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"For years, the nemeton's power was virtually gone like the dying ember of a burned-out fire. But a few months earlier, something happened that caused that ember to glow a little brighter. Something that gave it a spark of power again. The sacrifice of a virgin." - The Darach.
October 2011, Autumn
"Derek, come on!" Stiles shouted, gripping Derek's henley and shaking him.
Stiles slapped his face again. But he still didn't wake.
He was breathing. Why wouldn't he wake up? What had Jennifer done to him?
They didn't have time for this!
Desperate, Stiles raised his hand in a fist and closed his eyes.
He swung downwards and braced himself for the explosion of pain which would soon follow.
But it didn't. Derek's hand grabbed his wrist before Stiles could make contact, and they sat staring at each other, panting, motionless.
The wave of relief Stiles felt brought tears to his eyes.
"Stiles," Derek breathed out, and it sounded like an apology.
One Stiles solely needed to hear.
But not right now.
"We gotta get you out of here," Stiles said in a rush, adrenaline spiking when he thought of what came next. "The police are coming right now, and we gotta get you the hell out of here."
"Woah," Derek said as Stiles helped him sit up. "Where's Cora?"
"Cora?" Stiles stuttered, "Uh, she- Peter and Isaac took her. I-I think you can catch up with them, but you have to leave now."
With Derek still grasping his wrist and Stiles gripping his shoulder, Stiles helped pull Derek to his feet in the elevator.
But when Stiles stepped away, Derek didn't let go.
"I have to tell you something," he said suddenly.
"Now?!" Stiles gawped, looking frantically around.
"Yes," Derek said firmly. "Jennifer," he began but paused when Stiles flinched away from him.
He let go of Stiles only to press his mouth into a tight line. His hands fisted at his sides, and his expression determined.
"Her face. You have to know -"
"I know," Stiles choked out. Because he did know, he had figured it out almost as soon as she took his dad. He'd just been too angry to acknowledge it.
He was still too angry to talk about it now. But he knew.
Derek stared at him, conflict in his eyes. He didn't reach out again, even though Stiles could see he wanted to bridge the ever-widening gap between them.
"Not just that. Her scent. Everything. It was a trick. And I fell for it. I -" Derek swallowed. "I failed you."
Despite everything, Stiles shook his head. A big part of him wanted to throw it all in Derek's face. He was hurt. He felt betrayed.
But Derek had been betrayed, too. Again. And the opening of wounds not yet healed seemed punishment enough.
"You haven't failed me. Not yet," Stiles cautioned because there was still time for that. "Now go."
Derek hesitated half a second more before he turned around and fled the scene.
Stiles watched him leave with his heart in his throat. His gut warned this could be the last time they saw each other.
Because Jennifer was loose, Deucalion had taken Scott, Kali was still out for Derek's blood, and Stiles needed to find his dad before he became a human sacrifice.
And something, some voice Stiles didn't recognize as his own, whispered in his mind like a prophecy, "Someone's gonna die tonight."
Lydia and Stiles hurried through the halls of Beacon High, with Jackson dogging Lydia's every step like some paranoid puppy.
But then, considering Jackson was barely tolerable on a good day, his perpetual bad mood was especially sharp since Ms. Blake had almost strangled Lydia in the music room.
Really, Stiles wished Jackson would pull his head out of his ass long enough to be useful for once in his miserable life.
"Aiden isn't texting me back," Lydia said as she shoved her phone inside her purse.
Jackson's growl was so unnecessary that Stiles stopped in his tracks to glare at him.
"Really?" Stiles snapped, not intimidated, even when Jackson flashed his wolfy-blue eyes at him. "You want to play victim right now over your and Lydia's boy toy when actual lives are at stake?"
Jackson eagerly squared up to Stiles.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Stilinski," he hissed through gritted fangs.
"My dad and Scott's mom could die!" Stiles exploded, his nerves completely wrecked.
