[ Being kidnapped is not really on Stiles' list of favorite things to do.
With the way the Argents were lurking around every open corner, looking for breaks in their defenses, Stiles should have been expecting it. But he'd heard one of the children in the pack crying and gotten up in the middle of the night, and sure enough, fell hook line and sinker for a child's crocodile tears and into Kate Argent's hands.
He'd been told he wasn't going to be hurt, and he wasn't, for the most part--at least not immediately. But when Stiles wouldn't give them answers, wouldn't talk about his position in the pack or Derek or any of their plans for moving or relocating or anything things started to get a little worse. By the third day missing, he's sporting an impressive black eye and a cut across his lip--he hasn't been allowed to eat anything but a tiny scrap of food since he's arrived here, once a day, and kept awake for ridiculous hours upon hours of questioning.
The one saving grace was a little girl with honey blonde hair, who snuck in to see him the first night. She brought him water and broke into the area of the woods they were holding him in easily, impressively so for a six year old, actually, and sat with him, asking his name and to tell her stories. So Stiles did, kept himself as calm as possible and tried to entertain her.
Her name was Selena, and she had eyes like green sea glass, and a part of Stiles' stomach lurched every time he looked at her, because there was a familiarity that he tried to ignore, because Derek's life--it had been terrible, but it can't have been that bad.
Could it?
There's been no sight of Kate today, and Selena's in the makeshift cell with him, slipping in through the teeny hole in the back of the spiny trees that Stiles doubts he could fit through--he admires Selena for her bravery--and Stiles is listless enough that he's barely able to stay awake for her. Everything hurts, and he fluffs long fingers through soft blonde hair and listens to what sounds like chaos outside. A part of him seizes with hope, and he looks down at the child sitting up against his side, turning his gaze frantically through the wall of rowan trees, lined with spikes.
When he asked Selena about escaping before, she'd said--you just have to believe really hard, and you'll get out!--which Stiles thought was probably a fairy tale, and he croaks out a name, in hopes that maybe the chaos outside is exactly who he thinks it is, and that if Derek can hear him, he won't impale himself trying to get Stiles free.
(He wouldn't put it past him, and that scares him half to death.) ]
It's not really that big of a deal, in the grand scheme of things. Wolves can go without food and water for extended periods at a time, are built resilient to adversity and a decline in sustenance. They wander long ranges for their territories, often for days on end. A wolf can survive where other creatures cannot.
But Derek has not slept, has not had food or water, for days. At first, things had been fine. Stiles had simply left their tent while he'd been away, in the woods surrounding their encampment because something had drawn him out. He and Scott had circled through the trees, Isaac and Boyd uneasily keeping an eye on things at the camp, but it had become eerily silent in a matter of seconds. There were foreign scents, still warm on the wind and fresh tracks in the snow, but they'd come and gone quick as anything.
And then no one could find Stiles.
So it's completely gone downhill since. The wolves he takes with him to find him, find whatever took him, have tried to get him to rest. It results in restlessness, pacing and snarling and sharp anger mixed with nauseating fear. No one can blame him, but it makes them just as uneasy to see their faoladh, the remaining alpha, at such unease. They follow a familiar trail, when they catch it, one that they've encountered a handful of times. When they return to the rest of the pack, he's going to have a long, long talk with Allison Argent. Scott doesn't even argue, just looks miserably resigned.
Eventually they come across an encampment, the trail sharp and clear, the familiar scent almost overwhelming. And it takes barely any planning before they're moving as one unit, Derek giving only one warning: if they see a woman with honey blonde hair and blue eyes cold as the north, they're to leave her to him. But after that, it is literal chaos.
Until he hears his name being called, just this quiet thing on the wind, and he moves immediately towards it. The spikes hardly register, even though when he forces his way in there's long, angry slashes in his coat. It matches well the intensity in his eyes, the blood on his maw, but there's nothing truly fierce about him-- just a staggering relief and overwhelming concern as he lurches forward. ]
[ He catches the shape of the wolf before anything else--Stiles' heart seizes in his chest and he pushes forward, gets Selena to help him by rubbing the rope holding his hands up against a sharp part of a tree from the minute they start hearing the noises, and Stiles realizes what Derek's going to do while he's still stuck there, and the words practically explode out of his mouth in panic, because no, no no no, Derek can't just-- ] Derek--stop, oh gods, Derek, you're going to, stop--
[ But it's too late, because the second he gets free, Derek is through. He rushes forward on his hands and knees, practically wheezing with the panic bottled up in his chest in hopes that he's not just killed himself, and frantic hands come up to grab at his muzzle, until he can get his hands in the familiar fur and clutch on tight. ] Oh--Mother, Derek, you can't just-- gods!
