Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The call came in at exactly six o’clock in the evening to his landline, not thirty minutes after Scott and his new wife Allison had left.  Threats had been made, implications that they were going to throw him out of the house -being paid for and now owned by Scott and Allison, executors of his Father’s estate, despite not actually being family- but they’d left him the piece of shit Jeep that they’d had since before Stiles could remember.  Like that Jeep was more important than the house he’d grown up in, lived his life in, lost his family in.  

Scott hadn’t lived here, hadn’t lived with the suffering that he had, the shear agony that was day-to-day life here, caring for a sick and dying parent.  Self-inflicted.  Slow.  Allison hadn’t had to live in this house, not one day.  Had never had to watch her father die a slow and horrible, self-inflicted death by liver cancer brought on by alcoholism.  Hadn’t lived with the verbal abuse that Stiles had put up with for nearly twelve years.  And don’t get him wrong, he loved his father, still does actually, but there was only so much he could deal with.  And after that last fight that had ended with John Stilinski throwing a bed pan at him followed closely by a half-full tumbler of whiskey, there wasn’t much else to be had.  Stiles could almost confidently say he’d seen it all.  Until today.    

He still loves Scott like a brother, like a sibling he never had, but it doesn’t stop the insatiable fury that has begun to grow deep within his chest when it comes to him and his fiance-turned-wife.  Had been growing in his chest for close to five years now.  The one that had only been fueled this afternoon’s events when they’d come calling to his house to deliver him the Ultimatum.  Of course they’d called it a decision at the time, but it wasn’t.  There wasn’t any choice or option to be made.  It was a sink-or-swim sort of deal, as if Stiles hadn’t already been weighed down by an emotional anchor tied tightly around his ankles.  The baggage around his legs.  The weight in his heart.  

Live with them in their house or become homeless.  Kicked out, shown the curb, with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and the Jeep in the garage.  Move in permanently as their full-time house keeper and eventual nanny.  (Like he could be moved in under their stairs forcibly like Harry Potter or some stupid House Elf, only coming out to do menial labor for them for free.)  To take what they’d decided to give him and continue doing for them what he’d been doing for his father since high school.  And there was no way to get out of it.  That was the worst part, Stiles thought, that he couldn’t just get up an leave whenever he wanted.  He’d be stuck, unable to support himself or afford a place to live on his own.  Because he hadn’t been able to go to college like Allison had, or been given a full-ride to a vet-tech program like Scott had.  He’d had to stay at home, knee-deep in medical waste and empty booze bottles, alone and trapped.  So what if he was a few years behind on the taxes?  

Now he’d just be going from one prison to another.  While their place was probably nice, it was unfamiliar, and despite all the bad things that had happened in this house -his house- he didn’t think he’d ever be able to really leave it.  Especially not for some half-assed, pity-coved, bullshit lie about wanting to help him move on now that the good old Sheriff had finally passed away.  Like they really cared.  In truth, it was all about them.  It always had been.  They’d planned on having a family soon, Stiles knew, several little perfect kids running around their pristine two story home, white shutters and white picket fence posts marking entrance to their perfect little lives.  But with Allison’s new promotion at her big, well-to-do investment company and Dr. Deaton’s plans to retire soon, they were too busy to care for their own spawn.  So what was better than having someone else doing it for them?  

Someone else doing it for free.  

And she’d gotten Scott to agree as easily as Scott agreed to everything. It made Stiles sick thinking about it. Just because Allison thought the house market was bad, and if they didn’t sell now, they never would be able to, didn’t give her the right to kick him out of his house without his say so.  Didn’t give her any rights at all, really.  Taking Stiles’ home right out from under him without so much as a second thought.  It wasn’t right!  They couldn’t just do that to him, not after what he’d done for everyone else without nothing in return.  Without expecting anything in return.  

He wasn’t having it.  Nope, he just wasn’t.  

The phone call had just given him a chance to escape for a while, an outlet for all his frustration and bottled-up anger.  A retreat.  Stiles needed it, and when Dr. Argent had called and told him to look for his article in the paper, well it had just been perfect.  Stiles had signed up for the study almost immediately and without hesitation.  And, for once, happy for the events that had transpired the previous month.  

Finally, he was getting somewhere.  

--

The house, good god the house.  

Stiles couldn’t even begin to describe the beauty that was the Hill House and its surrounding grounds, complete with an expansive yard and sky-high, double gated drive that was well off the beaten path.  He didn’t even know where the start trying to put it into words so that he could tell others. There are no others, his subconscious whispered heatedly before he shook it off, before he shook himself out and got ahold of himself.  Here, in the safety of his Jeep -his last possession- he was safe.  As safe as he’d ever been.  And soon, at the Hill House, he would be as free as he’d always wanted to be.  

There were so many shades of green lingering in the yard that he didn’t even think they had names for them all, and the architecture wasn’t any style Stiles was familiar with, but he’d fallen almost immediately in love.  It was a large, sprawling manor, with so much room that Stiles had no idea how anyone had even seen all of it at once, and had enough windows on the front facing portion to glass an entire side of a sky scraper somewhere in a far away city.  It was beautiful and it was perfect and Stiles absolutely loved it here.  This had been a very, very good decision. 

Thankfully his jeep was loud enough to hopefully get someone’s attention at the inside gate, because upon getting out to open it himself, Stiles found it to be locked.  Strange, but not unusual if he was the first to arrive, and especially not if the Hill House rarely had visitors.  (Dr. Argent had said so in his last phone call to Stiles when they discussed the details of the insomnia study and the location of the house.  That they’d need a remote, quiet location to conduct their research.)  He’d wait for Dr. Argent or a grounds keeper that was promised to be there upon their group’s arrival.  And it at least gave him a few moments to study the gate in all its beautiful detail before someone would come to open the lock for him.  

The swirling patterns and interlocking loops were immense, flowing together towards the center of each of the two panels, down towards the lock panel in the middle.  It was easy for Stiles to trace with his fingers, following the design up, up, up as far as he could reach before he was limited by his height.  The gate continued upwards for another ten feet or so, towering over him and the driveway, framing the manor as it loomed in the background, just inside the metalwork gate.  To keep others out, Stiles thought, or to keep people in.  He wasn’t really sure which.  

“What do you want?”  Stiles whipped around, coming face to face with the most beautiful and surly man he’d ever seen, poised behind the tightly-locked, iron fence.  “What do you want?”  

“Oh, hello, I’m with Dr. Argents group.  For the research study?  I’m supposed to see a Mr. Hale to let me in?  And then report to a Lydia Martin to sign in?”  Stiles said awkwardly, his sentence halting a few times as he talked.  It had been ages since he’d talked to anyone face-to-face like this, up close.  “Are you Mr. Hale, the caretaker?”  

“Yes, I’m Mr. Hale, the caretaker.”  He answered shortly, eyebrows drawn downwards.  “I wasn’t expecting anyone for another two hours.”  

“Uh, sorry I’m early?”  Now Stiles was confused, but if this guy said he was early, then he supposed he was.  If it were just him and this lovely Mr. Hale for a few more hours, then Stiles certainly wasn’t going to complain.  “I’m Stiles, Stiles Stilinski, nice to meet you.  If you’re a Hale, then you must be distantly related to Peter Hale, the man who built the place, right?  Way back when?”  

Mr. Hale just grunted but didn’t answer him, reaching his hand through the gate to snag the lock on the heavy chain, eyes flashing in the light.  Stiles just blinked before backing up enough for the man to work the lock and chain off, the rod-iron gate swinging open with a rusty squeak. Once it was open, Mr. Hale took an almost giant step backwards, as far away from Stiles as he could while still being able to be heard.  It didn’t bother Stiles as much as he thought it probably should.  

“Is the house unlocked, or should I wait here then?” Stiles finally said.  “I don’t want to be in anybody’s way.”  

“Wait wherever you want.”  Hale said, waving him off before he almost stopped talking all together.  “See if I care.”  

And then he really did stop talking.  The pause was rapidly turning into one of those long, drawn-out, awkward silence with both of them at each end.  Hale didn’t seem to care all that much, but it was rapidly making Stiles want to fidget and hop around in hopes to start it back up again.  Anything but the anger filled silence.  

“What’s with all the chains?”  Stiles asked haltingly, trying desperately to breathe some life back into the conversation.  “Seems like a lot of protection for a house this far out.  There’s literally no one but you and me for miles.”  

“That’s a good question.  What is it about fences?  Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable.”  Hale said as he glared at Stiles, his mouth turning downwards into a semi-snarl.  “Why would that be?”  

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked you...”  Stiles blinked at Hale who gave a dismissive snort, turning around to walk away without answering.  He didn’t turn around despite Stiles‘ heavy glare focused directly onto his back, right between his shoulder blades.  “Rude.”

Well, it looked like he was going to be here for another few hours alone.    

Right...

Good thing he brought his car charger then.  

Chapter Text

The double grand staircase and vast foyer into the mezzanine was even more extravagant then Stiles had first expected.  And when based on the outside of the house alone, he had expected something grand, but no less intricate that what he’d found.  Door ways and passages lead off in all directions from the main room, some larger than others, but no less inviting.  At one end of the colossal room was an enormous fireplace with two large stone lions perched atop the mantle, each roaring as if they were threatened by an unseen foe.  If Stiles were to stand in front of it, it would easily dwarf him, almost swallow him up in its grandness, and it makes a shudder run down his spine as he drags his ratty suitcase along behind him.  The one wheel still doesn’t roll completely right, not since it’d been flung down the staircase at him.    

The ceiling towered far overhead of them both and was delicately decorated in curling plaster patterns, casting gentle shadows across the floor between the large windows that lined either side heading towards the staircase.  The glass panes towered from the marbled floor almost all the way to the ceiling, each section gleaming in the early afternoon sunlight.  Rich, dark drapery that practically oozed finery were arranged in intricate patterns around them and down across the floor, cascading out like the trains on old-world dresses as Stiles and Ms. Martin made their way through the house and towards the guest rooms in one of the many wings.  

She was saying something about the study and her research, he was sure, but for the life of him, he couldn’t pay any attention to her.  There were too many distractions to catch his eye here in the house, too many wonders, too many beautiful pieces of art that were more determined to catch his attention then Lydia Martin was.  Despite her most valiant efforts and stunning beauty.  And she was very beautiful, even he could agree, despite him being...well, gay.  No, maybe that wasn’t right.  Not gay, really, but something.  His sexuality was about as fluid as a popsicle on a hot July day in the sun, after all, and it wasn’t like he’d had a lot of dating opportunities in the past few years.  So maybe she was his type after all?  

No, no, she really wasn’t.  He could tell right off the bat that she was so far out of his league that it was almost painfully obvious, and judging by that ring on her finger, it wasn’t a problem anyways.  Ms. Martin was most definitely a Mrs. Martin.  Internally, Stiles gave a relieved sigh.  

That was probably why he couldn’t pay her any more than five seconds of attention at a time, or so he kept telling himself.  (It was a poor excuse, really.)  It totally wasn’t because of all the ornately carved and filigreed woodwork and stone masonry that he could see everywhere as they moved up the staircase towards the top landing, and it totally wasn’t because of all the carved plaster work that depicted woodland scene with tiny animals tucked here and there throughout the way.  Or the wild feelings he could feel stirring in his chest upon being exposed to all of the stimulating surroundings.  It was almost overwhelming, in its own way.  

“Wow...” His words sounded more like a gasp than a statement, as breathless as he felt from everything around him.  “This place is amazing.”  

“Isn’t it, though?”  Mrs. Martin said with a sigh of her own, almost dreamily.  “The perfect place for our study too.  Nice, secluded, totally isolated so that we can have optimal control in just about every part of the study.  It’s great for an insomnia research location.”  

“Are you sure?”  Stiles asked jokingly, a little giggle escaping as he took another visual sweep around the magnificent hall.  “Because I’m pretty sure my insomnia is almost instantly worsening by simply entering the front door.  There’s so much to see, so much to do and explore!  How could anyone sleep here?”  

Lydia just titters at him before continuing up the staircase, pausing once she reached the top, waiting for him to join her.  Once he does, she extends a hand and starts talking about the Hale House’s construction and background, most of which Stiles tuned out.  Because looming -and that was the only way that Stiles could explain it accurately- above them was a towering portrait of a rather handsome, but really creepy man.  One whose gaze was firmly meeting Stiles’ own, despite it being nearly twenty feet off the ground and cast in a series of independent shadows.  The name plate beneath the portrait says something that’s scratched out, but by what, Stiles couldn’t say.  It was seriously giving him the creeps, little goose bumps breaking out all over his arms and the hair at the back of his neck standing on end.  

“And this is the House Master, Peter Hale, the builder of the Hale House mansion.” Lydia finished saying, ending her little speech on the one question that Stiles was just about to voice.  “He built the house for his wife and his children, but his wife died during childbirth.  After that, he housed children from the village mills who didn’t have families of their own to help combat his loneliness.  It didn’t work.”  

“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”  Stiles asked curiously, unable to help himself.

“He died young.  The local legend is that it was from a broken heart, but medicine wasn’t the best then.”  Lydia responds casually, her red hair catching the light as she turns neatly on her heel to continue down the hallway, her heels clicking neatly.  “But as you can see, the house was finished long before that.  It was his remaining legacy and was given to his distant remaining family.  One of his cousins, I guess.”  

“Yeah...”  Stiles whispers, turning to follow after one quick look back over his shoulder at the creepy portrait.  It was still starring at him, almost following him, the piercing blue eyes lingering on him.  “Sure.  Whatever you say.”  

--

The Purple Room, Lydia had called it, was to be his for the duration of his stay here at Hale House.  And the name simply didn’t do it any justice.  Really, it didn’t even come close.  

It was spacious and sprawling, decorated with a weird combination of gothic architecture and rococo styled sculpture throughout, with other art forms thrown in here and there.  Low-relief carvings had flowed in from the hallways and wrapped around the perimeter of the room, the vines morphing into trees in which deer and other creatures were hiding.  The furniture was all done in the same dark wood as the paneling and carvings, almost springing from the wall and ceiling where it was nestled, the canopy literally made of intricately carved tree branches hanging low along the headboard.  It was just as enormous as the rest of the house and furniture he’d seen before now.  The king bed was larger than any Stiles had ever seen before, and was complete with rich, dark bedding and a thousand pillows piled high atop one another.  It was more linens and pillows then anyone could ever possibly use, and yet Stiles found himself longing to just fling himself into them without a second thought.  

Over on the other side of the room was a semi-open doorway leading to what he could only imagine was the bathroom, though from what he could see, it seemed far too gilded to be usable.  But it, like the rest of the room and house, was gorgeous and sprawling, and the edge of a large, claw-foot tub could just be seen through the gap.  

“Apparently we’re the first visitors that Hale House has had since Mister Hale died.  They were really strict with the screening process in order to obtain the use of the house and grounds.”  Lydia confided in him as she too took in the room around her.  “Dr. Argent really had to work at convincing them that this was the only place he could conduct his study.  It really is perfect too.”

“I can see why Dr. Argent fought for it.”  Stiles agreed.  “It’s all so beautiful.  Perfect, really.”  

“Yeah, well, it gets a bit tedious after a while, I’m sure.  And I’m sure it is a bitch to clean.  The Hales seem pretty disillusioned with it too, that’s for sure.  The groundskeeper was rather blunt when I commented on how lovely it was here before he just waved me off.”  Of course he did, Stiles thinks, Derek seemed like that guy.  “But he’ll be taking charge of the dining situation and any work that needs to be done, as well as the upkeep and care.  So I really can’t complain.”  

“Does he live here then?  I was wondering when I spoke to him a while ago.  Derek, I mean, the groundskeeper.  He’s the one who let me in at the front gate.”  

“I think he lives in the closest village, actually, but that’s miles away from here.  He was pretty clear about that point, actually.  About how no one could hear us all the way out here if we needed assistance.”  She strode towards the doorway that lead back into the main hallway, not looking back.  “Anyways, take some time and get settled, then come back down stairs for dinner around seven thirty or eight.  The rest of the group should be here by then, I think.”  

“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit then.”  Stiles smiles at her back as she retreats, the heavy door squeaking into its resting place as it moves shut behind her.  “Till dinner.”  

But he gets no answer.  

Stiles heaves a long sigh before just dropping his bag where he was standing beside the bed and flopping backwards.  Luckily he was close enough to the bed for the enormous mattress to catch the bulk of his weight and sprawling limbs, his arms falling out to either side of him as he took in a deep breath.  His eyes began to track alongside the closest portion of tree branches that made up the canopy closest to him, noticing several unusual spaces between the leaves before he ignored them and continued on.  

But after the first few lumpy spots he began to really look at the anomalies, and noticed that each one of them just so happened to be a wolf face peering down at him.  Not knots int he wood, or dark patches in the varnish, but a variety of wolves and wolf faces.  In fact, there were a significant amount of wolves hidden around the room, now that he was looking for them, watching him, their carved eyes following him as he sat up to look around as the setting sun cast an eerie glow around the room.  Strange, he hadn’t noticed any other wolves in the rest of the house, but then again, he hadn’t been looking for them.  Stiles would just have to keep his eyes peeled now, that was for sure.  

Shrugging, Stiles closed his eyes for a moment, letting the darkness block out the high-stimulus environment so that he could focus on the smell of the room and bedding.  (Musty, almost old, but not in a way that was stale.  It was pleasant, he decided, and turned his nose into the closest pillow to take a deep breath.)  And the sounds of the old pipes and water ways clanking in the walls around him as they were used in various parts of the house.  It was quiet, so utterly quiet, and the silence was almost disturbing to him, since he was so used to living with a rather loud household in a never-sleeping, California town.  But it was peaceful, and a part of him that had been clenched up and wound tight since his father had fallen ill, finally decided to relax.  The tension slowly drained out of him and down through his shoulders, his hands opening slightly in response, his breathing evening out.  

And despite his claims to relentless insomnia, Stiles fell into a light sleep.  

Chapter Text

Coming too was like being slapped in the face, and with a shudder, Stiles bolted up on the bed where he’d been gentling napping for the last two hours.  Something wasn’t right, there was something off, someone was in the room with him, and he could feel it in the chilled sweat that was clinging to his brow and down along his neck.  Dazed, Stiles glanced around with blurry eyes, seeking out whoever decided to be a major creeper and watch him sleep.  Really, he didn’t know anyone in this study, and they had the nerve to spy on him this early on?  When he was finally getting some restful sleep?  Creepy.  But upon inspection, Stiles found no one was there, at least, no one he could see, anyways.  

The feeling didn’t let up.  

Slowly, ever so slowly, Stiles sat up, his eyes scanning the immediate space around him so that he could see the entire room from his spot sprawled in the middle of the huge bed.  He didn’t dare move, didn’t dare draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary, especially since he couldn’t see whoever it was there with him.  Stiles hurriedly laid back down, digging his head deep into the lush pillows behind him, trying to be as still as he possibly could.  It was a remnant from living with his father, to try and vanish from site, to hide in the open as quickly as possible.  And in the past it had served him well.  But now, as he laid there as still as he could, shallowly breathing, he could feel whatever it was growing closer to his bed.  

Stiles remained as still as the dead up until something ever so tenderly brushed itself across his forehead and down the side of his clammy face.  The feeling of ghosted fingers tracing his features and under his eyes makes him tense up before he flings himself across the other side of the bed and to the floor with a thud, all the air held in his lungs burning out in a rush.  Panicked and flailing, Stiles tries to crab walk and scoot as far away from the bed as he can as fast as he can, and despite his terror, he still can’t see anyone or anything anywhere near the bed.  No one was there.  No one was in the room with him.  Stiles was completely and utterly alone.  No fucking way. 

Now true horror was setting in, and with as much grace as he could muster, Stiles flung himself at the door as hard and as fast as he could, wrenching it open and flying out and back into the hallway...

Directly into a startling blonde woman in a ridiculous leather jacket and and equally ridiculous matching corset-skirt combo, her designer boots knee high and stunningly tailored to her fit legs. Together they sort of made this strange and slightly strangled oomph-like noise as they collided and the air was forced out of them, Stiles slamming into the ground for a second time in just as many minutes, but the woman merely staggering a few steps before righting herself atop her heels.  She glared down at him haughtily, arms moving to settle upon her slim hips as she set her weight in a clear, outlined display of rage.  Rage that was, most certainly, directed at him.  

“What the Hell are you doing, you idiot?”  She sounded upset, but not overly angered, and Stiles prays for the best as he lays there with what he realizes is her luggage.  “Why are you running around the hallway like a chicken with it’s head cut off?  You’re not even watching where you’re going!”  

“Um, well, you see...  There’s actually a very good reason, and that reason is, well, um...”  Stiles stammers, eyes shifting away from her and back to the safe, safe floor.  “It’s like this, you see, and...”  

“Yeah, right.”  She cuts in, effectively cutting him off in the process.  Her fingers tap an irritated pattern along her hip line, the metallic of her oversized rings catching the glowing light of the setting sun from down the hallway.  “Get up and close your mouth, you look ridiculous.”  

Stiles silently agrees and rises to his feet as fast as he can, the lingering sensation of phantom fingers across his face an impressive motivator.  Along with the impressively hot woman standing before him.  Yeah, that was definitely a motivator high up on his list.  Damn near to the very tippy-top.  The top, let’s just face it, she was the very top.  This woman was gorgeous, and boy was she hot tempered.  Feisty and so very well put together.  

“Are you going to help me with my stuff or not?”  She asked again, clearly unimpressed with his near-drooling display.  Strong, independent, beautiful.  This woman had it all.  “I’m Erica, by the way.  Erica Reyes.”  

“Stiles, Stiles Stilinski.”  He offered her his hand, which she didn’t take, just raised her eyebrow at him.  He quickly retracts it, suddenly self conscious and antsy.  “It’s, uh, nice to meet you, Erica.  Really.”  

“Likewise, now take this.”  She shoved two, previously unnoticed bags into his arms, taking the remaining two and what looked like her purse for herself.  Each piece matched down to the little leather label on all the handles, and wreaked of expensive leather.  “Don’t worry, asking people to help me cart my bags around is really just my caring and clearly genius plan of gaining cheap labor and adoring fans all in one swoop.  You’ll fall for my charms soon enough.”  

“It’s working, it’s working.”  Stiles laughs but still picks up the luggage, happy to find a somewhat common ground with Erica, who he assumes is close to his own age.  “I am your loyal servant.”  

He thought slave might be taking things a bit too far.  

“I’ve been here all afternoon by myself, mostly.  It was sort of boring.  So boring, actually, that I fell asleep.”  Stiles laughs and Erica cracks a grin, taking the tension hanging about them with it.  “And we all know how boring that would have to be.”  

“I just arrived, so I can’t really say much for the night life, but this house certainly has a vibe to it.  Two weeks here are going to be seriously twisted.”  Erica grins harder and reaches out to shove at Stiles’ shoulder almost fondly.  Stiles realizes that she’s joking around with him and grins back.  “The decor alone is enough to give us all nightmares.”  

“I know, right?  Who even thought this was conductive to having a family in?  The little wolves alone scare me every time I find a new one.”  

“Wolves, what wolves?”  She seems curious, so Stiles stops and searches the railings and banisters around them until he spots one, hiding just out of site halfway down the corner pillar. He points it out with the toe of his shoe and watches her eyes go wide.  “I never even noticed those!”  

“There’s literally hundreds of them, tucked all over the place.  I think there’s a least twenty above my bed alone.”  Stiles giggles.  “It is a bit unsettling, to be sure.”  

“Yeah.  But hey, which room is yours?  Mrs. Whittemore showed me to a room way down the hall, but I don’t really think I want to be that far away from other people.  Even though I’m not in my room much, light sleeper you know, I don’t really want to be alone-alone when I am.”  

Stiles’ face lights up and he starts to twirl around and point as much as he can with his body and shoulders, the straps slipping up and down his arms with each step.  

“Here, right down here, where I came hurling out of.  The bathroom is one that connects through, so this room down here has to be the one it opens up into.  No one’s in there yet, so you can stay!”  He’s excited, and helps her to open the large door enough so they can both drag her things inside.  “Isn’t this gorgeous?”  

“Oh, wow...”  She just drops her bags where she stands and twirls, her blonde curls extending out around her in a gently sunlit halo.  Stiles thinks suddenly that he’s never seen anything more genuinely beautiful.  “This is gorgeous!  How do you think they came up with all this beauty?  I’m an artist, and not even I think I could come up with stuff like this.  Not enough of it to fill a mansion, anyways.”  

“You’re an artist?  That’s awesome!”  Stiles is genuinely impressed, because art is always something that’s eluded him.  The whole creative process, really, is a complete mystery, and anyone who can tap into that.  Well, that was really something.  “What’s it like?  What do you do?  Where do you live?  Do you live with anyone?  What sort of art do you make?”  

“Slow down there, just breathe, Stiles.  I am from New York originally, but I’ve been living in San Francisco for the better part of two years now.  I have a nice little loft in the middle of Bay View with my on-again-off-again boyfriend, Vernon Boyd.  I love it there.”  She shrugs it off, but she seems really, truly happy.  “He and I mainly do urban art that benefits local charities and the public well-being.  He does sculpture with natural materials, and I generally paint.  It’s a match made in heaven.”  

“That... sounds amazing.”  Stiles feels a bit breathless with the sheer weight of everything wonderful about Erica’s life, and despite knowing that there were bound to be bad things mixed in with those good, Erica seems content.  Happy, where he is not.  “What’s the big city like?  This is the first time since I was really little that I’ve ever left Beacon Hills.  It must be amazing.”  

“It is.”  Erica assures him, a smirk firmly in place.  “Beyond words.  My boyfriend thinks so too, my girlfriend doesn’t.  She hates the big city.  Prefers the little woodsy places in life as opposed to the hustle and bustle of city life.  If we could all live together... but, they hate each other, and they each hate the other’s life styles.  Do you know what I mean?”

Stiles stares, blinks twice, then answers with a shaky “No.”

“A blank canvas!  I could paint your portrait directly onto you.  Or, well, maybe not.”  She gives Stiles that up and down look once more, the smirk clinging to an edge of steel before it relaxes back into a comfortable expression.  “So, you?  Husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends?  A wife maybe?”  

“Honestly?  I don’t have anyone.”  Stiles shrugs but doesn’t mind the somewhat awkward pause.  “But I do have a little house of my own.  It has a flower bed out front of our wrap-around porch.  You can just see the preserve from the yard, and at night, when the wind comes in just right, you can hear the creatures of the woods.  It’s magical, really, calm, quiet.  Peaceful.”  

“That sounds really nice.  You’re lucky, but I’m sure you know that.”  Erica pats him on the shoulder before wandering off, taking one of her suitcases with her, the contents rattling around as she goes towards the bathroom.  “Come on then, I think we’ve seen enough of the bedrooms for now.  Let’s go explore!”  

Stiles can only grin in agreement, the fear from earlier completely forgotten.

For now.   

Chapter Text

Almost all the hallways in the Hale House are long, desperate things, cloaked in shadows and swaddled in secrets. And, if Stiles were any more poetic about a building, he’d have told Erica his thoughts on the matter. Each of the long halls is accompanied by long rows of intricately carved and decorated doors, the waiting silence nearly demanding to be broken, to be filled with sound. Neither Stiles nor Erica felt that opening them would do any good. There was a deadening sort of silence about the house as they explored it. Something that claimed whatever sound was produced and swallowed it up whole, devoured the light given off by the individual lamps on the tables dotting along their path, making it seem as if the small pools of light were dimmer at will. Stiles isn’t sure whose will the House is following, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was its own. Old places, places like this, often had minds of their own.

But, where the light did touch and the shadows did lighten, the walls were a glow with rich, decadent tones and complimented with the same strange carvings that seemed to follow them all over the house. Occasionally, when Stiles is feeling particularly brave, he reaches out and strokes a few of the recently-found wolves among the woodland scenes, his finger trips trailing delicately over their fine features and hardened fur. Even if they do look like they should be as soft as the real thing. Erica doesn’t say anything when she catches Stiles doing it, but she doesn’t look too happy at the actions either. It’s a blessing then, Stiles thinks, that she remains as quiet as she has.

“So many carvings. They’re literally everywhere. On everything.” Stiles says once, almost to himself. His fingers prick at the end when he presses them hard into the points of flora at the corner of intersecting hallways. “I wonder why they were made this way?”

“For the children that Peter Hale housed here, actually.” Both Erica and Stiles jumped before whirling on the new voice, one belonging to a perfectly poised gentleman in a nice suit combo, complete with a cardigan half-buttoned beneath it and a side bag slung over one shoulder. “Like an old fashioned version of hidden picture, or so I’m told. Gave them a game to play, a sense of familiarity while they were away from their homes. Hale sponsored them while they families worked in his mills and factories.”

“That’s creepy.” Erica mutters, scowling at the other man.

“Was that a common practice back then?” Stiles asks instead, ignoring Erica’s comment all together, his eyes focused. “The sponsoring of kids outside of their homes, I mean? That just seems really strange.”

“It was a common practice for that day and age, I believe.” The man tilts his head to the side and shrugs. “I suppose I should introduce myself though, before we get too much into this little discussion. I’m Dr. Chris Argent, you must be Stiles.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Pretty easy to guess, right?” Stiles takes Dr. Argents’ hand when it’s offered, shaking it firmly before backing up and glancing at Erica, who was hovering just over his shoulder. “And this is Ms. Erica Reyes! She’s another participant in your study. She’s from New York! Can you believe that?”

Dr. Argent laughs, and reaches for the hand that Erica extends out of politeness, her face slightly scrunched with the charming smile she’s clearly plastered onto it. Not anti-social, she’d said, just preferred the initiate touch herself. It doesn’t make Stiles grin any less once she’s dropped Argent’s hand like it was on fire, and it certainly doesn’t stop him from patting her on the shoulder in mock-comfort. Her glare could probably freeze Hell over through sheer intensity of will. It doesn’t phase Stiles.

“What are you two up to, then?” Dr. Argent asks, glancing from Stiles to Erica and back. “In this place, it’s dangerous to go unless you know where you’re going. The house is filled with trick rooms and passages.”

“Exploring, mostly, and we haven’t really gotten that far. There’s so many hallways and rooms, that we haven’t really gotten off the beaten path.” Stiles shrugs. “Well, so to speak. It’s all just... so beautiful here. So rich. And there’s so very much of it all. Hard to pick a starting point.”

“True, I suppose. Just, don’t get lost, is all.” Dr. Argent tips his head in a clear gesture. “The full group will meet up tonight around seven, in the foyer room just off the main mezzanine. All the participants will have arrived by then, so you can get to know your fellow group members, as well as my full staff and research assistants. We’ll go over the research goals and tests then. Sound good?”

“Sounds good.”

“Wonderful, see you two later then. And remember, be careful, be smart. Watch where you step, and don’t stray too far.”

“Later, Dr. Argent.” Stiles waves faintly as the man saunters off in the direction he supposedly came from, bag swinging gently at his back, footsteps light. “Well, that was sort of weird. But hey! At least we know where we’re going tonight. We’ve got like another hour, maybe a little bit more, before we have to meet up with everyone. So, what do you say? Want to poke around a little more?”

