Chapter Text
“So much pain. So much suffering. Feed it to me.”
Stilling in his chair, Stiles held his breath for a moment. That voice. That voice only spoke to him in his nightmares. It couldn’t be real. Slowly, so that no one else in his class would notice, Stiles counted his fingers. There were only ten.
A shaky breath managed to pass through his lips as he lifted his gaze to the board. The words there were in English. He could read them. He was not sleeping.
He was awake and that was bad.
Biting at his lip, Stiles tried to tell himself that he’d imagined it. It hadn’t been real. The voice had been leftover from the nightmare he’d had the night before. The one that had left him shaking and sweating so badly that he’d had to change his sheets. At least, he hadn’t woken his dad by screaming like he had other nights.
He was tired and sore and lonely, but his dad was safe. Stiles could deal with anything else as long as his dad was safe.
“The chaos in your soul. I will devour it.”
Panic overtook him. The voice wasn’t a figment of his imagination. It wasn’t something lingering. It was something real and it was speaking to him.
Panting now that he was struggling to breathe, Stile cast his eyes around the room. It was clear that no one else knew what was happening to him. His torment and panic were silent enough that it didn’t disturb the other students or the teacher who droned on at the front of the classroom.
And that was almost worse. That something so terrible and frightening could be happening to him. Something that no one else noticed or cared about.
Staggering to his feet, Stiles ignored his classmates who finally looked at him as he tried to make his way to the door. Instinct told him that he had to get out of there. And instinct was something that he learned not to ignore. It was about the only thing keeping him alive considering all the dangers that hanging out with werewolves brought him. Not that he was hanging out with werewolves anymore.
“Mr. Stilinski. Take your seat.”
Waving off the teacher, Stiles fell toward the door. He left his school books and his bag behind as he scrambled for the handle. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was closing up and his lungs were tugging painfully behind his breastbone. The attack had come on swift and it wouldn’t leave him so easily. He had to breathe, but he couldn’t while his classmates stared at him.
Falling out into the hall, Stiles caught himself with his hands. His feet slid a couple of times against the tiles of the floor before he found purchase. He managed to stagger toward the bathroom and lock himself inside to be alone.
Finding a spot in the corner so that nothing could get behind him, Stiles let himself fall to the floor. He pulled his knees up and pressed his forehead against them. Gasping, he tried to focus on anything other than the fear that was overwhelming him.
His dad was safe.
Scott was alive.
Lydia was alive.
Derek was…
Sucking in a hard breath, Stiles felt his lungs expand for the first time since his panic attack started. With his breathing evening out, Stiles pushed everything from his mind except for taking a breath in and pushing it back out. He was not about to start thinking about Derek in case he went right back into another attack.
Once he was sure that he could handle it, Stiles picked up his head. The voice he’d heard had been silent throughout the whole thing. Which was suspicious in its own way.
Using the sink beside him, Stiles pulled himself to his feet before facing the mirror. He looked like shit and felt that way, too.
None of that mattered though. There was something inside of him. Something he’d felt like a shadow in his mind since he’d sacrificed himself to stop Jennifer from killing his dad. He’d tried to talk to Scott about it only once and had been told he was just overreacting. He couldn’t say anything to his dad. Deaton was out of the question. Stiles didn’t trust him and his vague ways of saying things.
As he stared into his own eyes, Stiles thought over his choices. He could do one of two things: continue to suffer until something drastic happened, or he could face it head-on.
His father didn’t raise a wuss.
“I know you’re in there. I know you can see my thoughts and affect them. What do you want?”
Only silence greeted him.
His thoughts swirled around the idea that he was maybe a bit crazy. He was talking to himself in a bathroom mirror, after all.
Straightening up, Stiles glared into the mirror. “You’ve been giving me nightmares. I heard you speak. Tell me what you want.”
“Chaos. Feed me chaos.”
Sucking in a hard breath, Stiles pushed his panic back. He’d asked it to talk. He wasn’t about to lose his shit because it actually did. “What are you?”
