Archive of Our Own

It was nearing midnight and the forest was alive with sounds. The harsh gusts of winds were whipping through the trees, making the branches and leaves rattle. The rain that dribbled down in rivulets from the roof of leaves made soft pitter-patter noises on the forest floor. Occasionally, a tree or branch snapped when a woodland creature made its trek across the forest.

The relative peace and harmony of the forest was, however, rudely interrupted by Stiles’s less than subtle attempt at clearing a path, trying to get away from the guys with the guns that were chasing him. Somehow, he had once more landed in the role of decoy, which had nothing to do with Derek and Lydia assigning him this role and everything to do with the fact that he took it upon himself to provide this service so that his companions could get the flash drive with top secret information back to its rightful owner.

It was an amazing idea if he did say so himself. As far as he could tell, only two out of the four bad guys were chasing him, but that made it two against two on Derek’s and Lydia’s end. With a werewolf and a girl who could conjure up fire from her hands, that was a fight that was unfairly matched, even if the guys happened to have wolfsbane bullets on them.

A bullet whizzed past him, burying itself in the bark of the nearest tree. Stiles flinched and instinctively hunched in on himself a little bit while trying his best to keep his footing on the slippery forest floor. Clearly, the guys were getting too close for comfort. He was going to have to rethink his definition of a good idea.

Problematically enough, Stiles had lost his baseball bat, the source of his own power, at the scene of the crime. Super strength still wasn’t a match for bullets but at least it would have given him the advantage of being able to knock the guys out cold with one hit. No such luck though.

It seemed like an unspoken role that their missions would always go pear-shaped one way or another. No matter how well they (okay, Stiles) planned and no matter how strong they (okay, Derek and Lydia) were, they (okay, Stiles) always ended in a bit of a pickle.

Stiles made a sharp right turn just as another bullet shattered bark nearby. He uttered a few choice words under his breath and then cursed himself mentally for wasting breath that he desperately needed right now. His lungs were burning, his calves were feeling the strain of uneven terrain and his thigh muscles were aching with exhaustion.  

The shouting behind him was getting closer. He made to do another sharp turn, but his foot got caught behind a root and he went down, feeling his ankle twist uncomfortably and a sharp stick splice through the fabric of his hoodie. Fueled by adrenaline, he tried to scramble back up but the baddies were closer than he’d hoped. A well placed foot on his back kept him down.

“Don’t bother getting back up,” an out of breath voice said behind him.

Stiles resisted the urge to bang his head on the ground out of fear that more sharp branches were lurking beneath the leaves and instead slowly turned around when the pressure on his back let up, facing the nuzzle of two guns and the stares of two angry (and muscled, very muscled) thieves. Rule One of being a superhero was to make sure to never end up in a vulnerable situation where you were more likely to end up dead before you could do anything to defend yourself. Stiles wasn’t very good at sticking to Rule One.

“Fellas, you should probably know that when I said I had the flash drive and then took off running, that I might have been lying a little bit and that the flash drive has probably now been returned to the Research and Development Facility of Granger Electronics .Oh, and your two colleagues, I use the term loosely, are probably in custody right now, because my dad is the sheriff and knew we were going to thwart your evil plans, basically.”

“And yet, you’re here by yourself,” Guy One sneered. “Frisk him.”

Stiles was roughly pulled to his feet and patted down none too gently. “Whoa, hey, bad touch!” he complained when the perp went as far as to check his jeans pockets, front and back.

“He doesn’t have it on him,” Guy Two growled angrily, in a growl that so closely resembled Derek that Stiles feared for a second they were dealing with werewolves. Dealing with one surly werewolf on a daily basis was more than enough, thank you very much.

“I guess we have no reason to keep him alive then,” Guy One said, pointing the gun straight at Stiles’s head again.

“Whoa, I would very much advise against that. You don’t want to add homicide to your very long list of burglary charges. Yeah, I may have gotten a look at your police files. Doesn’t look very good, does it? Also, my dad is the sheriff. If you kill me, he’s much more likely to put you six feet under than in jail,” Stiles babbled, desperately trying to come up with a plan.

Guy One grinned. “Suspected burglary charges. You’ve probably noticed then that we’ve never been caught. We’re very good at getting away, you see. We’ll take our chances. Oh, you should probably know AE sends their love.”

Stiles’s heart skipped a beat or twenty. AE was their newest enemy who they had gotten no closer to finding in the month that they’d been dealing with them, or more like, their goons. It would probably help if they could figure out his, or her, master plan, but so far, all they knew was that AE was basically keeping them in business by pulling stunts all over town. They should send him, or her, a ‘thank you’ note, probably. Business was booming!

He had every intention of charging the guys when a dark, rapidly approaching, shape caught his eye. He breathed out in relief and grinned.

“You should have run,” Stiles said gleefully just as Derek, in full wolf form, charged, going straight for Guy One’s gun arm with his teeth. Guy One howled in pain. Before Guy Two could as much as aim his gun at Derek properly, Derek had already pounced, the gun falling to the ground and Guy Two too busy bleeding from a wound to his side to bother reaching for his gun.

Stiles could hear shouts in the distance, announcing the arrival of the cavalry.

“Nice timing,” Stiles said to Derek, who hadn’t changed back yet for the sake of not offending everyone by his nakedness. Although Stiles didn’t get so much offended as turned on by now.

A low, ominous growl came from his furry companion.

“Oh, don’t you growl at me! I know this wasn’t my smartest plan, but if you’re here, then I take it the flash drive made it back to the labs so our mission succeeded,” Stiles pointed out, knowing that wasn’t going to do anything to stop the lecture that was going to follow as soon as they got back to HQ.

Derek made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a huff and nudged Stiles’s hand with his nose. Stiles noticed Derek’s nose came back a bit red. For a moment he worried that wolves could have nosebleeds, until the sticky sensation down his arm reminded him he’d sliced it open. As if on cue, his ankle started throbbing too, reminding him something had gone wrong in his fall.

“Flesh wound, dude,” Stiles said. He relieved some pressure from his ankle by leaning back against the tree.

Derek let out a displeased growl.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “By the way, they were AE’s little helpers. Another crime to add to the ever going list of fuckery that has happened so far.”

Derek tilted his head, as if he was considering what this could mean for the big picture. Just then,  his dad, followed by two deputies and two medics, burst through the trees with bright flashlights that made Stiles momentarily wince.

“Book ‘em, sheriff!” Stiles said, loudly, which earned him an eye-roll from his dad. Derek’s only response was to take off into the darkness, no doubt to change back to a human state.

“Are you okay, Stiles?” his dad asked, eying him with an expression of worry and exasperation. It was not the first time that particular expression had been bestowed upon him. Ever since joining the team in lieu of going to college roughly two years ago (although both he and Lydia were taking some online courses now too, which Lydia made him to, saying something about needing to have a degree), that expression had graced his dad’s face on several occasions.

“Fine. Occupational hazard,” Stiles replied, holding up his arm.

The medics took care of the men on the ground first, applying bandages to their wounds. One of the medics wrapped up Stiles’s arm too, despite protests that it wasn’t necessary. When everyone was more or less in a state fit for walking, they commenced the trek back to the main road, where an ambulance, three squad cars, a Camaro and a scowling, though human and, unfortunately, dressed, Derek and Lydia were waiting.    

Two bad guys were already glaring at them from the back of one squad car, while the other two were being helped in the back of another.

“We would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids,” Stiles said in a loud booming voice, to the amusement of, apparently, only Lydia. “What? Why don’t any of the bad guys ever say that?”

His dad ignored him completely. “Is he going back with you?” he asked Derek.

Derek nodded tightly.

“Make sure he ices that ankle.”

“Of course, sir,” Derek replied. He looked at Stiles. “Get in the car. And if you bleed on the leather, you’re paying for new seats.”

“Oh, ouch, so not feeling the love tonight,” Stiles complained with a smile. He saluted his dad and slid in the backseat of the Camaro, knowing better than to fight Lydia for the option to ride shotgun.

It was only a short car ride back to their headquarters, aka the re-built Hale house, which was now an impenetrable fortress, with state of the art… everything, basically. Stiles’s favorite room was the basement which had been transformed into their Tactic Center. It had six flat-screen televisions on one wall hooked up to a control panel with wifi that doubled as a table and six bar chairs. Derek had pretty much forbidden him from using the awesome set-up for Call of Duty game nights after he and Scott had gotten the place particularly dirty. Stiles still mourned the loss of their super sweet gaming center.

