Saving Stilinski

Stiles' Misery

Scott recognized the scent that the late Victoria Argent loved: wolf's bane. Wolf's bane burning like incense, the smoke creeping down his windpipe, paralyzing his lungs, poisoning him. Eating him alive. The True Alpha lay flat on his back, staring at the open vent in the ceiling thirty feet above. He willed his body to rise, planned to get a running start, leap from wall to wall to climb up and either close the vent or get to safety beyond it. Scott managed to roll onto his side, even lift his head a few inches before his face crashed back down against the cement floor. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in the whitewashed room but it was long enough. Long enough to incapacitate the wolf inside him. To leash it, cage it. Scott could barely move. His ears were heavier than buildings.

He couldn't smell anything but wolf's bane or hear anything other than his racing heart. It was with another sense, an unnamed one, that he understood that someone was behind him. He rolled onto his back, then onto his opposite side where his nose crashed into someone's knee. "Derek?" Scott grunted. He bumped his forehead against his pack mate's thigh. "Derek!"

The Alpha started awake. Dull eyes swept over Scott's half a dozen times before they finally settled, finally recognized him. Derek didn't speak. Couldn't, yet. He inched his right arm across his waist, reached for Scott's outstretched hand and gripped it with all of his might. Scott barely felt the pressure. "You're okay," he lied. "We're okay, Derek. It's okay."

Derek nodded once, then shook his head three times. Nose wrinkled, lips slack, he glared up at the vent spewing poison down at them. Red eyes explored the whitewashed room and found nothing more remarkable than the iron door on the opposite side. He circled back to Scott and squinted. Squinted at something beyond Scott's ruffled brown hair.

Scott let go of Derek and rolled once again. His own knee connected with a nose – Isaac's bleeding nose. The beta was still unconscious from whatever or whoever he'd endured. Scott stretched until he grabbed the closest bit of Isaac – his left ear. Isaac didn't respond when Scott pulled it.

"Stiles..." Derek croaked. "Scott w-where's... where's Stiles?"

"Dunno." Scott licked his dry, chapped lips and tried to speak a full sentence. "I just woke up – he's not here – not here – wherever here is. Wolf's bane. They're... They're going to kill us with..." Exhaustion strangled him. Darkness marched from the corners of his eyes to the center. Scott's grip on Isaac slackened, failed as he passed out.

"Scott?" Derek's healing abilities started to kick in. He went from 5% strength to an impressive 8%. That allowed him to crawl to Scott's side and hold onto both his and Isaac's forearms. Derek's eyes rolled back into his head and his cheek crashed to the floor before even one tendril of his pack mates' black pain reached his fingertips.

•••

Aiden sometimes wondered, sometimes truly worried that both Gerard and Deucalion were so powerful that they could hear his thoughts. So he hesitated for a whole sixty seconds before he entered the building because, for the first time, he had thoughts that he didn't want them to hear. He knew what he would find. He'd smelled all of the blood half a mile away. Seven heartbeats met him at the threshold. The three strongest were, supposedly, Deucalion, Gerard and Kali. Three more were slow but steady, weak but working. Scott, Derek and Isaac, he assumed. The seventh had to be Stiles. Erratic. Erupting. Speedy like it was rolling down a hill and then sluggish like wading through quicksand. Stiles whose screams suddenly went off like a fire alarm. Lights in the hallway flickered and Aiden knew that the Optimalpha was enduring Gerard's sick game of How Many Amps of Electricity Won't Quite Kill a Werewolf.

Aiden took a deep breath and tried to cloud the fear and betrayal in his scent with anger and victory. Back straight, smile twisted, he burst through double doors. Gerard, Kali and Deucalion turned from the trembling figure on a makeshift operating table and greeted him with wide grins and cocked eyebrows.

"He's dead," Aiden announced before they could ask. "I ripped his spine out of his body with one hand."

"Bravo," Gerard congratulated him. He celebrated by stabbing a bolt of lightning into Stiles' chest. The teen's body arched off of the table, but he didn't make a sound. "There's a special place at my side for any man who would kill his own brother for his cause."

Kali stood next to Deucalion with her slim arms folded against her chest. "I nabbed Lahey for you," she reminded him.

Gerard ignored her. "How about pizza, son?" he said to Deucalion.

The Demon Wolf cocked his head to the side. "Father, your cholesterol."

The elder Argent laughed. "By tomorrow night I'll have an Optimalpha's powers. The last thing I have to worry about, son, is my health." Gerard turned off the generator under the metal table. "If you don't mind, Aiden," he said, gesturing to the still body, "I'd appreciate it if you'd reunite Mr. Stilinski with his friends. It would be cruel to make him watch us eat dinner."

•••

Being dragged down the hallway by his shirt collar was the highlight of Stiles' day. There wasn't an insane Darach burning his insides. There weren't straps holding him on the table or an equally insane Darach treating him like a lightning rod. There was just the flickering lights above, the soothing journey of his lower body sliding across the floor, the knowledge that his friends were, at least, alive. A walk in the park. Aiden pulling him like a suitcase was practically a walk in the park. Delightful.

Stiles heard a swishing sound like elevator doors. Aiden stuffed something down the front of his shirt and then tossed him, bag-of-potatoes style, into a white room that smelled like death. Stiles heard noise that might have been his name, felt cold hands touch him that might have been his pack's. He felt his body pulled in two different directions before it went in a third and, before long, he found himself cradled in Derek's arms with his head in Scott's lap and Isaac's wide puppy eyes examining him from his feet.

It took several minutes for his brain to realize that Scott was talking to him. "—a sign! At least blink, Stiles!" he said.

Stiles obeyed. He blinked. He breathed. Blinking and breathing wasn't supposed to be so hard. He hurt, but he did it.

Derek groaned with relief and lay his forehead on Stiles' chest.

Stiles counted to one hundred, slowly, then spoke. "Ache everywhere," he whispered. "Even taste pain..."

Derek clenched Stiles' t-shirt. Water hovered on the cliff that was Scott's eyelid. "You'll be fine once we get you home," Scott said.

"Tomorrow night."

"What?"

"I heard Deucalion say tomorrow night," Stiles said to Scott.

Derek lifted his face and hovered over Stiles' trembling lips. "What about tomorrow night?"

"The moon's already up so they can't kill me yet. They s-said I have to start bleeding when the moon rises and d-die the moment it sets. Something special about Optimalphas..." Stiles shook from either pain or fear, or both. He clawed at Derek's sleeve. "I'm going to die all night... I'm going to d-die all n-night!"

A noise rose from Scott's chest that sounded like a combination of a sob and a growl.

Suddenly, Stiles froze. His eyes were wide but not seeing, his breath waited in his lungs. A heartbeat later he grabbed Derek's hand and yanked it against his own throat. "What's the cliché...?" Stiles whispered to Derek. "Put me out of my misery? Put me out of my misery, Derek. Kill me."