after leaving the horrors of beacon hills behind, stiles built a new life in new york—far from the supernatural world that once haunted him. as a rising fbi agent, he finally felt safe. but the past had a way of creeping in: unprocessed grief, loss, and guilt followed him like ghosts, and, in their wake, something else sparked: a strange power, flickering to life in moments of raw emotion. at first, he dismissed it as stress, an overworked mind playing tricks on him. but as the unexplainable piled up, denial became impossible. determined to uncover the truth, stiles set out on a quest for answers—one that would unearth long-buried family secrets and awaken forces better left undisturbed.
𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐘 𝐈𝐍: questionable morals, loss of innocence, rifted reality, the aftermath of demonic possession, survivor's guilt, undying loyalty, unruly magic & untamed will
Time was a remarkable concept. When Kaine had risen that morning, he’d had a clear vision of the plans he held for his future. A future in which Helena - the only ray of light in his darkness - could live in safety, far from the cruelties of war. He could have seized the chance to banish, once and for all, the shadow that had loomed over her for so long, return to her the sun and the sea that reminded her of her father and with them a life before the suffering that now threatened to consume everything. For a moment, he had even indulged in the irrational and admittedly absurd notion that in this new future, there might be a place for him at her side. Calculating, cunning, devoted, determined, ruthless, unfailing, unhesitating and unyielding. Fixed and immutable in his traits, he had only himself to blame for the negative labels Morrough had carved - quite literally - into his bones and skin, and over the years he had lived up to every one of them. They had shaped him into what he needed to become in order to take revenge on those who had driven his mother to her death.
The High Reeve, the cruellest and most blinkered adherent, patriarch of the Ferron family and the Iron Guild, loyal husband and servant, the most feared torturer in Paladia, and Morrough’s potential successor. In all his efforts and schemes, it had never been part of the design that there would ever again be someone who mattered so much to him that he would care if they were forced to bear the consequences of his actions. Time had slipped through his fingers and with it the memory of the exact moment he realized that his survival and his vengeance meant nothing if Helena were no longer alive. Her future became his the moment he understood that his revenge alone was no longer the drive or the reason for his betrayal. Rather, he was driven by the thought that every sunrise was uncertain for Helena as long as the Resistance had not won the war. Yet even in times of war, time showed him no mercy. For someone who was immortal, he had an alarmingly frequent sense that he was running out of it.
Ivy’s betrayal did not surprise him in the slightest. On the contrary, over the course of his life Kaine had learned that when the foundation of a house - or an organisation - is built from small, fragile, and damaged pillars, it is only a matter of time before one of them collapses under the pressure. The magnitude and finality of this betrayal became painfully clear to the Resistance when the necromancers stormed the Alchemy Institute and executed nearly every last living member of the Eternal Flame, including wounded soldiers. The majority of the Eternal Flame, extinguished at the source like embers deprived of oxygen. Without their warmth, it was only a matter of time before Morrough would turn the Alchemy Tower into a wellspring of cold cruelty and death. His decision had therefore been made long before Helena asked him to save Lila Bayard - Lila Bayard of all people. Kaine would do anything to spare Helena from the fate of that desolate place and if rescuing Bayard was the price required to convince Helena to cooperate and leave the country - Kaine had already made every preparation in advance - then he would pay the cost of her rescue, even if it meant blowing his own cover.
What he had not anticipated - a hole in his otherwise far-reaching plans - was that his own willingness to sacrifice would be eclipsed by Helena’s. When he returned from his Bayard rescue mission to Helena’s laboratory, he became aware of the full extent of his miscalculation. In hindsight, he found it difficult to reconstruct the exact sequence of events that had brought him to this point: to a remote house at the edge of the country, near the coast and a small town almost untouched by the war, accompanied of all people by the pregnant Lila Bayard and a stranger who was either very unfortunate to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or deeply involved in Helena’s disappearance. The past hours - likely among the longest of his life - passed him by in paradoxical fashion, flashing only in disjointed snapshots, while the whole of them slipped from his grasp.
