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Stiles Stilinski knew that his mother had loved him. He also knew that she had hated him. His father wouldn't agree, the few times Stiles allowed himself to talk about her, he’d sit him down and tell him how she smiled, and laughed, but memory changes after death. When someone dies, they take who they really were with them and leave behind a reflection, all the cracks from the surface erased. Fights turn to laughter and the whiskey consumed is because of lost love, not resentment, and you can miss someone who hated you just as much as you can miss someone who loved you. Especially when they did both.
Stiles knew his mother loved him because she laughed when he spoke and his mouth moved faster than his thoughts. His sentences would stop in the middle of a word and start again a thousand miles away, and Claudia would touch his nose with the tip of her finger and tell him that being wired differently was okay. That being like everyone else was bound to be boring anyway. He knew his mother hated him when she yelled for him to just stop talking, that she needed peace and quiet and he was neither. Stiles was chaos, and she needed calm. (They didn't know she was sick then, they didn't know until after the laughter had already faded)
Stiles knew his mother loved him because once, when he was nine, she took him on a drive to the beach in December. Just because he wanted to see the ocean. They drove for hours until they saw the shoreline. She'd parked the keep haphazardly and they'd ran shrieking with glee to the deserted beach. They dipped their toes into freezing water and wrote stories in the sand. He knew she hated him when she left him there alone. A young couple found him, hours later, sitting on words in the sand, shivering. His father had come to get him from a tiny police station in a nameless seaside town, but Claudia had not. (Sometimes, late at night, he thinks the cold from that day sank deep into his bones and cursed him)
Stiles knew his mother loved him because she used to take him for walks around the town and smile when they passed the Hales. (They used to be everywhere, all at once, and so, so bright.) He’d stop stuttering for the briefest of moments, and whisper into her hair that they were beautiful. Claudia would spin him around and tell him yes, and that they were like the sun. Stiles knew his mother hated him when she smiled the night his father came home and said that they had died. He cried into her hair, and all he could smell was smoke. She told him that it was only right that someone had finally burned the sun. (Now he thinks it would be funny, if it weren't so damn tragic, how his life has always been a tangled mess within Derek’s)
Stiles knew his mother loved him because she used to sing his name like a song. It was music on her lips, and no one could ever say it the way she did. It was soft in a way he wasn’t, in a way he never really could be. He knew his mother hated him when she couldn't remember his name anymore. (It doesn't sound like a song anymore, only frayed and forgotten) He tells his father to call him Stiles when she forgets. Claudia had already wasted, and her comprehension worn down. She didn't understand that her son had a new name, because she didn't understand she had a son.
Stiles knew his mother loved him because during her lucid moments, at the end, she would caress his cheek and nod along to whatever nonsense he would whisper into her skin. He knew his mother hated him when the fingers that caressed his face would turn to claws and his whispers were drowned out by her screams.
Stiles Stilinski knew his mother had loved him. He also knew she had hated him.