Darkened

-What are you talking about? The alien eyes burn holes of anger and incomprehension into Derek. The other Alpha can barely keep his claws from coming out, his fangs tearing the thin skin of his lips, his eyes glowing red. McCall's absurd instinct is to protect everyone. He growls furiously, wanting to sink his teeth into Hale, but he doesn't even take a step forward. Because Allison intertwines their fingers. The coldness of her skin glares in contrast in his mind, creating gaps between human and wolf. Scott exhales, causing his irises to slowly fade following the sun that constantly disappears in a shroud of clouds. Allison stands in front of him, mimicking a shield, but it feels more like unnecessary sacrifice than concern. Her black clothing blends into the morning's semi-darkness, pulling most of her body out of space. Her features have turned into sharp geometric lines, scrawled streaks covering her face. -What you're saying is really true? Derek stares into her eyes, uninterrupted, laying his own certainty through the inky pupil, keyhole opening the wasteland of his abandoned consciousness. -True. So,- he glances around at everyone, burning a single streak of light falling aslant through the panoramic windows, -you must stop communicating with him. There's no telling what he's trying to do or how he'll want to use you. Scott bit his lip, clinging to Allison like a drowning man. The smells in the room are jumbled, the rain rhythmic scraps breaking the frantic pounding of hearts imprisoned under a crust of flesh. The constant noise turns to silence from a mixture of breath and wind. Until someone's high heels make it crack. Lydia clenches her fists, her nails digging into her palms, leaving scarlet crescents. Her fiery hair glows in fire amongst the surrounding fog, raking the walls with her body. -Derek. Alpha looks up and sees the Banshee in front of her, sees the strained ligaments inside her red throat, feels the genuinely fierce but serenely calm timbre of the voice crossing the line. -What are you so afraid of? Lydia takes a step forward, her line straight and unbroken, aimed at the wolf imprisoned in the bars of the endless cage. -What did Stiles do to make you so afraid? He can feel her breath, her fingers touching his chest with discharges of contempt. Hale takes a step back. Memories slide a fading pain through the inside of his skull, trying to escape reality. He remembers the phantom almost icy touch, the lacerations left on his face and through which everything he was so unwilling to let go disappeared. Nogitsune had taken it away. Took away the pain Derek had kept in his heart for years, trying to atone for someone else's death. -I... His voice was like static on an old radio with batteries nearly dead. How could he admit that he was irrationally afraid of the disappearance of memory, of his past and what he had managed to hold on to as he fell into an endless abyss of self-deprecation. Derek was startled by the fact that he was relieved. Hale stopped, the wells of his pupils collapsed, leaving the doors to the mind closed. He rested his shoulder blades against the wall, chin up, trying to hide the trembling of his own voice from the man who felt every distortion. -I just want to protect this city. It's my duty. Banshee reads the lie in the first echoes and smiles crookedly. Unlike Allison, she doesn't seem to be taking his words for granted. And that's because Jackson, the selfish Jackson who cares about his stuff, isn't here. There's no one here to try and stop her. -If you want to protect this town, I don't think I should listen to you. After all,- she turns on her heels, walking elegantly toward the exit, -you're not going to protect me. Alpha stares after her, clenching his teeth. Somewhere in his stomach, anger twists and turns, anger born of stubbornness, shortsightedness, and doomed fecklessness. He closes his eyes so he can't see, focuses on feelings and sensations, makes his wolf instincts whine. The subtle odor of cigarettes lingers from another man's touch on his chest. Stiles is like a parasite glued to everyone. -I don't know what he had time to tell you before we met, but foxes are deceivers. Nogitsune has you fooled. Lydia stops, entirely without turning around, her compressed lips a reflection of the window grate stretched across her face in a crooked stroke. She is silent, and Derek tries to put a single handful of river sand into that abyss. -You're no longer hearing what you need to hear. People couldn't stop dying, he's just using you. Understand, I don't want to... -I hear. In the viscous grayness of the space around her, her voice sounds terribly lonely, an almost emotionless knife sliding into the resulting silence. Scott pulls his heavy-lidded gaze away from the floor with a look of incomprehension. -What do you mean? Didn't you say the voices were gone? Argent is confused, from her lips to her throat, everything is dry. The ice of her image, the chiseled stone pedestal shakes from within, trapped in a hysterical tachycardia. Lydia, on the other hand, is as calm as ever. Her heart beats out the frosted rhythm of a waltz. Truly frostbitten. -I thought they were gone, but it turns out they're only gone when I'm with Stiles. It didn't make any sense before, but now,- Martin smiled with a sadness streaked with the bitter milk of dandelions, -it all makes sense. Derek pulled himself away from the wall, the weight of his body unbearable, preventing him from breathing properly. He walked over to the table, rested his forearms on it, bent, hiding his head between his hands, as if trying to protect himself from Banshee's words, from the sound of her voice. -I think The Nogitsune is eating them. Scott flinches, takes an unconscious step backward, and with a sudden loop collapses the construction Allison had made of the knots in their fingers. It's as if Martin is aware, as if an unmuted whisper passes through other people's heads, to then return to her. She shifts her eyes to McCall and their indistinct mixed color swarms of countless voices withering the fallen leaves between them. -So is Scott's problem. True Alpha twitches, his expression a palette of grim spectrum changes every two seconds, tripping over each other and creating ridiculous grimaces. He did speak to him for so long and so pointlessly that his throat shriveled, wiping his teeth in the crumbs of his past, a white veil covering another man's murky gaze. Not disappearing. Frozen against it for what had become countless hours. Lydia cuts through the people around her, in a soft but still slightly hysterical timbre. -Even if Stiles is a millennia-old ravenous evil, that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to restrain himself. Derek's eyes glaze over, and he straightens, turning to stone. He can't understand how this is even possible, how the most intelligent man among them can defend a monster whose natural instinct is to laugh until the corners of his lips crack, forcing the thin skin of his cheeks apart. Stilinski is just a foreign something, a rotten rib that has inserted itself into their perfect composition, tarnishing, marring their bond, turning the bloody threads into gray. -You trust a recently met fox more than you trust me, than you trust us? The inside-out question draws circles on her skull with a nasty scrape. Lydia stretched a grin, as if she couldn't believe the Alpha dared ask her that question. -I trust you, of course, but that doesn't mean I have to follow your will,- Martin takes the remaining couple steps toward the door, -I'll just do what I think is right.- She looks at Hale, still with the same ruthless insolence. -If you need me, scream louder, like you're about to die. Derek feels the door slam against its own frame. Allison grabs Scott by the brush, nodding to the alien alpha with complete confidence. It's not just wolves, hunters are scared too. This one trait they usually go at each other's throats with brings their thoughts closer than an inch. -You don't care if he's good or bad, do you? Allison nods with such poise that Derek feels as if she's been waiting for this moment all along. Scott repeats her gesture, his fists clenched, crushed by his own helplessness. McCall shakes at the mere thought that his friendship was food for someone.