A sort of manic laughter filled his mind. Whatever it was, Stiles knew it wasn’t something full of rainbows and sunshine. His nightmares as of late were proof enough of that.
“I am the nogitsune. I have slumbered for centuries before you came along. You with your guilt and pain. So delicious. You have given me strength and freed me. I want more.”
Things clicked into place inside his brain. Stiles didn’t know if that was because the creature inside his mind wanted him to understand or if he was figuring it out on his own. “You’ve been making me relive my worst memories. You’ve been feeding off my pain.”
“Yes. More. I want more.”
“And once you have more? What then? If you feed and become stronger, will you leave me?”
Laughter again.
Frowning at himself, Stiles gripped the sink tighter. “Nogitsune. A fox spirit. Foxes love tricks and games.”
Stiles could feel amusement that was not his own. It was a very strange sensation. “Answer some of my questions and I’ll feed you more.”
“You would willingly let me feast upon your mind?”
Shrugging at himself, Stiles made an effort to keep himself calm. “The way I see it, we can come to some sort of deal or you’ll just keep trying to take everything from me by force.”
“What is your first question?”
“Can you read my thoughts?”
“Only if I force my way into your mind. It causes you distress, which tastes lovely.”
Closing his eyes for a second, Stiles shook his head slightly. Of course, the thing inside of him had to be a creeper worse than Peter. “I’m sure it does. What is your goal?”
“To eat.”
“Yes, I get that. You’re hungry. But what happens after you eat your fill?”
“I have been trapped for many years. It will take time before I have had my fill.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I will take a form and continue to feed. With my own form, I can create the chaos I desire.”
Something told Stiles that that was not a good thing to let happen. A creature that feasted on chaos being allowed to create its own was definitely a bad thing. “And if you don’t get enough to eat.”
“I will. One way or another.”
A shudder went down Stiles’s spine. He turned away from the mirror for a moment to regain control over his breathing. “Where did you come from? How is it that you ended up inside of me?”
“Many years ago, I was trapped inside an ancient tree. One that contained powerful magic.”
“The nemeton.”
“I don’t know what they called it. It matters not. The seal was broken on my bonds. Three there were to choose from. One I could not take. One full of pain of another kind. And you.”
“You’re talking about Scott and Allison. About the night that we killed ourselves to stop a darach.”
“I don’t know why you were there, only that you were. I was not about to waste a chance to escape my crumbling prison.”
Someone pounded on the door to the bathroom before Stiles had a chance to think about what to say in response to the nogitsune. “The bathroom is occupied! Go somewhere else!”
“You can’t lock everyone out of the bathroom, asshole!”
“Watch me!”
Stiles waited for a moment. Nothing else happened. He couldn’t hear anything out in the halls. Classes weren’t over yet.
The interruption gave him a chance to breathe and organize his thoughts. The creature inside of him had been imprisoned. It was probably evil. Stiles didn’t like it much considering it gave him all sorts of nightmares. But it wasn’t doing anything besides feeding. He could not fault it for that.
“So I feed you. Then what?”
“I leave you and find more food elsewhere.”
It would leave and eventually not be his problem anymore. Stiles could deal with that. “If I feed you willingly, will you stop with the nightmares?”
“If you are willing to give me food then I will not take it by force.”
It was the promise of a good night of sleep that gave Stiles the most incentive. He could almost hear a voice that sounded like Scott’s telling him not to help something that was potentially evil. Stiles ignored it. It was his body and mind. He could do what he wanted with them. It wasn’t like Scott was paying attention to him these days anyway.
Squaring himself before the mirror, Stiles nodded at his reflection. “You have a deal. How do I feed you?”
“You must offer me a memory. I will devour it.”
“Will I forget the memory that I feed you?”
“No. I will eat the emotions of it. Not the actual memory.”
“How do I give it to you?”
“Think of a time when something terrible happened to you. Think of when it started and how you felt.”
Picking just one memory was not easy to do. Stiles had many from over the last couple of years. Since Scott had been bitten, he’d had to deal with plenty of things that were terrible. To make it easier for himself, he chose the most recent one. Giving his life to save his dad because of Jennifer.
