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i.
There’s something they never tell you about the end of civilization: gasoline goes stale. It goes bad. It stops working.
The Jeep is an abandoned husk somewhere on the borderlands of Oregon. Derek’s Camaro didn’t make it out of Beacon Hills. They’re traveling on foot now, hauling their belongings with them in backpacks and on MacGyver’d wagons. The werewolves (Boyd, Scott, Isaac, and Erica — but never Derek) pull the wagons, of course, and Allison kills birds and squirrels to feed them. Stiles has all the maps.
Chris Argent is a shadow of a man; he doesn’t carry a thing. He follows where they go and eats if they prod him to it, but mostly he is still and silent. He creeps Stiles out, but everyone has lost too much to force Allison to abandon him. If it were Stiles’s dad, he would kill every single person who even hinted at it.
But his father is dead, so it’s not an issue.
Derek leads them. He picks their camping spots and arranges their defenses. He’s the first to shed blood when people — human people, because that’s an important distinction — try to steal from the pack.
(They’re one pack now, sealed by blood and the slow disintegration of the human race.)
ii.
“We’re sleeping here tonight,” Derek announces. It’s the first thing he said since that morning, when he told Stiles to stop screwing around with breakfast. No one says anything back. The camp is assembled in silence; there’s exhaustion in everyone’s movements, and grief hangs over them all like a cloud.
“Who’s cooking this time?” Isaac asks once the bedrolls are unbundled and there’s a healthy fire going in the center. With five werewolves in the group, they don’t have to worry much about the extra attention it might bring. Violent humans aren’t a concern.
“Depends,” Stiles says, because no one else will answer with this mood choking them all. “What do we have to cook?”
“We still have a box of those military MREs,” Erica says. She runs her hand over the short fuzz of her hair and frowns at their food bags. “And there’s the canned stuff we got from that house two days ago.”
“Anything fresh?” Stiles asks, rolling up his sleeves. They’re ragged and stretched out, but he can’t bring himself to cut them off and risk sunburn.
Erica shrugs and then helps him get the cooking gear off of Boyd’s wagon. Boyd himself is off to the side, helping Derek arrange the defenses. “Our huntress didn’t shoot any woodland creatures today, so. Maybe we’ll find berries or something when we get the water.” Because Derek always plants his pack near a water source like the good wolf he is.
“Well, let’s go then.” Stiles grabs his baseball bat and two empty canisters and waits expectantly. Erica sighs for show and heads off in the direction of whatever stream the werewolves can hear but Stiles can’t.
It would be easier if he were a werewolf, he knows. It would be easier if they were all werewolves. Five werewolves and three humans move a lot slower than, say, eight werewolves would. But Derek only asked them once, just after they fled Beacon Hills — he asked, but Allison and Stiles said no. (There was no offer for Chris Argent, and Allison didn’t protest.)
It’s the end of the world, and Stiles wants to be human.
iii.
They cross the ruins of a small town a few days later. It wavers under the hot summer sun. The welcome sign is charred, making it impossible to tell what the place was once called. Stiles estimates that they’ve crossed the Idaho border already, but he won’t be sure until they find some way of confirming where they are.
Derek leads them down the main street, which is helpfully labeled Main Street by the signs, navigating carefully around the abandoned cars. Broken glass crunches under their shoes as they pass the looted shops and wrecked buildings. There’s more than one rotting body in the street. Stiles doesn’t flinch as they pass them. He’s seen worse. Every once in a while, Derek pauses and sends one of the werewolves into a store or down an alley to check for something, anything: Survivors, threats, useful items that got left behind. Allison stays with her father, favorite crossbow at the ready, while Stiles hovers awkwardly next to Derek.
They find some of the basics — more canned food, some matchboxes scattered across the floor of a gas station, a medical kit only half-used — and a lot of blood.
“Humans,” Derek says with disgust once everyone is back together. Stiles considers throwing out an offended ‘hey now’ for form’s sake, but he doesn’t. After the shit-show of Beacon Hills, he’s not too impressed with humanity himself.