This time though, they didn’t head for the basement for the de-briefing, mainly because sitting in the car and then hobbling up the front steps was doing nothing for Stiles’s foot. Putting any pressure on it now hurt like a bitch and if he hadn’t gotten the okay from the medics earlier on, he would have thought for sure that it was broken.

Despite angry glances, Derek didn’t object to Stiles using him as his personal crutch, while Lydia went ahead to open the door, carrying in his bat and setting it by the door. By the time Stiles was seated on one of the three super comfy couches in the living room with his shoes off, Lydia had returned with an ice pack, painkillers and a bottle of water.

“You are truly a goddess,” Stiles praised her, downing a painkiller with half the bottle before putting his foot up on the coffee table and putting the icepack on his already swollen ankle. Derek gave him an incredibly filthy glare, which Stiles ignored, because arguing about whether or not he was allowed to put his foot up on the glass coffee table wasn’t going to help the rant he could already see building up inside of Derek.

Lydia made herself comfortable on the other couch, watching Derek expectantly. Clearly, he wasn’t going to get any help from her when the scolding started. Traitor. He helped her get away with the flash drive, damn it.

“What the hell were you thinking when you decided to lead those two on a merry chase?” Derek asked.

“Well, I was --” Stiles tried to explain, but the question was, apparently, rhetorical.

“You do not run off into the forest by yourself without means of protection with the idea of luring away guys with guns! We may have been hired to retrieve the flash drive, but accepting missions such as these do not, under any circumstances, mean we put our lives on the line. This could have been a simple retrieval mission, we could have taken the four of them if we had stayed together!”

“Valid arguments but four armed men aren’t going to engage in hand-to-hand combat when they can just fire a gun. No matter how strong and fast you are, no matter how quickly you can conjure up heat and fire, a bullet is faster. We needed a distraction,” Stiles pointed out reasonably.

“A distraction would be starting a small fire, not yelling ‘hey, I have the flash drive, maybe you idiots should chase me’ before running off while not even having the flash drive!” Derek growled.

“Yeah, me not having it was kind of the point. Look, I get it, there’s no “I” in team, we stick together, the power of three will set you free, blah blah, but me running off by myself could have been avoided,” Stiles said, innocently.

Lydia grinned. “Here we go.”

“We need more manpower, Derek. My power is pretty much useless unless I have my bat, you’re out as soon as you get hit by wolfsbane, which, by the way, seems to be happening more and more and Sparky can sustain fire for all of five seconds, which --”

“Longer, Stiles. Also, call me Sparky again and I will show you how long I can sustain it,” Lydia said, menacingly, making a small ball of fire hover above her outstretched hand.

“Oh, I saw how long you could sustain it when you set half of Derek’s bookcase on fire!”

Lydia’s eyes narrowed dangerously, while Derek got that same pinched look on his face when he was forced to be around and deal with small children in a supermarket.

“That was an accident! Also, there was some questionable content in that bookcase. I should be thanked,” Lydia spoke airily.

“Enough! Stiles, we do not need reinforcements,” Derek growled, in that tone of voice that suggested he was getting increasingly fed up with the argument they’d had a couple of times before. “And we certainly do not need Scott!”

Stiles spluttered. “I didn’t mean Scott, specifically, although he would make a great addition to the team!”

“The power to talk to dogs isn’t exactly a power we need,” Derek replied, the eye-roll evident in his voice.

“I don’t know, I could use a growl-to-English translator,” Stiles teased with a cheeky grin. Derek narrowed his eyes and growled. “Although I don’t need a translator to know that was your ‘shut up, Stiles, or I’ll rip out your throat with my teeth’ growl, which, by the way, if you do that, you will have to recruit. Just putting that out there before you make any rash decisions.”

“No Scott!” Derek said with an air of finality. “We’re doing just fine.”

Stiles snorted and gestured at his severely sprained and still throbbing ankle. “Peachy, yes.”

“That happened because you’re an idiot,” Derek said.

Stiles mimed getting shot to the chest and clutched his shirt with both hands.

Lydia snickered. “Boys, as entertaining as this argument is, I have a date with Jackson!” She announced, putting on her tan leather jacket and grabbing her purse.

“Oh, lizard boy. Has he finally deigned to make some time to you in between classes? Doesn’t his tail ever get in the way of anything?” Stiles asked, smiling brightly at Lydia, all fake innocence.

“Kanima and I could ask you about balls and fetch, but I’ll be the bigger person and bow out.” Lydia smirked, blew him a kiss, swished her hair and sauntered out.

By the time Stiles managed an indignant ‘hey!’, she was long gone and Stiles was pretty sure he’d lost another point. That made it… 6 – 25 in the digs department. Losing pathetically. Story of his life. He huffed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Tonight was just not going well. He looked up at Derek expectantly to gauge if there was more to come.

Derek deflated, the tenseness going out of his posture as he closed the distance and sat down next to him on the couch, draping an arm across the back of the couch. Stiles took that as permission to scoot a little closer until their sides were pressed together and Stiles could feel the rise and fall of Derek’s chest against his elbow.

“Secretly, Lydia is an evil mastermind and she’s just biding her time until she can take over the world,” Stiles said sullenly.

Derek huffed out a breath that sounded like a choked off laugh. Sometimes, Stiles wondered what it was that made Derek still hold back, even with him. He wanted to find out, but he knew better than to push.

“Wouldn’t surprise me. We’ll be on the lookout for signs that we need to stage an intervention,” Derek promised, brushing a kiss over his temple. Stiles murmured his agreement and let his head drop against Derek’s shoulder, closing his eyes.

The tiredness was setting in now that the adrenaline was wearing off. The steady breathing from above him was a soothing background noise and soon, Stiles felt himself drift off, breathing becoming heavier and more regular, body feeling weightless and loose.

He was somewhere in the space between unconsciousness and consciousness when he heard Derek whisper, “Stop scaring me like that.” He didn’t acknowledge it, because he was pretty sure he wasn’t meant to hear the words. Instead, he let the darkness take over, comfortable in the knowledge that nothing would be able to get him here.

--

It was an ordinary day in the life of Stiles Stilinski. If the definition of ordinary was having to duck down behind his truck because they were under fire. Well, actually, Derek was under fire, if the dart in his neck was anything to go by. It had been a full minute since the hit, which Stiles took to mean they were in the clear.

Stiles took a couple of calming breaths and pushed himself up against the jeep, carefully peeking over the hood. The parking lot was as good as abandoned, save for another three cars that were standing on the opposite side of the lot. Stiles knew the dart had not come from there. He’d seen it fly. It had been going at an angle, which meant it had been fired from a roof or a window somewhere on the opposite side of the street. Stiles let his eyes dart over the building but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Whoever had done this was long gone.

Stiles ducked down again and crossed the couple of feet between himself and Derek, who was scowling up at the sky.

“Wolfsbane?” Stiles asked, worriedly. He pulled the dart out of Derek’s neck and put it into his pocket for examination by Deaton.

Derek nodded. “My limbs feel heavy, but different. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever been hit with before.”

The problem with being the town’s only team of superheroes was that people tended to learn your weaknesses pretty fast. In the two years that they had been active, Derek had been hit with so many types of wolfsbane, often mixed with something else, that it was nothing short of a miracle that he was still standing at all. Not all variations had been lethal. Some had caused him to temporarily go blind, someone had affected his hearing, others his strength. Deaton was documenting everything for posterity, with the hopes of finding a universal cure or vaccine to immunize Derek against future wolfsbane concoctions, but that was slow-going.

“Can you get up?” Stiles asked.

Derek sat up carefully and then pushed himself to his feet, swaying a little but staying upright. Stiles breathed a sigh of relief. That was something, at least.

Unfortunately, his relief was short lived. A second later Derek went crashing back to the ground, literally tipping over backwards as if he was being pulled down. Stiles blinked owlishly at the sudden drop. Derek sat up again, but the effort was short lived. He let out a soft groan and fell back on his back.

Stiles sighed. “Right, a gravity thing, then. Well, an equilibrium thing, can’t mess with gravity.  Awesome,” he muttered sarcastically. “Okay, just stay put while I call Scott.”

“Why do we need Scott?” Derek asked irritably.

“Because I’m not hauling you up into that jeep by myself while your balance is shot to hell. I’ll pull something,” Stiles commented, hitting speed-dial three. “Just take stock of your symptoms. Let me know if anything else happens, or if you start feeling like you’re about to die.”

“Helpful,” Derek growled out.

