Nature and Nurture: Finding the Perfect Blend

Chapter 20: The Meeting

Malia and Lydia had eventually followed Stiles out into the carpark as he hadn't gone back inside the clinic after Derek left. He was staring at his phone, trying to get it to ring as fast as possible. Enough time had passed for Scott and Derek to arrive downtown.

"Why was that so hard for you?" Lydia asked him.

"What?" Stiles asked, shaking his phone like that would make it ring.

"Making the pact with Deaton?"

Stiles tensed up. "I don't want to talk about it," he said, flatly.

Lydia stood closer, making him look at her. "Please, Stiles. Help me to understand. You obviously didn't want to make the pact. Why?"

"I don't see why you're asking me," he tried to stall.

"Uh, duh," Malia answered. "Because you're our friend who was acting even weirder than normal. If I had the power to make people do what I want, I'd have everyone make pacts with me."

Stiles gave her a slightly horrified look.

Lydia hummed at his reaction. "Is that it? Having power over people?"

Stiles gave in, obviously the two of them were going to push at this until they got the answers they wanted. "I may not be in control of their actions but I have unlimited access to them and what I can do to them, if they break their promise. No power can save them from me. I can hurt them in any way I choose. Their life is mine if I want to take it."

"Ah." Lydia's eyes were kind as she told him, "You're not the Nogitsune, Stiles. You would never do what it did."

Stiles silently cursed Lydia's ability to see the darker parts of him, even if she didn't understand. "I don't know what I'd do under the right or wrong circumstances. What if Deaton breaks his pact and it leads to someone I love getting hurt? If that happened, I'm pretty sure I would do horrible things to him. And there's no safe guard, nothing to stop me."

"Except you, yourself, Stiles. Even Deaton expressed he isn't worried."

"He should be." Stiles thought about how he pulled on Derek's emotions, let them fill him up like he was feeding on them. It may not hurt Derek, but Stiles knew he had the power to do so.

"I'm not worried. I'll make a pact with you now to prove it." Lydia held out her pinkie finger.

Malia smiled, and did the same.

Stiles backed away from them. "Please, don't! Don't even joke about it! You wouldn't say such a thing if you really knew me!"

Lydia scoffed at him, "I'm saying it because I do know you, Stiles! You're the one who sees yourself in the wrong way. You're not a bad person, you're not evil, you're not someone who likes to hurt others."

"But I can, and I have, and I will again."

"What makes you so sure?"

Stiles turned away from them.

"Stiles?"

"There was another reason why Derek didn't want me to go with them," he admitted.

"Apart from the whole loving you too much to endanger you?" Malia asked.

Stiles snorted wryly. "Yeah. Apart from that." He ignored the embarrassment he could feel wriggling inside him from Malia just speaking of Derek's feelings for him.

"Well?" Malia prompted.

"He doesn't want me near Brine because of what I want to do to him."

"You want to kill him," Malia said, mater of fact. "I'll help, if you need me to."