human. And yet he stayed… And Derek himself turned his back on a dangerous enemy because he was trying to protect said human… that says something about the both of them, doesn’t it?
Still, back then Stiles was so young, still a minor, and Derek refused to be like Kate… so he pushed any and all feelings, anything beyond the respect he’d begun feeling way before that, to the side. It was hard, especially when the human kept getting into messes, kept helping him! By the time Derek died in Mexico (he got better!) he knew there was no going back. He was in love with Stiles Stilinski, and he always would be. Even then, he never thought anything would come from that love.
And then North Carolina happened.
Stiles saved Derek in more ways than just the obvious during that mess in North Carolina. Granted Derek saved Stiles too and… well, that’s their whole thing, isn’t it? Them saving each other again and again? And now…
Tamora Monroe was a danger, Derek knew that from the start. Before he ever met the woman, even. Gerard Argent might have been an absolute psychopath, but even he didn’t manage to gather as many people to his cause as Monroe did in just two years. And on the subject of the Argents, Derek still doesn’t know what to think of the fact that in the end Gerard and Kate took each other out, rather than him, or his uncle, or anyone else dealing with them. He supposes it’s justice in a way, what with Kate being killed by the father she wanted to both emulate and have accept her again; while Gerard himself was killed by his favorite daughter, turned shifter, and whom he hated for that very thing, for being a beast, despite the fact that he himself sought the bite when sick…
Tamora Monroe was a danger, and she’s not anymore, because she’s dead. Stiles killed her. Derek thinks he’s perhaps one of few people who wasn’t surprised at all by this turn of events. Not only that Stiles had the necessary skills to do it, but that he had the will to do so.
“I always did say he’d make a remarkable wolf,” Peter commented at one point.
Derek doesn’t disagree, per say, but he doesn’t fully agree either. There’s a reason why he never offered Stiles the bite, even though he was a logical choice; and there were times when he wanted so badly to bind him to the Hale pack (to himself), especially every time Scott went and did something stupid and showed how little regard he had for his supposed best-friend and brother. And contrary to what some people might choose to believe, it wasn’t because he thought Stiles would prove to be anything but a magnificent wolf. Rather, the way Derek sees it, Stiles doesn’t need the bite, he’s already incredible.
When Derek made his choices for betas, he chose those he believed would benefit most from receiving the bite. It was his belief that doing it this way would allow them to see the bite as a gift, and with Derek being the one to give it to them, that would make them loyal to him. That didn’t exactly work out, seeing how all of those he bit left him in the end. But even on that, he doubts anything could possibly make Stiles more loyal than he was from the start.
Still, Stiles was already great as a human, he did not need to be more. The bite would have made him stronger, faster, made him heal faster, yes, but it wouldn’t have made him better. They talked about the matter exactly once:
“Peter offered me the bite once, you know?” Stiles commented, apropos of nothing.
“Offered?” Derek wanted to clarify.
“Yep,” Stiles nodded. “Which, now that I think back on it, considering that he was insane at the time, I suppose it’s more surprising that he accepted it when my answer was no, rather than him offering at all. Or perhaps the true surprise was the fact that he made the offer at all instead of, you know, just biting me against my will, like he did with Lydia and Scott.”
“Peter respects you,” Derek pointed out. “He has from the start.”
Stiles nodded, seemingly pensive.
“Are you going to ask why I never offered you the bite?” Derek asked eventually.
“Not really?” Stiles shrugged. “I mean, I’m pretty sure you know I’ve never wanted it.”
“I know, but that wasn’t it, or at least, not just that,” Derek admitted. “Though I’m intrigued now, why did you never want the bite? Was it the chance you might die?”
“Not really? I mean, it’s a consideration of course. I’d have never wanted to die on my dad or anything. But I must admit that wasn’t the main reason.” He held his silence long enough that Derek actually started to wonder if he’d ever fully explain, and then he did. “I don’t need to be a wolf. I… I am who I am. Humanity and all. I might not be as strong or as fast as you guys, and yeah, I’ll admit that I do feel more than a little self-conscious standing next to your adonis-like perfection,” he blushed. “But truth is I don’t consider myself weak, or fragile. I’m clever, and powerful in my own way, and I can go toe to toe with each and every one of you if I have to. I don’t need to be a wolf for that.”
“No, you don’t.”
Derek was quite happy Stiles knew that.
Of course then he had to show the human how much he really liked his body. That Derek considered him absolutely perfect as he was.
Sex with Stiles was… so much more than Derek ever expected it to be. Even without having to worry about the shitload of trauma others left him with, this time thanks to Braeden. And that was a whole other story. Much like was the case with Mirele, he and Braeden were never in love, but there was a certain attraction between them, and Braeden could see Derek had been through shit, and was willing to help him find himself again, learn to enjoy sex again. Also, she taught him how to survive as a human, made him see that, just like Stiles would say to him later on, one didn’t need to be a wolf to be strong.
The two eventually split, because they were never going to last, of course. Theirs wasn’t truly a romantic relationship. They were friends, friends who had sex, and that was enough for them.
Stiles… he’s always been so much more. More than Mirele and Braeden, and Paige, and anyone else he could have ever laid eyes on. Long before they even kissed. Derek knows all about mates, he knows that unlike what some people might believe they’re not magic, they’re not destined. Yes, there’s an element of compatibility, but it’s not like there’s only one person in the whole universe… Those are just fairy tales. Paige and he were compatible, and at fifteen he was young and naive enough to believe that that compatibility was the be-all, end-all of the world. It’s only as an adult that he’s able to look back on things and see that while they were compatible physically, they weren’t so in so many other ways. They wanted very different things from life; Paige wanted to move to a big city, to be a famous musician and Derek… he was happy to stay home, to build a life right there in Beacon Hills. He might have told himself back then that he could follow her, could be there and support her and that her happiness would be enough for him to be happy as well. But that’s a lie.
He and Mirele were never compatible like that, and that was just fine with them both. He and Braeden were compatible to a point, but by then he understood himself, and compatibility in a way he didn’t when he was younger.
He and Stiles… they’re compatible, yes. He’s not entirely certain they were from the start, but he knows now that doesn’t matter. Compatibility is important, yes, but what truly matters is what one does with it. And while he might have ignored it for the longest time, once he was ready, once they both were, they made it work. They turned basic compatibility into an actual relationship and now… now they’re mates.
He’s out of New York and driving south towards DC when his phone rings. It’s Mirele.
“Mir…” Derek doesn’t even get the chance to finish saying the name.
“Something’s wrong with Miec!” Mirele exclaims.
“What…?” Derek’s completely thrown by that.
It’s not that he doesn’t know it already, but how does she?
“You remember how I told you I have a spark?” Mirele asks him.
“Magic,” it’s more a question than an answer.
“It’s not a big deal, I cannot do much, and I never did train on anything beyond the basics, like handling mountain ash, mistletoe, vervain and such,” Mirele sounds particularly sheepish.
“Eli…” Derek doesn’t even seem to be sure how to ask.
“He has it as well, I’m sure, it’s a Gajos trait,” Mirele nods. “Though in his case, his wolf is stronger.”
And Stiles lost his during the mess with the nogitsune, Derek remembers.
“What do you know?” he finally asks Mirele.
“Not much,” she admits. “It’s just… I’ve always been aware of Miec. Long before I even knew what it meant, or that he existed at all. Through it all I managed to retain this awareness of him. Even when he went on to continue his training as a warrior and I did not, even when he quit, even when he lost his spark… I’ve always been as aware of him as I am of my own son.” she hesitates, and Derek can tell he’s not gonna like what comes next. “I’m not aware of him anymore.”
Yeah, Derek knew he wasn’t gonna like it.
He knows Stiles isn’t dead, knows it down to his bones. He’d have probably gone feral already if he were; just like he almost did when Stiles was taken by the Ghost Riders. Derek might have forgotten the human, at least briefly, but his wolf never did, he knew something was wrong and drove Derek mad trying to find out what. He and Stiles even talked about it and they were pretty sure it was only the strange sort-of fold in time that seemed to happen in Beacon Hills once they solved everything, that made it so by the time Derek got anywhere close Stiles was already back and everything was pretty much over.
He makes it to DC in record time. There he makes his way to the apartment buildings closest to the GWU Campus. He knows where Stiles has been staying. He’s almost there when he smells it: wolfsbane, steel, electricity and blood, in a small alley not far from the apartment building. He parks the Camaro and goes straight to the alley.
The place has been obviously cleaned up, but only superficially. Even though he can’t see the blood, he can still smell it. Human blood, from at least half a dozen different individuals, one of them his mate! Something happened, something that led to Stiles having to fight hunters in that place. He was injured and… and now he’s missing?
Unable to get anything more from that place, Derek decides to head to the apartment. Stiles gave him a key right before leaving NY so Derek knows where he’s going. He goes for the stairs immediately, is on the final flight of them before the top floor when he sees it, bright yellow police tape blocking the floor entirely. It shocks him
“What happened here?” he blurts out, blinking in surprise.
“You haven’t heard?” a voice from the entrance to the next floor down asks.
“Heard what?” Derek asks, confused.
“Well, the official version of the story is that there was a gas leak. That the nice tenant probably didn’t even notice it because he was barely around, what with classes and everything. And then someone tried to break-in and apparently they accidentally created a spark and… boom!”
Stiles not noticing a gas leak? Yeah, sure.
“And the unofficial version?” Derek asks, wondering if it’s gonna be better or worse.
It’s worse, so much worse.
“Well, 7B,” apparently the tenants in the buildings refer to each other by their apartment numbers. “Everyone knew he was studying like, Criminology or something. And, I wasn’t in DC at the time, but 5A says he was involved in some big mess like, two years ago. But anyway, so two days ago there were these suits outside the gate, and they were clearly waiting for someone. 2B says it was that guy they were waiting for. She thought nothing of it at the time, she said, but not an hour later these two guys go straight up, directly to his apartment and then… boom! It was like the whole place was rigged to blow!”
Rigged to blow, and yet it affected nothing but that specific floor?
“They say the suits died up there,” Derek turns back to the guy. “4A says the guy must have been with the mob, maybe a junior or something…”
“Roger!” the voice of an older woman. “Are you talking about your crazy theories again?!”
“They’re fair theories Tess!” the human yells back at the woman out of sight. “And the guy’s clearly here looking for him!” he turns to Derek. “Hey! You know him, don’t you? 7B? Was he a mob baby?”
Derek says nothing, just turns around and heads down the stairs without a word. In the end people will think whatever they want to think.
He’s not entirely certain if the explosion was intentional or not; though the idea of hunters sacrificing themselves in order to incriminate Stiles for their murders seems pretty out there. Like, Derek has no doubt they’d love to incriminate him, anyone they don’t like really, though he doubts they’d kill themselves for it. And hunters did die up there, Derek could smell it.
The other option is that Stiles got someone with some serious magic to lay protections, the kind that reacted… violently, when the hunters broke in. Or maybe it was because of what happened to Stiles?
So many questions, so little answers, and nowhere to find them.
Derek has always been one to be curious, to want answers to his questions. He learned at a very young age not to depend on other people giving him the answers he sought, though he also learned later on how dangerous it could be, trying to do everything on his own, and especially the risks of not knowing what question he needed answered, exactly. And he thinks that might be the case here. He’s looking for Stiles, but is he missing? Gone to ground after escaping from hunters who for some reason chose precisely this moment to go after him? Could they be some of Monroe’s people, seeking retribution for the death of their crazy leader? Or perhaps he’s in some hospital, a John Doe, injured and unable to make it to safety himself. Or… the third option is perhaps the most terrifying, the possibility that he might be missing, yet not by accident, or by his own choice, but because he’s been taken, captured by the hunters who managed to survive the encounter. Derek has no idea where he’d even begin to look, if that’s actually the case.
And then he remembers something else:
“Trust me!”
“I do, I trust you Stiles, always.”
“I will find you!”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
He does trust Stiles, truly and absolutely. So he supposes all he can do for the time being, is what he’s already told Stiles he will do: wait for him. Trust, believe in him, and wait.
xXx
Noah’s worried.
Last he heard from his son he was in New York, where he spent most of the summer, after finally ending the threat of Tamora Monroe and her bunch of sycophants. Noah won’t lie, he hates that it was his son that had to kill the woman, but at the same time, he always knew Scott wouldn’t do it. He loves the boy like he were another son, but he just doesn’t have the stomach for killing. He insists on seeing the world in black and white, claims all people can be redeemed, that his pack doesn’t kill and there’s always another way… It’s a pretty ideal for children, but they’re not children anymore.
Noah was a soldier, he fought in Iraq, he knows sometimes it’s life or death, and that only death can stop some enemies. Killing will never be his first choice, but he knows sometimes there’s just no other way. And he’s taught that to his son. He knows Stiles had killed before Monroe (and he doesn’t mean all the innocents the nogitsune killed using his son’s body), and even if the matter hadn’t become such a scandal within the pack, what with Scott constant, loud speeches about how Stiles should have handled it differently, Noah never doubted there was no other option. Whatever certain individuals might think, his son isn’t a killer.
He misses him sometimes. He’s away so often nowadays. Studying so hard at George Washington University. Noah wonders if it’s his fault…
He knows he’s not the best of fathers, far from it actually. He might not have ever been the kind of violent that would strike a child (like Cameron Lahey) or neglectful enough to actually walk out on his own kid (like Rafael McCall); but he did lose himself in the drink for a while after his wife died, and he knows he wasn’t a very nice drunk, he might not have hurt his son physically, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do so verbally, and while he might not have walked out on his son, he still wasn’t all there for him, was he?
Claudia… she was the love of his life. Noah had heard such lines before, but truth is he didn’t truly understand them, not… His parents weren’t like that. His father was not a good man and his mother… he was never sure if she truly loved the man despite it all, or if it was just that she felt she had no other choice but to stay with him. And then she got sick and died, and Noah chose to join the army straight out of high-school rather than stay in that house with that awful man…
Meeting Claudia… he liked her from the moment he met her, though it still took a while before he could say he was in love. Even with how often the two of them kept ‘accidentally’ meeting, whenever he had free time and could actually go into town and spend some time among civilians (it would be much later, after they’d been married for several years, that Claudia would admit to having a friend in the base, one who let her know whenever Noah would be in town so she could engineer an ‘accidental encounter’ with him). Even after they fully fell in love and married (and Noah will never forget how nervous he was when first meeting Claudia’s family, even though her parents were both dead and buried, she had three brothers, all quite protective of her, their big sister) Noah never expected for life to take the turns it did for them. And then war broke in Iraq, and Noah’s unit was sent to the front. It was… staggering. Realizing how small he truly was, how very mortal; and at the same time, how strong he could be, and how much he could survive.
The war changed a lot, while he wasn’t permanently maimed or anything, he was granted an honorable discharge after he got back. He was ready then, to start a new life with his wife, to form a family. And then everything changed again.
He thinks it was Miriam’s death that changed things. From the moment they found out she was pregnant, both he and Claudia started making all sorts of plans, from choosing names to buying baby clothes, toys… The day they knew it was a girl they went straight to the hardware store to buy paint and started working on the nursery. Claudia vetoed pink saying it was just… too girly, so instead they went with pale yellow with hints of blue and white, like early morning sunlight, because the baby was going to be the light of their lives… And then they lost her.
The miscarriage itself was hard enough on Claudia, especially with how advanced the pregnancy had been already; but it was in the aftermath that he feared he might lose her. She was depressed for so long. Holding onto the urn of their baby girl’s ashes as if she were trying to hold onto the baby herself. Noah never planned on going back to California, not really, especially not after marrying Claudia. It’s not like there was anything or anyone back there he particularly missed, and all of her family and friends were right there…
It was Przemysław (the oldest of Claudia’s brothers) that told him they had to leave.
“She cannot stay here, not like this,” the man told Noah. “She created a dream in her head, when she was pregnant, and that dream just isn’t possible anymore. It isn’t possible and yet, whenever she’s at your house, she can still see it. The room where her baby was supposed to grow, the rocking chair where she’d sing her to sleep, the garden where you would have played with her, taught her to throw a punch, everything. Being here, in that house, it’s killing my sister. You need to get her out of there Noah.”
In the end it wasn’t quite as simple as just moving to a different house (which, with the real estate market being what it was, it wouldn’t have been easy at all anyway), because the dreams weren’t limited to a house, or even a neighborhood. They included pretty much everywhere they knew, all their favorite places, and more. And then he made an unexpected decision: they left the country entirely.
Which was how they ended on the other side of the world, in Beacon Hills, California.
It still took some time for their family to grow, and there were moments, whenever yet another pregnancy test gave a negative result, or when Claudia miscarried again (it happened at least three more times total, though thankfully never again in as late a stage of pregnancy as with Miriam). When Claudia finally got pregnant with their son… he could see she was terrified. More than once he’d see her picking baggy clothes. She avoided maternity clothes altogether, seemed to avoid even looking at her pregnant belly, and wouldn’t even talk to him about picking a name for the baby. It was almost as if she were afraid that the moment she became attached to this baby, she’d lose it. Thankfully that didn’t happen and their son was born, healthy and screaming his lungs out.
Naming the boy a name like Mieczyslaw wasn’t in Noah’s plans, but he couldn’t exactly disagree with his wife’s logic for it either:
“There’s a… tradition, in my family,” she explained to him. “Sometimes when the women are having trouble conceiving, or their pregnancy is risky, they will… I guess you could call it praying, they will ask for the intercession of an ancestor, someone who’s already crossed over to the other side, so they will watch over the unborn baby and allow them to be healthy.”
“And you did that,” Noah guessed.
“I did, I asked papa to intercede on our behalf, to watch over our baby and bring him to us healthy and whole,” Claudia explained.
“And his name was Mieczyslaw,” Noah was quite proud he could pronounce the name without tripping over it.
Really, it’d have been the worst kind of shame if he couldn’t have pronounced his own son’s name!
“Mieczyslaw Gajos, yes,” she agreed.
And so their son was named Mieczyslaw Jan (a variant of Noah’s own middle-name John) Stilinski.
Something changed when Claudia’s brothers died. And it wasn’t just that her brothers were dead. Noah knew Claudia could fight. Truth is that he’s always been a bit paranoid, and when they started talking about marriage… Well, he was a soldier, one who’d been to war, and who later became a cop (and eventually a small-town sheriff). In all those different places, with very different people, there were some things he kept seeing time and time again; the saddest of all perhaps being women/girls beaten (sometimes far more than that) hurt, but more than the damage dealt to their bodies, Noah hated seeing the expressions that sometimes were on their faces, the looks in their eyes, so down, so sad, so absolutely devoid of hope. He never wanted to see his wife, or any child of his, looking like that. So he offered to teach Claudia self-defense, before they were even married. As it turned out, she already knew how to fight, better than him even! She and two of her brothers were even nice enough to teach him a few tricks (they saved his life, those tricks, more than once).
