The Price You Pay
Welcome to the jungle, we take it day by day. If you want it you're going to bleed, but it's the price you pay.
So this is it, Stiles thinks, deftly, as yet another white-light-energy-whatever hits him from behind. He smacks directly into the door frame he’d been intending to exit.
“Fuck.” Stiles grasps a hand to his face, examining the blood he finds there. He probably smashed his nose up by the way the pain radiates with the quick check.
The sounds of someone, probably Malia, colliding into something hard, smacks him out of his stupor. They’re holding up well, all things considered. It would probably be better if he wasn’t here. Hand-to-hand confrontation with anyone, especially supernatural anyones, is one of the things he’s learned to avoid by now.
Stiles clutches his ears ineffectively as he pulls himself to his feet. Lydia seems to be their best option for defense right now. She's managed to hit the guy with what should be a whammy a few times already. However, nothing seems to be going the way they expect it to. He's glad he's clutching his ears again when he sees Lydia scream again through the doorway, pushing the witch-sorcerer-guy directly through a wall and outside.
For a long second, nothing happens. Stiles hovers in the doorway, unsure if leaving is still his best option.
Malia stands with a string of curses, rushing to Lydia’s side. She casts a glance his way, her hand on Lydia’s shoulder.
Stiles gives her a shaky smile to say he’s fine. The smile doesn’t pull painfully, so he’s mostly sure his nose isn’t broken. It’s just superficial he thinks, relieved.
He watches Malia look Lydia over for injuries and then scan the area around them with her senses.
“Scott?” Stiles asks. The question is clear enough to decipher, and since he knows next to nothing about whoever it is that came and whammied them, keeping it brief is essential for protective purposes. Malia shakes her head negatively.
“We need to get out of here.” Malia says, obviously unaware of the conclusion he’s already reached. He grins at her in that awfully devastating way, where they can all see the pain etched into every line on his skin. He agrees with her anyway.
“You think?” Lydia deadpans, short of breath.
Stiles thinks back to before, when Scott was always by their side. He’d been slacking more and more the closer they got to graduation. But when Liam refused to take over Beacon Hills, Scott was forced to stay. And really? Trying to force a beta to protect the town was just asking for a slew of trouble. Stiles didn’t know if Scott thought that one through or just didn’t care.
Stiles stumbles with his first step, blood rushing away from his head. Quickly righting himself, he follows Lydia and Malia from the room with the giant hole in the wall. They settle into the middle of the house warily, backs to each other and let Malia work her Werecoyote magic to figure out their next move.
“I can’t hear anything.” Malia informs them.
Stiles relaxes, feeling the tension start to leak from his shoulders and chest.
“Good, good, good, okay.” He sighs aloud.
“No, Stiles. I can’t hear anything.” Malia warns. “No cars, no people, no bugs. Nothing.”
Shit. Double shit. Triple shit. A shit sundae with shit nuts and shit fudge sauce in a shit bowl. He’s not even surprised Scott’s a no-show so far. He presses call on his phone again and it goes directly to voicemail. He tries Mason next and it goes to voicemail, too. Mason always has his phone on and charged, even going as far as to carry extra batteries with him. A strum of anxiety hits Stiles and goes directly to his core.
He swallows a mouthful of spit and tries to clear his head.
“You two run when the guy comes back. I’ve got this.” Malia punctuates by unsheathing her claws and hardening her stance. He knows she’s serious, prepared for it, even ready to die if necessary to protect them. Lydia beats his protest with one of her own.
“That’s not going to work.” She takes a deep breath in. “Not alone, anyway.”
They look at each other in that way Stiles wish he was able to do, no words, just a look of pure understanding. It turns on it's head when they both share a pointed look with Stiles.
“Oh, come on guys!” Stiles groans. He has the image of them both lying dead in this room, and himself blubbering at Scott’s the next day, trying to explain just how he let this happen. He pushes the images away as soon as they come.
