Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a cell. If nothing else, Stiles knew that much by its three dreary greyish walls and one wall-sized set of bars with a section that would swing out to offer entry. Or exit. There was no window or bed, only a surprisingly clean toilet in one corner and a scowly werewolf in the other. Across from them was another cell with another pair of captives or prisoners or whatever they were. Stiles thought they might be another werewolf-human pair. That thought made his stomach twist. Stiles’ father had taught him it took three to make a pattern, but Stiles already doubted these two cells were a coincidence. Whoever had brought them here wanted something from them. From werewolves and humans caged together in pairs.

                Stiles leaned his head against the bars. They were smooth and cool, and they made him wonder why the dungeons here had air conditioning and plumbing. There should have been rust on the metal and moss on the walls accented by a dankness to the air and ghosts of those who had suffered here before. He rolled his face over the cool metal, feeling how it slid against his cheek. The next bar hit the side of his head, and Stiles rolled his face back the other way. They’d already given up on trying to bend or break these bars.

                In the other cell, the human looked at Stiles like he had a serious mental condition, the kind that called for a cell much softer than this one. Eventually his werewolf tapped his shoulder, and he turned away. The werewolf kept glancing at Stiles and Derek anyway. Beneath her obvious malice, Stiles saw something else. A hesitation in her step when she sized Derek up. The way her eyes slid to Stiles as she pushed her human toward the back of the cell to whisper to him. He just wished he knew what those moments meant.

                Stiles realized the possessives he’d given them and wondered if she’d already thought of Derek as his werewolf. A smile found its way to his lips as he imagined Derek in a dog collar trying to convince Stiles to fill his bowl with kibble. Then he imagined Derek ripping the dog collar to pieces and following it with Stiles’ throat. That wouldn’t be much fun. He glanced back at Derek.

                “Can you hear them?”

                Derek nodded. When Stiles continued to stare at him, Derek shrugged. “Nothing worth sharing.”

                Stiles frowned and studied what he could with his own senses. There were cells to either side of the one across from Stiles, but they were empty. He wondered if the same was true of the space around his cell, but the bars were too close together to fit his head through and peek around the corner. He stuck an arm out and reached over. At first he found solid wall, but then his hand reached first open air and then a metal bars like the one blocking in his cell.

                There was a growl.

Stiles waved his hand. “Hello, neighbor!” He grinned and noted the werewolf across the hall rolling her eyes.

No one answered except to swat his hand away. If the pattern held, there would be both a human and a werewolf in that cell. It was easy to guess which had growled, but harder to say who had pushed Stiles away. He tried again on the other side of his cell. There was only solid wall for as far as his arm reached. With his face pressed against the cement wall, he noticed a faint humming from beyond it. Stiles glanced back at Derek, wondering if he’d have mentioned something if it was important.

Stiles pulled Derek in the farthest back corner of their cell. “What about next door? Can you hear what they’re saying?”

                “If he was talking, maybe.” Derek cocked his head. “He says he can hear us.”

                “How nice of him.”

                “He says you talk too much.”

                Stiles rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even begun to talk.”

                “That’s what I’m afraid of,” someone said from the neighboring cell loud enough that Stiles heard.

                The werewolf across the way said something. Stiles saw her lips moving, but he couldn’t hear the words. Derek frowned.

                “What?” Stiles asked him.

                Derek shook his head.

                “Tell me.” Stiles nudged at Derek’s side, which earned him what could only be a ‘bitch please’ glare.

                “She warned him to be quiet. I don’t think whoever’s holding us likes their prisoners noisy.”

                “Then why’d they kidnap me?”

                Derek shrugged.

                Across the way, the werewolf and human moved to cuddle up against the wall. It almost looked like she was protecting him, but there was nothing to threaten them. Then the lights went out, and Stiles couldn’t see any farther than his nose.

                “Better stay close, newbies,” their neighbor said. “It’s about the get cold.”

                The air conditioning revved up, and the temperature plummeted. A wave of goosebumps spread over Stiles’ skin at the temperature change. Then the cold hit him like a sheet of ice. His teeth chattered, and his body shook.

                “That explains the cuddling werewolf,” Stiles barely said past the constant movement of his jaw.

                “Yeah,” Derek agreed.

                “Is it really as cold as it feels?” Stiles curled in around himself and whispered through the clicking of his teeth.

                “Worse, if you believe the locals.” Derek sighed. It was louder than their whispering. “Come on. Apparently it’s dangerous.”

                “What are they saying to you?”

                “Mostly that we should shut up.”

                The warmth of Derek’s arm pulled Stiles in. He almost pushed away and insisted he’d be fine, but then he remembered the way the werewolf wrapped herself around her human as best she could, like she had something to defend him against. They had known the cold was coming. Stiles pressed against Derek’s warmth and tried to ignore how awkward it was. Derek sighed the sigh of a tired and put-upon Victorian lady. Well, maybe he sighed more like a trucker who’d just found out he had to drive through the night, but Stiles preferred the first, if only for the image of Derek fanning himself to ease a case of the vapors.

                “What now?” he asked since the extreme sigh had come unprompted.

                Derek’s shoulder shifted over him as he lifted it in a shrug. “I’ve been forced to choose between cuddling you or condemning you to death by freezer. What do you think?”

                “I wouldn’t actua—”

                “You would.”

                “Oh.” Stiles pulled himself closer to Derek. He didn’t like the idea of dying here. He had a life to get back to. A life that, while it involved werewolves and frequent danger, definitely lacked the prison cells and artificial freeze of this place.

 

~.x.~

 

They woke up entangled and over-warm, wondering how they’d managed to fall asleep at all. The freeze had been turned off. Derek scowled, pulling himself away from Stiles, but Stiles just leaned against the wall and watched the pair across the way. The werewolf was standing near the back, eyes trained on Stiles and Derek. The human was looking almost at them but to the side. Their neighbor, Stiles realized, the human was watching their neighbor.

                A door crashed open out of sight, and Stiles listened as sets of measured footsteps approached. He couldn’t guess how many there were. More than two, fewer than a hundred. The footsteps stopped before anyone reached Stiles’ cell, so he moved forward the press his face against the bars and look out. They had sounded close, and sure enough, he found them looking in at his neighbor.

                “You look lonely,” A woman said. She wore leather and denim in faded shades of blue and brown. There was a cigarette between her lips, unlit. She spoke around it rather then removing the cigarette.

                His neighbor growled. Something about that made the woman smile, and Stiles knew then that he hated her. Across the way, the werewolf and human pair sat near the back of their cell. They did not huddle and cower, but Stiles thought they might as well have been. There were soldier types around the woman with spiffy brown uniforms and guns at the ready, but Stiles suspected she was the reason the werewolf and human pretended to lounge casually in the furthest possible part of their cell. She seemed the sort of woman who inspired fear more than respect. To be honest, she reminded Stiles a little of Allison’s mother, if Allison’s mother had blond hair and a killer body to match the fanatic hatred that burned behind her eyes.

                Derek’s hand settled on Stiles’ shoulder and pulled him back slowly. Stiles almost asked him what was wrong, but Derek widened his eyes in warning and settled a finger over his lips in a fairly universal signal for, ‘shut up and wait until the crazy lady is gone.’ Or something similar but less specific.

                “I think this could be an opportunity for us, Jorge. What about you?” Stiles had to imagine the evil smirk on the woman’s face.

                Their neighbor—Jorge—growled again. Stiles heard the slide of claws against cement and wondered what Jorge expected to accomplish. If these cells were weak enough for werewolves to break out, they’d be empty already. But Stiles remembered the other werewolf protecting her human and the warmth of Derek’s body settling around him.

                They chose humans the werewolves cared about. In Derek’s case they’d probably settled for someone he just didn’t want dead since Derek had no human friends. Actually, a list of Derek’s friends was more painfully short than Stiles’ even if you included his crazy uncle and the werewolves who had left or rejected him. Stiles let Derek pull him into the far corner of their cell and settled beside him on the floor in an eerie echo of the pair across the way.

                That was when he began to wonder if the woman was human.

                She began walking again and stopped facing into Stiles’ cell. “Raw meat,” she declared, looking them over. “And so young this time.” Her eyes lingered on the place where Stiles’ shoulder brushed Derek’s, and he thought there must be a reason they used cold, a reason only huddling together for warmth could protect them. He shivered under her gaze as he’d shivered under the freeze. The woman gave a satisfied nod and walked away, her footsteps echoing back to Stiles.

                “Ask them why she wants us invested in each other,” Stiles told Derek when the door had crashed shut again.

                “What?”

                “They’re taking us in human-werewolf pairs and forcing us closer using their ridiculous air conditioning.” Stiles frowned. He’d been speaking in a regular voice, so he knew the others could hear, but he doubted they’d shout so he could catch their answers.

                “Your boy is clever,” Jorge said. “You should keep him around.”

                Derek didn’t respond except by frowning and clenching his fists around the fabric of his pants. The denim was thick and too tight for him to get a good hold.

                “Is it better to give them what they’re looking for or to resist it?” Stiles hoped Jorge answered again. The werewolf across the way kept scowling at him and pulling her human away when he tried to approach the forward edge of their cell.

                “If you don’t like him enough, they’ll kill and replace you.” Jorge sounded bitter. He knew from experience, Stiles guessed, which meant he should cuddle up to Derek every night and hold his hands in the daytime and stare longingly into his angry werewolf eyes.

                “She says if you like me too much they’ll just make us die together,” Derek said, nodding toward the angry werewolf across the way.

                “There is no pleasing these people.” Stiles revised his plan. Stay close enough to Derek to stay alive. Pull far enough away to express doubt that Derek is enough to save him or worth being saved in turn. He saw the tightrope stretched ahead of him and settled in to cross it one step at a time. Something told him enemy ninjas would drop in on him midway through, so he hoped Derek’s balance was better than his.

 

~.x.~

 

There were eyes on them. Stiles felt the itch of their gazes between his shoulder blades, and he saw Derek raise his shoulders like hackles against them. There was sand under Stiles’ hands and knees where he’d fallen when a guard pushed him. It gave way as he pushed himself to stand. Whatever they wanted of him would be harder without solid ground. The sand reached all the way to the cement walls circling him and Derek. There were two doors with metals bars like the ones on their cell in the freezer. The doors faced opposite each other. Derek and Stiles had just been shoved through one. Stiles looked up at the mirrors topping the cement wall and felt the eyes boring through the glass, watching him even though he couldn’t watch in turn.

                This looked like something he’d seen in a movie once. It was the kind of movie where men fought to the death to amuse other men.

                The other door opened, and Stiles shivered. Derek crouched, ready to run or fight, but Stiles just stood there, not sure what to do beyond panic and hope Derek could handle it. A werewolf stumbled through alone and halted in the sand staring at Derek. He turned his yellow eyes to Stiles and frowned. There wasn’t enough anger in it.

                Instead, there was defeat.

                The door closed behind the lone wolf, and a voice came on over a speaker Stiles couldn’t find. It was somewhere above him. Maybe Derek and the other wolf would be able to see it. “You fight to the death,” the voice said as though it were explaining how to prepare tea. “And then we let you live a little longer.” It could have been anyone’s voice. Except the blond woman who frightened werewolves. It definitely wasn’t her voice.

                The werewolf growled, and Stiles realized something Derek must have from the start. “Jorge?” he asked, recognizing his voice.

                Jorge charged. Maybe there was a time when he nobly refused to fight, when he struggled to retain his humanity and dignity despite the gladiator matches. Stiles had come in late to his movie and would never know. Derek intercepted Jorge before he reached Stiles. He was already beaten, not by Stiles and Derek, but by the woman and her system, by the loss of his partner.

                “I don’t want to kill him,” Stiles whispered. He knew the werewolves would hear and hoped whoever watched from behind the mirrors wouldn’t.

