the author hates me.
His nightmares are…weird. They’re filled with blood and terror and generally all-around horror, maybe even more so than usual, but…he can’t feel it. He’s stuck, watching it, but it feels like there’s some sort of wall between him and his body. Like he’s underwater.
When he wakes he almost vomits on himself because he feels so disconnected from his body he can’t tell that he’s about to throw up. His head feels like it's filled with wet cement, making him sluggish and heavy. He barely manages to close his hand around the trash bin in time to throw up into it. All he can feel is the contents of his stomach – read: bile – burning his throat on the way out as he heaves and retches.
“It’s okay, son.” His father says in a soothing voice as he rubs a hand up and down his back, he can barely feel it. “Just breathe through it.”
He isn’t sure how long it is before the heaving stops, time seems to have illuded him in this disconnected state. Eventually though, he finally collapses back into his pillows with vague burning in this throat and abdominal muscles.
The next thing Stiles is aware of is the female member of the Fitz-Simmons unit coming forward with a glass of water for him, but when he goes to reach for it he finds his left hand tied to the hospital bed with restraints.
“You were thrashing in your sleep...” She says quietly. “And…”
“And?” He asks, his groggy brain having trouble sorting out the things going on around him.
She doesn’t say anything, just starts undoing the restraints. He looks down at his other hand to find an identical restraint there still attached around his wrist and the bed, but it’s been snapped, which is why he didn’t notice at first. Once he notices it, he also notices the dull pain in his wrist, likely from where he shot his hand out to reach for the bin and broke it.
How had he broken the restraints? He’s not nearly strong enough to…Oh.
He forces himself to stop for a moment and pay attention to his body, once he does he notices it - fresh pain in his sides, dulled a little by pain meds, medical tape pulling when he shifts.
“You were scratching at your sides.” James says, sounding like he doesn’t think ‘scratching’ is the right word. Stiles understands the sentiment. “And screaming in your sleep. And stuff was flying around the room.”
The memories of what landed him here, restrained and clearly sedated, come flooding back to him. He tastes something sharp and acidic, but the terror that accompanies it doesn’t quite reach him. He can’t decide whether he’s grateful for that or frustrated by it.
It's a little hard to get his thoughts to stay together, but he knows that he should be panicking. Void’s powers have been going out of control while he was passed out, to the point that they had to sedate him. That alone on a good day would send him spiraling into a panic attack until he hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness. But now…now he just feels, uncomfy.
“Stiles,” His dad starts and Stiles suddenly remembers the glass in his hand. “Why didn’t you tell us about the powers?”
“I thought I had them under control.” He answers honestly once he drinks all of the water. “They only lash out when I really panic. Are the others back from Japan?”
“They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“Good.” He’s trying to plan things out in his head, but it’s hard with the drugs in his system. He figures that they’ll need to find a werewolf that they can trust to bite him, but not anyone from the Pack, he won’t risk them. But how do they find someone that quickly? The last time he only had a few days before he took over Oliv…
Even through the drugs he can tell that everything has gone still. The monitor has frozen, the clock in the corner has stopped ticking, even the air is still.
Against his better judgment he looks up, not even registering everyone around him trying to talk to him to see what’s happening. His own twisted grin smirks back at him, looking amused enough for a sharp spike of fear to break through the drugs for just a moment.
‘Finally figured it out, did you?’ He asks nonchalantly, like the entire world isn’t crumbling to Stiles’ feet.
“Sedate me.”
‘I wonder who I’ll get to this time?’ Void cackles in response. ‘Daddy dearest? Soldier boy?’
“Sedate me right now!”
‘Oh! I know, I’ll have soldier boy murder daddio!’ He’s pleading now, begging them to knock him out, screaming again. It’s not fast enough. ‘At first I wanted to just kill him, but two loved ones, one possession. How fun!’ It feels like an eternity before another dose of sedatives are pushed. It’s an infinitely longer eternity as he waits for them to work their way through his bloodstream and render him unconscious once again. An eternity where he can only wait for that sweet blackness while Void continues his horrifying color commentary, stuck as his limbs go numb from the drugs, trapping him helplessly until sleep finally pulls him back into its’ clutches. ‘Can you imagine how much it’ll kill him,’ Void taunts, ‘to be controlled again? God, he’ll probably hate you. I wonder if he’ll try to kill you before I make him kill himself? But the real question, is who else do I take? Tony? Steve? Pepper for sure. She reeks of maternal love. I bet Tony would let them kill you if we did that. He might even pull the trigger himself. Such a pity that it won’t work, but then, that makes it that much sweeter, doesn’t it?’
