The next time Stiles wakes up, he... doesn't. Not really.

One moment he's immersed in the aching comfort of his mother's barely there presence, feeling weightless and free. Then something pops and, suddenly, he's blinking his eyes open to a sight he'd never wanted to see again.

He absently looks up at the lone bulb hanging from the ceiling of the building he'd spent hours being tortured in. The recognition alone has him grateful he's already lying down, otherwise he's sure he'd collapse to the ground or something like that. Which then leads to the question of how he managed to get horizontal when he'd spend the day memorably chained upright to the wall. Speaking of which, the chains and shackles seem to be missing. Not that he's complaining about their absence, of course.

Stiles sits up. At first, he thinks the numbness of his gut wound has managed to spread throughout the rest of his body; he feels odd and unnatural, but without any of the pain that should be present from the action of getting upright, what with the numerous injuries and all. Then he peels back the collar of his shirt to peer at the stab wound in one shoulder to find unblemished skin. His other shoulder, too, is fine. And when he looks at his stomach, confused, there's no gaping hole there, either.

For all intents and purposes, it seems he's healed.

"Hip hip hooray," Stiles mutters, because he's grateful as fuck that he's gone from bruised and battered to A-Okay, but something feels off. His palms are cold and clammy when he rubs them together, and his heartbeat is thrumming wildly beneath his skin. Come to think of it, his pulse is less of a dub-dub and more of a long, constant vibration. A hum like electricity. Or maybe that's the bulb burning from above.

He rubs his hands over his face carefully, before sitting up straighter and looking around.

The pack is—there, across the building. They're huddled around something; Derek and Scott crouched on the ground with Lydia, Isaac, and Allison standing over them. He doesn't recall Allison being there before, but, to be fair, he'd had a lot on his mind when his friends had burst in. Counting familiar faces wasn't his biggest priority at the time.

Between the pack huddle and himself is the metal table, lying upside down. The weapons that had been spread across it are now strewn around it, and Stiles is pretty fucking thankful he only found himself on the business end of a few knives, given what else Nick had in his arsenal.

Speaking of which, the devil himself is nowhere in sight. Stiles looks left, right, up and then down just to be sure he won't be caught unawares again, but. Yeah. He's gone.

He heaves a huge fucking sigh of relief, pathetically grateful that the motion doesn't immobilize him with pain. He's got—no shitting clue? Why he's healed? But he doesn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, not really.

"You have no idea how good it is to see you guys," he says to the pack as he gets to his feet. Mobility is so wonderful and exciting that he spends a few extra moments just marveling over it and talking before he realizes his friends... aren't... responding.

"Yes, hello, assholes? I don't appreciate your wolfy silent treatment, ok? C'mon, Allison, I thought you were nicer than... this." He trails off once it occurs to him that perhaps the problem is not that they are ignoring him (even though they are, those assholes) but rather that they. Can't hear him. Like, at all, because otherwise a wince or too would've occurred after the scream he just let out to see if they were fucking with him or not.

Not, as it turns out, and Stiles can't even find it in himself to be relieved that his friends aren't ignoring the pathetic human that managed to get himself kidnapped and tortured for hours (no matter how Evil & Scary™ Hunter McAssFace is, Stiles still got caught like a rabbit in a trap, and he hates that he can so easily be compared to prey when he spends his life running with predators) because the alternative of they can't hear me at allcombined with I went to sleep practically swimming in my own blood while my body resembled a human sized chunk of swiss cheese and then woke up clean and cozyjust spells out all the bad things, really, it does.

He doesn't—ok, fuck, yeah he's afraid to really think about what it means. Except—his fingers snap, once, with glee, as he figures it out. Lots of people have out of body experiences, so that's clearly what's going on. His body, ripe and delirious with pain, did his consciousness a solid and kicked it out to take it all on its own. That's why he's no longer in pain, that's why he's not where he remembers himself being.

The simple solution is simple, really, but in a matter of seconds after deciding that his intangibility isephemeral(hah, take that Scott) his electric heartbeat already feels like it's slowing down. The sour tang of panic at the back of his throat has dimmed and now he's just appropriately worried that he's out of his body and unable to communicate with the few people who can fix him.

"Wonder what I could get away with saying, knowing you guys are ear-blind to me. Deaf. Whatever." Stiles rolls his shoulders, determined to make the best of what hopefully won't turn out to be a miserable situation, and marches over to his friends. "But before I unleash the glorious Stilinski Charm, which you will unfortunately be unable to hear, I'd like to make a special request. See, I'm not too fond of the location, and also I was totally invested in a sandwich before I—"

He cuts himself off, or, well, Scott cuts him off when he erupts into a wrecked howl that vibrates into Stiles' very soul, and Stiles snaps his mouth shut. Partly because saying something when somebody else is communicating is quite rude, thank you very much Scott, and partly because the grief in Scott's voice hits him like one of Nick's knives.