                Derek sunk his fangs into Jorge’s throat and ripped through his jugular. Blood covered Derek’s face and the front of his clothes. “You don’t have to.” Derek growled. His eyes glowed yellow, but Stiles didn’t have a voice left to tell them that was wrong. They should have matched the blood. An alpha’s eyes were red, and before becoming an alpha, Derek’s eyes had been blue.

                The doors from behind Stiles opened, and soldier-types poured out. “Back inside,” one of them said, motioning with his gun where he wanted Derek and Stiles to walk like that wasn’t a serious safety hazard or anything. Stiles hoped his safety was on, and then he fervently hoped he’d forgotten the safety and would twitch his finger with the gun pointed at one of his allies.

                The blood had begun drying on Derek’s chin, and the sand arena smelt of shit now that Jorge had died and his bowels released. Stiles shuffled forward, but Derek caught his arm. He didn’t say anything, just held him there in mini-defiance, just to prove he could. Then the soldier who had spoken fired a round into Derek’s leg without first having to click off his safety. Derek went down, but Stiles pulled him up and let Derek’s weight rest on his shoulder as they moved through the door.

                They led them to a shower. “The rules here are also simple,” a different soldier told them with an ugly smirk on her lips. “Together or not at all, and I get the feeling you could use a shower.”

                Derek growled at her. He put his weight back on his leg even though they hadn’t pulled out the bullet yet, and the soldier-type backed away before laughing and putting a round into his belly. Stiles noted that she had to turn off the safety before firing. The soldiers pulled back.

                “Don’t we get a little privacy?” Stiles demanded when they formed a half circled around him.

                “Nope.”

                Derek tensed beside Stiles as though an audience actually made sharing a shower worse. Well, it did, but it was bad enough to start.

                “I’m going to try to get the bullets out,” Stiles told him. Derek nodded, so Stiles pushed him to sit. He knew Derek would heal and was thankful because he needed Derek to keep him alive here, and he didn’t have the tools he needed to remove a bullet safely.

                After a shuttering breath, Stiles rolled up Derek’s pant leg to uncover the bleeding hole there. He tried not to puke on it because that would be rude and probably lead to infection except that Derek was a werewolf and could heal an infection before it... infected him. Stiles’ hand was shaking when he shoved his fingers into the hole. Then Derek gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and rolled his head back with something too high-pitched to be a proper growl but too low for a whine.

                Stiles stomach did flips as his fingers groped past blood and tissue for the bullet. Derek kept his leg still, but just barely. The metal was hot against his fingertip when Stiles found it. He couldn’t quite get a grip on it, but the soldiers refused to help. He shoved his fingers further in, pushing aside the muscle to make space. If Derek had been human, he would probably never heal from the damage Stiles was doing. But he was a werewolf, and Stiles got his fingers around it and pulled the bullet out. He chucked the bullet at the head of the guy who’d shot it and laughed when it bounced off his cheek.

                For a moment he and Derek sat panting. “Okay, now the other one,” Stiles said at last, moving to push up Derek’s shirt. Stiles found an entry wound near Derek’s hip and an exit wound out the other side. The wound had already begun to heal. Stiles searched out where the bullet had implanted itself at the base of the wall and wondered how he hadn’t heard that. But the gunshot had been loud on its own, and even knowing he could heal, it was sort of stressful watching your only ally be shot. Stiles supposed it was a little more stressful for Derek.

                “Who’s doing our laundry?” Stiles asked, eying the shower. They’d get cleaner if they undressed, and sleeping in dry clothes would decrease his chances of catching pneumonia in the freezer.

                “Your clothes are going in the trash. You’ll be given new ones.”

                Stiles remembered the werewolf and her human. They both wore similar brown pants and white t-shirts. He hadn’t thought anything of it before, but Stiles figured those were their prison uniforms. With a shrug, he pulled his shirt over his head. The pants and boxers would be harder, and sliding into the small shower beside Derek harder still.

                “Come on.” He pulled Derek up and began pushing him to undress. “You stink like you just killed someone with your teeth.”

                “I can never seem to get that smell off,” Derek agreed. He winced when he raised his arms to remove his shirt and stumbled when he stepped out of his pants onto his injured leg. Stiles caught him and tried not to think about them both being naked.

                Not all of the soldiers watched them with hardened indifference. A few of them eyed Derek appreciatively. It made Stiles want to claw their eyes out and shove them naked in a shower together. He pulled off his pants and boxers in one go and stumbled into the shower to turn on the water. It was cold. Stiles tried turning it up, but nothing happened.

                Of course it was cold. He stepped back out to help Derek shuffle in, still trying to keep weight off the leg that had been shot not five minutes before. There was a ledge in the shower with a sort of liquid soap. There was only the one bottle, so Stiles hoped it served as both body wash and shampoo and began washing himself as fast as he could. Derek leaned against the shower wall with his eyes closed breathing a little too steadily to be anything but forced. Dried and drying blood still clung to his skin where it’d hit him or leaked through his shirt.

                Stiles offered Derek the wash-stuff, and Derek began scrubbing himself off with a sigh. Stiles tried to stand out of the way in the corner, but then Derek put too much weight on his injured leg. He caught himself, but only after Stiles’ brain had sent out the signal to rush forward. He caught Derek at his middle, unable to stop fast enough with human reflexes even though Derek no longer needed help.

                If they ever got out of this, Stiles was determined that they would never ever discuss his hands sliding across Derek’s slick torso in the shower because that was going to be way too uncomfortable a conversation. In fact, they were going to pretend they got separate shower stalls and uncomfortably warm prison cells.

                The water heated up. Stiles hadn’t noticed any coincidences yet and proved himself right by stepping away from Derek. The water cooled. “Assholes,” Stiles muttered. Derek made a sound that might have been a laugh if laughter was the sort of thing that stabbed you in the gut and twisted the knife while complimenting the definition of the abs it was ruining.

                Derek finished washing under cold water while Stiles stared past him at their guards. He wondered how long it would be before he was desperate for a hot shower. Desperation for a warm place to sleep had taken all of one-point-four minutes. Stiles tried to consider the symbolism of Derek/werewolf as warmth and life but got distracted by how much he wanted to strangle the woman smirking at his shivering nakedness.

 

~.x.~

 

On his way out and then back in, Stiles had seen other cells in the freezer, all of them empty except for his neighbor Jorge—now killed by a bad case of throatlessness—and the cell across the way. The human and werewolf there watched Stiles and Derek forced back into their cell with renewed hatred.

                “Was Jorge your friend?” Stiles asked when the soldier-types had gone.

                The werewolf shook her head and answered loud enough for the sound to carry to Stiles’ human ears. “He was my pack-brother.”

                Stiles sat at the back of his cell after that and tried not to stare too much. She would need time to grieve. Derek muttered something about understanding revenge that he probably didn’t think Stiles could hear. The werewolf looked at them for a long time after that, but Stiles couldn’t read her expression. Derek ignored her in favor of staring at the bars of their cell with such rage that Stiles was surprised they didn’t melt away to let them go free.

                Later, under the weight of darkness, cold, and Derek’s body heat, Stiles whispered, “Can anyone hear us?” He’d pushed Derek to sleep in the furthest part of their cell.

                “No one I know of.”

                Stiles paused. The cell could be bugged. “There was a thing toward the end of the fight. It was... different.”

                “Some things could mean trouble. It’s better to hide them.” Good, he’d caught onto Stiles’ attempts at vagueness as well as what they meant.

                “You can do that?”

                Derek grunted, and Stiles had to admit it was a stupid question given what he’d seen today. It made sense that an alpha could hide, otherwise Peter Hale would have been found out the moment Derek rolled into town. That would have saved them all so much trouble. Stiles shivered, even with Derek’s heat around him.

                “Why doesn’t the cold affect werewolves?”

                After a long pause, Derek whispered, “It does. We just heal.” His breath tickled Stiles’ neck, and Stiles wondered how long it would be before he stopped wanting to itch at the places where Derek breathed on him.

 

~.x.~

 

There were two of them the next time Derek and Stiles had opponents. Stiles didn’t recognize them and figured they must be kept in a different set of cells. The human had a sunburn. Her skin was red and peeling. Stiles wondered if there was a sunburn cellblock. Nothing here was coincidence.

                The wolf and human both went after Stiles as soon as they reached the sand-floor arena. Derek stopped the wolf, but not as easily as he’d stopped Jorge. This one had some fight in her yet. Stiles didn’t have time to admire it though since her partner was trying to claw his eyes out with her fingernails. He caught her by the wrists and held her back. There was blood under her fingernails and long streaks across her skin that Stiles suspected came from scratching. There was a burnt smell to her that almost made Stiles thankful for his freezer.

                He pushed her back and kicked her but hesitated once she was on the ground. He didn’t want to kill her. But she wanted to kill him. As soon as he gave her an opening, she lunged for him, fighting literally tooth and nail to drag him down. Stiles was stronger, but she fought harder. Her eyes were wide and crazed, and her teeth gnashed with desperation. Stiles wondered if this was what he had to look forward to. Or would he become quiet and hollow like the human who lived across the way and rarely moved after Jorge’s death except by order of his wolf or a guard.

                His opponent landed a blow on Stiles’ groin and kicked at his face as soon as he was down. Stiles struggled between holding his head and his balls until he realized she was trying to cave his face in. As soon as he could move again, Stiles struggled up and leapt on the girl. She went down under his weight, and his hands found their way to her throat.

                Stiles had always thought his first kill would be a monster.

                He tightened his grip past the shaking of his hands and blinked away tears. This girl didn’t deserve to die. She had been forced into this. She was just desperate, but Stiles was desperate too. She passed out, and he pulled away.

                “She isn’t dead,” the voice from above said.

                Stiles nodded. Of course she wasn’t dead. He’d let go too soon. The wolves struggled nearby, but Stiles sat in the sand staring at the girl he’d beaten. She hadn’t even been strong.

                “The rules require you kill her.”

                “I don’t want to.” Stiles knew things never worked out for the valiant hero who refused to kill his opponent in gladiator movies. He bit his lip and wondered how it worked here.

                There was a bang and then a burning in his shoulder.

                “Kill her, or we kill you.”

                Yes, that explained her desperation nicely, but would they follow through with it? Stiles pressed a hand to the wound, trying to stem the flow of blood, as he stood and shuffled over to the girl because he couldn’t afford to find out. He pressed the brown sole of his prison-uniform boot against the girl’s throat and shifted his weigh downward until he crushed her neck.

                When she was dead, Stiles looked up to find Derek covered in blood, some of it his, some of it the other wolf’s. Then he turned his eyes to the ground and found the other wolf in pieces. Three of them, if he didn’t count the flap of skin that had been torn from her cheek with such force that it stuck to the wall.

                Stiles fell to his knees and puked and didn’t even feel ashamed. Derek helped him to his feet. This time when they reached the shower, he pulled the bullet out for Stiles using his claws to prevent some of the extensive damage Stiles had done with his fingers. No one offered him a bandage, so his blood ran down his body as he showered in cold water. When they left the shower to find freshly-laundered uniforms, they also found bandaging on top. Derek wrapped it around Stiles shoulder and then helped him clean away the rest of the blood without soaking the bandage. It felt like lying wrapped in his arms, and Stiles worried that he was already so far gone. He hoped Derek would resist longer.

                The partners across the way were gone when Stiles and Derek returned to their cell. The soldier-types locked them up, and Stiles collapsed at the far corner of the cell. Already that spot had become a habit. When Derek sat down next to him, Stiles knew they were doomed even though Derek didn’t look worried or try to say anything comforting.

                “That was stupid,” Derek said at last, facing the empty air ahead of them instead of Stiles.

                “This from the guy who got himself shot twice last time.”

                “I heal.”

                “I do too. Just... slower.” Stiles sighed. “Much slower, I know.”

