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tamingthemuseTitle: lost (on the river) [1/2?]
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Prompt: 443 – wyrd
Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH (it's only temporary, I promise, but not resolved in this installment). Derek/Stiles established relationship. Canon-typical gore. Angst. Bastardized Greek mythology. ~Time travel.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2210
Summary: Stiles receives a box at his father's house a few days after he has a fight with Derek. What he finds inside leads him to a horrifying discovery.
Disclaimer: It's all lies and I own nothing.
-- = --
Stiles is in the kitchen making himself a sandwich for lunch when there's a knock on the front door. He's not expecting anyone and Scott or Kira would've texted or called before showing up. There's a chance it's Derek, but he's usually pretty good about giving Stiles the space he needs whenever they have a fight.
So Stiles sets his sandwich down on a plate and heads towards the front of the house. He opens the door, but nobody's there – just a nondescript cardboard box no larger than a Game of Thrones season box-set. It's clearly not a mail delivery as there are no address or shipping labels. Stiles is wary of picking it up, but the hesitation is no match for his curiosity. He keeps his eyes on the street, sweeping left and right to see if anybody is paying him any mind as he crouches down to grab the box.
It's light, barely weighs a thing, but he can hear something moving around inside when he tilts it side to side. He sets it down on the kitchen table and just stares at it for a minute debating whether or not this is something he should call Scott or his dad for. An unmarked box dropped off randomly at the front door – it sounds super shady. But, again, Stiles has the limitless curiosity of the ballsiest felines.
The lid lifts off the box easily revealing plain white tissue paper carefully folded over its contents. Stiles peels back one side, then the other, a range of emotions quickly rushing through him starting with confusion and quickly ending with nausea.
Gaze riveted to the contents of the box, Stiles finally gives in and calls Scott, barely able to hear the ringing of the line over the deafening beat of his heart in his ears. “You need to get here. Now,” he says as soon as Scott answers.
“Wha- Stiles?”
“Now.”
“I- I'm on my way.”
Distantly, Stiles hears his phone hit the linoleum, then he's turning around and throwing up in the empty sink basin behind him.
He's still bent over the counter when Scott finds him however many minutes later. “Stiles?” he asks uncertainly as he enters the kitchen.
Stiles just blindly gestures to the box on the table. “Please tell me those aren't what I think they are,” he manages past the lump in his throat. “Please.”
Scott steps up to the table and peers inside the box where ten dirty, bloodstained claws are scattered across the tissue paper. “Stiles.”
Stiles' body wars with itself, part of him wanting nothing more than to sink down to the floor and give into the panic attack he can feel starting to wend its way around his lungs, but there's a bigger part that needs to go and find Derek, that needs to see him and make sure he's okay. “We- we have to go. I have to find him,” he tells Scott, starting for the doorway.
“We don't even know if-”
“Don't lie to me,” Stiles interrupts with an edge of fear to his voice. “I don't have to hear your heartbeat to hear the lie in your voice. They're his.”
Scott – predictably – caves, drives Stiles to the edge of town where Derek built his new house on the tract of land his family owned just inside in the preserve.
The front door isn't open, but it's unlocked, meaning Derek is either home or intends to be soon.
“I don't hear anything,” Scott tells him as they go in. “He's not here.”
It's been a few days since their fight – the same one about Stiles going back to school that always gets heated fast – and Stiles hasn't heard from him since he left to stay at his dad's. Stiles slowly moves through the house from room to room, ending in the laundry room just off the kitchen where Derek's tennis shoes are noticeably missing. “He was probably out for a run,” Stiles says quietly, mind spinning various scenarios faster than he can pick them out.
There's a trail that meanders along the edge of Derek's property before it leads deeper into the woods of the preserve that Derek likes because not many other people use it. Stiles stumbles out the back door and across the yard, breaking into a sprint that Scott easily keeps pace with. “Do you think I should call your dad?”
Stiles shakes his head even as his heart seizes in his chest with barely restrained panic. “No,” he exhales. “No, because... because Derek's okay. He's fine.” He pushes himself harder than he ever has before, lungs burning, side aching, Scott catching him every time he trips over the uneven path or his own feet.
They're pretty deep into the preserve when Scott suddenly stops, gripping Stiles' shoulder to halt him hard enough he knows he's going to bruise. “Stay- stay here,” Scott says in that serious tone he has that he only ever uses in grim or dire situations, eyes trained on the dense woods ahead of them.
