No plan survives first contact with the enemy

(HP/LoTR crossover)

The newly named Fellowship of the ring sits in silence, all their eyes settled on the deceptively innocent looking golden ring sitting on the stone table. The quest that lies before them is a daunting task that weights heavily in their minds. The future of Middle Earth lies in their hands, but it does it especially in the hobbit's. A hobbit that has no training whatsoever, who is for the first time crossing the boundaries of his homeland. So very woefully unprepared...

Suddenly, the big oak doors open.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

And once they're open enough, they show another hobbit pushing against them with all his pissed off might. Not that it seems to do much against the enormous and heavy doors, but, then again, he shouldn't be able to push them open at all since they weigh more than double his weight, even soaking wet.

He grunts as he finally stops pushing, his glare a mighty thing for a being so small.

"Harlan Took, what do you think-" Gandalf starts, only to stop when the tiny thing directs his burning eyes towards him, a small hand shooting forward to shake a finger at him menacingly.

Then the hobbit, who now they're noticing is carrying a package that's longer that he is by far -not that that's a big achievement, because he's at least a head smaller than the other hobbit currently in their presence- directs his eyes to the ring on the table and scowls darkly, his features growing even more spiteful if that was even possible.

He grabs a stool and then he moves far quicker than they could have ever anticipated, because the next thing they know is that he's climbed the stool and pulled from the package he's carrying a sword, which he uses to slam against the ring after somehow managing to not topple over pulled down by its weight.

They expect him to be repelled like Gimli, but that doesn't happen. Instead, the ring starts emitting a high-pitched wail while he slams the sword down like a club, once and again, cursing in hobbitish (they guess) all the while.

Once he's done, he does some kind of hand gesture that has a shocked Frodo let out a mildly scandalized sound, and then climbs down the stool, pushing his sweaty hair back in an irritated gesture. He tucks the sword back inside its cover and then stalks towards Frodo to grab him. As he's pulling him behind him and towards the exit, he repeats the menacing finger shaking towards Gandalf.

And then he's gone, leaving the rest of the present shocked silent.

And before they can recover, three more hobbits scramble and fall from behind the bushes and then leave running after their folk.

"What in the Valar's name did just happen?" Legolas whispers, a wide-eyed Gimli nodding repeatedly and gesturing towards him, agreeing with an elf for the first time in his life.

"Hobbits," Galdalf replies weakly after a beat of silence.

Chapter 6

"MOM!!" Lisa screams through the receiver and the sound it makes when she lets go of it and it impacts with the ground is deafening.

Stiles' heart climbs up to his throat, choking him, and he can't breathe. "Oh my god," he whimpers, rooted to the spot by the sheer panic that floods him. "Nonono. Oh my god, the hunters!"

"Stiles?" Lorelle calls out worried and he snaps out of it.

"LISA! BEN!" he screams as he runs towards his dad's study as fast as he can. He slams into the door before he can stop himself and he scrambles to open it. "Ohmygodohmygod. I'M GETTING HELP BUT YOU NEED TO MAKE NOISE! YOU NEED TO MAKE NOISE SO THAT THE NEIGHBOURS CALL 911 TOO! DO YOU HEAR ME? YOU NEED TO-" The sound of a breaking window reaches him and he nearly sobs in relief as he turns his dad's scanner on. Then a shot comes through too and he does start crying. "Help," he sobs, voice so high-pitched it's unrecognizable even to his own ears. He hears the deputy's confusion but he plunges on in case they switch frequencies. "Help, they're attacking them, they're shooting at them! Pleasepleaseplease," he begs before rattling off the address. More shots are heard over1 his phone and he presses it to the microphone hoping the cops can hear it. "Please, help! Pleasepleaseplease, oh my god, please," he repeats the address again and again.

"Help is coming, kid," a cop reassures him calmly and Stiles cries harder. "Hang in there! Don't let go of the phone. Can you-"

"HELP IS COMING," he shouts to the Wilcoxes desperately, hoping they can hear.

"-tell me your name? How many assailants are there, kiddo?"

"Two, two of them I think? I can't-"

"That's alright. Do you have any siblings? Where are your parents? Can you leave the house safely?"

A roar reaches him and Stiles shakes. He can hear a kid crying in the background and the sounds of a fight. Stiles tries to recall any more information about the Wilcox family (how many kids there are, if the grandparents live there...) and he can't, he just can't.

"Kid? Don't let go! Stay with me."

"LISA, BEN!" he shouts desperately. " ARE YOU STILL THERE? HELP IS COMING! HOW MANY ARE THERE? WHERE ARE -?" he blurts at the speed of light before another crash sound comes through and chokes his voice. "HELP IS COMING!" The sound of sirens and patrol cars reach Stiles and he hasn't heard anything sweeter in his life, even though normally it makes him cringe and get anxious, thinking about his dad possibly being in a dangerous situation. "CAN YOU HEAR THE SIRENS? HELP IS COMING!"

"Mommy is hurt," suddenly a kid says tearfully and Stiles takes a sharp intake of breath, letting go of the scanner without meaning to. "Daddy too."

Stiles is safe, they're not. He knows how this is done, he's seen it before. His dad has drilled how to act in case of an emergency, this is the same, just taking on the other role. He can do this, he can. He will. He ignores the deputy that's trying to reach him through the scanner for now. He contains a sob and forces his voice to a normal level, trying to make it stop shaking out of sheer force of will. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Mommy says I shouldn't talk to strangers," the little girl whimpers. "Are you a policeman? She says I can talk to policemen."

"I'm here to help you, yes," he reassures her. "What's your name?"

"Mia," she answers finally.

"Ok, Mia," he says, tears sliding silently down his cheeks, because she sounds so, so young and shots are still firing in the background. His hands won't stop shaking, he wants to vomit. "Can you help me?"

"Ok?"

"How old are you, sweetie?"

"Mom calls me honey or honeybee," she says.

"Ok, honeybee. How old are you?"

"I'm five."

Stiles closes his eyes tightly and forcefully reins himself in again. "Are you hurt?"

"No. But mommy and daddy are. The bad guys are fighting with them and there's lots of-" she stops suddenly and Stiles chokes.

"Honeybee? Mia?" Her crying reaches him after that awful moment of silence and relief floods him. "Mia, honey, where are your siblings? Where are Ben and Lisa?"

"They're sleeping and won't wake up. I call them but they don't wake up."

Stiles takes a fortifying breath. "Help is coming, honeybee. Are you alone?"

"No, Ben and Lisa are here with me but they won't wake up."

"Honey, can you do something for me?"

"I'm really scared, I want it to stop," she cries. She sounds like she's moving and Stiles hears when she lets go of the receiver. "Lisa, wake up. Ben, please."

"Don't let go of the phone, Mia, stay with me. Mia?" She hears her picking up the phone again. "I know you are really afraid, honey, but help is on the way, ok? Now, what I want you to do is really easy, ok? Can you try?"

"I'm really scared, I want it to stop, please," she pleads again.

"I promise it will be over soon. Can you hear the sirens?"

"Is that you? Are you coming?"

"That's the police, honey, they will be there soon. Can you do that little something for me?"

"Ok."

"Do you have a place you can hide while still on the phone?"

"There's a table but mama told me not to."

"This is a special time, ok? I need you to get under that table."

"But mama said-"

"Just this time, I'm sure your mama will say it's ok."

"Are you sure?"

"I am. Now, honeybee, without getting off the phone, I want you to get under that table. Make sure you hide the chord so it can't be seen either."

"Like Hide and Seek?"

"Exactly."

He hears her move and grunt a little with whatever effort she's making. The sounds of a fight are still going strong in the background and Stiles hates them with all his being, but at the same time he's grateful because that means that someone is still alive to do the fighting.

"Are you still there?" Mia whispers fearfully.

"I'm still here, honey. I won't leave, ok?"

"I want it to stop, please," she repeats and it breaks Stiles' heart.

"It will be over soon, I promise."

"I want it to be over now," she whines crying. "Now!"

"Just a little more, ok? I promise!"

"Pinkie promise?"

"Pinkie promise."

"Ben is waking up, I'm gonna-"

"Don't get out from under the table, honeybee!"

"But-"

"Talk to him softly from where you are, honey. Tell him to hide and if he can, to hide your sister too. Tell him help is on the way."

"Ok," she says shakily. "Benny. Benny! The policeman says to hide and that help is on the way. He says to hide Lisa too. Why didn't you wake up? I'm scared," she cries. Stiles hears Ben answer something but the boy is whispering, so he can't get exactly what. "No, the policeman told me to not get out. He told me to stay hidden and you have to hide with Lisa too."

Then Stiles hears something sweeter than Mae's tooth-rotting milkshakes and better than bed will be after this long day.

"POLICE," comes through the phone, making Stiles fall to his knees in pure and unadulterated relief. "FREEZE!"

---

Just after he hears deputy Richards' unmistakable voice talking to Mia, Stiles hangs up. He stays there just sitting on the wooden floor of his dad's study with shaky breath, shaky hands, shaky everything, unable to process anything for a minute that feels like a decade, and then he cries.

He cries and cries until his face starts to feel numb and his head hurts and he can't breathe and he feels about to be sick, his stomach rolling at frightening speeds. Then he crawls because he can't muster the strength to walk but he's not going to vomit on himself or on his dad's study. He. Is. Not. No, no and no.

He crawls and crawls until he reaches the end of the hallway and thank god the door is open because he can't, he just can't right now. Hauling himself up to the toilet feels like the impossible and if he had had to open the door too, he would have just given up and vomited just there.

Then he grips the edge in a white knuckled grip and just vomits and cries and trembles and chokes with his own breath until there's nothing there to expel but bile.

"Oh, kiddo," a voice laments who knows how long after, but Stiles just can't.

Can't breathe, can't stop shaking, crying, dry heaving.

Anderson is talking but the world around Stiles is starting to spin, his vision darkening on the edges, and he just can't.

---

When Stiles wakes up his mouth tastes as if something suffered a very painful demise in it and then rotted to a vomit inducing degree. He tries swallowing, hoping that the action will alleviate it but the experiment is an utter failure, just as he expected. He grimaces and when he frowns, the pull of his facial muscles only makes his headache more pronounced. His head is aching in a way that reminds him of those times when he goes too long without sleeping properly and then he crashes for twelve hours straight. Which is no good, no good at all, because taking a pill for it will only do so much, so that means he'll have to toughen up and just hope it goes away soon.

On the bright side, though, his stomach's dialed the pain down to bearable levels and isn't feeling like it wants to turn itself inside out and claw its way up anymore. Stiles is deeply grateful for that.

He takes a deep breath.

He opens his eyes to the sight of his dad passed out on the chair beside his, by its looks and by the IV on his arm, hospital bed. His heart rate speeds up. Why is he here? He's never here! Last time it was Anderson who stood by his bed. Stiles killed a woman mere hours ago. Does he know? Is that why he's here? He tries to control himself. (There's a sound stuck in his head. It's faint as if it's coming from underwater, slowly but surely making it's way to the surface.) His dad is asleep, which means he has a bit to gather his thoughts about how he's going to handle things. And he really needs to. Like right now or he'll sink with the ship. But how?

He has no info, no data, nothing to help him decide how to act accordingly, so anything he says may make him sink even faster and deeper. Are all the Wilcoxes alive? Were the hunters apprehended, did they escape or did they die resisting arrest? Have the police found Sterling's body? Has Mia talked about the kid he talked to on the phone? Have Lisa or Ben? Questions, questions, questions... and no answers at all.

(Snap.)

His hands start shaking and he clenches them into fists to make them stop. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and counts to ten. He can't panic right now, he can't. He can't afford it. He takes another deep breath.

(Snap.)

Stiles shivers but he takes another, holds it in, lets it out.

One may argue that he has no need to hide, he may have saved the family by contacting the police as soon as the attack started, after all. The problem is that Lisa will say that Stiles called Ben, and he had no reason to call him at all since they have never met before. They aren't in the same age group so they aren't in class together, and they don't share a club or any other extracurricular activities either. Crap. How does he explain his second phone? He took it from that idiot, but it was still on when he lost consciousness yesterday (was it yesterday?). If they track it... And he called Ben with it... He can't explain it, that's the answer. Impossible. He has no way to explain everything in a way that won't sink him deeper in the sea of trouble he's in right now. Everything is tied and when they investigate (and they will, it's really suspicious, he knows) one thing will lead to another and that thing to another and so on, and everything will fall on Stiles quicker than a house of cards.

(She smiles.)

(Snap.)

He takes another deep but shuddering breath and counts.

(She smiles. Bullet. Snap.)

Stiles is shaking but he forces his mind to keep on.

Because, yes, he did kill Sterling in self-defence, but how does he explain the magically rebounding bullet since his fingerprints aren't on the gun? Moreover, that would announce him to the world as the killer of someone who has (because she still has them even though she's dead) the kind of associates that send people to kill a whole family without any qualms whatsoever, which would put his dad in danger too.

He chokes and then groans, pained because he's too tense and thinking is making his headache go from light hurts me to merely existing hurts me quite fast and the nausea is rearing its ugly head again.

"Stiles?"

(She smiles. Bullet. Snap. She smiles. Bullet. Snap. She smiles. Bullet. Snap.)

No.

Nonono.

He still hasn't a plan at all. No. He can't. And this isn't about avoiding a punishment, this is literally about dodging a bullet. Him, his dad. Nonono.

"Whoa!" John exclaims startled when Stiles turns abruptly to the side to vomit over the edge of the bed. He has nothing in his stomach it seems, because what he expels through his mouth burns like acid all the way out but has no real substance.

(She smiles. Bullet. Snap. She smiles. Bullet. Snap. She smiles. Bullet. Snap.)

His dad must have either pressed the call button or a nurse was nearby and heard him, because the next thing Stiles knows is that there's a woman holding a bowl under his mouth and talking to him softly with a deep and raspy voice that should be calming but isn't.

After the nausea eases enough to not feel like heaving with every breath he takes, Stiles lies there trying to stop shivering and failing, his mind going a mile a minute trying to think about what to say that won't mean outright lying to his dad. (Snap, snap, snap.) He never does that and he doesn't want to start now if he can help it.

"And this is why having poptarts for dinner is forbidden," John sighs tiredly just as the nurse leaves to call the doctor, and Stiles' brain screeches to a halt abruptly. "And also why you have a bedtime that you have to stop ignoring. You know, those rules are there for a reason, Stiles." What? "Oh, no, kid, don't look at me like that. As much as I hate seeing you sick, you brought this on yourself and we'll be having a serious talk about that. That bug you caught wouldn't have affected you as much if you had followed the rules," his dad finishes sternly.

Stiles' brain has yet to restart. He looks at his dad and tries to make sense of what he has just heard, but he can't. The wet and cold sensation from before is gone, but he won't stop shivering.

"I-"

"No," his dad cuts in. "You can't talk your way out of this. Do you know how many years you shaved from Anderson's life? Of mine? You irritated your throat so much that there was blood in your vomit and he thought you were dying, Stiles. He called me terrified and I rushed here from Lamont, sirens blaring, breaking who knows how many laws, only to learn that it was just that you binged on so many poptarts that-" His dad takes a deep breath, visibly reining himself in. His hand is shaking. Stiles tries to swallow the lump in his throat and fails miserably. "You will be apologizing to him, you hear me?"

"Yes, dad," he croaks softly.

What else can he say? Not only does he regret deeply having worried Anderson and his dad, but it's not like he can explain himself. Not like he can explain that he nearly died yesterday, first because of his own magic, then by psycho paedophile teacher's hand (Bang. Snap. Again and again.) and, after that, he nearly free fell four floors down trying to escape. Not like he can explain that he blew that woman's brain with the bullet that was supposed to have his name, watched her blood pool like a halo around her head. (Bang. Snap. Again and again.) Not like he can explain that he had a panic attack after having to listen to a poor little girl suffer the consequences of his actions.

(Mommy's hurt. Daddy too. I want this to stop, please.)

(Smile.)

(Snap.)

No, he can't explain that, so it will have to be the poptarts' fault. (God, he wishes it was really the poptarts' fault.) It will have to be Stiles "acting up" once again.

(The sound. The sound is in his head. Her sickening smile. The bullet and then her head snapping back. Again and again.)

"And what have you been doing? The doctor said your sprain has turned into a severe one. In one week, Stiles. If that! Is this-" His dad stops and takes a deep breath. Then he sits heavily on the bed and his eyes lock into the IV hooked into his arm. Something dark crosses his face before he can cover it, and Stiles swallows heavily, wondering if his dad is thinking about his mom right now, if his hand is itching for the weight of a tumbler filled with whiskey. His stomach churns and he has to fight the nausea with all his might. "Be honest with me, kiddo, because I'm really worried here. Is this... a call for attention?"

A what?!

"What?!" Stiles blurts out, not expecting that.

"Stiles..."

"You think that I... hurt myself? I would never-"

"Stiles, kiddo..."

"No, dad! I would never-" Stiles breathes in slowly and reminds himself he can't tell the truth about what happened (Smile. Bang. Snap. Again and again.) because his dad could get hurt and, no matter the issues he has with his dad, he'll never allow that to happen. He can't decide if he's angry and offended or hurt and bitter about the assumption, though. It's probably a mixture of them all but, whatever it is, he can't let him believe that he's hurting himself to gain his attention. "Someone stole my bike, so I had to walk back home."

"Stiles," his dad sighs after a moment of silence. "Why didn't you call me or Anderson? I could have sorted something out if Anderson couldn't pick you up."

"I couldn't," he replies without elaborating, because he never lies, and his dad sighs again.

"The battery again? You know you have to make sure your phone is charged," he reprimands him softly. He sounds exhausted and something stirs inside Stiles, but he purses his lips and doesn't correct the misconception. "And the poptarts?"

"I was really hungry and too tired to cook something. But everything hurt after... and the painkiller was only doing so much, so I think that my stomach was too queasy for poptarts and soda."

After a moment of silence, his dad sighs. "So that's what happened. I thought..."

His dad looks relieved.

Suddenly, Stiles is angry. (Smile. Bang. Snap. Mommy's hurt. Daddy too. I want this to stop, please.) He bites his lip as that anger escalates into fury, so fast that it almost feels like an instant change. His eyes prick with tears and he tries to get a grip, he really does. His dad's assumptions and misconceptions have worked in his favor this time. This is what he needed to happen and everything has fallen into place neatly, without any... It couldn't have gone better, he has no reason...

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

(Mommy's hurt. Daddy too. I want this to stop, please.)

(LISA! BEN!)

"Of course you did," he bites out without meaning to.

Crap. No. Nonono. Just no. Why? Why?! Crap.

(Stiles loves his dad and his dad loves him. He rushed here from Lamont, sirens blaring, breaking who knows how many laws, he said so himself. He's just really worried and trying to make sense of a situation of which he lacks a lot of essential information. What other explanation could he...)

(But Stiles has been bullied, again, and his dad hasn't noticed. Again. He has been in danger, again, and his dad hasn't noticed. Again. He's been hurt and nearly killed (Bang. Snap. Again and again.) and his dad, as always, hasn't noticed a thing.)

But his dad is relieved. Because he thinks that this happened because Stiles was... irresponsible.)

(Which is good, dammit! This is what Stiles wanted, right? He doesn't want his dad to know about the bullying because he can handle it himself. He doesn't want him to know about the magic and the hunters, because...)

"Care to explain that, kiddo?"

(Why put him in danger unnecessarily? Stiles can handle things just fine. This happened just because he was unprepared and lacked the necessary information, that's all. He doesn't need...)

"I'm sorry, I'm just tired and everything hurts," he whispers.

"Stiles..."

"I'm sorry," he repeats, turning to lie on his side, because he's about to cry and that won't do.

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

"Is this... about the exam?" his dad asks tentatively.

(Mommy's hurt. Daddy too. I want this to stop, please.)

Stiles bites his lips harshly again. "I'm just tired," he says once again.

(LISA! BEN!)

His dad's tired sigh is soft, but it feels like it resonates in the silent room and Stiles... Stiles just wants to sleep.

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

---

They let him go after a few hours in observation with strict orders to take it easy and to stick to a bland diet of soft foods for a few days. His stomach and trachea are bound to be sensitive for a little while, they say. And then they go on telling him to come back if it lasts more than a week.

The moment they get home, Stiles has to sit down through a painfully awkward conversation about eating healthy, about sleeping enough hours and also about how he's grounded for at least a week for not acting in a responsible manner. It takes everything Stiles has to not just scream in frustration because, for starters? His dad trying to lecture him about eating healthy is beyond rich. And the same goes for the sleeping habits.

But he has to bite his tongue about that, because he's a kid and his dad holds all the power, and... well, it's not like he can explain what happened anyways. So, in the end, he keeps his thoughts to himself and just nods in the appropiate places when his father seems to want an active answer.

And that's that.

When it's over, he just climbs to his room with a pounding headache because he's clenched his jaw muscles so much to prevent anything from coming out from his mouth. After a moment of deeply frustrated hesitation, he leaves the door open like his dad instructed, so he "can keep an eye on him".

He takes a deep breath so the vitriol he wants to spew remains in, and then opens and closes his mouth, hoping that the action will release some of the tension. It doesn't.

He takes another deep breath and then another and another before he enters his room.

He looks at the terrarium as he does, wondering if they all heard the conversation he just had with his father or not. (Damn if he doesn't feel a spike of hot shame at the thought.) Absently, he notices he can't see the fairies' light coming through the glass wall, so he guesses that, even though he feels like something the train ran over once and again, at least his power levels have recovered enough for them to raise the wards once again. Which, thank Lord Cheesus for small mercies...

"Not now," he mutters softly towards the terrarium when a couple of tiny heads pop out, hoping they understand that he can't interact right now because his dad will be keeping an eye on him and he doesn't want to risk them being found.

(And because he's feeling so raw that he just can't handle interacting with anyone right now. The talk with his dad felt like sandpaper rubbing against his skin until there was none of it left. He just... can't right now. Can't.)

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

He heads towards his bathroom to get changed into some pajamas so he can hopefully sleep for the rest of eternity, like he feels he needs to, because even just brushing his teeth feels like it takes more energy that what he has to begin with. Never mind actually taking off his clothes and then getting into his pajamas...

He takes another fortifying breath.

Just a little bit more, he tells himself.

It feels like it takes him an absurd amount of time to get ready and he can't help but sigh relieved when he's finally done. As he's getting into bed, his dad pops in to check in on him, his expression severe. Stiles' anger spikes again, terrifyingly fast, and he has to dig his nails into his palms to manage to stay silent.

Sleep takes a very long time to come.

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

---

He wakes up barely an hour after he finally managed to fall asleep with a muffled scream. Even with his eyes wide open it's there, Sterling's sadistic sneer before...

(Bang. Snap. Again and again.)

He breathes and breathes, not daring to turn on the lights because he can hear the TV downstairs and he knows it will be seen. He just doesn't have the energy for another fight right now.

He looks at the ceiling and shakes, trying to keep the tears in because the sound won't go away. The image of her smile, the sight of her head snapping backwards won't stop replaying in his head.

Then, he feels it, soft but undeniably there. And he said "not now" but she's there, warm and bright, chasing some of the shadows away.

