Chapter Text
Peter gets up as soon as Stiles falls asleep. Derek glances at him tiredly and Peter pauses for half a moment.
“I’m going back out,” he says.
Derek looks for a second like he might try to stop him, but then deflates and bows his head. “Be careful.”
Peter stares at him. Isn’t quite sure how to respond. Of course he’ll be careful, he’s always careful. Derek is usually the one to run in, claws swinging. He’s the martyr, not Peter.
But he shrugs and nods and leaves. He doesn’t plan on staying out long. He just has to see the writing again (maybe to see if it’s still there). He has to see the the windows again. He has to understand this wretched place.
Croatoan, the name is old and the story is provocative. He can definitely see the similarities that Stiles tried pointing out and now he thinks maybe they shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss them.
The story of Croatoan was just an exaggerated tale of a small settlement of Roanoke Island gone missing. The colony had been seemingly abandoned, food left out, treasures left behind; the only clues were two graves near the outskirts of the town and the word “croatoan” carved into a nearby fence post.
While the story had been built upon over time, the most forgotten fact was that a tribe of Indians called the Croatan were settled close to the village.
While they had been reported to be a peaceful tribe, something had probably happened to spark a fight between the colony and the tribe. Obviously, the Indians had won. Now, whatever happened to those people was sort of a mystery. Peter doesn’t quite remember how many went missing, but for no one to be accounted for was a bit...well. He shakes his head.
He should be thinking about his own situation. The stories are similar, yes, but he thinks that some sort of warning would have been passed down from survivors.
Unless there were no survivors. Unless they were all taken by this Thing that hovers around the town. Unless--
Peter huffs at himself. This isn’t helping. Maybe Derek had been right earlier, maybe he was creeping himself out worse than the teenager. Maybe--
there’s someone walking next to him.
Peter jolts and jerks around, immediately spying his reflection in the pharmacy window. And the reflection of all the people around him.
His lungs squeeze tight and his heart pounds. His claws are out and his eyes are flashing and he can’t control the quick, wheezing breaths that escape his throat.
A woman breezes past him, hair blonde and cut into a cute bob, her little daughter bouncing along beside her happily. A man nods at them and smiles as he crosses the street. A boy rides by on his bicycle, shouting at four of his friends as they race to catch up. Another man comes out of the post office and stops at his car, turning to wave at someone that calls out to him.
There must be at least forty people bustling around him. He can see their reflections.
If he turned around, he’d be able to see them all alive and well.
But he can’t hear them. Or smell them.
This is the same thing he saw before, this brief glimpse into another world, a normal world beyond the glass. Peter tries to calm down and just can’t. He steels himself, knows that he must look. He can’t stay here forever, being still and silent and hoping that the danger will pass.
There’s a high pitched whine ringing lowly in his ear, almost like a dog whistle. His wild heart becomes white noise as he slowly glances behind him.
No one.
The street is as empty as it’s been every other time. He stares anyway, trying to find someone, some reason for all of this. His senses have never failed him so utterly.
Peter balls his hands at his side, suddenly furious at himself. Whatever’s here, whatever is messing with their minds and isolating them, Peter should be clever enough not to give into it. These are scare tactics by the malevolent presence permeating the town. And when he figures out what (or who) the hell it is, he’s going to kill it.
He sighs, tries to let his frustration go as he looks back to the--
They’re staring at him.
Before, he’d only gotten a glimpse, a flicker of insight into that other world. When he’d done a double take, the vision had disappeared.
All that fear comes flooding back so quickly that he almost faints.
The girl, the mother, the children on bikes, the man crossing the street; they are all still, all expressionless, all staring right at him. He feels their gaze on the back of his neck like a physical touch. He imagines for a second that he can even feel their breath against him.
He doesn’t know what to do.
These are visions. Either his mind is torturing itself (and honestly, why would it come up with images like these) or he’s being magicked upon by someone he can’t see just yet. There are no other options. He knows this. He’s isn’t an idiot. These mirrored apparitions can no more hurt him than he can walk through the glass and into their world.
But his hind brain won’t listen to reason.
Peter is terrified.
He feels sick to his stomach and he wants so badly to run, bolt away and stay low to the ground, get back to the safety of his pack.
But he can’t move, and he’s ashamed to say that there’s no spell work causing it. He’s just too scared.
He swallows thickly, his eyes water as he fights the urge to blink. He doesn’t want to look away again.
Peter is petrified of these people, but he honestly doesn’t know if he’d be more afraid if he couldn’t see them anymore.
