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He knew he should have expected it, how could he have not after all?
From the very moment that Scott told him about that strange bite from the woods to the very moment he recognized Derek, Stiles Stilinski knew he was in trouble. And there was no amount of awkward flailing or biting sarcasm that could prevent him from seeing the look on his father’s face when he showed Stiles the security footage of the Alpha from the video store.
And werewolves, wasn’t that a fun conversation to have with his Dad?
Oh yeah Pops, you know how I told you I wasn’t doing drugs, it turns out I’ve just been hanging with a pack of nearly feral werewolves for a couple of months now instead. No big deal, right?
But it was over and done now, they both knew the truth, and there was no going back. Not for Scott, not for his Dad, and certainly not for Stiles. He knew without thinking where his father was tonight. He knew without thinking that as Stiles faked a smile and pretended to enjoy his ‘date’ with the girl of his dreams, his father was heading down to his mother’s grave to tell her how much he loved her and how he wished she could see Stiles tonight.
And Stiles knew, that even as Peter forced him to leave a bleeding Lydia behind, that his father would pick up on his trail faster than anyone else ever could. His father who – for the first time since they arrived in Beacon Hills – wasn’t going to be picking up his phone when the station called, because he would be too busy digging up the ground of the tool shed at the back of their property.
And when Peter left him alone in the parking lot with nothing but his jeep and a broken set of keys, Stiles knew that he wouldn’t have to wait for long before his father’s car came cruising around the corner, following the GSP tracker hidden within the jeep’s engine.
“Dad,” he greeted as he slid into the passenger’s seat, his heart pounding like a jackhammer.
“Stiles,” came the response, his father holding something out without hesitation. “It… it was your mother’s favourite,” the man admitted as Stiles took it gently, both flinching and smiling at the familiar weight and sight in his hand, “She would have wanted you to have it”.
“They’re at the Hale house,” Stiles admitted shakily, closing his eyes as his mother’s face flashed through his mind. “Peter already knows, he’s on his way”.
“Kate?” his Dad asked.
“Kate”.
GUNPOWDER
“Wait… just wait,” his father breathed into his ear, hand calming yet firm on Stiles’ shoulder.
Standing there stiffly as Chris confronted his sister, her gun pointed directly at Scott’s face, Stiles fought every protective urge he’d had over his life and just stood there uselessly. At least Allison’s father had gotten the message that Stiles and his Dad had left in his car, that he had realized the truth was the only reason that the man would survive tonight, something told Stiles that Peter would overlook Chris if the man turned on Kate for what she did.
“It’ll be fine, Stiles, don’t interfere if you don’t have to,” his father whispered.
Flinching violently as Chris fired a warning shot into the tree beside Kate, Stiles moved forward the moment his father’s hand moved to push at his shoulder instead, the door opening as his Dad stepped aside to pull it open with a whispered “I’ll cover you”.
“It’s the Alpha,” Scott declared as everyone turned to face the creaking door.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles began, filling his voice with fake cheer, keeping his hands shoved carefully into the pockets of the jacket his father had given him as he stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. “The Alpha’s car is experiencing some technical difficulties, he may be a little late to the party,” he explained, unable to stop himself from grinning as he called upon all his training to smile in the face of danger.
“Stiles?”
Hiding the way Scott’s betrayed tone had punched him straight in the gut, Stiles just forced his grin wider on his face, glancing over the guns pointed his way by the Hunters. “Chris, I see you got my message. Good,” he said in way of greeting. “Kate, you’re still alive, shame that”.
“Stiles? What are you doing?”
“In general, Scotty?” Stiles asked, shrugging his shoulders as he leaned against the doorframe with his non-dominant arm, “Or do you mean, why did I move to Beacon Hills less than a month after the Hale fire happened? Because I promise you, those two events? Purely coincidental,” he confessed awkwardly.
Scott shifted suddenly, drawing Stiles’ attention back to him for a moment as his best friend moved across to stand in front of Allison.
“I told you the kid wasn’t innocent,” Kate declared smugly, glancing at her brother quickly. “They’re working with the Alpha”.
“No we’re not”.
“Yes, you are,” Kate insisted.
“Nope,” Stiles denied bluntly, shaking his head simply.
“Yes, you are”.
“Oh you’re right, repeating yourself like a stubborn child is the perfect way to prove your point,” Stiles deadpanned, glancing over at Chris who slowly swung his gun back to point at his sister again. “See, Mr. Argent knows the truth,” he pointed out, starting forward only to freeze as the gun snapped back to aim at him.
“I checked you out,” Chris said simply, “The Stilinski’s moved to Beacon Hills a month after the fire, your mother was dying of frontotemporal dementia, your fa-”
“It wasn’t,” Stiles interrupted, hands clenching into fists in his pocket, “It wasn’t dementia. It was a curse; cast by a witch she was hunting. She said she could take one witch on her own and didn’t wait for backup, by the time Dad got there the witch was dead, but it was too late for Mom”.
“Demon-deal?”
