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Stiles called Isaac around 3 in the morning. Which was fine. Isaac wasn’t sleeping much anyway, not after the nogitsune, after
( Allison)
“I’m coming by Deaton’s to pick you up.” Stiles’ voice was high pitched, scared. Worried.
Isaac grabbed his knapsack and started shoving on his jeans, keeping the phone in the crook of his neck. “Stiles, what happened?”
“Just meet me outside, okay? Like now, right now.” He paused, then, “And don’t tell Scott.”
At this point I don’t think he’d even notice, Isaac thought.
Isaac understood it. He and Allison got closer, and in doing so, they drifted away from Scott. And that hurt. Then she died, and Scott felt like Isaac had stolen his last days with her.
The only reason Isaac got close to Allison at all was for Scott. The reason he liked her so much was because she was like Scott. But the werewolf was a blind idiot. Or maybe Isaac was the idiot for missing his chance. Whatever it was, they weren't talking. And Isaac wasn't sleeping.
.-
“You are definitely speeding,” Isaac pointed out.
Stiles relaxed a little bit on the accelerator. “Sorry.”
“You gonna tell me what this is about?” Isaac could tell they were heading in the direction of Derek’s loft.
“I just...look, it’s going to sound crazy if I tell you.”
“You know it’s me you’re talking to, right?" Isaac raised an eyebrow.
Stiles drummed on the steering wheel anxiously. “I think something bad happened. To Derek. And right now I’m just hoping to God I’m wrong.”
.-
He wasn’t wrong.
The loft was a wreck, riddled with bullet holes, tables upturned, furniture swept aside. The only upside was that there was no body.
“Aw, crap.” Stiles practically whimpered it, plopping onto the raised section of the floor by the door.
Isaac surveyed the scene. In the corner of his eye, something glinted. He knelt down to examine it.
It was a bullet, engraved with a kind of symbol. Isaac held it in the moonlight, rolling a thumb over the ridges in the metal.
“Who spends the time to customize their bullets?” he wondered aloud.
“The Calaveras, probably,” Stiles sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“The who?”
He just shrugged in response.
“Alright, you have to tell me what’s going on.” Isaac pocketed the bullet and stood, turning to face him with as much authority as he could muster. Which wasn’t a lot, but still, points for trying.
“Look, Derek and I, we were in the locker room. He told me he had a nightmare about the Calaveras getting in, and then he started talking about someone who got turned, but not by a bite. And he said he felt like...like he was still dreaming. And…” Stiles hesitantly rolled a thumb across his knuckles, deliberately settling on each one, like he had to make sure all his fingers were there.
“He asked me how you could tell if you were dreaming, and I told him that in dreams, you know, you end up with extra fingers. And my hand had six.”
Isaac’s brow furrowed. “Stiles, that was your dream, though, it wasn’t really Derek there.”
“That’s what I thought, right, but why would I dream about Derek asking me if he was dreaming? And he told me things I never would have come up with, like, I didn’t even know about the Calaveras, or him and Peter getting taken, because Derek doesn’t talk about jack shit with me anymore.”
Isaac could tell that the “anymore” stung a little bit.
Stiles kept talking. He was good at that. “But I was right, though, I mean, look around us, all of it happened, what Derek said, which means they took him again.”
Isaac spotted a splotch of something wet on the floor. When he got a closer look, he grimaced.
“What?” Stiles stood up to meet him.
“It’s ectoplasm, the stuff werewolf bodies produce when they’re trying to push out a toxin, when they can’t heal properly.” Isaac dipped a finger in the inky black substance.
“Dude, don’t --”
Isaac stuck his finger in his mouth.
“Gross,” Stiles muttered.
“It’s definitely wolfsbane.” He smacked his lips together a few times, gauging the taste. “Strong stuff, too, definitely top shelf.”
“Like, blue monkshood top shelf? Dead in forty-eight hours top shelf?”
“Not exactly.” Isaac wiped his wet finger on his jeans. “This stuff tastes brewed.”
“Brewed like tea? A very menacing tea?” Stiles’ eyes kept flitting around the apartment, like he couldn’t quite believe what his subconscious had predicted.
