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Chapter Text

Stiles woke up Friday morning thinking of his eighth-grade English teacher. Her name eluded his sleep-bewildered brain—it had been three years since he sat in her class—but her wrinkled-paper face floated to the forefront of his mind with ease. Streaked-gray hair in a sloppy bun; no-nonsense orthopedic shoes; sharp number 2 pencil tucked behind her left ear. Stiles saw her as if still seated at his third-row desk, snickering with Scott about how she smeared her shirts with dry-erase markers. 

“More ink makes it into her washing machine drum than on the board,” fourteen-year-old Stiles whispered to Scott. His best friend doodled a sub-par sketch of a motorcycle in his composition notebook.

“Mr. Stilinski!” Her memory cried out to him across the years. The toe of her shoe tapped like a metronome as she peered at him over the wire rims of her bifocal glasses. “Remind everyone what the magic number is in English class.”

“Three,” his younger self responded. “We follow the rule of three.”

Three.

She’d said it so regularly that school year it played on repeat in his brain like an annoying pop song. Now he noticed triads everywhere, in novels, in films, in advertising, as glaring as the vivid blue ink on his teacher’s white blouse.

So when he had the same recurring dream about Derek Hale for the third night in a row, warning bells started ringing.

Well, it might not be Derek. But who else did Stiles know who could evolve into a full-fledged wolf?

The dream always started the same. Stiles scampered along through the underbrush on four legs, tracking a brown hare. It flashed over a fallen log and vaulted off a wide, flat rock, Stiles nipping at its furry heels. Shards of moonlight sliced through the black night as they climbed higher and drove deeper into the forest. Coppery blood tickled his snout; the frantic flurry of the hare’s pounding heart echoed like war drums in his pointed ears. Overhead, ancient trees rose as high as city skyscrapers, their branches sighing and grumbling in the wind. Stiles closed in on his prey, his sharp teeth reaching, reaching, reaching…

The animal swerved, plunging into the shelter of tall grass. Stiles skidded to a halt on clawed paws. A small meadow stood before him. The periphery gave way to a craggy rock ledge and loose gravel at the opposite end. Leafy ferns took root, despite the brutal terrain, turning the jutting landscape into a death zone. Beyond the cliff’s edge, Beacon Hills appeared in a congested constellation of glowing dots and lines. The panoramic view, however, didn’t hold his attention for long.

A magnificent black wolf prowled the precipice, back-lit by the bleached-white skull of a full moon. Next to the majestic animal stood Erica Reyes. Stiles tried to gasp, but his animal lungs turned the quick intake of air into a low whine. Erica and the wolf glanced his way.

Erica Reyes; every bit the stunning vixen Stiles remembered sauntering down the high school hallway after Derek turned her into a werewolf. Apple-red lips and blonde curls gathered over her shoulder. When Stiles blinked, her image went fuzzy, like tv static, before she came back into focus. Now she sported a short, pale pink babydoll dress—Stiles only knew the fashion because he’d hung onto Lydia’s every word for so long. This younger, happier, unaffected version of Erica smiled down at the wolf, who shunned Stiles to howl at the moon. A long, mournful sound echoed across the glittering sky, covering Beacon Hills like a blanket. As the howl tapered off, Erica turned to mist, and Stiles woke up to a coyote spooning him. 

The same happened the second night he reached the meadow. But this time, Boyd stood next to the wolf. No more pinched skin around his eyes or weight of the world carried atop his massive shoulders. Boyd threw his arms wide as the baying faded, moonlight painting his dark skin in silver highlights before the breeze swept him away.

A groan erupted behind Stiles, startling him. So lost inside his head, he’d forgotten his bedmate. “You reek of anxiety,” Malia mumbled, voice sleep-gruff. “It’s summer break. What’s there to worry about?”

His standard reply of, “It’s Beacon Hills. What isn’t there to worry about?” fell flat on his tongue. The last half-year had been relatively free of supernatural shenanigans. 

Since they’d broken up, Malia’s midnight appearances in his room occurred less frequently, but this week he’d woken up to her warm, soft weight at his back twice. When they dated, his dad’s acceptance of Malia sneaking in through his window had come too easily. Stiles expected a fight—or at least a stern lecture—the first morning his father threw open Stiles’ door and found a girl in his bed. Instead, he’d received an exaggerated eye roll, a put-upon sigh, and the remark, “Be careful , son.” These days, the sheriff didn't understand or approve of their sleeping arrangement. “Maybe you two could use space from each other,” he preached at them with one eyebrow lifted. “Room to move on. Spending so much time together is peculiar. Don’t you think?”

“Dad,” Stiles threw his hands in the air, “of all the otherworldly crap we’ve seen and faced, you’re labeling my ex-girlfriend sleeping over strange ?”

“Stiles is my anchor,” Malia told his dad in her matter-of-fact tone. “That doesn’t disappear when a relationship ends. Stiles makes me feel safe. Sometimes I want to go back to being a coyote spending her days in the woods, but having Stiles in my life keeps me human .” His father couldn’t argue with her simple, science fiction logic.

Now, Stiles flopped over to study her sleep rumpled face. “Is dreaming the same dream—three nights in a row—weird?”

“No,” she answered, eyelashes fanning her cheeks and mouth buried in Stiles’ pillow. “I dream of eating raw deer every time I close my eyes.”

“I’m serious,” Stiles huffed, prodding at the tan shoulder peeking out from his comforter. She wore his favorite old Beatles t-shirt as a nightgown, the worn blue fabric threadbare-soft under his fingers. “I dreamed the same dream for the third time. Almost. Only one detail varied each time.”

She blew a loud racehorse breath through her nose. “Will you let me go back to bed without listening?”

“Nope.”

Malia ground gritty sleep from her eyes, yawned loud and cat-stretched, then braced herself against his headboard, yanking the blanket over her lap. “Okay. Spill.”

Stiles scrambled upright, sat next to her, and told her about running in the woods in animal form, about finding Derek as a big black wolf, about Erica and Boyd. “They’re mute,” Stiles told her. “They just… disappear when he roars.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “That’s not weird, Stiles. They’re dead. Dead people don’t chat.” She squinted at him. “Who appeared in the third dream?”

He faltered, mouth parted, framing words his throat refused to surrender, giving her all the time she needed to read him like Lydia’s class notes. “It was Allison, wasn’t it?” 

Stiles flinched. Allison’s name and memory—and Stiles’ part in her death—were sandpaper on the raw skin of a wound that wouldn’t heal. Malia’s hand shot out, settling on his forearm, thumb rubbing soothing circles on his skin. 

“At first, I figured it was Allison,” he said. “She had dark brown hair, hanging in loose waves down her back. Allison wore her’s in that style before she went to France and cut it short. But when she spun around…” A broken gust of air left Stiles’ lips. He battled against clapping hands over his mouth, needing to cram the sound deep enough that it couldn’t escape again. “I couldn’t bear to see her. I didn’t want her to look at me . But when she turned around...” Young, younger even than Stiles at eighteen. The girl’s enormous dark eyes and long black lashes were the centerpieces of her impish face, and a raised brown beauty mark stood out under her left eye. A seashell-pale flowing shirt danced around her torso in the breeze. She didn’t say a word, but Stiles swore music swelled when he stared at her.

“Maybe she was his sister?” Malia offered. “Laura?” 

Stiles shook his head, recalling the body in the preserve, the one he’d been so eager to discover. “Not Laura.”

A silent moment stretched between them. “I wonder why you’re dreaming of being an animal too.”

Scrambling through the woods, lungs heaving behind a narrow ribcage, tongue lolling from his mouth, were Stiles’ favorite parts of the dream. Sweet wildflowers, spicy herbs, and ripe, earthy decay invaded his sensitive nose. The textures under his padded feet; slick dead leaves, prickly burs, and rough, sloughed tree bark. Stiles hadn’t felt the child-like freedom that came from running under a full moon in a very long time. “Do you think I’m a coyote?”

She shook her head, clambered out of bed, and snagged her clothes from the carpet. “Too small. A fisher cat? Or a wolverine? They’re both carnivores. Or… Oh! I bet you’re a fox!”

Stiles’ stomach tumbled to the floor. “A wolverine is much cooler,” he quipped to bury his rush of remorse and discomfort. He wanted nothing to do with foxes in any form.

“Why don’t you ask Derek?” Malia continued, shedding her sleepwear and tugging on her camo shorts. “Isn’t he, like, the werewolf guru or something? He’d know what it means better than me. Call him and ask.”

“I can’t. Derek doesn’t have a cell phone.”

Her face disappeared as she pulled on her army-green tank top, then reappeared, screwed up in disbelief. “Even I have a cell phone.” 

Stiles chuckled but waved away Malia’s solution. “Even if he had a phone, it’s been months since anybody spoke to him. Who knows where Derek and Braeden even are. They’re searching for the Desert Wolf; they could be anywhere in the world.”

Malia narrowed her eyes. “Uh, Stiles? I know where Braeden is; she checks in every few weeks to update me on the hunt for my mother. And Derek’s not with her.”

Stiles’ mouth fell open. “But, they left Mexico together. Where did he go?” Goddamnit. Six months of relative peace and Derek got himself chained up in a hunter dungeon or witch cave, and they’d have to miss their first few days of senior year to traipse off to god-knew-where to rescue him. Someone needed to put a child leash on that dude.

Malia watched Stiles roll his eyes and sigh. Then she dropped word bombs into his lap and watched them explode on his face. “Stiles, he’s here. In Beacon Hills. Derek’s been here this whole time.” 

Chapter Text

Derek hadn't woken up and decided, "It's the perfect time to go crazy." Instead, his mental decline rolled downhill from one simple, intrusive thought to another. Gradual and insidious, he failed to notice how unstable he'd become until it hit him like one of Stiles' wild-flying lacrosse balls between the eyes. Perhaps insanity had pooled around him like an oil slick the entire time, waiting for a stray ember to strike and whoosh. 

Braeden pulled up in front of Derek's apartment building around noon on a rainy Tuesday. Tuesday: the worst day of the week. Stretched out ahead like an endless barren plain, the coming weekend seemed too far off to fathom, and the past weekend still tasted bittersweet. The passage of time was a concept from before. Back when Derek had a pack, a family, and friends. When he had people who loved him and when things like weekends and weekdays held meaning.

He stepped out of the Cruiser and grabbed his duffle bag from the back seat. "Do you want to come up?" he'd asked, lingering at the passenger side door despite knowing her answer. She kept her foot on the brake, didn't even put the car in park. Not stopping for anything. 

The whole ride home from Mexico, he'd vibrated out of his skin. They'd pulled off at the Otay preserve over the border, where Derek shifted and ran. The change helped, but as soon as he transformed back to human, staring down miles and miles of highway, his mind spun. He achieved full shift; he'd evolved. But the thought of his mother unable to share his moment weighed down every ounce of joy.

"Can't." Braeden's fingertips tap-tap-tapped the steering wheel as she stared out the windshield, eyes glazed over in determination. "I have to move while this lead on the Desert Wolf is hot. It's not only me hunting for her now; it's Malia, too." She hesitated, then glanced at him through the half-lowered window. "Come with me," she offered. "Nothing is keeping you here but bad memories."

Derek didn't flinch because he'd taken hits like that for years. She wasn't wrong. He'd told Scott that he'd help protect Beacon Hills like the Hale family had for generations, but the McCall pack would manage without him. They might even be better off. If Braeden had asked him fifty miles ago, he might have said yes. But the closer they got to Beacon Hills, the more Derek's land pulled at him. Empty land.

