Prologue

It had started with his Mom. Or at least, it had been her to ignite it.

She had been an economics PHD, a professor at the small community college an hour up the road. The numerous diplomas of hers littered the attic, even before she'd died. Stiles still remembered her snorting about how they were better at gathering dust than anything else. She'd given up a lucrative financial future for a romanticized ideal of family.

After she was gone, their cold glass panes were too painful to look at, so they remained up there.

Her area of focus had been the interactions of the dark web markets and their progression involving the usage of alternative currencies. The numerous facets of the wide world of felonies and hidden money had forced her to grow her abilities with computers alongside her grasp of market economics. She'd never been on to be able to shy away from something new or interesting.

She had been the first to show Stiles the internet, the different layers to it. Something his father had never shown much interest in, always standing firm by the fact that 'nothing good comes from that stuff, Claudia.' She'd always snort and turn to Stiles with bright eyes.

They had been so bright before. In some memories they still were.

She'd code silly little games for him to play, simple scripts.

Games that were still housed on the numerous hard drives and thumb drives that had been unceremoniously shoved into a rubbermaid and locked up in the attic. A blatant attempt to try and forget them. Grief is a strange thing. It could burn you up or freeze you in place. Blind-side you with fear and pain and flashes of happiness at the memories that are brought back by something as innocuous as a particular shade of blue.

But her ravenous curiosity had been imprinted on Stiles' genes. Like a brand, the desire and need to explore was hot and sharp. For Stiles the days spent in her lap as she calmly spoke to him about drugs, guns, and slavery had been his happiest. Juxtaposed as that bright feeling was with the surprisingly dark information she'd been so eager to impart on him.

His childhood had been chock full of coding languages, tablets, computers, robotics, and math. So much math, starting with baking. Edible math, his mother had called it. Fractions and decimals, they became the foundation for logic, as well as some pretty amazing recipes for Angel Wings and Kolaczki.

Nothing was off limits to him. She was a firm believer in 'if you're old enough to ask the question, you are old enough to hear the answer.' Which was an attitude his teacher's despised. His questions were never the easy ones, they were always difficult, borne as they were from a vast imagination and understanding of his small slice of the world.

--

So when she'd started forgetting things, he and his father hadn't thought much of it.

It was when she stopped answering Stiles' questions, stopped engaging in the world, that's when alarm bells really started ringing. Softly at first.

Too soon, however, the nightmare began. Stiles was shuffled off to Scott's house while his father took his mother to the specialist. They learned what 'it' was. Dementia, specifically frontotemporal dementia.

At first, being shuffled off to Scott's house was just for the doctor's visits. His dad would pick him up on their way back home and they'd both pretend to ignore his mother as she sat shivering in the front seat.

It was a fast deterioration. At first, it was just apathy and blankness and confusion. Stiles would still tried to speak with his mother, tried to light the fire of curiosity that had been lit aflame in him for so long. The constant attempts burned him out and he slowly lost interest in anything new. Just going through the motions of what they had done together, once upon a time.

That blankness changed, however.

Boy did that change.

His father ended up having to take time from work to care for his mother. Her violent outbursts, the paranoia. Stiles was sent to Scott's house under the care of Melissa, for days, then weeks, at a time. Gone was the blindingly brilliant woman that had so entranced the two Stilinski men. In her place was a demon that tried to claw out Stiles eyes. It didn't stop him from trying to make the best little code script to run for her. Something to bring back the glint of a smile.

She died when he was 10.

She'd been moved into a care facility, finally. Melissa had been the one to go his father, because it wasn't working. His father had been drilling himself into the abyss of pain and loneliness. The aggressive nature of his wife's invisible illness robbing him of any hope. Stiles wasn't mentioned, because Stiles was being cared for, so Stiles was supposed to be fine.

Into the care facility she'd gone. His father returned to work and Stiles returned home. He got permission to ride the bus to the care facility after school, his father would then pick him up after work.

