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The warm wind whistles through his hair as Stiles stares at a sky that seemed to be paint splattered- there are wisps of orange and pink dancing their way across the sky. Where he stands, small flowers of purple, blue and yellow burst through the rapidly melting snow. The water soaks into his shoes.
Someone laughs.
Stiles raises his heavy head and sees Derek- his Derek, his burdened, guilt-ridden, melancholic Derek, staring up at the streaked clouds and laughing . His eyes are bright and he is smiling, and as he turns around softly, his shoes make squelching sounds in the slush.
“Say what you want,” he crosses his arms and gives him a small smirk out of the corner of his mouth, so Derek it makes something in Stiles ache. “That’s pretty damn amazing.”
Stiles offers him a hesitant smile; he feels lightheaded. He wonders how much energy it took up, changing seasons just like that. He takes a step forward and comes to a conclusion as he pitches toward the ground.
He wakes up in a mess of light and noise, but when everything falls into some semblance of shape he realises the dark mass was not a ceiling but Derek, leaning over him.
“Gerroff,” Stiles slurs, trying to raise his hands. He cannot. They are shackled to the bed. “Whas fuck?”
“You were throwing your arms around,” Derek informs him, his eyes overcast. He unlocks the shackles, and when Stiles lifts his arms, they are bloodstained from his straining.
“I’m not shifting, right?” Stiles jokes, because he’s long since committed the lunar cycle to memory, and the full moon had been last night.
“Unless you can somehow become a tree, you’re not,” Derek helps him sit up and offers him a glass of water. “Though you came pretty close yesterday.”
Stiles remembers the bark clinging to his legs, the vines in his veins. The power at his fingertips, just waiting to be tapped. Even now, it is like he can feel the vast reservoir of energy beneath the Nemeton, waiting to be drawn up, like a bucket of water from a well, resting gently between his ribs. He pressed it and gets a flash of a rock, teetering on the edge of a cliff. If it fell over, it would crush a den.
“There is something the Nemeton wants me to do,” Stiles informs Derek after he’s pondered the vision for a while. He understands what he is meant to do now. He is meant to be the protector of the forest. “It wants me to fix the forest. Will you help me?”
“If you promise to attend my How to Not Die in Combat and Deaton’s Magical 101 classes every tuesday and friday,” Derek raises his eyebrows at him. Stiles feels overcome with an urge to touch- so strongly that he extends his hand and then snatches it back when he realises his mistake. Not fast enough, however, because tension bleeds out of Derek’s shoulders as he gently takes up Stiles’ hand and places it on the side of his face. His stubble scratches his palm. Stiles’ breathing hitches.
Derek doesn’t say anything, but there is a softness to his eyes as Stiles moves his hand down and until it’s resting, curved lightly over his neck. There is a rush of feeling when he realises he’s holding a powerful werewolf- an alpha in all ways that matter, by the neck. Derek trusts him. He wants to cry.
Derek surges up and yanks him by the collar into a bone-crushing hug as he sniffles and mumbles half-assed affirmations into his neck that he is okay, but Derek is having none of it. “You don’t need to pretend,” he says gruffly, and finally the waterworks come.
Stiles clutches onto his shoulder blades and cries and cries and he holds him through it all, until eventually he gets himself back under control and pulls away from him. Derek kisses his forehead so lightly and oh, Stiles is tempted to cry again because of that.
Brown meets green. The Nemeton hums, like nature, my spark.
Asters burst into bloom all along Stiles’ wall as he leans in to kiss him.
“Dryad,” Deaton tells him. “I’m at least ninety percent sure that’s what you are.”
Stiles stares at his hands. Ever since The Night, they are tinged slightly green. No matter how hard he washes his hands, he cannot get the colour off. “I wanted to be human,” he says, almost mournfully. “I was content.”
“I wasn’t,” a voice says, low and hesitant from the door, and instantly the metal chair he sits on is wrapped with vines that go as far as to tie his legs to the chair. Lydia moves immediately to stand by him, a hand resting protectively on his shoulder. He stands up, and the vines snap off and dissolve into nothingness, but he isn’t minding the way tree branches are forcing themselves into the room through the windows- and by through, he means it, like the the things he creates exists on a different level of reality. He is too busy focusing on the lost, lost eyes of his best friend.
Scott stares at him like he is a house he has spent far too much time away from. Scott looks at him like he is coming home. Stiles looks at him like he’s seeing snow for the first time, full of wonderment and apprehension, an excitement bone deep and a hesitation borne out of seeing it only in pictures.