“Hell yes!”

And they were off.

There were literally so many rooms to chose from, that they had to just go with their guts, and just pick one. This door was dark, just like the others, but stood tall and dark and strong where the others were simply ornate and decadent. It spoke volumes without even being opened, and once Erica had opened the door inwards, Stiles could see that the door matched the interior. While lush, the room was darker than many of the others, but not in color. No, this room just felt darker than the others, felt more enclosed, heavier and cloying and looming, despite the open floor plan and the large expanse of space. Just like the painting of Peter Hale situated over the huge fireplace next to the wooden desk, which sat in front of the widow at the other end of the large space. Everything was quiet and still, from the paneled walls and sweeping curtains, to the plush red carpet and solid furniture. And everything was inlayed with the same sense of pressure that the room was.

As Erica moves through the room, Stiles’ eyes land on the much smaller painting of Peter Hale, the one hanging above the bare fireplace. Like the portrait hanging above the grand staircase, this one is also in an elaborate frame, and is equally as dark and serious as the other. His piercing eyes seem to fixate on Stiles as he walks closer, and are a burning shade of pewter as they stare him down. Stiles suddenly gets this overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the painting, to touch the striking figure that is Peter Hale, and he doesn’t even realize he’s stretched out his hand to do just that, when Erica appears at his side and grips his wrist gently, but firmly.

“Maybe you shouldn’t touch that, Stiles.” She looks nervously at the painting before turning back to meet his eyes. “These paintings and this room gives me the major creeps. Let’s go?”

“Sure.” Stiles doesn’t mind, and he’s happy to follow her out of the room as she practically twirls into the hallway. “I’m following you.”

Together, they manage to swan further off into the house, through a hallway where the floor was replaced with a swiftly moving creek, with only smooth carved stones that resembled books making up the slippery path across. Erica had complained briefly about how the water would ruin her boots if she tripped in, but Stiles just laughed as they held hands and helped one another across at speed. Another hallway was made to look like it was lined with mirrors, an old mop and bucket leaning in one corner where the mirror panel should have stood, but didn’t. Instead, it was an empty frame that lead into an adjacent hallway, and from there, it lead into another hallway all together.

“Rats! Rats in a maze! that’s what this experiment is going to be! This is what we’ll be doing!” Erica laughs, spinning in the newly found hallway, taking Stiles’ hands in her own as she goes. “Running down halls and passages in designer boots towards unknown destinations!”

This passage was different from the others though, from the soft, downy blue carpet, to the soft yellows and swirling star patterns that carried over to the beautiful glass light coverings. This hallway, unlike so many others found in this massive house, wasn’t harsh and classy and stiff. Instead, it was soft and gentle and almost caring, and for the first time since Stiles entered the house, he felt an ease settle over him.

This was the house made by a man who took in children because he wanted his own and whose wife died trying to create a family with him. This was the portion of himself that he tried to give to the children who lived with him, the representation of the happiness he must have felt when he had all their laughter and joy resonating in his home. And it was so strange, so different from everything else. Such a stark, strong counterpoint that it almost had Stiles reeling from the sheer magnitude of it emotionally. In the dark, in the worst of times between Stiles and his father, this was the sort of man he had wished his father could be. Someone so dedicated and wanting of children that they would take in those in need, even if they had no blood relation to him what so ever. Someone who wanted a child of their own and couldn’t have them, instead of having a child of their own and never wanting them.

All of a sudden, Stiles wasn’t feeling up to exploring anymore.

He turned, trying to find the words to beg Erica to turn back with him, to get out of this hallway, when his eyes landed on the far end of the hallway and the set of doors residing there. They’re plain, dark wood that are almost barren next to the ornate nature of the rest of the house, and in their simplicity there is almost something enormously disturbing about them. It makes him go cold. He can feel it creeping down his back as he stares at the mahogany faces of the far away doors.

It’s dimly lit here, the last rays of the sun barely touching the solid shadows that frame the geometrical frieze and archways, the almost oily looking wood, and it makes Stiles stand as still as he possibly can with sudden distrust. Like something’s watching him, like the House is watching him, and it makes him shiver. It feels as if the House’s darkness has slithered out to taint this lovingly built hallway, it’s tainting fingers clawing out and impossibly complicated, twisting through the furnishings as it slowly makes its way towards him. And the longer his eyes stare down the hall, the darker the mood grows, choking the happiness and relief right out of him.

It’s dark. Too dark. And the darkness is regarding him just as much as he is regarding it. Like it’s gained sentience, a desire to enfold him in its dark embrace.

As he stands at the far end of the hall, Stiles can feel the hairs on the back of his neck begin to, one-by-one, stand on end as the most excruciating pain he’s ever felt takes up sudden residency in his head and around his neck. Like he can no longer breathe. Oh god, he can’t breathe!

Fingers scrabbled at his throat in an attempt to clear his airway of whatever was blocking it, but found nothing there but the loose collar of his t-shirt and the necklace chain he’d inherited from his father upon his death. There was nothing there to be found, and as he panicked more and more, the pain in his neck and head grew as well. It grew and grew until it was all Stiles could feel, his own pulse thundering in his ears as his lungs stuttered under the pressure of oxygen deprivation. As the pressure on his chest grew and grew and grew until that was all he could feel, his life being drawn out of him through panicked gasps desperate for breath. It’s all he can focus on.

He didn’t hear Erica as she frantically asked him what was wrong, what was happening, even if he distantly was aware of the fact that he was probably having a panic attack. The first one since his father’s death some months before. Of course, Stiles couldn’t tell her that, as he was occupied with trying to breathe, but it was a point he might want to bring up later.

Erica would have to wait. There was something pulling at his mind, at the edge of his conscious, just out of reach. And as Stiles followed it down into the dark, he couldn’t help but reach desperately for it. Anything to help keep him afloat.

--

Stiles finds himself standing at the foot of the huge painting of Peter Hale in the mezzanine, alone and in complete silence. Even his inquisitive requests are met with more silence. But it doesn’t feel like it’s all that important to find anyone else. In fact, Stiles doesn’t feel much of anything beyond a longing to stare at Peter Hales’ portrait.

Once again, Stiles’ eyes are drawn to the cracking and shadowing in the swirls of oil paint that make up the large portrait, and lead into Peter Hale’s strong face and hair. Up along his strong jaw line and towards the cool but competent eyes housed in an equally handsome face, before they curl back towards set shoulders and rich but elegant clothing. His figure is a daunting one, but looks almost dead where he resides in his framed prison. Stiles realizes it’s just a painting. Just a lifeless cast of a once-great man. An ordinary painting. He sighs and lets his gaze fall to the floor as he takes a deep breath and tries to release the tension he feels building in his shoulders go.

First breath, in, second breath, out... Repeat. First breath, in, second breath, out.

Then there are hands around his throat, and as Stiles’ eyes rise to see who it is gripping him tightly by his neck, he discovers that the hands and arms belong to the charming man in the painting. Because there, in front of him, leaning down from his home in the painting, is a smirking Peter Hale, his hands wrapped tight about Stiles’ throat, slowly strangling the life out of him. And his eyes... oh god, his eyes are a blazing, blood red.

Stiles screams.

--

“Why is he doing that, what’s wrong? Oh god, he’s going to die.” Someone is saying as Stiles comes to, his own scream bringing him out of his fugue state. It’s a male someone, and he can feel two pairs of hands cradling in the floor as he jerks and flails slightly against the carpet. “Is he having a seizure? He could swallow his tongue! He could bite it clean off!”

“Shut up, would you Lahey. He’s not going to swallow his tongue.” That’s Erica, Stiles realizes, ever the firm voice of reason. And despite him having known her for less than 24 hours, he knows that it’s in her blood to take charge. To be in control of everything in her life. “Now, hold his head like this... No, no, like this, here, in case he chokes again. There, that’s it, that helps him to keep breathing deep. Now all we have to do is wait.”

“Wait for what?” Lahey, whoever that is, asks anxiously. He sounds so small, so scared, that Stiles wants nothing more than for himself to get back to normal so he can give this new person a big thank-you hug. “He’s going to be okay, right? He’s going to make it?”

“I think so, Isaac. I think so.”

Stiles wants to believe her more than anything else in the world.

Chapter Text

Stiles is so embarrassed.  He really, really wishes that the floor would just open up and swallow him down like the whale did to Jonah, because seriously.  How could his body betray him like that?  He is so exhaustingly embarrassed that it’s not even funny.   He just wants to sleep.

The irony isn’t lost on him.  Not at all.  

Turned out that he’d had a severe and unexplained panic attack while exploring the house with Erica, and despite trying to remember what it was that had set him off, Stiles can’t remember anything beyond the weird dream where Peter Hale had tried to strangle him from his portrait hanging above the stair case.  From there, things had devolved into him attempting to swallow his own tongue and claw the skin off from around his throat in a misguided attempt to breathe properly.  Erica had panicked, and run around screaming for only a few minutes before back-tracking to Stiles’ side again, desperate for help but too terrified to leave him alone to seek it.  Just in case, she’d said, and he knew what she meant without her having to say it.  Luckily, her screams had been heard by another study subject, who’d come running to their aide.  

Isaac Lahey was anxious, almost skittish, in personality, and had a hard time standing in one place for more than a few moments at a time.  He wrung his hands, bit his lip, and clawed at the back of his hands as he tightly wrings them, Lady MacBeth style.  Obsessive worrier and neurotic, he says when Erica gives him a seriously questioning eyebrow when he does it while waiting for Stiles to recover, but he averts his eyes and Stiles can’t help thinking there’s something more to his behavior then he’s letting on.  It doesn’t seem to matter though, because Isaac is as sweet as the day is long, and even though he’s never met Erica or Stiles before, he treats them both like he’s known them for his entire life.  Thoughtful, considerate, and so clearly terrified out of his mind that Stiles was impressed he could even function, let alone leave the house.  It makes Stiles ache in a way he hasn’t since the Sheriff’s passing, and he heavily considers just outright cuddling this poor boy until they both can get some serious sleep.  Erica, of course, can come as well.  Hell, they can have a puppy pile and get out of this house that much faster.  

When Stiles has regained his wits about him enough to properly introduce himself, Isaac just gives him this adorable little smile and proceeds to nervously ramble at him by way of introduction.  Stiles catches that Isaac is in his early twenties, and that he’d been on his own for a while, but that he’s always wanted to meet new people, and that this study seemed to be the ideal setting for said interactions.  Stiles feels instantly guilty for nearly causing the other man to have a panic attack of his own.  It must show on his face, because the next sentence Isaac nearly stutters out is filled with platitudes and reassurances that everything is going lovely, and that this is the most social interaction that he’s had in ages.  Stiles can relate, and nods accordingly.  Erica, meanwhile, watches silently from her spot perched at the end of the couch where she and Isaac had half-drug Stiles when he had sort of came around.  

Now they’re all sort of half-lying, half-dangling off the couch together, each of them touching the others in some small way, talking about themselves and trading stories, anecdotes, recipes, and in Stiles’ case, legal advice.  (That, of course, is to Erica.)  He’d faintly entertained ideas of becoming a legal aid or lawyer when he was in high school, but when his Father had taken a major turn for the worst in his sophomore year, those dreams -along with any other he’d had- were quickly dissolved.  He had too many appointments, too many bills for his father’s treatments, to deal with at the time.  There wouldn’t be any way for him to get into college with his grades and low achievements, and he was stressing as it was to even finish high school.  He’d even tried to get a part-time job once, and it had gone the way of everything else.  Poorly and quick to end.  His father had seen to that.  

But this, this was nice.  It was unusual, but it was nice.  And like everything else good in his life, it ended far to quickly.  At least this time it was only temporary, and it wouldn’t have had to end at all if they hadn’t needed to get down to the group meeting.  Dr. Argent didn’t seem like the type to entertain delinquency, though, and none of them wanted to risk getting booted this early in the study.  They’d just met up, after all.  Just gotten new friends and started new bits of their lives.  

So, dejectedly, they all made their way downstairs, shoulder to shoulder, joking and generally goofing off together.  It was nice, Stiles decided, to have new friends.  Because that’s what these two had quickly become, friends.  

“There you three are!  I was wondering where you’d all wandered off to.  But I’m glad you found one another, as well as your way back here.”  Dr. Argent says pleasantly, his smile lighting up his aged but handsome face.  Stiles mind faintly registers that he’s Stiles’s type, but it’s a passing note, and it’s quickly moved aside when he starts talking once more.  “I’m sure you all know my lovely assistant, Mrs. Lydia Martin-Whittemore.  And this is her husband, Jackson Whittemore.  They’re my grad students, and they’re helping me run this study for the duration of our stay.  If you have questions, feel free to address them to either myself, or them.”  

The Whittemore’s both wave faintly when Dr. Argent introduces them, Lydia giving a small but beautiful smile while her husband stands at her shoulder, face blank.  He looks like the kind of man who restrains himself emotionally, Stiles thinks, or maybe he’s just that much of an ass.  There wasn’t any way for him to immediately tell.  But both the Whittemore’s seemed nice enough, and Stiles knew first hand that Lydia was dedicated to both this project, as well as her own personal research.  He could tell because of the dedication he’d heard in her voice when she’d shown him around the house originally, face bright and open and radiant.  But now she just looks strained, almost antsy, like something’s bothering her but she just can’t quite put her finger on it.  

“How was everyone’s drive up?”  Dr. Argent says, interrupting Stiles’ train of thought and Lydia’s shuttered stare, his smile once again lighting up his face.  “Good I hope?  Not too long?  Hate to make any of you unnecessarily tired.”  

Everyone laughs appropriately, and Stiles blushes when Dr. Argent’s gaze lands on him.  He can feel the heat blooming across his face and down his neck, and quickly averts his own eyes to avoid any further embarrassment.  He catches Erica out of the corner of his vision though, and can’t miss her own self-satisfied smirk.  Stiles knows that she’s seen his blushing and his appreciative gaze.  It’s not like anything would come of it anyways, Stiles thinks, Dr. Argent is much older than him, and has a stable job and life.  And Stiles didn’t have anything to offer a man like that.  

“Well then, why don’t we get some dinner while we all get acquainted some more?  I see that you three have gotten to know one another, but I want to make sure everyone’s comfortable asking any questions or seeking help if you need it.  This is a study, not a test.”  

With that, Dr. Argent moves to the ornate door they’d all entered through, before making his way out and down the hall a ways.  He leads them back through the main hallway, where they all once again get a feel for just how ornate the house really was.  All the carvings and careful craftsmanship looked so much more intense in the low light of the evening as it dipped into night, the lights in the house flickering on the way only old wiring can.  It makes all the little wolves dance as it casts even more shadows while they walk by, the furnishings appearing even more luxurious when they pass.  

“These old houses are beautiful, aren’t they?”  Jackson says finally, the first words out of the man all night.  They’re missing normal interest and inflection, but Stiles recognizes an attempt at small talk when it’s made.  “Such beauty in their old Victorian style.  This one in particular.”  

“It’s... It’s not Victorian.  Everyone thinks that the whole nineteenth century was Victorian, but it wasn’t.”  Isaac says in a rush, eyes darting around as he speaks, as if someone will yell at him or strike at him.  It mainly just stuns everyone that Isaac seems to know so much about architecture and art eras.  “This is a Gothic styled house, as well as old English craftsman, bordering on the Romanesque.  This is... insane, but beautiful.  Who lives here?”  

“Nobody, now.  It was owned and run as a local mill, by Peter Hale, who built the house in 1830.  He had no children himself, but he put the house in trust, and the farmland around it, with the stipulation that it never be altered or sold.”  Argent says calmly.  “Hale’s executors made good investments and for the last hundred and twenty years or so, Hale House has taken care of itself.  It was only recently that any other Hales were found still living, and for the last three generations, they’ve been tending the grounds.  Distant cousins or something, I think.”  

“That makes sense, I guess.”  Erica says, nodding.  “At least they found some family to help dust. I’m sure this place gets dirty pretty quickly.”  

Stiles and Isaac snicker while Erica smiles.  It’s a fair point, really.  He bet this place really did get dusty, dirty quick.  What with all the decorations, towering windows, and empty rooms.  It’s a wonder this place remains standing at all.  

It’s during this sweep of the room again that Stiles notices the way Lydia seems to flinch and curl in on herself, her brilliant red hair catching the firelight from the fireplace and the softly illuminating chandelier swinging over head when she moved, even minutely.  She looked like she was shaking, and worried, Stiles quietly walked towards her, by-passing the dinner table where everyone else is taking their seats.  

“Is something wrong?”  He says gently.  “You seem upset.”  

“What?  Oh, no, I’m fine.”  She says quickly, as if she just realized that she’d been spacing out.  “Just... distracted.  Yes, that’s it.  Distracted.”  

Stiles just eyes her sideways, but nods his head.  If she doesn’t want to talk, then he’s not going to force her.  But she just seems off, and it’s starting to make him nervous.  Enough so that he moves away from her when they start the meal, taking the chair at Erica’s right, across the table and down the way from both of the Whittemore’s.  Isaac and Dr. Argent sit across the table from them, and the Whittemore’s sit at Dr. Argent’s left, together and at the end.  It makes for a somewhat stilted and awkward dinner, at first, but as they each begin to relax and feel comfortable, it gets less weird and more open, even if neither of them speak much to the rest of the table.  It doesn’t bother Stiles much longer than the first ten or so minutes, and as the meal passes and draws to an end, they each get up and sprawl in the arm chairs and couches just to the other side of the room, in front of the huge but warm fireplace.  Stiles, Erica, and Isaac all sit together on the huge and plush couch, legs and feet touching lightly, the conversation carrying over almost seamlessly.  

“Alright, alright!   Your turn, Erica.”  

Erica twirls a strand of her long blonde hair, thinking.  

“The rest of you may hate your insomnia, but I find it the best time of the day for me.  I’m alone, mostly.  Nobody’s talking to me but myself.  My mind is racing with ideas, and I can think clearly for the first time all day.”  Erica pauses before continuing.  “I can turn on the TV, or my music, or sit in absolute silence for hours, and no one controls my environment but me.  I love it.”  

“Not me.  I’m going crazy with doubt, all of my mistakes are coming up the pipes, and it’s worse than any of the nightmares my subconscious can think up on its own.”  Isaac says, just as stilted and jittery as he always seemingly is.  “It’s... horrible?  No, no, that’s not a strong enough word.  Ferocious is close, but not quite it either.”  

“Excuse me...” Erica says, sounding cross, but her face and eyes read amusement and goodwill.  She’s not bothered by Isaac’s interruption, but is clearly teasing him.  “I was talking here.”  

“Don’t give me that look, it’s everybody’s problem, and you know it.  We just have different variations.  Take me, for example.  I fall asleep easily, but I wake up around two or three in the morning, every morning, without fail.  It’s the time of night that Fitzgerald called the deep dark night of the soul. I feel like I’m starring into the abyss.  Every night.”  He flinches and shifts restlessly against Stiles’ leg, fingers clawing at the backs of his hands once more.  “It’s the price I pay for being such a jolly fellow, don’t you think?”  

It’s a poor attempt at a joke, but Stiles gives him a small smile none-the-less. 

“How about you, Lydia?”  Isaac asks after a few moments pause, eyes searching, landing on Mrs. Martin-Whittemore.  “How’s your sleeping?”  

“I think I fall asleep easily, but just as I start to really fall under, I start to feel and hear things in the dark.  I feel like there’s a presence of something watching me.  It’s not scary, necessarily, not by itself, but I don’t want to go to sleep because I’m worried about it attacking me.  It’s different everywhere I go.”  She says while starring into the fire, mindless of the wide eyes watching her from every person in the room but her husband.  “So when I finally do fall asleep, really asleep, I’m like a solder who’s fallen asleep at her post.  I feel like I’ve betrayed myself, opened myself up for attack.  What about you, Stiles?”

Stiles just wants to hide under the couch cushions or Isaac’s legs now.    

“All of you have such interesting problems.”  He says and they all laugh at his statement.  “And I know how that sounds, but you’re all so articulate.  You know how to talk about your troubles.  I feel like I’m here under false pretenses.  It’s silly, it’s not like... well, all of you have trouble sleeping because you live such interesting lives out in the real world.  And that world is super complicated and scary, but nothing’s ever happened to me, not like any of you.  So I don’t really have a reason to sleep poorly.  I just... do.” 

“Your introduction survey says you have trouble sleeping, as well as your reports to me during our over the phone interview.”  Argent says, studying Stiles carefully.  “There must be a reason that you have trouble sleeping?”  

“Yes, because someone was always keeping me awake.  Ever since I was little, I’ve been caring for someone.  That was my job, to take care of my father and I had to be there for him all the time, each and every night, just in case.  What if he was in pain?  What if he was sick in the night?”  Stiles takes a huge, gulping breath and let’s it rush out in a gust.  “And after he died, well, I know it’s been a few months now, but I still wake up and it’s a habit.  A bad one, but a habit none-the-less.  Like someone still needs me.”

There’s an intense beat of silence once more, and Stiles pushes through it as quickly as he can, not wanting pity.  He didn’t need any pity.  Not from anyone.  And his train of conversation is clearly making everyone very uncomfortable, making them fidget.  

“I know we’ve only sort of known one another for a couple of hours, and that I’m not really anyone special, but I’m glad that I can share this with you.  With people who let me just sort of talk about this.”  He laughs, but it’s self-deprecating, fake.  It rings hard in his ears as it must in everyone else’s.  “I’ve not really had a chance to tell anyone before now, not that I have anyone to really listen.  It’s nice to just talk, you know?”  

“Well, we’re all very glad you’re here.”  Dr. Argent says sincerely, eyes gentle when Stiles meets them after he’s done trying to pretend to be an ostrich.  Erica’s eyes are trained on Stiles, but even Argent sees the way she watches everyone in the room, watches them for any queues or hints that they’re just shuffling Stiles off.  “Why don’t we continue on, then?  Now that we’ve all had a chance at introductions?”  

Everyone nods their agreement, and Dr. Argent gets up to go and retrieve his briefcase, moving swiftly but silently around the table and out the door.  It gives everyone a chance to get up and stretch a bit before they really get down to business, and everyone seems to poke about the room with interest.  Lydia wanders over to a large lap harp, old and slightly dusty with age within its guts, but with polished wooden exteriors.  Her fingers linger over the cords, plucking here and there lightly, playing as she takes in the room.  The house seems to creak and groan around them as she plays around, and her eyes move around the room as if she’s tracking something just at the edge of her perception.  Around the room, lingering on the curtains or the fireplace, near the corner of the large windows, before she suddenly stops.  

“What’s wrong?”  Stiles asks, noticing her sudden fearful gaze.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”  

“Fine, I’m fine.”  She says.  “The harp is out of tune.”  

It looks like she wants to say more when Dr. Argent returns and tells her thank you, quickly dismissing her presence before asking them to sit.  She looks a bit affronted, but everyone quickly finds their seats once more, and she simply sits down on the stool before the harp instead of with her husband on the love seat.  He doesn’t seem to mind, and once Dr. Argent is once again seated in the large winged-back chair by the fireplace, all attention is once again on him.  

“Alright, so, to answer any questions before they’re asked, why are we here?  What do we all need in life, what are the basics?  Food, water, sleep?  Sleep.  All of you resist it, but why, and what does that mean?  My field of study is in the individual’s psychology of emotion and performance, and this study is going to specifically test those boundaries in regards to sleep deprivation.”  

“So then we did we need to come all the way out here, to the Addam’s Family mansion for a scientific test on performance and sleep resistance?”  Erica asks patiently, one perfectly manicured eyebrow raised in question.  “And why for such a long period of time?”  

“I thought it best to be isolated, to be in a location with a definite sense of history, and I wanted to make sure that any outside stimuli were controlled and noted.” Dr. Argent explains patiently.  “You’ll be taking a variety of tests, none of them harmful of course, and you’ve got the house, as well as the grounds and each other, to keep you company.  It’s mainly to make sure there’s not outside factors skewing the data.”  

“When do we take the tests?”  Isaac says quietly.

“Every day.  Basically, we’ll be hanging out together like we have so far this evening, and you’re free to complete your tests whenever you like, as long as you get them done.”  Argent then passes out a few folders, each filled with sheets of paper, many containing bizarre geometric puzzles or word problems and riddles.  “Also, there is no phone service to the House and no TV.  Just fair warning.  I have my cell phone for emergencies, but other than ourselves and Mr. Hale the caretaker, we’re alone up here for the entire two weeks.  We’ll begin the tests tomorrow after breakfast.”  

Everyone nods diligently and begins to shuffle through the various papers handed to them, commenting on one another’s tests as they went through their own.  Stiles notes he has a variety of maze-like pages filled with beast and other creatures doodled in the margins, but that Erica has more word problems, and Isaac has more fill in the blank type tests.  Isaac in particular seems really interested in something found within the folder, and for the first time all night, he sees a tiny smile play across the other man’s lips.  Erica looks semi-interested, but not overly so, almost bored.  

“Dr. Argent, what is this house?”  Lydia suddenly asks, out of the blue, disrupting the quiet of the room.  “What was it’s purpose?”  

Stiles blinks, knowing that Lydia knows what the house was built for, because she’d told him when they’d first arrived and met up, but maybe she’s asking so that the rest of the group knows?  Or maybe she’s just looking for clarification?  Stiles could certainly use some.  

“There once was a king who built a palace.  The king’s name was Peter Hale.”  Dr. Argent begins, his voice smooth and pleasant.  “A hundred and twenty some odd years ago, Peter Hale made two hundred million dollars.  That’s over forty-three billion dollars in today’s money, mind you, and he could have anything he wanted in the entire world.  Literally.  And what he wanted, more than anything, was Rene, his banker’s beautiful and kind daughter.  Rene, and a sprawling house in the Californian country side filled with his many children.”  

“All the carvings.”  Stiles says, knowing this part, knowing that they were meant to be a game.  “For the kids.”  

“Yes, but there was a rather sad catch to the story.  There were no children, and Rene died suddenly, leaving Hale alone in this huge house.  His heart was broken and he was lonely, and they say that he died of a broken heart.”

“That’s terrible.”  Stiles says, shifting in his spot on the couch, a huge weighted feeling pressing down on his chest, like hands clasping at his very heart.  The air around them all has tensed, and a log crackles loudly in the fireplace, startling them all before Stiles continues  “And very sad.  What an awful story.”  

“I think there’s more to it than that, more to this place.  This house has its own music, Dr. Argent, I can play it for you, I can hear it in this very room.”  Lydia says manically, her fingers plucking strangely across the wound-tight cords, the almost unholy music resonating in the house and halls, from the very walls around them.  The air is thick with it as her fingers fly down the harp to the thickest wire, the deepest note.  “I can show you!”  

And as she plucks the final cord, the wire snaps loudly, and like a steel whip, cuts through the air to Lydia’s delicate face.  She screams, and Stiles knows a scream of pain when he hears one, knows that the cord has cut her, and probably deeply.  He only hopes that she isn’t too harmed.  

“My eye... oh no, my eye!”  She half-shouts, hand flying to her face where it’s now streaked with a deep red.  It’s slowly dripping down her face in steady pulses.  “Oh god, my eye!”  

Everyone else is frozen for a few moments in shock before they leap up, rush to help her.  Her husband has dashed to her side, his face pale and almost frozen, like he’s about to be sick.  Stiles can’t really blame him, because on the wall to Lydia’s back there’s a long line of blood where the cord had continued on after it’d met her face.  And the blood is still spilling out from between her fingers where they clutch at her face, even when Dr. Argent pries her hand away to look at her eye.  It’s still intact, Stiles thinks, but she needs medical attention, and even as he’s about to say something, Dr. Argent is pulling his key and cell phone from his coat pocket, shoving them at Jackson before he ushers them out front to Jackson’s car, helping Lydia in the passenger seat.  He then turns to Jackson and gives him directions to the nearest hospital, leaving Erica, Stiles, and Isaac time to fumble at the doorway. Stiles cannot bare to look any longer, and feeling a bit sick himself, urges Erica to return inside with him.  She just nods, and together they make their way back inside to the fireside, leaving Isaac and Dr. Argent on the front lawn together, standing in the driveway.  

They don’t hear Dr. Argent tell Isaac that he didn’t tell everyone the full story, and that he feels that Isaac can be trusted to know the full truth about the house, despite his desire to not tell anyone.  Trusts him to know fully about Peter Hale.  That he asks Isaac not to repeat it, to not tell Stiles or Erica because he’s afraid it’ll upset them, what with Stiles’ obvious panic disorder and Erica’s fearful-but-brash nature.  That it’ll skew the results because of their unnecessary fear of the house.  

“I can keep a secret.”  Isaac says calmly, his voice only hitching once.  “You can tell me.”  

They don’t hear the story from Dr. Argent, but later, they will hear it from Isaac.  

Chapter Text

“Icebreaker exercise conducted over dinner and carried on through to after dinner.  Observed initial bonding among subjects and the experimenters.  After dinner, first bland history of Hale House relayed to all subjects and experimenters.”  Dr. Argent says levelly into his tiny digital voice recorder, eyes scanning the files of the subjects scattered about the house.  “Stiles appears to be the most susceptible to suggestive history and tragic backstory components, while Erica seemed indifferent.  Isaac, who tested at the bottom of the Levy-Mogel Confidence Reliability Scale was given the second part of the story.”  

Dr. Argent pauses for another moment, fingers quick across the scattered pages of files, flying to make even more notes in each individual’s record.  Isaac, while eager to be trusted with information, would almost immediately run back to the others to tell, as was designed.  His confidence in himself and others significantly hampered his abilities to keep any sort of secrets or tales to himself.  This part of the test was designed to stoke the initial fear response from the group, and prime them for future psychological factors and group fear and hysteria cues.  The tale of Peter Hale being a monster, that he’d driven his own wife to her early death and was a cruel task master had flowed seamlessly into the experimental design, and once he’d discovered it, he’d decided that Hale House would be perfect for the fear exercise.  He’d embellished the tale a bit, of course, to suit his needs, but the basics were kept the same.  It was a run-from story, one that would be basic and root deep into the subject’s mind, while feeding fear and providing room for expansion of their own imagination. 

“We should see some initial results tomorrow morning, of course, along with base line entry results of all participants.”  Dr. Argent hums, tapping his lips with the back of his pen, contemplative.  “And poor Lydia... The accident with the harp, while horrible and unfortunate, almost... complements the experimental fiction factor and adds a sense of impending shadow fear to the tale.  At least she didn’t lose her eye in the process.”  

He smirks before reorganizing the files, reaching over to turn off the machine.  The buttons click before popping out, the tape stops winding, the electrical whine dies down.

“Because it’s publish or perish, at this rate.”  

