Darkened

Deaton stares suspiciously at Alpha, who looks as if he's in a tizzy, ready to burst into tears. Either from anger or from incomprehensible embarrassment. -What happened? Derek rests his hands on the table, the cold of iron against his skin. His eyes flash red and go out like a broken mechanism. -Who eats pain? Deaton stops a step, runs a thoughtful gaze over his tense cheekbones, over his jowls, and he hears a wrenching growl. -What do you mean? Derek looks as if the vet has brain cancer, because he can't explain the meaning of the question otherwise. Deaton smiles slightly, stands across from him, repeating someone else's pose. -I mean: physical or mental? The wolf frowns his eyebrows, making his face even more frightening, and covers his eyes. His body is surprisingly empty, all senses blurred and blurred, and he feels an unaccustomed relaxation and, what seems even more terrifying to him, a weightless joy. -All of it. Deaton continues to study the uncontrollably trembling hands and slumped shoulders. He looks at the man and the wolf inside him, sees the collision of utter incomprehension, the desire to escape, terror and something absurdly wrong. Hale licks his parched lips. -He had a shadow. -A shadow? -The fox,- Alpha pulls away from the gaze that keeps falling to the tabletop, looking over every dark shimmer in the visitation, -the fox was smiling. Deaton stooped, pursing his lips in a thoughtful gesture, searching for something on the bookshelf. -Are you sure it was a fox? Derek nods, rubbing the bridge of his nose. -It smelled like a fox. Disgusting. The vet tilts his head to the side, stopping to leaf through an old, tattered tome. Hale is sure the man in front of him knows what he means, but he finishes: -Chaos. Deaton unfolds the book. Its spine slides quietly across the metal table, leaving dust behind. Derek stares uncertainly at the picture, obviously drawn by someone ancient, a double-bottom overlapping reality. A skinny black fox with bottomless eyes spiraled out into space. Endless rows of teeth curved crescent-shaped, tortured creatures frozen on them in chunks of flesh. Hale runs his fingers around the endless tails and claws, blades embedded in his own body. He can almost hear the laughter. -It's Nogitsune. Derek arches an eyebrow as ironically as he can. As if that explains something to him. Deaton sighs, tapping his fingers confusedly on the edge of the old, tattered pages. -The dark ancient Japanese spirit. Alpha wants to shrug, turn around, and disappear into the darkness of his lair, because ancient means at least a whole millennium, and dark means it's very, very dangerous. And evil. -Then we need to save this kid and exorcise this prehistoric shit-. -No, you don't understand. Deaton looks somewhere through Hale's skull, and it makes him uncomfortable. He tilts his head to the side questioningly. -He didn't possess anyone. It's his body.- Derek feels like he's being mocked. -It's like a kind of transient consciousness, where you're endlessly reborn over and over again. So there's no way to kill him. Again and again he remembers the little wrinkles at the corners of his honey-colored eyes, the pink strips of skin on his fingertips where burrs have been scraped off, the dry, weathered lips with the cracks of blood and the scars of too many bites. Spirit? Outwardly, he looked like a broken child. Perhaps that's exactly what Scott thought. And it was because his Alpha lacked blood, the kind of untruthfulness you can feel when you become something dirty yourself. If you can't kill it, then you have to banish it, imprison it, make it disappear. Deaton looks at him as if Derek has lost his mind and is about to make an irreparable mistake. -I understand that you're afraid, but Nogitsune's better off not provoking you. Just be happy that he just ate you. The wolf inside whimpered guiltily, forcing a slightly twitchy gesture through his tangled hair. -But you can't just leave him in town. What can he do if- -He can do anything if he gets disturbed,- the vet's voice slides scalpel-like across the margins of his brain, -and no one can handle him. There's no need to push disaster, Derek. Derek's ears are silent as he remembers the other man's voice, the crooked smile and sparkling gaze, the smell soaked with bitterness and madness. Of someone done with charity. Deaton smirks, watching the grotesque change in Alpha's face, and slams the book shut. -While this is still happening... You should get everyone together. Banshee first.