Stiles flashed him a quick grin, just as Scott picked up. “Scott, I hope you’re not busy. I need you in the parking lot of the grocery store like yesterday. Don’t ask questions, just come.” Stiles hung up then, wanting to hurry things along before Scott started getting too curious or could tell him he was with Allison.

Stiles leaned back against the jeep and kept a close eye on Derek, and more specifically, the veins on his hands. As long as they didn’t turn black, then whatever type of wolfsbane concoction this was probably wouldn’t kill him.

While he waited, he pulled the dart out of his pocket and studied it for a couple of seconds. It didn’t take much to see that it was an AE dart. They were familiar with them, unfortunately. Stiles didn’t understand what the point of this had been. AE must have known this would, in a way, paralyze Derek. There was no better moment to strike. He, or she, was toying with them, still.

He heard Scott’s car pull up by the screeching of the tires when he pulled into the parking lot, yelling his name as soon as he was out of the car.

“Over here!” Stiles called back.

Scott appeared, looking out of breath and distinctly worried. Right, Stiles should probably have mentioned no one was dead or dying. Probably not dying. Possibly dying, but unlikely. Whatever.

“What happened?” Scott asked, looking at Derek on the ground, with a frown on his face.

“He got hit with a dart and now he can’t get up.”

Scott arched an eyebrow and Stiles could see him bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. It was probably a little funny.

“I need you to help me get him in the car,” Stiles said, before Scott could say or do anything that would set him off laughing.  

“That’s the emergency?!” Scott asked, looking anything but amused.

“He’s a heavy dude and him getting pulled down by gravity isn’t going to help matters,” Stiles defended himself.

“Great, so let’s get a forklift!” Scott suggested, sounding only half serious about the suggestion and now definitely holding back laughter. Stiles couldn’t hold in a chuckle this time either.

“As soon as this thing wears off, I’m going to kill you both,” Derek promised darkly.

“Alright, let’s do this, Scott. I’ll even sacrifice myself and take his feet.” He opened the backdoor to the jeep, putting it wide open and then got ready to lift. It was surprisingly easy to get him in the car. “Meet me at the house.”

Scott nodded and got back into his car, while Stiles did the same. Getting Derek into the house proved to be a little trickier, since that required more heavy lifting.

“You have got to stop working out. All that muscle mass is making things considerably harder,” Stiles huffed.

“I haven’t heard you complain about my muscle mass before,” Derek retorted in a decidedly teasing tone. Stiles blushed a little, because okay, yeah, no complaints.

Scott made a retching sound. “Don’t say things like that while I’m carrying you. I just might drop you and be forced to bleach my brain.”

They made it as far as the couch, so they dumped Derek there.

“What do we do now?” Scott asked. Stiles held up a finger and went into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water. He was halfway back to the living room when he realized Derek wouldn’t be able to drink from it. He grabbed three straws, fitting them into each other until he had one straw that made a downwards bow and then handed it to Derek, quite pleased with himself for his own brilliance. Then, he grabbed his cell phone and called Lydia to inform her of what happened. She promised to be right over. He hit up Deaton next, who promised to close up shop soon to come check out the patient and get the dart.

“Now, we check the monitors. Lydia will be here shortly, but in the meanwhile, you can help me look through footage to see if we can spot the attacker,” Stiles said, brain going into full on action mode.

“Stiles,” Derek growled, “Scott cannot go down in the control room. He is not a part of this team.”

Stiles smiled smugly. “Try to stop us. Holler if you need anything.”

“Should we be leaving him alone right now?” Scott asked, following his brisk pace through to the hallway and to the door at the end. He placed his palm against the scanner and pushed the door open when he heard the metallic click of the lock.

“We’ve got a camera in the living room. We’ll bring that up on one screen and monitor him,” Stiles replied. He’d like nothing more than to stay upstairs and watch Derek’s every move to make sure he was going to be okay, but they had to act quick. They might be able to catch a clue on AE’s identity this time if the camera’s on the street had picked something up. Thank God for Big Brother, Stiles thought.

“What are we looking for?” Scott asked, watching Stiles as he fired up the computer and started typing, remembering some hacking tips Danny had taught him. Stiles was really going to have another talk with Derek about this whole not expanding their team thing. They could use a computer hacker like Danny and an athlete like Scott, whose former lacrosse training would absolutely help with turning him into a weapon.

“For a couple of weeks now, we’ve been targeted by the same person. A lot of the crimes we’ve been solving have been initiated by him, or her. There’s no clear pattern, nothing to suggest that there’s a grand scheme. Right now, it appears as if he, or she, is just testing us. We haven’t found anything that could help us identify him, or her,” Stiles explained briefly.

AE hadn’t even met any of the perps they’d used in person. Stiles had been able to interview several perps after they’d been taken into custody, courtesy of his dad. They all said the same thing. No face to face contact. Untraceable calls. Envelopes that turned up out of nowhere. This guy, or girl, was nothing more than a ghost right now. It was starting to piss him off.

“All we’ve got are their initials. AE,” Stiles said, bringing up some of the security footage of the cameras onto the big monitors. “The dart was fired from across the street from an angle. Derek was behind the car when he got hit.”

“It’s pretty cool you guys have an arch enemy,” Scott said, managing to sound envious.

Stiles snorted. “Not so fun when they’re the cat and we’re the mice. I mean, I… holy shit.”

“What? Did you see anything?” Scott said, peering at the monitors intently.

Stiles smacked Scott’s arm. “No! It’s just… AE… arch enemy. They’ve named themselves Arch Enemy. Seriously, what is it with bad guys and their lack of originality? It’s like they’re not even trying these days,” Stiles complained.

“Gets the point across though,” Scott noted. “This footage is useless! We’re only seeing the street and the first floor of those buildings because the buildings on the side we were on are too low so the cameras aren’t high enough. Plus, there’s a blind spot.”

“Blind spot?” Stiles asked.

Scott nodded and walked over to two monitors. “There’s no complete overlap between these two. See? These buildings are separated by an alley. You don’t see part of this building and the alley.”

Stiles nodded, faintly amazed that Scott had picked up on this. “So, there’s a possibility AE used the alley, in which case, any footage we have could be completely useless.” He knew that alley was connected to several others, there was no way of knowing which point of entrance AE had used. While the part of town with stores generally had cameras, mostly privately owned, though still hack-able, the more residential areas didn’t have cameras, at least not ones pointed to the street.

The monitor in the living room drew his attention when Lydia appeared in the frame. She exchanged a few words with Derek and disappeared from the frame. A few seconds later, the door opened and Lydia breezed in.

“I was told to kick Scott out,” Lydia said, sitting down beside Stiles and making no attempt to forcibly make Scott leave. She didn’t have to, of course. She could send a ball of fire his way and send him running. “Alright, well, now that I’m here, you can go upstairs and start fussing over Derek like I know you want to do. Scott will update me on your findings.”

“You’re amazing. Scott, just keep looking through the footage and see if anything stands out.”

“Ay, ay, captain!” Scott saluted him. Stiles patted his back, pressed a kiss to Lydia’s cheek and hurried upstairs, Scott and Lydia’s voices growing more distant with distance and his mind being otherwise occupied.

Derek was exactly as he had left him, glowering up at the ceiling. The bottle of water was half empty, so at least his ingenious construction was successful.

“I take it Scott is not leaving?”

Stiles sat down on the coffee table. “Nope. Actually, he’s proving to be an invaluable asset.” Stiles explained their findings, or lack thereof. It would have been easier if Derek had been able to listen in, but the walls of their control center were soundproof. Sometimes, their dealings were with supernatural creatures with enhanced hearing. Giving their plan away was never a good thing.

“I might have to replace you with Scott as the brains of the operation then,” Derek grumbled.

“Aw, you consider me the brains? That’s so sweet. It’s totally Lydia though.”

“You’re the strategist.”

“Notice how most of my plans go wrong?” Stiles asked, self-deprecatingly. He’d never been very good at Stratego either.

“Notice how in order for a plan to go wrong, there has to be a plan? Better to have some kind of plan than to go in guns blazing,” Derek said.

“Well, we can add a bout of niceness to the weird symptoms of this wolfsbane thing. Hey, maybe I should get Deaton to whip me up a batch so you can compliment me all the time!” Stiles commented, jokingly. Derek was good at giving credit where credit was due, although sometimes the credit manifested itself in the form of lack of criticism. Either way, good enough for him. “Anyway, how are you feeling?”

“Like I have a bad hangover every time I try to sit up.”

“You can’t even get a hangover!” Stiles exclaimed.

