Archive of Our Own ^beta

I’ll tell you something about the patients here, most of the usuals are just doomed from the start—destined, they call it, to end up here.

Now, I don’t know much about fate, but I know that there’s a lot of reasons that people are who they are and end up where they do. And sometimes people are just so twisted and backwards that there isn’t any fixing ‘em. Those ones haunt you, keep you up at night wondering what could’ve happened that made ‘em just so damn broken. Most of us workers can’t afford to worry over this place and the people in it when we leave to go home. So, we go home and pretend like the world’s still a wonderful place even though we know it’s not. We’ve seen the damaged ones, the unfixable, and we can’t unsee that. But, sometimes, patients stick with you and make you wonder about ‘em even when you really don’t want to.

Like Stilinski, room 53, and Hale, room 24.

They were two boys. And I don’t know this bit for sure, but I like to think they were lovers. And even if they weren’t, they had some sort of special bond ‘tween the two of ‘em. We all saw it. Alone, they were just like everyone else here, crazy, but together they were crazy enough to have hope in one another.

That’s why I hate that we eventually had to go on and separate ‘em for good. They couldn’t even see each other under supervision anymore. I didn’t want to split ‘em, but the bigger one attacked one of the other workers here—Allison—and scratched her up pretty badly. People say she even had to get seventeen stitches, but I don’t know ‘cause Allison hasn’t been back since then and I can’t say I blame the poor girl.

Why did they do it?

Oh well, they kept sayin’ she was some kind of hunter. They said that she was out to kill them just like her family did to most of the boys’ friends and family. But that don’t make a lick of sense to me. Allison wouldn’t dare hunt anything ‘cause she once told me she lost her boyfriend to a hunting accident; he was shot in the woods one night on a full moon.

Anyway, not long after we went and separated the boys, the bigger one, his name was Derek Hale, broke free. I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he went and he got his boy back. They’d been dead for hours by the time we were able to bust through the iron door. The whole point of the damn thing was to keep patients out, but it definitely didn’t keep those two out.

Earl the janitor was the one who finally got the door unlocked and the first to see the boys, he said they were all tangled up together. There was blood all over both of them. It was probably Stilinski’s. Hale was laid out right beside Stilinski’s body, dead. Earl still tells me, whenever he’s fully here, that no ‘mount of drinkin’ gets the image outta his head.

Accordin’ to Earl, the smaller one had all these cuts on his chest, looked like he’d been mauled by a wild animal or something. The bigger one didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him; he was just dead. Cops later told us he had some kind of asthma attack, but I’ve seen his file when we brought him here and it didn’t say anything ‘bout him having asthma. I told that to the cops, but they just shrugged me off.

I remember the way those two looked at one another and there isn’t no way in Hell Hale did it, he couldn’t have killed Stilinski even if Stilinski had asked him to. It would’ve been too much for him. They might’ve been crazy at times, but that doesn’t mean they were crazy enough to kill the only thing in the world they cared about. I just don’t get what happened to ‘em; I guess I probably never will.

“Derek, c’mon man, please get your wolfy ass up here. Something’s outside my door and I don’t exactly think it’s Santa coming early this year.”

“Damn it. I know you can hear me.”

“Derek, oh my God, I think—I think it’s almost in. I’m going to die, it’s going to rip my throat out and feed it to me.”

“If you let me die, I swear I won’t forgive you.”

You see, this police officer told me it all started back in a small town down here in California. I don’t know the specifics of when, but that don’t matter much though, does it? It happened, those boys were proof that something happened.

Anyway, that’s where the oldest one’s family all died in a fire. They said it was an accident, but from the way that boy talked, it wasn’t an accident. Now, I don’t know much of the details, but from what I got outta those two was that Derek, his sister, and an uncle were the only ones that didn’t die. Derek was young then, still in high school, so I guess his sister finished raising him and then returned to their town after he was done with school. I don’t know much ‘bout that part, but Stiles told me—he was always talkin’, let me tell ya—he and his friend found her body buried outside the Hale family’s old house. Police suspected Derek of the killing for a long time, but they couldn’t prove anything. Stiles gave me some crazy story about Derek’s uncle being the one who did it, said that was the only way he could become Alpha of the werewolves. But wait, that’s not even the craziest part, the uncle was later found decapitated in the woods. Spooky, huh?

After that year, I think Derek was on his way to becoming like the rest of ‘em here—crazy, psychotic, whatever term you like.

“Wait, Derek, it was you at the door all along?”

“No.”

“But...”

“Save the questions for later, we have to go. It’ll be back soon and we have to stay out of it and the orderlies’ way.”

“How’d you get rid of it?”

“I didn’t, like I said, it’ll be back and when it is, it’ll be out for blood. So just shut up and follow me before they come back.”

“Is it a vampire? Oh dear God, please don’t let it be a vampire. I don’t have any garlic or…”

“It’s not a vampire, and keep up the pace, we have to be quick.”

“How do you know it’s not a vampire? And sorry, not all of us were born into a freaky family of werewolves that can run a mile in less than two minutes.”

“Vampires don’t exist, Stiles.”

“Right, werewolves are perfectly acceptable, but vampires are too supernatural. Okay. Hey, if we ever make it out of here remind me to ask you your position on zombies. I’ve always wondered about those.”

