Chapter Text
It was July 15 2025 when Stiles Stilinsky was pronounced death to the world.
That’s how they labeled it, a tragedy filed under redacted paperwork and vague condolences.
Only one call was made that morning.
To a private number. Direct line. It rang twice before it was answered.
Noah Stilinski was at work at that time, like always he was seated at the desk chair in the sheriff office of the police station of Beacon Hills.
“You’ve reached the Sheriff,” he said flatly, eyes still skimming the chaos on his desk.
“Am I speaking with Noah Stilinski?” the voice on the line asked, calm, measured, professional.
Noah sighed, rolling his eyes. It was one of those calls. Cold, clinical, probably spam or federal bureaucracy at its finest.
“What do you think?” he muttered.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’ll need verbal confirmation for our records.”
That got his attention. Noah sat up straighter, suddenly alert. He glanced at the number on the display, unfamiliar, untraceable. A flicker of unease passed through him, but he pushed it aside.
“Yes, I’m Noah Stilinski,” he confirmed, his voice sharper now.
There was a beat of silence, then the voice came again, slightly more cautious this time.
“This is Agent Harper with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m calling in regard to your son, Mieczysław Stilinski.”
The pronunciation was rough, awkward on the tongue, and under any other circumstance, it might’ve made Noah smile. But not now. Something dropped in his chest like a stone.
“My son?” he said, the words stiff in his throat. “What about him? What happened?”
There was a pause. Not the kind that comes from hesitation. This was pure procedure. The agent on the other end was following a script. That made it worse.
“I regret to inform you,” Agent Halpern said, voice low but unwavering, “that your son, Mieczysław Stilinski, was killed early this morning during the execution of a classified operation.”
Noah didn’t respond right away. He didn’t breathe either.
The agent continued, as if he had to fill the silence before it swallowed the call whole.
“The mission was part of a high-clearance task force. Your son was serving in an intelligence capacity as a liaison and field analyst. Due to the nature of his work, many of the details surrounding the incident are restricted. He died in the line of duty.”
Noah still hadn’t said anything. He wasn’t even sure he was thinking either, but he sure regretted hearing in that moment.
“Sir,” the agent prompted gently, “are you still with me?”
“…he, no…,” Noah repeated, voice hoarse, almost inaudible.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, all of FBI offers their official condolences”
“And you're telling me this over the phone?”
“I understand how difficult this is. We would’ve preferred to inform you in person, but due to the compartmentalisation of the operation and your son’s clearance level, this was the most secure and immediate channel.”
Noah’s hand was clenched so tight around the phone that his knuckles had gone white.
“I want to see him,” he said.
There was another pause, this one longer.
“You’ll be contacted by an officer when that will be possible sir.”
That’s didn’t resonate with him.
“I want to know the truth,” Noah said, his voice breaking into a rare crack.
“I know,” the agent said softly. “And we’ll give you what we can. But some parts of this… may remain classified. I’m truly sorry.”
Noah hung up without saying goodbye.
He didn’t go home. Didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t move from his office except to lock the door.
The lights stayed off. The blinds shut. Anyone who knocked got silence. Anyone who called got voicemail. And those who tried harder? Ignored.
By 2:00 AM, his fingers were sore from dialling and typing.
He called every number that had ever been associated with the FBI. He left messages on all type of contacts he could find. He sent emails flagged urgent, confidential, flagged everything.
To keep his mind occupied, to not think about what he was told just hours before.
He even thought of calling Agent McCall but he didn’t know what he could’ve said, he had to explain why he needed information and he still haven’t managed to say what he just learned out loud. Plus they weren’t that close, or at least he wasn’t the first person he wanted to know that his son was… he didn’t needed pity he needed answers.
He dialed a number that hadn't worked the last two times. Some internal line from a contact sheet Stiles had once left behind. Half the names on the list were redacted.
It rang. Once. Twice. Click.
A woman’s voice answered, sharp and efficient.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation, internal desk. Identify yourself.”
Noah’s breath caught for a second. He swallowed it down.
“Yes. This is Sheriff Noah Stilinski. I’m calling about my son, Mieczysław Stilinski. I need to speak to someone with clearance. Now.”
There was a pause. A few keystrokes. The woman on the other end didn’t speak immediately.
“I see your name in the record, Sheriff Stilinski. You're listed as emergency kin. One moment.”
Noah waited, heart pounding, hand clenching the receiver tight.
Another voice came through. Male this time. Calm, low, and unmistakably trained for this kind of call.
“Sheriff Stilinski, this is Special Agent Daniel Kravitz, Department of Internal Operations. I understand you were contacted earlier today.”
“Yes. I was.” Noah didn’t waste time
“You told me my son…. You gave me nothing but half-sanitized phrases and a bunch of ‘restricted’ garbage. I’m not calling as a cop right now, Agent. I’m calling as a father. And I want the truth. All of it.”
The line was quiet for a beat.
