Chapter Text
Everyone says the old Hale house is haunted. The fire that torched it six or so years before killed everyone inside: adults, children, everyone. It had been a tragedy, a freak accident… It had to have been. But it’s hard to believe even a freak accident could take out over a dozen people and leave no survivors.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t an accident.
Supposedly the Hales had been werewolves, although no actual evidence exists to prove that they were, or even that werewolves exist. But if they had been…
They’re all rumors passed between people who know nothing of the supernatural in the hopes of scaring someone who might believe.
And Stiles believes. Ever since his best friend was bitten a couple of years ago, Stiles has been learning more and more about all the things that go bump in the night, and all the things that he can do despite his lack of lycanthropy. All the things he can learn to do.
Stiles is a witch.
The word “witch” doesn’t have the best connotation, but he’s come to terms with it. He’s a witch, which...is pretty cool.
He had thought his connection to Deaton, the local veterinarian-slash-werewolf doctor-slash-druid (and his best friend’s boss), would help him out more on the magic end, but Deaton is not very helpful. Most of Deaton’s advice involves being hands off unless the situation is dire. But, like, what does that even mean?
If Stiles is going to use magic, it’s going to be whenever he damn well pleases, not only because everything is already so fucked up that it’s the only option. So Stiles has had to spend a lot of time learning on his own. It’s why he mostly experiments and hopes for the best.
It’s also why he’s about to take up residence in the refurbished and repaired Hale house.
The few who have tried before him have been spooked away, but Stiles isn’t scared of spirits. In fact, that’s the reason he wants to be out in the middle of the woods. Well, to investigate spirits, nature… All things natural and witchy, really. He’s glad that there’s still a house out there since he doesn’t really want to live in a little hut, cackling and caked in dirt, thank you very much.
The mental image is enough.
He pulls his Jeep up in front of the house and stares at it. He doesn’t see flickers of movement behind the curtains or hear any unnatural noises. He mostly just sees a recreation of the pictures from before the fire: a beautiful house that used to be full of people and now sits sad and empty in the Beacon Hills Preserve, almost as if it’s already been lost to time. There are a couple of vines clinging to the side of the house trailing up, but not too many. People have tried to tame the house, to claim it as their own.
No one stays.
Stiles is very aware of himself and the building as he twists the key. It sticks a bit, but he manages to get it open and takes a look inside.
It’s dusty and...he guesses the word is “rustic,” but it’s pretty nice. It’s a big house and semi-furnished already from what others have left behind—perhaps even from the first showings of the house once it had been fixed up, dressed but not like it ever belonged to anyone in its current state. He tests the lights, the faucets, then explores the bottom floor before glancing up the stairs, several doorways leading into bedrooms, bathrooms, maybe something that could’ve been a study. Stiles had known that the house was big, but it’s one thing to look at a large house from the outside and another to wander in and realize he’s going to be in here for a while.
Hand to the wall, despite all that’s been done to it since the fire, Stiles can feel the death and loss that permeate the building. The whole place is still wounded, festering in some places, scarred over in others. Maybe he can help it heal, along with whoever or whatever still resides here. He has no idea what to expect and doesn’t know whether or not the place is actually haunted, but his interest is piqued.
It takes him two hours to lug in his stuff and make some semblance of his own space in one of the bedrooms upstairs. He unloads a bag of groceries into the kitchen along with a meager few dishes, unloads some other necessary miscellany. He unwraps a glass to fill with water and takes it up to the room.
He gets a lot settled before he has to reluctantly return to his Jeep to unstrap his old mattress from the roof of it and drag it inside, draped in a tarp to keep it clean, and he wishes he could levitate something bigger than an apple for more than a few seconds at a time. His skills are no match for a mattress.
When he gets it to the wooden bedframe in what is now his room, he’s immensely proud of himself. So proud that he wastes nearly another hour on his phone trying to figure out if magic and WiFi are compatible. He gives up that thought process without coming to any real conclusions.
Stiles decides to draw in a few wards in case something from outside wants to wander its way in, but he doesn’t do anything that might impact what’s already in the house. He’s here to understand and commune, not exorcise things without any input from the affected beings. And he hasn’t seen or felt anything yet, but Stiles thinks from the state of things that there are beings. Or, at least, a being. He assumes he’ll find out sooner rather than later based on the stories of previous passers through.
Sunlight wanes, casting jagged shadows across the room. Stiles sighs and digs through one of the boxes until he finds his sheets. They were a gift from Lydia and a bit of a joke, at that, but Lydia is too tasteful to give him something garish, even if she did tease him for being a witch who decided to go hang out in the woods. They’re midnight blue with moons and stars and he remembers her saying, “Embrace the aesthetic,” with a fond smile. He haphazardly makes the bed and tells himself he’ll steal more pillows when he goes back to his dad’s house in a couple of days.
