i can't leave stiles.

[ 3.15 ]

Willow tip-toed behind Stiles as they moved through the boys' locker room. Though, walking quietly wasn't really necessary because the school was completely empty. And Stiles wasn't trying to be quiet either. He had Scott on speakerphone, demanding he join them.

"Get your ass down here now. We have a job to do," Stiles ordered.

"Dude, I'm already in bed," Scott mumbled tiredly.

"So was Willow!" he pointed out. "And come on. This is the first year I could convince her to come — the only other person on earth able to do that was Jackson!"

It was true. Willow never liked the thought of Mischief Night, especially when they targeted Coach. The fact that she thought pranks were mean coupled with her fear of being caught doing something wrong always kept her at home and her hands out of said mischief.

To be honest, Willow wasn't even sure how Stiles convinced her to come along.

"Um, as soon as she realizes exactly what you have planned, she's gonna bail and sit in the corner lecturing you about how it's dangerous and Coach could get hurt," Scott pointed out.

"Could Coach get hurt?" Willow asked with wide eyes.

"No," Stiles assured her.

Scott scoffed over the line, knowing it was a lie. "Aren't we getting a little old for this?"

"We do this for Coach," he argued.

"I thought we did this to Coach."

"Whatever, okay? You know he needs this. He lives for this stuff. He loves it," Stiles said.

Willow bit her lip to hold back a laugh. Coach did not live for this — in fact, he had nightmares about it.

"But it's the middle of the night," Scott said, trying to get Stiles to give up.

"Which means it's after midnight and officially Mischief Night/Day, and, by perfectly awesome coincidence, it's also happens to be Coach's birthday," Stiles said, opening his locker and pulling out a drill and other tools they'd need for the night. "So if you are not down here in five seconds, I will destroy you. Okay? And I mean five, four, three, two—"

Willow had spotted Scott a few seconds earlier but kept her mouth shut. As Stiles turned away from his locker, he saw Scott right behind him, face hidden by shadows and red eyes glowing in the dark. Stiles let out a shriek as he fell over.

"One," Scott said, a smirk on his face.

"I hate you," Stiles muttered while the other two laughed.

With Scott now helping, it didn't take long to set up Stiles' prank. He wrapped a present and put it on Coach's desk. However, there was a tripwire attached to it, so when Coach picked it up, all the things on his walls were attached to it and would fall.

And just as Scott predicted, Willow did voice her concerns about breaking his personal possessions. But by the time two in the morning rolled around, they were done. She also left an actual birthday gift for Coach in his office, which would hopefully make up for the prank.

"You're lucky I don't have any tests or quizzes tomorrow," Willow said, yawning tiredly as they walked out to the parking lot.

"I think you mean today," Scott said, chuckling. He got on his bike and revved the engine. "Night guys."

The entire ride home, Stiles went on and on in anticipation for Coach's reaction. It made Willow happy to see him so excited, knowing that the last few weeks were difficult for him.

But his night terrors seemed to be coming every other night instead of every night, which was a sign of improvement. Willow still spent most nights laying down in his bed with him. Really, she just felt an instinctive need to be around him and make sure he was alright.

Once back at the house, Stiles tiredly kissed Willow's cheek before wandering to his room. She paused in the hallway for a moment, her hand placed to the cheek.

She and Stiles hadn't talked about the night he confessed his love for her and also begged her not to tell Derek — though Derek still wasn't around to tell. Really, it was almost as if Stiles didn't remember it at all, making Willow wonder if it was an aftereffect of the nightmare. Perhaps he thought it was a dream.

When Willow woke up that morning, she thought that it was best to put some distance between herself and Stiles in order to spare his feelings. But then as soon as his eyes opened and met hers, the thought was gone. Willow wasn't sure where such an idea came from, as she hardly ever wanted to leave Stiles' side.

All thoughts of Stiles quickly faded though as Willow stepped into her room. A familiar figure was sitting on the edge of her bed, his head in his hands.

"Derek!" Willow called out quietly. Scribbles was already asleep in the corner, and she didn't want to wake him. She dropped her bag on the floor and rushed over to Derek.