Then “I understand. Let me first extend my condolences, Sheriff. Your son was highly respected. His loss is deeply felt among our ranks.”
“Don’t give me the speech,” Noah snapped.
“Just tell me what the hell happened to my son. Was it a mission gone wrong or a setup? Did you catch who was it? I want to know”
There was a slow exhale on the line. Kravitz was choosing his words carefully.
“Your son was part of an operation investigating a high-level infiltration within a joint intelligence task force. There was an ambush. He and two others were killed before extraction could be completed.”
Noah felt his throat tighten.
“And you’re telling me this now? You couldn’t lead with that earlier?”
“Earlier was protocol. This is me bending it.”
Noah leaned forward in his chair, voice low and cold.
“I want names. I want dates. I want to see the damn report, redactions or not.”
Kravitz was silent for a moment.
“I’ll see what I can do” that sounded a lot like a false promise to keep him calm but he would ignore that for now, he needed hope not anger.
“But off the record?” The voice lowered slightly.
“Your son knew the risk. He volunteered for this. And he saved lives. We’re only standing here now because of him.”
Noah stared blankly at the wall.
“Yeah. That sounds like him,” he whispered, more to himself than the man on the line. Noah hesitated for a beat before speaking again.
“He had plans,” he said quietly.
“He was supposed to come home.”
There was nothing but silence on the line.
Then “I’m sorry, sir. Truly.”
The call ended.
Noah sat back in his chair, eyes burning but dry.
And somewhere in the dark of the station, dawn began to creep in.
But he didn’t move. Not yet
July 16th
The worst part was telling the others.
What made it almost surreal was how they were all in town, like some strange coincidence. Except it wasn’t coincidence at all. Stiles was supposed to come home too.
This gathering had been in the cards for weeks. They just didn’t know the reason had changed.
So he called them one by one: Lydia, Scott, Kira, Malia, Derek and Melissa.
He invited them over for dinner. Said he wanted to catch up, that it had been too long. No one questioned it. They’d known him too long, loved Stiles too much.
He smiled when they arrived. Hugged each of them. Made small jokes. Pretended.
Scott was the first to ask the question Noah knew was coming.
“When is Stiles landing?” he said casually, setting a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter.
Noah's heart skipped, just like that. And if Scott noticed with his hearing then he didn’t say anything, probably thinking it was just his hearth problems.
The pause was too long. He covered it with a tight smile and a noncommittal shrug.
“He… got held up,” he said. Not a lie. Just not the truth.
He cooked. That was strange in itself. Everyone noticed. Stiles had always insisted on cooking when he was home, hovering over the stove like a man on a mission, monitoring what Noah ate with mock-serious lectures about sodium and cholesterol.
Now the house smelled like forced effort. A meal prepared by hands that were too distracted to care how it tasted.
The small talk over dinner was a performance. Every “How have you been?” and “What’s new with work?” felt rehearsed. Plastic. Hollow.
The words came out of Noah’s mouth, but they didn’t carry any meaning.
And if the people in the room could sense it, the awkward pacing, the weird silences, the fake laughs they didn’t say anything. Not yet. But the tension built like static in the air.
They had just started eating when Melissa finally snapped.
Fork halfway to her mouth, eyes narrowed across the table.
“Okay,” she said, voice sharp but not unkind.
“What’s going on?”
Everyone went still. The clink of silverware stopped. Eyes shifted.
Noah looked up slowly from his plate. He hadn’t even touched the food.
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Took a breath.
And then, quietly:
“Stiles isn’t coming.”
There was a beat of confusion. Then Lydia straightened slightly in her chair, her hand tightening on her glass.
Scott frowned.
“What do you mean? Is he-”
“He’s gone.”
Noah said it before he could lose the strength to say it again. His voice didn’t shake. It was flat. Too flat.
“He was killed during an operation. Two days ago.”
No one moved.
Malia’s chair scraped back suddenly.
Lydia’s eyes were wide ready to release tears, lips slightly parted, a thousand unsaid words stuck behind them.
Kira gasped softly, covering her mouth.
Derek’s expression didn’t change much, but his jaw clenched like steel and his eyes lowered.
Scott looked like he hadn’t processed the words. He blinked at Noah. Shook his head slightly, like it didn’t compute.
“What?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Noah said.
It was all he could offer.
The room was heavy with the kind of silence that breaks something in people.
“They didn’t told me much…” he added after a moment. “A mission gone wrong. But I don’t know anything for sure.”
Melissa leaned forward eyes glassy, hand trembling slightly as she reached for his.
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
Noah looked around the table at all these people who loved his son, who had fought beside him, bled beside him, grown up with him.
In that moment he didn’t see them as they where right now he saw them as they where, young faces with innocent eyes and in their eyes, reflected was the ghost of his son.
“Because I didn’t want to believe it,” he said simply.
“And I didn’t want you to either. Not until I had to say it out loud.”
There were tears. Shock. Denial. And silence.
But the truth had been spoken.
And nothing in that house would ever feel the same again.