She would lay wan in the bed, listless from medication. Gone was her ability to speak or connect. Her hands would tremble if she raised them.

Any lucidity that broke over her features, was soon chased by fear and anger.

Stiles didn't tell his father about the times she'd try to lay hands on him.

He just rode the bus and sat next to his mother on his tablet. Quiet and reserved.

She passed away quietly in the night. Stiles was awoken by his father whose eyes were red rimmed and his face lost. It had been Stiles to hold the bigger man while he wept. Because Stiles didn't feel the grief at first. At first it was relief. Relief that the person who'd been trying to hurt him, who'd disrupted his life, was gone.

Then it was guilt, and the guilt mixed with the grief painfully. Like sick barbs they dug into each other and seeped out poison. All Stiles could do was weep quietly in his bed, scared of himself and scared to tell his father. Scott listened, sometimes. Tried to. But they were just kids, something Stiles learned about.

Because something that happened when his mother died, was his curiosity burned erratically once more. Because he had to understand. What happened, what he was going through. No longer was he glued to his computer or tablet because of code and silly games, now it was for articles and papers on the social-emotional development on young adolescents.

Or articles on the frontotemporal lobar degradation. Those were harder to read, and he brought in the paper to sit with the latin teacher one lunch period to go through all of the pre and sub fixes found in the words so he could map the science a little better in his mind.

Maybe if he understood what exactly happened he might be able to come to terms with why it had to have happened. He never did find those specific answers.

--

A month after his mother passed, he was riding with his father in the cruiser. He'd been over at Scott's place, was honestly surprised his father had remembered to even pick him up. The cab was silent, neither speaking for their own reasons.

It was late, the night inky and quiet.

Scott didn't live too far from Stiles, and honestly he could've walked home. Would've if home felt like a home. There was only one stretch of highway, and mostly rural roads, so they were driving slowly.

"All call, 10-70 in progress-" The police radio sputtered to life, loud in the silence. The dispatcher rattled off the address. John cursed under his breath and unhooked the radio, glancing at his son.

"This is Stilinski in car 408." He started, voice tight. "Is the fire department on scene?"

"Negative, sheriff."

John grunted and affirmed that he was on his way.

"There's a fire in progress." He said to the kid, turning the radio down to a low mutter. The dispatcher was still coordinating different aids. "I'm going to bring you with me, it's close. Stay in the car."

Stiles nodded at his father, and now the silence that stretched between them was tense and tight. Stiles bit at his lips and looked out the window, his knees bouncing. His father never took him on ride-alongs. The reason was always 'they're too dangerous.' So there was a frisson of excitement fluttering along Stiles' nerves.

They drove for a few minutes, twining through the woods. The trees here were thick and dense. It was a moonless night, both the new moon, and the fact it's shadow had set already. If Stiles leaned against the window, he could see glimpses of the stars through the dark boughs of the trees as they sped by.

The Sheriff slowed and Stiles turned to face forward as they drove along a gravel driveway. The trees were close on each side and the Sheriff radioed in to alert the dispatcher of the terrain. One final turn, and they arrived first at the scene of a new kind of horror.

Sickeningly thick black smoke tumbled out of windows on the third floor.

Vicious red flames tore through the siding and the gabled roof.

The Sheriff cursed and spoke short and tersely into the radio at his shoulder, face tight.

"Don't leave the car, kid." He said, then burst from the car without a backwards glance. Stiles stared at the house, entranced and scared. It was loud, the fire. At first that was all he heard. But his father hadn't closed his door all the way, or it didn't latch. Because soon it wasn't just the roar of flames that he heard.

Screams were echoing in the night.

It seemed that the fire was mostly in the upper stories. The bottom floor not yet catching light. Stiles watched as his father approached the front door and tried it. No luck. Then the man jumped down the steps and sprinted around the back of the house, arms tucked tight to his sides.

