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tamingthemuseTitle: Project Lazarus [1/?]
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Prompt: 462 - magnum opus
Warnings: Post-season 4 canon divergent.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1860
Summary: Stiles goes missing on his way home from his grandparents’. Weeks later, while searching for him, Derek disappears, too. They’re reunited when Stiles is tossed into the cell next to his - in Gerard Argent’s laboratory.
Disclaimer: It’s all lies and I own nothing.
-- = --
Things in Beacon Hills never quite settle down, but once they’re calmer - and once junior year is over - everyone in the pack takes some time to recuperate. As Alpha, Scott can’t exactly leave his territory, so between his duty to his pack and his job at the clinic, he remains in Beacon Hills where he splits his time between work, spending quality time with his mom, and training Liam. He hangs out with Kira when they can, when she’s not busy learning all about her kitsune heritage and how to control her powers from her mother. Malia’s off wherever, still looking for her mother. She occasionally texts, less frequently calls. Lydia’s vacationing somewhere on the east coast with her mother where, according to her Instagram feed, she’s spending a lot of time under an umbrella on a beach reading books that aren’t bestiaries or written in archaic Latin. Derek’s still around, laying low in the aftermath of the year, trying to learn how to full-shift at will while trying to piece together what family history remains in the Hale vault. After a week of hanging out with his dad and Scott, Stiles takes his recently overhauled Jeep on a trip down to Arizona to visit his grandparents. He’s only supposed to be gone for a month, but the longer he’s gone, the harder it is to go back, knowing what he’s - eventually - going to have to face. But, as anxious and dread-filled as he is, he feels obligated to the pack, to Scott. And he can’t leave his dad alone to face whatever horrors they’re bound to face again. So, halfway through the summer, he calls his dad and texts Scott, letting them know he’s on his way home.
Stiles leaves Page in the morning and stops for the day at a motel outside Bakersfield. The place is rundown and a little sketchy - the girl at the counter takes his cash and doesn’t ask to see an ID - but he’s seen scarier things than shady motels. He gets as much sleep as he can before heading out again the next morning, making a pitstop outside of Sacramento around three to let his dad and Scott know that he’ll be home in a few hours.
Six o’clock comes and goes. Seven. Eight. As the night gets darker and the hours pass and more calls and texts go unanswered, John and Scott get worried. It’s easy enough to get Parrish to check Stiles’ location using the GPS on his phone, and it’s still showing him outside of Sacramento.
Lydia’s home and Malia’s temporarily back in town and Derek’s not playing at his previous hermitical ways, so Scott gets his motley pack together and they all make the trip down to Sacramento.
They find the Jeep parked at a Shell south of the city, locked, windows up, his duffel bag in the back and nothing missing. His cell phone is sitting on the driver’s seat next to an unopened pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The scene looks more like it was staged than abandoned.
Scott, Liam, Kira, Malia, and Derek spread out to try and catch Stiles’ scent while John and Jordan head into the gas station to ask about Stiles and possibly viewing whatever surveillance video they have. Stiles’ most obvious trail is the path he took into the station - it’s faint, hours old, covered up by newer, fresher scents and exhaust and gas fumes - but there’s no hint of fear or anger or panic. There’s nothing of Stiles beyond the parking lot.
John and Jordan have better luck, manage to view the tapes with the approval of the local LEOs, and find the footage of Stiles filling up at one of the pumps before pulling into an empty space at the edge of the lot opposite the store. He enters at 3:23 PM - right after he called his dad and texted Scott - and heads for the bathroom before grabbing a bottle of water and a pack of peanut butter cups. He pays for his snack at the counter and leaves. He walks across the parking lot to the Jeep and is unlocking the door when a black SUV with tinted windows and without plates pulls up behind him, blocking the surveillance camera’s view. The vehicle’s not even there for fifteen seconds before it’s moving on. The Chevron across the street only has footage of Stiles’ Jeep driving past and the Korean BBQ place next door doesn’t have a camera that faces the Shell’s parking lot.
But the Shell’s lot is nearly full and John takes down as many license plate numbers he can read to try and contact as many possible witnesses as he can.
As John and Jordan work within legal bounds to find Stiles, Scott and the pack use their supernatural abilities. The pack keeps looking, expanding their search grid; they work through the night, the next day. They refuse to give up. Even when a week passes. Then two, then a month. Then senior year starts for half of the pack. Derek’s the only one with all of his time to devote to the search around Sacramento, so he spends most of his time there while John and Jordan make calls to anyone that was in the Shell station parking lot during the time Stiles was there.
Then, somewhere between Sacramento and Beacon Hills, Derek disappears, too.