With the beginning of the memory firmly in place, Stiles blinked at himself in the mirror. “Now what?”
“Offer it to me.”
“How?”
“I am in your mind. Picture me. Picture you giving it to me.”
Stiles closed his eyes. He imagined his mind as a white room. Before him stood himself, but different. The Stiles that he was facing had a look to him that was not something he’d seen on his face before. Something beyond mischievous. Definitely foxlike.
Looking down at his hand, Stiles found that he was holding the memory. It was shimmering and almost liquid-like within his palm. Slowly, he held his hand out and offered it to the nogitsune.
The creature swiped it from his hand and seemed to drink the memory as if it was liquid. Stiles could only stand before it and watch as it consumed something that was a part of him.
Smacking its lips, the nogitsune looked up at him once the memory had been eaten. Its eyes slid shut as it swallowed again.
“Pain, longing, love, fear. Such chaotic emotions. Sacrificing yourself to save someone you love. Trusting in Derek to help you make everything better. Jennifer…”
Stiles stared at it in horror as the nogitsune’s eyes snapped open to meet his. They flashed before settling back to his regular brown. “What? Was it not enough?”
The thing with his face that was not his face smirked back at him. Stiles did not like it seeing what it did to his face. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t him. The creature before him wasn’t him. They were not the same.
“It was a start.”
Opening his real eyes, Stiles looked at himself in the mirror for a moment more. Whether he should have interacted with it or not, Stiles had done what he’d done. There was no going back. He wasn’t about to start second-guessing himself.
Straightening his clothes in the mirror, Stiles sighed at himself. He could only go forward. There was no way to go back. No way to change the past.
“What’s done is done.”
Now he just had to believe that.
Shaking himself out of it, he left the bathroom and headed back to class.
Stiles should have known that he wouldn’t be able to slip out of the bathroom and back into class without something happening. His teacher gave him detention for skipping out on most of class. He could have stayed after to explain himself, but sitting through detention wasn’t a hardship. Stiles didn’t care enough to try to get out of it.
If anything, it gave him a reason to avoid the parking lot until it was empty. Not that there was anyone out there that he wanted to see or wanted to see him. The people that were still living that he was acquainted with had made that perfectly clear.
Trudging to his next class, Stiles ignored Isaac. The werewolf sat in the back to the right. Stiles took the seat in the back on the left side of the room. He wasn’t surprised when Scott entered the classroom and went to sit in front of Isaac. He hadn’t even hesitated. Stiles stared ahead. He wasn’t surprised. So why did it hurt?
“I can feel bits of your pain.”
“Don’t.”
“Betrayal. He betrayed you. Feed it to me.”
Closing his eyes, Stiles saw himself and the nogitsune again. He took the memory of the fight that he and Scott had. The most recent one. The one that they’d had after stopping Jennifer. Scott didn’t want to fight the alpha pack. He just wanted to make them leave. Stiles knew that they wouldn’t. He agreed with Derek and Scott couldn’t handle that.
Holding it out, Stiles watched the nogitsune devour it like he had the other. This time, he was more curious than disgusted.
“Anger, determination, fear, rejection. A friendship of many years just thrown away. He does not trust you.”
Stiles didn’t respond. He opened his eyes and focused on their teacher. He’d missed the beginning part of the class. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Scott and Isaac sending him looks. Scott’s was suspicious. Isaac looked curious.
It was then that Stiles realized he’d spoken out loud to himself. Of course, the two werewolves had heard him. He could whisper and they’d still hear him. They probably thought he was going crazy.
In a way, Stiles was pretty sure that he was.
Feeding the nogitsune was not a sane thing to do. But Stiles didn’t care anymore. He was past caring. The nogitsune lessened the hurt that he felt when it consumed the memory. Stiles was ready to feel a little less pain.
The class went by without anything else happening. When the bell rang, the other students, including Isaac and Scott, left the room. The school day was over and they were eager to leave. Only Isaac threw a curious look back over his shoulder at Stiles.
