Chapter Text
Forty years is a long time to be trapped in a glass jar under a magical tree. It’s hungry, it’s starving, and it has been for the past four decades. If it wasn’t an immortal spirit, it would have lost its mind ages ago.
Its life is boring, so dreadfully boring. It’s been flying circles around this jar again and again for forty years, stuck in this stupid fly body. It is angry, furious with Noshiko. She’d ruined its life. She knew what she was getting involved with when making that deal, she knew the risks. It gave her exactly what she wanted, and she trapped him here.
Nothing happens here.
Until something does.
It hears the panicked crying first. Someone is at the Nemeton. No, there are two people. The trapdoor creaks open, and streaks of moonlight illuminate the dusty cellar, dormant particles floating in the air with the gusts of wind sweeping through the space. A boy climbs down the stairs, carrying a girl. A werewolf boy, and a dying girl.
The boy cautiously lays the girl down on the dirty floor, like she’s a delicate flower on the verge of disintegrating. They’re talking, whispering, crying but it doesn’t listen to what they say. It’s too immersed in the delicious pain and anguish they’re emitting. The girl is dying, poisoned by the bite. She’s dying and it’s delighted. The boy is feeling so delectably guilty, it can already see his eyes turning sapphire blue. It’s a feast, a feast for a starving fox.
The girl takes her last breath.
Crack.
The moonlight refracts brilliantly through the broken glass.
It is free.
-
Though the fox spirit is free, it is still weak. It needs a vessel. A body.
The boy would be a prime target, emotionally devastated and a broken mind, ready to be possessed and invaded. But he’s a werewolf, and one can’t be both a fox and a wolf at once.
So it flies away, and searches for someone else. As it leaves the forest and nears populated territory, it finds that the world has changed a lot in the last forty years. The small settlement it knew before has grown into a large town. Roads have widened, now containing more cars than it's ever seen. The internment camp is gone, nowhere to be found.
It doesn’t sense any kitsunes either, so Noshiko must have moved away. Pity. It would have enjoyed taking revenge.
While wandering around town, taking in all the new changes, a delicious smell gets its attention. Pain and misery lead it to a large building. Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital. Perfect.
It slips in through an open window and lands on the wall, looking through the room. An old, fragile man lies on his deathbed. That won’t do. It flies off, in search of a better victim. It comes across a room with a young man looking fairly healthy. But on closer inspection, appears to be paralyzed from the waist down. No, he needs someone else. Someone healthy.
Frustrated, it flies through the halls of the hospital.
“No! Mom! No!” A child’s scream cuts through the air. Intrigued, it flies toward the commotion. A door stands open, letting it fly easily into the small hospital room, where it’s pure chaos. Nurses and doctors are filing in, all circling around and checking on a frail woman on a bed. The child it heard screaming earlier is struggling against a dark haired nurse, who’s trying to lead him out of the room. “Mom!”
Ah, it understands. A mother dies, leaving behind her devastated child. Perfect.
The child has been escorted to the chairs in the hallway, fat tears rolling over his cheeks. The nurse squeezes his shoulder, and hands him a paper cup of water. “I’m going to call your dad, alright? I’ll be right back, Stiles.”
Stiles.
It almost feels like fate, such a perfect victim. Served up on a silver platter. A feast.
The boy is too caught up in his grief to notice the fly landing on his face, and crawling into his mouth. He coughs a bit when it crawls down his throat, but with a sip of water the fly is swallowed with ease.
-
It waits until night before it possesses Stiles. It’s been taking its time exploring the boy’s mind, learning about his life and family.
The kid’s father is a deputy, apparently, and has no other children. The boy has little to no friends, and a bad case of ADHD. Lonely and weird, and now motherless. Truly perfect.
Poking through someone’s mind is different from actual possession though, and by now it is starving for a human body to inhabit, so after the boy finally cries himself to sleep, it strikes.
-
It’s bright- too bright. Something’s wrong, terribly wrong. It tries to penetrate the mind, but it’s like a barrier is holding him back. A fiery, blazing barrier. Like fire. Like a Spark.
It tries to get out, but it’s too late. The mind has engulfed it, and it can’t escape. It’s trapped, trapped again and it struggles and struggles but it’s in too deep. How did it not notice the Spark?! This was a mistake, a terrible mistake, and it’s losing itself. It’s dissolving, melting and tearing apart.
It can sense the boy panicking as well. What’s happening?! He’s melting too, they’re breaking apart, sparkling and fizzing and crumbling and disintegrating until they’re nothing more than bits and pieces.
And then they start combining. Melting together and mixing together and absorbing each other and fusing and blending and combining and melding and then it ends. They’re joined. They’re both but one. They’re Stiles and the fox and neither and both. They’re eight years old and a thousand years old. They’re a little boy and an ancient spirit. They’re a kid and a fox. They’re… new.