-- = —
Derek wakes up shackled in a cell, slumped over on a concrete floor. Through the rusting bars he can see a brightly lit room that looks like a laboratory. Beneath the rows for fluorescent lights there are shelves and glass-doored cabinets and and tables filled with beakers and tubes and flasks, some strange and complex setup of glass containers and plastic tubing filled with dark fluid spanning half a counter in the far corner. In the middle of it all is a stainless steel table set at an angle with leather straps bolted to the shallow sides in five points. He’s been restrained enough times to deduce what he’s looking at.
As he slowly sits up, there’s a crackle of static from a loudspeaker somewhere in the room followed by a vaguely familiar voice. “Good, you’re awake.” Derek scans his surroundings once more and spots the blinking red light of a camera in the corner opposite him, above one of the shelving units. “Just in time to observe our latest trial.”
A door somewhere to the left, beyond the row of cells and outside of Derek’s view, opens with a swoosh and a scuff as two men in white lab coats drag an unconscious girl into the room. Her clothes are stained and worn, her hair a dirty, matted mess - she’s obviously homeless, a runaway teen, maybe. She’s lifted onto the table and strapped in: both ankles, both wrists, the last across her chest just beneath her collarbones.
Derek can do nothing but watch as one of the men removes a syringe from one of the glass cabinets - it’s full of the same dark fluid that’s in the tubes and glass beakers of the setup on the counter. He pushes the needle into the side of her neck and depresses the plunger. Her reaction isn’t immediate, but her whole body starts shaking after a couple of minutes before she seizes, her back bowing as she strains against where she’s strapped down. This low, pained groan starts up as she starts bleeding from her ears and nose.
It takes Derek a moment realize that her blood isn’t red. It’s dark like the fluid that was in the syringe - like Paige’s blood when she died, when her body rejected the bite. Like Gerard’s.
That’s when it clicks. The voice on the speaker. Derek feels the shiver of dread all the way down his spine. Gerard is somehow still alive. And he’s been doing some kind of experimentation this whole time.
The girl on the table slowly stops convulsing as the man that wielded the syringe writes in a small notepad. The other man produces a new syringe from a drawer behind him and draws a blood sample from the inside of one of the girl’s elbows.
Over the loudspeaker, there’s a sound of disappointment. “Another failure. Perhaps the blood of a born werewolf will change that. What do you say, pup?” Gerard hacks a wet-sounding laugh. “Welcome to Project Lazarus, my magnum opus. Meet your fellow candidate.”
The door to the left opens again and Derek recognizes the scent and the heartbeat before the boy even comes into view. Stiles — he’s been here the whole time, kept captive by Gerard for weeks. He’s dragged into the cell next to Derek’s where he’s shackled and shoved to the ground by one of the men, the more muscular one that’s sporting a bloody lip. Stiles lunges after the man as he retreats, does nothing but hurt himself as the cuffs of the shackles bite into his skin. Then, it seems, his gaze falls on the girl strapped to the table. The two men that brought her in are unstrapping her from the table and dragging her limp body from the room. They head to the right, leaving a trail of black blood on the pristine, white floor tiles.
“If we have to take your sample by force, you’ll regret it - any wounds you inflict on my men, we’ll inflict on your little pack mate,” Gerard says with a hint of dark amusement, like he wants Derek to put up a fight.
That’s when Stiles’s gaze slides away from the men that dragged him in and into Derek’s cell. The bigger man with the bloody nose is unlocking the barred door while the other is retrieving a syringe. Stiles’ scent goes even more sour with his fear and his heartbeat races a little faster. “Derek.”
The smaller man enters Derek’s cell cautiously. Derek sits cross-legged on the floor and offers his arm while holding Stiles’ gaze. He flinches at the bite of the needle as it pierces his skin but focuses on Stiles. “Are you okay?”
Stiles’ eyes go damp as he glances away. “I’m- I’m fine. How’s my dad?”
“He’s looking for you. We all are.”
Stiles gives a broken laugh. “You found me.”
“Guess I did.”
The man taking his blood fills up half a dozen vials before he leaves.
“I’ll let you two catch up while we rework our formula,” Gerard says. “We’ll start a new trial tomorrow. With any luck, your blood will be the key to our success. Young Mr. Stilinski’s life depends on it.”
Derek can’t tear his eyes away from Stiles even when Gerard’s sickly laugh devolves into a coughing fit before the sound cuts off. “We’ll find a way out of here.”
On the other side of the bars that separate their cells, Stiles attempts a weak smile as he nods. He doesn’t need to be a werewolf to hear the lie Derek’s telling. He knows they won’t be escaping this place and that nobody’s going to be able to find them.