Stiles clutched at the dashboard, a new fear bubbling hot in his chest.

His eyes were trapped on the house. So he saw when scared faces appeared in the windows. Watched as they broken them only to come up short. A new fear alighting on their features. Their screams were no longer muffled by the house or the glass.

Before he knew what he was doing, Stiles was unbuckled and stumbling toward the flames. Fear drove him, searing his chest like the flames seared into his mind. Because he was scared that if he did nothing, their faces would haunt him at night like his mother's was.

The broken window the faces were screaming out of was a little high, sitting above a well tended and organized garden. He could barely reach the sill, the people inside begged and pleaded with him. But he didn't respond, too focused and distracted. They should be able to get out, but they banged at the air as if it was a solid mass. Each thud of their hands sending out an inaudible thump into the air.

Stiles spied an upturned bucket on the edge of the small garden, it was rank and slimy when he dragged it over, hands catching on a raised metal shaving on the edge. Blood welled up on his palm, mixing with the dirt from the bucket.

He heard the fire sputter and when Stiles stood on the bucket to look over the railing of the window, he saw that red flames were beginning to flicker along the ceiling. The heat from the room baked his cheeks.

"Please, please, please." The guy was saying, face deeply shadowed trying to push a baby out the window. It, too, ran into the invisible barrier. Anger flashed through Stiles. He reached forward and the guy's face broke, the babe was placed in Stiles arms. But when he went to pull it through, something stopped him.

"Wh-?" Stiles mumbled.

The guy immediately took the babe back and a woman pushed him out of the way, her face fierce, even covered in soot.

"Wipe this away!" She yelled, pointing at the narrow black line of dust that remained intact, even with the over heated air brushing past his face. In the distance, Stiles heard sirens. He looked at her with confusion, but he obediently took the corner of his sleeve and wiped the dust away. It stained his sleeve instantly, and it clung like tar.

As soon as it was gone, someone leapt from the window, bowling Stiles over and knocking him to his back. His head hit one of the decorative rocks that lined the small garden that sat under the window.

He shouted in pain and curled up instantly, eyes squeezing shut as more people poured from the window. Stiles grunted and dragged himself away. The sirens were close, he could hear the bumbling noise of a large vehicle on the gravel driveway. His father would appear soon.

Through the pain, Stiles could only think of the disappointed look on his father's face if he knew he'd left the police cruiser. Shakily he tried to stand, firm hands helped him up and then disappeared, leaving Stiles to make his own way back to the car. The people from the house were checking on each other now, faces streaked with soot. Sobs filled the clearing, broken by deep chest racking coughs.

Stiles rubbed his hands against his pants as he looked back across the clearing, wincing when the cut from the bucket caught on a piece of mulch from the garden bed. He patted himself down as best he could and crawled back into the police car's passenger seat. The firefighters burbled out of the truck like a well oiled machine, a stern look on all their faces as they consulted with the people who'd made it out of the house.

His knees were bouncing. He didn't see his father.

The bottom windows burst with the force of the flame.

The shattering noise echoing up into the night.

Stiles ate at his lips, chewing until the metallic tang of blood seeped onto his tongue.

In his search of the clearing, he spotted a figure at the edge of it. They were gone before he'd gotten a good look. He stared a little longer, new fear ratcheting up in his throat.

Finally, he spotted his father. His uniform was covered in soot, one of his shoulders completely black. His face was streaked, and he held an oxygen mask over his mouth as he spoke to one of the firefighters. His other hand was placed on his hip, periodically waving about.

Ambulances bumbled down the road and pulled into the clearing, followed by more police cruisers. The clearing around the house becoming more and more full. It was chaos. Stiles leaned away from the scene. His father was safe, and his head hurt.

He was tired. The burning in his chest was almost overwhelming as he looked out the window. Before it popped like an overfull bubble. The heat spread through his arms and legs, leaving him chilled.