***

He pulls the wire from his headphones, falling to the bed with a crackle among the walls. His house is always empty, body damp to the point of disgusting. Stiles flips through the weather tab, fingers stabbing at the screen, swallowing lines with the effort of saving someone's life. He exhales disappointedly, clenching his teeth angrily at the light cloud cover with no precipitation. Only three more days before the rain stops. Stilinski locks the screen, which has turned into an ink blot reflecting space, and tosses the cell phone after the headphones. His room resembles a cliff split in two. Countless sheets of paper, books, printed files and notepads are scattered in perfect chaos on one half, distinguished from the other by a perfectionistic emptiness. Nogitsune has one personality, two lives, and already a third non-writing pen. Stiles clucks his tongue, tucking it away in the row of used ones. From the ajar window comes the faint sound of the first drops, the smell of rain mingling with rotting leaves, with rowan trees that have not fallen, with wolf hair. He picks up the cup, its multiple circles marking the hours almost as measuredly as the sandy ones. Stilinski steps onto the stairs, his body feeling the changes in his connection to Alpha. The thread has thinned, a disheveled moulin without a part of itself, but still holding on for now. Demons don't have plans for the future, but that doesn't mean they don't anticipate their opponent's next moves. Nogitsune feels a slight satisfaction in his stomach, Nogitsune feels something fun approaching. Footsteps on the stairs echo rhythmically throughout the house, playing a contrast for the music in his head. Stiles's voice is thin but still husky.