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Prompt: 462 - magnum opus
Warnings: Post-season 4 canon divergent.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1860
Summary: Stiles goes missing on his way home from his grandparents’. Weeks later, while searching for him, Derek disappears, too. They’re reunited when Stiles is tossed into the cell next to his - in Gerard Argent’s laboratory.
Disclaimer: It’s all lies and I own nothing.
Things in Beacon Hills never quite settle down, but once they’re calmer - and once junior year is over - everyone in the pack takes some time to recuperate. As Alpha, Scott can’t exactly leave his territory, so between his duty to his pack and his job at the clinic, he remains in Beacon Hills where he splits his time between work, spending quality time with his mom, and training Liam. He hangs out with Kira when they can, when she’s not busy learning all about her kitsune heritage and how to control her powers from her mother. Malia’s off wherever, still looking for her mother. She occasionally texts, less frequently calls. Lydia’s vacationing somewhere on the east coast with her mother where, according to her Instagram feed, she’s spending a lot of time under an umbrella on a beach reading books that aren’t bestiaries or written in archaic Latin. Derek’s still around, laying low in the aftermath of the year, trying to learn how to full-shift at will while trying to piece together what family history remains in the Hale vault. After a week of hanging out with his dad and Scott, Stiles takes his recently overhauled Jeep on a trip down to Arizona to visit his grandparents. He’s only supposed to be gone for a month, but the longer he’s gone, the harder it is to go back, knowing what he’s - eventually - going to have to face. But, as anxious and dread-filled as he is, he feels obligated to the pack, to Scott. And he can’t leave his dad alone to face whatever horrors they’re bound to face again. So, halfway through the summer, he calls his dad and texts Scott, letting them know he’s on his way home.
Stiles leaves Page in the morning and stops for the day at a motel outside Bakersfield. The place is rundown and a little sketchy - the girl at the counter takes his cash and doesn’t ask to see an ID - but he’s seen scarier things than shady motels. He gets as much sleep as he can before heading out again the next morning, making a pitstop outside of Sacramento around three to let his dad and Scott know that he’ll be home in a few hours.
Six o’clock comes and goes. Seven. Eight. As the night gets darker and the hours pass and more calls and texts go unanswered, John and Scott get worried. It’s easy enough to get Parrish to check Stiles’ location using the GPS on his phone, and it’s still showing him outside of Sacramento.
Lydia’s home and Malia’s temporarily back in town and Derek’s not playing at his previous hermitical ways, so Scott gets his motley pack together and they all make the trip down to Sacramento.
They find the Jeep parked at a Shell south of the city, locked, windows up, his duffel bag in the back and nothing missing. His cell phone is sitting on the driver’s seat next to an unopened pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The scene looks more like it was staged than abandoned.
Scott, Liam, Kira, Malia, and Derek spread out to try and catch Stiles’ scent while John and Jordan head into the gas station to ask about Stiles and possibly viewing whatever surveillance video they have. Stiles’ most obvious trail is the path he took into the station - it’s faint, hours old, covered up by newer, fresher scents and exhaust and gas fumes - but there’s no hint of fear or anger or panic. There’s nothing of Stiles beyond the parking lot.
John and Jordan have better luck, manage to view the tapes with the approval of the local LEOs, and find the footage of Stiles filling up at one of the pumps before pulling into an empty space at the edge of the lot opposite the store. He enters at 3:23 PM - right after he called his dad and texted Scott - and heads for the bathroom before grabbing a bottle of water and a pack of peanut butter cups. He pays for his snack at the counter and leaves. He walks across the parking lot to the Jeep and is unlocking the door when a black SUV with tinted windows and without plates pulls up behind him, blocking the surveillance camera’s view. The vehicle’s not even there for fifteen seconds before it’s moving on. The Chevron across the street only has footage of Stiles’ Jeep driving past and the Korean BBQ place next door doesn’t have a camera that faces the Shell’s parking lot.
But the Shell’s lot is nearly full and John takes down as many license plate numbers he can read to try and contact as many possible witnesses as he can.
As John and Jordan work within legal bounds to find Stiles, Scott and the pack use their supernatural abilities. The pack keeps looking, expanding their search grid; they work through the night, the next day. They refuse to give up. Even when a week passes. Then two, then a month. Then senior year starts for half of the pack. Derek’s the only one with all of his time to devote to the search around Sacramento, so he spends most of his time there while John and Jordan make calls to anyone that was in the Shell station parking lot during the time Stiles was there.
Then, somewhere between Sacramento and Beacon Hills, Derek disappears, too.