“One thing goes wrong and they destroy each other,” Erica says with equal loathing. No one points out the obvious — that she was human once — because her human experiences weren’t encouraging either. There’s a reason she jumped at the chance to be a werewolf.
“Are we staying here tonight?” Boyd asks. He’s the practical one, even now. He has more sense than their alpha.
“No,” Derek says, even though the sky is already turning pink from the setting sun. “There’s no reasonably defendable place in this dump. We keep going until we find one.”
“I don’t know if my dad can go for any longer,” Allison says. Scott shifts at her side, throwing a worried glance at their pet hunter. Chris Argent stares blankly at all of them, same as he always does. It's creepy.
“He’ll have to,” Derek growls, and ends the discussion by walking away.
Stiles carefully doesn’t watch as Scott helps Allison maneuver her father onto his wagon. Scott kisses Allison’s forehead and then starts pulling. He’s slower than he was before, but no one says anything about it. Allison glares at Derek, though, and her gaze is full of bitterness. She needs the pack to keep her father alive, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten the war between them.
iv.
Most of the time, they avoid other people, but only most of the time. The werewolves can hear anyone approach from miles away, so they only interact with people when Derek says so. If he doesn’t think it’s safe or if he just plain doesn’t want to, he moves the pack in another direction, until the sound of wandering humans fades. Stiles has no say in these decisions, and he doesn’t care. Most of the time.
For the most part, the pack doesn’t need other people anyway. They have water and bedding and shelter, they have a consistent supply of food, and most of them don’t need human medicine. They don’t need to trade for anything, and Derek has no interest in news of the outside world.
The apocalypse is an alpha’s isolationist wetdream. Who would have thought?
But unfortunately, not everyone in their pack is a werewolf, and one day Chris Argent falls sick. He has a fever, and he can’t keep anything down, but they don’t know if he has any symptoms beyond that. They need a doctor, and most of the surviving groups have at least one. All they have is Scott, who looks haplessly at Argent’s shaking body.
“No,” Derek says when Allison presses him to find a group of humans.
“He’s my father!” she shouts. She gestures to where he’s laid out on Scott’s wagon, motionless except for the tremors wracking his system. “If we don’t get him help, he’s going to die!”
Derek looks at her coldly. “And if the humans we find are violent? If they kill any of the humans in our pack? The answer is no.”
The only humans Derek counts are Allison and Stiles, and as far as Stiles knows, he doesn’t particularly like either of them. Well, Stiles would estimate that Derek likes him more, but only by the barest of margins. If Stiles were sick, he's pretty sure Derek would get help for him. Or bite him. However, Stiles’s aunt isn’t the one who murdered Derek’s entire family.
So, there’s that.
“Like you even care,” Allison spits. “You like this. You like having us follow you around. Having us depend on you. But my father is sick. He’s all I have left.” Scott flinches, barely, but he doesn’t say anything. He just watches as his girlfriend reams into his alpha. It’s hard to disagree with her. “If you won’t help him, I’ll find someone who will.”
And then she’s turning away and trying to get Argent to his feet. Her hands are shaking almost as much as he is. Scott grabs her and whispers something, but she jerks away.
“Here,” Stiles finds himself saying, “let me help.” He sets aside his maps and steadies Allison as much as he can. Derek watches with red eyes. It’s too easy to put one foot in front of the other.
It’s too easy for them to leave.
v.
“You don’t have to do this,” Allison says quietly after they take a break. They’re only a mile or so from where they left the pack, traveling in excruciating slowness. They had to stop half a mile in and rig a sled for her father; he’s too sick to walk, and they can’t carry him.
“If it were my father,” Stiles says just as quietly — they’re still in hearing distance of the pack. He swallows harshly. “If my dad was still alive, and he needed help, I’d want the same.”