Stiles ignored it and gathered up his stuff to head to detention. He didn’t have much in the way of homework to do, which he finished within the first twenty minutes. With forty minutes of detention left, Stiles pulled out a clean piece of paper. He doodled on it for a moment before sitting up a bit straighter in his seat.
He was going to sleep through the night. If he wanted to keep doing so then he had to come up with enough memories to feed the nogitsune. It wouldn’t be all that hard. He had plenty of them.
Writing down some, Stiles thought back on the last couple of years. He’d gained friends and lost them. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he lost more in the last year than he ever gained. He would not think about what-ifs.
Pushing some of those thoughts from his mind, Stiles focused on writing down memories that he could feed to the nogitsune. From the way that it had spoken after the first one, he figured that they didn’t have to be wholly bad or good memories. Just ones that made his emotions chaotic. That’s what the nogitsune fed on. Chaos.
“You can go.”
Only years of training himself to not show his surprise, his dad liked to think he was sneaky, made Stiles not jump when the teacher overseeing detention spoke. He hadn’t noticed how much time had gone by.
Stiles picked up his things before he made his way to his locker. The halls were empty. It was nice to move through the school and not have to worry about anything or anyone else. Once he traded his stuff for what he wanted to take home, Stiles headed for his Jeep.
It wasn’t the only car in the parking lot. A black Camaro sat a few spaces away from it.
Stiles stood in the doorway of the school for a moment before sighing.
“The sight of one car makes you feel all of that?”
Stiles did not respond. Derek had better hearing than Scott and Isaac. He would not make a fool out of himself in front of Derek Hale. Not anymore.
The driver’s door opened as Stiles got closer to his Jeep. He continued to ignore Derek as he got out of his car.
“Stiles.”
“What do you want?”
“Isaac said you weren’t feeling well today. Are you okay?”
Stiles knew that he looked like shit. “I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll be fine. What do you want?”
Derek shifted his weight as he looked at Stiles. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Is anyone bothering you?”
“No. Why?”
They stared at each other for a few moments. Stiles could tell from the set of Derek’s eyebrows that he was concerned and actually cared.
The silence grew as Derek let the question go unanswered. He didn’t know what to say. That Isaac was telling him about Stiles and how he was behaving oddly. That he was worried that something was happening that he couldn’t help with. He couldn’t say any of that. So he stayed silent.
Sighing, Stiles shrugged his bag higher onto his shoulder. “Look, man, I’m already late getting home. I have to go. I’m fine.”
There was no lie in his heartbeat. Derek just nodded and let him go.
Stiles glanced into the rearview mirror several times as he left the school. Derek just stood there and watched him go. It was beyond weird. It was also something he didn’t want to deal with at the moment.
Exhausted and ready for sleep, Stiles made his way up to his bed. His dad wouldn’t be home until late. He wouldn’t know what time Stiles went to bed.
“You’ll let me sleep, right?”
“Yes.”
Sighing again, Stiles slipped into bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.
XXX
“I want to know more about Jennifer.”
“Well, she was an evil bitch that was sacrificing people to power up in order to fight the alpha pack. She killed one of them and hurt some others. That’s what that fight was about. The one Scott and I had. He wanted to let the rest of them go, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“She’s dead now? A pity.”
Stiles twirled in his computer chair with a frown on his face. “I don’t think so. Good riddance more like it.”
“You misunderstand. She was someone with chaos in her heart. Feeding on her would have been amazing.”
“She was my English teacher, you know. She came here and inserted herself into the school and community and used Derek to find out stuff. I’m pretty sure she used magic on him to make him be with her. If I had the chance to kill her, I would.”
“You would not hesitate?”
Stiles stopped spinning. He stared across his room at the posters on his wall. Ones from before everything happened. Ones that he left hanging because they reminded him of happier times. “If there is one thing that I have learned since Scott got bitten, it’s that I can’t hesitate or bad things will happen to good people. If I had known what Jennifer was going to do when she’d first showed up, I would have killed her then and there.”
There was silence within his mind. It was not the type of silence that was dismissive. It was more like the type of silence that was contemplative.
“There is a way for me to give you the power to save those you love.”
