Reading Time: 138 Minutes

Title: The Tunnel
Series: The Light and the Illusion
Series Order: 2
Author: Lalaith Quetzalli
Fandom: Teen Wolf, Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Crime Drama, Crossover, Family, Slash
Relationship(s): Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Background Relationships
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Hate Crimes, Hate Speech, Torture, Violence-Graphic. Death-Minor Character, Death-Nameless Characters, Dark Themes, Discussion-Child Abuse, Discussion-Suicide, Kidnapping, Murder, Permanent Injury,
Author Note: This is marked as a crossover with Criminal Minds, it also has cameos from Charmed (the original show) though it’s not necessary to have watched either show to follow this fic.
There’s some Graphic-Violence (I don’t think it’s any worse than what canon showed at times, but still). Also, the aftermath of crimes, mostly murder, a few involving minors (teenagers). There’s also one mention of a cult-like-group committing mass suicide (it happens off-screen, but it’s still discussed, as well as the implications of children having been part of this ‘cult’.
Beta: CorgiQueen14
Word Count: 34,277
Summary: Some choices may be easy, others may be hard. But sometimes the hardest thing isn’t choosing, but going through with it. Because no matter how easy a decision, no matter how right, that doesn’t mean what follows cannot be hard as hell. Stiles knew this was going to be the hardest thing he ever did from the moment he laid eyes on the boy.
Artist: CorgiQueen14
Artist Appreciation: Thank you so much my dear! I love all your art so much!

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Chapter I. New York

Stiles stands silently in a corner of the warded courtroom as the top-secret trial against the Argents comes to an end.

To say that the Argent trial, the entire case really, was a mess would be putting it lightly. From the start, the fact that the initial proof they had (the true, verifiable, incontrovertible proof) was against two people already dead, did not help matters any. Very rarely were posthumous trials allowed. Two facts convinced the special ADA to pursue the case: first that it was well-known that while Gerard and Katherine Argent were the ring-leaders, they did not act alone; the second, the connection Argent Arms might have with those crimes. As several agencies and police departments throughout the country were known to do business with Argent Arms, the idea that they might be connected to serial killers and what was described as a possible homicidal cult was simply unconscionable.

ADA Casey Novak was one of a handful of ADAs across the country to have been read-in on the supernatural and chosen to handle these special trials, usually in connection to cases handled by the Shadow Crimes Unit. Managing to include the fact that Kate Argent’s reported death back in 2011 was fake, and showing proof of her actual death in 2015, mostly so they could add her other attempted murders of Hales (they’d have included her attempts on Scott McCall, but all calls and letters to him, to get him involved with the case, went unanswered). Thing is, this also allowed Novak to pursue a case against the Calaveras for abetting, though that one didn’t go far, with the Mexican authorities refusing to hear about extraditing their own citizens (even a family well-known for being involved in criminal ventures) to the US for a top-secret trial. Novak also pressed charges against Eliza Dumont, and a number of other agents of various agencies whose names had been discovered either in former-agent Dumont’s possession, or written in various documents connected to the Argents’ case.

And then Eliza Dumont was killed while in custody. It was set up to look like a suicide, but Novak, Hotch and his team all knew better. It took a good deal of effort, but between their different skills and talents they were able to discover that the supposed legal representative who’d visited her last was in reality her cousin, and he’d killed her on orders of his aunt, the Dumont Matriarch. An arrest order was issued for Lance Dumont and all his aliases (in between Stiles, a hacker friend of his known as Skye, and FBI technician Penelope Garcia, they were able to find them all). The man retreated to Canada and his family, though the Canadian government, unlike the Mexican one, seems to be willing to deal with the SCU if it means getting dangerous criminals out of the streets.

But the Dumont case is still coming. Today is about the end of the Argent trial. It’s been two years since Stiles sat in an interrogation room in an FBI safe-house and revealed the truth about all the crimes the Argents had committed that were being covered up, about the possible multiple moles not just in the FBI, but other organizations, to keep up with those cover-ups. Since Stiles first met Agents Hotchner and Seaver, and joined the SCU as their cadet.

Nowadays he’s a junior agent in a team conformed by Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, Special Supervisory Agent Ashley Seaver, Doctor Spencer Reid (another transfer from the BAU), Special Agent Grant Ward, Special Agent Skye (no last-name) who doubles as their technician, and the newest member of their team: Probationary Agent Kira Yukimura. Each member of the team has their own story, and while only Ashley, Stiles and Kira are truly counted as supernatural, they each were involved with the shadow world before ever joining the team.

Skye was part of Stiles’s network before joining the team. An expert hacker, most of the world didn’t even know she existed before she joined the SCU. No one knows what her birth-name might be as she used her talents to erase any and all trace of her own existence, though the one time she was asked (upon joining the team) she told Hotch and Seaver that it did not matter, as that wasn’t her name anymore, but the name of a girl her parents never wanted. She’s also made certain comments that lead Stiles to believe that while she might be human, her parents are (or were) supernatural, and she was rejected by them because of it.

Skye was also the one to bring Grant to their attention. The youngest son of a politician (which one, no one but Hotch knows, and he’s kept the secret) and a hunter who bought their freedom by essentially giving him away. He was raised by the Ward hunters, one of the families in service of the Argents, to be one of their soldiers, always knowing that his parents saw fit to sacrifice him for their own benefit. He was very talented, yet never liked being a hunter, so when given an out, he took it. He seems to take great pleasure in using his hard won skills against hunters, and to protect those they once tried to make him hunt. Also, he was instrumental in getting enough dirt for Novak to build a case not just against the Argents, but everyone connected to them in any way.

Christopher Argent is probably the only Argent in America to not be going to prison. Even then, he’s lost everything. Argent Arms is no more; after the loss of all the contracts, the numerous lawsuits due to the ‘illegally modified’ ammo and weapons, the heavy fines and simply the very public trial, he has nothing. Even his name counts against him nowadays. Stiles even got a particularly interesting call from his dad recently:

“So, Mel came to visit today,” the sheriff informed his son, almost conversationally.

Of course Noah Stilinski knows about what’s going on, he knew long before the trial came under so much public scrutiny, even before it began, really. Since he was one of those involved in the gathering of the original evidence (his name was the only one on those files, since Stiles had been a teenager at the time), ADA Novak saw fit to inform him when she took the case, both to ask if there was any more information he hadn’t included (either because it might have seemed unnecessary, wasn’t fully vetted, or because it was too supernatural for him to have been able to ‘sanitize’), and so he’d be aware and ready in case there was an attempt at reprisals. As it happened, Noah had had a few more things he sent along, though thankfully there had been no reprisals or threats of any kind.

“Really?” Stiles honestly had no idea what might be going on. “What did she have to say?”

“To talk about the Argent trial,” his dad answered.

Stiles blinked. He knew Melissa was made aware of the trial too, though not quite as early as his dad. When Novak’s and Seaver’s repeated calls to Scott went unanswered, they tried calling his mother, but she refused to work with them. In any case, with Scott not being involved, Stiles couldn’t fathom what interest Melissa might have in the trial.

“She wanted to know if I thought it was all true,” his dad continued. “The crimes the Argents are being accused of. Especially Christopher.”

Ah… that’s right. She was dating Christopher Argent, wasn’t she?

Christopher Argent was a complicated case. Being the face and head of Argent Arms meant that all the lawsuits involving their modified guns and ammo affected him indirectly. Between that and the fines, the Argent coffers were probably close to empty. At the same time, he’d been quite cooperative in the building of the cases against both Kate and Gerard, and even against Victoria, which counted in his favor (it was also what lead to Novak deciding to keep Allison’s name out entirely, despite the limited evidence of her having been involved with at least some of the crimes).

Christopher was one of very few members of hunter families who had no standing (or pending) warrants anywhere. Though again, because so many hunter crimes involved the weapons Argent Arms modified to leave no traditional evidence, that did count against him. In the end, aside from the situation with the company, the worst crime to his name was the assault, kidnapping and threatening of Thomas James, the former Beacon Hills High Principal. But even on that, the man was pretty insistent that Victoria Argent was the one who truly hurt and threatened him, while Christopher was the one to insist he was let go, on the condition that he left California and never come back (something James was very willing to do).

“What did you tell her?” Stiles eventually asked.

“That as far as I knew they were all true,” his dad confirmed calmly. “There was a bit of back and forth between us. It’s clear that she really wanted me to tell her that maybe things weren’t quite as bad as the news made it seem.”

Stiles snorted. He just couldn’t help himself.

“Just what did Scott tell her about the Argents?” he asked, though he didn’t actually expect an answer.

He did tell her they were hunters, didn’t he? Then again, considering how Scott had always seen hunters in general, and the Argents in particular, he probably gave her the whole spiel, made sure she believed it, that she saw the Argents as the heroes, fighting to protect helpless humans from the inhuman monsters… What a terrifying wake-up call the trial must have been then. That is, of course, if Melissa decided to believe it, if she didn’t bury her head in the sand and chose to hold onto her own beliefs instead of what everyone else told her was true…

“I honestly do not know, son,” Noah admitted. “In any case, I didn’t call to worry you. In the end, whatever Melissa decides to believe is on her, not you.” Which was true. “No, I called you so you’d be prepared in case she decided to call you next.”

He made an assenting noise, though truth be told, he seriously doubted Melissa would be calling him, Stiles wasn’t sure she even had his number!

“Are you safe, dad?” Stiles questioned.

If there was one thing that concerned the young FBI Agent, it was his father’s safety.

“I am,” Noah assured him. “Parrish ensured everyone at the station was well-aware of the situation, when the trial became public… well, at least the parts that humans are allowed to know about.” Of course, even with some parts of the trial being so very public, others remained top-secret, for obvious reasons. “He also ensured that I’m never alone whenever I so much as set foot outside the office.” which Stiles agreed with wholeheartedly. “Peter drops by the house regularly. And I’ve a feeling either he, Malia or Liam might be running patrols by the area even on the days I don’t see either of them.”

Stiles knew Malia had become close to his dad during their short relationship. The sheriff had done his best to help Mr. Tate deal with the fact that his daughter was supernatural, but in the end the man’s grief for his wife and daughter was too great. He loved Malia, there was no doubt about that, but he just couldn’t deal with everything. Malia’s relationship with Peter was still pretty complicated, and while Stiles had no idea when or how his dad ended up in the middle of it all, he knew he’d been a lot of help for them.

Also, since becoming saner (or as sane as Peter Hale could ever be), the elder Hale had been taking great interest in the safety of his pack. Malia was his daughter, while some like Noah, Melissa and Natalie Martin, being human, were more vulnerable than others. While Mel refused to allow him near, and as far as Stiles’s knew, Mrs. Martin tended to prefer to pretend ignorance to the supernatural, it was clear his dad at least was appreciative of Peter’s efforts. Stiles was grateful too. He truly did believe that with Peter on the job, his dad would be safe.

“Very well, you stay safe,” Stiles told him. “And eat healthy!”

The sheriff snorted at the last part, but agreed. The call ended shortly afterwards.

So there Stiles stands, in a corner of the warded courtroom, as Judge Pearson declares the sentence. As expected, Argent Arms exists no more. All hunters, Argents, Wards, and from any other family connected to the Argents, who were found to have pending warrants, have been arrested and sent to jail already. All other members of those same families, who weren’t found guilty of specific crimes but were still connected to the hunting, have been heavily fined and will be under watch for years (at least).

The most important part though, is that everyone knows that while the Argent trial might be the first. It won’t be the last by far.

Reporters are waiting when the doors open and all who were present for the trial start walking out. Chris Argent walks as fast as he can, ignoring the reporters, their microphones and cameras. ADA Novak, Judge Pearson and Mr. Barba (the Argents’ lawyer) face the media and give some well-rehearsed speeches on what’s been agreed will be public knowledge.

At the back of the group, carefully keeping out of the spotlight, are two people Stiles has come to know well in the months since the Argent trial became not just national news, but international as well. He’s completely unsurprised when the two people approach him. He bows his head respectfully to the woman: blue-eyed, brunette, with her long hair carefully combed to one side, kept in place with a clip of a big red rose in full-bloom, dark-red lipstick standing out on her pale face. She’s wearing a tight-fitting black dress, with thick-soled boots and a heavy tanned-leather jacket on top. The ensemble is odd, yet somehow she makes it work. She looks short, and while she’s certainly shorter than Stiles, it’s made all the more obvious with the considerable height of her companion: a bit over six feet tall, with a strong built, rectangular face, lightly tanned skin, light facial hair, green eyes and brown hair; he’s wearing a black suit with a white crisp shirt underneath with the top two buttons undone and no tie. To him Stiles just directs a small nod, which he returns.

“Lady Kemp, Ser Arek,” he greets them.

“Agent Stilinski,” the woman states, nodding gracefully at him in return.

She’s Alexis Kemp, Matriarch of the Kemp Hunter Clan, seen by many as the ‘original hunter clan’. Unlike so many American Hunters, the Kemps and those they work with do not hunt werewolves. Instead they hunt real monsters: demons and other creatures that tend to be far more dangerous, as well as old, sometimes even older than humanity itself. The man always in her shadow is Arek (Stiles doesn’t even know if that’s the man’s name, though he doubts it, it’s probably just an alias), her personal bodyguard.

“I was hoping to see you, Maese Stilinski,” she murmurs softly.

Stiles tenses, just a fraction, at the change in her choice of address, at what it means. She’s not talking to him as an FBI Agent, but as a mage and as an Emissary (it’s funny because since there’s no Hale Alpha, there technically cannot be a Hale Pack, and thus he cannot be the Hale Emissary; and yet everyone who’s anyone at all knows where his loyalties lie, and that it’s not with Alpha McCall…).

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he offers.

Because the middle of a hallway in a full courthouse with reporters looking for their next big story, is most certainly not the place for top-secret discussions to be had. Stiles might have managed to keep himself seen by most as nothing more than a young FBI Agent; there, but not particularly important. Yet Alexis Kemp isn’t exactly an unknown, even outside of Europe. Especially since the romantic relationship between the British prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle seem to make it so all reporters around the world are suddenly very interested in all members of the royal houses and the nobility of the countries that still have them.

Around the block from the courthouse there’s a small cafe, Crystal’s, that caters to the supernatural community. The back has a number of small rooms and nooks individually warded to allow for private meetings and such. The three of them end up in one of the smaller rooms in the far back of the building, one of the most private there are. Stiles and Lady Kemp sit at the one table near the middle of the room, while Arek sits on a single chair by the door. The mage is very aware of the huge show of trust it is for the bodyguard to be even that relatively small distance away, instead of at his lady’s back, like he usually is.

“You wished to speak to me, Lady Kemp?” Stiles prompts.

“Yes,” she nods, taking a small sip from her tea. “I wish to make you aware of certain recent developments that have taken place in Europa.”

Europa, that’s how the supernatural world seems to prefer to refer to the continent. Much like how they still use words like Maese, and Ser…

Stiles raises a brow, considering the implications. It’s not like he’s not aware of a good deal of what’s going on beyond the borders of the US, his network having grown greatly in recent years. And even without that, there’s Jackson, who seems keen on doing some networking of his own, in his work as a lawyer in London. He and Ethan have worked a few cases with the supernatural branch of MI5 and MI6, making a number of interesting friends and connections in the process. Still, the fact that Lady Kemp wants to share information with him… it’s huge, probably even more so than her bodyguard standing away from them.

“There was a meeting of the Council earlier this month,” Lady Kemp informs him. “It’s been made official, the Argent Clan is no more. Those members who could prove, beyond shadow of doubt, to have taken no innocent lives have either been retired or absorbed into other clans, as was their preference. The rest… depending on their crimes, they were either dealt with, or made to surrender to local authorities, with sufficient proof and confessions of their crimes, when at all possible.”

So that’s what the whispers Stiles has been hearing lately are about! He, and Jackson confirmed he’s been hearing something on the grapevine as well, heard about a considerable number of arrests made lately by Interpol, and various other law enforcement agencies across Europe, mainly in France, Germany and Spain. There were also rumors about something big happening in the north of France, though no one knew what exactly, as there were no bodies, no pictures, and no one was talking (then again, if the Council, if the leaders of the highest ranking Hunter Clans were involved, that’d certainly explain there being no definite proof of anything). The last time anything like this happened was back in the 1950s, when the Jäger Hunter Clan was ended, in much the same way.

“Sounds like the Hunters are cleaning house,” Stiles quips with fake humor.

“You must know, Maese Stilinski, that the kind of thing that happened here, the crimes perpetrated by Katherine and Gerard, they’d have never been allowed in the old days,” Lady Kemp informs him. “Our ancestors would have executed those two, forcibly retired Victoria and forbidden Allison from ever becoming a hunter herself, had they ever been involved.” She shakes her head before taking a sip from her tea. “It’s a deep blow to our pride, to the honor we as hunters possess, that something like this was allowed to happen. That we weren’t aware of it until way too many lives had been lost already.”

Stiles cannot help but think that while that sounds all well and good, it doesn’t change all the lives lost, destroyed, by Kate, Gerard, and the rest of the Argent hunters. Lady Kemp seems to understand this, for she nods at Stiles without another word.

They finish their tea, and depart shortly afterwards. It’s only after the lady and her bodyguard are gone, that Stiles notices the envelope left behind on the table closest to the door, the one Arek sat by. It’s a small, simple, white envelope, without anything written on it. Inside there’s an SD-card. Stiles looks it over, wondering what it’s all about; only belatedly realizing that, as interesting as their little conversation was, the card is the true reason for their little meeting. He makes a mental note to talk to Skye and get her to find whatever might be in it (being careful to ensure that there are no viruses or traps of any sort before, of course).

Stiles is on his way out of the cafe, not bothering to stop to pay for the room, as he knows Arek will have already done that, when the cashier calls to him. Cori Henderson is the cashier, a witch, part of the well-known (in his circles at least) Secret Circle coven. The coven owns the cafe, and several others in different cities, each which is apparently managed by one of the families.

“The Muse asked me to give you this, when you dropped by,” the blonde young woman tells him as she hands him a folded piece of paper.

The Muse, Cassie Blake-Conant, one of the members of the triumvirate that leads the Secret Circle. Stiles has only really met her once, years prior, as she apparently prefers to stay closer to home, with her soulmate and husband and their children. Stiles knows she’s a very powerful witch, the most powerful in her coven, she also possesses the Sight. Which makes any message coming from her of particular importance:

            The wolves howl.

            The hunters have come.

            The ones in the shadows.

            Blood will be spilled. Lives will be lost.

            By the rise of the blood moon, it’ll be too late.

Stiles says nothing, just nodding his head at Cori once before very carefully folding the note and slipping it into the inside pocket of his suit-jacket. His expression remains completely neutral even as, inside, his mind is working a mile a minute as he considers all the possible meanings and implications of that message.

It’s clear that the Muse has Seen something, something she decided was important enough, and relevant enough to him, to merit sending that message. The first part sounds simple enough. A pack is going to be attacked by hunters, hunters that exist in the shadows. Monroe and her ilk? They haven’t so much as heard a whisper from them in two years, not since their attempt to kill all supernaturals in Beacon Hills failed. Stiles knows there are some who believe that they’ve given up, Stiles isn’t quite as foolish as to think the same. He believes that the Argent trial has kept them in hiding, they’re waiting, wanting to see how the world handles things, before making their next move. Will this be it?

Blood spilled, lives lost… it’s bad, yet at the same time only to be expected with such an attack. The problem is that there are so many werewolf packs. And with the lack of specifications… as far as he knows this could be happening anywhere around the world!

At least one thing they do seem to have is a timeline… sort-of. The rise of the blood-moon is clearly a lunar eclipse. Those don’t happen more than once to thrice a year. Also, they aren’t exactly visible everywhere, so that might help narrow down locations. He’ll have to get working on that. Might even ask his team to help.