Claudia teaching their son to fight wasn’t exactly a surprise, even the other things, like the mediation and the moves that he’d almost call gymnastics. What Noah didn’t expect was everything else; especially the trips to Europe. He was just a small town sheriff (still a deputy back then), he earned enough to give them a comfortable, though certainly not lavish by any means, lifestyle. He knew Claudia had some money of her own, but nothing big, her family had never been particularly rich. Which is why he was surprised, not just by the trips, but also when she told Noah that he need not worry about it, as the trips were covered by some kind of family fund. He’d have pressed, but his son was so excited about all the things he was learning, and the friends he was making and… his son was happy, what else could Noah ask for?
And then Claudia died.
Or well, Noah’s not stupid, he knows the problems started before Claudia actually died but it was just… It hurt so much, seeing his wife, the love of his life, becoming someone he didn’t know, and what was more, someone who didn’t know him. He couldn’t handle it. It was like a part of him wanted to believe that if he didn’t see it happening, it somehow wasn’t. A ridiculous notion of course, and one that in the end cost him so much. He was so fixated on the fact that he was losing his wife, he didn’t realize he was also losing his son.
He wasn’t even there when Claudia died! Too focused on his job, on being there for a complete stranger, and even when the girl (some kind of supernatural, though he has no idea what she might have been, exactly) told him he needed to go if he wanted to say goodbye, Noah wouldn’t listen. And then he finally made it to the hospital and Claudia was already dead, and Stiles wouldn’t even look at him…
And as if that weren’t bad enough Noah then decided to drown his grief in a bottle (or many)! He checked out completely. It was almost like he forgot he had a son at all, and he supposes to a point he did. Even when Stiles’ panic attacks and other things would ever so often remind him, nothing was enough to pull Noah out of the hole he threw himself into. He’s wondered at times how bad things might have gotten had it not been for that call:
“Noah John Stilinski.” A woman’s voice on the other end of the line said in a very solemn voice, “You do not know me. My name is Mirele Wyatt, Genim Gajos was my father, just like Claudia Gajos Stilinski was my aunt.”
“If you’re trying to give me condolences…” Noah began in a drawl.
“No,” he was honestly surprised when the woman interrupted him, especially because of what she said. “I gave my condolences in person the day of Aunt Claudia’s funeral, though clearly you either do not remember, or missed it entirely. No, today I’m not calling you because of my aunt, I’m calling because of my cousin. The little boy you seem to have decided to push away and ignore in your grief.”
“I’m not…! Listen to me…”
“No! You listen to me! Claudia’s already dead. No amount of crying or grieving, or getting drunk will get her back. All you’re doing is destroying your son. Is that what you want? Do you want to die and leave him all alone?!” She didn’t give him a chance to get a word in. “You know what? No! You either pull yourself out of the funk right now, or I’m getting on a plane to California, packing Miec up and bringing him with me to New York.”
“You cannot do that!”
“Wanna bet?”
“I’m his father!”
“Are you? Because it doesn’t seem like it. Do you even know where your son is right now? When did you last talk with him? When did you last spend any time with him at all? Do you know what he had for breakfast this morning? That is, of course, if he ate anything at all. When was the last time you bought any food? When was the last time you had anything that wasn’t alcoholic? I wonder what CPS might find if they were to make a ‘surprise visit’ right now. Do you think they’d let you keep your son as you are right now?”
Things hadn’t actually gotten that bad, thankfully. Though it was true there hadn’t been any home-cooked meals in their diet since they finished the last of the casseroles from their well-meaning neighbors. The pantry too was starting to look dangerously empty, and the few things still there, and in the fridge, Noah couldn’t actually remember buying (he’d later learn that Stiles had convinced one of his new deputies, the one who usually watched over him when the kid spent time in the station. Tara Graeme, to take him to the supermarket using money from the ‘emergency stash’ Claudia had kept).
That night Noah poured everything alcoholic still in the house down the drain. After that, he forced himself to spend an entire year without drinking a single drop, no matter how much a part of him wanted it. And even after that, he never allowed himself more than one or two beers, or a single glass of anything stronger in a single night. He only allowed himself to drink more and get anywhere close to drunk once a year: on the anniversary of his and Claudia’s wedding (not on the one of her death, because he knew his son would need him then; the day of their wedding anniversary was the day he gave himself to mourn her).
It wasn’t until several years later that Noah learned how young Mirele actually was, the fact that there was just no way she could have ever taken Stiles away from him (though, he supposed, that did not mean she couldn’t have arranged for his son to be taken away regardless).
Noah would like to say that was the last time he fucked up, but truth is, it wasn’t. Though at the same time, he was never sure how things went so wrong on the next instance. It all started with his yearly med eval; it revealed his cholesterol was a bit higher than recommended. According to the doctor he wouldn’t even have put much emphasis on it, as it wasn’t high enough to be really worrisome all things told, but Noah has some history of heart disease on his father’s side of the family, and high cholesterol could have an impact on that, so he recommended Noah keep watch on his levels, to prevent future issues.
Noah has no idea how Stiles even found out about any of that. Oh, he knew about the police scanner the kid installed in the Jeep, yet he said nothing about it because having it seemed to be helping his son manage his anxiety (when he could listen in and know where his dad was, know he was alright), it helped keep his panic attacks at bay when he could no longer spend so much time at the station. In any case, he found out, and he decided he was going to ensure Noah ate healthy. Noah decided to allow it.
It was only until much, much later that he realized it might not have been the best idea. Not the whole ‘eating healthier’, that was a good idea of course, but letting his son manage things. He’d thought it was like with the police scanner. That Stiles being in charge of the meals would allow his son to feel like things were under control and there was no need to worry. Instead he somehow seemed to convince himself that Noah, fully grown, responsible adult and sheriff that he was, couldn’t take care of himself.
Noah knows he didn’t help matters any with his ‘cheating’ and his working so much. And yeah, he had to work a lot, especially in the years immediately after Claudia’s death. Medical bills weren’t going to pay themselves after all, and between all the experimental treatments they tried, and which weren’t covered by their insurance; and before that, when Stiles was diagnosed with ADHD and they had to go through a lot of testing and trying different drugs and plans because nothing seemed to work well enough for him… Bottom line, he had bills to pay, and he didn’t tell his son because he didn’t want to give him something else to stress over.
Only now, so long after the fact that he knows even wondering about it is completely pointless; only now does he wonder if he went about it the wrong way. If perhaps he should have instead sat down Stiles and explained things to him. Explain that he wasn’t working during the holidays (again) because he didn’t want to be with him, with his kid, but because the pay was too good to pass up and he really needed the money. Explain to him that the ‘cheating’ he did wasn’t really that bad. Noah was well aware of what he could eat without violating the doctors’ recommendations. And the times when he’d buy things like doughnuts and pastries and the like, they weren’t all for him. At most he ate one, two if the day was especially long, and that was it. And he was always careful with his sugar and fats.
More than anything, Noah wishes he’d ever taken the time to thank his kid for trying so hard to look after him. He wonders, if he’d done any of that, if perhaps then his kid wouldn’t have thought he had to hide his own troubles from Noah… But more than that, show his kid that Noah could, in fact, take care of himself.
He knows that’s why Stiles didn’t tell him about werewolves and the supernatural for so long. His kid honestly believed that Noah (the actual sheriff of the town, former soldier who went to war!), had he known about the supernatural, would have gotten himself killed. And he thought that because Stiles honestly believed (probably believes still) his dad couldn’t look after himself!
His son was getting into so much trouble, being hurt (getting tortured), fighting so hard, trying like hell to keep everyone safe, probably terrified half out of his mind, and he still didn’t tell Noah a thing until he had no other choice. And what did Noah do then? Refused to believe him! When his kid was finally honest with him, Noah wouldn’t believe him! Accused him of lying yet again, of making things up, why? Well, to be fair to himself, things were absolutely insane, with so many people being murdered in gruesome ways, and everything else going on, and it’s not like Noah ever had cause to believe the supernatural existed before… or maybe it should rather be that he never wanted to believe it. Any and all clues he got he kept explaining away, because it was easier than accepting that the world was far more complicated (and insane) than he ever thought it could be. It’s likely that if he hadn’t been kidnapped by that evil witch (druid? Dara-whatever they were calling her!) it would have taken him much longer to come to terms with it all.
Of course the fact that right after that particular mess was over his son ended up possessed by a fucking demon that caused so much death and destruction did not help matters any. Noah is the sheriff, he was a cop and a soldier before that. He’s always been all about the law. He’s always cared about family too, of course, and about his son, certainly. Yet he never imagined how far he’d be willing to go to keep his son safe, how much of the law he’d be willing to ignore…
Because of course he couldn’t just let things stay as they were. If anyone not-in-the-know had seen security-tapes of what happened at the hospital, had seen who was leading the ‘men in dark hoods and metal masks’ as they went around hurting people… Most people would have never understood that that wasn’t his son doing that, that Stiles was completely innocent of it all.
If there’s one thing Noah can believe he’s done right since his life was turned completely upside down by the supernatural it is, ironically, what happened when his son went missing. Or no, not missing, he disappeared, outside powers making it seem as if he never existed. And as if that weren’t enough, Claudia came back. Except it wasn’t his wife at all, and Noah could tell. How? Because his wife wasn’t dancing…
It’s the most powerful memory in his mind related to Claudia, perhaps because of how often it repeated itself throughout the years: Claudia and Mischief in the kitchen, or the living room, laughing and dancing together as they worked making lunch, or dinner, or a snack, or at times nothing at all. Even in an ‘altered reality’ or whatever that was, where his son never existed, his memory was still that of his wife dancing everywhere, all the time, to music no one but she could hear. And then he stepped into the kitchen one day, and she wasn’t dancing. She was just standing by the stove, stiff like a board, waiting for the casserole to boil.
After that it was almost easy to believe his real wife was dead and he had a son even if he couldn’t remember him. Or well, not easy, exactly, but he knew inside him that the one who called herself his wife wasn’t truly his Claudia, so when Lydia Martin told him she was an imposter and that he had a son… it somehow made sense.
It was that episode which led to him, finally, moving on. To finally stop grieving his lost wife once and for all. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her anymore, he did (a part of him is sure he always will). But he could finally accept she was gone, and he wasn’t. And there was a part of him that didn’t want to be alone anymore…
He and his son only talked about the teenager’s true skills once, right after that particular mess:
“I never asked why you… quit your trips to Europe, your training in… whatever you were into back then,” Noah murmured after they’d talked about the fake Claudia, and how exactly Noah knew she was fake. “I’m not gonna ask now, just… I know you used to train with your mom. Whatever it was you were training for. I know you can fight. I just… I want you to fight.”
His son blinked at him, clearly whatever he was expecting it wasn’t that.
“I’m still not happy you’re involved in… all this.” Noah clarified. “But much as I might hate to admit it, this isn’t something I can protect you from, kid. Even being fully aware of things now, even being fully armed, I know there are battles I cannot fight for you. Much as I might really, truly, hate it. So I want to know that if it becomes necessary, you’ll fight. You’ll fight and you’ll win. Whatever it takes.”
And Stiles certainly did, didn’t he? Noah may not like it (not because he’s against killing, he knows it’s necessary sometimes, but he hates that his son had to be the one to do it), but he definitely would rather Tamora Monroe be six feet under than his son.
Then everything was over, and his son left town again so fast Noah barely had the chance to talk to him at all. He certainly didn’t get the opportunity to talk to him about the future and what Stiles’ plans might be once he finished college… or about the fact that Noah knows his son won’t be joining the FBI, that he can’t. What Noah hates most is that he doesn’t know that because his son told him, but rather because Mel did, and the way she did it… like she was offering condolences for Stiles missing out on great opportunities (all while suggesting that maybe his son should reassess his priorities). Also, how did she find out about any of that? Well, because her ex-husband told her!
Noah doesn’t want to take offense to that, he really doesn’t, and yet, he cannot help it. Why does his son still not trust him?! It makes him wonder if perhaps all his attempts to make things better are for naught and he ruined their relationship for good all those years ago. If perhaps there was never any hope and he’s just been kidding himself that things were improving since he learned of the existence of the supernatural.
Near the end of the summer, Noah gets a digital picture showing his son and four-year-old Eli Wyatt, his son’s godson. The two are smiling wide in the picture, traces of chocolate on their mouths. It’s enough to make Noah smile, remembering similar situations and pictures taken when his son was that young… The memory makes him ache for all he’s lost. Especially all he might still have if he hadn’t been such a fool!
That’s the last he hears of his son.
It’s not until several weeks later that he truly worries. It’s the anniversary of Claudia’s death, and while Stiles hasn’t been around on that particular date since he started attending college, not even when it falls on a weekend, he’s always made sure to send a bouquet of flowers to his mom’s grave. This year there are no flowers, and when Noah goes as far as calling the florist, Mrs. Lawrence tells him his son didn’t order any.
Noah doesn’t want to seem like a mother-hen, or a busybody, or anything else. He supposes there’s the chance that his son has decided to move on, to stop grieving his mother, to put it all behind once and for all. And yet… Noah cannot help the feeling that something’s not right. So after much thinking about it he eventually dials his son’s number.
“The number you’re calling has been disconnected.”
Noah freezes in shock. He wasn’t expecting that. What… What does that mean? Did something happen to his son’s phone? Or… did his son change his number and not tell his father?! For a wild moment Noah isn’t actually sure which one might be worse.
Weeks pass, and Noah just doesn’t know what else to do. And then Scott calls him, with an invite to thanksgiving dinner with the pack. Noah feels hopeful. The pack! Stiles is pack too, isn’t he? So he agrees to be there. He’ll have to go on shift later that night, which means he won’t be able to stay long, but he just wants to see his son…
Except he’s not there. He sees Scott, and Mel and Argent, Malia, and several of the other kids. But his son isn’t there (neither is Lydia for that matter).
Noah waits as long as he can, until he knows he has to leave or he’s gonna be late, before asking Scott to talk in private.
“Noah, are you alright?” Mel asks, following them to the porch.
“Have you heard from Stiles?” Noah asks Scott straight out.
Scott seems to actually freeze for a moment, clearly thrown by the question.
“I… no?” It’s clear the boy’s hiding something, Noah just has no idea what.
“Scott!” Melissa yells in a chastising tone.
“I haven’t talked to him mom,” Scott says in a strangely mulish tone. “Not since he murdered Monroe.”
“Murdered…” Melissa parrots in disbelief. “Scott!”
“Killing in self-defense isn’t murder, son,” Noah points out calmly.
“She wasn’t attacking him,” Scott mutters.
“She was attacking all of you!” Melissa snaps.
“Scott, have you heard from Stiles since?” Noah intervenes, not wanting Scott to get distracted.
That boy knows something, and Noah’s going to find out what.
“I…” again, Scott hesitates.
“Scott, he’s my son, I need to know.” Noah tries his best to be gentle.
“I’m sorry sheriff,” Scott murmurs.
He won’t even look at either adult, and Noah’s heart starts to break even before the words come out of his mouth. He just knows…
“Stiles is dead.”
xXx
It’s been several weeks since Stiles woke up in the Citadel (two months? Or perhaps it’s been three? It’s hard to count the days for sure when each of them is the same as the one before, so dull and boring… Stiles hates being bored), when he hears it. One of the other inmates, one of the hunters: Douglas McKenna (a family affiliated with the Dumont hunter family, the very family Victoria belonged to, before marrying Christopher), is getting out in two days, and he’s clearly been making plans…
“I have everything ready man,” McKenna announces, rather loudly. “The little brat’s going to pay. And once I’m done with it, I’m sure I will find an excuse to go after the rest of the pack.”
It’s probably unsurprising that since Kate’s death, others have attempted to replicate her ‘success’ going after packs, usually to lesser success. Though Stiles isn’t sure if that’s because too many hunters see shifters as beasts and thus aren’t willing to seduce them (then again, he knows at least a few there in the Citadel have been known to rape shifters, both boys and girls; claiming that as they aren’t humans, human laws shouldn’t apply to them), or if it’s just that packs are more aware nowadays; are taking more precautions than the Hales, and others ever did, back when it was Kate annihilating them. Or perhaps it’s just that none of the hunters doing it now have Kate’s charisma (and he hates to admit it, almost as much as he hates Kate herself, but Kate was quite charismatic, Stiles could see it, even while hating her for all she did to Derek and the Hales).
“Are you sure that’s a good idea man?” another of the inmates asks McKenna. “He’s the reason you’re here, isn’t he?”
“Yes, little brat was supposed to keep things a secret, but he had loose lips,” McKenna growls. “I’ll sew them shut! Or maybe just cut them off, along with his tongue, teach him to speak out of turn!”
“But what I mean is,” his friend presses. “They already caught you once, what if they catch you again?”
“That’s easy, you cannot prove a crime without a body, or without someone to accuse you, and I don’t intend to leave anyone alive this time,” McKenna says it so plainly, like it really is that simple.
For a moment all Stiles can feel is white-hot rage. He comes very close to jumping out of the bench where he’s at, in a lonely table in the corner of the mess-hall (no one dared come close to him, to even sit on the same table as him, since that fight in the yard), then he thinks better of it. As satisfying as it would be to punch McKenna’s teeth in, Stiles knows there are too many people around for him to manage a solid beating, and even if he did, that wouldn’t change a thing in the long run. McKenna’s still getting out in two days, and a beating won’t be enough to keep him away from the Willowbrook pack. No, Stiles needs to use his head, if he wants to actually make a difference. So he starts planning.
When they get out to the yard, Stiles makes a point on being as loud and obnoxious as he possibly can. It helps that pretty much everyone in the Citadel (inmates and wardens) hates him, so it doesn’t take long to provoke some of them enough for a fight to break out. Stiles also makes sure he’s close enough to McKenna and his friend that they end up very involved. After that? It’s just a matter of moving around the fight (never stopping fighting himself) and timing things just right. Stiles delivers a hard kick, not to McKenna directly, but to his friend. The kick is hard enough and at just the right angle to make his leg fold beneath him, his knee damaged (probably, hopefully, permanently). The thing is, when that hunter goes down, he ends up tripping his friend up; McKenna falls hard enough, and at just the right angle to hit his shoulder and head against the edge of one of the solid metal benches in the yard. He ends up with a badly dislocated shoulder; though it’s the blow to his head that really affects him in the long term, as he gets a concussion, one bad enough to affect his eyesight on his right eye… permanently.
If Stiles were to be honest with himself (which he does prefer to be; lies and obfuscation are for others, but what would the point be in lying to himself?), he did not plan the blow to the head, or at least, did not plan on its effects to be quite that severe. He was expecting a concussion to at least delay McKenna’s plans somewhat (enough hopefully for the pack wherever he was going to be alerted to the fact that he was out and about again). The injury he planned on was the dislocated shoulder which… He knows the Citadel doctors have nothing but the most general of knowledge, and setting a dislocated shoulder correctly is not something just anyone can do; it’s easy to end up causing more damage, and with them being hunters… He had no doubt whoever ended up setting it would likely be rougher than entirely necessary. A damaged shoulder? That had the potential to affect the man’s mobility for the rest of his life (and obviously his ability to hunt as well). A vision impairment though… Well, Stiles might not have planned for it, but it’s not like he’s sad about it. And the best part is that since, technically, he wasn’t the one to hurt McKenna, no one suspects him of being responsible for any of it!
It’s then Stiles decides that if he’s damned to spend however long in that place (might even end up being the rest of his life, but that’s a worst-case-scenario he’d rather not contemplate), he’ll at least do something with himself.