----

Stiles had just finished putting all his things away into the chest of drawers at the far end of the room, closest to the bathroom, while Erica lounged around on his bed to watch.  She’d informed him that she never put anything away out of her suitcase, because it always ended up strewn about the floor in the end.  Why make all that work for herself, when she knew the end result was going to always be the same.  It’d made Stiles smirk and her giggle, before she’d flopped down onto the mattress without an ounce of shame.  It left Stiles free to really examine the room as he moved about it, tucking clothing and small personal items away into the heavy drawers as he went.  It was something to do with his hands, really, to keep his mind focused on anything but the events of that afternoon.  Starting with his nap.  

He hadn’t told anyone about that, actually, not even Erica.  There was no need to immediately come off as a basket case, and Stiles didn’t want to run her or Isaac off just yet.  He liked them both too much already to lose them that quickly.  And they would run quickly if he said the house had been watching him sleep, and that something had reached out to stroke his face when he came too.  Yeah... he definitely wasn’t going to mention that.  

“You’ve been out of the world for a long time, haven’t you?”  Erica says suddenly from her spot on the bed, brows furrowing where Stiles can’t see them.  “Or secluded, at least.”  

“Yes, I have.”  Stiles says carefully, timidly.  He can hear the traces of it rattling around in his voice.  “I’ve missed it.  The world, I mean.  People.”  

“No.”  Says Erica.  “The world has missed you.”  

Cautiously, Stiles lets his eyes move to the mirror handing over the chest, the one facing the bed and the small mirrored table next to it.  He can see his own back reflected there, as well as Erica’s stern and serious face.  He likes it, he thinks, her protective streak, even though they’ve only known one another for less than 24 hours.  He likes that she easily calls him her friend, despite the trouble he’s already put her through.  He likes feeling like this.  This sense of whole, of right.

“I’m going to go take a bath.  Good night, Stiles.”  Erica says finally, pulling herself up off his sheets and padding towards the joint door to the bathroom between the rooms, the one right to Stiles’ left.  “Happy tossing and turning with all these creepy things in here.”  

“Thanks, Erica.  You too.”  Stiles says, rolling his eyes.  “I’ll scream if I need you.”  

“Sure, sure.”  

----

For a moment, just a moment, all there is in the darkness with Stiles is his own breath, gently wafting in and out as he sleeps on tucked tightly beneath the many covers layered atop the bed.  It’s almost silence, the vast room complete with caverns in the walls filled with shadows that cast strange shapes against the walls.  New shapes contort and form in the windows, reach from the shadows tenderly, as quiet as a church mouse, as if longing for something in their silence.  Now there’s only the deepest of the dark, the deepest limit of capable human hearing, and even then it’s just a soft brush of sounds against Stiles’ consciousness when something in the room with him inhales.  He doesn’t seem to notice it, but there are others in the room, every wolf or child’s face carved into the woodwork, that turns to the doorway leading into his room and down the long hallway leading to the grand staircase.  Looking towards the source of the house’s new found life.  Each of the wood pieces seem to turn in gentle, soundless waves, and only the horror on their carved features hints at the despair now permeating the air.  

Because all the faces, from the tiny carved wolves to the huge stone lions, are now turning to stare up the double grand staircase towards where the darkened portrait of Peter Hale resides.  Terror is a clear expression written across all their faces as they stare into the black, inky darkness pulsing upon the landing, as if waiting for something or someone to walk down out of that miasma.  Descend the from the imposing baluster-lined balcony like a specter straight from Hell.  Eyes a blazing red, akin to coals, and waiting.  Always waiting. 

Outside, the lock binding the gate closes and locks, all on its own. 

And that’s when whatever’s been gathering finally breaks free, sends a loud thump echoing down the hallway, all the way to Stiles’ room.  It amasses along the darkened hallway leading towards the bedrooms, sounding like held breaths, as the House itself begins to breathe.  

Something knocks upon the doorway to Stiles’ room, loud and with purpose, as if seeking permission to enter, and the noise rings through the silence with a decisive purpose.  It registers somewhere in the back of Stiles’ mind, reminding him of a time not-so-long past.  A deep, hollow, distant sound like that of a dream, and it makes Stiles sit up, still mostly asleep, and move on reflex alone.  Up, off the bed, and towards the doorway leading into the hall, the source of the noise.  

“Coming... Coming, Dad.”  He mumbles, feeling around for the socks he’d kicked off somewhere along the side of the bed as the knocking comes again, louder this time.  “I’m coming.  I’m coming!”  

A crashing, stellar thump bangs somewhere out in the hallway, far away from the door, and the noise is as if something big and heavy has been picked up and then slammed down.  The resulting thump is enough to jar Stiles back to full consciousness, his mind firing up and lighting like a pilot light as he realizes that it’s not an imaginary noise he’s made up in his mind or dreams.  Stiles suddenly remembers where he is, when he is, and that his Dad’s no longer there to wake him from a sound sleep in the dead of night.  This is very, very real, and something heavy is still slamming against his doorway, making it rattle and shake in it’s hinges.  No one in this house is strong enough to rattle the solid wood door on in its frame like it’s currently moving, and that single thought alone more than terrifies him.  Another crashing bang and thump echo down the hallway from the mezzanine, and the feeling of cold dread creeps down his spine with surprising swiftness, grabbing hold at the base of his very mind.  

“Stiles!  Stiles!”  

That’s Erica, Stiles realizes, and he spins on his feet to run from the sound and the door, through the cracked bathroom door, slamming to solid wood closed behind him.  With shaking hands, he reaches up and fumbles with the large deadbolt lock that closes the bathroom off from the adjoined room, sliding it in a few shaky movements.  It clanks heavily into place and the moment it does, Stiles turns and bolts into Erica’s room, repeating the action.  Erica is there at the foot of the bed, a robe thrown hastily over her pajamas, hair wet and clinging to her face and the covers where she has them clutched tightly to her chest.  She’s not even attempted to get off the bed, and even in the dim lighting, Stiles can see her shaking.  

“What is it?”  She asks, nearly frantic, hair swaying as she shifts nervously.  “What is it?”  

The sounds in the room and hall grow nearer, the sound of doors opening and closing ringing down the way, like something is searching the rooms.  The sounds are progressing down towards their room, drawing nearer with every second, until it’s suddenly at the his room, banging open the doors, thumping against the inside bathroom door leading to Erica’s room.  There’s a rushing sound as the door shakes and rattles.  Whatever it is, it’s right there.  Oh god, it’s right there!  

“Oh no, it’s in my room!”  He shouts, eyes bugging.  “It’s in my room!”  

Stiles freezes at the sound of his own voice, and behind him at his shoulder, he feels Erica do the same. Panic stricken and scared out of their wits.  

The door rattles and shakes some more.  

“Stiles!”  Stiles recoils back to her side, climbing up and over the bed, dragging her off the other side with him, until they’re backed safely into the far corner of the room.  “Oh god, what is it?”  

THUMP.  THUMP.  THUMP.

Erica and Stiles’ eyes travel over the walls, both in the bathroom, as well as the hallway outside, following whatever it is which now seems to be moving in two directions at once.  The sounds move along the wall mainly to the right, in the bathroom, and it reaches its loudest as it cross the doorway again.  Erica shivers at his side, and Stiles clutches her closer to him, trying to shield her with his body as much as he’s able.  The thumping suddenly stops, and each of them relax a fraction.  

Suddenly he’s very, very cold, and as he himself begins to shake, his breath begins to mist in front of his face, fogging up the space they share.  He looks in horror at Erica, and finds her with her hands up in front of her face as she watches the hair on her arms prickle and goosebumps crawl across her skin.  

“Cold.  Oh, god.  Can you feel it?  Can you feel that?”

Erica’s eyes rise to meet his own as she speaks, just as the door rattles as loudly as it ever has, shaking so hard that Stiles is afraid it’ll tear then entire jam down with it.  The lock crackles ominously, and Stiles is terrified that it will bend and break, allowing whatever is in the bathroom into the room with them.  The door continues to jar in it’s frame, leaping from the blows of whatever is there on the other side.  Stiles backpedals further, dragging Erica with him as far as they can go, but slips on the edge of the area rug there, and falls to the floor.  He drags Erica down with him, and they land together in a sprawl against the cold stone wall.  

His world starts narrowing in at the sides, blackness creeping in on vision, and distantly he hears Erica scream.  Hears her demanding to know what that is, even as there is a sudden, abrupt silence.  As if whatever had been out there is just gone, replaced by a distantly muffled voice and the sound of knuckles rapping franticly on the outside door.  No longer is there any sound coming from inside the bathroom.  

“Hey!  Hey!  I heard screaming...”  Stiles thinks that that might be Isaac, but he’s not sure.  His blood is busy rushing through his ears, choking his attempts to breathe.  “I brought help!  Open the door!”  

“Isaac!”  That must be Erica, but now Stiles is curling up in a ball, back in the corner, while she gets up and rushes out to the door, the sound of the dead bolt being thrown echoing along side his stuttering breaths.  “Isaac, get help!  Stiles is having a panic attack!”  

“Move!”  That’s an unfamiliar voice, but it doesn’t seem to bother Stiles any more than he’s already bothered.  He feels like a huge weight is being pressed hard against his chest and belly, starving him of oxygen.  “Help me get him on his side!”  

Stiles feels himself turn, hears floating bits of conversation and demands as he drifts in and out of consciousness.  There’s a hot and heavy hand on the back of his neck, running through his hair, as he struggles fitfully.  And he feels like he’s seizing when his vision dims even further, and more hands grab hold.  

And then the world narrows down to a bright pin prick...

Stiles knows no more.  

Chapter Text

When Stiles came to a second time, it was to find himself still lying across the expensive carpet in Erica’s room, his head pillowed on her lap, while she, Isaac, and someone else with a vaguely familiar voice talked in hushed whispers over him.  Well, a seriously grumpy voice, he realized as he turned his head slightly and cracked his eyes open.  The bright light from the lamp at the bed side was almost blinding, and it made him shift away, throw his head back and blink rapidly.  While he did so, it sent his head reeling, limbs flailing.  

But everything slowly comes into focus, and Stiles realizes with a sudden jolt that they’re still in the room, still in the way of whatever it was that had come for them in the dead of night.  He tried to sit up, struggle away, but Erica and Isaac stopped him, gentle hands across his shoulders.  Even gentler words said in platitude near his face.

“Stiles, Stiles, it’s all right.  You’re fine.  Everything’s fine.”  Erica says, her voice husky with lack of sleep, hair wild, curls flying everywhere.  “You had a panic attack again.  But you’re going to be fine.  Isaac found help.”  

“Yeah, you’re going to be okay, buddy.  No... No worries.  Promise.”  Isaac said too, his own curls wrung tightly at the side of his head where he’d clearly been pulling and twisting them in his agitation.  Stiles recognized the signs.  “Hale here gave us a hand.”  

And there in all his resplendent glory stands the moody caretaker, Derek Hale.  He’s not exactly hovering over top of them, but he’s standing close enough that Stiles can see the dark rings under his eyes, the rumpled clothing that catches the weird shadows from the lamp light.  He looks like he’s been up, busy, perhaps driving for a ways, before he’d arrived in the house.  And knowing that he lived in the nearest village, nearly a thirty minute drive from the house in a good car, then he had to have been driving out here late into the night.  Why, Stiles couldn’t say.  But for whatever reason, he was glad that he was here.  Because he could explain just what the Hell had happened here.

The room looks perfectly ordinary again, though, and there’s absolutely no sign that anything has been here.  That anyone had been banging hard on either the hallway door or the bathroom door, which is no longer bolted, but now cracked open enough to appear as if someone had been investigating inside it.  Stiles thinks maybe Derek or Isaac or both had been in there looking for the culprit, and he’s just glad it hadn’t been him.  Whatever had happened had really, really scared him, and he wasn’t too proud to admit that.  But the hallway door is firmly closed still, but Stiles thinks that the door is no longer locked.  It’s hard to tell from his spot on the floor.  

Erica is sitting with him on the floor, wrapped in blankets with pillows scattered around them both.  There’s a few mugs of what Stiles thinks is tea sitting on the stand behind her, still slightly steaming.  Someone had been down to the kitchen and back while he’d been out.  Oh god, how embarrassing.  Stiles is absolutely mortified, especially since the ridiculously-good-looking caretaker had bore witness to his episode.  Well, there’s that road blocked off forever and ever.  It makes him heave a heavy sigh and finally sit up, pulling the puffy comforter up with him as he went, wrapping it tighter around him as he went.  

He’s just about to start asking questions when there’s a light knocking on the door and then Dr. Argent peaks his head into the room, followed closely by the rest of him.  There’s a digital recorder clearly tucked into the front pocket of his half-done up shirt, and there’s no tie or suit coat from earlier.  There are thin-framed glasses perched at the end of his nose that he didn’t have earlier, but seem to be a common item for him, because he looks comfortable and familiar with them.  He doesn’t look nearly as tired as the rest of them do, and even though he’s dressed in the same clothes from the previous night, it doesn’t make him look sloppy or even rumpled.  It only makes him look inquisitive.  

“Did anyone else hear anything?”  He says finally, averting his eyes.  “Or was it just Erica and I?”  

No one says anything, and Erica looks less and less sure.  

“You really didn’t hear anything?”  He says again.  “Really?  It was so loud, and some of it came from all the way down the hall.”  

Dr. Argent takes off his glasses, and Isaac looks at him and Derek closely as they move together towards the bathroom.  Derek opens the doorway wide and flips on the flickering overhead light, dousing the room in bright light, before walking to the huge claw foot tub.  He turns it on and lets it run for a few minutes on full blast before turning it off and leaning back against it with his arms folded tight.  Stiles, Erica, and Isaac watch him closely as they wait in tight silence.  A beat, and then...

The thumping, bumping, horrible grinding and pounding noise from earlier echos loudly through the enormous bathroom and into the two rooms it mediates.  It’s the exact sound.  They’re the same sounds, traveling up and down the hallway, echoing in the huge house space.  But none of them seem to have any impact, not like any of the ones Stiles and Erica had experienced.  None of the sound has the presence as they had in the dark.  Isaac gets up and walks over to the bathroom door himself, wrings his hands twice, before giving a nervous giggle.  

“Oh, look...  There he goes, old Peter Hale.  Up and walking around.”  He only trips over his words once, at the beginning, before shrugging his shoulders.  “I guess that explains things.”  

“No, it really doesn’t.”  Erica says, frowning.  

“Do you need me anymore?  Cause I’m going to bed, I think.”  Isaac goes on, as if he doesn’t hear her.  He looks exhausted and it makes Stiles wince.  “Are you okay, Stiles?  Will you be cool if I go back to bed?  I need all the sleep I can get.”  

“Sure, Isaac.  I don’t mind.”  Stiles says, giving him a tight smile.  “I understand.  Thanks for giving us a hand.”  

“Well I do!  If this was some sort of joke, it’s not funny!”  Erica snarls, moving up onto her knees, her robe hanging oddly, as if she’d tied it in a hurry.  She probably had.  “That’s not what happened!  And that’s not what I heard!  I know it’s not.”    

Hale just huffs and rolls his eyes, walking out of the bathroom behind Isaac, turning the lights off as he goes.  He’s quiet, but cautious, and Stiles can see him watching each and every one of them for any sort of clue as to what actually happened.  The scary thing was that Stiles didn’t know for sure what had happened.  It was a side effect of his attacks, the short span memory blurs.  He could remember the basics of what had happened, to waking up to the noises, feeling intense fear, the crippling panic as he’d raced into Erica’s room and bolted the door.  Cowering with her in the corner before things went dark and confusing.  From there it was just a blur of sounds, indescribable from each other in their jumbling dance.  It left him more than just confused and with a headache.  It left him jittery.  Nervous.  

“The cold sensation you described, Erica.  Who felt it first?”  Dr. Argent asks after a few minutes of intense staring.  “Can either of you remember?”  

“I did, I think.”  Erica says, glancing at Stiles.  “But you asked me that before.  While Stiles was out.  What’s going on here?”  

“How do you feel about Derek’s suggestion that it was just the old plumbing in the house?  You said that you’d just taken a bath, Erica.”  Dr. Argent asks calmly, ignoring her rising frustration.  “It was probably just a water hammer, or something like that.”  

Stiles doesn’t say anything, Erica just continues to seethe in frustration.  The room is a lot less frightening now, especially with the lights on and more than just the two of them there.  The walls are normal, silent when Stiles looks at them in contemplation.  Maybe Derek was right?  Maybe it was just the pipes?  His guilty conscious coming back to haunt him?  

“My father always banged on the walls and floors when he needed me, when he was drunk or sick.  The night he... the night he died, I heard him.  I pretended that I couldn’t hear him being sick, rasping out un-intelligable words.  I was just so sick of it all.”  Stiles couldn’t bear to look at any of them, couldn’t take their judging faces at his story.  “And then the banging just stopped.  In the morning he was dead.  This is the first time I’ve ever told anyone this, but it was the job I had.  The only one I’d ever known.  I knew every knock, every sound in that house.  I knew what it was.  I knew, and I ignored it.  I failed.”  

“Oh, Stiles...”  Erica half-whispers.  

“I’m actually a terrible person, Erica.  I know this.  I’m living with this guilt.”  He continues.  “But I know the difference between sounds of pipes and those of banging demands.  I know that what I heard, what happened to us, wasn’t caused by some faulty old house pipes.  I know what I saw.”  

Stiles stands up before walking by Derek and Dr. Argent both, head still cast down.  His face is drawn tight in humiliation, hot tears welling at the corner of his eyes.  The night’s frustrations and terror and emotions have all taken their toll on him, and his restraint and control is fast slipping.  He doesn’t care now that Derek and Dr. Argent can see the patches in his mask, because no one believes him anyways.  No one ever believes him.  Not Scott, not Allison, and not his Father.  Things are as they always have been.

“Good night, Erica.  Dr. Argent, Mr. Hale.  Pleasant dreams.”  

And Stiles shuts the door tightly behind him.  

--

The morning sun filters in through the heavy drapes all through the grand mezzanine, the lighting strong but almost cozy.  He’s easily able to read the massive amounts of puzzles and field-cognition tests that are assigned for today, and he easily scratches solution after solution onto the pages.  Some of them he’s had to go back and erase, redo, but he’s making a stilted sort of progress through the stack.  It’s frustrating, compiled with everything that had happened to them last night with the awkward and uneasy breakfast they’d shared.  Even Hale had been clearly uncomfortable, quiet as he was, before he’d broken the silence briefly to explain that he’d come to check on everyone after the local police chief had called him to tell him about the accident at the old House.  And that he’d given Jackson his singular key to the front gate, which was currently locked from the outside.  

They’d now have to wait for Jackson or Lydia’s return to the house to let them out, which wasn’t that big of a deal.  The house was self-sustaining, and Derek had done all the necessary shopping and what not the day prior to their arrival.  They’d be perfectly fine in the house alone, locked in, unless someone else got hurt.  He didn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that he’d locked himself into the house with the study group.  And honestly, Stiles wasn’t all that bothered by his presence.  He was quiet, unobtrusive, and with the size of the house, it was almost guaranteed that no one would see him until he absolutely wanted to be seen.  Which worked just perfectly for Stiles, actually.  He had taken his embarrassment and slinked off into the far corner of the mezzanine to do his work, seated just in front of the massive fireplace with the hulking lions over head. He could have hidden in the fireplace, actually, but fought the urge down with all of his reserves.  Stilinski men did not take refuge in massive, ornate fireplaces.  

He’d have sat further down the hall, next to one of the open windows, but it placed him too close to the large doorways built to resemble the gates to Hell.  Hulking stone things with carvings of deformed demon-like men twisting together in suspended agony, each one more horrifying than the next, clawing for escape around multitudes of carved children and wolves, all cast mid scream and caught for all of eternity.  Some of the demons are standing guard.  Others are twisting away from their stern gazes.  All of the children and wolves and animals are trying to flee, but cannot.  Purgatory, he’d told Erica lightly after breakfast and before walking away to leave her to study it in silence.  They were the gates depicting the judgement in Purgatory.  And they gave him the fucking creeps.  

“They’re based on The Gates of Hell, by Rodin, right?”  Isaac asks suddenly, just over his shoulder.  It makes Stiles jump because he hadn’t heard him walking through the room.  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to s-scare you. I just, well, I was just trying to... trying to, you know.”  

Isaac quickly turns away and shrugs listlessly, like Stiles won’t want to talk to him.  It’s strange, Stiles thinks, because normally the situation is reversed, and people don’t want to talk to him.  He sees himself sometimes, reflected back in Isaac’s set shoulders or down-turned gaze.  And it makes him both hurt and heal somewhere deep in his chest.  

“I don’t know anything about Rodin, actually.  I just know they’re the Judgement at Purgatory.”  Stiles says casually, casting his papers and folder aside.  “My Mom, well, she was really into that sort of thing.  The religious iconography and practices of the world.  She had a lot of books with many different pictures and depictions in them.  One of them was about the levels of damnation and salvation, and the place between where souls waited to be judged.  Like Dante’s Inferno, but on steroids.”  

He gives Isaac a careful smile, and Isaac hesitantly returns it before stepping down to the far end of the couch to sit down himself.  His hair looks better today, more styled and less stress-pulled.  It looks good on him, along with a good night’s sleep.  Makes him look as young as he really is.  Younger, maybe.  More innocent and good natured, at least.  

“I’ve been thinking about these carvings, the ones on the walls.  Kids.  Lots of kids.  Fat little angelic kids, some wild kids, ones with furry animals.  And wolves, so many wolves.”  He sighs heavily.  “It’s sort of weird.”  

“They’re the children Peter Hale built the house for, I think.  The children he never got a chance to have.”  Stiles nods around them, waving absently.  “This is a children’s wonderland.  Full to the brim of things to look at, touch, play with, play in or on.  It’s designed for entertainment as well as beauty.”  

“Oh, come on.”  Isaac smiles but rolls his eyes, almost fondly.  “These are typically sentimental gestures of a depraved, controlling industrialist.  Don’t play it up more than it is, Stiles.”  

They both laugh together, before Isaac stands up and runs his hands along the back of the couch as he walks around it.  

“Erica was working the dining room.  She’s probably done by now.  You almost finished?”  

“Can’t seem to get the last one just yet.  You?”  

“I think I did okay.  Finished it, anyways.  Don’t know if it’s right, but eh.”  He shrugs again.  “We could do this stuff anywhere, but they chose all the way out here.  I don’t know what he’s up to yet, Dr. Argent, but I think it has more to do with the environment then our sleep habits.  I don’t really trust him.”  

He smiles and then walks up, not waiting for Stiles’ response.  

Stiles doesn’t really have one to give.  

Isaac walks off, and his footsteps echo across the vast room, not like before.  He’s purposefully trying to make noise, Stiles realizes, and it makes the ache intensify for a few seconds before fleeing again.  He shuts the massive doors behind him after he walks through them, a careful wave and a tight smile thrown over his shoulder as he goes.  Stiles returns them both, and his smile is wide and bright, he knows, before returning to finish the test with something.  As long as he gets it done, he doesn’t really care what he writes, at this point.  He’s just so very done with everything.  God, he could use a nap.  

Maybe he’ll take one.  Yeah, right here, curled up on the couch in front of the beauty of the front mezzanine in the sunlight, the creepy doors behind him, the house still but not oppressive.  It was comfortable, Stiles thought, and he moves the tests off the side of the couch and onto the floor before swinging his legs up and onto the couch, his feet bare, shoes tucked under the couch when he’d sat down.  He feels good, he realizes.  Not exactly safe, but not restless or agitated, or even nervous.  Just... good.  And a nap is exactly what he needs to make this late morning perfect.  

Stiles settles down with one of the decorative pillows tucked up under his head, arms wrapped around his middle, and drifts off as his thoughts wander.  The paperwork and his things lay forgotten on the floor before him, and his toes twitch every so often as the breeze from the open window down the way blew across them.  

Gentle, warm, cozy... until the temperature started to drop.  

The drapes began to close silently.

The open windows shutting tightly.  

Within the fireplace, something stirs, moves about, groans as it shifts and stretches as it wakes.  And then the heavy chain curtains shift as it creeps out, blinks into the morning light, and scrapes its way out of its previous hiding spot.  Stiles doesn’t stir.  Doesn’t see it.  But it sees him.  And as it sways towards the couch, he continues to breathe gently, evenly in slumber.  It grins before reaching out to tuck a few wild strands of hair behind his ear, a gentle smile playing on his face as he continues to caress Stiles’ face.  

And Stiles sleeps on.

Chapter Text

There are a set of keys on the floor by his folder when he wakes up, placed gently atop all his papers in a way that looks like someone’s left them there specifically for him.  But he can’t remember seeing them before going to sleep, so whoever had left them had done so while he’d been asleep.  Creepy... and quiet, because he wasn’t a heavy sleeper.  Whoever had been in here had to be as quiet as the dead to walk this close to him and not wake him up.  Strange.  

They look like a set of ordinary house keys, complete with what looks like a few interior keys, one key to a fairly old car, an old, slightly rusted church key, two or three unremarkable keys, and a rather elegant skeleton key decorated at the top with a flourishing letter ‘H’.  For Hale, Stiles realizes as he lays there on the couch inspecting them.  It’s a key to the house.  They must be Derek’s keys, then, if they have a key to the Hale House on the ring.  Maybe he’d set them down in here while checking up on Stiles, or the house earlier?  Or Isaac could have had them and forgotten them in here on his way to return them.  Either way, it was evident that these keys belonged to Derek.  Stiles thinks he should return them, but can’t really motivate himself to get up and go find the moody groundskeeper just yet.  Just too much work, really, too soon after waking up, and if Derek really is missing them -and asks- then Stiles will return them.  Maybe he’ll just return them later.  Yeah, later.  

Stiles heaves a sigh and rolls over onto his side, one arm tucked against his chest, the other out-stretched and dangling the keys a few inches in the air.  They tinkle lightly when they catch against the pages below them, and the light reflects when it faces the right direction, the stylized monogram polished and smooth.  They’re very pretty, classic in a way that really old keys are when strung together, smell of metal, and feel so terribly cold in his fingers that it almost hurts.  And the keys don’t seem to be warming any in his grip.  

Weird.  

He gives a faint shrug before sitting up on the couch, reclining back into the stiff arm rest, half-draping himself along the length of the couch.  His bare feet wiggle in the air as he stretches before sagging back into a slouch.  Something catches his eye, just from the corner of his vision, inside the fireplace, where the iron curtain chains sway too and fro.  They’re too heavy for a breeze to move them, Stiles knows this, he and his dad used to have a fireplace curtain in their small house fireplace, and each of those chains weighed enough to barely move at his touch, let alone a light breeze.  No, something else is moving the heavy rings.  Something inside the fireplace.  

He freezes, and so do the fleeting movements, until he can barely see anything anymore.  But the mesh curtain is still swaying, still moving despite the now frozen being within the stone hollow.  He’s sitting there as still as the lion statues above the mantel, and suddenly feels very, very small.  The massive fireplace looms before him, like a monstrous, gaping mouth filled with metallic dripping teeth, and is black as pitch beyond the original curtain.  It threatens to swallow him up where he sits, and that horrible tingling feeling is now racing up and down his spine.  All the hairs at the back of his neck are standing up completely on end, and small patches of goosebumps have started breaking out all over his body.  He can feel them brushing against the fabric of his clothing when he moves only faintly to breathe shallowly in and out.  

The swaying metal starts to scrape against the brick floor of the grate once more, harder this time.  It’s eerie, and repetitive in a horrifying, nerve-wracking way, and it makes Stiles want to leap off the couch and make a mad dash for the nearest door.  It continues, and the sound is cutting into Stiles’ nerves.  The tightness in his chest indicating an impending panic attack fast on its way.  

Stiles sits paralyzed and thoroughly rooted to his place on the couch.

A faint breeze draws his hair forwards, towards the fireplace...

As if something is sucking him inwards.  

Stiles gasps a deep breath just as something huge moves within the fireplace, the mesh more than bulging out now, nearly being torn off the curtain rode as it’s shuddered and shaken violently.  It looks like something’s trying to reach it’s way out of the fireplace, to birth itself into the House proper through the tiny hole that is the fireplace.  Whatever it is, it’s huge.  Stiles crashes backwards over the top of the sofa, nearly braining himself upon the solid stone floor when he lands hard on the other side.  He knocks over his books and papers with his flailing limbs when he goes, his shoes skidding against the beautiful furniture and pillows.  He hears the nearby standing lamp as it goes end-over-end and breaks when it strikes the floor.  The shattered bulb scatters glass as far as where he’s laying, and despite being behind the couch now, he can still see the curtains moving in front of the fireplace.  

Holy shit...  Whatever moved in there was real.  Very, very real.  Big, dark, probably with claws and teeth and horrors untold, and it looked vaguely like a head when it tries to come through.  It’s form though is strange, because it goes in and out of focus, and Stiles’ eyes can’t always seem to follow it as it moves.  The panic attack, he realizes, he’s starting to be short of breath.  It’s affecting his vision now.  He has to move, get away, flee and run and tell someone, anyone, that there’s a monster inside the mezzanine fireplace.  

Stiles gets to his feet shakily, legs rubbery and wobbly as he tries to stand multiple times before he finally succeeds and dashes for the door.  He’s running in blind terror now, slamming the huge doorway open as he tries to dash outside.  And as he flies away, bare feet sliding on the marble tiles, he runs right into Dr. Argent, Erica, and a moody Derek Hale.  Dr. Argent and Erica stagger backwards as Stiles’ full weight crashes into them, and even he can hear the gasping breaths coming out of his mouth as he tries to speak.  Erica is just starring at him in surprise, holding her own papers tight to her chest less she drops them.  

“There’s someone in there!”  He finally gets out, gasping, one hand now tightly pressing against his side in an attempt to regain his breath.  “There’s something in there, in the fireplace!  A monster!  I swear!”  

Dr. Argent and Erica just blink at him before he seizes Erica by the wrist and tugs her back towards the other rom, insisting that they come.  Derek dutifully but silently follows behind the three of them as Stiles draws them into his previous nightmare, until all four of them are standing before the fireplace together.  Stiles is still trying to get his breathing under control, and Erica is just watching the still softly swaying curtain with trepidation.  Dr. Argent and Derek remain stoic and silent.  Erica looks towards Stiles and sees just how shaken Stiles is, and sees the panic attack he seems to be fighting down as each second drags onwards.  

Argent nods towards Derek, and together they start forwards towards the enormous fireplace.  Derek steps up towards it first, pushing at the curtain using the tilt wand found on each one, and dutifully moves them backwards without so much as a sound.  Their feeble scraping against the floor isn’t nearly as loud now as it had been ten minutes prior.  Dr. Argent helps, and together they get the six foot tall curtains open and parted, leaving a bare, empty fireplace on display.  The iron screens hang silently now, a solid wall of impenetrable black as they both duck about and pat along the fireplace interior, looking for the culprit within.  Derek turns back to stare at him darkly and crosses his arms, and after a few delayed seconds, Dr. Argent turns back to look at him questioningly too.  Neither of them say a word a word, just breathing, listening for any sound within the darkness.  

Stiles watches from the side lines with Erica, apprehensive and near breathless.  