A hand - his own - reaching past the two men to grasp a note lying on the lab table. Four eyes on him, their expressions perhaps readable had his own not been fixed on the slip of paper and the familiar handwriting upon it. „I’m sorry. Please save him. I love you.“ A hand on his shoulder - Shiseo’s, the two had crossed paths in the past only briefly. His words unintelligible as he left the lab, the rushing in Kaine’s ears far too loud, drowned only by the sound of his own pulse while his gaze swept the room and finally landed on the face of the last person still present. „I’m sorry. Please save him. I love you.“ Helena was sorry. He saw himself bracing his hands against the lab table between him and the stranger, his vision splintering into red and black flecks. A panic attack? That was new. „I’m sorry. Please save him. I love you.“ Save him. „And who the hell are you?“, his own voice against the silence, though perhaps it hadn’t been silent at all, he couldn’t tell. His senses no longer obeyed him. „I’m sorry. Please save him. I love you.“ She loves him. He would burn the world down if it would give him the faintest clue as to where she was at that very moment. Instead, the sober realization: she was gone, and her parting words had chained him to the burden of yet another fate. Burning anger, paralyzing nausea, tingling fingertips, the unfamiliar face across from him and the feeling of absolute powerlessness he had last experienced when his mother collapsed before his eyes. A lab table as it crashes against the wall, leaving devastation in its wake. The strange, half-numb sensation of his fist colliding with a face, and the sound that contact made. Bone against bone, the color of blood, and the metallic hum of his resonance in the air - a concentrated force of rage severing all connection to the senses for anyone caught within its reach. His necrothralls carrying the unconscious body past the patrols and finally securing him upon Amaris. Soldiers on the path discussing a bomb that supposedly destroyed Bennet’s lab.
„I liked you better when you were unconscious“, Kaine’s tone held no complaint, only cold resignation, as he checked the restraints around Bayard’s ankles and wrists for their firmness. Keeping Bayard unconscious any longer could have had negative effects on the pregnancy, so he was begrudgingly forced to deal with her awake. To disarm the weapon that Bayard, as a paladin, essentially was, he had removed her prosthetic earlier, buried it in the garden and thereby at least temporarily limited her movement, significantly reducing the risk to his physical well-being. And since the prosthetic was also an unmistakable identifying feature and neither she nor his new „prisoner” could afford to be recognized out here, he had eliminated two of his problems at once. Only the rest of the mess remained. „And I liked you better when - wait,“ She frowned, as though thinking. „No, I’ve never liked you. Knowing you’re the High Reeve certainly doesn’t help.“ To her utter annoyance, Kaine grinned at the provocation just as he caught movement in the corner of his eye. „Ah, look who has decided to join the conversation!“ he announced brightly, gesturing toward the figure tied to a second chair. „I don’t think I was entirely myself when we first spoke,“ he knelt in front of the young man, lifting his head slightly to inspect his nose, smeared with dried blood. „Now, where the fuck is Helena Marino?“
The world came back as a low, underwater hum. Voices floated around him—two, he was fairly certain—but they sounded disjointed, as though detached from whatever body they belonged to. The edges of his consciousness flickered, and he was almost certain that he was about to be pulled under again until the thick fog lifted, startlingly sudden, like a curtain being yanked back. As Stiles returned to himself, so did every sensation his mind had drowned out. It crashed over him like a tidal wave, pressing in on him from every side. Stiles’ world fractured in a blast of white-hot, blinding pain.
That first ragged breath surged through him, inflating lungs too long deprived of oxygen but quickly shattered against the motion. Stiles’ breathing stuttered, caught somewhere in his chest like an animal trapped in a cage. Every rise of his chest felt like someone was jabbing a hot iron rod between his ribs. It hurt too much to breathe. Panic leapt to the surface, sharp and cold, but his breathing was too uneven to feed it. A groan clawed its way out of Stiles’ chest, along with the acrid taste of bile rising in his throat. He managed to swallow the acid down but the groan slipped free, stirring the solemn silence while pulling at his split lip. Sensing movement around him, Stiles’ heart kicked hard against his ribs, his senses spiking with fear. With a strangled noise, he forced his eyes open. His body revolted against the flutter of his eyelids—a movement so minimal that the wave of agony washing over him seemed entirely out of proportion. One eye slid open to a blurry slash of dim light. The other was swollen to a slit, plunging half of Stiles’ world into a mess of shapes that smeared together. It remained shut, lashes stuck together by something wet. Tears or blood, he couldn’t tell.