Derek stood quickly and caught her in his arms as she threw herself at him. He was exhausted after being kidnapped and running back to Beacon Hills, but not so tired that he couldn't stop and see Willow.

"I was - I was so worried," Willow mumbled, burrowing her head in his strong chest. "What happened?"

"It's a long story," he said, rubbing her back. "A really long one. Want to come to the loft with me since you're awake? I'll tell you all about it."

"I can't leave Stiles," was Willow's first thought, which she said with a frown. "What if he has another nightmare?"

But then Derek's warm hands caressing the sides of her face coaxed away any intruding thoughts of Stiles.

"His father is here if something goes wrong." Derek didn't complain out loud, but it was almost annoying. His voicemails were literally full of messages from Willow, who was desperate to see him and know he was alive. And now that Derek was standing in front of her, she was thinking of Stiles? "You can bring a bag with your things for school."

Willow leaned into his touch, shutting her eyes for a moment as she did. Then she nodded. "Of course, I'll come. I'm just so glad you're alive."

☽︎

In actuality, Derek gave Willow a very brief explanation of what happened in South America. He didn't really think she needed to hear all the gory details involved with getting kidnapped and tortured by hunters. He also informed her that after he and Peter both rested a little, they had important business to continue.

"What were you doing out so late anyway?" Derek asked Willow, raising an eyebrow. She was always asleep by midnight on school nights.

"We were pulling a prank on Coach for his birthday," she claimed.

However, Derek shot her a doubtful look. "You were pulling a prank?"

Willow huffed and crossed her arms. "Fine. I was holding the flashlight while Scott and Stiles did it."

"That sounds about right," Derek said, chuckling. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against his chest. "My little Charmer's not capable of doing anything bad."

"I can do bad things," she said with a pout. But then it morphed into a smirk. "Like this."

As Willow's eyes glowed pink, Derek knew what she was doing a second before the aura of desire hit him. With dark eyes, Derek let out a low growl before bending down to kiss her hungrily. Willow giggled into the kiss, getting exactly what she wanted as she pulled the aura back.

In one swift move, Derek picked her up, fingers digging into her thighs as she wrapped her legs around his waist. By the time he walked to his couch and threw her down on it, Willow was a panting mess. Derek crawled on top of her, a hand on either side of her head as he kissed up her collar bone and neck and jaw before once again claiming her lips.

"Missed you so much," Willow mumbled breathlessly against his mouth.

"Worst two weeks without you," he murmured before sucking harshly under her jaw.

"Well, you were—" Willow stopped herself to let out a shaky whimper as his hands traveled under her shirt, finding her chest. "You were tortured, after all."

"As long as you keep making those pretty little sounds, I'll forget all about it," Derek whispered in her ear.

Willow's head tilted to the side, giving him better access as his lips devoured her neck, earning soft moans and sighs as he covered more territory while working his fingers underneath her bra. For only a second, her eyes fluttered open, catching sight of an alarming object that was now at eye level.

"Is that a finger on your coffee table?"

"I knew I was leaving something out of the story."

☽︎

Willow was exhausted when morning came, though she'd never complain given the reason that she was kept up all night.

"You don't have to go," Derek said, a bit of longing in his voice.

With a soft smile, Willow secured the braid she put in her hair before looking over her shoulder at him. As Willow moved around the room, getting dressed for school, Derek stayed in his bed, nothing but a sheet covering him as his eyes followed her.

"I'm not missing school, Derek," she told him. "Honestly, I'm surprised you haven't given up on trying to get me to skip."

"I'll never stop trying to steal you away for time alone," he admitted. "I'll pick you up after school?"

"Can't wait," she said, smiling. Then she grabbed her backpack to make sure everything was in it. "Don't be too mean to Peter when you sew his finger back—"

Willow's phone ringing cut her off. She quickly grabbed it off Derek's nightstand, seeing a call from Noah.

"Good morning, Sherriff," she greeted.

"Morning, Will," he greeted before sighing. "Are you already on the way to school? Or are you still at Derek's?"

"At Derek's, but I was just about to leave," she told him. "Don't wanna be late."