“I was trying to put it into terms you were familiar with,” Derek said, smirking.

“Ugh, one time! It happened one time and my dad totally busted me and I got a fifteen minute lecture that has made me swear off alcohol forever. At least you still have a sense of humor. A lame one, but one nonetheless, that’s good. Now that you’re down and can’t actually hurt me, we should talk about expanding our team again,” Stiles suggested, grimacing a little that he was bringing this up now, of all times. He didn’t much like ambushing people, much less his boyfriend, but necessity called for it.

“Your constant change of conversation is giving me whiplash. And the answer is still no.”

“But hear me out. We can’t keep functioning like this. The bad guys know our weaknesses by now. They can knock us out just like that. Downside of being the only, and well-know, superhero team in town. With additional back up, we’ll be better prepared, better functioning. Now is a good example. We’ve got Scott and Lydia looking for clues! More productiveness already!”

“If you weren’t talking my ear off right now, you could be down there with Lydia,” Derek pointed out.

“Point still stands, this team of three isn’t working anymore,” Stiles said decisively.

Derek sighed. “So, what do you suggest? Having Scott join?”

“Yes! Look, he’s not dumb, okay? Years of playing videogames has rubbed off, somewhat. I hadn’t even spotted the blind spot. In addition, his lacrosse training has made him strong and fast. He doesn’t need werewolf help to have incredibly good reflexes. He’s been trained to react quickly and swiftly. It’s a mistake to underestimate him. A lot of people do, but that’s his advantage,” Stiles said, confidently. He knew Scott. He could be dense, but he could pick up on things. People often didn’t see that.

“And how long before people figure out his weakness? He’s human,” Derek said. Okay, now Derek was just grasping at straws.

“I’m human! Lydia is human!” Stiles exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration.

Derek let out a frustrated breath. “But you have a supernatural element on your side that is actually useful. Scott can talk to dogs, not something we need. If he joins us, we’ll only be making a target out of him.”

Stiles couldn’t deny that, but the objection didn’t stand. Derek had used the same objection when Stiles had suggested they form a team and when Lydia had joined. Their mortality was not the issue. Even Derek was mortal. Shit happened. They knew what they were fighting for and they knew the risks. That was the bottom line. Stiles said as much.

“Let me guess, me saying no is going to have zero effect?” Derek asked, already sounding resigned, which was better than flat out negative.

“Pretty much, I’ll just make him my unofficial consultant,” Stiles said, not mentioning he may have called on Scott once or twice in the past already without Derek being aware of it. Or like, sixteen times. Who was keeping track anyway?

“Fine, but he gets training. I will train him in order to assess his abilities. If I don’t deem them satisfactory, he’s out. And for now, it’s on a part-time basis. If his education suffers, he’s out.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Stiles said in a loud booming voice that made Derek scowl more. Stiles grinned. “Okay, now that we’re on the subject, I think Allison would make a great asset too. The kids at school call her Archer, you know? She has mad archery skill. Girl can aim.”

“Her sister had a nickname, too? Want to know what it was? Killer.” Derek sounded harsher now. Stiles knew he had to tread carefully. He knew about the Hale fire story and about Kate’s involvement. He also knew she was still at large and that Derek would kill her on sight, treaty with the other Argents be damned.

Stiles slid a little more to the edge of the coffee table so he could comfortable take Derek’s hand. When Derek made to pull away, Stiles just held tighter. He might not be as powerful as Derek without his bat, but he still had enough strength to resist Derek’s tugging.

“Allison is not Kate. She knows what her aunt did, she condemns is it as much as we do,” Stiles spoke softly.

“They’re still family. A family bond is stronger than you might think.”

“I know exactly how strong a family bond is, Derek. You don’t have to lecture me on that. But those kinds of bonds are not infallible. Chris warned her off, you know that. She is not to set foot here and if she does, she will have to deal with the consequences, whichever party they come from. She’s not going to come back to town.”

“You underestimate her. She swore to kill me and Laura too, you know that? She wouldn’t even hesitate to kill Uncle Peter, who would have no way of defending himself!”

Stiles winced. He’d been to visit Peter with Derek a couple of times. No change. He just sat in his wheelchair, staring into nothingness. Stiles wondered if he was still aware, or if his spirit had simply moved on because the horror had been too much to live through. Maybe there was nothing but an empty shell left. Or maybe he was still caught up in his nightmares, trapped in his own mind, without a way out. Stiles shuddered just thinking about it.

“All the more reason to have more people in our team. We’ll fight for you, and for Laura, and for your uncle. If  you don’t trust her, then trust me. I trust her. She’s my friend. She’s Scott’s girlfriend. She’s on our side.” It was a cheap shot, Stiles realized that much. Derek trusted him, wholly and unconditionally, just as much as he trusted Lydia. A team did not function without that level of trust. Derek would not dare question that trust.

“Fine,” Derek gritted out. “Same deal as Scott.”

 “I promise you, you won’t regret this,” Stiles said. He leaned over and pressed his lips to Derek briefly.

“I regret it already,” Derek muttered, when Stiles pulled away. It was only a half-hearted complaint though. Stiles knew that much.

When Deaton arrived not much later, Stiles deemed it safe to go downstairs to see if there was any progress. Not shockingly, there was none. There had been nothing suspicious on the footage. Scott and Lydia had spotted families with kids, little old ladies, people from school, including Matt and Greenberg, and various people in different states of hurry. Nothing had sprung out as suspicious. But then, they had no idea what they were looking for either. Back to square one.

--

In the following days, the universe seemed to have granted them a break, which was fortunate because it meant Derek could spend some time training the new assets. And unfortunately, Stiles and Lydia as well. They never did escape a work out. The wolfsbane hadn’t caused any further complications and had worn off a little after six hours after he’d been hit, which was a relatively short amount of time. Deaton had managed to get some residue of the dart and had analyzed it. It had been a weird mix of wolfsbane and black hellebore that had caused the vertigo. Nothing life threatening, at least not for a werewolf. Deaton had added it to his online journal that Stiles and the team had access too. It was getting ridiculously long.

Stiles was sitting on the steps of the Hale house, sweating profusely after a 12 mile group run. Scott and Allison had kept up effortlessly, and had even beaten him. It was probably shameful that he was the slowest of the group, but then, he killed it on sprints. That was his forte. Strength and speed, not endurance. Although Derek never complained about his endurance. He smirked a little at the dirty thought but then shook it off. Not now.

Derek hadn’t given Scott and Allison any rest. While Lydia and Stiles were allowed to take a breather, Derek was testing Scott’s reflexes while Allison was made to shoot at different targets, from different distances. She nailed every last one so that even Derek looked grudgingly amazed. Stiles shot him a bright grin when Derek looked over. Scott’s reflexes proved not fast enough for a werewolf, but by human standards they were more than adequate, which Derek also admitted. With some specific training from Derek, he’d be able to hone them even further.

After their little test, Allison and Scott joined them on the steps, while Derek stood in front of the foursome.

“If you are to join the team, you must be aware of the dangers. Most of our jobs aren’t life-threatening but every situation has the possibility to go wrong. We are putting our lives on the line, which is why we must trust each other. After lunch, we will run a couple of more exercises to strengthen our group awareness and trust,” Derek said, sounding like someone straight out of those self-help books.

After they nodded their understanding and Derek dismissed them with a wave of his hand, Scott, Allison and Lydia scampered inside to go devour the sandwiches waiting for them, courtesy of Allison’s mother, who, although scary as hell, was an amazing cook who could turn even sandwiches into the most delicious meal ever.

Stiles rose slowly, waiting for Derek to get on his step before wrapping his arm around his waist. Derek’s arm came around his shoulder.

“That was good, wasn’t it?” Stiles asked.

“I can work with this,” Derek replied, which was as close to a ‘you were right’ as Stiles was going to get at the moment. Good enough.

--

The peace didn’t last all that long. Stiles sensed Derek would have liked a couple of more days to make sure Scott and Allison were properly trained and that the team had gotten used to working together, but alas, crime didn’t stick to any kind of schedule. It was his dad that called the team into the police station. The six of them were piled into an interrogation room that was by no means made for six people.

“The principal of Beacon Hills high school was attacked at his home last night,” the sheriff started, “Before you say anything, no, he’s not dead but he was severely injured. It looks like he was attacked by some kind of big animal. There are claw marks all over his chest. During the ambulance ride, he kept muttering something about the devil and red eyes. Sound like anything that is up your alley?”

Derek nodded, jaw clenched. “We’ve got an alpha in town.”

