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It's rare for them all to gather like this, but they all appear at the edge of the woods, one by one, save for Boyd who comes walking after Erica.
He wouldn't be here if she wasn't.
”Can I turn the fire to bubbles?” Erica whines, pressing closer to Boyd until he picks her up from the ground and tucks her face into his neck. She's small now, like a five year old would be. ”I'm scared.”
”No, sweetie, you can't. We can't stop it, not now.” Lydia strokes a hand over her locks.
”It would have happened, regardless. Is happening in all possible timelines, right now,” Deaton says. It doesn't sound like an apology.
Probably isn't, either.
”I still don't like it,” Boyd mutters. ”I didn't cause this.”
”I know,” says Jackson smugly without further explanation. Stiles sideyes his younger sibling, trying to figure out what they're up to.
”It will even out eventually,” Deaton says without looking up from his book and fades, going back to his realm. Isaac has already stalked off to the little gathering of firefighters and police on the front lawn, drinking in the misery and anguish. There's a lot for him tonight.
”Can we go?” Erica asks, now a little older but still small enough for Boyd to hold her. ”I don't wanna hear the screaming.”
”Yeah, let's go.”
Lydia just sighs and walks toward the flames, unharmed by them and unseen by onlookers as she enters the house through the locked front door. Very soon after, the screams dial down until all that can be heard, even with Stiles' supernatural hearing, is the sound of the flames.
Stiles doesn't need to look at Isaac to know his hooked ring is out, tearing at himself as a young man collapses on the ground by an ambulance, medics trying to comfort him. There's a deputy standing by a squad car, just hanging up on his cell.
He only makes himself visible when he's standing right next to the deputy in question.
”Stilinski.”
”Jesus! Stiles, what are you doing here?” He looks a little shocked by Stiles' sudden appearance yet remains calm.
”We're all here,” Stiles answers, still looking at the boy hunched over. ”Were, anyway. Who is he?”
”Derek, their oldest son. His sister is on her way.”
”Shit. At least he's not alone.” Stiles looks at his brother leaning against the cop car, eyes focused on nothing but Derek and the sound of him crying. Sometimes it disgusts him, not Isaac but his purpose, but it has to be, just like death and destruction sometimes saddens him.
That doesn't mean he's completely powerless in the face of it all.
”I'll make sure they both get to rest tonight. They'll need it.”
”Good, good,” John sighs. ”Something's up with this, they're werewolves, they should have been able to get out.”
”You didn't just inherit your name from your uncle, I take it.” Stiles nods.
”Nah, I can just spot them, I can't do much about the other stuff. I'm glad, I don't want to get too involved even if I'm a Constantine by blood.”
A civilian car pulls up and a young girl bursts out the passenger seat, running to the crouched figure by Isaac's feet.
”And that's Laura. I gotta go kiddo, see you when I see you.”
”John?” He stops, turns to look at Stiles. ”There are hunters in this town. Old blood.”
”Think they did this?”
”Yes. No. I don't know,” he admits and starts walking towards the house where Lydia should be done any second now.
Stiles is shocked to say the least when firefighters carry someone out on a stretcher, covered in a blanket. The sounds of Derek and Laura both vomiting makes him vince and John yells for someone to get them out of there.
”How is he still alive?” He asks Lydia when she walks back out, still invisible to the chaos around them.
”He refused to die,” Lydia shrugs. ”I don't know how much of a life he'll have, but he refused to die. That's his choice for now, and so be it.”
Derek and Laura sleep huddled together in John's guest room, making things much easier for all of them.
”I'll keep watch,” Stiles says and John just nods, heading to bed.
Stiles walks around the house silently, tracing photographs he knows his face used to be in when he was just an infant. Before Morpheus and Claudia, before the Furies and before his promise to Claudia to keep John safe and blissfully unaware that they ever even had a child.
The night passes peacefully, all three sleeping occupants of the house sleep through it, and by morning a deputy calls John to inform him there has been progress in the case already. Stiles watches him tell Laura and Derek about the arrest of Kate Argent, watches from the porch as they pack what little they have into a black car and drive off, sees the confusion and despair in Derek's eyes when he thinks neither Laura nor John can see.
It's the last peaceful night of sleep Derek gets in a long, long time, even if Stiles does his best to stop the dreams of screaming family and the pain of pack being torn away from him one by one.
So maybe Stiles gets an apartment. The Dreaming is his home, sure, but it's nice to have somewhere in the human world to go when he needs to. If it happens to be next door to Derek and Laura Hale... Well, coincidences happen, and he's constantly in contact with every sleeping sentient being that exists, he's always going to know whomever he ends up neighbour with.
He doesn't talk to them until Erica visits one day and he leaves for five minutes, only to find her talking to Laura out in the hall.