“Wh—” An iron grip on his chin cut Stiles off before whatever he’d been planning to say could trip onto his tongue. Stiles willed his unscathed eye to focus, allowing the face looming over him to fade into view though his gaze remained blurred by unshed tears. It was impossible to see much, but he recognized those distinct features even in the dim half-light. The distant, yet sharply assessing eyes that chilled Stiles to the bone. The hardened expression. Kaine Ferron.
Terror gripped him tight and refused to let go. Stiles’ heart sank in his chest, then took off in a staggering rhythm, pounding against his ribs in double time. He flinched, body no longer obeying him, desperate to create distance between him and the last face he remembers before everything went dark. The sudden movement sent fire through his frayed nerve endings, yet still didn’t render the desired result. Something held him in place. In his panic, Stiles hadn’t noticed the pressure on his wrists and ankles but he felt it now: The sharp bite of rope against bruised skin where his arms were twisted behind the chair—solid, inescapable. There was nowhere for him to go.
„Now, where the fuck is Helena Marino?“
Ferron’s words rattled against the inside of Stiles’ skull. Helena. His first friend in Paladia. The day Stiles had arrived at Shiseo’s lab—younger then, equal parts impressed and overwhelmed by the lab equipment and piles of records stacked high—she had been there, gaze drifting from her own research to settle on Stiles with cautious curiosity. Later, she had introduced him to Luc, the heart of the Resistance, the very best of them, then twins Lila and Soren by extent. His heart constricted at the thought of his friends, feeling a little like someone hollowed him out and clumsily shoved everything back into place again. He wasn’t used to it yet—thinking of them and remembering, in the same brutal heartbeat, that they were gone. His mind still reached for them as if they were alive, as if they might still be waiting somewhere just out of sight. Every time the truth caught up, ugly and merciless, it slammed into him with enough force to bring him to his knees. The muscle-memory of love collided with their harrowing absence. Stiles squeezed his eye shut, clinging to the foolish hope that he could force the images back where they belonged, ignoring the throbbing ache in his temple that ensued.
Ferron’s insistent grip on his chin brought him back, and the memories returned to him in flashes: Helena and Shiseo whispering to each other as Stiles stood at a distance, crumpled research note in hand, face scrunched over an unspoken question. Then—Helena scribbling something on a piece of paper before ducking out of the lab. Watching Shiseo’s silhouette grow smaller as he, too, left. Kaine Ferron in front of him, anger distorting his face into a grotesque grimace that left him almost unrecognizable. That same face just inches from his own now. A flicker of that same anger, though more contained. With the weight of Ferron’s calculated stare on him, realization struck Stiles, keen and sudden. He would die. Not at some distant point in the future with strands of grey streaking his hair, and smile lines etched into his skin to tell the story of a life well lived. Today. He would die in a country that wasn’t his home, collateral damage in a war that wasn’t his, with nothing to show for his life.
How long would it take, he wondered, for news of his death to reach his father? Would it ever? When they’d bid each other farewell after Stiles’ 16th birthday, neither of them had known that it would be forever. That shortly after Stiles’ arrival in Paladia to study under Shiseo—his father’s life-long friend—the country would be plunged into war that would divide its people into good and evil, light and dark, those who stopped at nothing in their quest for power and those brave enough to oppose them. In hindsight, it was easy to claim what had long been prophesied by Necromancers and doubting members of the Eternal Flame alike as truth: That it had been a losing battle from the start. That the Resistance had never stood a chance. That they’d been doomed to fail—too loyal to their own principles, and therefore too hesitant to resort to drastic measures. Maybe they had been naive, Stiles pondered. But naiveté mattered little in the face of hope. Even in the darkest of times, under the most dire circumstances, the Eternal Flame had remained a beacon of hope, giving him and everyone else who believed in their cause a reason to keep fighting. But today, the Resistance had fallen. And with it, every last shred of hope for a better future—or any future at all—had been torn from Stiles.
All he was left with were the principles that Luc had led by. Bravery. Loyalty. The steadfast belief that in the end, good will always prevail over evil. Stiles had proven himself incapable of saving his friends. That failure would follow him for the rest of his life, however short. But he would not let their legacy be eclipsed by his guilt. If nothing else, he would honor their memory. He would try to be brave.