He slumped in the seat, eyes blurring. The fire was still going strong, and it seemed they were going to let it burn out. It was simply too far gone. The woman who'd told him to wipe away the black soot stood proud in front of the blaze. Her shoulders square, her arms crossed.

Stiles regarded her. From the back, her shoulders looked like his mom's. Tears burned at his eyes and he sobbed a breath quietly, finally turning away completely. It was all a little too much, a little too overwhelming.

--

His father returned a long time later. Face drawn with exhaustion. When he sat in the cab, he didn't immediately turn the car on, instead sitting with his eyes closed just breathing for a moment. Soft coughs when a breath was a little too deep.

"Alright, kid." He said on a sigh, voice weary. "Lets go home."

Stiles nodded. Eyes raking over the people who were still in the clearing.

"What will happen to them?" He asked quietly, the curiosity burning sharp and painfully like it did sometimes. His father was silent as they drove from the house, back down the gravel road. Stiles hoped his mother's belief of 'if you're old enough to ask' was still in effect.

"They will go to a hotel." He finally said, voice flat. "And mourn."

"But-" Stiles whipped his head to his father.

"Some people died in that fire, Stiles." His father interrupted him, not unkindly. "You've seen too much for someone your age. I should've left you with Scott and Melissa tonight."

That burned. Stiles felt choked. A new guilt fell onto his shoulders. It was no longer just his mother's hands resting against his throat. Stiles stared at his father, a new fear of being left behind blooming cold and dreadful in his chest.

"Wh-" Stiles cleared his throat, "Who were they?"

"Talia said that there were 5 people missing from the people who got out." His father replied, voice tipping with exhaustion. "The Hales were having a family reunion."

It was as if every word his father spoke was an unwitting knife slicing to the core of him. Stiles nodded and faced forward, mind racing. The radio burbled and his dad spoke low words in response, letting the dispatcher know that the fire chief was in charge at the scene.

Their house was cold and dark, empty. Such a stark contrast to the fire.

They entered it quietly, subdued.

Stiles trudged up to his room, tossing his backpack next to his door. He had school tomorrow, but he'd already completed his homework with Scott earlier. Thankfully.

--

He kept track of the Hales after that. A resigned guilty fear and duty welling up in his small body, he didn't want them to be in danger. The memory of the figure at the edge of the clearing spurned his actions. Along with the burning tugging pull on his sternum that drug him everywhere.

Derek, Laura, and what was left of Peter's family, left for New York a few months after the fire.

Stiles had kept every article about the fire that he found. That had been the beginning of his…obsession. Something drew him through the mire of pain and guilt in reading those articles, yanked him forward into a full tilt run towards learning about the Hales.

Peter's wife had been trapped by a bookcase falling through the fire weakened upper floor. She'd curled around their infant child, who'd survived tucked against their mother's breast. But it seemed the memories of family now lost were too much. The first Stiles had learned that they were attempting to leave, it was because his father had been on the phone with Talia.

Since that evening, Stiles had stayed at Scott's place even more. His father took the evening shifts and they barely saw one another now. The eavesdropping happened on a rare day out together, to buy new shoes for Stiles after outgrowing his last pair.

"Thank you for letting me know." His father said lowly, standing amongst the aisles of shoes with a far away look shadowed over his features. "But you can't keep them here, Talia. Grief hits people differently."

Stiles had perked up at the name. He didn't know why Talia was talking to his father. But he was glad.

"I know." His father nodded at what she was saying. "You said Laura got into the graduate program at Columbia. She was leaving anyway."

His father was quiet as he listened to the response and Stiles tried not to make too much noise, tried to still his bouncing knees and burning curiosity that licked into his lungs.

"Either you lose them for a few years now, or potentially forever." His father's words sounded harsh. Which Talia seemed to also think.

His father seemed to notice Stiles finally, he waved at the shoes impatiently and strode off, leaving Stiles alone with a multitude of rubber soles. He sighed and picked a pair at random, following his father. At least this time he didn't smell like whiskey.