”My brother is in a bad mood,” Erica sighs, looking about twelve and sounding much older. Her curls are purple and pink today and Stiles has long given up interpreting the colours, but with his apartment full of butterflies it's kind of easy to figure out she's trying to get him in a better mood. ”I tried cheering him up but he's still grumpy.”
Derek has had nightmares for a week straight, woken up screaming, and Stiles is exhausted, moving between reading up on possible solutions in the Dreaming library and watching over him. There's something to it, beyond the horror of Derek's family dying, and as much as he tries to keep up, it keeps getting to Derek anyway.
”Is that so?” Laura says with a small smile and sits down next to Erica. ”I have a grumpy brother too, but you know what?”
”What?”
”Sometimes you have to let them be grumpy for a while. They come around eventually.”
”Yeah?”
”Yeah. What do you say I get a deck of cards and we play something while our brothers grump a little?”
”Okay!” Erica agrees enthusiastically and the butterflies swarming his living room turn into bubbles, popping silently as they fall down, all her focus on Laura instead.
It's not until the next day that he meets Derek. It feels like he knows him, probably knows him better than most do, but he never ever expected Derek to be the one to knock on his door.
”My sister said your sister left this at our apartment,” he mumbles and hands over a stuffed bear.
”Oh, thanks.”
”What's your name?” Derek frowns. ”I really recognize you.”
”Stiles. Um, Stiles Stilinski?” He blurts.
”Stiles Stilinski.”
”It's a nickname. My real name is really weird. Like, really weird.”
”No, I just... Related to a John Stilinski?”
Fuck.
”Nooope, not that I know of,” he lies.
”Ah, nevermind then.” Derek shrugs. ”I'm Derek.”
”I know.” He winces, then says, ”My sister told me.”
”Ah,” Derek repeats, then walks back to theirs.
Laura comes over the next day and talks to him too, just about the other tennants and what to expect, but they fall into an easy friendship and it makes him relieved to see her getting better and better, more sure in her status as an alpha as well. He meets Derek in the hall some days, watches him grow and put on muscle and get a degree and through all of it he does his best to keep the nightmares away for him, shaping landscapes and night skies for him to walk under, but the nightmares come storming in every night and it takes almost two years for Stiles to figure out why.
Derek dreams about bare skin and teenage hormones, blonde hair and bright smiles and Stiles knows the drill, has seen it all before, but then Derek wakes up dry heaving and he gets it.
”What did you do?!” He demands as he barges into Jackson's realm as soon as he's let in. ”Just because Boyd doesn't take responsibility for destruction anymore doesn't mean you can take over. You know the rules. ”
”He wanted her,” Jackson shrugs. ”She wanted power. I gave them what they desired. You know how this works, brother dear.”
”Doesn't make it fair.”
”Makes things a little more interesting, though.” Jackson looks him up and down, then turns to the mirror. ”If you excuse me, I have a date with a conservative politician and his favourite male escort.”
The following night he walks with Derek. Talks to him, keeps his mind occupied and away from Kate and the fire. Derek talks about architecture, about history, and Stiles tells him of the people he's met through the ages, all the dreams they've had and what inspired whom. They walk through cities empty of people and unbound by time, Pompeii and ancient Athens and modern day Tokyo, anything to keep Derek from waking in cold sweat.
It takes a while, but he starts looking healthier, less worn down. He still does double takes whenever they meet in the hallway, but the frowns have been replaced by smiles and it makes Stiles feel things he hasn't felt in decades.
Stiles tells him about his siblings, about what he is and what he does and brings Derek with him to the Dreaming, lets him roam the library as he chooses and watches him create buildings out of thin air, humming softly to himself.
Then one day Laura leaves Derek alone for the weekend and Derek actually invites him over to watch baseball.
”She said I could have friends over,” he says, holding two cartons of pizza. Human food has never been something Stiles enjoys, but the company makes up for it. He even manages to make Derek smile, not just in his dreams but a real one, and Stiles feels like maybe six years of hard work is paying off. Derek called them friends.
Of course it wasn't going to last.
Derek wakes up screaming for Laura, not for comfort after a nightmare but for Laura, so full of anguish that Stiles doesn't even know he's teleported until he's in the Beacon Hills woods, trying to adjust to the dark. He doesn't see until it's too late, until Peter is hunched over Laura and Laura has stopped healing.
”Stiles, Stiles you need to go,” Lydia yells and shoves him aside as she starts walking to where Peter is looking less like Peter and more like some of the creatures he's created for nightmares, big and misshapen and horrible. ”There's nothing you can do here. Leave, go talk to John, make sure he knows. Make sure Derek doesn't do anything stupid.”
Stiles leaves and completely misses the way Peter's alpha red eyes follow Lydia as she walks Laura to the other side.