The small girl closest to him, with her hair in braids down her shoulders and her white dress and stockings, is gazing at him and for some reason, she’s the one he locks onto. She’s a child, the weakest, the easiest to take down if he needs to (what is he going to do, punch the glass out?!). But he doesn’t feel any safer looking at her.
She’s staring not at his reflection like the others, but at him. Like she really is standing just a couple feet away and looking up at him with big, dark eyes.
Peter fights the urge to look at his side. She won’t be there. She won’t.
She can’t be.
His stomach swoops and he gets that free fall feeling that happens when you go down the first drop of a roller coaster; his palms are sweaty and his claws won’t retract and she’s reaching out to touch his hand--
Peter bolts.
Runs close to buildings, doesn’t dare look at his reflections, pants and grits his teeth and tries to outrun the brief, horrible sensation of little fingers brushing against the back of his hand.
---
Peter doesn’t come back.
Derek can’t decide if he’s surprised or not.
Stiles wants to go look for him, Derek can tell. But he doesn’t want to go alone and Derek refuses to do anything.
He keeps thinking that if something got his uncle, he would feel it, he would know as an alpha. He keeps thinking that if something got his uncle, then it was probably strong enough to get him and Stiles too.
He doesn’t know what’s going on in this town. He keeps going over and over the story of the lost colony of Roanoke in his head. He’d always been fascinated by it (and the Donner Party) as a kid. It was the greatest sort of scary story to share in the dark with his siblings and cousins. Laura had been the best at telling it when they were smaller and she got most of her kicks out of scaring the younger children.
She’d given them all superior, knowing looks as she spoke; soft voiced and lofty, like she knew that what she was saying was completely true. She’d been able weave the little bits of tales together so well that all the kids had been on the edge of their seats, leaning in closer even though they all knew that she was going to dart out and yell, try to scare them all when she was finished.
A few months later Jurassic Park had come out though, and Derek had stopped caring about some silly ghost stories and was more concerned about wanting to be a dinosaur when he grew up.
It stuck with him though, those stories shared around a flashlight in the middle of the woods or in a corner of the house where the adults wouldn’t hear them and break them up.
He feels stupid for snapping at Peter.
He knows his uncle is a dick, but usually he has a reason for everything he does. Stiles had been right about that, there was nothing to gain from Peter scratching that word into the building. Even though he must have known about the stories Laura would tell them.
It didn’t make any sense.
None of this made any sense.
Was it witchcraft? Had they been cursed while he’d been off guard? Were they trapped somewhere and dreaming together? Having a collective nightmare? They couldn’t actually be here--here that didn’t have a smell or taste or sound and thus, didn’t exist to Derek.
This place...is a trap that Derek had walked them right into. He remembers driving into the town, remembers seeing people and animals, remembers the scent of cat urine when he entered the front office of the hotel, remembers the way the mattress had squeaked whenever Stiles had rolled over in his sleep, every put out sigh Peter made when the noise woke him up. These things were real. These were things he could hold onto.
But that next day...he’d been so stupid, going through the motions and not paying any attention to his surroundings. Had there been a point where he could have noticed sooner? A point where he could have stopped them and saved them from...purgatory?
The word comes unbidden and Derek blinks at himself in surprise.
Did we die?
He tries to shake off the thought before it can fully form, but the idea eats at him.
Stiles is next to him, laying flat on his back with bits of sour cream and onion chips (that he wouldn’t share) crushed into his shirt. His mouth is open and his breathing is even.
Derek thinks the boy is lucky that stress seems to make him pass out instead of stay awake like it does Derek.
He wishes he had that sort of coping skill.
The boy smells of anxiety even in sleep. Anxiety and junk food and sweat and that soft, strange sort of smell people sometimes get when they dream.
No, he is definitely real, Derek thinks. Definitely here and alive in this world of gray and silence. Whatever happened, he believes that it wasn’t death.
And that means that he can find a way out for them. All of them.
He tilts his head, straining for any sounds of Peter.
But outside there is nothing.
Outside there is just a void.
They wait for Peter for several more hours. Stiles eats most of their food in a fit of anxiety and shifts between glaring a hole in the side of Derek’s head and shoving as much as he can into his mouth in one go.
He can’t stop fidgeting, bouncing his leg on the bed or twisting his powdered cheese covered fingers along the hem of his hoodie. He feels useless. Worse than useless.
He feels like a burden.
Stiles knows that if were just Derek, that the wolf would have already gone out to look for his uncle. But he can’t because he’s too busy babysitting Stiles.