“Yea. Whoever made the bullet calibrated the concentration in such a way that it wouldn’t kill him, just shut his body down.” Isaac pondered that. “Maybe when the bullet hit him, he blacked out and dreamed of you, reached out to you, and your mind answered.”
“So I didn’t predict this happening, he told me that it had happened, after it already happened.” Stiles shook his head. “God that’s weird. Is this some possession side effect thing? Or a Nemeton thing?”
“Could just be a Stiles thing.” Isaac stood and examined the area behind the not-blood stain. “The bullet’s still in his body, if it had exited it would have gone through the window.” He waved a hand at the surprisingly intact windows. “Which means he can’t heal, and he probably can’t wake up.”
“What do you mean a ‘Stiles’ thing?” He clearly had not processed any of the other things Isaac said.
“There aren’t exactly a lot of documented cases of Nogitsune possession, but of the ones there are, none of them involved lucid dreaming. You were doing that while the Nogitsune was still dormant, and when it woke up, you had dreams where you actually communicated with it. Most people don’t even realize they’re possessed, they just lose time and wake up bloody.”
“I did plenty of that,” Stiles muttered.
“And you mastered awareness and reality checking way faster than most humans. You’ve got a knack, I guess.” Isaac did his best not to sound too exicted, because it would be cool (really, really fucking cool) if Stiles was a dreamwalker, but the kid looked terrified.
“Great, so now, the only time I actually have superpowers is when I’m unconscious. Fantastic.” He rubbed his forehead, annoyed. “Alright, now what? How do we get him back?”
Isaac dug the little silver bullet out of his pocket. The design on it was a skull, a Calavera. “Road trip to Mexico?
.
“One of us has to stay behind.” It wasn’t a difficult calculus. After Lydia had tried to sense Derek in the bullets and come up with nothing, they started to plan the rescue. Lydia, Stiles, Kira, Malia, Scott, and Isaac all volunteered to go. That was six people. The Jeep had a pretty spacious back seat, and there had been some talk about just throwing Derek in the trunk for the return trip
(assuming there is one)
But six on the way there and seven on the way back was a lot of bodies for one car. Besides, there was always the distinct possibility that something horrible would go down in Beacon Hills (because there was always something horrible) and no one would be around to defend it.
“I’ll stay,” Isaac volunteered.
“You sure?” Stiles glanced over at him.
“It makes the most sense, tactically. Scott, Malia, and Kira have to be there to fight when things get ugly. Stiles has to drive, and you need Lydia as an early warning system.” There was also the added benefit of avoiding the unpleasant scenario of being trapped in a car with Scott for 16 hours. He didn’t mention that part, but from the slight blossom of relief in Scott’s aura, he figured they agreed on it.
“Early warning for what?” Scott asked.
“Death, generally,” Lydia supplied. “But also for whatever supernatural creature Derek was so worried about in Stiles’ dream.”
They’d all accepted Stiles’ Inception shenanigans fairly quickly. After the year they’d had, nothing was really surprising.
“Exactly. I’ll stay, hold down the fort.”
“Alright,” Scott straightened up. “We should go soon.”
Stiles lingered behind. Lydia spared him a last glance before following Scott out.
Isaac let out a tired sigh.
“You alright?” Stiles asked.
“Yeah, yeah, just…” Isaac rubbed his eyes. “The fucking timing.”
“What do you mean?” He moved to be next to him. Isaac turned reluctantly, to look him in the face.
“Argent’s in France. Ethan and Peter are AWOL, everyone else is dead. ” He wrung his hands, agitated. “It’s like they knew, exactly when we’d be at our weakest, hit us when we’d barely got up the last time.”
Something tender slipped into Stile’s gaze. “We’re going to get him back,” he said gently. “You know that, right?”
Slowly, Isaac nodded. “I know.”
Stiles nodded in return, starting to back away to leave.
Isaac stopped him. Hesitant at first, then almost too quickly, so he couldn’t change his mind, he pulled Stiles into a hug. Stiles let out a little “oomph,” but more contentedly than anything else.
Isaac pulled back and let him go. “Come back in one piece, alright?”
Stiles grinned. “Aye, sir.” He gave a mock salute. Their eyes met one last time.