It gets worse, of course, when he's finally a few steps away from everybody and close enough to make out details, from Allison pressing a hand to one of Scott's shoulders, from Isaac holding on to Derek, from Lydia clutching at her chest, when Isaac tilts his head back and joins Scott in his cry. A similar wail comes from the door and Stiles turns his head, surprised, to see Jackson and Boyd standing in the doorway, Erica with one hand clamped over her mouth and a tear spilling from one eye. He wonders how much time must've passed between his—falling unconscious, and now, so that the number of pack in the building has doubled since he first saw them, though not for long, because the group howl is doing very bad things to his electric heart.

Stiles has seen the videos before where some photographer manages to catch a wolf pack mourning one of its fallen members. He's heard the sorrow in the collective voices as they swirled together into a single sad song and felt their pain in his heart every time.
Hearing his pack, now, as they sing in grief, is worse than any one of the knives Nick pushed into his body. It makes it harder to hold onto his out of body theory, but he can't let go, not yet, not until he stumbles into the throng of wolves and humans, wondering why Derek is silent when even Erica who's covered her mouth and Allison and Lydia who're just as human as Stiles is have tilted their heads back and howled. Not until he sinks to the ground beside Derek, who's himself crouching in a massive smear of blood that even Scott next to him is avoiding. Not until his eyes slide from Derek's bowed head to his tense shoulders to his shaking arms to his trembling hands to the body lying stiff and still beneath them surrounded by a mess of shredded metal.

His body.

Fuck.

He shifts into a graceless crouch next to Derek, wanting to offer whatever comfort he's capable of even though he's doubtlessly invisible to them as well, but his gaze is stuck entirely on his. Fuck, his corpse. Stiles is dead. He can't believe it.

"Wow," he mumbles, once again fighting off tears. This time though, he's gotta be justified. Fuckin hell, he'sdead. That was never supposed to happen. "When I said out of body, this... isn't what I meant. Shit. This can't be happening."

It takes a little bit of staring for Stiles to realize his bonds are gone. The body's wrists are rubbed red and raw from all the effort he wasted thrashing from agony. The throat is crisscrossed with cuts that still trickle blood, and they're bruised from the collar.

Now that he's no longer chained to the wall and floor, Stiles would expect his body to be horizontal like he was when he woke up a few feet away from it. Instead it's draped half across Derek's lap, like Stiles is sleeping and Derek's thighs are his pillows. Derek's got one hand fisted in the front of his shirt and the other cupping the back of his head, supporting him as gently as one might a baby. Blood is slipping from the wounds in Stiles' chest and on his head to Derek's hands but he doesn't move them away, just lets them become dark and slippery as he clings.

Stiles is shaken out of his own mourning—both for himself and for Derek and his obvious misery—when Scott's howl tapers off and he reaches for Stiles' body. Derek jerks it away from him with a snarl that sounds like he's got broken glass in his throat for how wrecked it is.

"Derek, please," Scott begs, and his Alpha eyes are so wet with sorrow they seem to bleed. "I know you're—you're hurting, but. We need to tell his dad. We need to take him home."

Lydia chokes on a watery sob at his words and Allison soundlessly reaches out and pulls her into a one armed embrace. Stiles stares at them both, unable to speak, unable to—anything. Yeah, he'd been pretty sure his friends would be pretty upset when the day came that his new life style caught up to him and his wolfy companions weren't around to slice and dice and save the day, but he'd never thought it would be like this.
He'd never thought he'd see Isaac Lahey with glassy, haunted eyes, or Lydia Martin sobbing and undone. He'd never thought Allison Argent would stand there and be a shoulder to cry on over his death while looking like she needed one of her own, or that Jackson Whittemore the douchey former lizard would be staring at his body with genuine grief, rather than polite sorrow. He'd never thought strong and silent Vernon Boyd or fierce and confident Erica Reyes would need immediate comfort from each other, wide eyed and stricken and broken. He'd never thought Scott would be this much of a mess, shaking and sobbing and reaching with trembling claws to try and touch him, and he'd absolutely never thought he'd ever, ever, see Derek fucking Hale in real tears, curled over his cooling body with something wild and broken his eyes, clutching it like he would die if it were to be taken from him.

"Please," Scott repeats, and Stiles glances back at him in time to see him grab again.

Derek folds his upper half over the corpse and growls at him through his fangs. "No!" He buries his face into the blood-slick mess of Stiles' collarbone and repeats it, over and over again until the word shifts from English to something broken and drawn out, a low, meaningless whimper, until Stiles gets the impression that he's not just protesting Scott's request.

"Derek..." Stiles doesn't know what to say. of all the pack, Derek's the one he'd least expected to pull out the grabby hands on what is literally his lifeless corpse. They were long past the days of antagonistic frenemies, but even so, this is the kind of anguished possessive behavior he'd expect from someone like Scott, his best friend since forever.

Instead, Derek's refusing to allow Scott to even touch him. It's odd and unexpected and Stiles is really way over his head in this.

"I never signed up for this," he says suddenly, loudly. He's not too sure how the afterlife works but he's pretty sure somebody's supposed to be coming along and playing guide, like he's some lost little lamb. "Where the fuck are you? I never asked for this!"

"No-one ever asks for death, my glorious one, and yet all receive it."

