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“It’s nice to see you out and about. The fresh air is good for you.”
Stiles glanced over at his companion. The early winter breeze tugged a few strands of her hair from their artful curls. The cold of the lacrosse bleachers was the kind of frigid that seeped through his jeans and made his legs feel damp.
“Yeah, well—new body. Last lacrosse season I scored 3 points in the final minutes of the game. Now I can barely walk across a room.” He stared out across the grass so she couldn’t catch his expression. “I’m still breaking in the new Stiles-suit.”
Lydia huffed, pink-glossed lips pursing in a moue of distaste, “Your klutziness isn’t exactly novel, no, but you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. You’re probably just still recovering. Or it’s all psychosomatic. You feel like it’s not your body, so it doesn’t feel like it’s your body.” She gave him a once over.
Stiles tried not to fidget under her scrutiny, but he’d always been terrible at not fidgeting.
Damn fox could have at least gotten rid of the ADHD when it was puking out a new magical clone body. “Psychosomatic effects aren’t less real.” Long, thin fingers brushed over the skin behind his left ear, teasing aside short brown strands to find a small, reassuring rough patch fading more and more every day.
What would he would do once it was gone? It was hard enough to get back to sleep after a nightmare when his fingers could find a tangible reminder of reality in the dark or see it in the mirror when the circles under his eyes got a little too dark, the shadows a little too deep in his reflection.
When Scott or Lyds flinched when he moved unexpectedly.
Maybe it was time to reconsider the tattoo thing.
He propped an arm up on his knee, chin in hand, and shifted on the bench, ass going numb. The wind picked up again and he huddled a little farther down in his hoodie against the wind even if it wouldn’t do anything to warm the ice at the core of him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get out there and play with them?” Lydia caught his hand and pulled it down, away from his ear. “Even if you’re more coordination-challenged than you were before, sitting around won’t fix it. You’re probably just a little out of shape. You’ll never make first line again if you don’t try.”
A whoop drew their attention back out to the field where Scott pulled some kind of crazy werewolf parkour move that sent him spinning over Isaac’s back. A back-handed toss sent a small white blur whizzing from his crosse faster than human eyes could track. Isaac ate dirt trying to pull off a supernaturally quick pivot on the damp grass, but popped back up with typical wolfy reflexes. The faster wolf bowled Scott over just a little too late to prevent him from scoring.
There was an audible crunch of breaking bone.
Stiles gave Lydia a look.
She shrugged. “Ok, maybe we should get you back into things a bit more gradually...”
Their friends rolled around on the ground, more wrestling moves and street brawling than anything belonging to a team sport.
Probably working their grief for Allison out on each other.
Even if he wanted to get in the middle of that, what right did he have when he was at least partially responsible for it all? He wrung his fingers together. It should have been him. He’d prepared himself for it. It was his fault the nogitsune was free, it was only fair he was the sacrifice again to put him away.
But Allison had still paid the price instead. Aiden too.
And for what? A facsimile? More him than the fox at least. If Noshiko could be trusted.
Whatever the hell that meant.
What a shitty trade-off. He’d be pissed if he were them. Demand a refund.
It had been a month or so since they’d sent that bastard back wherever he belonged, and yeah, Stiles was still trying to figure out how to live like this.
“You can’t sit everything out for the rest of your life, Stiles.”
“Wouldn’t want to start screwing up this shiny new body when I’ve only had it a few weeks, Lydia. You don’t take a brand-new car off-roading” He gestured over his skinny torso, gangly limbs, gaunt face with its red rimmed eyes. “You gotta wait until you inevitably scuff it up a little. This bad boy’s still pristine!”
No nasty scar on his stomach where Void had eviscerated him to loose his horde of demonic flies on the pack. No lightning scars from fox lichen. No frontotemporal dementia.
Good as new.
No divot in his knee from that skateboarding accident when he was 13. No red patch on his calf from wrestling with Scott in the gravel pit a few summers ago. Not even the scar from those vase shards the first time Mom’s disease made her think he was some kind of monster sent to kill her.
His whole past might never have happened.
He itched behind his ear again, fingers tapping out a rhythm against his scalp, 1-2-3-4-5--His throat clicked dry when he swallowed.
What if his tonsils were back?
If he started getting strep again all the time he was going to be pissed.
“Mmm hmm,” Lydia shot him an exaggerated eye-roll, tucking her hands into the warmth of her royal purple peacoat. “You’re not fooling anyone.”
He shrugged.
‘You really have to learn not to trust a fox, cause they're tricksters. They'll fool you.... they'll fool everyone.’
Stiles leaned back on his elbows on the seat behind him, kicking his feet up on the lower step with a cheshire grin, “Coach wouldn’t know what to do without me holding the bench down. We’re in Beacon Hills. It might actually wander off.”
Nothing to see here. Na-na-na-na life goes on…
For everyone except Allison and Aiden, anyway. And half his dad’s deputies. And anyone who had died at the hospital. Either time. But who was counting, right?
