...

Y/n stands beside the Jeep, leaning against it and watching Stiles as he works away at the engine, trying to get it working enough so that they could ride into the desert to fetch Kira. He reached in, tightening something with a spanner before pulling out a bundle of wires. He tossed them aside and reached in again. He then pulled out large piece of... Well, Y/n didn't know what it was, but Stiles tossed that aside as well. "What was that?" She asked.

"No idea."

"Was it important?"

"No idea."

"Okay then." She nodded to herself. She remained silent, content to just watch him work on the Jeep, quietly enjoying the movement of his arms as he turned this and fiddled with that.

Scott walked out at the same time Stiles grunted in frustration, the Alpha moving to stand opposite Y/n beside the Jeep and grabbing the light hanging off of the hood. "So, what did he want?" Stiles asked about Liam who they both heard Scott talking to.

"To help."

"You gonna let him?"

"Eventually, I guess."

"Okay, but shouldn't he be a little higher on your priority list right now? I mean, since he's the only other actual werewolf, and your only actual Beta."

"You didn't see the way that he came at me. You didn't see the look in his eyes."

"Well, I've been with you on a full moon, so I've seen the look."

"The girl he loved was dying, and to make matters worse, it was the supermoon." Y/n reminded. "I remember when it was just a regular full moon and the girl you loved had only broken up with you. Love is potent and can make you do things you never thought you would."

Stiles nodded in agreement with his girlfriend. "You want to get the band back together, Scott, you don't leave out the drummer."

"We wouldn't be complete without Phil Collins."

Stiles went around to the driver's side and reached in, turning the key to test the Jeep. The engine roared to life and the three moved to stand in front of the hood, Stiles tossing his arms up in victory. "Success! Yes!" He closed the hood and the three then climbed into the vehicle, Scott unwittingly placing himself in the back where he had to share space with several large antifreeze bottles.

"What in the..." Y/n trailed off in surprise when she saw the amount of bottles Scott had to squeeze next to.

Stiles looked between their matching looks of question and held his thumb and fore finger together. "It's a minor leak. Very minor." He promised before he put the Jeep in gear and started to drive away, although Y/n doubted his claim for it sounded like it was raining under the car as they sped off.

...

Stiles glanced over at Y/n as she lightly moaned in her sleep for not the first time since she dozed off a while ago. It sounded almost pained, like a whimper of some kind, and it was starting to worry him that she might be having a nightmare. As he reached over to gently shake her awake, his hand stilled in the air when she started to mutter.

"Il doit être oublié."

"What the hell was that?" Stiles asked to no one in particular, but Scott still answered.

"I think that was French."

"Why the hell is she talking French in her sleep?"

"I don't know." Scott shrugged, unable to think of an answer.

She awoke a moment later with a sharp inhale, eyes wide as if she was startled awake. "Hey, are you okay?"

She turned to see Stiles' worried glance, Scott right behind him with a matching look of worry. She hesitated for only a moment before she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just a... Bad dream, that's all. I've already forgotten most of it." She brushed off with a small smile, one that didn't reach her eyes.

"Alright, of you say so." Stiles didn't really believe it, but he didn't push. If she wanted to tell him right then, she would have. And although he was concerned, he just needs to trust that she'll talk about whatever it was that spooked her when she was ready.

Y/n turned her head towards the window, the smile slipping from her lips and letting a frown overtake her features instead as her eyes flicked between the fading stars. The dream had indeed gone quickly from her mind, but there were a few images that stuck out in her head. A cabin in the woods, a blood stained hand laying on equally stained snow... and Allison's face. Yet it wasn't quite the Allison she knew. This face was older, sadder, yet no less as determined. And words echoing in Y/n's head that were spoken in a familiar voice, the cadence much like her own. He must be forgotten.

Hours pass and the sun is now high in the sky, beating down on the Jeep and making it feel like a portable oven. Scott continued to flip through a book, doing on-the-go research to learn more about damnatio memoriae. Stiles wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand while Scott sighs from the heat. Y/n's eyes glow as she holds her hand level with her face, moving her fingers to control a small air current that would help cool herself and the others off just a bit. She usually wouldn't waste energy on such a small thing, preferring to save it for bigger spells in case some random supernatural occurrence were to try and attack them, but she's been doing fairly well on energy. Well, very well actually as it seems any energy she uses is replenished almost instantaneously.