[ He can't even get the words out right. There's blood everywhere, and he holds onto his face, terrified, hands trembling near where the cloak would be able to be pushed back. He can't make it worse, not sure if the shifting would help at all, so he just thumbs at his cheeks and looks just as relieved, just as concerned, and probably ten times more terrified. ] Is Kate--is she...?
[ There's no arguing that he should know better. He should listen to Stiles, listen to his lupa, because he's being reckless and stupid. But Stiles is alive, though he's obviously taken a bit of a beating, and he's been worried out of his mind ever since he went missing. Because Stiles wouldn't just up and leave in the middle of the night for no good reason, not when he knows how harsh the north can be even in its kinder months.
The sting of the spikes only hits him after the fact, and he lets out a shaky breath as he realizes the thing that he's done. But the whimper he releases is only for Stiles' touch, and he licks his chops in an attempt to get rid of the blood there. There's nothing to be done about it when he doesn't have hands, though he gets a decent amount of it, but all he can do for a moment is tilt his head into Stiles' hands, eyes closing over and ears flicking back.
But then he uses where his hands are settled to push the hood back, magic easing away and letting him shift from wolf to man again. The blood lingers on the black pelt, but the wounds remain on his skin-- slightly less deep for the change but no less stupid, no less problematic-- and the red bleeds from his eyes, leaving them that same green as sea glass as the eyes of the little girl he hasn't registered yet. ] Ripped her throat out.
[ He brings his hands up to touch Stiles' face, careful of the cut in his lip and the bruising around his eye. It's easier to focus on him than it is to think of the delight in Kate's face when they met eyes, than to think of the taunts she threw at him. The promise that Stiles had been killed, useless after they interrogated him and got what they want. ]
[ He doesn't get the chance to look down, which is what he wants to do--when Derek shifts back to human, Stiles' gaze immediately shifts to take in the damage. Derek looks wrecked, there's blood everywhere and the scent is so strong that even Stiles can pick it out. A part of him wants to hurl, and his worrying hands fly from where the hood is to his chest, his arms, his stomach, around cuts and stab wounds, things laced with every kind of poison that could and would probably kill his faoladh.
Swallowing the lump in his throat when his face gets lifted, Stiles tries to scowl but ends up just looking a little relieved. He's exhausted and spent and wants nothing more than to go home, to curl up with Derek for hours, but now he's afraid after all of that, he could lose him anyway. ] You're an idiot, you couldn't have waited for me to try to figure a way out--or for Scott, or something?! Gods, Derek, you do not get to die on me, okay?
[ His voice is trembling and a tear spills out from over his eyes, and there's fierce relief when he leans forward for just a second and puts their foreheads together, inhales. The two of them are maybe at fifty percent strength, at most, and he's despairing about how they're going to get out without getting impaled, because he doesn't want to die here, when a tiny voice says from behind him--
[ Rather than fight it, Derek lets Stiles' hands wander across his skin-- muscle twitches and flinches if he brushes too close to something that hurts too much, and he can already feel the poison in his system trying to work its way deeper. There are remedies here, he knows it, but they're not within their reach. They're going to have to wait for Scott to find them, to threaten until they're given to him so that they can be used on those that were poisoned. And of course he'd want them to be used on the pack first, but they're going to refuse.
A pack is lost without an alpha, and they could've lost both of theirs.
He shakes his head a little as Stiles yells at him, thumbs sweeping over his cheeks and fingers fanning across his jaw and neck, feeling his pulse in his fingertips. ] No-- I couldn't. I won't. [ Couldn't wait, won't die.
Nuzzling against him as he presses their foreheads together, he still at the tiny voice that speaks up. Straightening, he finally takes in the other presence that he'd hardly noticed, and something lodges itself in his throat. There's blood all over him, and it's all he can really smell, but he's imagining a ghost, sweet honeysuckle rather than the tart honey that Kate carried with her. That can't be, Kate took her, had to have killed her for her lineage-- ]
[ Stiles pauses when Selena speaks up, turning over his shoulder to look at her. There's still that--he has to get her out of here safe, because if Kate is her mother and Kate is dead, she wouldn't last five minutes out in the wild, no matter how smart she was. Stiles didn't think his plan of smuggling through much, but that could come later; he was stupidly attached to the little girl, and if getting her out of here safe was a priority, well, no one could judge him for it.
