Teen Wolf, Scott McCall trapped in a strange reality is looking for Stiles.
Deaton, his face a canvas of contemplative shadows, continued to pore over the ancient, leather-bound book, his brow furrowed in a way that spoke of deep, troubling knowledge. The silence stretched, amplifying the frantic beat of Scott’s own heart.
"From what I remember," Deaton finally said, his voice a low, gravelly hum, "you're in a different reality. The problem is, you should have been rejected by that body and its soul, then shoved back into your own reality. Something must be keeping you here. What do you remember from when you first awoke, Scott?"
Scott swallowed, the dryness in his throat mirroring the knot in his stomach. He closed his eyes, forcing his mind back to that terrifying, disorienting moment. The cold, sterile air, the metallic tang, the crushing weight of a body that felt both familiar and utterly alien.
"Blood…" he whispered, the memory a chilling whisper of crimson. "I was covered in blood."
Deaton looked up, a flicker of confusion crossing his usually unreadable face. He paused, then returned his gaze to the book, his fingers tracing lines of ancient script. Finally, he found the page he was looking for. His eyes scanned the text, and Scott, leaning even closer, tried to read along, only to realize with a jolt of frustration that the intricate symbols were in Latin.
Deaton’s face became a fascinating, unsettling spectacle. Uncertainty first, a slight clenching of his jaw, then a cold, almost calculating satisfaction that made Scott’s hackles rise, before finally, a slow, wide grin stretched across the druid’s lips. It wasn’t a friendly grin, not the comforting smile Scott knew from his own world. This was something older, something predatory, a silent acknowledgment of a twist of fate, of a grand cosmic irony.
Before Scott could even prompt him, Deaton spoke, his voice now imbued with a strange, grave intensity. He looked directly at Scott, his eyes piercing. "I understand now why that soul and body didn't reject you. The container – and by that, the body – must be empty before a new soul can take its place. And that new soul must have a purpose for being here."
A purpose for being here?
The words echoed in Scott’s mind, a cold gust of wind through an already hollowed-out landscape. Empty container. The implication was horrifying, a chilling void where a life once was. This body... his body in this world... was dead. Emptied. But before Scott could fully grapple with the profound, unsettling meaning of that, a thought, sharp and urgent, pierced through the fog of confusion. It wasn't about him, not entirely. It was about them. About him.
He blurted it out without thinking, the name a desperate plea for normalcy, for a tether to a reality that recognized him. "I need to find Stiles!"
A fleeting emotion, quick as a hummingbird's wing, flickered across Deaton's face. It was too fast for Scott to identify, swallowed almost immediately by a mask of confusion. The druid tilted his head. "The Sheriff's kid who went missing?" he asked, his voice laced with genuine bewilderment.
Scott’s mind reeled. "Stiles went missing?" The words were a choked whisper, a stark, terrifying question. His Stiles, his best friend, his anchor – missing? In this world? His thoughts scrambled, a desperate hope forming in the chaos. Perhaps in this reality, Stiles had never encountered the twisted version of Scott, the ‘crazy other self and pack’ that Deaton vaguely referenced. Maybe he’d escaped, found a better life, far from the supernatural chaos that had consumed his own world.
Or maybe he'd been killed. The thought was a venomous whisper, and Scott violently shook his head, pushing it away. No. Don't think like that, Scott, he chastised himself angrily.
Deaton’s gaze softened, a hint of sadness entering his eyes. "Yes. The Sheriff and his wife were killed. Stiles survived, as far as the police department could work out, but he ran away and no one has ever been able to track him since. But this happened when he was only a child, Scott. He could be—"
"No!" Scott snapped, his voice raw with a fierce, unwavering refusal to believe it. No way would Stiles die, not his Stiles. The very thought clawed at his heart, a pain more profound than his own displacement. He couldn't, wouldn't believe it.
He turned away, his thoughts a muddled, frantic tangle. The Sheriff was dead? Actually dead? The man who had been a source of unwavering, if sometimes exasperated, support for him and Stiles in his own world. The grief was sudden, sharp, and unexpected, mixing with the terror and confusion of his situation.
"How—how did it happen?" he asked slowly, the words heavy on his tongue.
Deaton’s expression turned grim. "An intruder, likely a werewolf, killed them both. Why they were targeted is unclear, as is why Stiles was not killed." There was a slight edge in Deaton’s tone now, a hardness Scott didn't quite register as he was consumed by his own spiraling thoughts. He missed the intense, evaluating look Deaton was giving his back, a look that spoke of calculations and difficult choices.