“Okay, hold up, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Stiles intervened, “We need proof.”

The sheriff pulled some pictures out of his manila folder and spread them out on the table. Stiles flinched at the broad, and deep gashes, covering the man’s chest, that were highlighted by the blood. Much to their credit, no one looked away from the horrifying pictures, even if they, except for Derek and the sheriff, all looked like they were going to be sick.

“Sorry, couldn’t get anything more cleaned up for you,” the sheriff apologized. “Derek?”

Derek took a couple of seconds to study the picture and then nodded. “Werewolf.”

Stiles released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Another alpha werewolf in town, one that was injuring people? Not good, so not good.

“Why?” Lydia piped up. “We have to ask ourselves why this alpha attacked the principal. Why would another alpha come into a clearly marked territory and start killing? Aside from the fact that we’re a team of superheroes, trained to tackle these issues, there is an alpha. Derek. Is this a challenge for us… or a message to Derek?”

Stiles hadn’t even thought about that. See? This was why Lydia was totally the brains of the operation, not him. Lydia knew which questions to ask, knew which questions needed to be thought about.

Derek considered that. “Could be both, could be either. We all have ties to this man through our time spent at Beacon Hills high.”

“Or maybe the alpha went to Beacon Hills High? Feud of sorts?” Scott suggested.

Derek shook his head. “Beacon Hills has been Hale territory for decades. If there’d been another werewolf, let alone an Alpha at the school, we would have known.”

Stiles noticed Allison squinting at one of the pictures, sliding it a little closer towards herself and picking it up.

“Allison?” Stiles asked, making the entire group focus on her.

“I can tell you one thing. This attack? Not random. You can barely see it, but here, underneath the gash is a mark, something carved into the flesh. You’re not going to like it,” Allison said. She put the picture pack on the table and pointed at the spot they were supposed to be looking at.

It took Stiles a couple of seconds to see what they were supposed to be looking at, given that he was looking at it upside down, but when he noticed, he gasped and recoiled. Well, this just went from bad to apocalyptically bad.

“AE?” the sheriff asked. “I was just getting to that. Any idea what this means?”

Derek’s teeth were practically grinding together so hard that Stiles could almost hear it. “Arch Enemy, the evil genius behind most of what’s gone wrong in this town in the past couple of months.”

The sheriff’s eyes narrowed and Stiles mustered up his sweetest smile. His dad didn’t like it when they withheld important information. “Why was I not informed about this?”

“That was my decision, sheriff,” Derek stepped in. “Most of the cases were for us to handle and we didn’t want to come to you without any form of concrete proof.”

“Next time, you come to me, concrete proof or not,” the sheriff said, with a glare around the table.

“Guys, it doesn’t make sense that AE is an alpha. AE has been using Derek as their personal guinea pig to test all sort of wolfsbane concoctions. A werewolf wouldn’t use that stuff because it might backfire on himself,” Stiles pointed out, brain working at full speed now.

“Two evil geniuses then? This AE character and his pet alpha?” The sheriff suggested.

“Mutually beneficiary relationship, more like,” Stiles replied. “They want something from us, this town, Derek, whichever and are working together to get it.”

Scott groaned. “Couldn’t my first real mission have been something a little less… dramatic?”

Stiles smirked. “Welcome to the team, buddy.”

--

Seeing as how there was no time to waste, Derek sent Allison and Lydia to the hospital to see if they could visit the principal and ask him if there was anything else he could tell them, anything at all that could be significant to figure out the identity of the Alpha. He sent Stiles to go talk to the principal’s wife, who had not witnessed the attack but had found her husband to see if she could tell them anything about possible enemies. That was a long shot, but they were going in blind, so they should cover all their bases even if it was likely a waste of time. Stiles managed to talk Derek into letting him take Danny, because everyone liked Danny and they needed someone likeable to interview people. Derek didn’t put up much of a fight, too worried about time running out. They were to go back to HQ after that to look at more footage, any footage. Derek and Scott were going with them to the principal’s house, but only to see if Derek could pick up some kind of trail and follow it.

By six pm that evening, they were gathered around the kitchen table to brief each other. Stiles decided not to mention that they now seemed to have adopted Danny as member of the team as well. Not that Stiles wasn’t happy about that, he was. Hacking went so much faster with Danny there.

“We’ve got nothing,” Lydia said. “According to the principal, he was in his driveway, locking up his car, when he heard growling. He turned and got jumped, the claws slashing him. He tried to fight the animal off, saw the red eyes and black fur and then it was gone. Nothing human about the animal, nothing that could identify him in any way.”

“Aw, no collar?” Stiles quipped. That got a chuckle-turned-cough from some of the people around the table and a death glare from Derek. Sometimes the mood just needed to be lightened up a little, Stiles was good at that. The tension that was radiating off of all them was oppressive.

“No,” Allison said with a smile. “That would have been too easy.”

“Right, we don’t do easy,” Stiles remarked.

“Danny, what did you find?” Derek asked, ignoring Stiles, which, rude.

“The wife saw nothing, just heard her husband scream. By the time she ran out, the werewolf was gone. We went over whatever footage we could find near the house and along the route he seems to have taken to get home from the school to see if he was tracked, but we couldn’t spot anything out of the ordinary.”

“I picked up the werewolf’s scent but we lost it in the forest,” Derek finished.

“So, to summarize, we’ve got a big bag of nothing and two evil masterminds on the loose,” Stiles said, grimly.

“Until we figure out what they want, no one in this room is to go anywhere by themselves. I want everyone to go home in pairs, grab as much clothes as you can stuff in a bag and whatever you need and come back here. We’re camping out here,” Derek said, with such an air of finality in his voice that no one even thought about protesting. Scott went off with Allison, while Lydia and Danny formed a second pair. That left Derek with Stiles, who didn’t exactly need to go home. Some of his stuff had migrated over to the Hale house in the months that they’d been dating.

“Better call my dad, tell him to be careful.”

Derek nodded, but it didn’t look like he’d really heard him. There was a faraway look in his eyes. Stiles smiled softly, pressed a kiss to Derek’s temple and went into the kitchen with his cell phone to inform his dad that the brightest, though only, superhero team in town had diddly squat.

--

The next victim was Coach Finstock. He wasn’t quite so lucky as the principal and died on the scene.

They got the call from the sheriff’s station at three in the morning, when Stiles was all warm and cuddled up to Derek. It was hugely unfair to be woken up at such an ungodly hour while extremely comfortable. Waking up to news of a murder worked better than a bucket of ice cold water ever could.

By the time Derek finished talking to the sheriff, Stiles had everyone, with the addition of Jackson who must have arrived some time during the night, rounded up. No one looked all that presentable, pillow creases on their faces and hair complete messes, but now was not the time for vanity.

“What is he--,” Derek started, but then thought better of it at the glare Lydia sent him. Derek was probably going to blame that on priorities, really, but in reality, he was probably just terrified of Lydia, Stiles wasn’t even fooled.

“There’s been another victim,” Derek started. “It’s Coach Finstock. He didn’t make it.”

Scott let out a shocked exhale. Sure, the guy could be an asshole at times, but he meant well. He loved lacrosse, he loved his team. He didn’t deserve to be murdered.

“Same MO as the principal,” Allison stated more than guessed, because if it had been a regular homicide, they wouldn’t have been called in. Derek nodded grimly.

“The sheriff is faxing over some pictures. He’s not requested our presence this time, since there’s nothing we can do there. The coach was found dead on the lacrosse field. Maybe we’ll catch something on the security camera’s around the school this time.”

They sprung into action. Lydia dragged Jackson into the kitchen with her to get the coffee going and get them something to eat, under loud grumbling from Jackson but he went with her anyway. Danny disappeared downstairs with Allison and Scott to get the computers fired up and ready to start going through the footage.

“This is a blessing in disguise,” Derek spoke quietly, “It’s getting more specific now. The principal, the coach. It’s definitely linked to the high school and apparently, to the lacrosse team.”

Stiles nodded, having through of that himself. He smiled bitterly. “That knowledge isn’t going to help us know who’s left. We also can’t be sure that it has anything to do with the current lacrosse team. It could be about any team, past or present.”

Derek nodded. “Everyone of the guys in here has been on the lacrosse team. It could still be about us,” he said grimly. Stiles almost hoped not, because if this was a vendetta against Derek, against the team, then they were responsible for the deaths of innocent people. He found that thought hard to bear.

“Let’s find this asshole,” he said determinedly and led the way downstairs to join the others.