Don’t make me bury you, too, Isaac thought as he left.
.-
Stiles called him at 3 am. Again.
“Listen, we found him, and it’s bad.” Isaac could hear ambient noise filtering through the phone, the sounds of rough gravel crunching under the tires and the rattle of a beat up engine.
“How bad?” Isaac rolled out the crook in his neck from where he’d fallen asleep at the Animal Clinic. He and Deaton really needed to invest in better office chairs.
“Curious case of Benjamin Button,” it was Lydia this time. Her knack for sarcasm and obscure references matched, and possibly even surpassed Stiles’. Just one of the many ways she could put the rest of them to shame.
Isaac was fully awake now, running to Deaton’s stash of books. “By that do you mean he swept at the Oscars or he aged backwards?”
“He’s like, 16.” It was Scott this time. “And he’s completely unconscious. Heart rate and body temp are way below normal, and on top of that he’s dehydrated and malnourished.” That was the vet in him coming out.
“Well, that makes sense.” He started flipping through the pages. “Not the 16 part, but the rest of it screams comatose.”
“Like you tasted in the wolfsbane,” Lydia confirmed.
“Alright, glad we solved that mystery, do you think we could get to the much more pressing one?” Stiles was on edge, not just frazzled but worried. Very worried.
“Yeah I got nothing on that front. Just get him here.” Isaac hung up the phone with a sigh.
I should have stayed in France.
.-
They brought Derek in after a day straight of driving. Deaton promptly sent everyone home. Scott had to drag Stiles out of the room. He hadn’t wanted to leave Derek’s side.
“You should go back to the apartment,” Deaton prodded Isaac gently. “You also have a life outside of all this.”
“Do I, though?” Isaac muttered.
Deaton put a hand on his shoulder. “You only do if you make one for yourself.”
.-
Isaac did go home. To shower and change. Then he was right back at the clinic to watch over Derek. Deaton gave him his best “Disappointed but not surprised” look, which he used a lot more now that he was surrounded by reckless teenagers.
It was morning, and Derek was still unconscious. His vitals, however, had swung like a pendulum.
“His heart rate is unusually high,” Deaton observed. He reached over to the counter and pulled out one of his scalpels.
“Whoa, what are you doing?” Isaac stopped Deaton’s hand as he was about to slice through Derek’s arm.
“I’m going to wake him up.” He said it like it was obvious. “And I’m testing his healing, seeing if it’s normal.”
“You can’t just go around cutting people with knives!”
Deaton gave a very pointed look to the knife in Isaac’s pocket.
Isaac bit his lip. “You know what I mean. Why can’t we just wait for him to wake up naturally?”
“If he was going to do that, he would have done it already.” Deaton made another move with the scalpel.
“Wait, wait. Let me try something.” Isaac put a hand on Derek’s forehead and gently turned his head to the side, so that his eyes were facing him. “Sorry about this,” he muttered.
As hard as he could, he snapped his fingers right in Derek’s ear. The sound echoed around the small clinic.
Derek woke up with a roar, claws out, eyes blazing, heart pounding so hard even a human could hear it.
“Derek?” Deaton called. “Derek, can you hear me?”
“He’s seeing as a wolf right now,” Isaac commented.
“Yes, thank you for that astute observation,” Deaton shot back.
Derek let out a menacing growl, staring them down.
“We have to calm him down.” Isaac reached behind him and grabbed a Sharpie.
“It’s a sharpie, not chloroform!” Deaton hissed, backing up against the counter now, with nowhere to run, cornered by a threatened predator.
Isaac hastily scribbled something onto the nearest notepad, holding it up for Derek to see.
The werewolf stilled immediately. He started muttering something through his fangs.
“Alpha, Beta, Omega.” His claws receded. “Alpha, Beta, Omega.” His eyes returned to normal. “Alpha, Beta…” A completely human Derek Hale stumbled, falling against the examination table with a clang, breathing hard.
Isaac put down his crude drawing of the Triskele. “Can’t believe that worked.”
Deaton picked it up, examining it. “Reminding him of the symbol of his family. Not bad.”