"Eglantine," he whispers, his voice breaking with the force of his shaking.

"Stiles," she says back, settling into his cupped hands when he turns to the side.

"I-" he whimpers, shaking even more.

(I killed her.)

(I nearly got a family killed for that.)

(He didn't notice.)

Eglantine leans closer, her hand coming to rest on his cheek tenderly. "My sweet, sweet boy," she says softly, eyes full of sorrow.

"It was my fault," he gasps, curling inwards.

"No, it wasn't," Lorelle says landing softly beside Eglantine. "None of this was your fault, Stiles."

"If I hadn't-"

"No," Aelfdene cuts in sharply. "Listen to me, brat."

"Aelfdene!" Eglantine hisses angrily.

"No, you're going to listen to me, brat. Yes, when you protected yourself, it caused a chain reaction and those hunters attacked the pack. Yes, if you hadn't been involved, they wouldn't have attacked them." Stiles winces and tries to close his eyes in pain, but the elder makes firm eye contact and he can't. "Today."

"What-"

"Today, brat," Aelfdene states firmly. "Do you realize that hunters that followed the code would have contacted the Tribunal when they found one of their fellow hunters clearly killed by an outside force that was nowhere to be seen? That they wouldn't have just attacked their suspects with no proof?" Stiles' breath gets caught. "That means that they knew the Tribunal's involvement would not only not go in their favor, but they would also face the repercusions of their unsanctioned actions. Which in turn means that they instantly thought she had been found out on whatever nefarious plot she was planning and she had gotten her just desserts."

"How do you know the pack wasn't breaking the law or something?" he whispers.

"You're grasping at straws, brat," he rebukes him firmly. "You saw how she was, you saw what she did to us and what she tried to do to our children. What she tried to do to you, completely unwarranted." (Snap.) "That woman was scouting them through that kid. She was trying to find every information she could to wipe them out and chances are that they didn't suspect at all. They would have been caught unawares."

"They were caught unawares," Stiles says, eyes filling with tears.

(Stiles doesn't want to cry.)

(Stiles hasn't cried since...)

"And you saved them," Aelfdene finishes succinctly.

"You saved them, Stiles," Eglantine cuts in gently. "You were so, so brave, my sweet boy. I'm so proud of you. I know you were terrified but you sent them help. They're alive because of that. If you hadn't been there... If this hadn't happened... The hunters would have attacked at the pack's most vulnerable time, just like they did with us, and even if someone had noticed and sent help... There's no guarantee that the police would have gotten there as fast as they had this time, with you contacting them directly through the scanner."

"We don't know if they're alive," he murmurs, pained.

"They are," Lorelle informs him, but doesn't elaborate on how she got the information. Stiles is too tired to ask, he's just glad to know that they're alive. The overwhelming relief he feels makes him feel faint for a moment. "Thanks to you, Stiles."

"They're alive, sweetheart," Eglantine says, smiling even if it's a touch sad.

"They're alive," Stiles chokes out, shaking.

"Yes, brat. We all are," Aelfene sighs, sitting and leaning tiredly against Stiles' wrist.

Alive. The pack, the fairies, Stiles. They're all alive.

He closes his eyes tightly, trying not to cry with the overwhelming feeling of relief. Because they're all alive. It was horrible and they very nearly didn't make it, but they're here and... alive.

And Stiles doesn't need anyone just as much as he doesn't cry, but...

"Please, don't leave," he whispers as exhaustion starts to pull him under.

(They may want things from him but.. They came for him. They noticed. They helped. Even Aelfdene who doesn't like Stiles much.)

(And every time Stiles wakes up that night, shivering and with an almost scream crawling up his throat with claw dipped fingers, they're there, their soft glowing light chasing the shadows and the nightmares away.)

Some love, pls?

Thank you!!!!

Chapter 5

It’s a point-blank shot.

Stiles doesn’t even get the chance to scream. For an agonizingly painful fraction of a second, it burns as if he’s suddenly been submerged in molten lava, as if magma is eating away his flesh, his insides, and leaving nothing behind. Then, his brain screeches to a halt, unable to process more, and he feels nothing.

“STILES!”

Like a puppet with its strings cut down, Stiles slumps heavily to the side, nearly crushing some of the fairies under his dead weight. Some shout his name, panicked, while the others simply scream in denial. At that very same instant, the bullet rebounds against seemingly nothing before even reaching him, making Sterling’s head snap backwards unnaturally. Then the momentum makes her fall like a log to the ground, where she remains motionless, her hand still holding the gun but completely limp.

There’s a second of shocked silence before the fairies scramble to move under Stiles’ numb stare. Beriadan, Eglantine, others, are trying to get his attention and it takes him a bit to understand that they keep repeating the same thing again and again. At their behest he searches inside once more and, when he finds it, he absently cuts the flow. When did that happen? Dark starts advancing from the edge of his vision and he doesn’t care, he just wants to sleep forever.

“No, Stiles! You can’t sleep! Quick, do it or we’ll lose him! No, not you! At least three of us need to be able to fly just in case!”

Everything becomes overwhelming at once. His vision whites, his nerves light as if on fire and there’s a shrill ringing in his ears. Then, as fast as it came, it all comes to an abrupt ending, the pain reaching agonizing heights before disappearing. His stomach does a somersault that has him gagging for a moment before it settles a bit. He opens his eyes when it finally feels safe to do so, his vision blurry but clearing gradually. His body feels disconnected, as if his nerves have overheated and snapped, and sensation is seeping back in but tortuously slow. His brain is sluggish too, as if it only has energy to turn back on each neuron one at a time. The fact that he nearly died, that he didn’t care whether that happened or not, begins to set in.

Stiles swallows, his saliva so thick in his mouth that he almost chokes with it. He breathes in deeply, closing his eyes and pressing the heels of his hands to them. There’s a headache pulsing dully in his temples but its intensity is increasing steadily as the seconds pass. It’s scarily similar to the beginnings of the migraines he gets after pulling two all-nighters in a row, when he’s exhausted and needs to sleep but he can’t because insomnia has settled in. He knows he has to get out of here in case that happens, but he can’t seem to able to gather the will nor the wit to do so, much less the strength.

“Stiles, come on, honey. Up with you. We can’t be caught here!”

Right, Stiles knows that.

He breathes deeply again.

One step at a time.

He twists until he can push himself up with arms that feel newborn weak. It takes a couple of failed attempts, but he perseveres. Once he’s on all fours, he gets his feet under himself and finishes getting himself upright. He looks around, willing his mind to start working again. The more he moves, the easier it gets.

Stiles is strong. He can do this. Last year, at the worst possible moment, some assholes decided to steal from his computer some programs that Stiles had refused to sell to them. If he was able to do advanced hacking while the sounds of his own tapping on the keyboard were making him feel like his brain was liquefying, he can do this, no problem. He fried their computers and destroyed their reputations (consequently building up his own) in one fell swoop, walking out of here should be nothing.

“My prints,” Stiles rasps, the pain making his eyes squint, but fortunately, not getting worse. He needs to get out of here now. He’s so thirsty too… He remembers he has half a bottle of water and a couple of painkillers and takes them out. He shallows one pill and drinks most of the water before using what little remains to wash his face. He feels marginally less sluggish at the sudden coolness on his temples. He wishes he had the luxury of being able to wait for the painkiller to kick in but that’s not the case. “My prints are everywhere and this place is off limits,” he elaborates looking to where he was hiding. His bag is there but the papers he was holding are gone and he panics. “My papers!”

“They burned,” Eglantine answers promptly, catching on easily.

“What?”

“When you deflected that bullet they burned to ashes,” she explains.

Stiles tries to wrap his head around it and desists immediately. Now is not the time to think about how it happened. It happened and he’s alive, that’s all that is important right now. There’s a dead woman mere steps away from him, blood already pooled around her head like a macabre halo that's steadily expanding and tons of incriminating evidence against Stiles. His prints, his hair, his presence itself. The only thing he needs to know right now about those papers is that they’re not flying around the school grounds or the rooftop to point anyone in Stiles’ direction.

Belatedly, Stiles also realizes that out of all the fairies present, only three seem to be able to fly and their light is still shining brightly. The others’ glow is dull and almost nonexistent, which means that their energy is about to run out.

“Can you fly?” he asks them and they shake their heads. “Get inside my backpack just in case. We don’t know where the night guard is and if I have to hide quickly I’m not gonna be able to grab you all without being caught.” He frowns as they climb inside, thinking about the suspiciously absent guard, who should have noticed something already. “Did you see him before you came up?” he asks as he picks up the bag and puts it on. Eglantine climbs inside his hood almost instantly and answers with a negative. “That’s so weird…” Stiles murmurs and turns his attention to the fairies that still can fly. “Can you localize and distract the guard for a moment, Aelfwine? Maybe,” he swallows. “Maybe we’re lucky and he hasn’t noticed anything yet.”

“Done,” the blond answers immediately. “Srindin, come with me. Tarnsin, remain here.”

They leave and Stiles looks around himself. There’s blood and other things on the railing and the ground behind where Sterling was standing. He can’t touch that. He eyes the part where he knows his fingertips are again. Inside the little cranny where he was hiding, there will probably be traces of sweat and maybe even hair too. He has to make that evidence disappear.

He frowns. If a huntress was killed does that mean that more hunters will come? More hunters that don’t follow the code, that will use this to start a witch hunt or maybe will use it to incriminate and justify taking out the creatures she was hunting? Or even if they follow the code, how can Stiles prove that this was self-defense when he himself doesn’t even know exactly what happened?

So what now? Does he only erase his presence here or does he have to get rid of the body? And blood. And the gun. Maybe make it look like she left and send an email in her name resigning due to extreme circumstances? And create a fake trail of her leaving, make her car disappear… but he doesn’t know how to drive… and how is he going to carry her body?

This is insane.

And completely impossible.

It’s just…

He’s exhausted and hurt, but even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be able to carry her dead weight (pun not intended), much less do that while avoiding the night guard. He wouldn’t be able to pull that off even if the fairies weren’t exhausted too. There’s no way to do it, it’s impossible and insane and really dangerous and he’s completely in over his head, and everything is going to explode in his face. There’s. No. Way. Damn the twins, damn his classmates, damn Sterling. Damn himself, damn his choices. Damn everyone. And fuck them too. Fuck everything. And…

Except…

Kate admitted that she didn’t think him a supernatural creature… so maybe she hasn’t talked about him to anyone yet? So he can call the police and… tell the truth? The thought of having to talk about the bullying makes him shiver in revulsion but there’s no other way around it. He’ll have to tell the truth about hiding (but say that the door was open, he can pin that on her) and waiting for all his classmates to leave. He’ll tell them about seeing her with that boy and waiting even longer to leave. He’ll tell them that he was caught leaving and that she took the gun out and started spouting nonsense about monsters. He’ll tell them that he ran back to the rooftop when she was blocking the exit, hit her as she passed and somehow got the gun.

Which means that he has to check if the keys she used to enter are still in the door, because, unless she locked it behind her to close the escape route, he doubts that she waited to take the keys when she was in the middle of a pursuit and that would contradict his version of the events. Also… He shallows thickly. He has to get his prints on the gun.

He limps toward the door first, pointedly not looking at the body yet, and looks at the door. It’s closed. Just as he’s turning to go back to the body, Srindin comes back though the gap in a corner, clearly winded and panting from the effort.

“There are more of them!”

“What.”

“Quick, Aelfwine is distracting them! Hide!”

“They’ll catch me for sure if I hide here!” he whispers furiously, looking around fast, trying to get his still somewhat sluggish brain to cooperate. His panic rises and his adrenaline with it, which instantly fires him up. “Where are they?”

“We tried to get them to follow us to the other building but they caught on. Last time they were near the stairs on the end and coming here! We have to hide!”

“Just- Let me think!”

Stiles knows he’s running out of time. He can’t risk searching for the keys, leaving his prints all over the body, and, also, taking the stairs is the worst thing he could do because not only is Aelfwine leading the hunters on a merry chase on that level but at some point he's going to have to beat a hasty retreat and follow Srindin upstairs to escape them. If he tries hiding in the cranny from before, it will be suicide because that’s the first place they’re going to look if they have any brains at all.

He looks around himself, heart pounding and his eyes settle on the gun. Should he? He’s defenseless right now… He takes a couple of steps, closes his eyes and takes in a trembling breath. No, taking it would be the worst thing he could do. His dad is the sheriff and he hasn’t been able to erase the evidence. If they investigate this, he still can claim ignorance even after admitting to his presence on the rooftop. But leaving it loaded… but to unload it he has to touch it...

“Stiles, what are you doing?” Beriadan yells, prompting him into snapping out of it.

He has to leave it behind and pray that is the best decision. He turns his back to her.

Stiles can either remain here and die, or try his luck over the railing, trying to climb down to a level below. His ankle is not hurting horribly thanks to the painkiller and the headache has gone back to a manageable level, so he might even make it. He runs directly to the other side of the door and climbs over the railing, his breath stuttering at the height. He wraps his hands around the start of the drain to help himself climb down and goes for it.

“Foolish child!” Aelfdene hisses alarmed. "Are you out of-!"

“There’s no other-!”

“Tarnsin,” Aelfdene interrupts him, “make his feet stick to the wall to help him climb down. Put this array on the wall under his shoes and deactivate it when he needs to take another step, quick!” Not even a minute later, the points of Stiles’ shoes are stuck to the wall and the relief nearly makes his knees weak.

“Try to take big steps, Stiles. The less runes he has to place, the better,” Lorelle instructs, her voice so calm in the face of the storm that Stiles' frayed nerves soothe a bit.

Stiles nods and doesn’t let himself stop or doubt. His arms start shaking from the effort not long after he starts. He advances about half a meter, more out of sheer force of will and adrenaline, when he gets stuck. There’s a big separation between the drain and the window that doesn’t let him advance any more. If he lets go of the drain, he doesn't have anything to hold on to and Tarnsin is already stretching himself thin to keep up with sticking Stiles' feet to the wall. Srindin can fly too, but he's still winded, trying to recover from whatever happened to him after he left with Aelfwine, who hasn’t even returned yet.

He could keep descending, but he has no more time. When the hunters reach the rooftop they're going to find the door closed and assume whoever killed her is still there. If they look over the railing and down (and seeing as they hunt supernatural creatures that wouldn't be so strange) they'll see him easily in this darkness, because the moon's light is pretty bright today. He has to get to one of those windows.

Stiles' only chance is to not go any further, let himself hang from the drain and swing himself down to the windowsill. It isn't that far, with a good push he'll make it with no problems. The only tricky part is that he has to grab whatever he can to prevent himself from rebounding and falling to the ground below. And all of that without making any noise.

It's impossible.

He braces himself anyway, he can't waste any more time thinking. He has to act. He makes Tarnsin deactivate the runes and starts swinging himself. His arms are shaking and his grip is weak by now. His fingers slip before he’s ready, in the middle of the swing. He reaches blindly, his hands slapping deafeningly loud on the wall as he falls. He’s so terrified, his breath so caught in shock, that he can’t even scream. Then his hands are suddenly stuck to the wall and Srindin and Tarnsin are panting heavily, having rushed to place the runes to get him stuck. Stiles pants in terror, trying to get his body to stop trembling.

“Stiles,” Eglantine says, her voice soothing over the thundering in his ears. “Stiles, it’s ok, you’re ok. Come on, honey, it’s almost over. You can do it.”

Still shaking but knowing he can’t afford to stop now, Stiles looks downwards and finds nothing but a free fall. The easiest way would be to go down, but the next window is too small for Stiles to slip in (probably a toilet) and the next one is too far away. So up it is, because he has to hide the fastest he can and he can’t risk the two fairies running out of energy in the middle of the climb either, which would prove fatal for him.

Srindin and Tarnsin get to work again, one taking care of the runes of his feet while the other does the ones for the hands. Stiles startles when a phone starts ringing suddenly at the rooftop and he contains his breathing. The two fairies hide under him to conceal their rapidly diminishing glow. It takes them a moment to realize it’s Sterling’s phone and Stiles rushes to climb up as fast as his aching arms and trembling legs allow. His ankle is hurting fiercely by now but there’s nothing he can do about that. Beads of sweat are running down his face, his neck, his back.

The hunters make it to the rooftop at last, cursing up a storm. He hears them kicking the door open and calling for her. He forces himself to hasten his pace. Not even a minute later the cursing gets even angrier and he hears them moving, checking the rooftop.

There’s no sign of Aelfwine.

“Just a little bit more, honey,” Eglantine murmurs softly in his ear. “You can do it. I know you’re tired and I promise you can rest after you reach the window, ok? Look at that, you’re nearly there!”

When Stiles finally gets to the windowsill, he has to make a herculean effort to control his harsh breathing so that it doesn’t give him away. He plasters himself to the cool crystal of the window, but even he knows that he can’t rest yet, no matter how tired he is. Soon, but not yet. It’s unlocked, he tells himself, the window is unlocked. He’s going to be lucky on this, he thinks as he takes a shuddering breath. He reaches to test it and nearly sags with relief when it is unlocked. He pulls on the window painfully slow, desperate to make the gap big enough for him to slip inside as fast as possible but unable to just yank it open like he wants for fear of the noise alerting the hunters of his presence.

The two men are on the phone, but that’s as much as Stiles gets from their conversation, their voices too soft to understand anything. After what feels like an eternity, the gap is finally big enough and he slips inside. He recognizes the AV room, it’s the farthest one to the stairs, so they have to cross the whole floor to get to them to go downstairs. Before anything else, he gets everyone a secure place to stay inside the backpack without being squashed. Srindin and Tarnsin hide inside his hood, like Eglantine was doing. It takes a little convincing to get her to hide inside the bag too but she finally agrees.

“What about Aelfwine, we can’t leave without him,” Tarnsin says vehemently, echoed by Srindin.

“We’ll check all the floor as we get to the stairs. First, who can fly to the rooftop and see if the hunters are still there?”

“On it,” Tarnsin answers before going out the window.

While he waits for him to come back, Stiles takes off his shoes first and then checks the door, confirming it’s locked. Tarnsin hastily slips back inside and confirms that the hunters are still talking over the phone just by Sterling's body, so Stiles picks the lock and opens the door carefully. He gets out, heart in his throat, and closes the door behind him but doesn’t lock it again just in case. He creeps towards the stairs to the rooftop and lets Tarnsin and Srindin call softly to Aelfwine.

“He’s there,” Tarnsin says urgently, “He got stuck in the middle of the stairs because he can’t fly anymore.”

Stiles says mentally a big fuck it and quickly climbs up the stairs silently. Just as he spots Aelfwine, he hears the hunters coming back. He launches forward, grabs Aelfwine and then, hoping that the sound of his socked feet is deafened by the noise of their shoes, he runs the hell out of there, first down the stairs and then straight through the hallway. He makes it to the stairs at the far end, puts Aelfwine in his hood before he squeezes him to death out of nerves and listens silently. They’re still cursing down the hall and he breathes relieved.

He sprints down to the first floor, then into a classroom. He can’t hear anyone following him yet but that doesn’t mean anything with these people. He forces himself to be careful and not make a noise as he opens a window and then climbs through it to get outside. He’s even more careful as he leaves the school’s premises. When he’s finally three blocks over, he puts his shoes on again and then curses everything to hell and back as he prepares to half run, half walk home because his bicycle is who knows where.

(Damn the twins to hell, back and then again to hell, where the bastards rightfully belong. Stiles really, really, wants to make them pay.)

“Stiles,” Aelfwine calls and Stiles reaches for him. “I heard them talking on the phone.”

“What did they say?” Stiles asks as he ducks behind a dumpster at the sound of a passing car. By now he’s limping heavily, even after having taken the painkiller. The wonderful smell of rotten egg coming from somewhere inside the dumpster doesn’t help him one bit.

“They’re going to take care of the body and all the evidence themselves.”

“What? Why? That doesn’t make any sense,” Stiles protests, shocked but still whispering. Out of all the possible outcomes, he never expected something like that. He starts crawling from behind the dumpster but aborts at the sound of another vehicle that turns out to be a patrol car.

“From what I understood, the boy is a werewolf... Well, they called him mutt so I'm assuming that's what they were alluding to, in any case. Anyways, apparently he's part of the pack in this territory, and that pack is an old one that has never caused any problems. The Tribunal knows that they control the territory well and take care of any threats themselves, so they shouldn’t even be here.”

“Still, it doesn’t make any sense. If they pinned this on them, that would actually give them the excuse to do what they want without anyone accusing them of breaking the code. Sterling was hunting something,” Stiles grunts, explaining quickly what he saw her attempting to do as he pushes himself up after the car disappears around the corner.

“One of them did suggest using what happened, but then they’d have to explain what one of their hunters was doing with a fake identity and teaching at the school where most of the pack kids study.”

Stiles feels sick for a moment, remembering that boy with Sterling and what approach she was taking. If there are other kids, has she been doing the same with them? Or maybe she tried and tried until she hit the jackpot with that boy? How far would have she gotten if Stiles hadn't...?

He swallows, trying to force the bile down and forces himself to concentrate on the now. He’s alive, all the fairies are alive, he reminds himself as he creeps around and hides at the smallest noise. His house, his shower, his bed, everything is a breath away, he just has to endure it for a little bit more.

And he does just that.

The trek back home takes him nearly an hour and he barely can walk straight anymore halfway through it. His dad’s cruiser isn’t in the driveway yet when he makes it home and, for once, he’s happy about that because he doesn’t have to sneak in. He’s careful, of course, but once he’s hidden from view, he just opens the door and slips inside. He doesn’t turn on the lights until he’s in his room and has the blinds down.

The kids’ hugs are like a balm to his soul and he nearly falls asleep on the chair the moment he sits on it after helping everyone else but the elders into the terrarium.

“Stiles,” Lorelle says, looking ten times her age, just like Aelfdene and like everyone that has lived through tonight’s events, “we need to contact the alpha now.”

“If what you and Aelfwine have told us is right, that boy she was hunting was a werewolf,” Aelfdene adds, somber. “They may assume that the pack did it or use it as an excuse to retaliate, even if they’re covering it now.”

Stiles rubs his face tiredly, vision swimming and one hundred percent done with everything.

“Do you even know who is the alpha of the pack?” he asks after taking a fortifying breath.

“Sadly, no. When we came here following your magic, we were too weak to do anything. And with the huntress at large, we couldn’t risk giving ourselves away searching to inform the alpha of our presence. Only our king and queen knew who it was and... they didn't get to share the knowledge.”

Of course it wouldn’t be so easy. He feels like weeping his heart out and he can’t remember having ever cried since a while before his mom died.

Just one more push, he thinks. Just one.

“I need… I need a moment.”

Stiles can barely see straight by now. He rubs his eyes again, gets up and limps downstairs to wash his face with water straight from the bottle inside the fridge, hoping that the cold will help him keep awake now that the adrenaline is long gone. Then he drinks as much as he can in one go. It doesn’t work miracles, but at least he’s not falling asleep upright. Then he prepares the fastest and most carb filled food he can think of off the bat (which happens to be a lot of pop tarts) and a teeth-rotting sugary drink before getting back to his room.

