TIED SOULS
chapter fourteen ; manhunt
[ season three - episode twenty-one ]
𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐊 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐄'𝐒 eyes were scorned by the bright sun shining through his window as he woke up to a sound he didn't recognize. An unusual one at that. With a furrowed brow, he rolled over, expecting to see the blonde beside him in bed. He had two theories, and the missing space had confirmed the latter, she was the source of the noise. He groaned slightly as he turned back over to his side, seeing the time on the alarm clock. 5 a.m. An ungodly hour for any human. He spent a small moment lying in bed, considering ignoring her and the sound and going back to sleep, it wasn't as though he wouldn't find out what she was doing in a few hours. But could he wait that long? Or would the anticipation torture him?
Once again, it was the latter. With another groan, he pulled the sheets off of him in a strop. Partly hoping that the noise told the woman that she had woke him up, but he walked into the kitchen they now shared to find her completely unphased. He should have known better than to think it would bother her that she woke him up. If Gabby wanted him awake, he was awake.
The blonde was sitting at the breakfast bar, her head dug into a book in front of her while she'd twirled a piece of her golden locks around her finger, failing to even notice him standing there, watching her contently. He found himself in awe, he never thought he was capable of feeling at one, at peace, he might even say. There were moments when he imagined this, a long time ago when it almost seemed stupid to imagine. He imagined sharing a home with her, and having a life together. Of course, that was before everything was messed up. Before he fucked up and he, though he wouldn't admit this, had made the biggest mistake of his life. When such a thing had seemed possible without years of mishaps beforehand. But it was back on track now. He hoped at least.
He cleared his throat, waiting for a reaction. Still, nothing. She hadn't heard his obvious groan from the other side of the loft. The clearing of his throat when she stood right in front of him. If he wasn't the book she frantically flicked through, he was practically invisible. It hadn't occurred to her that the turning of pages could stir up such a sound, but then again, she hadn't given it a thought either.
Finally, Derek gave up on dancing around the bush. His hand slammed down on the book until it startled the blonde who finally raised her head. Her beautiful brown eyes were now bloodshot, a darkness around them from the lack of sleep. She smiled weakly, unaware of what time it was, how long she had been sitting here, or how she had woken him up with her incessant turning of the pages.
"What you doing?" He asked with a raised brow. Whatever it was, clearly, she had been doing it all night. He wasn't sure how she had wriggled out of bed without him noticing. So much for his supernatural senses. Gabby looked at the clock, her eyes widening as she was finally brought to Earth again, blinking harshly as she double-checked the time. Jesus Christ.
Gabby stammered for some kind of explanation as she turned back to the wolf, his brows were still raised at her, making her feel insane. Perhaps she was insane. Maybe Derek would think she was too once he had seen what had gotten her so twisted. Her only explanation was to show the man as she spun around the photo album, watching him flick through the endless streams of her old family photos from her teenage years and before. For all of the years her parents were alive. They were big fans of capturing the moment, he remembered that about them. They didn't miss a single moment. Not losing a tooth. Not a first day of school. Nothing, if they could help it.
He flicked through the images right until he reached the baby photos of her. Right now, it should have hit a soft spot, it should have pained him to see a child. Only, he had discovered a side that he didn't know he had until Melissa had told them about the news. The part no man knows they have until they become a father, or in his case until they find out they had been one for the past seven years.
His soft spot hadn't pained until he flicked to the final photo, one that had been carelessly put in the back until they had found it a proper, rightful place. A photo of Gabby smiling brightly as she held onto a small baby bump, glowing in the prime of her pregnancy. After that, he couldn't take anymore as he cleared his throat, sliding the album back to her. Knowing that he had missed the chance to be the one taking a photo like that, experiencing it all with her, preparing to become a father. He couldn't think about it.
"Where'd you get them?" He asked, trying to shove down the pained feeling inside of him as she slowly closed the photo album, deciding that she had wasted too much time torturing herself by digging through a past she couldn't get back.
"I just found it," she shrugged, keeping the details awfully vague. She saw how he looked at the photo of her, the less detail she provided him, the better. He was hurting enough, talking about it would only rub salt in the wound. "I-Uh... I told Allison that I would go and see her today. She got pretty knocked about too." Gabby quickly changed the subject as she walked to the dresser, searching for anything that she could throw on and leave as fast as possible.