"I'll come by next time I'm in town," she promised, locking eyes with him when he shook his head at her offer. She didn't smile; she didn't mean it. The keys to her motorcycle, still parked inside the storage shed behind his apartment building, landed in Derek's waiting palm. The automatic window rolled up, rain droplets cutting straight down the image of his face in the glass. Then she drove away. 

His apartment was so quiet, even the shadow tones were hushed. The bed still stood unmade from when he and Braeden jumped out, throwing clothes and guns into their travel bags. Peter's slim silver laptop sat on the coffee table, top open, battery dead. He won't need it in Eichen House. Derek floated sloth-like around the loft, opening and closing drawers, trailing fingertips over book spines for days. A jellyfish caught in the tide, bobbing from place to place, trying to soothe the what's wrong sting under his skin. He surfaced from dark thoughts, losing minutes or hours, staring into the glossy finish of the kitchen's granite countertop like a fortune teller's crystal ball. It held no answers. 

By the end of his first week back in Beacon Hills, Derek emptied his refrigerator. He made it as far as the grocery store's third aisle and placed a bag of green beans in his cart when Laura's old high school boyfriend walked up to him, all smiles. A townie who'd climbed the ladder from bag boy to store manager, Evan worked every conceivable shift. Each time he saw Derek, he wanted to stroll down memory lane in the produce aisle. 

"A friend stopped in the store the other day. We talked about eleventh-grade homecoming," Evan said, blunt, calloused fingers curling around the wire edge of Derek's half-full cart. "Laura had the prettiest dress. Do you remember? Midnight blue with rhinestones on top; god, I felt like the luckiest guy in the whole school."

Derek recalled his older sister traipsing in and out of his bedroom, showing off different outfits, threatening to wear her leather jacket to the dance. The threat horrified his mother. Laura laughed at Derek's constipated faces and mean-spirited jibes. Just wait , Laura teased, flicking his ear. One day you'll fall in love and take someone to a dance. He remembered her rotting corpse in a shallow grave—the best he could do—twined in wolfsbane rope, dug up by two teenagers. 

"Good times," Evan continued, oblivious to the self-hatred gnawing like a rat through Derek's guts, little by little until it filled him with sawdust. "We used to attend all of your basketball games together. And on Sunday afternoons, your mom made the best lasagna dinners."

Rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese coated Derek's tongue, strings wrapping around his heart and squeezing. He heard his mother ask if Evan wanted a second helping—he always did. In his memory, her voice was the same as when she offered Derek a cool glass of milk with his fresh-from-the-oven cookies, or talked him down from pre-game jitters, and said.  Different, but still beautiful, just like the rest of you. How pivotal those brief moments had been. How great their absence was. Derek wished he'd gathered them up like drops of water in the Sahara. He presumed there'd always be an oasis. How foolish and naive.

"Nice to see you," Derek lied, backing away.  His voice came out hoarse and disused. He hadn't spoken for a week. Abandoning the cart in the next aisle, Derek walked out to Braeden's motorcycle empty-handed, white-knuckling the handlebars all the way back to the loft. When he got home, he plugged in Peter's laptop and waited five minutes for it to charge. Derek pulled the computer onto his lap, the harsh light of the screen bathing the room in an icy blue glow. Opening his browser, he arranged for weekly grocery delivery to his doorstep for the next three months. 

When the too-wrong feeling became too much, he'd run. You're running. And once you start, you don't stop. You'll always be running. Keeping to downtown streets didn't ease his itch, and neither did altering his jog time from morning to night and every hour between. He returned to the preserve like a sailor to the sea, despite it conjuring a thousand memories that hurt like a fucking bitch. His post-pack world was thrown into stark relief. There's nothing here for you. The preserve pushed slivers of old memories under his skin. Silly rhymes his dad set to off-key songs that left Cora in stitches. His cousins—human and werewolf—enthusiastically participating in Saturday night charades. Laura tickling the ivories with her feet and falling off the padded piano bench. 

He stashed his running shorts in a fox hole and shifted. It helped, but not enough. The memories didn't disappear; their too-bright oil pastel colors muted to dull gray, like charcoal against a sketch pad page. Whether monochrome or color-coded, regret and remorse stained every part of Derek.

When running offered no relief, he put his sneakers in the upstairs closet and closed the door. 

He'd debated contacting Cora for days. He lost his cell phone in Mexico, but that didn't stop him from imagining their conversation, Derek sharing the story of his shift— just like mom! He replayed the words in his head over and over in a hundred different iterations. But each time he opened an email, hoping to bridge the ocean of space between them, his words evaporated. Instead, Cora's voice whispered, I preferred my pack in South America over you. You weren't enough to make me stay. His draft folder overflowed.

Unless strictly necessary, Derek quit going out. What would be the fucking point of leaving the loft? Modern technology allowed him to quickly meet basic needs. There was no reason to grab a drink or a burger. He might need free hands to thwart deranged hunters or darachs attempting to seduce him and ritualistically slaughter everyone he loved. And why bother maintaining alliances when an alpha pack—or, god forbid, something worse —might murder every newfound family member he'd made? 

He made it to his mailbox in the lobby for two months before putting a hold on mail delivery. Why had he waited so long? The trek downstairs had gotten more challenging each day, like wading through quicksand. You're waiting for me to write to you , Cora mocked. You'll be waiting forever . 

After the third month home, Derek arranged automatic mortgage payments with the bank. The bank they built when First National closed. Where Erica died in the vault. Where Kali murdered her.  

He slammed the laptop lid, let the dwindling warmth of the overheating battery seep into his thighs through the running pants he no longer ran in. He contemplated the gouges in the concrete floor from Kali's toenails and the broken beam Isaac had been tossed against. He stared at the cracked skylight, still boarded up from when Jennifer Blake crashed through it to attack the alphas. The place Boyd lay bleeding in the water, unable to heal, tormented him.

That's the spot where you killed me, Derek,

Boyd’s lifeless body hung from Derek's claws, his impaled chest heaving like iron filled his lungs instead of blood. Maroon rivulets ran down Derek’s forearms and stained his sleeves. Adrenaline-power coursed through his veins, the euphoric feeling burning like fire in his throat, flashing in his eyes. The oblong, hideous bloodstain on the floor was as permanent as the sky. Not the shape of a beta or a brother or a friend. 

You don't have any of those.

Derek saw himself kneeling, soaked and shivering until Stiles came and rested his hand on Derek's shoulder, the only person to offer him comfort. 

A kindness you didn't deserve.

Dizzy from the struggle for a full breath, Derek laid down on the leather couch. The plushness enveloped him like his mother's arms, the ticking clock on his bedside table as steady as her heartbeat. He must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes, a dark sky greeted him. The jumpy feeling and nausea grew worse at night, with chalk-white lines of moonlight tracing the window's edge, tempting him like a lover. But if he ran, he'd go to the preserve. He'd pass the spot where the county had demolished the foundations of his home and slapped condos on the graveyard of his family's bones. He'd hear the earth beneath his paws cry out for a family that no longer existed, land that now belonged to Scott McCall. Derek Hale had no place in the new world order.

The full moon called to him. Erica's body, cold and lifeless in the bank vault, called to him. Boyd's bloody torso called to him. His mother, father, cousins, aunts, and uncles called to him as they burned alive. Laura's mouth, filled with grave dirt and open in shock, called to him. He needed to shove their words somewhere he no longer heard them; he needed to shut them out. So he climbed the spiral staircase up to the spare bedroom in the loft and grabbed every extra blanket and bed sheet he found, nails, and a hammer. 

Outside. Outside. Shut it out. Put it OUTSIDE. 

The word circled in his head until the two syllables lost their edges, the meaning bent and warped like a funhouse mirror. He tacked the blankets and sheets over the enormous arched window and blocked out the outside. When he finished, he sank down into the sofa, tucked his feet under a throw pillow, and slept for two days straight.

To some innate degree, Derek knew it was delirium talking, so he fought his mental illness with teeth and claws. He didn't want to remain a hostage in the loft for eternity. A terrifyingly twisted version of if a tree falls in the woods preoccupied Derek's injured brain. If nobody I care about is alive or wants anything to do with me— and they weren't, they didn't, they told him so daily until he'd locked them OUTSIDE —is there anything out there? He revolted against the notion that if the world held nothing for him, it would morph into a genuine nothing if he let it. But after months transpired without seeing or speaking to a single soul, he succumbed. Without the people he loved anchoring him, reality drifted away.

Every slaughtered or absent family member, every fallen friend, every scarred and splintered inch of his burned-to-ash home got shoved OUTSIDE. Beyond the makeshift curtain, they couldn't hurt him. Derek's world disintegrated after that. He rode a fire-snorting stallion from the Johnny Cash song his dad sang in the shower, hanging onto the reigns of sanity for dear life. If Derek had climbed off his high horse sooner—the one he'd saddled with hollow alpha power—and shaken off the blinders, he'd have noticed all his off-kilter parts, all his wrong colors. Seen the red flags.

Going outside was healthy. Talking to people was healthy. He couldn't do either. The most he could do was slide open his door a few inches, and pull his delivered groceries inside. Something horrible and irreversible was happening, but Derek couldn't stop the forward momentum of his madness.

When he slammed closed his curtains like the cover of a book, the outside became THE OUTSIDE . 

Don't give up. Your story isn't finished.

Derek ignored the small knock at the door and the big, irate voice accompanying it. He still heard voices sometimes, on the days when his sanity blurred like dots of rain gathering on glass, sharpening again to prick the corners of his eyes. Sometimes the voices snuck past the makeshift barrier he'd erected against the OUTSIDE. They danced around his apartment like dust motes on stray sunbeams, but Derek refused to pander to them. One day he'd rummaged for spare shoe boxes and found a beat-up old yardstick in the recesses of the upstairs closet. He used it to push and prod at the blanket draping down against the window panes until no more voices could slip in. 

The knock became very insistent, but if he ignored it, it would go away. His hallucinations turned docile after he locked them out like poorly behaved dogs. 

Then the knock shouted. "Derek! Open this fucking door!" The knock sounded an awful lot like Stiles Stilinski. 

Derek looked at the yardstick clutched in his white-knuckled hand. Don't open it , Aiden warned, sliding under the window sill in all his sword-impaled glory. It's a trick. If you open it and no one's there, it proves you've gone crazy. Telling Aiden to fuck off would break Derek's vow of silence, so he stayed mute.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Oh, what the hell? He stretched out the yardstick, using one end to flip the deadbolt. Someone burst into Derek's living room with enough force to crack the door.

If mental deterioration didn't horrify him, he might have given a cursory nod to the genius of his craziness. There stood a perfect replica of Stiles; messy bed-head hair, big mouth open in perpetual shock, amber doe eyes. Insanity even imitated Stiles' treasure map of moles. The small one at the corner of his forever-moving mouth always struck Derek as the 'X.' 

"Why is it so dark in here? It's four-o-fucking-clock in the afternoon, Derek. Don't tell me you were napping." Stiles' hands had a life of their own. Fingers scratched at exposed forearms that seemed more sinewy than Derek remembered. They switched on lamps, and juggled two apples from Derek's fruit bowl. "I know you're allergic to conversations, but the least you could have done was let one of us know you were around. The murder and mayhem have been at a minimum." Stiles opened a kitchen cabinet, extracted a granola bar, unwrapped it, shoved it between his teeth, and then kept talking. "But some communication from you would have been polite." He left the cabinet door wide open and flopped down on Derek's couch. Crumbs spilled from his mouth and the leather cushion squeaked. Could psychopathy be any more cunning?

