Home is a Fire | TW fix-it | P. 1
They left Stiles out because they knew the nogitsune would tear him apart, but now the nogitsune is gone and Stiles can feel the nemeton telling him it isn’t over — not for him. And maybe not for Derek either.
There was fire, so much fire. It was hot and blinding, blurring everything else from his view. Suddenly, out of the dark he saw glowing red eyes. He felt pain. Then everything went dark. Gradually, a faint blue light spread from the waning moon above until he could see his surroundings. He was in the forest and he was alone. He turned around once, twice, looking for the source of the fire but he only found himself standing in the one place he never thought he would again. In front of him was the nemeton.
xx
With a start, Stiles Stilinski jolted awake in his small twin bed, almost falling out of it. He reached for his phone for a few moments until he remembered how he had broken it. While on shift they’d gotten a call about a fire, which turned out to be a small kitchen fire with little harm done, and in the haste to load up the truck he’d left his phone on the ground where he had been sitting – only a few feet in front of one of the truck’s wheels. It wasn’t until they got back that he realized what happened to his phone and he planned to fix it but days just kept passing.
He couldn’t sleep, his mind was racing. He got up and left his bedroom. His small apartment was an open room with a kitchen and a balcony and only two doors for his bedroom and his bathroom. The oven clock read 6:05. He went back into the room to change into a pair of jeans and a ratty, too big T-shirt – probably one of Scott’s he’d been accidentally carrying with him for the past 15 years. Once dressed, he could run down to a corner store just a few miles away, one he knew had a pay phone.
xx
It was still dark when Stiles reached the pay phone and fumbled around his center console for enough quarters to make a call. Sheriff Noah Stilinski picked up on the second ring. “Stiles?”
Stiles paused for a moment. The area code. Of course his dad would know it had to be him.
“What happened in Beacon Hills?” Stiles asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I had a dream. All I could see were red eyes. I think something happened to Scott and I think it happened there.”
“Oh, Stiles. Scott’s fine. It was Derek. There was a fire.”
Stiles hung up the phone. He couldn’t breathe. He’d seen a fire. He’d seen the eyes of a wolf, of an alpha. Not Scott’s eyes, but Derek’s. Stiles had been running from what happened to him in Beacon Hills, from what happened to him after, from the heartbreak of Lydia leaving him without a word.
He’d tried to find her for weeks. Whenever he wasn’t working or sleeping, he was searching their favorite cafes, diners, shops, even the park they’d gone to when they first moved to Portland. Instead, he found Jackson. At the diner he’d told Lydia that he would spend the rest of his life with her, Jackson was sitting in the front booth looking directly at him. “Stop looking for her, Stiles. She’s not coming back,” Jackson had said. There wasn’t a drop of sympathy in his voice.
“Why?” Stiles had asked. He was too out of it to play the game with Jackson. He didn’t want to trade insults over a cup of burnt coffee. He just wanted to know why she’d left.
“She had a premonition. Being with you wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing. She knew for weeks but she knew you wouldn’t accept that. She needs you to let her go.”
And he had. It had been 6 years since Lydia had left. It had been longer since he’d been back to Beacon Hills. 5 years still since he’d even seen Scott. He’d seen his dad a few times, when Noah came to visit him in Portland. His therapist said he had PTSD, though she couldn’t say from what – because Stiles didn’t tell her. He didn’t tell her about the friends he had seen die, the people whose deaths he’d been responsible for. He didn’t tell her about what happened in Beacon Hills. Still, he was doing better. He’d learned how to deal with his panic attacks, how to sleep without seeing faces of the people they’d lost, and he’d cut off as much contact with that life as possible after Lydia had left. Occasionally he’d get a text from Malia, an update from his dad on Derek’s son stealing his Jeep again, or a picture of a dog at Scott’s shelter usually accompanied by a message about how Stiles needed a companion and this dog would be the perfect choice.
xx
The sun was finally coming up when Stiles left his apartment again, this time with a duffle bag. He had to stop by the station first, let the chief know he needed a few days off for a family emergency. He said it was his dad, something was wrong with his dad. If his chief didn’t believe him, he didn’t say. He nodded, turned to make it down on the calendar, and gave Stiles 12 days to come back.