Lydia puts her hands on his face and rests their foreheads together. A show of solidarity. So this is it, then. She closes her eyes and inhales a steadying breath.
“We’ll be fine. Find Scott, find Liam or Hayden. You can do it. It’ll be fine until then.” Her eyes meet his as she gives a wry smile. “I’m a bad ass Banshee and Malia is a kick ass Werecoyote, after all.” Lydia flourishes with a confident smirk, pulling away.
Stiles grimaces and shoots a glance to Malia, who gives him a sure nod. So he’s going to run, like he’s useless. And he kind of is when it comes to things like this. It just sits sour on his tongue, forcing Lydia and Malia to play bait for his benefit.
“He’s back!” Is the only warning he gets before Malia is thrown directly into Stiles. He feels her claws break the skin on his bicep as they both hit the ground. Lydia lets out another scream from where he can’t see with Malia’s body on top of his.
“Sorry.” She growls, pushing to her feet and charging at the guy. Lydia hits the ground with a groan to his left.
Stiles stops, hesitating, making sure the guy is busy as he makes a break for the door again. He fumbles with the door handle, hearing the battle rage on behind him. He’s out the door when he hears glass shatter behind him. Whoever lives in that house is going to have a lot of stuff to fix, thanks to them. But, eh, for the greater good or whatever. Who doesn’t have house insurance anyway?
He breaks into a run for the street, only to be thrown back by something.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” He groans, examining the clear space in front of him. There’s a red powder on the ground. So, not Mountain Ash, then.
He tries to move the powder with his hands, and a lawn ornament, and following all of that, he tries moving it with his mind. Believe, Deaton said.
He concentrates on believing, because he has to go get back up. He believes he needs to break the barrier. He believes he can break it.
He believes it so much, he’s actually surprised when he opens his eyes and the forcefield is still there. He feels a nervous sheen of sweat on his face and back. If he can’t get out, he can’t get help, and Lydia and Malia are going to die.
He throws the lawn ornament ineffectively at the barrier, only for it to bounce back at him. He lets out an angry scream, beating his fists at it.
Stiles is running back to help them before he’s finished thinking about it. He’s not sure it’s a good idea to think about it too long, anyway.
There’s… a lot of blood. Malia isn’t moving, slumped against a coffee table. He checks her pulse, faint but still beating. She hit her head pretty badly. He focuses back on the noise and grabs a lamp, throwing it over the guy’s head from behind when he finds him and Lydia.
The guy doesn’t crumple or even flinch, just picks stiles up by his collar and throws him at Lydia’s feet. And yeah, that hurt enough for Stiles to remember he’s in a lot of pain already. Black flickering in his vision, he stands anyway. For Lydia, he won’t lose consciousness.
He’s faintly aware when the guy shoots another light-energy-burst at Lydia. He’s faintly aware when he doesn’t hear her get back up. His heart thrums uncomfortably in his throat. The world around him is singling down to only himself and the guy assessing him from across the room.
He sees more than feels the last bit of light flying towards him.
And then he sees nothing.
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Tony Stark is at his workshop desk tinkering with the wiring for what’s going to be the best damn replacement arm Bucky’s ever going to see, when his computer pings an alarm.
“JARVIS?” He asks, pushing his chair away from the desk, arm forgotten.
“There has been an unusually high energy signature detected in Northern California. Origin unknown.”
Okay, Tony can work with that.
“Pull up maps of the area: terrain, city, satellite.”
The maps flash around him.
“Do we have any visuals?” He asks, giving the maps a cursory glance.
“Unfortunately not, sir. The area seems to be primarily undeveloped.”
“Right. Okay. So who else has noticed? Anyone?” Tony asks.
“As of yet, sir, it seems to be just you and I.” JARVIS answers.
Tony grins and looks to his monitors again.
“Let the kids know we’re going on a trip, JARVIS.”
