So, raise your hand if you were personally victimized by Stiles' flashback on Monday.

*raises both hands*

So, obviously I had to write this. You only have yourself to blame, Teen Wolf.

So Here's the Thing

By ChasetheWind-TouchtheSky

So here's the thing:

Stiles didn't believe that he would grow up to be a murderer, it's just a thing that sort of happens.

He's eight the first time his mother doesn't remember who he is. She goes through a laundry list of names before chuckling and saying, "Why did we name you something so complicated?" Stiles remembers laughing at that because it took him until the age of five to be able to say his own name correctly. He laughs because it's his mother and she's warm and feels like love whenever he hugs her.

It doesn't even cross his mind that it was her father's name and if there's anyone who should be able to remember who he is, it's her.

"Maybe I should get a nickname?" He suggests because his mom is having a hard time remembering and he just wants to help.

"That is a great idea!" Claudia says, clapping her hands and Stiles is so proud that he's made his mother happy again, he misses the concern and fear in her eyes.

He should've noticed.

So they come up with Stiles because it's what his father used to call him the first couple months because even his father had a hard time pronouncing it from time to time. Claudia doesn't forget his name for a while and Stiles thinks he's solved a problem.

It isn't until the forgetting thing gets worse and she starts forgetting more things – like to pick him up from school and to pack him lunches – that his dad starts to notice. Stiles knows that this isn't how mothers are supposed to act, but it's his mother and he loves her, so maybe he can come up with another solution. Because his dad's solution is taking her to the hospital and he's stuck in the waiting room with a book that is too easy and a mind that won't shut up.

He knows he should figure out a way for her to get better, but it isn't until she starts yelling at him does he realize that he's being a bad son for not figuring it out. One night, when his father is in the café getting a cup of coffee, Claudia turns her head to look at Stiles. Stiles looks up from the game he's playing in his hands – on mute, so that the music won't bother her – hopeful that she'll say that she loves him and that she remembers.

For a moment, he believes that it'll happen. Because he's ten and ten-year-olds are allowed to have hope.

But her eyes grow dark and cold and angry. "What are you looking at me like that, for?" She spits, no ounce of warmth or love in her voice.

"Because I love you."

Stiles answers honestly because he lies a lot to make her happy and his dad happy and he doesn't know what else to do.

Her eyes narrow. "Are you fucking with me?"

Stiles' eyes grow wide. It's a bad word. He knows it's a bad word. One time his dad used it and his mom yelled and Stiles locked that thought in his mind that it was a word that you are not supposed to use. He's heard it a few times after, it seems to be a word that grownups use, but he's never heard his mother use it.

"N-No," he stammers out because he wouldn't even say that word, let alone mess with his own mother.

"Yes you are, don't lie!" She shouts and Stiles drops his game and flinches back. "You are a liar!" She shrieks and it's loud and Stiles puts his hands over his ears and feels his eyes sting with tears. "You are a nightmare, you are doing this to me! This is your fault!"

The amount of vitriol coming from Claudia is astonishing and all Stiles can do it cower. She is hopping off the bed and ripping the IV out of her arm. Stiles curls tighter in the chair and for a moment, he thinks she's going to attack him. But then she rushes from the room – away from him – because she doesn't want him anymore.

Stiles barely registers his father barging into the room, slamming the door open, and pressing his hands against Stiles' face. "Ssh, ssh, Stiles, it's okay." He says that a few more times but Stiles isn't stupid. He knows it's not okay. All he knows is his mother hates him and he can't breathe and he can't see and this is the worst he's felt in his entire life. "Stiles, you have to breathe. Where's you mom?"

Instead, Stiles wraps his hands over his head, but not before pointing at the door that she escaped from him from. Stiles can't see the look of indecision on John's face – obviously his son needed him, but his wife is gone and unstable. "Just… stay right here. I'm going to find your mother and be right back. Stay right here, please Stiles."

And he leaves.

Stiles brings his head out of his hands because he's scared and it just occurred to him that both of his parents just left him. And he doesn't want to be alone. "N-No," he gasps to no one in particular. "I c-can help. I-I can fix it."

So Stiles hops off the car, drying his eyes, and makes it into the hall just in time to see his father in the elevator before the doors close. Stiles is clever and has watched enough procedural crime shows to know he shouldn't wander aimlessly until he finds them. Instead, he stands in front of the elevator, watches it stop at the rooftop level, and then calls it back down.

While in the elevator, he tries to calm down. He wipes his eyes, but it seems to be a futile act. He doesn't want his mom to think that she's a bad mom, she's just confused. That's all, she's just confused.