It doesn't take long after that for things to fall apart. Derek finds Laura and buries her as well as he can, biting his lip the entire time so he won't cry. Stiles knows this because he walks with him, sits next to the grave and watches. He should feel like he's intruding, he knows, but when Derek's lip starts bleeding Stiles cries in his place, and when Derek falls asleep with his face buried in her pillow in their parents' old bedroom Stiles brings him to Rome, holds his hand through the empty streets as the sun rises and keeps Derek talking about the history of all the sculptures and paintings as if Stiles wasn't the one to plant their seeds in Michelangelo, Bernini and DaVinci's heads.
Derek doesn't sleep after that, and it's becoming a problem. Instead he spends his nights awake in the old house exercising, and all Stiles' work is slowly but surely fading away, giving place to the enormous amount of guilt he's tried to keep Derek away from all these years.
The nightmares aren't just dreams, they're real, and Derek sits in the midst of the chaos, watching the scorched walls of his childhood home, waiting for Lydia to come for him, too.
Lydia does turn up, but not for Derek.
”Stiles.” She tugs at his worn pyjamas, tries to get him to move.
”Nope.”
”You look like shit. Seriously, you can morph into anything you want, you actually decide to look like shit. Come on, there's a werewolf killing people in town, I know how much you like werewolves!”
Yeah, if Death herself is using gore to cheer him up, it's bad.
”Not leaving him.” Stiles repeats and sinks deeper into the matress where Derek is sprawled out, staring at the wall. ”I can't leave him, Lyds.”
”This is above my paygrade,” she whines and she strokes his cheek gently, her way of showing her support of what he's doing.
She sighs and leaves them.
Stiles should probably be surprised when Peter captures Lydia to try and make himself permanently immortal.
Instead he just rolls his eyes very hard and calls for backup.
He doesn't like doing it, keeps as far away from the Eumenides as he can, but Peter has killed someone who was family, and they are more than happy to remind him of it until he reaches for the wolvesbane hidden under the floorboards in the former livingroom. It's not pretty, but it's what has to be done in order for Lydia's prison to break open.
”How did you get here? What's going on? My uncle called her death?” Derek says with a nod to Lydia's naked form on the floor, voice dripping with disbelief.
”I am Death,” she confirms as she rises to her feet, her regular long, flowing gown falling down her body as she does, covering her up again. ”And that's my brother, Dream. We're... Embodiments of our functions, I think is the best way to describe it. I believe you've met our little sister, Delirium.”
”Erica,” Stiles explains, leaning against a table.
”I dreamt about you.” Derek stares at him, face open and vulnerable and Stiles never, ever wanted him to find out like this. "A lot."
”Stiles,” Lydia gasps. ”That's what you've been doing, dreamwalking? Have you any idea how bad that can end?”
”What was I going to do, huh? Watch him get eaten away by guilt and nightmares? No way!”
”You what?” Derek hisses and the look on his face is a punch in the guts, to say the least. ”Dreamwalking?! Dreams are private things, I don't want my fucking neighbour in my head, no matter what you are.”
”I'm the literal King of Dreams, Derek. I create them, it's my main purpose for existing. There are no dreams without me.”
”But you've been changing them!”
”From nightmares, yeah.”
”Nightmares I deserve,” Derek shouts, and wow.
That one, Stiles did not see coming.
”Even if you were guilty of something, which you're not, you've lost so much. Of course you don't deserve them, Derek, I've seen them.”
”Yes I do. I let her in, I let a fucking hunter into our house and she disintegrated my entire family right before my eyes. And now my psychotic uncle is dead, leaving me alone. Again. Which is what I deserve.”
”No.” They all turn to the fourth voice in the doorway.
Tisiphone leans enough into the dim light of the room for them to see and she's as beautiful and intimidating as Stiles remembers her being when she took Morpheus, exacting revenge for taking Stiles away from Claudia. Her sisters must be finishing up upstairs.
”You have never spilled a drop of your family's blood, we seek nothing from you. We cannot answer for other deities, but on this we are sure.” She turns to Stiles, ignoring Derek and Lydia who's just about to teleport back to her realm. ”It is done,” Tisiphone says, as if they needed confirmation.
”Thank you for your help,” Stiles bows a little to her.
”Our pleasure,” Tisiphone grins, sharp teeth gleaming before she backs into the shadow and a chill goes down his spine, immortal being or not.
”Well, now that that cat's out of the bag...” He runs a hand through his hair and takes a look at Derek, who...
Looks a lot less angry than he did just five minutes ago. How about that.
”You don't look to shocked for someone who just met two of the Endless and one of the Furies.”
”I've read things. I'm a-”
”Werewolf, yeah, I know,” Stiles winces apologetically.
”I was going to say history major,” Derek shoots back with a small smile ”So do you really live in that big castle, or was that just a dream?”
”Both, technically. I do.” He thinks for a second, then adds, ”I could show you?”
The extended hand is as much peace offering as it is question; Derek is a lone alpha. Stiles is his only friend.
Derek looks at it long enough for Stiles to almost pull it back until he grabs it gently, warm and real against his skin like he's never really been in the dreams.
”Yeah, okay.”