Chapter Text
Stiles had never been afraid of werewolves. When he was four years old and his sister’s first shift had resulted in the scar on his left hand, his only thought while she grew fangs and sunk her teeth into him was, ‘that is so cool’. It wasn’t until almost two years after that when he met the rest of the Hales and his not fear of werewolves got affirmed. Oh, he totally thought all the adult Hales were pompous dicks and the kids were entitled brats, but he wasn’t afraid of them (he had gotten his daily cookie taken away for a week that visit because he said all of this out loud, Peter had then snuck him chocolate chips for two weeks).
The Hale kids took his lack of fear as a challenge (see, totally entitled brats). At school for the next four years whichever Hales shared his school building made a game out of seeing which one could make Stiles screech the loudest, jump the highest and swear in front of adults (the last one happened the most often). Stiles in turn, would sneak dog whistles or other low pitched noises that human ears wouldn’t pick up into his classes and randomly turn them on to watch whichever Hale he had gotten close to twitch until a teacher told them off.
The games stopped after his mom died. The Hales didn’t know what to do with grief like Stiles’. Alex had been the only one to try something and it had ended with an enraged Stiles attempting to pound a werewolf’s face in. No one else did anything to him for a long time. After the fire all of them had been lost in their grief. The cold walls even began to melt a little as their shared pain brought them together for a time.
Then Talia entered the scene, and all the fragile bridges being built had crumbled in a day. When Stiles was older he knew it was grief that clouded her judgement. She had lost her mother, her sister, her niece, her nephew, and the aftermath she had lashed out at anyone she thought might be a threat to her remaining family. Knowing this would never earn his forgiveness. Stiles would not, could not, forgive what came next. For she swept in from on high and took Peter from him.
Pack dynamics had been a particular obsession of his because he had wanted to understand why Peter and Malia could not leave Talia’s pack. Peter had spent many a long session with Stiles patiently working through his questions and tangents trying to explain things that were so intrinsic to a werewolf that they never even thought about them. Peter was the only adult in his life (after his mom died) that had ever seemed to enjoy walking through Stiles’ thought process the whole way through. Even his dad, with the man’s endless patience and deep love, couldn’t last the hours it took Stiles sometimes to sort out the tangled web of his brain.
But Talia came, took advantage of Peter’s grief, and took him away. Stiles was never, ever, going to forget (or forgive) it. Talia made her family close ranks and the Stilinskis, she made very clear, were not family.
The torment from the Hales at school started up again and Stiles’ responses to the torment became more viscous in response. He remembered everything Peter had ever taught him about werewolves and dived deeply in his own research. Internet forums, Wicca websites, and a few illicit side trips to obscure shops on the occasions when his dad took him into the city helped his knowledge grow and expand. He taught himself latin and greek, he learned norse and gaelic runes, he planted an herb garden and began to make his own potions, and one day he managed to track down a phone number and with shaking fingers he dialed it to talk to his grandfather for the very first time.
Meeting his mother’s side of the family made him start to think anyone who interacted with the supernatural world was a pompous dick. Apparently, Claudia Stilinski’s decision to marry a ‘mundane’ was comparable to high treason for the Gajos family. He was pretty sure that she had named him after her father was the only reason the family decided to talk to him. This theory was shot to hell though during the summer he was fifteen and he had convinced his dad to let him spend a month in Oregon at the family lands.
“When a man gets old Mieczyslaw,” (everyone in the family outright refused to call him Stiles) “he begins to rethink his life, go over it backwards and forwards, there can be a lot of regrets in life, pride is my biggest regret. It was my pride and the pride of my family that drove my Claudie away. We think because of the family blood and legacy we are something better. Hah. Fools we are. Don’t let your pride get in the way of family, don’t let the Gajos foolishness and stubbornness be your regrets.”
He vowed he wouldn’t, that he wouldn’t ever be like them. He was a Stilinski and happy in that. He wouldn’t let the Gajos family make him become like the Hales. He still missed Peter though, it was almost worse than missing his mom or his sister. Them, at least, he knew with certainty he could not have or see anymore. But Peter, Peter he saw, he saw him at the grocery store or driving around town and every time he saw the man it was like a knife shooting through him all over again.
Life continued, his war with the Hale children continuing, him and his dad holding each other closer, learning a different side of the family. His only real friend was Scott who had moved to Beacon Hills a year after the fire. The two boys had become fast friends quickly, both needing someone to hold onto. Through all this time, Stiles had never been afraid of werewolves.
Not having this fear he realized, as he and Scott were frozen in wide eyed horror at the red eyed monstrous creature looming over them, had been very foolish of him.