Slowly, Stiles unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth. It felt like a dead weight, swollen and tender, and Stiles winced as his tongue brushed against something loose, sharp-edged and jagged. Fragments of a broken tooth cut into his cheek, the metallic tang of blood overwhelming his senses. “I—” He tried through a mouthful of blood, but his voice failed him like his body had stopped counting on ever using it again. With a wheezing breath, Stiles spit blood at Ferron’s feet. He couldn’t deny the smug sense of satisfaction that bloomed at seeing crimson stain his boots. A shadow of determination settled over Stiles’ features, stark against the split skin of his cheekbone, and the purple bruising spreading over his jaw and orbital socket. “I might have been able to tell you,” he gritted out, fighting for every syllable like it was being dragged through molasses, “had you not knocked my brain around my skull. But as is…” Sounding much braver than he felt, Stiles pinned Ferron with a glare. “I’m afraid I’m suffering from some pretty severe, spontaneous memory loss.” A beat passed. Every inhale of breath scraped against the dried blood in Stiles’ nose. “But, you know,” he added, disregarding the flickering edges of his vision. “If you see her, maybe have her pay me a visit. Feels like I could really use a healer right now.” He jutted his chin out defiantly despite its obvious wobble, bracing himself for whatever came next. Something told him Ferron wouldn’t take kindly to being denied.
Claiming memory loss had merely been a half-lie—close to Kaine’s assault, there were significant gaps where Stiles’ recollection of events should be. His last conversation with Helena, however, was etched into his mind. “Let me take it.” Stiles’ fingers had hovered inches above the device but under Helena’s scrutinizing gaze he’d balled them to a fist, hoping to disguise their traitorous tremble. Instead of outright arguing, Helena had simply looked at him, brows furrowed as if confused. “But… your father. You want to see him again, don’t you?” Unable to meet her eyes, Stiles had dropped his gaze onto the table between them. “Of course I do, I just don’t think—” The rest of the sentence had dangled between them, unspoken, though not unnoticed. “You will,” Helena had said with an air of finality that left no room to argue. “I promise.” And so, in the end, it had been Helena to take the bomb to Bennet’s lab while Stiles had stayed behind with Shiseo, destroying every piece of equipment in the lab down to decades worth of research notes so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Necromancers. Both actions had, in a way, been one final act of resistance.
“Ferron.” To Stiles’ right, someone spat out the traitor’s name like an insult. “Leave him alone. He doesn’t know anything.” Despite the protest of his gridlocked muscles, Stiles craned his neck towards the source of the voice, feeling a glimmer of hope spark in his chest at the familiar sound.
“Lila?” A wave of relief washed over him at seeing her here—alive and relatively unharmed, though bound to a chair in the same fashion that Stiles was. Where Luc had been their heart, Lila was the Resistance’s brawn, as brave as she was strong, admired by her comrades and feared by her enemies. Last he’d heard, Lila had been at one of Bennet’s labs. Each of them was built like a fortress, impenetrable, and inescapable from the inside. There was no way out, unless… Stiles’ mind ground to a halt. “You got her out.” It was more of a statement than it was a question. He narrowed his intact eye at Ferron who stared back at him, expression unreadable. “Why?” Stiles poked, mind resuming its tireless reeling. He was missing something. Some integral piece of information refused to click in place. To the Necromancers, the only good Resistance member is a dead one. And yet, Ferron had two of them here, still drawing breath. For now.
For the first time since he’d regained consciousness, Stiles took note of his surroundings. Thick curtains in front of the window barred the view outside, while simultaneously bathing the room around them in semi-darkness. It made it nearly impossible to see. The fact that Stiles’ vision blurred every time he blinked certainly didn’t help. He could—with great difficulty—make out the broad outline of a fireplace, its flue blackened with soot, though the hearth was nothing but a cold, gaping hole in the corner of the room. Fire had not been lit here for a long time. On its mantlepiece, however, a single candle, short and weeping, was melting in its holder. A flimsy stream of light danced across the wall whenever the flame flickered, but it dwindled before Stiles could piece together whose faces were frozen in the picture frames above the fireplace. Ferron must have taken them deep into the countryside. The bleakness of war had not yet run its cold, ruthless fingers along these walls the way it had in the city. “Where are we?” Every word weighed a ton as it rolled off his tongue, muffled by swelling and blood dried to a crust at the corner of his mouth. Stiles strained his hearing against the ragged wheezing of his own breath. In the distance, he could hear the lick of waves against the shore. “Why aren’t we at the Institute?” Where you executed Luc on his knees, alone and humiliated, surrounded by enemies.
this wouldn't be happening if i had a mentor that was deeply interested in me and my life and guided me with a firm hand even when i was overwhelmed. whatever.
