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He sits on his knees in the shallow snow. The cold burns through his jeans, the snow melting and turning them damp. He bows his head, his eyes not finding the strength to continue reading the words on the headstone.
The headstone itself is new. Too new. It’s white stone reflected the winter sunlight brilliantly, the words, carved in silver, were impossible to miss.
He feels like he could still see the words when he closes his eyes.
They told him not to come. They told him it wouldn’t do him any good. He missed the funeral, but he wouldn’t miss this. He couldn’t miss this, not when Scott flinched every time Stiles brushed up against him, when Lydia’s eyes were redder than her hair, when Isaac stared at him as he walked through the hallways of the school, his eyes accusing . Not when her father, all alone, was packing her stuff into boxes and booking flights out of the country. He did not know where he was going to go, but since when did anyone? All that mattered was that he get away, get away from the city who stole his father and his sister and his wife and his daughter.
Stiles had spent so long being someone else, being taken over by something else, he did not...he no longer knew who he was. He used to love the doughnuts from that store with no sign just up the road, but now he looks at it and can’t remember what was so good about it. He can’t remember why his favourite shirt is his favourite, why he insisted on colour-coding his underwear according to days, why he styled his hair in this way. He looked in the mirror and saw the Nogitsune, he looked at his friends and didn’t see Allison. He looked at the Graveyard and saw everyone under the ground because of the actions the pack had taken. Because of awaking the Nemeton. Because he dragged Scott out that one night. Because there was a body in the woods. Because there was a fire in a house. Because there was a boy who loved. Because there was a woman born without a heart.
His tears freeze to his face.
He stands and drags his feet away from the silver light of Allison, bright in death as in life. He doesn’t say he’s sorry. It’s not going to help, she’s dead, and it’s never going to make up for it. “See you soon,” he says instead. He turns to leave. “I’m sorry,’ he caves as he steps over the gate, and the wind whips his apology up into the air and lets it dissipate into the sky. He wants to pretend she heard it.
There is a Camaro out in front of his house. Snow has dotted its sleek blackness. Stiles brushes them off with hand and smears them onto the hood instead. He turns to look into the house. He walks past it. His nose goes cold. His fingers go numb. He’s at the edge of the woods now; the barren trees coerce and beckon him into their gloomy darkness.
He accepts.
The snow gets thicker and thicker the deeper he forges into his home. Soon, it’s up to his thighs and he can’t quite walk like this, but the second he turns around there is a wide tree stump humming in front of him. He whirls back, and somehow it’s still in front of him. Stiles was a fool to think he could ever escape the Nemeton. This...thing, this elusive, supernatural thing, would haunt and curse him forever.
He sits on the stump. He’s tired, he’s so tired, of running. The tree glows a warm golden, lighting up the darkness with its fire.
The blame is not on you, my spark , the Nemeton says.
It was your fault , Stiles tells it without moving his mouth.
The Nemeton hums in reply. Maybe. You are too bright. All bright things love darkness. All darkness hates bright things. One exists because of the other, one exists in its absence. Such is the way.
Stiles stands from the stump. He smooths his fingers over the worn edges, tracing the rings around and around with his fingers. It starts off in a dazed haze, but then becomes all consuming. Suddenly, he has to follow every ring, round and round until he reaches the centre.
He is halfway there when the Nemeton whispers a warning, and a figure trudges into the clearing, his shoulders heavy with death and snow. His eyes widen when he sees Stiles, sitting on the Nemeton, his fingers going round and round. Stiles wonders how he found him, when they spent ages and ages looking for it that day. When they had to die to find it.
“Stiles,” he says. It is not upset. It is not angry. It simply is. “Will you come with me?”
The Nemeton whispers, held together by strings and nails.
“Yes,” Stiles slides off the Nemeton and into the snow. “How did you find me?”
“I do not know,” he says, his breath clouding in the air. “I just...thought of you.”
He smells of ash and smoke , the Nemeton calls. He burns still.