Chapter II. Paraná

The team races against the clock, unable to find anything that might help them pinpoint where Monroe and her hunters might be, or what pack they might be planning to attack. Then the lunar eclipse comes at the end of the month and… nothing happens.

It’s not like they weren’t aware of the possibility of the attack happening during (or right before) some other lunar eclipse, but still. After checking the calendars for when the moon will go red on their skies the next time, and deciding they have quite a few months before that happens, the team turns most of their attention to other stuff. The Dumont Trial has started, and while they’re not quite as involved with that one, Grant, Skye and Stiles do still need to be ready in case they’re called to testify for any reason.

Aside from that they’re working on other cases. Like the lone wendigo that killed his girlfriend, apparently by accident; yet the really big problem came when he got a taste for ‘fresh meat’ and started hunting down women in the outskirts of Kansas City. And then there are the crazy farmers in Northeast Texas, who formed a lynch-mob and went after a family of werecats claiming they were monsters. As the team finds out throughout the case, the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of those farmers has a boyfriend who’s twenty years old, and part of that werecat family. When the Romeo and Juliet law protected them from charges of statutory rape being levied against the young man, the girl’s father decided to find something else to take offense on. Thankfully, no one dies. The farmers get heavily fined and added to the watchlist. Also, legal arrangements are made for the girl’s custody to pass onto an aunt; she and her boyfriend plan on marrying once she’s off-age.

Amidst all this, Stiles gets Skye’s help with the encrypted SD card Lady Kemp left for him. It takes a couple of days, but the hacker manages to decrypt the contents and, after checking there are no viruses or traps anywhere to be found, she copies the contents onto one of her modified, highly protected hard-drives before passing it to Stiles (she very carefully keeps her usual curiosity in check and does not look through the files, knowing it’s none of her business). What Stiles finds in those files is way more than he could have ever imagined. There are dozens, hundreds of files in a number of directories: bestiaries, histories, journals, everything. All that once belonged to the Argent Clan. There’s also a directory containing maps with the locations of every single Argent warehouse and safe-house in America (both North and South), and even a few from Europe. Along with those there are notarized copies of the deeds for all of these properties, all now held in trust by the Hales. Stiles, and through him his pack, have just essentially been granted all of the Argents’ assets.

The last directory he finds though, is the only one completely unrelated to the Argents. Instead it’s all about the Jäger Clan. The same that supposedly ceased to exist back in the 1950s, when the Council decreed they were to be no more, due to crimes committed during WWII. Apparently having already been a bunch of crazy, racist, sociopathic hunters, made it very easy for many (perhaps even most) of them to join the Nazis when the war happened. What either wasn’t known at the time, or perhaps it was just that no one had wanted to admit to it, is that it wasn’t just the ‘normal’ Nazis that fled to South America when their loss became imminent…

“Fuck,” Stiles curses.

He rises from his chair, paces around his office once, twice, as he cards his finger through his hair, pulling at the strands a few times, before returning to where he started and dropping back to his chair.

“Fuck,” he curses again and he starts typing on his computer, sending messages to his team.

Okay, so what if the hunter in the warning wasn’t Monroe at all…?

The new angle gets them information, as Skye and Grant find rumors and whispers (and some things that might not qualify as even that, but still, they’ll take them!) and soon they have reason to believe that an attack is coming, in Brazil, south-west of Sao Paulo. They get Stiles the information as fast as possible, which becomes all the more important when everyone realizes that there’s an upcoming lunar eclipse that none of them had considered, because it wouldn’t be visible in the US at all, and only in very few places, very far south…

The issue is that, with them just wrapping up a case in Florida (a bunch of mermaids who attacked fishermen they believed had killed one of their own; the case turned out to be mostly a bunch of misunderstandings, but still came close to ending up with a serious body-count), Hotch and Ashley have reports they must finish, and some of the other Unit Chiefs are apparently already waiting for them back in Washington for some important meeting. Skye and Grant aren’t even in Florida anymore, having left the day before when the Dumont case took an unexpected turn, with their lawyer trying to get some of the evidence dismissed, which made Novak call them to testify both on the origins of the evidence, its importance, as well as to prove their own reliability as both witnesses and the people to gather said evidence. Finally, Kira is on medical leave after getting several ribs and her left collarbone broken; she’s healing fast, thanks to her status as kitsune, but it’ll still take a few days. Days they just don’t have.

“I’m getting on a plane to Brazil, right now,” Stiles announces to his team as they make it to the airport, the rest of them about to head up north.

In the end no one really tries to stop him, all of them just wishing him the best. Hotch calls a few people so the authorities will be aware of what they believe is coming so Stiles won’t get in trouble if he has to act. It’s not perfect because they don’t actually have the contacts in most of South America needed for such things, but in this case, the name Red opens more doors than the FBI badge does. They can only hope it’ll be enough…

Stiles at least knows where he’s going. After Gerard’s attack on all those packs, years prior, many of them moved, far and away from the places where the previous murders happened. There’s only one pack that he knows is still living in the south of Brazil, a pack that lives separate from all human settlements, surrounded by rivers, hills, and forest. Whose very existence is a secret to almost all non-pack members. Most of the wolves never even go to any human towns. The only reason Stiles even knows they exist is because he unknowingly did a favor to a few of their members, which led to him learning of their existence. They’re the Silveira Pack.

xXx

Stiles can hear the howls, shots and yells long before he makes it to the pack’s settlement. And there’s an eerie orange glow in the distance… fire. He cannot see the smoke yet, but as he gets closer he can start smelling it in the air. He thinks he can almost see the flames in between the trees, not too far now. The night is dark enough, with scattered clouds in the sky. He’s grateful that he chose to rent a Jeep after getting off the plane in Guarapuava, the closest he could get to the pack. There’s no way a taxi would have ever gotten him anywhere near to where he needed to go. The moon is already high in the sky, and while the eclipse hasn’t started yet, he knows it’s not far off. The worst part though, is when the noises start cutting off, before he makes it there.

He’s almost at the settlement itself when a sharp pull from the spark at his core makes him step on the break abruptly. Something is calling to him, a touch soft like velvet, yet as strong as piano wire. So with that in mind he twists the key in the ignition, turning the Jeep off right where it is, in the middle of the dirt-road, jumps straight out of it and takes off running. Caring not for maps or signs or any kind, just following his spark.

He’s just cleared the last hill when he hears a growl, then a shot, followed by a wolfy whine and a child’s cry of ‘Mama!’. It’s like something in the voice galvanizes him and Stiles manages to pick up speed. He somersaults over a wooden fence and as he rounds the burning building that he thinks might be a warehouse of some kind, he twists his right wrist and the handle of a short knife drops into his hand (traveling commercial and last minute meant he couldn’t take any of his guns with him, but he has enough weapons concealed in his magical tattoos that he doesn’t really miss them). The moment he has eyes on the hunter, the knife is flying off his hand, to bury itself in the man’s head. He drops to the ground, dead, before he can fire another shot.

The she-wolf turns to look at him, bright-amber eyes flashing for a moment before her furious snarl turns into shocked confusion…

“S… Stiles…?!”

Amber eyes turn to light-hazel and even though her skin is a darker tan than before, her dark hair shorter and way messier, Stiles can still recognize her:

“Cora?!” he blurts out, shocked.

It’s been years, and she looks quite different from when he last saw her, not just because of the years that have passed, and her current injuries, there’s something else that Stiles just cannot put his finger on. Still, he knows it’s her.

He hesitates, not knowing whether to approach her or not, when a pained groan crosses her lips and she drops to her knees, hands pressed to her middle.

“Cora!” Stiles cries out.

He rushes to her, managing to reach her side just in time to catch her before she fully hits the ground. Then settles her on the ground as gently as possible. He tries to put pressure on her bullet wounds, and Cora cannot fully swallow the scream that escapes her.

“Mama…?” The child’s voice from earlier calls, Stiles half-absently realizes that he’s on the roof of the closest cottage, probably a way to keep him out of the hunters’ reach. “Mama!”

“E… Eli…” Stiles only half hears her as she calls. “My… my baby…”

Stiles freezes from where he’s holding her body, half upright and to a side. Where he’s just discovered that at least two of the bullets went straight through, she’s bleeding through the holes both in the front and the back. Has been bleeding for a while, judging by the blood already on her clothes and the ground. Also, he can sense the wolfsbane, see the black tint on her skin; so it’s hard to tell which might be worse, the holes left by the bullets that went fully through her, or the wolfsbane being released by the ones still inside her. All in all, he has a very bad feeling…

“Cora…” he murmurs as he slowly puts her back down.

They’re too far away from any sort of hospital, or healer, and Stiles’s magic is no good for healing anyone other than himself (he knows, he’s tried). Cora just nods, clearly understanding what he’s not saying out loud.

“My baby… Stiles…” she mumbles.

“Little one…?” Stiles calls, hesitantly as he stands, arms raised for the child to jump to him.

“Eli,” she murmurs. “His name is Eli, Eli Noah Hale. He’s yours, Stiles.”

The revelation of the kid’s middle-name takes him enough by surprise, that it takes the human a few seconds to fully process the last part. Especially when right at the same time the boy finally jumps off the rooftop, landing straight into Stiles’s arms, who holds him automatically. Once the boy’s secure, Stiles turns sharply to stare at Cora in shocked disbelief. Because she cannot possibly mean what he thinks she means…

Except… well, the moment he lays eyes on the kid, it’s hard not to see it: his eyes might be more green than brown, his skin more tanned than Stiles’s has ever been; yet Stiles can see himself in him too, in the kid’s wavy brown hair, in the beauty marks on his skin and… and the connection deep in his core. The mage realizes then that it’s the kid that pulled at him when he was on the way. They’re connected. Were even before ever laying eyes on each other.

He has a son. A five year old son. And his mother is dying…

Cora is dying, they both know it. She’s dying and there’s nothing Stiles, or anyone else, can do about it. She’s lost too much blood, and with the wolfsbane in her system… She’s beyond hope.

“Eli baby, come here,” Cora calls, voice damp, teeth and lips dark with poisoned blood. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” she waves a hand at Stiles for him to approach as well. “This,” she makes sure they’re looking at each other before adding: “is your papa.”

xXx

It’s impossible to tell how long it takes for Cora to die, exactly. She spends most of that time talking quietly to her son, telling him all the things she didn’t before, for whatever the reason, all the things that she’ll never get the chance to later. They have so little time, and she wants to make sure her baby knows she loves him, always has, always will, even when she’s no longer there with him.

She talks to Stiles for a few minutes too, mostly talking about Eli, apologizing for not telling him about the baby, explaining that at first she wasn’t entirely certain he was Stiles’s and afterwards…

“I promised you no strings attached…” she murmurs, voice soft, barely audible.

“You think I wouldn’t have wanted him?” Stiles asks in disbelief. “That I wouldn’t have dropped everything the moment…”

“No!” Cora cuts him off. “I… I know you’d have. Wanted him, done anything, I just… I didn’t want you to give up on everything you knew for him, for us… you cannot tell me it was ever in your plans Stiles, having a kid this young.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’d have made it work,” Stiles insists. “We would have made it work.”

He tries to sound confident, but the truth is even he isn’t sure. Though his insecurity doesn’t lay on whether or not he’d have wanted the kid, done anything to be in his life but rather… what would he have done exactly? Given up his scholarship to GWU? Moved to South America to be closer to them? Or perhaps try and convince Cora to move in with him? Would she even have wanted that, any of it? It’s not… It’s not like he loves her any more than he did the day they were together. They’re friends, they might have once had the potential to be pack… But she’s the one who left. She gave up on the Hale Pack, when the rest of them did not.

In the end Stiles knows what-ifs are pointless. So there’s no point in wondering how different things might be if Cora had stayed, if she’d ever told him the truth, if… things were anything other than what they are. This is the hand they’ve been dealt, and they must accept it, live with it.

Near the end, Cora waves at Stiles to get closer, and she whispers to him, sharing one very important, very huge secret Stiles tells himself he’ll deal with, later. When he’s no longer dealing with things like a dying friend, a newly-found son, crazy hunters… just later. So he just stands guard beside mother and son through it all, using his magic to lessen Cora’s pain, and lengthen her time as long as he possibly can. Looking away to give them as much privacy as possible as they handle their goodbyes.

She does still die, eventually, and Stiles is left not knowing what to do as he kneels beside the cooling corpse of his once friend and lover, and the son he didn’t know he had.

His attention is pulled abruptly in an entirely different direction though as his spark warns him of the approaching danger, right before he hears a voice call:

“There are two more here!” It’s a hunter, Stiles can sense, almost smell, the wolfsbane, hear the sound of a gun being cocked. “Fucking beasts…”

It’s hard to tell what it is that does it: the words, the cocking of the gun, the recent death of an old friend, the threat against himself, against the son he just discovered he has… maybe it’s all of it put together. Stiles just… snaps. He’s so abruptly furious… like he hasn’t been since a void-fox was using his body to hurt those he loves. He turns his face to the sky and lets out a wordless scream… and the skies respond.

There are clouds already on the sky, they’ve been there all night, making it hard for Stiles to keep track of the moon and the eclipse, of the road as he traveled, and even when he resorted to running, he had to trust on his spark to guide him with how little he could actually see. But in that moment they grow, in size and in number, becoming so much darker and heavier and then… lightning strikes. Bolts of lightning come, one after the other, too fast to be anything natural, and followed by cut off, clearly human, screams that are almost louder than the thunder itself.

It’s huge, and devastating, and completely unnatural, Stiles’s fury is unleashed like a force of nature as the Earth itself responds to it, to him, to his emotions, to his deep-seated desire to see all those who’ve hurt him and his young son, his son’s pack… would hurt anyone and everyone they consider non-human, dead.

Eli says nothing, tears still falling down his cheeks mostly silently as he, his newfound father and his dead mother are the only ones that remain fully untouched while lightning hits all around them and the hunters fall, one after the other. It’s not satisfaction he feels, not exactly, but there is a sense of relief, at the knowledge that those that hurt him, that hurt everyone so, won’t get the chance to hurt anyone else ever again. That he, his father and whoever else that might remain will be safe…

It all comes to an end as the last hunter falls. Then there’s no more lightning. Instead the skies open and the rain falls, slowly but surely putting out the fires started by the hunters. In the distance, a blood-red moon can be seen shining in the sky…

Chapter III. Beacon Hills

It’s Kira waiting for him beside a borrowed truck (her dad’s, probably), on the runway of the small, privately owned airstrip on the outskirts of Sacramento, when Stiles gets off the private plane he called several favors in to get. She’s also the one who helps him get down the simple but nice pine casket he bought while still in Brazil, Cora lays inside, body cleaned up, dressed in the best clothes of hers Eli found and encased in a spell to prevent decomposition.

Eli follows, a silent, teary shadow, and while Kira’s eyes go wide and she half-trips when first laying eyes on him, she doesn’t say a word, just guides father and son to the truck, which Stiles insists on driving (he has no idea how anyone allowed Kira to drive when she still has one of her arms in a sling!). After giving thanks to the plane’s pilot and the owner of the airstrip, they’re on their way.

They make it to Beacon Hills in less than two hours. Derek, Peter, Noah, Malia, Jordan, Lydia, Jackson and Ethan are already by the ruins of the old Hale house when they arrive, Stiles having sent messages to each of them from the plane to request their presence (and he has no idea, and doesn’t want to know what the latter three had to do to make it to California in such a short time). He didn’t tell any of them what happened, not believing it was the kind of information that could be shared over a phone. He hates so much having to give this kind of news, especially to the Hales…

The moment he slips out of the truck, carefully closing the door behind him before anyone can see Eli in there with Kira, the nostrils of all the shifters flare, but while Malia just cocks her head to the side, clearly trying and failing to connect what she’s smelling with something, anything, the others tense. Considering that he hasn’t gotten a shower since Florida, and the most clean-up he’s been able to do was a bit of washing up with wet-wipes and paper towels in the public bathroom of an airport, Stiles has no doubt he must reek: of magic and wolfsbane and death, of blood… Cora’s blood.

“No…” Derek gasps, dropping to his knees. “No!”

Peter actually stumbles a bit to the side, Noah reaching out to stabilize him, to ground him. The others just stand there in horror. Lydia’s eyes go briefly white as the smallest of wails escapes her (Cora wasn’t pack, not really, so she hadn’t really wailed before her death, but now… the pain that death is bringing does make the banshee in her react).

“Who…?” The older Hale demands in a growl, eyes flashing electric-blue with barely restrained fury.

“Doesn’t matter,” Stiles shakes his head, and at the start of two snarls he clarifies: “They’re all dead. And yes, I’m completely sure.”

Everyone knows exactly what he means by that. No one utters a complaint about it. Not even his dad.

“E… Eli…?” Derek asks abruptly. “Is… is the kid okay?”

“Not really?” Stiles cannot help but shrug a bit. “But he’s not physically hurt.”

Emotionally though, is a whole other story.

Before Derek, or anyone else can say anything else Kira opens the door and everyone can hear a pair of feet jumping off the cab of the truck and rushing around it:

“Uncle Derek!” Eli calls in a voice that is half child-cry, half wolf-howl.

Derek barely manages to shift in time to catch the little boy, then holds him tight, murmuring quietly into his ear.

The shocked looks from pretty much everyone other than Peter at the scene tells Stiles that at least he’s not the only one who’s just finding out about Eli’s existence. Somehow, it doesn’t make him feel better.

xXx

The funeral of Cora Hale is a private affair, with only her family, and their pack in attendance. Peter, Derek, Jackson and Ethan dig the hole themselves, right next to where Laura was buried years ago. They’re also the ones to lower the casket into the hole, and cover it with earth. The marker is commissioned by Lydia from a stone-worker in Sacramento. It’s simple but nice, done in a slab of silver cloud granite, with Cora’s name, dates of birth and death, and then the Hale triskele. Stiles conjures a cattleya orchid to grow over the grave, white and dark pink, her favorite.

Afterwards they all head to the Stilinski home, as it’s more private (and safer) than the loft, or even Peter’s or Malia’s apartments.

Eli falls asleep shortly after they arrive, which is no surprise. Stiles runs a hand through the boy’s head several times, whispering something quietly after helping him lay down on the couch.

“What did you do?” Derek asks from behind him.

“Nothing big, just gave him a little push to ensure his sleep will be deep and restful. He’s barely closed his eyes since the attack.” Stiles doesn’t even jump, having sensed Derek’s approach immediately.

“Probably didn’t feel safe,” Derek offers, then seems to consider what he just said and tries to back-track. “Sorry, I…”

“Don’t apologize,” Stiles cuts him off. “I completely understand. He doesn’t know me, there’s no reason why he should feel safe with me, regardless of our blood-connection.”

“You know,” Derek exhales.

“I know,” Stiles agrees. “What I’d like to know is how long you’ve known, who else knows and why you didn’t feel the need to tell me I have a son.”

He can barely keep his temper in check. Also, he doesn’t realize that while he didn’t actually speak loud enough for humans to hear, shifters can all hear him, and Malia clearly has no compunctions repeating what he just said to Stiles’s dad, which they all realize when Stiles and Derek step into the dining room to find everyone looking straight at them. Lydia looks absolutely flabbergasted, though it’s his dad who speaks up:

“You have a son?” It’s Noah who blurts it out. “Wait, that… that kid is your son?! But, but but… why didn’t you tell me?!”

It’s probably a good idea that along with easing his sleep, Stiles ensured that Eli wouldn’t be woken by their voices. He knew things were likely to get loud, even before he considered how several people might react to the revelation of Eli’s parentage.

“Because I didn’t know,” Stiles answers bluntly. “I had no idea that Cora had a son, much less that I was the boy’s father, until I arrived at the Silveira settlement. She revealed the truth, to the both of us, not long before she died.”

“The Silveiras were the pack attacked?” Peter asks, shocked.