First he fades into the background. Oh, everyone still knows he’s there of course, but he stops doing most of the things that call attention to himself, so ever so slowly people just start… ignoring him. Of course if someone goes after him he’ll fight, but he doesn’t start fights… at least not for a while.
Once he’s managed step 1, step 2 is a piece of cake. And that is just: listening. He listens to everyone. Hunters are by nature proud, they also make a habit of oneupping (or trying to, at least) everyone they can. So it’s no surprise at all that most of them like to share little ‘victory stories’. Their best hunts, the toughest ones; they also tend to talk about their ‘unfinished business’, the things they plan on doing once they’re out (which usually amounts to, or at least includes, taking revenge over whatever or whoever had them go to prison in the first place).
Stiles creates a list of targets based on all those stories he listens in on. And when the opportunity presents itself: he goes after them. They’re not all fights in the yard, of course (that’d have been too obvious, and he’d have been found out too easily). There are some, those he has the most time to plan for, where he actually makes a point on creating rumors, creating an enmity between specific hunters; then he just sits back and watches the fireworks. It tends to be very satisfying. Especially because: hunters tend to be violent in the extreme. Against supernaturals with things like heightened senses, strength, speed and healing that’s usually not that big a deal. That much violence against a human though, it turns deadly more often than not. And it’s not like anyone could point fingers at Stiles when he wasn’t even involved in those fights! And even when it doesn’t turn deadly, things like broken bones, deep tissue bruising and concussions are pretty common, and when handled wrong (or right, depending on one’s point of view) the damage can be pretty permanent. Which of course is what Stiles is aiming for.
Also, truth be told is that, in the end hunters are a dime a dozen, and male ones? They’re the muscle, not the leaders, so he doesn’t think their families will care much if a few more die. At least, not enough to want clear answers regarding why or how it even happened.
He arranges a number of accidents too. No one in the Citadel knows he’s a Gajos, their specialty has always been strategic-thinking, and not just that, but the creation of traps (the nogitsune took advantage of that skill, which is something Stiles would rather not think about). Most aren’t even particularly big accidents, but even small things can have the biggest consequences if done right. Like a cell-door booby trapped to fail, ending with a crushed hand; or the bars of another damaged in a certain way that when someone grabs them just right (or wrong) they end up cutting their hand open, deep. Arranging it so one of the industrial sized washers in the laundry room pops open while still working, throwing really hot water all around, when specific people are in the room? Water just hot enough can cause really bad burns too, and if they happen on someone’s face, neck, or even their hands…
One particular occasion Stiles is rather short on time. Finding out that someone on his list is getting out sooner than expected. There’s no time for finesse, or careful planning. In the end the best Stiles can do is make the ground slippery enough for the guy to slip, fall and hit his head on the floor. It’s perhaps not his best plan, but Stiles does what he can with what he has available.
While the Citadel has a ‘lights out’ time, and the lights truly get cut then, that doesn’t mean activity ceases. Cell doors can be closed or not, and only those who have their own bolts can really secure them. It’s part of the black-market of sorts going on inside the prison. Those hunters from the richest or most prominent families tend to have certain ‘perks’ that their families arrange for, like doors that close, better food, proper cutlery, more time in the yard, or the gym (because them being hunters, of course they have a gym, though the machines tend to be hogged by specific individuals who’ll ‘charge’ others for the chance to use them), hot water when it’s their time to shower even. There are even the ‘luxury items’, from coffee, chocolate, magazines, to cigarettes, various drugs, and even other more specific things like lighters, candles and lamps. The latter of which means of course that there are those who just don’t care about things like ‘lights out’ and go about as they wish. There’s also the fact that the middle of the night is the best time to have things like a private shower and such.
Stiles knows that his target (a Fitzgerald hunter, which is a big hunter family, though the hunter in question is a younger son from a branch family) ‘paid’ to borrow a lamp and was granted a hot shower for that night. So he makes sure he’s the last to leave the showers before lights-out, on the way out pouring just enough shampoo he traded from another inmate (in exchange for some food) to make the ground slippery. He knows it might not be enough, and can just cross his fingers and hope for the best. He knows falls wouldn’t usually be that big a deal, even if one were to hit their head; unless the blow is hard enough, and they’re not treated in time, then it can lead to all sorts of consequences, up to and including permanent brain damage. Stiles hopes that with the hunter being the only one in the showers at night, and the wardens never being around, no one will find him until the morning.
In the end, things surpass Stiles’ expectations. It doesn’t happen immediately. The first day Stiles just hears whispers about Fitzgerald being found on the shower room’s floor, blood around him from the blow to his head. He’s still released that day. It’s months later when a new inmate, an Emerson (which is one of the families who answer to the Fitzgeralds) brings with him the news that Jake Fitzgerald is dead. He apparently had a stroke not two months after he got out of prison. Rumors have it that it might have even been for the best, as he just ‘wasn’t the same anymore’.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, young man,” someone tells him shortly after that.
Stiles knows there are other prisoners at the Citadel, aside from the hunters (and himself) that is. Some are low-level magic users. But as he’s learned in the time he’s been there, most of them are, in fact, humans who’ve gained the enmity of the hunters by acting against them. Or rather, the prisoners at the Citadel are relatives of those who’ve done exactly that, serving as hostages to ensure the cooperation of the ones outside the prison.
For the most part Stiles doesn’t come in contact with them. As they’re kept in a different section of the prison. Logical, considering it’s unlikely most would know or be in any way capable of holding their own against the other inmates. And well, the hunters wouldn’t want to lose their hostages, would they?
Though, several months after his arrival to the Citadel, one morning Stiles wakes up to find someone new, someone not a hunter. It throws him completely, as he wasn’t expecting for one of the hostages to end up on ‘their side of the prison’. And then a small group of hunters decide to beat the new guy up for no other reason than because they can.
Stiles is so surprised by the whole thing he hesitates a bit too long about doing anything. In the end, it’s the intervention of another that puts an end to the beating. That man is Willard Lewis, though most call him simply ‘Old Will’. Perhaps the only truly non-hunter on the main area of the prison (other than Stiles himself). He’s in his sixties, with graying dark-brown hair and stormy blue eyes. He used to be an ADA, in Boston. Was the one to pursue a case against Charles Dumont; managing to bring a case against him for the rape and murder of over a dozen young women (the exact number was unknown, as were all the names, there were even some bodies that were never found; the authorities only knew about their deaths because of the trophies found in Dumont’s possession). The hunter was found guilty, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Will was pressured by various hunters, repeatedly, to drop the case. He refused. When that failed they attempted bribery, blackmail, even death-threats (which, all it did was make him add further charges). Will was all alone, a widower, having lost his wife to cancer a couple of years earlier, they’d never had any children and in the aftermath he’d taken refuge in his work, so he had no girlfriends (or boyfriends) and few friends, none really close at all. So the hunters had no possible hostages.
In the end the only reason why Charles Dumont did not end up in prison for life, was because he took his own life the day before he was to be sent to a federal prison. No one really knows if he hadn’t known about the Citadel, or if perhaps the hunter prison wasn’t an option due to how public his trial was; or if maybe he decided that regardless of the specific prison, he just refused to go to jail at all.
Will was abducted right off the street, a couple of blocks away from the District Attorney’s office just a month later. He’s been in the Citadel ever since.
Stiles is pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that the man is in ‘general pop’, just like Stiles himself. It’s not just that they’re not there to be anyone’s hostages, but those who sent them there actually hope they’ll get themselves killed, sooner or later. Then again, ‘Old Will’ has been there over a decade already, and he’s still very much alive (Stiles tries very hard not to think about what that might be like, if he’ll end up being just like him, trapped for the rest of his life…). While Will’s not exactly friendly with anyone, most of the hunters seem to have enough respect (or fear) of him, not to go after him.
Stiles wouldn’t say they’re friends, exactly, but they’re polite to each other. They also share a cell, which is probably for the best all things considered. He’s the one who explains to Stiles that sometimes, when the humans in positions of power prove to be ‘less than cooperative’, their hostage will be thrown to the hunters for a day or two, then the wardens will send digital pictures of the beaten up hostage to the ADA, Agent, cop, or whatever the human in question might be, in order to pressure them into doing whatever the hunters want.
Old Will has made a habit of stopping the beatings after a little while. He cannot stop them from happening entirely. He tried once, the wardens kept the hostage in the section for longer than ever before, before arranging for Old Will to be away on a particular day so the beating could happen. Since then he lets it happen, but only as long as it’s necessary for the hurt to be obvious, but not so long that the damage will be in any way permanent).
Regretful that he didn’t think to do something himself from the start (though at the same time aware that he didn’t know what was going on), Stiles tells Will to count him in next time he needs to break up one of the beatings. Truth is, the worst that could happen is the hunters seeing them as friends, and it’s not like most don’t believe that to be the case already, ever since they started sharing a cell. And it’s no secret that they’re the only non-hunters in the main section of the Citadel.
All in all, Stiles isn’tt surprised Will would choose to talk to him after Fitzgerald. What does surprise him is what Will wants to talk about. Stiles wasn’t even sure Will was fully aware of what the younger man had been doing; not because the older man was a fool or anything like that, but just because they each tended to do their own thing most of the time.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, young man,”
He doesn’t call Stiles son. He did it, a couple of times, early in their acquaintance, and he couldn’t fail to notice the way Stiles flinched every time. The memory of his own dad hitting the younger man hard. Will hasn’t done it since.
“I know,” Stiles says simply.
And really, what else can he say? He knows what he’s doing is risky, knew it from the moment he orchestrated that fight where McKenna ended up permanently hurt. But what else is he supposed to do? Stiles hates being idle, but it’s not just about that. It’s… seeing all those hunters, all those murderers who have no shame, no regret for all the lives they’ve taken, those who are eager to get back out and do it all over again; who’re only in a prison at all because they slipped at some point. They’re never going to change, never going to stop. And Stiles… he can’t just sit there and do nothing.
So he will keep doing what he’s doing. Going after those he thinks are the worst of them, the most vicious, the ones who represent the most danger. Hunters are a dime a dozen, and in a society where women are the ones who give the orders and men are just there to follow orders a few more, a few less, doesn’t make much of a difference… as long as Stiles doesn’t make it too obvious. Which is why he doesn’t kill them. Of course, because the easiest thing to make happen are fights (it’s a prison, fights every other day are a given!) and some hunters are just that violent, sometimes things go too far, people get killed even without Stiles intending it (not that he regrets it, but still).
Regardless, most of the ‘accidents’ Stiles arranges, he does tend to make them non-lethal. Just enough to ensure some pretty permanent repercussions. Aside from bobby-trapping cell-doors and slippery surfaces, the easiest accidents to arrange for are those involving electricity. Most cells don’t have electric sockets, but there are a handful of inmates (those from highly ranked families) that do. It takes some trickery and a lot of planning, but Stiles manages to set up things so something else in the cell (the bed-frame, the table, or whatever electric thing the hunter has in the room in the first place: usually a lamp, or some kind of music player, though once it was a charger for a razor).
Time passes like that. Days, weeks, months, years; until he has a hard time keeping track of how long he’s been in that horrible place.
There’s one thing that lets him know though. His shared dreams with Derek. They happen every so often, and while they never last long, Stiles treasures them greatly. Derek always tells him the date, before sharing anything recent about him, Eli, Mirele, even Peter (who’s apparently still in Beacon Hills) and Cora (who’s been traveling around the world, working as a freelance photographer).
The news shared aren’t always good. Like when Stiles learns he’s legally dead (and knowing that makes him suspect who all must be involved with his ‘imprisonment’, and his anger against them all grows), or when Derek reveals Mirele has died (at least that happened in a car accident caused by a drunk driver and they know for sure it had no connection to the supernatural, or the hunters, at all; then again, Stiles is pretty sure the hunters still don’t know about him being a Gajos, much less his connection to the Wyatts).
Good things and bad, Stiles lives for those dreams, seeing them as his connection to the real world, and moreover, a reminder that there is something waiting for him out of that prison…
xXx
Noah’s sitting on a stone bench in the small park across the street from the sheriff’s station silently eating his lunch while absently glancing at the windows to the station, where several deputies seem to be rather in a hurry to clean up after their lunch-in-the-office.
He says nothing when Parrish goes to sit beside him, offering his boss the bottle of iced-tea he knows the sheriff keeps in the station fridge. On his other hand he has his own choice of cold coffee, some strange concoction Noah doesn’t even know the name of and believes shouldn’t even be called coffee (then again, the sheriff’s one of those who believes that the only real kind of coffee is the black, barely sweetened kind).
“Hewitt is really, really sorry,” Parrish blurts out, unprompted. “He apparently heard Scott mention during one of their pack meetings that you loved a good meat lover’s pizza and… yeah.”
Noah says nothing, just opening the iced-tea and taking a drink.
“He didn’t know about your continued… diet,” Parrish seems to hesitate with what word to use.
“I’m not on a diet,” Noah grumbles as he takes another forkful of his pasta-salad.
“Really?” It doesn’t sound like Parrish quite believes it.
“I’m eating healthy,” Noah mutters, a bit petulantly before adding in a softer, quieter tone. “It’s what my son would have wanted.”
Parrish really has nothing he can possibly say to that. He knows all about Stiles’ seemingly endless war to get his dad to eat healthy (who at the station doesn’t?) equally as legendary are the sheriff’s various attempts at cheating (some more successful than others). He also noticed his boss eating healthy almost all the time nowadays. And even when he ‘cheats’ and has something greasy or really sugary, they’re small things, more of a treat than anything else. Parrish knows all that, yet it never occurred to him to wonder why the sheriff did any of it (why now). There’s a part of him that honestly wishes he’d never found out…
It’s been years since Noah first learned of his son’s death (from Scott of all people!). Though of course he didn’t just take Scott’s word for it. On the one hand, he’s the sheriff, he’s always known it’s better to corroborate things. Also, he… Well, he’s seen some shit in his life. Dead people come back to life, and more than once (Peter, Jackson, Scott, Parrish, several other kids who’re in the pack, Derek, and two Argents too many for his tastes)! So even after it was confirmed he didn’t just take that and accepted it.
Noah did his research. He found out about the explosion at the studio apartment his son was renting off campus. Thing is, there seemed to be no official version of events. Some people spoke of there being agents and warrants involved; one report claimed the explosion was caused by a gas leak, another that it was a homemade bomb made by some kind of ‘terrorist youth’ that chose to blow the place rather than be taken. When he found one supposedly official report claiming it had all been caused by an electrical malfunction Noah cursed, colorfully, and gave up on it entirely. It was clear to him that whatever had truly happened, there was a concerted effort being made for him to not find out.
The question then became, how did Scott know? How did he know about Stiles being dead at all? Peter actually helped him with his research into things, told him his nephew, Derek, went looking for Stiles at one point, and the various versions of events he heard back then from those living in the building, none of which truly fit any of the reports Noah had found.
Noah had tried to point out the inconsistencies to the local authorities (local in DC) but when they weren’t giving him the go around, they kept insisting that the case was closed and there were no grounds to reopen it. It made Noah wonder if everyone was really that coldhearted, that careless… or if perhaps someone higher in the chain of command had ordered the investigation to stop.
“There might as well not be any reports,” Peter scoffed after Noah shared with him his own side of the research into things.
“Actually, it’s not the same,” Noah pointed out. “I mean, yeah, it’s just as bad in the end. But if there were no reports at all, that’s something that would call more attention. Most people don’t really care what’s in the official reports, they only care about them existing at all. About them being able to say that the investigation was done. That it’s now closed. And it had to have been, or there wouldn’t be any reports, right?”
“You mean like the investigation done into the Hale Fire, and how the whole thing was a lie from beginning to end?” Peter muttered, furious.
“Actually, yeah, that’s it exactly,” Noah’s words threw Peter, though just for a moment.
“You think hunters are involved,” Peter exhaled in realization. “You think that… whatever actually happened, they’re responsible.”
Noah just nodded. He knew the odds, there was a big chance that, even if his suspicions were correct, well, in the first place there was no way to actually prove it, and even if he could prove it, it would change nothing. In the end his son would still be dead, and there was nothing he could do to change it, not even to avenge him. But what if he wasn’t?
Noah remembers a story Melissa told him (in the aftermath of Scott delivering the news) about the day Scott died on her, how he hadn’t had a pulse for fifteen minutes, yet still she refused to give up on him, because he was strong, and an alpha, and he couldn’t die like that! Well, Stiles might not be an alpha, not even a wolf, but he’s Noah’s son, and Noah just… he needs Stiles to be alive. He needs to believe he still has a chance to make things better, to be a good father…
He hates so much that not once, in all the times he and either McCall have met since that Thanksgiving (and they keep trying to invite him to Christmases, and birthdays and sometimes even pack meetings, no matter how many times Noah insists he’s not interested), not once have they so much as suggested the possibility that Stiles might not be dead. And not just that, the one time he even suggested the possibility Scott dismissed the idea out of hand, like not only it was logically impossible, but Scott himself did not want it. Why?! How is it everyone in their freaking town can cheat death, even murderous hunters, everyone but his son!
And as if that weren’t enough, Scott seems to believe what happened to Stiles was his own fault. Because of what he did. And what? Because he was a human involved with the supernatural? Like, sure, Noah would have preferred his son not be involved at all, but there was never a chance for that, with Scott being in the middle of it all. To which the boy had the gall to imply that it was all Stiles’ fault in the first place! Like, yeah, Noah knows his son has bad ideas at times, and going out in the middle of the night to look for a dead body (or half of one) was certainly one of the worst ones ever; but it’s not like he forced Scott to go with him, or like his son knew that an insane werewolf was out and about, looking for someone to bite! (From what Noah’s heard, while his son certainly knew the supernatural existed, he hadn’t known there were any shifters in Beacon Hills back then).
And then of course there was the moment when Scott implied it might all have happened because Stiles killed that huntress, their former counselor: Monroe. And not in a way that perhaps some of Monroe’s guys might have gone after Noah’s son to avenge the woman, and that was a very, very bad thing, but like maybe his son deserved it? Because he shouldn’t have done it, because his pack doesn’t kill? Like, what the hell?!
One of the first things Noah learned when he became aware of the existence of the supernatural, was that it’s a hard world, and more often than not, it’s ‘kill or be killed’. Also, he was a soldier, he knows how bad an idea it is to leave enemies alive to come after you later on. And considering the enemies of the pack tend to have no compunction about killing… Well, Noah cannot say he’s sad about there being a few less murderers in the world, supernatural or human. So why is Scott so against what even to Noah sounds like obvious and necessary?
It cannot be… this whole mess cannot be about Donovan still, can it? About the mess that kid, Raeken, created, back when the boys were still in high-school can it? It’s been so long since, they solved things, right? Well, Stiles never told him… but it wouldn’t be the first time Stiles didn’t tell him something. And Raeken isn’t even around anymore! So Scott must have understood, he must have seen that Stiles is not a murderer, that it was all self-defense… right? Noah is beyond terrified that he knows the answer to that, and it’s not the one that would bring him any peace of mind.