Selena looks at Derek when he says her name, and so does Stiles, as everything he thought is suddenly confirmed, in one wrecked look on the alpha's face. The little girl sounds awestruck for a moment, and whispers you're the big bad wolf, but she doesn't look terrified or anything. Rather, she takes a couple steps towards them, until she closes her small hand into Stiles' palm, startling him out of where he was looking at Derek. ] C'mon.
[ More than a little awestruck, himself, and absolutely wrecked-- she's been alive, she's been with Kate this whole time, for six years she's been here with the real monsters-- Derek can't take his eyes off of the little girl for a minute. The chaos is starting to die down outside, but it's still ongoing, like it's waiting for them to emerge from the makeshift cell. His blood is everywhere, and Stiles' scent permeates everything, but all he knows in that moment is that his daughter has apparently been alive all this time.
It takes Stiles speaking to draw him back, and he drops his hands down to briefly brush his palms over Stiles' neck, following his shoulders before he actually looks at him again. Like he's afraid that the spell will break and she'll be gone, or he'll disappear. That Derek will wake up in the middle of winter and they'll be lost.
So all he does is offer the little girl a slow nod, until he's shifting up to a crouch rather than kneeling. The adrenaline is still running in his veins, but it won't be for long. ] Go.
[ stiles is--stiles is kind of terrified. he wasn't sure he was going to get out of this alive, and now derek, that brilliant, self sacrificing moron, is probably going to be the one who won't make it. something in his chest lurches at the thought of spending the rest of his life without him--it was like he'd finally matched their puzzle pieces and stiles was not having that taken from him.
he follows selena out towards the back. there's a tiny little crevice that selena must have been shimmying through--she looks back at stiles as she realizes she can't fit him through. carefully, he reaches over and grabs her shoulders, looks her in the eyes. ] I need you to go get the wolves and bring them here. Just yell for them really, really loud, okay? This part is safe, right?
[ she nods, and stiles figures if she can get through, the wolves can tear the opening a little wider to make room for both stiles and derek to crawl out. sitting back, stiles immediately turns his attention back to derek and puts a hand over one of the gaping wounds at his side. ] You're not--you're not really healing fast, why aren't you healing fast? Derek, if you--you can't, we're gonna get you out of here okay, okay? We have to.
[ "we have to"--he repeats it again, a little faintly, a little dizzied at the idea of derek dying right here, dying because of stiles-- ]
[ Though he's bleeding and a veritable mess, Derek follows along with Stiles as they're brought to where the little girl has been slipping in and out ever since his lupa was first brought here. He's still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that she's alive, that she was here, but right now he needs to concentrate on his movements, on the fact that he can smell the anxiety rolling off Stiles in waves.
When they come to a stop, he looks at the crevice, frowning at it quietly before looking to the little girl-- his daughter-- and listening to what Stiles says. She can do it, she has to do it, because otherwise they're stuck in here. The other wolves won't be able to break through the "cage" up front, and that's the only entrance that any of them could possibly know of. Especially with Derek's blood staining the wood.
His skin flinches at Stiles' touch, but he doesn't make a noise to go with it. Instead, he bows forward to press their foreheads together, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath that is all Stiles. ]
Wolfsbane on the spikes, probably. I'll be okay. We're together again-- you'll make sure of it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
i was gonna do something completely different with this oops
With the way the Argents were lurking around every open corner, looking for breaks in their defenses, Stiles should have been expecting it. But he'd heard one of the children in the pack crying and gotten up in the middle of the night, and sure enough, fell hook line and sinker for a child's crocodile tears and into Kate Argent's hands.
He'd been told he wasn't going to be hurt, and he wasn't, for the most part--at least not immediately. But when Stiles wouldn't give them answers, wouldn't talk about his position in the pack or Derek or any of their plans for moving or relocating or anything things started to get a little worse. By the third day missing, he's sporting an impressive black eye and a cut across his lip--he hasn't been allowed to eat anything but a tiny scrap of food since he's arrived here, once a day, and kept awake for ridiculous hours upon hours of questioning.