“They weren’t just attacked; they were decimated. The attack had been going on for a while by the time I arrived. Cora had taken several bullets to her torso, and between the blood-loss and the wolfsbane… there was nothing I could do. I dealt with the hunters, and helped the few survivors find food and transport, and someone who might be able to help them, before getting on a plane with Eli and… and Cora. There were less than a dozen survivors all told. And most only survived because they were in the jungle when the attack happened, or they were very young children who were magically hidden where the hunters couldn’t get to them before I intervened.”

And the fires didn’t reach them before that, which is something Stiles would rather not think too much about. On the numbers though, considering that the Silveira pack had had enough members to fill a self-sustaining settlement, it’s a huge thing, bad too.

“Fucking hunters…” Jackson and Ethan hiss around their fangs.

“Was it Monroe?” Lydia wants to know.

“No,” Stiles shakes his head. “The Jägers, a German clan that was officially disbanded in the 1950s… apparently it didn’t occur to anyone to consider that bastards who’d chosen to side with the Nazis, would follow their lead and flee to South America following the war.”

“How did you find out?” Jackson asks, curious.

“I got a visit from Lady Kemp, the day the Argent trial ended,” Stiles answers.

“Lady Alexis Kemp, the Kemp Matriarch?” Lydia asks, clearly not having expected that.

Even Peter, Ethan and Jackson look suitably impressed.

“And Head of the Hunter Council,” Stiles adds for good measure. “Yes, her. She wanted me to know that the Argent Clan has been disbanded, struck from the registries. What members weren’t sent to various prisons or absorbed by other clans have been dealt with,” everyone knows what that means. “Also, we’ve been granted most of their American assets, and even a few European ones.”

“We…?” Peter arcs a brow, intrigued.

Derek just blinks, clearly not understanding.

“The Hale Pack,” Stiles clarifies. “I was approached as Emissary.”

“But you’re not an Emissary,” Derek blurts out. “Because there’s not a Hale Pack!”

“Isn’t there?” Stiles asks, a hint of challenge in his tone as he looks around.

And really, they’re all right there. Friends and family… pack…

xXx

Stiles and Kira end up spending the rest of the weekend in Beacon Hills. Making plans, but more importantly, spending time with their pack. Their pack… that is the biggest, most important thing to everyone. It’s… they might have been telling themselves and each other for a while now that they’re pack but now, now it’s official.

They all felt it the moment it happened. It was as if all of them knowing, acknowledging that they’re pack, flipped some kind of switch and suddenly they could feel it. All of them: shifters and humans and everything in between. They could feel the bonds tying them together, making them a pack.

They spent the rest of the day just being together, solidifying those bonds. Stiles took the chance to show them what Lady Kemp gave them, what now belonged to all of them. Derek looked a bit at a loss, but Lydia and Jackson were honestly interested and Peter actually whistled after seeing everything.

“So, we’ve basically inherited all that once belonged to the Argents?” Ethan guessed.

“Basically,” Kira nodded.

“Wonder if Argent knows,” Jackson muttered, obviously talking about Christopher Argent.

“No idea, but I don’t think so,” Stiles admitted.

“I haven’t smelled him around in a while,” Malia pointed out.

While she and Scott hadn’t been together for years, not since he transferred from UCDavis to UCLA and then simply didn’t return to Beacon Hills, not even for the summers (it was one thing for people like Stiles and Lydia to not return often, they weren’t supposed to be the territory’s alpha!).

“He left shortly after the trial ended,” Peter informed everyone.

Because really, official pack or not, there was a part of Peter that never stopped being the Hale left hand. So of course he’d know.

“It’s not that surprising,” Noah offered his own two cents. “Melissa stuck by him as long as she could, longer than I expected, all things considered. But in the end even she was forced to accept the truth…”

Stiles shook his head. Really, he knew all about Melissa using denial as a coping mechanism. Believing that if she believed something, or in this case, denied something, long enough, things would go her way in the end. He knew because Scott was exactly the same way. Refusing to believe in werewolves until he first shifted; claiming to have no problems with control, until he almost killed people; defending all the Argents even when they kept trying to kill him and everyone around him…

“Chris Argent is not our problem,” Stiles said evenly. “The Argent name is worth nothing at this point. No, our focus should be elsewhere.”

“Monroe.” Several voices called at the same time.

Yeah, however much some people, like Scott and Deaton, might insist on believing that the danger was past, that Monroe had given up, the Hale Pack knew better.

Stiles reports to Hotch’s office the moment he and Kira return to Quantico. Leaving Kira to quietly inform the rest of the team of the ‘public story’ they’re going with. How an old friend of Stiles’s died and they stayed in Beacon Hills for several days for the funeral. They already know about what happened in Brazil, as Stiles did check-in while on the plane to California. There are still a few things he couldn’t say over the phone, and other things that were decided while in Beacon Hills that he must talk to his boss about.

“Stiles…” Hotch nods, putting aside the file he’s been working on and focusing all his attention on the younger man. “Welcome back.”

“Hey boss man,” Stiles runs a hand through his hair. It’s getting a bit long but he hasn’t yet decided whether to cut it or let it grow out fully. “Hope you didn’t have much trouble over Brazil…”

“None at all,” Hotch assures him. “Officially the deaths of the Neo-Nazi cult are being blamed on the wild animals the tribe” the word they were using instead of pack “kept, and freak accidents caused during the thunderstorm. But from what I heard from Miss Carvalho, even if they were to know the truth, you wouldn’t be in trouble as you were acting in self-defense, yours and the tribe’s.”

Cora’s and Eli’s names had been kept out of everything. In fact, due to the way in which Stiles had gotten back to California there was no record of either of them leaving the country, which was another layer of protection for Eli now.

“I do believe the Brazilian government is just grateful not to have a Neo-nazi cell operating in their territory anymore,” Hotch continues. “It’d seem that a great many crimes can be traced to them.”

Many crimes which had probably originally been blamed on one of the local gangs, or the cartels. Stiles wouldn’t be surprised if the Jägers had been involved in some way with those, really.

“Your friend…” Hotch adds, more quietly.

He’s the only one who knows about Eli, mostly because he helped Stiles get in contact with the people necessary to get Eli new papers. Papers that made him Derek’s son, and Stiles’s nephew (son of a half-sister or something), mostly to allow Stiles to have a legal connection to him, even though he wouldn’t be the one to raise the boy… and that, that definitely wasn’t an easy decision to make.

“I can stay, why don’t you want me to say?!” Stiles demanded.

It was probably a good thing he’d worked that spell on Eli earlier, because by that point Stiles was stressed out and emotional enough he wasn’t paying much attention to his own volume, Eli would have woken, probably gone up swinging too, several times over by then, otherwise.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to stay…” Derek began.

“He’s my son…” Stiles’s voice broke on the last word. “He’s my son, whom I didn’t even know existed. Cora never told me and I… I want to do right by him. I want to be there for him. To… to help him, protect him and…”

“And you can do that much better where you are right now.” In the end, it was Peter who said what they were probably all thinking.

He was right too, which made Stiles hate him a bit more, and less, at the same time. Because it was true, Stiles could have left the FBI, moved back to Beacon Hills, started his PI Agency, or even worked as a consultant for the Sheriff’s Department if necessary. He’d have been there for Eli, yes. But that might not have been enough to protect the kid. Not really. All the Jägers who participated in the attack on the Silveira pack were dead, and if there were any others beside them, they had fled. Too few for the time being to present a real threat. But that didn’t mean it’d stay that way.

“I understand.” He exhaled.

He needed to protect Eli, but at the same time, it was about so much more than just the kid. Because the Jägers attacking the Silveira pack? That wasn’t an accident… It shouldn’t have been possible, the Silveira pack was one of the best hidden packs. They had lived in their own settlement, separate from any and all human towns, they were completely self-sufficient, which meant that they didn’t need to go to others, especially not to humans, for anything. It had kept them safe for many, many years. So then how had they been found?

“Cora’s dead,” Stiles murmurs. “Eli is… as safe as we can make him for the time being.”

“How did this even happen?” Hotch asks. “Didn’t you say that they were a very secret pack?”

“They were,” Stiles agrees. “I only knew their location because I helped a few members years ago and that led to me finding out.”

“Then how?” It’s clear this is really bothering Hotch.

It’s not surprising, it bothered Stiles too.

“They were betrayed,” he reveals to the older agent.

It was the last thing Stiles expected. He’d left the kid back at what had been their cottage, telling him to pack whatever he wanted to take with him, before placing a simple but powerful ward on the building, just in case any of the hunters had managed to survive his rampage (which was next to impossible, but still). Then Stiles went skulking around the remains of the settlement, so many of the buildings were half destroyed, either due to fire, or because one or more individuals had gone through walls and fences and more during the fights. Also, the fight had clearly scared the horses, cattle and other farm animals they kept, which added to the chaos.

As he made his way through the settlement Stiles managed to find a few survivors. Most were either young, having been protected by other members of the pack until Stiles’s magic acted-up. Or had probably not been in the settlement itself until it was all over. Most of them were still hurt in one way or another. Stiles talked a bit with each of them, telling them his name, offering them help. While most accepted a boost from his magic, herbs and the like, none were interested in going with him once he left the settlement. Stiles understood.

Stiles had made it almost to the very center of the settlement when he found the last survivor. A tall, tanned man in his late fifties with an athletic built, dark eyes, his curly hair had clearly once been a deep black, though now it was peppered with gray, same as his full beard and mustache, neither of which looked especially well-groomed. He was wearing an olive-green button-up shirt over a white undershirt, with the sleeves rolled-up to his elbows, khaki pants and work boots on his feet.

The last thing Stiles expected was for the man to pull a blade (a freaking machete!) off his back and throw himself at Stiles with it!

“What… what the hell is wrong with you?!” Stiles demanded as he repeatedly dodged the blows, side-stepping him, all while trying to understand what was going on.

The man kept shouting imprecations at him in a mix of Portuguese and what sounded like a native tongue (probably a dialect traditional of the pack); Stiles didn’t know more than the most basic Portuguese, and certainly nothing of whatever the other language was. Which meant that he only really understood a handful of words from the whole tirade:

“You ruined everything… white-boy!” He yelled at Stiles.

It was when the man pulled out a fistful of mistletoe and tried to use it against Stiles, that the younger man understood the horrifying truth: the man was the Silveira Emissary, and he had been in on the attack… that is, if he hadn’t orchestrated it himself, at the very least he was responsible for revealing the location of the Silveira Pack to the Jägers, which was bad enough…

“Betrayed…?” Hotch’s disbelief is an echo of Stiles’s own when he first realized the truth.

“By their own Emissary,” Stiles practically spits, a mix of horror and disgust as he speaks.

He just doesn’t understand how a man who’s supposed to have been so connected to the pack, the wolf’s connection to humanity, could ever do something like that.

“I don’t actually know what all happened,” Stiles admits as he runs a hand through his hair again. “It’s… the bastard kept attacking me with a fucking machete, a time came when I just… I had to fight back, had to protect myself, and Eli.”

“I understand,” Hotch nods.

And it’s true, he does. The problem is that killing him meant that Stiles was never going to get answers to his questions: Why did the emissary betray his pack? Was it his idea or did someone convince him to? He’d like to think the man was coerced… but his attack on Stiles says the opposite. He wasn’t happy to have been saved, but angry with Stiles for stopping the Jägers, for killing them… Though what worried Stiles most was, was he the only one? The only traitorous emissary… or were there others, out there, ready and waiting for the chance to betray their own packs? It’s a terrifying prospect and Stiles has no idea how to make it right!

He manages to put all of that, or most of it at least, into words.

“I don’t know,” Hotch shrugs helplessly, as much at a loss as Stiles. “How do you get a message to those who need to hear it, while bypassing those who’re supposed to be the connection between outsiders and the packs?”

And isn’t that the question? Stiles just knows this is gonna be an absolute disaster.

So they start making plans. Because really, it’s the best they can do for the time being. Stiles works on a message that he hopes the shifters will be able to understand, and he places it on his webpage, and then between he and Skye, they copy it to every single supernatural-friendly forum they can find. Hoping that at least some of the shifters in each pack will see it and understand what it means. That they will find a way to protect themselves… and that their emissaries will not realize what’s going on. Because much as he might like to, Stiles just cannot protect each of them on his own, he just can’t! So he writes the messages and he holds onto his spark and prays and hopes and wills it to be enough…

They’re also working on finding out whatever Jägers there might be left. And Monroe (because that bitch is never far from Stiles’s mind). Because they need to find them. Need to bring them to justice. To ensure that no other packs will suffer what the Silveiras did… to ensure that all others will be safe. That Eli will be safe…

xXx

In the evening, Stiles stands by the window of his bedroom in the apartment he shares with Kira. Outside the moon is shining, and he distractedly brings a hand to the juncture between his shoulder and neck, to the fourth scar on his body, the newest one…

“Cora told me.”

Most of the other pack-members had left already. Even the sheriff, who had a shift at the station, left with Parrish. Eli was sleeping on Stiles’s old bed, with Stiles himself offering to stay in the long-abandoned downstairs bedroom (which had once been the master bedroom, at least until the death of Stiles’s mom, when his dad couldn’t stand to be there without her and moved to one of the upstairs bedrooms). Derek had gone to the kitchen for a cup of tea, he clearly didn’t expect Stiles to follow him, or what the younger man had to say…

“What…?” Derek blurted out, at a loss.

“She told me what this means,” Stiles explained, at the same time he pulled the collar of his shirt a bit to the side, revealing a scar, newer than the three he’d gotten in the year following the creation of his current body.

The scar was simple, consisting of a set of teeth-marks, most prominent a set of fangs. On the exact point where his neck and his shoulder connect.

It’s a mating mark.

“That’s not… I didn’t mean… I…” It was clear that Derek just didn’t know what to say.

Stiles was grateful that he at least wasn’t going into denial, or trying to claim it meant nothing (they both would have known it to be a lie, but it was still a lie that would have hurt).

“Just tell me something Derek, do you mean it?” Stiles asked, so very, very softly. “The… the promise implicit in this mark, do you mean it?” At Derek’s continued hesitation he asked. “I don’t care if it was an accident, a rush of adrenaline, instinct, or whatever, when you first bit me, back then. I mean now. Right here, right now. Would you choose me as your mate?”

“Yes, always.” The wolf exhaled. “But it’s not that simple, Stiles…”

“But it is Derek, it is that simple. Maybe not right now. Not while we still have enemies waiting in the shadows. But those enemies won’t be there forever. One day we’ll deal with them. One day the danger will be gone, and we’ll be able to live our lives the way we choose to. The question is, do you want that life to be with me?”

“Always.” Derek repeated. Simple and to the point.

Nothing else needed to be said, a moment later the two were kissing, practically devouring each other. Pulling at the other’s clothes, barely making it to the somewhat dusty bedroom at the back of the house, falling onto old, slightly musty bed-clothes (and paying no attention to those details), their entire focus on each other. All in all, it was probably a good thing that the sheriff had a night-shift, and no shifter senses to smell what all happened that night…

Stiles does still believe what he told Derek that night. One day the danger will be gone, and they’ll get the chance to live the lives they want. He, Derek, and Eli, a family, as they are meant to be now. It won’t be easy, but it will be absolutely worth it.

Chapter IV. Cali

It’s not easy. But then again, it’s not like Stiles, or anyone else, went into things believing it’d be.

The trial for the Dumonts takes an unexpected turn a few months in. Right after an agreement is reached with the Canadian government to allow Hotch’s special FBI team (with help from a few others) to go into the compound where the family is known to live, in the outskirts of Granisle, a rural town in the northern part of British Columbia and arrest them all. Surprised as all agents are when finding no resistance upon their arrival to the compound, the last thing they are expecting is to make it to the living quarters and find them all dead.

Every single member of the Dumont Hunter Clan, not just the main family, but those married into it, as well as the families in their service; they’re all dead. To the last man, woman, elder and child. It’s absolutely terrifying.

Stiles spends the few hours they remain in the compound so tense it looks like he might shatter, flinching at the slightest unexpected movement.

“Just what is wrong with you?” Ashley asks him at one point.

“You probably cannot sense it, but the whole energy in this place is… it’s sickening.” Stiles answers quietly, voice full of feeling. “The very air around us is charged with emotion. The righteous anger, the fury, and the near-overwhelming fear.”

“Fear…?” Hotch asks, tense.

“I cannot know for sure, Sight is not one of my abilities, nor would I wish for it to be,” and he’s never allowing Lydia anywhere close to this thrice-cursed place. “But if I had to guess, I imagine that the adults must have told terrible stories to the children regarding what would happen to them, once we arrived, to get them to participate in the suicide as well. At least all those that could.”

As if the mass-suicide alone weren’t horrifying enough. They at least decide to leave that detail out of any official reports. Not just to avoid giving other people nightmares, but the last thing they need is for those Hunter Clans still out there to see them as martyrs of some kind, and worse even, to try to emulate them.

The trial is called off shortly afterwards, judges and attorneys as a whole seeing no point in continuing. The Dumonts didn’t have a history quite as bad as the Argents, and what victims had stepped forth to testify and the like, accept such an end to things, deciding that the end of the Dumonts is enough for their peace of mind. The Dumonts will forever be remembered as yet another story of an insane cult endingin a tragic mass-suicide.

The team then turns their attention to tracking down any possible remaining Jägers. They’re mostly successful, managing to find the group in Colombia, where they seem to be in the process of allying with one of the local cartels.

The mission quickly becomes an absolute disaster. The local government insists on being involved, due to the connection with local criminals (and them not wanting to later have to admit that Colombian criminals were captured by Americans and not their own authorities). It’s hard to tell if the problem ends up being moles in the Colombian police, their military, if somehow they were spied on (either by people, or hidden mikes), hacked or something else entirely but it’s soon made obvious that not only are the criminals expecting them, they’re more than ready to fight back.

Vans are parked carefully around the corners of the block where the criminals are supposed to be meeting, in an old vecindad. Other vehicles are nearby, waiting for the signal before they’re used to block the street at both ends to ensure if any criminals manage to make it to their vehicles, they won’t be able to escape.

The Colombians are on both sides of the gate into the vecindad, having insisted on going first. Ashley and the team are split up on both sides and ready to follow, when the first shot rings.

None of them seem to truly realize what’s going on at first: the way one of the soldiers who were standing by the gate (he was a big guy, had to be, as he was the one holding the battering ram) he’s just… not there anymore. Or not all of him. Two of the other soldiers, the ones who were standing closest to him, are covered in blood and gore, and one of them is actually staring at himself, at where a part of his arm (from the middle of his forearm down) is just… gone.

Someone somewhere starts screaming.

It all becomes a mess of a firefight after that. Ashley’s the one to bring down the door in the end. In the madness of all that’s going on no one really stops to wonder at how a woman who, while tall, doesn’t seem like she could weigh even 140 pounds soaking wet, could manage such a feat.

For a moment there everyone seems to be shooting at everyone. The terror, especially when two more locals are killed by high-caliber guns (which is what happened to the military man at the start of it all), and several more lose limbs in a very bloody way, makes things even more insane.

It’s probably the worst situation the team has ever been involved in. Even Hotch, who was with the FBI for years prior to this team cannot remember ever being involved in such a bloody confrontation. Things go up another notch Stiles goes down after taking one of those high-caliber shots to his lower left flank. The shot is powerful enough to throw him several feet back before he goes down, and after seeing several other people almost taken apart by such shots, there’s a moment when the team actually fears the worst.

“Stiles!!!” Kira screams when she sees her packmate go down.

She’s affected enough to briefly lose control over her powers, electricity shooting out of her fingers and hitting those closest to her (thankfully all but one of them are actually criminals), who go down as if they’d been tased (it’s probably a good thing that all in their team carry high-powered tasers, not just because they’re good against both humans and shifters, but precisely to be able to explain such instances like Kira, or Stiles, losing control for a moment without giving away the truth about them). It takes several seconds for her to gather her wits, and be able to feel that Stiles is alright. In a fair amount of pain, but nothing life-threatening.