Stiles sat up straighter in his chair. His heart skipped a beat. “What are you talking about?”
“I am a nogitsune. I am a fox spirit. I can take a form if I become powerful enough, but I have to continue to eat vast amounts in order to maintain that form. I grew out of control. That’s why I was sealed away before.”
“You don’t seem to mind the idea of taking on a form to create chaos again.”
The laughter that rang through his mind this time was different than what he’d heard before. Stiles couldn’t help but grin himself. It was a little odd to think that he was becoming somewhat friends with a probably evil fox spirit.
“I will do what I have to in order to survive. There is another option, however. One that I have never chosen because I have never found someone worthy enough.”
“And what,” Stiles snorted. “You consider me worthy?”
“Yes.”
All the humor left him immediately. Stiles pushed himself out of his chair to pace around his room to dispel some of the energy he could feel building within him. “What are you talking about?”
“There is another way for me to feed. A different way. One that would require more than you offering me memories.”
“What does it involve?”
“We would meld. Become one being.”
Stiles felt the blood drain from his face. He stopped in the middle of his room and spun around. “You want to take over my body!?”
“That’s not what I said. I said we would meld. You would be you and I would also become part of you.”
“This isn’t a trick to get me to let you take control for a while, right? I don’t need to agree to this shit and find out that you’ve taken us for a spin in order to create some chaos.”
“That is something I had considered doing before you spoke to me. But this choice is better for both of us. We would unite and become one being. You would take my powers and be able to protect those you love. Even those you thought lost to you.”
Stiles had been about to refuse based on his morals alone until the nogitsune dropped that. “What do you mean by that? By those I thought lost to me.”
“I am an ancient creature with magic beyond your imagination. There are those that have died that you could save.”
Shaking his head slowly, Stiles bit at his lip. He turned again and moved until he could sink down on the edge of his bed. “Things happen for a reason, don’t they? I can’t just travel back in time and change things to be the way that I want them to be.”
“And why not? Some things do not happen for any reason except that they were made to happen that way by someone else.”
“For something considered evil enough to warrant being trapped in a tree, you are oddly on the side of good.”
“I am not evil. I simply feed off chaos. Not all chaos is evil.”
Stiles felt like there was so much that he was missing. “Why offer this to me?”
“Your life so far has been full of chaos. Traveling back into time to change things here and there will not make it less so. We would be fed and strong. We would be able to protect those that we love.”
With his mind whirling, Stiles dropped his head into his hands. “I will not become something that my friends would have to hunt and kill.”
“You would still be you. You would keep your morals. Already, I reflect more of you than any other.”
“Why is that? Because you’re in my head?”
“Yes, but also because you fed me willingly. You have shared pieces of yourself with me.”
“If we do this. I will be in control, right? I would be able to say yes and no to you.”
“You would.”
“You won’t take control and do whatever you want, right?”
“There would not be a moment when you give me control. From the moment we start this, we will begin to unite until there is no way to distinguish you from me.”
“And we’d go back in time and change things. What happens to now? Right now? This moment.”
“It will cease to exist. The spot that we go back to and change something erases the future we are in now.”
“So if I travel back to before you slipped inside me, you’d be gone?”
“No, the you that travels to that time would be the same you as now. You would not take over your body from that moment in time. There would be two of you.”
“I’m not going to explode the universe if I see myself or talk to myself, right?”
“Absolutely not.”
“That’s good.”
Stiles picked his head up from his hands and looked at his room. Changing things could not make the present worse than it was. He could do what he said and travel back and kill Jennifer. He would have the power to stop the alpha pack. He could stop Gerard.
But why stop there? If he was going to travel back into time, why couldn’t he go further than the last couple of years? Why couldn’t he save those that should never have been killed?
Stiles pushed himself to his feet. He swallowed once and then twice before nodding his head. “Let’s start somewhere small and see how it goes.”
“If we start, there is no stopping.”
Stiles closed his eyes for only a second before opening them once more. He clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders to his empty room. “I understand.”
“We’ll start with Jennifer.”
“Perfect. What do I do?”
“Nothing.”