"Hey!" Lydia said, pushing between them with wide green eyes. "Can we focus here, please?"
"Yeah, on something other than your own narcissistic problems," Stiles added petulantly. "Surprise, not everything revolves around you."
"All right!" Lydia huffed as she shoved them apart.
Stiles spun around and grabbed at his hair, tugging violently.
He was losing his mind.
Around them, other students slowed and stared as they waited to see if a fight would happen.
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Lydia said loudly, glaring at the semi-crowd until they slowly wandered off. However, most lingered around the lockers nearby.
Stiles's phone vibrated against his leg, and he fumbled as he pulled it out of his jeans pocket.
As he read the text, he swore he felt his heart stop beating.
He felt... cold.
"What?" Lydia said from far away.
He couldn't...
He couldn't answer.
He couldn't feel...
"Oh, God," Lydia was still talking.
Stiles could barely see her. The whole world blurred around him.
Too bright.
Too dark.
He couldn't...
...see.
His phone was gone, snatched from his hands.
Stiles couldn't feel his fingers.
He couldn't breathe.
"What's it say?" Lydia sounded desperate.
Why?
Stiles couldn't think.
"It's from Isaac," Jackson sounded worried.
Jackson? Worried?
"Jennifer took Allison's dad," Jackson said.
No.
Please.
His dad.
"Stiles!"
Someone was calling him.
"What's wrong with him?"
The voices. They sounded like they were underwater.
"He's having a panic attack."
No. Not them.
"Stilinski! Snap out of it!"
It was him.
"Jackson, you're not helping!"
He...
"Well, what are we supposed to do?!"
He was drowning.
"Slow his breathing!"
"How?!"
"Um!"
There were hands on his face.
Then, soft lips on his.
All at once, Stiles was staring into the green eyes of Lydia Martin.
As she kissed him.
The girl he had loved since he learned what love was... was kissing him?
The locker room came into focus behind her, and Stiles felt the solid ground underneath his knees again.
But... where was the spark of fire? The tingle of passion?
All he felt... was empty.
When her lips left his, the first breath he took was like a knife in his throat.
It hurt in a familiar way.
But then, Stiles had known grief before.
"What the hell, Lydia?" Jackson said from where he stood over them with his hands fisted at his sides.
His entire body was tensed like a bowstring.
"I, uh..." Lydia started roughly, only to stop and clear her voice. "I read once that holding your breath could stop a panic attack."
Jackson's stone-cold silence seemed to spur Lydia into explaining further.
"So when I kissed him, he held his breath... didn't you? Stiles?" She prompted when the tension didn't waver a moment.
Stiles blinked, dazed, confused, and wallowing in the darkness of his thoughts.
But she was right.
He could breathe again.
So he nodded slowly.
"I did," he whispered and tried to pull himself back to the present. "Thanks," he said to her. "It was really smart."
Jackson scoffed and crossed his arms.
"You would think that," he sneered at Stiles.
"Besides," Lydia said louder and with more confidence. "I think we have the answer to at least one burning question. Right?"
Stiles met her piercing gaze as she raised her trim brows at him until his chest squeezed painfully.
And the ice in his veins finally warmed from a jolt of emotion.
"And you picked now to let me know?" he said, annoyed.
Lydia shrugged with a smirk and a teasing glint in her eyes.
"Well, you're not panicked anymore, are you?"
"No," Stiles snapped.
He was furious.
Finally, there was the ember he needed to keep burning if he was going to find his dad.
And he could start by asking their guidance counselor, Ms. Morrell, how she knew Jennifer would target Chris Argent.
Deaton had said there was a way to save his dad. But he, Scott, and Allison needed to be "surrogate sacrifices."
So they had to die to save their parents' lives.
But Deaton could bring them back.
Right?
"It's dangerous," Deaton had said.
They'd be dead. But just for a few seconds.
Only there was a catch.
They'd be giving power back to the Nemeton, a place that hadn't had power for a long time.