Allison nods and looks over at her father. Her expression is so lost that Stiles can’t help but reach out and grab her hand. He holds on, even as she cries. He holds on, even as he cries for his own father, who never even lived to the end of the first day of this nightmare.
vi.
It takes them less than a week to stumble upon another survivor group. Or, for the survivor group’s scouts to stumble across them. Allison has her compound bow drawn and an arrow notched as soon as she spots the young man through the trees, and Stiles has his baseball bat held at ready.
“Oh,” the scout says, blinking at them in surprise. He looks at them and then focuses on Chris Argent, who is still a shivering mess. “You look like you could use a doctor.”
The other scouts come into view, and the three of them are escorted to the walled settlement, flanked on all sides. The leader of the settlement greets them at the gate. He looks like he’s in his thirties, but Stiles thinks he’s probably younger. He rules them with a hard fist, he guesses, because the people flinch away when he moves. If he were a werewolf, his eyes would be alpha red and bloody for it.
His name is David, and he scares Stiles more than Derek ever has.
“You need a doctor?” David says with easy charm. “Well, we need a hunter. Welcome. We’ll take good care of you.”
“We already have a family,” Stiles says, substituting ‘pack’ with ‘family.’ “We’re just here to get Chris looked at. We’ll exchange work for the help, but this isn’t permanent.”
“Really?” David says with careful surprise. “Your family let you go off alone with a sick man? With the world like it is?” They aren’t taking care of you, he doesn’t say, but it hangs over them anyway.
“They trust us to take care of ourselves. They’re waiting for us to come back,” Stiles lies. He smiles. “But thank you for your concern.”
“Anyone will tell you, I’m always concerned,” David replies. He smiles back, and Stiles’s skin crawls from the wrongness of it. “Come on, I’ll show you to Doc Jones myself.”
He helps them lift Argent to his feet and half-carry him to their doctor’s makeshift infirmary. Once they’re under the tent cover and David has taken his leave, Allison and Stiles look at each other with wide eyes.
What have they gotten themselves into?
vii.
“So,” David says once night has fallen and everyone is gathered around the huge bonfire. “Tell us about yourselves.”
By mutual, unspoken agreement, Allison and Stiles don’t talk about their split from the pack or the internal fighting that went on. They talk as if they really are one big happy family, and that the two of them — the three of them, really — are just on a quick vacation, full of plans to go back and be reunited. Maybe, once Allison’s dad is either cured or dead, they will. But for now, they just give the appearance of it, full of smiles and strength and happy stories. They tell the truth and they lie as if they were one and the same.
“And then Erica threw him into the lake,” Stiles finishes with a flourish. The settlement people laugh appropriately. Their ages run from infant to middle aged. No elderly. Stiles has seen enough fucked up shit to guess what happens to people who can’t keep up or contribute.
“Sounds like you’re close,” David says as the laughter dies down. Heavy silence replaces it. Stiles focuses on keeping his expression the same, and he prays that Allison is doing the same. Doc Jones nods encouragement from across the fire, keeping her face angled so that David can’t see her expression. Stiles makes sure that he doesn’t look at her directly; the doctor is petite, and the men of this camp are not.
“We were close Before,” Stiles says. He doesn’t have to explain what Before is. “Everything after just made us closer. We fight for each other.”
It’s the truth.
“Well, you’re here now,” David says with a smile. He motions for someone to refill Stiles’s bowl of stew. “And we welcome you for however long you decide to stay. We think of ourselves as a family too, you know. Maybe,” he continues, leaning forward, “you’ll come to think of us the same way.”
It sounds ominous.
viii.
Chris Argent dies the following week. Doc Jones won’t meet their eyes when they go to check on him during the day, in between helping the survivors go about their business.
“He’s too sick for visitors,” she says, and they know from the twist of her mouth and the flicker of her eyes that she’s lying. After a pregnant pause, Stiles and Allison nod like they believe her and wander off. They lean close to each other, holding hands as if they’re lovers. The guards watch them go back to the tent David gave them to sleep in. Stiles wonders what happened to the last people who slept there.