"Granted, you and cellphones aren't simpatico, but there's always the bat-signal—wolf signal?—or smoke signals. How about ASL?" Imaginary Stiles very clearly signed you are a dick , hand cupped into a D shape and tapping his button nose.

Derek secretly loved squabbling with Stiles—real Stiles—and was half-tempted to snark back. He'd never met a human so unconcerned with his well-being that he'd verbally go toe-to-toe (or a baseball bat to the head) with a werewolf. Sane Derek used to engage; half-insane Derek only imagined retorts. The mandate of not talking to hallucinations was a thin line, but he wouldn't cross it, no matter how enticing. Even silent communication with lunacy seemed like a slippery slope.

"So what gives? Why aren't you off somewhere with Braeden, making the world's most bad-ass, beautiful babies?" Derek tried to stop the wince but failed. "Ugh. Getting dumped sucks, dude. Malia and I called it quits a few months ago, and despite being a relatively mutual decision, it still blew." Stiles tugged at the collar of his graphic tee and fidgeted on the cushion. "Why is it so stuffy in here? Is hot yoga part of your workout regimen? Scott literally handed you a duffle bag filled with a quarter of a million dollars. You can afford an air conditioner."

When Derek only blinked in reply to his ramble, Stiles squinted his eyes. "You're even more broody than usual." His expressive face displayed a question mark that faded into gentle concern. "I know I'm not Scott, but if something's wrong, you can tell me."

Derek wanted to laugh; he wanted to cry. Blunt human nails bit crescent moons into his palms. A million voices screamed in his head, but he couldn't tell anyone anything.

Sour-sweet perspiration beaded at Stiles' temple, and he rubbed at it with the back of his hand. "Dude, it's hot as balls today." He rose from the couch like smoke from a fire, drifting toward the wall opposite the door. Our house , Laura choked. Our home is burning down! "You've got to open a window. You're looking a little pale for a werewolf living in California. When was the last time you went outside?" 

Outside? Stiles reached long, slender fingers— Paige's fingers, lightly holding her bow —toward Derek's shield against the world, held together with a spit and glue and ragged scraps of will. He tugged once, twice, the thin cloth tearing around the nails in the wall. The violent roar of rending fabric, like lightning splitting a tree, echoed around the sparsely decorated loft. Oh fuck, Derek couldn't breathe. Outside? Outside? OUTSIDE?

Eyelids slammed shut against the total despair that those two tiny syllables summoned. What if Derek went OUTSIDE and there was no Hale House? He knew the county demolished it. And what if his mother wasn't patrolling the borders of their territory in her full shift? She wasn't because her claws were all that survived. What if he went OUTSIDE and his father wasn't putzing around  in the garden, trying to grow enough asparagus to feed a dozen werewolves and humans? But he wasn't alive or... Or… Laura. No Cora. Not even Peter… All that remained OUTSIDE were the voices of everyone he failed. 

Horrible sounds rolled across the painted-cement floor like tumbleweeds and ricocheted off the brick walls like bullets. Cold cerulean sobs swam through an ocean to reach his sensitive ears until they washed away the tiny thread of sanity Derek clung to like a life raft. Next door, someone was killing a cat, and if Derek could speak, he would roar. Someone put that goddamn animal out of its misery . Who made those awful noises? Stiles? Derek cocked his head but didn't dare open his eyes. Because what if he opened them, and no one was there? There's nothing here for you but bad memories.

The cacophony rang in Derek's ears like a bell. Only when he stopped for breath did he realize the racket came from him . His mouth. His throat. His lungs. 

Some indeterminable time later, fine brown hair tickled Derek's nose, and he sneezed. The warm, sharp edges of the body curving around Derek's like a scythe seemed Stiles-like. "Bless you." Stiles' baritone buzzed low in his ear. Derek opened his eyes.

Somehow they'd ended up in the spare bedroom. Did Stiles carry me up the stairs? Derek admonished himself as soon as the thought entered his head. Stiles wasn't real. Derek had climbed the stairs on his own… somehow. One good thing, though? Derek voiced the question rolling around inside his skull. Not a dead person, not a missing family member. A second good thing? If trapped forever inside his apartment, Derek's mind could have hallucinated a worse partner. Instead, it gave him Stiles.

Presumably, his brain had a shitty ulterior motive in conjuring Stiles. Probably something to do with the curious, culpable feeling that roiled in Derek's gut when he looked at Stiles, touched Stiles and thought about Stiles. The feeling that hadn't completely faded when Stiles turned eighteen. But as they lay on his bed, imaginary Stiles cradled him, sheltered him, protected Derek from OUTSIDE. So Derek gave himself the green light to pretend, to believe in something good, if only for a little while, and snuggled into the warm embrace of imaginary arms.

Chapter Text

He slid on socked feet into Scott's bedroom doorway a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business . Only Stiles wore pants. "Did you know Derek's back in town?" He launched the words into the room like spitballs as he skidded past, clutching the doorframe to halt his forward momentum. Melissa must have waxed the hardwood floor. 

"What?" Liam and Scott swung their eyes toward Stiles hanging off the door jamb and spoke in unison. Scott reclined in his computer chair, biology textbook open on his lap. Liam sat on the area rug in front of the window, handcuffed to the radiator, lips pressed into a flat, sullen line.

Distracted by the spectacle, Stiles said, "Scott, you're a True Alpha." He motioned toward the hostage. "Make a better plan! This was so two years ago." Cuffing Scott to the cast iron heater as both protection and revenge wasn't one of Stiles' finest moments. 

Scott shrugged. "It was this or a tree, and I figured this was less visible." He had a point. "Wait. Do you mean Derek Hale?" Shrill disbelief tugged up the last three syllables, like Derek was Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and Stiles was the sucker still believing long past the expiration date. Since Scott himself was a mythological creature, Stiles thought he should check his tone.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you know a ton of other Dereks?" Stiles snarked, unamused.

Scott went quiet, brown eyes glazed. It was his deep thinking look. Stiles recognized it like he knew the back of his hand. "Well, yeah. There's Derek on the lacrosse team, whose locker always smells like dirty feet, and I sat next to a Derek in freshman math. He had red hair. And—"

"I have a cousin named Derek," Liam pipped in, looking a little less murderous. "He's eleven." The cuffs rattled. Liam had tried to raise his confined hand to talk.

"Holy God, could you both just… Scott!"

Scott blinked at him, owl-eyed. "Did you know Derek Hale was back in town?"

He closed the textbook, using an orange highlighter as a bookmark, and placed the tome on his messy desk. "I mean, Malia told me Braeden dropped him off in Beacon Hills, but no one saw him. I figured he stayed a few days, then left to visit Cora in South America or something."

"You didn't go to the loft and check?" Usually, Scott cared too much and took on too many burdens that weren't his own. Now there was an actual problem, and Scott's lack of concern made Stiles feel like he'd taken up residence in an alternative universe. 

"Stiles, Derek is a grown man." Scott shook his head. "He's been on his own since he was younger than we are." Trying for subtle but missing by a mile, Scott gestured toward his subdued beta, lowering his voice. "Plus, I've been a little busy."

Stiles crossed his arms over his chest and spoke at full volume. "Not my fault you bit an explosive device, dude. Make better life choices."

"I'm right here," Liam grumbled. He kicked at the radiator, flecks of faded paint chipping off onto the tops of his sneakers.

"Why would I go to Derek's loft and check on him?" Exasperation tinged the question. Scott acted like Stiles was an unruly schoolboy; the answer was on the board, but Stiles refused to look. "If he needs us, he'll find us."

"That's the thing." Stiles tugged at his hair, the pull at his scalp strangely soothing. "I think Derek needs us, but he couldn't come. There's something…" Stiles' heart contracted, trying to pull the word back down his throat. "I went to the loft, and…"

"Is he hurt?" Scott bolted up from the chair, shoulders squaring as he pictured blood and mayhem.

"No. Well, I mean, physically , Derek seemed fine." Stiles rode the razor's edge of the speed limit the entire drive to Scott's house, confident in his mission to involve Scott in whatever was afflicting Derek. But once the moment presented itself, voicing what he'd witnessed felt like a breach of trust.

"What did Derek say?"

Stiles took a steadying breath. "That's just it, Scott. Derek said nothing. He didn't talk. At all. He was silent ." Not entirely true, and the omission earned a flicker of Scott's eyes toward his chest.

"So, like a spell?" Liam asked from the floor. "Are witches a thing? If druids are a thing, then witches are too. Right? Or is witch, like, a politically incorrect term now?" He lowered his voice on the third utterance. "Should we call them sorceresses?"

"No. A sorceress is just a witch without a hat… Look, Derek was…" Stiles' heart quickened remembering the anxiety attack, Derek's hard, noisy intakes of air, his heartrending sobs. Now Liam and Scott both stared at the center of his graphic tee. He'd been gung-ho about enlisting Scott to come to Derek's loft, but Stiles knew better than anyone what it was like to be vulnerable, scared, and out of his mind. A wave of fierce protectiveness washed over him. "He wasn't himself."

Scott's eyes and voice were gentle. "It's not that I don't believe you, Stiles, because I do . It's been a rough couple of years for all of us. Is it possible you just caught Derek on a bad day? Maybe he didn't want to talk to anyone. I mean, you two haven't always been on the best terms." Scott stepped closer, hand going to Stiles' shoulder. "Nothing's tried to kill us for six months. Things have been quiet. I trust Derek to come to us if there's something wrong he can't handle.

"I know you carry around a tremendous amount of guilt and anxiety, and I know you plan for the worst, just in case. But maybe this is a PTSD thing? Seeing trouble where there isn't any?" 

PTSD. Huh . A puzzle piece twisted inside Stiles' mind, searching for a spot to settle down and bring the picture together. "I wish I could talk to Deaton," Stiles sighed. Whatever advice the vet offered would confuse at best and require maximum discomfort at worst. Still, his expertise with supernatural maladies was invaluable.

Scott shook his head. "He's still in Mexico. I haven't been able to get a hold of him in weeks. I was hoping he'd have some advice for helping Liam strengthen his control."

Stiles nodded. "If you hear from him, can you have him call me?"

The warmth of Scott's palm permeated the thin cotton of Stiles' shirt when he squeezed his shoulder. "Look, I'll go check on Derek tomorrow. Then you won't have to worry."

Something bone-deep and instinctual wanted to keep Scott away, despite Stiles feeling in over his head. "No," Stiles said, thinking of Scott's always-want-to-help puppy-dog determination causing Derek a breakdown. Scott always had the best intentions. God save us from people who mean well.  

"I've got this." Another omission of truth. Scott and Liam either weren't paying attention, or Stiles' lie game was improving. "Your focus should be on Liam.

Liam rolled his eyes and rattled his cuffs. "Gee, thanks. If Scott's any more focused, I'll end up in an actual dog house."

The floorboards under Stiles' sneakers groaned as he wore a path in the carpet from one end of his room to the other, but he paid their complaints no mind. Desperation and misery, rank and palpable in Derek's apartment, seeped into his clothes. It sent him digging through his dresser drawer for a t-shirt and a clean pair of pants. Lazy summer days equated to less laundry getting done, so Stiles scrounged for gym shorts. He was elbow-deep in the bottom left drawer when his fingers brushed it: his mother's incomplete cross stitch.