Nothing can be heard above the cacophony of dozens of guns firing almost simultaneously. It’s less than five minutes in all, yet it feels like it lasts for almost an hour. Even when the shooting comes to an end, it still takes several seconds for everyone still alive to believe that it truly is over. The shifter’s ears keep ringing for even longer (even though they trained to get used to the sounds of shooting, nothing could have prepared them for something like that shootout).

A pained groan announces that Stiles is very much alive, prompting his team to rush to his side as fast as they can make it. What they find is… not quite what either of them would have expected: the lower left quarter of his shirt is missing, the skin underneath looking like a bloody mess even as they can all see that it’s healing, and faster even than any of them has ever seen Ashley heal.

“How…?” The jaguar is at a loss.

“It’s a long story,” Stiles groans, at the same time a somewhat loud snap announces a bone (probably a rib) has just set into place, making a small pained yell escape the young man unwittingly.

No one says a thing, though all turn when they notice Grant hurriedly unbuttoning his jacket and throwing it at Stiles.

“What…?” Kira begins.

“He cannot go around like that.” Grant explains. “What kind of explanation would we give to the Colombians? Most of them don’t actually know what our team’s about.”

He’s right. They’re lucky enough (for a value of luck) that Stiles ended up somewhere in between several vehicles, so no one other than his team can actually see him at that moment. So he takes the proffered jacket, quietly thanking his teammate before putting it on, swallowing the groan as the movement makes a stab of pain run down his side.

Not another word is said on the matter until they’re on the plane back to the States. The Jägers are all dead, same as most of the criminals they’d teamed up with. It’s a win all around, and the Colombian police seems to be particularly proud to be able to say they were an important part of it all. Even with all the losses and the considerable injuries, they believe it to have been worth it. Being all too aware of how many lives could have been lost to criminals who had such weapons in their possessions. And if the losses had been of civilians… At least with things happening as they did, all who went into that operation knew the risks; they were aware of them, and went into things anyway.

Stiles refuses a chance to use the showers in the police station in Cali, not wanting to risk any of the mundane-humans noticing anything odd. So it’s until they’re all on the plane and in the air, that he finally slips off Grant’s jacket and takes a look at himself.

He’s a long way from his teenage years, no longer feeling self-conscious at all the eyes watching him. He might not have the big muscles most wolves he’s met have, but he knows he’s not bad to look at either (and not just because of how much Derek clearly enjoyed touching, stroking and pretty much worshiping every inch of his body…). Kira sits beside him on the long bench on the back of the team’s plane, a first-aid kit in her hands, along with a new shirt from Stiles’s go-bag.

The shirt Stiles is (technically) still wearing is a loss, at least a quarter of it missing, and a lot more drenched in blood and… other stuff. He throws it into a plastic bag to dispose of later. Kira helps him and with the use of some wet-wipes they manage to clean Stiles’s torso fairly quickly.

“You won’t have much of a scar,” Kira points out. “No worse than any of the others, in any case. It’s even smaller than the one you got from Quinn…”

A sharp inhale calls the attention of both of them to the rest of their team. The sound having come from Skye, who’s just staring at Stiles, hands pressed against her mouth and tears sparkling in the corners of her doe-brown eyes.

“Those are some wicked scars man,” Grant points out. “Just what happened to you?”

“I thought…” Ashley cocks her head to a side, making an effort to find the right words to express herself. “I don’t scar, why do you?”

“Well, I’m not a shifter,” Stiles points out.

“No, but you do have enhanced healing, I’ve seen it,” the blonde insists.

She had even before the thing in Colombia. They all had. Though never anything quite so… big.

“I do,” Stiles takes a deep breath, not sure if the next part is gonna shock or outright horrify his team. “I only get scars when it’s something that would have killed me. You know, if I weren’t what I am.”

Except for his mating scar, of course, but that’s a whole different matter.

He’s right of course. His team looks either shocked, or downright horrified, some of them both. Skye is actually crying.

“Just what kind of life have you lived?” Grant blurts out. “I mean, most of those are from before you ever joined the Agency, aren’t they?”

And to think that these are only the scars he got in the last year in Beacon Hell, pretty much nothing in comparison to what all went down before he got his new body, and his improved powers… Of course, those are details his team doesn’t need to know. Not only because how such things came about is absolutely insane, but because Stiles really doesn’t want to traumatize them even more. Still, he does tell them about the scars visible on his body. Tells them about Donovan, his insane anger against sheriff Stilinski and his decision to take that anger out on his son; the Ghost Riders and the way Beacon Hills came so close to becoming a veritable ghost-town, and the Anuk-ite, with its power over fear, and how Stiles did the only thing he could do under the circumstances.

Reid’s the only one who seems to notice the mating mark on his neck, and despite not being a shifter himself he also seems to be able to understand what it means. He smiles gently at Stiles and says nothing at all about it. A man is allowed to keep his private life private, after all.

Once back in the States, when they split to go to their respective homes, Kira very pointedly does not join Stiles. He’s the only one unsurprised by this, though he still goes very red when Kira makes an off-handed comment about boyfriends and not needing to see ‘that’ again…

She’s right of course, the moment Stiles closes the door of the apartment he finds himself being slammed against the wall right beside the door itself. Forceful enough to feel it, yet not so much that he might end up hurt.

“Hey sourwolf…” the human murmurs, a bit breathless.

Though that is nothing compared to a moment later, when a mouth latches onto the juncture between neck and shoulder and sucks… Stiles goes hard so fast for a moment he wonders if he’s managed to orgasm, just like that, completely untouched but for his mate’s mouth right on that mark… He doesn’t, though it’s a near thing, and a part of him cannot help but think it’d be something to experiment with… but later. Some day when he’s not so hard he’s almost dizzy.

“Come on sourwolf, bedroom.” Stiles gasps when Derek goes from sucking to outright nibbling at the mating mark. “Come on, Kira won’t thank us if we have sex here.”

In the end he manages to convince Derek to move, though the wolf doesn’t let him go so much as pick him up from the floor and carry him straight to the room Stiles directs him to.

They don’t emerge until well after noon the next day (it’s probably a good thing Hotch gave them all the day off).

xXx

After the fifth round (or was it the sixth?), and some short-ish naps in between, Stiles and Derek find themselves lying side by side on Stiles’s bed. Completely naked, with sheets not quite covering them and legs half-entwined, with one of their hands they’re holding onto each other, while they keep moving the other ones idly; Stiles tracing random runes on Derek’s skin, while the wolf keeps simply running his hand down the human’s arm, his flank, his cheek, among other parts, scenting him.

At one point Stiles presses his face against the side of Derek’s own neck, pressing a kiss to the mark his spark allowed him to leave on the wolf’s neck.

It hasn’t been easy. Not the mateship itself, their relationship has been easy (as easy as breathing), even keeping their relationship while living apart hasn’t been that hard. It’s… they might only have become mates recently, but the potential for that, for them, has been there all along, from the moment they met. They might not have always been aware of it. Their relationship coming slowly, taking shape a little bit at a time. Sometimes there might have been issues, moments when they took steps back, when it looked like things might never work out, but they always did.

No, what hasn’t been easy has been knowing. Knowing the danger each of them is in, and not being by the other’s side to face it. In the past, every time Derek left Beacon Hills, leaving Stiles behind, he did so believing that the younger man would be safe enough there (and Derek himself was still working towards being the kind of man who could seek love, who could accept it…); when Stiles himself left Beacon Hills, he had an objective in mind, and it’s not like he didn’t plan on coming back. Even when they split after the fight against Monroe and her hunters, two years after Stiles’s highschool graduation; it might not have been their best separation thus far, but they still had reason to believe things would be alright. Now…

Now, with Derek once again in Beacon Hills, raising their son, knowing the kind of threats that made a habit of showing up in that town… Peter is a fantastic left hand, and many of their pack are right there to help if the need arises, yet the risk still exists. Stiles has always made a point of being there for Derek, for their pack, and now he isn’t… And then there’s Stiles himself, part of an FBI team dedicated to going after the worst criminals who also happen to be part of the shadow-world, hunters and supernaturals both. Every day on the job he’s at risk and he knows it. He’s at risk, doing battle time and again, and Derek can’t be there for him…

“I felt it,” Derek murmurs eventually.

Stiles doesn’t even need to ask what he’s talking about. It’s obvious enough, with his mate’s hand settling on the human’s flank, on the still red-ish patch of skin there, which is quickly turning into a proper scar. Almost as if he’d suffered the injury weeks ago, rather than hours.

It’s not surprising. While Stiles won’t say he’s ever felt Derek’s pain, exactly. He’s always sensed something being very wrong, whenever he’s been badly injured, even before finding out he’s been hurt. All the way back to the very first time. When Stiles jumped in his Jeep, right as Derek found him in the highschool parking lot. It wasn’t only about the shock of seeing him there, so badly injured, but that Stiles had just known… there had been something, like a pit in the back of his stomach, and he’d known something was wrong, he just hadn’t known what. Then he saw Derek, saw his blood, and the black marks on his skin and he knew.

He knew when Derek was badly injured in that abandoned mall too. Woke up from a dead-sleep before dawn, feeling like he couldn’t breathe, like something was pressing his chest so hard his lungs wouldn’t work. When he asked Scott what had happened he got… nothing. Stiles will never stop cursing himself for not doing something about it, but being objective, what could he have done? His dad was home that night, if he’d noticed Stiles leaving… he hadn’t actually known about the supernatural and there’s no way Stiles could have explained it then. That also means there was no way he could not get on that bus, go to the cross-country meet. Though still, there’s a part of him that wishes he had, that he’d stayed back, that he’d been there when Derek went to the school looking for help. Maybe then the darach wouldn’t have managed to get her hooks into him. Maybe then he wouldn’t have ended up being used by yet another psychotic bitch…

“Easy…” Derek whispers, running a finger down his brow. “Easy, Mischief…”

“I’m alright,” Stiles states automatically.

Derek snorts, clearly not believing a word.

“You forget, sourwolf, brooding is your thing, not mine.” Stiles cannot help but get just a tiny bit defensive as he says that.

“You forget, baby, I know you,” Derek says in return. “The way you can talk and talk and talk, without ever actually saying a thing…”

“Are you calling me a chatterbox?” Stiles manages to sound fake-outraged, though just for a moment before adding. “Not that you’re wrong but…”

“The way you’ll use misdirection, will masterfully avoid giving answers when they’re things you wish not to talk about,” Derek continues. “I know you my love, now will you tell me what it is that’s keeping you awake right now?”

“It started with me thinking of what you might have felt when I got hurt,” Stiles reveals after a few more seconds, because whatever else might be going on, he won’t lie to his mate, not for any reason. “And somehow that turned into me thinking about all the times when I knew that you’d been hurt… or well, I didn’t ‘know’, not really. I just knew something was wrong. And every single time it turned out that you’d been hurt…”

“Every time?” Derek didn’t know about this.

“Every single time.” Stiles emphasizes each word. “The worst was perhaps in Mexico… but then that was also the only time that I was very much aware of what was going on. I saw you bleeding, saw you dying, and I knew… all the other times I’d just had this sense of wrongness, not understanding what it meant until later. Even the first time. I might have been seeing you bleeding, and with your insistence that I cut your arm if Scott didn’t get back and…”

“Wait, that was the first time? But we’d barely met each other back then!”

“I know.”

“We… we didn’t trust each other, didn’t even know…”

“Why did you come? To the school I mean, when you were hurt?” At Derek’s lost look he clarifies. “I looked it up later. The place you were when Kate shot at you, it was practically on the other side of town from the high-school. The veterinary was closer than the school!”

Derek knows what Stiles is saying, and it’s true. It’d be easy to say that he went looking for Scott. The only other werewolf (aside from the rogue) in town at the time, the only one he might have been able to trust. The jeep even smelled a fair bit of Scott back then, with how often Stiles drove him (since he hadn’t been of age to drive just yet). But Derek wasn’t in the habit of lying to his mate, and he wouldn’t start over something like this.

“I knew you’d help me.” The wolf whispers, so very quietly, head buried in his mate’s hair. “I… I don’t even know how, I just knew…”

“And you were right.” Stiles agrees, pressing a kiss to the wolf’s neck. “I’ve always done my best to help you, and I always will.”

It starts with soft kisses, to hair, brow, neck, chest, it soon turns into yet another round of lovemaking. Unlike the previous ones they’re in no hurry, no rush at all. Taking their time to touch and stroke and taste every inch of each other’s bodies. Worshiping their mate, their union… when orgasm finally comes it’s almost secondary to everything else they’re already feeling: their deep, strong bond, their absolute devotion for each other, their everlasting love…

Chapter V. Sado Island

Not all cases the SCU goes on end up being as intense and bloody as the shootout in Cali, Colombia.

They don’t all end well, either.

Like the time when Dr. Reid is kidnapped and almost killed by one of their unsubs. He’s rescued by a local supernatural, a chameleon who tends to help the local police as an undercover. He ends up rescuing Spencer in such a way that it leads to the unsub believing the human doctor has been killed. After some consideration it’s decided that Reid ought to play dead, stay hidden until the case is over. He accepts.

It works very well on their end. Reid keeps his head down while the team finds their unsub, who ends up committing ‘suicide by cop’ by the end of the case. There’s an issue, though. At some point during the case (which takes longer than most) Diana Reid falls badly ill. Enough that the staff at the facility where she lives try to contact Reid so he will visit. The calls are either answered by people who’re unaware of what’s truly going on or just don’t know the team enough to be able to make the right connection. By the time the case is over and they finally reach him it’s too late. Diana Reid is dead.

Spencer stays a bit longer, but in the end he’s too easily distracted, which is dangerous for him and for the rest of the team. He chooses to retire, instead turning to teaching. Stiles puts him in contact with many supernaturals he knows, who’re willing to share their knowledge, oral traditions, histories and folklore that has never been written. Reid is very excited about the project.

xXx

The mission to Japan is a very particular one. Russ Montgomery, the technical analyst working with the International Response Team contacts them through Skye with a message from his own bosses. They’re in the city of Niigata in Honshu, Japan’s main island, where they believe that something requires the SCU’s attention.

Apparently it all began with the murder of nineteen-year-old college student Madison Riddley. Or at least, that was when the IRT were called in, since the Riddleys were an American family who’d been living in Japan for a few years due to the mother’s job with an important company centered in the prefecture of Nagano.

As they quickly discovered, Madison was far from the only person dead in suspicious circumstances. In fact, the longer the IRT looked, the more people they kept finding. High-school professors in Nagano, college students from several universities across a good number of cities, even a few teenagers working here and there. There had seemed to be no connection at first, until they found the same picture in the rooms of several of the teenagers.

“They’re all from the same class then?” Grant summarizes.

They’re on the plane, on their way to Japan.

“Yes,” Skye nods as she shares several files to their tablets. “Niigata Seiryo High School.”

The team does a quick read of the things Skye shares with them, they all end up more than a little shocked by what they find.

“Is this… is this for real?” Kira asks in disbelief.

“What she said.” Stiles agrees. “I mean, I did think that Beacon Hills High was hell, but this…”

“Yeah, doesn’t sound like the best place ever, but I dropped out of high-school myself so what do I know?” Skye shrugs. “Most of the younger victims found thus far, were part of a very specific class. They graduated last summer.”

“And the older victims?” Ashley inquires, wanting to know if there’s a connection there too.

“Half of them used to work at the school, either as teachers or in administration at the school at some point when that particular class studied there,” Skye shares several more files.

“What about the others?” Hotch wants to know.

“Owners and workers of two separate diners, one current worker and a retired one from the child guidance office, and several people with the surname Tanaka…” Skye enlists.

“Several Tanakas?” Kira interrupts. “Family?”

“Possible…” Skye contemplates before typing quickly, starting to cross-reference a few things.

“Wait, this makes, how many deaths?” Ashley asks.

“Ah… total is over a dozen, but not everyone is convinced that they’re all connected,” Skye admits, halting her own work for a moment.

“Different MO?” Grant guesses.

“Some are similar enough, but others are very different,” Skye says. “Also, while some of the kills, especially those from the last few days, appear to have been premeditated, the earliest ones… not-so-much. More like…”

“Crimes of passion?” Kira guesses.

“Or of opportunity.” Stiles offers an alternative.

There’s something bothering him. Like an itch in the back of his head and he doesn’t know what it is, exactly… (or perhaps it is that he doesn’t want to know). The shiver that runs down his whole body as they step off the plane at the Niigata airport tells Stiles that something is most definitely off. He doesn’t think it’s a coincidence the way his hand automatically goes to the spot behind his left ear, to the kanji seemingly tattooed there…

xXx

Stiles doesn’t often wish he were wrong. This is definitely one of those times.

While locals work on tracking down the remaining students from that particular class at Seiryo, Skye and Russ manage to connect most of the victims who hadn’t fully fit into things, they’re part of a single family. Even those who do not have the surname Tanaka, they’re all connected. Which is how they eventually get to Fuyu Tanaka.

Nineteen years old, like the rest of the younger victims. She was part of the same class. Short and a bit overweight (not a lot, but still notorious, especially with how different her looks are to the average Japanese girl). It’s not surprising to find out she was severely bullied while at school (Skye has no doubt that her considerable… assets must have been a part of it too). The girl finished high-school with pretty good grades, not the top of the class, but not bad at all. And then she failed the entrance exam to college. Twice.

“That’s what made her snap?” Matthew Simmons of the IRT asks.

“I’ve heard of people turning suicidal after failing the exam, but murderous?” Clara Seger, of the same team, doesn’t seem to fully believe it.

“Besides, how is she even doing it?” Mae Jarvis agrees. “Just look at the girl,” she points at the pictures. “There’s no way she could have killed half of these people. I mean, most of her classmates? Maybe. She might have even taken some of the adults, especially those in her own family, by surprise. But the boys, especially the two who were known athletes? And what about the adult men? Especially the teachers. Professor Fujimori was former military, no way this girl could have just drowned him. And he wasn’t drugged beforehand, or disabled with like, a blow to the head or something. I’ve looked through the autopsy reports, there’s no sign of any of that.”

“What? You think she had help?” Seger seems open to the idea. “An accomplice?”

“Or maybe not that kind of help…” Jack Garrett, the team-lead murmurs as he turns to look at Hotch and his own people.

“She’s possessed,” Stiles announces.

The statement is shocking enough both teams turn to look at him.

“Possession?” Simmons is the most skeptical, he turns to his own team. “Do we believe in that now?”

“This is why you called us in,” Hotch says to his fellow Unit Chief. “You suspected something supernatural was at work here.”

“Yes,” Garret says simply, he directs significant looks at Ashley, Kira and Stiles in turn. “I have… a bit of a gift, you could say. While I’m not supernatural myself, I know, instinctively, when someone is.”

The IRT team looks like they don’t know whether to be supportive or worry that their team leader has had a mental breakdown of some kind. Until Stiles goes and waves a hand, bright sparks dancing across his fingers. That certainly quiets the argument before it can even begin.

While most of the others get to work on finding Miss Tanaka, and any potential future victims, Ashley approaches Stiles, who’s just standing by the window, looking outside.

“I did not expect you to just… out yourself like that,” she admits quietly.

Stiles just shrugs.

“I mean, I knew it was possible we would have to tell them something, once it became obvious that the girl had to be something supernatural, or have access to something supernatural, because like the others said, there’s no way she should have been able to kill some of her victims,” Ashley continues. “But there’s telling them the supernatural is real. And then there’s revealing yourself like that.”

“Did you know I was possessed?” Stiles asks quietly, apropos of nothing.

“What…?” His superior is completely thrown by that. “No… I… what…?”