Scott’s hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, hatred coiling in his gut. A werewolf. The irony was bitter, scalding. He didn’t know how or why he was going to do it, but he knew with an absolute certainty that to sort this out – his own bizarre existence, this empty body, this twisted reality – he needed to find Stiles. But the task, he realized, was going to be incredibly difficult. The sadness over the Sheriff’s death weighed heavily on him, but his purpose was crystallizing.
"Do you know how I can find Stiles?" he asked, turning back to Deaton, a desperate hope in his eyes.
Deaton shook his head slowly, regret etched on his face. "I have no idea where he is, I'm afraid. He vanished without a trace, a ghost in the wind."
Scott felt a fresh wave of despair wash over him. Then, his eyes snagged on something out of place. A black coat, not Deaton’s usual dark, flowing robes, was slung over one of the chairs in the corner. It looked too small, too modern, to belong to the ancient druid. It was a detail that pricked at his heightened senses, a discordant note in the clinic’s controlled symphony.
"Do you have company, Deaton?" he asked hesitantly, a sudden prickle of unease making him even more on edge. Who else was here? Who had Deaton been talking to, perhaps, before Scott arrived? Or was it someone waiting?
"Just me," Deaton said, offering a small, placating smile. But it was that kind of smile – the one that was designed to reassure but only served to highlight the obvious lie. It was patronizing, dismissive.
It hurt a little, that Deaton didn't trust him. But Scott quickly pushed the sting away. It wasn’t like he couldn’t understand. He was, after all, inhabiting the body of what was likely a monstrous, evil version of himself from this world. It was a miracle Deaton had even believed his story at all, let alone spoken to him so candidly. The very fact that Deaton wasn't dead yet, wasn't fighting him, was a testament to something. It made him feel a little ill, the thought of how truly wicked his other self must have been for Deaton to even question his own sanity.
"I guess I should start looking for clues at their house," Scott said, already turning towards the door, acknowledging the unspoken desire for him to leave. Deaton likely didn't want him around, a walking paradox, a danger. "I'll be out of your way."
Deaton didn't protest, merely watched him go with that same unreadable gaze.
Inside, Scott was crying out in frustration. Was this all Deaton could do to help him? How would looking at a house where a crime had been committed many years ago, likely scrubbed clean of any useful evidence, help him? But he had no choice. He needed a starting point, any starting point, a tangible thing to latch onto in this swirling sea of impossibility.
He left the clinic, head down, shoulders slumped, a different kind of anger simmering beneath his despair.
Deaton watched the alpha werewolf leave, his shoulders so different from the cruel, arrogant posture of the man whose body Scott now inhabited. It was profoundly strange to see such vulnerability, such raw, earnest purpose in those eyes. But since this other soul had taken the original soul’s place, it made a terrifying kind of sense. Not that Deaton had ever witnessed such a complete transference before. But it was certainly possible, given his knowledge of parallel worlds and the intricate dance of souls.
"You should have told him. What a poor, pure soul."
Deaton turned slightly as a woman stepped out from behind the heavy velvet curtain that separated his consultation room from a smaller, private antechamber. Marin Morrell. She had waited until Scott was far away, well out of range of his supernatural hearing, before she spoke. She looked in the direction Scott had left, a flicker of profound sympathy in her eyes. Marin wondered how this new soul would possibly survive this cruel world he’d woken up in. His innocence was a vulnerability in a place where only the sharpest teeth and the darkest hearts survived.
Deaton sighed, a heavy, somber sound. "That's exactly why I couldn't tell him, Marin. How could I tell him that the person he is after, the person he believes is his anchor, and the person that wants him and his pack dead, are one and the same?"
Marin’s expression was grim. "He wouldn't believe it. Not about Stiles."
"No," Deaton agreed, his voice barely above a whisper. "He wouldn’t. And the shock… the potential for an uncontrolled shift, for his newly acquired Alpha spark to destabilize… it would be catastrophic. He needs to find his purpose first, to understand why he’s here. And right now, that purpose is Stiles."
Stiles. In this world, the boy who had survived a werewolf attack that claimed his parents, had not become an ally to the supernatural. He had become something far more dangerous, far more driven. The trauma had twisted him, forged him into a weapon. Stiles, the curious, sarcastic, loyal best friend, had become a deadly werewolf hunter – a force of nature, driven by an unyielding desire for vengeance against the creatures that had stolen his childhood. He had hunted down and killed dozens of supernatural beings, honing his skills, his intellect, into a finely tuned instrument of death. And, Deaton knew, through his cryptic sources and the whispers of the supernatural underground, that this world’s Scott McCall – the cruel Alpha, the one whose body the new Scott now inhabited – had been high on Stiles’s kill list.