                Derek nodded, stood, and paced. He was wasting energy, but Stiles didn’t even know that they needed to conserve it.

                “Have you ever sparred with a human before?” Stiles asked, still leaning into the corner.

                “Not since I was a teenager,” Derek said, but Stiles heard, ‘Not since I had a family and friends.’

                “Well, I get the feeling I’m going to want to know more about fighting than I do now.” No matter how terrible a person it made him, Stiles wanted to live more than he wanted not to be a killer.

                Derek knelt in front of Stiles. He looked into his eyes as if searching for some sort of determination, or maybe he’d fallen in far enough to believe they had a connection now, a ‘we killed people together,’ link that made them more than the only-when-convenient allies they’d been in Beacon Hills. Stiles hoped it was the first one. Then Derek rammed a fist against Stiles wound hard enough that he screamed.

                “Lesson one: they’ll aim for your weakness.”

                “Thanks, Derek, I really needed that.”

                Derek nodded even though Stiles doubted he’d missed the sarcasm. “You should rest. We’ll spar another time.”

                “Oh, now you think I should be treated like I’m injured.”

                “Don’t make me punch you again.”

                “Your threats ring hollow.” Stiles didn’t get to say more because the door crashed open. He wondered why it was always so loud.

                Soldiers marched in the pair across the way and deposited them in their cell. The wolf was limping, and the human had claw marks running down his face and neck. They’d had a fight too. The werewolf glared at Derek while the human leaned against the wall and sank to the floor.

 

~.x.~

 

Stiles hated how easy it became. Derek trained him to fight, and Stiles quickly realized the freezing cellblock was one of the nicer ones. Most of his opponents bore the scars of their cellblock. Wounds, burns, exhaustion, psychoses. There was a rattle in Stiles’ chest sometimes now, and if he sparred too long with Derek, he fell into fits of nasty coughing. He tried to kill the humans before his cough had a chance to act up. Most of them were weaker than he was.

                The lights went off in their cell, but Stiles continued fighting. Derek was trying to teach him to fight without sight, by sound and smell, but it wasn’t the same for a human. He reminded himself that Derek had never been human and tried anyway. Some of his blows landed. None of the blocks succeeded. Eventually he tripped on the toilet, but Derek caught him before he fell.

                They stayed frozen, panting and sweating. Stiles had wondered since they arrived how long it would take to reach this moment, and now that they were here, he didn’t know how long it had been. He tried to break away, but Derek pulled him closer. He hadn’t tried very hard anyway. The rattle in his lungs acted up, and he fell into a coughing fit against Derek’s chest that he honestly hoped would ruin the moment before one of them did something they’d regret.

                “The cold is getting to you,” Derek said.

                “There’s nothing else you can do.” Stiles wheezed a little, but he could speak again and got his breathing under control one thin strand of air at a time.

                Derek’s arms settled around Stiles’ waist. They should have felt more out of place. “We’ll take warm showers. That will help.”

                “I don’t—”

                “Yes you do.” The harshness of Derek’s voice surprised Stiles into silence. “That’s what all this is designed for, isn’t it?”

                So Derek had noticed after all. Stiles gave up and leaned in against Derek’s chest. It felt so right being close to him now even though Stiles knew better. They hadn’t tried to change his thoughts though. They’d known all they had to change were his feelings.

                “Besides,” Derek added, “All those people watching and we never bothered to give them a decent show.”

                Stiles laughed, but only if coughing into Derek’s throat and clawing his nails into the skin of Derek’s neck counted as laughter. Then he kissed Derek, but only if biting Derek’s lips and telling him how much he hated him counted as kissing.

Chapter Text

They were moved to another cellblock, moving at the center of a squad of soldier-types with brown-and-white uniforms and loaded firearms. Stiles stumbled with exhaustion, and Derek put an arm around him for stability. He still smelled of soap. They passed by cells like the ones in the freezer block, but nearly all of them were taken. Stiles wondered what they did to the prisoners here. Then he noticed how the pairs filled their cells. The cold cells had pushed cellmates together, but these were pushed apart as far as space allowed. The wolves’ eyes glowed with their distrust.

                Stiles wondered if jerking each other off in the shower had maybe been going too far. Apparently they’d been moved from the cuddle-bug cells to the enemies-in-a-room-together cells. He pointed it out to Derek and got a nod in return. He’d noticed. Stiles was tempted to act out again, to grope Derek or kiss him or fall to his knees and blow him, but he thought it might be a bit late for that to have much impact other than a bullet’s impact with his back.

                The soldier-types shoved Stiles forward into an occupied cell and then pushed Derek into a cell across the way. There was just barely enough space between opposite cells for the soldier-types to walk side-by-side at the center of the way without being reached by any prisoner’s outstretched arms. The werewolf in the cell ignored Stiles, but his eyes tracked Derek. Across the way, the human kept her eyes on Derek as well.

                “Is she your partner?” Stiles asked even though he could see the answer.

                “Keep your mouth shut, human, or I’ll kill you.”

                Stiles rolled his eyes. “Unlikely since you killing me means my partner killing her.”

                The werewolf eyed him with a frown. He turned his back on Derek and walked to the back wall. When he set a hand against it, the wall became nearly invisible. They were high up. Below them was a circular sand arena with a cement wall around it. It was empty now. Stiles gaped. He’d noticed the path curving as they approached the cell, but none of the reasons he thought of had related to the arena where he killed people.

                The werewolf pulled his hand away. “They can’t see from their side,” he said with a nod to Derek and the human he shared a cell with, “But I can see. I know you.”

                Stiles watched him. “But what is it you think you know?”

                “You play this game too well for someone who sees through it so clearly.”

                “Either that or not well enough.” Stiles chanced a glance at Derek. They should have lasted longer, stayed in the cold cells. He shook his head. A few warm showers wouldn’t have been enough; he knew that. Even though he didn’t know what waited for him in these cells, Stiles doubted it was more coldness. Maybe he could heal. He would fight better healthy.

                “They did move you here, after all.” The werewolf smirked.

                Stiles turned back to the wall and set a hand against it. The glass became clear. “I always thought we were fighting for the audience’s twisted amusement.”

                “I don’t think we’re the only ones watching.” The werewolf laughed without humor, and Stiles joined him.

                “What do they want with us?” he asked.

                The werewolf shrugged. “If there’s a level where they tell us that, I haven’t seen it yet.” He eyed Stiles, sliding his gaze from head to toe. “Speaking of levels, you never show their signs. Where have they been hiding you?”

                Stiles returned the werewolf’s look and then turned to study his human. She had scars running along her arms and burns on her cheeks. There was an intermittent twitch in her left hand, and she kept staring at a shadow that never moved. He counted three levels on her and wondered which one they were in now, or had she just come here, making this her fourth?

                “You don’t trust me enough to tell.”

                “Are you surprised?” Stiles shrugged and smiled, hoping his eyes were suitably cold. He had too much practice faking at happiness for his father. Coldness was harder to reach, but he thought maybe murder had made it easier.

                “You know I’ll find out.” Stiles could guess at levels seconds after meeting a person despite never having been in any cellblock but the cold one. So, yeah, the werewolf would figure him out eventually. But seconds counted in the arena, and Stiles saw no point to making things easier for a man who would try to kill him before much longer.

                “But the guessing part is just so much fun.”

                Across the way, Derek snorted. The girl sharing his cell flinched, pressing herself against the wall. Despite her fear, her fingers twitched in a way that spoke of killing to Stiles. The werewolf stepped forward at her yelp, but he only gritted his teeth and clenched his hands into fists. Derek never moved. He stood at the forward edge of his cell, right behind the bars, staring out at Stiles. He leaned his forehead against the metal and smirked. Stiles remembered rolling his face against the bars of their cell on their first night here and figured Derek meant it for a joke.

                A gust of wind roared through the cellblock. It pushed Stiles back and left him gasping for breath, which left him coughing until his knees hit the floor. When he could breathe again, he looked up. Derek was gripping the bars of his cage in both hands, knuckles white. His cellmate was on her hands and knees giving Stiles a wicked smile. She knew his weakness now. He turned to find the werewolf grinning too.

                “Nasty cough you got there.” He chuckled. “Hard to believe they moved someone straight from the Freezer to the View.”

                During their stay, no one else had been placed in the cold cells. Stiles wondered how many actually went there, but clearly this werewolf knew about them. The werewolf and her human from across the wide way were still there. Jorge had been there until Derek ripped out his throat.

                “What does that mean?” Stiles asked. “And what was that gust?” The werewolf’s secrets danced in his eyes in time with the upward tilt of his lips. “Really? You’re clamming up now?”

                “Well, I got what I wanted from you.” He said it like something special, like Stiles hadn’t gotten the same thing from the girl in Derek’s cell with only a glance.

                “Yeah, yeah, you’ve read my scars and know my weakness, but have I ever let a fight last long enough for it to matter?” Stiles forced himself to bare his teeth in a way he’d learned from watching Derek. By the werewolf’s hesitation, Stiles knew it had worked.

                “Good point,” he admitted.

                The wall went clear on its own before he could say more. When Stiles looked through the glass, he saw two partner-sets shoved onto the sand. One pair he recognized from the cold cells. He wondered if they’d gotten new neighbors yet and wished he’d learned their names. The human moved without focus. The werewolf looked almost ready to kill him herself as she pulled his attention back to the impending death match. These two lost the day Jorge did; they just refused to admit it. The other set had rope burns on their skin and moved like their joints had forgotten they were meant to bend and turn. Stiles winced. That was one of the worst levels. It left them nearly useless in combat. Maybe the partners across the way would live to see another day. Stiles grinned to himself over his rhyme.

                Stiles couldn’t hear the voice that always told them to fight to the death, but both teams charged at once. They went for the humans first, but the werewolves cut each other off. Stiles rolled his eyes at the familiar tactic. Every fight here seemed to boil down to human-on-human and werewolf-on-werewolf, separate fights in the same ring.

                Desperation and adrenaline lent the rope-burn partners strength and speed to stand against the partners across the way. Even so, the fight should have been quick. It dragged on. The humans fought defensively, driving each other back, trying to hold on just a few moments longer. The werewolves slashed madly, desperate to land a fatal blow. Stiles thought they should have been better at killing given how much of it each pair should have done by now. He wondered how they expected to win that way, but then he remembered the teams he and Derek had beaten already. This tired, pitiful fight was not unique. This was how everyone fought. Try to kill the human. Get paired by species. The humans stall each other. One wolf kills the other. That wolf kills the other human too. Someone lives and someone dies, and the human thanks fate that there was a werewolf there to save the day.

                “You see it now,” the werewolf said. The fight stretched out into the silence Stiles left him. “Those of us in the View have changed since you got here. You taught us the importance of murder.” Stiles tore his eyes from the beatings below to look at the werewolf’s face. He’d feared some sort of maniacal grin and found instead weariness and hatred. “Maybe that’s why they put you here. We’re the only ones who could kill you now.” Stiles thought of the humans he had passed on his way here. How many of them had waited for backup before? How many of them would kill him outright now?

                Stiles leaned against the glass as the werewolf across the way finally killed her opponent. Then she bolted to her human’s side and killed his opponent too. They stumbled away together through a door that slid shut behind them. Stiles pulled away from the glass, and its surface took on the color and texture of a cement wall. Light still passed through though. Stiles wondered why he hadn’t noticed it sooner, but, of course, he’d been eying his potential opponent, not the shadows on the floor.

                “You never explained the wind,” he said.

                The werewolf shrugged. “It’s a mind-game level. What can I say?”