“Ok,” he says as he munches on the pop tarts, turning on his laptop. “I can check the yearbook and see if it rings any bells. And also… if several members of the pack attend the school, they’ll share the same last name, right? Or most of them will in any case.”

“Unless the kid was adopted into the pack, they should.”

“Let’s hope it’s like that,” he sighs and, before even checking the yearbook, he searches on the school’s student database for kids sharing the same last name. While the search runs he keeps talking to help himself remain awake. “What happened to me? How did you know something was wrong?”

Lorelle takes a moment to answer, but not as if she’s trying to choose her words to hide something from Stiles. She makes a couple of aborted starts before she seems to find a way to explain things. “Do you recall what we explained to you about how your magic beckoned us?” Stiles nods. “And how our numbers make us weak right now and sometimes we use you as a support, like Eglantine did when you went to search for the kids?” Stiles nods again. “As we told you, your magic is still active on the terrarium and at the moment we use a small part of that magic to help us maintain the wards around it.” Stiles makes a humming noise. “Around nearly seven this afternoon, your magic wavered and it thinned so much and so abruptly that we had to take down the wards for fear of it breaking completely. We knew something was wrong and then we called your phone and you didn't pick up.”

Stiles startles, finally noticing that he can still spy the dull glow of the exhausted fairies and the bright one of the kids across the crystal when normally he can’t see a thing. He swallows around his mouthful. There are six missed calls on his phone. All done in the space of not even three minutes. “And… you came for me?”

“You came for us,” Aelfdene answers gruffly and looking as if admitting this tastes sour in his mouth. “And in more ways than one so we're in your debt.”

Stiles clears his throat feeling incredibly uncomfortable. “But why all of you? You didn’t need…”

“In our state right at this moment, it was all of us or none, or we wouldn’t make the trip there,” Lorelle answers, leaving clear with her expression that none was not an option. “Eglantine remembered the way.”

“We made it there and tracked you.” Aelfdene continues with a weary sigh. “We’re connected and you were still using your magic,” Stiles looks at the rune shaped burns on his wrist with his lips pursed. “so it wasn’t that difficult. However, that woman caught the tail of our group and we had to divide and distract her while the rest of us got to you. You were unconscious and we couldn’t even hear you breathing. Beriadan found the runes on you and we pushed our magic into you until you recovered enough energy to regain consciousness and deactivate the array, because we couldn’t do that for you.”

“It goes both ways,” Lorelle explains at Stiles’ confused expression. “You share with us, and we do the same. We are symbiotic,” she sighs ruefully, “or in normal circumstances we would be. Regretfully, right now we are taking more than we are giving.” She clears her throat and thanks Kendel distractedly when the kid appears with some food and water for them. “In any case, what happened is that you activated one of your arrays (and let me tell you, I haven’t seen that one before) and maybe in your panic at nearly getting caught, you pushed too much energy into it and during more time than you could handle.”

“But you said that if you push more or less than the energy necessary to activate an array it collapses!” Stiles protests, confused.

“We said that happens with fairy rune magic. Do remember that we were sure that your spark would act differently,” Aelfdene explains long-suffering.

“And as he said,” Lorelle adds, "the array you used is not one of ours. Entity, sound, void. We’ve never used that combination.“

"What was different, though?” Aelfdene asks frowning, as if he can't help himself. Over the last few weeks, Stiles has gotten to know him a bit even though the elder has tried to keep their interactions minimal. It took a while to understand that it's not that he hates Stiles per se, it's that after what happened to them, he doesn't trust humans. Having to trust Stiles because he has no other choice rankles him. “Beriadan says that you tried that one here already and it didn’t work. What else was in those papers? When that huntress shot you, you activated something from there that made them burn.”

Stiles rakes his mind, but for the life of him he can’t remember what else he scribbled on them that could deflect a bullet. He looks at his wrist, but the mark is almost gone. He blinks surprised and rubs what remains of it, but it doesn't even twinge. He files that little tidbit to go back to it later and focuses on more important things. What was he thinking when his magic worked, though? What was he doing? Because the only thing he remembers was being panicked about getting caught and repeating that it was impossible he was heard. And with the bullet, it was actually the opposite, he was numb, not feeling anything but convinced…

“Conviction,” he murmurs, skeptical to a certain degree. He fights a yawn before he continues speaking. “I was convinced that I couldn’t be heard and then I was convinced that I couldn’t be hurt.”

Could that be? When he tries to activate a fairy array, he knows he has magic and that the array is a valid one, so he’s convinced about that… but is he convinced about obtaining the intended result? He has to explore this more.

Tomorrow.

After sleeping all Saturday away…

Which he can’t do until he finds the alpha and sorts this whole debacle.

Dammit.

He forces his attention back to the search still running on his laptop. After he has the names, he loads the yearbook and focuses on the years around the age he assumes that boy to be and bingo, he gets lucky about ten minutes later.

“I hate everything right now,” he whines rubbing his face, deeply frustrated. He really wants to get into bed and forget about everything, but he knows he wouldn’t forgive himself if anything happened. He gets up with a groan and reaches inside the terrarium to fish out his burner phone. He stares at it for a moment after he sits again.

He has the name of the boy that was with Sterling (one Ben Wilcox) and finding out his phone number and address is easy. Now what?

Ben Wilcox is a supernatural or connected to them, that's for sure, because if not, Sterling wouldn't have targeted him. However, assuming that the rest of his family is too may be too big of an assumption to make and it can cost Stiles dearly. Because if Ben was bitten and assimilated into the pack, his family may not be in the know and either this will force the teen to out himself or the family member that picks up the call may think Stiles is either a lunatic, a prankster or a bully and hang up, closing that venue of communication with his only lead to the pack entirely until school tomorrow. Because, let's face it, Stiles is not only in no condition to brave the night in search of Ben Wilcox's house but also he hasn't the means to do so, even if it's only about three kilometers away.

It's late, but not so late that calling them will raise any suspicion if Ben's family isn't in the know, so if he's going to do it this way, it has to be now. He just hopes that Ben isn't a lovesick puppy that won't listen to him out of principle. Stiles is really unsure about how to broach the subject too and his exhaustion isn't helping his brain think up how to do it in the slightest. How can he say: hey, your paedophile prospect of a girlfriend was in reality a huntress that was trying to trick you so she could kill you and most likely your whole family, but don't you worry, I killed her instead when she was trying to put a bullet in my head; just calling to give you the heads-up, just in case?

That can't go wrong at all, really.

Stiles sighs and rubs his forehead tiredly. Lorelle and Aelfdene are looking at him expectantly and he sighs again, dialling the number.

"Hello?" a girl (Lisa, his mind supplies helpfully) answers through the receiver.

"Hi!" he chirps faux happily, hoping that his voice being obviously a kid's helps his chances of being passed through without raising any suspicions, even though he knows he sounds much younger than Ben. "Can I talk to Ben?"

"Give me a second," she replies before shouting for him loudly.

He waits with bated breath, going over and over the options in his head, thinking about how to say it, how to avoid Ben hanging up on him, how to talk to the alpha, how...

Then he starts hearing the screams.

---

Some love pretty please?

Thank you!!!!

(2/4)I’m so excited to see where this is going. Like has the Hale fire happened yet? Does Stiles stop it somehow(like was that Derek on the roof that he was hearing?)? Does the fire still happen/already happened and Stiles end up getting close to Peter somehow? Does the story more or less get to S1 and then go off the fucking rails cause Stiles has fairies and magic? Like I’m drowning in maybes here and don’t even care cause they all sound awesome.

(¾)And I know I haven’t even come up with that many possibilities, you could have something else I haven’t even considered waiting in the wings. So. Excited. And finding the rest of Fides lead me to Runes, and I remembered how much I love that fic too, and I may or may not have gotten sucked into rereading a bunch of your fics. Again.

(4/4)So holy Hel, thank you so fucking much for writing your stories and sharing them with us, cause you absolutely don’t have to, but you do, and it’s amazing and sooo appreciated.

—

Thank you so much!!!! ❤❤❤ There’s been so little feedback to the fic that this is a balm for my soul!

Ok, as for the questions you had about the timeline… I can’t answer many of them because it will come into play later, but I can clarify some stuff for you. First of all, Stiles isn’t even living in BH, he lives in another town, of another county (so no, that teen wasn’t Derek :3). As for the TW events and characters, well, I’ve kept the ages as they were, and some of the bad guys will definitely make an appearance. And yes, Stiles having magic and fairies will change everything. As you can guess, at some point Stiles will move into BH, but I can’t say anything else about that.

Thanks again for your amazing comment, it definitely made my day!

Chapter 4

It’s cloudy and gloomy outside and it matches how Stiles feels this morning, yet again with divided feelings plaguing him.

His dad came home so late yesterday (or so early today, depending on how you look at it) that Stiles had already put the man’s dinner plate in the fridge, tidied everything and gone to bed. Admittedly, when his dad arrived, he was still awake finishing an essay, because the experiments with Eglantine had taken so long that not only couldn’t they start the rune lessons, but he was late getting started with homework too. He could have faced his dad and gotten the unavoidable confrontation out of the way, but he had so much stewing anger inside that he felt things would have gotten out of hand, so he decided to feign being asleep. Part of him was relieved that he came home late, the other part was everything but that. And now it’s morning, he’s had to get up earlier to finish that essay and his anger is still there.

It gets worse.

His dad messes his hair as he goes to pour himself a coffee and proceeds to act as if nothing happened yesterday, as if a brownie is enough to apologize for that. He knows, okay? His dad has never been a man of words, he’s always been one of action. If he messes up, he fixes it, and if that’s not an option, he makes up for it and tries to never make that mistake again. No excuses, no explanations, he owns his mistake and becomes better out of the ordeal. It’s the trait that made his mom fall in love with him, what gained him his friends, what made him become such a good investigator, and what made him climb the ladder in his job until he became the sheriff.

Something in that philosophy broke where Stiles is concerned since his mom died.

Because a lot of the things that Stiles has received these past years to make up for it don’t, in fact, make up for it, just like a silent brownie doesn’t make up for what happened yesterday. Because sometimes things have to be talked about, just like dirty wounds need to be flushed to heal, no matter how uncomfortable or painful the process is. The thing is, though, Stiles has tried to tell him that before and it didn’t work. His dad would get that pinched and then empty expression Stiles knows all too well that hides an ocean of pain and sadness for the loss of his wife; then he’d sit across from Stiles, facing the situation like one would face a firing squad, and talk to him like Stiles wasn’t the only fully functioning adult (in a manner of speaking) there at the time. And when that changed, their talks didn’t get any better.

It’s been a long time since he tried last.

And that’s going to remain that way. Stiles has tried already (many, many times in fact), his dad has to make an effort too. Stiles is also a man (boy) of action, the thought of having to talk about feelings almost makes him break out in hives, but at least he tries. Because not being good at something necessary doesn’t exempt you from doing it. Besides, how are you going to get any better at it if you don’t even…

Stiles sighs inwardly, getting up to wash his cereal bowl. He goes upstairs to brush his teeth before leaving and then enters his room to grab his bag.

“Stiles!” Odette waves madly, her blond pigtails hitting the redhead beside him, when Stiles leans over the terrarium to let them know he’s leaving. The only four remaining kids of the colony are in a semicircle with Eglantine in front of them, obviously in the middle of a lesson. “Which star can be used to work out where is North?”

“Odette!” Eglantine admonishes as two passing girls with their arms full snicker. “You can't ask Stiles what I’m quizzing you about.”

“In the northern hemisphere, the North Star or Polaris. In the southern hemisphere you use the two stars that form the long axis of The Southern Cross to find south and go the opposite way.”

“Stiles!” Eglantine admonishes him too as the kids giggle, even Ehaldun, which Stiles counts as a personal victory. She sighs, long-suffering, but with a fond smile. “Leaving for school?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna see the stars,” Odette pipes and the rest of the kids look excited.

“Can we?” Ehaldun asks shyly, to Stiles’ surprise.

“Yes, please!” the two remaining kids (Kendel and Rhenalyrr, and Stiles is starting to have problems remembering all the bizarre names) join in hopefully, which officially marks the descent of Eglantine’s lesson into chaos.

“KIDS!” Eglantine finally exclaims as Stiles puts his converse on. What she says next makes him pause. “You know we can’t go outside right now, it’s too dangerous. It’s going to have…”

That’s right. Effectively speaking, for these fairies the terrarium is a prison as much as it’s a safe place. True, they can move around Stiles’ room, but they were used to living in the forest, where they could roam around as they pleased, even if they had to be careful. Not only that, but their colony, as in the physical place, was probably at least ten times bigger than the terrarium because it had to house about three hundred fairies as opposed to their current twenty-four.

He sighs inwardly.

“Hey there,” he waves as he looks at them from above again, cutting the protests that are still going on. “If you behave, I’ll show you the constellations here, inside. It won’t be the same, but I promise it will be really cool and you will be able to see them all.”

“Really?” Odette gasps, echoed my Kendel. Ehaldun looks hopeful and Rhenalyrr mildly skeptic. “But mama says you can’t see them all!”

“You promise?” Ehaldun asks softly.

“How are you gonna do that?” Rhenalyrr demands, getting her long black hair out of her face impatiently.

“Magic?” Kendel pipes.

“But he doesn’t know how to yet,” Rhenalyrr scoffs, making Kendel blink surprised.

“No, I don’t,” Stiles intervenes before everything gets out of hand again. “But as if I’d let something like that stop me. I promise you I’ll show you the constellations if you behave and promise to not go outside. If you don’t keep your end of the bargain, the deal is off. Remember that outside you’re not going to see every constellation, and that’s if you even see any at all, with how cloudy it is today. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal,” they answer. First, almost instantly, Odette and Ehaldun, then, after some consideration, Rhenalyrr and Kendel follows shortly after the brunette nods.

“Later then!”

—

Mostly, the day drags its metaphorical feet. News about how the twins got suspended is out, or what he suspects is a heavily edited version in any case, because his classmates are being very aggressively silent. He ignores them (which actually means that he keeps an eye on them while it outwardly looks like he’s ignoring them, as per usual) and uses any spare moment he has to prepare the base he’s going to use to create the constellations map for later. With the whole weekend ahead of them, hopefully things will calm down, but if they don’t, Stiles will deal with it and that’s it.

“I’m home!” he calls as he enters the house. He makes some small talk with the guards as he goes to the kitchen to preheat the oven to bake a small chicken with a side of potatoes for dinner.

When he gets to his room, Odette glomps onto him and Ehaldun follows. Stiles can spy Rhenalyrr and Kendel sticking their little heads over the edge of the terrarium, trying (and failing) to be inconspicuous. His lips twitch with mirth.

“Stars?” Ehaldun pipes hopefully.

“Did you keep your end of the bargain?”

“We did!” comes from the two hiding kids as the two in front of him nod enthusiastically.

“They did,” Eglantine corroborates fondly before she adds mischievously. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Stiles tips her an imaginary hat to that before getting his attention back to the kids. “Then you’ll get the stars… but when it’s dark, of course. That’s when stars can be seen after all.” He grins inwardly at the groans and pouts that earns him and goes to change into something more comfortable. “I’m gonna prepare everything for dinner and start the timer for the chicken. Then we can start?”

“Sure, that sounds good to me. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Cool.”

When he finishes, Stiles brings the timer with him so he doesn’t miss the alarm. He leans back over the pillows of his bed for the first lesson, since it’s going to be a purely theoretical one. He keeps his laptop on his lap to take notes as she speaks. Eglantine sits on the edge of the screen to be more comfortable too, and they start. Odette and Ehaldun barrel in but settle for laying on his head, of all places, when their mother threatens to ground them to the terrarium if they don’t behave.

"So," she starts after a moment of consideration, as if she's gauging what level of density in her lecture Stiles will be able to stand. "The very basics first. Fairies can use two different types of magic: the innate one and the runic one. The first one is instinctual and is what lets us perform nature magic, which we use to fly, make plants grow and so on and so on. However, this one isn't really useful for you, since you won't be able to use it anyways, so I won't go much into detail." When she sees Stiles' curious expression she elaborates, her lips twitching in amusement. "For flying it's a mixture of gravity, temperature and wind manipulation, while using our wings to navigate-"

"Like birds?"

"Not exactly," she denies, as if the giggles from the peanut gallery perched upon his head weren't answer enough. Stiles rolls his eyes in response and Eglantine smiles fondly at her children's antics. "Because, as you can see, our wings are not the same. We don't have feathers, our wings are more... membranes in a way? The closest thing to it that I can think of, is if you thought of a hummingbird in terms of the speed we move them at to keep us up when stationary... And as Delta wings when we are moving and using the wind to our advantage, which is most of the time. That's actually where the manipulation comes in, because we can use it to move the air to create a current in an enclosed space or to make it denser with the temperature to help us go up."

"And gravity?"

"That's a constant thing, to make it easier to fly, we intensify it when we are stationary. But as I said, this is instinctual, we don't actually have to know how it works to use it, we just have to want it."

"So it's a question of intent?"

"Exactly. To make plants grow we'd manipulate earth, water and sun elements... but, in the end, we just have to want it to grow up. Of course, there are limitations to what we can do, and in more ways than one at that. Each kind of fairy has its strengths, after all, and since we are wood fairies, our affinities would be everything that's connected to it."

"So plants?"

"Plant life and we have a connection with woodland creatures. We can manipulate water and earth to an extent too, because it's related, but we'd never reach the proficiency of, say, an earth or a water fairy respectively."

"Earth and water fairies..." Stiles muses thoughtfully. "Are there any others?"

"Sun fairies would be the last." She laughs at his surprised expression. "You look like you were expecting more."

"I was kinda expecting, I don't know, fire, wind, ice?"

"Well, I've heard that humans in the know think sun fairies are fire fairies because of their exclusive ability to control fire, so I'll give you that. But the others? All of us control wind to one extent or another (sun ones would be the most proficient and water ones the least, in this case) and ice is frozen water, so you can guess which of us controls it."

"Water fairies!" Odette exclaims happily.

"Exactly, dear. But we're deviating, I think."

"Just one more thing?" Stiles pleads, deeply interested.

"Ask away," she nods smiling.

"So what's the difference between your kind and earth fairies? Can't they control plants?"

"They can, but not to the extent that we do, they would need to cooperate with a water and sun fairy to do something that we do easily... But then again, we can't create golems or do some things they do either, so it's not like we are the strongest of the fairies or anything. I'd say we are the most versatile? It's been speculated more than once that wood fairies were born after the three lines mixed at some point in the past, because the records and stories don't go as far in time for us as they do with them," she adds as an afterthought. "But back to topic now."

"Sorry," Stiles apologizes sheepishly.

"Don't be." She smiles openly. "I don't mind explaining at all, it's just that we have a tight schedule right now with everything that's happening and I'd rather that you have the basics as early as possible and then revisit this topic later if you're still interested."

"Sure, I'd like that, thanks." He smiles back at her. "You were saying you had more limitations? Or is that too off-topic too?"

"No, actually, this you should know because of the circumstances, I think," she says seriously. "The more fairies there are in a colony and the nearer they are to each other, the stronger their magic is and vice versa. The presence of sparks and druids can serve as support and an amplifier, though in the case of druids they have to be practicing a ritual, not just by being present like with sparks." Then seeing Stiles about to open his mouth to ask, she clarifies. "That's because druids only have the ability to draw magic from around them (and mostly through rituals) while sparks have their own innate magic too."

"So sparks are stronger?"

"Technically, yes."

"Technically?"

"Well, having all the power of the world is useless if you can't harness and control it."

"So, potential means nothing if you don't do anything with it?"

"Exactly," she nods. "So back to our limitations right now. I'm going to give you a couple of examples so that you can understand the extent it goes to for us. First: seeing we were (and still are) so low in number and that we were pretty low on energy too back then, it took all of us to make the Pothos grow enough to trap you that very first day. Another example would be that when you took me to your school, I had to use your presence to help my stamina last the whole trip alone without exhausting myself."

"Well, that sucks," Stiles mutters. "And there's nothing you can do to change that?"

"As in an immediate remedy, you mean?" Stiles nods. "We would have to join another fairy colony and after a period of adaptation we would be back to normal. But that's not feasible, so we're stuck with growing our numbers little by little. Your presence has bought us time, in any case, so we're far better than we could have been. Thanks for that too, by the way."

"Ah, you're... welcome, I guess?" he says fidgeting, deeply uncomfortable.

The alarm for the chicken chooses to go off right then and Stiles sighs inwardly, relieved to escape because he's never known how to take a compliment or any type of praise. He dashes downstairs and turns the chicken over quickly after checking its progress. He grabs a soda from the fridge before going back to his room. When he's crossing the threshold, he realizes that Odette and Ehaldun never left his head, which, given the silence, means they're probably completely asleep by now. He checks in the mirror and sure enough, they're curled like kittens in his hair. Stiles grins at Eglantine and she snickers.

"Want me to take them to bed?"

"Nah, leave them be. They're not bothering me at all," he says as he gets back on the bed and picks his laptop up. "So, innate magic and runic magic, right?"

"Yes," she nods. "We use runic magic for long-distance communication, warding, to strengthen our homes… so basically to satisfy some of the needs that our innate magic doesn’t cover. But you have to understand that without our innate magic the runic one wouldn’t work, because it needs that kickstart to work."

"So, if we're making a parallel, that means that druids can't use runic magic?"

"Not unless they tie it to a ritual, no," she explains. "Now, we have three different alphabets but we only use..."

Cross referencing what Eglantine teaches him, Stiles learns that fairies have three different runic alphabets: Elder Futhark and long-branch and short-twig Younger Futhark. They call them the Ancient, the Mystical and the Practical alphabets respectively.

The Ancient one is, like its name indicates, the oldest of them. Humans themselves stopped using that alphabet around the eighth century, but the fairies continued employing it until the twelfth. It consists of twenty-four different runes and a long time ago it was used for everything, from casting a spell to noting down a recipe or recording an official document. However, this is known only because of the knowledge passed mouth to mouth through generations, because no document remains of the time before the two other alphabets started being used. It was an abrupt change and whatever happened at that time that wiped all knowledge of how to perform magic with Elder Futhark is still a mystery nowadays. It baffles the fairies as much as it does Stiles, according to Eglantine, because the feeling that they have, thanks to little snippets of information about that time, is that it was strictly prohibited to even mention the incident back in the day, and since no one talked or wrote about it, the story was lost after the fairies that lived through it died. What’s even more baffling is that the alphabet itself was still taught even though it wasn’t used anymore, and it’s still that way nowadays.

Leaving that mystery aside, since the middle of the twelfth century approximately, the Mystical alphabet (long-branch Younger Futhark) has been used for magic and the Practical one (short-twig Younger Futhark) for everything else. Both of them consist of sixteen runes each and share some of them with each other and the Ancient alphabet, though the Mystical shares more with the Ancient than the Practical one.