A warm (warmer than base human temperature) hand in his, is what pulls Noah out of his musings and back to the present. He doesn’t even need to turn to know who is now sitting beside him, holding his hand, not particularly tight, but still enough to anchor him. The human exhales, relaxing minutely, his whole body swaying just a bit in the direction of the newcomer, barely enough for their arms to brush together. It’s not much, not really, and yet it’s still enough. It’s, in some ways, a whole nonverbal exchange (“I’m here,” “I know, thank you”).
Ever so slowly, Peter Hale raises Noah’s hand up, placing a single, barely-there kiss to the back of the human’s hand. Who just turns to smile at him, letting that single gesture show how grateful he is for Peter being there. Then he rests his head on the wolf’s shoulder and just sits there in companionable silence as they wait for the sheriff’s lunch hour to come to an end.
Whatever might have truly happened years ago, whatever might yet come, in the end all Noah can do is pray and hope things will turn out right. That one day, he will get to see his beloved son again…
“Klaudia, czuwaj nad naszym synkiem (Claudia, please watch over our son)…” Noah murmurs quietly in Polish.
xXx
Derek exhales. He’s tired. So very tired. And so is his son. The boy’s been either having nightmares or just been unable to sleep practically every day; except for those days when his body seems to decide enough is enough and he conks out for twelve or so hours straight (and the first time that happened Derek almost had a stroke!). Only, even after that happens, he doesn’t really look any better, making it obvious that while he might have been sleeping, he wasn’t truly resting. This has been going on for months now, ever since his mom died. Which, Derek supposes, is not surprising.
Derek can still remember, if only vaguely, what he was like in the aftermath of the Hale Fire. And even then, that’s mostly because Laura kept bringing it up whenever she was cross with him in the following years (which happened fairly often, all things told). Often complaining about the time he spent practically catatonic, how she had to pretty much drag him out of Beacon Hills (away from Peter) and how they couldn’t stay in any reputable places, with his eyes glowing blue practically all the time, so out of control he was (not that he thinks she’d have wanted to stay at good hotels anyway, not with the way she refused to even use their real names, much less touch any of the Hale money). Sometimes Derek feels like Laura just got used to blaming him, it made things easier on her, when she could claim all that went wrong was someone else’s fault, not hers. That Derek had put them in that situation, rather than accepting they were still in it because she just wasn’t a good alpha. She abandoned Peter, and other non-Hale pack members, didn’t even notice Cora was alive, she never helped Derek, never sought a new territory for themselves, or to even secure the pack; in all the years between the fire and her own death Laura barely kept in control by a thread (Derek has long suspected that she only kept him around at all because she needed at least one beta in order not to go feral).
So, all in all, it’s obvious Eli is traumatized by the loss of his mom. It doesn’t help that they still don’t know where Stiles is (and Derek has been looking for him, though carefully, making sure not to call the wrong sort of attention). The kid has lost two of his three parental figures in less than five years, and he’s clearly deeply affected, seems to be gripped by terror whenever he goes more than a few hours without knowing where his dad is, exactly. And Derek wants Stiles so badly… he’s so sure his mate would know what to do!
“I’m a failure as a father,” Derek mutters to himself.
“You’re not a failure, you’re just overwhelmed, grieving, and understandably traumatized yourself,” a female voice announces as a figure drops on the living room couch beside him. “Wouldn’t surprise me if you were having flashbacks to the deaths of our family too, either.”
“Cora…” Derek mumbles.
He intends to say something, he doesn’t know what. Whether he wants to deny everything she just said, agree, snap at her for being so blunt and honest… in the end all he does is twist around just enough to then fall upon her, burying his face in her neck.
Cora lets out a small wordless exclamation but reacts promptly, winding her arms around him and holding him tight against her.
“I’m here, Der, I’m here brother…” she whispers into his ear.
Next thing they know, Derek is crying.
Derek can almost sense the exact moment he goes from the real world to a dream. He’s in the exact same position he was before, but it’s no longer Cora he’s holding onto, but Stiles. Who’s carding his fingers through Derek’s somewhat shaggy hair. The human says nothing when the wolf sits up, but by the way he cups Derek’s face, practically petting his thick beard it’s obvious he’s noticed.
“Had never seen you with this much beard,” Stiles comments quietly.
Derek shrugs. Truth is he hasn’t had the time (or the inclination) to really focus on his usual grooming routine. Too busy trying (and failing, he’s sure) to be there for Eli.
“And don’t take me wrong, the mountain-man look truly suits you,” Stiles babbles a bit before turning serious again. “I just know it’s not what you actually prefer.”
It’s true. While it can be a chore, especially considering how fast his beard tends to grow, Derek does prefer to keep it carefully groomed, and at a very specific level of thickness and growth, which he passed over a week ago!
“How come you always look the same to me?” Derek asks, somewhat evasively.
“Well, I suppose it’s because this is how we both like to remember me.” How he was that summer they spent together in New York. “I look nothing like this in the real world right now.”
“Mountain-man beard?” Derek asks with a smirk.
“Actually, no,” Stiles fidgets a bit before admitting. “After I had to deal with blood in my hair, this after a blow to the head during a fight in the yard that got so bad and so big I just couldn’t avoid it entirely a few years back, I made a deal with one of the medics at the infirmary, they got me a razor, a good one, and in return I played nurse for them for a week.”
The man had definitely needed the assistance with just how many people ended up injured after that particular fight (and if Stiles ended up taking advantage of that to ensure some damage ended up being worse, or more… permanent, that was all for the better, in his opinion).
“Since then we have a standing deal for me to do ‘extra shifts’ whenever I need new blades for it,” Stiles adds for good measure. “So I’ve actually gone back to the buzzcut nowadays, and clean-shaven of course. It’s not my preference, but…” he shrugs in a ‘what can you do?’ way.
Derek supposes Stiles probably decided he’d rather that, than be dealing with blood in his hair. Not for the first time he wishes there were a way he could just… be there, save his mate…
“So, what’s going on?” Stiles asks. “I hadn’t seen you so down since… well…”
Since Mirele died. And Stiles knows Eli is very much alive. While he doesn’t have the same kind of connection to the kid that he shares with Derek, he does have enough of one to know the kid’s alive. Perhaps not in the best state, but who would be after losing their mom?
“It’s Eli,” Derek exhales. “I just… I don’t know how to help him.”
Stiles takes a deep breath, clearly bracing himself and Derek can tell whatever he’s about to say is gonna be hard on both of them.
“What Eli needs right now, more than anything else Derek, is security,” Stiles tells him softly.
“What…?” Derek isn’t expecting that. “You, you think he’s afraid of me?”
“No! Of course not, it’s not that at all.” Stiles shakes his head emphatically.
“Please don’t tell me he thinks I’m going to leave him…”
Stiles’ mournful expression is enough of an answer.
“I’d never do that!” Derek exclaims, horrified at the mere idea.
“You’d never plan to, true,” Stiles makes special emphasis on ‘plan’. “But truth is, neither did Mirele plan on dying. It just happened. That’s what’s truly affecting Eli right now.”
Derek has no idea what to say to that.
“Do you remember Elin?” Stiles asks, in what to Derek seems like an absolute non sequitur.
“I do,” the wolf nods. “Mirele’s mother. She… she died when Eli was still a toddler. Cancer, I think.”
“She did,” Stiles nods. “Breast cancer, very aggressive. Didn’t respond to any of the treatments. Even the bite wouldn’t have saved her.” He takes a deep breath. “The thing is, well, I don’t actually know how much Eli might consciously remember of his grandmother, or her death, but I remember Mirele telling me that they were absolutely honest with the boy from the start. He knew his Nana was sick, that it was bad. When they learned there was nothing that could be done and she was going to die, he was told that too. He spent a lot of time with her, and Elin took lots of pictures, wrote letters, and I think even recorded a few videos so he’d remember her.”
“I remember that,” Derek says softly, thinking back on it. “Eli has a video of her rocking baby-him, singing an old lullaby. He used to watch it every night before going to sleep.”
“Yeah,” Stiles clearly remembers that too. “Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is: while Eli certainly mourned the death of his Nana when it happened, it didn’t traumatize him because he knew it was coming. He had time to make all sorts of memories with her. He had the time to say goodbye… with his mom, he never had that chance. Obviously Mirele didn’t plan on being in an accident and dying when she left the house that morning, and from what you’ve told me she was dead by the time the ambulance arrived, so there was no chance for either of you to see her one last time.”
Derek shakes his head. He also notices something Stiles seems to have missed.
“It’s not just his mom,” Derek says in realization. “It’s you too.”
“Me?” Stiles clearly wasn’t expecting that.
“Eli lost you too, we all did,” Derek reminds him. “And yeah, I still get to talk to you, but we just don’t know where you are, or how to get you back. You left one morning, after we’d made all sorts of plans to meet again, and that didn’t happen.” He swallows. “I… I’ve heard Eli… heard him calling for you sometimes. He really misses you Miec…”
It was Mirele that got Derek into the habit of calling Stiles by that name, and Stiles cannot say he minds. It’s nice, to have someone calling him that still.
“I miss him too, so, so much,” Stiles admits quietly.
Neither of them say a word for a while. And what can they say? Any sorts of promises they might try to make would be empty, and they’re neither of them in the habit of making such. The best they can do is wait, keep hoping, trying, they have to believe a chance will come, that Stiles will make it back to them.
“So, what do I do then?” Derek asks eventually. “How do I prove to my son I’m not going to leave him, willingly or not?”
“I’m… not sure, actually.” Stiles admits. “I mean, it’s not like you can stop leaving the house, going to work and the grocery store and whatever. And New York… car accidents happen all the time, there are no guarantees there.”
“What if we weren’t in New York anymore?” The idea comes to Derek rather suddenly.
“What…?” Stiles blinks, not expecting that.
“Originally I didn’t want to take Eli away because, well, this is his home, you know?” Derek explains. “I even moved from my apartment to the house with him to make it easier on the both of us. But maybe if we were somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t such a big city, with so many people and cars and accidents…” he hesitates.
“Are you actually thinking about moving back to Beacon Hills?” Stiles asks.
“I, I don’t know,” Derek admits. “It’d be insane, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, certainly. But at the same time… well…” whatever he says, he does so much too quietly for even Derek to hear.
“What was that?” the wolf asks.
“I said that maybe then you wouldn’t be so alone anymore,” Stiles murmurs quietly.
“But I’m not alone,” Derek retorts. “I have you.”
“But you don’t really, do you?” Stiles shakes his head. “I mean, don’t take me wrong. I love you as much today as I did the day I was taken, perhaps even more. And I do absolutely love the shared dreams we have. These dreams, and you, have been a lifeline the last few years like you cannot begin to imagine… but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not there. And I will be, one day. I promise you. I haven’t given up, and I never will. But until then, I don’t want you to be alone, sourwolf. You deserve to have more people, more pack around you.”
“Scott isn’t pack,”
“Who said anything about Scott?” Stiles shakes his head. “No, I mean Peter. Maybe Parrish? Malia? My dad? I have no idea what he might even be up to nowadays, if he even…”
He doesn’t dare even finish the sentence.
“He’s alright,” Derek blurts out. “Well, he believes you to be dead, but aside from that, he’s alright.”
“What?” Stiles asks. “How do you know? Sourwolf?”
“Remember how I told you that even though I’m not an alpha anymore, to me you’ll always be pack? Pretty much the same applies to your dad. To my wolf, the two of you have always been a package deal. The way you used to take care of him so…” he trails off.
“So obsessively,” Stiles finishes for him. “You can say it. It’s not like it’s wrong. I know it was too much. And he never liked it. I don’t think he ever understood why I reacted so intensely to what, in his mind, will always be ‘just one bad exam…’.”
“Ohh…” Derek exhales.
Stiles blinks, cocking his head to the side.
“Your mom, she died of a rare illness, didn’t she?” Derek can tell his question takes Stiles by surprise.
“Yeah, fronto-temporal dementia,” the human nods.
“How long was she sick?” Derek asks, then clarifies. “How long before you found out?”
“A couple of years,” Stiles admits, closing his eyes briefly. “Though it didn’t get really bad until the summer when I was ten years old. I… I was in Wales for the summer,”
“Wales?” Derek blinks.
“Yeah I… family friends and… it’s a really, really long story that is… not quite so important anymore? Anyway, the point is for a few years, back when I was a kid, I used to spend the summers in Wales. That time, when I left, I knew there was something off with mom, but she told me, repeatedly, that she was just a bit under the weather, nothing serious, she’d be better by the time I got back.”
“And she wasn’t.”
“Not only wasn’t she better, but she was so, so much worse. According to the doctors, no one expected for the sickness to advance so fast. Even when it’s not detected until it’s already advanced, most people live at least five years, sometimes more. Her decline happened pretty much over the summer, she had to be admitted into the hospital not even a month after I came back, after…”
“After?”
“After she tried to kill me. Not only she didn’t remember me anymore, but she claimed I was a monster who was planning to kill her.”
“Oh Miec…”
“I… I hated it all so much! Hated them all so much!” A part of him still does.
“They lied to you.”
“Yes!”
“If they had told you, you’d have never gone to Wales. You’d have stayed at home, with your mom. Would have spent all summer with her. Fighting to make sure she’d remember you.”
“It’s a battle I know I was always going to lose. But at least I’d have gotten to make more memories with her before the end.”
“Memories of her decline. Of her losing herself, a piece at a time.”
“Sourwolf…”
“Don’t you see? That’s why they didn’t tell you. They didn’t want you to see her like that. To remember her like that. They wanted you to remember her at her best…”
Of course it’d have been better if she didn’t then try to kill him, hadn’t said such terrible things to him, about him. But one couldn’t plan for everything.
“That’s why you were always so obsessed with your dad’s health.” Derek says in understanding. “For him it was just one bad exam, but in your head it was just the beginning…”
“Not just that,” Stiles mutters.
“No,” Derek agrees. “Your dad had already lied to you once, about your mom’s health. It was quite possible he’d lie about his own too.”
“I couldn’t lose him too…” Stiles sobs.
Eventually Stiles settles down and they get back to the original topic of conversation. Derek’s (and Eli’s) potential move to Beacon Hills. Derek shares everything he knows about how Noah has been doing, from what his uncle has been reporting. He’s still the sheriff, there appears to be some sort of schism between him and the McCall Pack, as he hasn’t attended any or their pack meetings in years, and has refused the McCalls’ invitations to Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years’ and various people’s birthdays every year without fail. Oh, and he’s eating healthy. Yes, really!
“He… what?” Stiles stutters, he cannot help himself. “How? Why even…?”
“According to Uncle Peter, and this was something he overheard your dad say to Parrish, it’s what his son would have wanted,” Derek answers quietly.
Stiles bursts into tears again.
“Did you know you talk in your sleep?”
It’s the first thing he hears upon waking up, the words coming from his sister, Cora.
“I do not!” he scoffs, though truth is he’s not entirely certain.
“Who’s Miec?” Cora presses.
Derek has never been a good liar, at least not with those who know him (yeah, he can lie and flirt and all that when he’s playing a part, when he has an objective; like distracting a deputy while someone else slips into the sheriff’s station to find something… or someone). So it takes no time before he’s telling everything to his sister. From the summer he spent with Stiles in NY, the morning he woke up and just knew something had gone wrong, the human going missing, and everything since.
“So… wait.” Cora says in disbelief when he’s done. “Stiles is alive, you know he is, and you haven’t told anyone?! Not Uncle Peter, or his other friends, not even his own dad?!
“What do you want me to tell him, Cora?” Derek rolls his eyes at her. “Oh, I know you were told Stiles is dead, but he’s not. I cannot prove it, but I know he’s not! How do I know? Oh, I’ve been meeting him in dreams for years! And no, I still have no way to prove it. How do I know it’s real then, that he’s truly alive? Because if he weren’t I’d be feral!” Derek’s practically panting by the time he reaches the end of his speech.
“Oh…” Cora breathes out in realization. “He’s your anchor…”
“Yes!” Derek snaps, just a little bit, because wasn’t that obvious already?
Then again, the circumstances in which he came to realize that Stiles, and not anger, or grief, or any other emotion (or any other person) had become his anchor… Cora hadn’t been around back then. And anchors were really so personal a topic, most shifters never talked about what theirs is, not even while teaching others about them.
“But… but McCall… his anchor is that Argent girl, and she’s dead!” Cora blurts out, clearly at a loss. “She’s dead and he’s not feral!”
“It’s not the same,” Derek shakes his head, trying hard to find the right words to explain something he’s not sure even Scott realizes (then again, the so-called True Alpha has never cared about the reasons for things, only how much they might benefit him). “Because Scott’s anchor isn’t any girl, not really, it’s… his memory of her. It’s an ideal, a dream. That’s why it doesn’t matter that Allison’s dead, because his anchor isn’t the real her, but his idealized memory of who she was, who he believed her to be. In some ways one might even say it’s preferable she’s dead, because that way she cannot say or do anything to break that perfect dream…”
Just like anger was a perfect anchor for Derek, until he stopped being angry at himself all the time… Then he needed something else, something better. Something that fit who he’d become, as a man, and a wolf; something strong, unbreakable, enduring, but at the same time flexible, adaptable. Is it any wonder Stiles is his anchor?
“So, are you going back to Beacon Hills then?” Cora asks eventually.
“I am, but not just yet,” Derek replies.
She let out a questioning vocalization; not words, not really, but Derek understands her nonetheless (Derek can still remember, before the fire, Cora always seemed to be more wolf than human, seemingly more in tune with her wolf side than any of her older siblings; to the point where she rarely talked, when wordless vocalizations would suffice).
“We need a place to go to,” Derek explains. “A… a home. The loft was fine when it was just me, or just the two of us. But Eli needs more, deserves more.”
And so does he. Derek thinks he’s finally in a place, at a point in his life when he can believe that.
“A new Hale House…” Cora murmurs thoughtfully. “I think I like the sound of that.”
So does Derek.
xXx
Stiles hears the commotion before he’s even fully awake. He can vaguely hear Will muttering about ‘something happening’ and yeah, talk about stating the obvious! Still, nothing could have possibly prepared them when the two men step into the main area of the Citadel and find a young man, small by the looks of it, curled up on the floor, clearly trying to make himself as small a target as he possibly can while several of the inmates argue among themselves who has the right to beat him.
It’s been a while since a hostage has been thrown to the hunters, and it’s not like they can all beat him up (that would end with the hostage killed, and it’s not what anyone actually wants). Stiles pays very little attention to the argument, focusing instead on the figure on the floor, considering how quickly they will have to intervene, he’s never seen someone so small…
“Fuck!” he yells as he starts running.
That’s not a small young man… that’s a child!
What follows is… disaster would be putting it mildly.
Will notices the same thing as Stiles, either at the same time, or right after him, and the two rush to get to the kid, to pull him away. That doesn’t make any of the hunters happy. Apparently it’s one thing for Will to interrupt the beating after a while; him getting the potential victim away before they’ve had the chance to vent their frustrations? That they really, really don’t like.
“He’s just a kid!” Stiles yells at them when he stands in the way.
It’s pointless. The hunters really don’t care. They want someone to beat up. And if it’s not the kid, it’s going to be someone else.
It all devolves from there.