The Aida cloth was still attached to a six-inch embroidery hoop. The needle and thread had disappeared years ago. All that remained was unfinished. He'd found it about a year after her death, in a plastic bin under his father's bed.

Everyone needed the newly appointed sheriff in those days, and his father was working another double shift. Stiles tried hiding from his impromptu babysitter—their elderly neighbor, Mrs. Fenton, who smelled like mothballs and pinched his cheeks. She had no issue barging into Stiles' bedroom and demanding he complete his homework, but his father's room was a haven she didn't dare enter. For maximum concealment, Stiles tried sliding under his dad's bed frame, only to be halted by his own growing body and a plastic tote. The box had a shiny piece of silver duct tape stuck to the side. On the tape was a name in black sharpie marker: Claudia .

Curiosity killed cats, but so far, it had only landed Stiles in minor trouble. 

There wasn't much of interest inside the bin: some old college essays, a textbook, Polaroids of big-haired, smiling strangers, and a circular, medium-sized, hollow wooden frame. Attached to the top was a screw and a piece of cloth stretched within the frame. Rainbow-colored strings zig-zagged across the open-weave fabric. Stiles picked it up and flipped it over.

To everything, there is a season, 

A time for every purpose under heaven:

Small letters were stitched in the exact shade of spring lilacs in the top center of the circle. Tiny daisy's decorated the upper corners, their glossy white petals surrounding bright sun-yellow heads. A half-formed flower sat in the bottom right corner. The bottom left was bare. 

Mom made this? Stiles racked his brain, trying to recall his mother sewing, knitting, or even picking up a needle. She'd never reattached a button or mended a sock. Heaven threw him off, too. They weren't religious. Stiles never attended Hebrew school, and the Stilinski's decorated a Christmas tree and lit a Menorah every December. He'd never seen a Torah in person. They didn't own one, so he had to wait until he could research the religious phrase in the computer lab at the school library.

Reading the entire Old Testament passage confused him even more. What prompted his mother to start such an ambitious and pious project? When had she started? Before he was born? Before she got diagnosed? After? Stiles spent a few agonizing weeks wondering if his presence in the hospital prevented her from finishing it. Once she went into the hospital full time, he didn't leave her side. 

A time to be born and a time to die.

Maybe stabbing something thousands of times had been her healthy way of channeling anger and anxiety. Stiles should take up the hobby and stitch pictures of moons, paw prints, and triskeles. He could add a few decorative wolfsbane flowers for good measure.

He'd tucked the piece under his shirt when Mrs. Fenton's feet hit the staircase and shoved the box back under the bed just in time. "There you are!" she admonished, throwing open his dad's door. Apparently, no place was safe anymore. "Is your homework done?"

"I'll go to my room and do it right now," he said, scooting past her bulky frame in the doorway to avoid stray, pain-inducing fingers. As soon as his door slammed shut, he pulled open his dresser drawer and shoved the cross stitch inside. He didn't think his father would confiscate it, but his mother left so little behind, Stiles didn't dare leave it to chance.

He looked at it a lot the first year, but as time went on, Stiles' evolving wardrobe pushed it further back in the drawer. He didn't want to believe that his mom's unfinished cross stitch—hinting at more to come that never did—was a sign. He'd never been a follower of platitudes, motivational posters, or destiny. Yet, he couldn't seem to put it back in the drawer.

He stuck the rough skin of his thumb between his gnawing teeth. The sense of focus he'd felt back at Scott's faded, letting doubt glow brightly. Who was he to think he could help Derek? He could barely help himself. Stiles' disregard for others' safety led to his best friend being bitten by a werewolf. His disregard for his own led to demon possession.

He plopped onto his bed, one hand still clutching the cross-stitch. The truth was, he'd already failed Derek. After the third dream, he should have gone to the loft when Malia told him Derek never left Beacon Hills. But he'd waited two weeks, letting three more dreams come and go.

We follow the rule of three.

The three souls were strangers, but it didn't take a genius to guess their identities. Laura Hale in a leather jacket. A handsome middle-aged man resembling an older, stockier version of Derek in wire-rim glasses and a graying beard. He must have been their father. And Talia Hale. He'd never met her, but her power and presence were unmistakable. "Help him," she'd said, hand resting atop the wolf's head. She looked directly at the fox as she spoke. "Please. Help him." Stiles woke in a cold sweat.

Downstairs, a door slammed.

Stiles put the cross stitch back into the drawer and bounded down the stairs. "Dad?" he said, coming around the kitchen corner. Seated at the table, his father had a bowl of steaming, reheated spaghetti and meatballs in front of him. A carton of grated cheese stood next to the oversized bowl with a spoon sticking out. Stiles' stomach growled.

"I don't want to hear a lecture about the carbs." The sheriff held up a hand to ward off Stiles' reprimands. His uniform shirt was off, hanging on the chair back. A case file lay in the middle of the table, closed. "I'm eating vegetables. Tomatoes are a vegetable."

Unbeknownst to his father, Stiles bought the jar-sauce with an extra serving of vegetables. He was eating a lot more than tomatoes. "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Did you eat?" his father asked, sprinkling romano on his mound of pasta.

He hadn't. He'd been too busy bum-rushing Derek, anxiety-cuddling him until he fell asleep, and then speeding to Scott's. "I forgot," he said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Motioning toward the cabinets, his dad said, "Grab a bowl. There's plenty left."

So Stiles ended up sitting kitty-corner from his dad at the table, twirling noodles around his fork. "I wanted to ask you something. For advice, really."

The sheriff stared at Stiles while he chewed. "If it's about Malia, you know where I stand. You're either in, or you're out, son. Call me old-fashioned, but, anchor or no anchor, this strange bed-sharing limbo isn't good for anyone."

"Dad, it's not about her. She hasn't slept over this week." Stiles tapped the tines of his fork against his glass bowl. "This is about Derek."

"Derek?" his father said around a fresh mouthful of pasta. "Derek Hale?"

Deja vu. "Yes, Derek Hale. Why does everyone keep asking me that? How many Derek's could there be?"

"There's Derek who works dispatch on the weekends, and my barber's grandson is named Derek, but I think he spells it D-E-R-I-C-K."

"Please stop," Stiles begged, throwing up his arms.

"Isn't Derek somewhere with Braeden, searching for Malia's mother?"

"Turns out, no. Derek's been back in town this whole time, but no one saw him. I got so pissed off. Deaton's still out of town, and Scott really needed help teaching Liam to manage his shifts. Derek told Scott he wanted to help protect Beacon Hills like the Hales have done for generations, and I thought this was him hiding out, flaking off on a promise he made. So I went over to his loft today to give him a piece of my mind. He was home, but he was different ."

His father set down his fork. The small sign of focused attention had Stiles spilling the encounter minute by minute; Derek's confused face, his massive anxiety attack over Stiles moving the curtains, Stiles holding Derek in bed, talking him down from the panic. "I know a panic attack, Dad. That was one of the worst I'd seen."

The sheriff nodded, grim-faced. Telling his dad the details didn't feel like a violation because he knew them, too. He understood. He'd helped Stiles through countless panic attacks in the years after his mom died. "Did you tell Scott?"

"I told him enough. But Scott's… Scott. He cares, but he doesn't really get it. I know how it feels to be in that moment, and I know the shame of having someone witness it, even someone you love." He thought about his father holding him when he woke up screaming and crying from nightmares. He thought of Malia running a hand up and down his back, trying to keep her claws in because Stiles' anxiety triggered her own. Of Scott's hand, a warm weight on his shoulder, telling him to breathe. Of Lydia kissing him. "And I'm certainly not someone Derek loves. I'm barely someone he likes . The last thing he'd want is more people witnessing what he's going through."

"It's a panic attack, Derek," Stiles whispered into the fine hairs on the back of Derek's neck, so much softer than he'd ever imagined. "I used to have them all the time after my mother died." Stiles focused on deep, even breaths until Derek's heart rate mimicked his own.

His father leaned back in his chair, eyes dark and far away. "I hate talking about the Nogitsune," he said quietly. The name sucked the brightness from the room, leaving his father with tired, sunken eyes and deep grooves carved around his mouth. He looked haunted, even saying the word. "I hate what that thing did to you, to all of us. When you disappeared, I was more terrified than I'd ever been. I didn't know what the Nogitsune had done to my son." He shook his head, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed the dregs of his bitter memories. "Derek never stopped searching for you. He stayed awake for days straight, combing the town, the preserve. When we found you and Chris Argent held a gun to your head, I thought Derek was going to step in front of the barrel."

All Stiles retained from the possession were glimmers of visions he preferred to forget and the blood on his hands. He knew the moments happened, had read all the reports, but hearing his father speak shined a new light on them. "I remember Derek as a teenager when the fire took his family," Stiles' dad continued. "That kid has been through hell and back. Then again, so have you." 

Kid . Stiles forgot, sometimes, because Derek was a few years older than him. In many ways, they were all children thrust into an adult world of supernatural madness. That's why his eighteenth birthday hasn't felt like a milestone, despite seeming like it took two lifetimes to arrive. Sometimes he felt like his childhood didn't fade away like summer. It ended abruptly as a September cold snap, the floorboards freezing under his feet and dropping away. They'd all been transformed by the temperature shift. "He's so stoic, ya know?" The words spewed out. "Derek's a total asshole, throwing around his muscles and flashing his teeth. I'm not… I didn't take time to think about how it affected him." 

"Sounds like someone else I know."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "I don't have sharp teeth or muscles."

His father sipped water from an old plastic cup with a cracked, faded image of Smokey Bear. Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires! "You have brains and a mouth made to cut people down. And you use them both like weapons to protect yourself from others. To protect the people you love. You're a professional at that. What you fail at is knowing how to protect yourself from, well, yourself." 

"I don't know what to do. I don't know if I have what it takes. My own mind was—"

Taken . Used . Manipulated . Lost .

The words were out, and his feelings of failure along with them. "I thought Scott should handle Derek, but when I got to Scott's house, something held me back. It didn't feel right to take him away from focusing on Liam. I didn't want him to have to juggle helping them both because Derek needs— deserves —someone's full attention." Shame and grief churned in his stomach. "But who am I to try and reach him, dad? What could I possibly bring to the table that would help?"

"We all have demons, Stiles. Some of them are in a bottle. Some of them are in graves. Some of them walk the earth and turn into werejaguars." He smiled at Stiles. "Some of them are inside our own heads. You ask me what you can bring to the table? You bring a boy who lost his mother too young. You bring a teenager who had his body used against him. You bring years of living with anxiety and learning how to overcome it. You bring a man who outfoxed a fox."

Tears sprang to Stiles' eyes. He wiped them on the hem of his shirt. 

"You're like a sponge, Stiles, and whether you realize it or not, you soaked in that pack mentality from Scott. He's busy with Liam. What would an alpha do in this situation? What would a leader do if one of his own needed help?"

Stiles sighed. "He'd send his second."

"Son, even though I love and appreciate you seeking me out, it doesn't sound like you need my advice. It sounds like you already know what you're going to do." His dad picked up his fork, gathering strands of spaghetti together. "Scott is a True Alpha; let him take the lead on the supernatural. But from what you've told me, it sounds like Derek needs someone human ."