The Nemeton whispers, all things solve themselves.
Scott says, “Stiles-”
Stiles throws himself at him.
Scott cries into his shoulder, and suddenly, the floor is transformed into a mass of swaying white tulips.
Isaac snapchats Stiles a picture of a soggy baguette. The caption reads: gone for one fukkin week and stiles gets all fukkin magic n shit. whats next. derek gets nice????? fuck me.
Derek steals his phone, takes a photo of him kissing Stiles’ cheek and the next snaps Stiles gets are full of wide eyed shots and OMG OMG OMG written in red pen. Send the DEETS, the next one reads.
There is a huff of laughter from Derek as he puts the phone down and repositions himself back into stance. Stiles groans from where he dropped to the floor after the photo had been taken.
“C’mon,” Derek nudges him with his foot. “Get up. That was only conditioning.”
A cyclamen grows out of Derek’s hand. He shakes the flower off and glowers at Stiles, who groans and moans as he stands up.
“Jiu jitsu is good for you,” he insists. “You don’t have the muscle build for an all-out brawl.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Stiles shrugs, and drops to a sprawl as he tackles him. “I. Still- hate it!”
Stiles has gotten himself in a very awkward position. He stares at a foot he isn’t sure is his. He tries wiggling his toes. Derek throws him over his back and gets him into choke so fast it’s not even funny. In retaliation, white vines yank at Derek’s arms and pull them back. I really need to learn how to control the flowers, he thinks, as yellow irises start weaving themselves into his hair.
“That’s cheating,” Derek glowers as the vines tie his hands behind his back.
“That’s sexy,” Stiles corrects, and watches Derek’s face go three shades of red.
There is a girl crying silently on the bus. Stiles watches her. A gardenia slowly forms, cupped perfectly in the palm of his hands. He studies it, turning it around in his hands. Instinctively, he understands the meaning of the flower, as he does for the rest he has grown. You are lovely.
He gives it to her as he gets off the bus, and the surprised, almost grateful look on her face is something he’ll remember for a lifetime.
He still screams at night. He does not remember his dreams.
He wakes up, sitting in the middle of the Nemeton one night. He does not tell anyone.
“There’s been a string of deaths over in the next town,” Derek shows up at school one day and tells them as Stiles is biting into his egg mayo sandwich. “Mauling. Maiming. Hearts missing. Police putting it down to animal attacks.”
“Wolves?” Scott asks, instantly on edge.
“We’ve got to be prepared if they come,” Derek steals a bite of Stiles’ sandwich, much to his loud displeasure. Scott watches this with an odd expression on his face. “We’re increasing training sessions at once.”
Stiles thinks of the gun-wolfsbane locker he now has under his bed. “We’ll be ready.”
“We have no pack,” Derek reminds him.
“We have a pack,” Scott says, and his eyes glow red. He says with utter conviction, “we have us.”
Stiles remembers when Scott told him that the pack was a joke, that it did not matter, that it never mattered- that whatever it was, they would never get it back again because Allison wasn’t there.
But then Stiles thinks of Isaac snapchatting him eight exactly the same pictures of the Eiffel tower. He looks at Lydia, filing her nails, her forehead creased in a determined line. He feels Derek pressing his leg into his thigh.
They have a pack.
They always did.
The third time Stiles wakes up sitting on the Nemeton, he sees a picture of a nightmare dark wolf with blood eyes.
The fifth time, he is on the edge of Beacon Hills, on a cliffside that overlooks the sprawling city, their lights indeed like little beacons in the night.
He wonders why he is here, and gets his answer when his eyes fall on a flickering light in the distance. It shakes and moves, it is the light from a flashlight.
Wolves , the Nemeton breathes.
“Wolves,” Stiles bares his teeth. The forest shivers.
Derek is mad at Stiles for not telling him about the sleepwalking, but he is more worried than anything.
“Eating the hearts of humans,” Deaton tells them as they scramble to fill their weapons. Stiles’ dad cocks a gun omninously. Parrish sets himself on fire. Lydia sprays him with a fire extinguisher and he breaks out of the shift to laugh. “Gives a werewolf unimaginable power. But not many do it, because you need to be unshifted when you eat the heart raw, and most wolves, unshifted, are good people. Not psychotic killers.”
“What did they want in the other town?” Stiles asks. A vine twists its way up his arm and covers itself in bark. “Why are they here?”