Stiles is a little confused at this point, because looking at the letters that correspond to each rune, it just doesn’t match to the ones necessary to transcribe English in Futhark in any of the three alphabets. And these fairies speak exclusively in English, and fairies living in France speak French, and so on, but all of them share the same runes (which is a mystery in itself). So how? It turns out that the fairies do like the Japanese and they write the word phonetically to match the runes they have, whatever the language they speak in where they live, which means that if he were to read a text written by a French fairy, even if they used the same runes, it wouldn’t make any sense to him. To make it even worse, if that isn’t complicated enough, each rune, apart from the letter they represent, also means something else: sun, water, air and so on. Here it gets really perplexing because those meanings don’t match the ones the human historians gave them. And at this point Stiles simply gives up trying to cross reference everything and just takes what Eglantine is teaching him at face value.

At least for now, because his head might explode if he continues going in circles like this, so he is just going to concentrate on learning the three alphabets and their meanings according to the fairies until he has them down pat. Besides, Lorelle and Aelfdene won’t allow him to advance more until that happens anyway, just like they would do with any fledgling starting to learn.

“It’s still early if you want Lorelle to start today too,” she says when she finishes her lesson.

“Yeah, I’d prefer that,” he nods. “But can you take a look at this first?” he asks pointing at the screen, where there are three pictures with a different rune alphabet on each. “I was thinking of trying to write with them as I learn them.”

Stiles normally learns better with a more hands-on approach, so he thinks that practicing writing with them will speed up the process. Of course, this will not only help him memorize the runes but also gain a fluency that he feels he’s going to need when he gets to the part of actually doing magic with them.

“Hmmm…” she hums as she looks at each rune closely. “That’s actually a great idea, Stiles. We normally make the kids memorize them individually before we start them with words, then phrases, and so on. But if you think this works better for you… By all means, knock yourself out.”

“Cool. I’ll transcribe sentences to Mystical and Practical and you can check them over.” He plugs his phone into the laptop and minimizes the window that appears on the screen to let Eglantine continue with her inspection. “Are they ok? I can edit the pic to change them if not,” he tells her. “I’m going to keep an encrypted copy of these in my phone so I can practice in any spare moment I have at school.”

“They’re correct, Stiles, but are you sure that’s wise? There’s a hunter…”

“I’ve thought about that, but I feel like I’m against time here, to be honest. I know that she doesn’t seem to suspect me, but I don’t know… I just feel rushed for some reason and I don’t like being defenseless, so the sooner I get this and move on onto the magic part, the better. In any case, I’m not gonna risk it, Eglantine. If I feel like I can be seen or sneaked on, I won’t do it.”

He will be very careful about it. Not because of his peers, of course, because as it is he’s already the object of many incredulous and contemptuous stares in general. It happens at everything he does anyway, so he just shrugs it off and continues doing his thing… Even today when it has been especially intense after it got out that he’d gotten the very well liked and all around loved twins suspended. He’s not sure how that happened, because their parents dragged them to their car before any student arrived, but it’s obvious that some other students knew about it by the time first period started.

Stiles is starting to think that the twins either lack any kind of self-preservation instinct or they’re just plain stupid. Or maybe it’s both? So far they’ve clashed multiple times already and Stiles has either simply won or has gotten back so harshly and swiftly that he has rendered their victories to a fleeting moment of satisfaction followed by a crushing retaliation. He honestly doesn’t get how they haven’t gotten a Pavlovian response ingrained by now with how many times this has happened.

He really doesn’t care to know what lie they have told their clique to explain their suspension that has all of them glaring balefully at him from where they were congregated at the end of the classroom. The situation does bear watching (more so when the twins come back the Monday after the next), of course, because he’s not stupid but they are, and Stiles is not going to become a movie cliche casualty, or even fatality, just because he didn’t pay attention.

And he’s not going to become a fatality either because he was careless and got caught by a huntress who he knows is already there prowling around school and has him in her sights. And, sure, Sterling hadn’t approached him at all today after she left him at the cafeteria, when he expected her to hound him constantly, but that doesn’t actually mean he’s off the hook. Maybe she’s waiting for him to lower his guard? Or maybe she had been hounding him and he just hasn’t noticed? Even if neither of those are the case, he doesn’t know if she’s going to keep an eye on him herself or if there are other hunters he doesn’t know of around school that are going to watch him in her place. Moreover, Stiles has no way of finding out unless he spies on her, which no, not happening. Being honest with himself, the truth is that he struggled to even hold minimal control of a conversation in a friendly setting with her and that he didn’t even hear her approach when she caught him on the stairs, even though he was expecting her and was alert. If those aren’t enough proofs of how that’s the worst idea in the planet, he doesn’t know what would be.

The whole situation is making him wary as hell, because it feels like the calm before the storm and that’s nerve-wracking, but it’s not like he can do anything else but be careful at the moment.

So no, no spying and super extra precaution in everything he does. First of all, no letting his grades slip and no skipping class or track practice, no matter how tempting that is. He’s never done it and it would draw too much attention. So if he wants extra time to study runes apart from what he already will do at home, it has to be at class. On that front, as a rule he normally sits where he can’t be seen from outside the classroom, but if he’s forced to change seats or to work in pairs, practicing is out. He can’t do it at the cafeteria at lunch or at the library either, because he could be sneaked up on very easily.

All in all, if he squeezes half an hour of extra practice at school, which is not much but at least it’s something, he’ll consider himself lucky. Normally he wouldn’t risk it at all for just a measly half an hour, but there’s a threat pending over the fairies and him, and if Sterling attacks, he wants to have at least an ace under his sleeve to buy himself some time.

Sometimes the tiniest things are what make the difference, after all.

Like, for example, cutting holes on pieces of cardboard to place around a lamp making the light coming out of those little punctures project the entire map of constellations on his walls and ceiling, so that the twenty-four fairies that come out of his terrarium at the spectacle miss being outside a little less.

—

The day the twins come back, Stiles walks into the classroom and he doesn’t pay attention at first, which is a mistake he thought himself too intelligent to make. He’s too focused on mentally going over what’s he’s learnt so far again and again, because Lorelle and Aelfdene are going to test his knowledge on runes just as he hits home after track practice. All the intense practice over the last week and a half has paid off, and while there’s still room for improvement on his writing speed, he doesn’t make mistakes tracing them or about their meanings anymore, which are the most important things. So he told the elders before leaving for school and they agreed to test him to see if he can advance and be taught about how fairies use the Mystical ones to raise wards and to communicate with them. He knows it probably won’t work for him, because he’s a spark, not a fairy, but it will at least give him some pointers on how it works. Still, he’s pretty exited and he doesn’t want to mess it up, hence the manic mental revising.

So he’s not paying attention, but he’s brought back to Earth when a couple of snickers reach his ears disrupting the grave-worthy silence he hadn’t noticed before. From the door, he looks around his classroom, careful to keep his face neutral, and he finds every single one of his classmates staring at him. The only seat available is directly in front of the teacher’s desk, right in the middle of the first row. It’s just a childish retaliation, but for a moment he has a strong sense of deja vu that leaves him really unsettled.

The twins snicker again when he sits, and in retrospect, Stiles should have seen it coming.

Over the day, he gets numerous muttered insults and spitballs to the head in each class, his locker gets forced open and his lunch nearly lands all over himself after a timely smack. He almost skips Track practice, his anger already through the roof, but in the end he refuses to give them the satisfaction. He gets a pair of skinned knees, a badly twisted ankle and a visit to the nurse for his troubles. The twisted ankle is bad enough that they call his dad to pick him up. Anderson is the one who comes. His bike is nowhere to be seen when they go to pick it up.

After three days full of this kind of treatment, Stiles finally finds a way to retaliate that not only will not get him caught, but also will make his classmates think twice about continuing with the bullying. To his horror, not only does it not work, but it makes it worse instead. Stiles tries again days later, hoping it’s just a fluke, but not even involving their parents works and they get even more vicious, so he has to retreat to think about his options.

Stiles refuses to let the bullies walk over him. He did that the first time he was bullied so badly, hoping that they would get tired and leave him alone, but that never happened. It’s not going to be different now. But what can he do? Whatever the lie is that the twins have told the rest of his classmates (and they then to their siblings too), it has painted them as the victims and Stiles as a bully that needs to be taken down. In other words, they are united with a cause and everything he does just serves to validate their views and justify their actions. And the days go on.

To add to his frustration, he passed Lorelle and Aelfdene’s test (to the man's chagrin), and got instructed on fairy runic magic, but that was as far as he got. Two weeks after Beriadan and Aelfwine finished teaching him and he’s gotten nowhere, partly because everyone is so focused on him (going as far as calling him out to the teacher if he so much as tries anything non-class related) that he doesn’t dare to risk squeezing extra study time at school. Maybe he would have cracked the mystery with that extra time, maybe not, but he’s irritated beyond belief with the stagnation of the progress with his magic. The thing is that while the theory is pretty simple (two to four runes placed in an array in a certain, specific way that are activated with a pulse of innate magic), the practice is not so much, and he still hasn’t found a way to activate it. The elders, well, pretty much every fairy in one way or another, have reminded him that they expected this, that they knew when they started that the way fairies use the runes wasn’t going to work for him. And yes, Stiles went in knowing all that, and maybe it’s because of the general shitty situation he’s in now, but it’s hitting him hard.

All in all, Stiles is frustrated, angry, hurting and doesn’t know what to do. Nothing is going the way it should, and no matter what he does, that doesn’t change. He supposes he should be happy that Sterling seems to have forgotten about him, but it’s just making his skin crawl and he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. So with everything that’s going on, nearly three weeks into the bullying, he's, embarrassingly enough, almost at his limit. Only his pride is keeping him up at this point, because he refuses to give them the satisfaction of seeing him crumble. But pride will only take him so far, and he has to find a solution.

Pronto.

(Telling his dad about the bullying never even crosses his mind.)

—

A month after the exam debacle, Stiles learns why Sterling hasn’t been prowling around him entirely by accident and revulsion doesn’t even begin to cover what he feels.

It’s all the twins’ fault.

With how things have been going lately, Stiles has no other choice but to make do with surviving the present and for that he has to focus on the silver linings, such as finishing school early today because he finished Mr. Andrews’ test with nearly half the time to spare and because he suspects the man still feels guilty about what happened. All in all, for once avoiding his classmates at the entrance as he leaves sounds like heaven.

He ignores the dirty looks as he grabs his backpack and then groans inwardly when Mr. Andrews reminds him that Coach wanted to talk to him. He still has to give his Track coach the slip the doctor gave him to justify his absence from practice for a while, until his ankle heals. Which, regretfully, means he can’t avoid everyone like he wanted, because the man will keep him for at least half an hour listening to him as he berates Stiles about not being careful and getting injured in the stupidest way possible and about being irresponsible and not taking care of himself with regionals just around the corner and what the hell is he doing that he hasn’t recovered already?

(If they didn’t keep on pushing him and tripping him and many other things, he would already have, thank you very much.)

So much for silver linings, because the man is not even in his office. After waiting for ten minutes, Stiles just places the envelope on the desk and leaves. He’s hurrying to the entrance, his ankle protesting at the effort, when he overhears two girls giggling in the toilet about how his classmates are preparing something for him and how he deserves everything he gets. Stiles doesn’t hear what exactly, but he doesn’t wait to hear more. He’s halfway to the entrance and class is about to finish. He realizes that with his injury he’s going to get caught for sure, so he takes what others would think is the cowardly route and just hides on the rooftop. Climbing the stairs with his injured ankle is precisely what he shouldn’t be doing but it can't be worse for it than being unintentionally stomped on by a ninth grader (coincidentally one of his classmate’s brother) at lunch, so he does it anyway. He picks the lock to open the door to the rooftop and then locks it behind him for good measure. Then he sits out of direct sight from the door and just breathes.

Now he just has to wait for the buses to leave and for the rest of the kids to be picked up. And even if some of them walk home, he doubts they’ll wait more than half an hour or they’ll risk being grounded by their parents. He hopes so at least. In any case, it’s not like his dad is going to notice him being late if he’s not even at home, so if he has to hide for an hour or two, he’ll just do it. He has a notepad, pens and a magic system to crack, so he’s not going to get bored, that’s for sure.

So, undoubtedly, it’s all the twins’ fault.

It’s their fault that Stiles is hiding on the rooftop, where the rules say that he can’t be, when the door opens and closes, not even ten minutes after class finished.

It’s their fault that he’s hiding on the rooftop with a page full of his own variations of the fairy arrays that he’s trying to make work when he recognizes Sterling’s voice.

It’s their fault that he’s hiding on the rooftop when, as he crawls to hide inside the dirtiest cranny ever, which, to make things worse, is full of spiders, he sees a teenager follow her.

It’s their fault that he’s hiding on the rooftop with spiders crawling all over him, hearing Sterling playfully manipulate said teenager, who looks not even a day older than fifteen years old and isn’t noticing any of the things that are making Stiles cringe.

Something lands on his cheek and then he feels it crawling towards his eye. He reflexively bats it away with a sharp intake of air and then he contains his breath terrified, heart thundering in his chest, when he hears the pair stop. He prays, prays and prays that they haven’t heard him, because it’s impossible, right? They haven’t, they surely haven’t. On his hand, one of the arrays starts to glow, then burns through the paper it’s written on and Stiles has to bite his lips to contain a whimper as it burns into the skin of his wrist too.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Sterling croons sweetly and the flirty tone is nauseating. Their whole conversation reminds Stiles of those first dates in cheesy love movies, when the couple is too shy to even kiss and they flirt awkwardly with each other.

“I thought I heard…” The teen sounds shy, insecure, and Stiles’ stomach is doing somersaults by now because the whole situation feels wrong. “I-I… Nothing,” he stammers almost too softly for Stiles to hear. “I’m still a bit…”

“Don’t apologize!” she croons. “You’ve been sick almost a month, it’s normal to be a little out of it on your first week back.”

The whole ninety-six minutes and forty-five seconds they’re there, they never even kiss that he can tell, but it leaves a sour taste in his mouth and an almost compulsive need to call his dad before there’s more to report than an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student.

It’s torture. There’s almost no light inside the cranny and the urge to squirm with nerves is almost irresistible, but he’s so terrified of getting caught that he doesn’t dare to breath too loudly or alter his position even an inch. His legs have been asleep for at least ten minutes, his wrist is burning and he’s feeling so dizzy that he’s seeing spots even though it’s dark, and he didn’t know that was possible.

And it’s all the twins’ fault.

By the time they leave it takes Stiles another ten minutes to get his legs to work enough to crawl out of hiding, breath harsh. Stiles can recognize the beginning of a panic attack. He used to have them when his mother died, especially when he was being bullied within an inch of his life, but he stopped having them when he took the reins back and decided to stop being a victim and to start being a survivor instead. Today he’s been insulted, manhandled and then nearly pushed down a flight of stairs, which he’s pretty sure that the math teacher saw but did nothing about because it ended just as an attempt. On top of that, a huntress that would kill him if she knew he’s a spark and hiding the fairies that she possibly failed to kill, has turned out to be attempting to seduce a teenager, which is wrong in itself, but since she’s a huntress there has to be more to it and that means he has to do something about it, lest it splashes on him. Oh, and his magic worked but he doesn’t know how, and there’s an array still making his wrist burn and his hand tremble. It’s too much.

He tries every technique he knows to control it and fails time and again. With each failed attempt, he gets worse and worse. He curls into a ball and his forehead gets scratched with the concrete. It takes him ten minutes to notice that he isn’t actually having a panic attack but instead working himself into one because he thinks he’s having one. The harsh breath, the full-body trembling, the spots in his vision, the sweating, the dizziness, the fast heartbeat; all those things were there before he added panic to the mix.

It’s too late by then.

—

“-les!”

“-iles!”

“-tiles! One more time, everyone!”

His body feels heavy. His tongue is dry, heavy and feels ten times too big in his mouth, as if it could choke him. His eyelids might as well weigh a ton because try as he might, he can’t open them.

Everything aches in a muted, detached way, as if it’s not his own body that hurts.

Stiles just wants to sleep.

“-tiles!”

“-elle, one more time! He’s almost there!”

“They’re coming back!

"Stiles, honey, please, open your eyes, pleaseleaseplease!”

“Wa?” Stiles slurs, vision unfocused and blurry. He doesn’t hear his own voice Well, it comes as if it's far, far away.

“There you go! Listen to me, love, you have to stop pushing energy into the array. Do you understand me?”

He doesn’t.

“Eglantine, let me. Stiles, listen to me. Remember our lessons? About how it felt like a flow, a stream leading to the array? Concentrate on your… No, look at me, don’t close your eyes. Concentrate on your arm. Right, here. Can you feel that?”

There’s a spike of pain on his arm that fades quickly. Stiles doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to feel pain. He wants to sleep.

“Focus, Stiles. Eyes on me! That’s it. Focus on that and then cut it. Stop that flow and I promise the pain will stop. Your arm, Stiles.”

Stiles doesn’t want to feel pain.

“We’re running out of time, Beriadan! I can feel them coming back. They can’t stall her anymore!”

“The flow, cut it, Stiles!”

It feels like a tiny, trickling river. The path feels bigger too, like there used to be more water running in it but now it’s almost dry. It’s pulling from somewhere within him and the pain sharpens when he looks at it closely. He backs off quickly from that and hesitates. How does he cut it? He doesn’t want to feel pain again, but he doesn’t want that river to pull from there anymore.

It cuts abruptly.

“Yes, that’s it. Stiles, now you have to hide, honey. She’s coming!”

“Dun'derstan,” he slurs again.

His voice is back and the pain from within has stopped, so he can go to sleep now.

“No, Stiles, you have to get up. Crawl if you have to, but you have to get up! I know it’s hard but try, please? We’ll help you, but you have to try.”

Stiles doesn’t understand, his mind is trying to process what’s happening but he just can’t. There’s something in the tone of voice, urgent and desperate, that gets him moving. He feels them pushing as he tries to roll onto his stomach to push himself up. There are some papers strewn over the ground and he grabs them reflexively.

“We have to do it again, Aelfdene! He’s not going to make it at this rate!”

“Once more and that’s it. Everyone land right now or we’re going to drop like deadweight afterwards!”

“Again!”

Everything sharpens abruptly just as seven fairies rush to them. His stomach rolls and spots dance on his vision. He obeys the fairies' urgings and crawls as fast as he can to his hiding spot. Before he can make it, the door opens with a loud sound when it hits the wall and Sterling comes out with a terrifying laugh.

“Well, look at what we have here,” Sterling croons as she takes out a gun from god knows where and stalks closer. “I have to admit you’re good, kid,” she says conversationally when she stops in front of him. Stiles’ vision won’t focus and his arms give up on him, making him drop to the ground. He breathes harshly. “You convinced me completely with your act this past month. If you hadn’t been stupid I would have left you alone. Now, I’m curious, what are you? A mutt, maybe?” She aims and then lowers the gun again. She’s playing with him and enjoying it. It doesn’t work, his mind is too gone to feel anything. “No? Not feeling talkative? Don’t worry, I don’t need to know what you are. Bullet to the head always does the trick. It’s a shame having to use a silencer, though, I love the sound they make.”

On the edge of his vision he sees Eglantine, who looks terrified but at the same time determined. A lot of the fairies came looking for him. The only ones he can’t see are the youngest ones. Odette, Ehaldun, Kendel, Rhenalyrr. Those ginger twins that begged him to put the constellations on his ceiling again and again. They’re not here. Are they home? Waiting for the people that will never come back because of Stiles?

She’s going to kill him, Stiles thinks, detached. What is she going to do? Hide his body? Frame someone else for it? Maybe she’ll make it look like he ran away? Will his dad even notice today? Will he drown in alcohol again when he finds him? Will he search for him if he doesn’t? It’s late. Is he home already? Is he waiting for a son that will never come home just like his wife didn’t either?

“You can’t hurt me,” he slurs finally, which is true. You can’t hurt someone that can’t feel anything.

“Oh, I can't?” she says, mocking. “In case you haven’t noticed, not only am I the only one with a gun here, but you can barely move and your mosquitoes can’t even fly."

"You can’t hurt me,” he repeats, completely convinced.

"Let me prove you wrong, sweetie."

With a bloodthirsty smile, Sterling takes aim and shoots.

Um, some love would be appreciated, please? Not only I'm struggling quite a bit irl, but y'all are being very silent about this fic and I could use some positive reinforcement...

Chapter 3

Stiles hasn’t slept a wink. His head is pounding a little bit and his eyes are tight and stinging. He’s been thinking about what to do and he still feels conflicted even after so many hours mulling over it. He turns in bed to glare at the glowing numbers of the clock in his nightstand. The alarm will go off in less than an hour and he resists the need to growl in frustration.

He just doesn’t understand. He’s a good kid. His room is clean and tidy, hell, the whole house is. He does the laundry, buys the groceries and cooks. He has either the best or one of the best grades of his whole year. What twelve-year-old does all that? What's more, what twelve-year-old with ADHD does that? And ok, he sometimes hacks to dig dirt and take revenge when people mess with him, but that’s just self-defense, because he’s never gone after anyone that hadn’t gone after him first. More importantly to the case at hand, he’s never been caught, not even when he acted all crazy when he was eight and his schoolmates behaved like it was the hunting season of the one-of-a-kind specimen named Stiles. Whatever he does, he always makes sure that there’s no way it could be traced back to him, that he has such an airtight alibi that it would be absurd to think it was him. Which means that his dad doesn’t know about that and he’s never been called to the school before yesterday. So why? Why is he so ready to not trust Stiles? If he hasn’t given him any real reason to distrust him, is it because he’s a cop and that general attitude is always seeping through the cracks until it taints his personal life too? He doesn’t understand and it’s exhausting, because letting all those assholes at school walk over him until nothing remains is not an option and he doesn’t know what else he can do to make things better with his dad.

(And, honestly, he’s starting, slowly, very slowly, to not give a damn.)

(Even though he doesn’t want to even contemplate that terrifying possibility because his dad is the only one he has left.)

One part of Stiles (the part that is brimming with resentment and anger about how things have been since his mom died) wants to just defy his dad with a cynical oops, sorry, I forgot to set the alarm. That part of him also wants to just send everything to hell and start giving his dad a real reason to distrust him, forcing the man to feel deeply the absence of everything that he has been overlooking or maybe taking for granted every single day ever since Stiles started taking care of almost everything around the house.

The other part of him (a colder, calmer and more practical one) knows how to pick his battles and also that this isn’t one that he can win. That part of him also realizes that if the general situation he lives in (with only those little sporadic fights against his dad) exhausts him, being in constant battle would be unbearable. Especially since he’s not on equal footing and his dad holds all the power. It would be like one man going against an imperium, and even though in movies that works, he’s more than mature enough to know who would win in his case.

Still, it rankles that there’s no way he can turn the whole situation in his favor unless he gets the twins to confess. Even if he aces the exam today, his dad is so convinced that he cheated that he’ll think that he busted his ass off studying and then left the textbook back on the kitchen table just for show. Or if he doesn’t think that, he’ll see his face this morning and think that he spent the whole night awake studying. He regrets so much not getting up to throw the textbook out of his room… except that wouldn’t have gone well either because it would have been like a declaration of war.

One thing is for sure, even if he can’t get the twins to confess, he’s going to make them regret it with every fiber of their beings.

Hah! Who is he kidding? He’s so pissed off that he’s going to do that either way.