The following day, Stiles sat in his Jeep, staring up at Derek's loft windows from the parking lot. The low morning light painted the side of the building. From this far below, Stiles couldn't see the blankets pressed against the glass. He threw open the driver's side door, blasted by the abrasive summer heat before his shoes touched the cracked pavement. The asphalt already smelled sweet and musty, like baked earth.

His phone rang, blaring Scott's ringtone so loud Stiles heard it over the buzz of an airplane flying overhead. 

"Hey Scotty," Stiles answered, kicking at a tuft of parched weeds growing out of the fractured blacktop. 

"Are you sure you don't want me to stop over to Derek's?" Stiles smiled. Here he was, the Scott who wanted to help everyone. 

 "I appreciate the offer, Scott, but…" His eyes danced over all the windows of the vacant apartments in Derek's building. Some were broken, some were sprayed with colorful graffiti. A mouse skittered around the perimeter of the foundation. The whole building screamed empty and alone . Abandoned. "I think this requires a human touch."

"If it doesn't," Scott hedged, "you'll tell me. Right?"

A welcome breeze flirted with the already-damp locks of Stiles' hair, moving on to pull a plastic bag from a stunted shrub, and dance with it across the empty lot. "You'll be the first to know. Just... tell me one thing, Scott. You're my best friend. You know me better than anyone in the world. Am I the right person to help Derek?"

"Stiles," Scott said, "you're the guy who'd step into a puddle of gasoline to take a lit flare from someone's hand. If anyone has what it takes, it's you." Scott was quiet for a moment. "After you left, I thought about something Deaton once told me. Have you heard the phrase, regression to the mean?" His voice carried a hopeful note.

The direction change gave Stiles whiplash. "Like in statistics? The math phenomenon?"

"Yeah. Deaton said life can't ever be all bad or all good. Eventually, things have to come back to the middle. Regression to the mean. Maybe that's what's happening."

The terms standard deviation and random fluctuation twisted in his brain, trying to stick to Derek, then to their whole pack. Scott's hoping I observed an error. But Stiles pulled data from all his interactions with Derek over the years, compared and contrasted Derek's trauma to his own, and came to a different conclusion. He couldn't blame Scott, who didn't have the same data Stiles did. "If you're hoping to diagnose Derek with a math equation, I think you better send Lydia. Besides, I thought we were already in the middle?"

"Uhh…Maybe we're stuck in the middle?"

"Is this a Stealers Wheel song? Are we about to sing a duet?"

Scott ignored him as usual. "Call me if you need me, Stiles. And hey, I'm really proud of you."

"Your mother would be proud of you," his father had said as Stiles reached for the door handle. 

Stiles laughed. There was no joy in the sound. "Mom would be horrified."

"No," his father said the word with confidence. "She was made from tougher stuff."

Stiles thought of his mom's cross-stitch, of all that was stolen from Allison, from Aiden. He vowed, there in the shitty parking lot behind Derek's shitty building, that he wasn't going to let another life go unfinished. 

A time to keep silent and a time to speak.  

Stiles took the stairs up to Derek's loft two at a time, loudly humming the refrain from Stuck in the Middle with You .

Chapter Text

It paid to be nice to imaginary Stiles. Imaginary Stiles often showed up with food. 

"You look like you haven't eaten for a month," Stiles said during his second visit. Squinty eyes scanned Derek head to toe and back again, darting to the bare kitchen counters, the empty fruit bowl, the weight bench, and free weights in the corner. "I realize I'm not one to talk, but, jeez. You're making my one hundred and forty-seven pounds look pudgy. Have you been subsisting on nothing but lean protein and existential angst?" 

He didn't turn up every day, but he appeared most days, arms weighed down with takeout containers or grocery bags, and dished up their meals. Derek was too hungry to do the mental calculations needed to know whether the food served by a hallucination counted as real or fake. The soup Stiles made the first week filled his stomach, as did the stew he tried not to gobble down. The rest didn't matter.

Imaginary Stiles also brought an entire stick of butter to slather on hot, yeasty rolls, the same buns his mother baked every Thanksgiving. They melted like sugar in his mouth. The Hale house had an oversized farmhouse kitchen, with double ovens built into the wall. The entire room, packed with boisterous people and delicious food, had smelled like a bakeshop, cozy as a warm blanket on a crisp winter night.

He decided he would live with the Stiles hallucination. It seemed benign, except for the part where Derek was delusional. And that his unstable brain had conjured Stiles Stilinski, of all people, as his caretaker and only companion. Insanity manufactured horrific things, so if it dressed up something positive in a Stiles skin suit, Derek would not complain. He reached for another roll.

"I got this at the diner down the road," Stiles said around a mouthful. "Pot roast. My mom made pot roast every Sunday because my dad loved it. I only ever wanted to eat the potatoes, and she used to scold me." His tone went falsetto. "There are starving kids all over the world, Stiles!" He waved his plastic fork in the air. "Now, I'd give anything for a bowl of her home cooking. I'd eat every bite." He beamed as Derek soaked up the gravy with his buttered roll. 

Stiles watched Derek eat, and Derek watched Stiles. If Stiles were real, Derek might say, My mom made lasagna on Sundays, or. I'd give anything for one more chance too , or maybe, We have more in common than I ever realized. 

Of course you do , insanity admonished. This is all in your head .

"Do you want some more? I won't finish this." Stiles slid his half-full paper plate toward Derek. Provider . Derek accepted it. "Good. You need it. You never leave your apartment? Ever? How does a werewolf not go outside on a full moon? That seems sacrilegious to me. Do werewolves have their own religion? Is there a werewolf pope!?"

Derek chewed and listened, listened and chewed, and never said a word.

Stiles came with a whiteboard, and blue dry erase marker, flapping it over his head like a white flag on a battlefield.

"Come on," he coaxed. "You must want to say something. You've never gone this long without telling me to shut up." He waggled the marker in Derek's face. Stinging alcohol and pungent polymer singed Derek's nose hairs.

His fingers itched to pick up the board, and not because he wanted to tell Stiles to be quiet. He enjoyed the babble that filled the apartment every few days, the hearty food, Stiles' particular, reassuring smell: maple sugar buzz, spicy-sweet deodorant, milk-sour frustration, floral shampoo, and spring grass at night. It soaked into Derek's couch, his bed, his skull.

If any of it were real, Derek would take the board and write: thank you.

"I can't live like this," Stiles bitched, towing two box fans through the loft door. He set them up a few feet away from the drawn drapes and strode out. A few minutes later, Stiles returned with rotating standing fans, arranging them at intervals around the open floor. He turned them all on and groaned in relief. "It's fucking August , Derek. I leave a layer of skin stuck to your leather couch every time I stand up."

August. Was it? Derek grimaced. Where had the days and months gone? It couldn't be. Could it? Stiles noticed his consternation, scrolled on his phone, and then spun the screen toward Derek, the calendar app showing August. If imaginary Stiles showed him an actual date—and, aside from the heat, he had his doubts—he hadn't been ou... OUT… it had been six months. 

On the off chance imaginary Stiles was correct, Derek walked over to the thermostat, flipped up the plastic cover, and set the central air to sixty-eight degrees.

Stiles' arms flapped around his head like birds. "Why the hell didn't you turn that on before!?" He squawked. 

I didn't know what month it was, Derek thought, and Werewolves regulate their body temperature better than humans, and, You never asked.

Stiles left the fans going, circulating the cooling air, and sat on the couch with his feet braced against Derek's coffee table. They wiled away hours like this; Stiles on the sofa with his nose in a comic, Derek settled into an armchair with a novel or non-fiction book. Time passed, Derek sneaking peeks at Stiles every so often. Once when he glanced up, he caught Stiles gazing at the floor. A tumbleweed of dust rolled past. 

Stiles shot to his feet. "I have a plan. I'll be back in a few. Don't go anywhere." He made finger guns at Derek and winked. Imaginary Stiles was just as much of an asshole as real Stiles. 

He returned two hours and six minutes later (Derek watched the clock between his book's paragraphs). A disc with black and silver concentric circles was tucked under Stiles' arm and had a flat gray button in the center. The small machine had wheels and brushes on the bottom, about a foot wide and a few inches tall.

"It vacuums!" Stiles placed the disc on the floor and pressed the switch on top. The machine rumbled to life, crooning. "This sucker's going to be your new best friend. Dad and I had this one for years, but it lost some of its sucking power, so we upgraded. This one still works though, don't worry. It will do the trick around here." They watched it bump into a wall, spin around, and toddle off in a different direction. 

Derek frowned.

"Wow. That expression looks almost normal," Stiles murmured, shaking his head. "Still a sour wolf." The hated nickname brought back the night Scott howled over the high school PA system, calling Peter to their location. Derek wanted to growl, he wanted to howl, he wanted to roar.

"Nobody hates an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, Derek." Stiles continued. "Just wait. In a few days, it'll be like a beloved pet." He elbowed Derek in the side. "Dad and I call ours, The Annihilator 5000. I bet you name yours." 

He doubted it. Naming a make-believe Roomba gifted by an imaginary friend seemed a bit too crazy, even for Derek. 

"And dude," Stiles said, dragging his phone out of his back pocket, "there are so many videos of cats riding these things. You gotta watch!"

Derek fucking hated when faux Stiles was right. 

Derek didn't love the Roomba in a few days. It took a week and a half before any powerful emotions came into play. He secretly smiled when it buzzed under his propped legs as he sat on the couch and fondly shook his head when it thumped into the standing lamp for the third time. Nothing serious. Then he'd stepped out of the shower one morning, and the little robot, sweeping up the bathroom, sensed his bare foot and detoured around him.

It's learning! A joyous little exclamation popped out of Derek's mouth before he even knew he made a sound. Foolish pride rushed through him, like a dog owner whose new puppy mastered a trick.

Derek lost hours watching it—still unnamed, because he was crazy, not pathetic—shamble from room to room, unearthing a cheerio Cora dropped a year ago, and sucking up bits of mortar Kali's nails dug from the walls. Tiny shards of glass from Jennifer dropping in. All the minuscule pieces he'd missed in the corners the Roomba seemed to unearth and cleanse, returning to its charging base to empty the canister loaded with particles of Derek's dirty past. The loft felt brighter, decontaminated, and so did Derek.

The lightness led Derek to do what he did. He showed Stiles the boxes.

"What do you do all day?" Stiles asked on multiple occasions. "Weight lifting and brooding only take six, seven hours max." The day Stiles walked in like he owned the place, calling out a greeting as he hopped over the shambling Roomba and snatched a can of root beer he'd stocked in Derek's fridge, Derek grabbed his hand. 

A tiny note of surprise, more subvocal than anything else, left Stiles' mouth. Derek hadn't touched Stiles since he burst through the door a few weeks ago and cuddled him through an anxiety attack. The nagging doubt and dread that this time his hand might pass right through imaginary Stiles held him back. 

Not anymore.

"Where are you taking me?"

Derek led Stiles to the spiral staircase and up up up… The last time they'd been here, Stiles had led the way, Derek so far out of his own head with grief he reached outer space. They'd ended up spooned together in the guest bed that still held Cora's scent, Stiles' steady breathing pulling Derek back down to earth.

Stale air coated Derek's tongue. He only came into this room for two reasons: the boxes and the books. A single crooked picture hung on one white wall, a stock photograph of beach dunes, the ocean peaking in from the foreground. Built-in bookcases lined the opposite wall, shelves buckling under the weight of Derek's books.