“They want the true alpha, probably,” Derek snorts. He is coating a blade in kanima venom. “Or the Nemeton is being a bitch.”
“I take offence at that,” Stiles sticks his tongue out and practises swinging with a katana that Derek takes away from him after he nearly takes out Lydia’s arm.
“Can we keep Stiles at home?” he asks, his forehead creased in a disapproving line.
The Nemeton takes offence. A huge gust of wind gathers up in the locked room and knocks Derek into a wall.
He must protect the forest , something howls, high pitched and painful. It scrapes against the metal cabinets.
Deaton looks around the room, struggling to keep from looking amazed.
“I get it,” Derek scowls. He stands up and dusts himself off. “He also must be kept safe. We have different priorities.”
The wind dies down as the Nemeton considers this. The forest will protect him .
“Oh, I am so comforted. He protects the forest who protects him. Fucking giving tree, aren’t you?”
There is no reply.
Derek glares at the silence.
Stiles feels his knees buckle when the first person is killed in the forest. As the blood spattered a tree, so did he drop to the ground, aching and heaving.
“We’ve got to go,” he gasps; cocks the Glock in his hands. The click-clack sound echoes ominously in the locked room.
The Nemeton says, follow me.
The first wolf is of a hulking size. His eyes are red- not as an alpha, but as one demented. He takes Derek on easily until Parrish manages to tap his arm and his entire body goes up in flame. The Hellhound is a beacon against the night- a cleansing fire.
It does not stop Derek from flinching away.
Parrish’s eyes are soft when he sees Derek’s barely disguised distress, but as he stares at his burning hands, he knows he cannot help. The air above him starts to move in waves. The grass starts to crumble.
The Hellhound bows his head and moves on.
The second wolf rounds on them because of Parrish’s fire. It nearly guts him, but then Stiles is there, his eyes angry and sad. The wolf chokes and falls down to his knees, pulling things out of his mouth- purple flowers mixed with blood. Parrish has seen many disturbing things in his life, but nothing compared to this- this seventeen year old boy, his eyes dark with intent, killing a man twice his size from the inside.
The wolf is retching now. Stiles glances at him dismissively before stealing away through the woods. The disregard for the wolf’s life is apparent in the slant of his shoulders, the tilt of his head.
When the wolf finally dies, Parrish notices the ground is littered with rhododendrons. He burns through them all.
Lydia learns how to use her voice as a weapon in a fit of desperation. She is not in the woods with the others- that is not her skillset, and she has resigned herself to it.
However, she does not expect to chance upon a wolf outside the seven-eleven. The wolf sniffs the air and turns to her, snarling. “You’re not human,” he cocks his head. He stares. Lydia is little red riding hood, and lord does the wolf have big teeth.
Her reaction is instinctual- she screams, pushes her hands forward- and her voice flies outward and hits the wolf like a wall of force. He goes flying into a fence- there is a squishing, squelching sound- and Lydia looks up from her surprise to see a pole sticking out of the wolf’s heart.
She considers this.
She turns to look at the forest.
Scott is searching for the alpha. The elusive wolf is barricaded behind a wall of his pawns- letting them die for him.
Scott doesn’t want to kill anyone, but then one comes at him with a machine gun and his moral codes are gone in an instant. He is reminded of Stiles’ question on their motives. The next time he finds a wolf, he does not attack.
“Why are you here?” he demands. “What do you want with my land?”
The wolf bares his teeth; roars. “It was ours before.”
“You’re all dying !"
The wolf looks at him as if he was stupid. “Some things are worth fighting for. Beacon Hills lies on ley lines- and not just that, active ones. They’re- they’re worth souls . Even if we don’t succeed, do you know how many packs would kill their way here?”
Scott sees the logic in an instant. Everytime he stepped on a ley line, he would feel a small surge of power, like a small static shock, like he is hopped up on caffeine. If you could amplify the ley lines- you would be unstoppable.
The wolf lowers his eyes at him. His mouth curls in a seductive smile. “You could join us.”
Scott lets his eyes flash red. “I doubt that.”
The wolf’s smile turns bitter, his tilted head turns to claws. Scott sidesteps and shoots him with a dart of wolfsbane.
He still tries not to kill.
Sheriff Stilinski is holed up in his office. He is fielding calls from panicked citizens- there are screams in the woods, blood on the streets- my wife is dead - he does not know what to tell them.
He says, “animal control is on it, ma’am.”