Stiles sighs and reaches to turn off the alarm before it can even sound. He rubs his face frustrated and then heaves himself up with a grunt. As he does so, small dimly glowing dots start coming from inside the terrarium. A tiny part of him wonders about the magic they’ve used on the terrarium that makes it so that the glow they emit can’t be seen when they’re inside, but he dismisses the thought, too tired to care about that right now.

Odette barrels into his face and it takes him a moment to process that she’s hugging him. Ehaldun hovers behind her shyly, prompting a fond smile out of Stiles. He raises his hand and the kid first pries his sister from Stiles’ cheek and gives him a quick hug before making her sit with him on his palm.

“How are you?” he murmurs softly as he crosses his legs to sit more comfortably. “Did she hurt you?”

“Thankfully it was nothing but a scare, Stiles,” Eglantine interrupts before they can answer, gliding closer until she stands on his palm too. She keeps reaching to touch her children, as if to reassure herself. “We arrived before she could do more. But you need to be careful, she’s really dangerous.”

“I gathered that,” he nods frowning. Just what he needs today, more problems. Awesome.

“She’s a huntress,” Lorelle interjects as she comes near with Aelfdene in tow. Both elders look grim and wary. They keep exchanging covert looks that put Stiles instantly on edge.

“A huntress… of supernaturals, you mean,” he guesses instantly and the elders nod. And that’s bad news because if Stiles is really a spark, that means that he’s a supernatural too, and therefore that places him within their sights. “Is it some kind of sport for them? Or a crusade?”

“For some it’s both. We’re abominations to them,” the elder sighs, world-weary and just her tired expression makes her look way older than she already is.

“An abomination, wonderful,” Stiles sighs, sarcasm thick, and rubs his eyes tiredly with his free hand. Then it dawns on him. “Just some?“

“Most old families have a code of conduct they’re supposed to follow that forbids them to attack innocents.” Aelfdene snorts at Lorelle’s words and he’s echoed by many.

“Supposed?”

“What do you think happened to our home?” Beriadan snaps but Stiles doesn’t take it to heart, knowing it’s not directed at him. She isn’t even looking at him, her gaze lost as if she’s seeing things that aren’t there.

“Was it her?” he asks calmly instead.

“We don’t know,” Lorelle sighs again. Aelfdene's face is pinched, he obviously still doesn't want to rely on Stiles this much but knows that there's no other way. For the better or the worse, at this moment they depend on him to survive.

“It happened too fast,” a man to her left adds, pained, echoed by others that speak too softly for Stiles to understand.

“We were… and suddenly there was fire everywhere,” a girl chokes out as she embraces another girl. “When we tried to fly out…”

“Whoever they were, they sprayed something on us and it was like poison,” the other girl finishes.

“The ones of us that managed to fly further and hide survived,” Lorelle takes over. “We managed to regroup after we regained consciousness, even though we were incredibly sick. It took days before some of us felt good enough to sneak in to search for any other survivors. There was nothing left.”

“Could the hunters have taken anyone with them?” Stiles asks immediately and both Lorelle and Aelfdene shake his head. “Are you sure? You said you were unconscious for a while…”

“We have our ways, Stiles. None of them survived,” Aelfdene’s response is needlessly harsh, sharp and unequivocal. In the face of that, Stiles holds his tongue and nods.

“I’m sure that she didn’t see me but I’ll be careful,” he concedes simply as he lowers his hand onto his nightstand to let it’s occupants get off.

“But are you completely sure?” Eglantine prods gently.

Stiles gets it. He saved the kids and they’re grateful, so they don’t want anything bad to happen to him. But also, if that woman even remotely suspects that Stiles is involved, what stops her from simply breaking into the house when he’s at school to check it out? His address is on his record, and she probably has access to that. Moreover, the terrarium is not exactly inconspicuous. A normal person would see the ewok village and wouldn’t even think to associate it to fairies, but she is a huntress, not a normal person. And in the remote possibility that she didn’t immediately associate the terrarium as a fairy village, Stiles still has the box he stole from her in his closet.

There are four things that could get him caught: the traffic cameras, his fingerprints, the printer and the glittery box.

If that huntress has access to the traffic cameras or can get her hands on the feed from the shops that have cameras too, she won’t find anything. Stiles knows the blind spots of the town like the back of his hand and unless someone installed a new camera on the last twenty hours that he doesn’t know of, he’s safe. He’ll check it out just in case.

As for the fingerprints he may have left while sneaking around school, his hands were covered by his sleeves both when he snuck in and out and when he opened or closed the doors as he searched around. If he slipped up without noticing, there will be so many other fingerprints that his will be lost. Maybe this precaution seems too much, but in Stiles’ opinion it never hurts to be careful and in the slim chance that she checked for fingerprints, it would have been a problem if his fingerprints appeared on every door of the school. Even with his heart pounding with fear and adrenaline at that last moment, he had the presence of mind to cover his hands with his sleeves as he climbed out the window. The only time he forgot himself was when he checked the box, which is why he didn’t leave it behind.

And now the only doubt left is if he left some kind of trace when he hacked into the printer or not, because he didn’t use his backup phone for that. Yesterday he used a very simple code to hack into the printer, basically giving it orders to print indefinitely the last archive in its memory. He revises the code mentally and yes, no one will be able to link him to it. If they check who sent the order to print, it will show the owner of the last printed archive. And even if that hunter suspects foul play, because Stiles can see that the printer turning on just before the captive fairies disappeared is too much of a coincidence, no one knows that he has that kind of skill or even suspects. He started learning after he lost all his friends and he has never flaunted it. And when he uses it to get revenge it’s because he can’t do it any other way, which means that enough time has passed and people on the receiving end of it, whom also expect a more hands-on approach from him, don’t link it to back to Stiles.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Once I get rid of the box, we’re clear. But it never hurts to be careful, so you should strengthen your wards and maybe… place something on the doors and windows that alerts you if anyone other than me or my dad comes in? That way you can hide? Is that a thing?”

Lorelle and Aelfdene exchange a short glance, seemingly debating silently about something, before the first talks. Again Aelfdene's expression sours, clearly against sharing more information that could be used against them but letting Lorelle have her way. “We can place some magic to alert us if anyone enters the house but… we can’t be as selective as that. Besides, if she is the one that attacked us, she already knows how to circumvent it and it would only serve to confirm our presence to her if she came to investigate on a hunch.”

Stiles hums as he gathers a change of clothes. “And what about placing a sentry? You have those communication runes, right? Place people on guard to alert you of intruders and that will give you enough time to hide in case of an emergency. At least until we can think of a better solution.”

“We can do that,” Eglantine nods, echoed by Beriadan and some other guards, and then sighs. “It’s such a shame, though.”

“Eglantine!” Aelfwine admonishes.

“What! I’m only saying…”

“What? What is a shame?” Stiles asks, frowning.

“I swear, Eglantine! You have no shame! We can’t have him more involved…”

“This has nothing to do with shame! And he’s already involved, there’s no turning back!”

“She’s right, Aelfwine,” Beriadan interjects.

“He’s done more than enough and we’ve already put him in danger by moving into his home!”

“We know that, but leaving him defenseless would be doing him a disservice,” Beriadan answers calmly.

“Exactly! It is more than enough reason for him-”

“You only want-”

“Don’t insult me! All of us would benefit from-”

“Eglantine, Beriadan, Aelfwine, that’s enough,” Aelfdene cuts in sharply, Lorelle sighing exasperated beside him.

“Explanation, please?” Stiles demands crossing his arms and frowning.

“Spark magic is stronger in those kinds of wards,” Beriadan answers plainly, ignoring Aelfwine’s protests, “but you’re not trained and we don’t have that kind of knowledge.”

Stiles sits on the bed mulling over that. He gets why Aelfwine is protesting but he likes Eglantine and Beriadan’s direct approach more. So, the way he sees it, the situation is like the following. He doesn’t owe them anything but he’s letting them stay and he still risked himself to go looking for the kids, possibly placing himself on the radar of the hunters by doing so. This has made the fairies in general (especially Eglantine and her kids) warm up to him. Still, some of them fear that since they can’t offer him anything in exchange, he’ll change his mind and kick them out, which, admittedly, would be the sensible thing to do. Eglantine owes her kids’ life to him and she’s deeply grateful, which is why she wants him to be as prepared as he can just in case. Beriadan is more practical about the whole issue: if Stiles knows more magic, he can protect himself and the fairies (which she assumes he would do, because he has already showed the inclination to do so) better. Aelfwine, on the other hand, thinks that they should cut his involvement to keep Stiles safe. And Aelfdene is trying to shut them up because he fears that he’ll make them leave if they confirm that they can only give him information about the supernatural world and no real training.

While he appreciates Aelfwine’s concern, out of the four he likes Eglantine and Beriadan’s approach the best. Lorelle and Aelfdene, while he understands, he's not very happy with.

“Okay,” he starts after a moment, “let’s be clear: I hate when people lie to me. It pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe. So don’t lie to me or try to manipulate me, period. Apart from the moral part of it, which I don’t care about,” he makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, “want to know why in this case? Because I could have been trying to guess how my powers work ever since you told me what I was, instead of waiting for you to teach me the way more safely. And now that we need it, I don’t have even the foggiest clue on how to use them. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that you were looking for your people in extreme circumstances and you didn’t know me, but I think that by now I’ve proven that I’m at least a little bit trustworthy, haven’t I? When you chose to come here you said that my magic marked it as a safe place, right? So something in it must have told you that I wouldn’t harm you? In any case, trusting me or not, you have to decide if you’re going to work with me or not, because I’m not going to harm you, but I’m not going to get harmed because of you either, just because you knowingly kept things that I needed to know from me. Think about it.”

Stiles doesn’t push it anymore. If the situation was reversed, he knows it would take more time for him to trust them, but he’d be willing to give the benefit of doubt after what happened yesterday. He leaves them to chew on the bone he’s left them and starts getting prepared to leave for school. It’s very early still, but it’s not like he has anything else to do.

First he makes sure to hang all the clothes he used yesterday and then he looks at the box, thinking about how to destroy it. It’s cardboard, so he decides to wet it until he can just make a ball (making sure the glitter stays in the center of it) to throw to the trash. He sneaks into the kitchen silently to grab the cleaning bucket and then he leaves the box soaking hidden inside his closet while he takes a quick shower.

When he finishes, most of the fairies have gone back to the terrarium. Only the elders remain, and neither of them talk as he makes a ball with the soaked box and puts it inside a plastic bag to throw out hidden among other trash. He also throws the water from the bucket to the toilet and makes sure that there’s isn’t any glitter left on either of them.

“We can teach you the runes. The basics are the same for everyone, it’s the way of using or activating them that varies,” Lorelle says finally. Aelfdene remains stony at her side but he looks resigned about the whole thing, even though he obviously still doesn't like the situation one bit. “Of course there’s more to spark magic than just runes, but apart from stories about it that may or may not be truthful, sadly we have nothing more to give you. We can share general knowledge about the supernatural world too, but, again, it may be incomplete or off the mark without our knowledge.”

“Ok, I can work with that,” Stiles replies simply as he goes to pick up his bag. He waves goodbye to a wildly gesturing Odette, whom is peeking over the top of the crystal wall of the terrarium, copied more sedately by Ehaldun. When he receives some verbal goodbyes from the rest of the fairies, he answers to those too. “If you’re going to place those sentries, remember to wait until my dad leaves… or hide very well.”

“We will.”

He looks at the textbook still lying where it fell beside the bed and then sighs tiredly as he bends to pick it up. It’s going to be a long day.

(But at least he’s finally getting somewhere with the fairies.)

—

By the time he makes it to school, the cold and crispy morning air has taken care of the last vestiges of drowsiness that had remained stubbornly even after his cold shower. He has taken his Adderall, but it’s not magical, so he’s welcomed the cold weather on his way there.

It’s too early and still dark, so he locks his bike and prepares to eat the pop tarts that he prepared before leaving, not wanting to see his dad today. They’re cold by now, but he doesn’t really care. There are some cars in the parking lot, including the ones he assumes to be the huntress’ and the security guard’s. He debates for a moment as he munches a tart and then he decides to try the entrance door to see if it’s open, because the cold was nice when he was moving, but right now it’s a bit too much. He doesn’t think he’ll have a problem because he does have a legitimate reason to be here this early… Well, not so early, but he has enough indignation and anger about the whole situation to draw an excuse from, so he decides to risk it. With any luck, this will help cement the idea in the huntress’ mind that he has nothing to do with her disappeared hostages.

Stiles pushes on the door and it opens easily. He finishes the first pop tart as he crosses the hallway leisurely and when he takes the stairs he’s halfway through his second. As he climbs them, he wonders if Eglantine’s runes are still there. This morning he didn’t think of it, but should he try to erase them? They left three marks before they had to beat a hasty retreat. He’ll have to ask Eglantine later because if the hunters found a way to evade their wards, maybe they can see their runes too? In any case, he’s not going to do anything right now, because, one, he can’t see them himself and he only remembers vaguely where she put them on the door and the stairs, and two, he can’t risk getting caught doing it. If that huntress knows they’re there, she’ll be keeping an eye on them and Stiles is not going to fall into that trap. Besides, unless the huntress knows how to track the residual magic that Eglantine may have left on them, it’s not like they’re very incriminating. They actually help Stiles because she may think that only other fairies were involved in the rescue.

Just as he’s turning to leave the stairs a hand falls harshly on his shoulder, making him choke with a mouthful. “Well, well, what do we have here?” a woman’s voice says. “Did you forget something, mmm?“

And of course the very first thing that happens to him is that he crosses paths with the huntress. Still, he has more pressing things to care about right now, like not dying because he choked on a pop tart. Well, at least this answers the question, doesn’t it? She can somehow see the runes because, if he recalls well, there’s one on the door behind her and another one on the wall just beside him. Too much of a coincidence that she’s waiting right there. Stiles reminds himself that he hasn’t done anything that indicates that he was looking for the runes to erase them. In other words, she’s fishing and taking advantage of having surprised him to see if he spills anything.

“Oh, my god, you nearly killed me,” he lets out in a strained voice when he finally stops coughing his lungs out. His heart is still rabbiting in his chest and he tries to control his breathing. He throws at her a wary look, like he would to any stranger that grabbed him out of the blue, and he tries to escape her hold. She not only doesn’t let go but tightens her grip.

“Ah, ah, ah,“ she tuts, and her smile is really unsettling. “No escaping for you. Name?”

“You’re hurting me, let go,” he grumbles as he glares at her heatedly. Then he purposely raises his voice a few notches. “Ok, this is officially the worst day ever. First my dad grounds me and now this? This is the worst! But, hey, why not? Punish me for something I didn’t do too and join the club!”

“What?” the woman says, clearly surprised.

“Ms. Sterling, is everything okay?” A male voice reaches them. Score, Stiles thinks when he recognizes the night guard. “Another one?”

“So it seems,” she answers and then she starts pulling him in the direction of the principal’s office. “I’m going to get this one to the principal too.”

“Need any help?”

“I can manage, don’t worry.”

“Maybe just in case…”

If she’s not happy with the night guard dogging their steps, Stiles can’t tell from her expression, but she does stop trying to puncture his skin with her fingers, even if she keeps her hand on his shoulder to steer him in the direction of the principal’s office, so Stiles is thankful for his presence. Stiles just keeps the facade of a disgruntled child the whole way there and ignores the conversation the two adults maintain.

She knocks on the door firmly but doesn’t wait for the principal to bid them in. She pushes Stiles into the room, just as the security guard leaves with a wave.

“I have another one for you, Emily,” she says.

“Stiles?” Mr. Andrews exclaims before the principal can get a word in.

Stiles takes stock of the room quickly. The twins are there, along with whom he thinks are their parents, Mr. Andrews and Mrs. Callahan, the principal. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but hell if he’s not going to take advantage of this.

“You know him then?”

“He’s one of my students,” he replies sighing.

“I caught him sneaking in-”

“I wasn’t sneaking in,” Stiles interrupts with an angry face. “You told me to be here to retake that exam and here I am. But for the record, I didn’t cheat and it’s really stupid to think that I would when I always have good grades. This is unfair and the only reason I’m here now is because my dad will ground me for forever if I’m not. And I can prove that I wasn’t the one cheating and it will be even more unfair if you don’t let me do it. And just so you know…“

“You can,” Mr. Andrews says sounding more interested than Stiles expected.

“I can?” Stiles blinks for a second. “I mean, yeah, I can.”

“Prove it, then. There’s not going to be a better time than this, now that we’re all here.” When the twins and their parents start to protest, he raises his hand, successfully silencing them. “If they didn’t cheat, they shouldn’t be worried. They did get a 98% after all. So Stiles, do go on.”

Okay, this is going way better than Stiles expected and it’s a little confusing, but he’s not going to let this opportunity pass, so he shakes it off quickly and barrels on. “Ask me anything and I’ll answer.”

“That just proves that you studied for today, Stiles.”

“I know, but I bet you anything you want that if you ask any of them,” he answers triumphantly, savoring how pale the twins are becoming by the minute, “they won’t have the answers.”

“And if they do?”

“I know they won’t, or not enough to get a 98% anyway.”

It turns out that Stiles is right and they don’t. With Mr. Andrews grilling them and the added pressure of their parents and the principal’s presence, the twins break halfway through. Everyone knows that Mr. Andrews always grades the exams two or three days after they take them, so they snuck into school to rewrite their exams because they had done pretty badly. When they were doing it, they had the idea of copying Stiles’ exam to make it seem like Stiles was the one that had cheated. And it worked, but then they caught wind of Mr. Andrews letting him retake the exam because they heard their parents talking about it. Not knowing what else to do, they decided to sneak in yesterday night again to try to steal the new exam from the teachers' room, because even though only Stiles had to retake the exam, they were worried that he’d do so well that it would make Mr. Andrews suspicious and he’d make them take it again too, and there was no way they could cram everything in just one afternoon to get a similar grade a second time. Stiles nearly cackles when he hears it, but it turns out they got caught because the printer suddenly turned on. Of course, Mr. Andrews grew suspicious after Ms. Sterling and the night guard caught them trying to steal the second exam, which is why he let Stiles try to prove his innocence.

Karma. The name is Karma. Very nice to meet you.

What’s even better is that the twins don’t even get to spread rumors about Stiles cheating because they’re getting suspended for the rest of the week for doing exactly that and trying to incriminate Stiles and an entire week in addition to that for sneaking into the school to steal the exams, which is going to be on their record permanently.

Mr. Andrews apologizes as he guides him out of the office and promises to call his dad, which at this point, to be honest, he doesn’t care much about, because this is nothing but a bittersweet victory and it doesn’t make everything okay again. An apology isn’t going to erase how deeply his dad’s refusal to even listen to him or to let him prove his innocence hurts. This is just the best outcome he can get out of this all around shitty situation because at least his father will now have proof that he didn’t cheat and Stiles won’t get punished for something he didn’t do.

“I’ll take him,” Sterling offers when Mr. Andrews talks about getting him at least a cocoa from the kitchens to make up for having to wait nearly an hour until class starts, and no. Just no.

“You should try to sleep for a bit, Kaitlyn, you were awake all night, after all…”

“Kate, please,“ she smiles and why is Stiles so creeped out by it? Mr. Andrews seems to like it quite fine.

“Kate. Charlie, then, please.”

It’s like that tale about the spider and the fly, and Mr. Andrews is falling so hard for the act that Stiles is nauseated. He wonders if it would be too obvious to just let himself fall to the ground and then crawl the hell out of here before she devours him too… But of course it would be and he has watched way too many cartoons.

“Charlie,” she lilts as she smiles coyly, taking the man’s hand to shake it. “And I don’t mind taking him because I could use one now too.“ And then she winks, of all things. “Besides, I don’t have class until fifth period and I can take a nap after I take him to the cafeteria.”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind…”

Farewell Charlie Andrews…

“I don’t.”

“Here, then,” he nods as he passes her the keys to open the kitchen’s door.

… may you rest in peace.

“Come on, Stiles,” she says as she passes her arm over his shoulders. Just for a second, Stiles feels like a little mouse cornered by a snake and he shudders. He’s pretty sure her smile acquires a shark edge to it in response and has to stomp on the urge to tell her what exactly his father does for a living and yes, he does carry a gun and knows how to use it, so get your damn paws off me lest you lose them. “Let’s get you something warm,” she adds as she rubs his arm comfortingly.

She doesn’t talk again until they’re sitting facing each other at the nearest table with a mug full of cocoa each. Stiles doesn’t let that get him nervous or lure him into a false sense of security, even though if outwardly he makes it look like the latter.

Maturity wise, Stiles is pretty advanced for his age. It’s not only because of what happened with his dad, but because the better he got at hacking, the older the crowd he moved with got, so he learned fast about topics that a kid his age should have no business knowing about to pass off as a much older person on the net, or he wouldn’t have been taken seriously due to his age. If it wasn’t for that, he’s sure one Kaitlyn Sterling would have him for breakfast very easily and then ask for seconds. Even so, as things are now, he’s not sure if he’s going to get out of this conversation unscathed, and he can’t afford to make any mistake in this.

“Rough night?“ she asks commiserating, and when Stiles just shrugs and keeps looking at his mug fixedly, she reaches to touch his hand. “You have panda eyes.”

He has to throw her a bone or she’s going to continue digging until she gets a reaction out of him. Either he controls where this conversation goes or she’s going to eat him alive. This is nothing like interacting with his peers or even stupid teenagers, where he has to be careful with what his face is giving up but not overly so, because it’s how he twists his words that gets him what he wants. Not even the people he talks to on the net, whom are much older and experienced, are this difficult to manage either, because he doesn’t have to worry about what face he’s making when someone surprises him or nearly gets the upper hand. Sterling is using a tactic Stiles has used before, where she gets information whether he talks or not. So right here, right now, he has to have an almost impossibly tight control of his facial expression and his body language on top of what comes out of his mouth, to avoid giving up anything.

“My dad didn’t believe me when I told him I hadn’t cheated,” he mumbles before she can push more.

“So you couldn’t sleep.” When he just nods in answer, she continues unfazed by his closed off attitude. “I understand, you know? After all you didn’t cheat and he didn’t believe you.“

“Yeah. I tried to prove to him that I hadn’t cheated but he wouldn’t listen.” His fingers clench around the mug unconsciously and she pats his hand.

“That must have been so frustrating…” she nods, removing her hand from where it was still resting on top of his.

“It was. I haven’t done anything to them and they keep coming after me.”

Her expression turns completely serious. She’s good, so good at this, and if he didn’t already know that she’s basically a murderer, he’d be fooled. “I hope you aren’t thinking about getting into trouble to get revenge, though, Stiles. I know it’s tempting after what they’ve done but-”

“Why would I?” he interjects. “I never thought about that,” she raises both eyebrows skeptically but keeping her amicable expression, and he flushes before he can control it. Damn it. “Ok, maybe I did, but that was only if I couldn’t convince Mr. Andrews about letting me prove that I hadn’t cheated or making them repeat the exam too.”

“Seriously?” she asks, keeping the same skeptic yet friendly face.