˙ ˖ ✧・* @griefbitten moves a pawn across the board ─── ❝ why won't you come home to me? ❞ ( from here )
The air inside the diner was stale. Over years of service, the distinct stench of fried fish had crawled under the chipped wallpaper and gripped Stiles like a vice upon entering. The oily tang clung to everything—from vacant booths and picture-lined walls to the complicated layers of Stiles’ clothes. He could swear even his order of burger and fries tasted faintly of crab cakes. Chafed floorboards squeaked whenever the waitress bothered to pass through, a pot of lukewarm coffee in hand. Mostly, she busied herself behind the counter, where a bobble-headed dog figurine nodded its oversized head rhythmically next to an empty tip jar. A muted, monochrome recording of some sports event flickered across a boxy TV in the back. It looked ancient. In the age of rapidly advancing technology, Stiles bristled with surprise at the existence of something so visibly outdated. A yellow triangle near the door cautioned incoming customers of slippery floors although Stiles had not seen anyone mop since they came in. Obvious hygiene concerns aside, he couldn’t deny that the diner exuded a singular charm inherent to these in-between places that attracted outcasts, wanderers, lost souls. Stiles wondered where he fit in among those categories as he watched droplets of rain cascade down the windowpane.
“Why won’t you come home to me?” The sudden rise of Derek’s voice snapped Stiles from his thoughts. Amber eyes darted across the table to settle on his husband, a flicker of resignation dragging at his face. There it was. The conversation they had danced around all day.
Stiles’ fork scraped against his plate, long cleared of any food. His gaze dropped to scrutinize the table’s scarred surface, noting dark rings where glasses had been placed, scuff marks at the edges, and wood bleached in spots where the sun had touched it. Anything not to meet Derek’s eyes. “I thought we agreed on this,” he mumbled. In reality there had been little agreement. Barely even a discussion. Just the conclusion Stiles had arrived at a month ago and refused to waver from once his mind was made up. Exile. A measure serving a threefold purpose. One, ensuring Derek’s safety. Two, seeking outside guidance after he’d reached the end of his own wits. And three, a self-imposed punishment for what Stiles perceived as a personal shortcoming rather than a struggle with powers beyond his control.
It was better this way. Safer. Stiles clung to this conviction with increasing desperation whenever the distance between them clawed at his chest. It struck him most harrowingly at night when he laid in bed alone—when Derek’s absence at his side manifested into a presence and Stiles’ yearning grew teeth. As much as he missed him, Stiles took comfort in knowing that Derek was out of harm’s way with him at a distance. Nothing else mattered much in the face of that. Least of all his own misery.
Stiles peered up, fixing Derek’s hands with an intent look where they rested around his empty cup. The dim light of the dusty overhead lamp caught in his wedding band. Stiles’ gaze climbed up the broad plane of Derek’s chest, taking in his stubbled jaw and the faint downturn of his mouth before meeting Derek’s eyes. Amber locked pale green in a tender grasp, allowing the longing to ebb between them like waves lapping at the shore. The flaking booth heaved out a sigh as Stiles shifted his weight against the cheap vinyl and reached for Derek’s hand. With the very tips of his fingers, he stroked the ridges of Derek’s knuckles. One, two, three, four, then back again. Stiles repeated the motion until he felt confident his voice wouldn’t betray him upon speaking. “I don’t wanna be apart from you anymore than you do. You know that, right?” No amount of dressing it up with humor and lighthearted conversation could hide this bitter truth. Stiles felt Derek’s absence like gravel under his skin, jagged and painful and wrong. Every second they spent apart chipped away at him.