-Every time I stand to leave my cage

He walks to the kitchen, puts the dirty cup under a powerful stream of water, runs his fingers along its sides, pouring it down the sleeves of his shirt. The fabric sticks to his body, creating unpleasant goosebumps running up to his elbows. Nogitsune puts the kettle on. The other dishes, always soiled mountains piled in the sink, are somehow absent. He opens the cutlery drawer, searching it for anything unclean, staring down unreadably. The water in the kettle begins to boil, a light noise filling the silence, like a melody that had previously fallen out of tune. Stiles picks up the knife, on which he notices a barely visible soapy smear. In the rippling darkness, it looks more like the natural glare of a fire. The gas camphor burns with a hellish blue flame. He runs his fingers along its edge, watching the reflection thoughtfully. The wet sleeves irritate the skin on his narrow wrists, and he rolls them up leisurely. Steam escapes from the throat of the kettle along with the metal touching the pale crust. A neat thin cut without any hesitation divides wounds with a hungry mouth open on his forearm. The mangled veins cry out in the gloom of the evening for something entirely unrelated to them, and Stiles silences them again with an indifferent movement of his small blade. The disembodied flesh smiles, blood streaming into the sink. He hears only her uninterrupted words that have become part of the familiar background.

-In my broken body I stay

Nogitsune throws the knife beneath the streams of water, her trembling fingers touching the wound that has yet to heal. Black lines crawl across his skin in ugly cracks. Stiles smiles, turns off the boiling kettle, scrubs the walls of the sink and the dark blade with detergent. Returns everything to its proper place. The rain only gets louder. He brews green tea, throws three spoons of sugar into it, pours strong bitter black into another cup and sets it on the table in front of him. The warm, delicate flavor touches his frozen lips, forcing a relaxed smile. The tang of pain slides from his wrist with a pulse. Right now, he almost absolutely doesn't care what they all want from him. -I thought you might like that. The darkness next to the stairs separates, growing smaller, taking steady steps toward the table until it's completely indistinguishable in the slanting pale light streaming in from the street. Peter smirks, ruffles his hair, a little wet from the rain, and sits down next to her, pushing back the wooden chair. He picks up a cup, makes a harmless effort on himself to spill the tea down his throat. -Do you really know everything and everything about everyone? Stiles warms his palms against the warm edges, studying every curve of the face across from him. -No, I only know what the pain tells me. Hale shrugs. The young man in front of him has a tired face, a frankly pained look, and blood-covered hands. His demeanor is more reminiscent of a little psychopath than a driven boy. -And the fact that I like my black tea strong and sugar-free, she told you that too? Peter snickers, but his fixed gaze remains the same. Stiles takes another sip and smiles blissfully, making the ex-Alpha's eyes light up with a bright celestial color. -So beautiful.- Stilinski doesn't look away from the two blue halos unfolding vertically across the other's irises, -It's just that you dreamed of him in a coma in between swearing revenge. The abrupt transition and change of topics, the knowledge of what others have under their crust. Hale hums uncertainly, an overwhelming urge to drink it all down, not to leave a single drop, and at the same time to shatter the porcelain grinding against his teeth. -So you want something from me? Peter sets the cup aside, putting aside the annoying choice. An entire millennium of evil stands before him, hungry enough to eat itself to pieces. Peter repeats the other man's smile. -I've come to pay tribute to you. Stiles tilts his head to the side in bewilderment.