"Wait, don't you think you should-" he tried to lecture her about taking it easy, but before he had even spat it out, he watched her try to jump into her jeans, tripping over the pant leg until a thud sounded from the collision of her ass on the concrete floor. "-take it easy..." he sighed. "Gab, I get that you've just had a big bomb dropped on you but-"
"I'm fine." Gabby interrupted him, pulling herself up and properly pulling up her jeans. "I made my peace with it a long time ago, Derek. I mourned her. She's alive, she always was, I get it, but she's not mine now. That's not my baby." she said, every word a lie, a scheme to ensure that the man didn't worry about her, or more importantly, follow her. Stood on her tiptoes to reach him, she cupped his face in her hands. "I'm fine, okay? I've moved on," she reassured him, falsely, her lips planting a kiss on his before she grabbed her jacket and headed out.
He stood watching the door, flabbergasted in her absence. Most of all, unconvinced of anything she had just told him. People didn't change that quickly. The Gabby he knew would never give up something so easily, especially not her child. Her own blood. Whatever she had just fed him had a bitter taste, the taste of lies. What she had told Melissa, the idea of finding their daughter was the real Gabby, not the one who just stood before him. He watched out of the window, the moment she had pulled away from the loft, he grabbed his jacket, prepared to follow her until he found out the reason behind her lies.
Gabriella's hand brushed against the old wallpaper as she wistfully walked through the corridor of her childhood home, envisioning every time she had run through them as a little girl, giggling as her father playfully chased them in a game of tag. Her heart ached while her lips smiled. This was a beautiful kind of pain. Grief was both cruel and lovely. Bitter yet sweet. She reminisced on the times she had spent with her parents, trying to keep them light and happy, not stung with the cruel stench of death. She would have done anything to spend another day with them, to go back in time and change all that had happened. If she did, she wouldn't be the woman who she was today, maybe that was good, maybe that was bad. Maybe this was exactly the way it was all supposed to happen.
She had been considering coming back to the house ever since she had arrived in town, before that too. She had never had it in her to do it, she didn't think she was capable of that pain. She hadn't realized just how easy it would be compared to everything else she had been through in her life. After what Melissa told her, all she wanted was to feel connected to her baby. This home was the closest thing she had to that. This was where she found out about her. This was where she experienced every little kick. Where she hit every milestone that she now cherished, wishing that she had been able to meet more. Despite the circumstances, she enjoyed every moment of carrying her little girl.
This was the closest she would get to her baby again.
When she had snuck out in the middle of the night last night to come here without Derek waking up, she never thought she would come back, she didn't think she would be able to bear it. She'd been prepared to sign the papers and get rid of the house after seven years of it being here in her name, untouched, still the same as it had been the night she lost her parents. And yet within just a few hours, she was here again, never wanting to leave, wanting to cherish this house and all of the memories that she had made in it for the rest of her life.
She continued into the homely kitchen, daydreaming, forgetting all about reality until the figure of a man appeared in front of her, startling her for the second time this morning. "Oh, my God!" Gabby almost screamed as she stopped in the middle of the kitchen, a hand to her heart as she tried to get her breath back again. "Derek, what the hell are you doing here? How did you know I was here?" She asked frantically, her heart had dropped as though she had been caught in some kind of illegal activity, like it wasn't normal for someone to want to relive their childhood. Like it was some random house she had broken into, not one left in her name.
"I followed you." Derek deadpanned, unlike her, he was completely unphased. "This is why you were acting so weird this morning?" He asked, looking around the kitchen of her old home, the guilty expression on the woman's face growing. "Why didn't you say?"
"I don't know," Gabby admitted, shrugging. She wasn't sure why she hadn't told him, she knew he wouldn't judge her for it, that he would understand her reasoning, but there was still part of her that was scared to let him in, part of her that still thought she was alone in all of this.
Derek sighed as he pulled the blonde into a hug, allowing her to rest her head on his chest as she took in this room as she took in the rest of the home she once shared with her parents. It was the first time Derek had ever been here, but he could feel how homely it had once been, living in his own childhood home hadn't been like this, it was a place filled with werewolves and human kids causing chaos on a daily basis. It was filled with rules and precautions, danger. This home hadn't been the same as that. It was filled with love, he could feel that. It was where Gabby had become the person that he had fallen in love with, whether that be the feisty teenager he met in his first-ever detention or the woman that she was now as she stood wrapped in his arms. He loved both of those people.
"Do you think we'll ever be like that?" Gabby asked. Derek followed her eyes to a picture sitting on an end table in the living room, her parents and herself as a small child, each smiling as they posed for the picture. Happy and content with life. A family.