The drive ahead of him was going to take hours and his thoughts were still racing. What had happened to Derek? Had Kate come back for him? Had another Argent? Why had his eyes been red? What did the nemeton have to do with any of this?
xx
Outside of Noah Stilinski’s house, there were so many cars. More than he had seen in a long time. The sun was starting to fall from the later afternoon sky. The usually comforting smell of damp woods was missing. A faint smell of smoke remained. He left his duffle bag in the car, a black compact car that got him around well enough, and headed inside.
The house immediately went quiet when Stiles opened the door. He saw his dad talking to a kid – Derek’s son. He saw Scott’s Mom and Allison’s Dad and even Deacon, who he hadn’t seen in at least a decade. Peter was there, in a corner, and Malia glared at him from a few feet away. Liam, Mason, Parrish, and a girl he didn’t know were scattered around the room, too. Lydia and Jackson stood together and Stiles fought the urge to turn and walk straight back to his car. “Stiles?” He turned his attention to Scott. Scott who was standing with someone he didn’t recognize. Did he? She looked so much like someone they’d lost.
“Allison?” He whispered.
“Hey Stiles. It’s me.” Stiles let out a sob. “It’s really me,” she said, taking a step towards him. Scott moved with her and he let out another noise. Suddenly Allison was in his arms. Allison who had been dead. Allison whose death he had been responsible for. Who he had let die.
“How?” He could feel Scott’s arms go around them both. He felt Malia’s next and then Lydia’s hand on his shoulder. This was real. Allison had come back from the dead and in return, they’d lost someone else. It wasn’t fair.
“Derek,” he whispered. He could feel them tense as they let him go, retreating to where they’d been before.
The boy, Eli, he'd remembered his Dad calling him, made eye contact with him then. “My Dad held him back. He saved us. He sent that monster straight to Hell.”
“Parrish sent him to Hell, Derek held him in place,” Malia whispered.
“You were at the nemeton,” Stiles said, trying to put together how his dream had played into this. “No one called. No one came to get me. Derek is gone and I didn’t even know something was happening.”
“I tried to call you but it didn’t go through,” Lydia whispered. Shit, his phone had been broken for 5 days. Had it really all happened so suddenly?
“You couldn’t have been here, kid,” his Dad said, firmly. “That thing, I’m not sure we could’ve stopped it if it had gotten to you this time. He wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. He would never have let you go.”
“Who?” Stiles asked but he did so quietly. In his mind, the nemeton flashed again, this time it was bright – white. There was a chess board on top. “The nogitsune.”
“Yes.” Stiles couldn’t tell whether it was his dad, Scott, or Chris Argent who had responded. Maybe it had been all of them. Maybe none. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t get air. He was going to die and it was going to be because of the nogitsune, again. “He’s dead, Stiles. Gone. Burned by a hellhound. He can’t hurt you or any of us again.” That was Scott’s voice, it was definitely Scott’s.
“But he got Derek,” Stiles said, looking at Scott.
“Derek held him in place on the nemeton while Parrish lit him up. Someone had to hold him there. No one could’ve survived that kind of fire. He made a sacrifice to save all of us.” Stiles couldn’t listen to Scott anymore. He still couldn’t breath but he didn’t feel so much like he was dying. Somewhere, deep inside of him, he felt a pull. He needed to follow it. Out the door, into the woods, and he was running.
xx
Stiles ran until his legs wouldn’t cooperate any more. He collapsed in a clearing of trees. When he looked up, he knew what had been pulling him. It was right in front of him. The nemeton. And it was glowing. Silvery blue strands of light flowed out from the center. He blinked. In that second, the light was gone, and he was just a man on his knees in front of a tree stump with the sun setting and the air turning cold.
But he’d seen it – that light. The nemeton wasn’t done with him yet, and maybe, just maybe, that meant it wasn’t done with Derek either.
