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Dr. Deaton the vet shows up a couple of days later, and Stiles watches him from the window as he walks all the way around the tree line, and then again, and Stiles isn’t sure what he’s doing but if he thinks really hard about it he can feel a prickle like when everything is staticky but he hasn’t touched something to make it spark, and he wonders if Dr. Deaton would spark if Stiles touches him.
Stiles rubs his fingers together, but they don’t spark.
Dr. Deaton doesn’t come into the house until he’s done walking around the tree line, and Stiles watches him the whole time, not because he wants to, really, or because his attention span is long enough to do so normally, but he can’t take his eyes off of the vet, can’t look away from the staticky half-feeling he gets from him, like watching a tornado or an oncoming train.
He’s standing in the doorway as Dr. Deaton approaches, and Dr. Deaton stops a few feet away from him, watching Stiles like Stiles is watching him. Stiles wonders if he feels like a tornado, too.
“You must be Stiles,” Dr. Deaton says finally.
“There’s nothing that makes me be Stiles,” Stiles says, “other than the fact that I am Stiles. I could be anyone else and then you would be ordering someone to be Stiles who isn’t Stiles.”
“But I know all of the Hales,” Dr. Deaton says, and doesn’t come any closer, “and you are the only person staying with them, so there is nobody you could have been but you.”
“There’s nobody I should have been but me, but I could have been anybody. Like my friend, Scott. He’s also my age and has dark hair and could be standing in this doorway watching you do magic.” Dr. Deaton stares at him, and then he smiles, and the tornado goes away, turns into a windstorm that Dr. Deaton tucks away inside of himself. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
Dr. Deaton’s eyebrow arches. “Do what?”
“Do I feel like a tornado to you? What do I feel like? What were you doing around the treeline? Are you going to show me magic? Who taught you magic?”
After a second, Dr. Deaton says, “Why don’t you follow me out here? Away from the house?”
“Because I don’t know you,” Stiles answers. “Mrs. Hale probably wouldn’t bring someone who wants to do something to me, but if you try to hurt me near the house, Derek will tear your throat out.”
Dr. Deaton’s lips press thin, like he’s trying not to smile. “That was a suggestion, not a question.”
Stiles isn’t sure he wants to do that, because his dad always said not to go places with strangers, and he’s not about to start ignoring his dad now. So he turns around and calls into the house, “Derek, if you’re not busy, can you come here?”
A few seconds later, Derek comes hurrying over to where he is, stopping just next to Stiles. He stands a little too close, and his body feels like a space heater like his mom kept in her office, but Stiles has noticed that werewolves like standing close to people, or at least the Hales do, so he doesn’t say anything about it.
Derek looks at Dr. Deaton, then looks at Stiles. “Yeah?”
“I’m going over there with him,” Stiles says. “If he murders me, I expect you to murder him back.”
Derek looks horrified. “Dr. Deaton is our emissary. He wouldn’t murder you.”
“Yeah, but if he does.”
“If the emissary hurts someone the Alpha has sworn to protect,” Derek tells him, “the Alpha would kill the emissary.”
“So if he murders me, your mom would murder him back.”
“Yes.”
“Cool.” Stiles looks at Dr. Deaton. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
He heads off with Dr. Deaton, who leads him to the middle of the lawn and stops, which is kind of weird, but whatever. Then Dr. Deaton stares at him for a while, which is also kind of weird, but Stiles has kind of gotten the impression that Dr. Deaton is weird.
“Why did you ask me if you felt like a tornado?”
Stiles shrugs. “Because you feel like a tornado. Or did. Now you don’t, and I want to know if I feel like a tornado because you made the tornado go away, and if I feel like a tornado then I want to know how to make the tornado go away so nobody can tell if I don’t want them to.”