The man wasn't always confident, not on the inside, he had mastered acting it, but when it had come to things like this, the more human part of life, it was a part he had always struggled with, perhaps because he never thought there would be a true human aspect of his life like families or fatherhood. But now, as he stood in the love-filled home, looking at the picture of a family, he'd become confident in one thing. He wanted that. "One day." He assured her as she looked up, her chocolate eyes melting him as she smiled. "I'm gonna find her, Gab. I promise you I'll bring our little girl home. Whatever it takes, we'll get her back."
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Gabriella stood at the foot of Argent's desk, beside her, the brunette huntress whose invitation to her home she had seemed to speak into existence after lying to Derek about it. Allison urged for both of them to meet her at the apartment, explaining that she had the plan to help track an awol Stiles who had escaped from Eichen House. Allison and her father had gathered all of their necessary weapons, laying them out on the table before Gabby, Derek, and Noah, they were all non-lethal, something which each of them had agreed to when handling Stiles, or even the new, possessed Stiles.
While they had all agreed, it was no secret that Argent and Derek were willing to take up a more lethal approach to catching the Nogitsune who had already killed or seriously injured dozens of people, some of them included. But there was a code, one that Allison had made and was still determined to stick to.
Argent looked across the spread of weapons, suggesting that they should take all of them. With a Nogitsune, none of them truly knew what they were up against, it was a trickster, evil, dangerous beyond belief. If they were really going to approach this non-lethally, they needed all the ammo an arsenal like theirs could provide.
Stilinski swallowed thickly as he looked at all of the weapons, even in all of his years as an officer of the law he had never seen such a sight. Even their evidence room didn't contain weapons like the ones laid out in front of him. He knew well how the Argents worked, how the man had built up an entire business around weapons, it wasn't until now when he saw a large part of the more than impressive collection that it had been put into perspective. The man stammered as he tried to ask the Argent girl what the plan was to capture and save his son. Chris explained that Derek's enhanced abilities would be best to help them find the boy, suggesting that he use Eichen House to pick up the scent given it being their last known place for the boy, especially if he experienced any stress during his stay.
Gabriella spoke up, while she didn't know the purpose of her being involved in the plan, Allison was insistent on her being here, she could only imagine that was to put her good knowledge of werewolves to use, and that she did as she pointed out that all of them would be in one place, a perfect opportunity for a trickster to kill all of them at once.
Surprisingly, it was a detail that had seemed to slip both of the Argents' minds, meaning that it was time for a new part of their plan- considering the other places where they might find Stiles or his evil, identical self. In unison, they all began to list a series of locations they thought they'd find him. The school. The hospital, and all of the places he had appeared to create his chaos.
Derek made sure to interrupt the listing, reminding them that they had all done something like this before, being led on some wild goose chase, perhaps it wasn't intentional then and he had been asleep, but he believed it was still on the same premise. Right now, they needed to think logically, deeper than just where he had been turning up, but somewhere that had some form of significance. The Nogitsune was trying to repeat the same moves, to trap them, they had to try and be one step ahead at all times.
They each knew that the Hale had made a fair point, but they didn't know what else to do. They couldn't wait for Stiles to come to them, not when the Oni was after him, Scott and Kira were out trying to work on that, but there was no promising that they would have a solution by the time it had become dark tonight. They didn't know how to outfox a fox. None of them was a fox. Since it seemed there was no other solid plan but to seek out the Nogitsune, it was agreed that as they'd originally planned, they would go looking for him, hoping that it wouldn't end badly for them.
Stilinski looked at those gathered around the desk, giving them a final chance to back out before it was too late, he would understand, none of them had asked to be involved in this, even his son hadn't, he couldn't ask them to put their lives at risk once again for the sake of him getting Stiles back. And he just couldn't be responsible for knowing that one of them had gotten hurt trying to help him and his son. Nobody backed down, and nobody would back down, they reassured him that they wanted to help, that they would help.
Derek grabbed one of the tasers from the collection of lethal weapons, insisting that he wouldn't be the first wolf to run away from a fox. Argent picked up his cattle prod, the lightsaber, at least it was one according to Parrish, his small reminder of the joke had helped lighten the mood, taking away from the other feeling of certain doom. Once everyone had chosen a non-lethal weapon to defend themselves with, Allison handed out orders to each of them. Her father and Derek would take Eichen house while she, Gabby, and Sheriff Stilinski headed to the hospital, once they'd all searched their areas, they would meet up at the school.
Noah proposed that he headed to the school alone, not only would it help them cover ground a lot quicker, but he was confident that his son wouldn't harm him, that even while possessed by a Nogitsune he would find a way to fight against it. Even though none of them were sure that he could guarantee that, the man remained adamant on it, he just wanted to find his son as fast as possible, restoring him to the boy he knew and raised.