As his vision finally starts to fade and blur Void moves closer, leaning over him to look into his reflection. ‘Everyone has it, no one can lose it. What is it?’
“A shadow.”
‘Sweet dreams, Stiles.’ The smirk is the last thing he sees before he is mercifully delivered back to his nightmare riddled sleep. Funny, how this started with him being too afraid to sleep, now the horrors that plague his dreams as his escape.
*****
It’s hard for him to be in the room with Stiles, but it’s somehow worse to be out of it. He had barely been hanging onto his mental state watching Stiles be driven out of his mind, but then he had to be the one to knock the teen out when things all went to hell. At the time, that was the worst thing he could imagine happening (realistically) in this situation. Then the magical outbursts continued even in his sleep. He started screaming through his nightmares. When he wrapped his arms around himself in his sleep, James had thought that it would be to soothe himself, but now, he was clawing his skin open.
James had left the room then to throw up. He had been stuck for several hours sitting outside the door of Stiles’ room, unable to be with him, but too afraid to leave.
They had to restrain him. He thrashed for two hours straight before his body was too exhausted to continue. He screamed and cried and pleaded for another forty minutes before those stopped too. After that he had had to go back, if only so he could watch the heart monitor and hold his hand to make sure he was still warm and breathing.
He couldn’t understand. What was this? Why was this happening to Stiles? He was just a kid.
He had only been awake for seventeen minutes before it went shit again. Most of those seventeen minutes had been spent vomiting up nothing. The trash can had flown straight into his hand, the restraint that had been keeping him from doing any more damage to his sides snapped as his hand shot forward to catch it. Stiles hadn’t even seemed to register it until afterwards, but he hadn’t said anything.
A brief, tense explanation. A question from Noah about the powers mostly brushed off. Then stiles asked when the others would be back and less than a minute after the answer, he had gone rigid and everything just stopped, the electronics stopped working, the air went completely still, the hair on the back of James’ neck stood up. Stiles had looked up to a completely empty chair in horror, shaking his head as tears formed in his eyes and chocked out ‘sedate me’.
Then he was screaming it. Begging. They had tried to figure out what was wrong, tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t see or hear them, and they had learned better than to touch him when he was like that. Stuff has started floating, the whole room had shook. Fitz-Simmons couldn’t get the drugs into him fast enough. Even once they had, it still took a minute to render him unconscious. He cried and screamed even after his body had gone still, numb from the drugs. His heart raced even after his eyes closed until he was finally asleep again.
Steve had to violently drag him into another room that didn’t have people in it. He broke a lot of furniture.
The rest of the team got back almost at the exact time that he and Steve returned. Several questions were asked all at once.
“Is he okay?”
“Did you get it?”
“Where’s Thor?”
“What happened in here?”
“Why is pepper crying?”
“Breathe, Buck.” Steve reminded him quietly. He exhaled and released his grip on the chair he was sitting in, ignoring the dents he left.
“We got it.” Natasha said. “Someone want to wake him up so we can figure out what to do with it?’
“That’s not going to work for a while.” Simmons said quietly.
“Why not?”
Four days had passed and they didn’t know what to do. They had managed to wake Stiles up a few times, but the longest that lasted as six hours on the last try, and his hallucinations had been so bad that he hadn’t been able to communicate with any of them the whole time. They had to keep him restrained because of the damage he did to his sides in his sleep, and then to his arms the second time they woke him up. They had to put in a feeding tube to keep him alive. None of them knew what was going on, and John was about to give up and call the boy’s Pack, when on the sixth day, James had been walking in from the hall after taking a break to clear his head when he nearly ran into a tall, dark-haired man that had been rounding the corner.
“Shit, sorry.” He said, checking to make sure he hadn’t done any damage. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” The man said, flashing him an easy smile that quickly turned confused a moment later. “Are-is that-um…d-“
“James,” John said as he stepped into the hall, “Can you watch-Derek?”