They didn’t get much from the footage, other than that they saw the alpha this time, all wolfed out. They had confirmation but that didn’t mean anything if they couldn’t identify him. The image of the alpha was frozen on the screen. He was in mid-run, head tilted towards the camera. His eyes shone a bright red and even in the darkness, they could see the blood on his snout. It was a horrifying sight, but Derek was studying the image closely, frowning as his eyes drifted over the shape, looking for God knew what.

“There’s something familiar about this wolf, but I can’t figure out what it is,” Derek said, turning to the group at large, who were alternating between studying Derek’s face in hopes that it would suddenly light up and they’d have an answer, and the image on the screen.

“Could be nothing. I assume alphas look more or less the same when fully wolfed out,” Stiles said. To be honest, Stiles probably wouldn’t be able to tell Derek from the alpha if they were standing next to each other. Okay, maybe he could. The look in Derek’s eyes didn’t tend to be quite as murderous as the one in the unknown alpha’s eyes.

“I’m going to the lacrosse field. Scott, you’re with me. The rest stays here until it’s a decent hour to go talk to Finstock’s wife. I want two people here at all times going through every bit of available footage you can find. Jackson, you’re going home,” Derek ordered, barely glancing at any of them as he was giving out orders.

“Derek, Jackson has supernaturally perfect eyesight. Take him with you. You can use all the help you can get,” Lydia said, reasonably. Neither Derek nor Jackson looked too pleased with her suggestion. Even Scott looked as if he’d just bitten down on something sour. Stiles smothered a laugh with a cough. Their rivalry hadn’t gotten any better since leaving Beacon Hills High.

Derek could not argue with her though. They had a ticking time bomb on their hands and no solution. Turning down any kind of help would be foolish. Derek nodded tightly.

“We’ll call if we find anything.”

“So will we!” Stiles shouted at the retreating backs of the three men. If this wasn’t such a life or death situation, he’d be seriously worried about letting them leave and then he might have just joined them himself, if only to videotape whatever crap they were going to pull on each other. He trusted their common sense enough to assume that they were going to be professional about this though. At least they were getting some excitement.

Realistically, Stiles knew there was no point in the seven of them trudging through the forest for what could be nothing, but it still felt like he was getting side-lined a little bit. Even if he had been the one pushing for an expansion of their team. He had gotten what he’d wanted, but it seemed to come at the price of watch duty.

Since seven was definitely too early to go knocking on any doors, Lydia and Allison remained behind with him and Danny to look through more footage, even though it was an exercise in futility. Stiles was going to start petitioning the council to hang camera’s at every possible point within the city limits and the forest. It would sure as hell make their job a lot easier when they needed to track someone.

Around nine, the girls left, leaving Stiles and Danny. “This is pointless,” Stiles grouched. “I’m going to get more coffee, want something?” 

Danny shook his head.

Stiles headed up the stairs to the kitchen. There had to be something that they were missing, some connection to the team, and specifically, to either Derek, Lydia or Stiles, given that they were the original three when the mess had started. If this was a case of an alpha wanting to establish dominance over this area, then it would be highly unlikely he’d go about it this way. Why kill people in the territory you want to establish control over? Why not go straight for the reigning alpha and challenge him? It didn’t make sense that he would play with them like that.

Sadly, there was no shortage of enemies. They had thwarted many evils over the two years they’d been active. Any one of them could have come back. He couldn’t remember having fought werewolves before though and someone using an Alpha as a pet? No, that still seemed highly unlikely. They were two individuals, acting jointly and working towards a common goal, he was sure of that much.

So then what? How did all of this tie together?

Derek had said the alpha felt familiar somehow, but he’d said that there hadn’t been another werewolf pack in town. Someone he’d met while he’d fled Beacon Hills with his sister after the fire then? Derek hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. He hadn’t said much about that period of his life, and much less about coming across other packs. It couldn’t be anyone of the Hales, they were all dead, except for Derek and Laura, who was in New York and had no beef with them.

And Peter. Stiles froze halfway down the stairs, freshly brewed cup of coffee in his hand. Surely not. Peter was heavily burned, hadn’t said a word in years. Besides, he could hardly be an alpha. Those powers had passed on to Derek. He shook his head. Now he was just grasping at straws.

He couldn’t shake the idea though. It kept nagging at him and only grew more persistent when by the end of the day, they had come up with a big fat of nothing. Even with Derek’s enhanced smell and sight and Jackson’s enhanced sight, they had lost the trail where the alpha had supposedly turned back to his human state.

Stiles managed to pull Lydia aside in the Tactic Center at some point during the early evening, while the others were upstairs, and shared his theory with her. She looked doubtful through most of it, but nodded slowly when he was finished talking.

“That’s a long shot, Stiles, we don’t have any evidence,” Lydia said.

“I know, but right now we don’t have anything. If this turns out to be nothing, then at least we can rule out this possibility, right?”

Lydia sighed. “We should tell Derek about this though.”

Stiles eyed her dubiously. “Right, because that’ll go over well. ‘Hey, Derek, I think your comatose uncle might be a homicidal maniac, we should do something about that’.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Fine, I’ll go by myself then,” Stiles declared.

Lydia heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll come with you, for the sake of not defying Derek any more than necessary by breaking his pairs-rule. But if you’re wasting my time with this, you owe me!”

He enthusiastically nodded his consent. They headed up the stairs, Stiles grabbing his bat, and quickly and quietly left the house with Lydia. They decided to take Lydia’s car, because it made a hell of a lot less noise than Stiles’s jeep. Secretly, Stiles was sure this was more of a control thing though.

It took all of five minutes for his cell phone to start ringing. Stiles blanched at the sight of Derek’s name coming up. He was so not a convincing liar. Derek would still be able to spot the lie through the phone connection.

“Derek, hi!” Stiles said, brightly. Lydia shot him a glare, which he took to mean that he needed to not overdo it. Or suffer the wrath of a pissed off Alpha at their secret excursion and the wrath of a pissed of Lydia. He kind of feared Lydia’s wrath more.

“Where are you?” There was a lot of noise in the background, which might just work to Stiles’s advantage on the lie front.

“Lydia needed something from her house. So we just popped up to go grab it, seeing as how we’re at a complete standstill anyway,” Stiles replied casually, to an approving nod of Lydia. His balls were safe another day.

“Next time, say something before you leave. Be careful.”

Derek hung up before Stiles could say something. “We’re safe for now, but we better make this quick.”

Sneaking into the hospital was becoming somewhat of a habit. Sometimes, it was the only way to get to interrogate patients his dad or the doctors wouldn’t allow him access to. Because of their expertise in the sneaking in area, getting in this time wasn’t much of a problem either. The staff was at minimum capacity, most of the patients were down for the night and Stiles knew exactly where Peter’s room was. All in all, it was one of their easier missions. They slipped into the room without much hassle, Lydia closing the door quietly behind them.

Peter hadn’t changed from the one time he’d seen him on a visit with Derek. He was sitting in his wheel chair, looking but not seeing out the darkened window. Half of his face was scarred and even more frightening looking in the moonlight that shone in through cracks in the blinds.

“Um, Peter, hi, it’s Stiles. Derek’s boyfriend. It’s kind of late for visits but, um, we’re here to… check up on you, I guess,” Stiles said, looking at Peter closely for any kind of recognition from the other man. There was none. He didn’t even as much as blink.

Stiles stepped in a little closer. “Either you’re an incredible actor, or my theory is a load of bull,” he said, now standing so close that he could easily hear Peter’s even breathing. Stiles waved his hand in front of Peter’s face, which he felt vaguely guilty about. Derek was going to skin him alive if he found out about this.

Stiles pulled back and shook his head at Lydia. “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

“You mustn’t doubt yourself so much, Mister Stilinski,” a smooth, deep voice that was definitely not Lydia’s said. Before he had the chance to raise his bat, or hell, turn back to Peter, Peter had him by his throat and up against the wall, eyes glowing bright red. His bat was torn away from his hand. Peter was uncomfortably close.

“Well, this didn’t take you as long to figure out as I had thought it would. I would have thought for sure my darling nephew would recognize his uncle soon enough. But his pet human beat him to it,” Peter spoke, looking mildly fascinated.

Stiles let out a strangled noise, which he would like to pass off as a noise of indignation but was more him being strangled by the hand around his throat. He struggled futilely.

“Miss Martin, I can see the reflection of your pretty ball of fire in the window. I would highly advice against sending that my way because I can turn quicker than you can throw it and then Mister Stilinski is going to end up fried,” Peter said, calmly, his eyes not once leaving Stiles’s face which was, okay, a little impressive. And a lot terrifying. “Do tell, Stiles, can I call you Stiles? What gave me away?”

