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Peter’s not coherent when it happens.
The drugs the Eichen House staff pump into his veins are bad enough, but they also make consistently avoiding Valack’s gaze impossible. Peter’s not thinking clearly enough to figure out when to turn, to close his eyes, to lash out. Occasionally, Valack catches him and he’s plunged into disjointed visions of flames and family and past mistakes.
Ultimately, all Peter has is a collage of sensations: Blood blooming against a concrete wall. The thud of Valack’s body tipping over. A scent, faintly medicinal but familiar. His feet scuffing through powder, but not ash. A rush of air. The crinkle of a tarp. Stiles’s voice, casual and friendly even though he stinks of anxiety.
After that, the rumble of an engine and the hum of wheels over asphalt soothe Peter to sleep.
When he wakes, he’s on an air mattress in an unfamiliar garage. It smells musty. The scent of bacon drifts towards him, so he climbs to his feet and looks around, finding the door into the house and heading that way.
The rest of the house smells musty, too. No one has used this place in years. But the lights are on, and Peter can hear Stiles in the kitchen. When he spots Peter, Stiles looks relieved. “Oh, good, you’re awake. It’s been two days. I was starting to wonder if I was going to regret dragging you to the middle of nowhere.”
“Why help me?” Peter asks.
Stiles is silent for a long time. Peter waits. “Because you’re the only person who ever consistently took me seriously,” he says eventually. “And I’m done playing comic relief.”
That is… not the answer Peter expected. Compassion would have been his guess, given Stiles’s own experiences with Eichen.
He finds he likes this reason better.