The conversation was finished by the time Stiles caught up.

"What happened?" He asked, face turning up to look at his father. Who regarded him for a few moments before sighing and rubbing at his neck.

"The Hales," The sheriff started after a moment. "Laura was leaving for Columbia in a few months anyway. It seems that Derek, Peter, and Peter's kids, want to go with her."

"Who are they?" Stiles asked. "Why'd she call you?"

"Her son, her brother, and her brother's kids. She wanted me to talk to them." He said on another sigh. "Those the pair you're picking?"

"Huh?" Stiles looked down at his hands, a pair of blue converse. "Yeah."

"Ok, come on." The sheriff stepped up to the sales counter and waved for Stiles to put the shoes on the counter.

--

The days spent on his mother's knee had been what really gave Stiles the crumbs to follow. The numerous silly net crawling bots that they'd crafted together to find old html run sites made in the mid '90s. His burning curiosity was the fuel to the fire.

It started out simple enough.

The memory of the black tarry soot on the window sill would come back to him every once in a while. The memory sparking questions. So he began there. Setting his bots to crawl and search for a few key words. It was slow going, because 'tar, barrier' was a very broad search.

Laura, Derek, and Peter were long gone from Beacon Hills before he came up with his first result.

Talia and his Father grew closer, both bonding over losing family. They'd meet in town, Stiles would hear about it from his Father when he'd pick him up from Scott's. He felt left out, but he didn't hold it against the Hales. The guilt was beginning to manifest in self doubt.

It also manifested in nightmares and panic attacks.

He'd been the one to have to go to his father and explain about ADHD, Anxiety disorders, and the need for proper medication. It had been a tense conversation, but his father had nodded and the following week he'd been seen by a professional.

His father's drinking got progressively worse.

Stiles could do nothing but watch.

--

The first time he'd walked to Scott's house had been when his father had drunk himself into a stupor on a Friday night. There was no food in the house, and he'd been loud and angry. It reminded Stiles so much of his mother when she'd tried to hurt him. So he left, walked out.

It was a couple of years after his mother's death and the fire.

Scott had been excited to see him, and he'd smiled and waved Melissa's concern off.

His shield of words long since being formed.

His father didn't stop drinking until his fellow officers sat him down. Stiles was thankful for their care and tact. Because nothing he'd said had ever made a difference, but he hoped that this time something would change.

God he hoped.

--

His bots unearthed interesting articles and scientific journals. All dating from the mid to late 80's. Old PDFs that only existed on dead websites. He was 14 when the word lycanthropy drifted across his screen for the first time. It was also the first dead end he'd found.

Nothing he searched after that pulled any new information.

Before remembering the laughing fondness his mother had for the darkweb.

Then, as soon as he downloaded Tor and set a new breed of bot to crawl, hits fired like no tomorrow. An entirely new world came to life from the shadows of his reality. It also completely reformed his painful need to watch out for the Hales.

Within those shadows he saw a reality that matched what he'd seen that night. The gaping maw of fire and fright. The family held in place by a single line of soot. At first he was fascinated and excited. An entirely new world to learn and become a part of. At least, until he came across the first legitimate plan to retaliate against members of the Hale pack for the imprisonment of a hunter.

That had been a wake up call.

In the years since the fire, he'd anonymously tipped the police off to several groups of people overtly planning harm against the Hale pack. They'd been cocky, thinking their password protected forums were advanced enough to keep prying eyes out. Yet, there Stiles was, archiving all messages and IP addresses and delivering them via thumb drive through mail to the police office.

Mountain ash, lycanthropy, supernatural.

Stiles kept tabs on Derek, Laura, and Peter's family in New York. They shared a mind bogglingly large and expensive condo near the heart of NYC. Derek was in college now, he was also seeing a therapist, which Stiles approved of happily. Laura was finishing graduate school, and had been scouted by a rather impressive law firm.