His eyes drifted past the orange paper lanterns that lined the windowsill and suggested a much cozier atmosphere to outside onlookers than the diner actually provided. It didn’t seem to matter much—Stiles had not seen anyone pass by for the last thirty minutes. Foreign travelers and townsfolk alike rarely seemed to wander into this part of town, past the desolate snarl of gas stations and strip malls by the freeway exit. The diner’s parking lot stretched on before him, a bleak expanse of grey pavement, cracked and shining wetly with remnants of an earlier downpour. Though the rainfall had ceased, the sky refused to lighten. Turbulent clouds churned overhead, a tumult of ashen smudges on the horizon’s edge. The sun, a mere spectator, struggled to pierce through their dense cover, only succeeding at poking a trembling finger through when a gust of wind whipped past.
Stiles found his gaze drawn to Derek’s Camaro—the sole occupant of the otherwise empty parking lot, a sleek silhouette against the dull backdrop of an overcast afternoon. How tempting it was, the thought of sliding into the passenger seat. Images flickered before Stiles’ inner eye as he indulged in his fantasy: Derek’s hand splayed on his thigh while Stiles fiddled with the radio, frazzled nerves soothed by the subtle weight of Derek’s presence. Stolen glances and private smiles exchanged under the moon’s watchful gaze as day faded into night. Any inkling of tiredness warded off by the exhilaration of being together, refusing to miss even a fraction of it. Silence that need not be filled for it wasn’t uncomfortable—fueled, instead, by the irrefutable knowledge of being understood even in the absence of words. The faint promise of closeness echoed in every figment of Stiles’ imagination, but the flare of temptation was swiftly blasted apart by looming memories of shattered glass, flickering lights, splintered wood. What if next time he lost control, Derek was the target? He couldn’t risk it. Wouldn’t.
The sudden jerk of Stiles’ knee against the tabletop knocked Derek’s knife against his plate, the tinny clink deafening in the diner’s lingering silence. A pair of curious eyes turned their way, but quickly scurried back to their own plate at the sight of the two men sitting across from each other, neither saying a word. Stiles dug his thumb into the spasming muscle of his thigh through the fabric of his faded jeans. His leg defied him, resuming its anxious jiggling. The sole of his Converse bounced against the floor, drowned only by Stiles’ voice, soft-spoken but resolute despite the dull ache behind his ribs. “If anything happened to you because of me… I couldn’t forgive myself. Okay? I couldn’t.” Lifting Derek’s hand to his mouth, Stiles pressed a fleeting kiss to the back of it, lips fluttering over soft skin in wordless apology. “This is just how it’s gonna have to be for now,” he added as he lowered Derek’s hand, turning it palm-up on the table so he could pluck at Derek’s fingers—a small, nonsensical act that grounded him.
༘⋆ @embcrspark leaves a note beneath the cider jug for johnny . . . (from here)
↪ ‘ an empty public playground, equipment hot from the sun ’
THE PLACE LOOKED LIKE SUMMER HAD SWALLOWED IT WHOLE AND LEFT IT TO BAKE IN THE SUN: There were metal monkey bars which were bleached almost silver, sagging slightly in the middle. The slide had seen better days, it had gone dull and warped from years of sunlight and even the swings were looped over their chains, hanging limp and out of reach, swaying the tiniest bit when the wind bothered to pass through. Then there was the sandbox, just a pit of pale, dry grit . . . no toys, no footprints, no sign it had been touched by kids in years.
Johnny had been cutting through, head down, hands buried in the pockets of his jeans. His earbuds were dangling around his neck now, the faint ghost of a bassline leaking out.
He was a few steps from passing entirely when he saw them.
Someone was standing near the jungle gym. Tall enough that they didn’t belong here, still enough that they almost looked like part of the rusted set. There was something about the scene that stopped him cold. The figure framed against the empty playground in the hard, unforgiving light . . . it was perfect in a way you didn’t plan for. The kind of image you couldn’t stage without killing it.
The digicam was already in his hand. Johnny lifted it, squinted through the viewfinder, and pressed the shutter. The mechanical click cut through the heat-heavy silence and as he glanced down at the tiny screen to study the grainy result, a slow smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“ Yeah ”, he said, mostly to himself, “ That’s a good one ” The strap swung lazily against his chest as he let the camera drop, but his eyes stayed on the stranger. He was curious now.
“ You and this place ”, Johnny went on, louder now, tilting his head like he was still sizing up the shot, “ Both look like you’ve been here a while. Both a little . . . ghosted over. But it works ” He nodded toward the cracked blacktop stretching out past the swings.