Stiles stood staring at the bed, sheets still body-rumpled from where they'd laid weeks ago. The abstract shape of wrinkles kind of resembled a heart if Derek squinted. In the dim room, a single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, accompanied by two glowing table lamps on either side of the bed. Derek needed little light to see. He wondered what Stiles saw.

Long fingers moved toward the sheets, but Derek grabbed Stiles' wrist, strangely reluctant to mar the canvas their bodies had decorated. Derek tugged him over to the closet, double doors hanging on a sliding track. He pushed them open and stood on tip-toe to grab the shoe boxes off the wooden shelf above the clothes rack. He pulled down one, two, three…

One by one, Derek arranged them on the floor at Stiles' feet, like tributes to some ancient god. Six total. Then he genuflected, spreading them out, so imaginary Stiles saw the names on each box in Derek's slanted handwriting.

Erica. 

Boyd. 

Paige. 

Laura. 

Dad. 

Mom .

Stiles walked around the boxes, reading the names once, twice, three times, ending up behind Derek. "They're all here," he whispered, voice thick. Derek didn't understand the words. 

Stiles reached long fingers over Derek's shoulder, hands shaking like a wind-caught leaf in fall, soft bare skin of his forearm brushing the side of Derek's neck. Derek shivered despite the warmth. Stiles touched the top of the first box, the one that said ERICA . He watched, entranced, as Stiles' fingers curled around the box lid.

A tube of fire-engine red lipstick. A stretchy black scrunchie with a few strands of blonde hair still wrapped around the fabric. A pink origami butterfly. A lacy blue bra. A driver's test study booklet.

Boyd's box had an old Shakespeare play; Macbeth. He'd read it in tenth grade English class. Dirty ice skate laces and a bloodstained red and blue striped shirt lined the bottom of the container.

Paige's contained a small piece of tortoiseshell attached to a long ribbon of hair that had hardened like dried sap. A book of cello music lay folded on the bottom of the box. When Stiles picked it up and flipped through the pages, a dried, pressed flower fell out. A daisy.

Laura's held a leather cuff, a car key on a wrist lanyard keychain, a piece of brown canvas and ball of twine, and a small snow globe, miniature New York City skyline enclosed inside the glass sphere. The base of the globe had a small music box crank. When Stiles wound it up, the tinkling notes of Smile by Judy Garland filled the room. 

An unopened package of asparagus seeds and a dirty, cracked eyeglass lens were the only items in the box marked Dad . "Did you find this in the ruins of your house?" Stiles whispered to Derek. He didn't answer, of course. He was too busy listening to the slowing notes of the music box.

Soot covered almost everything inside Talia's box. Derek glimpsed the burned corner of a recipe card, a blackened triskele charm from the charm bracelet she never removed, and his mother's claws. Then Stiles gently replaced the lid.

Silence. Down the hall, the bathroom faucet dripped. Derek needed to haul out his toolbox. 

For some odd reason, Stiles was fighting back tears. Derek smelled salt before he saw the wetness at the corners of Stiles' eyes. Derek remembered Stiles' tears when Jennifer abducted the sheriff, Chris Argent and Melissa McCall; the protectors. Derek's blindness to who Jennifer really was, his weakness, had led to Stiles' suffering. His fault. Stiles almost lost his father because Derek trusted the wrong person, like Derek lost his entire family because he trusted Kate. He thought he'd gotten off the merry-go-round, but he just jumped from one painted horse to another, riding them into catastrophe over and over. 

His breathing changed, growing harsh in his ears. "Okay, okay, none of that," Stiles whispered, kneeling down and planting a warm palm against the back of Derek's head. He pulled Derek's face into the crook of his neck, where he sucked in deep lungfuls of Stiles' familiar, calming scent. What screwball corner of Derek's mind had conjured this? His Stiles hallucination never played by the rules. It fit with the real Stiles, who always shirked Derek's expectations in an oddly comforting way. There was a method to the madness.

Once his breathing evened out, he pulled back, Stiles' gentle grip allowing him space, but he didn't let go. They were a hair's-breadth apart, noses almost touching. Stiles' eyes, liquid amber in the low light, traveled Derek's face. An orange wall of electricity sparked between their bodies. It was always between them, even now, when none of it was real. Derek wondered what would happen if they gave in one day. Would it shock them like a dog collar? Would they melt and fuse? No end and no beginning.

Stiles blinked and moved back, falling to his butt on the floor, shaking his head like he was throwing off the remnants of a dream. Derek closed his eyes, breathed deep. When he opened them, the wall had cooled, no longer crackling. A smudge of moisture clung to Stiles' lower lashes. Derek wiped it away.

"The boxes," Stiles said, voice hoarse. "I want to understand. What do they mean?"

He stood, holding up one finger. Wait . Stiles' heart jumped. It wasn't ASL, but it was a gesture that meant something, communication. The floorboards gave and bent noisily under Derek's weight as he headed to the bookcase. He couldn't answer, so he handed Stiles a book instead. The Gift of the Sacred Pipe .

He'd checked the book out of the New York Public Library the week Laura left for Beacon Hills. In his mad rush to return to his hometown when she stopped answering calls and texts, he'd thrown the book into a moving box by accident. It had an off-white label stuck to the spine, a book pocket on the back inside flap, and the front cover had a barcode at the bottom under the author's name. He'd thought about mailing it back, but they'd already revoked his library card, and so it found a permanent home on his shelves.

Stiles took the book and crawled into the bed on top of the sheets, cracking open the spine. Derek crawled in after him.

Stiles left with a casual remark thrown over his shoulder. "It might be a few more days than normal until I'm back. Lacrosse practice is starting, and Coach has us taking part in a three-day intensive camp. I'll stop over as soon as it's done, and I drag my beat-up body out of bed." 

Derek worked out and showered after Stiles left, made himself dinner. He went upstairs and slept in the bed that smelled like the two of them. In the morning, he made himself eggs and an English muffin. Worked out again. He was settling down on the couch with a book when it happened. 

A metallic scream split the air, zipper teeth ripping apart against their will. He startled, sitting up on high alert in a way he hadn't been in months. The loft plunged into silence after the sound, the level of quiet that sunk into Derek's bones when he returned from Mexico. Not even the gentle, pervasive whir of the Roomba could be heard, like the persistent underlying buzz of a chaotic, happy household.

Derek stood, dread curdling in his stomach. 

He could see it from where he stood, stopped about two feet in front of the refrigerator, between the row of cabinets and the kitchen island. A weak red light flashed on top. Derek watched it blink for ten seconds, twenty, thirty. The blinking stopped, its power sacrificed to the universe like Derek’s own had been when he healed Cora. You drained your battery all the way to the red (and there is a fully charged alpha on her way, ready to rip you limb from limb).

He walked over to the Roomba, looked down at it, lungs filling with cement and burned ozone. He squatted down next to it, the smell stronger closer to the floor. There was a button on the top; Stiles had pressed it the first day, and the Roomba roared to life. Maybe Derek should… He reached out, shaking fingers hovering a few inches above the machine. 

Even though he could feel very real heat emitting from the burned-out husk, touching it would be a horrible admission that he believed it was real. If his hand grabbed for it and there was nothing there... Then. Well. 

He scrambled backward like a crab, propelled by his hands and feet. No, don't touch it. Wait for Stiles.

So he went upstairs, and he waited.

For two days, he could pretend he wanted to stay in the spare bedroom because, well, he did. It was where he cuddled with imaginary Stiles. It was where he kept the boxes safe. He pretended the stale Saltines he found stashed in the bedside table drawer were the only thing his upset stomach could tolerate. After a few days, they were the only things he could eat because his sister didn't stay, they'd locked his Uncle away, and everyone was gone gone gone. Stiles wasn't real, and there was a dead fucking Roomba in his kitchen.

Sitting there for two days, he saw Stiles and the Roomba for what they were, his feeble mind's last grasp for happiness, for love. He couldn't even keep daydreams alive. The silent darkness he'd submerged himself in was louder than anything. The loft shrank to the size of a dollhouse, walls pressing in on all sides so he couldn't breathe or speak or think of anything but despair.

Derek clutched the doorjamb so tightly his hand would be sore for days, pulling himself to his feet, propelling himself down the hall to the top of the stairs. 

He descended each step like a staircase to hell, memories burning down in front of his eyes, the heat of the house fire blasting his front at a thousand degrees. Still, Derek was dunked under the icy water of this reality, this moment. He shivered under a layer of burning ash. For months everything had been colorless. Unreal. Then Stiles burst through the clouds like a rainbow, washing everything in technicolor. Now, a cyan chill rippled over his skin, leaving goosebumps. 

"Everyone around me gets hurt," Derek whispered aloud, his first spoken words in months, broken because his chest filled with ice. So cold, ribs spider-webbing with cracks, the fissures in his voice threatening to crack open his heart. A thing frozen deep in the arctic. Like Captain America , Stiles would say. The comic book sat on his coffee table for weeks; he'd picked it up when he was cleaning, put it in the end table drawer. It was real real real what is real nothing is real.

Thoughts exploded, the debris cloud full of memories he thought he'd locked OUTSIDE, but he shoved them inside, this last death at his hands shaking him to the core. Now everything combusted— contents under pressure . 

He hadn't known. He'd sat in the high school library on the second floor, Latin textbook open to the chapter on rhetorical figures. His eyes swept the stacks for any sign of her , the substitute teacher with the too-sharp smile. Derek thought of her hands, her mouth, her… Laura burst through the doors, crying, screaming his name, eyes glowing so red Derek didn't know how they'd ever explain away the color. While he'd sat there, hard behind the zipper of his jeans, fantasizing about the enemy, his family burned alive. 

Gerard's lips sneered, dripping the words, you're the only piece that doesn't fit . Cora emerged from the vault, her disappointment a tangible thing when she realized the powerful alpha she sought could never be Derek. Kate's fingers and mouth and eyes. Scott said They must have had a good reason . Allison's fear and disgust in the tunnels. His brave, beautiful sister cut in half. A family-shaped hole made of ashes; a pack-shaped hole filled with dark, sticky blood 

The shift came, fast, painful.  He couldn’t stop it. Derek stumbled toward the counter, grabbed the whiteboard and marker, fingers shaking, bones cracking. Words ate him alive, so he exorcised them like wolfsbane burned from a wound. 

Dead. I killed it.

Then Derek was gone.

Stiles stared, eyes enormous, round, very brown. The near tears returned, salt and grief and fear stinging the wolf's sensitive nose. 

He'd burst through the doors with his sweet, wind-swept scent bringing in the OUTSIDE, a shoebox in his hands. Stiles had papered the lid and bottom white and had a name written on the side in black sharpie marker: ALLISON.

Stiles' scent soured, instinct as agile as any animal. As soon as he saw the wolf, he knew something was wrong. Stiles put the box down on the floor by the door and walked to the wolf on legs that shook like a newborn foal. He sank to his knees, fingers coming up to press against the wolf's muzzle. "Why?" Stiles asked. "Why?"

The wolf glanced at the floor where the Roomba laid dead, whiteboard loudly broadcasting all Derek's secrets.

Dead. I killed it

Stiles' face puckered into something awful, mouth shaping words that, for once, refused to come out. Now they were both silent as a grave. 

Stiles' phone rang, ringtone shrill in the omnipresent quiet. He lifted it to his ear with a shaking hand. 

The wolf knew well the voice coming through the ear hole; he'd heard it since childhood.