***

He loved the twilight. The shadows covering the remnants of the vanished sun. The endless shroud of merging clouds. The smell of damp. He counts the seconds until the streetlights come on. Snaps his fingers as they flash and smiles happily. Stiles has nothing against being alone. The cigarette smolders, disappearing colorlessly onto the lightly fogged asphalt. The bitter taste lingers down his throat into the emptiness of his weathered body. Nogitsune always had big fun. Large-scale.But this life, carved out according to his mother's paradigm, was completely wrong for him. Usually, God was more fair to him. Usually, he had no parents at all. He found that convenient. Right now, Stiles was in constant discomfort because the irrational attachment that had appeared since birth prevented him from even just breathing. Later, however, someone must have taken pity on him. And this time he could confidently say that this creature was definitely not God. God doesn't take human lives. -I'm not gonna talk you into quitting if your father doesn't mind. -I'm not gonna talk you into quitting. But can I ask you a question? The stranger's gray-green eyes almost merge with reality, framed by the sight of the dusky forest and the faded empty space of the highway. Sitting on the barrier fence, Stiles looks up at Lydia from below. -Ask. She fixes her tangled hair with her hand and sleeves of her leather jacket and sits down beside him. -You had some reason to start, didn't you? Well,- she falters, searching for words to explain, -for example, wanted to look cool, rebelled against father, or just had a sudden urge. You had something like that, didn't you? Stilinski rolls the cigarette in his hands, the burned ends lightly touching the cooled skin. His fiery hair flickers in the corners of his eyes in an absurdly poisonous way. -Hunger. Martin turns her gaze to him, trying to read any expression on his perfectly serene face. But all she sees is an old, stretched-out sweatshirt, his shirt collar peeking out from under it, and his black jeans torn in several places. Lydia wants to ask again, but the reason seems too personal for her to allow herself such rudeness, and she lowers her head guiltily. Stiles smiles with the corners of his lips. -You know about smoking during the war to dull hunger, don't you? Banshee nods uncertainly, biting her lower lip. Somehow she's starting to feel uneasy, as if her sharpened and varnished fingernails have torn a scab from a barely healed wound without warning. -Since my mother died, I've been hungry all the time. Lydia shudders, remembering the bright smile and warm touch of the man closest to her for some unknown reason. Stiles' voice echoed in her ears. -It's like the war is still going on, cutting off all avenues to satiation. Would that be a good reason? -I'm sorry. -Don't sweat it. Stilinski waves his hand like it doesn't matter and tilts his head back. With each breath he takes, the sky grows one thousandth darker, subtly approaching pitch black. This place was familiar to him. He used to come here often, back when his father hadn't yet burned him for buying cigarettes with a fake passport. Then Noah started bringing home whole blocks himself. And that's because there was no pain anywhere. Just a murky ocean of sadness lingering under his skin and on the tip of his tongue. Claudia was sick, Claudia had something that had allowed Nogitsune to stay satiated since birth. The touches of his hands, the kisses before bed, the hugs. Because of him, she continued to breathe freely, happy for each new day while veins blackened under the long sleeves of little Stiles' shirt. She continued to reach for him, even when she thought he was trying to destroy her and that he was a monster. His mother's words cut at his stomach, making him smile happily. It was then that he realized this body was wrong. For thousands of years, Nogitsune had warped other people's lives, plunging them into despair and chaos that went hand in hand with death. It was always others who suffered. Right now, only Stiles was suffering. -So, why did you call me? Lydia had beautiful features, well-groomed hair, a graceful figure. Banshee, on the other hand, has an insanely shrill voice. There is so little pain, so little in those cigarettes, so little in his own scars, so little that he is ready to weep rather than be angry. -I wanted to ask you something. Nogitsune broke down when he was given that name. He warped, reflected from his own mirror the wrong way. His eternal tenet remained the same, he still needed pain to be happy, to be himself, to be fed. But now it was coming from his own body. -Can you scream for me? Stiles feels the panicked moisture on his cheeks, and even though the rain should have started a long time ago, the asphalt continued to be dry. He bites down on his index finger, hunched over and turned into a broken silhouette, swallowed up by the fog that has become almost black. He needed what he himself was so sick of. It was a paradox. The Stiles Stilinski paradox. Lydia went numb, turned into a completely silent statue for a few pitiful seconds that lasted an infinity. And then she screamed. A question echoed in her head: Can you scream for me?