"Alright. You're not gonna like it, but I want you to stay put," Noah instructed. "I know I told you kids about the hospital operating on William Barrow this morning. Well, he escaped, and we haven't found him yet. Stiles is already at school, but I don't want you out there alone. So, just stay with Derek."

"But wouldn't it be safer to go to the school? There's more people around—"

"Willow, I will write you a note so that the absence is excused. But stay put. Barrow told - he told Melissa the reason why he killed all those people," Noah said, sounding concerned.

"There's a reason other than him being insane?" she asks skeptically.

"He said their eyes glowed."

Willow met Derek's worried gaze, who clearly listened in to the call. "Looks like I'm staying put."

☽︎

Willow, quite literally, had nothing to do but sit and watch as Derek sat across from Peter and sewed his finger back on. It was sort of gross, but Willow had unfortunately seen much gorier things since learning about the existence of werewolves.

"Ow!" Peter hissed. "Don't you have any anesthetic?"

"Yep," Derek replied with a smirk. "Hid it from Will so that she wouldn't give it to you,"

Peter rolled his eyes while grumbling curse words under his breath. "Well, are you at least going to tell me what I risked life and digit for?"

"I'm going to show you," Derek said, finishing with the finger. He grabbed a wooden cylinder box that had a triskele carved into the lid. "After the fire, that's all that was left of her."

Peter and Willow watched as Derek dumped the contents on the table. Five claws fell out, and Peter recognized them immediately.

"Talia," Peter said in disbelief. "I can't decide if that's touching or morbid. I guess the real question is, what are you planning on doing with them?"

"I have to ask her something. And from what I've heard, this is the only way it's possible," he said.

Peter looked from the claws to Derek, who had an expectant expression on his face. Peter's shoulders sagged, realizing what he was implying. It took Willow a second longer, understanding that Peter would be digging the claws in the back of Derek's neck.

"You gotta be kidding me," he muttered.

Derek couldn't hide the smug, amused smile on his lips. "Why do you think I sewed your finger back on?"

"He's all talk," Willow said, walking up behind Peter. She wrapped her arms around him from behind, leaning her chin on top of his head. "He would've put your finger back on even if he didn't need you."

Peter smiled at Willow over his shoulder and moved his hand toward her face. "Kiss to make it better?"

"Ew, don't put it in my face," Willow said, cringing when she saw the finger that was only held on by a few rough stitches.

Once Peter lowered the hand, she moved and pressed a soft kiss to the side of Peter's temple. Warmth washed over his hand, and before their very eyes, the bone and muscles and skin fused back together, looking as if the digit had never been missing.

"Thank you," Peter said, flexing his fingers. Then he looked back at Derek, who was dropping the claws back in the box, getting it ready for Peter to shove his hand into. Willow simply sat back down, a wave of tiredness washing over her from healing. "You know, there's always an element of danger to rituals like this. I'm not particularly fond of them. Unless they somehow benefit me."

Derek rolled his eyes. "What do you want?"

"I want to keep them," he stated, ignoring the questioning looks that he was getting from Derek and Willow. "Sentimental value. She was your mother, but she was also my sister."

Derek clearly didn't believe that as he narrowed his eyes at Peter.

"What?" Peter asked defensively. "Am I not allowed a little bit of sentiment?"

With a scoff, Derek dropped the last claw in the box. Willow rubbed Peter's shoulder comfortingly. "I take that scoff as a no."

With Peter's finger back in commission, Derek set the box in front of him on the table. Then he took Willow's elbow and pulled her back and off the couch. They watched as Peter's hand hovered over the box.

He let out a nervous growl, not really wanting to stab five sharp claws into his fingers. Especially when those claws held the spirit of his dead sister that definitely hated him.

"Too long," Derek suddenly said, growing impatient. He stepped forward and grabbed Peter's hand, shoving it down in the box.

"No! No, wait — Ah!"

Willow winced as Peter cried out, his eyes flashing bright blue. Then a moment later, Derek pulled his hand out, showing off the claws that were now sticking out of the tips of his fingers, blood pooling around them.

