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He doesn’t realise until later, but it starts the moment he wakes up from his sixteen hour nap in an ice-cold bath.
-
He goes to sleep.
He wakes up in his bed, breathes a sigh of relief, until Lydia sits up beside him and the door swings open and –
He wakes up in the garden, barefoot in the mud and he’s looking up at the stars as they twinkle high above him and –
He wakes up in class, the whole room staring at him with frowns on their faces and the words dripping off the page and –
He wakes up in the loft –
He wakes up in the park –
He wakes up in the cafeteria –
He wakes up –
He wakes up –
He wakes –
-
“Frontal temporal dementia,” he tells Scott.
He knows the symptoms: hallucinations, impulsivity, irritable, insomnia. It’s so familiar, mom had it and now he’s got it, and he can’t help but feel like maybe this is it, this is the end. He’s finally losing his mind.
He lies still in the machine and listens to its steady whirring and clunking until his eyes slip closed and he falls. The darkness reaches up to catch him.
So glad to finally meet you Stiles, it says.
-
Sometimes it lets him up so he can see what it’s doing with him. Sometimes he’s eating dinner with dad, joking with him about finishing his salad. Sometimes he’s at school listening to Scott go on about the new girl. Sometimes he’s in Lydia’s room, watching her pick out whatever outfit she might wear to the next party. Sometimes he’s with Derek arguing about who’s going to pay for the pizza. None of them notice a thing.
It’s a threat: he always surfaces when he’s with someone he loves, someone who could get hurt, and that, without fail, always makes Stiles give up, give in.
-
It’s like falling asleep. Every single time.
-
He wakes up on his knees in the leaf litter, leaning over Coach’s body. He’s shaking and his hands are a bloody red.
“I think I can hear an ambulance,” Aiden says.
“And my dad,” Stiles says, and feels a wave of relief. Because dad can help, he’s the Sherriff, of course he can help.
Not a chance, the Nogitsune says as it drags him down again.
-
He wakes up in the animal clinic, his hand twisting a sword into Scott’s stomach.
“Give it to me,” his mouth is saying and then – oh.
The power tastes like cherries, sweet and sour. It’s a rush, as it seeps out of Scott and into him, like electricity crackling over his skin and under it, singing in his blood. All that chaos and strife and pain.
Delicious, the Nogitsune whimpers and it’s right, it is.
-
He wakes up in the woods where the Nemeton still grows. Stiles can feel a hum reverberating through his body where its power buzzes around him.
They’re having a showdown, an honest-to-God showdown. They’re all there, Scott and Allison and Isaac, his dad, Melissa, even Deaton and the twins and Kira and her mother. Everyone except Derek and Lydia, and for a moment he feels nothing but relief that maybe, just maybe, they’ll be safe.
"Let him go," Scott is saying and the Nogitsune laughs.
It gets pretty bloody after that.
-
“You have to fight it,” Scott says as Stiles pushes his hand in and up, under Scott’s ribs to where his heart is fluttering nervously. Blood trickles down his arm, warm and wet.
“Oh he is fighting it,” the creature says with his mouth, “he’s screaming for you.”
-
There’s a chunk missing from his memory where he shut off at the sight of Scott’s heart beating in his palm. He tucked himself away in a corner of his mind and gave his body over and fell deep into the endless black.
-
He wakes up in the back of a police car, crying and screaming and apologising: oh god I'm so sorry I didn't mean to I'm so sorrysorrysorry because it forced him up long enough to find out exactly what it did in his name.
They lock him up in the cells he knows so well, down the hall from his dad’s office, and one by one people come to see him. Cora Hale, Agent McCall, Mr Yakimura, parents and siblings and friends of the people he’s killed, of those who are still missing. It’s endless, one after the other, until the sun sets and the deputy on duty finally tells him that they’re done for the night.
When her footsteps fade into the distance, Stiles gets up and the Nogitsune unlocks the cell door. He gets a glimpse of his file on the way out: seventeen dead and counting.