But when Stiles gets to the roof, he sees his father struggling with his mother and she's screaming. She's screaming about someone killing her. She's screaming about him.

Stiles never entertained that thought. He knows his mother needs help, but he didn't realize she needed help from him. "He's trying to kill me! Look at him! Why is he looking at me like that? Stop. Looking."

His dad can only keep her steady for so long before she rips out of his grips and tears over at him.

Stiles is scared.

He never thought he'd be afraid of his own mother, but she's running at him and grabbing his arms. "Mom, no!" He shouts, wincing as her nails dig in and she shakes him.

"Stop looking at me like that! Why do you look at me like?" She screams and he's crying.

"Because I love you, mom!" He tries to shout, but she's shoving him to the ground.

She raises her hand, her eyes full of hate and anger, but she never makes it to strike him. His father rushes over and grabs her arm, struggling with his wife.

Stiles is bleeding. It's not bad, just superficial, but there are angry red marks down his forearms and blood trickling to his wrist. He doesn't get it, he'd never try and kill his mother, he'd never even—

"Go!"

Stiles realizes someone's shouting at him. He looks up, barely able to see what's happening through the tears. His father's face is red and he's hold her hands down. "Stiles, get out of here! Go to the waiting room now! Find Mrs. McCall and she'll take care of your arms."

"But dad—" Stiles says because he wants to let him know that he's not trying to kill his mother, she's just confused, she's just—

"Stiles, I said go, now!"

John looks away so quickly, Stiles misses the heartbreak and tears in his eyes. The way he stood in shock as his wife attacked their son. That she made him bleed.

But Stiles misses that.

He misses it because while he can understand that his mother is confused and thinks he's killing him, it never occurred to him that it may be true.

Even worse, it never occurred to him that his father might agree.

XXX

So here's the thing:

It's easy to tell himself that he didn't kill his mother and that his father didn't really believe that he did either. Besides some dark nightmares and an unfortunate incident with some punch at a party, Stiles has perfected the art of ignoring this problem in hopes that it'd go away.

He always is the person who says 'kill them' first and suggests chloroforming over talking. But he actually doesn't want to do any of those things. So when an ancient Japanese demon takes over his body and uses him as a personal executioner, Stiles can't really ignore it much anymore.

He can't ignore it so much that he doesn't go to Allison's funeral.

Well, he sort of does. He watches from a vantage point, far away from where anyone can see him. She's buried in the same graveyard that has his mother in it and he can't help but think that without him in the world, there are two strong, wonderful women who would've made it a better place.

He can see her coffin being lowered into the ground. It's moments like these that he's so grateful he's not a werewolf. Stiles isn't sure if he could handle the weeping that he's sure is happening. So instead he sits on a rock a ways away from the crowd of people with a handful of lilies in his hands.

They were Allison's favorite.

And he knows this. He does.

Just like he knows that she doesn't eat orange skittles. And that she's actually more of a cat person, but she was always afraid to tell anyone. She prefers winter to summer and Stiles could always tell when she got a new book because she'd come to school the next day with dark circles under her eyes.

Because no matter what anyone said, no matter the jealousy and problems they had when she first arrived, Stiles loved Allison. She was like the sister he never had – the girl friend that never felt like she had to be a girlfriend. She was a part of him too and now she was gone.

She was the one who always who reminded them to have hope, but was realistic. She trusted and believed in you, but you had to earn it. She side-eyed newcomers with him as Scott gave them hugs and snuck Stiles candy in Chemistry whenever Harris was being a particular dick.

Allison was the realistic balance to Scott's optimism. And he killed her, just like he killed his mother.

"Visiting someone?"

Stiles jumps a bit at the noise, wrapping his arms around himself. He's so cold, but reminds himself he deserves it. He made the world a little colder by killing Allison, so he needs to feel the pain he brought into the world. "I'm sorry?" He asks.

A kindly-looking woman steps up to him, a rose in her hand. She nods at his flowers. "Visiting someone?"

Stiles finds himself nodding. "Yeah," his words are scratchy and painful in his throat. He's certain this is a record he's had for not speaking.

"Who, if you don't mind my asking?" The woman says, placing the rose down at the grave that he's standing next to.

Stiles looks in the distance as people are filtering out from the funeral. He sees his father and Lydia. Chris Argent and even Derek Hale. But most of all, he sees Scott still sitting in one of those stupid plastic folding chairs.

He's the only one who hasn't stood up.

Stiles' chest aches and he thinks maybe he should've gone. He should've gone to hold Scott's hand and tell him it'll be alright.

But he has no right to be there. He has no right since he killed her. They should've just murdered him while they had the chance.