“When I was in my junior year of high-school,” Stiles nods. “There was an ill-conceived ritual and… anyway, that part doesn’t matter. The thing is, I got possessed by a fox-spirit. A void-fox to be precise. Nogitsune, is the proper name of the creature. An ancient dark kitsune, a trickster who relishes in creating chaos, strife and pain, along with other negative emotions, in order to feed himself and gain more power. It is a most malevolent being that enjoys causing pain, both to its host, and those around them. It’s…”

“How did you survive that?” Ashley asks quietly.

“I was extremely lucky,” Stiles murmurs. “My friends found a scroll that explained how to defeat a nogitsune, without necessarily killing its host. Even then, it wasn’t easy.”

Ashley isn’t a fool, she wouldn’t have made it as far in her career if she were…

“You think the girl’s being possessed by a fox like that one, don’t you?” she guesses.

“I know she is,” Stiles admits. “I don’t know how to explain it right but when we were at that crime scene earlier today I could feel it, almost like static electricity or… or like a shadow of some kind.”

“Like with the Dumonts, years ago,”

“Not exactly. With the Dumonts I could pick up on the energy left in the place. This… imagine like seeing a serial killer’s signature on a wall. A signature only I can see, or sense, because it resonates in a corner of me.” the part of him that could still remember having been so closely connected to that nogitsune, that his own body was influenced, in a way, by the void-fox…

“How bad can we expect this to be?”

“Bad. Back in Beacon Hills… the nogitsune tore several high-tension cables just outside Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, I’m sure you can guess the kind of damage that caused.” Ashley’s wide-eyes tell him she does. “There were some traps in the running trails in the preserve, which could have killed everyone in the track-team if we hadn’t gotten them out just in time… And there was a bomb at the sheriff’s station. It also went after several Japanese men, the ones who had the scroll, and my friends, especially once it realized they stood a chance at winning.”

“Well, the number of deaths might be similar enough, but not the manner or, you know, the way everything seems to be progressing.”

“Yeah, I… I have my suspicions about that.”

“You think she’s cooperating. That she’s, what? Aiding the fox possessing her?”

“Or at least not fighting it. I mean, think about it. I fought like hell, because I had a reason to.”

“You think she doesn’t.”

“Look at her victims thus far: the family-members that were either neglectful or abusive, the classmates who bullied her, her ex-boyfriends, the bosses and co-workers who… well, whether they ever offended her or she just didn’t like them doesn’t really matter at this point. Nogitsune are all about vengeance. In fact, the one that possessed me was initially summoned by another kitsune, back in the forties, one who wanted vengeance on her lover’s killers. Tanaka probably wanted to make all who ever hurt her pay. Whether it was her idea, or the fox’s, it doesn’t really matter.”

No it doesn’t. Though they both know that if the host is truly cooperating with the fox, things are probably gonna be much harder than they were when Stiles was the one possessed…

xXx

By the time they manage to track down Fuyu Tanaka, it’s all over.

It’s not that they weren’t trying to find her. But rather that the younger brother of Madison Riddley, either believing that the authorities aren’t doing their job quickly enough, or in an attempt to call attention upon himself, makes a post on social media regarding his sister’s murder. In less than two hours, it’s gone viral. And then the IRT and the SCU teams not only have to track down Tanaka, and keep an eye on possible future victims, but also on all the civilians, mostly teenagers, going around, convinced they can find the killer before the FBI!

As if that weren’t bad enough, following that viral post, others are made by a number of other people, families and friends of several of the other victims. That only makes things worse. Especially when some of the photos and videos circulating come dangerously close to revealing the supernatural.

“You know, usually I love social media, but right now? Not so much,” Skye mutters.

She and Russ are working as fast as they can to get the situation under control. Going as far as hacking the accounts sharing the most dangerous pictures and getting rid of them before someone starts asking the wrong questions.

At the same time, it’s thanks to them combing through the internet to ensure no more ‘dangerous footage’ will be shared, that the techies eventually come across a grainy security video that shows Tanaka boarding the ferry to Sado Island.

After some consideration it is decided that the IRT should stay in Niigata to handle the situation with the victim’s families while the SCU makes the trip to the island (deciding that, since they’re the experts on the supernatural, it’s better that way). Once on the island Stiles can sense the nogitsune more clearly and they’re able to find Tanaka relatively quickly. However, by then it’s all over.

Kira and Grant hurry to the prone form of the teen-aged girl lying on the edge of a pond, her body half submerged in what’s probably the shallowest point of the body of water. Hotch and Ashley watch their backs, while Skye stays behind at the port, in charge of the comms, both with the team and with the IRT back in the mainland.

As for Stiles, he walks past his teammates, straight towards the pond, though instead of stepping into the water he jumps onto one of the rocks that litter that particular area. Moving from one to the next with almost preternatural balance and grace, until he’s standing less than a couple of yards from another man. A few inches taller than the average Japanese man, with pitch black hair long and loose, falling around his shoulders, well-cared for moustache and beard, he’s dressed in an interesting mix of modern and traditional; with an olive-green long haori over black sturdy pants and an off-white shirt. His feet bare as he balances on a rocky formation. There’s no hint of water, or even dampness on him or his clothes, making it obvious that he must have gotten there the same way Stiles got as far as he did.

Stiles bows his head at the man respectfully, saying not a word.

Behind him, his team have turned to him, though Kira stops the others from trying to approach, or even talking to the two men.

“You’re far from your home, young one,” the man tells him solemnly.

“I am,” Stiles agrees. “Special Agent Stiles Stilinski with the FBI. We were called in by another team, to consult on the case of murder of an American teen-aged girl.”

“Ah, one of the victims of the void-fox’s hunger, and that poor girl’s pain.” The man shakes his head sadly. “It’s a pity that her life had to end so soon.”

“Did it?” Stiles asks quietly. “Could she not be saved?”

“There’s no cleansing the taint of a nogitsune, young one, not once it’s been let in so far.” The man shakes his head. “No, there was no saving her. You should know, there’s no saving a nogitsune host. It’s simply impossible.”

“But it’s not,” Kira blurts out before she can stop herself.

The man turns to her instantly, and not just that. He jumps straight off the big rock he’s on, across several, before going to stand by the edge of the pond, where the team has gotten Tanaka out of the water; deciding that there’s no point to try and preserve a crime scene when the water will have washed it all away already. Also, the fact that there’s not a single sign on the body, not of a blow, or drowning, or asphyxiation, or anything like that, tells them that the chance of the cause of death being anything remotely natural is next to zero.

“You’re young still, little-fox,” he tells Kira after watching her intently. “But you must learn. Nogitsune are among the darkest creatures in the world. They’re creatures of chaos, of vengeance and mayhem. They feed on pain, all kinds of pain, physical, mental, emotional… And most importantly, a nogitsune’s host cannot survive, it’s just impossible, because once the fox has burrowed into them, it starts tearing them apart…”

“But…” Kira’s at a loss.

“I know there have been stories, but that’s all they are, legends, nothing more,” the man continues. “If you know someone who claims to have survived being possessed by a nogitsune… it’s a lie.”

“Could it be that it’s the fox walking around, pretending to be human?” Grant asks.

Stiles would be offended, except he totally understands wanting to know the answer to that question. He’d ask it himself, in Grant’s place.

“Impossible,” the man shakes his head vehemently. “Once a nogitsune has consumed its host from the inside out, their body is nothing but an empty husk, like a walking corpse. It cannot pass as human. So it leaves the body behind, returning to the spiritual plane until someone is foolish enough to summon them again.”

“But…” Kira trails off, looking straight at Stiles.

She’s not the only one looking at him, they all are. Something the Japanese man cannot help but notice.

“What my packmate doesn’t dare say out-loud is that I was possessed by a nogitsune, years ago.” Stiles explains quietly. “The fox had me for a few weeks, not even a month, and I fought it every step of the way. Eventually my pack found a way to save me.”

“How…?” The Japanese man sounds honestly at a loss.

“The Shugendo scroll,” Stiles explains. “Changing the host.”

“That might be enough to enable others to capture the nogitsune, but not to save the host,” the man insisted. “Especially not one who’d been possessed for weeks… That girl… she was a host for less than a week and there was very little left of her by the time I found her…”

Stiles knows what he means, while his team might have focused on the fact that they couldn’t find a visible cause of death. When Stiles looks at her the first thing he picks up on is… the emptiness. Like the man said, the body is little more than an empty husk.

“The fox got tired of my fighting back, opposing its will at every turn,” Stiles explains. “It… basically kicked me out of my own body. What it didn’t realize, because I myself wasn’t fully aware of it at the time, was just how great my magical potential was.”

“You forged a new body for yourself…” The man gasps in realization.

“Essentially,” Stiles shrugs, barely keeping himself from blushing at the awe in the man’s voice.

“You’re extraordinary, supāku-dono,” a mix of awe and respect in his voice. “My name is Hiroki Zhang, Shinto Priest, and the one chosen to guard the Sado Nemeton…”

Chapter VI. Tijuana.

In some ways, not much changes following the trip to Japan; in others, a lot changes. Stiles’s team looks at him just a little bit differently. Learning that he’s survived something that no one else ever has, that he has enough magic he could even create a new body for himself… Thankfully, they can see that Stiles doesn’t like being treated differently, so they go back to acting as they ever have around him in a relatively short time.

Aside from that is the fact that Stiles has found a new friend in Zhang. While the man doesn’t seem to be interested in carrying a mobile. He does have an email which he checks with some regularity in a computer he keeps in his cottage. According to him, both the computer and the email address he got at the insistence of his niece, his younger brother’s daughter. He just loves her. The girl works with her dad at the family restaurant in the mainland, though she visits him at least once a month, sometimes even spending a few days with him. He’s expecting her to bring along her boyfriend on her next visit.

Zhang also knows a lot about nemeta. Living and protecting one as he does. It’s information Stiles is very eager to learn, considering how it might be useful when he eventually returns to Beacon Hills.

xXx

A mistake people often make, even those who should know better, is becoming overconfident, letting their guard down. The SCU are not exempt from this. After Japan, the team works on many cases, none in which they ever come as close as they did then to having the shadow-world outed (especially in a way such that would make humans, if not outright hostile, at least very, very afraid).

Skye creates several programs that allow her to keep an eye out for any possible pictures and videos being shared on media that might come too close to revealing the existence of the supernatural. And makes a point of getting rid of those, going all the way to the source. Doing what hacking might be needed to ensure things get done. This of course brings about a number of conspiracy theories, mostly about what some secret society somewhere, or ‘the government(s)’ might be hiding. Thankfully no one has seen enough of the posts to pick up on why exactly they’re being deleted. It might happen one day, but hopefully not any time soon.

And then they get a mission to Mexico. Which ends up being a complete clusterfuck.

It starts with an arrest. Or rather, several arrests. Mexican authorities manage to arrest a number of criminals during an Op in a small town not far from Mexicali. Among those arrested are a fair few members of a known cartel, and three Calaveras, including none other than Severo Calavera.

Thanks to a shift in power in the country in recent years, an accord is made, to send two of the three Calaveras (the two whose names have been on American arrest warrants for years!) to the US so they can go on trial for their crimes in that country.

It wasn’t supposed to be anything big. No more than prisoner transport. So they didn’t send the whole team. Hotch and Ashley went with a small team to get the prisoners across the border and to a prison in San Diego, at least until they can arrange proper transport to LA, NY or one of the other cities where they have DAs and judges who can handle the cases.

They’re about an hour away from Tijuana and the border, when there’s an explosion.

Then the shooting begins.

When it’s all said and done Hotch’s in the hospital with a list of injuries half as long as his arm. He managed to avoid a bullet to the head (mostly thanks to Ashley’s quick reflexes), but the three he took to his chest, while they did not get through the specially-spelled vest Stiles arranged for all the humans in the team, they still hit him with enough force to at least crack two of his ribs, also, the one to his leg made him lose a fair amount of blood. And the initial explosion damaged his ears.

Of the six officers who were with them in the convoy, four from the Mexican State Guard, and two from the American Border Patrol, three are dead, while one of the Americans is still alive but will probably never walk again; while one of the Mexicans was hit by a bullet that shattered his collarbone, and has been told it’s unlikely she’ll ever recover full range of motion (she’s lucky she’s still alive, if the bullet had hit her a bit lower it’d have gone straight into her lung, or probably her heart); while the other is in a coma, after a graze to the head, and a bullet to the leg means he lost so much blood they don’t know if he’ll ever wake up. The only reason Ashley’s not dead herself, or on a bed right beside the others is her own shifter-healing.

Surprisingly enough, and despite how disastrous it all was. They did not lose. They still have Severo Calavera in custody. And the only reason they do not have the other one, is because the man’s dead, due to a bullet that went through his neck at some point during the shootout. Also, most of those who attacked their small convoy are dead as well. That includes several known cartel members, and the assumed leader of the attacking group: none other than Amalia Calavera…

“I don’t know if this is gonna be a huge opportunity, or a hell of a mess,” Stiles says after reading through the preliminary report on the shootout.

He and the rest of the team got on the plane and flew to Tijuana the moment they got Ashley’s text. While Stiles cannot really magically heal anyone, he has a few things that can help promote healing and has no compunction about using them, not just to help Hotch, but also the other officers (discreetly so as not to call undue attention onto himself).

“Why?” Hotch asks, curious.

“Because Amalia Calavera was the daughter of Araya Calavera,” Stiles says ominously; though when no one reacts to that, he adds: “The head of the Calavera Hunter Clan?”

“And Severo is her son,” Ashley shrugs, “Her eldest too, from what I understand.”

Stiles realizes one thing right then. While they’ve had their cases against hunter families, they usually go after, if not the whole family, all the adults. There’s some nuance regarding hunter families they’ve never had to go into. Also, there are things Stiles knows about Hunter Clans, that aren’t exactly common knowledge. He didn’t realize it at first, but having known the Argents, and especially Allison, during a time when she was, if not pretending at least trying to be good, has its perks.

“Yeah, patriarchy’s still a thing pretty much everywhere in the world I know, but not here,” Stiles points out. “Or at least, not for these specific families: Hunter Clans are matriarchal. Why? I… actually have no idea. But from what I remember being told once: women are the leaders, men are the soldiers, in those families.”

The expressions on several of his teammates show they’re probably starting to understand a few things. Things that happened during previous cases, and the trials against hunters.

“What are the… well, how does this affect us?” Ashley asks.

“Does it?” Grant inquires almost at the same time.

“It depends entirely on you,” Stiles admits.

Hotch gestures at Stiles to elaborate. Truth is that while Hotch might be Unit Chief, and might have learned a lot throughout the years being involved with the supernatural, he knows there are things he still doesn’t get. Not the way Stiles does. Truth is, if the younger man weren’t so focused on eventually leaving, returning to his hometown, Hotch would be training him to eventually succeed him. Ashley’s really good, but even she agrees Stiles would be far better in Hotch’s position than her.

“According to the warrants,” Stiles elaborates. “The crimes Severo Calavera is wanted for are… well, I won’t say they’re minor, exactly. But even with all of them put together, they won’t get him more than a few years in prison, a decade at most. With a good lawyer it’ll be much less than that. This I think is because, as the one closest to his mother, he’s rarely been involved in crimes on our side of the border.”

“Why were they sending him to us, then?” Skye asks, curious.

“Well, we do still have a warrant for his arrest, so…” Stiles shrugs.

The other Calavera they were transporting, Emiliano Calavera, had been the one they were most interested in. Clearly one of the enforcers. His rapsheet included assault, gun-trafficking, kidnapping, torture, and several accounts of first and second degree murder. He’d have only gotten life in a maximum security prison if he wasn’t sentenced to death (probably would have depended on which judge got his case). In any case, for good or ill, he’s dead now (probably for good).

“As you all might or might not know, I did a lot of research on the main Hunter Families, when the Argent trial began,” Stiles explains. “While the Mexican government got in the way of us properly going after the Calaveras, that didn’t stop me from looking into them. Especially with my own past dealings with them.”

The team knows about that already, at least in general terms. The way the Calaveras were the ones to find Kate Argent when she first turned, how they tried to get her to kill herself, as was ‘tradition’ whenever a hunter was bitten. Yet that’s not what happened. They also know that the Calaveras hurt the Hales, and several members of the Beacon Hills pack at least once.

“Araya Calaveras is not a good woman, but she’s not unreasonable either.” Stiles tries his best to put his thoughts into words. “From what I found out, she had three children. Her youngest, Francisco, died several years ago in what I’m pretty sure was a wrongful hunt,” one that went against even the hunter code, and not just human law. “And now Amalia, her daughter and heiress, is dead as well. Araya is clearly past her child-bearing years. She has no siblings, and only distant cousins. Which means that aside from her, Severo is all that’s left of the main Calavera line.”

“So… she has no heiress,” Grant summarizes. “Unless… grandchildren?”

“None, far as I’ve been able to find out.” Stiles shrugs. “But… and this is the part we should be focusing on. If her remaining son were to marry… to a woman Araya approves of, and father a daughter, that girl could be raised to be the next head of the Calavera Hunters.”

“Do we want there to be a new Calavera head?” Kira pipes in.

“As opposed to all those hunters running around with no order and no control, absolutely,” Hotch states. “As bad as hunters might be. Them having no reliable leadership could potentially end up being even worse. We’d then have them fighting each other for leadership, and who knows what they might end up doing in an attempt to prove they deserve to be the next head of the family…”

Considering they’re talking about a Hunter Clan… nothing good.

“So your plan is, what?” Ashley turns to Stiles. “We use Severo to negotiate with Araya?”

“Exactly,” Stiles nods seriously. “It happens all the time. Deals get made with lesser criminals to try and catch bigger ones. Or at least improve our chances.”

“What do you think Mrs. Calavera would be willing to give?” Hotch sounds honestly interested.

“For her only remaining son? Probably a fair bit.” Stiles can only hope.

xXx

Days later they’re still in Tijuana. Hotch and Ashley have talked to Judges Pearson and McCoy, who’re tentatively in agreement of the SCU’s plan to negotiate a deal with the Calaveras, as long as they can get Araya to offer something significant. At the very least, someone from their wanted list.

And then Skye goes missing.

She just left the safe-house they’ve been staying at (local authorities believing it would be safer than a hotel, more easily secured) to walk a few blocks to a small Chinese cafe she’s taken a liking to. Whenever it’s her turn to get lunch she tends to pick that place, and while few on the team are really fans of Chinese food, they all like something from the place.

The thing is, that day Skye makes her way to the restaurant, she buys the food… but never makes it back. The team manages to get into the security feed of an ATM and in it find a blurry image of the young woman standing in a corner, waiting for the light to change so she can cross the street. A bus goes through, blocking the image for a handful of seconds, and when they can see the corner again, Skye’s gone.

Of course, almost everyone immediately suspects the exact same person, or rather, people:

“It’s not the Calaveras,” surprisingly enough it’s Stiles who opposes their beliefs.

“Wha…?” They’re all clearly thrown by his certainty as he says that.

“How are you so sure?” Grant demands.

“First, because we still have Severo, Araya would never risk her son by coming after one of us,” Stiles states. “She’s ruthless, not stupid.”

“Maybe she plans on exchanging Skye for her son,” Ashley offers.

It’s not a bad idea, and it’d certainly throw all their current plans, except for one thing:

“I put wards on the area, and also on the vests you all wear for protection,” Stiles reveals quietly. “Trust me, if hunters had her, I’d know.”

And that’s not all.

“Also, I received a call from one of my contacts,” Stiles adds. “There’s a supernatural… tribe, I guess you could call them, here in Mexico. They have a small enclave just outside the town of Tula, Hidalgo. Though most members seem to actually live in Mexico City and its surroundings. They’re known as Flores, the flowers, due to their powers.”

“You have a contact in one of the most secretive magical tribes on the continent?” Ashley asks.