“They killed him,” Allison whispers that night. “He wasn’t getting better, but he wasn’t getting worse. They killed him.”
“There are no sick people in this place,” Stiles murmurs back. He stares at the slanted roof of their tent. “No old people either. The only person who can come and go without a guard is Doc Jones and David himself.”
Allison laughs dryly, and it’s only a little hysterical. She’s handling the death of her only surviving parent far better than Stiles had. Stiles had lost his fucking mind. “Who would have thought that Derek Hale would ever be the humane option?”
They both lay there for a moment, appreciating the irony. Then they curl closer together and begin to plot their escape.
ix.
The guards don’t let Stiles and Allison leave the settlement at the same time, even while they’re being watched. They have an excuse ready, claiming that Stiles is needed to tend to the children today, but it doesn’t surprise either of them. They were expecting this, now that Argent isn’t here to tie them in place, even with the lie. Stiles laughs like he doesn’t know anything is wrong and waves as Allison leaves him. If she’s smart, she won’t come back for him.
He hopes she doesn’t come back, even though he has a fair guess as to what might happen to him in her absence.
x.
She doesn’t come back, and it’s a relief.
She doesn’t come back, and Stiles knows that she’s gone to the pack. She’ll tell Derek where he is, and maybe Derek will come for him, and maybe he won’t. The important thing is that Allison will be safe. It’s what her father would have wanted. It’s what Stiles’s father would have wanted.
David doesn’t see it that way, but that’s not a surprise.
“She abandoned you,” he says, standing in front of Stiles’s tent. “We just wanted to give the two of you time before we told you about her poor father. She must have found out somehow.” David looks at Stiles with sad, sad eyes. The falseness of the emotion coils in the air between them.
“The minute her father died,” David continues, “she had no use for you. I’m sorry for your loss. You must not have been as close as you thought.” He offers his hands to Stiles as if to give him comfort, as if Stiles could get comfort from this human monster.
Stiles thinks of his own father and the pack and Scott and Allison and Chris Argent and all of Beacon Hills and all of humanity. He and Allison left the pack behind on the chance that someone would help them. They found this man instead.
Allison is safe, and the pack is out there surviving together. Stiles doesn’t have anyone else to protect, so he does what he’s wanted to do since he saw the way the settlement people flinched at the man.
He punches him.
xi.
Stiles wakes to Doc Jones dripping water into his mouth. Her hands are rock steady as they hold the bowl over him. She meets his eyes and then glances away. Her hair glimmers black in the light of the fire as she sets down the water and leans over him. He wishes that he knew her, suddenly. She's still in the way that Boyd is, in the way that Scott is. In the way his father was.
They have him staked out like a dog next to the main bonfire. Stiles wonders if David is going to burn him alive at the end of his demonstration, or if he’s going to leave Stiles to starve to death, beaten and weak from exposure.
“My name is Ki,” she says as she examines him gently. “Is yours really Stiles?”
“No,” he exhales softly. “Mine’s unpronounceable. You? Ki Jones?”
“No,” she says. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Everyone just calls me that because you white people are lazy.”
Stiles huffs a laugh. He stills when Ki places her hand on his shoulder and shakes her head. “Don’t let them see you move,” she whispers, leaning close. Her hair shields her face, so that no one could tell that she was talking to the prisoner. “If they do, they’ll beat you again. You might die before—before you should.”
“Why does that matter?” Stiles asks. He keeps his lips as still as possible.
“Because—” Ki starts to say, but a guard wanders too close, and she backs away as if burned. She picks up the bowl again and gives him some more water, and then she shuffles away.
He watches her go. Don’t do anything stupid on my account, he wants to say, but the guard is too close, and he doesn’t think she would listen anyway. She has that stubborn set to her shoulders that Stiles recognizes from his father and Scott’s mom — she’s done seeing horrible things and not being able to do anything about it.
xii.
