Help me Derek

Chapter 13

After the first night of sleeping in the corner of the room his dad had insisted that he at least had to have some sheets, Stiles didn't have the heart to tell him that he was more than used to sleeping wherever he could lay his head. He didn't really sleep anyway, his body was too used to the state of constant vigilance that he'd been living with for the past two years, knowing that the moment he let his guard down he'd get a set of claws digging into his stomach or tearing through his thigh or shoulder.

When Melissa had repaired his stitches, she'd made him sit on the bed for a few minutes and it had been one of the most amazing experiences, not as good as the shower, but, still, it was so comfortable that Stiles could have just lay down and gone to sleep right then and there. He's stood up as soon as he was allowed, knowing it wasn't safe to relax like that, that relaxing meant death.

The pack started to pile onto the floor, dragging whatever blankets and sheets they'd acquired in their own rooms until they were all sprawled across the floor and each other, Stiles knew there were at least three of them already snoring. He had to sleep with his back to a wall, it was the only thing that allowed him to at least get a little sleep, he settled into the nearest corner, making sure that his swords were close by if there was an attack, Erica and Boyd both rolled their eyes and came closer, lying down on either side of him, Erica throwing a blanket over his knees before reaching out to grasp Boyd's arm on his other side and slipped into sleep.

Stiles slept on and off for the next few hours, never going deep enough to lose the awareness of his surroundings, hearing the shuffle of moving bodies as they shifted around in their sleep, listening to the even breaths that indicated sleep, tensing slightly the few times he heard movement from the world outside the room, a car going past, a room door slamming a few doors down, the murmur of voices walking past their room. None of them were threatening though so as soon as he'd assessed they weren't a threat he dozed again for a little while.

He thought instead about the fourth ring, how he wanted to tear it down and make sure that nobody ever thought of doing something so despicable again, that if they did, he would destroy it and them. He needed to stop anyone else suffering like he had. He needed to do something drastic, make sure that nobody thought of doing it again at any point in the future. Maybe he could cast something that would stop gladiators from ever being a thing again? He lost himself in that thought for a while, giving up when Danny got to his feet and flashed Stiles a brief smile on his way to the bathroom, the rest of the pack beginning to groggily wake up.

Stiles decided that it would be a good idea to take another shower and then get ready to go, he knew he hadn't managed to clean all the blood off from yesterday yet. As soon as the bathroom was free he went in and shut the door behind him, snapping the lock in place before pulling his shorts down and his t-shirt off, leaving him stood in his boxers, he couldn't take them off, he felt too exposed naked in the locked bathroom.

He leant on the edge of the sink, glancing up at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes were darker, harder than he remembered, the planes of his face were sharper, he tried smiling and it looked more like a grimace, he sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair and trying to ignore the burning of his magic under his skin. His eyes trailed downwards to the scars that covered his chest, he'd seen the others looking at them, practically smell the pity rolling off them whenever they looked at him, he didn't like that, didn't want to see his dad upset like that, once this was all over, once he'd destroyed the rings, he was going to make a conscious effort to cover his scars up.

He sighed heavily again, there had just been too much happen in such a short space of time, this time last week he was convinced that he would end up spending the rest of his most likely very short life in that hell hole. He had the plan to shut off the electricity to the collars, but he had no idea how he was going to get it done, he needed someone on the outside to shut off the electricity. His back-up plan had been to try and remove the collar without anyone noticing, but he didn't see how that was going to work, he'd been running over a hundred different plans in his mind and then suddenly his dad had been there. Everything since then had happened so quickly that there were still moments when he believed that this was some kind of dream, that any second, he'd wake up and be back there.