He and Bruce developed the tracking system shortly after the Loki-attempting-to-enslave-mankind debacle. Tracking the Tesseract was a great base-point for tracking non-human energy systems in general. Since SHIELD is in possession of the original Tesseract-tracking program, Tony pretty much had to make a new, better one- one that they didn’t have.
Bruce called it childish. Tony called it insurance… and then, maybe, albeit begrudgingly, childish. But first and foremost, it was useful. Case in point: now. When Bruce gets back to the tower, he’ll rub it in his face. But for now, he’s ushering his fellow Avengers out the door and to the car so they can catch a private plane to Nowheresville, California.
“Tony, I’m not sure what -” Steve tries.
“I said already. JARVIS detected something possibly hostile, possibly alien, and possibly dangerous in California. So we’re going before SHIELD gets it’s grubby little hands into another mess they can’t handle.”
This shuts Steve up, but Bucky blunders on, to Tony’s annoyance.
“If you’re that bored, Tony, next time we can go see a movie or something.” Bucky grins.
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Natasha lands the plane close to the original energy signature.
“Look sharp boys,” Tony says over the coms in his suit, “and girl.”
He continues, “Whatever it was dropped a few clicks west of here, but there’s no telling where it is now.”
They trek through the thick woods following Tony’s lead since he’s the one with the maps on hand. They approach carefully, Tony scanning their way for safety’s sake.
“Oh.” Tony says as they approach around the perimeter of the unknown object.
“You see what it is Tony?” Steve asks.
“Well, whoever it is, they’re alive.” Tony says.
Steve reaches the body first.
“Bucky and I will stay on perimeter guard.” Natasha informs them all.
“Hold on.” Tony tells Steve, who’s already reaching toward the prone figure on the forest floor. “Scanning for injuries.”
“JARVIS?”
“There appears to be nothing life threatening, sir.”
Tony lets his mask fold back into the suit.
“Go ahead.” He tells Steve.
Steve flips the kid’s body over to his back, checking his pulse to be sure for himself the kid’s still alive. He feels around the kid’s sweater and jeans.
“No wallet. No ID.” Steve informs him.
“JARVIS, facial recognition scan. Let me know when it’s done.”
“Affirmative, sir.” The AI responds.
The kid’s face is bloodied, as is his clothing. There’s not enough dirt on him to assume he’d been running around the woods, but that just confirms he’s been dropped here from god-knows-where.
“Area’s clear.” Nat informs them, joining Steve and Tony with Bucky at her side.
Tony goes through JARVIS’s analysis on a screen he projects from his suit’s arm.
“Seems human to me. All the right stuff in all the right places.” He jokes. “Multiple lacerations, and huh, surprisingly no broken bones.”
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Stiles comes to awareness with voices around him. He stays still and relaxed, taking stock of his body with closed eyes,
His head really hurts, as does his face. His arm is wet. Thanks, Malia, he admonishes silently. His left thigh feels like someone took a meat tenderizer to it for awhile. He fights the urge to flex his fingers and toes.
“… hospital.” He catches the end of someone’s sentence.
“Or we can just leave him to SHIELD.” A woman offers. He doesn’t recognize her voice.
“Aren’t you guys even a little curious? Come on! Kid drops out of nowhere, pings my magical what-the-fuck finder, and-”
The voice cuts off and then continues.
“Sleeping beauty is awake.”
Stiles opens his eyes then, pretense abandoned, to find four people looking at him from a few feet away, watching him intensely. One is in a suit of red armor, another in star-spangled spandex. The other two don’t catch his eye as odd immediately, dressed in black head to toe.
“I -” Stiles starts, sitting up, bringing his hands to examine his head first - no wet blood. Then he checks out his arm, which does seem to still be slowly leaking. He wipes the messied hand on his jeans and stands shakily, finally getting the chance to look around.