Everyone burns, Stiles says, bitterly. I will burn with him.
There is no reply. The trees close behind them, and there is silence once more.
Derek takes him back to his house. His father grips his shoulder when he steps through the door, worry etched into every line on his face. Stiles feels bad. He is all he has left. They are all they have left.
Stiles slips through his grip and up the stairs. As if on an afterthought, there are footsteps behind in, silent from practice. Derek helps him into his room and closes the door softly. He tugs off Stiles’ coat and hangs it out to dry. He puts away clothes lying on the bed.
“How did you manage?” Stiles asks, the first thing he says in an hour.
“I did not,” Derek answers. “I am not.”
“How are you functioning?”
“There are reasons to live,” Derek sits down next to him. “When you think you have nothing.”
“What are they?”
“Whatever you want them to be. The glow on the streets after it’s just rained. Snow on your face. The sound of your voice. The crack in your lips. You live for yourself,” Derek smiles and says, like he’s trying to convince himself of it too, “you live for who you want to be.”
Stiles studies him. “I want to be better.”
“I want to be good.”
“Will you help me?”
“What do you think?”
Everything is so far away when he’s up here. He feels like he can be taller than his grief, sitting up on the school roof. He swings his legs over the ledge, thinks about how funny it is that he used to be afraid of heights. Heights are nothing when you know what’s out there. Heights are a child’s fear, a fear you’d give anything to have back.
He had sat down at lunch today. Scott had joined them, then Lydia, then Isaac, and Stiles got to thinking that yes, yes this might be okay, we will be okay- then Scott had stared at the empty chair next to him and Isaac swore and threw his spoon at the wall- then they were gone, and Stiles was there with Lydia, her green-apple eyes not quite managing to hide their sorrow. She had lost two people that night. She had lost two people because of Stiles. But then, when they’d sat in silence for a while, she looked at him, said, “to blame you would be absolutely idiotic,” and gave him a bite of her lasagne. Stiles loves her so much- he had loved her because she was pretending, and now he loves her because she is real.
He tosses a rock off the ledge, watches it bounce down and clack on the pavement below. He would live for Lydia, he decides, as he throws another rock. She obviously cares about him. Stiles has done enough damage as is.
He is so numb to everything that not even the gruff voice coming out of the gloom can startle him off the ledge.
“Don’t fall,” Derek says, sliding over to sit next to him.
“I’m at rock bottom, I can’t go much further,” Stiles spreads his hands, and makes a face and hurls another rock far away from where he was.
“We both know you can go much further down than that,” Derek takes his hands and holds them.
“How did you get up here?”
“I’m Batman,” Derek grins at him, all teeth.
“Please,” Stiles snorts, gives him a shove. They both topple backwards back onto the roof. Stiles feels the breath get punched out of him, feel the cold of the snow on his ears and in his hair. He takes a moment to consider why he did not think that through, “in hindsight, that could’ve gone horribly wrong.”
“Ya think?” Derek says, breathless, but he’s laughing and smiling from the adrenaline, his hair mussed and white from the snow, his eyes bright with adrenaline.
Stiles watches him and smiles too.
Derek’s flat has a new addition. It’s a potted plant. It’s three potted plants. He eyes their green innocence and turns to Stiles, who is faking a nonchalant whistle.
“Do I need plants?”
“Everyone needs plants,” Stiles smiles at him, reaches out a hand and runs his fingers down the waxy leaf. “Get closer to nature.”
“It’s the height of winter.”
“Nature, Derek. Nature.”
Scott has stopped coming to lunch. The cafeteria is quiet- perhaps, the rest of the students feel the absence seeping into their bones. Snow flurries outside, a whirling mass of white. The winter is unusually harsh. Beacon Hills got cold, but not like this. Stiles thinks nature is mourning the loss of a sun.
Lydia brushes his hair with a bejewelled hairbrush. She asks he’s been sleeping. Stiles says yes. He means no. Lydia knows this. She frowns and says, “it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” Stiles says. That doesn’t make it better.