When we brought Derek in, we had to put him in a straitjacket just to move him into his room. He was bitin’ and clawin’ at people, screaming his head off as he tried to get back to Stiles. We couldn’t put them both in the same room, but we tried our best to let ‘em see one another at least twice a day. But even that had to stop once that attack with Allison happened. After that, we eventually quit allowing them to visit one another altogether because we thought some separation would help them get better. But of course it didn’t, things got worse.

Derek was the violent one. Oh, he was quiet, sure, but that one’s temper was always there bubbling underneath the surface. He knew how to throw a punch too; he knocked some of our guards out a few times before.

Derek always thought we were going to get Stiles killed, that we couldn’t protect him—from werewolves of all things—the way he could.

Outta the two of them, I think maybe, if we would have had more time with them or got them sooner, we could’ve got Stiles back. ‘Course, he never would’ve been normal, he’d gone through too much for that, but he would’ve been okay after a while. He was clever, that boy, he could be a smart-ass at times, but he was gifted nonetheless.

Sometimes I would entirely forget why Stiles was even here in the first place, but then at the mention of his past or of Derek, I’d remember. That boy believed everything Derek told him, even tried to convince me that hunters were the ones who killed Derek’s family and Stiles’s own best friend, but I always told him to knock it off ‘cause I don’t believe in that stuff.

You can’t start believing in things that don’t exist because then you’ll start to forget what actually does.

“Head for the emergency exit that’s next to the supply closet as soon as we’re on the first floor.”

“It’ll set off an alarm if we use that door, and I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that’ll signal where we’re at. And unless that’s our plan, then it’s a very bad idea. Even if that is the plan, it’s still a not a very good one.”

“Just trust me, Stiles.”

Stiles came in with far less of a fight than Derek. He yelled a lot, but he couldn’t really do much more than that. He was so small, you see, and you could just tell he wasn’t the fighting type.

I don’t know what all happened to him, but he had lost a lot of people over the years. He mentioned, only once, about his best friend. He still claimed he was killed by hunters for being a werewolf. I didn’t believe him, still don’t ‘cause they ain’t no such thing, but something did happen to his friend, even I could see that.

That boy had real pain in his eyes, the type of pain that comes with dealing with too much too fast. And I don’t think he was ever gonna be able to let go of it. I don’t think he’d even know how to try, really. But I guess that doesn’t really matter now, does it?

I tell ya, that’s why I think the worst thing we ever did was go and separate the two of ‘em. We thought that if we could keep Stiles away it would help him, and of course Derek was dangerous. But really, I think Derek was the only reason that Stiles was even holding on.

"Stiles, drop!" Derek orders once they’ve made it to the ground floor, and Stiles listens even though he can’t see anything.

Derek jumps over Stiles’s head, gets some good hits in on the thing that’s trying to kill them, but he can see out of the corner of his eye that there are five more making a beeline towards Stiles.

"Inside the supply closet, now Stiles, go."

There's no hesitation, just instant obedience from Stiles. But as he reaches the door, something gets ahold of him from behind. He can’t see it, only knows that the sturdy grip on his side isn’t good. He gets out a loud ‘Derek!’ before the thing knocks him completely to the ground.

I’m sad to see those boys go, I really am, but at the same time I’m happy they went together. They deserved that, at least, ‘specially after all the sorrow that they’ve dealt with. Those two had earned a break. Now, I might not ever know what all happened that night, but I’ll tell you one thing, I won’t ever forget those two. They left an impression on me, can’t get ‘em outta my head to be honest.

Anyway, that’s all I really know ‘bout what happened to them. I hope I gave you enough information for your report. And what’d you say your name was again?

Kate? Ah, yes, Kate Argent, that was it. Sorry, sometimes things just completely slip my mind after a long day at work.

Well ma'am, I’m glad I could be of help, but it’s getting late and I better get to headin' home. If you want to visit their graves once you leave here, for further research or something, they’re both just down the road in the city graveyard. I’ve visited there a few times myself, and there’s these beautiful purple flowers that are growing up and around their graves. I don’t know if they’re natural or if someone went and had ‘em planted there, but I like to think it means something.

Those boys had a special story and I don’t think anyone will ever really know it.

Derek always thought Stiles looked nice in red, but not this, he doesn’t look good in the blood that rushes through Derek’s fingers as he holds Stiles’s stomach. He doesn’t look good in the red that he coughs up as he whispers Derek’s name.

“Stiles,” Derek’s voice sounds frightened and desperate as he clings to Stiles, “don’t you even think about dying on me. You got that?”

“Got it.”

And Stiles doesn’t think about it, would never consider leaving Derek alone because he knows just how much it aches to be alone in a world full of people. So he tries to stay, tries to fight, but he knows he’s already fought enough for a lifetime and now it’s just time to rest.

"Damn it, Stiles.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Stiles’s voice is barely more than a whisper so Derek leans down to hear him, “it isn't your fault.” He smiles with lips stained crimson and a twinkle in his eyes.

Don’t be too hard on yourself is the last thing Derek ever really hears besides the sound of pounding on the door, but he ignores that because he knows it’s just the others waiting to kill him next.