“Seriously? I save you from getting mauled to death and I get a ‘Not bad’?” Isaac crouched down on the floor to be at Derek’s eye level.
Deaton, still standing, gave him a light swat on the back of his head “I’m still your teacher, you know. And your guardian. And your boss.” Isaac could hear the smile in his voice.
“And a pain in my ass,” Isaac teased. Deaton swatted back a little harder.
“Young man -”
“Where am I?”
Derek was fully awake now, eyes darting between the two of them. He looked so unnaturally scared and young and vulnerable, nothing like the man they knew.
“It’s alright, you’re safe.” Isaac readied himself for Deaton’s reaction to what he said next. “We’re friends of Talia.”
As expected, a sharp tang of grief rolled off Deaton. Isaac was in tune with his mentor, he was used to the occasional emotional transference, but it was still jarring.
“My mother?” Derek sat up a little straighter. “You know her? Where is she?”
Ah, now here was the hard part.
He doesn’t know about the fire. But his eyes are blue, so it can’t be that far off.
Derek’s eyes bored into Isaac, the confusion and fear clenching something in his heart. Behind him, Deaton cleared his throat.
“She’s not here right now,” he said. Lying to a werewolf isn’t difficult as most people think, especially if you have practice at it. It’s just stupid.
“Hey Doc, no offense, but that wasn’t a helpful answer.” Isaac hoped Deaton would get his message; Let me do the talking.
“Listen, it’s Derek, right?” Isaac feigned ignorance, because the kid was plenty unnerved without having to be weirdly familiar with someone who was, in his mind, a stranger.
Derek nodded.
“Okay, so, a lot’s happened in not a lot of time, and some of it is going to sound crazy, but you can trust what I say to you.” Isaac pointed a finger at his heart to emphasize the point. “If you think I’m lying, you can call me out.”
Derek pressed his lips together. “...Okay,” he said warily.
Isaac pulled his phone out of his back pocket and showed it to Derek. “Do you know what this is?” He handed it off.
Derek turned the gadget over, running a thumb over the Apple logo. “It’s an iPhone. But it’s...wrong. It’s the wrong shape.”
“That’s because it’s an iPhone 4.” Isaac smiled at Derek’s incredulous look.
“What do you mean ‘four’?”
“Click the button.” Derek did as Isaac said, watching as the lock screen lit up, displaying the date and time.
Derek nearly dropped the phone in surprise. Luckily, he didn’t. Isaac didn’t have a case for it and it probably would have smashed into little bits of glass. “Did I time travel?”
Isaac suppressed a laugh. “Not exactly. The past seven years of your life have been erased, so you don’t remember anything passed being...this.” He motioned to Derek’s teenage body.
Derek blinked. Then he blinked again, like he was stuck on a loading screen. With slightly trembling hands, he gave the phone back.
“You’re telling the truth,” Derek muttered, listening intently to Isaac’s heart. “ How are you telling the truth?”
Isaac shrugged. “We don’t have much more of a clue than you do.”
Suddenly, Derek straightened up. “Where’s my family?” he demanded.
Isaac sighed, biting his lip. “Depends on what religion you have.”
“Now is not the time for jokes, Isaac.” Deaton spoke back up again, disappointment radiating off of him.
Isaac pressed on, because he knew that someone had to tell Derek, because in his time, the Hales practically owned this town, and he needed to know why they were gone.
“If you’re an atheist like me, Beacon Hills Cemetery.” He quietly tensed, waiting for the outburst.
None came. Derek simply sank lower, as if he wanted to melt into the floor. “No…” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Derek.” Deaton moved around Isaac to give Derek a comforting squeeze on the shoulder.
The touch seemed to pull Derek out of his state, making him scramble to his feet. “I need to see them,” he said urgently.
“I don’t think that’s the best --” Deaton started.
Derek shook his head. “No, I need to see them.” He started heading out of the clinic.
“Derek, wait.” Isaac stood. Derek paused, but Isaac knew it wasn’t going to last, so he spoke quickly. “It’s 910 Oregan Avenue, they’re in the far corner on the hill, by the hydrangea bushes, you can’t miss it.”
Derek gave a quick, curt nod, before turning and running out the door.