“You don’t feel like a tornado,” Dr. Deaton says after a second. He pauses a lot when he talks. “We’re different, you and I. Magic-wise, I mean. I’m what’s known as a druid. Druids are a born, and we are trained; the potential is in some of us, but we require extensive training to be able to use it with any proficiency. You are a spark. You don’t need training to be proficient, only willpower. Training, however, can make you excellent--and give you control. Make you consistent, not just good.”
Stiles blinks at him. “So I don’t feel like a tornado.”
“You feel like a flame. And I can help you make that flame bigger, help you control that flame, but you can never make that flame smaller. You are a spark; that flame is part of you, as part of you as your skin or your bones.”
“So I can’t hide it?”
“I didn’t say that. I can’t help you make it smaller, but I can help you hide it, shield it. But that will come later. If you’re afraid of people being able to tell, though--there are few people who could tell, and I am the only one around at the moment who would be able to.”
Stiles thinks about that for a minute. “I can make myself--I can make it so people don’t notice me, if I don’t want them to. If I think about it hard enough. Could I do that with the flame, make people not notice it?”
“Can I see this trick?”
Stiles bites his lip. “I’m not sure I can do it if you’re looking for it. Or at me.” He thinks about it so more, how he’s used it before.” He points over Dr. Deaton’s shoulder. “Can you walk that way? Turn around and walk that way, I mean.”
Dr. Deaton turns and starts walking, and Stiles starts thinking, I want him to not be able to see me, I want him to not know I’m there, I want him not to know where I am, and then starts walking.
Dr. Deaton keeps going, towards the trees; when he reaches the treeline he curves so as not to curve into the forest. He doesn’t look around, he doesn’t say anything.
After a few minutes, Stiles reaches out and taps Deaton on the shoulder.
Dr. Deaton startles, spinning so fast he knocks Stiles to the ground. For a second, the tornado is back, pressing on Stiles’s chest like a weight, about to crack through his ribs like an anvil from a cartoon, and then all at once the weight disappears and the tornado is swallowed back up into Dr. Deaton’s body.
Stiles stares up at him, feeling bad that he scared Dr. Deaton. He didn’t mean to scare him, just to surprise him, and he guesses he probably wouldn’t like it if people did that to him, snuck up behind him when he couldn’t hear them. Though the Hales do that, sometimes, the werewolf Hales, because the werewolves can hear each other, and they forget that humans can’t, sometimes, even though they have humans.
“How long were you following me?” Dr. Deaton asks, and he stares down at Stiles, and Stiles stares up at him.
Stiles shrugs, which is surprisingly awkward when lying down. “The whole time. Well, I mean, I gave you a few seconds, but basically the whole time.” Dr. Deaton doesn’t really look happy with him, like when he broke a window by jumping through it, and he dad got mad at him but he also looked scared. “Sorry.”
Dr. Deaton blinks, and the look disappears from his eyes. “Don’t apologize for what you can do.” He offers a hand down to Stiles, who takes it and lets Dr. Deaton pull him up. “How did you do that?”
“I just thought really hard about not wanting you to know that I was there.”
“Have you done anything else using that technique?”
Stiles looks away, feeling kind of stupid. He feels like he should have done more, because obviously Dr. Deaton thinks he could have done more with his magic thinking thing. “I was trying to figure out how to fix my mom’s brain, because my mom’s brain was broken, but I didn’t figure out how to fix it by the time--” His throat closes, like the words eat up all the moisture in it and stick everything together.
Dr. Deaton looks horrified. “Don’t--that’s a thing you can never do. After enough time, I can train you to heal. But brains--I can teach you all the theory, all of the reasons why you should never try to alter the brain, but for right now, just know that that’s something you should never ever do.”
Does that mean that he could have hurt his mom worse? He wanted to help her, but maybe he could have--maybe he would have--
Dr. Deaton’s hand touches Stiles’s chin, tilting his head up so Stiles has to look at him. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Dr. Deaton tells him. “You wanted to help your mother, and that’s admirable of you. But this is why training is important, so you know what you can do without putting anybody else--or yourself--at risk.”