“Sheriff?” The man he had just bumped into stood frozen in shock for a moment. “What are you doing here? Is Stiles okay?”
It was John’s turn to freeze. James watched as the man seemed to crumple in on himself, despair and exhaustion emanating from the man, the lines on his face that didn’t seem to be there spoke of absolute exhaustion. He looks back to the man, Derek, and says, “You should come inside.”
*****
Derek was exhausted after a long shift, barely conscious as he did his best to drag himself out of the hospital to his car. He was so tired he wasn’t even listening to his surroundings, which is probably why he ran into the guy – James, he’d later learn – when he rounded the corner. But then he was very awake, because just as he opened his mouth to make sure that the man was okay, he caught a hauntingly familiar scent.
Stiles?
What the hell?
The teen’s scent was all over the man, but it wasn’t the sweet green smell that Derek had come to associate with the boy, instead is was so sharp with fear that it almost hurt Derek’s nose. It reminded him too much of standing on the rooftop of Beacon Hills Hospital. He had hoped he was going crazy, because if Stiles was really here, smelling like that, then something was very wrong.
Unfortunately, the universe decided it hadn’t screwed Derek over enough when John opened the door that he and the guy he’d just crashed into were standing in front of, cutting off his stammering and it felt like the floor had been ripped out from underneath him.
“I don’t understand.” He says as he hands the tablet back to the sheriff, he can taste bile in his throat. Ice had filled his veins the moment he saw the spastic teen lying unconscious in that bed, looking like he was an inch from death. “This doesn’t look like the last time. You said he was using Void’s powers? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Have you talked to Kira? As much as I hate even asking, Noshiko might have answers.”
“He doesn’t want any of the pack to know.” The man says, and Derek can’t help but notice how awful he looks. Stiles looks…worse isn’t even the right word…He looks like Void. “We tried waking him up, it never goes well. His hallucinations have changed, he can’t look at anyone or hear us anymore, he says all he gets is Void taking us over.”
Derek thinks he might actually throw up.
“None of this makes sense, Sheriff.” Derek admits once he pulls himself together. “A Nogitsune is powerful, but this shouldn’t be possible. There wasn’t any of it left in him, we watched for months.”
“You’re saying something else is going on here?” Tony Stark asks, and Derek is too overwhelmed by the idea that Stiles might be possessed again to even care that Stiles somehow got himself adopted by the avengers.
“It’s impossible to tell right now.” He admits, running a hand over his face. God, he’s so exhausted, and this isn’t helping anything. “No one has ever survived possession by a Nogitsune. There’s no information on what happens after this kind of possession. It could be real, but we don’t know. The symptoms don’t fit with Void’s typical behavior though. If he’s hallucinating this bad and he has control over Void’s powers, then it should have taken over by now.”
“Thor said something similar before he left for Asgard.” Sentences like that really aren’t helping him sort this out. “He said he knew someone that could help.”
“If he doesn’t get back with that help soon, I’m calling the Pack.” John says, holding onto his sons’ hand desperately. Derek can almost feel the man praying for Stiles to wake up.
He doesn’t go home that night, which is fine, because it’s not like he would be able to sleep anyways. They all just sit there, some of them managing to get some shut-eye, waiting for Stiles to wake or for Thor to return. He’s been staring out the window thinking for god only knows how long when he’s shaken from his thoughts by a familiar voice saying, “Are you serious?”
His head snaps up to see Stiles looking annoyed and heartbroken all at once, tears of frustration gathering in his eyes.
“Stiles, how are you feeling?”
“Don’t you dare.” The boy hisses and Derek wants to curl up in a ball and die. He had been so worried about Stiles that he hadn’t even stopped to consider that the boy probably hated him still. He had left without telling anyone, disappearing without a word, probably leaving him thinking he was dead. Of course he’s mad.
“Stiles, I’m sorry that I left like that, but why didn’t you call and tell me? I would have been there so-“
“Do you really have nothing better to do than this?” He asks, trying for bored but not quite hitting the mark. The waver in his voice betrays him. “Derek is gone. He got out of this shitshow. Was this supposed to hurt me? I think you’re losing your touch.”