.-
Isaac gave the kid the better part of the afternoon to grieve alone. But at some point, they did need to get him back. He shrugged on his jacket and started the brisk walk to the cemetery.
Derek was sitting by Laura’s headstone, looking at the granite that shone a little glossier than the rest.
“The date’s different on this one.” Derek didn’t turn to look at Isaac, but he knew he was there. Probably heard him coming from a mile away.
Isaac slowly sat down next to him, the dampness of the grass starting to cling to his jeans.
“Everyone’s here. Except me.” Derek was still staring at Laura’s name, carved into the rock. “Me and Peter.”
“Cora’s still alive, actually,” Isaac said gently. “They presumed her dead, but she made it out. She’s in South America, now.”
Derek did turn his head at that, probably trying to reconcile the idea of his baby sister living it up on another continent. “What happened?” He finally asked.
Isaac didn’t want to look at Derek while he said it, but he felt like he had to, like he owed him that. “There was a fire. They were trapped inside. Peter and Cora dragged themselves out. You and Laura weren’t home.”
Derek’s eyes swam with tears. He reached out to touch the grave beside Laura’s, the biggest, most intricate one, with his mother’s name on it. “It’ll happen soon.” He ran a finger over the grooves where the date was chiseled into. “That’s the year I’m from.”
Isaac did his best to keep his emotions in check. He didn’t need his chemo signals to agitate the werewolf. “You won’t have to see it.” It was small comfort, but it was all Isaac had.
“I will, though. If you get my years back, I’ll see it.”
That and a lot more crap. Derek had been returned to what was probably the last time he’d been truly happy. The past seven years had nothing to offer except pain and death and betrayal. Isaac ran through the list, everyone in the fire, Kate, Ms. Blake, Erica, Boyd, Laura, Aiden...
But there was another list. People like Isaac, Scott, Stiles, Lydia, Kira, a long-lost cousin Malia. And Peter, on occasion. When he wasn’t a dick.
As if reading his thoughts through the silence, Derek spoke up. “What does Uncle - what does Peter look like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is he...old? Or is he more like me?” Derek started fiddling with his shoe lace. “He kept his face young, for me, so he could visit me at school. But after…” he trailed off, unsure of whether to tell Isaac.
“After Paige?” Talia had told Deaton about Paige, and Isaac had eavesdropped. Because he was ten, and kind of a little shit at the time. Well, that last part was still true.
Derek swallowed. “He started getting older. At first it was just little things, and then it was like it all happened at once.”
Isaac tried not to show his surprise. He knew that Peter and Derek were close, before the fire, but being a teenager, just to give comfort to a lonely nephew in a school full of humans? That was more compassion than he ever gave him credit for. It also saddened him, a bit, to know that after Paige, Derek lost trust in Peter, and as they grew apart, Peter let himself age twenty years in less than two.
“He’s older now. But, you’re older, too. You guys are still close.”
That wasn’t a lie. It was a pretty fucking complicated truth, but it wasn’t a lie.
Derek’s eyes fell back onto Talia’s grave. The one Isaac still visited. He’d spent more time talking to Talia’s headstone than to Talia herself.
“I met your son today.” After placing the ten little flowers he’d picked on the way here, one for every Hale, he finally settled onto Talia’s grave. “He’s brutal with himself. Takes pain like it’s his job. He’s got a lot to learn. But…” Isaac smiled. “He’s a good kid. He’s got your heart.” Isaac thought about Stiles. “Maybe one day he’ll figure out how to use it.”
“You were lying, earlier.” Derek seemed to notice the flower for the first time, the one that was old and withered, because Isaac hadn’t been around since he knelt here and cried about Allison.
“About what?”
“When you said you were an Atheist. I hope...I want to believe - I want them to be somewhere better.”
Finally, the tears began to fall. They came down fast and silent, and Isaac could see how hard Derek was trying to stay quiet, for Isaac’s sake.
This kind of thing...Isaac didn’t really do this. His idea kind of help was always practical. If there was a problem, he found a solution. He didn’t know what to do when something couldn’t be fixed.
“Do you want, um,” Isaac cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Do you want physical comfort?”
Derek’s nod was nearly imperceptible, but it was there, nonetheless.