Stiles figured offering his reasoning would be a lot wiser than smart-mouthing the alpha, given the fact that he could feel claws digging into his flesh. Not good.

“Impressive reasoning. I’m surprised Derek didn’t believe that… Ah,” Peter said, gleefully after a couple of seconds of intently studying his face. “You didn’t tell him. He doesn’t know the two of you are here. How delightful. This is going to be fun.”

Before Stiles could ask how this was even fun, he was hit over the head by Peter’s fist and his vision blacked out. Before he crashed to the ground and lost consciousness, he distantly heard Lydia’s scream.

--

When Stiles came to, he found himself in a dusty, dungeon, with no windows and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Stiles sighed in disappointment, pulling himself up from his half slumped position against the wall. No originality. Whatsoever. The comic books never taught him that getting kidnapped would be boring. He’d at least expected a display of torture devices or a human skull or something, instead of this blank canvas.

“When you’re done being disappointment, could you maybe put some effort into seeing if you can get those ropes loose?” Came Lydia’s annoyed voice from his right. He whipped his head around and ouch, the sudden movement made him remember getting struck hard by Peter. The back of his head was throbbing unpleasantly, but it didn’t feel all that bad.

“I’m fine, Lydia, thanks, how are you?” Stiles asked, sarcastically, but obeying nonetheless. The ropes were thick and brown, and chafed his wrists when he tried to get some wiggle room. At least the knot was decent, that was something. It would have been hugely inappropriate if the ropes had fallen off at the merest tug. “Why don’t you just burn through the ropes?”

“Can’t. There’s some kind of liquid on the ropes and the sleeves off my jacket. I’m going to go ahead and assume that if I try that, I’m going to be on fire, literally,” Lydia replied, grimacing.

It appeared Stiles had to give the bad guys a little more credit. That was actually a smart plan to prevent Lydia from using her powers. They were growing on him. Four for them.

“It appears that you were right about Peter,” Lydia said conversationally.

Stiles groaned. “Sometimes, I hate being right. Especially when no one knows where we went and we’re at the mercy of someone who is now most likely going to tear us to shreds limb by limb.”

“Your optimism is astonishing,” Lydia said dryly. “They’ll realize we’re missing soon enough and find us. Our team is not the best for nothing.”

“Lydia, we’re the only team and our plans have a way of failing miserably on the first go,” Stiles pointed out. He gave up tugging on the ropes when it became apparent that all he was accomplishing was turning his skin into a patch of red, raw flesh.

“But we get there in the end. Have a little faith. Derek will tear this town apart trying to find us, he’ll come for you,” Lydia said, sounding sincere and encouraging.

“Yes, he always does,” Stiles replied with a smirk, because moments were there to be ruined anyway.

“Gross, Stiles!” The chuckle sounded through in her voice though so Stiles figured she wasn’t too upset by the mental imagery he was providing. Stiles was definitely not upset. Now was not the time for dirty thoughts though.

The wait was the worst aspect of being kidnapped, partly because he never knew what was going to happen next, but mainly because Stiles was not a patient person, nor was he particularly good at sitting still for an extended period of time. Letting him wait was a form of torture in and of itself. It didn’t take long before he started jiggling his foot, making Lydia huff in annoyance, but she didn’t comment.

They weren’t forced to wait long this time. The door at the top of the stairs opened and Stiles squinted up at the man. He couldn’t properly see him, because the light coming in from the hallway was too bright, making it possible to only make out his silhouette. It didn’t look like Peter though. The guy in the doorway was shorter, but slightly buffer. It looked like they were finally going to meet AE. Stiles could hardly wait. No, really, he was dying to find out who had it out for them.

“Ah, my guests are awake, I see,” the man said. His voice sounded awfully familiar, young. He took a couple of steps down the stairs, his shapes and features slowly becoming more defined until he could identify him. Lydia’s surprised gasp came a second before the realization hit Stiles like a ton of bricks.

“Greenberg?! Holy shit, you’re… Well, that’s an unexpected turn,” Stiles muttered, mostly to himself.

Greenberg grinned and further descended the steps. He crouched down in front of him, the corners of his lips pulled up in an approximation of an evil smile. It made Stile’s skin crawl nonetheless.

“It’s a shame we got busted early. By the time we had carried out our plans, you would have been able to figure out who I was for yourselves, but I must say, it has been fun toying with you,” Greenberg said, fondly shaking his head at the memories. Stiles made a face, not cool. So not even cool.

“Is this the part where you reveal your evil plans because you’re not going to let us live anyway?” Stiles asked.

“If you’d prefer me killing you before all is revealed, then I’d be happy to oblige,” Greenberg said. He dropped from his crouch to sit cross-legged in front of them, already anticipating the answer. Stiles gave him a short nod. He honestly was curious right now. He was fairly certain the saying curiosity killed the cat was made up especially for him.

“It started the beginning of July when I interned at the hospital. Peter was one of the regulars I had to keep an eye on. I needed someone to vent past frustrations too and who better than a comatose patient? Little did I know Peter wasn’t really comatose, just biding his time. I told him about Beacon Hills High and the horrible time I’d had there, how Finstock kept bullying me, how no one did anything about it, not even the principal. I went to him about it once, he just laughed it off, said that was the Coach’s MO to toughen up his players.” Greenberg laughed humorlessly. “He was wrong. Coach had it out for me –”

“Hang on, hang on, you think Coach had it out for you? Dude, at least you got to play! I spent as good as my entire lacrosse career as a benchwarmer,” Stiles pointed out, with only a little note of bitterness in his voice. He’d worked on that.

“You really weren’t very good,” Lydia piped up. Stiles resented that. He’d scored the winning goal once for crying out loud.

“I excelled at baseball though,” Stiles returned, smirking. Too bad they hadn’t had a baseball team, he would have been the star.

“Hey, can we get back to my story?”

Stiles motioned for him to continue.

“As I was saying, Coach had it out for me and I had vowed to myself to one day make him pay for all the insults and humiliating comments. When Peter heard that, he graciously offered up his help, if I helped him in return.”

“Peter’s an alpha, how did that even happen?” Stiles asked curiously.

“Ah, interesting question, Mister Stilinski,” Came Peter’s voice from the top of the stairs. He descended the steps slowly, almost predatorily and sat down next to Greenberg. Stiles was very tempted to ask for tea and call this a tea party, maybe with some biscuits. He could do with some biscuits. He wisely kept his mouth shut though. On occasion, he knew when it was not a good time to talk. When Peter was baring his teeth at him, eyes glowing red, it was very definitely not a good time to talk.

“I presume you know how one becomes an alpha?” Peter said, kindly, phrasing it as a question. Stiles felt obligated to answer.

“By killing another alpha.”

Peter nodded approvingly. “Very good. My young friend here,” Peter said, slinging an arm across Greenberg’s shoulders companionably, “is very good at chemistry, did you know that? Invented all kinds of wolfsbane related concoctions that he then tested out on my dear nephew. With the more than satisfactory results, it was easy to trap an alpha and kill him, thus taking his place. I presume I don’t have to tell you what my end game here is?”

“You want Beacon Hills back. You want Derek dead,” Lydia spit out.

Peter inclined his head at her, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “That’s part of it, certainly, but I don’t necessarily want Derek dead. I want revenge, revenge on the people who slaughtered my entire family. Derek, good old noble Derek, might not feel as inclined to personally extract revenge. If I have to kill him to go ahead with the plan, then so be it, but he’s always free to join me.”

“Derek is not a murderer, he would never agree to that,” Stiles said with conviction. Derek was one of the good guys, he would never sink to that level, would never do anything more than necessary to defend their lives. That was one of their rules. Violence was only the answer in self defense and only the minimum justifiable level was allowed.

“We’ll see about that,” Peter said pleasantly.

“So, that was the big plan? Greenberg gets to wipe out the principal and the coach and in turn, you get to be alpha?” Lydia asked, sound skeptical about the whole plan.

“Well, the plan hasn’t been completed as of yet. The entire lacrosse team is on my list and that includes Jackson, Danny, Scott, and yes, Stiles, you, because none of you ever spoke up or defended me. You went along with it,” Greenberg said, with hate shining so bright in his eyes that Stiles was starting to take this whole thing a lot more seriously.