"Man, I think the Jeep's overheating again." Scott finally mentioned after sighing yet again.

"Probably." Stiles agreed.

"Should we pull over and put more antifreeze in it?"

Stiles sighs. "No, we can just turn the heat on." Stiles does so, and the heat that was surrounding them became even more suffocating making them roll down the windows. Stiles glanced over at Y/n as he felt the air become stronger, seeing her fingers moving a little faster than they were before to compensate for the extra heat. "Are you okay? Like, are you sure you're able to sustain that for this long?"

When her eyes met his he swore they were brighter than he remembered, but, of course, that might also be because of the fact he hadn't seen it while she lost her magic. She nodded with a little smirk. "I can do much more than a little air current, you know." To prove her point the small current picked up pace and turned into a mini tornado in her palm. Despite it's small size it still held a powerful gust that blew back their hair and made Scott cover his face with the book to keep the pages from ripping out by the strong wind.

"All right! All right, we get it!" Y/n chuckled at their struggle against the mininado, but decided to be nice to her boys and shrink the cone back down to a cooling breeze. After they recovered Stiles glanced back at Scott who was reading once more. "You find anything yet?"

Scott lightly shook his head in answer. "They're mostly the same stuff you guys already knew. 'Damnatio memoriae was a Roman practice, a government decree to destroy the images of the damned. And they would scratch off their names from inscriptions, chisel their face off of statues. The Romans believed it was a punishment worse than death'."

"Being forgotten." Y/n glanced at Stiles after he spoke, the words from her dream echoing in her mind again.

"Listen to this. 'Damnatio memoriae was later used on a serial killer in 1598, known as the Demon Tailor. He lured children to his shop in Paris where he would kill them and boil the flesh off their bones to eat. The courts believed the crimes so horrible, they ordered all the documents destroyed. To this day, no one knows his real name'."

"So the Dread Doctors resurrected a killer who was so bad that he had to literally be erased from history."

"A killer that became a werewolf."

"Which probably made him a better killer."

"La bête."

"La what?" Stiles parroted Y/n, looking at her in question.

"La bête. The Beast. It's a demon wolf that killed hundreds of people in the 1760's and was killed by the Maid of Gevaudan. My mother used to tell me stories about it."

"Your mom told you stories about a serial killing werewolf?"

"Sort of. The way she told it was more of a tragedy than a horror. I had an ancestor who lived in France at that time. She helped the Maid kill the Beast back then. I have a feeling that La bête may be related to what the Dread Doctors have done."

"Why do you think that?" Scott asked.

"The Beast's name. It's not anywhere, not even in my grimoire. The name has been stricken out, most likely because of the damnatio memoriae."

"That's great." Stiles quipped sarcastically before he pressed on the accelerator, suddenly extra motivated to get to Kira.

...

Every few hours they rotated seats, taking turns driving to their destination. It was Y/n's turn, the witch taking the wheel for a while while Scott took the passenger seat and Stiles taking up residence in the back seat. Y/n's eyes were back to their usual color because now she had to keep her focus on the road and had to stop manipulating the air currents. "Have either of you heard from Malia recently?" Scott suddenly asked.

"Not lately. I think she's been busy." Y/n answered vaguely.

"Well, she's not talking to me. Or anyone, I guess." Stiles answered.

"I think I know why." Scott admitted. "I think she found her mother."

Stiles' eyes widened as he looked at Scott. "Her mother, as in The Desert Wolf?"

"Yeah." Scott nodded.

"I knew she was still looking. She had Y/n erase her name off of my board, but I just- I knew she never stopped."

"When I was at her house, I'm pretty sure Braeden was there, too."

"Braeden?" Stiles was shocked yet again. "What, did you catch her scent?"

"Actually, it was her motorcycle. I smelled her exhaust."

"What the hell do you think they're gonna do?"

"Something that Malia doesn't want to tell us about, so probably something bad."

Stiles looked to Y/n, tilting his head as he realized she had been quiet for a bit. "Y/n, you're being unusually quiet about all of this."

"I just don't have anything to say about it." She lightly shrugged as she answered, keeping her eyes forward.

Stiles leaned forward between the seats, eyes squinted in suspicion as he looked at her profile. Something about the way she was holding herself tipped him off, and he gaped at her. "Oh, my God. You already know, don't you?"