It takes no time at all for all the inmates to turn against them. Even those who usually don’t seem too interested in participating in the beatings are clearly angry at Will and Stiles’ interference.
And then the weapons come out.
Unlike other prisons in the country, in the Citadel no effort is made to keep weapons out. Then again, the inmates are hunters, many of them are used to turning pretty much anything they can get their hands on, into a weapon. Also, as much as many of them may make a habit of fighting among themselves, they rarely end up killing one another (one of the reasons why Stiles has had to be so careful when engineering his own fights and ‘accidents’; multiple deaths would have been way too obvious, called way too much attention, while things getting out of hand and there being permanent damage of some kind, doesn’t. It also helps that no hunter wants to admit to being damaged, to having a limp, or having lost mobility, or anything; not until they’re either forced to stop hunting, or they get killed while doing so).
“What are we gonna do now?!” Will demands, the trembling kid half standing, half laying against him.
And he truly is just a child, perhaps not a particularly small one, but Stiles doubts he’s even hit his teens just yet. Chocolate eyes, dark-blonde hair and tall (which Stiles believes might be at least part of the reason why he briefly did confuse him with an adult).
Will doesn’t disagree with Stiles’ desire to save the boy, not at all (he’d have never survived a hunter-beating), but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about not having a plan. Stiles’ mind works a mile a minute. There’s no way they can possibly fight everyone at the same time, they just can’t. They’re just two men (and one kid)!
“We need something more defensible,” Stiles states. “Somewhere they cannot come all of them after us at the same time.”
The answer is obvious: their cell. What’s not quite as easy is getting there.
The boy was either hurt at some point before being dropped into the Citadel (or it might just be the trauma), Will has his hands full keeping him moving alongside them. Which means Stiles is almost solely responsible for ensuring the hunters don’t kill all three of them!
At some point one manages to get close enough to throw a knife (an actual knife, rather than a makeshift one) at them. Stiles snarls, reacting instinctively as he grabs the still extended arm of the hunter, pulling towards himself at the same time he raises one leg. There’s a loud crack as the man’s arm is suddenly bent in the opposite direction from what’s natural, his elbow joint violently dislocated. He screams as he goes down.
By the time they make it to the cell, Stiles knows it won’t be that easy. He has detailed knowledge of how the gates into the cells work (necessary for some of the accidents he engineered). They have a very basic latch (unless the inmate has a bolt they choose to use) that can be opened by pretty much anyone. At the same time, a person needs to actually make an effort to get the gates to slide, whether opened or closed (they’re old, and the maintenance clearly hasn’t been the best). From the inside it’d be next to impossible for any one person, or even two, or three, to hold the gate closed. From the outside though? All they’d need is to make sure no one can get close enough to slide them.
So Stiles makes a choice. He takes pretty much everyone by surprise when he throws himself at a couple of nearby hunters, ripping the pipes they’re holding to use as makeshift weapons, before taking position before the entrance to his and Will’s cell, at the same time the gate slams closed. The young man twists his wrists a couple of times, twirling the pipes, getting a feel for their size and weight. They’re certainly no eskrima sticks, or any of his preferred staves, but they’ll have to do.
“Stiles!” Will yells when realizing the younger man is not inside the cell.
Stiles does not respond, he just bends his knees a bit, shifting his weight for a better balance, then he braces himself, and waits. It takes no time for the first attacker to come at him. In seconds it’s an all-out fight with the enemies coming at Stiles, one after the other in a seemingly endless stream. At first he tries to be careful, which gets him a sharp kick to his ribs, a slash to a leg and almost a blow with something heavy to his head. Also, one hunter manages to make it all the way to the cell and has both hands on the gate, ready to pull. That’s when Stiles abruptly decides the time to ‘take it easy’ has passed as he spins around on one foot, pipe extended, and delivers a blow to the hunter seeking to break into the cell, hard enough to crack his skull.
The hunter in question drops, and inside the cell the kid screams. Will curses, clearly not expecting for Stiles to be quite that strong (or it could be his viciousness, it’s a side of him the old man hasn’t seen before). Stiles for his part takes a deep breath, centering himself. It’s been a long time since he last went all out, since he trained to one day be able to go against demons and other monsters (real monsters, not just men with special gifts and blessings). Almost fifteen years! But in some ways it’s almost like riding a bike. The muscle memory is there. And beyond that, his mind, his whole self, remembers what it’s like to get lost in the fight, to let go of societal norms and limits and just… fight. So he does.
Part III. The Legend
Jack is missing.
Or no, not missing. Because missing implies he doesn’t know his whereabouts. And while he might not know exactly where Jack is, he does know exactly who has him, and why, and… Aaron could totally scream.
For years Aaron Hotchner had dangerous jobs. First as an ADA handling high-profile cases, then when he chose to switch careers entirely and joined the police, then SWAT, before eventually being recruited to the FBI, specifically the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). Hotch (as most people call him) loved working as a profiler. It allowed him to make use of all his skills, to work towards justice. His job also cost him so, so much…
He never blamed Haley for leaving, not really. She married a lawyer, not an agent. He knows she was never happy with his change of career, though at the same time she didn’t complain. He wanted to believe that eventually they’d find a balance andbe happy. But that moment never came. Hotch supposes some of it was on him. He’s always been a very intense person, can become laser-focused. And much as he might not have wanted to, sometimes he would end up taking his work home with him. Haley never liked that.
Still, as bad as it was, losing Haley when she chose to divorce him, and knowing he’d get less time with their son; because he definitely couldn’t dedicate enough time to him (if he had, perhaps Haley never would have left…). Even with all of that, he never expected that one day Haley would just not be there anymore. Haley died, because an unsub Hotchner couldn’t catch fast enough, went after her. He murdered her, and came so close to murdering their son as well…
Hotch will never forget the absolute terror he felt, all the way to his house that day. He knew Haley was dead; there was no way she wouldn’t be, not with Foyet there. At the same time, he kept hoping against hope that Jack would have hidden well enough for the insane murderer to not be able to find him. That proved to be true. And Hotch has never felt such great a relief as he did when he finally made it to his home-office and found Jack still hiding in the bench-seat (where he always went to hide when he was ‘helping daddy work the case’).
After Haley’s death Hotch tried really hard to be home more, to be there for his son. He knows he didn’t always manage. But he tried. And Jessica (Haley’s sister) certainly helped a lot.
And then another criminal escaped, only this one didn’t just obsess over Hotch (his whole team, really) but he chose to stalk Jack as well. That was where Hotch drew the line. He’d already lost Haley because of one unsub, there was no way he was losing Jack over another one!
So he walked away. From his team, from the BAU, from his friends, from the whole life he knew; and went into witness protection with his son. Even after the rest of his team finished the case, found all the escaped prisoners and dealt with them (especially Mr. Scratch), Hotch didn’t go back. He decided to take the whole thing as a sign. As long as he kept working for the FBI, as long as he kept going after dangerous criminals, his son would always be in danger. He couldn’t live like that. And his son shouldn’t have to, either, it wasn’t fair to him.
So how is it that it is now, after he’s left all of that behind, this has happened?!
That’s actually a rhetorical question, because he knows exactly why it happened. After leaving the FBI he decided to go back to his roots. He was a lawyer after all. Only, instead of working for the DA’s office, this time he chose to join a small law-firm and just be one of many lawyers there. The last thing he expected was for none other than Ricard Arne to come to his office. His son was facing charges for several counts of harassment, stalking, kidnapping, assault, and at least one of attempted murder. Arne of course claimed his son was innocent of all charges, that it was just a ‘bunch of stupid bitches’ wanting to taint his son’s reputation and his family’s good name.
Thing is, Hotch knows the kind of people the Arnes are, he even knows the kind of man Ricard Arne is (he was a ‘colleague’ of his father’s, before the elder Hotchner switched professions and became a lawyer himself full-time). Also, it took him less than fifteen minutes to find out that the group of young women accusing James Arne of all those crimes were in fact a group of college students, all close friends with each other, studying a variety of majors, yet all very involved in eco-friendly things and activism. It wasn’t hard for Hotch to create a picture in his head, one he had no doubt was far more accurate than Ricard’s speeches about names and reputations. He turned down Arne.
The man called him over half a dozen times in the span of two days, insisting Hotch be his son’s lawyer. His tone changing from prodding, to enticing, to demanding… in his last call he went as far as threatening Hotch, claiming he wouldn’t like what happened if he kept refusing.
The following day, Jack disappeared on his way home from school.
They weren’t living in a big city. The school-bus had a stop not half a dozen blocks from the house, and they knew practically everyone who lived in the neighborhood! It shouldn’t have been possible for Jack to be taken in such a place, in such a small lapse of time. Yet that’s exactly what happened.
Hotch knows exactly who took his son, because they told him (the shameless bastards). They also warned him they could make things much worse if he didn’t give in and agree to do what they wanted. Hotch knows criminals, he knows monsters (especially the kind masquerading as humans) he knows the moment he gives in, his son will become no more than a pawn in the hunters’ game, and then neither of them will ever be free again.
So now Hotch is left sitting in his home-office, contemplating his options. He has his phone in hand, and two numbers before him, two possibilities. He can call Emily, can ask his old team’s help. They will do a profile and work really hard to find Jack, he knows. He also knows there will be a lot they will not understand, so many things they will have no context for. Oh, Emily probably will, considering her own heritage, similar to Hotch’s own in a way; but the others? No, they won’t understand, and Hotch is afraid that lack of knowledge might keep them from solving the case fast enough (because his team is so good, he has no doubt they’d crack it sooner or later, but will it be in time to save Jack?).
The other option then, is to call a very different number, of a man Hotch has never talked to, but who knew his mother. A man who will know exactly who the Arnes are; will have a pretty good idea, without Hotch having to explain a thing, who’s responsible for Jack’s abduction, and hopefully how to get him back. The question on that end is, will he, will they, help? Will a vague connection to him, and having once known his mother, be enough for Arkadiusz to be willing to help Hotch now?
Hotch can only hope it will be.
xXx
Alexis Kemp, matriarch of the Kemp Warrior Clan and Brenin of all the warriors left around the world, steps into the War-room.
The place is a piece of art, in many ways. Almost a living part of the warriors’ history. Circular room, holding a round table with empty space in the middle. It has twelve seats, meant for the representatives of each of the twelve warrior clans. The room is enchanted to make any violence inside it utterly impossible (making bodyguards unnecessary, allowing for truly private meetings). But the true show of art in the room, is on the wall. In twelve sections, both divided and connected by Celtic knotwork, each section is a mix of carvings and paintings in various ancient styles representing each of the clans. What’s more, the wall, just like the rest of the tower, is deeply imbued with magic.
If historians were to ever be allowed access into the warriors’ war room they would be both absolutely fascinated, and utterly flabbergasted at the same time. Both would be due to the state of the different sections of the wall. Some of the sections look old, crumbling and somewhat faded; which experts would believe to be due to the age of the art. However, other sections look perfectly intact. It’s clear that they’re just as old as the others, and they haven’t been modified or restored in any way, they just are in perfect condition. This is because the state of the different sections has nothing to do with time or use. The magic in the wall connects them to the different clans. And thus, the section that corresponds to the one clan that no longer exists, that has not even one remaining living member who’s a warrior, is almost fully crumbled, just enough of it remaining to show that the clan existed once (and that somewhere in the world there are those who still carry its blood, even if they’re no longer proper warriors). The rest of the sections are in various states of wear depending on the state of each clan.
Alexis says nothing as she crosses the room, going to stand in front of the section of the wall that corresponds to the Kemp Clan. It looks clearly worn, however, it’s no longer crumbling. Even if there aren’t many Kemps, there are more than there were when she was a child. They’ve managed to bring the clan back from the brink.
It’s another little detail of the magic in the wall. If the clan recovers, so does their section in the wall.
Alexis exhales, her attention turning, almost without her fully intending it, to the section to her left (to the right of the Kemp one), it’s the one that represents the Gajos Clan. It looks even worse than the Kemp one ever has, the colors almost entirely faded, parts of it looking like the slightest touch will make it all fall apart. It’s a clear reflection of the state of the Gajos Clan, of the fact there’s only two members left in the world; neither of whom are actually, technically, warriors.
“We’ve received a plea for help,” Arek announces to his Brenin.
“From which clan?” Alexis asks, not truly turning to him.
The phrase ‘plea of help’ is more ceremonial than a true reflection of any words that might have been used by anyone involved. Had the phrase been ‘plea of aid’ it’d mean that they’ve been asked for help against a demon or monster of some kind. A ‘plea of help’ is indicative of a need of a different kind, things like mediation, or rescue, or something else along those lines (doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be any fighting, it just isn’t the priority).
“Kemp,” Arek states evenly.
That does make Alexis react, as she spins around abruptly.
“Who?!” she demands.
She was so sure she knew all Kemps, not only her warriors, but even the civilians.
“His name is Aaron Hotchner,” Arek explains as he offers his Brenin a tablet with a file already opened. “He’s the son of Frank Hotchner and Anwen Stewart.”
Anwen Stewart, Alexis knew that name. She’d never met the woman, she was from Arek’s generation. She was one of those who ‘washed out’ during training. It happened with a few in every generation; those who, despite their best intentions, proved to just not be good enough as warriors. Usually they were offered the chance to do assistant-work, same as with those disabled in some way. Some chose to accept it, but others chose to simply walk away. Anwen was one of those. She’d chosen to build a new life for herself as a civilian.
The interesting part perhaps, was she’d fallen in love with the son of a hunter family: Frank Hotchner. The man loved Anwen enough to leave hunting for her, using the damage to his eye from an accident hiking (one that was in no way connected to hunting) as an excuse. He’d become a lawyer full time then, and made a good life with his wife and two sons. Neither of whom were ever involved with either hunters or warriors… until now.
“What happened?” Alexis asks after browsing Hotchner’s personal information.
“The Ansens,” Arek says in a clipped tone before manipulating the tablet still in his Brenin’s hands to have it show another file.
It has the basic information about the Ansens, their usual ‘territory’, their track record (both what they claim, and what they know the family tries to hide); the last page goes into James Ansen and the trial he’s currently facing. While the Ansens aren’t one of the major hunting families, they stand out in several ways: the first is they don’t follow a specific major family (like the Argents, Dumonts, the Lanes, or the Calaveras), but at the same time they’re connected to all of them. This is due to the fact that the Ansens haven’t had a female born to the family in several generations; rumor has it a magic-user cursed them at least a century prior. They’ve taken advantage of it, setting up their sons to marry high-ranking females in many different hunter families. It’s those connections that have allowed them to set up marriages for each generation’s eldest son, ensuring their own name is carried on (the woman is called their matriarch, but she holds very little power, as she’s not actually of their blood).
“What did they do?” Alexis asks, suspecting she’s not gonna like the answer (she’s right, of course).
“Ricard Ansen sought to enlist Aaron Hotchner to act as his son’s defendant, Hotchner refused.” Arek explains succinctly. “When bribery, blackmail and threats failed, they took his son on his way back home after school.”
“How bad?” Alexis asks, because she just knows there has to be more, Arek’s far too angry for the only issue to be a kidnapped boy (they’ve dealt with such before).
“This video hit the web earlier today,” Arek informs her as he manipulates the tablet again to show the aforementioned video:
It’s footage from a security camera, small, distant, grainy, and at enough of a bad angle to make it impossible for anyone to distinguish any specific features from either the child, or the adults. At the same time, it shows clearly enough a kid walking down a sidewalk right as a van slows down (never fully stopping) two figures in plain clothes, though with caps and hoods pulled up, jumping out, grabbing and pulling him into the van, the door closing behind them before the kid can so much as react, much less call for help.
“The video has had several thousand visits already, and we expect it to hit mainstream media any moment,” Arek adds.
“Cach (shit),” Alexis curses in Welsh. “How fast can the plane be ready?”
“Two hours,” Arek answers. “I took the liberty of giving the order to begin preparations the moment I knew exactly what was going on.”
It’s still not fast enough, but it’s the best they can do. So Alexis will accept it. And in the meantime she’ll find the name for the chief of the Interpol office in Washington. Because she can do that now (kinda has to, actually). After way more years than she, or anyone ever expected to be necessary, the warriors are fully allied with Interpol. Thus far only the chiefs of each region are fully aware of who and what the warriors are exactly, most of the organization simply seeing them as a private security organization that has partnered with Interpol regarding international crimes against certain minorities (which is how they chose to phrase things). There are, of course, those already working in Interpol who’re aware of the shadow-world, even those aware of the existence of the warriors and their duties; but while the former are a pretty decent number, the latter, not so much. Especially in places like the Americas, where hunters have been the major power for over a century.
Alexis truly believes her ancestors made a huge mistake when they allowed the hunters to gain such a foothold, to hold so much unrestrained power. It was bad enough that the Brenin of the time let so many members of her clans walk away, even two of her own Tywysog! That they then allowed several of the hunter families to emigrate to the Americas to continue their activities, without the oversight the warriors could still provide in Europe… Well, it should be no surprise things have gotten as bad as they have.
Alexis’s Teulu are waiting at the foot of the boarding stairs once the jet has been prepped. They’re the very people who have been there for her from the very beginning. From the early days of their training: Sofiya Popova-Abbot, Trystan Cadman, Ioan Warner, Amélie Gauthier, Sharif Hassan and Cruz Valencia. Seeing them invariably leads to Alexis having thoughts of those no longer there. Mirele Wyatt he knows is dead now, killed in a traffic accident over six months ago now. Alexis has heard rumors about a child surviving her, and about the child not being human, but she knows nothing for sure; and she wonders if perhaps the only reason she doesn’t know those things, if the only reason she’s never asked anyone, or even done her own research, is because a part of her stopped seeing Mirele as one of their own the moment summer came and she wasn’t on that plane landing in Wales. And well, if she wasn’t one of their own, neither was any child of hers, right?
She thinks back to the other person no longer there: Mietek. Thinks of the last time she saw him, right after his mom’s funeral, remembers his words, his righteous anger… Because he was right, they had known his mother was sick, longer than he knew; and she was even aware that some of those who routinely watched over the former Gajos Tywysog and her family suspected she was ill long before even she became aware of the fact. It makes Alexis think back on Francesca Arkadiusz, and the fact that clearly the warriors learned nothing from her tragedy, if a generation later they were making the exact same mistake with someone else. Only Mietek didn’t just refuse an honored rank, he left the warriors entirely; gave up the name, and everything that came with it.
Alexis is aware that, legally, Mieczyslaw Stilinski is dead, was declared thus years ago. Has even heard several very different rumors about what happened exactly, from those that claim some sort of hitman mistook him for someone in the mob; to those that insist he was in fact a mobster who set off an explosion rather than be taken by agents there to arrest him; and quite a few in between those. He knows that Stiles hasn’t been to Beacon Hills, and nothing indicates his father heard from him in at least four and a half years.
Yet even with all of that, Alexis still refuses to believe her once best friend is dead. Mietek was… Is (Is! He’s still alive damn it! She knows it at her core! Knows it with the same conviction she knows her own name) much too strong to just… just die. Alexis refuses to believe he’s dead until she’s seen a body (and even then, she’d have her doubts).