Stiles thinks about that, then asks, “Am I not allowed to tell anyone about this? Like Harry Potter, where magic is secret and you go to magic jail if you tell anyone about magic?”
Dr. Deaton smiles, letting his hand fall from Stiles’s chin. “I would recommend you not go out and start telling the world about the magic you can do, but the Hales know about me, and you shouldn’t be afraid to tell them about it.”
“What about Scott? Can I tell Scott?”
“Your friend, Scott?”
Stiles nods.
“You’re welcome to tell Scott, though he might not believe you.”
Scott will believe Stiles. Definitely. It’s Scott .
Stiles jams his hands in his pockets, then pulls them out, then sticks them back in again. “What were you doing around the treeline? Was that magic? Were you looking for something?”
Dr. Deaton starts walking towards the trees, and Stiles follows him. There’s something in the air as they get closer, something Stiles didn’t feel the night--
Stiles shoves a hand against his mouth, and it shakes, and he shakes, and his skin hurts, and his hair, all the way down to his bones, and he can smell fire again, fire and burning and ash that shouldn’t be there, and he dreams about it sometimes, when he’s not dreaming about lowering his parents into the ground and lowering himself down with them.
Dr. Deaton stops in front of a tree, one with something written on it like a word but not words, burned out and then redrawn, and Stiles wants to touch it but feels like it would burn him, or tear him to shreds.
“What is that?” he asks, and his voice is smaller than he meant it to be.
Dr. Deaton brushes his hand below it, not quite touching the word that’s not a word. “Katherine Argent should never have been able to enter the Hale’s property with the intent to harm them. I made sure of that.”
“Did Mrs. Hale--”
“I know what Derek did, yes. Despite that, she should not have been able to enter. Which means she either had help, or she had training.”
Stiles makes a face at the word that’s not a word, because it’s bothering him. “This thing, is it like some force field, that keeps bad people out? Why didn’t I feel it before? Can I make those?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than a force field, but the idea is somewhat the same. Those with ill-intent, those who wish to do harm, should not be able to pass through. But--you can feel it now? The sigil?”
Stiles shrugs. “I could feel it when you were doing it, all fuzzy and staticky. And it feels like--” He shrugs again.
Dr. Deaton looks like he wants to keep asking about it, which is kind of a look Stiles gets a lot, mostly when he starts talking about stuff that people don’t know anything about, or he starts talking too fast for people to keep up with, and his mom could always--
“There are two possible reasons why you didn’t feel it,” Dr. Deaton tells him, and Stiles clamps his hand over his thigh, and his hand throbs, and his leg. “The first is that whatever Katherine Argent did burned the sigils out, and that’s how she got through. The second is that you burned the sigils out, passing across the border.”
Stiles swallows. “Does that mean I let her in? If I burned the sigils out, is that why they didn’t stop her? Did I do it?”
“No. Talia told me about what happened, and you arrived after Katherine Argent did. Nothing that she did is on you.” Dr. Deaton touches Stiles’s chin again. “Being a spark, having the abilities you have, they don’t determine what kind of person you are. Whether you’re good or bad, which way you shift the balance, that’s up to you. And what you did did far more good than can be understood simply by the lives you saved. You won’t always be able to do good. Sometimes there are no good choices, sometimes you will make mistakes. You are human, and humans will never be all-good.”
That doesn’t seem right to Stiles. “Scott is good.”
“Has Scott ever made a mistake?” Stiles nods. “No human makes no mistakes.” Dr. Deaton steps back. “I’m going to start your training, but for you to start your training, there’s something you need to learn how to do first. Meditation.”
That sounds like something he saw on the TV, where people sit with their legs crossed and make humming noises. It always looked really boring. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“No, I don’t think regular meditation would go well for you, not yet. So I’m going to teach you walking meditation. That way you won’t have an excuse to skip out on it.” Dr. Deaton’s eyes fix on Stiles. “We are different,” he says, “and I cannot teach you everything you need to know. But what I can teach you, you will learn.”