"Oh, that's gross," Willow muttered. Not as gross as the missing finger, but still. And probably equally gross as what would happen next.

While Derek sat backward in a chair, leaning against the back, Peter stared down at the claws, raising an eyebrow.

"That's not exactly my color," he said jokingly. It at least earned a smile from Willow, who kneeled in front of Derek on the other side of the chair. "This is going to be excruciatingly painful."

"Just do it," Derek said gruffly. Though they saw through his tough facade when he grabbed Willow's hand.

"Oh, I'm going to. I just wanted you to know," Peter said with a smirk. "We all have our petty revenges."

Peter forcefully dug Talia's claws into the back of Derek's neck, who let out a pained roar, his eyes glowing. Both he and Peter were tense — Peter concentrating and Derek caught in a trance where he was speaking with his mother.

It lasted a long time. Willow stayed on the floor, letting Derek squeeze her hand unconsciously. But she did get bored and started to scroll through her phone.

Evidently, she missed a lot after missing one day of school. Lydia had been so sure that Barrow was at the school, though the police never found him. Stiles, in a desperate attempt to empty the school because they thought there might be a bomb, pulled the fire alarm and was caught by Coach, who then gave him two weeks of detention.

That led to the incoming text from Stiles.

Lydia and I going to school. Want us to pick you up on the way?

Before Willow could respond, Derek let out a loud gasp, ripping his neck away from the claws. He was staring forward, eyes blown wide and covered in sweat.

"You're okay," Willow said, gently cupping his face.

"Did you see her? What did you ask her? Did she say anything about me?" Peter asked frantically. Derek whipped his head around to glare at Peter — clearly, whatever Talia told him was causing some tension. "Well, that doesn't look good."

"I'm gonna give you two some space to talk this out," Willow muttered, texting Stiles back. "Please don't break any furniture — Derek has so little of it."

☽︎

"So what are we looking for?" Lydia asked as the three of them entered the chemistry classroom.

After picking Willow up from Derek's loft, they went to the school to investigate. Stiles was determined to prove that Barrow had been at the school — that Lydia was right.

One of the first things that Stiles did was open up the chemical supply closet. Both Lydia and Willow stopped at the door, confused as to why it was open.

"That was supposed to be locked," Lydia stated.

"Yeah. I know," he muttered, beginning to look at the chemicals on the shelf, some of which had been opened. "Notice anything else?"

"It smells like chemicals," Willow said, scrunching her nose up. It definitely wasn't safe to be in such a small space with such strong smells.

"They wouldn't have been able to catch his scent," Lydia realized. It was why the wolves couldn't find him.

"Well then—" Willow cut herself off when she stepped further into the closet. Something hard crunched under her sneaker, and she looked down to see a small pool of blood with a handful of staples sitting in it. "Stiles."

Stiles crouched down to observe the mess, keeping his flashlight trained on it. "He was here, performing very minor surgery on himself," he muttered, shaking his head. Then he glanced up at Lydia. "You were right."

"Then why don't I feel good about this?" Lydia asked.

"Probably because he was here to kill somebody," he stated.

"But who?" she asked.

"That's what we gotta figure out," Stiles said as they abandoned the closet. "We could spread out, start looking for anything."

The three of them spread out across the room, checking desks and cabinets for anything out of the ordinary. Stiles was the one to stop and spot three numbers written on the chalkboard.

"Lydia, Will, what are those?" he asked.

"Atomic numbers," Lydia identified. They walked up to the board to examine them.

"Is it a formula?"

"Not really — at least not together," Willow said, shrugging. "Potassium is nineteen. If you mix it with the second, you get potassium iodide. But radium doesn't make sense."

Lydia stared at the board for a second before picking up a piece of chalk. She wrote a K next to the first number.

"Potassium is K?" Stiles asked, confused by the random letter.

"From kalium, the scientific neo-Latin name," Lydia explained while writing an I next to iodine.

"What's radium?" he asked.

"R-A," Willow whispered as Lydia wrote the last letters. And when you combined them all, it spelled a name. "Kira."

"He's after Kira," Stiles said, his eyes wide. "Come on. We gotta find her!"