Dr. Argent sticks his head back around the fireplace, and for a long moment nothing happens.  It’s total silence, and it’s nearly strangling the life out of Stiles.  Argent feels up the chimney a final time before something way up the darkness clicks, and drops down frighteningly fast.  Something huge swings down and sways right in front of his face, so close that he can feel the air that it moves as it goes by, barely missing him.  He doesn’t even have a chance to flinch, nor move, and as it goes by, it creates a loud groaning sound as it goes.  Derek has ducked and moved rapidly out of the fireplace, and subsequently out of the way, faster than even Stiles’ eye can follow.  He is slightly impressed.  

“Chris...” Erica says lightly, watching whatever it is moving.  “What is that?  Stiles, is that what you saw?”  

“No... no, it’s not!”  Stiles half-shouts, even as the flue comes into view again.  “It’s not!”  

Not knowing, Argent flings back the remaining screen, revealing the only thing left inside the fireplace besides him.  There are two massive andirons, framed by the still-swinging lion’s head flue.  It’s completely cast-iron, forged in the shape of the king of the jungle, and looks heavy as all get out.  Solid in a way that old world irons always are.  But there’s nothing else inside the fireplace but him, a fact which Derek soon confirms.  Nothing but him, some ash drop, soot, and the massive swinging flue above a dusty hearth.  The iron doors covering it are slightly rusted at the hinges, but he quickly opens it up as well to check inside, despite there not being a mark on it.  Inside, there is nothing but glimpses of ashes and the remains of charred wood, ages old, having been swept down there some time prior.  Most likely by Derek or someone in Derek’s family.  

Stiles can’t believe it.  

The good doctor sticks his head back out of the fireplace, and is quickly followed by the rest of his body, the large doors closing as he lets them drop closed with a reverberating bang.  Dr. Argent dusts his hands off on his pant legs before looking at Stiles with one eyebrow raised curiously, as if asking the unsaid question.  Stiles can’t bear the shame.  

“Somebody was in here.  In the fireplace.”  He insists, eyebrows furrowing.  “I saw it.  I saw him.  It wasn’t just the flue!  There was someone else!”  

Argent just continues to look at him oddly, as if he’s not sure what to believe.  If he should believe Stiles again.  Stiles turns to look at Derek and Erica for help, but there’s none to be had from either of them.  They remain quiet and still as they watch.  Stiles can’t help but grow more and more frustrated at the tail end of a thwarted panic attack, the adrenaline still surging but with nothing to do.  It makes his heart beat throb behind his eyes and between his eyebrows at the top of his nose.  He can feel it building and shifting, just like the flue is still doing inside the fireplace.  Intensifying at the thought that no one will listen to him or his horror story.  

“I saw something.  I did.”  

Stiles leaves, the keys forgotten in his jean pocket.  

--

A few hours later, Stiles is still lingering outside the front of the house where he’d run to, angry and upset at the betrayal.  He’d seen something, he really, really had.  And no one believed him at all.  It hurt, it did, but it wasn’t anything Stiles hadn’t experienced before really.  The humiliation at other’s hands, at his own hands, an age old feeling.  He was used to it, by now.  His father had put him through it enough that he’d started to develop a thick outer skin.  Now it didn’t bother him as much as it probably once had.  That didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt.  He’s lonely, has been for a long time, and their rejection of him doesn’t make his loneliness ache any less.  

But he’s fine.  He’ll be just fine.  

Suddenly, Isaac is shaking him by the arm, distress written across his face, eyes wild as if he’s run the whole way out here, just to get him.  His grip is tight, demanding, and he’s saying something to Stiles that Stiles can’t quite understand.  Mouth moving faster than Stiles’ brain can follow.  

“What is it, Isaac?  What?  What’s wrong?”  

“You have to see something.”  He demands, tugging at Stiles arm again.  “You have to come now.  Now!”  

Stiles goes without further question.

He shouldn’t.  

--

Isaac and Stiles mount the grand double staircase with surprising speed, meeting an already waiting Erica, Dr. Argent, and Derek up at the top.  All three aren’t paying any attention to he or Isaac, and are instead focused on the huge and towering painting of Peter Hale that resides there.  Stiles turns and looks towards them, following their line of sight up and up until he is starring in even more confusion at what they’re all looking at.  On the wall and the painting upon it are bright, glossy, smeared stains, runny, as if freshly painted or melted them seconds earlier, and are in the shape of letters and words.  Like someone had just leaked them from the room itself or a paint bucket from up above... or their wrists.  It looks like deep, black blood smeared in with fresh oil paints.  As if the canvas itself has melted into pools to form these words.  

Confused, Stiles takes a few wild steps backwards and looks up, trying to take in all the letters to see what it reads.  Because it does say something, Stiles is sure.  The words ‘welcome’ and ‘home’ tower quite some feet above their heads, almost at the top of the huge painting, and beneath that is a name.  A name that Stiles hasn’t heard in what feels like centuries.  It’s an unknown name, tightly held secret, one he hasn’t spoken a word of outside his family.  It’s knowledge is trapped within him, and the last person who knew it died months prior.  He buried it with his father.  And Scott doesn’t know.  No one knows it but him.  His name.  His birth name.  

Upon the wall is written the phrase “Welcome Home, Genim” in gruesome, towering letters.  

Stiles begins to really panic.

The substance, despite having looked like it’s bled from the ceiling or the walls itself, isn’t coming from there like Stiles suspected it was.  It is as if the oils on the painting of Peter Hale have been boiled up by a heat gun and blasted off to form the letters themselves, leaving the heated remnants to run down from there across the wall.  Hale’s face is gone beneath the words, leaving on the underlying aged-ivory canvas to glare out, making his face appear more like a skull than the once handsome man it had shown.  He heralds the gruesome and haunting message left to Stiles by name, only the faintest blues of his eyes remaining in blackened hollows where they should be defined.  His once handsome coat and figure is marred by this, and even once removed, the painting will never be the same.  It’s ruined.  His name has ruined this once grand painting completely.  

“That’s my name.  That’s my name.  That’s my name.”  Stiles repeats, over and over again, clutching at his stomach and sides as he sinks to his knees, his breath burning its way up and down his throat.  “Who did this?  Who did this!  Why?”  

No one says a word, and Stiles feels the full force of his panic attack set in.  

The world goes black as his breath leaves and refuses to come back.  

Stiles goes dark. 

Chapter Text

Stiles is resting in his room calmly and breathing evenly again, when Dr. Argent calls the other three’s attention out in the hallway, gently shutting the door behind himself after he’s finished checking up on the young man.  Derek had thankfully brought Stiles back to his room so that Chris could check him over, make sure he’s okay, before he’s stood back and loomed once more.  He’s just been standing there watching as Isaac, Erica, and he flitted around and tried to make Stiles comfortable.  Or as comfortable as the young man could be.  He isn’t sure that Stiles can keep going at this pace and remain for the rest of the study’s duration.  Dr. Argent just wishes that he’ll be okay.  That Jackson will get back quickly with the key to the gate, so that they can leave and get Stiles the help he clearly needs.  He didn’t mean to permanently hurt him, or even mentally scar him, but it’s clear that the he’s having a mental breakdown.  This was just meant as an experiment, and it has quickly gotten out of hand.  He may have to call it off sooner than he’d like for Stiles’ mental well-being.  

“How many of you knew Stiles’ real name wasn’t actually Stiles?  That it was Genim?”  He asks hesitantly, eyes searching each of them in turn for any sign of the truth as they stand together.  Looking for any sign of a confession.  “Because I’ll be honest.  I didn’t.  He filled out all the paperwork with Stiles as his first name.”    

“I had no idea.”  Erica says tightly, eyes drawn.  “I thought Stiles was his first name.  Like one of those play on word names, you know.  Paige Turner, Harry Bawls, that sort of thing.  I didn’t know it was a nickname.”  

“Me either.”  Isaac agrees, his face and posture tense.  “Stiles never said.”  

Derek just raises one eyebrow at Chris to answer his question. He hadn’t known either. 

“Well then, I’m not sure what’s going on around here, but someone had to do that.  And I doubt very much that it was any one of us since it’s clear none of us knew.”  He gives everyone a brief glare.  “Unless one of you’d like to confess?  It’s alright if it was you, just come clean now.”  

No one says anything for a good, long while.  

“My keys are missing.”  Derek says suddenly, unprompted and after a significant pause of silence.  It’s out of the blue and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.  “My car and interior keys are gone, along with the main house key.  The entire ring is gone.  One of those keys would have opened the shed door out back, where the ladders are kept.  You can’t get at them without it.  I keep it locked at all times.  Someone’s taken them.”  

“Well I don’t have them.” Isaac says grumpily, crossing his arms tightly in clear sign of defensiveness.  “Not like I could get up on a ladder anyways.  I’m terrified of heights and get severe vertigo when under stress.  I literally couldn’t have done it.”

“I didn’t do it either!”  Erica defends, glaring at all of them.  “I would never do that to Stiles.  He’s so nice to all of us, to me.  I would never do something that cruel to him.  Not after all he’s been through.”  

She falls silent and backs up, putting her hands back on the door frame, as if she wants to enter to keep vigil over Stiles as he sleeps.  But she clearly can’t make up her mind if she wants to comfort of if she wants to accuse and hunt down whomever had done this to Stiles.  A cruel joke in need of revenge.  Erica would make a righteous and vengeful angel.  A defender to those who would need it.  

“His father was seriously abusive.  Not physically, but emotionally and mentally.  He’s spent almost his entire life enslaved to an abusive alcoholic who would hurl insult after insult at him without provocation.”  Isaac says tightly towards Erica.  “He’s never said anything outright, but I know the signs well.  He flinches when you move too quickly, or when you raise your voice.  He’s been hurt.”  

“Yeah, he has, hasn’t he?”  Erica says in response, her face reflecting just how much the statement and images it brings hurt her.  “And he’s still so sweet to everyone.  Whoever did this to him doesn’t know him, isn’t one of us.  So that means there’s someone else here.  Fine.  We’ll find them, and Derek here can take care of them so Stiles is never bothered by them again.” 

Derek rolls his eyes but nods his acceptance of the plan, face as closed off as his posture is.  At least he’s willing to help.  

“I’m going to keep an eye on Stiles, at least till he wakes back up.  He’s always really confused after a panic attack.”  The fact that she knew that with a sure certainty is enough to make her stomach roil angrily.  “He’ll want to know what’s going on.”  

She leaves.

--

“So did you come to confess then?”  Stiles asks as Dr. Argent comes up behind him on the balcony, tugging his sweatshirt tighter around himself.  He feels shaky today, a bit week in the wake of three intense panic attacks in less than a few days.  “Or at least tell me someone else did?”  

“I wish I were.  I wish I had done it, then I could tell you and you’d understand and have some closure.”  Dr. Argent doesn’t smile, but he does come to stand side-by-side with him along the railing to look out at the grounds.  “It would help with your anxiety, wouldn’t it?”  

Stiles smiles ruefully.  

“Let’s say it wasn’t you, or any of the others.  Not that I believe that, but hey.  Someone had to do it, right?”  Stiles sighs again, turning to look at him finally.  “Who did do it then?  And why?  What have I ever done to them, or any of you?  I don’t know any of you.  And you don’t know me.”  

“I don’t know.”  Is all Dr. Argent says.  

“It was a stupid thing to do.”  

“It was.”  Argent agrees.  “And you’ll never see it again.  Derek found a ladder in the cellar tall enough to get the writing down.  He’s taking care of it now.”  

“Yeah?  That’s good.”  

“I really am sorry, Stiles.  Can I show you something that I think you might like to see?  As a way to show how sorry I am?”  Dr. Argent looks sincere, when Stiles looks him in the face.  “I want to make things right in any way that I can.”  

A shaky “Sure.” is all he’s going to get.

--

Dr. Argent has had some time to really explore the house while the others have been filling out their paperwork and tests.  He had wanted to set up a few more small scares and story bits, to work with the theme of group hysteria and shared fear, but with the events of the last few days, he doesn’t feel comfortable in really doing that anymore.  Someone has taken his fear study and turned it into a personal nightmare for Stiles Stilinski, and he wants to know why.  Why Stiles, and why here, at his expense?  So he’ll help Stiles recover, stabilize the young man as much as he is able to, and investigate himself.  Chris is just hoping that the beauty and tranquility of the greenhouse will lend a helping hand.  

The greenhouse itself is an old Victorian-era remnant, overgrown with lush plants and a multitude of flowering plants he doesn’t know the names of.  The leaded-glass panes that make up a majority of the outer structure are stained with years of condensation, pollen, and storm refuse.  The plants themselves have taken to climbing all over them, and in a few cases, actually intertwining into the metal strut supports that run along overhead and down the walls.  The vines merge with the small saplings and larger trees growing in the back, and beneath them are the soft carpeting of flowers in overrun beds.  The narrow footpaths leading around the entire house are hard to see, and even harder to navigate, but Stiles is taking to them like a pro, nimbly working to and fro until he’s reached the central fountain where the water garden resides.  

The water garden itself is something of grand beauty.  It’s a long, rectangular raised bed filled to the brim with water and a multitude of water plants.  Delicate lilly pads dot the water’s surface, the small flowers pink and almost fluffy where they float along in the unseen currant feeding the plants.  In the center of it all is the statue of a huge man, almost bursting from the surface of the water, grasping for the air he’s caught breathing in as if he’s been drowning in the depths.  His legs are akimbo and rest at the edges of the fountain further down the way, and one hand is poised at the edge near Stiles’ figure, where it’s used the edge to leverage himself from the depths of the water.  Stiles inspects the man’s face where it rests against his shoulder, relief clear in his stationary features, until a rumble sounds through the greenhouse.  It’s followed by a sudden burst of water coming from the statue’s mouth, which startles Stiles into rearing back.  

Chris is worried that Stiles is about to panic again, but instead he laughs.  Dr. Argent laughs along with him after a few minutes pause.  It is clear by Stiles’ face and expression that he loves the greenhouse, that it takes his breath away.  And Chris is glad that he can give this gift to Stiles, even if it is in the wake of such horrible scares.  

“It’s beautiful here, Dr. Argent.”  Stiles says as he once again makes his way around the plants, towards the towering double helix staircase that rises up from the floor to an overhead platform further in the room.  The twisting metallic forms twine together to make beautiful shapes as they rise upwards into the air.  “Oh very, very beautiful.  But sad,  you know?”  

“It’s Chris, Stiles.  And why is that?  I thought it was rather beautiful in here.”  

“Chris, then.  And there are violets over here.”  Stiles points to where the base of the stairs are, and to the purple patches that linger around them and the cement foundation directly beneath the tower twirl.  “It means someone must’ve died there.  In that spot, or so the story goes.  Old wives’ tale my dad used to tell.”  

“He was right.”  Derek’s voice in the quiet stillness of the greenhouse is like the dashing of fine china against a stone wall, stark and loud and demanding for attention.  It makes both Stiles and Chris turn to face him, one with curious eyes, the other with shrewd study.  “That’s where she hanged herself.”  

“W-who did?”  Stiles catches his stutter the moment it’s out, but doesn’t stop his questioning stare.  “Who hanged herself?”  

“Rene Hale, you know, Peter’s wife.  Up there was where she did it.  Stole some rope out of the back shed, my sister used to say, to tie a ship’s hawser over the main support beams.”  Derek is looking right at Stiles now, piercing blue eyes familiar in that they look startlingly like Peter Hales’ portrait.  “They’re hard to tie and work with, so I don’t know how she did it.  But Laura always said that’s what she used.”  

“That’s enough, Derek.”  Dr. Argent says sharply, his features cast into a furious glare, one which Derek seems to ignore.

“She stepped off the platform, up there.”  Derek looks up with a shrewd gaze of his own, eyes linger on a spot that would hang directly above the violets.  “Just decided to end it one day.  No warning.  No note.”  

“Thank you, Derek.  But that’s really enough, please...”

“This house is full of stories, if you know how to look and listen for them.  They’re all over, just waiting to be read.  The house can be an open book.”  Derek is looking into Stiles’ very soul now, his blue deep and dark and never-ending.  “You just need to get used to the differences of this library.  It’s not the same as the ones I’m sure you’re used to.”  

“Why?”  Stiles asks quietly, his voice barely a whisper.  

“Why what?  Why’d she kill herself?”  Derek scoffs when Stiles nods his head in the affirmative.  “Because she was unhappy.  With her life, with her marriage...  Who really knows?”  

“That’s a horrible story.”  Dr. Argent says finally, tone brooking for no argument or continuation.  Derek just rolls his eyes but shrugs, his head inclined towards the other man.  “One you shouldn’t be telling the guests.”  

“Why, because it’ll skew your results?”  Derek mocks.  “Or because you wanted to tell him yourself?”

“Enough, Hale.”  

Derek just shrugs again but acquiesced, turning his back on both of the other men in the room.  His shoulders are pulled tight and strong beneath the fabric of his shirt, Stiles notes distantly, through the haze of horror story that he’s just been told.  Been revealed.  Derek didn’t seem to have any problems in revealing such a horrible thing to him, and for once, Stiles is happy someone’s not treating him like spun glass.  Like he’ll fly apart the moment they’re not watching anymore.  It makes him smile.  

“You’re smiling.”  Dr. Argent says as he watches Stiles move around again.  He’s picking up the flora and fauna, sniffing it, twirling it, inspecting it as he goes.  “That’s not the reaction to the horror show I was expecting.”  

“I was just thinking about how happy I am right now, actually.  All my life, I’ve been waiting for an adventure, some way to escape.  And I’ve thought, oh, I’ll never have that!  Adventures are for soldiers or for the women who the bullfighters fall in love with.”  Stiles smiles ruefully.  “But here I am, and something is happening to me.  Me, can you believe that?  Strange noises in the night, paintings calling out to me, telling me welcome home.  Like they know me.  And all it costs to get here was five gallons of gas!  I’m certainly getting my adventure, aren’t I?”  

Dr. Argent is silent, still as he watches Stiles move about the green house.  There’s more bounce in his step, all of a sudden, a sort of erotic calmness to his gait.  His hips sway gently, but it’s clear he’s not doing it on purpose.  In fact, it looks as if he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.  Stiles smiles down at the plants, at the small hidden statues, the stone children gazing here and there as they were captured in the middle of play.  His fingers trail across the the mottled glass and the overgrowth lining the walls, and his eyes are distant, but calm.  Chris just feels like he’s following now, instead of leading.  It’s an odd feeling because of how quiet and normally timid Stiles seems.  But here, he is almost a whole other person.  Almost confident with his body in a way that he hadn’t ever seemed to be before.  

“Someone’s playing with you.”  He says firmly.  “They’re doing it on purpose.”  

“Why?”  

“I don’t really know.”  Chris sighs and rubs his forehead with one hand.  “But they’re trying to hurt you.  That much is obvious.”  

“It doesn’t matter.  Even if they’re trying to torment me, someone at least wants me.  It’s more than I ever got back home.”  Stiles laughs in a small huff of air, and it sounds more like a cry for help than actual humor.  “What I do with this is up to me.  I can be a victim, or I can be a volunteer.  And I chose to be the volunteer.”  

Stiles’ face looks raw in that instant, split open from the inside, and Dr. Argent can see just how far his passion runs.  He’s a strong man, despite all his past experiences, and it seems to make him stronger for all he’s undergone.  It hasn’t quite broken him, and that makes Chris smile.  Stiles remains inquisitive and curious, in more than just his exploration of the house and greenery around them.  He’s surprised by that.  So much so, that he rears forward towards Stiles when the younger man gasps and stumbles away from the wall and the vines he’d been pushing and pulling at.  

Inside the greenery, nearly choked out underneath the weight, is a marble face.  But not just any marble face.  It is Peter Hale set into once-polished white finery.  Ghastly and starring out for all of eternity, surrounded by smaller figures who dance around his feet.  The children’s figures aren’t nearly as overgrown as Hale’s is, and their faces aren’t as stained or ruined as Hale’s own.  They all have blind eyes starring out of horrified faces, carved through years of overexposure and moisture content.  The plants have attacked them all as if they were trying to wipe Peter Hale from the face of the planet and spare the dancing children.  It’s more of a funerary presence than one of happiness and play.  It gives Dr. Argent the creeps.  

“Peter Hale.  I can’t seem to get away from him.”  Stiles says as he runs one hand over Hale’s jutting cheek bone. “It’s weird, like all his portraits and statues are watching me.  I can’t seem to catch them in the act though.”  

“And it’s a good thing.”  Chris says, smiling at Stiles brightly.  “I’d be worried if you had.”  

“Hmmm...”  Is all Stiles says in return. “We’ll see.” 

Chapter Text

It’s pouring outside when Stiles wakes up, and the air around the house is just as dreary inside as it is outside.   All the light is grey and drab, trickling in slowly through the thick window panes and the even thicker curtains, and it makes for lousy company.  Stiles doesn’t feel like getting up out of bed, let alone finishing his required tests and questionnaires, and with all the panic of the last few days... Well, Stiles doesn’t feel much like being a people’s person.  So he skips breakfast.  And more than thinks about skipping lunch.  He doesn’t want to see anyone’s faces, anyone’s judging looks directed at him, so he avoids the mezzanine, the kitchens, and most of the dinning rooms.  

Instead, he wanders around the greenhouses, both indoors and outdoors.  He only briefly visits the one Dr. Argent showed him two days prior, just in case Dr. Argent is there looking for him.  Stiles has been avoiding him since then, all of them really, and he has absolutely no intention of returning any time soon.  No one else will come looking for him, he’s sure, but Dr. Argent might.  The man clearly has alternative motives for their trip to this house.  It’s not just some bullshit sleep study, Stiles is almost positive.  But he doesn’t know exactly what it is instead.  No, he’s still fairly in the dark about the motive behind Dr. Argent’s little research project.  That doesn’t mean he has to play by the rules, though.  Stiles is not too keen on being jerked around once again.  

His musings lead him to one of the outer decks, where the room is opened up to the outside grounds, but still covered by an awning of tarnished glass.  The patio plants are wild and overgrown out here where no one has been to tend them, to tame them back.  Derek seems to be the only one out here to tend the house, and even though Stiles has heard him speak of his sister Laura only two or three times, he’s never seen her around.  She’s not come to check on Derek once since he’s been out here with them, and Stiles knows his stay was unplanned due to Lydia’s accident. There are no phones in Hale House.  There is no way to get word out that Derek is here, and as far as Stiles is aware, Derek has never referred to Laura in the present tense.   

Stiles thinks she might be dead.

He’s pretty sure of it, actually.  

It would explain why Derek is as surly and disgruntled as he is, that’s for sure.  He doesn’t have anyone to go home to, to look out for him, and despite living down in the near-by village, Derek lives very much alone.  Just like he himself does.  Their one last tie to humanity as a whole snatched away, stolen from them, leaving each of them with a house too full of memories and too big to keep.  Derek rents his out, lets the bad air circulate before it resettles into his bones, but Stiles?  Stiles keeps his dirty laundry tidy and sorted away, out of the reach of prying eyes.  He’d sooner burn his childhood home to the ground then allow Scott and Allison to take it from him.  It might come to that sooner than he’d like.  

“Stiles!”  Someone shouts across the lawn, from the direction of the trees, far out in the yard.  “Stiles, come here!”  

Stiles turns and prepares to shout at whoever is out there for calling to him like a dog... so much like his own Father used to.  It wasn’t very nice, and if they asked nicely, Stiles would have come.  He would have talked to them if they’d just treated him like a human being instead of their servant.  Stiles is going to give whoever it is a piece of their mind.  He is.  

But there’s no one there.

Stiles scans as much of the yard as he can, which is quite a bit considering just how open the landscaping and yard are.  And they couldn’t be hiding in the trees either, or the sound wouldn’t have carried like it had.  No, whoever it was, had to be out in the yard.  Somewhere out there, someone is hiding from him.  Stiles decides he’s going to ignore them, and turns back to the doors leading back into the house when he hears it again.  

“No, Stiles, out here!  Out here!”  

Once again, there’s no one there.  

“Whoever’s out there, it’s not funny anymore!  I’m not going anywhere with you.”  Stiles shouts back, chin out and head up.  “So you can go to Hell!”  

“Come on Stiles...  I just want to play.”  Something touches his forehead, right at his hair line.  “Stay with me.”  

The voice is so much closer than it had been a few moments ago, and Stiles whips around in a panic.  The voice had been just behind him, just over his shoulder, hot breath ghosting across the skin of his neck teasingly.  But when he spins around, no one is there.  Stiles bolts out into the yard.  Someone’s messing with him now, maybe Derek, maybe Isaac, maybe even Dr. Argent.  Whoever it is, they’re out here now.  They’re out here with him, and he’s all alone.  

Stiles runs faster.  

It’s still pouring out, and the water makes the ground soggy and the grass slick, so he loses his footing a few times, slipping and sliding as he goes.  His tennis shoes are soggy now, half-filled with water and mud, and his pant legs are getting heavy due to the water soaking into them.  He doesn’t slow down, doesn’t stop.  He needs to get away, and he needs to do it fast.  Looking back over his shoulder, Stiles doesn’t see the uneven ground, and trips, sending himself sprawling and careening towards a rusted iron fence.  He only misses it by a bit, and when he lands, the only sound left is the sound of the raining striking the ground and his own heavy breathing.  Before him is the tiny Hale Family Cemetery, the iron fence barring it from the rest of the yard.  

It is just on the edge of the woods, out of the way, but still visible from the house if you knew where to look.  Stiles hadn’t known it was out here, and hadn’t been looking for it.  But here it is, laid out before him like a neatly wrapped gift.  

There are nine moss-covered headstones in total within the cemetery, worn and torn from the long end of the century.  One of the smaller ones, of which there are eight, has fallen over and bent the fencing low.  Once he’s picked himself up, Stiles steps over the railing there and enters the sacred ground.  The largest headstone stands towards the middle of the plot, and has a double plaque on the front.  Stiles catches himself, pauses, hesitates before walking towards it, and is glad he did.  Around the other eight headstone, all which circle the largest ninth one, are small unmarked stones hidden among the grass.  Stillbirths, Stiles realizes.  Rene’s stillbirths.  

Stiles feels drawn into the graveyard, and as he carefully approaches the largest stone, he realizes just who is buried there.  Rene Hale’s name is etched into the front of the right side of the stone in elegant print, the dates of her life and a short epitaph written below that.  Around her are her children, both born and stillborn.  Stiles can feel his heart breaking as he moves delicately among them, looking at the various names and the scattered dates.  One of them reads Adam Hale, born April 5th 1874, and beneath the grime that Stiles has to clear away from the moss covered headstone, April 6th, 1874.  The small boy had only lived for two days.  Only two days.  

“My god...”

Beneath the boy’s name is a short epitaph of his own, nearly wiped away by the ravages of time, and it is sad.  Stiles has to kneel to read it, and once he has, he wishes he’d left well enough alone.  Disturbed, Stiles gets back up, and whirls to the next headstone.  Wendy Hale, January 1, 1880, and the death date -- January 1, 1880.  The grave commandment is familiar, strikingly so, and not as comforting as it was meant to be.  It rings with a terrible, malevolent promise.  

“Suffer the little children unto me...”  Stiles’ head reels, and he turns to the next stone.  “Samuel Hale, March 2, 1877 -- March 5, 1877.  Only four days.  Oh my god.”

There are three move grave stones around him, and after Stiles clears them all from debris, they too show that all the babies dies soon after their births.  Some within a few hours, others a few days.  None of them made it a month into their lives.  There’s the same symbol on the graves of all the children, a wolf, a marker of death, smiling at the visitors as they come.  It’s the same type of wolf that Stiles has seen all over the house, and it scares it.  So much so, that he backs quickly out of the cemetery, terrified.  Stiles doesn’t have to see whose name is written beside Rene’s on the tombstone to know that Peter Hale is buried here with the rest of his family.  His body laid to rest.  

The chills that run along his spine as he quickly makes his way to the front of the house doesn’t leave him for hours. 

Chapter Text

Stiles has been standing around, loitering in the mezzanine for a while now, starring down the hallway that lead into the Red Parlor.  He stands there, wondering if it’s empty, if he can make it down there without being stopped or questioned.  He’s seen Dr. Argent in there earlier, when he’d stopped in for a late lunch of whatever was left over and still out.  Derek had taken to leaving it there for longer than need be just because, and Stiles doesn’t hope to think that Derek is doing it for him.  Because he’s embarrassed and avoiding everyone else.  He just lets himself eat what little he can scrape together from the left overs before wandering out again.  One of the rooms near the parlor holds a staggering number of books, piles and piles and piles of them stacked together on top of one another.  

He stand there and stares longingly at them, unsure of what he’s found here, what knowledge lies within these books.  They’re old, so incredibly old, and some of them probably date back to before the house was built.  They’d most likely been Peter Hale’s at one point, or at least some of them probably were.  It made Stiles want to burn them.  But something deep within him compels him to look through them.  To search for something he’s unaware of.  He’s uncertain what it was he’s actually looking for, but it doesn’t stop him from searching, his fingers pawing at the yellowed and brittle pages as he stands bellow a much smaller painting Peter Hale.  The man is looking down at him from the painting, the same small smirk playing across his features, and it gives him the creeps.  It also apparently alarms all the small cherubs and wolves woven in and out of the frame around him, because they all look like they’re caught mid-scream and fleeing in terror from the man.  All the frames look like that.  The statues too.  

But the painting is holding Stiles attention more than the books, and after starring at it for fifteen minutes or so, Stiles realizes why.  The painting is depicting Peter Hale, but more importantly, it is depicting Peter Hale in the Red Parlor, standing before the far bookcase near the fireplace.  The bookcase is opened inwards though, propped open and dark, as if luring in the viewer to it’s hold.  Stiles jolts and then bolts to the other room, where the bookcase is the same as it is in the painting.  Intuitively, he reaches for the wooden case, and with as much force as he can muster, gives a valiant shove inwards.  The wood creaks and groans before shuddering inwards a few inches, and after renewing his efforts and pushing again, Stiles manages to open it enough to squeeze through into the dark.  

Inside is a small spiral stairwell, cramped and dark and damp from being closed up for so long.  It leads downwards into what Stiles thinks is an intermediate level, a floor between floors, hidden from all who didn’t know of its location.  There are windows, but they’re small, only lining the top of the one wall, and they don’t give off much light.  But from the outside of the house, you wouldn’t be able to see in here.  A completely hidden room within this monstrous maze of a house.  It’s dusty in there, and only the small shafts of light coming from outside illuminate the space, making Stiles eyes blurry before they finally adjust to the dimness.  Once they do, Stiles realizes that the furnishings he’s able to make out in the room are those of a late-nineteenth century office, a massive desk even large than the one upstairs in Crane’s office lingers to one side.  There are many shelves filled with even more books, along with reams of loose paper.  Some of the sheets are scattered across the dirty floor, and the writing is faded and illegible.  

But the room’s purpose is obvious.  It’s a secret office.  Hale’s secret office.  