He can see the little cogs working in Derek’s brain, can see him start to work himself up, start to look like he’s about to get up and go out. But then he’ll steal a glance in Stiles’ direction and settle himself again.
Stiles hates it.
He isn’t useless. He isn’t a coward. He doesn’t need to be protected.
So he gets up, dusts his hands on his jeans and strolls right up to the door. He glances back over his shoulder just once as he starts to head out.
“Coming?”
“Stiles!”
But Stiles is already out of them room and scurrying along the hall and down the stairs.
Derek stomps after him as he jogs toward the town center, furious footsteps slapping against the pavement. He doesn’t really expect to have a chance at outrunning the wolf, so he assumes that Derek takes so long to catch him because the other man was burning to get out of the room just as much as he was.
As soon as they hit the main road, Derek reaches forward and snatches Stiles’ arm, wrenching him back so hard that he loses his balance and almost falls on his ass.
“What the--”
“Don’t do that again,” Derek snarls, tightening his grip.
Stiles swallows back a gasp as he steadies himself. “Dude, let go, you’re hurting me.”
Derek glares at him, teeth bared and squeezes until Stiles actually cries out and tries to jerk away. Then he lets go and clenches his fists at his sides.
Stiles holds onto his arm, cradling it against his chest. His shoulder throbs, pain beating with his pulse. “You almost dislocated it!”
Derek flexes his fingers and looks guilty for a second. “You shouldn’t have run off like that.”
“And that makes it okay?!” Stiles snaps. “What, were you going to maim me so I didn’t have a choice but to stay behind?”
“What?” Derek actually looks shocked. “No, I wouldn’t--”
“Well you almost fucking did, asshole!”
Derek shakes his head. “I didn’t even grab you that hard, stop complaining.”
Stiles actually gapes at him because it sure as hell feels like his arm was almost wrenched out of its socket. “I’m not a werewolf!” he says loudly. “I don’t heal like you! Whatever messed up love tap that was for you, was almost a pretty serious injury for me!”
He spins away from the wolf angrily before carefully shucking off his hoodie to inspect the damage. He has on a short sleeved t-shirt underneath and he hisses when he sees how red his skin is turning against the bright white cotton.
He can already make out the shape of Derek’s fingers. The hoodie hadn’t given him much protection against werewolf strength and the fresh bruise is spreading up from his elbow to his bicep.
“You’ve been losing it,” Stiles says meanly, turning back to show off the marks.
Derek’s eyes narrow, but he looks guilty as fuck. “I didn’t mean to grab you that hard. You should have stayed--”
“Oh screw you, man,” Stiles snaps. “You jumped down Peter’s throat yesterday and now you’re on me! No wonder Peter didn’t come back, he probably thought he was better off without you!”
And yeah, before he’s even done talking, Stiles know that that’s a pretty shit thing to say. He knows Derek must be worried over his uncle and he knows that Derek carries around guilt like it’s the newest fashion trend. So that was a pretty low blow.
He doesn’t apologize though.
Instead he just stares down at his arm, rotating it one way, then the other just to make sure nothing is sprained. He can feel Derek glaring holes into the side of his head, but they both just stand there until Stiles starts to get chilly and slips back into his hoodie.
“What do you want to do,” Derek says lowly.
Stiles looks up in surprise. From the expression Derek’s wearing, Stiles knows that cost him a lot to ask. Had he been any of the other betas, he’s pretty sure Derek would have just roared and dragged him back to the hotel room by his ears.
“I want to look for Peter,” he says shortly. He chews on his lower lip for a few moments before sighing. “I don’t want anyone left behind, okay?”
Derek stares at him grimly. “He might have...found a way out.”
Stiles blinks. “And what? Left us behind?”
Derek raises his eyebrows.
And okay, yeah, that...sounds kinda like Peter. It hadn’t occurred to him that Peter wouldn’t have come told them about a way out though. He’d just kept picturing the wolf’s mangled corpse somewhere. Now he feels like Derek’s guess is the more logical one.
“Maybe,” Stiles agrees. “Still though, if he found a way out, we could too.”
They’re already outside; he thinks that if they have to return to the room and just wait, that he’ll go stir crazy. Stiles just can’t be still anymore, he needs to be out moving. He needs to at least pretend at being proactive.
Derek frowns and looks toward the town. “Okay. I’ll go look around. You go back--”
“Dude, no!”
“Stiles, if I have to drag you back--”
“What, gonna break my arm for real this time!”