"I- I didn't know know." She immediately defended, not bothering to try and deny it. "I suspected."

"What did you suspect?" Scott asked.

She hesitated for only a moment before she finally said, "She's going to kill The Desert Wolf."

"She's going to kill her mother." Scott agreed making Stiles turn to look at him.

"What tipped you off? It's like- it's the chemo signals, right?" Stiles asked.

Scott lightly nodded. "Aggression."

"And you weren't going to try and stop her?" Stiles directed to Y/n again.

"It's really none of my business. I don't necessarily agree that killing her is going to solve anything for Malia, but at the end of the day it's her mother and her choice of actions. All I can do is talk to her and hope she listens, that is of course when she talks to me."

"Why didn't you tell us about it?"

"She asked me not to. And if you couldn't tell, I'm pretty good at keeping secrets." Stiles frowned at the sudden edge to her voice, but he didn't have time to wonder about it as the Jeep suddenly started to sputter and slow down.

"What's happening?" Scott asked as Stiles peaked at the dashboard.

"Um. Yeah, we're out of gas. It's out of gas." He answered.

"It says we have half a tank." Scott pointed out in confusion.

"Yeah, not necessarily."

"The gas gauge isn't fixed, is it?" Y/n asked.

"Not necessarily." Y/n huffed a small laugh despite herself as she was forced to pull to the side of the road where the three got out, grabbed the jerrycan from the back, and started down the road to the nearest gas station. The only one they found was very small, in the middle of nowhere, and, when Stiles tried the doors, was closed. He jiggled the doors again with no success, sighing when they didn't budge and trying to peek around the closed sign to see if anyone was inside. "Come on." He groaned, glancing back at Y/n and Scott who were looking at a gas pump that was chained.

Y/n's eye's flashed violet and the padlock clicked open, the chain falling to the ground as Scott called back to Stiles, "You got a twenty?"

Stiles fished in his pockets and grabbed the $20 bill, sticking it in the gap of the door for the owner to find when they came back. Y/n moved to the side as he walked back to them, grabbing the nozzle and putting it into the can while Scott held it. They were silent as the can was filled up, yet Y/n knew it wasn't going to last long. Not only could she feel Stiles' nervous energy, she could see it in the way he moved, the way his fingers twitched and eyes shifted around to look at anything but Scott in front of him.

Once the can was sufficiently filled Stiles put the nozzle back, Scott put the lid on, and that's when Stiles broke the silence. "There was a pin." Scott looked at him, slight confusion in his eyes, but didn't say anything as he continued. "There was one little metal pin attached to the scaffolding." Stiles lightly shook his head as he tried to explain. "He was trying to pull me down."

"He was trying to kill you." Scott seemed to piece together.

"Yes, and then I pulled the pin. And all these metal braces came down. And one of them just- just went right through him."

"Why didn't you think you could tell me?"

"It was just the way you were looking at me that night. You know, you're standing there with a wrench in your hand, you're looking at me like, I just bashed you in the head with it. You know, like I'd broken your sacred rule and that's it, there's no going back."

"I know the difference."

"What?"

"I know what self-defense is."

Y/n watched them talk with a little smile. This is what should have happened that night, or even before then. This is how they should have spoken to each other and resolved things. But better late than never, right? As they started to walk back to the Jeep Y/n placed herself between her best friends, linking her arms with theirs so they all walked in step with each other.

...

The sun has long since dipped below the horizon, the sky dark while Stiles takes his turn to drive. Scott was asleep in the back and Y/n was nearly dozing when Stiles called them, waking them from their sleep to point out the tall plateau and the raging clouds above it. "Guys. Guys, look at that." The clouds occasionally glow from the lightning strikes within, some of them even hitting the top of the plateau itself. "What the hell do you think's happening to her out there."

"I would guess she's probably being tested." Y/n said.

"Tested? By who?" Scott wondered.

"The skinwalkers."

"What the hell are skinwalkers?" Stiles asked.

"Honestly I don't know much about them, no one really does except for the native inhabitants of this land. All I really know is that they're very old and very powerful shapeshifters. If anyone could help Kira, it would probably be them. That is, if she passes their test."

"And if she doesn't?" Y/n didn't answer, but her silence was answer enough. If Kira didn't pass the test, they would probably never see her again. Stiles shifted gear and pressed on the gas yet again in order to get to Shiprock that much faster.