 

~.x.~

 

The rules against yelling in the Freezer had no bearing in the View. Stiles thought part of the game here involved making them think they knew the game. The thought made him laugh and wish for the weight of Derek’s arms at night while the walls whispered to him. The man standing across from him now had told Stiles that everyone heard the walls, just no one heard the same words from them. He thought it was a drug. His partner thought it was low-volume speakers and stress. Derek said it reminded him of his uncle and chuckled with the bitterness and hatred of betrayal. No one said what it meant to hear maddening lies and be reminded of family, but Stiles felt the others weighing it against Derek’s strength. Some of these people might have felt sorry for him once, but now they only picked out weaknesses.

                Stiles’ cellmate had been right. These humans were different. Most of them had twitches and neuroses, but they went for the kill the way his first opponent had. They were stronger though. Some of them didn’t sleep, and some of them didn’t eat, but some of them did both. Today, Stiles’ opponent was bigger than he was, stronger. Stiles knew he liked to work out in his cell even though some of the others found the noise of his counting annoying or maddening or a bit of both.

                Stiles brushed his fingers against Derek’s hand. “Trade you,” he whispered. Derek looked at him like he’d suggested lying down in the sand and hoping they won by default because no one could see them. His confusion faded as he considered Stiles’ suggestion longer. Then he nodded, and Stiles caught a hint of a smirk at the edge of his lips. He wanted to bite and lick the smirk away until he left Derek open-mouthed and panting. Stiles licked his own lips and wished reminding himself that he only cared because he associated Derek with survival would make him stop wanting him so badly. He wondered what it was like for the werewolves, how they became so obsessed with protecting their humans even though the humans typically did very little.

                The voice told them the rules, and Derek charged for the human just like everyone always did. Stiles crossed behind him, aiming for the wolf. Stiles almost thought he wouldn’t take the bait, but he saw Stiles running at him, unprotected, and charged. Derek reached the other human first, having never lost that split-second to hesitation. As his opponent neared, Stiles hit the ground and slid through the sand with no intention of attacking a werewolf head-on.

                The human was dead the moment Derek reached him.

                Stiles scrambled in the sand to regain his footing as the werewolf spun, screaming. He would smell his partner’s blood even if he’d missed the dying, and Stiles knew most of the pairs in the View were either in love or close enough that it didn’t matter. Derek spun, drenched in blood and flinging it out into the sand with his motion. Mad with grief and rage, the werewolf attacked him instead of Stiles. Derek braced himself against the attack, and Stiles ran forward. He leapt onto the werewolf’s back. One arm stretched around the wolf’s neck to hold him close. With the hand of the other arm, Stiles dug a finger into the wolf’s eye. He screamed and clawed at Stiles’ hand long enough for Derek to drive a hand into his chest and rip out his heart. Stiles thought that might have been a bit excessive but imagined the crowd going wild with freshly-sated bloodlust.

                Stiles spun, staring at the glass above the cement, but he couldn’t tell which side his cell was on. Now that he looked more carefully, he thought there was more than one level of glass. His cellmate had said he thought there were others watching. Stiles decided that based on the doors it was one of two locations and waved to them both. Then Derek pulled him away to their shower.

                They ignored the soldier-types in favor of kissing. Stiles relished the heat of Derek’s body. Even though they’d been out of the Freezer for a while now, he still associated body heat with survival. He pressed as close against Derek as he could while trying to get them both undressed. His hand, where the werewolf had clawed him at the end, bled all over their uniforms, but Stiles knew they’d get fresh ones after their shower. He unbuttoned Derek’s pants and shoved his good hand inside. One of the soldier-types cleared her throat, but Stiles ignored her.

                “I see you two have gotten very... close.” Stiles knew that voice. He pulled back from Derek to find the woman who had spoken to Jorge. She had her arms crossed and studied them with a look on her face that said they could never measure up. Stiles couldn’t guess at her standard.

                Derek pulled Stiles against his chest again and rumbled at her. Stiles shivered with the vibrations of Derek’s growl and leaned against him. He didn’t have anything to say to this woman. He understood just enough to know he understood too little. Anything he said to her could be a mistake, and Stiles had enough disadvantages as it was.

                “Not afraid anymore?” she asked. Her laugh was mocking. “You think a few little fights make you strong enough to stand to me?”

                “That would be much more meaningful if I knew who you were,” said Stiles, even though he’d told himself to keep his mouth shut for once.

                “I would comment on your nerve, but that seems to be all anyone can say about you these days, Stiles.” She smiled. “Especially after this last match. You’re beginning to get noticed.”

                Stiles suspected he did not want to be noticed, but he wanted to be killed even less. The woman turned and left without explanation, and Derek’s hand slid down past the waistband of Stiles’ pants when she was gone. He let Derek touch him even though he’d just remembered they wouldn’t be doing this if they were free. He kissed Derek without loving him because they needed each other, and when they were put into their separate cells, he felt like he’d been split in two even though he knew they would never be close again if they managed to escape.

                Derek stood at the front of his cell with his forehead pressed against the bars. He stood like that for hours, like he always did, watching Stiles train alone since he didn’t have Derek to spar with anymore and didn’t trust his cellmate not to hurt him. By the time the walls started talking to him and the shadows reached out to coax him to lie on the cool cement, Stiles realized Derek was even more lost in this than he was.

 

~.x.~

 

The guards came for Stiles while the walls still whispered. Night was the time for torments, not for killing. Stiles blinked groggily, shushing the walls when they drowned out what he hoped was an explanation. In the opposite cell, Derek pressed himself against the bars, growling threats, while the human huddled against the wall pretending to be asleep. Stiles caught her peeking through her eyelashes. When the soldier-types got fed up with his confusion and sluggishness, the guards sent one of their own into the cell to carry Stiles out. They had their guns trained on the werewolf, so Stiles grabbed the soldier who had come in by the collar of his uniform and smashed his face against the wall just because he could.

                The guns swung to him, but Stiles only laughed until his sides hurt and he worried his cough would return. No one laughed with him, not even the walls. Stiles let the laughter fall away into a smirk and followed the soldiers out of his cell. They kept their distance, even with their superior numbers and firepower.

                They left Derek behind.

                Stiles crammed his fists into the pockets of his prison-uniform to keep his hands from shaking and told himself he didn’t need Derek. He wanted Derek, and that was fine. But he didn’t need him. Even without saying the words aloud, Stiles tasted the salt of lies on his tongue. He would be dead now without Derek.

                At first Stiles tried to memorize the path they took, but he lost track. He couldn’t tell if the halls all looked the same or if the soldier-types led him through the same halls multiple times to confuse him. They opened a door that looked like dozens of other doors they had walked by, and behind it was a staircase. They climbed upward. No one would tell Stiles their name, quest, favorite color, or anything at all about swallows.

                Behind another door that they reached after another maze of hallways, these with smooth white walls and white floor tiles that reminded Stiles of a hospital, stood a man. He wore a lab coat and a name badge that just said, “Haha, No.” Stiles chuckled at that, and the man smiled appreciatively.

                He turned and motioned to a chair at the center of too many metal contraptions for comfort. “Please, sit.”

                This was a different kind of movie than the gladiator films Stiles had been stuck in with Derek. Stiles eyed the needles and knives suspiciously. There were machines too, the kind he suspected beeped and gave readings about important things that only the man in the lab coat would understand. Stiles shook his head. “No thanks, I’d rather stand.”

                “You know perfectly well that we can make you sit.”

                “And I’m sure you know perfectly well that I have a few behavioral issues that I never quite worked through.” Stiles waited for the soldier-types to make him sit.

                The man with the lab coat sighed and waved a hand. When the first soldier-type touched him, Stiles threw him to the floor. Then the others had him by his arms and by his fear of gunshots to the face. They wrestled him into the chair and strapped him in. Stiles tried not to think of all the things that could be in the syringes around him. It was probably some sort of anesthetic, but his brain kept oscillating between zombie virus and metamorphosing serum. He couldn’t decide which one would be more awesome any more than he could decide which one would be more terrible.

                “This is going to sting,” the man said, brushing his hands off on his lab coat before lifting some sort of suction cup with a tiny needle attached toward Stiles’ face.

                “You are not sticking that in me are you?”

                “Of course I’m sticking this in you. Haven’t you ever seen a creepy, illegal science facility before?” He pressed the needle into Stiles’ temple and held it until the suction cup had a good hold on Stiles’ skin. There were others for his other temple, neck, and chest. Stiles imagined himself as Frankenstein’s creature and groaned appropriately until the scientist laughed. “I didn’t expect you to be in such good spirits, what with my kidnapping you for strange and mysterious experiments.”

                Stiles shrugged, but it earned him a firm pat on the shoulder since it messed up Haha, No’s attempt to draw a sample of his blood. “I compensate with humor.”

                “We’ve been watching, and you don’t so much compensate as obliterate anyone matched against you.” He got the blood sample and grinned at it briefly before moving on. “This might hurt a little,” he warned, pressing his finger against a button on the machine connected to Stiles via suctioned needles.

                White-hot agony poured through the needles. Stiles’ body convulsed with it. His hands arched into claws, and his arms strained against their bonds to reach the needles and pull them out. He screamed, first with pain and then with rage. His struggles shifted to aim at Haha, No. Stiles snarled past bared teeth, and he stretched his neck, trying to pull away from the needles. Eventually he just shook his head as fast as he could, hoping to shake the pain off. The pain switched off, and Stiles collapsed against the chair in relief.

                He coughed, throat suddenly dry. “Yeah, that stung.”

                “Thank you, Stiles. Honest feedback is always an important part of the scientific process.” The machine hummed, and Haha, No turned to it immediately. He scowled.

                “Not good, I take it?” Stiles made himself smile even though it hurt. All he wanted to do was collapse somewhere and sleep, preferably with Derek nearby.

                “Completely useless,” Haha, No agreed. “But still worth studying.” He pressed the button again.

 

~.x.~

 

“You’re not as scary as he is,” the girl said. Her voice was young like her face, but her eyes were old. Everyone had old eyes here. She had not spoken since Derek was put into her cell except in startled yelps and midnight whimpers.

                Derek sized up Stiles’ cellmate. “He’s not so tough.”

                “No, not my partner. Yours. You’re not as scary as he is.” She looked at Stiles like he was the monster that lived in the shadows of her cell.

                Derek looked at her like she was crazy. “He’s human.”

                “I think he’s crazy.”

                Stiles was hurt. A girl who talked to shadows even when the cellblock’s game was turned off had just called him crazy.

                “At least you get to live over there,” her partner said to her.

                “You too?” Stiles rolled his eyes.

                “You used yourself as bait and then gouged out a werewolf’s eye.” He tapped his own cheek, just below the eye. “Humans are supposed to fight humans. Otherwise, humans wind up dead. But you’re not dead.”

                Stiles shrugged.

                “And he’s strong,” the girl added. “Most of us aren’t anymore, but he is. I’ve seen the way he practices, and it’s not like Cory used to with his counting. He doesn’t practice like he wants his body to last. He practices like he wants his body to kill.”

                Stiles hadn’t known exercise boy’s name was Cory. The letters crawled under his skin and found a place to latch on at the back of his lungs. They felt like the sickness the Freezer had given him. He cleared his throat and swallowed. His mouth had gone dry.

                “I’m Vic,” Stiles’ cellmate said, “And she’s Mirabelle.” He grinned. “Usually it’s best not to react so visibly when something bothers you.”

                “You know I’ll kill you whether I know your names or not.”

                Chattering in the cellblock stopped dead. No one talked about killing each other here. It made talking at all too difficult.

                Mirabelle pointed at Stiles. “See. Scary.”

                Conversation picked back up, but Stiles caught a few of them talking about him. He hadn’t told anyone his name—the one his mother gave him or the one he’d taken for himself—but he knew the things they called him by now. He grinned widely at Mirabelle until she backed away to the corner of her cell and became quiet again.

