The Last Ally
They would hit the small red Ford if he didn't do something this instance. On the other lane were two more cars coming their way that would also be caught in the crossfire.
Stiles didn't think too long about it. He reached for the steering wheel but he couldn't find a grip. His hand went right through it.
"Damn it!"
The rules of the In-Between were never really clear and he hadn't figured them out yet. The woman next to him was frantically muttering under her breath, but he paid no mind to that. She could neither see nor hear him.
The car was still accelerating. Why did no one notice what was about to happen?
"You have no power here."
Stiles' neck creaked as he turned around to look at the speaker. He was so bewildered that he didn't even acknowledge the Lord-of-the-rings-reference.
"What?"
"This is the In-Between. There are barriers here that keep you from influencing the real world. Why do you think it is that not every ghost can just levitate furniture as they please? The In-Between is not on the same level as the real world. You have to work up a certain amount of power to break through the veil."
The time window for action was diminishing every second of this conversation. Stiles shook off all his abhorrence for the faceless man.
"How? Tell me how," he demanded.
The faceless man leaned forward from the backseat. "You already know how. It's what gained you access to this level in the first place."
But there would be no turning back, was what was implied.
The red Ford was getting closer. They would hit the driver side.
"Iowereth."
It was a hardship to raise his voice above a whisper. The name was lodged in his throat and he had to fight to get it out. And just like that, the deal was done. He felt a part of his being as it was ripped from him but also the connection to this realm the deed created.
From this point on, he focused on the situation only. He played the most likely scenario out in his head.
If he managed to reach the breaks, they would not be able to avoid a collision, it was too late for that. He could honk to draw attention to the risky driver. The other cars would then hit the breaks but collision, again, was unavoidable. There were two cars on the other lane coming towards him so if he would swerve, he would hit them, at a point where they would block the whole intersection, meaning that the red Ford would collide with the wreckage anyway.
He needed to leave the road altogether for minimal casualties. First, he needed to swerve to the other lane and then away from the road. If he went the other way, he would still graze the red Ford who was too close now to avoid.
Nodding along with his plan, he grabbed the steering wheel, fighting against the strong grip the woman held on it. He was forced to knock her out with a spark.
The car swerved uncontrollably and as hard as he tried, he could not get the control he had expected to gain. The car crossed over to the other lane, cars coming in their direction honking loudly. The red Ford was braking but it would not be enough. In their panic, the driver of the red Ford pulled the car to the side, swerving left. The car turned sideways.
Stiles' car finally left the road but it still grazed one of the cars heading in their direction which in turn caused the car to collide with the trunk of the red car.
What Stiles had not anticipated was that the car he had grazed was not intended to be innocent in this accident. The driver hit the gas, crossed the lanes and caused the crash with the cars from the crossing road.
The car Stiles was in had swerved from the road down a small slope and was thrown on its back. When they finally stopped moving, Stiles felt blood drip into his eyes, presumably from a gash on his forehead that came from the impact with the window. He noticed that a tree in their way had stopped the car from movement.
As Stiles looked to the driver side, he recoiled and had to put up a hand to his mouth to not be sick. The woman's head was twisted oddly from her body, her sternum pierced by a branch that had broken through the windshield.
The car door on his side was wrestled open and a hand clutched his own to heave him out of the wreckage. One look back to the crossroad caused him to lose the contents of his stomach.
"You knew that the accident was unavoidable. Your goal was to spare the red Ford at which you succeeded."
Stiles continued to retch even if there was nothing left in his stomach. All that was left was bile and clawing emptiness.
"You did the best that you could in an unsalvagable situation. Some would say that you're a hero."
Stiles crawled up the slope, clutching his side, being reminded of the barely healed wound from his last visit to the In-Between that now seemed to have opened up again. When he was on the side of the road, he climbed to his feet.
First responders had now arrived at the scene and clutching their phones or their mouths as if bad news could not be true as long as they were not spread. People were screaming for help. In the distance, the sirene flared to life. When the paramedics arrived, they took one look at the car off the side of the road and resumed helping others. Ones that they could actually help.
A child of maybe thirteen years old was recovered from one wreckage and laid on a gurney. On finding no pulse, they continued with chest compressions.
Others were carried away in a body bag.
What have I done? That thought kept pulsing along with the rapid beat of his heart.
"The accident would have happened no matter what. You can't stop something of this magnitude. Not when there are two forces you can't control who willed it."
That gave Stiles pause. "What do you mean 'willed it'?"
The man exhaled sharply through his teeth. "The possessed will do what they are ordered to do. You can keep them at bay, but nothing will stop them indefinitely unless you destroy the host. This accident was not just due to bad fortune."
Stiles thought back to the woman in the driver's seat, mumbling frantically and incoherently.
"But see," the man gestured with one hand toward Lindsay and Ray who were getting out of her car with just a few minor bruises. "Your friends are alright. Thanks to you. You're very powerful with the right incentive."
Stiles felt like retching again. He was pulled in two directions. On the one hand, the relief he felt at seeing Lindsay and Ray mostly unharmed swept him up, but on the other hand, the chaos and destruction around him tried pulling him into a black pit.
"You chose who lived! Isn't that power exhilarating?"
Stiles gripped his pounding head, trying to make sense of it all.
He had chosen who lived, but he realized that he had done so with no care who would die. As the dreadful realization settled, he watched as the paramedics gave up their reanimation attempts on the young girl with faces pulled tight in frustration. Someone called the time of death. A woman was screaming, trying to run towards the girl. She was held back by the police who had now arrived.
Suddenly, he was grabbed by his shoulders, the strength of the hold bruising.
"Stop it!" The faceless man was chiding him, shaking him, as if that could make him see sense. "Stop feeling guilty. Don't you see that you could become much more? You could do everything you've ever dreamed of! Isn't this power worth the sacrifice?"
Stiles' palm showed that half of his scars had turned black. Black for decay, for loss, for the void. He had lost half of himself already.
He looked into the smudge that was the man's face. The features were not visible to him but he felt the man's insistence, his hope that he would see, understand. Because he thought they were the same. He was the only one who could relate.
"This power - only you and I could understand the burden of it. We are its slave. We can never be free of it. The responsibility, the quenching thirst for justice that turns into vigilance, into self-righteousness, into violence. It sets us apart from everyone else. For some we are a tool, for others a threat. Make no mistake, Stiles. I am the only who's truly on your side."
Stiles thought about those words even after he had left the In-Between when he woke up lying bleeding in front of the mirror wall in the ballet room, his name written in blood in one corner of the mirror. They kept ghosting through his head as he watched the news alongside the shocked expressions of his friends, feeling nothing except the residue whiplash from the crash.
He found himself nodding to the words internally when Derek noticed the state of his scars. He didn't answer when he was asked what had happened. He didn't protest when he was hauled into an embrace that was almost violent in its reassurance and need to encompass his whole being.
He tried to feel less alone. Only to realize that he no longer felt like he deserved the companionship.
A god amongst mortals. As such he could never truly belong.