“Uh?” He exhales, questioning dumbly. Besides the four strangers around him, who are just watching him silently, there’s nothing he recognizes. There are no houses, no streets, and no people or cars. There are just trees, and plants, and dirt, and… that can’t be right.
“Where am I?” Stiles asks, then amends. “Exactly. And who are you? How did I get here? I was…” He trails off and shakes his shoulders out to relieve their stiffness. It’s not important where he was until he can figure out where he is.
Tony watches the kid’s eyes stick to him and Steve when he sees them.
“I’m Tony.” He says. The kid nods and then his eyes slide back to Steve.
“That’s Steve. Over there are Natasha and Bucky.”
“Got it, okay.” Stiles shifts his weight around to center as Steve walks closer to the other three so the kid doesn’t have to keep turning his head to see them all.
“What’s your name, kid?” Steve inquires for them all.
“Stiles.”
“Okay then, Stiles,” Tony starts. “I have a computer that tracks unusual energy signatures and a few hours ago it found you. So I convinced -”
Bucky snorts at Tony.
“Convinced,” Tony reiterates. “These completely willing folks to check it out with me. And here we are.”
Stiles raises a skeptical eyebrow but nods along anyway, still flicking his eyes over each of them cautiously.
“Where is this, though?” Stiles takes in the dense woods around them.
“Oh. Earth, USA, California.” Tony pulls up the map for all of them again. Stiles eyes widen as he steps closer to the holographic projection, their location marked with a blinking light.
“I’m still in Beacon Hills then.” Stiles notes, relieved. “Which way is the city? I’ve gotta check on my friends. It’s only been a few hours you said? Probably?”
Natasha raises her brow. “Which city?”
“Beacon Hills?” Stiles raises his eyebrows back at her.
“This is Beacon Hills.” She gestures with one arm to the woods around them.
“Yeah, obviously. I saw the map!” Stiles takes a few steps away and flings his arms around wildly.
Ow, yeah, he forgot about the cuts. He fingers the wound again, pushing his hoodie aside. It’s definitely bleeding more heavily now.
Tony pulls up the satellite imagery of the area.
“Most recent satellite surveillance: this is Beacon Hills.”
Stiles takes the few steps back, closer to the map, less wary about the strangers around him than what he’s hearing.
“Can I…?” He holds his good arm up and makes a pinching motion between his fingers.
Tony nods. “Yeah, go for it.”
Stiles brings his hand in front of the projected screen hesitantly and swipes down, moving the image. So, just like a normal screen, he notes.
He spends 30 seconds zooming in on their current area, then any area around them that isn’t blanketed by trees.
“This isn’t right. Beacon Hills is huge. Not like, huge-huge, but it’s - There’s schools, businesses, buildings. I - It’s - There’s a city! A cityscape! I don’t…” He trails off, lost.
He’s suddenly alert, taking measured steps away from Tony’s projection.
“That’s real?” Stiles confirms. “This isn’t a trick?”
“You saw it yourself, kid.” Tony says.
Which makes sense, Stiles thinks. Unless that supernatural baddie did something to his brain. Is he still alive right now? Is he even awake?
Stiles looks down and counts all his fingers. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. He looks back at the people around him and when nothing changes, he count again. Just to be sure. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.
“Okay.” He says mostly to himself. “Okay.” He steels himself to work through the problem with the information he has already.
“You,” he points at Tony. “You said you detected me here, out of nowhere. And this isn’t Beacon Hills, not like real Beacon Hills, my Beacon Hills. So I’m what? In another dimension?”
How would that work? How would he get back? Is it one of those ones where time passes differently? Is he sure he’s awake? He counts his fingers a third time, unable to quell the urge, goes slower this time - crooks each finger when he’s done with it. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. He frowns at his hands.
“… It’s possible, anyway.” Stiles catches the end of Tony’s sentence.
“What were you doing before?” Steve questions, running a hand through his hair tiredly.