                Derek was looking at Stiles like he’d never seen him before. He ran a hand up and down the bar of his cell, studying Stiles like a puzzle. Stiles worried what that look could mean, but then he saw the outline of Derek’s hardness against the fabric of his pants. Stiles grinned and blew Derek a kiss. Then he turned his back and pressed a hand to the glass wall so he could look out at the arena. There were scratches along the walls, faint things he hardly noticed while on the ground. He only needed another match or two. If he could find a way to have Derek stall a little after Stiles killed their human opponent, he could get a look at the walls and find the place he’d been studying from his cell.

                Stiles told the walls to shut up and brushed away a phantom touch against his throat where Haha, No’s needle had punctured the skin. He breathed deeply and told himself everything was okay, but no one else was talking to their walls just yet. The games only ever began after dark. There was a twitch in Stiles’ eye that wouldn’t go away. He thought his last opponent had seen it, but maybe that wasn’t so bad. Everyone he fought now was from the View. They all bore View scars. Even Derek had begun growling at things no one else could see. There was breath against the back of Stiles’ neck, but it wasn’t soothing like Derek’s.

                “Am I already so bad that it’d be worth losing her to kill me?”

                ‘No,” Vic answered. “I’m just starting to worry you will be.”

                Stiles laughed. He spun around and pushed Vic away from him and advanced, relishing the single backward step Vic took before squaring his shoulders and facing Stiles down. “You worry too much. I’ll only kill you in the ring. Otherwise, I’m determined to rescue us all.” He grinned and wondered how manic it looked. He’d lost a lot of sleep recently on the nights Haha, No decided to prod, poke, torture, and study him. His favorite part was making Stiles scream.

                “I told you he was crazy,” Mirabelle muttered from her corner, glaring at Derek. “At least you make some sense.”

                Derek laughed. Not the dark, bitter laugh that sounded like something dying inside of him, but a thin, terrified laugh that told Stiles Derek had already lost hope. That was okay. Stiles had enough for both of them. He had enough for all of them, and he would scream it every night until his throat gave out because he was tired of resignation to this place.

 

~.x.~

 

‘Joker’ was the name that stuck. The other nicknames faded from use until people started calling Stiles ‘Joker’ to his face. A woman one cell over tried to call Derek ‘Harley,’ but after the way he growled, they went with ‘Beast’ instead. Every once in a while, someone used just the last syllable of Mirabelle’s name and thought themselves clever, but no one suspected Derek was interested in anyone other than Stiles. They understood too well what ‘partner’ meant in this place.

                Stiles played up the part. He had already smiled too much, but now he smiled more. He’d taken to calling Derek ‘Adam’ because that was the Disney version of the Beast’s name. Mirabelle caught on immediately and spoiled any chance of someone believing his name was actually Adam. She used that instead of Beast though. When Derek asked why, she giggled and said it suited him better.

                The door crashed open. The door always crashed when it opened. Soldier-types marched in. By their footsteps, Stiles knew they were in formation. They only brought this many to let someone out and take them down for a match. The soldiers stopped outside Stiles cell, but they turned toward Derek. Derek tried to step back because they always let the human out first, but the soldiers motioned for him to step out. Then they locked the door, put a guard on Derek, and turned to let Stiles out.

                Stiles forced himself to laugh. Even the guards had bought into Mirabelle’s claim that Stiles was the scary one. Vic backed away slowly, but by his posture Stiles guessed it was an act for the guards. A guard unlocked the door and slid it open. Stiles stepped out calmly, grinning like the maniac everyone thought he was. A shadow twitched at the corner of his vision, but Stiles ignored it and moved to stand beside Derek. The soldier closed the cell and locked it. They ordered Derek and Stiles to march forward to victory or death.

                Once they were out of hearing range, Stiles muttered, “Go in oldschool?” to Derek.

                “Nothing fancy?”

                “They’ll see all my tricks. Gotta save a few.”

                They reached the arena first and waited for their opponents. Stiles ran his eyes over the cement, looking for his landmarks. Finding his own window wouldn’t actually help him escape, but his mind had latched onto it. He needed to get closer. Or farther away and higher up, but that one wasn’t exactly an option. Soldier-types would shoot him if he moved too much too soon, so Stiles decided to bolt to the right when the fight began. If he found nothing, he’d try for the left. If that failed, he’d go the other way next time.

                They had come through the door with a chip on the bottom right of the frame, Stiles reminded himself. Then a werewolf he called the Witch because of her horrible nighttime cackling and a girl he called Banshee because of her impressive lung capacity and the speed with which she decided shouting was in order entered through the opposite door. That would be the one with a streak of off-color paint on the ceiling at the last intersection before the final stretch of hall. Stiles hoped there was only the one arena.

                Banshee was fast. Stiles wouldn’t have much time. The Witch was unpredictable. She’d lost her mind entirely to the View. Stiles hoped Derek could keep up with her despite the guessing game she presented. He supposed that was how people felt about him and focused the bitter amusement of that into a laugh, hoping it would make them nervous.

                The voice told them the rules—fight to the death—and Stiles charged for the wall. He kept his eyes on it as he approached but recognized nothing. There were marks, just strange ones. He turned to run for the other wall, but Banshee tackled him. The fall took long enough for him to see Derek holding the Witch back, but then Stiles was struggling against Banshee. She knew how to lean her full body into an attack, making it harder to push her off even though she was smaller than Stiles.

                Stiles made himself laugh again, and Banshee tensed at the sound. That gave him an opening to push her off and scramble to his feet. He ran for the other wall, searching it for his shapes, but these seemed strange too. Banshee caught up and slammed him face-first against the wall with one of her signature shrieks. Stiles pushed off the wall and jammed his elbows backward. One of them caught Banshee. He spun, hoping she was stunned or forced back, and caught her mid-spin, using his momentum to slam her against the wall too. He grabbed her by her hair, pulled her head back, and smashed her face against the cement as hard as he could. It crunched. He did it again. And again. And again, staring at the wall. His angle was all wrong, but when he tried to reimaging these marks, they didn’t feel right. He threw what was left of Banshee into the sand and walked calmly to the other side while Derek fought the Witch.

                He took his time staring at the wall this time. It was still off, but then he moved farther down the wall and found them. He’s misjudged the angle of his view slightly, probably because it was hard to get a good look at the cracked-frame door from his window. Now that he knew where he was, Stiles turned and point a finger like the barrel of a gun at the place he knew Vic liked to watch from. Then he pretended to fire it as Derek gutted the Witch.

                “I thought you said no tricks.” Derek didn’t sound angry despite his words as he joined Stiles.

                Stiles shrugged. “I was wrong.”

 

~.x.~

 

“If you’re studying the connection, why only examine the human?” Stiles slumped in Haha, No’s chair of extremely painful science. His voice was a croaking that caught in his throat before exploding past his lips in a dry wheeze. Stiles had waited until he was all but certain before saying anything, and the shock on the scientist’s face was prize and confirmation in one. Unfortunately, he’d also given away that he only knew part of it. Stiles doubted he’d ever know more than just part of it.

                “Do you really think that’s all we’re studying?” The scientist rolled his eyes, but it was overdone.

                “Of course not.” Stiles left it at that. Better they didn’t know quite how much he had pieced together or quite how much he hadn’t. He knew a close bond with a werewolf did something to some of the humans. By Haha, No’s constant disappointment in him, Stiles guessed he hadn’t properly bonded with Derek. Maybe that was why they hadn’t bothered moving him through different levels like they did with others. They couldn’t test if having a werewolf for a pet affected his resistance to torture when he had missed out on the memo to make Derek his.

                Stiles assumed they used tests on him to determine factors of resistance to the bonds they wanted to create. He remembered thinking it had been about dependence and manipulated intimacy. In a way it had, but they’d wanted something more, a new level of connection that Stiles and Derek never achieved. Thinking of their failure made Stiles smile. Then Haha, No hit his magic pain button and wiped the smile off Stiles’ face.

                “Come on, Stiles. You’ve made yourself out to be such a smart cookie. Let’s have a test, shall we?”

                “I forgot to study.” His throat was shredded from screaming. He wheezed, trying to carry air to his lungs without pulling it against the edges of his throat.

                “What sorts of factors usually prevent a connection?” He stood still, watching Stiles expectantly.

                “You actually expect me to answer?”

                “Either that or...” He hovered a hand over the pain button.

                “Prior connection, emotional ambivalence or detachment, insufficient motivation...” Stiles shrugged. There was probably more.

                “What about your case?”

                “By your muttering, I gather that I’m perfect except for not being perfect, so... whatever.”

                Haha, No hit the button. Stiles screamed and strained against his bonds, desperate for relief.

                “He’s a smug fucking bastard. Why would I want to have a magical werewolf bond with him?” It was the first thing Stiles thought of, and he hoped it was enough.

                “You’re claiming you don’t like him enough?” He waited for Stiles to nod. “I’ve got some footage of you two in the shower. Shall I play it to prove you wrong?”

                “Only if you want me horny. Is that a new part of your game?” A fit of painful coughing ruined Stiles’ tone somewhat. It was so hard to mock people with your body convinced it was slowly dying.

                “Tell me about the rest of your pack.”

                “They’re wolves.” Well, not all of them. “You think I’m connected to one of them instead?”

                The man in the lab coat didn’t answer. He stared at Stiles with inner debate obvious in his eyes. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head.

                “Oh, is the test done? Then maybe you can help me with my notes.” Stiles knew he was pushing it, so he made sure to smile past the blood he’d coughed onto his lips. “I thought wolves were pack animals. Why would they bond with just one person?” Stiles remembered something bitten by a wolf that bonded only one person and shivered against his bonds. “Unless it’s not really wolves you’re interested in.”

                Haha, No slammed his fist against the pain button. Stiles screamed until he passed out. The darkness rushing over him felt like victory even if it smelled like dying.

 

Chapter Text

Derek paced his cell, hands clenching into fists, arching into claws, and retracting to fists. His lips pulled back to bare growing fangs. Mirabelle huddled in her corner, plenty afraid despite her claims that Joker scared her more than Adam. Stiles worried that the walls and shadows were getting to Derek and chuckled to himself because it was too late for that. The mind games had gotten to both of them already. Stiles ran through the training exercises Derek taught him and hoped he looked less worried than he felt.

                “C’mon, Beast, what’s wrong? Your princess getting attacked by wolves and you can’t help?” It was one of the newer voices. Stiles didn’t know it well yet.

                Derek growled, but his eyes darted to Stiles. “Some things could mean trouble,” he said, and Stiles filled in the rest: ‘It’s better to hide them.’

                Stiles remembered a time Derek had sensed that Scott was in trouble and become agitated like this. He had demanded Stiles ruin all of their plans so he could charge in and rescue Scott. Stiles thought it might be an alpha thing. “How many?” he asked, hoping he’d guessed right what was causing Derek’s agitation and that not too many of their friends were in danger.

                “None yet,” Derek bit out. He must have thought Stiles wanted to know who had already died. “Close though. And near.”

                Stiles wanted to whoop and shout. The pack was nearby. He bit the inside of his cheek to quiet himself and wondered why he needed this to be such a secret now. A wall bounced at him, and Stiles lashed out to push it back. His fist sailed through air. Scott wouldn’t fail him. Stiles brought the fist back to his side, clenched tight around the empty air and hope. Scott had never failed him.

                Funny that Stiles would feel more sure if it was Derek. Scott had only been his best friend. Derek was his partner in a place where ‘partner’ meant life. He failed not to think too hard about cells, battles, torture, and Derek. His thoughts lingered on Derek’s hands sliding wetly across his skin in the shower before he reminded himself there was a rescue to hope for.   

                “Is it too late though?” Stiles asked, moving three feet over so he could rest his hand against the wall he knew was harmless even though touching it made his skin crawl. He felt the wall crawl too and swallowed at the dryness of his mouth.

                Derek shrugged. “If it is, then it’s been for a while now.” Then he returned to his pacing.