She’s obviously surprised. Stiles wouldn’t say that the Flowers are secretive, not really. Mexico is a bit of a conundrum where the supernatural is concerned. A lot of people, not just those who have ‘powers’ of some kind themselves, know about the existence of the shadow-world. They don’t treat it like a secret, or something to hide, the whole opposite in fact. Then again, they also talk about things like aliens, and angels, apparitions and a lot of other stuff like they’re just as real… Though, Stiles supposes that him not knowing for sure that any of those exist, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t, so…

In any case, it’s clear that because of the way people talk about one thing or the other, those already in the know, don’t see a problem about it; and those not in the know think those people are crazy and don’t believe any of what they say (rather than realizing that at least some of it might be true).

“I was told one of their own would be coming to meet with us,” Stiles states, doing his best to ignore Ashley’s comment. “She has information that will help us find Skye.”

“What kind of information?” Hotch wants to know immediately.

“How do they even know anything if they live in a whole different city?!” Grant demands, not fully believing it.

“Because my gift allows me to know things,” a new voice announces.

There’s a young woman standing by the door (most in the team blink, not having noticed when there was knocking at the door, or when Kira went to let their visitor inside); she’s of below average height, with an hourglass figure, coffee brown eyes and long brunette hair in a half twist; dressed in skinny-jeans, a pale blue long-sleeved top with cut-offs on the shoulders and elbows, and off-white shoes with high-heels and platform (giving her back some height, so she doesn’t look quite so small beside everyone else). The most curious detail, however, is the fact that she’s wearing what looks almost like a shawl; hand-woven, off-white with tiny blue flowers embroidered throughout (it’s called a rebozo, as they’ll learn at some point).

“I am Veronica,” she announces calmly. “And I have a gift for knowing truth. I can tell truth from lie, can see through illusions, disguises, anything that someone might be using, intentionally or not, to try and hide, it doesn’t work on me.”

“What truth do you bring to us?” Stiles asks formally.

“Your friend,” Veronica explains. “The beautiful flower, she’s in the Barrio Chino.”

There’s something in the way she says ‘beautiful flower’, like she’s saying something else, something more. Like she’s saying a name, not Skye but…

“Barrio Chino…?” Stiles repeats, translating the words in his head. “Chinatown? Why?”

“You’ve made a habit of fighting monsters,” Veronica tells them. “Especially those not everyone might realize are such. But I fear you might have forgotten that monsters come in all shapes and sizes. And while it’s true that often the hunters have been the greater evil in our world, that’s not always the case.”

Hotch’s the first to parse what that means, exactly:

“Supernaturals have her,” he realizes.

“But why?” Ashley blurts out. “I mean, not saying that all supernaturals must be good, or support our team or anything, but why her?”

“You must know, ash tree, this has nothing to do with your team,” Veronica’s next announcement surprises everyone. “This is about blood, and tradition. There are those that do not agree with your friend’s choices…”

“Her choices…” Kira repeats, at a loss.

“To abandon her old family,” Grant hisses. “The ones who didn’t want her anyway.”

“Something you need to understand, great guard,” Veronica says to him. “Is that in Chinese culture, the family is seen as the foundation of all personal and social relationships. Families encompass a sense of belonging, loyalty and shared identity. To them, what the beautiful flower did was a deep betrayal, of all they believe in. It doesn’t matter to them how good her reasons for doing it might be. It’s still a betrayal of blood and tradition…”

Stiles realizes something then. The phrases Veronica’s using to refer to them: beautiful flower, ash tree, great guard, even when she said barrio chino, in Spanish, even though she’s been talking to them in English, she has been using the names of people, and places, the meanings of all the names. Seeing the truth, indeed…

“How do we find her?” Grant asks.

They need to know. Even if they might be able to ask pretty much anyone where Chinatown is, if they do things that way they run the risk of Skye being hurt before they can get to her (or hurt more, rather, and none of the team really wants to think about that!).

xXx

It’s already dark by the time they make it to where Veronica told them they’d be able to find Skye. They have only a very general idea of the building, and the numbers they’re going against, but none of them really want to leave their teammate, their friend, in that place, with those people, for any longer. And Grant is more than willing to storm the place alone if he has to. So they go in.

They manage to take the Chens by surprise. According to what Kira found out after calling her parents, they’re a clan of supernaturals, one of the ‘dragon lines’. They weren’t shifters. The name was apparently connected with the whole Yin-Yang; the supernatural clans with mostly passive or defensive powers were known as ‘phoenix lines’, while the ones with more active powers, those useful for attack, were the ‘dragon lines’. There were several of each. The Chens were a very particular line in that their power was basically that of illusions, except instead of using them in a passive or defensive way, they used them to create terrors, and to manipulate their opponents into attacking each other. Which was how they’d come to be seen as dragons rather than phoenixes. And while historically the family was well known for their service to past emperors. The current ones, especially the ones living in America, were well-known to be involved in various criminal ventures, particularly trafficking.

When the team goes in, they’re each carrying small blue flowers on their person, veronica flowers. A gift from the young woman to allow them to ‘see truth’. It means that no matter how many illusions the Chens throw against them, the team sees straight through them.

They find Skye cuffed to a chair by the wrists and ankles. One of the sleeves of her off-white blouse is ripped, and there’s dirt and traces of blood on the garment, same as on her khaki colored capri pants. She’s not wearing shoes. There are bruises and burns all over her golden tanned skin, her lip is split and there’s blood matting her temple.

Grant becomes so furious when seeing his girlfriend like that, he practically growls. He also throws himself against the Chens with renewed fury.

There are a lot of Chens, and the team aren’t really trying to kill them, so the fight lasts longer than it probably would have, otherwise. Ashley goes down briefly when one of them uses a shock baton on her (the same they used on Skye…). Stiles does his best to drop those he believes to be the most dangerous, the ring-leaders of the operation; he cannot do it a lot, but a handful of people, knocked out for a few minutes (just long enough to finish the fight and cuff them if necessary), he can do.

Soon enough pretty much all of the Chens are on the ground, either unconscious or hurt enough not to be in a hurry to get back up.

And then… something none of them saw coming: one of the younger members of the group, a girl, with the tips of her short black hair dyed a teal color, wearing short-shorts and a t-shirt big enough to be falling off one of her shoulder, showing part of her bright-green bra, picks a gun from somewhere (none of them really know where) and points it straight at Skye!

“Gun!” Hotch yells, loud.

But they’re all too far away, both from Skye and the girl. Stiles raises a hand to try and drop her, but he’s already swaying, having overextended himself, he doesn’t have the power needed to do it. And then she’s pulling the trigger…

“GRANT!!!”

Chapter VII. Quantico.

Sometimes Stiles hates being professional. It’s somehow even worse than just being a responsible adult (which sometimes he feels is bad enough). Yet he is still, very much a professional, responsible adult, which is why Stiles stays in Tijuana, with Ashley and Kira as his backup, while Hotch gets Skye and Grant on the plane, and the plane to Chicago. Where he’s called in some favors to get Grant an appointment with Dr. Berger, the best orthopedic surgeon in the world.

Back in the barrio chino, when that girl shot at Skye, Grant was the only one anywhere close to her, having been intending to find a way to release her from the tight, wide cuffs that kept her secured to the chair. He couldn’t stop the shooter, or get Skye out of the way (the chair was bolted to the floor) all he could do, and did, in the end, was take the shots himself. He threw himself in front of his girlfriend and received two shots. The first hit him low in the right side of his chest, just high enough for the bullet to be caught by his vest, which lessened the damage considerably. The second bullet however, hit him in the leg, in his knee, to be precise, destroying it completely.

Hence them needing the best possible orthopedic surgeon.

Stiles, Ashley and Kira stay in Mexico only long enough to arrange a meeting with Araya Calavera in Tecate where, after several hours of intense negotiation, a deal is reached.

The moment it’s all finalized, the three are crossing the border and heading to the closest airport so they might catch a commercial flight to Chicago themselves.

Turns out that Hotch knows some pretty interesting people, and was owed some pretty good favors. By the time the three make it to the Rush University Medical Center Grant’s already undergone surgery and is under watch to ensure his recovery.

The moment they’re there, Stiles pulls a couple of phials with light-green, subtly-glowing liquid out of one of his ‘magic pockets’ and hands them over to Skye. Who doesn’t even bother asking what’s in them (more than used to Stiles’s strange concoctions after working with him for years), just uncorking them, throwing one back like it’s a shot, before turning and helping Grant swallow his own.

“Urg!” They both express their disgust at the taste.

“Why do healing potions always taste so awful?” Grant wants to know.

“Because of the ingredients needed for healing,” Stiles answers honestly. “I cannot add anything for flavor or even to sweeten, because I risk there being a wrong interaction and the potion not working right. It’s not worth it.”

“So, what does this one do?” Grant asks as he settles back on the mountain of cushions on the hospital bed as comfortably as he can.

“It’ll improve your healing, and hasten it a bit,” Stiles told him.

“Couldn’t you have given it to him back when we were still in Tijuana?” Skye asks softly. “He was in so much pain…”

Stiles doesn’t take offense to her words, he knows they come from a good place. She’s not making less of Stiles, or his actions, just worrying over the one she loves.

“I…” Stiles runs a hand through his hair, trying to find the right words to explain things. “Magical healing isn’t like in the movies. It’s not… it doesn’t undo the damage, like it never happened. What it does is basically push your own healing into being faster.” he swallows. “See, healing is basically cells reproducing, in order to like, recover blood, to close gashes, etc. So healing obviously takes time. What magical healing does, either my potions, or magicals who can, you know, actually heal, is accelerate the rate at which the cells reproduce. Thus you heal faster. However, there are things that must be taken into consideration: we cannot regrow limbs. Like, if I were to find you after someone’s cut off your finger, if I made it there fast enough, I could probably help with the reattaching, but if it’s gone, like, destroyed, there’s nothing I can do; other than heal what’s left of the hand, I mean. Likewise, when it comes to broken bones, I can make them heal, but I cannot make them do so the right way. Grant had to go through that surgery, because someone needed to put all the pieces where they needed to go. I couldn’t do that. All I can do is ensure that, now that it’s been done, the bone fuses faster, that he heals faster. Also, lessen chances of infection, that sort of thing.”

He supposes, all things told, it’s possible that someone out there, perhaps a witch or some other magical with a healing power, would be able to do a better kind of healing. But this is what he can do, so…

“I’ve been thinking,” Ashley murmurs thoughtfully. “Doesn’t cell reproduction involve aging and all that? Like, does enhancing healing like this mean that Grant’s effectively aging faster?”

“He is, a bit,” Stiles admits. “Though not as much as, say… he’s not like, losing the six months to a year that it’d have taken him to fully heal the human way, just because I’m doing this. He might end up losing a few weeks, but even that’s a bit extreme. The only serious ‘loses’ I’ve ever encountered with cases like this is… well, the Mexican agent that was in a coma, Alvarez? He woke up a day or so before we left. He’s still recovering, and some damage cannot be fully healed; and he’s probably lost a couple of years, if not a bit more, from his natural lifetime but…”

“But if you hadn’t helped him, he might have never woken up at all,” Hotch finishes for him.

Stiles just shrugs. Really, losing a few years, as opposed to losing your life entirely? As far as he’s concerned it’s an easy choice to make.

“What happened with the Calavera deal?” Grant asks eventually, he really wants to know.

“As agreed, Severo Calavera will serve the minimum time for his various charges in the la Mesa prison, in Tijuana.” Stiles explains as he passes a file to Hotch with all the paperwork. “Once he’s out, he will not be leaving the Calavera complex for a further few years.” he swallows. “As I’m sure you must know by now, one of the biggest Calavera enforcers was turned in to the authorities, just over the border from Tecate.”

“Yes, Isidro Calavera,” Hotch nods. “He was remanded to USP Victorville, the closest high-security facility. In the two days he’s been there he’s already been involved in several fights, and was responsible for half a dozen men, some of the worst criminals in South California, ending in the infirmary with everything from deep-tissue bruising, sprained wrists and shoulders, to a broken arm.”

“Establishing his position as the top dog,” Ashley says, not at all surprised.

“Will he expect a deal too?” Hotch wants to know.

“No,” Stiles shakes his head. “He was essentially Araya’s attack-dog, still is. He’s in prison because she ordered him there. He’ll stay there until his term ends, and either die there, or eventually get out and go back to her.”

The team has nothing to say to that. It’s hard to tell if they’re more shocked, fascinated or horrified by such a level of loyalty and devotion. The man is a criminal, a murderer and no doubt about that. But still, for him to just go to prison, because she told him to… It’s a stark reminder of all the things they still do not understand about Hunter Clans (that, hopefully, they’ll never understand).

“The most important part of the deal, however,” Stiles gets back to the original topic of conversation. “Is that, as of three days ago, the Calaveras will be staying south of the border. No more will they be crossing into the US and committing crimes there, only to then flee to Mexico to hide. Our country is from now on safe from them.”

“And you just took her word on that?” Grant asks, disbelieving.

“It’s not a matter of taking anyone’s word,” Stiles shakes his head. “A geas has been placed on the Calavera family, and all who follow them, by blood, name and deed. They, and their hunters, cannot cross the border. It will continue for as long as there is a Calavera Hunter Clan.”

That does leave everyone more than a little in awe.

Stiles for his part will admit to not being entirely satisfied. He wishes he could have done more. That there was a way to ensure the Calaveras won’t be hurting anyone, anywhere, ever again. But he cannot do that. This is the best he can do. And he’s done it.

“Good work,” Hotch smiles proudly at him as he puts away the file.

It really is. Better than most expected would be possible. That’s one less criminal group they have to worry about. That’s their people being a little bit safer, humans and supernaturals. Good work indeed.

xXx

“Xiuying Long,” Skye blurts out unexpectedly one day.

They’re finally back in Quantico. Grant’s wearing a brace and using crutches; his girlfriend shadowing his every step (it’s unlikely she’d be able to keep him up if something were to happen, considering he’s taller, heavier and stronger than her… but at least the intent is there). The doctors back in Chicago were satisfied with his recovery thus far (which was only a bit faster and further than would have been normal, as Stiles decided to wait to give him the stronger potions until they were back home) and arrangements have been made for PT and any necessary consultations with a local orthopedist.

This little meeting is, in fact, taking place in Grant’s and Skye’s townhouse, in the suburbs. Since he’s on medical leave and she’s insisted she can do her work from a distance if she has to.

“Long?” Ashley asks. “Isn’t that the biggest ‘dragon line?”

At the disbelieving looks from her teammates, she reacts defensively:

“I read on the various Chinese supernatural lines while we were back in Tijuana waiting for the meeting with Calavera,” she explains. “There was a lot of information. Like how the Chens were basically at the bottom of it all, while the Longs were the most powerful of the active lines. With a history of serving as royal bodyguards, military generals and the like. The Huangs being the most powerful of the phoenix lines…” she exhales. “Very interesting reading actually. Though most of it seemed to go around the idea of the monarchy which, according to google, China hasn’t been ruled by a king in more than a hundred years.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the problem,” Skye admits with a small shrug. “Or rather, the families’ insistence on living in the past, is.”

“You said Xiuying Long,” Kira points out. “Who’s that?”

Stiles suspects he already knows the answer, and he’s not the only one. By Hotch’s expression, it’s clear he’s on the same page; while Grant must already know everything.

“I am,” and there it is, the confirmation. “I was born Xiuying Long, to Chinese immigrants, in San Francisco, California. The whole story is a bit long and complicated, but both my parents were Longs, distant cousins, I think. Their ancestors left China many generations ago, like so many others, looking for better opportunities in other lands. They, like many other supernatural bloodlines from Asia, sought to remain ‘pure’, arranging marriages to secure one more generation every time.”

Several of her team-members make a gesture at that. It’s not like… they’re far from the only people still doing arranged marriages (despite the fact that it’s the 21^st century already!) but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.

“You know how you said that the Chinese supernaturals seem to be fixated on the monarchy, despite the fact that there hasn’t been a king in China since, like, 1912 or something?” Skye asks, not really waiting for a response before she goes on: “That’s because many of them have this idea that if the monarchy returns, all the old stories will become true again. That if there’s a king on the throne, he’ll make them all into his protectors, his council, his generals, like it was in the old days. It’s a bit of a secret, but several supernatural clans were actually behind the last attempt to bring back the monarchy, in the 1970s.”

Everyone blinks because, what? All those people are living their lives waiting for some kind of fairytale? It actually reminds Stiles of the Mexican telenovelas Melissa liked so much. Where there was always someone poor, who had the world against them, until suddenly, as if by magic, something happened and everything began going their way, and they met the love of their life and everything was perfect. Actually, now that he thinks about it, that’s kind of what Scott always expected his life to be like, isn’t it?

“How is any of this connected to what happened in Tijuana?” Ashley asks. “Because I’m guessing it is connected, somehow…”

“It is,” Skye nods. “Like I said, my parents were both Longs. It wasn’t that big a deal, not really, with us living in San Francisco and not in China. Not until the last couple of generations. Some things happened, I don’t know what all it was, but there are no more Longs back in China. Well, there might be some descendants who long ago married into other families, but they’re not really Longs anymore, you know? Somehow we ended up becoming the only true Longs, the only ‘true great dragons’ so-to-speak.” she exhales. “And then I was born human.”

Kira gasps loudly.

“Yeah, it wasn’t good.” Skye nods solemnly. “My parents created this whole fairytale in their heads that one day there would be a king in China again, and when that happened, as the last true dragons our family would be called to serve once again. Only, how could we serve when their child was powerless? It was bad enough that I was born a girl when the clans have always been patrilineal, but a human girl? To say they were angry would be to put it nicely.”

“Why not just, well, have other children?” Ashley asks, somewhat bluntly.

“While they might not have been living in China, most of the clans made a habit of following the laws and traditions from that country,” Skye explains. “Including the one about only having one child.” she shakes her head. “Eventually they decided that the only way to make things right was to ensure I’d have a good match. And hope that my own child would have power, even if I did not. It had happened before, apparently. There was the chance that even if I had no power, I might be a carrier.”

Like the magical version of a recessive gene or something.

“Of course the one they chose for me was an absolute bastard,” Skye continues, voice turning sharp. “Older than my own father. He wanted a servant, a slave, not a wife! When I told my parents I wouldn’t be tied to a man like him, my father beat me, while my mother yelled that I would not ‘ruin the family’ or something like that.” She’s so angry, but at the same time, there are tears in the corners of her eyes. “I ran away that night. Never looked back.”

“Do we need to avoid San Francisco in the future?” Ashley asks rather bluntly.

The question seems to honestly surprise everyone, but especially Skye herself.

“No, that’s not necessary,” Skye eventually answers. “I… according to the Chens, my parents are dead now. My mother committed suicide not long after I ran away, supposedly the dishonor I brought the family was so great she couldn’t stand it. My father got involved in a number of ventures, some legal, some not; until he eventually tried to cheat the wrong person and they killed him.” She exhales. “Is it bad that I don’t mourn them? I mean, they were still my parents…”

“They were shit parents,” Ashley tells her bluntly. “Trust me, I’d know. My father was a serial killer. And in any case, we don’t care about any of that. We care about you, about our teammate. It’s Skye who is a member of our family, not Xiuying Long… If you ever want to reclaim that name that’s fine, of course, but to us you’ve always been Skye, and if you want to remain just her…”

“Yes, I…” Tears finally start falling down Skye’s cheeks. “I’m Skye, just Skye.”