Peter had all but dropped out of the electronically documented world. Stiles only kept track of him peripherally through Laura and Derek, as well as his kids, who attended a private nouveau riche school. They had no social media presence, even the rare photo of them was obliterated from the source.

The man was a ghost. Trying to find, watch, and hunt that elusive man is what spurred Stiles to learn even more. Constantly having a problem to try and solve.

Because of this Stiles' own privacy and protection measures ratcheted up along with Peter's. Because whatever he was concerned about enough to hide from, made Stiles concerned in turn. Soon Stiles was wiping all of his own hard drives and starting completely from scratch.

Building a protocol from the ground up, only accessing Tor and the dark web through Tails. Only seriously hunting for supernatural information from any free wifi hotspot he could find, with his back to the wall. This was more difficult when he didn't have his mother's jeep to drive around. But a kid asking to go somewhere for homework always seemed innocent enough.

What little money he had went into various bitcoins, and from there into secondary and tertiary wallets that had no tie to him. Which he began keeping on various thumb-drives.

Fear still rode him, hand in hand with his guilt.

Things were after the Hales.

The first group, he'd discovered in those first days of being on the darkweb, had been the hunters. They were the modern day Gestapo. Well. They had been the Gestapo in the past as well, but their reach hadn't waned. Neither did their anger.

Stiles uncovered the remnants of the plans to burn down the Hale house. Several broken .txt files that had been forgotten in a server. Only a few lines, but enough to boil Stiles blood.

His curiosity burned hotter the more he learned of the darkly shadowed world just beyond his reality. But he didn't try and reach for it, not yet. Objectively, Stiles was afraid. He was protecting the Hales just fine as he was, sending in various thumb drives and sheets of carefully printed paper.

That fear didn't stop him from learning, though.

He soon had notebook upon notebook of notes he copied dutifully down from the encrypted pages he'd found online. He couldn't safely save the files, wouldn't want to. So the old fashion note taking was what he could do. It helped him learn, and kept him quiet, because the only thing that could hold his attention was anything to do with the supernatural.

--

His father gave up drinking.

The talk with his fellow officers did what Stiles could not.

It didn't magically make anything better, and now that Stiles was old enough, he didn't have to be babysat at Scott's anymore. His evenings were given over to his obsession. But his father stopped taking the evening shifts.

They started to have meals together again.

It was frozen food, heated up in a microwave or a toaster. But it was hot food and they ate it together. Stiles didn't trust this newness. So he stayed one step back from his father at all times. His shield of words strengthened by years of hiding.

With his father being home more, they found they had little to talk about. Save the sheriff's work. Stiles' mind was useful in numerous 'stuck' cases. There weren't even that many since Beacon Hills wasn't a large city. Yet, there were enough that the sheriff would drop a few facts about a case and Stiles would mull it over for a few days and come back with a thought out plan. Or even proposed where evidence might be. Enough that the close rate began to rise.

So they bonded over crime.

The sheriff found his love for the job again.

He started actually seeing his son whenever he looked at the boy he lived with. Started to feel the complicated and vicious guilt that dragged claws down his sternum when he thought of the months, years, after his wife's death.

But Stiles had never complained.

Even now, he never complained.

At least, until he took Stiles with him to the doctor's office. It was a routine check up. But the fateful words of 'high blood pressure' and 'risk of heart attack' had sent Stiles into a surly spiral. The next grocery trip had been arduous and painful. No snacks, no frozen meals, no soda.

A wasteland of whole grain food and vegetables now inhabited their fridge.

The first meal Stiles made was wet, mushy, and bland. But he'd almost force-fed John each bite. Only calmed when the food was done and dishes cleaned.

Their meals got better from there as Stiles learned to cook. Pots and pans that hadn't been taken out since Claudia first got sick were brought out and washed carefully. He did it all without complaint, the sheriff not noticing the burdens the kid was piling onto his already heavy shoulders.