Is that the sound of his heart breaking? Gotta be. Stiles turns at his mother's voice to find her standing gracefully next to the overturned table. She's wearing a glowing cream robe that flows around her feet as though a breeze is constantly ruffling it and a soft smile that turns sorrowful once he's facing her fully. "My Mischief, my boy. I have missed you so."

"Mom," Stiles croaks. He looks between them; Derek with his eyes bleeding despair and claws clasped tight to Stiles' empty body, and his mother with shimmering skin and stars in her hair. Time slows down. He runs to her.

She catches him as easily as though he were still four, and she young and strong. His best memories of her are from those days when she had seemed an angel to him, much like she does now. Her skin is soft and smells like the strawberry lotion she used to love, and Stiles presses as close as he can to the familiar and much cherished scent, closer. The robe tickles his nose when his mother raises her arms and wraps them around his shoulders. She palms the back of his head and pulls it down to rest in the crook of her neck, where the smell of her is strongest. He sobs.

"I don't want to—rush you, Stiles, but we shouldn't stay here for too much longer."

You really are an angel, Stiles muses. All he needs to do is think the words and suddenly he can see the displacement of air behind her back, the reason behind the ruffled robe. The wings aren't fully visible but he can make out the outline of them, the glimmer and glow of each feather as it shifts. They're folded now but he imagines they will spread out wide when he's ready, when she'll take him wherever he's supposed to go.

He pulls away a little bit, so that he can look his mom—oh god, his Mom, he'd missed her so much—in her warm eyes. They shine with tears and he watches one slide down her rosy cheek, isn't surprised in the slightest when she lifts one hand to his face and wipes away the moisture that's at his eyes too.

"You weren't supposed to die tonight," she tells him quietly. She looks past him to where the pack is gathered around his body, where Scott continues to reach for him and Derek continues to protest violently. He watches them for a moment before the sight of them grieving over him becomes too much. "You were meant to last for decades more. What happened tonight was an accident."

"Nothing happens on accident," he says as he turns back to her, because she used to laugh it over and over and over when he was young, when he broke a vase or pressed a painted hand onto clean walls or ran through the house with muddy feet. Nothing was an accident to her. "Besides, I'm not really—dead, right? I mean," he presses one of his hands into his chest, feeling the rhythm beneath his layers, "still got a heartbeat."

His mother smiles sadly and brings her other hand to cup the other side of his face. She pulls him down and kisses him on the forehead. "That is not your heart that you feel," she corrects, "but your spark, your magic. It is trying to keep you here when your body argues to leave." His mom looks him up and down and the smile quirks up a bit, even as it saddens more. "Can you hear it sing through your blood? It begs, not yet, not yet, not yet. The rest of you is trying to move on, as it rightfully should, but your spark will not let it. Do you know why that is, Stiles?"

"I can't," he starts, and then, "I don't—my spark? I don't know—Deaton said something, a while ago, but I don't—know. I don't know." Stiles closes his eyes, a little ashamed that he doesn't know, that he can't answer her. When he opens them after a few beats of her silence, his mom is gazing at him with adoring eyes that spark with her own grief.

"You should have lived a long life with the one who loves you by your side. You were not supposed to die tonight," she repeats firmly, and her eyes flash golden.

"Mom—" he starts, but the grip on his face tightens, and he can't speak. His mother's eyes start to glow and he can't hear anymore the broken sounds coming from behind them, can't register the newfound tugging at his feet that keeps him rooted in place even when instinct tells him to step backward.

"You were not meant to die!" The golden glow burns fierce and bright, like fire, as it grows and spreads. Stiles can't see anything other than the blaze of light. In a matter of seconds he is blinded.
Then everything, every ache and bruise and pain that he's felt over the last day pierces him in a sudden, unbelievable agony as it rushes back into his body. Gone is the odd empty sensation from before; in its place, fire. For a split second, he is too overwhelmed to do anything. His mouth opens wide, ready to scream, but he chokes on the sound before it can spill from his lips. He's being stabbed over and over again, a thousand times over and over, and it's the absolute worst thing he's ever felt in his life, second only to the way he'd felt his mother's hospital room all by himself, watching her die. The part of him that doesn't feel like dying—admittedly, a very small part of him—feels betrayed by his mom, who called him into her arms and gave him this agony when he expected literally anything else. It sucks. It sucks almost worse than anything else that's happened to him, like having the king of all douches break into his house, destroy his sandwich, kidnap him, and then use him as a knife holder. He's gotta be honest though—dying in front of his friends, seeing and hearing them grieve over his broken body, that's the worst.

It's difficult to concentrate on his thoughts, no matter how hard he tries, because he's never been in this much pain in his life, not ever. Seriously, betrayed. How could his mother do this to him?

Dimly, he feels her hands release him, but he can't do—anything, or the pain strikes through him again. Every breath is fire, every movement is ice.

"Remember me when you wake," his mother whispers into his ears, barely audible over the red haze of pain. "Remember me."

She kisses the tip of his nose and the burning light crescendos around him and he hears something high and wild and there's unbelievable pressure all over his body and—