Just as the four adults were about to leave the office, a thought struck Allison, a proposal as she quickly stopped them in their tracks. There was someone else who could help them, maybe the idea was stupid and the girl might not want to help at all, but she believed it was at least worth a try in asking her. Gabby questioned who else was left, a question the others wanted to know too. Malia Tate, Allison proposed, the coyote they had saved in the woods, apparently she had been in Eichen House too to help with the whole coyote-turned-human thing, she was bound to know or have seen Stiles in there, perhaps she could help them.
After a quick pit stop at the Tate house to ask the coyote to help them, the plan altered to fit the were coyote in, with the extra set of eyes to search for the boy, the group was able to split into twos, searching the three places they hoped to find Stiles in. Malia, who was most familiar with Eichen House, would go there with Argent. Derek and Stilinski were headed to the school where Derek would try and sniff out a scent of the boy from the belongings in his locker, leaving Gabby and Allison to go to the hospital. Allison had made sure to think logically when she ordered all of the pairs, those whose skills would work well together, whether it be the enhanced abilities or a renowned knowledge of firearms and strategy. Hopefully, it wouldn't be long before the group had found Stiles and came one step closer to helping him.
Gabriella and Allison stood in the hospital elevator, staring at their warped reflection in the set of doors. The older woman had immediately felt the uneasiness of being here once again, and this elevator had brought back some bad memories of its own as she recalled the time she and Derek had been trapped in here with Jennifer. She shuddered at the thought. She could still hear all of the annoying storytelling the woman had done, that was more torturous than being shut inside of a broken-down elevator in the dark in the middle of a storm.
She wasn't the only one who was nervous, she could see Allison nervously fiddling with the hem of her shirt as she tapped her foot rapidly. Perhaps she wasn't a fan of hospitals either, or maybe it was the fact that Isaac was just upstairs and she hadn't been able to see him for a few days, his condition was still a mystery to the people who were supposed to be his family.
It was safe to say that neither of them was in the best state of mind to be trying to help someone else, especially someone possessed by a thousand-year-old fox. Their problems didn't seem so dire when they put that into consideration. Gabby couldn't help but feel like she was being just a little selfish for focusing on her problems rather than those of the teenagers around her, day by day they were all having their lives twisted and turned, snatching away what should be the best days of their lives. Rather than focusing on herself, she should have been ensuring that nobody lost what she had lost.
"I don't know how you did it," Allison admitted, clearly her thoughts were similar to Gabby's as she considered her own problems minuscule compared to what the woman beside her had been through in her own lifetime. The blonde raised a brow as she questioned what the huntress was talking about. "You're so strong and fearless even after everything that's happened. I- I can't do that. I'm not like that." She admitted with a shake of her head.
"I'm definitely not strong or fearless." Gabby disagreed with a slight laugh, finding it funny that that was how Allison saw her. "Not like you guys. You're all so optimistic and strong. No matter what you've been through none of you have ever let it bring you down. I let mine alter my life. I ran away from my problems. I wish I was more like you."
Tears had begun to form in Allison's eyes as she talked to the woman, unable to believe that she looked up to someone like her, that the way she saw Gabby was how Gabby saw her too. Over a short course of knowing each other, the two had seemed to build a sister-like relationship, they had never felt it before, they were both only children, growing up with only their parents. Gabby had never been one for making friends when she was younger, and in her prime years, well she was far from that. And for Allison, with all of the moving, friends didn't come easy, she counted herself lucky with Lydia, the two of them had clicked on their first day together. Beacon Hills was a blessing to her, even if it certainly did have its challenges.
"When I was your age I was a mess. I'd lost everything and everyone and I let myself get trapped by a pack of Alphas who manipulated me, the very people who had cost me what I'd lost." Gabby spoke, her tone showing just how disgusted she was in herself. "Maybe if I had been more like all of you I would have my little girl right now and she wouldn't be somewhere in the world with her new family, possibly growing up to think I never wanted her." The blonde said as she teared up, meanwhile, Allison looked at her in utter shock, nobody had known about what Melissa told the two parents, it hadn't been news either of them broadcasted, especially not with everything else going on at the moment. "You've been fighting Kanimas and druids and Alphas and still manage to keep your grades up."
Allison scoffed, that wasn't exactly true, admitting that she was failing Coach's class. Econ. She had been a little distracted from it, understandably so, but she still beat herself up over her bad grade. She had never failed anything in her life before, she had always been so on top of it, but not now, she allowed everything to pile up on her and slowly crush her, now she was beginning to reach breaking point. Allison broke down into a sob as she thought more about the grade or how she might be disappointing her father by failing school, how her mother would have made sure she was grounded until she had fixed it.