“They’ve gotten suspended and grounded, and on top of that they won’t be able to spread rumors about me,” he shrugs. “It can’t get any better than that and I don’t want my dad to tell me off again. Or even worse, ground me.”

“I used to argue a lot with my mom too. It pissed me off so much! Sometimes I was so angry that I would climb out the window and disappear for the whole night. I was such a brat,“ she laughs self-deprecatingly as she explains what she used to do on those nights.

“Oh my god, my dad would kill me if I did that.” He feigns an earnest expression to cover an alarmed one. She suspects him all right and he doesn’t know why. Judging by the line of questioning she’s taken, maybe she’s just shooting in the dark because of this whole exam robbery thing. Because if she has heard about him before, she knows he likes to get back at the people that cross him and sneaking into school to get the twins caught wouldn’t be too far off. He has the feeling, though, that she doesn’t think that he rescued the fairies or her questions wouldn’t be this obvious… or amicable for that matter. Maybe she thinks that he saw someone else and she’s trying to get it out of him? Still, she wants to talk? Okay, they’re going to talk, but about her. “What did your mom do?”

“Ground me, of course,” she laughs and Stiles snickers before he can think of it. “What else? But she couldn’t take away the fun I’d had already,” she adds with a wink, making him smile back unconsciously again.

One thing is for sure, if it wasn’t because she doesn’t think him guilty and she’s going in with kid gloves, she’d have caught him very easily, and Stiles needs to brush up those skills pronto if these conversations with her are going to be a thing. And unless this particular conversation serves to prove to her that he has nothing to do with the fairies’ Houdini act, he’s pretty sure they are until she gets what she wants from him.

“I’d never dare, you know? My dad is the sheriff and all his deputies have known me since I was a baby. I’d be brought back home by the ears not even five minutes after leaving home. I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad had put in one of those pet microchips with the way he always knows where I am and what I’m doing.” She starts laughing and he scowls as he mumbles. “Not funny.”

“It kind of is, though.”

“No it’s not,” he pouts and she laughs harder.

“Well, kiddo, that just means that you have to be craftier about it, that’s all.”

“Are you seriously telling me to misbehave? What kind of teacher are you?”

“A fun one?” She joins Stiles when he snickers and then she yawns spectacularly. “And a dead one too. Sorry to cut this short, kiddo, but I’m going to hide in an AV room and sleep for a couple of hours at least. Do you mind if I leave you alone? I can…”

“That’s ok,” he cuts in. “I don’t mind, I’ll just read for a bit.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“See you around then.”

“Sleep well.”

Somehow he’s dodged the bullet. Unbelievable. Now he’s not going to move at all from his seat for the next twenty minutes at this obvious trap. And unless Eglantine tells him that those marks can be used to track her, he’s going to forget they even exist.

—

He gets through the day trying to not fall asleep every minute and succeeding mostly, even though he loses the count on how many times he has to splash his face with cold water to help himself. He doesn’t see Sterling again but he can’t shake the feeling of being watched, so he mentally cheers when the last bell sounds and he can go home.

“I’m home!” he calls as he enters, feeling a little weird, because he hasn’t said that in a long time. Still, it’s a way to let the fairies know it’s him and he takes note mentally to work out a code with them so, in case something is wrong and they have to hide, he can let them know beforehand and without being suspicious. “Hi, Beriadan,” he greets her as he takes a look around. Another fairy pops out from behind a picture on the shelf near the door to the backyard and waves at him, which he responds in kind.

“Hello, Stiles. Rough day?” she asks with a wave as she glides near. “Any problems?”

“More like long,” he answers sheepish, rubbing the back of his head with a sigh. “A really long, long day. And nope, no problems so far but we’ll see how that goes. It’s too early to tell. Everything fine here? Anything suspicious?”

“Not that we noticed. We placed the sentries after your father left like you suggested, but we haven’t dared to place proximity runes on the perimeter. At this point, seeing what happened, doing that might actually give our presence away rather than help us.” Stiles hums in answer, frowning, but before he can get a word in, Beriadan continues speaking, obviously opting for the direct route. “How did the exam go?”

He clears his throat feeling pretty uncomfortable about the fact that probably every fairy listened to the delightful conversation he had with his dad yesterday. “I didn’t have to take it in the end. They caught the ones responsible before that.”

She looks at him for a moment, gaze penetrating. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”

“I am. It saved me the hassle of having to find a way to make them confess,” he shrugs flippantly and her lips twitch reluctantly. “Is Eglantine upstairs? I need to ask her something.”

“Yeah,” she replies simply, letting the matter go. Stiles sighs inwardly in relief and advances towards the stairs. “At the library, I think. She was trying to compile everything for your lesson.” When she sees the smile that stretches on his face, she rolls her eyes. Then when that same smile vanishes, she frowns. “Is everything okay?”

As he expected, there’s an apology brownie waiting for him on the kitchen counter. He can see it from where he stands and he has to stomp on the desire to throw it through the window. He manages to contain himself by very little. “Yeah. Everything’s cool.”

“Sure?”

“Yep,” he says, mustering a smile. “Talk to you later, Beriadan, I need to talk to Eglantine,” he adds as he climbs the stairs, ignoring the brownie altogether.

Stiles nods to the two guards outside the terrarium (Alvara and Fafnir, if he recalls well) as he enters his bedroom, letting his bag fall beside his desk chair. Just as he’s bending to untie his sneakers, Odette comes barreling out from the terrarium and into his face like this morning. Stiles can see already that this is going to become a thing and he can’t decide if he likes it or not. Ehaldun comes right behind her with a shy wave and then grabs his sister’s shirt to pull her away from him, obviously noticing his discomfort. Stiles sighs inwardly, battle already lost, before reaching to pull the kid near, so he can follow his sister’s steps too. The little boy’s flush shouldn’t be this cute, and Stiles has just found out that maybe he’s a sucker for little kids. He lets Odette babble about anything and everything as he opens his laptop and turns it on, only intervening to pull Ehaldun into the conversation when he notices he wants to say something but he’s too shy to interrupt.

“Is your mom available?” Stiles asks after he finishes the quick check of the security cameras but finds nothing new. Unless someone put a personal camera with no intranet or connection to the Internet, he’s safe. “I need to ask her something.”

“I’ll get mom!” Odette exclaims happily before she rushes into the terrarium.

Stiles catches a strange expression on Ehaldun’s face as she leaves before the kid can cover it. Ever since he met the two siblings, the boy hasn’t let his little sister out of his sight. In fact, this has been the first time he hasn’t trailed after her after she’s moved farther than an arm’s length of distance from him and also the first time he’s seen him alone. It doesn’t take a genius to know the cause of this behavior, after all that’s happened to them. First the attack on their colony and then the whole failed school trip debacle. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t want to let her out of his sight. Odette doesn’t seem so affected by what happened to the colony (as opposed to her encounter with the huntress, which left her shaken), so Stiles guesses that either she wasn’t present or she was too young to fully understand what was happening.

In any case, Ehaldun wasn’t so lucky.

“Wanna play a game?” Stiles asks because the kid looks deeply uncomfortable with the silence and it’s almost painful to watch.

“A game?” Ehaldun repeats softly, his voice almost inaudible. He looks interested, though, so Stiles counts that as a win.

“Here, this is fun,” he replies as he opens the Minesweeper and starts playing a round to show him how it works. “It’s a puzzle game. You see that board?” Ehaldun nods, flying to hover Stiles’ shoulder to watch what he does. “You have to clear it. Under each square there are either mines or a number. If there’s a number, like here,” he points to a two he’s just uncovered. “This means that there are two mines around that square. You have to avoid those mines. If you hit them, it’s game over.” Stiles continues playing and the kid finally relaxes enough to sit on Stiles’ shoulder and starts piping suggestions on where to click. It’s almost too adorable the way Ehaldun jumps, startled when they make a mistake and the mines go off. “Wanna try?” Stiles offers, trying not to snicker at his pout and determined look.

“Yes, please,” he replies, nodding eagerly.

“Can you move the mouse? If it’s too difficult I can set it up with the keyboard. Try first and we’ll see.”

“Okay.”

Stiles mentally pats his shoulder, satisfied. Admittedly, he doesn’t know the kid much, even though Odette has dragged him almost daily to watch Stiles do his homework or other things, but this is the most excited he’s seen Ehaldun since he’s known him. He normally sits back and just observes with a closed off expression, only answering to his sister when she badgers him.

“Keyboard, it is,” Stiles says when it’s obvious that with the mouse it’s too awkward. “Gimme a moment.”

“Sorry,” Ehaldun mumbles, face red in shame.

“What for?”

“I-I…”

“You don’t,” he replies simply to what he knows the kid is going to say. “Here you go. Use the cross here to command the selection up, down, right or left. To select the square you press the enter.”

“What’s that?” Odette cries happily, Eglantine coming more sedately behind here. “I wanna play too. Can I? Please? Please?”

When Ehaldun looks like he’s about to let his sister go at it in his place, Stiles intervenes. “Here, Odette,” he stops the boy as he speaks, making him a gesture to keep on playing. He opens a duplicate window with the same game and explains to her the rules quickly before letting her play with another part of the keyboard. Stiles tunes them out as he turns his attention to Eglantine. There’s a strange expression on her face but he dismisses it to get to the matter at hand. “Remember where you left those two runes at the door of the hall that connects the two buildings and the stairs?” She nods. “When I got to school this morning, that huntress was waiting right at that exact place.” She startles and he rushes to explain what happened, distractedly reaching to help Odette when she seems to get too frustrated. “It could be a coincidence, sure, because, strategically, that’s a place where I would hide to catch someone. You can control a bigger area there. But I think that it confirms that Sterling either can see those runes somehow or rune magic leaves some kind of sign and she knows what to look for. Now my question is: if she can see them, can she trace the user or can she just see them if they are on her way?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Well, obviously…”

“No, Stiles. I mean it, it’s impossible,” she interrupts vehemently. “There are two ways of doing runic magic: either you use some kind of ink to write the rune or your own innate magic. If I had used ink, sure, a smidgen of the caster’s energy always remains on it, because it mixes with that ink or whatever you used to write it no matter how much you try to avoid it and makes it impossible for the array to consume it. But I didn’t do that, I used the second method. It takes more energy to do it, but the moment you stop feeding the runes magic, they disappear.”

“Does that happen immediately?” he asks after a moment of consideration.

Eglantine frowns, crossing her arms contemplatively. She smiles warmly when Odette lets out a startled scream when the mines go off, followed by a happy giggle as she starts another round. Ehaldun smiles triumphantly when he clears the board and Stiles smiles back, making the kid flush. A couple of older kids come out, obviously drawn out by the noise they’re making. They settle for taking turns without Stiles’ intervention so he turns his attention back to Eglantine.

“I don’t know the exact time, but I think it takes a bit for the runes to consume the remaining energy once you stop feeding them. A couple of minutes or more depending on the array? In any case, whether it is traced with ink or magic, the array converts the magic, acting as a filter, essentially changing it’s nature and leaving it unrecognizable. We’ve tried tracking it before and it’s impossible.”

“And are you completely sure about that?” She nods and he hums in response. “Can we do an experiment? To see how long it takes for a communication rune to fade, I mean. Maybe Sterling saw them before they faded?”

Eglantine places the array on the table. After approximately the same amount of time that she kept them up at the school, she stops feeding them. It takes about twenty minutes to fade. They make more tests with various different arrays and it turns out that depending on the one used, it needs more or less energy to function.

Conclusion? It’s possible that the huntress found them before they faded. So, either, best case scenario, it’s pure coincidence that she’s was right there waiting for him (which means that, if she was the one to destroy the colony, she was lucky, she crossed paths with a fairy and then she followed them home) or, worst case scenario, she can see runic magic, or the signs left by it somehow. In any case, seeing that Sterling can’t track a magic that is long gone by now, it’s better that Stiles does his best to not raise her suspicions. The sooner she forgets about him, the better.

With that out of the way, since they’re already talking about runes, they work out a schedule for the lessons. Eglantine will start with the basics, since she’s the one that usually teaches that to the kids. When he masters that, either Beriadan or Aelfwine, depending on their availability, will take over to teach him the rest. The elders will impart their vast knowledge about the supernatural world in between those lessons. If any of them is otherwise occupied, other fairies will take over the lessons.

At dinner time, his dad calls to tell him he will be late and to apologize, in that order and very awkwardly.

Stiles does throw the brownie into the trash in the end.

I was going to wait a bit more for this one, but since it's my birthday, y'all get an unbirthday present today... or birthday present, if you're a 26th of April baby like me lol.

Also, in case you're wondering, for now I'll only be posting this here and my AO3 will come later.

Cheers!

---

Chapter 2

They don’t trust each other.

The fairies are wary of Stiles and Stiles is wary of them. It’s understandable, though, in both cases. Although the fairies have been watching Stiles since they came, they’ve only seen him when he stays in his room, which means that about seventy percent of that time he has been asleep. And now they find themselves dependent on him, which means that a complete stranger holds the security of their livelihood, and isn’t that a terrifying thought? And for his part, Stiles knows them even less and he knows they’ve already seen him naked and asleep. Some would think that the second is nothing compared to the first, but it’s not. He’d take being naked and awake in the presence of a possible hostile over vulnerable and unconscious every day. Not that he thinks of them as hostiles, but desperate people can do a lot of things they’d normally be against doing to survive.

In short, they’re at an impasse.

"Um," he starts awkwardly. "Apart from dishes and glasses, what else do you need?" He's not trying to butter them up. If anything it should be other way around. But someone has to take the first step and Stiles figures that the survivors of a massacre aren't going to be the ones to do it. "I still have fabrics if you need clothes too?"

"That- That would be- Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble," a girl answers. Stiles doesn't know her name yet and she hasn't volunteered it.

"I can make blankets and easy stuff," he admits sheepishly, "but if you want anything more complicated... I think I can make dresses and all that, but don't expect them to be too, you know, high quality."

"Oh, that's- We will manage, thank you," she replies, trying avoid pulling at her threadbare clothes self-consciously.

"But you can have the fabrics and make something else yourself if you want? I have a lot."

"That would be wonderful!" she answers, clearly brightening.

God, he's such a softie, dammit.

So Stiles makes more cutlery and the like with the remaining polymer clay and they drop some pearls of wisdom about what being a spark entails. He sews some fabrics to use as blankets so that they don’t have to share and they talk about some other creatures that Stiles thought a fantasy but aren’t. He sews some clothes rudimentarily because they still don’t have needles and they share a little bit more about the supernatural world. Then, he shapes some wood into tiny itsy bitsy needles and cuts the fabrics as they ask him to, and they explain about fairy society specifically.

And that’s that.

Getting any kind of cooperation out of them is like pulling teeth and Stiles is pretty frustrated by now. Don’t get him wrong, he gets it, he really does. Besides what they told him when he found them, they haven’t talked about what happened to their colony and the circumstances that brought them to his terrarium, but he doesn’t have to be a genius to know that the whole thing has marked them, that they are traumatized by what happened. Putting himself in their shoes, Stiles knows he would be as distrustful and closed off as they are.

Knowing or understanding that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, though.

Because everything he has found on the Internet is pure bullshit. Because supposedly he has a lot of power at his fingertips and he can’t try it. Because there’s a whole new fascinating world that he’s taken a peek at and then it has closed on him. But above all, because there are hostiles in that world that are capable of destroying a whole fairy colony, bypassing all the security measures (magical or not) that he’s sure they had, and he can’t prepare in case they come at him searching for the survivors.

And he hates that so, so much.

But he isn’t sure about how to proceed in this situation because he feels that whatever the outcome of his approach is, it’s going to be bad. His approach right now is working to some degree, but if the threat is real, it’s nowhere near enough to be of any use, because if they attacked today, he’d be useless. If he kicks them out (and mind you, that’s not a possibility, he’s not that cold-hearted), not only is there no guarantee that the hostiles won’t show up anyway, but he’ll lose the only connection and source of knowledge of the supernatural that he has. Now, if he explains to them why he wants the knowledge, he may spook them into leaving, getting the same results as if he kicked them out. Then again, it could convince them to talk to Stiles, but, being honest, he doesn’t like the odds at all, because in that aspect they’re like Stiles, whom doesn’t like to be dependent on anyone and normally doesn’t ask for help unless there’s no other way.

So yeah, it’s a stalemate alright, because they don’t trust each other and none of them want to make the first step (help with utensils and clothes non withstanding). So it’s been nearly a month since Stiles found the fairies in his terrarium and they haven’t moved a single step further from just cordial interactions. And all those have been initiated by Stiles…

… which is why he’s so surprised when he finds six of them waiting for him just as he opens the door of the house, coming home late after Track practice. Up until now he hasn’t even seen them leave his room and they choose to do that on the one out of the five total times a year that his dad comes to pick him up.

The word flail doesn’t even begin to describe what he does when he notices them and he realizes that his dad is only a couple of steps behind. He recovers quickly and gestures frantically in the direction of his room, only breathing normally when they disappear upstairs, his dad being none the wiser.

“So,” his dad starts just as Stiles starts climbing the stairs to get to his room as fast as he can without being suspicious. “I had an interesting conversation today.”

Stiles knows that tone of voice. Although it’s not outwardly noticeable, he instantly checks mentally what he may have done and gotten caught for. He’s been too busy trying to subtly convince the fairies to talk to him and after his retaliation of last month the twins haven’t dared to mess with him, so nothing comes to mind. Still, in these cases the best defense is silence and a poker face, so he only turns to look at his dad with a neutral expression, like he always does in all of their conversations lately.

His dad’s serious expression turns severe. “Come here and sit,” he orders and it takes all Stiles’ willpower to keep his stance as he approaches the chair his dad has just pointed at. “Last chance to come clean, son,” the man warns as he also takes a seat.

Stiles suddenly adds two and two. When he finished practice today, on his way to the changing rooms, he saw his dad’s patrol car already parked from the hall window, but he never actually saw his dad inside or near it. He was actually waiting by Stiles’ locked bike by the time he finished showering and everything, about fifteen minutes later. It doesn’t take much to deduce, seeing the current situation, that it probably means that he was in a meeting with his teacher or with the principal. Maybe even both. Which means he was probably summoned.

Which means he probably (most likely) wouldn’t have come to pick him up if he hadn’t been called.

There are lots of probably’s in his guesswork but Stiles has good instincts and he’s rarely wrong about these kinds of things. The ratio up to date is that one out fifty he’s wrong, so he feels justified when anger starts to bubble under the surface. Especially so when he goes over the small talk his dad had been trying to make on the way back home and he finds lots of hinting that he had taken as a joke or he had just plain missed.

“Are you sure this is the way you wanna go, son?” his dad insists, expression even more pinched, as if he’s exhausted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answers firmly. And for the life of him, he doesn’t. If his dad had asked this same exact question about a month ago, he would have had about three different answers for it just at the top of his head: hacking into a senior’s PC to plant a virus because he had nearly pushed Stiles down the stairs as a joke; anonymously tipping the police into finding the steroids that same senior’s best friend still kept in his locker because he hadn’t distributed them yet; and turning on the megaphone just as the math teacher was making out with the vice principal (both of them are (maybe now were is the correct word to use?) married) just because he felt like it and because Mr. Jones’ wife is a sweetheart and Stiles really likes her, and, most importantly, he heard them talking about having a baby, and that’s… nope. He isn’t even counting what he did to the twins because he just had to lead Mr. Andrews in the right direction and the rest came by itself. But all this happened nearly a month ago, which leaves him at a total loss about what his father is talking about.

“Stiles,” his dad warns, “this is not a joke.”

“What do you want me to say?” he finally snaps, his anger at the whole situation mounting. It adds to the worry he feels about the fairies, because if they sought him out and risked being found out, whatever their problem is, it must be serious. And he’s stuck here with his father without knowing what hell is happening, both with his dad and with the fairies. He sure isn’t a happy camper right now. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about!”

His dad then tries that stern no nonsense look that used to make him crack and had him confessing in no time when he was little, and Stiles tries to reign in his temper. It’s difficult because apart from the worry and the anger, his resentment is starting to build up again, no matter how much he tries to quell it (because this is his dad and he still loves him no matter what). And the hurt, oh, the hurt. It stings so bad that this is the most time they’ve spent together these last three months and it’s because his dad has made time in his busy schedule to scold him and probably punish him. Stiles won a track competition three weeks ago and the most he got was a phone call that evening and a celebratory brownie in a paper bag waiting for him the next morning on the kitchen table. In his more uncharitable moments, Stiles thinks that it was Anderson who reminded his father about the competition.

His dad sighs and then proceeds to pull out two carefully folded papers to place them in front of Stiles. They are exams. Specifically, one of them is the copy of the Science exam he took this Monday and the other is Mathew Collins’ exam. Also known as twin number one to Stiles. The answers are, if not completely, nearly the same. Stiles instantly sees where all this is going. He doesn’t know how they managed it and he doesn’t care. Stiles is going to counter back so brutally that the mere thought of going against him is going to make both twins piss themselves in fear. At the very least.

Internally, he’s seething. Externally, he’s so cool that he might as well be ice. His voice is level when he speaks. “Are you accusing me of cheating?”

“How else would you call this, Stiles?”

“How about him copying me? I don’t know, seeing that my grades are always among the best of my class?”

“Stiles, don’t make things worse,” his dad interrupts him, anger and disappointment seeping into his voice, and Stiles clenches his jaw. “I asked Mr. Andrews and he said that the kid was a little ahead of you and he would have caught him if he turned continuously to copy from you to this extent. The only answer is that you copied from him then, and I want to know why would you do this when you normally have good grades on your own.”

“I haven’t cheated.”

“Stiles…”

“I haven’t cheated,” he cuts in, deeply offended and hurt by his dad’s refusal to believe him. He picks up his bag and takes out his Science textbook, throwing it angrily to the kitchen table. “Ask me anything.”

“Stiles, you’re just making things worse for…”

“Anything,” he cuts in again. “I know the whole damn book, not just what we’ve seen so far. Ask away.”

His dad’s phone interrupts the silent battle of wills that proceeds Stiles’ affirmation. When the man comes back from where he had gone to ensure his privacy, so does his disappointed look. Stiles wants to rage but before he can get a word out, his dad raises a hand, stopping him.

“This matter is not closed. We’ll talk again tomorrow after school. I talked to Mr. Andrews and agreed that you’ll go an hour early tomorrow and you’ll retake the exam. You should be happy I convinced him to leave this out of your record because this was a first incident. Take the chance and study.”

“I don’t need to because I didn’t cheat!”

The sheriff sighs long-suffering as he goes to the entrance. “Study, Stiles. We’ll talk about your punishment tomorrow.”

“I didn’t cheat, dad!” Stiles shouts frustrated just as the door closes behind his dad.

He’s going to make them regret ever crossing Stiles. They want war? Okay, war is what they’re going to get. And he’ll take no prisoners. Stiles takes a deep breath because he's so angry he's shaking. But first, the fairies.

“We’re alone,” he says through gritted teeth as he opens the door of his room, and almost all the fairies leave the terrarium instantly, coming to meet him.