It was more than likely that Stiles had been the one who had "emptied the container," who had killed this world’s Scott, creating the very vacuum that the new Scott had fallen into. The universe, in its dark humor, had granted Scott his "purpose" – to find Stiles – but it was a purpose laced with the bitterest poison.
But Deaton made the conscious, agonizing choice not to tell Scott this. Not yet. The boy needed hope, a direction. The truth, in its raw, unfiltered form, would shatter him. And Deaton needed Scott to survive, to understand, before he faced the true horror of his new reality.
Scott walked through the quiet streets of Beacon Hills, the familiar houses and trees imbued with an unsettling, dreamlike quality. Every corner, every shadowed porch, was a ghost of a memory, a distorted reflection. This wasn't his Beacon Hills. It felt colder, quieter, burdened by a history he didn't know.
The McCall house, his own house in his world, was a dilapidated mess, windows boarded up, paint peeling. A ‘For Sale’ sign was half-hidden by overgrown weeds. His mother, Melissa, was nowhere to be found, not a ghost, not a memory, as if she had never existed here. The thought was a fresh stab of pain.
His internal compass, usually so reliable, spun wildly. He felt the gnawing emptiness of the body he wore, a hollowness that seemed to echo the absence of Stiles. His werewolf senses, usually so keen, were muted, disoriented, like trying to see through thick fog. He could feel the pulse of the town, the underlying hum of supernatural energy, but it was different, darker, less vibrant than his own world.
He finally reached the Stilinski house, or what had once been the Stilinski house. It stood on a quiet cul-de-sac, nestled amongst other quaint, suburban homes. But unlike its neighbors, it was an island of decay. The lawn was a wilderness of knee-high grass and thorny bushes. The porch swing hung askew, covered in cobwebs. The windows were either broken and boarded up, or darkly opaque with years of accumulated dust and grime. A faded yellow police tape, almost entirely disintegrated, still clung to a broken fence post, a ghostly remnant of a tragedy long past.
The air around the house was heavy, stagnant, imbued with a pervasive sense of sorrow that made Scott’s fur prickle. He pushed past the gate, his alpha strength making short work of the rusted latch. The front door was ajar, hanging precariously on one hinge, a gaping maw inviting him into the past.
Inside, the house was a mausoleum. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light that penetrated the boarded windows, illuminating a scene of utter dereliction. Furniture was overturned, drawers pulled out, contents spilled across the floor. Not just from looters, he realized, but from the initial attack. There were dark, dried stains on the floorboards, too old to be anything but blood. His stomach churned. He could almost hear the echoes of screams, the frantic thud of a struggle.
He walked through the silence, his footsteps crunching on debris, his heart heavy. He tried to use his enhanced senses, to pick up a scent, an echo of Stiles, anything. But the air was thick with the scent of decay, of time, of lingering despair. The scent of Stiles, after all these years, was gone, washed away by rain and the passage of time, or perhaps, simply overwritten by the stronger, more recent memories of violence and abandonment.
He found the kitchen, the scene of the worst of it, by the sheer disarray. A table overturned, chairs splintered. On the wall, above a long-dead houseplant, a faded drawing of a stick figure family, crudely taped up, was still visible. Scott swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat. It was the kind of drawing a child makes, full of innocence and love. This was Stiles’s home. This was where his world had ended, where his parents had died.
He walked slowly, reverence mixing with horror. He ran his hand over a dusty bookshelf, pulling down a tattered copy of a fantasy novel. It was something Stiles would have read. A spark, a tiny flicker of connection, went through him. He imagined a young Stiles reading this, curled up on a sofa that was now just a pile of rotten springs and fabric.
He spent hours in the house, sifting through the wreckage, his senses straining, but there was nothing. No hidden message, no secret compartment, no residual scent that could lead him anywhere. Only the overwhelming sensation of loss. He came to the realization that this wasn't how he was going to find Stiles. This was a dead end, literally.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and bruised purple, Scott stood on the porch, staring out at the silent, indifferent street. He was no closer to understanding his purpose, or to finding Stiles. The weight of his new reality pressed down on him, a crushing, suffocating blanket. He was alone, truly alone, in a world that remembered him as a monster, and his best friend as a ghost.
But despite the despair, a flicker of defiance ignited within him. He would find Stiles. He had to. It was the only thing that made sense, the only thread connecting him to any semblance of his old life. He would find him, even if it meant tearing this twisted reality apart himself. He had to believe that the Stiles he knew, the good, loyal, hilarious Stiles, was somewhere out there, and that he could reach him. He had to. Because if he couldn’t, then what was the point of being here at all? What was his purpose?