                “I feel like the rest of us are missing out on something,” Vic said, leaning close to Stiles’ ear. “Why don’t we share with the class?”

                Stiles rolled his eyes and ignored Vic. He moved to the forward edge of his cell and slumped down against the bars. “Is it weird that this isn’t what I expected?” Stiles asked.

                “Yes,” said Derek.

                “I just thought it’d be me.”

                There was a pause. “I think that’s the walls talking.”

                Stiles chuckled. “Yeah, they’re noisy sons of bitches.”

                There was a soft hiss from down the hall.

                “No,” a voice said, “These are dangerous. They’re monsters.” It wasn’t anyone in the cellblock, but the door hadn’t crashed open.

                Then Stiles considered that they slammed the door on purpose, and a lot of the weirdness of the View made sense. Especially the strange breezes.

                “Dude, you’re a werewolf,” Scott’s voice said, and Stiles thought he would melt with relief. “Besides, we’re saving everyone.”

                “Your funeral,” the first voice said. Scott groaned exactly like an exasperated teenager but said nothing else.

                “Who are you?” That was a werewolf in the first cell. She missed Cory’s counting now even though she’d complained before that he would drive her mad faster than the whispering walls.

                “My name is Scott. I’m looking for my friend.”

                The werewolf laughed. “There are no friends here. Only partners and enemies.”

                “I’ll be your friend,” Stiles called down the hall.

                “Look out!” Derek shouted over Stiles, and then there was a sickening crack. Scott didn’t answer. Stiles hoped that crack was the sort of thing he could heal from.

                “Which cell is the Beast in?” This voice belonged to the werewolf from across the frozen cellblock’s way. When no one answered, she growled. “Never mind. I can smell him.”

                “Hey, hey, hey, angry werewolf lady!” Stiles pressed himself against the bars of his cell and reached an arm out toward her. “You know he didn’t have a choice, okay. You can’t just kill him for something you’ve also been doing for a while now.”

                She rolled her eyes and turned her back on Stiles. “You have a name?” She asked, settling her weight more heavily on one foot than the other. It was not a fighting stance.

                “Some of them call me Adam.”

                “Yes, because you’re an angry Disney prince. I meant a real name.” She crossed her arms. Nothing in her posture signaled a threat. Stiles leaned his face against the bars of his cell and watched.

                Derek frowned. “Derek.”

                “Ah, man, how can we uphold our secret identities if you blab to every pretty lady with a touch of contrapposto?” Stiles sighed.

                “A what?”

                “It’s an art term,” Vic said. “For the way she’s standing.” The werewolf glanced down at herself as if looking for where someone had slapped a contrapposto onto her shirt.

                “Oh, yeah, I forgot about you,” Stiles said to Vic. If anything happened to Derek, Vic would be free to kill Stiles. He should probably stop showing his back to the guy.

                “Well, Derek, you angry-muttered at me something about revenge and your understanding of it.”

                “I’m sure he meant that in a purely academic sense,” Stiles said.

                “Now I want you to help me get it.”

                “You’re not telling him to let you kill him are you? Because if you are, I’m going to gouge your eye out and feed it to you.” Stiles wasn’t used to threatening people, but it came easily enough.

                The werewolf turned around just long enough to roll her eyes. “You’re a freaky little idiot, aren’t you? I want him to help me kill the alpha.”

                “There’s an alpha?”

                “The woman who taunted Jorge,” Derek said. “She’s an alpha, but not just an alpha.” That explained why the werewolves had been so afraid of her. Derek gave the angry werewolf a look that implied the alpha being not just an alpha—whatever that meant—made her request more like a suicide mission than an exhilarating challenge.

                Stiles licked his lips. “Okay, dude, I’m here waiting for you to tell me what she is in addition to an alpha, and you’re just standing there, silent and mysterious like some kind of broody non-giving-of-answers jerkwad.”

                “Joker, where did you learn how to talk?” Vic asked. He’d moved closer while Stiles was distracted, so he definitely had some plans that ended in Stiles’ death. He still managed a touch of exasperation and humor for his question though.

                “Probably not the same place you did,” Stiles answered.

                “Come on, Derek, you’re the only one who’s ever offered to help. You’re not chickening out now, are you?” The werewolf across the way shifted her weight to the other foot.

                “Joker comes too.”         

                “He’s human. What’s he going to do?”

                Derek took hold of the cell bars above his head and leaned forward, supporting part of his weight by his arms. “I have it on good authority that he’s scarier than I am. They named me after a Disney prince. They named him after a psychotic villain bent on chaos and destruction.”

                She turned long enough to glance at Stiles who smiled and waved even though Vic was breathing down his neck at this point. “You make a fair point,” she admitted. First she unlocked Derek’s cell. When he stepped out, he didn’t close it behind him. Instead he pushed the werewolf across the way toward Stiles’ cell, and Mirabelle crept out slowly like that would keep werewolves from noticing.

                Stiles bolted from his cell the instant his door was open and stopped only when he hit Derek’s chest. Then he pushed away to check on Scott. He lay on the floor just inside the door that hadn’t crashed open today. Stiles checked his pulse and his breathing. Scott was fine, just knocked out. Stiles shook his shoulder until he woke.

                “Joker,” a voice said. “He said he was looking for a friend.” It was one of the newcomers. Almost everyone here was a newcomer. Only Vic, Mirabelle, and a few others had been here before Stiles and Derek. The others had all been killed.

                “Yeah, why else would someone actually break into this place?” Stiles helped Scott sit up as he struggled for consciousness. There was a wound on his forehead, but it knitted itself together as Stiles watched.

                “It’s you, isn’t it?”

                “Of course it’s me.” Stiles patted Scott’s cheek. “Wake up, dude. We’ve got bad guys to kill.”

                Scott grinned and threw his arms around Stiles. “You’re okay!”

                “Yeah, but call me Joker until we’re out of here.” He didn’t know why they’d hidden their names in the first place, but it seemed a shame to waste the effort now.

                “Um. Okay. Joker.” Scott tilted his head like seeing Stiles from a different angle would help him make more sense.

                Stiles smiled without having to force it this time, but he still turned away from Scott eventually. “Hey, werewolf lady, does that key work on all these cells?”

                “It’s not a key, Joker. It’s a ring of them.” She held up and jangled the keys.

                “Good. Unlock them.”

                “You do realize at least one of these people probably wants you dead, right?”

                “If they try, I’ll kill them. Otherwise, let’s free some fellow captives.”

                Scott pushed himself to his feet, and Stiles followed suit. “Why would anyone want you dead?” Scott asked.

                Stiles shrugged rather than explain. Scott wouldn’t understand.

                “Come on,” the avenging werewolf said, sliding past them toward the door. Stiles grabbed her wrist before she reached it.

                “Where’s your partner?”

                She growled and wrenched out from Stiles’ grip with more force than necessary given that he was human and she a werewolf.

                “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” He figured he should use Scott and Derek as meat shields so he didn’t wind up the same way.

                “Wait,” Derek said as the werewolf turned again. “The keys.”

                She rolled her eyes and tossed them to Derek who unlocked the cells. Scott beamed. The werewolf who used to be across the way but now stood uncomfortably close to Stiles given how little she seemed invested in his continued existence frowned and tapped her foot impatiently. The other pairs reunited. They held each other and kissed and eyed everyone else with familiar suspicion. This would have been an excellent time to escape.

                “So,” Stiles said instead, “Anyone else here think a dead alpha would be a good kind of alpha to make that one woman into?”

                Someone laughed. Someone growled. Someone shouted, “Fuck yes!” And someone else yelled, “Do it yourself.”

                “Fair enough,” Stiles said. “Onward.” He motioned toward the door, and they set out. Stiles kept Scott at his front and Derek at his back. They ran off in different directions once they moved through the door. A few stayed with Stiles’ group. Vic and Mirabelle were not among them.

                “Do you really think we could take down an alpha?” A girl with burn scars asked. She had a tendency to laugh at jokes no one had made.

                “That or die trying,” the avenging werewolf said. Stiles wondered if this was an awkward time to ask for her name and decided he maybe didn’t need it since she would probably fall into the ‘die trying’ category.

                Stiles had such cheery thoughts these days.

                “Of course we can do it,” Scott said, but Stiles elbowed him to keep him from saying more. Everyone noticed, of course, but Stiles gave them a wicked grin until they decided not to look at his face anymore.

                “Where are the others?” Stiles asked Scott.

                “Probably getting shot at somewhere. There are a lot of people with guns here.” Scott sniffed and pointed. “Allison’s that way. Or am I not supposed to use names?”

                “Too late now either way.”

                “The alpha’s that way,” Derek said, motioning opposite of Allison’s direction.

                “We have a better chance with a larger team,” Stiles pointed out.

                “We also risk losing her if we get sidetracked.”

                Stiles rolled his eyes. “Okay, someone howl to get the pack to follow us or whatever it is you do, and let’s go alpha hunting.”

                Scott and Derek howled together. Stiles examined his jealousy. This place had made him accustomed to being the only person who did anything with Derek. He would have to get used to other people again, especially the flavor of other people who didn’t necessarily want him dead or worry about the brutal ways he was going to kill them with his hands.

                Before the howling finished, the group set off toward the alpha. Stiles hoped his friends would follow, but he wasn’t sure how many of them could or who had come. Derek had never answered properly, and he couldn’t know about humans like Allison anyway.

                There were soldier-types everywhere. Mostly the werewolves took them out, but Stiles grabbed a gun the first chance he got, and the other humans followed suit. He looted ammo from later bodies, wondering why they were human if their boss was a wolf. When Isaac and Allison reached them, a human with black hair and a tendency to whisper sweet nothings to himself as he ran his eight-point-five fingers over laceration scars almost shot them. To be fair, so did Stiles, but he didn’t have to body slam himself to send his bullets into a wall instead of his friends.

                “Let’s not kill the people who came here to help us.”

                The guy nodded, all eight-point-five fingers trembling.

                “Good.” Stiles stood and helped him back up.

                “You’re alive!” Allison jogged over and hugged Stiles after making sure his new gun wasn’t going to maim or kill anyone while she squeezed her arms around him. She was so small. Her arms felt wrong around him, but he knew that was just the dependence on Derek, still leftover from the Freezer.

                Stiles smiled. “And with you by my side, I may even stay that way.”

                He didn’t miss the looks he got. No one who had been here long thought Stiles had any trouble staying alive.

                “This is your backup?” The avenging werewolf across the way crossed her arms. She sounded unimpressed, probably because Isaac and Allison looked like a couple of gangly teenagers to anyone who didn’t know better.

                Stiles made a show of sighing and turning around. He raised a finger. “There’s something I need you all to understand.” He had their attention, but Stiles was starting to think he always had their attention. “I am the least badass member of my pack.”

                Allison, Scott, and Isaac looked pretty confused, especially at the way the others started eyeing them. Allison leaned in toward his ear but didn’t bother with a proper whisper, probably because the werewolves would hear anyway.

                “Just how badass do they think you are?”

                Stiles shrugged. “The plan for my next fight was to take out the wolf myself.”

                “I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”

                “No, but they do.” Most of the others’ eyes had widened. One or two took a step back.

                “You couldn’t do it,” the avenging werewolf said. “It’s one thing to plan and another to do.”

                “You haven’t watched him fight,” the kid who nearly shot Allison and Isaac muttered. “I know he’s human, but sometimes it’s like he’s...” Stiles grinned, and the guy flinched back. “He could do it.”

                His friends were giving Stiles weird looks, but they weren’t the ones he’d been trying to convince. He thought the others believed him now, believed they could take down the alpha-plus-whatever the woman was. With a new smile, Stiles motioned for Derek and the angry werewolf to lead the way.

                “She’s going to know we’re coming,” Derek warned.

                “Then let her know.” The avenging werewolf started jogging, and the rest of them followed suit to keep up.