“What happened leading up to...” Tony gestures widely over Stiles’ general direction.
Stiles considers for a moment, but ultimately paints the story in broad strokes. Because… the guy has a computer that tracks energy, for fuck’s sakes. And a holographic touchscreen. And Beacon Hills is… gone… along with his pack… and his mother’s and father’s graves… and if Beacon Hills didn’t exist, what else in the world is different? Does he exist here?
“There was this guy; young-ish, long white hair, a cape, maybe?” Stiles starts, trying to remember. He’d been a little too preoccupied to pay attention.
“Anyway, appeared out of nowhere, basically. We’re used to - but anyway, no monologue or preamble, he just attacks us - me, Lydia, and Malia, I mean.”
He checks to make sure he hasn’t lost his audience with his rambling but they’re still listening as best as he can tell. He takes a deep breath, preparing to have to justify the unbelievable supernatural shit he’s about to explain.
“Okay, so this guy is like shooting, or emitting, this white light. It was more like energy, I guess. Packed a punch, knocked us all right on our asses.”
He winces dramatically at himself and continues on without meeting any of their eyes.
“We run into this house - more defensible than just taking it out in the middle of the street, you know. So I call Scott. He doesn’t pick up, but we’re getting our asses kicked. Uh,” Stiles thinks.
“Oh! So Lydia finally gets the upperhand, pushes him through a wall. So he’s outside and we all move closer to the center of the house, and I try to call Scott, and then Mason, you know, for backup, but no calls go through. Turns out, guy put up a forcefield around the house.
“Which, I know, sounds impossible. But trust me. Forcefield. So Lydia and Malia are fighting the guy and I’m supposed to get back-up but there’s a literal fucking forcefield, this red powder circling the house pretty much.
“Nothing was getting through it. Nothing. And I realized Lydia and Malia -” Stiles swallows thickly.
“So I run back inside and hit the dude over the head and it’s totally ineffective. Didn’t even flinch. Rude.” He inserts some levity, still not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Malia’s unconscious. Lydia hits the ground and doesn’t get back up… and then… I’m here. With you guys over me. That’s it I guess. Any thoughts?”
Nobody says anything for a drawn-out period and Stiles looks back at them.
Natasha, the red head, is muttering in hushed tones to the heavily muscled dude not dressed like an American Flag. Stiles can’t remember his name. The other two appear to be listening in as well.
“I, uh, I’m not lying.” Stiles feels compelled to say.
The muscled guy in black snaps his gaze to Stiles, calculated. Stiles feels uncomfortable with the scrutiny, folding his arms carefully over his chest.
He hears the word “shield” again, but the rest of their hushed conversation eludes him. When they all turn to Stiles in unison, his heart rate picks up. He feels hunted and has to force himself to not take the involuntary step backwards his instincts are screaming at him to take. He tenses and waits for whatever is coming next.
He knows he’s too injured to put up much of a fight, or even much of a chase. They’re probably well aware too, but hell if he’s going to go down without a fight if it comes to it.
He’s flexing his fingers when Steve opens his mouth.
“Stiles,” Steve addresses formally, “Would you like somewhere to stay while we try to figure out how this happened?”
“I -” Stiles is taken by surprise. “It’s either that or living on the streets, so, yes? If that’s okay? I don’t have any money.”
Is his social security number still his here?
“I don’t t-” trust you guys. His mind catches up with his mouth. What good would it do to tell them that? “Have anything.” He finishes awkwardly.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that, kid. I’ve got plenty of everything.” Tony smiles gleefully, mind whirring with potential tests and programs he can create to solve this mystery.
“Brucey is going to be so excited to figure this one out with me!”
“Okay.” Stiles says, shifting his weight between his feet.
“Plane’s this way.” Natasha says before turning and walking away into the woods. The rest, save the muscled guy in black, move to follow. Stiles scrambles after them, cursing the pain radiating up and down his leg.