“ So- ”, his tone shifted, easy, almost conversational, “ You posted up here for a reason, or did I just catch you in your own personal wasteland? ”
Stiles’ heart had just stopped hammering in his chest when he suddenly heard it.
The click wasn’t loud. In any other setting, it would’ve barely registered above the noise. But here, in the lazy quiet of an abandoned playground in Northern California, the mechanical hiss sliced through the thick summer air like a snapped twig—enough to startle Stiles from his thoughts, setting his teeth on edge. He whipped around, heart slamming hard against his ribs as his body snapped into alertness. Muscles coiled tight, shoulders set in a rigid line, hackles raised despite the heat. His gaze swept the playground in a fast, practiced scan. Rusty swing set to his right, a trampoline with broken springs to his left. The jungle gym now at his back—and there, standing a mere fifteen feet away, the stranger blocking his path forward. No obvious exits. Shit.
Stiles shifted his stance, angling his body so he could keep the stranger in his line of sight while simultaneously tracking the rest of the clearing, ears strained for the sound of additional footsteps. His arms crossed over his chest more out of habit than comfort. It made him feel smaller than he wanted but steadier. Grounded. Ready.
Warily, Stiles’ gaze darted towards the nearest tree line where valley oak and pine trees nestled together. Sun-marked treetops swayed in the gentle caress of a shallow breeze that brought but little relief from the bone-dry heat. Through the foliage—turned crisp by sun exposure in some spots— he caught a glint of pale blue varnish reflecting the harsh sunlight. Stiles’ heartbeat settled into something less panicked at finding his Jeep right where he’d left it, parked haphazardly on the side of a gravelly service road. He’d narrowly avoided swerving into a nearby telephone pole when he’d pulled over in a haste—luckily so, considering that it already bowed at an odd angle. It was a ways to go, but at least he knew where to bolt off to if things escalated.
Snapping back, his eyes locked onto the man holding the camera, sharp and assessing, cataloging details without conscious thought: Hair buzzed close to the scalp the way Stiles’ own used to be, though the stranger’s was much lighter, shimmering light pink under the searing sun. Ripped, faded jeans. Scuffed vans that mirrored the state of Stiles’ own worn-down Converse. Posture relaxed, weight distributed equally. No telltale shift to his stance that indicated looming trouble. Nothing about him seemed especially threatening, but Stiles had learned that danger lurks even in the most unsuspecting places.
His guard remained up even as he took a step forward and peeled out of the little shade provided by the jungle gym. The sun was thick enough to swim in. It beat down on him ruthlessly, a lone monarch reigning the cloudless sky. Stiles lifted a hand against the blinding light, allowing it to shroud his face in a half-shadow. His voice rose against the heavy silence that stretched on between them. “Hello there to you too, stranger that just snuck up on me and took my picture without warning. Or consent, might I add.” With his head inclined, Stiles let the words dangle there. Though not unkind, they still carried an edge. A certain kind of bite.
Heat rose from the ground, bringing the itchy smell of dry earth and grass. It reminded Stiles of childhood summers—back when the world had still seemed full of possibilities and danger had not prowled behind every corner. “My own personal wasteland?” He echoed, and his face twisted into something sharp before he schooled his expression. “That would be two towns over where my dad is the sheriff, by the way, so in case this—” Stiles waved a hand at the camera, indicating the picture, “was gonna end with my face on the side of a milk carton, you might wanna rethink that.”
With the initial sense of panic tapering off into mild suspicion, Stiles felt the familiar stir of curiosity in its stead—morbid, occasionally. To his detriment… almost always. “So,” he quirked a challenging brow at the stranger, voice echoing across the distance. “What are you then? Journalist? Stalker? Bigfoot hunter?”
please don't mistake silence for hatred. please don't mistake unanswered plotting messages as indifference, or a lack of enthusiasm towards you. considering the ages of most roleplayers, many of us have bills to pay, families to take care of, medical conditions to treat, appointments to make, classes to take, homes to clean, and lives to live away from the computer that are far, far more important than writing on tumblr — life has a tendency to get in the way of hobbies and fun things like this. be patient with your fellow writers. if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. of course you can set your boundaries, keep your space comfortable, and softblock whoever you wish, but do so while recognizing it's probably not hatred or apathy that keeps them from leaping into your dms with message after message. they probably love this hobby just as much as you... but sometimes life gets in the way.