And that kind of power was like a magnet. It would attract the supernatural, the kind of things that a family like the Argents could fill the pages of a bestiary with.
It would draw them here like a beacon.
Oh, and it would also have an effect on the three of them.
According to Deaton, they wouldn't be able to see it, but they would feel it every day for the rest of their lives.
"It would be a kind of a... darkness around your heart," Deaton had said to Scott. "And permanent, like a scar."
"Like a tattoo," Scott had whispered as if he had realized something.
Stiles wished he would share with the rest of the class because Stiles could hardly make sense of anything anymore.
He just wanted his dad safe.
They were supposed to bring something of their parents, something that had meaning.
Stiles clutched his dad's crumpled badge between his hands so tightly his fingertips were slowly turning white.
It was all he could think to bring.
After all, it was what his dad had last touched before Jennifer had crushed it and taken him.
But now Stiles was supposed to lay in a tin tub full of ice and mistletoe, and what?
Hope?
"You're going to die," whispered that same voice in his mind from before.
A terrible chill ran down his spine.
There was something wrong.
His gut was screaming that he was missing something, something huge, important, though he had no idea what it was.
Everything was so messed up.
Deaton had told them the person who needed to hold them down also had to be the one to pull them back.
Someone who had a strong connection to them, a kind of emotional tether.
But he had directed Lydia toward Stiles instead of Allison.
And maybe if their earlier kiss hadn't happened... Or had been under different circumstances, Stiles might have felt right about it.
But it had happened, and now he knew the truth.
And considering the awkward moment when Allison had to decide between Isaac or Jackson, and Scott was obviously not okay with either option...
Part of him wondered if Deaton knew exactly what he was doing.
But it wasn't like any of them had a choice.
In the end, Allison had picked Isaac.
Stiles gritted his teeth as he stepped into the middle tub, with Allison to his right and Scott to the left.
Each submerged themselves while holding on to the items representing their parents.
Was this it?
It was like he could hear the clock ticking down the seconds.
"By the way, um-" Stiles turned desperately toward Scott.
Stiles swallowed as Scott met his wild-eyed stare.
"If I don't make it back and you do," he gasped between trembling breaths, trying to ignore how alarmed Scott seemed by his words, "you should probably know something."
Or everything.
God, Stiles wished he had time to tell his best friend everything. Every secret Stiles hadn't realized he had been keeping until this moment.
When he could die, and Scott would never hear how Stiles had changed over the Summer they spent apart.
Stiles sighed and held back because none of it mattered now.
But there was one thing Scott would have to face, even without Stiles there beside him.
"Your dad's in town."
Scott closed his eyes and turned away from Stiles.
He didn't say anything. But then Stiles didn't expect him to.
Stiles closed his eyes as Lydia stepped up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders.
This was it.
He took his last breath.
Then he went under.
This was the second time Stiles had been held underwater until he stopped breathing.
And the third time, he had lost the will to fight toward the surface.
But this was the first time he had drowned to death.
Stiles, Scott, and Allison resurfaced all at once, gasping, spluttering, and trembling.
Disoriented, Stiles stood up and looked above at the night sky. Not a star to be seen, just an endless black abyss.
Shockingly, as his bare feet sunk into wet grass, Stiles recognized his surroundings as the lacrosse field.
But why would they end up here?
Scott and Allison glanced all around with matching perplexed expressions.
"I don't get it," Stiles muttered quietly, although his voice still carried across the open field.
"Do you?" He frowned at Scott, who was slowly rotating on the spot.
"No," Scott said shortly.
Then he nodded behind Stiles toward the center of the field.
"But I see it."
Stiles looked again, and there it was: the tree stump from Lydia's compulsive drawings.
Cautiously, he started towards the nemeton. And as they approached, Stiles noticed a thick silvery shard of light washing over the bark.
Tilting his chin up, he lost his footing and stumbled, feeling dizzy as his vision doubled at the sight of the moon above.