Eighteen if you count the deputy whose neck it breaks with his hands as they leave.
-
The Nogitsune decides Beacon Hills is a wash and turns its attention to other pursuits. Namely going after Derek and Lydia who, it seems, somehow managed to get out before it ripped them to shreds too.
I want a taste of their suffering, it tells him with a sneer.
He knows that they’re probably going to die too, if the Nogitsune ever catches up for them. He feels torn. It would be so easy to close his eyes and surrender to it completely, let the guilt fade as he’s finally pushed out of his body. Or he can fight with everything he has left against the monster that used him to murder most of a small town, and who now wants to rip apart the last two people in world he loves.
He picks the second option.
-
He wakes up in Reno.
He wakes up in Boise.
He wakes up in Cheyenne.
Denver. Kansas City. St Louis.
The cities blur together but the feeling is the same: grief and suffering and chaos and pain. He’s leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
-
He wakes up in an alley behind a seedy looking bar, with a pole in his hands, beating a guy to death. One hit, two hits, three hits, until the guy’s face is a mass of bloody pulp. Later he finds out the guy was a serial rapist.
What a shame, the Nogitsune whispers, we could have been partners.
-
He wakes up in bed, with a guy looming over him. He looks like – he looks like Derek, and Stiles clenches around his dick where it’s buried inside him.
The guy moans, stubble scraping against his neck, and he bites down. It’s too much, he’s hurtling towards his orgasm and –
When we find them, the Nogitsune murmurs as he's falling over the edge, you can have this for real.
-
He wakes up in a car with the window down and the wind rushing around his face. The Nogistune is taking a break, letting him drive. He turns the car around and gets thirty kilometres in the opposite direction before it realises what he’s done.
-
He wakes up to silence, the Nogitsune slumbering quietly in his skull. Wiggle your big toe, he thinks and, lo and behold, it wiggles. For the first time since it took over his legs work, his arms work, his hands work. His phone is on the bedside table and when he reaches out, it’s easy enough to pick up. He knows who to dial, does it without thinking, and prays that the number is still the same. It rings once, twice, before voicemail clicks on.
This is Derek. Leave a message.
And he does.
-
He’s breaking through more often. It’s like the Nogitsune can feel it because it tries harder to squash him down into the prison of his mind, fills what’s left of his sane mind with sightsoundstastesfeelings, Scott’s heart in his hand and Kira’s blood splashing his face and Alison’s dead-eyed stare.
The worse it gets, the harder Stiles fights.
-
He wakes up in a bar. There’s a drink in his hand and girl leaning into him. Strawberry blonde hair. The biggest green eyes you’ve ever seen. The resemblance is uncanny.
Don’t be shy, the Nogitsune says when he protests, I know your type.
He takes her back to his room and they fuck and it’s nice, considering he’s barely in control. He falls asleep to the sound of her laughing at a joke he didn’t tell.
-
He wakes up in a bright room, with the Nogitsune whispering sweet nothings in his ear. It wants to put his hands around her throat and choke her. It wants to find the knife in his bag and carve her up. It wants to use Stiles to destroy her.
It reaches out and puts his hand on her neck and presses a little. This beautiful girl with Lydia’s hair and Lydia’s eyes and Lydia’s smile, and Stiles attacks.
-
He has a single moment of clarity: this is it.
-
He wakes up in a motel room, alone.
The girl is gone and so is the creature that’s been living in his brain like a parasite for the last – Stiles looks at the calendar on his phone – eight months.
It’s gone, really truly gone. Not like it’s hiding, because he knows what that feels like now, the faint buzz of something curled up in your mind, waiting – no, this time there’s no buzz and his whole body aches like he’s gone another round with Gerard Argent.
He remembers calling someone a while back, and when he picks his phone up, his fingers know what to do. It rings and rings, and just when he thinks no one will ever answer, it picks up.
“Hello?”
The voice is the same as it ever was, low and husky, and sounding exactly like home.
“Derek,” he says, “I need your help.”