The books are actually old, hand-written business ledgers, filled with beautiful handwriting done in old english inks.  Some of it is faded from exposure, but most of it looks as if it’s been written only days before.  It’s beautiful, actually.  Stunning.  The business ledgers are stamped with a small little wolf symbol, one that is more than familiar.  Stiles has seen it nearly everywhere in the Hale House.  Peter Hale must have had a seriously thing for wolves...  Creepy.  

At the enormous desk is an equally massive, carved chair covered with a dust sheet.  Only the lion-head arm rests protrude from beneath it, their growling visages snarling in the dimness at Stiles.  Hale’s study, Stiles realizes, is comfortably furnished, lived in, in a way that the rest of the house isn’t.  There’s also a huge mirror, its silver inner surface flaking and peeling with age, tarnished and barely reflecting the room at large.  It stands facing the desk, and for a split second, out of the corner of his eyes, Stiles sees a shadow lingering in the chair.  Stiles whips around, blocking the mirror’s path to the rest of the room, but doesn’t find anything.  There is no shadow in the chair.  There is no one in the room but him.  Sighing, Stiles steps past, and goes around the end of the desk to stand over it at the side of the chair.  It sits silent beside him, shrouded.  

Before it on the desk sits a large, dark bound ledger marked with the mill names -Lowell, Haverhill, Manchester, Beacons- and several years.  The dates begin in the early 1870’s and continue on, and curious, Stiles flips it open.  Inside, the ledger is a series of payroll accounts.  Names upon names of workers rendered in sepia and black ink in Hale’s flowing cursive.  Notations in the column beside the family names indicate the number of members, as well as the number of men, women, and children within them.  Beside that is the appropriate wage for each class of worker, and then the total for the entire family.  Many of them, well over a third, are children.  And each of the details recorded here are meticulously taken down and noted.  

Stiles is disturbed by the whole thing, and shifts closer to the looming chair beside him in his agitation.  He sees it shift out of the corner of his eye again, pull tight, but realizes that it’s caught under his foot and moved when he did.  It now hangs in a way that would allow for someone to sit just beneath it and go unnoticed.  Stiles doesn’t like it.  

He turns the page and finds more columns of indicated pay, and even more family names, as well as children tallies.  At the end of each is an unlabeled column, nearly hidden in the binding of the book, and is ominously scratched in and around.  Down the column, some of the names of the children or workers are repeated, and most of them have a line drawn through them with a small cross at the end of the line.  Stiles follows them with his eyes, tracing them back across the ledger, and he turns the pages to see the pattern repeated.  But something is off in this column.  There are only crosses at the end of certain lines, and these lines are ones that match up with entries for children.  The adults do not have crosses upon their entries.  Only the children.  He looks at their names in a dawning sort of horror.  

“Erin, Peter, Sean, Emily... And Elizabeth.  Who are you?  And you?  What happened to all of you.  You must have died, but how?  How did you die?”  

Stiles continues to turn the pages, and keeps finding more and more crosses.  Dozens of them, scores of them.  It makes him weary, and sighing, he finally moves in front of the desk chair and sits down heavily.  There are tears in his eyes, he can feel them, and as he stares down at the book, he can feel them pooling and trying to escape.  He bats them away with the back of his hand, wiping the moisture off on his hoodie sleeve.  This is a testament, a novel to horrors that have taken place in the Hale Mills so long ago.  And Stiles can’t just leave this here.  No, he can’t.  

Stiles takes the ledger with him.  

He hides it beneath his pillows when he gets back to his room.  

--

Later that night, Stiles finds himself sitting in his bed with the ledger in his lap, his old and faded t-shirt and boxer shorts making up his pajamas.  He couldn’t seem to get the book out of his head, and he’s been nearly cradling it ever since.  Even Erica, who’d come to check in on him, had noted the old book, and had plopped herself down next to Stiles on the bed to look at it with him.  Together, they’d gone through page after page of  names of deceased children and workers, whole families being wiped out while working for Peter Hale in his dangerous mills.  

“That’s so sad.”  Erica says, sniffling slightly, her eyes suspiciously damp.

“There’s hundreds of them.  This must have been the record of the children who died in the mills, like Isaac mentioned from Dr. Argent’s story.  I think Derek said something about it too.”

“Before he painted your name over Mister Hale's face, you mean.”  Erica says snidely.  “What a creep.”  

“You really think it was Derek?”  Stiles asks, confused and conflicted and scared.  “Why would he do that to me?  He doesn’t even know me...”  

“Well, I know it wasn’t me.  And Isaac can hardly handle climbing that staircase by himself without a death grip on the railing, let alone climbing up a ladder big enough to reach all the way to the ceiling.”  Her voice is accusing, and Stiles knows she’s thought about this.  “It was either Derek or Dr. Argent then, and considering all the creepy shit that Hale’s pulled since we all got here, my money’s on him.  But I’m not ruling out Argent either.”  

“I honestly don’t know what to think anymore.”  Stiles really can’t imagine why anyone would want to do this to him, to them really, because this whole ordeal is effecting them all.  “I’m sorry I was mad at you, Erica.  I just got scared, and then everyone was flinging accusations and I just... I snapped.  I’m sorry.”  

“Me too.  I’m sorry I silently accused you, because I know that I was wrong when I thought it.  But hey!  I learned one thing about you, that you probably don’t know about yourself.”  She smirks at Stiles.  “You can be a pretty decent bitch when you want to be.”  

“I’ll... take that as a compliment.”  He says, trying to sound casual.  “In the city, what kind of place do you live in?  Apartment-wise, I mean?”  

“I have a loft downtown.”  Stiles is thrilled with this answer, and he can feel his face light up as she keeps talking.  “It’s fairly big, enough for my studio and stuff.  I work out of it.”  

“A loft.  That’s a lot of room for one person, right?  Even though you work there?  Maybe there’s room for--?”  Erica looks up, and almost immediately understands what he’s asking.  “I mean, only if you want to.  I’d want to.”  

“You want to move to New York?  To move in with me?”

“I don’t know?  Yes?”  Stiles sounds hesitant, but Erica can see the conviction in his eyes.  “It’d be fun, right?  Exciting.”  

Stiles lies back suddenly, spreading his arms, and lets the ledger slide to the sheets beside him.  He can’t bear to look Erica in the eyes any longer, not when coupled with the silence that is pervading their conversation.  It feels a lot like rejection.  Too much like it, and it sets off a sharp aching pain in the center of Stiles’ chest where his heart should be.  He’s easy to move, to manipulate and take advantage of, and he knows that, so when someone doesn’t really take advantage of him... it hurts.  Even though it shouldn’t.  Because why would Erica want to move in with him, anyways?  

“My place isn’t like yours, Stiles.  It doesn’t have a great view of the woods at night, or a little rap around porch with flowers blooming at the ends.  It doesn’t have a view of anything.”  She says slowly, carefully, but she’s placed a hand on his arm, and Stiles can’t bear to look at her when she speaks.  “What’s interesting about the way I live is what’s happening inside, within the walls.  LIving with me, well, it’d be tough.  My boundaries aren’t very well defined, Stiles.  I’m impulsive like that.  Do you know what I mean?”  

“I’m trying...” He sighs, and the ache lingers despite Erica’s placating words.  Stiles decides to change topics, to escape the emotional pain he’s leveled himself into.  “Have you ever kept something to yourself because you were afraid of ruining things?  I mean,like, really ruin things?  The way that there’s no going back from?”  

Erica looks at him, and Stiles meets her gaze.  She looks sort of confused, but for the most part unreadable.

“All the time, Stiles.  All the time.”  

Stiles nods and breaks their gaze, looks away from Erica’s brightness and into the gloom of the corners of the headboard and room.  Erica must move too, because suddenly her warmth is gone from Stiles’s side, and the bed dips like she’s gotten up to leave.  For a moment, Stiles doesn’t know what to do.  What to say to make her stay.  Because no one ever stays, not for him.  

“I think it’s time for bed, hmm?”  Erica says calmly, like he hadn’t just brought up the awkwardness of every point of their friendship.  “We should both get some sleep.”  

“Yeah, okay.  That’s probably a really good idea.”  Stiles feels like he hasn’t slept well in ages, and maybe that’s why he’s feeling like he’s dragging himself through molasses. Something has kept him awake and panting in the dark here, feeling like someone is watching him, running their hands through his hair when he’s asleep.  “Good night, Erica.  And thanks, you know, for everything.”  

“Night Stiles.  You’re welcome.”  

--

Stiles is breathing deep and even in his slumber, his face relaxed and open in a way that it isn’t during the day when he’s awake.  His hair sticks in several directions, but despite it’s gravity defying act, is soft to the touch when it’s stroked this way and that.  Stiles’ sleeping mind plays off the soft touch as that of the wind gently blowing in and out of the open window at the far side of the room, and doesn’t stir beneath the heavy blanket he lies tangled in.  He’s been restless, despite his unconscious state, and it is apparent in the fact that his feet hang out from under the heavy blankets and off the edge of the bed nearest the window.  The pink toes are delicate and twitch every so often when the gauzy curtain flows in and out with the wind, through the arching window panes that look like blind eyes in a horrified face.  All the doorways and entry ways look like that in the house, and eerily so in the dark of the night.  It’s the reason Stiles has so firmly shut the heavy bathroom door every night since the one he and Erica were first awakened to panic and sound.  

The door is a solid weight, and Stiles is reassured by the fact that it would take a great deal of effort to open.  But not only that, it would make a great deal of noise to do so, and it would be more than enough to wake Stiles up out of a sound sleep.  He would know if someone were to enter into his room while he wasn’t looking.  

But despite that, it silently begins to open inwards, slowly widening.  It’s a yawning gap of darkness, no light from his or Erica’s room flowing under the door jams to illuminate the space.  No moonlight from the outside coming through the darkened windows, not like the moonlight spilling into Stiles’ room on the other side.  No, the room is a deep and yearning void now, opening it’s jagged jaws and pouring out into Stiles’ space.  There is no sound but the slight thump and drag coming out of the bathroom and into the room proper, as if someone is trying to walk lightly across the floor and failing due to their size and bulk.  It isn’t enough to wake Stiles, and the sliding sound continues as it drags itself closer and closer.  The sound gets louder, draws closer and closer to the bed, and still, Stiles doesn’t stir, only grinds his teeth in his sleep, pulls the nest of blankets up around him and in.  There’s a sudden coldness in the room, and his breath fogs where he continues to breathe evenly and calmly.  Ice and cold hang heavy in the air, and unknowingly, Stiles reacts.  He tries to hide in his sleep, but his feet remain uncovered and vulnerable.  

The sound stops, and sudden movement is there, beside the bed, hovering just out of human sight.  The house feels heavy, the air itself cold and tortured and screaming.  Stiles sleeps on, even as something draws icy finger tips across the tops of his nearest foot.  Lightly they hold as his ankle, tenderly encircling it, frigidness radiating from the touch.  

Stiles bolts upright, gasping into consciousness, the icy touch enough to wake even him from a somewhat-sound slumber.  His eyes take a moment to adjust, but find nothing in the dark when he looks.  It is just a dark room and him, even as he scans.  No one is there with him, but the heavy bathroom door stands open just off the end of his bed.  It is open far enough to allow for a fairly large body to fit through, and done so as to admit no sound.  Stiles breathes fast, feeling the cold as it permeates the air about him, and knows, just knows, that something or someone is in this room with him.  Watching him.  Touching him.  

He holds his breath and strains his ears, listening, but finds only long moments of drawn out silence.  There is nothing to find...

And then he notices his feet.  

They are black and glossy in the dark, the faint moonlight giving them a shimmering quality, like blackened glass or sludgy lake water, and when he moves them, they feel slick.  Sticky in a way that squelches when he flexes his toes and ankles.  He quickly braves the dark enough to flip on the nearby bed lamp, which illuminates the small section of room closes to the bed so that he can get a better look.  

His feet are covered, drenched, in gore.  They are covered in deep red viscous all the way up to his ankles, where they’d felt chilled to the bone, and there are bits of matter that look like bones and viscera sticking stubbornly to his skin.  By the look and feel of it, it is fresh, like his feet had been submerged into a butcher’s vat, but they are not warm.  The slimy filth is a deep red, almost brown or black, like old clotted blood would be, and the smell that slams into Stiles’ nose is enough to make him gag and throat wretch.  His feet are an exercise in horror, and are dripping slowly onto the lavish carpet bellow.  

Stiles screams and launches himself off the bed, half-stumbling, half-crawling his way towards the darkened bathroom door.  He only just barely manages to flip on a light before he tumbles into the tub and spins the faucets on full blast, dousing himself with the icy spray.  There will be bruises everywhere later, and he only realizes it faintly as he sticks his feet forcefully under the arctic water pouring from the tap.  He shivers and shakes and feels hurt, but not in a way that he can describe.

“Stiles?  Stiles!”  

Weeping, damn near crying, Stiles scrubs and works at the gore clinging to his feet, trying to get it off.  But it is stubborn, sticky, and the water doesn’t seem to be able to cut through whatever it is.  It just transfers from his feet to his hands, and so Stiles shoves those beneath the taps too.  

“Who’s doing this to me?”  He whispers, horrified and to himself.  “I’m sorry, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.  So sorry.”  

The door to Erica’s room is still firmly shut, but the handle is rattling now, urgent in panic, but refuses to open.  Stiles doesn’t even notice it.  Doesn’t notice the force with which Erica is trying to enter the bathroom, to get to Stiles’ side.  He cannot hear Erica’s desperate questions as she tries to make the door bend to her will.

“Stiles, what’s wrong?  What’s wrong, Stiles?  Are you okay?  Let me in.”  

The blood is only barely coming off, and Stiles, who is still squatting in the tub, sobs forcefully as he tries to get it off.  But only faint traces of it are being sucked down the drain, and it won’t come off.  

“Stiles, the door is locked.  Open it, please.  Open it so I can come in.”  

Finally, Stiles hears her, and rises shakily, hobbling out of the tub on still gory feet, making his way slowly towards the door.  He doesn’t know who is doing this to him, or why, but he can feel it slowly crumbling him, breaking him, killing him.  He just wants it all to end.  To stop.  Even as he grabs the handle to the door, he realizes that for whatever reason, Erica’s door is locked from the inside, which he doesn’t remember doing.  It had still been open when he had shut his own bathroom door after her when she went to bed, and he hadn’t heard her shut it when she went into her own room.  He would have.  But now, the door stands locked, and it perplexes him in a way that makes him shaky as he slides the deadbolt back.  The door rams open and almost into him, Erica behind it, and she’s a raging mass of fear and exhaustion.  It’s clear to Stiles that she was woken from a sound sleep by his antics, and he feels guilty, even as she races to him.  

“Stiles, what the Hell?  What’s wrong?”  

But Stiles cannot answer, can do nothing more than stare at her with his hair damp and tangled, sticking up wildly, his face tear-stained and doubtful.  His feet are cold, but no longer as bloody, and they are slick against the floor in the water that has splashed over the edges of the tub with him when he’d gotten out.  The faucets are still running full blast behind him, and the water is a dull, diluted pink, with bits of things floating in it before swirling down the drain.  He doesn’t know if Erica sees it or not, but he does, and he can feel it before the lights in both their rooms begin to flicker.  Then, go out.  Erica only has enough time to look up at the light fixture swinging above their heads before they too go out, and darkness swallows them up.  There is no stray moonlight reflecting in the bathroom like it does in the bedrooms, despite there being windows before them.  The darkness is oppressive and stifling, and it makes Stiles want to scream.  

The faucets in the tub before them squeak shut, and Stiles realizes that he’s holding both of Erica’s hands in his own.  Neither of them had moved or gone anywhere near the tub.  

They bolt, and race into Erica’s room together, towards her bed where Erica leans down and swipes something small and shiny off the bed-side table.  With a snick, Erica’s cigarette lighter lights up, giving off a small amount of light in the otherwise black rooms.  Erica holds it up above her head, and the orange flame glistens off the polished woods and metals of the decor, and casts long shadows where it’s touched.  Stiles feels compelled to step towards her, into the small hallo’s protection.  At least now they can see whatever is in there with them both.  

There’s a steady drip, drip, drip noise coming from the bathroom.

“Oh, god, your breath... Look at your breath!”  She says urgently to Stiles, and tucks the lighter in closer to them both where their breath has started to fog in front of them.  There’s a shock of freezing bitterness, and Stiles feels himself start to shiver.  “Jesus Christ!”  

Stiles shakes his head, trying to get her to stop talking, to not say anything, and he turns around to where the darkness lingers in the bathroom doorway.  It is almost impenetrable, and seems to reach out from the crack in the doorway when Erica’s small light flit across it, creating shapes as it goes.  They’re alien and very threatening, and at the very edge of the light, Stiles thinks he sees someone moving in the dark.  But when he urges her hand back, there is nothing but the cold and the steady drip, drip, drip of the tub’s faucets.  Together, they back away from the bathroom and towards the fireplace at the far wall, around the end of the bed.  They give it a wide birth, just in case someone is hiding beneath it, having coming in some time in the night.  Both are petrified, and their eyes are trying to adjust to the minimal light source, but to no avail.  They cannot see further than the small flames’ reach, and back right into the looming fireplace screen, it’s metal and cage-like workings pressing against their backs.  

There’s a beat of silence, of stillness, before something lunges out of the blackness of the fireplace behind them, and is caught in the screen.  It’s momentum is enough to strike Erica and Stiles in the back, and it sends Erica’s lighter flying and skidding across the floor, away from them both.  They never see what’s hit the screen, but both are sent to the floor as well, screaming as they go.  Stiles alone manages to whirl and embrace the cage, to slam it closed with whatever’s trapped inside back into the stone casing of the fireplace itself.  It is heavy, and the screen jolts hard enough to nearly lift him, despite his wiry strength, rattling him to his very bones.  The metal bites into the flesh of his arms and the joints of his fingers and hands, and he bites the inside of his mouth to retain the shout of pain as something claws at him from within.  

“Help!  Help me!”  He shouts to where Erica still lies screaming, lying paralyzed on her back before the fireplace.  Her eyes are wide and locked onto Stiles as he pleads for her help.  “Help me, Erica!”  

She finally seems to come to her sense enough to ram her feet against the grate, bracing it against the floor with her legs and body, the strain evident in her face.  Stiles knows, he is feeling the tension and force all throughout his own body, but he holds fast.  If either of them run, it’ll get out.  It’ll get them.  And Stiles thinks it’s bad enough when it hammers against the screen, hitting his fingers and sending dark clouds of soot rumbling out of the fireplace’s mouth, covering them in ash.  Stiles hears Erica coughing and screaming, but he doesn’t let up, can’t let up, or he’ll lose his focus.  

Suddenly, their own shouts are drowned out by a horrifyingly inhuman shriek that comes from within the fireplace.  It sounds like a thousand metal blades scraping against stonework and masonry, wrapped in steel wool and salt water.  It’s piercing and makes Stiles freeze all over.  Erica’s scream goes dead in breath-stealing horror, and Stiles can feel something else trailing up the backs of his legs towards his thighs as he tries to keep the fire gate in place.  It sickens him.  

“No, go away!  Leave us alone!”  He shouts, even as the screen continues to punch out at them, denting and bending and flexing at the joints.  “Get away from us!”  

The thing draws back from the gate rapidly, taking nearly all the air in the room with it.  It causes a massive suction force as it goes, causing Erica’s hair to be pulled towards the fireplace, and his pajamas to get caught in the metal.  The bathroom door slams loudly, shaking the door frame and jam as it strikes.  The sound is like a thunderclap, and once it’s receded, there is only silence.  

And just like that, it’s gone.  They stand poised in the darkness together, panting, and try to stop shaking.  

He cannot let go of the fireplace curtain until Erica pries his fingers away.  

Chapter Text

Stiles is standing in the green house the very next morning, staring down the statue of Peter Hale where it peeks through the greenery.  In the morning light it seems almost frozen, inert, and as cold as any statue.  There is no life sparking in its stone eyes, no burning blaze of intelligence like the painting has, or any other portrait of Peter Hale Stiles’ has seen.  It is just a replica, swallowed up in time, unable to hurt him.  And yet, that doesn’t comfort Stiles.  Doesn’t make the scratches and cuts lining his hands and arms any less real in the faint warmth the sun brings through the dingy glass, and despite the blood having washed off long ago, Stiles can’t help but feel like his toes are still sticky with bits of unknown.  It swallows him up, his attention gone, focused on his predicament here in the Hale House, and he doesn’t see Erica or Isaac enter through the far doors, or hear them when they speak to him.  Not until they’re standing right beside him, one of Isaac’s hands resting gently on his shoulder in concern.  

“Argent said the same thing he did last night, he says that he checked with Hale, and that he said that Hale told him that there was this weird wind storm last night.  All the fireplaces in the West Wing connect to the main chimney, and since the flue was opened earlier, the wind was able to travel through it or something.”  Erica says in a huff, and Stiles can tell that she doesn’t believe a word that Argent or Hale say.  “Hale thinks that it was some freak air current that ran down through the open system.” 

“What do you think?”  Stiles asks, cutting off the rest of her tirade, voice soft but forceful.  “Do you think it was a storm I know we didn’t have, because my windows were open?  Because there were no branches down this morning, or soot out of the fireplace in my room, or Isaac’s room, or the main fireplace?”  

Erica seems to stop and consider this, and then looks back at him, her eyes severe and blazing.  Isaac doesn’t look too far from upset himself, but he remains quiet while he thinks this evidence over.  He doesn’t fidget like Erica does, and he doesn’t blink away when Stiles makes direct eye contact with him.  

“Don’t tell the Professor; he’d probably throw me out, but test taking is one of the ways I’ve been supporting myself.  I volunteer for every paid study that they offer, every research position I can.”  He says finally in a low, quiet voice.  Isaac doesn’t speak much, and even when he does, it’s quiet, his voice lowered and clipped.  “Of course straight psych stuff doesn’t pay as much as the pharmaceuticals do, or a good wound study...”

He trails off before rolling up one of his sleeves, revealing a group of large, livid scars in patterns too uniform to be anything natural.  The intervals are evenly spaced, and the wounds each the same length and size.  Some of them are old, but most of them are still red and puffy, in the final stages of healing and scabbing before going into full scar mode.  

“They’re worth a thousand dollars each, which is pretty good money when you’re as poor as I am, as desperate as I am.”  He shuffles his feet before shoving the sleeve back down, cutting off Stiles’ view of his forearm.  “So I’m in a lot of these things.  I sort of know how it goes, you know?  And this?  It feels like experimental misdirection.  Like he says it’s about one thing -a sleep study, for example- when really it is about something completely different.  I think we’ve been subjected to an academic bait and switch’ he’s really looking at something else entirely.”  

“No.  No...  Chris isn’t doing these things.  He’s not, I just know it.”  

But there’s a desperate, creeping edge to Stiles’ voice now, and even he can hear it when he speaks.  It’s rising, like a tide threatening a narrow beach, trying to drown him out beneath it’s weight as it comes crashing down around him.  And even Erica’s response, though quiet and sober, isn’t as reassuring as it should be.  As it could be.  

“Then who is?  Come on, Stiles.  Deep down, if you really through it all through and still thought it wasn’t Chris, why wouldn’t you be leaving right this second?  Wouldn’t you be bolting for the door as quick as you could, the rest of us be damned?”  She quirks an eyebrow in his direction.  “I know I would.  I’d be afraid.  Really, really afraid.”  

“If it is him, then I don’t want to ruin things.  I still don’t want to ruin things, ruin whatever it is that we... that we have, here, together.”  He smirks, but it’s self-deprecating, and directed more to the statue of Peter Hale than Erica or Isaac.  “Because home is where the heart is.”  

Erica is chilled by his answer, particularly because it is one that would and should only make sense to someone out of Stiles’ own mind.  Because Stiles isn’t looking at them anymore, or even Hale himself.  Instead, he’s gazing down to the end of the warehouse, and up into the rafters, to the top of the swirling double spiral staircase where Hale’s wife had supposedly thrown herself to her death at the end of a rope.  There isn’t anything there, not that Erica or Isaac can see, anyways, but Stiles is clearly watching something.  His eyes widen briefly before they drop to just below the edge of the platform there, and remain transfixed before Stiles turns and hurries out, ignoring Erica and Isaac as they call after him in concern.  

--

Stiles enters the Red Room towards the end of lunch, where the leftovers from Derek’s meal still sit proudly, the dishes mostly empty, and the ice in the bucket holding the bottles of juice long since melted.  There are the remains of a small meal at the far end, on a side table by the fireplace, the chair Dr. Argent has been using all week standing proudly with it’s winged back facing him.  The remains of his test papers are in his hands, and he wants to give them to Chris as soon as possible.  Because after talking about it with Erica, and then very briefly with Derek before lunch, Stiles has decided that he’s going to leave, and that with Derek’s help with a heavy crowbar, they can get the gate open so that he can.  But he refuses to leave without completing his end of the study first, so here he is, work in hand.

“Chris?  I’m done with the tests, all of them.  And I’ve decided that I’m going to...”  He comes around the edge of the chair, but Argent isn’t there.  The chair is empty.  “Leave.”  

Stiles sighs, his breath puffing out in a great burst of air that stirs and ruffles his bangs, and he runs a hand through it in an attempt to get himself under control again.  He’ll have to leave the papers here, then, along with a note, because he doesn’t feel like going to look for Argent.  And he certainly doesn’t want to explain to the man just why it is that he’s leaving in the first place.  So he searches for a clean piece of paper somewhere in the stack of stuff on the table near the food.

He doesn’t find a clear sheet of paper.  Instead, he finds Dr. Argent’s digital recorder.

Stiles watches as it glints up at him mockingly in the hazy sunlight in the room, sitting there so innocently while he’s being psychologically tortured and tormented.  He picks it up, and looks to the door quickly to make sure no one is coming before he decides he’s going to press play.  Dr. Argent could return at any moment, but as the man’s grainy voice floods his ears from the tape, Stiles looses focus for anything else.  

“Stiles continues his alienation of other subjects and the experimenter.  It remains unclear whether he truly believes that he didn’t deface the painting himself for attention.  Interview with the subject in the greenhouse yesterday to ascertain the extent of his self-delusions and mental state, but was inconclusive due to his efforts to sexualize the encounter with the experimenter.”  

Argent’s voice continues on in his clinical assessment, but Stiles isn’t hearing it anymore.  He isn’t hearing anything besides the long, hard ringing that’s sounding in his ears.  He can feel himself die inside, and with his world already upside down and in a downward spiral, he can’t really cope with much else.  All he can hear is Argent’s cold, analytical tone, his garbled psycho-babble jargon.  His assessment of Stiles, right down to his neurosis and fears.  Chris hasn’t ever really cared about him, all he’s cared about is this study... 

From down the hallway, he can hear someone approaching, and Dr. Argent’s voice call out that he’ll be right there.  It doesn’t mean much, Stiles can only barely feel his body from a long way off, like he’s at the edge of a panic attack, but not.  He’s cold, dead inside, and it hurts with a hollow sort of truth.  No one’s ever really cared about him but himself.  That’s the way it’s always been, it’s the way it’ll always be.  

“Stiles, what are you doing here?”  He sounds surprised, but not unhappy to see him, and the falseness of it rings through to Stiles finally.  The way his smile doesn’t really reach his eyes, or how his tone is flat and static where it should inflect and be genuine.  

And he can only stare back at Argent, his eyes dead.  Chris looks from him to the briefcase, papers, and discarded tape recorder before turning his gaze back on Stiles.  

“Were you looking for me, Stiles?”  Stiles can’t answer, and Dr. Argent approaches slowly, unsettled by his hollow and saddened gaze.  “How’re the testings going?  You’ve quite the stack there.”  

Stiles stands there, continuing to be motionless, staring in his haze.  He can feel something break within him, snap under all the strain and force it’s been put under.  It bounces back and forth in his head, and along with the betrayal, starts to settle in and take hold.  He quietly hands him his finished papers, and when Argent meets his eyes, he forces himself to look away.  This man is not his friend, not even a peer.  Stiles had defended him to the others, because he thought he was a good man, a kind man, if a little aloof.  But everything he’d thought of him was wrong.  So very wrong, and it pained him to think that he’d been so duped.  So very wrong.  

Without a final look back, Stiles walks around Argent and leaves, emerging from the study to stand there.  He feels utterly lost, alone, cornered in a way that he hadn’t even felt when he’d been living with his father.  He’s been set adrift, and as he turns, he feels resolute.  He starts moving.  Faster and faster and faster.  Down the hall, air whipping around his head and face, and he’s momentarily blinded by his own tears.  They leave his vision cloudy and for a while, he has no idea where he’s going until he slumps to the ground of Hale’s secret study, stirring up a cloud of dust as he goes.  He didn’t see Derek as he’d stormed past him, the other man’s face open and questioning and concerned for Stiles.  He didn’t see the urge to reach out and comfort, or the pain of loss as it flashed through Derek’s eyes as he remembered some personal pain.  No, Stiles hadn’t seen him lurking in one of the doors, and instead of being with someone, being comforted, he was alone.  So very alone and in the dingy, dusty dark of an abandoned room.  

“How can anyone think I’m doing this?  How could they?”  He sobs slightly, and pulls his knees up to his chest as he leans against the heavy couch before the barren stone fireplace.  “No.  No, I couldn’t do these things: I’m not making it up.  I’m not.”  

He grabs a small, near-by throw pillow and hurls it away from him in a fit of sullen anger and despair.  It’s a small burst of shocking, uncharacteristic rage that he’s let loose, and as it hurtles through the air, he can feel his heart hammering in shock.  The age-hardened pillow strikes the nearest shelves seconds later, and hammers into the items perched there.  Vases, small knickknacks, a few books, and a leather bound album go crashing to the floor before him, a cacophony of noise ringing in the silence.  It startles him, and as he gets up, slowly approaching the broken mess, he’s shocked at what he’s done.  The rage drains out of him suddenly and forcefully, and the thought, a terrible, niggling, burning black thought creeps into his mind.  If he could do that without meaning to, without any really thought... then maybe...

“No.  I’m not doing it.  I’m not that crazy.  I’m not.”  

He turns in place, desperate, and in his despair, he sees the singular, old leather album precariously tilting on one of the broken shelves he’d struck down with the throw pillow.  It’s hanging open, one of the leaves flipping over on its own, gravity and the weight of its own pages working against it, turning it so that Stiles can see their contents.  Stiles walks towards it, stepping over bits of broken ceramic and shattered glass, and watches as another page turns on its own, and another.  He hovers over it once he gets close, holding his breath so as not to make the book flip over and fall off the shelf, but still the pages slip down, revealing old photos from the nineteenth century.  Some of the pages are bound with ribbons, and they’re clearly from the age of old Daguerreotypes in pressed vellum frames.  Some of them have age spots, and the pictures have gone fuzzy and are blurred out in large, spreading patches.  Others are in pristine condition, and when Stiles peers closer, he finds the faded, gray images taken long before it became conventional to smile for photos.  In it, a woman is sitting in a chair, and Stiles realizes that this is Rene Hale, her name printed delicately below her photo.  