It takes a long, tense negotiation, but eventually the DC Chief of Interpol agrees to have the warriors work on the rescue of the kidnapped child (the name of whom is being kept under wraps for his own safety). Which is convenient, since they’re almost there already.
And perhaps once they have Jack Hotchner back, they can take a little time to find out once and for all what truly happened to her best friend…
xXx
It’s the siren that breaks up the fight in the end.
It rings long, and loud, making all the hunters scatter in a relatively short time. Even then, Stiles doesn’t believe things can be that easy, so he refuses to drop his guard. At most, he leaves the cell-door just long enough to do a quick sweep of the hall, confirming there’s no one else left but them. He commits to keeping guard at the gate, at least until the kid calls his attention inside.
“Mister!” the boy calls. “Mister, the man in here, he’s unconscious and he doesn’t wake up! He’s burning up! And… and he’s bleeding…”
“Shit!” Stiles curses, half-jumping, half-stumbling to his feet from the spot where he basically slid to the floor at some point hours earlier.
It takes him a couple of tries to grab the cell-gate and actually manage to pull and open it, part of it being his exhaustion; the other part being the blood, both on his hands and on the bars, that makes it so his hold keeps slipping… But he’d rather not think too hard about that.
The boy’s right, Will’s in a really bad way. Apparently that time when one of the hunters threw a knife at him, the knife actually hit him! And then… Well, Stiles doesn’t know if the knife slipped out on its own or if Will pulled it out (either because it was necessary for him to use it to defend himself from some follow-up attack before he made it into the cell, or he just forgot how bad an idea that was and did it). In any case, he has a stab-wound to his abdomen. There’s actually not much blood on the outside, yet with the fever and the fact that he’sunconscious and not waking up no matter what Stiles does… the younger man has no doubt he must be bleeding on the inside.
Stiles pulls at his hair, desperate. Wishing so hard that there was something, anything he could do. But there’s nothing. He’s no medic, has no training beyond basic first-aid. And even if he knew some things, nothing short of surgery could possibly save Will and he knows it. The shadows on the kid’s expression tell him so does he.
Come morning Will is dead. Stiles doesn’t even think about it as he slips into Welsh and whispers:
“Cysged yn dawel (May he sleep in peace)…” he murmurs the traditional warrior funerary phrase as he traces a simple Celtic knot on Will’s brow, like a blessing of sorts.
Stiles offers to go check out the place on his own, but the kid (“Jack, my name is Jack.”) refuses to be left behind, so Stiles loads for bear from the weapons he can find on the dead hunters on the hallway, before handing the kid… Jack, the least bloody stick and switchblade he can find.
“I don’t know if you even know how to use either of these, how to fight,” Stiles states solemnly. “You’re young enough your family probably would hate me giving you any weapons at all, but in our current situation, being armed might make the difference between you living or dying.”
“I know self-defense,” Jack offers quietly. “My dad, he used to work for the FBI and… and my mom… she was killed by one of the serial killers he was pursuing. After that… dad asked me if I wanted to learn how to fight, and I said yes. He and some of the members of his team taught me. Nothing formal but… well Uncle Derek always said that martial arts were pretty, but when you’re in danger pretty won’t save your life.”
Stiles has to agree with that one. Also, ‘uncle Derek’? He’s pretty sure the kid isn’t talking about his sourwolf, but still, small world!
They find no one in the mess-hall, or any of the other hallways leading to cells. Even the bathrooms, gym, kitchens and laundry area are all empty. Only the section that holds the hostages seems to have any people still. Stiles doesn’t believe that to be a coincidence. He makes sure to do a whole sweep of the place, confirming that even the wardens have left, before approaching the hostages.
It takes hours to get the hostages to trust Stiles enough to even listen to him. Which, he totally understands, but still he believes time is of essence.
“My name is Mietek Gajos,” he’s not entirely sure why he’s using that name; it’s part wanting to protect his dad, to not let anyone connect what’s happening right then and there to Beacon Hills’ sheriff; it’s also that ever since he let go in that fight he’s felt more like a warrior than he has ever since he quit almost fifteen years ago… “I might not have been imprisoned in the same section as you, but I assure you, I’ve been as much a prisoner in this place as the rest of you.”
“Yeah sure,” the disbelief is obvious in quite a few.
“How do we know you’re not one of them?” A woman in the back asks (unlike the hunter side of the prison, the hostage one had both men and women; which Stiles wasn’t entirely certain made things better or worse).
“If that’s true why weren’t you with us?” A man demands to know.
“I said I was a prisoner, not a hostage,” Stiles says rather bluntly. “The difference between you and me is there was nothing they could get from me. No one they could use me to threaten or to blackmail. Because of that, they weren’t interested in keeping me alive and in reasonable health, like the rest of you. In fact, I’m rather sure most of them would have loved it if I just died, but what can I say? I’m a stubborn bastard.”
That at least makes a few people chuckle.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Someone eventually asks.
“That’s what we’ve gotta decide,” Stiles answers honestly. “There’s no way of knowing if the hunters will ever be coming back. And if they do, what they might decide to do with us. Wardens and prisoners are both gone, the fact that they left, and that they didn’t seek to take any of us, not even any of you with them, tells me that they’re cutting their losses. For what reason? I cannot possibly know. But if they’re not coming back, we’ll need to make plans.”
“What sort of plans?”
“Can’t we just wait for someone to find us?”
“Idiot! If someone could find us, don’t you think it’d have happened already?!”
“What are our options then?”
“The way I see it, with the wardens gone, that means we’ve lost access to pretty much everything. The lights weren’t cut last night, and we have electricity right now, but who knows how long that’ll last. If the rationing of the power was done because it was necessary and not only to keep us all under control, that means we’re likely to lose power sooner rather than later. Without electricity we’re likely to also lose access to clean water, and possibly the plumbing.”
People keep going paler as Stiles continues. It’s clear none of them has so much as considered any of those things.
“The loss of the wardens also means we’ve lost our food source,” one of the hostages, a blonde, blue eyed woman who looks to be in her late twenties points out.
“There’s a chance we could collect some things from the fields when we make our way out,” another, this one a brown-eyed, dark-haired man in his thirties, adds. “However, how much we’ll be able to carry is anyone’s guess. Depending on how far away exactly we are from civilization, things could get really dicey, really quickly.”
“So basically, fucked if we stay, fucked if we go,” someone in the back mutters crassly. “What are we waiting for?”
In the end, everyone chooses to leave, which doesn’t fully surprise Stiles. Also, while Beth (the blonde woman, a former reporter and freelance investigator that used to work for the DA’s office in LA) and Logan (the brunette man, a former Naval Intelligence Officer from Neptune) soon enough take charge of the hostages, they still turn to Stiles as the leader of the group. Which, Stiles has no idea how the hell that even happened!
There are no functional vehicles for them to use (not that Stiles would have been inclined to trust a hunter vehicle, but still), but they do manage to find a number of useful things in the warden spaces they didn’t have access to before.
They make a plan and decide to take the rest of that day and the following one to collect as much food, water and blankets as they can carry. A few of the more adventurous people make their way out of the Citadel itself and to the closest fields, collecting what they can find that looks fresh enough.
Then Stiles raids the infirmary, and after packing as much of the medical supplies as he can, he reminds the hostages of the trackers they all have in the back of their necks, suggesting it might be a good idea to get rid of them before they make their escape. Thankfully there’s a paramedic among the hostages, and a young woman who was a nursing student before being kidnapped. The two of them together help take the trackers out of everyone, causing as little damage as possible.
They create packs, with each person carrying as much food, water and blankets as they can without burdening them so much that they’ll be at risk. The strongest in the group additionally carry the first-aid stuff and any tools they find useful. And of course everyone has the weapons they’ve chosen.
The power does go out early on the morning of the day they planned on leaving. And like expected, everything, including the water and the plumbing, stops working. That means even those among the hostages who might have been hesitant about leaving, perhaps even considering staying behind and waiting to be found, are quite ready to leave once the hour comes. Everyone’s using only first-names, which is just fine with Stiles.
Considering what little they can see from their surroundings, and from the scarce information the wardens left behind, Stiles is able to hazard a guess that they’re somewhere in the Chihuahuan Desert. Which, while not ideal, isn’t as bad as it could be. He decides on heading north, north-east instead of, for example, south; he also decides to avoid roads, at least for a while. The last part doesn’t make everyone happy, but when both Beth and Logan agree that it’d be dangerous, especially if the hunters decide to return, complaints stop.
Without any GPS, maps, or even a freaking compass, Stiles is forced to use the sun to orient himself as he leads the group and hopes he’s not leading two dozen innocent people to their deaths. To keep himself from despairing, or having a panic attack, he focuses hard on his most recent shared dream with Derek. It might not have been the best, exactly, what with Derek yet again worrying he was the worst father, but still…
“I’m a terrible father,” Derek muttered, more to himself than to Stiles.
“Der!” Stiles exclaimed, horrified. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s the truth,” Derek hissed, then added, much more quietly. “My son is terrified of me.”
“Eli would never…!” Stiles refused to believe that.
Derek explained the situation then. Stiles had been aware of the impending move to Beacon Hills, with the new Hale House finally finished. Unlike the original Hale House, this one was in the town itself, though it still abutted to the preserve. It was also connected to the brand new Hale Auto Shop. Which, according to Derek, used to be Rogers’ Auto Shop, and belonged to two of the few members of the Hale pack who did not bear the Hale name; a gay couple. They had actually survived the Hale Fire, though Laura cut the bonds to them, like she did to everyone else who somehow survived the fire, except for Derek himself. From what Derek knew, Hank and Phil had gone south, looking for a new pack, their trail ended somewhere after Pasadena. It was hard to tell if they found a new pack, or were killed, and if so by who or what.
It had been Hank and Phil who first got Derek interested in cars, in knowing them inside out, working on them. It was the memory of them that led Derek to seek a job at an auto shop in NY (which in turn also led to him eventually meeting and falling into bed with Mirele). When seeing the shop while on the lookout for a new home… it’d felt like it was meant to be.
In any case, the house did not have a back fence, because Derek remembered his home never had one. It never occurred to him the risks that might carry. Like an actual wild coyote making it inside the house, and to the living room where Eli was playing…
Derek’s reaction had been instinctual when hearing his son calling for him, terrified, and seeing the wild animal so close to him: he shifted, and roared.
The problem? Eli had seen his dad in beta shift before, of course, had even seen him in the full-shift (Eli absolutely loved to cuddle with wolf-Derek, from the time he was a little boy); he had never seen him like that, ready to attack, and had certainly never heard him roar. The boy had shrieked in terror, seemingly more terrified by his father, than the wild coyote. And Derek couldn’t stop beating himself up.
“So you made a mistake,” Stiles said bluntly. “Everyone makes mistakes, sourwolf. What’s important now is, what are you gonna do next? You cannot hide from this. Whatever you do, you cannot back down, and like, try and pretend it never happened, or worse, avoid your son because you think it’s for the best! Trust me, that will just make things worse.” Like his dad avoiding Stiles for so long after the death of Claudia, to the point where neither father nor son knew how to bridge the divide anymore. “You need to sit down with Eli. Explain what happened, why you did what you did.”
“Miec…”
“No, listen to me Der. You sit him down, and you explain to him he’s safe with you. That you’ll never hurt him. And you will never hurt him! I know that, you know that, even if the part of you that’s full of insecurities might not be so sure. I Know! And deep down so does Eli. He just needs a reminder. Whatever fear there might be in him right now, you need to nip it in the bud before it becomes worse.”
“I don’t know if I can do this…”
“You can, I know you can, wanna know why? Because you’re a father who loves his son, and nothing, not fear, or nervousness, or any possible insecurity could ever be stronger than that.”
“Oh how I love you,” Derek blurted out unexpectedly.
Stiles blushed to the tips of his ears.
“I love you too Der,” he mumbled eventually.
They run out of food on the fourth day, and are dangerously low on water by the fifth. Staying away from roads means they’ve also been staying away from towns, and Stiles can only hope they’re far away enough from any hunters by then, and that he’ll manage to make it to civilization before people start dying.
He’s been keeping the group walking in intervals of about two hours, with rests in between. There were some complaints at first about the strict rationing of the food and water, especially the first couple of days, when everyone felt like there was so much, they should be able to have more. It’s only as the days pass and they keep going, while their supplies start to dwindle, that they realize Stiles was right to insist on the rationing.
Logan is the first to realize when they go from walking on mere dirt, to an actual hiking path. They still have no idea where they are, but there being actual paths means there must be people somewhere nearby, right? Also, they find an abundance of vegetation not much later, which seems to improve everyone’s mood considerably; if nothing else, they’ll have shade to rest under.
Hikers find them a few hours later. Following a longer rest than usual, the group has been discussing the possibility of some of them, or all of them, seeking the end of the trail, hoping to be able to find some help. There are those still hesitant about the possibility of hunters (like Stiles), and those who don’t like the idea of them splitting up (like Beth) so it’s been hard to come to an agreement on what they should do. Hikers finding them kind of makes the argument moot in the end.
Authorities get called, and ambulances. Two hours later the whole group (Stiles, Jack, and the rest of the 24 hostages) are in the Gila Regional Medical Center, in Silver City, New Mexico.
Stiles knows they’re calling way too much attention, with so many people, dirty, tired, clearly hungry and dehydrated, a good number suffering from sunburns from lesser to severe; not to mention the way they refuse to be separated. He’s pretty sure others have guessed already they escaped from somewhere, especially with the way they’re all dressed in worn jeans and faded off-white shirts. Though he’s also pretty sure most will be assuming they escaped some sort of cult, rather than any sort of prison. Another thing is Jack, no one can possibly miss he’s the youngest in the group, or the way they’re all very protective of him. Stiles is the only one with visible injuries, aside from some minor cuts and bruises a few of the others got as they walked through the desert.
Yeah, all in all they make quite the picture (and not a pretty one!).
Things get better in the following hours as they start relaxing enough to accept the nurses’ offer to take turns showering and changing into scrubs (they’re certainly cleaner than the clothes they’re wearing). Then Beth asks for a phone so she can call her boyfriend. After her someone else asks to borrow the phone as well and eventually everyone but Stiles has gotten in touch with someone.
There’s a lot of crying, and screaming. It’s clear that a few of the people on the other side of the phone believe the callers to be dead, or to just not be able to call them. There are a few shouts about getting on cars/buses/planes and making their way to New Mexico as fast as they possibly can.
Though the fastest one to get there ends up being Jack’s dad (Jack having been the second person to use the phone, right after Beth).
What Stiles isn’t expecting is just who ends up walking into that hospital behind Mr. Hotchner. None other than his childhood best-friend (before Derek and Mirele, and Scott…): Alexis Kemp.
“Princess…?!” Stiles blurts out in shock.
xXx
Derek is in Stiles’ old bedroom in the Stilinski house. He’s there but Stiles isn’t, and Derek doesn’t know why. He hates not knowing things.
He knows he’s dreaming, that part is easy. In the years he and Stiles have been meeting in dreams, the location of their meetings has changed. It started with it being the high-school locker-room. Which, to be fair, there was a good reason for it, considering everything that happened both in that room specifically, in the Hale Vault (which could be accessed through the locker-room) and in the high-school as a whole. But still, it didn’t stay that way forever.
Throughout the years they’ve dreamt themselves in a variety of places. From the tiny apartment they shared that one summer in New York, to the Wyatt household, also there in New York, and the last few times: the preserve (Derek hasn’t yet been able to show Stiles his new place, and he doesn’t know if that’s because Stiles doesn’t know it, because it being his mind as much as Derek’s, the human needs to know the place as much as the wolf does; or if it’s perhaps just that they don’t have a connection to that new place, not yet…).
“Der…”
He thinks he can almost hear Stiles…
“Derek…”
The wolf’s sure he can hear him, why then can he still not see the human?!
“Sourwolf! Wake up!”
Hazel eyes open abruptly and for a moment Derek doesn’t quite know where he is at all. He was just in Stiles’ old bedroom, wasn’t he? Except the ceiling he’s looking at in that moment is not right… But no, Stiles’ old bedroom was a dream, and he’s awake now. He knows that, doesn’t even need to count his fingers to know it. Why did he wake up then? He… he thought he could hear Stiles’ voice… Stiles telling him to… to wake up?!
It hits him suddenly, he’s not alone in the bed. Someone just managed to slip into his room, into his own bed (and he knows it’s not Eli) while he slept, without waking him up, without the wolf noticing at all, he felt no threat… that’s not normal, is it? And then he turns to the side, and it becomes obvious:
It’s Stiles…
Stiles is the one on the bed with him.
Right there. For real. When Derek is awake!
Stiles is there!!!
Stiles’ startled laughter is swallowed entirely by a mouth that seems intent on devouring him whole (not that he has anything against it, really!). Clothes are half shed, half ripped apart quickly and then there are hands and mouths and tongues on skin as wolf and human come together, settling a bond that’s been left on stand-by for so long, yet has never wavered, never weakened in the slightest. And now it can finally be fully realized…
Come morning, Eli bursts into the room. It’s late morning, and his dad hasn’t gone to get him up yet, why? Also, Eli can sense something in the pack-bonds, something’s changed (for the better) but he doesn’t understand what it is… And then he sees his dad isn’t alone in bed. And the person with him is someone he knows very, very well (even if he hasn’t seen the man in years, not since he was uncle Miec and went missing after that summer, years before his mama, before she… yeah. Still, Eli knows what he means to his daddy, and if he’s here now…)
“Papa!!!” Eli shrieks in delight as he jumps onto the bed.
It’s perhaps not the best wake-up call ever, and not one Derek would have ever chosen. But at the same time, laying on that bed, looking at the other two there with him: his son, and the love of his life… nothing could possibly make the morning any better.
xXx
It’s been such a long day… Truly, Noah doesn’t think he’s had one like this since… well, since his son was last around and he and the pack were doing all sorts of crazy stuff while ‘fighting the forces of darkness’ (and why does his life suddenly sound like a freaking fantasy novel?! He has a feeling Claudia is laughing at him from the Other Side).
In any case, he knows it’s just starting. The FBI coming back into Beacon Hills to ‘audit’ them, without giving any sort of explanation about what they were looking for, exactly. Though the fact that the person sent was the ‘illustrious Agent McCall’ probably had something to do with it. And to think Noah once believed that learning the truth about the supernatural (about everything that was truly going on in Beacon Hills) and especially his son’s involvement in it all would change McCall. Make him, if not a better man, at least more willing to cooperate… Though he supposes, it’s not like Scott has turned out to be the kind of man Noah used to believe he’d be, either.
In any case, as bad as Rafe could be (almost without even trying!) everything changed abruptly with the arrival of Interpol. And while Noah still has no idea how those guys are even involved with… well, whatever is going on, exactly, he knows he’s not the only one grateful that they no longer have to deal with ‘Agent McCall’…
And on that front, Noah cannot help but feel that he’s seen this Agent Aron Arkadiusz before. Though he knows it makes no sense, as he’s never worked with Interpol before!