Isaac’s eyes burn gold. Stiles watches him warily. Then he says, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Lydia starts. Her hairbrush tangles in Stiles’ matted hair. “Leaving?”She asks, her voice carefully controlled.
“I’m going with Chris to France,” Isaac crosses his arms. The corners of his mouth twitch downwards. “I’ve got a boarding school.”
Stiles wants to say stay with us, Isaac, stay with us- we are stronger in a pack, we are stronger- “Bye, then,” Stiles’ voice is numb and quiet. “ Coward .”
Stiles likes to believe the last word was the last remnants of the Nogitsune. He knows he is wrong. He knows the Nogitsune chose him not because he was outwardly weak and he thought it funny- but that he was inwardly dark and he thought it fitting .
Isaac’s eyes don’t even burn. He nods and takes it, stands up and reaches for Stiles’ hands. He holds them, calloused palm over bloodstained ones and says, “good luck, Stiles.”
Stiles tears his hands away.
Isaac looks at him sorrowfully, then puts his hands in his pockets and walked away. He looked back three times, and Stiles watched him every step of the way.
His dad sits on the edge of his bed. Stiles had gone missing again that night. He had gone to the Nemeton, and sat on its trunk, and asked it why it was taking everything from him.
You are my hands and eyes and ears, the Nemeton breathed. I will never try to hurt you.
But you are, Stiles whispered, but the Nemeton never heard him. He can see the stump even now, visions of it flashing behind his father’s eyes, contained within the blue Stiles didn’t inherit.
For this , the Nemeton says. I do not understand.
Leaves grow from his dad’s head, stretching high into the sky. A small, pink flower blooms at the end of the stalk, beautiful in its defiance. He shakes his head, and the flower crumbles into nothing.
“You can’t keep going off into the woods like that, Stiles,” his dad tells him softly. His eyes mirror the lake out in the woods, rippling with green and blue and flecks of brown. “Not with- well, you know what’s out there.”
Stiles imagines himself fading into the white of the snow outside. It blankets him, it covers him- it soothes him, keeping him wrapped beneath its quiet silence. He doesn’t even register his father leaving. He is nothing but white.
Stiles notices the small plant growing in between his index and third finger during lacrosse training. They are not doing any training, for it is snowing outside. Instead, they sit in circles in the locker room. People are laughing. Scott is not here.
If Coach had not made Stiles stay, he would be gone too.
However, as he sits with his back against a locker, he thinks maybe it was a good thing. Because how else would he had noticed the stalk poking through his skin and growing . Stiles tugs on it and it hurts like a son of a bitch, but he yanks and the plant comes out, blood trickling down his hand. The plant has no roots, but there is a hole in his skin.
As he watches, his skin knits back together with a tangle of green, and a small bud appears. He runs his fingers over the new bump and thinks if his punishment is to turn into a plant, there could be worse things.
There is green mottling his shoulder. He thinks it is good it is happening in the wintertime, for the long sleeves hide it. He also thinks that he should tell Deaton about it. He is certain turning into a plant is some supernatural side effect.
He becomes even more certain of this when the classroom he is in whites out, and is replaced by the Nemeton. It glows and cries out in wordless pain. My spark, it cries. My spark!
The vision reveals a group of teenagers whacking at the stump, laughing. Bits of its wood flies off in chips. The Nemeton howls.
Stiles stands.
Scott stares.
Lydia asks, “Stiles?”
The teacher echoes her, her voice a bored monotone.
Stiles walks out the door.
He does not remember what he did to the teenagers, but the next day, on the news, is a story of an unknown man in a red tattered hoodie, who put two teenagers into the hospital with a broken arms, and another face first into a trashcan. Compared to what he did as the Nogitsune, this is nothing. He had a mass of thorns below his hands for the rest of the night, but they died and fell off eventually.
But Derek turns up at his window that night.
“Vigilantism doesn’t seem your style,” Derek says, slipping into his room with grace. “Tell me what those kids did.”