“Really, Stiles, are you sure you’re ok? You know it’s ok if you aren’t right? That we’re all here for you?”
“Yeah, of course!” he waved her off her shrewd look with a little laugh.
He was still breathing. What right did he have to distract from their grief just because he was having a little trouble getting past it? Or sleeping. Or looking in mirrors? Remembering shit he couldn’t possibly know.
Waking up his dad a couple times a night screaming from nightmarish memories of massacres that happened hundreds of years before he was born.
“Really. Don’t worry about me.”
“Are you doing anything Stiles? Talking to anyone? You’ve been through some really serious trauma.”
“Yeah sure. Noshiko suggested Tai Chi. You don’t want to know how hard I failed at meditation, but I think the nogitsune actually left some useful memories in here,” he pointed at his own temple. There was so much of it. Some of it had to be useful, right? “I should probably figure that out or something so I don’t keep dragging the rest of you down with my squishy human-ness. Maybe I’ll unlock the lost secrets of the kung fu masters and spontaneously become a ninja overnight. Learn to handle myself.”
The next person he got killed could be someone that mattered to him, and if that thought didn’t make him an asshole, he didn’t know what did. Void had gone for him for a reason, right?
Lydia’s soft voice pulled him back to the present, “You know you’ve got options,” she said softly, eyes locked on their friends who were back to pretending to practice for tryouts once school picked back up from winter break in a little over a week.
“Options for what?”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit if you think you’re just the token human of the group, Stiles, but I shouldn’t need to point out you don’t have to stay that way if it really bothers you. Scott was ready to bite you to save you from the nogitsune, but you don’t have to be dying to ask for it.”
Stiles sucked in a sharp breath. Ask for it? Just like that?
Would deciding to let this body be changed into a werewolf make it more or less his? Give him agency over this golem he was trapped inside or just make him even less human?
“You should talk to him, Stiles. Just talk. You don’t have to make any decisions, but he’s your brother. He loves you.”
As if on cue, Scott’s phone began ringing in his bag a few benches down from them. The true alpha automatically looked up their way to catch the sound, his eyes flashing red. Isaac used the distraction to whip his stick around, sending the ball sailing right past his ear and into the net.
“Damn it, Isaac!” Scott laughed, taking off after him.
Stiles put his hoodie string between his teeth, mumbling thoughtfully around the cracked plastic eyelet, “I don’t mind being squishy. Someone around here needs to be able to handle the mountain ash, and I don’t know. Scotty talks like the wolf is something else in his head sometimes. Even if the body doesn’t fit quite right, at least I’m the only one in here.”
She winced a little, “I remember when Peter was using me for his resurrection…,” her hand covered his free one and squeezed in comfort before taking her hand back to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Everyone thought I was crazy. I kept losing time. Doing things I wouldn’t normally do…”
A shudder went through Stiles’ body. He pulled his knees up, circling his arms around them to keep them in place, an effort to keep himself warm. The fact that it partially hid his face was just coincidence. He wished he’d lost all that time, but he remembered everything the fox did with his body.
Scott’s face when he’d twisted the sword in his stomach and demanded his pain was burned on the back of his eyelids.
His converse were worn thin in places. Covered in dust and small scratches from normal wear and tear. He’d bought them new. He probably had his tonsils back, but at least those marks were still his.
Scott’s phone started to ring again after the last call went to voicemail.
“Should we get that, do you think?”
“Nah - it’s probably just his dad overcompensating for the past decade of bullshit he’s pulled. He’s been playing super-parent since he decided to stick around a while.” The ringing stopped again. “Besides, if it’s an emergency, I should hope everyone remembers to call me first. Scott’s useless at the pack phone tree.”
Lydia huffed, but she couldn’t argue with that one. By then everyone had fallen victim to Scott’s inability to coordinate or multi-task in a crisis. When things got hairy, his instinct was to take it all on his own shoulders.
No one had a heart like Scotty. He deserved the best, not this shit show.
Stiles was saved from more deep diving into his fucked-up psyche when his own cell began to vibrate in his pocket.
He and Lydia stared down at it accusingly before Stiles groaned, levering up a hip to fish it out.
A picture of Derek mid-sneeze, eyes scrunched closed and impressive eyebrows pulled down into a hilarious frown flashed accusingly up from the lock screen. Stiles had gotten lucky with that shot after a surprise attack with perfume at the Macy’s sample counter.
He flashed the phone at Lyds, “So much for our lazy Saturday.”
She gathered up her purse and stood, primly swatting at any dust that might have gathered on the back of her pristine black leggings and delicate floral skirt, under no delusions what that had to mean.
Derek didn’t call Stiles’ number unless it was serious.
“Better see what apocalypse we’ve got to stave off this time.”
“Great. I can’t wait.”
At least it was a distraction. Maybe that’s all he needed. Get his mind off things.
He was pretty sure his mind was his.
More his than the fox’s anyway.