Gabby pulled the teenager into her arms, shushing her as she tried to calm the girl down. "Hey, one bad grade is nothing. That doesn't define you. Failing Econ or not you are still a strong and beautiful, badass huntress who is going to do amazing things." She reassured the teenager. "If I had my daughter, I would have loved for her to be like you."
"Really?" Allison asked with a sniffle.
The blonde nodded confidently with a smile, it seemed to be just what Allison needed to hear as she wiped her tears from her eyes, thanking the woman. Weakness wasn't something the Argent girl tended to show, her family didn't do weakness, but she didn't have it in her to hide it now, it had all become too much for her. She couldn't compartmentalize like she had been taught to, it wasn't always as easy as she hoped it would be.
After composing herself slightly, it suddenly dawned on Allison again what the woman had said when she spilled her feelings, something that couldn't just be breezed over. "Wait, did you say your daughter's alive?" The brunette asked as she tried to catch up with the chapters that she'd clearly missed in Gabby's life.
Allison pressed the emergency stop on the elevator, pausing their hospital search before it truly began, she needed to hear all about what had happened to Gabby's daughter and how she had come to find out about it, and frankly, Gabby was glad to finally have someone to talk about it to who wasn't Derek, someone who wasn't so close to it all, who she could spill her feelings to and not worry that they were going to watch her like she had gone insane. Allison was perfect for it, she listened to every word that Gabby had to say, she reassured her that each of her feelings was valid and that if she could, if she and Derek would let her, she would love to try and help them to find Zoe, an offer Gabby promised to take her up on.
As Gabby was about to restart the elevator, Allison's phone buzzed as she quickly pulled it out, her eyes widening at the text message from the Sheriff, he had found Stiles, he was back at their home, urging for her and Gabby to get there as soon as possible. The two nodded at each other as Gabby pressed the button for the bottom floor, hoping to get there in time from across town, both of them were in agreement to act as though they had spent their time wisely in the search for Stiles, not breaking down in the elevator between the ground floor and the roof.
They had each raced to the Stilinski house, Gabby and Allison the last one's to arrive as they had found the rest of the group gathered around in Stiles' room, all in a confused silence, staring at a chess board that had been set up in the middle of the teenage boy's bedroom. Each chess piece had a colored sticky note on it with the names of each of the pack, even people who had since left Beacon Hills like Jackson Whittemore. A name that Malia questioned, confused as to who he was, in the time she had spent with Stiles in Eichen, that wasn't a name that had come up, a few of them hadn't, making her feel like she hadn't connected with him as much as she thought.
None of them could quite understand what the sticky notes were for and what the correlation was between the colours and the names that were on them. It didn't make sense that after hours of being missing Stiles would come back to his house to set up a chessboard, surely the fox who had possessed him had more things to do, such as killing this entire town, rather than playing a game of chess. Sheriff Stilinski stared at it for a while, wondering why it seemed so familiar, as if he had seen this chessboard laid out the same way, and then he remembered, it had felt like so long ago now, he had been so involved in the lives of supernaturals he had forgotten that there was a time he didn't know about them.
This was how Stiles had explained it to him, he recalled. It hadn't worked very well, Stiles wasn't great at explaining things, not to mention they had been distracted by Cora fainting while he had tried to explain it. But now that he knew more, he looked back at the board and it sense to him. Each colour was a different kind of supernatural. It seemed much more simple when Nogitsunes and Oni's hadn't been added into the mix.
"Maybe it's a message from Stiles," Allison suggested. "The real Stiles."
Derek asked if there could be a reason as to why he was labeled as the king, that Noah wasn't sure of, but he did tell the wolf that he was heavily guarded by Ethan and Aiden, but that really wasn't what the man was most concerned about. Derek was just one move away from being put into checkmate, that was what made it clear to Chris. It wasn't a message from Stiles, but it was a threat from the Nogitsune. He was at the loft. And he wanted them there too.
A trap, in Argent's words, though Noah disagreed. Biased, as Argent called him.
Noah asked for the man to hear him out. They were dealing with something that lacked motive, no rhyme, no reason. Meaning their enemy wasn't a killer, it was a trickster. The killing was just a by-product. It didn't want to kill them, at least that was his belief, though some of the group had quickly disagreed with that, especially Derek. Noah believed it wanted irony. He wanted to play a trick on them, a joke. They just had to come up with a new punchline.