Stiles' heart immediately sinks, leaving space for the panic around his lungs to expand to grip and squeeze. “Is it- Is he-”
“Stay. Here.”
Stiles watches Scott trot off further down the trail, but he's not werewolf and Scott's command won't work on him. He manages to give Scott a few seconds before following and comes upon the scene just behind his best friend.
There, strung by his wrists with rope to a tall tree with thick, sturdy branches, is Derek. He hasn't been bisected, but it's a near thing; a deep, wide gash splits his belly, gore spilling out of the wound and down his bare thighs, shins, and toes, staining the leaf-strewn ground dark with blood.
He's clearly been here for a while – a day, maybe two.
Scott's already got his phone out, dialing with one hand while the other tries to hold Stiles back.
Stiles pushes his arm away, crosses the short distance to where Derek's suspended. “Help- help me get him down. Help me get him down. Help me get him down.” He stares up at Derek's pale face as he grips around his knees, hugging them to his chest as he lifts Derek's full weight to ease some of the strain in his arms.
Scott makes a choked off noise behind him, but Stiles isn't really paying him much attention. He's just worried about Derek and getting him down. “Let me,” Scott tells him a moment later. “Let me.”
Stiles lets go and steps back and is immediately caught in some facsimile of a hug by Scott, trapped in his supernaturally strong embrace. “Get him down! GET HIM DOWN!” he cries, straining against Scott's hold. He looses track of how long he struggles, but it's long enough for his dad and Deputy Parrish to find them, Stiles catching sight of his father over Scott's shoulder. “Get him down,” he says weakly, voice hoarse. “Dad, please.”
The look on his father's face is familiar, it's not all that different from the devastation he constantly wore after Stiles' mother died. He reaches for Stiles and holds him tightly, presses his mouth against Stiles' temple as he apologizes.
More deputies arrive, the coroner. It starts to get dark, work lights are set up and attached to a small, portable generator. His father and Scott lead him away from Derek and where a couple of deputies are carefully bringing him down. Stiles keeps glancing back over his shoulder, watching as two take his legs and another shimmies up a ladder behind him. He loses sight going down a short hill when Deputy Anderson, Stiles thinks, takes a knife to the rope.
Stiles doesn't remember the drive back to his dad's, doesn't remember how he got into the house or up to his old room. He's vaguely aware of his dad helping strip out of his shirt and his jeans, quickly wiping down his face, neck, and arms with a warm, damp washcloth.
When there's nothing left to do, his dad settles at the edge of the mattress next to Stiles' hip, pulls the blankets up to his chin to tuck him in. “I'm so sorry,” he says, eyes downcast. “We'll find whoever did this, okay? We're gonna find them.”
Stiles nods slowly, closes his eyes. He's so tired. He's exhausted and his heart aches. So he closes his eyes and tries to focus on his breathing and keeping it even, fights back the lingering panic that's biding its time with measured inhales and drawn-out exhales.
-- = --
They bury him next to Laura in the family plot a week later. It doesn't feel real to Stiles; it feels like a nightmare that he can't escape but he counts his fingers over and over, coming up with ten every time. Cora's standing beside him, five of her fingers clutched tightly around five of his as the service goes on around them, as the casket is slowly lowered into the ground.
They're taken back to the house Derek and Stiles shared, the one that Stiles doesn't think he can survive in alone, and surrounded by pack. They keep close, grief palpable amongst them all; even Isaac and Jackson have returned, made the trip from Europe to be here.
Stiles continues to lose time. He blinks and an hour goes by, blinks again and it's a day later, falls asleep and a week passes. He doesn't go to work, doesn't leave the house, doesn't eat half the time. He reads and researches, buries himself under books and computer printouts, searching for anything useful, anything that could help.
Cora stays for a long time, Lydia checks up on him frequently, his dad and Scott drop by daily, but Stiles persists, confines himself to the bedroom where Derek's scent still clings to the pillows.
He doesn't know how long passes before he finally comes across a ritual that seems promising. He has everything he needs here, waits until Cora is asleep before slipping out to the backyard to set up his circle. It's by far the biggest feat he's attempted, a ritual of this magnitude, calling forth ancient entities that may be more inclined to smite him down than help him.