“They’re gone!” Eglantine cries as soon as she’s nearly in his face, making him recoil startled. Lorelle comes near, placing a calming hand on her shoulder and the woman tries to compose herself. Aelfdene joins them, throwing a grim look at him that makes clear how little he likes having to come to him for help. Stiles instantly tenses because if both Lorelle and Aelfdene, the only remaining elders, seek him out, it means that the matter is really serious and they have exhausted any other means at their disposal.

“Odette and Ehaldun have disappeared,” Lorelle informs him, her throaty voice dark.

Stiles blanches. Odette is the kid that interrogated him that very first day about where had all the hair gone. She comes almost every day to look at his textbooks while he does his homework but never talks to him because her mother (Eglantine) told him to not to talk to strangers (or non fairies for that matter). When she’s curious about something she asks her brother in a raised voice so that Stiles hears it too, hoping that he’ll explain without having to break the rules of not talking to him. Stiles finds it funny but Ehaldun doesn’t. But she’s his little sister and it’s his job to protect her even though she kicked that cockroach when he was afraid the other day, and… And at that the little boy cut himself, noticing he was talking to Stiles when his mother had told him not to. Stiles still snorts when he remembers that. They’re both funny.

And now they’re missing and Stiles doesn’t understand how, because he left the windows and doors closed this morning before leaving, just like they asked him to. Moreover, his dad left before him and according to the fairies he hasn’t been back throughout the day, so the doors and windows remained like he left them. And he doubts the kids left the room by themselves. Oren says that it took three of them to open the door to his room to search for them and that they only did it just in case there’s any little hole that leads to the rest of the house that they don’t know about.

Stiles doesn’t bother asking them stupid questions like if they they’re sure. Of course they are, they wouldn’t have come to him if they could solve this themselves. Which means that they have already searched the whole house for them multiple times already and found nothing. So either they’re asleep, unconscious, or not in the house. And Stiles is completely sure about that, because he also knows that if they were in the room (or in the house, for that matter) they would have come out already and not let their mother suffer this way.

”When and where was the last time you saw them?” he asks instead.

Some saw them by the waterfall, others in the big house where he keeps his picture… Depending on the person, it changes, but it’s Aelfwine’s answer the one that catches his attention. ”Before you left, I think, because they were over your bag.”

”My school bag?”

When he nods, he frowns. After a second of consideration, he turns to go back downstairs to pick it up from where he left it at the kitchen. It’s a long shot but it doesn’t hurt to check it out. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise him if he found out that Odette had tried to peek inside and that Ehaldun had followed her just to not leave her alone. If that’s what happened, they’ve probably spent the whole day in his bag.

He brings it up to his room and, when he calls for them and they don’t answer, he starts to empty it just in case. When he finishes doing that, he even turns it around to shake it. Nothing.

Eglantine shakes trying to control herself and Stiles winces in sympathy, not knowing what else he can do. It just doesn’t make sense. Eglantine says that they barely know any magic because they’re still too young. And they are, because in human years Odette is five years old, and Ehaldun is just a year older.

“Maybe,” Stiles bites his lips, “they went outside.”

“They know not to!” Eglantine cries out, hugging herself to control her shaking hands.

“I know,” Stiles says, voice soft, “but we don’t lose anything just checking the backyard just in case.”

“Time, that’s what we lose,” she bites out. “Time. And they may already be…”

“No,” a man Stiles doesn’t know the name of cuts in. “Don’t even think that.”

“But…” Sobs start to make her whole body shake and the man and another woman hug her tightly.

“I’m gonna check outside,” Stiles says pained and Aelfdene nods.

Aelfwine and his partner, Beriadan, join him in the search but keep themselves in the pocket of his hoodie to avoid being seen. They check the whole yard, both in the back and in the front of the house and nothing. It doesn’t take them more than ten minutes because there’s only grass and one lonely tree.

He goes back to his room and he almost winces when the desperate hope in Eglantine’s face vanishes at his shake of the head.

“Don’t you have any tracking magic?” he asks awkwardly after a moment of silence. “Because the only option here… is…” He stops himself to think. What are the odds of that happening? What if they did get inside the bag but didn’t stay in when it stopped moving? He always bikes his way to the school like a madman because he normally leaves the house late and he has to sprint there… Which means that they could be at his school. He shudders. If he’s right and they are there, unless they stayed put and didn’t move from any of the five different classrooms he had class in today, they could be anywhere in that enormous building.

“What? What option?” Eglantine asks desperate.

“If they got into my bag, maybe they’re at my school,” Stiles finishes, pursing his lips. “It’s a long shot, but it’s not like we have other options.”

“I’m coming with you,” she says, echoed by many others.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I get caught, they’ll ask me to empty my pockets. At most I can bring one of you with me, just in case the kids don’t answer to me because I’m not a fairy or whatever, but even that is a bad idea.”

“I’ll go. They’re my children. I’ll go.”

“Eglantine,” Lorelle starts firmly, only to be cut off by her.

“They’re my children.”

“Ok,” Stiles says coming forward to stand2 right in front of her. “But I want your word that you’ll stay put and do what I say. If I have to run the hell out of there to not get caught…”

“I won’t give up,” she states stubbornly.

“And I’m not telling you to. I’m telling you that I don’t want to have to search for you too when I enter back in from a different window because you didn’t stay in my pocket like I told you to. And think about this, if I get caught I can’t search anymore and you won’t know how to get back here even if you finally find them.”

Stiles can see her taking a deep breath, trying to steel her nerves. Was his own mom like this? Fragile yet diamond hard at the same time? If she hadn’t gotten sick and was alive right now, would she have believed Stiles? Would have his dad? He shakes his head chasing the thought away and goes to his closet to change his clothes into darker colored ones.

It occurs to him that now is not the best time to break into the school with his father so angry. Part of him is screaming that if he gets caught it will solidify and somehow prove right the idea that he cheated on his exam, which makes this whole venture stupid and foolhardy. Another part of him, the one that’s bitter and furious and hurt, thinks that if he’s going to get punished anyway, it’s better if he gives his dad a real reason to do it.

“I’ll do what you say, I give you my word,” Eglantine says finally, cutting his train of thought and he nods in response.

He picks up his phone, putting it on silent (he’s not getting caught for something as stupid as his phone ringing when he’s hiding) and then makes an inviting gesture pointing to the hood. When she looks hesitant, he explains.

“It’s better if you hide inside the hood on the trip to the school. I may hurt you if you go in my pocket while I’m biking there. Besides, if I get caught they may not think to check in the hood. Or at least at first, which will give you time to slip into a sleeve or something like that while they check my pockets.“ As she flies to get into the hood, he takes out his secondary phone (the avenger, he calls it, because it’s the one he normally uses to get revenge because, well, his dad’s the sheriff and he’s not stupid, and since he took it from a bully that was too ashamed to admit that a scrawny little kid taught him a lesson, if someone ever manages to trace it, it will lead them straight to him, not Stiles, which is definitely a plus) from a box inside a drawer and shows it to the rest of the fairies. “Here,” he says as he turns it on. “If the kids come back before we do or if you hear my dad coming, text me. If we find them, I’ll text you too. I’ll show you how. It’s easy.”

He takes five minutes to explain to them how to unlock the phone and how to send and read texts. He leaves three drafts (Dad is home, Kids came back and Danger) to make it easier for them. Just in case he shows them how the calls work too, but advises them to just call him if it’s an emergency or they may get caught. When he’s sure they get it, he hides the phone inside the biggest ewok house, where his mom’s picture still is. Before going to get his bike, he leaves the window almost unlocked so that the fairies can finish opening it with just a push, in case he needs to come in through it.

It’s going to be a long night, that’s for sure.

It’s very dark and pretty chilly when he exits the house. He takes the shortest route he can take to school. It’s not the safest but he has to sacrifice that in favor of saving time. Taking this route means that he won’t be spotted by patrol cars either, so that’s definitely a plus. When he’s a block over before reaching the school, he stops and hides the bike. He doesn’t lock it, just in case he needs to beat a hasty retreat. It’s a risk, because the bike may not be there when he comes back but it’s a risk he’s willing to take.

”Ok, plan of attack,” he murmurs as he creeps sneakily to the school. “There are two buildings of three floors each connected by a large hallway on the second floor. We’ll go around both of them until we find an unlocked window. Whichever is the building that we enter, we check it floor by floor before going to the other building. The problem here is that we can cross paths with them without even noticing… Do you have any way to mark each floor so that the kids will know we’re searching for them and can come to us?”

”I can place a communication rune that relays the message that only fairies can hear, but it takes time that we may not have,” she answers.

”And if you place it someplace where the sound carries? Because there’s a staircase that connects the three floors on each building…”

”That would work.”

”That’s the plan, then. Here’s to hoping that we don’t get caught,” he sighs as he walks briskly.

When he reaches the school, the first thing he does before he starts to circle it, is to check the parking lot for cars. There are two where he expected to be only one (the security guard’s), which means that he has to watch out for two or more people. Awesome.

(Not.)

He sighs but he starts circling the nearest of the two different buildings that constitute his school, hoping to find an unlocked window anyway. The first he finds is a bust, because when he climbs onto the windowsill he finds that the reason why the window is not locked is because it’s stuck. And Stiles may be small for his age, but there’s no way he can slip through that tiny space. Also, he’s not even going to try because if he got stuck it would be a disaster. And he can’t afford making a racket trying to open it either.

“Eglantine,” he murmurs and she appears over his shoulder almost instantly, “try to open the lock of the other window.”

She nods in response and flies into the room. She has toned down the glow of her wings all she could but he can still see her when she’s trying to open the lock. As it is, a firefly is way brighter than her right now, but he’s going to have to watch out for that. It could be worse, he thinks as he waits for her. When Eglantine returns defeated he’s not even surprised, because he knows from experience that those windows are pretty hard to unlock. Still, it was worth a try.

He continues going around the building until he finds another unlocked window. When he tries to widen the gap it emits a creak that has his heart nearly jumping out of his throat. He makes a sprint until he can hide under a bush and waits with bated breath and a thundering heart. Damn the stupid and old as dinosaurs building! Do they not grease the damn windows??? What the hell!

Ten minutes and no hellfire or damnation later, he dares to leave his refuge to creep around in search for an opened window that leaves a gap big enough for him to get through and doesn’t emit beyond the grave sounds while he’s doing so. And dammit, the list of prerequisites keeps growing, but if this keeps going like this that’s going to be the least of his worries because he’s going to die from a heart attack. And he hasn’t even entered the building yet.

(There’s a reason why he doesn’t like Silent Hill, dammit.)

He takes a deep breath and steels himself when he finds another unlocked window. Third time is a charm, indeed. It creaks a little when he pushes it to widen the gap, but he figures this is the best he’s going to get, so he bears with it and suffers through the nearly five minutes it takes him to open it enough to be able to get in. He waits in silence, trying to hear through the thundering of his heart if someone has noticed the noise and has come to investigate. When nothing happens, he climbs inside what looks like a small audiovisual room.

The room is locked, so he’s going to have to put his lockpicking skills to test. But the thing is that there are no windows besides the one he climbed through, which means that he can’t check if someone is coming. Which is bad, very, very bad.

“Eglantine,” he calls her again and points at a the slightly bigger gap between the door and the wall, just at the corner. “Do you think you can go through that?“

“If I squeeze I think I could…”

“Careful with the wings,” he warns her. “If you can’t I’ll think of another way, ok?”

Stiles is starting to respect her quite a bit. She’s terrified, he can tell, but not for herself, for her children. Even so, besides the completely understandable meltdown from before, she’s holding it together admirably.

She squeezes trough the gap, belly up so that her wings don’t get scratched by the door and then she disappears. He waits for a minute before he starts picking the lock and he waits another minute after he’s done. When nothing happens, he calls her softly so that she doesn’t get caught by the door if she’s attempting to cross back and then carefully opens the door. She flies up to hide in his hood again when he’s closing the door after him so that it doesn’t raise any suspicions.

Stiles crosses the hallway as noiselessly as he can. He has put on the softest sneakers that he has just for that, but he’s seriously considering taking them off and just keeping the socks on, because every single little noise sounds like a bang to his ears. Thinking logically, he knows that it’s not like that, that it’s just his own senses that are heightened. But if that happens to him, it surely happens to the guard too. He doubts for a moment but he decides to keep them on, just in case he has to run to escape.

They comb through the first floor, calling softly to Odette and Ehaldun inside each room and closet that they find. On the ones locked, Stiles either waits, hidden as well as he can, as Eglantine slips inside through a crack, or he picks the lock when she can’t. He waits with his heart in his throat while she places the rune on the second floor (we’re searching for you in this building, come to the second floor and don’t leave, it says according to Eglantine). The search is slow, tortuous and nerve-wracking, and the fact that they still haven’t seen hide nor hair of the security guard is driving them up a wall, but, floor after floor, they persevere.

It takes them an hour and a half to clear the first building and he has to wait again for her to change the message on the rune before they proceed to the second one. This one is actually where Stiles’ classrooms are, but since they were going to check the whole school anyway, it was better to have a method to it, to avoid having the children slip through a crack unnoticed. They go back to the second floor, nerves wracked by the long staircase, no matter that Eglantine looks out all ways before they brave each stretch.

Stiles bites his lip as he eyes the long hallway that connects both buildings. It’s pretty long and there’s just one small teachers' room right in the middle along two big doors to the outside and a lot of windows. To make matters worse, Stiles would bet his own life that the room is locked, which officially makes this a nightmare worse than all the staircases combined. And that’s without taking into account that they have to check that room too.

They decide that Eglantine is going to check that room to see if there’s a crack where she can slip through. If there is, she’ll look inside and then, if the kids aren’t there, she’ll go to the end of the hallway to signal to Stiles if the coast is clear. The can’t do it any other way, because as it is, with so many windows and doors along the hallway, Stiles is going to have to crawl his way to the end of it and also pray to any deity listening that no one is looking when he’s passing the doors.

He has a sudden desire to bang his head to a premature death when he sees her check the whole door and then fly lower and stick to the opposite wall to come back undetected. Fuck his life. He doesn’t need her to tell him that there’s no crack to slip through and, by the time she’s halfway, he’s crawling towards her, signaling that he wants her on the lookout at the end of the hallway. Eglantine gets it and turns around, flying as fast as she can.

He reaches the door, heart in his throat, and then nearly dies from terror when one of the tools slips through his fingers and nearly meets the floor. He grabs it just in time but his hands shake from adrenaline when he tries to open the lock, and it takes him almost five minutes to finally succeed. The door creaks ominously when he pushes it a bit and he wants to die. Eglantine starts to flutter and flying back up the hallway on the corner of his eyes and he calls to the kids urgently before closing the door half a minute later, wincing at another creak it emits as he does so. He pulls off his sneakers before sprinting down the hall, grabbing Eglantine as he passes her, and then hides inside the last audiovisual room he lockpicked into.

Heart thundering and trying to contain his harsh breath, he waits hidden behind the big furniture thingie that holds the oldest TV Stiles has ever seen. About a minute later, he sees the light of the guard’s flashlight coming from under the door. He nods to Eglantine as it starts to diminish and she goes to look to signal to Stiles when to leave the room. Meanwhile, Stiles tries to control his breathing, his hands clenching around his sneakers. This is nothing compared to track, he can take much more that this actually… but then again, in track there’s no security guard jumping at you like a zombie to eat your flesh… Ok, maybe he’s exaggerating a bit.

He puts on the sneakers again before she gives him the coast clear sign, and then starts crawling down the hallway. She places the rune again to warn her kids to not leave the building, to let them know they’re still looking for them and the rest is the same message as before.

They start clearing the second floor. Stiles is still wary because there were two damn cars in the parking lot and they’ve only encountered the security guard. To make matters worse, this building’s structure is much more complicated than the other because it doesn’t have the gym and the pool attached to it. It starts like a normal hallway, then it turns into a rectangle with both classrooms on the outside and at the center of it, and then it turns back into a normal hallway again. And if that’s not sufficiently terrifying, there are stairs both at the beginning and at the end of it.

They clear the first couple of rooms easily, but before they can go on they notice a light coming from one of the classrooms from inside the rectangle. They creep near to take a peek inside but before they can even try it, the one-sided conversation taking place inside reaches them. It doesn’t take him much to realize that it’s a phone call, because they never hear a second voice, and what they hear is inconspicuous enough, but something about it chills Stiles to the bone. Maybe it’s because he’s pretty on edge after all the night’s happenings, and that’s what's making him suspicious but he won't risk it.

He tiptoes to the opposite hallway inside the rectangle to take a peek from there without being noticed. It’s difficult to see through an entire classroom but he recognizes her, he’s seen that teacher around. If he recalls well, she’s new this year and teaches gym to a grade below him, but he can’t recall her name. As he guessed, she’s on the phone, but that's not what catches his attention. She has a box in front of her. It’s colorful and has more pink glitter than actual paint, that he can see. It looks like the art project of a first grader and he doesn’t know what a gym teacher could be doing with that, but again, that’s not what catches his attention the most. She keeps touching it as she talks about taking care of something, then she stops, stays silent for minute or so, and then she taps her fingers on it pretty harshly.

Stiles can recognize a scare tactic when he sees one.

And it’s obvious that Eglantine can too, because he barely manages to catch her before she bolts. He brings the struggling fairy up to his eye level and he mouthes that she gave her word. She stills and throws such a desperate look to Stiles that his heart almost breaks. He shakes his head because if she was a normal teacher, he would just let himself be caught, giving Eglantine enough time to rescue the kids. But with a person that talks so casually about killing children you can’t use a tactic like that, it will get you killed because it’s obvious she won’t care that he’s just a twelve-year-old. Especially since there are no witnesses.

Stiles rakes his mind for an idea but he doesn’t know what to do. They have to be sneaky about it and quick and they don’t have time to plan. Stiles hates it but they're going to have to wing it and do a classic, which means that they’re going to have to create a diversion and run for it. At least they’re lucky and the window is open. Even if it’s a second floor that’s better than nothing.

He steels himself for the umpteenth time and starts crawling to the other end of the hallway. They’re right in the middle of it when they hear the guard coming back from upstairs. When the man has gotten to the second floor, Stiles doesn’t know, but he curses under his breath, takes his sneakers off again and tries to hurry without making a single noise. Just as he sprints and reaches the stairs of the other end, the guard starts going to the lighted classroom.

Stiles eyes the teachers' room in front of him and nearly cheers when he sees that they’ve left the printer on. He runs downstairs, through the entire floor and upstairs again in record time. The guard is talking to that teacher, perfect. He then takes out his phone, accesses the printer and just lets it go until it either runs out of paper or ink, whichever happens first.

The guard jerks, surprised, and it’s no wonder, because even Stiles can hear the startled shout that comes from the teachers' room from where he is. He nearly cries with relief when the teacher follows the guard, and as they go, he starts tiptoeing towards the classroom. He hides for a moment, crouching in front of the classroom on the center. He peeks in as he hears the guard unlock the teachers' room and enter with an exclamation. For a moment he thinks that he hears more than two voices, but the moment she follows the guard in, he doesn’t care.

He sprints inside the classroom, looks inside the box to see if both children are there, then grabs the box itself and peeks outside to see if he can just run the hell out of here. She’s just exiting the teachers room and he jerks back. He goes to the window, gets out through it and prays that he doesn’t die, because this is nothing like climbing a tree.

There’s a gutter to the left and he just hopes that it can hold his weight. He opens the box, takes both children out to place them in his hood beside their mother and then throws the box and his sneakerd to the ground. He then grabs the gutter with his hands covered by the hoodie’s sleeves and lets himself slide down, holding for dear life because his socks make it so that he can’t control the fall. Everything is trembling by the time he touches the ground but he forces himself to grab the box too because he wasn’t thinking when he grabbed it and there’s no way he’s leaving something that has not only his fingerprints but the print of his whole hand, and then he keeps running.

Not even when he finally reaches his bike does he stop to put the sneakers back on. He just makes sure that Eglantine and the kids are still holding on before speeding the hell out of there.

Stiles doesn’t really stop until he’s back to his room. While the fairies rejoice, he just sits on his bed, trying to get his whole body to stop trembling from the fear and the adrenaline. And just as he’s getting the hang of it, his dad’s cruiser pulls into the drive again. He shoots into action, taking his clothes off as fast as he can, making them a ball and hiding them in his closet along with the glittery box. When he turns to search for his pajamas, he finds that the fairies are holding them out for him mid-air. He doesn’t even question it and just grabs them to put them on. He doesn’t even bother turning off the lights because his dad will have seen them on already and it would look more suspicious to turn them off. He’s going to get scolded for being up this late anyway, he’s not going to add another count for trying to cover it too. By the time his dad comes in, he’s in bed with a book in his hands and the fairies are nowhere in sight.

He ignores his dad pointedly until the man comes near the bed to let the Science textbook that Stiles left exactly where he threw it on the kitchen table hours ago, fall onto the sheets. Stiles doesn’t lift his eyes from the book, doesn’t look at him even when the sheriff takes the book from his hands and pointedly turns off the lights.

“I didn’t cheat,” Stiles says simply into the darkness and receives no answer.

(Kicking the textbook to the floor doesn’t make him feel any better.)

---

Gimme some love? 😘

Three thousand years later... ^^; Thanks so much @esamastation for letting me play with your idea of a terrarium filled with fairies!

---

Fides: (noun, latin) faith, trust, confidence, loyalty, promise of protection.

---

Chapter 1

Stiles Stilinski is a pariah, a loser, a freak and an outcast, and he’s proud of it.

It’s been like that ever since his mother lost it and Evan Richards -big brother by one year to Jonathan (Stiles' classmate) and son to Mary, who was his doctor. All of them trash, because who shares a child's medical history like that, huh? So trash family to its fullest. Trash mother (Stiles has never liked her), trash father (he has never met him, but nothing but trash can produce such trash) and trash sons. They should make a musical a la The Sound of Music, it would be a hit for sure!- spread a lot of rumors about him sharing the same sickness and being a total psycho. Suddenly, everyone had always suspected, friends had the prefix former attached to that title, no one wanted him around. He always did this and that, didn’t you see? He had to take some kind of medication every day, didn’t you see? He was too strange, didn’t you see? What kind of boy wanted to know that much (if anything at all!) about male circumcision, huh? It wasn’t normal, didn’t you see? Blah, blah, blah. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And then, no one in Lost Hills School wanted to touch that (him) with a ten foot pole.

Stiles, after two horrific weeks of shunning and jeers and coming back to an empty home because the sheriff was god knows where, decided to prove them right and fought back by being as crazy as he could… without getting caught, of course, he's not an idiot. The final balance? No one wanted to be his friend, sure, but no one wanted to be his enemy either.

Stiles is a vicious, cunning, vengeful and grudge-holding asshole, and he’s proud of that too.

He doesn’t need anyone. He hasn’t needed anyone ever since he was eight and he had to start cleaning up the fridge and going grocery shopping and tidying up the house and doing the laundry and mending his ripped clothes and… All in all, ever since he finally acknowledged that his father wasn’t going to get away from the bottle long enough to take care of him like he should.