Derek glowers and takes a menacing step forward like he’s actually thinking about it. “Just go back and wait for me. I won’t be more than an hour!”
“No!”
And Stiles knows exactly what that kind of bald defiance does to the alpha, he not even surprised when Derek grabs at him again.
“I’m trying to protect you!”
Stiles jerks his arm out of Derek's grasp and hisses, “Yeah, well you’re doing a shitty job of it!”
He darts away when Derek reaches for him again, backstepping until--
"Maamaa!"
Stiles jumps about a foot in the air and pivots mid-flight (he's actually a little surprised that the scare didn't activate his dormant mutant gene that made him sprout wings). "What the-"
Apparently 'what the' is a doll. One of those raggedy, sorta real looking baby toys that manages to look both like an infant and a demon spawn of Satan and plastic. He stares at it for a moment.
"That wasn't there before," Derek says behind him.
The road had been clear before, yes, clear from main street all the way to their hotel. There was only pavement below them, trees and fog on their sides, and gray clouds above.
"Don't touch it!"
But Stiles is already kneeling down and scooping up the doll in one hand. It’s sort of soggy and wet like someone had left it out in the rain--
When he looks up there is a truly massive dog about three inches from his face. Its lips pull back, showing off its white teeth and soft pink gums; its muzzle is painted with blood and for ten full seconds, Stiles forgets how to breathe.
He thinks maybe, for a bare second, that he’s seeing some kind of apparition. But the animal pants against his face and he can smell its rank breath hot against his skin.
He stays still, doesn’t dare move or blink. In the back of his mind, there’s the frantic thought of ‘you’re not supposed to look into an aggressive dogs’ eyes’. But he can’t help it. The dog stares and he stares back. It’s some kind of mix breed, he can tell that much; some giant cross between what looks like a rottweiler, a shepherd, and a horse.
The dog growls wetly, ducking its great big head down and glaring at Stiles.
Behind him, he can hear Derek shift forward and let out a growl of his own. It’s deeper, louder, more ferocious. The wolf puts a hand on his shoulder and slowly eases him back.
The dog seems to be caught between wanting to bite Stiles’ face off and scampering away at the sight of a bigger predator.
Derek snarls and snaps his teeth and the dog makes up his mind, turning tail and darting down toward main street, belly low to the ground before it weaves between one of the buildings and disappears.
Stiles sits back on his ass and rakes his hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ.”
“Come on--”
“No, fuck you--that, what the fuck was that?! Was that what’s been messing with us or?”
Derek squeezes his shoulder until Stiles looks up at him.
“It was just a dog.”
“Just a dog?”
“Smelled like a dog, sounded like a dog,” Derek confirms.
Stiles just sits there for a few more seconds. “What the hell is a dog doing here? Was it left behind?”
Derek shakes his head and tugs him to his feet. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
Stiles doesn’t even fight him this time.
They trudge back to the hotel; Derek obviously herding him. Stiles doesn’t care anymore at this point. His mind is jumbled, his arm hurts--he casts the sodden doll away from him--and he stinks.
“Think the shower works?” he mutters.
Derek actually pauses and stares at him as they enter the room. They’d never checked.
Since they’d been here, there’s been no urge to go to the toilet, to drink anything, to eat anything. It’s like their bodies just stopped needing anything. Which was pretty scary if Stiles thought about it too much.
The water does work. Which is kind of a surprise since he’s pretty sure the power’s out. At least, there’d been no need to turn anything on. It didn’t get dark here; the light that came through the window was enough to work in and sleep by, so what was the point?
He actually kinda feels stupid for not being more proactive about looking through this new environment. He feels like he should know as much about it as he can.
Stiles gets dressed in a new set of clothes, making sure leave his hoodie off so Derek can see the dark bruise crawling up his skin.
“Sorry about your arm,” Derek mutters and somehow makes it sound like ‘Your arm is stupid and shut up’.
“Sorry about your face,” Stiles replies. Because that’s the kind of guy he is. He slips in under the covers, strangely wiped after their short time outside. He can’t seem to sleep though and spends most of his time sighing and flopping from his stomach to his back.
“I’ve heard of lost dogs crossing states to get back home. I’m pretty sure Peter is at least that smart.”
Stiles shifts until he can stare at Derek over his shoulder. “Did you just make a kinda-racist dog joke to make me feel better?”
Derek stares at the door. “...go to sleep.”
Stiles rolls back over and shuffles down until he’s comfortable. “Thanks.”
“Shut up.”
“You know,” Stiles says after a few quiet minutes. “If that dog got in, it means we can get out.”
---