The one saving grace was a little girl with honey blonde hair, who snuck in to see him the first night. She brought him water and broke into the area of the woods they were holding him in easily, impressively so for a six year old, actually, and sat with him, asking his name and to tell her stories. So Stiles did, kept himself as calm as possible and tried to entertain her.
Her name was Selena, and she had eyes like green sea glass, and a part of Stiles' stomach lurched every time he looked at her, because there was a familiarity that he tried to ignore, because Derek's life--it had been terrible, but it can't have been that bad.
Could it?
There's been no sight of Kate today, and Selena's in the makeshift cell with him, slipping in through the teeny hole in the back of the spiny trees that Stiles doubts he could fit through--he admires Selena for her bravery--and Stiles is listless enough that he's barely able to stay awake for her. Everything hurts, and he fluffs long fingers through soft blonde hair and listens to what sounds like chaos outside. A part of him seizes with hope, and he looks down at the child sitting up against his side, turning his gaze frantically through the wall of rowan trees, lined with spikes.
When he asked Selena about escaping before, she'd said--you just have to believe really hard, and you'll get out!--which Stiles thought was probably a fairy tale, and he croaks out a name, in hopes that maybe the chaos outside is exactly who he thinks it is, and that if Derek can hear him, he won't impale himself trying to get Stiles free.
(He wouldn't put it past him, and that scares him half to death.) ]
WELP HERE GOES
It's not really that big of a deal, in the grand scheme of things. Wolves can go without food and water for extended periods at a time, are built resilient to adversity and a decline in sustenance. They wander long ranges for their territories, often for days on end. A wolf can survive where other creatures cannot.
But Derek has not slept, has not had food or water, for days. At first, things had been fine. Stiles had simply left their tent while he'd been away, in the woods surrounding their encampment because something had drawn him out. He and Scott had circled through the trees, Isaac and Boyd uneasily keeping an eye on things at the camp, but it had become eerily silent in a matter of seconds. There were foreign scents, still warm on the wind and fresh tracks in the snow, but they'd come and gone quick as anything.
And then no one could find Stiles.
So it's completely gone downhill since. The wolves he takes with him to find him, find whatever took him, have tried to get him to rest. It results in restlessness, pacing and snarling and sharp anger mixed with nauseating fear. No one can blame him, but it makes them just as uneasy to see their faoladh, the remaining alpha, at such unease. They follow a familiar trail, when they catch it, one that they've encountered a handful of times. When they return to the rest of the pack, he's going to have a long, long talk with Allison Argent. Scott doesn't even argue, just looks miserably resigned.
Eventually they come across an encampment, the trail sharp and clear, the familiar scent almost overwhelming. And it takes barely any planning before they're moving as one unit, Derek giving only one warning: if they see a woman with honey blonde hair and blue eyes cold as the north, they're to leave her to him. But after that, it is literal chaos.
Until he hears his name being called, just this quiet thing on the wind, and he moves immediately towards it. The spikes hardly register, even though when he forces his way in there's long, angry slashes in his coat. It matches well the intensity in his eyes, the blood on his maw, but there's nothing truly fierce about him-- just a staggering relief and overwhelming concern as he lurches forward. ]
8D
[ But it's too late, because the second he gets free, Derek is through. He rushes forward on his hands and knees, practically wheezing with the panic bottled up in his chest in hopes that he's not just killed himself, and frantic hands come up to grab at his muzzle, until he can get his hands in the familiar fur and clutch on tight. ] Oh--Mother, Derek, you can't just-- gods!
[ He can't even get the words out right. There's blood everywhere, and he holds onto his face, terrified, hands trembling near where the cloak would be able to be pushed back. He can't make it worse, not sure if the shifting would help at all, so he just thumbs at his cheeks and looks just as relieved, just as concerned, and probably ten times more terrified. ] Is Kate--is she...?
WEEPS
The sting of the spikes only hits him after the fact, and he lets out a shaky breath as he realizes the thing that he's done. But the whimper he releases is only for Stiles' touch, and he licks his chops in an attempt to get rid of the blood there. There's nothing to be done about it when he doesn't have hands, though he gets a decent amount of it, but all he can do for a moment is tilt his head into Stiles' hands, eyes closing over and ears flicking back.