(His stance was proven right when his dad did get away from the bottle (changing his mere alcoholic status to functional alcoholic) enough to relaunch his cop career into being named Kern County’s sheriff. Which pretty much changed nothing for Stiles, who still had to take care of himself, but now had to cook for one instead of two, more often than not. He got really creative with his cooking, that's for sure. Now he understands why people say that cooking for one is such a pain. He has also learned that a recipe found on the internet is like walking on a minefield: it may turn out alright or blow up in your face spectacularly.)

So he doesn’t need anyone, indeed, but he’s twelve, alone, with no means of transportation out of town to see anything new (unless he wants to bike his way out), some pocket money that he’ll most likely need to spend on groceries when his father inevitably forgets about him, and the entire summer vacation ahead of him and no activities to fill it with. The Internet, for once, is not cutting it at all, and hacking into his peers’ computers to plant viruses in them seems to have lost its charm and isn’t working either. And hacking the teachers'j room’s printer to have it spit pages with Mr. Jones’ porn sporadically isn’t funny with no one there to see it. Summer work, finished. Everything is clean. Laundry is done. He has the meals for the entire week prepared already.

In other words, he’s bored as hell and about to climb the walls in frustration.

He sighs and looks to the ceiling of the living room, as if the couple of stains above him are going to give him an answer to his dilemma. He’s been sprawled like a starfish since half an hour ago, ever since he let himself fall off the couch dramatically after checking all the channels on the TV. Thrice. He contemplates the idea of binge watching Star Wars again and dismisses it almost instantly, because he did that yesterday and, he loves them, he really does, but it would be too much even for him.

He wiggles in place almost in agony after going over all the possibilities again in his head and finding none suitable. The backyard catches his eye and he thinks of getting the inflatable pool to at least stop being an asphyxiated starfish and soak for a while, escaping the almost unbearable heat.

He dismisses the idea again because he hasn’t liked spending time there ever since his dad took a look at the mess his mother’s garden had turned into and took care of it. Definitely. Stiles had tried, he really had, but he didn’t seem to have his mom’s green thumb and also he had more than enough on his plate without having to despair over the gardenias.

(Seeing the empty spaces where the flower beds used to be always made his heart constrict, so he stopped looking.)

He looks again, raising up from his sprawled position. He misses her garden and the aroma that would drift through the window in spring. She never won any contest, but it was beautiful.

And now there isn’t a single plant in the house.

Stiles suddenly wants one. The memory of her garden is a good one, along with the smiles she would throw over her shoulder at him, with dirty hands and sometimes even face, when she would forget and scratch her nose. And Stiles, unlike his dad, is past the point where he avoids all memories of her and he tries to cherish the good ones. Even though the tools she used still give him nightmares sometimes (if he ever sees the little trowel with the light green handle and the matching hand fork it will be too soon), he still wants a plant. Or many. So that's it, he's getting some.

But...

But he doesn’t want to kill it, he had enough of that with the gardenias, thank you very much. So research it is. He’s going to research the hell out of it to start easy.

He nods to himself and, somehow, three hours later, the initial idea of getting a hardy cactus, which evolved to planting lavender or snapdragons, has in turn led him to inside moss terrariums and now he’s hooked. Because, apart from the awesome plant-only creations, some even put little houses un them… and there are Star Wars terrariums. Star Wars. And now he has decided he’s going to make an entire Ewok village. Not a dupe one, but an entirely functional one with even that cage elevator they had. And the bridges. And all the furniture. And… it’s going to last.

Decision made, he makes a list of what he needs and then, he plans. The container, he has, because they never got rid of uncle Celestyn’s big as hell fish tank. The glue gun, woodworking tools and materials, gloves and pebbles, he has too. Wood he can get from the broken juniper table his dad bought to fix and then never did, and moss he can easily find. He’s missing the peat moss soil and the hygrolon. The first he knows he can find at home depot, the second, he’s not so sure. True, he could make the terrarium without it, but he wants moss to cover the walls too. If he doesn’t find it or can’t afford it (there's no way he’s going to spend all his just-in-case money), he’ll make do with what he has, though.

---

The soil he has no problem getting, but the hygrolon he finds out is only sold online and it’s pretty expensive to boot. He mourns for a moment and then moves on, already making plans on how to shape the landscape of the terrarium.

He needs to cut the table to make the fake trees for the houses and he doubts he can do that without injuring himself. Not only does he not have that kind of heavy machinery, but he wouldn’t dare to use it. Then, he remembers his father’s former partner, Anderson, who likes woodworking and, more importantly, Stiles.

“Is everything okay, kiddo?”

He’s also the one he’s supposed to call in case of an immediate emergency when his father is out of town. Besides the one time he caught a stomach bug from his classmates and couldn’t go to school, he’s never done it. Not because he doesn’t like him (nothing farther from the truth, actually) but because he’s used to always dealing with problems himself.

“Sure!” he chirps. “I was just wondering if you could help me with a project?”

“You’re supposed to do those by yourself, Stiles,” the man laughs, obviously amused.

“It’s not for school!” he protests indignant and then explains what he needs. “Do you think you can help me with the trees and making the sheets of wood for the houses?“

There’s silence from the other side of the line and Stiles can picture easily what the man is thinking. He knows that Stiles is going to do it one way or another, that his father is on the other side of the county so it’s not like he’s going to be there to stop him, that it’s better if he takes on the more dangerous parts himself and instructs Stiles on how to make the others without hurting himself. In other words, he’s thinking about danger prevention and damage control. Stiles hears a sigh and makes a silent triumphant dance.

“Well,” he grumbles and Stiles snickers, “it’s not like I have anything better to do. Damn the retirement. Time of your life, my ass. I’ll be there in an hour, kiddo. Don’t you dare start without me there, you hear me? I don’t want to have to explain to your dad why you’re missing some fingers.”

“Yes, sir,” he salutes, still snickering.

When he arrives, he brings with him a portable grinding machine, a piece of fallen wood from his own garden and sealant. “I imagine you don’t want the moss to reach the trees and the houses, do you?” He explains and Stiles grins, delighted.

(Stiles really, really likes Anderson.)

About three hours later, Anderson has made a structure that will ensure that the trees don’t fall. There is one big tree and three clusters of trees joined each by various platforms at different levels, with spaces where the houses will sit. He even went as far as to shape them as if they are made out of wooden boards (instead of flat) and to hollow the thickest of the trees at that platform level. Stiles also had the idea of making the top of each tree hollow too to put a potted plant inside, so that it won’t look bare and strange. All in all, they are ready to start the setup.

“So,” the man looks at him intently. “Where are you going to put it?”

“I want it in my room,” he answers, “near the window. On the floor.”

“The floor?”

“Don’t wanna have to take the ladder every time I have to water it.”

“Fair enough,” Anderson snickers and Stiles pouts. “But you know you’re going to have to wait to finish the house to set the terrarium, right? Unless you want to do that kind of detailed work from above and with an awkward angle to boot,” he explains and then laughs at his despairing face. “Take it easy, kiddo. Call me when you want to do it and I’ll help you, ok? How about this, if you promise to be careful and not do anything careless, I’ll make a waterfall for your terrarium.“

“I can’t…” he starts protesting.

“It will be an early Christmas present. Deal?”

“There’s no waterfall in the Ewok Village…” Stiles grumbles, “but deal.”

And they shake on it.

All in all, even if he’s a little peeved about having to wait, Stiles is happy with the progress. He still hasn’t gotten the moss, so it’s not as if waiting for a bit is going to hurt… and he got a waterfall out of it. He grins, waving at Anderson as he leaves the drive. It’s going to be awesome.

—

Once he starts, he can’t stop, focused in a way that’s unusual for him.

The bridges are easy enough so long as he follows the measurements he’s made, because he only has to shape the steps, make a hole on each side of them, use the rope to secure them and then braid the whole thing. He uses the glue gun for good measure, to make sure it’s sturdy enough.

The houses are a little more complicated because they are rounded. He ends up getting round objects to support the wood while the glue dries. There are a couple of instances when they get stuck to the object he’s using and he has to start anew, but he learns how to avoid that pretty quickly. The windows and the doors are a pain in the ass in themselves. He destroys a couple of houses trying to cut them until he finds another method for that too. He precuts the wood and uses cardboard to fill in the space while it dries and it works like a charm. As it is, he has now seven vaguely house-looking semicircles with two levels (joined by a little staircase) and even some shelves inside, that he has to stick to the main structure to be able to finish the roof. He leaves that for later, because once he does that it will be a nightmare to put the furniture inside.

He struggles for a while with the tables, seats and any other detailed work he remembers from the movie, because working at that scale, even with the tweezers, is hard. Again, he’s nothing if not stubborn and he works out a method to do those too. The shelves are easy enough because it’s just a matter of measuring, cutting the actual boards of the shelves with a c shape to fit the circular walls and gluing them, both between them and to the walls. The table, the seats and the beds are easy after that, again just taking care to measure well and struggling to not have his hands tremble when he assembles them all. He even uses one of his dad’s old furry sweaters for the beddings and old t-shirts for other things like that, carefully sewing the edges to make them look more like the ones in the movie. The drawers and the wardrobes are a pain in the ass to make and he regrets even trying almost from the very first time he tries to put the drawer in its place and it doesn’t fit and then, after trying to fix it, it gets stuck. He perseveres, though, and it gets easier the more he makes. As for its door, he follows the same method he’s going to use with the doors to the house (with holes and string, because making hinges at this scale is beyond his capabilities and he has accepted that) and it ends up looking pretty neat.

(In the middle of all this, his father comes and goes but, even if he makes sure to come by Stiles’ room every night, he doesn’t seem to notice what has his own son so busy, always too concentrated on some case or another and the room too dark to actually see anything. They make small talk and he pats his head some mornings. Stiles is kind of indifferent. He loves his dad, he really does, but he’s tired of having to be always the one who tries to make a connection.)

The day when he can finally start gluing it all to the main structure comes, and he ends up not doing it after all, because he takes a look at the houses and finds them empty. Two days later, after hours of research on how to do the cutlery and the pottery, some failed attempts and a trip to the mall, he finds himself shaping them out of polymer clay, preheated oven beside him. If that wasn’t enough, after having rows upon rows of glasses, containers and different types of plates and bowls, he adds pans and pots to the collection until he’s satisfied.

Finally, nearly four weeks after he started, he starts gluing the houses in place and securing them with extra pillars that he pins to the main structure. He makes the roofs by shaping little sticks and gluing them in place, copying the ones from the movie. They’re not exactly like them, but it’s as close as he’s going to get with his current skill level. He then sticks the stairs that connect each level and the bridges between the three clusters and the lone bigger tree, where he has attached the biggest house too. As the final touches, he decorates the main area with rustic wooden benches and stumps, all around the setup for a fire, and attaches the polymer clay pulley with the cage (which has a working door, of course) at the far end of it. He then reapplies the sealant just in case and breathes, feeling deeply accomplished.

He waits a couple of days for everything to settle before he calls Anderson again. The man sounds like he has had fun with the waterfall project and like he feels pretty accomplished too. Stiles can’t wait to see it and to show him what he’s done too. Anderson tells him he’ll come by the next day and Stiles takes the opportunity to go to collect the moss and buy the plants for the tree tops.

At the home depot, he debates between the Pothos and the Heart-Leaf Philodendron. In the end, the Pothos is an easy choice, because not only is it very easy maintenance and purifies the air, but it’s also on sale and he spends much less than what he was expecting on them. He doesn’t have much pocket money left, but his allowance day is in three days, so he’s not as wary about it as he would normally be.

He feels a little silly about having to make two trips to take the six little plants home, but nothing breaks, so all is good. He checks the space for the potted plants at the top of the trees and they fit perfectly. He cheers and dances around the room like a dork for a while before going moss hunting. By the time dinner time rolls around, he has everything in place and having to eat dinner alone again doesn’t even sting like it normally does.

---

Anderson comes pretty early in the morning and whistles in appreciation at what he sees, making him beam and grin proudly. Then he takes out of his car a waterfall as tall as the whole tank and Stiles gapes astonished. The man snickers at his face, reaching to mess up his hair, and goes inside the house again.

After placing the tank in Stiles’ room, first they install the waterfall. It fits perfectly in a corner of the fish tank, going a little above its edge to disguise the wire and the flow’s setting very cleverly. The man has also made it so that Stiles can change the water inside using a little tube or refill it from outside, without having to take the whole thing out.

After that, they place the tree structure and then they cover all the spaces and the root part of the trees with pebbles. To the ones near the waterfall they apply a layer of sealant to prevent the moss eating the poor thing alive and over the rest they put a good layer of wet peat moss soil, making sure it doesn’t lay flat. Over that, they place the moss they’ve previously trimmed to fit and parts of the fallen wood to make it look more realistic. Finally, Stiles puts the Pothos at the tree tops, fills the waterfall and turns it on.

He has his Ewok Village like he said he would. His mom would have loved it because she loved gardening just as much as she loved Star Wars. Specifically, she loved the Ewoks. She had a lot of figurines and even made an Ewok onesie (furry hat included) for him when he was a baby. There’s photographic evidence of that in one of the dusty albums in the storage room. They feature Stiles in that onesie playing with the figurines and his mom in the background laughing.

(And now he wants to cry.)

(He waits until Anderson leaves.)

---

When school starts again, the moss is growing nicely and the Pothos are still alive. Stiles is also seriously considering either braving the storage room in search of those Ewok figurines or setting some of his allowance money aside to buy them, to put them in the village.

(His dad finally takes notice of the giant terrarium in his room. First he berates him for doing dangerous things and then, sighing exasperated, he congratulates him.)

(Stiles could have done without the lecture.)

—

There are two new kids at school that have transferred from New York of all places, which means they have climbed the social ladder ridiculously fast. Stiles hopes he’s wrong about the twins, but if things go as they normally do, he thinks he’s going to have to set some boundaries soon. He’s already caught others whispering to them about crazy Stiles that is a total nutjob that will destroy your life if you cross him and, while it somehow brings him a kind of vindictive glee and pride, it also can mean three different things for him. One, they think him a bully and try to teach him a lesson; two, they try to take him down to establish themselves as top dog for bragging rights; three, they don’t dare mess with him and avoid him like the plague. Okay, there could be a fourth and they could try to find if all those rumors are true for themselves, but yeah, right.

(Is it bad that out of those four choices he’s hoping for the third?)

Well, time will tell, he supposes.

(He has to resist the strong temptation of making a pre-emptive strike quite bad, though.)

—

About a month into the school year, the newcomers seem to have settled into a mixture of the three first options, leaning mostly towards the third after Stiles manipulated things into having them banned for the rest of the year from lacrosse in retaliation for a failed attempt at teaching him a lesson. Of course, no one can prove it was him, but they know .

It’s a rainy Friday afternoon in which he’s bored out of his mind, so Stiles finally decides to search for the Ewok figurines and to do a deep clean-up of the storage room while he’s at it.

After nearly one hour full of coughs, sneezes and watering eyes due to the ridiculous amount of dust, he decides that his plans of action are flawed and that he has to change them if he wants to come out of this experience alive and with his body intact.

(The giant spider that he’s pretty sure is actually the last dinosaur on Earth may or may not have helped force him into a hasty retreat.)

Half an hour and a trip to the store later, he tries to tackle the mission impossible again. With a facemask, the longest gloves he could find, his father’s protective glasses and his head covered with an old towel, no dinosaur is going to beat him. He also has long sleeves and has changed his shorts for pants, tucking them inside his socks for good measure, so that nothing crawls up there. He shudders just thinking about it. He just can’t stand spiders.

He decides to divide it into sections. First he organizes and cleans the things in those sections, making piles outside the room, then he tidies the spot superficially before tackling another section. And rinse and repeat. When he has the whole room mostly empty (there is some furniture he can’t move), he starts cleaning it thoroughly. Afterwards, he puts the organized piles (photo albums, books, music…) inside again neatly, filling drawers and shelves. He doesn’t dare to throw anything away but, except for some toys that hold a big sentimental value to him, he does set aside some things he never uses to donate them.

Six hours after he started, he hears his father’s cruiser pulling into the drive and he debates about what to do. He’s almost done but he hasn’t touched his mom’s things yet, having left them for last. His dad still won’t talk about her and all her things have been hidden in the storage room ever since he let go of the bottle, because the sight of them made him want to track the nearest liquor store and send them into bankruptcy after leaving them out of stock.

Stiles doesn’t want to be the one to pull him into that downward spiral again. He sighs, looking mournfully at the three boxes with his mother’s things. Maybe he’ll sneak in after dinner to at least get the figurines and set them in his terrarium, when his dad has gone to bed. He frowns when he hears him talking to the neighbor. Maybe…

In the end, with his heart beating wildly in his ribcage, he opens the boxes hastily, hoping that the figurines are in first sight. And they are. He rushes to his bathroom beaming but still jittery with nerves, and cleans them under the spray of water as fast as he can. When his father calls, they are already placed inside the terrarium.

He completely forgets about his battle attire and blinks in confusion for a moment when his dad asks about it, his eyebrow raised.

“Spring cleaning,” he chirps brightly, too happy about his success to care about resentment. “Er… Autumn cleaning?”

His dad snorts and pats his head fondly, only to pull his hand back with a grimace at the amount of dust settled there.

(The next day, by the time he finishes checking, cleaning and organizing his mom’s things, he’s not crying, dammit, it’s just that he forgot to put on the facemask and the dust is irritating his eyes.)

(He squirrels away the picture of himself in all his ewok onesie glory with his laughing mother and plastifies it, hiding it inside the biggest house of the terrarium so that if you crouch and you know where to look, you can see it.)

(He's the happiest he's been in a long time, and nothing can ruin what he's accomplished. Nothing.)

—

(Or maybe something can, because really, what the hell???)

Stiles wants to know what the hell has he ever done to deserve this. Or, if that’s a thing, in any of his past lives for that matter. Did he kill puppies or kitties for fun? Or babies? Was he Hitler? Because destroying the increasingly aggressive twins’ impeccable (or not so much now, but that was the point) record can’t possibly warrant this bad karma, right? Right?

It’s not his fault, ok? He did notice something was wrong, but who would have thought about this as an explanation? He did notice that the water of the waterfall went down too fast to be normal, but he thought it was maybe because of the heat wave! And of course he noticed that sometimes the ewok figurines were slightly out of place, but he thought that maybe his dad…

Seriously.

He calls a big WTF.

Fairies.

He can’t even…

No, seriously, he can’t.

He can’t because they somehow have made the Pothos grow meters in mere seconds and he’s plastered against the wall. Upside down. Stiles feels somehow betrayed because he’s their daddy, he’s been lovingly taking care of them since they were little babies and they have attacked him after all he has done for them…

He’s not being ridiculous, thank you very much. There are fairies in his room. There are fairies in his room pointing sharp looking little things at his face and he’s so completely out of his depth that he can’t stop talking. And there’s a little one (well, smaller that the rest, that is) that sneaked around the guards (or that’s at least what Stiles assumes them to be) about three minutes ago that wants to know where did all the hair go and he’s for some reason babbling about onesies and what ewoks are and the guards keep threatening him and…

“… what the hell?” he finally snaps, fed-up. “This is my house, my room, and the terrarium you’re accusing me of invading and all that shit? It’s mine too. I built it with my own two hands, and paid for the materials, and… I call bullshit here. You’re the ones trespassing here! I should be the one demanding explanations and not the other way round. And for the last time, I don’t know any glint or beam or spark or whatever the hell you’re talking about, ok?!”

The fairies go silent. They look at each other and then back at Stiles.

And it turns out that Stiles does know a spark… and quite well at that. Because he is one. Surprise, enter confetti and crackers. And the reason he has a fairy infestation in his room? Their colony was destroyed back in August and they were left wandering for a while, until the beckoning magic that Stiles had placed in the terrarium to mark it as a safe place for passing fairies called to them.

(His what now????)

Except they haven’t been able to find a suitable place to rebuild yet, and their manpower was reduced to a sixth (if that) of what it used to be when the colony fell, and there are members that are still healing, and their ruling pair is gone (which apparently means that their power has been reduced to a facsimile of what it should be), and…

In other words, they are desperate and grasping at straws and completely at loss about what to do right now. Well, it’s not like they say it outright (in fact they actually try to cover their obvious despair at the whole situation), but Stiles is quite adept at reading between the lines and he knows desperation when he sees it.

(He has intimate knowledge of it, after all.)

So, even though he’s still plastered to the wall with his feet nearly touching the ceiling, which places his head at an intimidating height from the ground and he’s definitely not happy about that, Stiles caves in. Kind of.

“We don’t have enough dishes and stuff,“ he grumbles with a sigh. When he receives no response, clearly having thrown them off kilter, he just continues. “Dishes and glasses and all that stuff, we don’t have enough. Because you’re about twenty people, that I can see, and I only made eight or ten of each, if I remember well.”

“We’ve been sharing?” the guard with his spear-like thing nearly up Stiles’ nose squeaks finally. Squeaks, yes, because all of them have high voices, man or woman, that he has to strain to listen to. He vaguely wonders about it, because there's no way he should be able to listen to them at this distance, but he dismisses it for now, chalking it up to some kind of fairy magic or whatever, because he has more pressing matters to worry about at the moment.

Stiles is going to regret all this, he just knows it. But he’s an incorrigible softie at heart just as much as he’s a vengeful asshole. He sighs again. “Come on, let me down before my brain leaks through my nostrils. I still have some polymer clay.”

So fairies are a thing.

He knows others in his situation would never believe what’s in front of their very own eyes, but Stiles has always been able to roll with whatever life throws at him, no matter what that is. Besides, thinking logically, he has taken no drugs or drank any alcohol that could impair his senses or make him hallucinate and, although he could be starting to develop the same dementia as his mother (and it is a possibility)… well, he pinched himself not a minute ago and yep, he was still hanging upside-down, plastered to his bedroom wall by the Pothos. The only thing left for him to do on that front is to somehow buy a pregnancy test to check if it turns positive, so until he manages to do that, fairies are a thing.

And he’s a wizard.

Or a spark, whatever. What matters is that that’s a thing too. A thing that is exciting and terrifying at the same time, because what other creatures exist too then? Elves? Vampires? Werewolves? Nymphs? Are those real too? Which myths are real and which not? As a spark, which are his powers? Can he do magic? Spells? Rituals? What can he do?

He wants answers, he’s not letting them stay out of the goodness of his… well, he is, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get something out of it, right? Admittedly, if they refuse to give him answers, he’s not going to kick them out. He’ll just have to find those answers by himself, that’s all. He’s pretty self-sufficient, so if push comes to shove, he’ll do it without help, like he always does. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to try to convince them, though.

His ears ring when he’s finally let down. He sits on the rug, holding his head as he waits for the dizziness to pass and for his vision to clear. He doesn’t appreciate the wet and cold sensation at all. Well, at least they didn’t just let go to see him brain himself with the free fall, so that’s definitely a sign of goodwill... right?

He eyes the overgrown Pothos warily, thinking of a way to manage it without having to chop the whole plant off. Then he decides that it’s not his mess, so he’s not going to take care of it. “You better leave these the way they were before,” he states firmly, pointing at the plant. “I’m not gonna explain that to my dad. My house, my rules and all that jazz.”

Up until now, Stiles has never let anyone walk over him and he’s not going to start with some fairies.