Jaw tightening for a moment, Stiles bit back the instinctive response to tell the man to mind his own business and just nodded. “Demon-deal,” he confessed.
“A hunter,” Scott blurted, Stiles guiltily turning his eyes back to his best friend, “Your mother was a hunter?”
“Part-time,” Stiles admitted, “After I was born they retired, but they still dealt with the occasional hunt if one popped up in the area”.
“Stilinski isn’t your real name then?” Chris questioned, “You changed it, didn’t you?”
“Ye-” freezing as something flickered behind the hunter, Stiles swallowed nervously as a pair of glowing red eyes blinked into existence. “Yes. We moved to Beacon Hills because it was where Mom was born, she wanted Dad to raise me as a normal boy, not a hunter. We settled in and looked the part of a normal grieving family, and nobody looked twice when the new police officer in town arranged for shooting lessons for his son,” he explained, watching as his ‘subtle’ eye movements made Chris falter and tense up in realization.
“Everything was quiet here too, no hunts popping up in town until suddenly my best friend is being bitten by a feral werewolf and a body is found beneath a circle of wolfsbane on the old Hale property,” Stiles continued casually. “I’ve never had to pick up a gun properly, until now,” he finished, pulling his hands from his pockets and taking aim over Chris’ shoulder with his mother’s old pistol as the older hunter spun around.
He’d never been on a hunt before, Stiles’ father had always been fiercely overprotective of him ever since his mother died to the witch’s curse those eight or so years ago. That meant that when Peter launched himself out of the trees behind Chris and hurled the man into the side of the house, Stiles hesitated for just a second too long, firing his mother’s gun into the empty dirt were the Alpha had once stood as Peter threw Derek and then Scott around like they were ragdolls. Gun following the blur that was Peter as he tossed Allison out of the way and charged at Stiles, he could only take a deep breath and fire, pistol jumping in his hands as wolfsbane bullets punched into the Alpha’s chest.
Flinching as a shotgun exploded in his ears, his father’s shot knocking Peter off course and giving Stiles the chance to dive to the side, he jumped off the porch with his Dad on his heels, guns snapping around to aim into the motionless house waiting for any sign of the Alpha.
“Stiles! The bag!”
Leaping at his father’s command, Stiles dove for the porch again, this time circling around it and tearing away the loose plank of wood they’d left covering the bag they’d brought with him.
Panic stabbing through him at his Dad’s cry of pain, Stiles brought his gun up to aim at Peter, eyes flicking between his unconscious father and Kate who was choking for the air the Alpha was squeezing from her throat. Faltering as he looked between his Dad and the expectant look on Peter’s face, Stiles looked down the sight of his pistol at the perfect kill-shot he had lined up, the look in the Alpha’s eyes almost promising that he wouldn’t move if he took the shot.
He could do it, he could take out the Alpha and save Kate. The same Kate who had slaughtered almost the entire Hale family because they were werewolves. The same Kate who had even burned the children alive for just the ‘crime’ of being associated with the pack.
‘We hunt those who hunt us’.
Stiles lowered his gun.
As Peter vanished into the Hale house with Kate, Stiles grabbed the bag carefully and ran over to his father, gently rolling the man over nervously and almost sobbing in relief at the feel of a pulse beneath his fingers. Glancing over at Chris Argent to see his chest still rising and falling, Stiles barely spared a second to look at Allison, the look of betrayal on her face as she glared at him twisting his stomach painfully.
“We hunt those who hunt us,” Stiles blurted as he heard Allison standing, werewolfy snarls echoing from inside the house as Scott and Derek obviously attacked Peter. “I don’t know about you, but Kate definitely meets the criteria of ‘those who hunt us’”.
Why couldn’t things be different? Why did he have to be from a family of hunters? Why couldn’t Peter have bitten someone other than Scott so that Stiles wasn’t involved at all? In another world he could almost imagine what it would have been like if someone else had been bitten, Stiles would have graduated with Scott at his side, blissfully unaware of the big bad supernatural world out there, they’d have been happy as Scott became a vet and Stiles followed his father into law enforcement.
But it wasn’t like that at all, this was real, and so was Stiles.
“Allison,” he added, making the girl look over at him with a lost expression. “He killed your Aunt,” Stiles said simply, holding something out to her that she stared at dumbly before taking it.
The two of them flinching as Scott was thrown through the window by a black hulking beast, Stiles just exchanged a look with Allison before grabbing his pistol and firing a single shot straight into the air. Both of them moving the moment the monster Peter had become turned to face them, dropping a panting Scott to the floor, Stiles flinched as the Alpha easily caught both of the Molotov cocktails they’d thrown.
“Well this is awkward,” Stiles exhaled, raising his gun again and firing. “Really awkward,” he added when his gun just let out an empty click in response.
“ALLISON!”
Ducking as the girl caught the bow Scott had thrown to her, Stiles snatched up his father’s shotgun and stumbled to his feet. Exchanging another look as they both raised their weapons, Allison just nodded and they both fired.
Stiles was pretty sure that his shot hit the Molotov before Allison’s did, but he was willing to share the kill if she was.