"Woah," Scott said after grabbing Stiles's arm to steady him.
Stiles looked down at the ground and blinked rapidly to clear his vision, lifting his free hand to press against his forehead.
"Ugh, trippy," he gulped, hoping he wasn't about to vomit. "Do yourselves a favor, and don't look up."
So, of course, Scott and Allison did the exact opposite.
"Gah!" Scott groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
Stiles laughed at him.
"I warned you."
"You did," Scott sighed before he smiled back.
"There's two of them," Allison said, and Stiles was shocked to see her still squinting up at the sky.
"How can you stand to look at them?" Stiles asked suspiciously.
"Doesn't it make you feel sick?" Scott backed him up, just as incredulous.
"No," Allison said, seeming genuinely confused by their reaction.
So, against his better judgment, Stiles looked again.
For a split second, he saw them. Two full moons barely overlapping, no merging as if they were one and the same. But there were definitely two.
Then, the earth tilted beneath Stiles's feet, and everything ran together like a watercolor painting.
"I'm gonna barf," he warned, forcibly swallowing his spit.
Scott stepped away with his hands outstretched towards him.
"You okay, Stiles?" he said.
Breathing shallowly with his mouth firmly closed helped a lot. And Stiles tentatively nodded after waiting a few more seconds, just in case.
"I'm good," he sighed.
They continued walking towards the nemeton, Stiles squinting as they entered the veil of bright moonlight.
Scott stepped closer as Stiles and Allison slowed to a stop, and Stiles watched him frown down at the old stump, then reach slowly upwards to brush his fingers along his tattoo.
And Stiles felt a jolt of something pass through him, causing him to stumble back again.
"Scott..." he said cautiously, staring down at the rings within the tree.
Growth rings, Stiles thought, each dark line represents one year...
Scott turned to him, an odd smile curling up the corners of his lips.
"Where were you when you traced that pattern with your fingers?" Stiles pointed at the tattoo.
Scott blinked at him slowly.
"Uh..." he hesitated and frowned down at the tree, seeming lost in his thoughts, "At work, maybe?"
"You don't remember?" Stiles said, his voice cracking as his adrenaline spiked.
Scott just looked confused.
"I-I don't-" he began only to fall silent as if his train of thought was interrupted.
Then Stiles watched as if in slow-motion how Scott leaned over the old tree with his left hand outstretched.
The same arm the tattoo was on.
"Scott, wait-!" he cautioned with his hand outstretched, but it was too late.
Scott's palm pressed into the growth lines of the nemeton.
A rustling sound that sounded like it came from every direction had them all startling and turning on their heels to stare around at the tree line.
Only Stiles jumped backward when somehow a tall, skinny tree had crept up behind him.
Wait... he blinked as he took in the surrounding area and recognized he now stood in the preserve... Alone.
"Um," he said awkwardly.
Well, this couldn't be good.
"We're seriously doing this?" Scott's voice sounded to his left.
Stiles felt himself relax, knowing he wasn't alone, that Scott was somewhere nearby.
Until his own voice answered.
"You're the one always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town."
He felt suddenly cold as he saw them... him and Scott... almost an entire year younger and so much stupider.
They had no idea the chaos they had thrown themselves head-first into this night.
Flashlights permitted the dark, running footsteps and a dog barking.
Then, his screech of terror.
"Hang on, hang on!" his dad said, and Stiles cringed at the note of disappointment that was all too familiar. "This little delinquent belongs to me."
Stiles moved to follow his dad, half dragging his past self toward his jeep when a flashlight beam almost blinded him, and he took a huge step backward.
Bumping his ass against a dead tree stump.
He put his left palm down hard to catch himself, and a zing of recognition zipped up his arm, trapping his breath in his throat.
Stiles couldn't help but lean on the nemeton's rough surface, pulled down by momentum or just plain gravity. His bare feet tripped and slid on the roots poking through the dry dirt, and his right hand joined his left as the air around him grew thinner.