Isaac carefully reached around him, circling him into an embrace. The Derek he knew never would have let this happen. Hell, Isaac didn’t even know if he could hug Derek’s broad-ass shoulders. But this one...this one turned into his embrace and let himself sob, muffling the cries in Isaac’s scarf.
“I know it’s not okay right now,” Isaac whispered. “And it might not be okay tomorrow or a year from now or ever, but we’ll help you get through it. I promise.”
That tiny, broken Thank You he got in response haunted him long after Derek stopped.
.-
The kid named Stiles came to pick the two of them up in his Jeep, to take them back to Scott’s house. Derek vaguely remembered him, like a face in a dream, brown eyes wide in concern and worry, unable to tear themselves away from Derek’s grimey, teenage self.
Is that him? Is that Derek? The memory was hazy, at best.
Um...Not exactly. The two of them hadn’t had much time to talk, but Stiles still felt familiar to him, in a way that went beyond just memory.
The drive was done in silence. Isaac was slumped in the passenger seat, eyes flitting over to Stiles. Looking at the back of his head, Derek could tell Stiles was determined to keep his eyes firmly on the road, and it wasn’t just for automobile safety.
“You’re Angry.” Derek could smell it on him, that and something else, something less harsh but more powerful.
Stiles’ eyes flicked up to regard Derek in the rearview mirror. “No, I’m not.” He was lying.
Isaac sighed. “Can you drop me off at the clinic, first? I got some stuff to take care of.”
Stiles nodded, still refusing to look at Isaac.
When they pulled into the little lot behind the animal clinic, Stiles was practically vibrating with tension. “Isaac, can I talk to you for a sec?” He got out of the car and slammed the door before Isaac could respond.
Isaac looked back at Derek. “You’re taking this like a champ, by the way.” He got out and went after Stiles.
Derek tried not to listen. But they weren’t standing that far away. And they weren’t exactly being quiet.
What the hell was that?
If you didn’t want to pick us up I could have called someone else.
That’s not - Why’d you take him to the cemetery?
He asked about his family, what was I supposed to say?
You couldn’t have given him one day without that pain?
I wasn’t gonna lie to him.
What happens when he asks about Paige? Or Laura? Or -
Paige already happened, that’s a non issue.
Is that really what you’re gonna focus on here?
I get it. The last seven years haven’t exactly been stellar, but how is that my fault?
It’s not I just - I could tell he’d been crying.
Hang on, you are this mad, because I made him upset?
Maybe, I guess. I don’t know, it’s been a stressful week.
You’re an idiot, you know that? Both of you are idiots, actually. You’re made for each other.
Derek heard Isaac go into the animal clinic, then Stiles came back into the jeep. Derek tried to act casual, but there was a lot to unpack in that conversation, and it wouldn’t take a wolf to read his confusion.
Stiles sighed and ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I’m guessing you heard that?”
“Wasn’t very hard. You project.”
“Yeah, I’m practicing for my Broadway debut,” Stiles snarked. He started the car.
“How do you know about Paige?” Derek wasn’t sure how this random human even knew his name, let alone a secret like that.
Stiles was quiet. He started to pull out of the Animal clinic, down the road to Scott’s House. Derek wondered if he was going to ignore the question entirely. Then,
“Peter told me about Paige because he thought I could help you.”
“Why would you help me?” Derek doesn’t ask the other question: How could he help? How could anyone help him with...with that?
“You really don’t remember me,” Stiles said it quietly, almost to himself. “We’ve been through a lot together, you and me. And I don’t know if you ever trusted me. But I see myself as your friend, and I’d die to protect you. Almost did, actually.” There was a smile in his voice.
Derek really didn’t know what to say to that. “Oh.”
They rode the rest of the way to Scott’s in silence.
.-
“What do you mean ‘Kate took him?’” Isaac was starting to get really tired of getting Stiles’ frantic Derek-related calls while he was trying to work.
“Scott talked to Peter. He said that Kate took him back to a time when he still trusted her.”
Fuck. Isaac hadn’t considered the possibility that this version of Derek had already met Kate.
“Peter thinks she needs him to get into the Hale Vault. It’s at the school.”
.-