When they got a few miles away from Shiprock itself they pulled over for a minute to have a quick breather before they would arrive and probably get into a fight. They stood together, looking out at Shiprock and the roiling clouds in silence. But, of course, the silence never lasts long.

"I don't know why I believed him." Scott suddenly spoke. "I don't know why we didn't just keep talking that night. Five more minutes... And we would've figured out that there were two different stories. We would've filled in all the blanks. Should've just kept talking."

"He knew we wouldn't." Stiles said.

"I shouldn't have cut you off." Scott looked to Y/n. When the truth was finally revealed, Scott realized that Y/n had almost figured it out. She could tell something was off and was going to point it out until Scott stopped her, saying something he wishes he could take back like everything he said to Stiles.

"Well, at least the truth is out now. Even if it took a little while." Y/n said as she gave him a kind smile.

"I didn't want it to happen like this." Scott suddenly confessed.

"Like what?" Stiles asked.

"I knew, sooner or later, one of us was going to get a little too much blood on our hands. I half thought it was going to be Malia."

"It's not for a lack of trying." Y/n joked, smiling to herself when she managed to pull a chuckle from Scott.

"I just always thought that if it were to happen, then it should be me. I'm the one who's constantly putting you guys in danger, risking your lives for people you don't even know. It should've been me."

Stiles didn't comment on what Scott said, but put a hand on the Alpha's shoulder, giving it a small squeeze. "Come on. We only got a few hours to sunrise. Come on. Let's go." He turned to head back to the Jeep, Y/n following behind him.

Scott turned to follow them as well, but a flash of light and a distant clang sound caught his attention. "Hey, guys, do you see that?" Scott called, the couple turning back to see what Scott was now pointing at to see the flash of light themselves. "It's Kira."

"The test has started." Y/n said. They all shared a look before getting back into the Jeep. They drove as fast as the Jeep would allow, and even then it took a few hours for them to reach the place they had seen Kira. And when they did, they saw the Yukimura women with weapons drawn, facing off against three skinwalker women.

Y/n's eyes glowed as she moved to climb out of the Jeep's window, being swallowed by sand after she had gotten half way out. Scott and Stiles watched with wide eyes as the new dust devil sped in front of the Jeep, going twice the speed as the car to reach the Yukimura's. The two watched the sand cloud settle a bit in front of them, dispersing to reveal Y/n now on her knees. Her hands were planted on the dry terrain, brow drawn in concentration as she battled against the skinwalkers influence on the earth, stopping and even reversing some of the cracks that the three had made to get to Kira.

As soon as he was close enough Scott jumped out of the Jeep before it screached to a stop, the Alpha roaring at the skinwalkers with eyes aglow. "Get in! Come on!" Stiles called to the four. Scott ushered Kira into the car just as one of the skinwalkers threw her spear, which Noshiko promptly sliced in half and rendered it useless.

"She has no hope without us." One of them spoke as they all looked at Y/n.

"She must stay."

"Or she will be overcome."

"Maybe." Y/n admitted with a little nod, but then she gave them a hard stare, eyes shining in defiance. "But not today." She raised her arms and slammed her fists into the ground with a yell, the force creating a wave of earth that sent the skinwalkers flying back, buying her and Noshiko enough time to climb into the Jeep. Stiles slammed his foot on the gas, getting the hell out of there before the skinwalkers could retaliate.

"Everyone okay?" Stiles panted from the adrenaline, glancing at Y/n beside him.

"I'm good." The witch promised before Stiles looked into the rearview to check on the others. Noshiko had nodded, but then they all noticed that Scott and Kira had yet to answer. And the reason was they were currently in the middle of a long awaited reunion kiss.

"You came back for me." Kira smiled up at Scott when they separated. Scott nodded with a soft eyes and a reassuring smile. "I love you. I love you so much." Kira gushed before they kissed again. Noshiko had been uncomfortable up to that point, but hearing how happy her daughter was, she decided she was able to handle it for a little while at least. Y/n smiled back at the couple, her eyes meeting Stiles' own before he took her hand, both of them releaved they managed to get Kira without anyone getting hurt in the process.

~~~
Published: 7/27/22

IT'S MY MAMA'S BIRTHDAY TODAY
😆🥳🎉🎉🎉