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Stiles writes the first letter the night after his mom is diagnosed. His parents encourage him, thinking it a healthy alternative to a diary, an idea which Stiles had rejected outright. The letter sits on his desk, folded into a blank envelope, for a week before it is joined by another, and another, and another. As his mother sheds hair and weak smiles, Stiles sheds his feelings, his fears, his hopes, his regrets; scrawled by hand onto 8 by 11 sheets of paper and tucked into envelopes to hide from the world. He never addresses the letters formally, but mentally fills in a recipient. This one to the doctor who greets Stiles with a smile and a lollipop whenever he visits his mother, this one to the brother asleep beside his sisters bed a room away, this one to the woman with the tired eyes who brings her son for treatment at 2:45pm every Sunday, just before his mother's appointment at three. He writes and writes, increasing in frequency when his mother worsens and decreasing when she gets better. He doesn't write for an entire week when his mother, finally adjusting to the treatment, is well enough to get out of bed for a few days and stay out. His father takes up more vacation days and they set out a picnic in the woods, go ice skating to beat the summer heat, make the drive down to the ocean for a beach day, careful to slather his mother with plenty of sunscreen to protect her fragile skin. She presses a dot of it to Stiles' nose and he refuses to wipe it off, just smiling at her for a full minute until she starts laughing with him. But these days don't last.
Stiles knows it's getting bad again when his father takes him to buy new stationary, making a supposedly offhand comment about how he'll need new paper soon. He tells Stiles to choose whatever he likes, even cracks a weak joke, saying "so long as it doesn't get glitter everywhere," but then all Stiles can see is the cracked toe nail polish his mom is too tired to repaint and he chokes back a sob. There's been crying enough these past few weeks, as his dad's red-rimmed eyes prove. Stiles browses the aisles for a few minutes, looking for something, though he doesn't know what. He finds it in a plainly wrapped pack of stationary, just a dark blue box. The actual paper features a dark blue border with a faded image of a wolf howling at the moon in the background. This image strikes him years later; how futile writing letters to no one was, like a lone wolf howling at the moon, without a pack to hear him.
The first time Stiles stumbles across the Hale household, he isn't supposed to be there. He's supposed to be at home, studying until his dad comes home, but the house reeks of the imagined smell of death and despair, and as soon as he locks the door behind him Stiles is running for the neutral ground of the forest. He didn't mean to get lost, really! Hopefully, his dad won't be too mad. It takes Stiles a few minutes to place the building when he comes across it, but then he remembers rumors whispered from ear to ear between classes: Hale, family, fire, gone, dead. He shudders at the memory. But at least he knows where he is now. He turns around and retraces his steps, hoping to return home before he causes his family any more grief.
A few weeks later, Stiles' dad gently shakes him awake in the middle of the night. Though the red letters on his bedside clock flash 3:34am on a Thursday morning, his dad ushers him to get dressed quickly before piling him into the car. It takes a good few minutes into the drive for Stiles' sleep-bleary mind to register what must be happening. There's no going back then. A few preliminary tears slip down his cheeks despite his efforts to stifle them, as he knows there will soon be more to follow.
His mom slips away at 5:22 that morning. There is little noise in the room, just birds chirping softly outside, nothing to cover the slow breathes and the slowly declining beeps of the machine. The noise in the room as she draws a final breath, the soft wheeze and the long accompanying beep of the machine flat lining, will haunt Stiles' dreams for years to come.