He calls on the fates, hoping to plead his case to Atropos. It's she he has to convince – she's the one that literally cut Derek's life short, possibly even chose how it ended. He finds it hard to believe that a daughter of Nyx, a goddess so intrinsically tied to Derek's own heritage, would be so cruel as to let his... death stand.
Greek isn't a language he speaks easily or fluently, but the Latin translation didn't feel right on his tongue. He stumbles through the ritual, enunciating carefully, finds three old women standing before him on the lawn in the scant light of a waning crescent moon and the three pillar candles arranged in an arc in front of him. Their white robes seem to glow in the darkness, the thick, red thread connecting them pulsating with an supernatural light as it unfurls from the spool in Clotho's hands and along Lachesis' rod. Atropos holds the end of the thread in one hand and a glinting pair of scissors in the other.
“Child,” Clotho starts, thankfully, in a stilted, accented English. “Why do you call on us?”
“Derek,” he says. “Derek Hale. You have to bring him back.”
Lachesis and Atropos share a look before turning their gazes on Clotho, who looks slightly cowed. “I knew he would lose nearly all of his family. I was trying to be merciful.”
Lachesis' gaze hardens as she looks at her sister. “That was not your choice to make. You were not merciful.”
“You brought back Peter,” he accuses of Clotho, making Atropos and Lachesis turn their attention to her once again.
They're all silent for a stretch of moments until Atropos nods. “We will right this injustice but will require your help.”
Stiles nods. “Anything.”
Clotho huffs. “Very well.” She unravels a length of thread from her spool and gestures Stiles forward. He shuffles on hands and knees to kneel before the Moirai, offers his hand when Clotho reaches for it. She starts to wrap the thread around his fingers, the further down his hand until only his thumb and the heel of his palm are showing.
The sisters gather around him. “You will not have much time, but with this thread you will be able to undo the harm my sister has caused,” Atropos says. “We can send your consciousness back to when this grievous mistake was made. We will stay here with you in the mortal world as you travel along the fabric of Time. Be brief.”
Clotho knots the exposed end of the thread around the strand connecting the length wrapped around his hand to the spool in her hands.
With a tug, the thread starts to unravel from his hand and Stiles is thrust into darkness.
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Prompt: 443 – wyrd
Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH (it's only temporary, I promise, but not resolved in this installment). Derek/Stiles established relationship. Canon-typical gore. Angst. Bastardized Greek mythology. ~Time travel.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2210
Summary: Stiles receives a box at his father's house a few days after he has a fight with Derek. What he finds inside leads him to a horrifying discovery.
Disclaimer: It's all lies and I own nothing.
Stiles is in the kitchen making himself a sandwich for lunch when there's a knock on the front door. He's not expecting anyone and Scott or Kira would've texted or called before showing up. There's a chance it's Derek, but he's usually pretty good about giving Stiles the space he needs whenever they have a fight.
So Stiles sets his sandwich down on a plate and heads towards the front of the house. He opens the door, but nobody's there – just a nondescript cardboard box no larger than a Game of Thrones season box-set. It's clearly not a mail delivery as there are no address or shipping labels. Stiles is wary of picking it up, but the hesitation is no match for his curiosity. He keeps his eyes on the street, sweeping left and right to see if anybody is paying him any mind as he crouches down to grab the box.
It's light, barely weighs a thing, but he can hear something moving around inside when he tilts it side to side. He sets it down on the kitchen table and just stares at it for a minute debating whether or not this is something he should call Scott or his dad for. An unmarked box dropped off randomly at the front door – it sounds super shady. But, again, Stiles has the limitless curiosity of the ballsiest felines.
The lid lifts off the box easily revealing plain white tissue paper carefully folded over its contents. Stiles peels back one side, then the other, a range of emotions quickly rushing through him starting with confusion and quickly ending with nausea.
Gaze riveted to the contents of the box, Stiles finally gives in and calls Scott, barely able to hear the ringing of the line over the deafening beat of his heart in his ears. “You need to get here. Now,” he says as soon as Scott answers.
“Wha- Stiles?”
“Now.”
“I- I'm on my way.”
Distantly, Stiles hears his phone hit the linoleum, then he's turning around and throwing up in the empty sink basin behind him.
He's still bent over the counter when Scott finds him however many minutes later. “Stiles?” he asks uncertainly as he enters the kitchen.