One thing Noah knows definitely helped with things was how polite Agent Arkadiusz was, respectful of the Sheriff’s Department and all the work they’ve done. In fact, Noah suspects the man must be well aware of the supernatural considering how he not only dismissed Rafe’s veiled comments about ‘small town cops’ and the ‘piles of unsolved cases’ but, when Rafe then tried to switch gears, probably in an attempt to keep a foot in things, Arkadiusz’s response was everything Noah’s ever wished to say to the man himself:
“This is no longer your case, Agent McCall. In fact, I do believe it never was supposed to be. So I suggest you return to the San Francisco offices, I’m sure your superiors will be wanting a word or two with you in the coming days.”
Noah wonders if that means they’ll never have to deal with Rafe again (he can only hope!).
So, it’s been a long day. So Noah could perhaps be forgiven for not noticing when he makes it home, that the light of his kitchen is already on. Even when he makes it all the way to the kitchen and there’s someone telling him:
“Why don’t you go change out of your work clothes and wash up? I know you’re not expected back at the station until the morning so you should be able to eat and then sleep. Dinner will be ready in ten.”
Noah pretty much follows instructions without comment, tired enough not to stop to question any of it. It’s until he’s in his bathroom, taking a moment to splash water on his face after having changed into sweatpants and an old, comfortable tee-shirt, that it occurs to him that the one giving him orders back in the kitchen was not Peter…
Noah rushes down the stairs so fast he almost trips, only stopping when he makes it to the entrance to the kitchen. And there he is: standing behind the counter, looking at him with a nervousness Noah hasn’t seen in his son’s face since he almost burned the kitchen down the first time he tried to cook something…
And that’s really his son! Standing right there! In the middle of his kitchen!
Stiles is right there!
His son is alive!!!
xXx
It’s the main news story in every channel (as well as all the newspapers and even online), the discovery of a complex deep in the Chihuahuan desert where over two dozen people were kept captive; some for months, others even for years. Sons, daughters, siblings, parents and spouses of politicians, reporters and even some in law enforcement. The ‘hostages’ is how the group is referred to. Few actual names have been revealed, with everyone agreeing that their privacy should be protected.
Also, while it hasn’t been fully confirmed yet, more than a few people, especially those discussing the matter on online forums, fully believe a number of arrests of some either very rich or very powerful people (sometimes both at the same time) taking place across the country (and some in other countries) are connected in some way to these hostages. Some even claiming that the people being arrested must be behind the illegal detainment of the hostages (which is actually the truth, even if no one has officially come out and said it yet, and they probably never will; especially because it’d be hard to explain the connection between some of those people).
“Oh my god, all those poor people,” Melissa murmurs, watching the broadcast. “So terrible… I’m so glad someone found them. It’s a good thing, don’t you think Chris?”
Standing behind her, close to a window, Chris is on the phone, looking grim.
“Is everything alright?” she asks, sounding honestly worried.
“Yeah, I just…” Chris takes a deep breath. “I got a call from Argent Arms. Things are… I need to take the first plane to Florida.”
Melissa blinks, not expecting that.
“Oh… okay, how soon will you be back?” she asks, not knowing what else to say.
“I… I honestly don’t know,” he murmurs.
She knows he’s keeping something from her, she just doesn’t know what.
It becomes clearer when more than a week passes and Chris still isn’t back. He’s also not answering his phone; and after another week Melissa starts getting a recording telling her the number has been disconnected. Which means that Chris is gone. He just left her, without an explanation, without even a goodbye. Why?! She thought they were good together, that he loved her. Melissa doesn’t just understand. What went wrong?!
And then Scott tells her he’s leaving too!
“Doc Deaton says he’s moving to L.A. and has offered me to go with him,” Scott explains with a shrug. “We’d continue the same as we do here. And who knows? Maybe in a few years I’ll even open an animal shelter or something.”
“If Alan is leaving, why can’t you just stay here and take over the veterinary?” Melissa asks.
“Come on mom, you know I can’t do that!” Scott says with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not a veterinary doctor, just a technician. I cannot do all the things Doc Deaton can.”
No, he’s not truly a vet. Scott tried, but his grades just weren’t good enough to get admittance into any veterinary medicine program, much less any scholarship. In the end the best he could do was become a vet tech. And Doc Deaton was nice enough to hire him to be his official assistant. Sort of like how it was when Scott was a teenager and in high-school; only now it’s full-time and Scott is earning a bit more. Enough to keep the tank of his bike full and buy groceries. Doc Deaton has also promised to give him enough of a raise when they move to LA that Scott should be able to afford an apartment.
Scott’s really excited about the whole thing. Truth is, he’s never been the kind to be happy just living a small life, in a small town. His whole life he’s always wanted to make it big. So many times he’s been convinced that if he could just get ‘this one thing’ everything else would fall into place.
When he was a little kid he’d see his dad working so hard, and whenever he wasn’t working, he was cursing about all that had gone wrong, and all the ways he was good and yet other people kept taking the credit for his achievements. Rafael McCall truly believed one day people would see how good he was, he’d get the promotion he ‘was owed’ and then everything would be much better. And Scott believed that too, because his father said it, so it had to be true, right?
Only once Rafael McCall got his chance, and he joined the FBI, and things got better for him, it was just for him, because he left both his wife and son behind. Scott has never forgiven his dad for leaving them. Even when he’s tried to explain to Scott that it wasn’t because of him, that he and Melissa had a misunderstanding, Scott just refuses to listen.
Still, that did not change Scott’s way of thinking, as he kept believing that if he achieved some ideal, everything else would fall into place. As a child, when he was always alone, the kid without a father, the kid with asthma, the one no one played with because he just couldn’t keep up; he used to believe once he had friends everything would be better. And then he met Stiles. Stiles who was a bit older, and taller, and vicious; who saved Scott from the bullies, and didn’t give up on him, didn’t see him as less. Scott thought things would be better then. Only, Stiles was as much of a loner as he’d been. The two of them were friends, yes, and no one dared mess with them after Stiles put several bullies in their place; but no one was interested in being their friend either. So perhaps things were better, but still not the ideal Scott wished for.
When Scott became a teenager, and he got the chance to see all the popular boys and girls, all the different cliques, he decided that what he needed for everything to be better was to join the lacrosse team. He’d play lacrosse, and be awesome at it, and that’d make him popular, just like everyone else on the team; he’d be one of the popular crowd, and all the pretty girls would want to date him. And life would be perfect for him. He never stopped to consider that, as a severe asthmatic he had no hope of ever playing lacrosse, at least not good enough to be first-line…
Then Scott got bit. He got bit, and suddenly the asthma was no longer a problem, and he was so much faster, stronger and more agile, and lacrosse was so much easier. And he was good at it! So good that even the most popular girl in the school looked twice at him, and Allison! Allison was so pretty, and so sweet, and gentle. She was like a Disney Princess made real! Scott was absolutely in love with Allison from the first moment he saw her.
For a few days there it seemed like he was finally going to get everything he always wanted. He was playing lacrosse (and he was so good coach might make him co-captain!), he was popular, he was being invited to Lydia’s parties, and Allison had agreed to go on a date with him! Then his so-called best-friend had to go and try to ruin it! He kept insisting Scott was a werewolf, a monster, and that he couldn’t play lacrosse, and he shouldn’t date Allison. And then Derek Hale, saying all those things as well, and even worse things about Argents, saying they were the reason his family was all dead, that Kate Argent killed them (and who knows? Maybe they did something to deserve it!).
And then Derek went and ruined his life. He killed Peter and took his cure away from him! His only chance to be human again, to not be a monster… And yeah, Stilesalways said that the whole idea that a turned wolf killing his alpha will cure them is a myth, but what does he know?! And even if that’s true and he’d have just turned into an alpha, he was always meant to be an alpha, wasn’t he? He was always a better option for it than Derek Hale!
When they were little, Scott used to believe he and Stiles would be best friends forever; almost like brothers, if with different parents. And well, with Scott’s deadbeat dad gone and Stiles’ mom dead, they could totally have become brothers for real if the sheriff had ever opened his eyes and noticed how awesome Scott’s mom truly is! But that never happened, and later on she found someone else, Chris Argent, so his loss!
Anyway, Scott used to believe he and Stiles would always be tight. That Stiles would always be there for him, good times and bad and all that, right? But ever since Scott was bitten… things just weren’t the same. First there was Stiles’ insistence that Scott was a supernatural creature, and granted, that one was true. But what Scott really hated was the way Stiles seemed to believe that Scott would have never managed any of the things he did, if he weren’t a werewolf. Wasn’t he supposed to always support Scott and believe in him and all that?! Some friend he turned out to be.
The breaking point, however, came when Stiles became a murderer. It started with the nogitsune. And yeah, everyone says that what the void-fox did wasn’t Stiles’ choice, that he wasn’t in control… but it was still his choice to let the demon in. And no matter how much Kira, and even her mother Noshiko might say it doesn’t matter, Deaton told him it does, and Scott believes him!
Scott knows it wasn’t his best friend that killed the love of his life, it wasn’t even him that gave the order. But he also knows that if Stiles had never allowed him in, the demon wouldn’t have been able to do all the things he did. No matter how much Stiles and some of the others might blame the proxy-sacrifice they did… It’s ridiculous to say it was because of that, because how come he and Allison recovered just fine? In the end, the demon went after Stiles, and there was a reason, and it’s that deep down Stiles was just as bad.
Scott didn’t want to see it for the longest time, but it’s clear to him now. It became all too clear after the nogitsune. And maybe… maybe Scott could have forgiven him for letting the fox in. If Stiles has truly regretted it, if he’d asked for forgiveness, made amends, but he never did! And then he went and killed again! And okay, Theo made it sound so much worse than it was, and maybe Scott shouldn’t have believed him so easily; but that doesn’t change the fact that he was right in that Stiles killed Donovan. And he didn’t have to. There’s always another way!
The breaking point came when Stiles killed Tamora Monroe in cold blood. He knows that the woman wasn’t the nicest, but she didn’t deserve to just… just be killed like that, in cold blood, like she was nothing. The way Stiles just shot her in the head, without even a word of warning. And to then claim he was doing it in self-defense?! It’s ridiculous! Monroe wasn’t trying to kill him! She was after Scott, and Scott knows if he’d just had the chance to talk to her, he could have made her understand… He could have made her see that he was sorry, sorry he couldn’t save her earlier, when the Beast attacked. She could have been a good hunter, like the Argents!
Stiles killed an innocent woman, a human! And he was so proud of it! That was when Scott knew that Stiles was more of a monster than any wolf. He wouldn’t kill him, of course not. He wouldn’t let his once best friend turn Scott into a monster as well. No, that’s what the justice system is for. And no matter what Lydia and Liam might say about the justice system not finding Stiles guilty, Scott knows better. All he needed to do was appeal to the right kind of justice. And he knew exactly who to ask. Hunters were supposed to make sure justice was served on the supernaturals, right? And yeah, Stiles was human and all that, but if he wanted so much to run with wolves, maybe he should pay like one too. Maybe then he’d think twice about getting involved in things that didn’t concern him! Well, he’d have, but it’s not like he’d get the chance. After all, the sentence for murder is life in prison, isn’t it?
Scott realized, after talking to Mr. Argent, that his mom and the sheriff would never understand. Even the sheriff, who was a man of the law, he just loved his son too much to see the terrible being he’d become. Scott thought it was better if everyone just had a clean break, so he asked Mr. Argent to make sure Stiles was declared dead. Then, once the sheriff found out, Scott would be there for him. He’d always liked Scott, the sheriff even said so. And to Scott, the man was more of a father than Rafe! So it was the best solution, right? Scott would have a good father figure, and the man would have a son he could truly be proud of, finally.
The plan… didn’t go quite the way Scott expected.
First there’s the fact that Scott had thought that by Thanksgiving the sheriff would already know that Stiles was dead, would have even had time to mourn, and be ready to start moving on. Scott thought that was why the sheriff accepted the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner! It was a time for family after all! And instead, he got the sheriff asking him about Stiles, if he was coming, if Scott had talked to him… and so Scott had to be the one to deliver the news.
Even with that, Scott decided not to give up and invited the man for Christmas dinner. After all, a month was enough time to grieve a lost family member and move on, right? As he found out, probably not, considering the sheriff turned down his invitation. The one for New Year’s dinner too. And every single invitation Scott made in the following years as well!
Even the couple of times someone from his pack tried to make a connection, it never worked. Scott just didn’t understand why! It made no sense. The sheriff was all alone in the world now! Shouldn’t he be looking for a connection? Shouldn’t he want family to lean on now more than ever? Didn’t he love Scott? Wasn’t Scott a son to him? Scott would have been such a good son to the sheriff, certainly much better than Stiles!
And then… according to Mason, the man was always eating healthy nowadays. All kinds of healthy pastas and salads and wraps and… the sheriff had never liked eating healthy! Scott remembered he was always complaining about Stiles controlling what he could eat and not letting him have the things the man really liked! So why would he be choosing to eat healthy now that Stiles was gone?! It made no sense! Absolutely no sense at all!
Anyway, if the man didn’t want Scott as a son, just like he hadn’t wanted Scott’s mom for a wife, that was his loss!
And so Scott left Beacon Hills behind. Who knew? Maybe LA would be his chance to finally have the kind of life he deserved!
xXx
Arek is the last person to enter the room. It’s a formal dining room in a huge house, the very same the Argents rented when first moving to Beacon Hills, years earlier.
It’s no coincidence they’re there. Officially, Arek is the leader of the warrior team that’s come to town to investigate the Argents and their possible connection to the ‘desert prison’ as the humans are calling it. This is part of the measures he insists be taken to protect the real identity and position of Alexis. To the point that while it is in all the official paperwork that their organization’s leader is called Alexis Kemp; when out on a mission with them, she uses the name of Lexie Gajos (she even has paperwork that legally makes her Mietek Gajos’s older sister!).
Laptops, tablets and even several actual paper files and books are strewn all over the table; the room having been turned into an approximation of the war-room for their stay in Beacon Hills.
An agreement has been reached with both the Interpol and the FBI. The two mundane agencies are handling the return of the hostages and going after those involved in the abductions (Interpol’s part in things being especially important on this front as the teams involved have a better knowledge and understanding of the hunters involved: who they are, how they work, etcetera). The warriors are going after those behind the Citadel.
The plan for that began with Alexis, her Teulu, and the brand new liaison between all three groups: Aaron Hotchner, following Stiles back to the Citadel. And while Stiles refused point blank to set foot back inside the building, the others did go in. Studying the place, taking pictures and collecting whatever evidence they could find.
Stiles’ one request had been that the Teulu retrieve Old Will so he could arrange for a proper burial for the man. He had no family or friends left, but Stiles didn’t want him to end up in a mass grave with the rest of the dead hunters. He deserved better than that. When Hotch heard from his son that the man had died protecting him… well, the Agent was more than willing to ensure the former ADA had a proper grave, and moreover, he intended to make sure everyone would know what had become of the man who was believed to have died over a decade prior.
To say that they were all shocked when they made it to the hallway that led to the right cell, would be a huge misunderstanding.
“What the hell happened here?” Hotch asked in obvious disbelief.
“The little knight,” Trystan quipped.
“Not so little anymore,” Alice reminded him.
While it was obvious at least some of the dead hunters had been killed by other hunters. They still had no doubt that most of the kills could be attributed to their friend, either directly or indirectly. Every single one of them (bar Hotch) could still remember a ten-year-old boy dancing in between opponents, taking them out one by one. At the time none of them had doubted that by the time Mietek turned sixteen, no one would be able to surpass him. And yet when he’d quit… Well, some of them actually thought he might have gotten rusty in the years since. The carnage on that hallway proved it was the whole opposite in fact.
They weren’t condemning Stiles. Not at all. Their old friend had faced insurmountable odds and not only did he manage to survive, he then went and saved over two dozen people from a sure death.
In the end there wasn’t much they could find in the Citadel about the people behind the existence and the upkeep of the secret prison. Which wasn’t at all surprising, really (these people weren’t stupid, they couldn’t be if they’d managed to get away with keeping such an operation going for so long…). That only made them finding these people and bringing them to justice all the more important. Alexis was sure she was far from the only one who wouldn’t feel entirely safe until this mission was done.
Which was why what they were doing in that moment in Beacon Hills was so important.
“What I want to know,” Arek states as he looks around at things. “Is why exactly we’re letting these people get away when we could have arrested them already.” He focuses on his Brenin. “What’s more, you didn’t just let them go, you pretty much gave them the warning they needed to run. They wouldn’t have even known that we were onto them if you hadn’t sent Sofiya and Cruz to alert Druid Deaton and Hunter Argent respectively about the investigation taking place.”
“It was necessary,” Ioan points out calmly.
“What? Letting them go?” Arek still doesn’t understand.
“If we’re to find everyone else behind their crimes, yes,” Alexis states, looking straight at her protector. “This goes far beyond a druid seeking to siphon the power of a nemeton and his liberal use of rather… questionable magics to achieve his goals. Or Chris Argent’s own numerous crimes. They’re each just one part of much bigger wholes. So big even we don’t know how many people might be involved.” She shakes her head. “We don’t know. But they do.”
“You expect them to lead you to their… associates.” Arek realizes. “They’ll never do that.”
“Well it’s not like we’re asking them to,” Cruz says in a drawl. “Or like we’re telling them they’re doing it. That’s what the trackers and listening devices, both technological and magical, are for.”
Arek blinks, that… hadn’t occurred to him. More and more he’s come to realize that he comes from an entirely different generation. The way he would do things, that he used to do them… it’s not how things are done nowadays.
“That’s not all,” Sharif states, eyes fixated on his tablet. “Did you notice what Argent said to Cruz?”
“Yeah,” Alexis nods. “He introduced himself as Regent Christopher Argent.”
“Regent?” Arek repeats, confused. “For whom? The last Argent Matriarch, his daughter, Allison Argent, is dead, isn’t she?”
“She is,” Cruz nods. “I questioned him on the matter. He claims that the Argents intend on elevating one of the daughters from the branch lines to the position.”
“Wouldn’t be the first to do so,” Arek offers, waving a hand at Alexis because, yeah.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Alexis agrees. “Except there is no one close enough to the main family to actually make that feasible.”
“Christopher and Victoria Argent only had one daughter, Allison,” Alice starts listing. “Gerard and Adelaide had, aside from their son Christopher, one daughter: Katherine, who apparently was involved in some sort of accident as a child, which left her barren. It’s why the matriarchy skipped her and went straight from Adelaide to Allison, with Victoria serving as regent, as Allison’s mother. Adelaide’s brothers never had any children, and she had no sisters; and while Gerard’s brother Alexander was brought into the family and granted the name, and it is believed he had several children, even if he never married the mothers, they wouldn’t truly be Argents, and thus ineligible for the position.”
“Then who is he acting as Regent for?” Arek demands.
“Isn’t that the question?” Cruz mutters, making it clear she doesn’t like not knowing the answer.
“Chris Argent is never going to accept that Allison is dead,” a new voice announces.
All eyes turned in time to see none other than Stiles (or as he was legally known now: Mietek) step into the room. He shudders, noticeably as he goes in, looking around the place and in the direction of an innocuous looking door to the side… a door they all know leads to the basement.
“Mietek…?” Alexis says in a questioning tone.
