Author's Notes: Time frame is a bit screwy because the show's is a bit screwy, so just ballpark some things. There just has to be something more signifigant to Claudia and Stiles. This is just a theory.

Summary: Claudia's last words were to Stiles. A few years later, he was standing with Scott across from a stranger in a leather jacket and everything began.

What Was Meant

Stiles hated this. His father trying to calm his mother. Failing. Trying to retrain her when her delirium peaked without calling the nurses in. He always told Stiles to leave on days like this and, gladly, heart torn, Stiles always did.

Today, he didn't.

She was yelling again, trying to escape her husband's grasp.

"Wolves in the woods. There are-" She let out a frustrated sound of anguish.

"Stiles, get out." He didn't yell exactly. His voice was strong and commanding, but it worked poorly at holding back tears. Stiles didn't move. His mother was looking at him now. She knew him. She knew what she was saying. There was something important in it; her words, her tone, the way she kept her eyes focused wholly on Stiles.

Claudia's voice softened and she smiled like she had before all this, eyes clear. She looked at her son and it was only the two of them in the room. In the world.

"There are wolves in the woods".

The next he was aware, Stiles was in the hallway, a barrage of nurses and his father beyond the door that led to his mother. Someone was kindly trying to speak to him, get his attention, but it was static to his ears. Tears ran down Stiles' cheeks that he didn't remember crying, but he knew why. His mother's voice, her words and soft eyes; that had been her goodbye.

They were the last words she spoke and days later, his father out on a call, she was gone.

There was a fire a short time later. With many casualties and questions and few survivors or answers.

Years later, near that burned out house, two teenagers encountered a figure who bore striking resemblance to the glimpses of the dark-haired shadow he caught outside his mother's hospital window as a child. He remembered flashes of red eyes but never feeling afraid. Stiles thought of his mother's words for the first time in so long. He smiled the whole way home next to Scott.

There were wolves in the woods again.