The woman's still next to him, watching the silent tears roll down his face as he feels more alone than he has ever felt in his life.

"My sister," he finds himself saying. "She was my sister."

The older woman touches his hand. "Is your sister."

Stiles turns. "I beg your pardon?"

The woman smiles. "She is your sister. Just because my Larry died, doesn't mean he stopped being my Larry. He's my husband and will always be my husband. Just like she will always be your sister."

Stiles looks to the ground.

No, she won't.

The woman doesn't get it, doesn't get what he's done, and doesn't get why he doesn't deserve Allison.

He can pretend for a moment, though.

XXX

So here's the thing:

Of all the people he's killed, he's never actually physically touched them.

With his mother, it was just his presence. With Allison, it was the Oni. But with Donovan?

Donovan, he watched the kid choke on his own blood as the light went out of his eyes.

Stiles shouldn't be surprised. He shouldn't be surprised that another person died because he made a mistake. He shouldn't be surprised, but he is.

So as they all stand at Eichen House and Scott goes on about how Kira almost murdered someone and how he can't trust her, Stiles stills. He listens to Scott talk about how terrible it is and how she may be becoming evil and all Stiles wants to do is cry. He listens as Scott explains how terrible it is, how terrible everything is.

"But he was trying to kill you," Stiles insists because there has to be a line. There has to be a justification for self-defense. There has to be a justification for Donovan being impaled when he was trying to eat his legs. "There has to be a line. T-There has to be a line when… when self-defense is acceptable."

Of course Scott says no.

And maybe that's the case. Because Scott's never killed anyone and Stiles has killed a lot of people and there's a difference.

Maybe Scott's good and Stiles can't understand that because Stiles is bad.

Stiles swallows, but his throat is too thick for him to do it properly. He knows that anxiety is rolling off of him in waves and he rubs his shoulder because it hurts horribly and he knows that he hasn't cleaned it properly because he can't quite reach it.

Which is why Stiles finds himself driving to Derek's loft.

He knows logically it's empty, because no one's heard from Derek in a while besides an off-handed note saying he was going to visit Cora. Get away from Beacon Hills.

Stiles can't blame him.

It all looks the same, which is weird.

Stiles feels like it should all look different because he's different. He watched Donovan die and he's walked in the hospital where he's murdered so many people and he feels like everything should reflect that. The only thing different is that there's more dust.

Stiles sits on the floor of the loft and peeks around. "Why aren't you here? You can't just uproot our lives and then just leave." He yells at no one, but someone at the same time. "You'd get it, you'd…"

Stiles chokes on his words.

"You wouldn't think I'm a monster."

So here's the thing:

Stiles hates Derek. He does. Derek scares him.

But he doesn't and Stiles isn't entirely sure when that change happened.

He never understood what his absence would do until he's gone and now Stiles realizes that it wasn't just him who knocked sense into Scott, it was Derek too. It was Derek imploring Scott not to trust hunters and to learn control. It was Derek – who had been literally burned by people in the past – to encourage treading carefully. It was Derek who killed because it needed to be done and he discovered a way to live with it regardless.

"I have questions," Stiles calls out to the empty loft. "And I need someone to stitch up my shoulder because I think it's getting infected."

Stiles stares at his hands that have been stained with blood so many times.

"I need to know – how did you do it? How did you live with the… the guilt? How did you handle it without falling apart?"

Surprisingly, the walls are good listeners.

Unsurprisingly, they don't answer.

XXX

So here's the thing:

Theo is a shady motherfucker.

Stiles knew it. He knew it and he would never let it go. He'll wear a shirt that says "Fuck you Theo" everyday if it helps.

So when Theo straight up murders a chimera in front of him, he wishes he was more surprised than he is.

Except this time, Theo's threatening him. He's blackmailing him. He knows about Donovan and murder and if Stiles was a betting man, he'd guess he knows about the Nogitsune too. Theo is putting Stiles and him on the same plane and Stiles is affronted. He's angry and wants to argue.

Except…

Except maybe he's right. Stiles never wanted to grow up to be a murderer. This isn't how life was supposed to go. This isn't what he wanted to do. He wants out. He wants out of it all.

But his prison is sealed with one sentence.

"Because I never said anything about Donovan."

XXX

So here's the thing:

Stiles knows he's a bad person, so he shouldn't be as surprised as he is. After all.

You knock on the Devil's door long enough, one day he's gonna answer you.

Author's Note: BRB DROWNING IN FEELINGS. Come muppet flail over all the angst with me on Tumblr. I'll bring cookies.

Please leave a note if you have the time with your thoughts. I'll still be unintelligibly crying.