“You’re my example,” David says on the third day. Stiles opens his eyes and squints at the man. The sun is directly overhead, and Stiles feels like he’s burning up. They’ve kept the bonfire going constantly all three days, even though the summer heat beats on them, even this far north.
He feels like he’s cooking, like he’s burning even though the flames haven’t touched his skin. Not yet anyway.
“You’re crazy,” Stiles croaks. He wishes Lydia were around to smack him for it, but she and Jackson are long gone, split off before the pack even made it out of Beacon Hills.
“I’m surviving,” David says. “And I’m making sure that everyone important survives too. What about you? Dragging around some sick old man, letting his needs take you from your little band. You could have had a place here, both you and the beautiful Allison. Some leader your Derek is, letting the two of you go off.”
“Fuck you,” Stiles grunts. He has the odd compulsion to defend Derek, of all people. Derek is cruel and demanding and mean, but at least he wouldn't have murdered any of his pack. Not again, not after Peter. But Stiles holds his tongue; his throat is bone dry. Doc Jones gives him a little water each day, but it’s not enough. Not with the sun on him and the fire burning.
“You’re my example,” David says again. “He’s my example. We’re going to kill you tomorrow.”
Nothing you say makes any sense, Stiles doesn’t say in reply.
xiii.
The guards haul Stiles to his feet and drag him forward. Stiles keeps his head down, too tired to even look for Ki in the crowd. The settlement is gathered around, their faces young and frightened. They hover amongst one another, scared of David but also scared of what life might be like without him. To them, he’s the only thing between them and death. He’s the one keeping them from making Stiles’s fatal mistake.
There’s no speech, no fanfare. David doesn’t need it. The showmanship in Stiles’s execution was in the days he spent slowly dying in the sun. This is merely the last swing of the hangman’s noose.
There’s no speech, no fanfare to David’s death either. He motions for the guards to drag Stiles to the fire, and then he’s on the ground with an arrow in his chest.
Ki is standing at the front of the survivors, armed with one of the pack’s crossbows. Stiles recognizes the triquetra design Allison carved into the tiller. Her favorite one. The one her father bought her as an apology after Gerard drove their relationship to ruin. And beyond Ki—
Beyond her is the pack. And Allison, standing at Scott’s right, armed with her compound bow and a cold expression.
The guards on either side of Stiles reach for their weapons, but werewolves are faster than any human could hope to be. Boyd has one down for the count with a slashed throat; Erica takes the other one with a blood thirsty howl. Werewolves don’t need weapons; they have claws.
Scott catches Stiles as he collapses.
“David’s law is void,” Ki says fiercely. “I’ve seen too many of my patients killed at his hands. We’re done with that. If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay, stay. But this overlord nonsense is stopping now.”
Slowly, while Ki is keeping the humans’ attention, Scott picks Stiles up and they creep away. Anybody who sees them quickly looks away. The pack is back in the woods before anyone thinks to stop them.
xiv.
Nothing is magically fixed. Stiles heals slowly, sitting on the back of Scott’s wagon like so much dead weight. They stop frequently to let him rest, even though he’s not doing anything more taxing than sitting on his ass and reading maps.
Allison stands apart, and Scott gazes after her with soulful puppy eyes. Stiles watches his skin peel off as his body works through the sunburn and dehydration. Derek stares after them both with that vaguely guilty constipated expression that Stiles loathes. Boyd and Erica walk so close together that the wheels of their wagon get tangled, and Isaac has to help fix it.
No one talks about what happened — Argent’s death makes their travel easier, but only technically. It feels like they’re hauling his dead body with them, even though that’s back at the settlement, buried in the same mass grave as everyone else David killed.
xv.
“Do you think we should have stayed?” Allison writes on the back of Stiles’s hand. She uses her finger, going slowly so that he can feel each letter.
“Do you think the pack would have let us leave again?” he writes back.