“They hurt me,” Stiles sees a vine winding its way slowly around Derek’s leg. “I mean, they hurt the Nemeton.”
“Do you also want to tell me why you have a flower growing out of your collarbones?” Derek moves to stand so close to him; he can feel his breath on his face. Derek reaches out a hand and caresses the pink rose that grew and reached out for him. “Why instead of blushing, your face is covered in poppies?”
Stiles blinks, his eyelashes long, thin leaves. His irises are like bark. His voice the rustling of trees in the wind. “I am going home,” he says, and a lily grows from his finger.
In the time Stiles sits on the metal chair in Deaton’s clinic, a small tree has managed to grow through the crack in the walls. It blooms with flowers of a beautiful wispy yellow. Stiles plucks one and holds it in his hands.
A vine of ivy is making its way up the windows, blocking out the moonlight. Stiles calls for it to stop and it hesitates before retreating, winding its way back down and settling on covering the medicine bottles, winding around them.
“Fascinating,” Deaton says. A flower blooms near his feet. There is no soil. Stiles looks at him sees the most of the Nemeton in him. His skin is the brown of the tree bark, his eyes the rings in the stump. Round and round and round, endlessly wise and caring and knowing. His hands the soil beneath its ground, his feet the roots of the tree. The Nemeton has clung to him. “You are one with the Nemeton.”
Stiles cocks his head.
The Nemeton calls out.
The room fades out. Stiles is sitting on the Nemeton, but Deaton is still there. He looks around in surprise, and when Derek shouts and Stiles jerks and Lydia screams- Stiles realises he is not the only one seeing the Nemeton.
He moved them here.
Spark, my spark, why are you so sad? The Nemeton asks him, a breeze whistling through his hair.
You need to let me go , Stiles says, spreading his hands. His nails are now hard shells. I do not live like you .
You did not want anything to be taken away from you , the Nemeton sounds confused. You protect me. I protect you. I will make you me. My hands and eyes and ears. All me.
“It wants to protect you,” Deaton breaks the reverie. He approaches the stump with reverent caution. “Because you protected it, doesn’t it?”
Stiles wonders why Deaton is always right.
“Yes,” he says, swinging his feet. They were starting to get covered in bark. “I do not mind.”
“You have to mind,” Deaton says. “You’re letting it consume you. You will become a Nemeton too.”
“Is that so bad?” Stiles dreams. He dreams of endless stars and a galaxy of planets.
Derek takes his hand. “‘Course it is, dumbass.”
Stiles laughs. His planets turn to golden dust and they float by his eyes, a vision of sparkling glitter. “Maybe it is. So what?”
Wildflowers bloom amongst them, their buds poking through the snow.
“You think you caused this, this snow and cold and hurt because of things beyond your control. You did all that you could. All the Nogitsune did was look like you.”
“But why did it chose me?”
You are lost, the Nemeton hums. Derek flinches. Lydia puts her hands over her ears and Deaton looks like he’s having the best day of his life. You choose no path, you are unsure of yourself, that is the only road to chaos, my spark. Hands grab you in the darkness of confusion. I will give you a light, and you shall not want.
“The spark,” Deaton sounds amused. “It would appear that you have no outlet for an inherent magical capability, Stiles, and you’ve been projecting and connecting on the Nemeton. It is you who has been causing the cold-you’ve been influencing the Nemeton to influence nature itself.”
“It is always me,” Stiles’ teeth are icicles.
“But this time, you can fix it.”
Derek pulls him into a gruff hug. “You’ll always have me.”
“And me,” Lydia bumps him to the side and cups his face in her hands. “Stiles- c’mon, come back.”
Let me be, Stiles takes a deep breath tells the Nemeton. Humans are always lost. Such is the way.
I do not wish you to be lost.
I do not wish to be lost. Humans cannot find their way by themselves. But we will. We do. We fight. We carry on. It is what we do best.
Protect each other.
Always.
Lydia says, “bring the spring, Stiles,” and he does.