And thinner.
Then nothing.
Oh god.
The trees seemed to loom closer as the moonlight dimmed to black.
Stiles's arms collapsed under him, and he sprawled half on top of the dead tree, unable to draw breath.
I'm dying.
"You've been under for sixteen hours," Deaton told them gravely.
"What?" Stiles said sharply. "You said we'd be out for a few seconds. And you kept us underwater for sixteen hours."
"I couldn't disrupt the ritual," Deaton explained patiently. "If I had, then your chances of returning would have been non-existent."
"Well, gee, lucky we were in safe hands," Stiles said sarcastically.
"Stiles," Scott turned to him. "We got what we wanted. We know where they are."
Stiles gulped.
He could find his dad.
When Deaton left the room, Stiles still eyed him suspiciously. His feelings from the day before of missing something had returned full force, and now he had a lead on his dad, his brain was finally working to catch up.
"Hey, Lydia," Stiles called her over to him, and despite the fact they had been unofficially hanging out all year, it still surprised him when she came toward him.
"What?" She asked curiously, her volume matching his.
"How long were we under?"
"How would I-?" she started to deny, but Stiles interrupted.
"I know you were timing us. So how long? Exactly?"
"Exactly?" she repeated, then pursed her lips, her green eyes glancing over the three tubs behind him.
"To the last second if you can," Stiles pressed, knowing she could.
Lydia inhaled deeply before saying, "Sixteen hours, fifty-two minutes, and thirteen seconds."
Stiles closed his eyes, feeling more awake than he had for days.
"Sixteen years, fifty-two weeks, and thirteen days," he said slowly.
Lydia gasped.
"Until what?" she asked, nervous.
Stiles glanced at her but looked over to where his best friend was toweling dry.
"Since Scott's birthday," he said.
"Today is October 18th. Scott was born on the 6th?" Lydia worked out quickly.
Stiles clenched his jaw.
"Yeah," he confirmed.
"What does that mean?" she hissed at him, her wide eyes watching Scott like he was a ticking timebomb.
"I don't know," he muttered, his thoughts spinning around and around in circles.
Stiles awoke gasping and flailing his arms, gulping down air as he frantically refilled his lungs.
His numb fingers fumbled with the handle before he was able to pull one leg up to kick the driver-side door open.
He tumbled out and landed hard on his knees, sucking a deep breath between his teeth at the first sting of pain.
His dad needed him.
He swiped at the blood dripping near his eye and dragged himself onto his feet. Needing to grip the jeep's roof when his knees buckled and threatened to give out.
His bat. He-he needed his bat.
But when he refocused on the jeep's interior, an icy chill enveloped him from head to toe.
There was a body in the front seat.
And it had his face.
"Stiles," his lips moved, but what escaped was a high-pitched hiss.
Stiles's whole body was tense, frozen by terror as he looked into the empty whites of his own eyes.
And like nails on a chalkboard, the voice asked him, "What's a Stiles?"
"Aaaahhhh!" Stiles jumped back with his bat in hand. Just as lightning struck the ground so close to him that all the hair along his arms stood on end, and the sharp scent of ozone filled his nose with a tingle.
He lost his footing and tumbled down the steep hill into the preserve.
The echoing sound of crackling laughter followed his descent.
When he rolled to a halt with a thud and a groan, he immediately scrambled backward, trying to drag himself as far away from his busted-up jeep as he possibly could.
As the wind whirled around him, he was forced to squint his eyes to keep out the dirt and leaves beating against his face.
With his heart in his throat and his vision obscured, Stiles was freaking out!
What if that thing was crawling its way toward him right now? What if it was hovering above him?
He decided his best option was not to wait around to find out.
He stumbled to his feet and leaned forward into the whipping wind as it clung and dragged back on his clothing. Pressing forward toward where the dead stump of the nemeton was anchored to the root cellar where his dad was trapped.