Stiles just blindly gestures to the box on the table. “Please tell me those aren't what I think they are,” he manages past the lump in his throat. “Please.”
Scott steps up to the table and peers inside the box where ten dirty, bloodstained claws are scattered across the tissue paper. “Stiles.”
Stiles' body wars with itself, part of him wanting nothing more than to sink down to the floor and give into the panic attack he can feel starting to wend its way around his lungs, but there's a bigger part that needs to go and find Derek, that needs to see him and make sure he's okay. “We- we have to go. I have to find him,” he tells Scott, starting for the doorway.
“We don't even know if-”
“Don't lie to me,” Stiles interrupts with an edge of fear to his voice. “I don't have to hear your heartbeat to hear the lie in your voice. They're his.”
Scott – predictably – caves, drives Stiles to the edge of town where Derek built his new house on the tract of land his family owned just inside in the preserve.
The front door isn't open, but it's unlocked, meaning Derek is either home or intends to be soon.
“I don't hear anything,” Scott tells him as they go in. “He's not here.”
It's been a few days since their fight – the same one about Stiles going back to school that always gets heated fast – and Stiles hasn't heard from him since he left to stay at his dad's. Stiles slowly moves through the house from room to room, ending in the laundry room just off the kitchen where Derek's tennis shoes are noticeably missing. “He was probably out for a run,” Stiles says quietly, mind spinning various scenarios faster than he can pick them out.
There's a trail that meanders along the edge of Derek's property before it leads deeper into the woods of the preserve that Derek likes because not many other people use it. Stiles stumbles out the back door and across the yard, breaking into a sprint that Scott easily keeps pace with. “Do you think I should call your dad?”
Stiles shakes his head even as his heart seizes in his chest with barely restrained panic. “No,” he exhales. “No, because... because Derek's okay. He's fine.” He pushes himself harder than he ever has before, lungs burning, side aching, Scott catching him every time he trips over the uneven path or his own feet.
They're pretty deep into the preserve when Scott suddenly stops, gripping Stiles' shoulder to halt him hard enough he knows he's going to bruise. “Stay- stay here,” Scott says in that serious tone he has that he only ever uses in grim or dire situations, eyes trained on the dense woods ahead of them.
Stiles' heart immediately sinks, leaving space for the panic around his lungs to expand to grip and squeeze. “Is it- Is he-”
“Stay. Here.”
Stiles watches Scott trot off further down the trail, but he's not werewolf and Scott's command won't work on him. He manages to give Scott a few seconds before following and comes upon the scene just behind his best friend.
There, strung by his wrists with rope to a tall tree with thick, sturdy branches, is Derek. He hasn't been bisected, but it's a near thing; a deep, wide gash splits his belly, gore spilling out of the wound and down his bare thighs, shins, and toes, staining the leaf-strewn ground dark with blood.
He's clearly been here for a while – a day, maybe two.
Scott's already got his phone out, dialing with one hand while the other tries to hold Stiles back.
Stiles pushes his arm away, crosses the short distance to where Derek's suspended. “Help- help me get him down. Help me get him down. Help me get him down.” He stares up at Derek's pale face as he grips around his knees, hugging them to his chest as he lifts Derek's full weight to ease some of the strain in his arms.
Scott makes a choked off noise behind him, but Stiles isn't really paying him much attention. He's just worried about Derek and getting him down. “Let me,” Scott tells him a moment later. “Let me.”
Stiles lets go and steps back and is immediately caught in some facsimile of a hug by Scott, trapped in his supernaturally strong embrace. “Get him down! GET HIM DOWN!” he cries, straining against Scott's hold. He looses track of how long he struggles, but it's long enough for his dad and Deputy Parrish to find them, Stiles catching sight of his father over Scott's shoulder. “Get him down,” he says weakly, voice hoarse. “Dad, please.”
The look on his father's face is familiar, it's not all that different from the devastation he constantly wore after Stiles' mother died. He reaches for Stiles and holds him tightly, presses his mouth against Stiles' temple as he apologizes.
More deputies arrive, the coroner. It starts to get dark, work lights are set up and attached to a small, portable generator. His father and Scott lead him away from Derek and where a couple of deputies are carefully bringing him down. Stiles keeps glancing back over his shoulder, watching as two take his legs and another shimmies up a ladder behind him. He loses sight going down a short hill when Deputy Anderson, Stiles thinks, takes a knife to the rope.