                There were more soldier-types. That didn’t surprise Stiles. The way his friends looked at him when he gunned them down did. He grumbled to himself that they were clearly enemies while Scott, Isaac, and Allison all made a point of knocking people out without killing them. The other former prisoners killed too, and Stiles took a moment to wonder if he’d have been shooting to kill before his stay here. Then a new set of enemies appeared, and he stopped thinking and started shooting.

                Derek rammed his foot into a door so hard it crashed inward and flew toward the opposite wall even though Stiles was pretty sure, based on the ruined remains of its hinges, the door had been designed to open outward. The avenging werewolf charged in screaming, and Stiles assumed that was the signal that they’d found the alpha. There was gunfire, so Stiles ran toward it, ready to fire his own weapon once he’d found some sort of cover. He wound up stuck in the doorway and peeking in between rounds of bullets.

                Something slammed the avenging werewolf back. That much force could only come from another wolf, and when Stiles found another chance to peek around the corner, he confirmed it.

                “What the hell, Vic,” he shouted. “I thought we were friends.” He hadn’t really, but it seemed a better line than, ‘I thought you ran away already.’

                “Sorry, Joker, the other side’s got more leverage than you.”

                Stiles took another look around the doorway and caught sight of the alpha holding a gun to Mirabelle’s head just inside another doorway across the wide room. “Yeah, all I’ve got is a gun and a grin.”

                “Honestly,” said the human on the other side of the doorway, “For you, that’s kind of enough.” Then he charged in shooting. Stiles covered him as best he could, but this place taught him to fight with his hands, not a firearm.

                “I call shenanigans,” Stiles screamed into the room, but no one answered. They were too busy fighting. “Come on, guys, this is bull. Someone kill the alpha before I turn this car around.”

                Allison had taken the now-dead human’s place. “They don’t just lock you up and keep you for fun here, do they?”

                “No,” said Stiles as he tried to figure out how to reload.

                Allison walked him through reloading. Stiles hadn’t been kidding when he included her in the list of people more badass than he was. As soon as he could fire again, Stiles found some soldier-types and shot at them. The avenging werewolf was busy with Vic, and Derek and Scott were trying to reach the alpha. The others were fighting or dead. Isaac was fighting on top of the dead.

                “I assume we’re on a mission to destroy the ones who held you captive?” Peter said. Stiles hadn’t noticed him approaching. He glanced to Allison who shrugged and then fired her crossbow at the throat of a guy with a clear shot at Scott.

                “You wanna help?” Stiles jerked his head toward the fighting.

                “I’m more of a wait in the background until the opportune moment to strike kind of wolf.”

                “Yeah, I’d noticed.” Allison glared but only briefly before she returned to shooting.

                “Are you scared, Joker? That’s what they’re calling you now, right?” The alpha’s voice was loud and clear even over the fighting.

                “Not scared. Just not bullet proof.” Stiles shouted back. He knew his voice would carry, but he sort of wanted the others to hear too. His life was more about show than skill these days anyway.

                “Joker? Really?” Peter had leaned forward and whispered his questions into Stiles’ ear. Stiles just shrugged.

                “Yes, sometimes I think we forget you’re only human.” The alpha followed it with a laugh. Stiles made a point of laughing with her. He grabbed Peter by his jacket and pushed him forward.

                “What are we doing?” Peter sighed.

                “Being baited. Come on.” He shoved Peter forward, and they both ran into the battle. Peter chuckled just before he caught his first bullet. It hit him in the chest with enough force to make him grunt and stumble back into Stiles who just pushed him ahead.

                A body rammed into Peter, forcing him to the ground. When the wolf who did it turned, Stiles found himself face-to-face with Vic. “We both knew this was coming,” Vic said. “Though I thought we’d both have backup when it did.” He caught a bolt from Allison’s crossbow and laughed. “Backup from our partners, I mean.”

                Stiles fired at Vic’s middle even though he knew the bullets would only hurt him, even at this range. Then he moved backward, firing at Vic’s legs. Vic leapt at him, sending Stiles crashing to the floor under his weight. He lost his hold on the gun, and it flew across the floor. It went off once when it hit, but Stiles didn’t see where the shot landed. Mostly he just saw Vic’s fangs below the golden glow of his eyes.

                “I’m not afraid of you like the others, Joker. I know the gasping panic we hear every night is you. I know even after your cough went away, you still couldn’t breathe.” He leaned in closer and growled, “I can see your scars now.”

                “Dude, mouthwash. Try it out,” Stiles grunted, pushing Vic back as best he could. But Vic was stronger, and his fangs reached closer and closer to Stiles’ throat. Stiles squirmed until he had one leg in position to knee Vic in the balls. Then he used Vic’s distraction to ram the palm of his hand into his nose. He felt the bone break and knew if he’d done it right, something was supposed to shove up into Vic’s brain and kill him. But Vic’s teeth kept gnashing, and he adjusted his hold on Stiles as blood leaked from his nose.

                “Well, I tried,” Stiles said, just before a crossbow bolt exploded from Vic’s throat.

                Somehow that didn’t stop him either, but Stiles managed to get a hand free. He drove the nail on his thumb into the softness of Vic’s eye. Vic howled with pain and raised hand to claw Stiles away from his eye. Stiles kneed Vic in the balls again, harder this time, and pushed him over. He gave up on that eye but climbed on top of Vic to gouge out the other one. Maybe he would heal, but not in time to regain his vision for this fight.

                Something crashed into Stiles’ back before he finished. It burned through him as he fell forward. Vic clawed blindly at his throat, but Stiles scrambled away. When he screamed at the pain in his back, Vic’s head swung in his direction. Stiles tried to soften the harsh gasping of his breath or to still the beating of his heart. Vic shuffled forward, snarling with more rage than Stiles had imagined inside him even after watching him kill from the View.

                Both of his eyes were ruined and bleeding. He fought by sound alone. There was so much noise around them that he must have latched onto Stiles the way Scott would focus his senses on Allison, but in less of an ‘in love’ and more of an ‘intent to kill’ kind of way. Stiles scrambled backward, and the slap of his bleeding palms against the floor echoed back at him. Those small sounds led Vic straight to him.

                Stiles screamed.

                He poured all of his rage, pain, and fear into his voice. Every second he spent wondering which shadows on the floor were real, every day he had to take another life to prolong his own, every spasm of every muscle damaged by this place, and every moment he ached for Derek without knowing if he even cared for him filled Stiles and exploded in the loudest cry he could muster. It tore at his throat and left him red in the face.

                The onslaught of noise stunned Vic. Stiles lunged forward. He tackled Vic and grabbed the crossbow bolt still protruding from his throat. Then he tugged. Vic screamed, clawing blindly at Stiles. His claws slashed through cloth and skin, and Stiles ignored them. He pulled the bolt out and stabbed it into Vic’s neck again, aiming for the jugular vein. When he missed, he pulled it out and stabbed again. Blood shot over his face and torso as Vic faltered, then fell. Stiles continued to work the bolt into his neck to make sure he was dead. Then he kept stabbing Vic because he couldn’t remember how to stop.

                A hand caught his and pulled him back. Arms wrapped around him holding him still. No one told him to calm down or that it would be alright. They just held him against their chest until he stopped screaming. By the way his skin itched, Stiles knew it wasn’t Derek. He first relaxed to show he was under control and then pushed away and turned to find Peter behind him.

“Where have you been?” Stiles panted. He turned his eyes to the floor and the corpses covering it, looking for a new gun.

                “I got preoccupied with not dying myself.”

                “It can’t be that bad. You’ve done it before.” He found a weapon, but it only had one round, and the soldier-types nearby had run out of ammo. Stiles kept it anyway. One shot was more than none.

                “Bad enough.” He limped after Stiles, using mostly his right leg. His left pant leg was in ribbons, as was the flesh beneath it. Blood stained his sock and leaked through his shoe to pool on the floor.

                Stiles stumbled forward with the crossbow bolt still clenched in one bloody hand and the gun in the other. Peter followed, and between the two of them they left a trail of blood even blind and dead Vic could have tracked. They shuffled past the avenging werewolf where she lay in a soggy, red heap, wheezing so pitifully that Stiles couldn’t decide if she’d heal or die. He didn’t bother to stop and find out.

                “Joker, you might want to look at this,” the alpha said. She had a gun pointed at Derek’s head now. She must have cast Mirabelle aside as soon as Vic went down. Stiles stopped walking, grip tightening on his meager weapons.

                “I don’t suppose you’d consider letting him go?” Stiles forced himself to grin. He had a name to live up to, after all.

                “Maybe if you use that gun to put a bullet through your brain.”

                “Can’t. I have plans tonight, and it’d be hard to make them dead.”

                Peter put a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, but his eyes stayed on the alpha. “When villains want to scare each other,” he said with the tone of someone reciting a quotation, “They tell Joker stories.” It made Stiles want to laugh, but he wasn’t sure he could manage it with the way his breathing kept running away from him.

                A twitch of the alpha’s head and the way she stopped mid-blink to open her eyes again signaled to Stiles that Peter had startled her. Derek must have caught it somehow too because he rammed his elbow into her ribs and ducked away from the gun before she pulled the trigger. Peter dashed forward to take the alpha from the side when she turned toward Derek. Stiles hadn’t seen him fight since he was still an alpha, but he wasn’t surprised to find that Peter fought dirty. He attacked from behind, letting Derek take the brunt of the damage.

                “Take her oldschool!” Derek shouted as he leapt away from her claws. Then he wolfed out for the first time since waking up here. Giving off the false yellow glow was the closest he’d come before. Now his teeth turned to fangs, his fingernails to claws, and his eyes to red. Even his bone structure shifted with the change. He lashed out with tooth and claw at the alpha. When he broke her skin, the blood was black. She snarled, teeth lengthening into points, but differently from how Derek’s had. Her eyes turned yellow even though she was an alpha. They weren’t a wolf’s eyes. They were a kanima’s.

                “Oh, shit,” Stiles said, backing up as scales spread out over the alpha kanima’s body.

                “Is that what I think it is?” Peter asked. He looked like he regretted joining the fight.

                “Yes,” Derek growled.

                “Shit.”

                As the scales spread, wings erupted from the alpha’s back. She hissed, advancing on Derek. Her tail lashed with such force that it sent her own soldiers flying. Then Stiles remembered that kanimas don’t work alone. The werewolf-human pairs made so much more sense this way. Derek had told him to take out the kanima’s human partner when he said, ‘oldschool.’ Stiles just had to find out who that was. He bolted past the fighting to the door behind the kanima, hoping his chances of finding her master were better since she’d seemed to be guarding that door until Derek made her angry.

                Stiles’ footsteps echoed back at him as he jogged through the halls. Even after repeated visits to Haha, No, Stiles was lost. Every hall looked the same. He rounded a corner and suddenly wasn’t alone. Stiles slammed the other person against the wall and brought the barrel of the gun to their throat before he realized it was Mirabelle.

                “It’s me, Stiles. It’s me,” she sobbed.

                “Sorry.” He backed up. “Are you okay?”

                “Vic is dead,” she screamed at him. “You...” Her eyes turned to jagged shards of ice. “Youkilled him.”

                She didn’t attack though. She just collapsed into a sobbing mess on the floor. Echoes from the fight between the pack and the kanima reached them in the hall. Stiles wanted to comfort Mirabelle—he knew how close a partner bond was here—but he didn’t have time.

                “Mirabelle, did you see anyone else?”

                “No, Joker. That’s why I came this why. I thought I could hide.”

                Hearing his nickname always made Stiles want to grin now, but he didn’t need to scare Mirabelle. She was just a girl who’d lost her somewhat-too-old-for-her boyfriend. She didn’t need—

                Stiles had been ready to turn away but focused his eyes back on Mirabelle thinking about his name.