He took a deep, shaky breath, the cold night air filling his lungs. It wouldn't be easy. Nothing in this new, terrifying world was. But Scott McCall had never been one to give up. He just needed to figure out where to look next, and how to navigate this dangerous, unfamiliar territory without revealing himself to be the very monster this world's Scott had been. He pushed the thought of his own 'evil' self away. He wasn't that Scott. He was his Scott. And his Scott was going to find his best friend
Prompt given to the AI, what I actually wrote, below.
Scott leaned in, heart thumping hard, finally he could find out what was going on?!
Deaton continued to talk as he looked through the book, looking troubled.
"From what I remember you're in a different reality. The problem is you should have been rejected by that body and its soul then shoved back into your own reality. Something must be keeping you here, what do you remember from when you first awoke Scott?"
Scott swallowed, thinking back to it.
"Blood... I was covered in blood"
Deaton looks confused at that but he finally finds the page and his eyes scan the book, Scott tries to read it too only to realise it's in latin.
Deaton goes through a range of expressions as he reads, to uncertainty to cold satisfaction and then a grin look crossed his face.
Deaton speaks before Scott could prompt him too, looking at Scott seriously.
"I understand now why that soul and body didn't reject you, the container and by that the body must be empty before a new soul can take its place and that new soul must have a purpose for being here"
A purpose for being here?
Before Scott could think to heavily on what this body being a empty container meant, a thought struck him out of no where.
He blurted without thinking "I need to find Stiles!"
A emotion flickered across Deatons face but it was so fast that Scott could not understand it before confusion related it and the druid said sounding confusion "The Sheriffs kid who went missing?
Scott said, shocked "Stiles went missing?"
He quickly thought of what had happened to his own pack and he hoped desperately that this meant Stiles was a good guy and had escaped but maybe he never came into contact with his crazy other self and pack?
Or maybe he'd been killed, no, don't think like that Scott told himself angrily.
"Yes, the Sheriff and his wife were killed, Stiles survived as far as the police department could work out but he ran away and no one has ever been able to track him since. But this happened when he was only a child. Scott he could be-"
"No" Scott snapped refusing to believe it, no way would Stiles die! He couldn't believe that, he couldn't!
He turned away, his thoughts muddled, the Sheriff was dead? Actually dead?
"How-how did it happen" He asked slowly.
Deaton's expression turned grim and he said, a slight edge in his tone, Scott didn't notice the look Deaton was giving him from behind "A intruder, likely a werewolf, killed them both, why they were targeted is unclear as is why Stiles was not killed"
Scott hands clenched, hating what had happened. He didn't know why or how he was going to do it but he knew that to sort this out, he needed to find Stiles but it seemed like that task was going to be incredibly difficult as he thought about this, as well as feeling sadness over the Sheriff's death, he asked "Do you know how I can find Stiles?"
Deaton said, shaking his head "I have no idea where he is I'm afraid"
Scott then noticed a black coat slung over one of the chairs.
It looked to small to be Deatons.
"Do you have company Deaton?" He asked hesitantly, suddenly feeling more on edge, who else was here?
"Just me" Deaton said with a slight smile but it was one of those placating, patronising smiles where it was obvious to Scott that he was lying.
It hurt a little that Deaton didn't trust him but he decided that he it was not like he didn't understand, he was essentially in the body of his evil older other self, and it was a miracle Deaton believed him at all.
The idea that he was telling the truth because Deaton wasn't dead yet, made him feel a little ill, why was he in this world, so evil?
"I guess I should start looking for clues at their house, I'll be out of your way" Scott said, acknowledging that Deaton likely didn't want him to stay around.
Inside he was crying out in frustration, was this all Deaton could do to help him?! How would looking at a house that a crime had been committed in, many years ago, help him?!
Deaton watched the alpha werewolf, leave him, head down, shoulders slumped.
So different from the cruel alpha werewolf he knew, it was so strange to see him behave so differently but since this other soul had taken the original souls place, it made sense, not that Deaton had ever seen this ever happen before.
But it was certainly possible with what Deaton knew about parallel worlds.
"You should have told him, what a poor pure soul"
Deaton turned around slightly as a women stepped out behind him, she had waited until Scott was far away, out of his supernatural hearing before she spoke.
She looked in the direction Scott had left in sympathy.
Marin Morrell wondered how this new soul would survive this cruel world he'd woken up in.
Deaton said sadly "Thats exactly why I couldn't tell him, how could I tell him that the person he is after and the person that wants him and his pack dead, is one and the same?"
Stiles in this world had become a deadly werewolf hunter… and had likely killed this worlds Scott McCall so the Scott McCall from the other reality that Deaton had just been talking too, could inhabit the body.
But Deaton decides not to tell Scott this.