He’s promised himself that he’ll give it at least a couple of days before he breaks down and wanders back into civilization, knowing that otherwise it’s too easy to get distracted and he gets distracted enough as it is.
Dark is starting to really creep in and he remembers the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he packed because food is an actual thing he should deal with. There are a lot of things he should deal with, really, but he wants to settle in his space and, much as Stiles is interested in searching out new life—or death, as the case may be—he doesn’t feel ready tonight to take full advantage of the Hale house’s amenities. In the morning, he’ll make himself breakfast in the kitchen, he’ll figure out what stuff he still needs, and he’ll traipse out into the preserve. For tonight, he looks out the window into almost total blackness under the new moon, can only really see his own reflection.
There’s something in the corner of the room, he thinks, but when he actually looks, it’s empty.
Stiles thinks about calling his dad or Scott, or even Lydia, but he just stares at his phone instead, like someone’s listening.
That’s what he gets for moving into a haunted house and, as he goes to sleep, he whispers, “Goodnight.”
A thrill goes down his spine and he smiles.
~
Laura always took care of her brother. Always.
She tries to now but there’s not much she can do.
He isn’t himself anymore. He can’t communicate. His ties to humanity hang on by almost unnoticeable threads and she hates it.
He wasn’t like this when they were young, before Kate had come into the picture. To think that they’d imagined themselves free after years passed with no sign of her, only to be trapped in their own home, their littlest cousins confused, crying, while their mother howled like it might still mean something. The smoke had been so thick, the fire had spread so quickly… There wasn’t anything they could do to save themselves.
Even then, Laura had gone to her brother’s side, had tried to protect him until the end.
But Derek Hale had died in her arms, age twenty-three, and her own death had come only moments later.
She wonders now if he’s still her brother, ravaged by guilt and unable to move on. She can’t leave him like this alone. Whether or not he acknowledges her, remembers her, he needs someone to look after him. Someone to help him. Someone to keep him from hurting others.
She never expected this, but here they are: two ghosts trapped in a facsimile of the house in which everyone else they’d ever loved had died. People come, but they mostly go.
In death, Derek’s wolf is closer to the surface.
He lashes out, he intimidates people, scares them. Laura doesn’t think they can see him, has never heard anyone describe either of them, but people can certainly feel them, feel him.
She tries to keep him calm and remind him that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he doesn’t look at her with anything but a wild, animal gaze that holds no reason behind it. And she finds it odd to still see it that way, knowing that they’re barely corporeal as it is on a good day, even to each other. And some days he’s wearing the tattered remains of the clothes he died in, other days less when the wolf cries out and she can see fangs and claws.
At first though, all those years ago, sometimes she’d see him like he was. He’d look normal, vulnerable… Everything he’d been that had made him an easy victim and it makes her no-longer-existent heart ache for him. If he could talk to her, at least…
The blue Jeep that pulls up outside comes after six months or more of nothing—not that Laura is very good at keeping time anymore, but it’s been a while. She can see it on the house, the lack of care put into it leaving it more and more like a forgotten relic, the decrepit tomb in which their spirits reside.
The boy who arrives thrums with something she does not recognize, a different kind of power. His eyes roam the house perceptively, curiously, and his face is dotted with moles, mousy brown hair a bit of a mess. He’s not a wolf like them, like they were. He’s something else entirely, and he brings in groceries, sets up in Derek’s old bedroom.
He’s staying, although Laura doesn’t know how long he’ll be allowed to last, especially on his own.
Derek flickers in and out. She can see him watching the boy, taut with anger at this intruder to their den, as if it still means anything. Days are harder than nights in this form, so she knows the boy is safe until the evening at least. Maybe someone else is coming later, will provide another barrier between him and what was once her brother because even though she feels power, she can’t see it—and the amount of time and effort it takes for the boy to drag in his mattress only proves this part of her assumption.
She wants to tell him to leave, but she misses seeing humanity, remembering what people can be like when they’re still just people. She wants him to stay.
And then, as darkness descends and she feels herself getting stronger, despite the moon’s absence tonight, the boy turns to Derek and she feels her own curiosity grow. Did he— Did he see something? Or is it just a coincidence?
Just as quickly, the boy shakes it off and Laura thinks it’s nothing.
At least, she thinks it’s nothing until the boy is nearly out and he says, “Goodnight.”
But he’s alone. He should think he’s alone with how nonchalant he sounds, but he says it aloud.
Like he knows.