Stiles and Lydia left right away, but Willow hesitated for a second. She stared at the board a moment longer, looking at the numbers instead of the letters that Lydia wrote.

Why did the handwriting look so familiar?

☽︎

Though the three of them rushed to the Yukimura household, they weren't fast enough. When they reached the street that Kira lived on, they found Scott unconscious on the ground beside his bike. The blood on his head was from a wound that already healed.

"Scott! Scott?" Stiles called, patting the sides of Scott's face to wake him. "Scott!"

Scott slowly came around, and as soon as he remembered what happened, he scrambled to his feet. "Barrow, he took Kira!"

"We know," Stiles said. "He was after her the whole time."

With no scent to pick up, Scott tried to ask Isaac for answers. He was with Allison and trying to find information on flies that might of helped with the sound Lydia had been hearing all day. Unfortunately, they came up empty-handed, meaning they were back to square one.

"We have to think of something," Scott said, running a hand through his hair as he worried. "He's going to kill her."

"I knew he was there," Lydia mumbled. "How did I know that?"

"Because you heard the flies, right?" Stiles asked.

"I guess that's part of being a banshee," Willow added. There was still so much they didn't understand about Lydia's powers. She didn't have someone like Deucalion to tell her all about it and teach her control.

"What do you hear now?" Scott asked her.

"Nothing. I feel like I can do this. But I don't know what to do. It's like it's on the tip of my tongue, and I don't know how to trigger it. I just - I swear to God, it literally makes me want to scream," Lydia said, stepping away from them.

"Okay, then scream," Stiles told her. "Lydia, scream."

She took a second before opening her mouth. An eardrum-rupturing screech echoed around them, so loud that Willow had to cover her ears. Then as the scream stopped, none of them dared to speak.

Slowly, Lydia looked up at the bright street lamp above them. Then she spun quickly on her heel, making Stiles and Scott flinch, who were both still frightened from the scream. "It's not flies. It's electricity."

"Wait a second, Barrow was an electrical engineer," Stiles remembered. "He worked at a power substation."

"What substation?" Scott asked.

The four of them raced to the substation that Barrow took Kira to. Stiles called his father, letting him know that everyone needed to go there to catch Barrow. But of course, the four of them would get there first.

As soon as the jeep was parked, Willow and Stiles jumped out, Stiles making sure he had his bat. Scott, who came on his bike, already ran inside.

"Okay. Wait here, all right? Just wait for the cops to come," Stiles told Lydia, making sure she stayed in the passenger seat.

"Me?" she asked. "Wait, why?"

"Will has super powers, and I only got one bat," he said, shrugging.

Lydia sighed in defeat as Stiles grabbed Willow's hand and they ran into the substation. They followed the sound of Kira and Scott's yelling to figure out where Barrow was keeping her.

"Come on," Stiles shouted, running even faster. From the way Scott was yelling, it sounded like Barrow was about to do something drastic.

Just as Stiles and Willow ran into the control room, there was an electrical explosion. Willow couldn't see anything for a moment as she was knocked back, covering her face to keep any sparks from hitting her face.

Soon, the sparks faded — or rather were absorbed by Kira through her hands. But Willow only focused on that for a moment because she soon realized that Stiles was no longer next to her.

She searched through the darkness until she found him a few feet away. His metal bat was stuck to a large fuse box, having become magnetized by the electrical charge in the air. The magnet was so strong that it pulled Stiles across the room. He was laying on his back on the ground, not moving.

Willow rushed to his side, leaning over him as she clutched his face.

"Stiles? Sti?" she called, panic creeping up on her when he didn't respond immediately. She couldn't help but start crying, worrying that he had been electrocuted. "Stiles, open your eyes."

It took a few moments, but eventually his eyes snapped open. His face was expressionless as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Oh, thank god," Willow breathed out, lowering her head to his chest. "You're alright. You're alright, right?"

Slowly, Stiles brought his hand up to brush him thumb across her cheek. Stiles' vacant eyes shifted to her face, an almost calculating look in them. But Willow was too relieved that he was alive to notice how different he seemed in that moment.

"I'm alright."