Another page slips, and turns, and in this one, the same woman, Rene, is sitting again.  But this time, Hale hovers just at her shoulder, his handsome face dark, rage and madness stirring just below the surface.  He has a frown upon his brow and mouth, but Rene’s mouth is turned up in a small and rather inappropriate smile.  It sends a chill through Stiles’ very being, especially when he seems to meet this photographed picture of Peter Hale’s eyes.  They burn in a way that Stiles has seen in all his other portraits, but a photograph makes it all the more real.  This man was one of intelligence, sure, but also of cruelty, and pain.  It is something that his photograph shows with a definite sort of bluntness, and it makes Stiles shiver even more.   

The album begins to slide down the shelf, and as it does, pages begin to flip by, and Rene’s smile grows wider as they fall, her hair becoming more and more disheveled, her eyes lit with a grinning sort of infectious insanity.  Her clothing, once pressed and pristine, is ripped and torn at the hems, and she looks to be losing weight as each month gives way to a new one.  Hale, who still stands at her shoulder, continues to glower at the camera, his frown deepening and his anger more and more palpable.  In the last photo of them together, he has one hand gripped tight across her bony shoulder, his long nails almost pointed where they dig into her flesh, gripping her tight, his ring glinting in the light.  A look of deathly loss mares both their faces, and Rene’s eyes look as vacant as a mirror’s own gaze.

Stiles grabs the book just as it falls from the shelf, just barely catching it before it strikes the ground.  

It is opened now to a page of Hale standing alone in front of the enormous fireplace in the Great Hall, a walking cane held in one hand.  Rene is gone, and the photo itself is monstrous.  Peter Hale is monstrous in it, standing righteous and furious and all alone in his mansion, his own knowing grin captured forever on film.  Stiles fearfully turns the page, and startles at this photo, the very last thing he’d ever expected.  A picture of a lovely woman fills the page, her personality alone enough of a presence to take up the space of the aged page.  She is clearly filled with grace and power, and the writing below the photo reads the name Carolyn Hale.  She is posed on a lovely settee before the fireplace, the very same one Stiles had fallen asleep on a few days prior, and she is beautiful beyond words.  Her smile lights up the room, and she is clearly ahead of her time.  

“His second wife.  There was a second wife?”  Stiles asks, curious and confused all at once.  “Carolyn.”  

The thought alone sort of warms Stiles, and as he turns the page again, he finds Hale once more there, standing beside Carolyn, as opposed to behind her.  There is something different about him in this photo, and the change makes him less frightening somehow.  It’s hard to pinpoint what it is about it that makes Stiles relax a fraction, but with each passing image of Carolyn and Peter, he finds himself smiling more and more.

The next page reveals something wrong.  

It is another image of Carolyn and the kinder, almost gentler Peter Hale, but now it is Carolyn who is unsmiling, face haunted and slightly lined.  Pinched in a way that bad news marks a face once it has been passed on.  Another page, and another.  Another.  Carolyn’s face keeps on darkening, and in these pictures, her stomach is slightly distended.  Realization strikes Stiles.  

“She was pregnant.”  

Stiles keeps on turning the pages faster and faster, and as he does, Carolyn swells pregnant before his eyes, the ragged animation of his constant flipping startling him more and more, making her mouth move as if to speak to him.  She is voiceless, silent in age, but her mouth looks as if it is saying something... 

Stiles...

He fumbles the book as it drops out of his grip and onto the floor, where it stares up at him, open to the very last page.  It is an image of Carolyn, alone, her face a painting of betrayal, Hell, and a dark knowledge that poisons her lovely form.  Her hand, the one not gripping protectively at her swelling stomach, seems to be pointing at the gaping maw of the grand fireplace that looms up behind her.  The dark threatens to reach out and drag her in as well, and at the edge of her beautiful gown is a dark series of smudges that look suspiciously like soot and ash.  The grate in the fireplace is still cracked open a small amount, and her feet are bare and blackened from her trek.  It is clear to Stiles that she’s been in the fireplace, looking for something, and whatever was residing there, she had found.

Fear grips Stiles heart, and without much thought, he bolts from the room.  

--

The Great Hall is silent when Stiles gets there, his pounding footsteps echoing off the tall walls as he comes to a halt.  At the far end of the room broods the vast fireplace, its chain curtain hanging like the veil to some hellish sanctuary for the dark.  He stares at it, daunted, fearful of whatever it was that Carolyn is trying to show him.  The fireplace beckons him, and Stiles approaches it against his will, and certainly against his better judgement.  

At the side of the fireplace he finds a steel poker hanging by several other tools used to tend and clean the chimney and grate, and he takes it down as quietly as he can, using it to slide one of the heavy chain curtains open.  He steps into the soot-blackened mouth hesitantly, his feet heavy with dread and weighted  with his impending panic attack.  It hangs just out of reach, like the truth of this horror show, and despite Stiles efforts to hold it at bay, it threatens him more and more with each breath, each step.  He peers up the chimney, and a faint sigh of air moves around him as he sticks his poker up the flue, scratching it around, searching.  Nothing.  He turns his attention to the back of the fireplace, strikes it with the tip of the poker.  Some sooty stone chips away, but otherwise it’s solid, no space or hollow places hiding there.

Below him the handle for the ash drop catches his eye, and he stoops down to grab hold of it, pulling up on the heavy, iron bar.  He can barely budge it, even as he pulls with all his might, but with the help of the poker, it finally moves.  When it does, it screeches back, and the iron door in the floor of the fireplace moves open to reveal a large collection of years upon years worth of soot, ash, and debris left by the many roaring fires built in the hearth.  Stiles looks in curiously, because two feet down looks like a gray blanket of ash, a charred timber or two sticking out here and there.  Sick with a dreading sort of fear, Stiles prods the ash, but only finds bits of charred wood and old logs.  He thrusts the poker down deeper, and it vanishes into the ash until he’s nearly up to his hand in ash.  The poker has yet to reach the bottom, but it clacks faintly against something within the trap.  He tries to move it again, but it strikes against something else, the vibration rattling up his arm as the poker takes purchase on something.  Curious, he draws it up and out into the light.

Impaled onto its hook is a tiny human skull.

And below it, in the ash he’d dug deep down into, is another skull.  This one is an immense skull with a pronounced, brooding brow, familiar in an abstract way, and crushed in at the forehead and temple.  The gash spiderwebs away from the impact site, across the face and eye socket that’s peeking up out of the dirt at Stiles.  

Immediately, he knows who this is, who this had been, and just what he is doing here, buried beneath a mountain of ash and debris in the great fireplace instead of the family plot out in the yard near the woods where his marker stands.  Stiles lets the poker drop, his hands cold and fingers numb, his breath coming faster and faster, his heart racing.  It bangs off the door and falls into the ash drop, it’s handle hitting the jam, and Stiles barely has time to recoil as the trapdoor snaps shut like a closing jaw, the heavy iron barely missing him as it goes.  

Stiles stumbles back and down the hall, weeping in fear and confusion, shaking as hard as he can.  The panic attack is rushing in on him again, and as the darkness creeps in, he can hear himself faintly calling for help.  For anyone to find him, help him.

“Erica!  Isaac!  Someone, anyone, help me!  Derek, Dr. Argent, Derek!”  

But instead of help, he hears children’s voices, calling out for him as he runs.  He tries to follow them in his hysteria, down through a confusing series of rooms and into the maze of the inner part of the house.  He winds through the pitch-dark halls, rooms gaping black left and right of him.  Stiles continues his search for the voices which seem to come from just around the next bend, leading him around corner after corner, down hallway after hallway.  He slams through doors that grow darker and darker the further he goes, though from lack of light or from his panic, he’s not sure.  But he’s sure that the House’s hellish beast carvings glare at him as he passes, grinning and taunting him along, and the wolves howl distantly in his ears.  There are no children here, no chubby faces of cherubs or grinning kids.  Only the wolves and other monsters, cast into the dark wood and the shadows, luring him deeper into the maze.  He rages on, oblivious as to where he’s going until he rounds one final corner and ends up into a familiar hallways.  

It is the same one from his and Erica’s initial expedition through the house, the intricately locked door standing bright at the end of the long, dark hall leading up to it.  The statuary peer down at him with their dead faces and their matted muzzles, blind marble eyes in even barer bone masks, and as he turns, the heads and eyes seem to turn with him, following his every move.  It makes Stiles freeze in place, facing the terrible doors, and considering abstractly the labyrinth around him.  He begins to understand, slower than he’d like, just what was going on.  

“The house, it’s a maze.  That’s how you designed it, didn’t you, Peter Hale?  So wherever one of your little guests went, the house always brought them here, in the end.  It’s designed to make you come here.  But why?  Why here?”  

Another cry comes from the far end, leaking out beneath the door.  Stiles eases himself down the hallway, the fear welling in the back of his throat quickly becoming a tide that would drown him.  He hesitates, but then the child’s cry forces him on once more, and he reaches the carved doors where the wooden guards and wolves stand watch.  

“Oh, no... No, no, no...” He wails, anguish strong in his heart.  “Oh no, not that.”  

Gaping cold and rotting stench hit him, and he gags, staggering back from the door.  

Now the cry is coming again from beneath the door, but it seems more present now.  Real and right there, struck just on the other side of a heavy wooden barrier from him.  Stiles shudders, and the cry grows louder, desperate, hurting, and he tries to shut his ears from it.  From the pain it exudes.  But as he listens, it rises from a desperate wail and into a fearsome rage, no longer sounding like a child anymore.  In fact, it doesn’t sound anything like a human anymore at all, and it’s almost physically painful for him to hear.  He looks at the locked room in horror before he takes off running again.  

Or tries to, anyways.  

Stiles doesn’t get very far when someone grabs him from behind and throws him into the nearby wall with an inhuman strength.  His head strikes it hard and fast, cracking against the ornate woodwork and statues, and as he crumples and his world goes dark, Stiles swears he sees Derek Hale standing over him, his eyes glowing red, red, red.  

Chapter Text

Stiles wakes up on the settee in the Red Room, his sleeves undone and his flannel removed.  Under his head in the faint softness of a pillow, like the ones from his room, and his feet are distinctly missing their shoes.  There is someone there, just out of his field of vision, but he can’t seem to turn his head or focus on them.  They’re clinking around with some dishes, he thinks, but he can’t see for sure.  And despite his efforts, he can’t call out to them either.  Nothing comes out of his mouth except a faint whimper.  

Whoever is standing at the side table pauses briefly, the sound of tinkling glass stoping as the dark figure turns to look down over the edge of the armrest at him.  His entire figure is blurry for only a minute before a familiar and terrifying visage comes fully into view.  Stiles is sure that if he could have screamed, he would have, and loudly.  

Because standing over him, reaching for him, is Peter Hale.  

A very dead, bleeding from a horrible head wound, rotting Peter Hale.  

And his grin....

The panic seizes up in Stiles’ chest as the man’s hand connects with his forehead, moving through his hair before it reaches his temple and turning down.  There’s blood on his fingers now, and there had been a flare of pain at his hairline where he’d been slammed into the wall moments before going unconscious.  It doesn’t seem to bother Peter as he keeps on petting, stroking down Stiles’ face with a butterfly’s touch.  The freezing cold appendages reach his cheek eventually, tough, and grab him roughly, causing his mouth to open wide in shock and pain.  The suddenness of the action makes Stiles flail, but he can’t move from where he’s laid out.  His limbs feel like they weigh a ton a piece, and he can only watch with horrified eyes as Hale produces an ornate crystal goblet filled to the brim with some dark liquid.  It sloshes around against the clear crystal sides as he moves, and a few droplets spill out onto Stiles’ cheek.  The stench of it alone makes Stiles gag in the back of his throat as Peter opens his mouth wider and wider by pressing hard at either side of his jaw.  

The cup tilts, and the sludge-like contents slip and slide out of the cup and into his waiting mouth.  The liquid touches his tongue and immediately fills his entire mouth with a fiery burning, which causes the horrible tasting slime to mix with the distinct flavor of charring flesh as it rolls between his cheeks and tongue.  Soon the taste of rotting meat and fresh blood bloom along his teeth and palate, and Stiles can feel himself choke against the searing flavor of whatever had been in the crystal cup.  

He tries not to swallow it, but Peter shoves his jaw and mouth close, and after throwing the cup away from himself, clamps his free hand down hard across Stiles’ nose, cutting off his breathing.  It causes him to reflexively swallow the horrible mixture still swishing around in his mouth, and it leads liquid flames racing down his throat as it goes.  The horrible fire blooms deep in his stomach when it hits, and it causes all the muscles in his body to seize up in horrible agonizing pain, his fingers and toes twitching as he tries to fight back the pain.  It’s nearly unbearable, but Peter doesn’t seem to care, because he cards his hand through Stiles’ hair in a mocking comfort gesture while Stiles feels his insides alight within him.  

“Don’t fight it, my brave Stiles.  It’ll be all over soon.  You’re mine.  You’ve always been mine.”  The man whispers down into his ear as he tucks a few stray strands back behind his hear tenderly.  “And now it’s time for you to join me.  After all this time, you’ll be mine at last.”  

Stiles gasps, coughing blood up and out of his raw throat, and can feel himself gasp for breath around the liquid obstruction hiding in his throat.  His pathetic attempts just make Peter chuckle under his breath as he continues to whisper horrors into his ear, but as it goes on and on, Stiles can feel himself slipping away.  He can no longer hear Peter with the same certainty and clarity as he had in the beginning, and the fire radiating through him has grown into a roaring inferno, threatening to swallow him up the moment he stops fighting.  

The words “You’re Mine, Stiles.” echo through his head as the world tilts and goes black around him, finally gobbling him up.  "Blood of my blood."  

And with a gasp, Stiles wakes up in the main hallway outside his bedroom door, his fingers gripping tight at the many little wolves and wooden carvings that litter the walls.  There is blood crusting beneath his nails, and his shoes and socks are missing as they had been in his nightmare.  There is red tinting his vision too, of his left eye, as it had in the horror vision, and he feels slimy viscous dribbling out the corner of his mouth.  Suddenly, his stomach cramps, and he leans forward just as he expels an alarming amount of what looks like days old blood mixed with fresh all along his feet and the wall and floor.  He coughs pathetically as the fire once more rages inside him, and tears sting his eyes before running down his face in twin rivers.  He needs to find someone, he needs to find help, and he needs to do it now.  

Stiles presses on, down the never-ending hallway towards the grand staircase, where he pauses briefly to cower at the foot of Peter Hale’s looming portrait.  His guts feel like they’re going to liquify and come out his mouth as well, and with as much panic and movement as he can muster, he lurches down the staircase.  At the foot of the stairs, he trips, and goes down with a loud and resounding bang, a muffled scream pouring out of him that brings footsteps running in his direction.  He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, he sees the stricken faces of Argent, Erica, Isaac, and Derek standing above and to the side.  He coughs hard again, and more blood speckles into the air from his breath, spraying a fine mist across the polished stone floor and the edges of Isaac’s pants.  

There is this shared look of shocked horror on all their faces, and for just a beat, Stiles lays there silent, before he hysterically tries to pour words out of his broken and bleeding mouth.  

“He hunted all those children in here, the dead ones, in the house.  Josiah and Elizabeth and Mary and all of them from the book.”  He gasps and spits more blood up, rolling onto his side and away from the lump of stairs plastered against his back, reaching for them.  “He took them up here...  He played games with them, the ones from his mills, and he burned them up in the fireplace but she found out what he did and she killed him for it.  She killed him but it didn’t stop him...”  

“Jesus Christ...” He hears someone say faintly above him before large hands grip him and help him sit up, holding him firm against their strong chest.  Stiles can’t see Derek anymore, and not even the alarm of the earlier attack makes him pull away, he’s so focused on telling them what had happened.  To the children, to him, to them.  He has to tell them, he needs to get it off his chest before it suffocates him.  Before he lets the house and its long-dead master claim his very soul.  

He takes a shaky breath, and his skin, which had taken on an ashy pallor, begins to turn an alarming shade of gray before all their eyes.  Before anyone else can react, all his strength gives out, and he full slumps against Derek, mumbling and crying and whimpering in what can only be pain.  He’s bloody, but still talking, and none of what he’s saying is making any sense to anyone but him.  

“-- he didn’t kill her she killed him and ran away with her baby, and she tried to escape but he followed her in death and --” Dr. Argent grabs his face in his hands gently, tilting it towards him as Stiles continues to shake in his hands.  His face is an alarming gray, and his eyes are quickly glazing over.  “-- the skulls in there, in the trap, and I found them.  He tried to stop me but she lead me there and I couldn’t help it, I had to look, and I found them, just like they wanted --”

“Get a blanket!”  Argent nearly roars, concern flooding his voice as Erica drops to her knees beside Stiles, reaching towards him as Isaac bounds away to find the demanded blanket.  “Quick!”  

“It’s okay, Stiles...  We’re all here, now, it’ll be okay.  Stay with us, Stiles.  Stay with us.”  Erica whispers in a mantra before turning frightened eyes on Argent.  “What’s wrong with him?  What’s happening.”  

“He’s in shock.  He’s gotten hurt, and he’s going into shock.  Come on now!”  

Argent prompts Derek to grab Stiles tight as he moves to the young man’s other side, taking hold gently but firmly.  Together, they pick him up off the floor and begin to carry him towards the Red Room, so that they can get a good look at him in the strong light of the fire.  The sun had been setting for a good while now, and the long shadows cast in the Great Hall are unproductive when it comes to looking for wounds.  Slowly, they make their way down the hallway, while Stiles remains sprawled ugly in Derek and Argent’s arms.  Together, they shuffle him to the same couch from his dream, and briefly Stiles becomes lucid enough to fight them before all the energy seems to drain out of him and he falls back into the padding.  

“After Rene, after she killed herself, he turned into a real monster.  More than he ever had been when she’d still been alive.  He did fill the house with children... he did, but they weren’t laughing, not like him, not in the end and he just --”

“Stiles, please, Stiles take a deep breath with me... Please, try to breathe.” Argent prompts, but Stiles won’t focus on him or his command.  “Come on now, take a deep breath and try to relax.”  

“-- and now they’re all locked in here together and he won’t let go of them!  He won’t let them go!”

Argent grabs his face, roughly this time, and shouts his name at him once, twice, three times before Isaac returns with a blanket.  Erica takes it and covers him quickly with it, Derek helping to get the material around his lanky body as it twists and squirms on the couch, trying to keep him still so that he doesn’t fall off the bench.  

“Stiles!  Look at me, Stiles.”  Chris continues.  “Look at me!”  

Stiles manages to focus on him, but his breath is labored, and his mouth is still spraying bits of blood from an unseen source, soaking his collar and his pale cheeks with the striking color.  His eyes are wide and wild, and for a moment, Dr. Argent sees Hell burning within their depths.  

“Peter Hale.  He’s in the house.  He’s still here... he never left.”  Stiles half-whispers, and on the one side of him, Dr. Argent can see Erica, Isaac, and Derek freeze and go still.  “He’s still here.”  

“No, Stiles, listen to me.  You have to understand this, so let me explain what’s happening to you...” He pauses for a deep breath, and a look of guilt races across his face.  “You’re participating in a study on group hysteria and fear.”

Around him, everyone reacts, shouts rise up, and threats are made.  Chris ignores them so that he can continue to focus on Stiles, who looks so small and lost in the blanket wrapped up on the couch.  

“I’ve given you a powerful verbal suggestion that you’re in a haunted house.  I picked Hale House because it fits the expectations, and has a reputation all its own.  It was my... it was my theater, my stage, that I used to scare you.”

Behind him, Erica glances at Isaac.  He’s been right all along, this was never a study on insomnia or sleeping disorders.  It was all about the fear Argent could generate.  

“Modeling small-group dynamics in the narrative hallucination format, that was your goal.  You brought us here to scare us!  Insomnia, that was just the decoy, what we focused on instead of the real issue!”  Isaac shouts, anger lacing his words.  “You can’t do that!  That’s unethical!”  

“Is this true?”  Stiles gets out, confusion and pain evident on his face, heedless of Isaac's outburts.  “Have I been making all this up in my head?  Am I crazy?”  

Argent sighs.

“I hadn’t done a study on how group fear affects individual perceptions or performance.  Mass hysteria is like a story, Stiles.  A communal story that everyone gets and adds a little bit to, small steps at a time.  Eventually, everyone starts to believe it, and is effected.  The story shapes what we see and hear.”  He runs a hand through his hair tiredly.  “We interpret everything through it, and make it fit the story we’ve been given.  I started out the story when I gave you the history behind the Hale House, and then you all added to it.  Even Derek added to it with his story in the greenhouse, remember?  That’s what this experiment has all been about, but it’s over now, okay?  I’m pulling the plug.  This is all my fault.”  

“It’s not real?  Peter Hale, he’s not real?  I made him up?”  Stiles sounds broken and lost and just as small as he looks, his eyes watering and wide.  It strikes Argent then just what he’s done to this poor kid, so far from his home.  He’s done this to Stiles.  “I didn’t make him up.  I couldn’t...”  

“Your fear of him was very real.  That’s all the ghost anyone needs.” He tries to placate.  “You gave the ghost life in your mind.”  

“How could you do this to people!”  Erica shouts at him, ignoring the searching way Stiles has curled into himself, the way his hands run nervous patterns over his face and tug at his hair.  “Look at him!  Look what you’ve done to him!”  

But Stiles bucks in her arms, furious and desperate.  

“This is real, I’m not making it up!  Erica, you saw it!  You were there -- the banging in the fireplace and the taps in the night.  You, you all saw the painting!  There were things that couldn’t be explained!”  Stiles cries.  “And what about the dreams and the smell in the hallway?  The bones in the fireplace --”

“Stiles, it makes sense.  It all makes sense.  You and I, we were scaring each other, working each other up, and in the dark, our mind played tricks on us.”  Erica retorts.

“But the painting and the bones!”  

No one says anything in return, and the silence tortures Stiles, just as the House has.

“I know you think I did that, to the painting, but I didn’t!  Go look in the fireplace!  You’ll see what I’m talking about.”  He sobs and Argent presses him back down into the couch cushion, tucking the blanket around him.  “You’ll see what he’s done to all the children from the mills!  He’s killed hundreds!  Their bones are in the fireplace!”  

“Why would they be in the fireplace, Stiles?”  Derek finally says, voice calm and even.  “I’ve cleaned that ash trap a million times.  There aren’t any bones in there, just old wood and long burned ash.”  

“Because that’s where he burned them up after he killed them!”  Stiles shrieks hysterically, and it sounds so hollow, so completely delusional, that it strikes them each deep.  “He just left them there, and if you didn’t see them, then you’re blind!  Or in on it!”  

“There are no bones in the fireplace, Stiles.” Derek starts again.

“I can’t believe you’re not going to look!  Oh, god, you’re not even going to try to look!”  He shouts again, and begins to thrash in earnest now, any prior pain and fatigue quickly receding in the wake of his frustrations.  It puts a new wind in his sails, and it takes both Derek and Dr. Argent to hold him down as he wails with helpless rage.  “You have to go look!”  

Erica tries to comfort him, to shield him from Argent and Hale with her body as she shoves her way in, but it’s not enough.  Stiles is too worked up, too furious with them to be shut down that easily, and even Isaac is keeping his distance from them.  Stiles is shaking, and wether from fear or from shock, Erica isn’t sure.  

“There has to be a monster in the end of the maze, Stiles.  We make them up.  That’s how we deal with things in everyday life that are too hard or too terrible to deal with.  Like losing someone, even if that someone is cruel and horrible to us.  Or like being alone.”  

Stiles stops at these words, freezes and stares up at him, looking completely lost.  He feels totally alone as he’s held tight against the couch, as these others tell him how crazy he is, how looney he’s become in his own pain.  

Argent reaches down to him once more, but he shrinks away, and the action is enough to give Chris pause.  He realizes that he’s done this to Stiles, and that his actions here disgust him.  He saw how much the younger man was breaking, how much this study was breaking him from the inside out, and yet he let it happen.  He left Stiles alone and cold in the dark to fend for himself, when he knew, he knew, that Stiles wouldn’t make it to the end.  Some part of him knew that these were the results he’d get when he’d first started out, when he’d first met Stiles.  And yet he continued anyways.  Heedless and uncaring about anything but his data and test results.  

“I’m so sorry, Stiles.  I didn’t mean to do this to you.”  

But sometimes, sorry just isn’t enough.

Chapter Text

Stiles lies in his bed, shivering, shaking nearly so hard that his very bones rattle under his skin, and continues to spit and cough up blood at random intervals.  Dr. Argent has long since given him his handkerchief to mop it up, and despite checking his mouth, tongue, and the back of his throat for injuries, he can find none.  There is no obvious explanation for Stiles’ bleeding, and with each passing minute, it gets worse and worse.  His skin pales out more and more.  It terrifies them all, but Erica remains with him, determined to stay with him until he falls asleep.  She desperately, desperately needs a drink.   

Erica had lit a small candelabra that stood proudly in the far corner of the room, the two candles more than ample lighting for Stiles, who is resting now.  The small strings of crystal beads dangle from its arms invitingly, and twinkle faintly as a soft draft of air stirs them from their resting spot.  Stiles has his eyes firmly trained on them, and as he lies there watching the flicker of the candle light upon the walls, shadows are cast across the room and his face.  It lets corners linger in shadow and darkness, and he cannot bear to look at them for too long, just in case.  In case his eyes decide to deceive him once more.  He watches as small plumes of smoke waft up and dance in the air before puffing out of existence, and he can clearly see where the faint, radiating heat melts small portions of the frost window pane it stands before.  The window is shut.  

Stiles falls into a fitful sleep, and he looks so pale against the bold purples of the bed clothes and pillows he’s resting on.  It makes him look like a fragile china doll, she thinks, desperate for attention and poised to break.  She’s afraid to leave him for even a moment, but even she needs a break, and after twenty minutes of his restless sleep, she quietly leaves for the kitchen.  

Isaac’s noisily munching on a bag of chips he’s pulled from somewhere when she comes in, and he’s definitely ignoring a brooding Derek and a concerned-looking Dr. Argent.  She decides to take his lead and walks by them without a word or even a second glance, opting to pour herself a drink.  The chair next to Isaac is empty but welcoming, and Erica can do little more than just drop heavily into it, suddenly very, very tired.  They all look that way, though.  Exhausted from the skin down.  

It is awkward and silent until Chris breaks the silence, his voice heavy but questioning.  

“Where did he come up with it, though?  That’s what I’d like to know.  How did he put all that together?”  He rubs his chin and fiddles with his collar as he speaks.  “There’s only so much you can draw from what I’d given him, and even with Derek’s input, he shouldn’t have had so many little details.  It doesn’t make sense.”  

“Is that a series of compassionate inquiries, or ones of science?”  Isaac mocks, but still refuses to look back at either man.  His voice is hard, and his face even harder.  “Because it sounds like the latter, to me.”  

“It’s just a question, Isaac.”  He snips back, but his brows furrow, and Erica can see it from the corner of her eyes.  “I’d just like to know so that I can help him.”  

“He got some of the child labor stuff from me, I think.  But there’s this book he found, filled with names and dates and Families from Hale’s Mills.”  Isaac looks sad, and he tugs a handful of hair as he speaks.  “It has all these birth dates and death dates and names in it.  It’s really, really detailed.”  

“I... I was playing games with him, Big City games, and I know it was wrong, but you didn’t see the way he’d look at me.  Like I was someone important, like I could hang the moon if I wanted to.  I liked feeling like that.”  Erica chimes in, the aching weight of guilt causing her to stutter slightly as she starts.  “I don’t think it helped that he was looking for friends, but got us instead.  And you sort of broke his heart, Doctor Argent.”  

He looks guilty, and she knows that he was aware.  That it’s slowly tearing him apart, bit by bit, to realize the full extent of what he’s done to Stiles since the young man got to the Hale House.  Derek looks a little abashed too, and Erica hopes to god that he knows just what he’s helped to do to Stiles, to his mind.  She hopes they both stew in it.  

“Is he asleep?”  Derek asks, his voice quieter and calmer than Erica has ever heard it.  “Is he doing any better?”  

“Yes, he’s asleep.  But I promised I wouldn’t leave him alone the whole night.  Someone needs to stay with him, in case he gets worse.  He’s still bleeding.”  

Argent nods, gatherings his briefcase and bag off the floor, and leaves.

Derek trails after him.  

Together, they step into the dark, vast room that is the great mezzanine, the dark glass panes glinting and glittering as they walk by.  The faint outline of the far off fireplace looms in the darkness before them, more a mouth now than ever before.  Dr. Argent’s phone lights the way towards a standing lamp, and as it flickers to light, they take in the fireplace that Stiles was ranting about.  It’s clearly been opened, the ash drop disturbed, because there’s a halo of debris and soot surrounding the giant metal doors.  Sighing, Chris sets down his briefcase and approaches, sliding the half-open mesh screen out of his way as he and Derek climb inside.  They stand for a moment in silence, both just looking down at the door with clear trepidation, before Derek reaches down to open the ash drop.  But it doesn’t budge, despite Derek’s attempts to open it, and soon he realizes why it won’t move.  At the end, jammed into the ledge beneath the door but before drop, is the hooked fire poker, lodged in the way.  It catches on the door when he tries to open it, and won’t budge when he or Dr. Argent try to pry it free.  It’s stuck firm, and refuses to budge even an inch.  

There will be no looking inside tonight, and probably not in the near future, because it’s going to require tools to get the door off or the poker out.  Derek doesn’t have that kind of thing stored at the house or in the shed, so it’ll have to wait.  Argent just shakes his head as he considers the floor, and he feels infinitely stupid for even coming in here to check.  Hale didn’t kill children and burn their bodies in this fireplace, and there are no bones in the ash drop.  Stiles was hallucinating, he was sure of it.  His mental state has been unstable since before they even arrived, and he’d just exacerbated the condition.  Made it so much worse.  He feels so stupid standing in this fireplace with Hale, looking for imaginary monsters in the dark depths of Stiles’ mind.  He feels ridiculous and responsible and he knows, he knows, that Stiles won’t recover from something like this.  From the hurt he’s helped to inflict upon him.  

And the guilt crashes down.  

--

Stiles lies in the bed, asleep, but his restlessness is clear even in the dark.  The room itself has long since gone cold, and Erica had blown the candles out when she’d come to bed, leaving the shadows to their own means.  Stiles doesn’t notice the faint pulsing, throbbing that some of them have taken on in the corner, but he does hear the long, low, faint sound of feverish murmuring coming from somewhere within the room.  It is inarticulate, and sounds like many voices combined into one.  He stirs, and as he blinks his eyes open, he hears the sound again.  It sounds closer now, like it’s just out of sight, hiding in the shadowed corners of the room.  It sounds like it’s looking for something, searching the house...