The conversation gets a tad less fraught after that. Eventually people start getting hungry and Stiles offers to cook for the group, with some assistance from Kira. Hotch is good for making breakfast, and not much else, while all Ashley’s good at is making instant-noodles and microwave dinners, that sort of stuff. Grant is good at cooking (not as much as Stiles, but still pretty good) but he has to stay off that knee and Skye… most of the things she knows how to cook are Chinese dishes, and not even the modern ones, but the really old, more traditional versions. Also, cooking is… complicated for her. It’s something her mother taught her, as it was something expected of her: and as such it’s tied to all this mountain of expectations… She had to know how to cook, in order to be a good housewife and mother, just like she was expected to be proper, and obedient and submissive and… there’s a reason Skye doesn’t really do much cooking nowadays. If she and Grant are cooking together, that’s different (also, it usually involves him teaching her modern non-Asian dishes).

So Stiles and Kira start cooking, with Skye watching from behind the counter. The mage cannot help but start noticing a few things: like how fidgety she is, the way she’s continuously looking around, especially in the direction of the doors, and of Grant. It looks like it actually costs her, having him out of her direct line of sight. And also, there are dark bags under her eyes, and she doesn’t look quite as put together as she usually prefers…

Stiles waits until the stir-fry is all put together in the pan, leaving Kira to keep an eye on it and stir it until it’s fully cooked, while he approaches Skye, handing her a glass of water as an excuse for his approach before sitting across from her.

“How long did you sleep last night?” he asks her straight out.

He doesn’t ask her how she’s doing, he’s not the kind to ask stupid questions.

“Two, three hours, maybe?” Her hesitation is enough to tell him it might not have even been that much. “The real issue is that I keep waking up, and whenever I do, for a moment I think I might still be back there and…”

It all comes pouring out then. It’s clear she’s been holding onto things, as hard as she can, trying to be strong, trying not to bother the team (perhaps not even Grant) but she really, really needs help. And that’s perfectly alright.

“And the worst part is that I keep waking Grant up,” Skye concludes. “He needs to rest!”

“So do you,” Stiles points out. “And trust me, if you try to convince him that you can sleep elsewhere or something, until it gets better. It won’t help. It won’t help you, and it won’t help him. Because I’ve a feeling that the two of you being together is one of the things that’s helping you, it’s a reminder of where you are, that you’re not back there. Also, that he’s alive, even though he was badly hurt, he’s alive. And to him it’s a reminder that you’re there, with him. If you try to change your sleeping arrangements that will probably only make things worse. And you need to sleep. Both of you do.”

“But how?” she asks.

“Trust me, I know exactly how you’re feeling…” Stiles begins.

“That’s… there’s no way!” she snaps. “You cannot possibly know! You’ve never…”

“Been abducted from a public place, in broad daylight, in plain sight of so many people, yet somehow having it go unnoticed by everyone there?” Stiles cuts her off. “Ending up in a room that looks so innocuous at first sight, yet becomes absolutely terrifying, not because of the place itself, but because of what happens to you there? Seeing the people who took you, who hurt you, and telling yourself that you’re strong, you’re stronger than them… and you are, you definitely are, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re captive. Feeling trapped, and hurt and weak and… useless. Wanting people, your people to come after you, to save you, to be your heroes… and at the same time being absolutely terrified, because what if they get hurt trying to save you?” he exhales, forcing himself to calm down after things got a bit intense for a moment there. “Trust me, I definitely understand.”

“How…?” Skye is clearly at a loss.

“When I was in my sophomore year of high-school, I was kidnapped, off the lacrosse field, right at the end of the state championship, while everyone was busy celebrating… I was thrown into a veritable murder basement, made to watch two of my classmates, Derek’s betas, strung up in a corner, with electricity running through them, keeping them unable to fight back or escape. And then I was beaten up. By a psychotic old man. And he was old. Old enough… I should have been stronger than him, strong enough to defend myself, to fight back. But I wasn’t. He beat me up, punched me and kicked me around. Until I was on that basement floor, moaning in pain. Almost begging him to stop. The pain was bad. I ended up with a broken rib and two more that cracked but didn’t actually break; almost broke my arm too, and my collarbone, got a minor concussion,” which was actually worsened later on when he ran his Jeep through an actual wall, but that’s a whole different story. “and so many bruises all over my body… But you know what was even worse than all the pain? It was feeling so weak so… useless. I couldn’t even defend myself from a fucking murder grandpa!”

“How long did it take your… your people, to rescue you?” Skye asks quietly.

“They didn’t,” that answer only seems to shake Skye more. “I… I don’t blame them, not really. Back then Derek and I… we weren’t close, weren’t pack. And also, there was other stuff going on, stuff he needed to deal with.”

“How did you get out then?” Skye wants to know.

“I was let go,” Stiles shrugs. “I was supposed to be some kind of message. To… someone else. To show him how little power he actually had. I was supposed to be a graphic reminder of the power they, the hunters, truly had. The fact that they could take anyone, anywhere, keep them captive, beat them up, and there was nothing S… nothing anyone could do about it.”

“Stiles…” Skye gasps, horrified.

“Of course because I’m, well, me, I refused to play ball.” Stiles says, trying to sound as blasé as possible. “I went straight home, where my dad was already looking for me, incredibly worried. Made up a story about the opposing team taking their anger out on me to explain my bruised face and split lip. Because, by the way, I was the one who scored the winning goal in that game! Never got the chance to enjoy the celebration but anyway!” he shakes his head. “It’s not like it was the first time I had to see to my own injuries without others finding out about them… or the last.”

He ends his speech there because right then Skye rounds the counter and goes to hug him, Kira joining from the other side (Stiles didn’t even notice when she turned off the stove). He feels watched, and when he raises his head he notices they’re all looking at him, even Grant, from the big armchair he’s sitting on. Ashley looks especially perturbed for some reason.

“That’s not in your file.” Ah, that’s why.

“A lot of things are not in my file,” Stiles admits with a shrug. “Hotch knows the basics.”

“I didn’t know how bad it was.” Hotch points out. “When we talked about it you just said that hunters kidnapped you off the lacrosse field, threw you into the Argent basement, and that Gerard beat you up a bit. Nothing major, I think I remember you saying.”

“I…” Stiles exhales. “I think I grew so used to making less of things, to ensure that psycho grandpa would not get away with things, with making me a fucking message, that it kind of became habit.”

Also, it was easier than admitting to some other things: like his own disappointment that he was never rescued, that the others weren’t even looking for him. And he understands! He really does, but it doesn’t always make things better. Also, while Derek not caring much about things was understandable (they weren’t pack at the time, after all), the fact that Scott didn’t even realize anything was off with Stiles after that night… that all through the summer, while Stiles was recovering from everything, his so-called best-friend was entirely focused on Allison-fucking-Argent… He didn’t even ask about Stiles’ split lip! Being honest, Stiles doesn’t know if he’d have told Scott the truth, or kept on with the lie about the opposing team, but Scott didn’t even ask! Though whether that’s because he didn’t actually notice, or just didn’t care… Stiles thinks he’d rather not know…

Lunch goes pretty well. Everyone enjoys the stir-fry. And they even have desert, some pie and ice-cream that Hotch and Ashley buy.

At some point they talk about Stiles’s techniques to handle his PTSD, the things that worked, the things that didn’t. Nowadays he also has the numbers of several in-the-know therapists, which he gives to Skye, in case she ever decides she’s willing to talk to someone (therapy isn’t for everyone, he knows, but sometimes just having the option helps).

After lunch they go back to the sitting-room. Grant on the big armchair, Skye on the armrest, while everyone else takes spots on the various couches around the room. It’s Grant who brings up the next topic of conversation, one that surprises pretty much everyone…

“What do you mean you’re retiring?” Kira asks in disbelief.

They’re all still looking at Grant in shock. Who fidgets a bit on the big armchair he’s sitting on.

“My injury… it qualifies as a career-ending injury,” Grant explains quietly. “I’m not a quitter. I’ve never been the kind of man to give up, especially because… my doctor says my recovery is going great. That there’s a chance I won’t even have much of a limp, if I continue ‘doing whatever it is I’m doing’ and improve steadily over the next few months.”

“Grant,” Hotch cuts him off, gently but firmly. “If you want to leave field-work, that’s your right. It doesn’t mean you’re quitting, or giving up, or anything like that.”

“I think… I think if it were just me I’d take my chances but… but it’s not just me, not just us anymore,” he reveals.

Skye’s already sitting on the armrest of the big chair he’s on, and as he says that, she guides one of his hands low on her belly, where the slightest curve is only just visible… and only because the shirt she’s wearing is tighter than she usually prefers, and she’s wearing no vest or flannel.

“You’re pregnant!” Kira practically squeals.

“I’m pregnant!” Skye announces loudly, like she can barely believe it herself.

Things get a bit insane for a little while as Ashley and Kira rush to congratulate the two, wanting to touch Skye’s belly, as if they could feel the baby despite the fact that it must be pretty small still.

“How…?” Stiles eventually asks softly.

“Oh come on Stiles, I know you’re with Derek but you know exactly how babies are made!” Kira exclaims, a bit more crassly than usual.

She does seem to realize what she just implied afterwards, for she slaps a hand over her mouth almost immediately. Some chuckles follow, though they’re more due to her own reaction than anything else.

“That’s not what I meant,” Stiles shakes his head before focusing on Skye. “I saw you, when we found you, in the barrio chino. The bruises, the burn marks… you were beaten, and electrocuted, you…”

“I should have miscarried,” Skye nods evenly.

That brings everyone up short, as Ashley and Kira turn horrified looks to her.

“There was more than 75% chance that I’d lose the baby, after what they did to me,” Skye reveals. “Even though they never hit me in the stomach, the electroshocks alone… It’s hard for a fetus to survive something like that, especially because I was shocked repeatedly. And it’s so small yet, we don’t even know if it’ll be a boy or a girl… I was warned, after Hotch forced me to have a check-up in Chicago. It was the doctor who was examining me who first discovered my pregnancy, he… he began warning me about the things I needed to look out for, the chances of miscarriage… he didn’t realize at first that I hadn’t even known I was pregnant until he said it!”

They’d been so busy with the Calavera case, it was probably unsurprising.

“No one knows how the baby survived,” Skye murmurs. “It’s… it’s happened before, of course, otherwise the chances of miscarriage would have been much higher. And yet… those studies are about women who are in some kind of accident and they get shocked once. Not… not repeatedly. Not women who are… who are tortured… like I was. I… it’s a miracle that my baby survived.”

“I don’t want to leave them,” Grant says quietly. “I… I love my job, but I love Skye, and I love our baby, more.”

“And that’s perfectly alright,” Hotch assures him.

In the end, Grant doesn’t retire entirely. He’s still part of the SCU, just not part of the field-team. He starts working at Quantico, or sometimes from home, which Skye starts doing as well. Helping the team from a distance. That ends up being a good thing, especially when Nessa Claudia Ward is born seven months later…

xXx

Time passes. Days that turn into months that turn into years.

The SCU continues to show themselves as a very good team, saving innocents and taking down both hunters and supernaturals as needed. Only one group manages to continuously elude them: Tamora Monroe and her army.

And they truly have become an army. Kira suggests at one point that their successful campaign against so many law-breaking hunters has made it so those who manage to escape, seek other like-minded individuals in order to survive. Which eventually leads them to Monroe. So… they’re doing such a good job, that their enemies are banding together!

Things are still much improved from what they were when the team was first founded. While only a few more families have gone through trials the way the Argents did, that’s only because many more have chosen to deal with the problem before the FBI makes it there. The first few years there is an almost worrying amount of suspicious suicides and ‘accidents’ taking place not just in North America, but a number of other places as well. Where, upon investigating the victims, it’s discovered that they were responsible for any number of crimes in the shadow-world. At least none such situation is ever as bad as the Dumont disaster. Also, the Calaveras staying south of the border makes things in the South US so much better all around!

More often the leaders of the hunter clans will send their criminals to the closest FBI (or Interpol) offices to wherever they live, along with verifiable information pertaining their crimes, and if at all possible also evidence on why the rest of the family isn’t to blame for those crimes. Considering that at least half of those cases involve people whom Skye claims they might never have been able to catch, not because they’re slouches, but rather they’d have never thought to even look for them; and even if they ever got a reason to go after them, it’d have taken them much longer, Hotch is willing to accept the favor those clans are doing them and not press unless it’s absolutely necessary.

It perhaps helps that it got out that not only are two members of the Hale Pack working with the team, but they have met with Lady Kemp, as well as Alpha Vivian Gandillon of the loup-garou pack (which is a huge pack, spread throughout most of Eastern Europe) in several occasions. This gives the team a level of credibility in the shadow-world that they alone would have never achieved, considering they were the first such team to ever exist, at least properly.

Stiles’s own reputation keeps growing as well, almost more than that of the team as a whole. While on his line of work he’s mostly known as Agent Stilinski, to the shadow-world as a whole he’s known as either Red, Maese Stilinski or, more and more lately: Master Hale (and something tells him it isn’t due to people seeing him as an emissary for the pack as, were that the reason, they’d be calling him exactly that: Emissary Hale. No, the title is for another reason…)

Days, months, years…

A lot of things can happen throughout the years. Cases come and go, dangers, enemies, teammates…

Hotch retires from active duty as well several months after the Calavera case, finally deciding that he’s just not a young man anymore. He remains their Unit Chief, but Ashley takes the position of field-leader, with Stiles as her second in command. There are talks about the possibility of creating more teams, though no one has decided yet if it’s truly necessary; or even who’d be part of those teams. While there are more people nowadays in the know regarding the shadow-world, not many are interested in being so deeply involved in things.

Other team-members come and go, though for the most part the team makes a habit of working with locals whenever they need to up their numbers for whatever the reason. The more their reputation grows, the more people, both supernatural-adjacent, and supernaturals themselves, are willing to work with them. To make their world safer.

Their newest (and youngest) team-members are Jack Hotchner, Hotch’s only son: tall, tanned skin, brown-eyed, dark-blonde hair and in his mid-twenties. His dad was equal parts proud and terrified the day the boy told him of his plans to join the FBI, and not just that but the SCU team. The only member of the team younger than him is Prudence Melinda Halliwell: petite, brunette with big chocolate eyes and long dark brown hair, in her early twenties. She’s a witch, the youngest daughter of the matriarch of the Halliwell Family: Piper Halliwell, and her husband and former whitelighter: Leo Wyatt. The only pure-witch of the younger generation, and with enough power to be considered on a level with her mother and aunts in their beginnings. She’s also Jack’s girlfriend.

Days, months, years. A decade.

A lot of things can happen in a decade.

That’s how long it takes for the team to come face to face with Tamora Monroe…

Chapter VIII. Los Angeles

Stiles has never forgotten what it was that they were pursuing… who they were hunting. It’s not that Monroe is the only enemy left, not exactly, though in some ways she is exactly that. In the years that have passed since the creation of the SCU all known hunter clans have either been taken to trial or cleaned house themselves. And while they’ve gone after other supernatural beings a few times, that hasn’t happened anywhere near as often. Proving perhaps once and for all that hunters, rather than being the ones protecting innocents, have long since (perhaps even always) been the real danger in the shadow-world.

The team knows they’re not perfect. They don’t always manage to catch every single person involved with a crime. And while some are caught later, or even simply found dead somewhere, some seem to vanish into thin air; only reappearing later on, as part of a group attacking yet another pack, enclave, or some other supernatural settlement. They all know what it means: Monroe and her growing army.

It’s ironic really, that in their attempts to bring justice, they’ve also somehow led all their enemies to gather into a single group. A group that keeps growing, their threat becoming worse with every passing year. The worst part is that no matter how hard they try, the team cannot seem to be able to find them.

Until it happens. In Los Angeles, California of all places!

It actually begins a little earlier, and in an entirely different city.

Their latest case takes a completely unexpected turn when a demon (an actual freaking demon!) turns out to be involved. Hunters, werewolves, witches the team can handle just fine, demons… Even having no idea how to handle this enemy, the team just refuses to give up. Things go downhill really quickly, and it’s only thanks to Mel calling in her brothers that they manage to survive. After most of them get transported to what appears to be the demon’s own dimension, a place where the very air they breathe hurts the team’s lungs…. And then there’s Kira, who takes a wound that’d have been fatal had Wyatt Halliwell not had the power to heal and used it to save her (and Stiles had never before seen a magical healing that didn’t just heal damage, but effectively undid it!).

Jack also ends up badly hurt, both due to the poisonous air, and an athame the demon stabs his leg with. It’s in fact him going down that causes Mel to panic and call Wyatt and Chris, shortly before Kira herself is injured while protecting Mel. After the fight is over, the Halliwell siblings insist on the team taking a moment to rest and recuperate, and thus they’re transported to Halliwell manor in San Francisco to do just that.

Piper Halliwell, the siblings’ mother, whips up a potion that clears their bodies of the various ill-effects caused by breathing the air in that other dimension (the underworld, they call it). Then she insists on them staying for lunch and even preparing it herself (she just loves cooking) before her sons get them all back to where they must be. That being the East Coast, where Ashley and the locals assisting them with the case, still are.

It’s perhaps not entirely surprising when Mel’s two aunts: Phoebe and Paige, decide to drop by. It’s hard to tell whether they’re there to check the team out, or Jack. But whichever the case, they all have a pretty good time. At least until Stiles goes to shake Phoebe’s hand as they’re about to leave, and they’re both pulled into a vision:

A building collapsing… A forest on fire.

A black dog… A black wolf.

Cracked stone and dust. Blackened trees and ash.

A woman in black holding a rifle. Another holding a bow.

Men and women in jeans and leather holding guns. Creatures encased in old armor holding swords.

A shot. An arrow.

Screams… blood… howling…

Darkness, and a tiny glowing light somehow even more oppressive than the darkness itself.

Shadow and fire, so much fire and… red eyes.

The vision comes to an end and both Stiles and Phoebe pull back, away from each other, almost violently. As if they’ve just torn themselves out of it.

“What was that…?” Stiles gasps, his mind running a mile a minute.

He’s rubbing a thumb almost rhythmically over the tattoos on the inner wrist of the opposite hand. Switching hands with every mental iteration of his mantra (the sun, the moon, the truth) as he fights to control himself, to not fall into some insane spiral, or worse, a panic attack. He doesn’t even know why he’s on the edge of a panic attack! It makes absolutely no sense!

“A vision,” Phoebe states the obvious. “I… we just had a vision.”

“What the hell?!” Several more people call out, shocked.

“Phoebe’s a precog, visions are kind of her thing,” Paige points out.

“Yeah, her thing, not Stiles’,” Kira retorts.

Which is exactly the point Stiles didn’t quite know how to make. Visions aren’t his thing, they never have been, at all. So how the hell…

“What did you see?” Jack asks, phone out, ready to take notes.

“I… I don’t know…” Stiles begins, trying to make sense of any of it.

“It was strange,” Phoebe murmurs, thinking back on things.

“A jumble,” Stiles offers.

“Yeah,” Phoebe agrees. “Like… like two visions meshed together.”

They spend a while talking about what they saw. Trying to make out the two very different scenes. Some things are pretty easy: like connecting the cracked stone and dust with the collapsing building, the blackened trees and ash with the forest fire. The black dog is far more likely to be found in a building, the wolf in a forest. The people… well, hunters can be found everywhere, really, but the armor seems really supernatural, and would probably be too much for a city. The real issue comes at the very end, with the blood, the howls, the darkness and tiny, terrible light, because there doesn’t seem to be any clear split there. Nothing particularly distinct, which makes things all the more confusing. Also, why two visions meshed together like that? Are the two things connected somehow? And if so, how exactly?

“I think I recognize the city.” Chris’s statement takes everyone by surprise. “Remember that I told you all about my new charge?”

“The young boy who was in the foster system?” Paige asks, curious.

“Yeah, him.” Chris agrees. “He has a passion for photography, and like, human interest stories. Well, one of his recent stories was about this old building. Apparently it used to be a hotel before becoming an apartment building for low-income families. The owner tried to sell it to some corporation sometime last year but failed when the building got declared of historic importance or something. I remember it because he’s very proud of the pictures he took of the building, and that some of them were bought by a number of local publications, when the story reached mainstream media.”