Stiles doesn't remember the drive back to his dad's, doesn't remember how he got into the house or up to his old room. He's vaguely aware of his dad helping strip out of his shirt and his jeans, quickly wiping down his face, neck, and arms with a warm, damp washcloth.
When there's nothing left to do, his dad settles at the edge of the mattress next to Stiles' hip, pulls the blankets up to his chin to tuck him in. “I'm so sorry,” he says, eyes downcast. “We'll find whoever did this, okay? We're gonna find them.”
Stiles nods slowly, closes his eyes. He's so tired. He's exhausted and his heart aches. So he closes his eyes and tries to focus on his breathing and keeping it even, fights back the lingering panic that's biding its time with measured inhales and drawn-out exhales.
They bury him next to Laura in the family plot a week later. It doesn't feel real to Stiles; it feels like a nightmare that he can't escape but he counts his fingers over and over, coming up with ten every time. Cora's standing beside him, five of her fingers clutched tightly around five of his as the service goes on around them, as the casket is slowly lowered into the ground.
They're taken back to the house Derek and Stiles shared, the one that Stiles doesn't think he can survive in alone, and surrounded by pack. They keep close, grief palpable amongst them all; even Isaac and Jackson have returned, made the trip from Europe to be here.
Stiles continues to lose time. He blinks and an hour goes by, blinks again and it's a day later, falls asleep and a week passes. He doesn't go to work, doesn't leave the house, doesn't eat half the time. He reads and researches, buries himself under books and computer printouts, searching for anything useful, anything that could help.
Cora stays for a long time, Lydia checks up on him frequently, his dad and Scott drop by daily, but Stiles persists, confines himself to the bedroom where Derek's scent still clings to the pillows.
He doesn't know how long passes before he finally comes across a ritual that seems promising. He has everything he needs here, waits until Cora is asleep before slipping out to the backyard to set up his circle. It's by far the biggest feat he's attempted, a ritual of this magnitude, calling forth ancient entities that may be more inclined to smite him down than help him.
He calls on the fates, hoping to plead his case to Atropos. It's she he has to convince – she's the one that literally cut Derek's life short, possibly even chose how it ended. He finds it hard to believe that a daughter of Nyx, a goddess so intrinsically tied to Derek's own heritage, would be so cruel as to let his... death stand.
Greek isn't a language he speaks easily or fluently, but the Latin translation didn't feel right on his tongue. He stumbles through the ritual, enunciating carefully, finds three old women standing before him on the lawn in the scant light of a waning crescent moon and the three pillar candles arranged in an arc in front of him. Their white robes seem to glow in the darkness, the thick, red thread connecting them pulsating with an supernatural light as it unfurls from the spool in Clotho's hands and along Lachesis' rod. Atropos holds the end of the thread in one hand and a glinting pair of scissors in the other.
“Child,” Clotho starts, thankfully, in a stilted, accented English. “Why do you call on us?”
“Derek,” he says. “Derek Hale. You have to bring him back.”
Lachesis and Atropos share a look before turning their gazes on Clotho, who looks slightly cowed. “I knew he would lose nearly all of his family. I was trying to be merciful.”
Lachesis' gaze hardens as she looks at her sister. “That was not your choice to make. You were not merciful.”
“You brought back Peter,” he accuses of Clotho, making Atropos and Lachesis turn their attention to her once again.
They're all silent for a stretch of moments until Atropos nods. “We will right this injustice but will require your help.”
Stiles nods. “Anything.”
Clotho huffs. “Very well.” She unravels a length of thread from her spool and gestures Stiles forward. He shuffles on hands and knees to kneel before the Moirai, offers his hand when Clotho reaches for it. She starts to wrap the thread around his fingers, the further down his hand until only his thumb and the heel of his palm are showing.
The sisters gather around him. “You will not have much time, but with this thread you will be able to undo the harm my sister has caused,” Atropos says. “We can send your consciousness back to when this grievous mistake was made. We will stay here with you in the mortal world as you travel along the fabric of Time. Be brief.”
Clotho knots the exposed end of the thread around the strand connecting the length wrapped around his hand to the spool in her hands.
With a tug, the thread starts to unravel from his hand and Stiles is thrust into darkness.