The wall sconces that hang in the center of the room catch his attention, and in the pale moon glow cast from the window, he sees the twisting figures in the plaster and wood as the low relief sculptures start to twist and thrash in their places doting the walls.  The wolves bend and buck, and the small children’s faces turn together and stare upwards, over the bed, where the shadows start to gather and come together.  The decorative arches throb and expand, and Stiles realizes that they’re eyes, searching, starring down at him where he’s frozen in the bed, the form of Erica still asleep next to him.  The ceiling moves and bucks down, and the eyes blink heavily.  They’re not human, and they’re dark, almost unseeing, still searching as the murmuring starts to sound closer and closer.  

Quietly, Stiles leans towards Erica, his mouth moving, trying to find words, any words, to warn her.  He needs to her to wake up, to see this, to know that he’s not crazy, and that he’s not making it up.  But most of all, he needs her to flee with him.  Flee from Peter Hale’s searching gaze.  

“Erica...  Erica, get up.”  He reaches his hand out, under the covers, and feels her hand take his in a tight grip.  Her hands are freezing, but he’s distracted when the eyes on the ceiling suddenly lock in on him, and babbling, liquid like voice mounts, pushes at his ears and consciousness.  “Erica, we have to leave... Now.”  

The eye roams over the room, the shadows moving with it...

“Oh, god.  It’s looking for me.  He’s looking for me.”  He whispers urgently to Erica, whose yet to move more than just grasping her hand.  “He can’t find me.  He can’t.”  

And then the voice stops.  Erica’s grip tightens even more, almost past the point of pain, and he grimaces.  Her cold fingers and long nails are digging into his own, and despite looking to her, he cannot see her.  It’s far too dark in here.  

In the place of the man’s voice comes another sound, one far higher in pitch and more desperate in meaning.  It wails through the walls, and it is a sound of sheer agony.  It is not of this earth.  But he recognizes it, despite it being as inhuman as the mumbling from earlier.  Stiles struggles, racked between the pain in her hand where Erica grips her tight and the tortured child’s cry.  He has to get at the child, to help it. 

“A child... No, no, no!  I’m right here!  I’m right here!”  

He speaks and the eye focusses dead on him, making him freeze in place once more.  The wolves all turn to him as one, and their eyes glow red, as red as Derek’s had when he’d struck him down in the hallway outside the center of the houses’ maze.  Erica’s hand grips his even tighter, and her nails break the skin on the back of his hand, drawing blood to match that faint trickle still escaping from the corners of his mouth and on his breath.  Stiles sucks in a pained hissing, reaching with his other hand to her wrist, to try to get her to let go and run with him...

He finds a man’s wrist instead, unfamiliar rings digging into his flesh.  Stiles hadn’t noticed them before in his panic, but now he feels them, two of them, one on a ring finger, and the other on a pointer finger.  Erica doesn’t wear rings on this hand, and her limbs are much smaller.  There is someone in bed with Stiles that Stiles doesn’t know.  And it is a man much bigger than Isaac or Dr. Argent or even Derek.  

Another hand grips his wrist tightly where he’s trying to pry the hand off, and it stops him from moving any further, pulling him until he’s lying on his side facing the mass under the sheets with him.  Ice cold feet and toes trail up his legs, burning icy paths as they linger against his shins before one leg wraps over his own, pressing them down and together at the knee.  Stiles cannot move, cannot turn anything away but his face as whoever is in the bed with him moves closer, their body shifting as it shoves him roughly onto his back.  Whoever is looming above him and holding him down tightly has a grip of steel, and Stiles can feel irregular breaths as they’re puffed out against his neck before a cold and slimy tongue laps up his pulse points and over his adam’s apple.  Teeth graze it slightly before they latch on tight, biting down tight and hard, pain blooming in his neck.  Stiles cries out, and gasps for breath as they bear down on his flesh harder.  They’re trying to break the skin, he realizes, and the shock of the entire situation shakes him out of his stunned stupor.  

Stiles bucks and he kicks out, fighting against the pinning figure, cussing and crying and flailing as hard as he possibly can, desperate to get away.  The wailing children are crying faintly in the background, above the heavy ringing in his ears, and he fights harder.  He’s desperate now, to get away, and before he knows it, a much smaller hand has taken hold of his bound ones and wrenches him free of the bed.  He hits the floor with a choked-off scream, skidding across the polished stone, and away from the bed.  

The room flashes into brilliance as he all but pulls the lamp to him and yanks the chain down, nearly breaking it off in the process.  The bulb flickers slightly before its yellow glow illuminates the rest of the room, including the bed.  

It’s empty, and only the sheets where Stiles was laying have been disturbed.

The bed is cold on the other side.  

Chapter Text

Stiles barges out into the hallway as fast as his feet can take him, skidding on the stone cold flooring, the sound of breaking glass and clanging metal following in his wake.  The window inside his room lies in pieces on the floor before it, and the curtains blow inwards as a rush of icy-cold wind snaps in at his heels.  He’s not sure what’s caused the breakage, but it came from inside his room, sounding heavy, and he’s sure as Hell not sticking around to find out what broke the glass.  Because someone’s in there.  Someone’s in there, and he doesn’t want to meet them.  

His neck is throbbing where the bite rests.  

He’s broken into a run before he can even look backwards over his shoulder and back into his room, and now his attention is all on the many hallways twisting in front of him.  The far off cry is still ringing in his ears, and every so often, he can hear it again and again as it squeaks down the corridors.  But each time it comes from farther and farther away, as if its being drug in the opposite direction faster than he can run to meet it.  Stiles doesn’t give it much thought before deciding to chase after it.  Chase after them, the children in danger, and doesn’t hear Erica’s distant cry of his name as it rings out her fears and concern and a cry for help.  Stiles doesn’t know that she knows he’s gone from his room.  That she’s gone to find Isaac, Chris, and Derek.  

Halls sprawl away from him and into the darkness reaching out before him, branching out in almost every direction imaginable.  They’re dark and winding, and Stiles tries to figure out where he is within the house, but it’s not long before he’s truly lost, stuck in the dark, and trapped by himself.  It’s just how it was before, when he and Erica were lost in the maze of the house on the first day, exploring together.  Like rats in a maze, he thinks, just like Erica had said.  Stiles knows just how alone he is in that moment, that he’s been tricked into leaving the safety of his bedroom where he was being looked in on by Erica.  He’s been thoroughly duped and it stings.  

Panting, he stops short, skidding to a halt as he lumbers into the near-by wall.  His breath is catching in the back of his throat, and his chest is heaving as he tries to take a deep breath.  He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, and whips around to face whoever is there, before he realizes that he’s come to rest standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror.  It is nothing but his reflection looking back at him from a tarnished surface.  

There’s something wrong with it, wrong with his reflection.  

Wrong with his face.  

Cautiously, Stiles steps across the hall towards it, eyes locked on his reflection’s face, when the reflected-self begins to smile widely back at him.  It’s tooth in a way that his smiles have never been, and probably never will be.  Because his teeth don’t look anything like that.  They aren’t that white.  His eyes take on a demonic glint next, and there’s a sharp tint of insanity that stings its way across the reflection’s face.  Stiles knows that he’s not making this face, this smile, and he’s certainly not moving towards himself like that, his hips swaying erotically as he goes.  Stiles is pretty sure that his hips have never moved that way in his life.  

Stiles writhes in horror, twitching anxiously in front, but can’t seem to pull himself away from the mirror or the demented reflection.  His reflection’s grin continues to widen, becoming more and more insane looking.  The bangs lengthen before curling ever so slight, too long for his face.  Stiles’ face is morphing into someone else’s.  

A loud crashing sound echoes down the hall, and Stiles recoils from the reflection that’s begun reaching for him from within the mirror.  The noise seems to break whatever spell he’d been lulled into, and he knocks himself backwards and away.  

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

Stiles begins to run again as the banging noise chases him down the hallway, through an open doorway, and into the moving Hall of Pillars.  Stiles had been in this room earlier in his stay with Erica, and once the doors are opened, a mechanism outside starts up, which causes the floor to start twirling as eerie carnival-like music plays through the walls.  Star lights drop down out of the ceiling panels and light up the space, and the airy painting on the floor, pillars, and ceiling is illuminated even more.  All the lights twinkle and reflect off the walls which are all mirrors, and it is hard to remain standing because of the rotation.  It causes Stiles to stagger now and almost fall to the floor, and he’s desperate because the banging noise is still coming after him, following and chasing him ever further into the house’s interior.  

The banging peaks, crescendoes, and then recedes, as if it’s unable to enter the tiny room with him, kept at bay by the heavy double doors.  It’s still audible, as if at a distance from him now, and Stiles can’t believe his good fortune.  He can see himself scramble to get back upright in the many mirrors he passes as the floor continues to slowly turn, and once he gets standing again, he notices something odd out of the corner of his eye.  

On a mirror on the wall behind her stands a version of himself.  He’s still in it, not flailing or trying to keep his balance like he actually is in real life.  Instead, he’s still as a statue, his face impassive, blank.  His eyes are almost lifeless, and the blankness in his posture is alarming.  But what worries him the most is the way that the other version of himself just stares at him, as if waiting for some kind of cue, before twin hands wrap themselves around him from behind and a maniacally grinning Peter Hale steps against his double’s back.  The other him lets a small grin grace his face before his own hands come up and rest atop Peter’s own, fingers lacing tightly together, before blood starts to pour out of the other’s nose and down his chin and neck.  Neither seem to notice as they stand tightly embraced, but Stiles does.  

Stiles backs away, trying to get back to the doors on the other side of the room, as the banging noise suddenly increases again, shaking the very room’s walls and the mirrored glass hung upon them.  The vision of Peter Hale has his hands running over Stiles doppelgänger, sliding up and down and all over, fondling him as he stands impassively, like he’s happy for the unwanted attention.  It makes Stiles slightly sick, like he wants to vomit or collapse or both.  It makes him think about throwing himself from the upper platforms in the greenhouse.  

“Why do you want me?”  He screams at them both as the other Stiles turns and begins trailing light kisses up Hale’s bare throat, the other meeting his eyes as his reflection bathes him in affection.  And his grin.  His grin.  “Who am I?  What do you want with me?”  

And then the figure of Peter Hale laces his hands around Stiles reflection’s throat, before beginning to squeeze tightly.  The other Stiles doesn’t even fight as the life is squeezed out of him, and for a moment he goes limp in Hale’s arms, the older man supporting all of the reflection’s dead weight.  His glassy eyes stare into Stiles’ very soul, before Stiles once again stands upright, dark bruises in a bright ring around his throat.  Around them both small children start to gather and come out of the shadows behind them both, a few taking hold of Stiles’ hands, others holding onto Peter’s clothing.  There are so many of them, Stiles thinks, so many children waiting for him...

Peter Hale’s voice whispers into his ear then, as if he’s standing behind him really, and not just in the tormented mirrored image.  It’s light and airy and Stiles can swear, swear, that he feels the man’s breath move across his face and in his hair as he speaks.  

“Welcome home, Genim.”

Stiles runs. 

He races down the many long hallways once more, bare feet flying beneath him, his ratty t-shirt and boxers hardly keeping him warm in the chill of the night.  He covers his face to keep from meeting his many reflections along the way, breezing through a long corridor filled with open floor-length windows, the gauzy curtains brushing against his body as he moves.  Stiles has a vague idea of where he’s headed, images of greenery and stone flickering in his vision before he bursts into the greenhouse and slips on the marble.  Condensation has gathered on the stone, making it slick, and Stiles isn’t graceful enough to counter-balance for the sudden lurch forward.  He slips and slides across the floor and into the base of the spiral staircase, his horror driving him up, up, up the twisting metal, the rickety thing swinging as he goes.  He can still hear the voice of the children echoing around, and he follows to where they’re calling him.  Up to the platform where Rene Hale had hung herself.  

They cry for him to help them, help them escape, to join them, to find them, and he finds himself crying now too.  They sound so lonely, just like him, and they want him.  They want him like no one else has ever wanted him before.  By now, he’s decided to find them, to join them, so he can protect them and love them just as much as they love him.  

“I’m here... I’m here.  I’m coming to you, I’m coming to you.  Don’t worry now, I’m almost there.”  He whispers gently, fingers winding into the elaborate steel stairs as he crawls upwards.  “I’m going to find you and help you.  We can live together, just like you want.”  

Stiles climbs higher and higher into the dark that reaches far above him.

The moment he reaches the platform, the very landing he’s been searching for his entire life, the doorway below bangs closed.  The heavy door slams into the jam, causing the stairs he’s just climbed to sway back and forth in their space, the creaking and groaning of old metal on metal ringing loudly in the open silence. It jerks him, makes him sway, before a pair of hands seizes him from behind.  Stiles panics and pitches himself forward, against the railing separating him from the floor a story and a half below.  He knows it is Peter Hale, come to throw him to his death.  He spins, expecting the worst... and finds the concerned face of Derek Hale.  

“Stiles, oh god, we’ve been looking everywhere for you!  Are you okay?”  He asks in a rush, and is speaking more than Stiles has ever heard him.  Derek sounds relieved to find him, but genuinely worried, and something within Stiles’ chest loosens.  “Your room was empty and there was glass everywhere.  We feared the worst, but then I couldn’t find you outside.”  

“I’m fine...  I’m fine, Derek, but the children...  They need me.”  He says, pleads really, starring down towards the ground below him, at his back.  “They need me, Derek.”  

“You’re right, Stiles, they do need you.”  Derek’s voice has gone cold suddenly, and his grip has tightened against Stiles’ arms, pinning them in place.  “I’m going to help deliver you.”  

Stiles whips back to face Derek only to find the other man’s eyes glowing a familiar shade of red, and a grin on his face crazy enough to rival even that of Peter Hale’s.  It makes Stiles shiver and shake as Derek pushes him back against the squeaky, fragile railing, the metal groaning under the sudden new pressure.  

“I can push you Stiles, right off the platform.  You can go out just like Rene did, expect you don’t stop after a sudden drop.  Not until you hit the floor below.  The cold, stone floor.”  Derek sounds gleeful, deranged, and Stiles doesn’t get it.  Doesn’t understand why this man who only seconds ago sounded so concerned for him suddenly wants to kill him.  “Or maybe, just maybe, I can fulfill another fantasy of yours...”

His hands release him suddenly before clamping down around his neck, thumbs pressed tight in a crushing grip against his adam’s apple and the lingering bite mark from earlier, cutting off his airway and causing a horrible amount of pain.  Derek’s eyes blaze red as they stop his breathing complete as they begin to squeeze and choke the life out of him.  Just like his reflection’s life had been choked out of him by Peter Hale.  

“Derek... Stop...” He hisses, or tries to, around the massive hands cutting his life short.  “Stop it...”  

“No, Stiles, not until you join us.  Welcome home, Stiles.  Welcome home, Genim.”  

The doorway below them bangs open again, once more shaking the staircase and railing they’re standing on, the platform rattling beneath both their bulks.  But Derek doesn’t seem concerned with the sudden new audience, and continues on his endeavor to end Stiles’ life tragically short.  Dr. Argent’s shout of his name doesn’t do much to help him either, even as Isaac’s cry of Derek’s name before another familiar voice rattles out into the air.  One that should be coming out of the mouth only inches from his face.  

Because below him, standing and starring up at the isolate platform in horror with the others, stands Derek, his eyes comically wide and their normal shade of brown.  With his air supply how it is, this confuses Stiles, but this other Derek’s sudden hiss makes him baulk and turn back towards him.  

Stiles can only manage a half-strangled sob as this Derek’s face contorts and changes, the skin shifting and almost seeming to melt at the sudden scrutiny.  This isn’t Derek, not the real Derek.  This is something else.  Something not human.  

“Let him go!”  The real Derek shouts as he begins climbing the stairs, the metal groaning and shrieking beneath all of their combined weight.  “You’re killing him!”  

He can only agree where he’s starting to drop, his knees going weak and them numb before they collapse out beneath him.  He slumps forwards into this monster’s grip, and the hands tighten even further, causing his vision to blur out at the edges before dimming.  By the time the real Derek is halfway up the stairs, his vision has gone dark at the edges, and his hands have almost stopped clawing at the hands that hold him tight.  Through the fog, he can hear the metal giving way, and Isaac’s cry of dismay as part of them starts to collapse, and Derek’s begging voice telling him not to move, that he’s going to get him help, get him down.  Save him.  

“It’s not going to hold your weight!”  Isaac sounds dismayed, frantic, and Stiles is sure that if he could see him, he would be clawing his hair out.  “It’s not going to hold!”  

“Just stay there, Stiles!  I’m coming!”  

The swaying is wilder and wilder the longer time seems to drag out, and as the last of Stiles’ strength seems to flee him, the platform and stairs give a heavy, shivering shudder, which knocks both him and the other Derek off their feet as one of the spiral staircases give way, and the real Derek is forced to leap onto the other as the one he’d been on plummets to the floor.  But it gives Stiles a sudden and intense chance to take a breath in, and he does noisily as he coughs and sputters at the newly acquired air.  The other Derek has, by now, staggered to his feet, and has a horrible look of twisted rage painted across his features.  Stiles fears for his life, even though Derek is quickly climbing his way towards them both, the other stairs rattling just as hard as the others had before they’d collapsed.  The support rods crease high above them both before the whole enormous column of steel supporting the last of the staircase bursts from the ceiling, plummeting downwards.  

Below, Isaac shoves Erica out of the way, and they both go sprawling as the bottom half of the stairs spiral out in a massive, deafening metal collapse.  Dr. Argent dashes out of the way, his phone flying out of his coat pocket at his sudden movements, and is crushed in the pile of metal as it hits the floor.  Above them, Derek dangles for a few moments before he slowly, agonizingly, pulls himself up and onto the platform where his copy stands, one hand tight on a dazed Stiles’ arm, trying to pull the younger man up and out of the now opened door at the end of the platform.  A door that hasn’t been opened, or able to open, in over two decades.  This horrible version of himself meets his eyes briefly before turning back to Stiles with its red, red gaze, and speaks with a voice that is Derek’s, but not.  

“The children want you, Genim.  They’re calling you, can’t you hear them?  They need you to find them, to join them.”  He says, as if he and Stiles are the only people in the world, mindless of the other Derek frozen a few paces away.  “Don’t you want to join them?”  

Stiles can feel his entire body shake, but can’t seem to muster up enough of anything to answer him.  Not in words, or with a shake of his head.  He’s just so completely exhausted.  

“They want you to join them, Genim.  I want you to join us, here, forever.”  

He shoves Stiles, and it sends him feet over head, toppling over the railing behind him.  His limbs flail out uselessly in their still semi-oxygen deprived state, unable to get more than a fleeting hand-hold on the edge of the platform as he flies past it.  His nails and finger tips scrape against the metal as they latch on for dear life, and Stiles’ arms and shoulders jar in their sockets at his sudden stop.  The evil Derek smiles down at him horrifically before turning and bolting out the open doorway behind him, leaving Stiles dangling high above the floor and the remains of the collapsed staircase.  The real Derek blinks after his clone as if he’s about to dart after him, before his eyes land on the frantic Stiles, and he lunged down to help him.  His hands latch onto Stiles’ wrists just as Stiles loses his grip for the final time, and there’s nothing stopping Stiles from plummeting to his death but Derek’s ridiculous upper body strength.  

Derek falls forward slightly, pulled by Stiles’ dangling weight, before his muscles bulge and strain, slowly pulling Stiles up and back towards the platform.  It takes some work, but eventually he manages to hoist Stiles back up to safety, and together they lay in a heap as the platform gently sways beneath them.  Stiles’ chest is still heaving, trying to make up for the few minutes of cut-off air supply, and Derek is breathing heavy in something that resembles fear.  

“Who the fuck was that?”  Derek asks after a long moment.  “And what the fuck was he doing to you?”  

“Taking my breath away, apparently.”  Stiles stutters out after an equally long moment, his breath still hitching and catching.  “Ironic, huh?  It was you, but it wasn’t.  All the package with none of the substance.”  

They share a small laugh before everyone’s concerned voices down below call up at them, asking if they’re alright.  Derek is the first to rise and respond, his voice more even than he clearly feels, and he runs a nervous hand through his hair multiple times before he manages to help Stiles back to his feet.  His neck is sore and on fire, and even though he can’t see it, he can see the way Derek’s eyes keep darting to the place where his clone’s hands had been.  There are already bruises forming.  He feels light in a way that usually happens after a long and grueling panic attack, and his head is still swimming and swaying as Derek takes his shoulders gently in his large hands and starts leading him towards the still open passage behind them.  He only hesitates a moment before leading Stiles into the darkness beyond, and back towards the group waiting for them below, hand in hand with a world-weary Stiles.  

“Don’t worry, Stiles.  We’ll figure this out.  We’ll figure this out.”  

And for once, Stiles sort of believes him.  

Chapter Text

When they get back to Stiles’ room, the window has been covered with a ripped up, plastic trash bag and duct tape, the glass cleared away, and the bed has been made up and turned down.  Stiles shudders when he sees it, but allows Derek to help him over to sit down on its edge heavily.  He’s dazed, distant feeling, and can’t really answer any of the questions they’re asking him right now despite his willingness too.  He just doesn’t know who the other figure was, but he knows it looked like Derek.  Exactly like Derek.  Identical in every way.  He hadn’t know the difference until the real Derek had showed below him and the platform.  Dr. Argent sounds unconvinced, while Isaac and Erica just stand back and watch, their faces drawn but silent and tinged with pity.  Stiles doesn’t get why they aren’t all totally concerned about the fact that there’s an evil Derek look-alike loose somewhere in the house, free to roam and cause as much destruction as he can.  When he asks if they saw the reflection again, they all just look at him in concern, and it’s Erica who breaks the comfort of the moment.  

“Stiles, we all saw someone up there with you, but Derek was on the catwalk, and we didn’t get a good look at whoever’s face it was.  It was too dark to see and you were standing in the shadows.”  She says calmly, evenly, and Stiles looks to Derek for support.  “The moon wasn’t out, we couldn’t see you very well.”  

Derek remains silent, his eyes turned away from Stiles’ own and to the floor, resisting any attempts Stiles makes to meet them with his own.  Like if he ignores the topic for long enough, it’ll just go away.  He can’t believe it.  He just can’t believe that they didn’t see what he saw, and the one other person who did, refuses to tell the others that he saw it too.  They still think he’s crazy, that he’s losing it completely.  That they’re not really in danger.  

“I can’t believe you still don’t believe me!”  He cries, shrieks, nearly screams in his hoarseness.  “You wouldn’t look in the ash drop in the fireplace, you wouldn’t believe me about the noises in the house, the painting!  What I saw in the green house or the fireplaces!  This!”  

Derek looks suddenly confused, his head snapping up finally, eyes search out Stiles’ own.  They’re slightly panicked, dark, but normal.  Not that lingering, horrible red.  

“What about the ash drop in the fireplace?  We’ve never talked about the ash drop, just the flue that one time.”  He says it slowly, looking at the others for confirmation.  “You never mentioned the fireplace again.  Or any fireplace.”  

“What?”  Isaac asks, gracelessly, his own confusion plain, a flickering light of concern in his eyes.  “Derek, you where there with all of us when Stiles came into the room and told us about the bodies he found in there.  The skulls.  You said there wasn’t anything down there but ash and wood, that you’d cleaned it a thousand times.  And then you told us about that wind storm when Erica’s fireplace went crazy.”

“We checked it together, Derek.”  Chris says uncertainly, finally looking like he has some doubts about this whole event.  “Afterwards.  We couldn’t get it open because it was jammed by Stiles‘ discarded poker.”      

“But I haven’t...  That ash drop has been sealed since Peter Hale’s time, way before my family inherited it or I was even born.  There haven’t been any fires built in that fireplace in ages, so there’s no need to clean it.”  He explains patiently, as if to a small child.  “I’ve never cleaned the trap before.  Never had a reason to.  And I don’t know anything about Erica’s fireplace story or a windstorm.  There haven’t been any windstorms up here lately, not the right season.”  

“You did, Derek.  You were there, I know you were there.” Stiles reaffirms tightly.  “And if you don’t remember it, I’m sure Dr. Argent has it all on his digital recorder.  Every conversation.  He’s keeping them all on it.  I know he has one, I saw it that day in the Red Room.  When Chris came back and asked me about all my tests and how I was doing with them.  I was going to leave then, but I didn’t because of what he’d said on the tape.  I got upset and ran instead.  How he acted like he didn’t know I’d found out about the recordings...”  

“Stiles, what are you talking about?”  Dr. Argent says next, equally confused now instead of just curious, if not more so than Derek.  “I was never with you alone in the Red Room, not in the entire time we’ve been in the house together.  The only time we’ve been alone was that one time in the green house, and a few times after dinner.  I never asked you about your tests, or how you were doing, and I had no idea you knew about my tape recorder.  That’s all really unethical and can tamper with the data and results.”  

“But you did, Chris.  I saw you in there after Stiles came out of there in a hurry.”  Derek replies.  “You were just standing there, watching him leave.  Like he had said something  hilarious to you.”  

“I saw you too, from the end of the hallway.”  Isaac says quietly, and he’s trying to ignore the unethical comment, Stiles can tell.  “You watched Stiles run off before going back in the room, and Derek was further down the hallway.  You stayed in there a while before coming back out.  You said hello to me.”  

“I was never alone in the Red Room with Stiles.”  Dr. Argent reaffirms.  “And I have no idea what you’re both talking about, Derek, Isaac.  I have no idea what’s going on.  I don’t remember any of that.”  

Stiles blinks at them all owlishly.  

“Was it just a coincidence that you told me the story about Rene in the green house, Derek?”  He asks with a shaky voice, and he dreads the answer, the reveal.  “Did you just do it to scare me?  To hurt me?”  

“What story in the green house?  Stiles, I have no idea what you’re talking about.  I didn’t even know you were hurt and sick until Erica came and got me this evening when I came in to prepare food for tomorrow.  I’ve been staying in the grounds-keeper’s cottage at the edge of the property since we got locked in here.  I haven’t been in the house with you guys properly in days, not unless I’m cleaning or cooking, and I never told you any story about Rene Hale in the green house or helped you check any fireplaces.  I don’t know anything about the Hale House history.  My sister was the one who knew everything.”  

At that, everyone gives pause to blink at him together.  It’s then, when Stiles is taking him in for what feels like the first time, that Stiles notices the singular ring that Derek wears on his right hand, on his middle finger.  It’s a thick silver band with some sort of flowing design wrapping around the center of the band, and it’s strange in its starkness against his flesh.  It’s unique, and utterly foreign.  New.  Stiles has never seen Derek wear this ring before.  Stiles has never seen Derek wear any jewelry before.  Not in all the time they’ve interacted and been in Hale House together.  

“Derek, since when do you wear that ring?”  

Derek turns to look at him before his eyes rest on his right hand, on the ring.

“I always wear it, Stiles.  I have since you arrived here, remember?  I was wearing it the first day at the gate.  You saw it when I took my work gloves off.  I never take it off.”  Derek’s voice is even, but his face is screaming with a thousand questions.  “It was my sister Laura’s.  I wear it to remember her by.”  

“Derek, this past week you haven’t been wearing that ring when I’ve seen you.”  Stiles replies, his own eyes focused solely on the ring in question.  “You haven’t had it on once.”  

“But Stiles, I never take it off.  And like I said, I haven’t been in the house with you guys in a while.  I didn’t even know there was a problem until tonight.  I thought we were just still waiting around for Dr. Argent’s assistants to come back and let us out of the gate.”  

“I believe you, Derek.  Because what we’ve been seeing, what we’ve all experienced, the missing interactions, the weird behavior, the stories and the photos... It’s all the house’s doing, Peter Hale’s work.  The house is after us, and you’re a pawn, just like the rest of us.”  

Stiles is certain of it.  

--

Dr. Argent and Erica stand in the doorway to Stiles’ bedroom together, with Isaac and Derek somewhere down in the kitchen together getting tea and coffee for all of them.  They’d deemed it wise to not wander the house alone, especially since there were others here apparently, lurking in the dark, others with the intentions of harm.  None of them were really certain what was going on, or what it was that everyone else had seen over the past week or so, but one thing was certain.  They were all in danger.  And it wasn’t smart to willingly walk into a trap all alone.  So here they find themselves, each buddied up, constantly on watch, on guard.  The patched up window in Stiles’ room flutters slightly under the strain of the late night breeze blowing by outside, but Stiles is comfortable and warm beneath the many blankets on the bed with him.  He’d fallen back to sleep some time earlier, the strain of the night and his wanderings getting the better of them, and Dr. Argent had agreed to take the first watch with Erica.  To monitor Stiles, and keep him safe.  But also to keep watch for whoever was out there and apparently looked exactly like them.  

They’re standing in hushed, grim silence, and everyone feels as exhausted as they look.  Weird things are going on and it’s terrifying to contemplate to extent of the damage done by all of this.  To all of them, not just Stiles.  Because now, Chris could see it in Erica and Isaac’s faces as well, and in the corner of Derek’s too.  

“We can’t leave him.”  Erica announces strongly, suddenly.  “Just, I want to go search the house, find whoever’s doing this to us, stop them....  Find out how they’re doing this.  But we can’t, not without leaving Stiles.  But how are they able to look just like each one of us?  There’s something going on here, Chris, and I want to know what it is.”  

“I know, Erica.  I want that as well.”  

“Whoever’s wandering around the house, Stiles has heard them.  Seen them, and he thinks they’re ghosts.  Thinks they’re the embodiment of evil, thinks they’re Peter Hale.”  Erica spits.  “I don’t like it, and I want to go look for them again.”  

“No.  If they’re hiding somewhere within the house, they’ll have to stay that way until tomorrow, until the night is over.  We can’t risk looking for them in the dark, where they clearly have the advantage over us.”  Dr. Argent replies calmly.  “What we have to do now is stay together, stay with Stiles, and Isaac, and Derek.  Keep together.”  

They will try.  

--

Isaac has volunteered to take the next watch, and has camped himself out on the edge of Stiles’ settee at the foot of the bed.  Behind him, the bathroom doors are all open, and the gentle lamp light spills in from Erica’s room where the others are gathered.  The illumination falls gently across Stiles‘ face, and the way his body has curled into itself, into the fetal position, upon the bed.  Scared even in sleep.  He doesn’t feel much better, really.  And Isaac knows that Erica is laying on the bed in the other room, nearly asleep herself, a forgotten cup of tea left cold on the nightstand table.  Derek and Chris are both slouched in chairs at either side of the room, and all of the hallway doors have been locked from the inside to keep whoever might be in the house out.  It is just them now, Erica’s room, the bathroom, and the room Stiles’ is currently resting in.  Small, safe, and quiet.  

Isaac settles back against the bed for a moment before deciding he needs more coffee from the thermos in the other room, and he gets up as quietly as he can before wandering into the other room.  He sees where Dr. Argent is struggling to stay awake, his eye lids drooping before shooting back open, over and over again, before they finally close and remain that way.  Isaac can’t blame him, and doesn’t begrudge him the sleep.  As long as one of them is awake to keep an eye out for trouble, they’ll be fine.  He can do that, and let the others get some rest while he keeps watch.  It is no hardship.  