Derek wakes up shackled in a cell, slumped over on a concrete floor. Through the rusting bars he can see a brightly lit room that looks like a laboratory. Beneath the rows for fluorescent lights there are shelves and glass-doored cabinets and and tables filled with beakers and tubes and flasks, some strange and complex setup of glass containers and plastic tubing filled with dark fluid spanning half a counter in the far corner. In the middle of it all is a stainless steel table set at an angle with leather straps bolted to the shallow sides in five points. He’s been restrained enough times to deduce what he’s looking at.
As he slowly sits up, there’s a crackle of static from a loudspeaker somewhere in the room followed by a vaguely familiar voice. “Good, you’re awake.” Derek scans his surroundings once more and spots the blinking red light of a camera in the corner opposite him, above one of the shelving units. “Just in time to observe our latest trial.”
A door somewhere to the left, beyond the row of cells and outside of Derek’s view, opens with a swoosh and a scuff as two men in white lab coats drag an unconscious girl into the room. Her clothes are stained and worn, her hair a dirty, matted mess - she’s obviously homeless, a runaway teen, maybe. She’s lifted onto the table and strapped in: both ankles, both wrists, the last across her chest just beneath her collarbones.
Derek can do nothing but watch as one of the men removes a syringe from one of the glass cabinets - it’s full of the same dark fluid that’s in the tubes and glass beakers of the setup on the counter. He pushes the needle into the side of her neck and depresses the plunger. Her reaction isn’t immediate, but her whole body starts shaking after a couple of minutes before she seizes, her back bowing as she strains against where she’s strapped down. This low, pained groan starts up as she starts bleeding from her ears and nose.
It takes Derek a moment realize that her blood isn’t red. It’s dark like the fluid that was in the syringe - like Paige’s blood when she died, when her body rejected the bite. Like Gerard’s.
That’s when it clicks. The voice on the speaker. Derek feels the shiver of dread all the way down his spine. Gerard is somehow still alive. And he’s been doing some kind of experimentation this whole time.
The girl on the table slowly stops convulsing as the man that wielded the syringe writes in a small notepad. The other man produces a new syringe from a drawer behind him and draws a blood sample from the inside of one of the girl’s elbows.
Over the loudspeaker, there’s a sound of disappointment. “Another failure. Perhaps the blood of a born werewolf will change that. What do you say, pup?” Gerard hacks a wet-sounding laugh. “Welcome to Project Lazarus, my magnum opus. Meet your fellow candidate.”
The door to the left opens again and Derek recognizes the scent and the heartbeat before the boy even comes into view. Stiles — he’s been here the whole time, kept captive by Gerard for weeks. He’s dragged into the cell next to Derek’s where he’s shackled and shoved to the ground by one of the men, the more muscular one that’s sporting a bloody lip. Stiles lunges after the man as he retreats, does nothing but hurt himself as the cuffs of the shackles bite into his skin. Then, it seems, his gaze falls on the girl strapped to the table. The two men that brought her in are unstrapping her from the table and dragging her limp body from the room. They head to the right, leaving a trail of black blood on the pristine, white floor tiles.
“If we have to take your sample by force, you’ll regret it - any wounds you inflict on my men, we’ll inflict on your little pack mate,” Gerard says with a hint of dark amusement, like he wants Derek to put up a fight.
That’s when Stiles’s gaze slides away from the men that dragged him in and into Derek’s cell. The bigger man with the bloody nose is unlocking the barred door while the other is retrieving a syringe. Stiles’ scent goes even more sour with his fear and his heartbeat races a little faster. “Derek.”
The smaller man enters Derek’s cell cautiously. Derek sits cross-legged on the floor and offers his arm while holding Stiles’ gaze. He flinches at the bite of the needle as it pierces his skin but focuses on Stiles. “Are you okay?”
Stiles’ eyes go damp as he glances away. “I’m- I’m fine. How’s my dad?”
“He’s looking for you. We all are.”
Stiles gives a broken laugh. “You found me.”
“Guess I did.”
The man taking his blood fills up half a dozen vials before he leaves.
“I’ll let you two catch up while we rework our formula,” Gerard says. “We’ll start a new trial tomorrow. With any luck, your blood will be the key to our success. Young Mr. Stilinski’s life depends on it.”
Derek can’t tear his eyes away from Stiles even when Gerard’s sickly laugh devolves into a coughing fit before the sound cuts off. “We’ll find a way out of here.”
On the other side of the bars that separate their cells, Stiles attempts a weak smile as he nods. He doesn’t need to be a werewolf to hear the lie Derek’s telling. He knows they won’t be escaping this place and that nobody’s going to be able to find them.