                “You called me ‘Stiles,’” he said.

                She backed away, reaching a hand toward the pocket of her prison uniform. Stiles raised the gun again, making sure the safety was off. Its weight reminded him of his feelings for Derek. Mirabelle froze and let her hand fall slowly to her side without whatever she’d hoped to reach.

                “It’s you, isn’t it?” He swallowed. “How could it be you?”

                Kanima screams thundered down the halls, closer than Stiles thought they should have been. Mirabelle was calling the alpha to her. Stiles hoped Derek could hold her off.

                “Answer me!” he screamed, hand trembling around the borrowed gun. He calmed himself, forced his breathing to slow, and steadied his hand. He only had one shot. He couldn’t afford to waste it.

                “They chose me. They said I was the best,” Mirabelle said like it was a wonderful thing and he was stealing it away. Her eyes focused on Stiles and narrowed. “But then you kept winning. I would have beaten you because I had to and because they already chose me, Joker. Not you. You didn’t stay in the other cellblocks. You weren’t tested, and you don’t understand.”

                “What did they choose you for?”

                “I’m the best,” she insisted, but tears welled in her eyes. “I was the best. I would have killed them before letting them take her away from me.”

                “Who? The kanima?”

                “She’s so powerful, Stiles. And she can do so much. At night the walls tell me all the things I should make her do.”

                The kanima screamed again. It was close. Stiles heard Derek growling and the crash of their bodies against the cement that made the walls and floors.

                Stiles didn’t give himself time to think. He aimed for Mirabelle’s middle because he was least likely to miss that way and pulled the trigger. She doubled over. Stiles lunged forward and pressed her against the wall again so he could slit her throat with the crossbow bolt’s sharpened point. The kanima’s screams echoed through the halls as he killed Mirabelle the same way he had killed Vic. Then the fighting stopped. Stiles worked the bolt in Mirabelle’s throat, making sure she was dead. When he reached into her pocket, he found a knife and slipped it into his own pocket. The crossbow bolt he left behind in her neck.

                When he reached the alpha kanima, she was dead, probably killed while stunned from losing her master. Stiles counted six pieces of her but couldn’t figure out where her left arm had gone.

                “The master?” Derek asked.

                “Mirabelle. And dead.”

                “Mirabelle?” He frowned. “She did always give me the creeps.”

                “She gave you the creeps?” Stiles raised an eyebrow.

                Derek shrugged. “I don’t think Vic knew though.”

                Stiles had reached Derek by this point and threw his arms around him instead of answering. Derek’s warmth was still comforting, even past all the blood.

 

~.x.~

 

Stiles was glad to be home, to have his family and friends around him again. And a bed. And good food. And control of the air conditioning. And doors that opened whenever he wanted them to. And the internet. But he only felt safe if Derek was there. He knew why. He even explained it to Derek, who looked at him like he was trying to explain physics to a physicist.

                Understanding it didn’t mean he wanted to fight it.

                Stiles pressed himself against Derek’s warmth even though his father didn’t like seeing them together. He kept the house just a little too cool most of the time because he wanted to be comfortable close to Derek, not far from him. Derek was the only one who understood.

                “It’s called codependency, Stiles.” His father sighed. He’d been talking to people who thought they knew anything about Stiles even though he refused to meet with them.

                “I know.” Stiles gave his father a flat stare.

                “It’s not healthy.”

                “I don’t care.”

                “Wouldn’t you rather move past this so you can have real, healthy feelings and a stable relationship?” He didn’t say, ‘with someone else,’ which meant he was learning.

                “I’m fine as I am.” Derek shifted as Stiles spoke. He would hear the lie in his heartbeat and feel it in the way Stiles’ fingers twitched around his where they laced together. “I don’t want to change,” Stiles corrected so Derek would still. That one was true.

                “You have a panic attack every time he leaves, Stiles. He can’t be with you all the time.” The words tumbled out awkwardly, and then he adopted the look of a man ashamed for sharing a secret. Stiles appreciated that, but Derek already knew. Stiles had told him.

                Stiles shrugged. “I’ll get used to it.”

                “No, you won’t.” He let out a sigh heavy with the weight of the world, or the weight of worrying about a teenager whose fingers itched to kill as much as to run along his boyfriend’s skin. “You were under intense pressure in that place. You had to adapt to survive, and you did. But it’s different here.”  Stiles almost interrupted to remind his father of the constant danger he’d been in since Scott was bitten, but he didn’t know about that. Then Stiles’ father turned to Derek. “I haven’t asked you before; what do you think?”

                Derek frowned. “I don’t want Stiles to have panic attacks.”

                “Then we can help him stop them.”

                “I don’t want him to leave me either.”

                Stiles’ father sighed again. He ran a hand over his face. “You realize the help would be for both of you, right?”

                “But...” Stiles struggled. He knew they weren’t perfect, and he knew they’d tried to fight becoming this. Not hard. They could have resisted longer, especially since they’d know exactly what was happening. It was just... “What if I don’t want to be with him after?” He clung to Derek. It scared Stiles to imagine not needing him.

                “Scott tells me you were sort of friends even before they took you.”

                Stiles nodded. They had been together in Stiles’ jeep when they were taken, arguing about something. Food maybe. Stiles remembered being hungry.

                “Then I don’t see any reason you couldn’t be friends after.”

                “You just lied,” Derek said.

                “Fine. There’s a chance you’ll be afraid and hurt and never want to see each other again, but I don’t care. I just want my son to be okay.” Stiles nodded, but he gripped Derek’s hand in his so hard his knuckles went white.

 

~.x.~

 

Stiles rubbed at his arms. He sat on the couch with his feet pulled up on the cushions and his shoulders curled forward. He was slowly getting used to being alone, but this was supposed to have ended hours ago. He knew his father had a demanding job and that coming home late was normal, but Stiles itched to do something and to be with someone. His phone was in his lap. He had texted Derek. When he got no response he had called Derek. When he got no answer, he had hung up and slammed the phone down next to him, determined to wait until Derek called back.

                Derek wasn’t going to call back.

                Stiles clawed his fingers against the side of his head, breath coming in short gasps. A nail bit into his temple, and Stiles’ hands clawed madly at his skin, pulling away phantom needles with suction cups. His breath caught somewhere between his mouth and his lungs in a wad of hatred. Stiles froze on the couch except for his trembling. He wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be stronger.

                The door inched inward, slowly in an attempt not to make any sound. It startled Stiles into breathing again, and getting air into his lungs broke fear’s hold on him. Stiles realized he’d heard the car and its door closing, but he’d let himself become distracted. Telling himself that was dangerous didn’t help because his life was supposed to be less dangerous now. He almost thought if something would attack Beacon Hills, he could catch hold of himself again and function like a real person instead of a broken doll.

                “I’m awake,” he said, and the door opened the rest of the way at a normal pace. It creaked less that way.

                “You didn’t have to wait up.” His father entered with a droop to his step. He dropped his keys on the table beside the door and shrugged slowly out of his jacket.

                “I couldn’t sleep.” He knew he’d slept without Derek in the View, but he’d still been nearby, lying at the forward edge of his cell, facing Stiles across the way.

                His father winced. He knew Stiles didn’t like to be alone. “Sorry. That forest fire finally died out, and we got called to a structure out there. Someone thought it was a meth lab.”

                “Really? In Beacon Hills?”

                “Not today. It was...” He hesitated, and Stiles imagined him chewing on his words until they were tender enough to feed his son. “It was just a ruin, but it used to be...”

                “It was where they kept Derek and me.” Stiles didn’t need his father’s nod for confirmation.

                “There’s not enough left for them to know about you.” He sat down beside Stiles. It always felt strange to be this close to someone other than Derek, like the thin plastic of a windbreaker after days of wearing only leather.

                “You saw it?” He needed to know his father was sure.

                “I saw it.” His pause was heavy with pity or horror. “There are still pieces. They may piece together some of what happened.”

                “Just not to whom.”

                His father gave another unnecessary nod.

                “I’m glad it burned down.”

                His father sighed. “No you’re not.”

                He was right. Stiles wasn’t unhappy it had burned, but he wasn’t glad either. He shrugged because he couldn’t bring himself to care. Something about that felt wrong. Stiles ran his fingers along the edge of his cell phone and let his father try to comfort him.

 

~.x.~

 

It had been a long time since they saw each other. The therapists and doctors said it was part of their therapy, learning how to be apart. Isaac was the only one who saw much of Derek anymore. Even he had been spending more and more time with Scott. Stiles started having nightmares when they stopped letting him sleep with Derek at his side, but they had mostly gone away now. He ran his tongue along his lips and pulled the bottom one in between his teeth. He knew the others were nearby even if he couldn’t see or hear them. He ran his hand along the bench he sat on, tracing the places where the paint had peeled away.

                Derek approached slowly and in plain sight. He had his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket. Stiles felt weird, meeting him in the middle of a park instead of a normal place like one of their houses. It was supposed to happen in a neutral place though, a place he could avoid in the future if this went badly. No one had told him how much Derek did or did not speak with the therapists. Stiles wondered if he had all the same stupid explanations for everything they made him do or if he’d been sitting alone in his burned-down house all this time waiting for the phone call that meant he could see Stiles again. Hopefully not that second one. It was pathetic, even if Stiles knew Derek was enough of a mess to fall into it if no one pushed him toward something better.

                He didn’t say anything when Derek reached him, and neither did Derek. He just sat on the bench beside Stiles, too far away to touch the way they used to, and stared at the pathway by his feet. There were brown and red leaves scattered everywhere, and they shifted whenever the breeze blew.

                “I’m scared to say anything,” Stiles admitted eventually.

                “They tell me you’re doing well.” Derek didn’t look at Stiles when he spoke. Instead, his eyes followed the path of a bundle of dried leaves skidding across the sidewalk.

                “They don’t tell me anything about you.” Stiles frowned at his sneakers.

                “That’s because they can’t tell you I’m doing well.” Derek closed his eyes and leaned back against the old park bench.

                “I miss you,” Stiles said. It was at least half true. He missed Derek, but he hated Derek too because he was supposed to be stronger than Stiles. He was supposed to have resisted. That wasn’t true of course; it just seemed that way when Stiles was angry.

                “I wish you didn’t.”

                “Harsh.”

                “But I miss you too.”

Stiles gripped the edge of the bench. “I wish you didn’t.” Then, after a long pause, he said, “If you’re not... why would they let you see me if you’re not ready?”

                “They let me choose. They think you’re ready, and that maybe you needed to see me before you could go any further.”

                “But that helping me could hurt you, right?”

                Derek shrugged. “I don’t care. I just wanted to see you.”

                Stiles made himself look Derek in the eye. “You don’t see much of anyone anymore.” When Derek just shrugged, Stiles pushed onward. “You’re supposed to be the alpha, not the hermit.”

                “Then tell Scott to challenge me, and he can be the alpha.” Derek growled. He had to know Scott was listening.

                “Yes, because throwing a little werewolf fit is definitely going to make everything better.” Stiles rolled his eyes.

                Derek glared at the leaves rather than respond. They sat for a long time, not sure what to say. Eventually Derek pulled one of his hands out from his coat pocket. “I brought this for you.” He held out his hand and opened it. In his palm, lying on its side, was a slightly misshapen Hershey’s Kiss.

                Stiles rolled his eyes, but he tugged Derek forward by his jacket to kiss him. That was when his friends decided to come out and pull them apart, but Stiles didn’t care. He popped the chocolate into his mouth and grinned at Derek. He didn’t smile back, but he parted his lips and rubbed a hand along his pant leg in a way Stiles knew meant he was bashful. Stiles slid out of Scott’s grip long enough to hug Derek goodbye. It wasn’t a forever kind of goodbye, and the warmth of that was nicer than the memory of Derek’s heat protecting Stiles against the cold.

 

End