Behind them both on the bed, Erica has fallen asleep as well, and her face is scrunched as if in discomfort.  Like she’s having an unpleasant dream that hasn’t quite turned into a nightmare yet.  Isaac settles himself firmly at the foot of the bed, sipping his coffee, and watches in case the dream takes a turn for the worst.  He’ll be there to wake her if she needs him.  

Derek is quiet but still awake, eyes trained on the gap between the bathroom doors leading into Stiles’ room.  His face speaks of all the troubled thoughts racing through his head, but he never says anything.  He sits quietly with Isaac and keeps watch, waiting for something to happen, someone to move.  Isaac hopes something will happen soon or they’ll all fall asleep.  

This is exactly what the Hale House wants.  

Chapter Text

Stiles is asleep in the bed, resting tucked up tight against the headboard in a mockery of the fetal position.  The ornate carvings and looming foliage darken the space he inhabits, casting fleeting shadows scurrying across every surface in the room.  The black splay of leaves and branches seem to move and shift with the blowing wind outside, and there’s a far off sound that resonate like tinkling glass while Stiles sleeps on unaware.  He’s breathing deep, and in his slumber, none can hurt him.  No one can torment him or poke at him.  No one can hurt him.  There’s nothing malicious moving, breathing in the dark with him, and there’s nothing to sense watching him from out of the dark.  Even if there is something lingering just at the edge of consciousness, the cold gathering as it approaches, he cannot feel it.  He doesn’t recognize it as a threat.    

The room continues to grow colder and colder, and Stiles continues to sleep on, limbs tucked close to his body.  The sheets have long since been rucked up around him, pillows thrown around him and tucked beneath him as he’d fretted in his sleep, and they’re not much protection against the sudden growing gloom.  It makes Stiles shift, flail slightly, before he starts to come back to semi-awareness.  His eyes flutter, his hands grasp and uncurl as he reaches for something just out of reach on the edge of his vision, and when he does finally shift further towards the headboard, someone rests their hand gently on top of his calf before moving the blankets back up around him.  Stiles stills, but whoever it is, is just offering comfort and warmth against the air’s chill, and while he’s still feeling hunted, Stiles is exhausted.  And so he slips back into slumber as the hand gently presses against him, giving what little support it can.  

Once Stiles has returned to the deep embrace of sleep, the hand gently removes itself, and the cold around them shifts, moving as the hand does.  It swirls up like a cloak to settle about the shoulders of the man who had, only seconds prior, been sitting on Stiles bed with him, and small crystals spread down the man’s arms as he takes a deep breath of his own to match Stiles.  He smiles, because how can he not?  Stiles, his prize, is lying prone in his presence and still deeply asleep.  He’s clearly reached the end of his rope, and although his little peon friends are residing in the next room over, they’re hardly a concern for him.  Not for someone of his power, anyways.  They’re easily dealt with.  

The ghost of Peter Hale turns his attentions to the next room over, and moves to the bathroom doors that separate them.  These doors had once kept him from Stiles, in his sleep and weakness.  They’d been enough, when combined with Stiles own will and determination, to keep him from claiming the young man the first few times he’d tried.  And oh, how he’d tried.  Peter had seen him, felt him the very moment he stepped upon the property, since he first walked through the foyer doors and into his life once more, and he’d wanted.  He recognized him, the distant echo that his blood held, and it had sounded so sweet in his distant ears.  Oh how he’d wanted.  And what Peter wanted, Peter got.  He’d wanted Rene, and he’d had her until she had flung herself from the greenhouse ledge, and Carolyn too, until she’d escaped.  Taken with her his child.  

Neither had been able to give him what he’d needed, and so he continued to look, continue to plan and plot. 

Next, he’d wanted children, and despite the length of time it’d taken and the work it have involved, he’d gotten those too.  The means hardly bothered him.  They had just been a means to and end, after all.  Where they’d come from had hardly mattered.  It was just their life he needed.  Their tiny lives so very full of potential, lives that would feed his powers and abilities.  They would gift him with untold powers, and in return, Peter had given them eternal peace.  Or, at the time, what he’d thought was eternal piece.  He’d simply yolked them to his own soul, their life forces and power feeding his own.  It kept him young, healthy, and strong far beyond human means.  He’d used those powers to get what he wanted, to take things, to gain money and influence in the community.  He built for himself an empire, and with it came even more children who fed his needs.  Yes, Peter had wanted then, and he’d taken what he wanted.  Gotten what he wanted. 

He’d have Stiles, because he wanted Stiles.  He was the key to freeing Peter from the grounds at last, and that he was handsome and so full of life didn’t hurt either.  His life, his very essence, would set Peter free and give him the power he’d always desired.  The children had been a nice boost, his occult presence budding into its own as he’d made sacrifice after sacrifice, the power funding his company and wealth.  It kept him in a position of power, but it had to be maintained constantly, and it was a drain on Peter’s mental and monetary resources.  The ritual and powers were very specific and very picky, and while children were enough to sustain it for some time, it had to be renewed the more he increased the power he exerted.  Their little lives held enough potential and energy for that, but it hadn’t been enough for what he’d really wanted.  For more.  It had to be constantly renewed, and while he enjoyed the power, he didn’t enjoy all the maintenance that went with it.  Peter needed something new, something stronger, more solid and lasting.  So he went in search.  

Peter had gone after the ultimate prize next.  He found a spell at the darkest reaches of the universe that would triumph all those that came before it, and would only need the singular power source to give him all that he desired.  The spell was dark, oh so very dark, but surprisingly simple in its demands, and was self-renewing once set up.  He wouldn’t have any troubles getting the necessary components, and once he’d gotten those, it would be smooth sailing from there.  But despite his efforts, Rene couldn’t keep with child, and he couldn’t continue without her and progeny of his own to power the ritual.  The spell that would keep him powerful, wealthy, and perpetually young required blood of his blood, and Rene, despite her beauty and potential, couldn’t produce.  Then she’d gone mad and threw herself to her death in her grief, and Peter’s plans had come to a grinding, stuttering halt.  

Peter had been utterly furious that she’d escaped his needs.  He’d sacrificed many in her place, and for a while, he flourished, but his plans remained incomplete and unfulfilled.  He’d become inert, stagnant, and it infuriated him.  Then Carolyn, sweet Carolyn, had come along, and hope had been rekindled.  She was perfect; beautiful, strong, intelligent, so very full of life.  She would take Rene’s place to power the spell and enhance his powers, and once she’d conceived and given birth to blood of his blood, he would have all the components needed to complete the dark ritual.  He would be strong, powerful, wealthy for eons to come.  Two lives were a mere drop in the barrel to all that he’d already given in his pursuits.  So he’d waited, wooed her sweetly as she was want, and once he’d married her and she had become with child, he started once more to prepare.  All had been well, she’d been so close to birth when she’d found his secret study, and inside the plans for all the occult doings he’d been perpetrating in his now extended life.  The plans he’d drawn up for what he was going to do to her and her unborn child.  She’d successfully fooled him then, and when he’d turned his back, she’d struck.  

He hadn’t seen the binding spell coming, or his untimely death.  It shouldn’t have killed him, not really, because he was far beyond mortal at that point, but her feeble attempts at witchcraft gathered from the servant witches in the town below his home had taken hold.  She’d bound his powers and presence into his mortal body, and once she’d done that, she’d taken him to the seat of his power, the tiny burnt remains in the fireplace, and  cast him down.  Carolyn had killed his physical body and bound his supernatural powers to the house itself, knowing that only their child’s blood -his own blood- could free him and restore him to power.  Whatever witch she’d talked to had been thorough, and very knowledgeable, and though Carolyn wasn’t a strong power, she’d had enough to sneak up on him and catch him off guard.  Once she had been certain his body was useless and his power bound, she’d left him to rot in the ash trap and then fled, and despite later efforts once he’d woken again, he had no luck finding her.  

That is, until now.  

No, what he needed, what he truly needed now, was Stiles.  Blood of his Blood.  The final locus to the spell’s power and his return.  And once it had been completed, once Stiles had given his all, his spirit would forever be bound under Peter’s power, just like all the others.  He’d always have Stiles, and soon, he’d have restored power and his former body back.  A body that was, until recently, undiscovered in the fireplace.  

Peter feels accomplishment flow through his veins, and with a grin that scares even the shadows about him, sets his plan finally into motion.  

--

The first thing Isaac realizes when he’s startled awake is that his breath is fogging in the air around him, and that it’s so cold that he can hardly feel the tips of his fingers.  His hands had been resting solidly in a death grip on his own hair, and he’d been resting gently against the wall near to the door of the bathroom.  But now he can hardly move, and there’s ice forming on his clothing and in his hair.  He’d been unaware, his eyes closed, until something startled him into wakefulness, but he’d already been exposed by then.  And whatever it was, it was lingering.  Stirring just out of the reach of his sight.  

The second thing he notices once he’s fully woken up is that there was a man, shrouded in darkness, standing tall and proud at the foot of Stiles’ bed glaring directly at him from the other room.  His features are generally indistinguishable, but he’s got dark hair, Isaac notices, and fine, sharp features when the limited light catches them.  And his eyes, oh god his eyes, were glowing a fierce, deep red when they met Isaac’s own.  Isaac is shocked into total alertness now, and in his horror, he sees Stiles’ room convulse and throb around them both before the doorway leading into the other room shudders and slam close.  The last thing he sees as he lunges from his seat, is the manic grin stretched across the face of who he swears is Peter Hale.  The man smiling horribly at his plight.  

“Jesus Christ...”  

And then he starts shouting.  

--

Stiles is awoken by the muffled shouting coming from the room next door and the slamming of the doors that separate the two as they fling shut.  He startles, and makes an attempt to sit up when he’s hit with a sudden wave of dizziness, which flattens him back to the mattress.  His legs stretch out, and his fingers clench and unclench in the bedding, and though he’s afraid to move again, afraid to make the faintest of sounds, he feels compelled to act.  From the darkness around him he can hear wood creaking and metal scraping against itself, and when he tips his head up to get a look around, despite the dizziness, he sees Peter Hale standing there smiling down at him before the room spins out of view.  Stiles slams a hand against his eyes, groaning as he makes to shift, move, get away, but when he blinks his eyes open again, there’s no one there.  The bathroom doors are closed, the room is dark, and he is alone.  

Or so he thinks.  

The carvings on the canopy and the ceiling around him are shifting violently in the shadows, the impossibly elaborate woodwork and metal craft are moving and convulsing along with them.  The tiny wolves are pacing and thrashing, eyes glowing in the dark down at him, and when Stiles looks up, they are looking down at him.  Some of their forms are lengthening, shortening, shuddering in their attempts to break free.  Carvings changing here and there, the very ceiling and canopy above him coming to life as it expands in and out, as if the house itself is breathing.  The wood grows out of the ceiling is now eating its way downwards and into the bed’s canopy, connecting the two, and it starts to crawl down the posters and through the vines and branches above him.  They strain and move as if they were sinew, like they’re reaching out for him from their sealed spot in the woodwork.  The baroque curves swell and surge downwards, and by now, Stiles is so terrified he cannot move.  Can hardly feel his toes or his fingers anymore, and his breathing is so labored that he’s not sure he’s even doing it anymore.  

Stiles feels his vision narrowing down as his breathing starts to stutter in his aching chest, and it burns a fiery trail up his throat as he gasps.  The creaking above him begins from out of the darkness, and when Stiles inclines his head to see it, all he can see is the walls around him and the ceiling above him bulge inwards and towards him.  Out of the ceiling above him two enormous protrusions grow, side by side, and move towards him.  

From behind him, the headboard begins to groan, and its shape is moving, the fan-like plants and leaves thickening and splaying wide, like fingers of a hand stretching out and searching.  Stiles can’t move, his mind refusing to understand or even try to comprehend what’s going on around him, and all he can do is panic and watch as the bulges from the ceiling drop to the floor and continue to shudder as the canopy shifts and moves and steadily comes towards him. 

Understanding starts reaching him finally, and though Stiles isn’t certain that what he’s seeing is really happening, he is certain that he’s now being held in place.  His hands are pinned to either side of his head by vine-like wooden wraps that extend out and down from the headboard.  They look to be apart of the bed frame itself, and they’re drawing Stiles arms upwards above his head to keep them firmly there.  They dig into his skin as they circle tighter and tighter, and it makes tears spring to his eyes.  It’s painful, and it hurts, and Stiles is frightened and horrified and alone in the dark as it heaves and thrusts and shudders above him.  Next, he feels tendrils wrap around his legs and ankles, and once they’re secured, they begin to drag his legs downwards and straighten them out.  He struggles against their pull, but they’re stronger, and finally they stretch him out flat against the mattress, pulling his legs tight.  He has no leverage to struggle anymore, and now his tears start in earnest as the ceiling and canopy above him thrive with life.  

He cries out in terror when the archways above him form eyes and blink down at him, and then again when the other designs begin their awful transformation into other parts of a specter.  It’s a head, the very visage of madness looking down at him, with moving parts that extend the absolute horror that Stiles feels into something else.  It clenches in his chest and begins to shift into something more primal, less human, and he cries harder as the face blinks down at him and moves.  Stiles breath is still coming ragged and harsh, and he’s unable to speak or even call out.  Beyond the few small cries he’s able to make as he struggles weakly, Stiles is paralyzed and unable to get away, and no one seems to be coming to his rescue.  The face that’s appeared to him in the ceiling blinks down at him, and as it stares him down, more and more tendrils slither down from the canopy to wrap about his arms, legs, and body.  They bite and sting where they grasp as him, and he can feel clothing rip alongside flesh where they grab and hold tight.  

Stiles screams as the entire room rams itself towards him, jolting him hard against the headboard and mattress where he’s stretched out.  The bed itself shudders and shakes before lurching towards the face descending out of the decorations above him.  Hands and arms fold out of the remaining woodwork, and help pin him in place, as well as use him to pull itself out and down.  The very room itself lowers down towards him, and he screams, utterly out of his mind as bruises and pain bloom across his skin where he’s seized tightly.  He screams loudly, and yet no one seems to hear him.  He can hardly hear himself over his own pounding heart, and Stiles knows that whatever he’s experienced in the past week is nothing compared to whatever is coming now.  He screams, and screams, and screams.  

--

Argent lunges into full consciousness as Isaac and Derek lunge past him towards the doors leading into the bathroom, their bodies slamming into it with force enough to shake and rattle them, but not open them.  He doesn’t understand until Erica joins them both that Stiles is in the next room screaming his head off, and they’re unable to get out of the doorway to get to him.  To help him.  He’s the next to start helping at the door, and when Erica checks the one leading into the hallway, she finds it the same as the bathroom doors.  Sealed shut and unmovable.  They’re trapped, stuck inside the room by someone while they slept, and whoever had done it is next door with Stiles.  

And Stiles is screaming bloody murder.  

“What the Hell is happening?”  Argent asks when Erica rejoins them at the bathroom doors.  He’s found a heavy candlestick that they can try to use to batter or pry the door into submission.  “Why didn’t we hear anyone lock us in?”  

Isaac is shaking so hard that he can’t even make any words come out, and he’s just starring in horror at the doorway that separates the two rooms.  Derek has to shove him aside to continue working at the hinges, using his own candlestick to work at the bolts while Argent takes note and tries to do the same.  They work in silence that is punctuated by Stiles’ wracking sobs and screams, the sounds of what can only be terror and pain ringing out at uneven intervals.  It makes Chris want to cry as well, and he can see Erica move a still shaking and shocked Isaac out of their way while they work.  

“We all  need to hit the door together now!”  Derek says as he works two of the six bolts out of their places at the edge of the door.  “If we all use our weight together, we should be able to wrench the door out of its frame.  On the count of three!  Ready?  One, two, three!”  

All of them serge forwards together, their combined body weight shouldering into the door and splintering it as it turns downwards and inwards.  It doesn’t free the door completely, but it allows them into the room beyond as it warps and moves.  They all stumble into Stiles’ room together, and as they do, they all take in the entire spectacle before them.  Argent’s mouth drops open.  Isaac stands there shaking and speechless, Erica stricken into silence beside him.  Derek feels his own eyes widen in shock and horror at what he’s seeing, and he drops the candlestick to the ground.  They’re collectively stricken by the sight of Stiles lashed to the bed screaming, held down by what appears to be the deformed remains of the headboard and canopy above and behind him.  The deformed ceiling dips and throbs over him, and the room is thrusting at him rhythmically as he screams.  Erica finds Stiles frantic eyes, and her own mouth drops open as Stiles screams again.  

“Oh, Jesus...” She breathes, and then the room turns on them.  “What the Hell is that?  What the Hell is that?”  

But none of them can answer.  

Chapter Text

Chris barely has time to recover, to reach out towards Stiles, before the thing, the face, in the ceiling turns its visage upon him and Derek jerks him back into the doorway.  In doing so, Chris narrowly avoids being impaled upon a falling sheet of razor sharp glass that’s been loosed from the panes that line the ceiling above them, but doesn’t avoid being scratched along his arm.  He and Derek’s shirts are torn in several different places, and blood beads to the surface of a long gash upon Chris’s arm.  He doesn’t even feel it, really, and hardly knew he’d been struck before the blood had started.  A trickling steady stream of ruby in the low light.  Both men just look at it dumbly before turning eyes back to the room at large, their eyes wandering until they’re meeting the monster eyes that are planted in the ceiling above Stiles’ bed.  

It strikes Chris then, and likely everyone else standing around him, that the being stopping them in their tracks with his blazing gaze is real.  Very, very real.  And not only is it real, it’s horrifyingly familiar in its visage.  Because somehow, this is Peter Hale.  Peter Hale, inhabiting the house’s structure and using it to torment the residents and everyone around.  To torment and hurt Stiles Stilinski... and do it right under their very noses.  Everything Stiles has said, ever detail he’s found and professed to them, written off in his time of need, is apparently true.  The house is alive, and Peter Hale is controlling it.  God, he thinks, they all need to get out of there as fast as they can.  But how?  How to get Stiles free, and then out of here without the house’s notice?  

Chris is thinking hard on how to help when Isaac appears from out of nowhere on his right and dashes towards the bed, his fallen candlestick held tightly in his shaking hands.  He aims and then smashes the heavy brass into the wooden holdings of the bed and headboard, the sinewy vines that are Stiles’ bonds splintering and smashing ever so slightly.  It only takes Stiles’ scream of surprise and a few more hits before Derek and Chris both catch on, and they too surge forth, armed and ready.  Erica follows out of the corner of Chris’s eye, but she comes empty handed, using sheets on the bed to stem the flow of Stiles’ blood where the bed had dug too deep into his flesh instead.  He can only faintly nod his approval before he and Derek join in the fray with Isaac, unleashing their pent-up confusion and anger out on the bed frame.  

It takes them more blows then it should to break wood that thin and bent, but whatever has possessed it to move has also given it resilience, it seems, because it withstands Derek’s mighty blows and Isaac’s valiant attempts along side his own.  By the time they get Stiles’ legs free from their bonds, all three of them are sweating, and Stiles has gone limp and stopped screaming.  He’s staring off into space in the direction of the window he’d broken earlier, eyes alarmingly still damp, and his mouth gasping out ragged breaths of the panicked.  Stiles is going into shock, and quickly, Chris realizes.  He’s on the verge of having a full-blown meltdown, and if he’d seemed panicked before, Dr. Argent realizes that he’s hyperventilating, verging on full blown self-suffocation.  And Chris can’t do anything for Stiles here, especially if he passes out from lack of oxygen.  

“Hurry up guys!  He’s not breathing right, he’s not breathing right!”  Erica snaps at them, her own hands poised over Stiles’ prone form, a few of her fingers pressed delicately at Stiles’ pulse points.  “Stiles?  Stiles, can you hear me?  I need you to breathe, Stiles.  I need you to take deep breaths and stay with us.  Please?”  

Stiles doesn’t move, or even make an attempt to respond, and now his eyelids are fluttering and closing for long periods before snapping open again.  The cycle repeats rapidly, and it looks as if Stiles has been drugged, even though Chris is pretty sure he’s just going into shock.  Erica looks grimly up at Chris before she pats the sweat and tears streaked down Stiles’ face away with the edge of the blankets, and Chris gets back to helping Derek and Isaac smash away the bindings.  They’re desperate now, trying not to hurt Stiles in their rush, but hurrying as fast as they can.  

They get one hand free when a huge, gaping mouth opens up in the ceiling and a mass of arms tipped with claws is expelled from within it.  They claw and reach and grab at them as some of them seize the bed, Stiles’ ankle, and parts of the would-be rescuers bodies, claws tearing and ripping when they meet flesh and cloth.  Derek swears and nearly drops his makeshift weapon when one gouges four long stripes down his back and over one of his shoulders, but he manages to hang on and keep at it, even as Isaac shouts and recoils from his own cut across his arms and one manages to get Erica across her face.  There are deep gouges when he looks down at Stiles’ leg, and the hands are pulsating there where they hang on.  Chris dodges the lunge directed at him, but it sends him stumbling away from the bed and into a nearby chair, which in turn sends him sprawling across the floor face down.  His candlestick goes rolling beneath the bed and far out of reach, and it makes Chris curse before he snaps back to his feet and starts pulling on what he can with his bare hands.  It’s not really effective, but he’ll do anything at this point to free Stiles so that they can flee.  

Derek and Isaac manage to break a majority of the other bindings holding Stiles’ remaining arm down, and when they get the splintered wood off him and roll him to the side of the bed, his silhouette on the sheets is haloed in his own blood.  The arm is gone from it’s hold on his leg, but it’s left blood and distinct wounds in its wake.  Chris worries that it may not just be emotional shock anymore when he gets a good look at Stiles’ wrists and the amount of blood now cooling in the fabric he’d rested upon.  God, there was so much blood...

“Chris, come on, let’s go!” Derek shouts as he scoops up Stiles, his own back covered in his own blood, but he’s carrying Stiles bridal style and doesn’t seem to falter even an inch.  “I’ve got Stiles, let’s get our of here!”  

Erica and Isaac are right behind him, and Chris follows them all out, armed once more with Derek’s abandoned weapon.  As they exit the room, Chris chances a look back, and meets the eyes of the crazed demonic house.  They flee further down the hall as fast as they can, and Dr. Argent backs away in awe and complete, stunned fear as the House’s shaking roar follows them down the hall.  Plaster cracks and splinters as they go, and despite running as fast as they possibly can, they can’t seem to break away or make any headway on it.  Chris quietly thinks that if the house is really possessed by Peter Hale, then they’re trapped here, and they probably can’t escape anyways.  It doesn’t mean that they’re not going to try.  

Derek, Isaac, and Erica are already far ahead of him, racing down the stairs in the Great Hall together while Derek hauls Stiles around, his head hanging limply over Derek’s arm.  His gaze is listless, gazing at the ceiling like he has no idea where he is, and his gaze doesn’t catch Chris’s own when he tries.  Wherever Stiles is right now, mentally, it isn’t here.  It makes Dr. Argent’s chest ache as he brings up the rear, his weapon high and ready, despite the sudden quiet of the house around them.  But it’s probably for the best.  Stiles has been under enough strain lately.  He doesn’t need to see whatever’s this is coming.  

They retreat further towards the entry as Isaac begins stripping off his sweater to put around Stiles’ shoulders, but he’s struggling to get the sleeves over the lumps where Erica has tightly wound bedsheets to stop the bleeding as much as she could.  They’re wound tightly there, but still mass up.  They’re bedsheets, not bandages, but they’re doing the job, even if they impede Isaac’s generosity.  And with the lull that’s started up around them, Dr. Argent thinks there’s enough time for Isaac to work around their hurried medical treatment.  

Then Chris stops dead in his tracks.  

“Wait a second!  Wait!” He shouts, but it’s the only sound ringing in the grand space next to their heavy breathing and Stiles’ wheezing gasps.  “Hold up a second!”  

The House is silent.  Dead silent.  And still as the grave.

“No...” Isaac gets out, and Chris can see his hands gripping tight at Stiles’ arm.  “What’s happening?  Chris, Derek, what’s going on?”  

“I... I don’t know.”  Derek manages, whipping around himself.  “It’s like we’re alone again.  But I’ve never heard this house so very quiet before.”  

And indeed, the Hale House is silent.  Chris finds that his arm is still outstretched, as if reaching for some sort of comfort, and not in an effort to slow and stop.  They’re all looking around now, but honestly, there’s nothing to see.  Only the deep, dark shadows that dance along the walls and across the ornate floors.  There are heads, snouts, and faces everywhere.  The wolves and cherubs staring at them from out of the woodwork, beady eyes following their every move.  When the wind outside causes the low, flickering light to run across the stair case, he swears that some of the wolves move and saunter closer to them.  Some are even baring gleaming wooden fangs when the light settles once more, and even the statues and railings look as if they’re pulling closer to their small, scared group.  

Still, everything remains still and quiet.  

“We can’t wait anymore.  We need to get out of here, and we need to do it now!”  Isaac says in a rush, and when Chris looks at him, he sees the younger man’s furious panic and set determination.  “Stiles needs help.  Stiles needs more help than we can give to him, and we need to leave.  We need to leave now.”  

“Come on then!  Why are we waiting?”  Erica snaps out as she rounds on them and continues down the stairs, her hair flying out behind her like a cape.  “Let’s get the fuck out of here already.”  

Even now, Dr. Argent can’t believe what they’ve see, what they’re continuing to see moving in the dark with them as they make a mad dash towards the front door.  He can’t wrap his head around the horrors they’ve found lurking along side them in a house he’d thought safe, and he doubts that any of the others can either.  And Stiles, god poor Stiles, still limp and wheezing in Derek’s arms like some broken doll... Chris feels horrible that Stiles was ever brought into this study, that he’d ever allowed his case file across his desk.  That he’d ever allowed Stiles to step foot into this living Hell.  But they’re almost out, they’re almost there, and from there, the front gate doesn’t seem that big of a challenge, lock and chain or not.  All they have to do is make it across the rest of the mezzanine, and they’re scott free.  

They never make it to the front door.  

All at once, every window in the great hall bangs open in a flurry of heavy drapery and swirling darkness.  The heavy fabric is easily whipped about by whatever force is stirring it, and despite the relative cold of the outside temperature, the biting wind now whirling around them is far bellow the outside temperature.  It’s freezing, and the moment it touches them, they freeze in place.  Goosebumps race up and down Chris’s arms and body, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as he’s enveloped.  Derek turns his upper body towards the rest of them, trying to shield Stiles from the mystic freezing gale, but it only increases in force, and soon they’re all huddling together.  Erica and Isaac are clinging to one another, and one of Erica’s hands clench hard in the torn fabric of Derek’s shirt near where Stiles is resting.  Derek himself has turned his back to the room at large, and soon Chris puts himself on his other side, completing their oddly formed circle around Stiles’ prone body.  They cling to one another, and as the wind picks up speed and drops in temperature further, they can’t help but force their eyes shut.  

When the wind suddenly stops and the temperature drops another fifteen degrees, at least, everyone forces their eyes open to carefully look around.  The windows are shut tight, they look like they’ve never been opened, and the doorway they’d been so close to is suddenly gone.  The entirety of its frame just missing from its customary spot in the wall, leaving only blank, smooth wall where it should have stood.  Derek and Chris look at it together in stunned horror, and Erica lets go of Isaac and Derek long enough to frantically run her hands over the wall.  There’s no give, and she balls her fists up and pounds upon the wall a few times before giving up, and turning back towards them all.  But her eyes aren’t on them when she turns, and as she looks up at something behind them, they widen in horror and shock.  Soon, her mouth drops open to match how wide her eyes are, and it forces them all to still and turn together to see whatever it is she’s looking at in terror.  

There’s maniacal laughing and the dark figure of Peter Hale standing regally at the top of the stair case, his lower body shrouded in shadows and darkness, and his eyes glow a faint red before going out.  He’s smiling widely at all of them, and when he moves, its smoothly, but not in a human way.  In fact, it’s not a way any living being could even attempt, let alone do.  But really, Chris doesn’t know what he’s expecting, because Peter Hale is dead, and can’t logically be standing before them.  And yet, he is, he had been this entire time, and some part of him knows that when he laughs, he’s laughing at them and their stupidity.  Literally looking down upon them like a god looks down upon ants.  

“Ah, how nice of you to finally join us.  And look!  You brought my pet back.”  Peter says snidely, his smirk tainting each of his words black.  “How kind of you, to save me the trouble of having to search the House for him.  Typical fools.  You're hardly a challenge at all.”  

Every single one of them flinch back at his laughter and malice, and Derek’s shaking hard where he’s standing at the back of the group, still clutching the listless body of Stiles.  Stiles, who is now starring up at Peter as if waiting for the man to do something, to say something more.  His breathing has evened out, but he’s just as limp as he had been when they’d taken him from the bedroom and the horrors it contained.  In fact, Derek’s own shaking is enough to jar Stiles ever so slightly where he rests, and it’s hard enough that even Chris can see it from where he’s standing.  

Clearly, so can Peter Hale, because he’s looking intently down at Derek with one of his eyebrows raised incredulously.  He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to.  His face clearly says it all.  Derek shifts, moves ever so slightly backwards, further towards one of the windows, when Peter’s head snaps around like a reptiles, eyes blazing bright in the gloom.  They seek him out like a laser, lock on with fierce determination.  

“And where do you think you’re taking him?”  He says casually, but his body language is screaming anything but.  “Without my permission?  I think not.”  

It’s the only warning they get before everyone’s ripped apart from one another, each being yanked in a different direction, kicking and screaming.  Derek’s holding onto Stiles so tightly it’ll probably bruise, but he refuses to let go, and the last thing he sees of anyone else is their panicked faces as the house literally consumes them.  

Derek is spat out somewhere in the lower levels, his feet soaking wet where he’s landed in the shin high stream that runs through the back portion of the house.  He’s still cradling Stiles, but now they are very much alone in the silent darkness, with only the faint candle lights lining the hallways to light their path.  

There is no one around when Derek calls out for the rest of the group, and as he frantically looks around, something Stiles had said much earlier strikes him hard.  Strikes him nearly so hard that he stumbles and almost falls, catching himself upon a wall decoration hard enough to bruise.  

He took them up here...  He played games with them, the ones from his mills, and he burned them up in the fireplace...

“Oh, god.  He’s hunting us.”  Derek hears himself say darkly.  “We’ve got to hide, Stiles.  We have to hide and wait him out.  It’ll be okay, promise.  We’ll find the others.”  

But Derek doesn’t even know if he can find the others, not in this maze of a place, and especially not at night.  And even if he does, there’s no telling if it’ll actually be them. If it won’t just be Peter Hale wearing their faces, waiting to strike from behind and rip Stiles from them.  Derek feels himself shudder again, hard.  God, he feels trapped, and this must be the hopelessness that Stiles felt when no one believed him.  When no one trusted that he was seeing what he told them he was seeing.  It makes Derek feel absolutely terrible.  Horrible.  Devastated.  God, he’s so sorry.  So very sorry.

Laura would be so disappointed.  So very disappointed.  

Derek fights his own cry of dismay.