“I think you’re making a bit too much of a big deal about this, man. None of that was meant to be harmful. Coach shouted at us all, and okay, maybe a little bit more at you, but he was just passionate about the game and he wanted to make us better. It sucked, no doubt and I’m sorry, but seriously, couldn’t you have just punched him in the face and called it even?” Stiles complained.

“I assure you, this was a lot more fun. For the both of us,” Greenberg said with a grin at Peter, who nodded his head.

“It feels amazing to be an alpha, all that power. I could definitely get used to this.”

“I wouldn’t get too used to it, because when Derek and the team find you, you’re going to wish you’d never been born,” Lydia said, threateningly. Peter barely batted an eyelash at the blatant threat, which Stiles considered to be quite a feat, given that her icy tone was giving him goose bumps and they were on the same side. Peter obviously hadn’t learned yet that you do not under any circumstances mess with Lydia unless you want to pay the price.

Peter hummed and cocked his side to the right. “Looks like they’ve already tracked us down. That’s a little bit quicker than I had anticipated, but ah well.”

Greenberg looked a bit panicked at that. “We’re not ready for a confrontation. I told you, they’ve expanded their team.”

“It’s quite simple,” Peter said soothingly, “You grab your gun and you shoot at whomever you see, right? I’ll take Derek. I can’t wait to see his face.”

“I feel like we should really talk about this,” Stiles said hurriedly, not liking the way this sounded. It was often more dangerous when the bad guys weren’t prepared for action. Insane and unprepared was a recipe for disaster, a ticking time bomb. Stiles wondered with how much information the others were walking in here, if they had it all figured it out. They must have figured something out in order to make it this far. That thought wasn’t as comforting as he thought it would have been.

Peter graciously rose to his feet and pulled Greenberg up. The unlikely duo headed back up the stairs and locked the door behind them.

“This is about two seconds away from going to shit,” Stiles commented, only just managing to keep the nagging worry out of his voice.

“They wouldn’t have come here without a plan,” Lydia said confidently.

Stiles made a face. “I’m generally the one making the plans, because Derek’s plans usually involve the word ‘charge’ while seeing what happens.”

Lydia shrugged. “Hasn’t gotten him killed before he started working with us.”

“Not feeling particularly reassured,” Stiles said, just as hell seemed to break loose above them. The violent creaking of the wooden floors, gun shots, howling and shouts of pain weren’t particularly reassuring either. Even Lydia was staring up at the ceiling so determinedly that Stiles figured she was trying to see if she could look through the wood. He was guessing she wasn’t having any success.

Stiles had no idea how long the fight lasted. It felt like an eternity, sitting down there, not being able to do anything but hope for the best possible outcome. It was as frustrating as it was frightening. Fear had taken such a hold of him that he wasn’t entirely sure he would have been able to do something even if he’d wanted to. He was painfully aware of his heart pounding too fast, of his ragged breathing and the way shivers of anxiety were coursing through his body. He didn’t notice he’d been pulling on his ropes again until he managed to rub the skin so raw he was drawing blood where his flesh was thinnest. He stopped then, just as the noise above him came to a startling halt.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. The moment was suspended in time, stretched on and felt like an eternity, even thought it wasn’t more than two painful thuds of his heart before the door at the top of the stairs opened.

Stiles tensed all over, while Lydia went rigid beside him.

“They’re in here!”

Scott, that was definitely Scott.

The tension in his body released and he sagged back.

Several pairs of feet thudded down the stairs. Everyone was there, bloodied and bruised, but alive. Jackson was holding onto his arm, blood seeping through his fingers. Derek’s clothes were bloodied and red but his wounds were healing before them, slowly but surely. It made Stiles vaguely nauseous to see the gashes through the ripped fabric but if he was still standing, it couldn’t be too bad. The fact that he still had enough energy left to glower down at both himself and Lydia proved as much.

“We stumbled upon them by accident?” Stiles tried, with a sheepish smile.

Derek narrowed his eyes at him, probably catching the lie in his voice.

--

They were taken to the hospital immediately, despite loud protests from both Stiles and Lydia that they were fine. Derek’s glare and Allison actually using her words to explain that they might have concussions and they needed to be checked out shut them up eventually. Allison drove them, with Jackson in the backseat, Lydia fussing over him, while Derek and Scott, the least injured of them all, stayed behind.

During the car ride, they got the summarized version of what had happened after Stiles and Lydia had been taken. It hadn’t taken long for the pack to figure out they weren’t coming back. When they stopped answering their calls, Danny had tracked the GPS. Their cell phones had been found underneath Lydia’s car at the hospital. Apparently, it had clicked for Derek, then, because he went to Peter’s room to find it empty, Stiles’s and Lydia’s scents lingering. After checking the visitor’s log, they’d noticed one name in particular popping up a lot: Greenberg’s. They had learned from the nurses he had interned at the hospital and had kept on visiting Peter even after his internship had ended. Figuring it was as good as a clue as any, they’d had Danny track the GPS in his cell phone from HQ which led them to the house. It had been fortunate Jackson still had his cell phone number.

Greenberg had been taken down easily enough between Jackson and Scott. He was still alive, if not a little worse for wear. Peter wasn’t so lucky. Allison had hit him with an arrow doused in wolfsbane. That had merely slowed him down at first and it had taken a lot for Derek to stop his uncle from killing everyone in the room, including himself. They’d been evenly matched, Peter older and more experienced but still a tad weakened because of the coma, Derek fitter and stronger, with the advantage of the wolfsbane slowing Peter down. None of the others had been able to interfere, the fight too quick and ferocious to consider doing something that could injure Derek just as easily.

Derek had prevailed eventually, but had seen no other option than to finish him off, unwilling in the heat of the moment to take the risk that a situation like this would ever occur again.

Stiles winced at that and his heart ached for Derek, who’d now lost another member of his family. It was only him and Laura now, who was hopefully safe back in New York, keeping her head low. Stiles wished he could go to Derek right now, ask how he was, but he had a feeling that was exactly the opposite of what Derek needed right now. Derek’s method of dealing was processing it quietly. Stiles didn’t believe that was the most healthy option but it had seemed to work for him so far. Derek knew well enough he was there if he ever needed to talk, Stiles was safe in that knowledge, so he didn’t harass Allison or Jackson into giving his their cell phones so he could call Derek.

Their injuries were tended to as soon as they entered the hospital, the actual examinations passing in a blur as Stiles spent more time trying to get to the others and fighting the nurses than sitting down and waiting patiently to be checked over. They got the all clear eventually.

When they arrived back at the house, they found Scott and Danny in the living room. Scott stood when they entered and Allison practically flung herself into his arms. It was disgustingly cute how he held her and smiled, whispering God knows what into her hair. Stiles smiled.

Scott let go of her long enough to embrace him, Lydia and even, albeit reluctantly, Jackson, who, to his credit, returned the hug, even if it was a quick one. Stiles considered it progress. Team spirit and all that. They were alive and well, that definitely deserved hugs. Danny made the rounds himself.

“Glad everyone is still in one piece,” Danny said.

“It was touch-and-go there for a while,” Stiles commented.

Scott side-eyed him pretty spectacularly.

“For you guys,” Stiles conceded.  “So, what happened to Greenberg?”

“Sheriff took him away for questioning, also had some deputies clean up the, um, mess,” Scott replied, eyes going shifty in a way that the word ‘mess’ was probably meant to indicate Peter. Stiles deflated a little. Derek.

“Where is he?” Stiles asked.

“His room,” Danny replied, with a sad little smile. Stiles patted him on the back, smiled reassuringly and then went up to Derek’s bedroom to see if Derek was, in fact, dealing with this in quiet or if his room hadn’t survived any anger or distress he was feeling.

Derek’s room was actually still in one piece. Derek himself was standing by the window, back to the door. As Stiles came closer, he could see the reflection of Derek’s expression. He looked pensive but Stiles had known him long enough to know that the real emotion was in his eyes, almost imperceptible.

Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek’s waist from behind and pressed himself closer, resting his head against Derek’s shoulder. He was close enough to have seen the flash of pain, but he consciously hadn’t met Derek’s gaze in the glass. Derek relaxed the tinniest fraction and a little bit of tension seeped out of his body. He let out a quiet sigh, that Stiles felt rather than heard, and covered Stiles’s hand with his own, entwining their fingers.

He had no idea how long they stood gazing out of the window at the garden and the tree line, but that didn’t matter. Gradually, the rigidness began to ease out of his body, his muscles and stance relaxing.

Stiles was content enough to just stand there in absolute quiet, letting Derek grief in his own way and letting him feel that the weight was not his alone to bear. That was enough for now.