Chapter Text
The voices overlap, conflicting emotions and accents, but their identities clear. These are his friends. The Pack. The protective circle of champions, warriors, beasts, and monsters who’ve been keeping Beacon Hills safe and meeting every challenger who wants either their power, their blood, or most likely both.
What are you? Erica.
What are you? Boyd.
Who are you? Allison.
A gasp. Lydia.
What the hell are you?! Jackson. Betrayed, hurt, and more.
Stiles, what was that? Derek.
Silence from the one he’d pay to hear most, and of course, his shadow lieutenant; although Stiles wouldn’t have expected such restraint from Isaac given the circumstances.
“Stiles!” Stiles jerked awake, brain still half asleep and fogged with the very vivid memories of his most recent dreams.
Scott kept on with his tirade in spite of Stiles’s obvious weariness, pouncing on the bed as he tried to elbow Stiles into moving more quickly. “What the hell, man? I’ve been outside honking for almost half an hour. Your dad said he saw you awake when I called earlier.”
Stiles shoved Scott from laying half across him in order to sit up, scrubbing at his face and dislodging the glasses he’d almost forgotten he owned a pair of when his endless supply of prescription contacts suddenly ran out less than a week ago.
Jackson of all people had been the least surprised the first day Stiles had shown up—at school, and then, a pack meeting—wearing them. Well, Jackson and Boyd. Nosy, observant mother hen wolves.
Stretching with a very loud yawn, Stiles jumped out of bed as if he hadn’t been deeply asleep and wracked with nightmares not even 60 seconds ago. He slapped things from every corner of his room into his bag, jammed his feet into the ever present pair of Converse, and slid out of his bedroom door, Scott not even half a step behind him, still talking about whatever had happened with Kira that had him either (a) confused, (b) aroused, (c) worried, or, most likely, (d) all of the above.
Stuffing cereal bars in his pocket and half of a banana down his throat made not holding up his end of the conversation ridiculously easy, while locking up and leading Scott backwards to the waiting van. Technically, it was Mrs. McCall’s, but as of the past weekend, it was also half-Scott’s, which made transportation a hell of a lot easier with the growing Beacon Hills (McCall-Hale) Pack and the moodiness of Stiles’s own baby, Betty, who was increasingly under the weather lately.
Nothing on the drive kept him so occupied or distracted that Stiles was able to keep his mind completely off of his dream.
Dream. Vision. Whatever he wanted to call it, it shone with the clarity of prophecy. His gift, among a few others, and legacy, from both sides of his family—even if it was more romantic and origin-fic-ish to say it was a long lost secret of his orphaned mother’s.
Not quite, though. In his case, both parents carried equal blame and sympathy for what their child would have to endure. They just probably couldn’t have predicted that he would set himself smack dab in the middle of the resident wolf pack and all of the supernatural battles and tensions that surrounded it when they got together and eventually agreed to conceive.
In the wake of the Nemeton being awakened, the nogitsune, an actual fuckin’ Darach—it was a miracle he’d kept up the charade even this long. A miracle…and probably a curse.
Who knew what the eventual fallout would be? Whose sides everyone would fall on? Would there even be sides?
Stiles could have tried to avert his premonition and told Scott or the Pack as a whole. He could try to ease them into it. Lay clues, maybe, and let Lydia, or Peter, or Allison, figure it out. Bear his heart to Boyd and let the gentle, perceptive giant champion him to Erica, and let them work their magic to win over the group’s loyalty. But that wasn’t the way things worked. If anything his vision only cemented that when, not if, the Pack found out, it certainly wouldn’t be at a time of his choosing and it would be upsetting enough to draw the worst kinds of attention.
Even as he blinked away his morbid pity party and prepared to focus on the babbling noise of his peers and friends engulfing them as they pulled up to the high school, Stiles spared a last thought. At least Gerard and Kate are out of the fucking picture…