But then he uses where his hands are settled to push the hood back, magic easing away and letting him shift from wolf to man again. The blood lingers on the black pelt, but the wounds remain on his skin-- slightly less deep for the change but no less stupid, no less problematic-- and the red bleeds from his eyes, leaving them that same green as sea glass as the eyes of the little girl he hasn't registered yet. ] Ripped her throat out.
[ He brings his hands up to touch Stiles' face, careful of the cut in his lip and the bruising around his eye. It's easier to focus on him than it is to think of the delight in Kate's face when they met eyes, than to think of the taunts she threw at him. The promise that Stiles had been killed, useless after they interrogated him and got what they want. ]
no subject
Swallowing the lump in his throat when his face gets lifted, Stiles tries to scowl but ends up just looking a little relieved. He's exhausted and spent and wants nothing more than to go home, to curl up with Derek for hours, but now he's afraid after all of that, he could lose him anyway. ] You're an idiot, you couldn't have waited for me to try to figure a way out--or for Scott, or something?! Gods, Derek, you do not get to die on me, okay?
[ His voice is trembling and a tear spills out from over his eyes, and there's fierce relief when he leans forward for just a second and puts their foreheads together, inhales. The two of them are maybe at fifty percent strength, at most, and he's despairing about how they're going to get out without getting impaled, because he doesn't want to die here, when a tiny voice says from behind him--
"Ser Stiles, I know howta get out." ]
no subject
A pack is lost without an alpha, and they could've lost both of theirs.
He shakes his head a little as Stiles yells at him, thumbs sweeping over his cheeks and fingers fanning across his jaw and neck, feeling his pulse in his fingertips. ] No-- I couldn't. I won't. [ Couldn't wait, won't die.
Nuzzling against him as he presses their foreheads together, he still at the tiny voice that speaks up. Straightening, he finally takes in the other presence that he'd hardly noticed, and something lodges itself in his throat. There's blood all over him, and it's all he can really smell, but he's imagining a ghost, sweet honeysuckle rather than the tart honey that Kate carried with her. That can't be, Kate took her, had to have killed her for her lineage-- ]
Selena?
no subject
Selena looks at Derek when he says her name, and so does Stiles, as everything he thought is suddenly confirmed, in one wrecked look on the alpha's face. The little girl sounds awestruck for a moment, and whispers you're the big bad wolf, but she doesn't look terrified or anything. Rather, she takes a couple steps towards them, until she closes her small hand into Stiles' palm, startling him out of where he was looking at Derek. ] C'mon.
no subject
It takes Stiles speaking to draw him back, and he drops his hands down to briefly brush his palms over Stiles' neck, following his shoulders before he actually looks at him again. Like he's afraid that the spell will break and she'll be gone, or he'll disappear. That Derek will wake up in the middle of winter and they'll be lost.
So all he does is offer the little girl a slow nod, until he's shifting up to a crouch rather than kneeling. The adrenaline is still running in his veins, but it won't be for long. ] Go.
no subject
he follows selena out towards the back. there's a tiny little crevice that selena must have been shimmying through--she looks back at stiles as she realizes she can't fit him through. carefully, he reaches over and grabs her shoulders, looks her in the eyes. ] I need you to go get the wolves and bring them here. Just yell for them really, really loud, okay? This part is safe, right?
[ she nods, and stiles figures if she can get through, the wolves can tear the opening a little wider to make room for both stiles and derek to crawl out. sitting back, stiles immediately turns his attention back to derek and puts a hand over one of the gaping wounds at his side. ] You're not--you're not really healing fast, why aren't you healing fast? Derek, if you--you can't, we're gonna get you out of here okay, okay? We have to.
[ "we have to"--he repeats it again, a little faintly, a little dizzied at the idea of derek dying right here, dying because of stiles-- ]
no subject
When they come to a stop, he looks at the crevice, frowning at it quietly before looking to the little girl-- his daughter-- and listening to what Stiles says. She can do it, she has to do it, because otherwise they're stuck in here. The other wolves won't be able to break through the "cage" up front, and that's the only entrance that any of them could possibly know of. Especially with Derek's blood staining the wood.
His skin flinches at Stiles' touch, but he doesn't make a noise to go with it. Instead, he bows forward to press their foreheads together, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath that is all Stiles. ]
Wolfsbane on the spikes, probably. I'll be okay. We're together again-- you'll make sure of it.