"Stiles," Dr. Deaton said, voice as placid as ever, "I hear you have a problem."

Chapter Text

"This is impossible." Stiles flopped forward, forehead pressed to the cool, scratched stainless steel of the exam table. "I hope you cleaned this," he mumbled, too late for it to make any difference. 

"It's clean," Deaton said as if discussing the weather or something equally mundane. Ammonia and Lysol permeated the thin layer of animal when Stiles took a breath. "And nothing is impossible."

"Ugggghhhhhh," Stiles moaned. "You sound like Scott."

Exhales fogged the tabletop. After six breaths, Deaton walked around to Stiles' side of the island, took him by the shoulders, and planted him into a comfortable chair he'd pulled out from the corner. The question of why Deaton had such a nice chair in his surgical suite died in Stiles' throat. People probably sat there as they comforted their dying animals. The weight of grief—his, Derek's, the countless unseen pet owners—landed like an anvil in his lap. He couldn't get up if he tried.

He'd left Scott standing vigil in the parking lot behind Derek's building, eliciting a promise of a phone call if Scott's super senses picked up anything abnormal. "Don't worry," Scott said the second time Stiles called in thirty minutes. "I hear his heartbeat. He's asleep."

Deaton leaned back against the table, facing Stiles. "Stiles, you've lived in Beacon Hills your whole life. A Nogitsune possessed you, you have a True Alpha for a best friend, and in your short lifetime you've loved a banshee and a coyote. By now, you must realize; nothing is impossible."

"Yes, but… Why? " Stiles scuffed his sneaker against a drool spot on the tile floor. "Why Derek? Why now?"

The skin around Deaton's eyes and mouth stayed smooth, the exact opposite of Stiles' stress-crumpled expression. "Our subconscious is spectacularly agile, as you're well aware. Sometimes it knows when to take us away as a kind of protection. Based on what you've told me, I think Derek's regression to wolf form is an act of self-preservation."

Endless days at his mother's sickbed washed out to a hazy gray with passing time, leaving behind a few spots of colorful clarity: fluorescent lights above her hospital bed as bright as the sun, the never-ending beep of a vital sign monitor, and her pale, waxy skin. Only flashes of memory from his possession by the Nogitsune survived, like overexposed photographs. Ethan's tears as Aiden lay dying. Allison with an arrow shaft protruding from her stomach, twitching in time with her failing heartbeat.

Instead, Stiles' subconscious strung up fond memories like twinkling holiday lights, casting life in a soft, warm glow. Choosing which to display and which to hide in a shoebox in the closet wasn't reality. Neither was the boa constrictor-squeeze of every horrible moment. Derek's memories were hateful things, slicing from all angles. Humiliation, devastation, rage; rewound and replayed, spinning like magnetic tape around a reel.

How do you stop it? How do you work your mind free?

"I don't know for sure," Deaton answered the questions Stiles' hadn't realized he spoke aloud, "but if I hazard a guess, I'd say it has something to do with balance."

"Balance?"

Deaton pushed away from the exam table and walked over to the far wall where a feline anatomy poster hung, depicting the internal organs and muscular system. He lifted the bottom corner of the poster, pulling a tiny silver key off the back. "Our lives contain a mixture of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, harmony and struggle, and life and death. Each season has an appropriate time in the cycle of life. Nothing stays the same, even the bad times. They balance out, in the end." 

Rough cloth rubbed his fingertips, silk-like strings spelling out unfinished words. "Are you saying there's some divinely chosen purpose for everything we experience in our lives? Like, Derek's mental illness is god's will or something? Because I have to tell you, Doc, that sounds like a bible-thumping crock of shit."

"No, Stiles," Deaton said. "I'm a druid. We don't follow the Bible."

Stiles held up his hands. "Fine, sorry. You worship trees ."

Another man would roll his eyes, but not Deaton. "We believe in harmony, connection, and reverence for the natural world." He carried the key to a white metal stand-alone cabinet with glass doors and inserted it in the lock. "You know, Christianity borrowed from the Druids, as the Druids borrowed from those who came before. You're familiar with the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, I presume?" 

Somewhere in the back of his bedroom closet, a t-shirt with a yin-yang symbol laid buried. Stiles' knowledge on the subject went no further.

Deaton continued without an answer, pulling out amber apothecary vials with cork tops, glass dropper bottles, and travertine jars with wire bail lids. Inside the jars, Stiles discerned dried, crumbled herbs and syrupy liquids. "It's the belief that contrary forces are interconnected and complementary. They give rise to each other, depend on each other. Duality . It's a common principle found in many cultures and belief systems. Each paints it a different color and calls it their own, but it is the same at heart. Like humans, we spend so much time focusing on our differences, we forget how alike we are at our cores. Duality is abundant in the natural world. Give and take. Balance ."

"So what helps a werewolf find balance?" Stiles asked, scratching his cheek. "There's no antidepressant strong enough to withstand their metabolism."

"People help. Human contact." Deaton took the vials to the built-in cabinets along the exam room's sidewall. A sink and countertop stood atop wooden cupboards. He pulled out a stone pestle and mortar set from the recesses of a lower cabinet that held blankets, dog food, water bowls, and biscuits. "In the same way wolves are highly social animals, werewolves need a pack. A pack is a family, and wolves devote themselves to their families. They're one of only a few species known to tend and care for their injured and sick." Deaton pointedly looked at Stiles over his shoulder.

"Like us, wolves form friendships and maintain lifelong bonds. They succeed by cooperating, and they struggle when they're alone. Wolves need one another." Another loaded look as he measured out ingredients and poured them into the bowl. "They're known to mate for life." 

"Balance really isn't my forte." Steeped in all his insecurities, Stiles' statement came out small and scared. "I'm not a wolf, were or otherwise. And a freaking demon possessed me! That has to be reason enough to be unfit to help anyone find mental stability. Derek made progress; we made progress. He didn't speak words, but we communicated , understood each other. But then… I brought over that stupid Roomba, and I pushed him off the ledge."

Deaton sighed, putting down the pestle he used to grind the combined ingredients into a fine powder. "I'm aware you and Scott like to joke about my ambiguous advice, so let me be very clear. Both you and Derek have died and come back to life, which has offerings and consequences. You've each had your bodies and minds used against your will. Your souls are connected, complementary. Alike and different. You've always given rise to each other. By being there, by not giving up, you're already helping." Deaton raised an eyebrow. "When you love people, you don't give up on them." 

"I don't—" He kept his feelings for Derek tucked away in the low-lit corners of his mind. It felt like being excavated; with a few simple words, Deaton dug to the center of his soul. When Stiles and Derek were together, Stiles' body was a lit firework, barreling into the sky, exploding, raining back down in a million burned-out pieces. Stiles called it adrenaline, survival instinct, ADHD, rage. He'd called it everything but what it was. 

A million reasons to walk away floated through Stiles' mind when he found Derek struck dumb in his loft. The exact reasons had played on repeat when Derek first rebuked Stiles and Scott in the woods— This is private property. But Stiles only ever needed one reason to stay. 

"God," he sighed. "None of it was supposed to be like this."

Deaton hummed his agreement. "I've found the universe has a way of knocking all our supposed-tos on their asses." Using the pestle like a pointer, Deaton gestured at the container Stiles carried into the clinic. It sat on the counter next to the office computer, wrapped in pieces of tenderly taped paper. "Tell me about the boxes."

Stiles stood from his seat and walked over to his Allison box. He tipped it forward, removing the lid to reveal the contents to Deaton: a bullet engraved with a fleur-de-lis, a stun gun, a slip of torn notebook paper with AA + SM doodled in purple pen, a bottle of glittery blue nail polish, and an archery glove. While Deaton perused Allison’s artifacts, Stiles told him about Derek’s boxes.

"Derek also gave me a book called The Gift of the Sacred Pipe after he showed me the boxes he made." Stiles had brought the tome, and he picked it up off the counter. He held it out to Deaton, who put down his pestle and took the title from Stiles' outstretched hand. "It's the story of Black Elk and the seven rites."

Deaton flipped through the pages. " Nagi Gluhapi . The Keeping of the Soul. In the Lakota tradition, a soul's keeper watched over the soul bundle, a buckskin bundle wrapped around a lock of purified hair. Soul bundles were kept for about a year. Then, the Keeper of the Soul took the bundle outside, opened it, and released the soul. Tribe members came and raised their voices, helping the soul travel back to the place it was born. It's a sacred ceremony meant to help people deal with the deep feelings of loss and grief experienced at the death of a loved one and purify the deceased's soul. It seems Derek created his own version of soul bundles for the people he loved and lost."

Stiles nodded. "He feels responsible for their deaths. This is him trying to free their souls. Somewhere along the way, I think he tried to bundle all his grief, remorse, and mistakes in the boxes, but everything got locked behind his tongue instead. And when it became too much, he sealed himself away, inside the wolf." Stiles filled his lungs with a steadying breath. "There's one more thing I haven't mentioned. I've had dreams."

After Stiles finished talking, Deaton added a few drops of yellow liquid to the mortar. The concoction smoked as he poured the contents into an empty vial, corking the top. He placed it on the exam table. "I think I know a way to restore the balance."

"Will this be painful?" Stiles asked, regarding the mixture with a sigh.

Deaton smiled, and Stiles added sadism to the man's resume. "Progress always is."

Stiles met Scott in the parking lot, and they called for reinforcements—Lydia, Malia, Liam. "It takes a village," he joked. 

"Not a village," Scott replied, smacking him on the back. "A pack ."

"God, you're lame. A True Alpha for all of five minutes, and it's—"Stiles shook invisible pom-poms—"ra ra teamwork."

"What can I say? The bite is a gift." Scott sobered. "You don't have to do this. We can find another way." 

Scott's unfailing optimism was a balm to Stiles' nerves. "Just make sure Liam gets the boxes from the apartment as fast as he can, and places all of them where I showed on the map. You guys follow, but not too close. I don’t want to spook him.”

“Got it.  Don’t worry, Stiles.  This will work.  You’re the one who makes the plans.”

“I won't let Derek down." Stiles gave his best friend a small smile.  

Scott volleyed with an even bigger one. "And we won't let you down."

There he was, the wolf from Stiles' dreams. Though, in his dreams, there was decidedly less tail wagging. 

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles cooed as Derek came forward, nudging his hand with a black, fuzzy head. He ran fingers through the wolf's soft, thick fur. 

Stiles sat on the couch, leather cushions swallowing him whole. He placed the vial onto the table. Wolf Derek sniffed it, nudged it with his nose. "Deaton said this could help restore the balance." Wolf Derek cocked his head at Stiles' air quotes. "He also said some other shit, but what kind of dysfunctional pack would we be if we didn't ignore the mortal danger?" 

What Deaton said had been a warning. "The wolf is a manifestation of Derek's soul. Just like he needs to free the souls of those he's guarding—Erica, Boyd, Paige, his family—he also needs to give the wolf freedom. The wolf needs to be outside under the full moon. The higher the elevation, the better. And you need to bring the boxes."

"How can I lure him out of the house?" Stiles asked. "What if I touch the curtains, and instead of a panic attack, I get my hand bitten off?"

"You'll use this." Deaton set the vial of yellowish liquid on the exam table, close enough for Stiles to grab if he wanted. "It will ease communication between your souls—create a pathway—however it has to."