His colleagues look at each other. Animal control has not been called, but Sheriff Stilinski was a gem amongst sheriffs. Brave, wise, and kind. They’d follow him to the end of the world.
For two teenagers in a dark forest, it was.
The wolves are starting to realise the forest is against them, that the very grass beneath their feet loathes their presence when one wolf is taken out by a tree that literally leans over and envelops her.
The remaining cornered wolves bare their teeth in fear when the trees part to reveal- a small scrawny teenage boy, his eyes glowing silver. They have not met someone like him. They will never meet someone like him- the shared vessel of dark and light. He looks upon them, judge, jury, and executioner. His eyes betray what he sees- insects.
The smallest one says, “please-”
It is too late. The trees shake, and they are gone.
Stiles steps into the clearing, where the Nemeton sits and issues a series of panicked whispers. He knows why it is nervous- on top of the stump sits and unfamiliar wolf, and on that wolf’s lap is a snarling, frightened Derek Hale.
“Is this yours?” the alpha asks.
“He is his own,” Stiles replies carefully. He can feel the power the Nemeton is sending to him like he is downing cups of coffee.
“I see,” the alpha tilts his head. “You give me Beacon Hills; I’ll let you join my pack. You are powerful. No one else has to die.”
“No one of yours ,” Stiles corrects. “Not one of my pack has died. Because we’re stronger, faster, better than you. You are afraid of us. You should be.” Stiles had, after all, racked up the biggest kill count of them all. He wonders if their deaths would linger on his hands, but he’s already forgotten their faces. “Let him go.”
A sea of poisonous flowers- tansies, appear surrounding the Nemeton. The alpha looks slightly unnerved. No wolf, after all, could do magic. The wolf snuffed out the spark.
Scott skids into the clearing with Parrish, blood covering his face. His eyes leap from the alpha to Derek to Stiles. He steps back slightly. The Hellhound blazes against the night with righteous fury.
The alpha looks at them almost brokenly. He runs his claws over Derek’s throat. He whispers, “one of you has died.”
Stiles doesn’t even have time to say no before the claws go down and deep.
He feels Derek die like a tangible knife in his heart. He drops to his knees as Derek slides limply off the alpha and into a heap on the floor.
“Derek?” the words are stuck in his throat.
He looks up at the alpha. Something roars.
The shift is immensely painful. Stiles feels like his bones are cracking and liquefying, his skin bubbling and peeling off him in strips. The pain only lasts several seconds but it is enough to mark him for a lifetime- and when it is done, the world is different.
The alpha stumbles back over the Nemeton.
Stiles looks at his hands.
They have elongated into long, green, spindly things with webbing connecting them together. His nails are wood. His hair is leaves, autumn leaves, tumbling down his back, adorned with branch and vine and twig and horns, curling slightly into the air. His canines are longer. He is taller too, taller and thinner, his eyes the colour of dirt- swirling, endless pools of resentment and vengeance.
The alpha cries, “what the fuck?”
This sentiment is echoed- not literally, but Stiles can hear tiny, panicked heartbeats from the trees, where the alpha has hidden more of his pack.
The trees shake themselves mad and the wolves come dropping out ungraciously from the branches. They huddle together like lost children.
Stiles looms over them.
The world goes dark as the ground opens up and the trees bend and twist and the dirt explodes and suddenly the Nemeton is not a stump but a massive glowing tree. It stretches out glowing branches and wraps it around the alpha.
Sacrifice , the Nemeton hisses. Sacrifice to bring back the lost.
The alpha can only scream as the Nemeton grows back until it is a tall, towering sentinel and all that is left of the alpha is dust.
Scott is afraid of him. Stiles can see the hesitation in his eyes ever since The Other Night- when Stiles had cracked open the earth in his fury. It takes a while for things to go back to normal- or as normal it can be, when he comes to see Derek in the morgue every wednesday. Stiles knew he was getting better from the faded, healed scars of the slash on the throat, but he didn’t- none of them knew when he was going to wake up. It has been three weeks.
As Stiles is sitting by Derek’s body, he gets a few years taken off his life when Derek sits awake, coughing and choking.
Stiles asks, “do you feel any different?”
Derek says, “more alive,” and promptly kisses him. The doctors are very disapproving.
They get their answer on how Derek survived on the next full moon, when instead of half shifting, he closed his eyes and- poof, into a full fledged wolf in the middle of the grocery store, leading Stiles to have to tell everyone he adopted a big dog.
A really big, black dog with red, red eyes.