She isn’t actually looking at him, but at the three men that just followed him into the room: his dad, Derek and Peter… Stiles doesn’t even need her to ask any questions, he knows what she’s thinking, because they talked about it on the flight to Beacon Hills. About how Stiles had every intention of revealing to his family that he was alive, but he wasn’t going to tell them what had really happened, beyond the fact that he’d been in that top-secret desert prison, and there were people working on bringing those responsible to justice. Things obviously hadn’t gone according to plan.
“Yeah, I didn’t exactly plan it but…” Stiles shrugs, at a loss on how to explain what happened, exactly, especially since he’s still more than a little shocked by it all.
“Stiles didn’t plan on telling me anything,” Noah states, with a tone that makes it very clear what he thinks about that! “But then again, I did not need him to. I’m not stupid.”
“I never said you were!” Stiles exclaims, defensive. “Nor did I think it!”
“No, but you still believe I’m incapable of taking care of myself,” Noah replies, expression softening the chastisement in the words just a tiny bit. “I understand why you feel that way, but I wish you’d give me a little more credit, kid.”
“Not a kid…” Stiles mutters under his breath, though he doesn’t really put up more than a token resistance when his dad pulls him close to hug him tight.
“To me you’ll always be my kid,” Noah whispers, holding his son tight and burying his face in the messy hair. “Whom I believed for so long I had lost. My greatest fear was I’d never get the chance to make things right with you.”
Noah’s practically on the verge of tears, and he doesn’t try to hide it, he doesn’t see the point when the Hales are werewolves who can pretty much smell his emotions; while the others, from what he’s learned since then, are all either magic-users or legendary warriors with the kind of training that it’d be laughable to think he can hide anything from them (and that includes his son!).
“Why are you here, sheriff?” Arek asks quietly, asking the question in pretty much every single warrior’s mind.
“I want to make the bastards who put my son in that awful place, pay,” Noah practically hisses, with enough anger to surprise Stiles, just a little bit.
It’s almost funny. Stiles is all too aware of what his mom used to be, and what she was capable of. But it’s like… he’s always been so focused on all the things about his mom, and the fact that his dad’s the sheriff, that it’s like he forgets his dad was also a soldier, one who went to war. And more than that, he’s the man who met his mom at a time when she was still a warrior, and fell in love with her, exactly as she was. Who met Stiles’ uncles, who saw all their strangeness and oddities, and none of that ever scared him off. Who saw his wife teaching their six-year-old son how to both throw and take a punch, how to fight, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Who saw his son going toe to toe with both humans and monsters and instead of asking him to stop, he asked Stiles to fight harder…
“Then we’re all on the same page,” Alexis announces. “Want to take a seat?”
The four men do exactly that, though not before Stiles glances at that stupid little door and shudders yet again. Something the wolves cannot fail to notice, as Derek touches his arm comfortingly, while Peter himself turns to look at the door, wondering what is so wrong about it, exactly. It’s not that he’s not aware of who lived before in the house, but still. He wasn’t aware of anything happening to make Stiles react like that, yet his reactions show something definitely did. Seems Peter’s going to have to start paying more attention, if he’s managed to miss something like that.
“Did you really have to set up shop here of all places?” Stiles asks, not really asking the question of anyone specifically, but still looking at them all. “I know there are other places big enough to fit you all, places with a less… bloody history, shall we say?”
“Perhaps, but then our staying here served multiple purposes,” Alexis states, without an ounce of regret, or shame. “Did you know this place doesn’t actually belong to the Argents?”
“What, like they were renting it?” Stiles asks, thrown by that.
On the one hand, he supposes it sounds logical. He remembers Allison mentioning more than once how they had to move every so often because of her dad’s work (hunting!). Renting houses was probably easier, and cheaper, than actually buying them. On the other hand, he also remembers someone saying something about the size of the Argent apartment, and Lydia commenting that Allison had said that the sale of the house hadn’t gone like they expected. Which meant they had owned the house, didn’t they?
“No, like they obtained it illegally,” Ioan explains. “The house was Hale property.”
“What?!” Stiles isn’t the only one shocked by that.
“Though I don’t think any Hales have actually lived in it in many generations.” Alexis shrugs a bit. “But it is, in fact, owned by them.”
“We Hales own a lot of property in Beacon Hills,” Peter shrugs. “Starting with a good deal of the preserve. Even the plots of land where all the public schools sit, City Hall, the Public Library and even the hospital. They’re all technically Hale land, granted in trust to the town, to serve its people.”
Meaning that while it’s legal for there to be public buildings there, if for any reason those buildings were taken down, and someone tried to build something like houses, or apartments, or anything else like that, that’d be illegal.
“Apparently the town took advantage of the fact that Laura Hale left town without taking possession of things, legally, or even executing the wills,” Alice explains. “And that even when Laura Hale died and Derek Hale came back to town, he didn’t either. So the town condemned the Hale House, declaring it a hazard, and also did their best to take possession of several properties across town, using things like unpaid taxes and the places being ‘left to languish’ as excuses.”
“Because so many people were interested in buying them…” Stiles snorts, then thinks twice about it as he looks around. “Wait, this house. Did Argent know?”
“That I don’t actually know,” Alice admits.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Peter scoffs. “Gerard is the kind of man who’d have loved that sort of thing. Building his own shop of horrors on top of what had once been the home of a pack.”
Stiles agrees, and it makes his anger at the Argents so, so much greater.
“In any case,” Alice continues. “No one really knows who fought the town back on things. But from what I’ve been able to gather, the selling of all the Hale properties was declared illegal and all were legally put in the name of the remaining Hales. Also, according to files several people are currently dealing with a bunch of legal problems for having been involved in the illegal sale and purchase of these properties.”
“That was me,” Noah admits, a revelation that surprises everyone (even Peter!). “I never agreed with Mayor Devereaux’s decision to claim any of the Hale assets but there was little I could do while he was still in power. He lost the last election though, so…”
Yeah, him being no longer in office would have made things much easier.
“Wait,” Stiles spoke up unexpectedly. “Did you say Devereaux?” At his dad’s nod, he elaborated. “The day I… the day I was taken. There was a woman who approached me at the door of my apartment building; she claimed to be an agent, waved a very fake badge at me. But anyway, the point is, that’s the name she used, Devereaux.”
“You knew she wasn’t a real agent and you still went with her?” Noah asks in disbelief.
“I was pretty sure she was a hunter, same as the others with her,” Stiles points out. “And considering my experience of hunters killing first and asking questions never, and not really caring one lick about innocents and collateral damage… I did not want to put the people in my building at risk. It’s not like they asked to be put in the hunters’ crosshairs.”
Noah just exhales at the same time he presses the base of his hand against his eyes. It’s… he cannot say he’s surprised by his son’s actions, not really, he just wishes things were different anyway.
“Devereaux is not a hunter family name,” Arek points out.
He’s going through their files, to second-check, though it’s clear he’s pretty sure already.
“But it is,” Stiles contradicts. “I mean, it might not be one of the original hunter families and all that. But they’re definitely a hunter family here in the States. I found the names of several different Devereaux hunters who worked with one or another Argent on a number of hunts across the country. Some of them have even been involved with some of the fires.”
“Fires?” Jack (who’s in the room, in part because his father is still having trouble letting him out of his sight; but also because at his own insistence the boy is going to be trained to become a warrior).
“Yes, like the Hale Fire,” Stiles clarifies.
“But that’s just one fire,” Jack insists.
“Yeah, but it’s not like that’s the only time Kate did it,” Stiles shrugs.
“What…?!”
That… it’s clear that’s news to pretty much everyone in the room except for Noah, and Peter. Which actually surprises the Stilinskis.
“Between the years of 2002 and 2012, no less than seven peaceful packs in the US were annihilated.” Stiles states evenly. “Now, there might have been more, there are certainly a few more that almost, but not quite fit the pattern. All but one, the very first of them had the exact same MO:” he directs a brief glance at his mate who takes a deep breath and wordlessly nods. “Kate would go in using a fake identity, seduce an underage member of the pack, using pink wolfsbane on them to make them more… agreeable and cooperative. Then she’d recruit local criminals to assist her, acquire enough mountain ash to seal the pack home and set fire to it at a time when all but the teenager she seduced were expected to be inside.”
“What?!” Everyone was beyond shocked by it all.
“She… She left them alive on purpose?!” Jack was clearly horrified.
“Pinche puta…” Cruz’s voice was especially noticeable as she slipped into her native Spanish.
“How come this wasn’t reported?” Hotch wants to know.
“What do you mean it wasn’t reported?” Stiles demands. “We reported it!”
“He’s right,” Noah elaborates. “My son shared all his investigation with me. Even before I was made aware of the supernatural. Really, even without that part, Kate and Gerard Argent were clearly serial killers, of the family annihilators kind. I confirmed all the research Stiles had already done, added what things I could find that he hadn’t had access to, like financial records, the proof of several bribes and blackmails, particularly of those involved in the Hale Fire. Also, several of Katherine’s journals, which we got from her brother while I was working on the Hale Fire case, shortly before her death.”
Noah’s pretty sure Christopher thought the journals had never been read. His sister had died not even three days after the sheriff executed the warrant for all of Katherine’s possessions, and with the obvious killer dead, what reason would Noah have had to continue working on the case?
“What happened with your investigation afterwards?” Hotch asks, already suspecting he’s not going to like the answer.
“I sent it to the FBI,” Noah confirms the man’s suspicions.
“I never saw it,” Hotch murmurs.
And with these being serial killers, the BAU definitely should have been involved.
“I’m going to make some calls,” Hotch announces.
He needs to call Emily, and David and… he needs to call everyone he can. Someone, somewhere must know what the hell happened with Stilinski’s investigation!
He’s about to leave the room when something else occurs to him.
“Are there any other survivors?” He asks quietly. “People who might be able to give statements about the Argents’ crimes?”
“Two of Satomi’s betas…” Peter begins.
He’s never gotten along with Alpha Ito, exactly. The she-wolf is such a pacifist she’s entirely against those who, like Peter, hold the position of Left Hand of a pack. But he’s sure that if they’re trying to make justice for her own pack she’ll agree to meet with them.
“They’re dead,” Stiles cuts him off. “The Ito pack is gone. Satomi too. The few who didn’t die at the hands of the assassins during the Deadpool, were killed by Monroe’s and Argent’s sycophants.”
Peter’s eyes are very wide. Ito never liked him; and if Peter were to be honest, he never liked her much either. Thought her too much of an idealist, with her Buddhism and pacifism and everything else but… she was over a hundred years old. Had been Talia’s friend, and their mother’s before her. To think that the old she-wolf had survived so much, just to die at the hands of psychotic hunters like Gerard Argent and Tamora Monroe…
That at least seems to solidify Hotch’s decision to find out why the Argent case never reached his hands. Well, it’s obvious enough that someone somewhere must have blocked it, the question is who, exactly. It’s been made obvious that there are moles in the FBI, and probably in many other places and agencies as well, and Hotch will find them. He’ll find them and ensure that this, and whatever other investigation they might have blocked will be handled properly once and for all. He will ensure that these people (whether human, supernatural, he doesn’t really care) will have justice.
For a few minutes no one really does anything, or says anything, and then…
“So, what are we gonna do now?” Peter eventually asks.
“Now, we work on dismantling the hunters, once and for all,” Trystan states with no little eagerness.
“And once you’ve done that?” Noah wants to know. “I mean, don’t take me wrong, I want all those killers behind bars, the sooner the better. But I think I was told they were supposed to fulfill a purpose.”
“Not that they have in the last twenty years… if they ever did,” Stiles scoffs.
“I will never agree with what all these… people have done throughout the years,” Noah declares solemnly. “In my opinion, they’re more the monsters than any supernatural beings I’ve ever met. But the fact remains that the duty they claim to have, the need they claim to fulfill… someone needs to do it. Someone needs to be able to protect both the humans and the supernaturals from those who might, for lack of a better word, be hunting them, regardless of who or what they might be.”
All eyes turn to Alexis.
“That’s the plan, sheriff,” Alexis assures him.
She stands, walking from one side of the room to the other slowly.
“Years ago, when we were all children, we had a… I guess you could call it a dream, or perhaps an objective. Something we’ve been working towards all these years.” Alexis explains slowly. “We’ve always believed that while the shadow-world in general must remain a secret for the good of all, those of us who are meant to serve as guardians, as protectors, can only truly do our work to our full capabilities if we have the understanding and acceptance of the human governments. It’s that belief that has led us down the path we’ve been following ever since. Which led to the deal we now have with Interpol and the International Criminal Court.”
“The original deal concerned only Europe,” Alexis continues. “Since we warriors weren’t established here in America, while the other continents… the supernatural handles itself very differently, so much that hunters have never managed to gain a foothold there, nor has there been any need for them, or us.” She shakes her head. “We’ve spent the last several weeks, in between researching the Citadel, and beginning to track down those responsible for the existence of such a place, negotiating a new deal. This one for America. Or more precisely, the United States and Canada.”
Latin America is proving to be a much different beast, and much harder too. It’s been hard because, while Europe is, to a certain point, used to organizations like the Interpol operating on an international scale already, most governments in the American continent are much more… zealous regarding who they allow to operate within their borders. In fact, Alexis, Arek and most of the others are convinced that the only reason they even managed to finalize the deal with the American and Canadian governments is because of the trail of death first the Argents and then Monroe and her own sycophants caused. The last thing the governments want is a repeat of such things. Also, the discovery of the Citadel… as bad as the whole thing has been, the knowledge that such a place existed, that their own citizens were stolen from the streets and even their homes beneath their noses and nobody knew… yeah, the governments would rather avoid things like that ever happening again.
“And are you going to head that operation?” Peter asks, curious.
He has no idea just how many warriors there might be, but considering what he’s heard thus far, like the fact that they’ve historically kept themselves to Europe, he’s not sure that them trying to take so much additional territory is the best idea.
“I cannot,” Alexis shakes her head. “I mean, of course we’re here to handle the matter of the Citadel, and those behind the existence of that place. And we’re not leaving until that matter has been settled. But once that is done, me and my own shall be going back to Wales. As much as I might be willing to take on the challenge of guarding the shadow-world in this continent, as you might be able to guess, there’s just not enough of us to run operations in both Europe and North America simultaneously. Perhaps if our numbers were still what they were last century; or if, on the other hand, the human population were a more manageable number…” She shakes her head again. “In the end, things are what they are. So no, I will not be heading this operation.” She gives everyone a moment to process that, before adding: “I have, however, chosen someone who has my absolute trust, and I know is perfect for the job… Mietek?”
Stiles just… stares at her for several seconds.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he blurts out eventually.
“I know you can do this Mietek,” Alexis assures him.
Around them the rest of the teulu nod in agreement.
“I will not be the Brenin to a new version of warriors,” Stiles warns.
“Of course you won’t, little knight,” His childhood best-friend smirks mischievously at him. “The warriors work in Europe, because that’s what Europe needs. America is different.”
Yes, it was. America has had issues with hunters that they’ve never had in Europe. And for that very same reason, the American Shadow-World would never be open to warriors, the way the European one has been. Because those in America, especially the packs, will see warriors and think them nothing more than hunters going by a different name.
America is different, so it needs to be handled differently.
Stiles and Derek look at each other, just for a few seconds, but it’s enough. Derek straightens up in his seat, at the same time Stiles undoes the top two buttons up his shirt, pulling slightly at the collar, just enough to show off the brand new scar on the juncture between neck and shoulder, his mating mark… Showing that he’s, as of last night, officially Derek Hale’s mate.
“I will do this,” Stiles agrees. “But I will not do it alone. Europe may have the warriors. North America will have the Hale Pack.”
For a moment it looks like someone might ask how they’re going to manage that exactly since, as far as they know, there’s not actually a Hale Pack, then Derek blinks and his eyes bleed alpha red…
It’s been perhaps Derek’s best kept secret. The fact that he’s an alpha, has been for years.
Truth is that while he might have truly lost the alpha spark when first using it to save Cora from the mistletoe poisoning, when he died and came back evolved in Mexico, he didn’t do so as a beta, but as an alpha. Only, he realized it might not be the best idea to reveal that.
At the time he decided to keep the development to himself out of respect for Scott. The ‘True Alpha’ was still finding himself as an alpha, and Derek didn’t want to make him doubt himself, or feel he couldn’t be his own alpha, if Derek was back to being one as well. So Derek kept the information to himself, never telling anyone, not even Braeden. He let most people believe that the surface bond he shared with the members of the McCall Pack was what kept him from going Omega.
Eventually he revealed the truth to Peter and Cora, taking them into his pack formally. He did the same with Ethan and Jackson when the pair moved back to the US so Jackson could attend Harvard Law. And of course Stiles knew as well. His son was naturally part of his pack, as had Mirele been when alive. But aside from his small pack, everyone else believed him to still be a beta (it was incredibly convenient that alphas could learn to flash their eyes whichever color they chose).
Now, Alexis’ announcement changed things. It was time for the Hale Pack to come out of the shadows and take its place as the protectors of the supernatural.
The Shadow World will never be the same…
Wow, what do you call someone so stupid and self-righteous that they are almost evil? Cause that is Scott. He is like Batman only instead of beating/almost killing allies who break his rules, he gets them sent to f-ed up prison. So, not that different, I guess. I liked the POV into his mental psychosis. He’s totally delusional.
Aw, I like Peter/Noah. I also like that Stile is giving hunters shit even in jail. I like that Cora came back, though her f-ing off in the first place wasn’t great. Hotch to the rescue! He at least does something when his kid is missing.
Of course Stiles helps everyone rescue themselves. Man, Argents are still fucking shit up. Of course all of those responsible run away. The FBI peeps better get them all.
I don’t understand how they literally did nothing for years and years and then suddenly they have the power to bust the hunters? These new hunters haven’t really done shit lately for anyone either. It makes sense no one would really trust them. I’m glad they set others up instead. I really like that Derek is an alpha, and the Hale Pack will become more.
I really, really don’t like Scott. And it shows in my stories. The most terrifying is that as bad as his behavior is in this (and other fics) I think it’s rooted enough in canon to be believable (at least it is for me).
I love Peter/Noah, they’re my second favorite ship in this fandom. Also, Stiles doing what he does while in the Citadel is half the reason I wrote this fic (the other half being I wanted to write non-magical hunter!Stiles).
Cora leaving is awful, though regretfully canon, so I did the best I could with it.
Hotch is one of my favorite Criminal Minds characters, and he fit so well with that particular part of the story. I mean, his story fit here so well! And yeah, I like the idea of parents doing anything for their children.
Don’t look down on Noah. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do something, but rather that he had no idea what to do. I mean, it is stated that he tried at first, he asked questions, demanded answers, but everyone kept telling him his son was dead. Even if he never believed it, people though him to be the delusional one. If he’d kept going he’d have only gotten in trouble himself. And that’s not what Stiles would have wanted (which he knew).
Of course Stiles helps everyone rescue themselves. Every Stiles is a BAMF Stiles, magic, or no, hunter or not. In this case it wasn’t just Argents fucking things up, it was all the hunters, so many hunters… And the FBI couldn’t do a thing because they had nothing to work with, now they do. And they have witnesses. The Hale Pack (and the Warriors, at least at first, until the Pack was fully established) would have made sure the witnesses would be safe from the hunters while the FBI did their thing.