"In my dreams," Stiles said, "I wasn't myself. I was a fox. Why would my soul take the form of a fox and not a human?" The question was rhetorical. Stiles knew the answer. He just needed to hear it spoken aloud.

"Offerings and consequences," Deaton repeated. "Give and take. The Nogitsune took much from you, Stiles. It took your mind; it took your body. I'm not surprised you took something from it as well. When people talk of fundamental changes, these are the kinds of things they mean."

Stiles reached for the vial. Before his fingers touched it, Deaton spoke again. "If your soul takes on the form of a fox, Stiles, I must warn you. Free will is a force of nature. You always have a choice. A choice to hurt or a choice to help. A choice to stay, or a choice to go. In animal form, it may be much harder to reason which choice human Stiles would make."

Wolf Derek whined, nose bumping Stiles' white knuckles, clutching the vial. 

"Derek," Stiles said. "Look at me." The wolf stared at him with cornflower blue eyes. "If there's one thing I've learned from all this death—the ones I've caused and the ones I've borne witness to—it's that I want to live . And I want you to live, too. Maybe... maybe we can do that together. We're not so different, you and I." With the back of his hand, he wiped at a trickle of sweat dripping down his temple. "I don't want to leave what's between us unfinished, Derek. Life is too damn short. When we're both human again, I think it may be time we talked." 

A time to break down, and a time to build up.

He unstoppered the cork. The liquid wafting up his nose smelled lemony and medicinal. "Okay," Stiles said, talking to Derek, to his mom, to Allison, to all the souls gone too soon. He held the vial above his head in a toast. "Here’s to freeing our souls. Let's finish this."

He tipped the glass up to his lips and swallowed.

Chapter Text

They raced toward the edge of the world under a black tablecloth sky, stars strewn across the surface like spilled grains of salt. No matter how fast they ran, the horizon remained one step ahead. The wolf heard others follow, felt the echoes of their paws against the earth—a coyote, an alpha, but they stayed back, downwind, meaning no harm. Pack. Protection. Strength. The knowledge swift and sure, instincts rooting out a fundamental truth. Up ahead, a human heart thumped, steady beats half-drowned by wind-churned leaves. 

Distracted, the fox veered into the underbrush, jaws snapping at the hind legs of a rabbit. The wolf waited for the fox to re-emerge, the soft sunset-orange fur of its pointy face threaded with fragrant pine needles. The moon didn't govern the fox as it did the wolf; foxes didn't feel the all-consuming pull in the center of their guts. So it was in no hurry, nipping at the wolf's heels, chatting and barking, and flicking its bushy tail under the wolf's nose. 

Foxes were lone hunters, solitary creatures. But in the same way the wolf knew their pursuers were pack—chemosignals, heartbeat, instinct–it knew the fox was his . Magic, brotherhood, and the earth's magnetic fields oriented them to each other. Bonds of love and devotion tied them together as surely as strings of fate. 

They chased each other up a steep embankment, dashing over fallen logs and hedges. Around them, comforting, familiar scents leaked through the trees; sharp pine sap and soft clover. The fox darted ahead, rubbing itself along the base of trees, scratched at the dirt with its paws, mouthed at branches, evading the wolf. Despite the moon's call, the wolf relished the play, stalking and pouncing like a pup. 

The wolf lost the trail of scent, darting from tree to tree. It hunkered down low to the earth, ears twitching, listening. Overhead, wings flurried as bats streaked like lightning across the sky. Bark crackled, and nocturnal prowlers rustled the bushes. The human's heartbeat, a mile off, smelled of sweat and soap and skin and pack. He'd walked nearby, carrying something that belonged to Derek . The wolf sifted through jasmine and pine, through moss and rotting leaves. Then… there . Just up ahead.

The wolf rushed at the scent, bounding at full speed, heedless of the briars clawing at his coat. Expecting a burrow or a shrubbed hiding place, he instead found the fox standing stock-still at the edge of a meadow. Ears flattened to its head, one frozen paw lifted as if in step, its bushy tail and heartbeat elevated. High grass waved like an ocean tide in the night breeze. A lone cricket beckoned him forward with a siren song. At the opposite end of the small meadow, the perimeter gave way to a craggy rock ledge with loose-looking gravel and leafy ferns; the cliff overlooked Beacon Hills.

Sneaker-clad feet had crushed the grass in spots, blades still straightening from their trampled and twisted positions. The human's scent permeated the air in widening ripples, the epicenter exuding from a set of small rectangular boxes deposited at the cliff's edge. The boxes beckoned the wolf forward, the ground rumbling under his passing paws like a mother's heartbeat. Behind him, the fox whined low in its throat, keeping guard at the edge of the meadow.

Covered in his own scent, one box, in particular, his human hands had touched the most, lid edges and corners saturated. The wolf nosed the bundles, dislodging the tops of each.

More spilled out than their meager contents. Derek's mother came with gentle eyes and tender hands. "Different," she whispered, palm against the top of the wolf's head. "Different, but still beautiful."

Erica came with powerful arms that didn't tremble, reaching for the sky, able to take on the world and win . "I got my driver's license," she told him, smile unfettered. 

Boyd came, calm and confident. "I found Alicia," he told the wolf. "I'm not alone."

Paige said nothing; her cello spoke for her in mellow, sonorous notes.

"When I teased you about dressing up to take someone to the dance," Laura laughed, "I didn't mean a fursuit."

His father's arms were as all-encompassing as Derek remembered. He always gave the best hugs. 

And Stiles… Stiles was already there. He'd been there for weeks, months, years. He'd torn a 147-pound hole through Derek's insanity with unwavering loyalty and love. Derek lost months to the echoing voices of his past, found it easier to pack them away, and his own voice, too. Then Stiles had come, his hand reaching out, an offer and a plea, without pressure, but filled with hope. 

"There is a time to keep silent, Derek," his mother said. "And a time to speak. Tell Stiles it's time."

The wolf— Derek —released a howl that echoed over Beacon Hills. 

He came to in the clearing, gulping down breaths like a diver breaking the surface, and found a fox licking his nose. "Stiles…" Derek said. The name caused him pain, his human throat unused to words after months of nothing but grunts and hums. Pain, Derek was used to. Stiles was worth it. "Stiles," he said again.

The fox cocked its head, yipped, then darted around the meadow, flashes of orange and white in the tufts of tall grass. In human or fox form, Stiles' boundless energy, enthusiasm, and resulting chaos were inevitable. He flopped onto his back, showing Derek his belly, an act of play rather than submission. Chase me. Play with me. 

"It's time to shift back," Derek told him, crawling over to the fox on hands and knees. Stiles tumbled onto four paws and rose on his haunches to nip at Derek's chin. "Quit it." Derek laughed, unable to resist running a hand down the soft fur of Stiles' back. The fox's entire body shivered, calming.

He allowed Derek to pull burrs from his coat, only protesting meekly at the grooming, more mischievous than agitated. "Trust me, you don't want these stuck to your hair—or worse, your ass—when you change back. And you need to change back, Stiles."

Stiles' transformation shimmered in the corner of Derek's eye, like a cloud of buzzing insects or fog melting off a mirror. Derek's heart sped up, his bones crying out in empathy. Then the fox's head jerked like a puppet pulled by an invisible wire. The transformation halted and turned back in a blink, and he lopped off without warning, heading toward the tree line, leaving Derek to scramble to his feet and give chase.

"Wait, Stiles!" Derek wasn't as nimble as the fox in human form, and he no longer had a protective layer of fur or tough pads on his feet. Fox Stiles raced ahead for long minutes, circling back, weaving through the trees to drive Derek crazy. He paused his chase, threw his head back, and roared, letting a partial shift take over his features. But Stiles never backed down, so the fox didn't either.

Derek, at supernatural speed, ran for hours, but Stiles remained a glimmer gravity couldn't touch. They hopped over deep gashes in the earth that had become trickling streams, skirted roots that clawed at the sandy soil, protruding like distended veins on the back of a clenched fist. Sharp brambles and thorns tore at Derek's bare human skin, the shallow, superficial wounds healing faster than the sting could fade. He knew they headed south, and the fox must have known too—South; toward Beacon Hills, toward home, toward the pack. 

As the sun silvered the sky, the fox skidded to a halt at the edge of the forest, where trees gave way to a lightly traveled gravel trail. Scott, Lydia, Malia, and Liam stood shoulder to shoulder on the rocky road, human Lydia with bags under her eyes. Even the werewolves and werecoyote couldn't hide their exhaustion and stress under unblemished skin; worry weighed down all their faces. Malia held two oversized blankets, clutching them to her chest when the fox broke the treeline. Why isn't he changing back? Derek didn't need to be crazy to hear the unspoken question in the air.

Stiles tried to change back, his skin and fur rippling, stalling, rippling again. Over and over. He couldn't do it. The fox sagged onto the road, panting in exhaustion. Liam grimaced, and Lydia stopped a soft, mournful sound from exiting her lips with manicured fingers.

Despite his nudity, Derek walked out onto the trail, bending down next to Stiles. Malia stepped forward with a blanket, but Derek waved her back with one hand.

"Stiles," she called to the fox, "I know how tempting it is to stay in this form, how safe it feels. But you've never played it safe a day in your life."

"Remember," Scott said, "pain makes you human."

Derek nodded." You think the memory of Allison, of the Nogitsune, can't hurt the fox, but trust me, it's just a different pain. And so many people need you: the pack, your dad, me . We need Stiles. I need Stiles. It's time ." The words ripped new holes in Derek's chest, but they filled with light this time instead of darkness.

One by one, the pack said his name.

Liam. "Stiles."

Malia. "Stiles."

Lydia. "Stiles."

Scott. "Stiles."

Derek. "You didn't let the fox keep you before. You won't let it take you now."

The fox stumbled back onto its paws, sides heaving, lips pulled back from its sharp little teeth.

A glint. A flicker. The violent, echoing roar of rending fabric, like lightning splitting a tree.

Then, Stiles . 

Morning sunshine, warm like towels fresh from the dryer, streamed through his blinds, painting tiger stripes over the guest bed. In the living room downstairs, Malia and Scott fought over the last dregs of milk for their Cheerios. Liam made use of Derek's workout equipment, and Lydia typed on Peter's laptop. He'd learn that later she'd used his stored credit card number to order furniture and wall art and area rugs. "You're home , Derek. It's time to decorate." 

It's time.

Next to him, Stiles stirred.

Laying on their sides, Derek's chest pressed into Stiles' back—his human back—and he ran a hand up and down Stiles' arm. Stiles turned, facing Derek, the skin under his eyes bruised-blue from lack of sleep. Derek slid his hand back up Stiles' arm, over his shoulder, neck, chin, until his fingertips kissed the soap-bubble thin skin.

Stiles' hands did their own excavation. One brushed against Derek's face and neck like moth wings, and one cupped Derek's chin, thumb resting at the corner of his mouth like a promise. When the time is right. Their gentle ministrations dug out Derek's fear and self-loathing, filling the gaps with potential.

Derek needed to use his words. He'd start with a thank you and go from there. Because no matter what, Stiles never lost sight of who Derek was deep down inside. Human, flaws and all. Stiles had always known, and he stayed. Derek anchored himself to Stiles' cheekbones, moles, and lips. He let himself feel all the good and the bad. Stiles kept Derek safe; he freed his soul.

No more silence.

"There's a lot I have to say," Derek told him.

Stiles smiled, palm settling against Derek's cheek. "I know," he said. "I'm listening."

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