“And where is this great building?” Wyatt asks in a drawl.

“L.A.”

That makes them all jump to their feet, Stiles’s hand going to his phone as he considers who he ought to be calling first. Ashley, their boss, Skye? Or maybe someone from his network who might be closer to where… whatever it was that was happening in their vision went down?

“Guys, there’s something else you probably need to know.” Phoebe speaking up again pulls all the attention straight back to her.

She has a tablet in hand, Mel’s. Having been looking through some pictures… and not just any pictures, the team realizes as soon as they take a glance at it, it’s the directory Stiles put together about known threats in the shadow world. What’s more, she has it on one photo, a very specific photo:

“I know you might not have been able to see her clearly, Stiles,” Phoebe continues. “The woman holding the sniper rifle. But I did. This was her.”

Tamora Monroe.

xXx

New plans get made. Instead of getting taken to the East Coast, Wyatt and Chris instead get Stiles and the team straight to L.A. They also insist on staying and helping as much as they can.

By the time they make it into the FBI building it’s already a flurry of motion as the local teams use traffic cameras and whatever security footage they might have access to from around the city to try and find not just Monroe, but her better known followers.

It takes several hours, just long enough for Hotch, Ashley and the Red Cell team (the only full team available and willing to join the manhunt) to arrive in the city. They’re joined by a SWAT team, lead by Sergeant II Daniel ‘Hondo’ Harrelson.

They manage to track Monroe’s hunters to an old office building near the highway. The place seems to be completely abandoned, with windows either broken, boarded up, or both. A chain link fence and a big padlock keeping the property presumably locked from outsiders. They might have even believed that, what with there not even being any vehicles nearby, if it weren’t for a few things:

“That padlock is way too new,” Ashley points out.

“Also, look at the cement walkways, at the leaves and rocks and random debris on it,” one of the local FBI agents adds. “You see the way they’re all closer to the edge of the path, leaving most of the actual path clear? That either happened because there was a lot of foot transit…”

“Or someone dragged something big down that path not too long ago,” Hondo finishes.

“Don’t forget that the utilities are connected in the building,” Skye points out from where she’s attending the meeting through Skype. “If the building were truly empty they definitely wouldn’t be.”

Yeah, because no one’s crazy enough to pay for water and electricity for an abandoned building, especially in a city as expensive as Los Angeles.

“What I wanna know is what these guys are even doing in this city,” Deacon, Hondo’s second in command, states. “From what you’ve told us, they’ve been on the move for years. As good as domestic terrorists, they are. Causing death, destruction and mayhem everywhere they go. Never staying in any one place long enough to be caught. So why here? Why now?”

That’s the question, isn’t it?

It hits Stiles in a moment and he turns to look at Kira. There’s not even any need for the question to come out of his mouth, the way she’s staring at him, all open mouth and wide-eyes, shows that she’s thinking the exact same thing as him.

“You know…” Hondo mutters, sharp.

“Rather, we suspect,” Stiles corrects, running a hand through his hair as he contemplates things.

“It’s not a secret that when Monroe’s little, domestic terrorist group, as Sergeant Kay has dubbed them, first showed up, their first attack happened in Beacon Hills, back in 2013,” Ashley elaborates.

“There were actually two attempted attacks, from that group, early on in their existence, one in 2013, the other two years later.” Hotch’s own explanation is more detailed. “Both in Beacon Hills. Also, on both occasions they were thwarted, in no small part thanks to a small group of people led by a young man called Scott McCall.”

“Police?” A local agent wants to know.

“No,” Stiles takes a deep breath, mentally thanking that for whatever the reason all the people in the room have been read-in on the supernatural already (there’s a reason why only one of the local FBI agents, and two of the SWAT team are present). “He was a high-school senior back in 2013, college student on a school-break two years later. The official version is that he was a leader of a ‘take-back-the-night’ kind of group that formed back in 2011, during the worst crime-spree Beacon Hills has ever seen. The truth is that he was the alpha of the local pack and…”

“And as such it was his responsibility,” Hondo finishes for him.

“Who leaves a teenager in charge of the safety of a whole town?” Deacon scoffs.

“It’s not like it was Scott’s choice, or any of ours really,” Stiles shrugs. “We did what we had to, what we could. After the loss of the Hales, the original pack and protectors of the territory… we didn’t have a lot of options.”

Everyone in the room knows the name Hale. They also all know how most of them came to be lost. No more questions are asked in that vein.

“Should we warn him?” Kira asks quietly. “He could be in danger.”

“He probably is,” Stiles spits, then exhales. “Why else would Monroe be in LA at all? She’s made a point not to stay in any big city, in any place with the kind of technology that could be used to track her and her army.”

“She could be getting sloppy?” Jack offers. “It’s been, what, fifteen years?”

“Yeah…” Stiles supposes it could be possible.

Still, better not to take the chance.

xXx

It takes no effort at all to find not just Scott McCall, but also Alan Deaton. The latter lives in a townhouse in one of the suburbs, the former seems to be living in a studio apartment in the same building where both of them have their businesses: a veterinary and an animal shelter. Considering the ease with which they found him (no hacking being needed!) they have no doubt Monroe must have done the same. So an agent in civilian garb is sent to warn both men of the risk and suggest they might want to close shop for a few days, perhaps even leave town for a day or two, until the SCU has dealt with Monroe and her followers.

Unsurprisingly, most of the hunters are active in the night, which is why, aside from sending some of their best to keep track of them to ensure they aren’t attacking anyone just yet, the plan is to storm the building where they’re staying in the late morning. When most of the hunters can be expected to be sleeping, or at the very least resting. They also plan on having Wyatt and Chris orb Stiles’s team to the roof, so they can come at the hunters from above, while SWAT and the FBI storm the building from the doors at floor level.

At first the plan seems to be going beautifully. But of course, like the saying goes: no plan survives contact with the enemy. It’s soon made obvious that the hunters have no intention of going quietly, they have no intention of going at all. When the first of the local FBI Agents goes down to a bullet of a caliber high enough to punch right through his kevlar vest… it’s like a switch is flipped. Until that moment only the SCU truly knew what the hunters were capable of, their absolute disregard for people’s lives: shifters, mundanes, innocents, none matter to them. The realization of how little the people they’re there to take down care for the lives of anyone, even their own… the gloves come off. If Stiles had to compare it to something, he’d say it’s like when police track down a cop-killer. They’re not looking to arrest anymore, just to take the enemy down…

(When it’s all said and done and Agent Carroll is found with a couple of broken ribs and a badly bruised kidney, yet miraculously alive, some people will chalk it up to everyone having seen wrong and remarkable luck on his part. The few people aware enough of things, will never say a thing.)

At some point during the confrontation, Stiles finds himself standing back to back with Ashley as they fight off a group of particularly vicious and resilient hunters. Stiles is mostly busy shielding from some high-caliber shots with one hand (making sure not to make the shield visible, as he doesn’t want to call undue attention to his magic), while at the same time shooting his own gun, when he notices someone behind all those hunters. It’s none other than Tamora Monroe, in black jeans, combat boots, a simple top and a tight-fitting jacket, lining a shot at…

“Abunai!” Stiles yells, automatically switching to Japanese.

The switch in language serves a double purpose, as most people there don’t actually understand Japanese. Kira does though, and she understands that the warning is meant for her. She manages to react just fast enough, dropping her gun and spinning around on one knee at the same time she reaches for her own belt, it slipping off her waist and transforming into her katana just in time for her to bring it up, cutting right through the special bullet that’s just been fired at her.

The move works perfectly to save her from Monroe’s shot. It also serves to reveal to Monroe that supernaturals are involved in the take-down of her and her army. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s when she chooses to flee, instead of standing her ground. Stiles hesitates all of a handful of seconds before…

“What are you waiting for?” Ashley demands. “Go after her!”

So he does exactly that.

It all happens so fast… Stiles knows that a handful of hunters follow him and Monroe, but he trusts Jack and Mel, who follow as well, to keep them off his back. He’s slowly but surely gaining ground, getting closer and closer to the fleeing Monroe. It’s clear she wasn’t prepared for them, not this time. She doesn’t have a convenient getaway vehicle, apparently not even a proper escape plan.

Eventually she becomes aware of Stiles, prompting her to raise her gun and shoot at him, rushed shots, barely turning around, not even aiming properly. One misses him entirely and the other, while closer, Stiles has no trouble dodging. And then she seems to run out of bullets. Stiles guesses she must not have any ammo on her, since instead of changing the clip, she throws the gun at him. If they weren’t on an op, he might even find it funny.

Her next attempt to get rid of him comes in the shape of a grenade that she throws his way. It’s a strange one, big (bigger than the military issue ones), it also looks odd, roughly made, not at all like the Argent-issue weapons Monroe seemed to favor for the most part. He wonders if that means that they’re keeping the Argent weapons elsewhere, or if perhaps the group has finally run out of the armament they managed to steal from the old Argent armories prior to the trial (and the Hale pack taking possession of those). Obviously formal weapon dealers wouldn’t be selling to them (even those who might not really care to follow the letter of the law, usually, won’t want to get in trouble with all the recent trials against ‘domestic cult-like terrorist groups’, as the public has dubbed the hunter clans), which would explain the homemade grenade. The problem is that with such weapons, you can never know how good or bad they’ll end up being. That proves especially problematic just a few seconds later…

When Monroe throws the grenade his way, Stiles doesn’t even stop to think about it before he deflects it. A part of his brain takes a look at it, cataloging its rough made and the implications, but the greater part of his brain is already on the next thing: focusing on the end of the block, on the buildings at both sides of the street, the busy street two blocks down, contemplating his chances of catching up with her before she makes it that far. Currently they’re on a mostly empty street, if that changes things will only become harder. Not just for Stiles to keep sight of Monroe, but he has no doubt that she’d have no trouble using innocent passersby if it benefits her.

Then the explosion happens.

It’s powerful enough it throws not just him but also Monroe off their feet. Clearly taken off-guard, the huntress ends up on a sprawl, temporarily breathless and disoriented. Stiles reacts instinctively, going into a roll to absorb the impact as best he can. Still, it’s not easy, one of his legs twinging, ears are ringing and his head’s pounding; his magic sense feels off somehow and he has no idea as to why.

“Freeze!” Stiles yells as he jumps to his feet, when he sees Monroe start to move. “Keep your hands where I can see them!”

Stiles doesn’t see the danger coming until it all goes black.

xXx

When Stiles recovers consciousness his head’s still pounding and there’s a certain dampness and itchiness behind his left ear that lets him know he took a blow to the head. It’s already healing though, same as his leg, which no longer pains him. He can hear voices nearby, and with just a tiny bit of magic directed to his ears, he’s able to make out what they’re saying:

“How did they find us?” a female voice, Monroe, is demanding. “And him? How could he follow me? You told me that your… that you’d made me untraceable!”

“Untraceable, yes,” a quiet, cultured male voice replies. “But he wasn’t tracking you, he was following you. He must have seen you leave the building and went after you. It is not the same thing.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Monroe states coldly. “He must die.”

“And he will,” the man assures her. “But not just yet. There’s so much information we could yet gain from a mind such as his. Someone so deeply entrenched in the mundane agency that has made it their goal to go after supernaturals and hunters alike…”

“You sound almost like you admire him,” Monroe scoffs. “He’s just another freak.”

Stiles wonders if she realizes that she’s calling him a freak, before a man who’s probably magical himself considering that he apparently did something to conceal Monroe from any tracking. And she calls Stiles a freak while working with a magic-user… Like, he knew Monroe was more than a little crazy, but this is ridiculous!

“Do whatever you want, just make sure to kill him when you’re done,” Monroe demands.

“You leaving now?” The man questions.

“There’s a reason we came to LA, I will finish the mission and leave the city,” Monroe states.

“You still believe you can make it work?” The man doesn’t sound surprised just… intrigued. “Your army is lost.”

“That is a setback, yes,” Monroe admits. “But there have always been people willing to hunt the beasts. And this… when it becomes known that I have killed this Alpha, they will all come to me…”

“A True Huntress, to kill the True Alpha…”

Monroe cackles in obvious glee, but Stiles can only wonder if she cannot hear the disdain in the man as he says those words, the mocking in his tone…

Stiles knows he hasn’t been unconscious for long. He knows. Because if he had been, his team would have found him already. He has no doubt that between Mel’s incredible power, and Jack’s own minor but no less important power (the younger man’s magic might be limited, but he’s as resourceful as his dad) they can find him. Or they could, but Stiles doesn’t intend to wait for a rescue when he can rescue himself.

The man that steps into the room is tall (several inches taller than Stiles, in fact), with tanned skin. He’s wearing oxford-blue slacks, with a royal-blue button-up, with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and black boots. He looks almost lanky, all long limbs and a narrow waist, but the muscles on his bare arms are evident. As are the scars, and the Celtic tattoos. The latter makes it quite obvious that he has some sort of druidic connection, though Stiles knows as he looks at the man that he’s missing something, even if he cannot figure out what, exactly.

It’s clear the moment the druid realizes things haven’t gone according to plan. As he fully steps into the room and realizes Stiles is no longer hanging from where he left him. Even then, he doesn’t realize it in time to be able to do anything as the mage steps out of the shadows where he concealed himself and delivers a kick powerful enough to knock him down.

Stiles is mentally patting himself in the back, satisfied for a job well done, when the loud crack of a shot reaches his ears. And not just any shot, but a high-caliber one.

“Shit!” he curses, half-absently throwing a sleeping spell at the druid before rushing out of the room.

As he soon realizes, he’s in yet another abandoned building (how are there always so many of those?) this time one that looks like a motel of some kind. Though that’s not the part that keeps his attention. Following his instincts and magic more than anything else he soon makes it outside, to the back of the building. The door leads to a small, overgrown backyard, and more importantly, an outlook. There are dusty stone benches and a half-crumbled railing before the edge of the cliff-side.

There he finds Monroe, in a crumpled heap. The answer to the question of what exactly happened comes a second later as Jack and Mel come running from around the corner of the building, clearly having gone around instead of through it. Jack still has his gun in hand, and Stiles knows without asking that he was the one to take Monroe down, once and for all. What he doesn’t expect is what the younger agent says next:

“I’m sorry!” He calls out. “I couldn’t get a clear shot before she fired!”

Stiles feels like cursing again. Because yeah, he heard the shot, didn’t he? That wasn’t a shot from Jack’s glock, but clearly from the high-caliber rifle he can see on the ground, not far from Monroe herself. She managed to shoot once, but at what? Or whom?

Stiles rushes to the edge of the cliff, his two teammates on his heels. It takes him a moment to realize what he’s looking at exactly: a half-crumbled building. It looks familiar, but he doesn’t understand why exactly, until it hits him: it’s the same building from his vision. And not just that, that’s the building they were running past when Monroe threw that grenade at him!

It’s clear that the grenade caused a great deal of destruction. Emergency services are already in the area, which makes Stiles wonder just how long he was out, exactly. He’s vaguely taking note of the police-vans, ambulance and fire-fighter’s truck in the area when he notices something else, a black bike that seems to just not belong among the rest of the vehicles. And then he sees him. The man walking down the steps leading to the damaged building… Scott McCall.

Stiles curses. Long, and colorful, and loud.

“Wow…” Jack actually whistles when he’s done. “Something’s really annoying you.”

Yeah, annoying, because he knows that when Stiles is truly angry he doesn’t bother with cursing, instead going straight to attacking.

“Yeah, at idiot people who cannot listen to others even when it’s for their own good,” Stiles mutters.

He wishes he could say he’s surprised, but he’s really, really not.

Not wanting to think further about Scott, he turns his attention to Monroe. A quick check confirms that she’s most definitely dead.

“I’m sorry,” Jack murmurs quietly.

“Don’t be,” Stiles shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have come quietly.”

“Maybe not,” Jack admits. “But still, it feels wrong, to have just shot her like that, from the back…”

“She’d have done that and much worse to you, to all of us,” Stiles reminds him. “She’s been doing it to shifters, magic-users and even humans across the world for fifteen years.” He exhales. “Don’t think about what you did to her, think of all the lives you saved by doing so.”

He can tell that that does help as Jack relaxes minutely.

“Was she the last one?” Mel wants to know.

“There’s a guy in there.” Stiles waves his hand back at the building. “I knocked him out, physically and magically. Still, be careful. He’s some kind of magic user. A druid maybe.”

For all answer Mel fishes one of her sets of cuffs from her utility belt. A set spelled to work against magic-users (she has a different one for shifters and other supernaturals with similar skill-sets, but no magic). Jack follows her, a hand on his gun as they go into the building.

Stiles meanwhile remains where he’s standing. Looking at Scott in the distance. Wondering how much of an idiot one has to be to ignore warnings given by authorities, by people trying to keep him safe… He knows how stubborn his once-friend can be, but he’d have thought that after so long Scott might have finally grown-up…

He shakes his head, turning and walking away. He supposes it doesn’t matter anymore. Monroe is dead, as are most of those in her army. Those who might have survived the op will be spending a very long time in jail, including the old druid who planned on killing him. It’s over.

It’s finally all over.

xXx

Stiles drops on his back on the bed as soon as he makes it into the hotel bedroom for the night.

It’s been a very, very long day. What with that insane almost-failed Op, followed by a team debriefing, followed by yet another debriefing, this time with the local FBI office, and SWAT (and keeping the separate stories straight in his mind took some effort, though he’s probably lucky he didn’t have to deal with a concussion at the same time). And then there were the written reports they all had to fill. Jack at least wasn’t going to be in trouble for shooting Monroe. It’s not like it’s a secret how dangerous the woman was. Even those who know nothing of the supernatural are well aware that the number of deaths she’s been involved in, even tangentially, is longer than most serial-killers! If anything Jack’s probably going to get a commendation for his quick thinking, and the fact that his actions protected the lives of civilians (everyone knows Monroe was responsible for what happened to that building, and it’s assumed that it was Jack’s shot that made her own sniper-shot miss… either that or she was a terrible-shot, and that one is unlikely).

After a big dinner in a nearby restaurant and some drinks in the hotel bar, the team finally split into the rooms the FBI rented for them for the night, since they decided it was too late to fly back to Virginia; Stiles is convinced that was just because their bosses were planning on making them go to the office and go through yet another debriefing the moment they get back to Quantico.

He is half-asleep when the ringing of his phone has him on full-alert in an instant. He doesn’t even need to look at the screen to know it’s Derek calling. He knows Stiles is alright, of course. Stiles had the time, and presence of mind to send a couple of quick texts to him and his dad after the Op, especially since he suspected Derek would have felt at least some of what Stiles went through.

“Hey sourwolf…” Derek knows Stiles is alright when the younger man calls him by that nickname.

It’s sort-of their thing: Stiles calls Derek ‘sourwolf’, he calls the human ‘Mischief’ in return. Each of them being the only one who gets away with using those nicknames with the other.

It’s… saying ‘I love you’ is not easy for either of them, for so many reasons. Derek heard the words from the mouth of a psychotic bitch who later burned most of his family alive. Her heart never gave away a lie. And yeah, he knows people can learn how to control themselves enough to lie to wolves, and hunters especially like to learn to do so, but still. What trust can he put on love declarations when he was already tricked once. And Stiles… he’s been let down by every single person he’s loved, and who claimed to love him: his mom, his dad, Scott… and granted, it might not have been entirely their fault, at least not for most of them. But still.

With two men for whom the words ‘I love you’ are so hard, and mean so little, perhaps it’s unsurprising that they’d find other ways to express such feelings. There are many love languages after all: from gentle touches, to kisses, to acts of service and protection, to using and allowing simple, funny nicknames like they do with no one else.

When the choice comes it doesn’t even feel like a choice at all, instead it feels like the most natural thing in the world:

“I’m ready to come home…”

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