Stiles
Legacy Name: Stiles

It was a bright, summer day, the light filtering through leaves, glittering, dancing. It was magical, in more ways than one. The sound of laughter and happy shrieks of delight could be heard in the idyllic setting, a child and their mother, bonding, both red-faced and flushed as they eventually come to collapse just out of the sun’s reach.

“Look, Stiles,” she was smiling, plucking a blown dandelion from the grass, scooting close to the chubby-cheeked boy, “do you know that these are magical? They say, if you close your eyes and blow, you can make a wish, and that wish will be carried out into the sky.”

The wonderment in the boy’s, in Stiles’, eyes was childlike and pure as he reached for the flower, pausing, fingers hesitating. “But you gotta do one, too,” his voice held a stubborn level of insistence as he rolled around in the grass, but there were no more of the wish-making flowers to be seen. Stiles’ lip jutted out in a pout, and he turned to his mother, “you make your wish, mummy. I’ll make mine next time!”

“I’ve already made plenty of wishes, here.”

She took his palm, opening it to curl around the flower.

“Now close your eyes… And wish.”

So, Stiles did. He puffed out his cheeks and blew until he couldn’t anymore, sending the spores off into the air, letting them be picked up and carried by the breeze.

“Stiles? Stiles?” His mother was calling him, and when he opened his eyes, his grin slowly became gap-toothed and joyous. Surrounding them, there were at least two dozen dandelions, all ready for his mother to wish on.

“My wish came true!”

Stiles sometimes wished that he could forget that his mother’s smile was a little tight, or how she had ushered them home after she had only made one wish, and hadn’t allowed him any more past his first wish: for his mother to have more of the flowers to wish on.

He would never forget that all his future wishes for her to get better had never come to flower like his first one had.

When she died, nearly a year later, he’d gone out to that very same meadow, ran out from home, and dug his hands into the ground, ripping at the grass. He’d screamed until his lungs burned and gasped for air, and when his father found him, the grass was just as dead as his mother.

After that, Stiles had trouble sleeping.

Nightmares plagued him, the memory of his mother’s mind slowly fading, memories of her screaming at him, accusing him of horrible things. His doctors prescribed him one medication after another, until, along with his Adderall, he was also on an anti-anxiety pill that didn’t throw his body completely off balance, according to them. To him, though, he felt numb, cold, and like a piece of his heart had died when his mother had.

The third outburst had been late one night, when he’d come downstairs for a glass of milk, and his father was passed out on the kitchen table, a glass and an empty bottle at his side. Stiles had seen death, and the fact that his father hadn’t woken up when he’d called out a frantic ‘Daddy!’, nor when he’d tugged his hand, had caused a panic attack.

At some point in, his panic attack caused the demolition of their kitchen, and the waking of his father.

That was the day that John quit drinking, and sold the house.

Stiles was only ten, and the world was so big.

“Dad, where are we going?” he had asked, confused, wide eyed as they sat together in his father’s sedan, his mother’s Jeep in storeage. Stiles had cried over that, but John had insisted that his car was better for the long trip.

The once-sheriff sighed, pinching his temple as they drove, letting Stiles twist himself in the backseat to look at the cows eventually, if only to mollify the child and save them from a potential outburst. “Son, your mother was… Special. Like a superhero,” was how he had started the dialogue. It was the first time Stiles had ever had a spark explained to him, but he had never looked at himself as a superhero, only his mother. She wouldn’t have killed the grass, or broken the kitchen counter.

He listened, anyway.

Magic training was boring. They had started somewhere hours away, with a woman whose face was as creased as his sheets after a nightmare, but her voice was soft. Patiently, she had explained:

“What you have, my child, is rare, and different. It is bigger than you will understand, but one day you will come to live alongside it. You have a spark, and whatever you wish for could come true.”

“I don’t make wishes,” was what a glum Stiles had said, sitting on a stool, his legs swinging as he sucked on a juicebox.

“Perhaps, for now, that is the best.”

They stayed there for half a year, and his father looked tired, but not as tired as Stiles felt, unable to sleep without his childhood bed, haunted by his mother’s last moments, scared and in unfamiliar territory. Later, he would come to realise that his father’s haggardness was probably because he felt awful for his son, but the pre-pubescent boy barely noticed the discomfort of a rock in his shoe, too easily distracted, so he wasn’t likely to notice the upset of a man trying to act like everything was okay.

From the old woman’s house, with wrinkles like prunes, they continued to travel. Stiles grew older, they lived out of motels and apartments, or sometimes they stayed with whomever was trying to mentor the anxious child, but it took years for his spark to emerge again.

When it did, he and his father were visiting the Grand Canyon, because Stiles had started to read tourism pamphlets, nature journals, and history books about the places that they visited. They had a storage facility where they could send the books he had already devoured, because Stiles couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, nor pass them on.

He’d been babbling excitedly to his father about something and then, as a child who knew no rules, Stiles had started running. It was just excited loops, he’d stayed within the boundaries, but it hadn’t stopped his father from panicking and chasing after him.

No!

Stiles didn’t remember much after screaming, only that the scrub-plants had crashed through the rock wall and knitted together, almost forming a baseball glove to catch his father as he slipped from a smaller ledge. The drop may or may not have killed him, but all Stiles could think about was the frightening depth of the canyon.

He’d received a stern talking-to, but from that point on, Stiles didn’t feel as toxic as he’d once been, tipping out a bit of his water onto the roots of the plant in thanks. From that point on, he also became more attuned to his abilities.

In the following months, Stiles had learned to block small projectiles, hell, he’d learned to push them back. He blossomed, laughing, anxiety fading away. He was young, but finally happy and comfortable.

Stiles received his first tattoo when he was fourteen, much to the disapproval of both his father and his stomach, but it was simple. A compass on his shoulder, surrounded by eight moons and twelve suns. So he would always be able to tell the time, the position of the moon, and the direction he was heading. Stiles had enjoyed spinning in circles, watching as the dial twisted around over his shoulder, and he’d laughed until he’d cried.

Cried, because the man had made a comment about his mother never harnessing her own abilities to this extent, cried because life was hard.

But it was better. Briefly.

They’d encountered supernatural creatures before; a lot of the people who they had gone to for guidance had been werewolves, witches, vampires – an assortment of creatures that never failed to awe Stiles, from the delicate fae to the burly dwarves, who looked like vikings of various statures.

He’d loved supernatural creatures, but they didn’t love him.

Pure sparks were rare, and unpredictable. While Stiles had gone through plenty of training, he had yet to meet another like him, save for his mother. For all he knew, he was alone, but never truly, not with his father at his side as they travelled together. Stiles had started picking up jobs, making potions and brewing medicines for the supernatural, working from old books he had picked up – those ones stayed in the car.

Life wasn’t easy, but it had started to look up, he’d even gotten his first phone, a brick, by all means, but a way to contact people, to make friends.

Stiles would neither forget, nor remember that night. It hadn’t been cold, or hot. There had been no rain, but the ground had been firm with its recent fall beneath his feet.

“Son, leave me.”

“No, Dad. Come on. The car’s not that far, there’s mountain ash –”

“Stiles!”

He’d never forget that the last words his father had said to him had been filled with anguish, nor would he forget the way that he’d locked eyes, in horror, as a clawed hand ripped his father apart in front of him, a boy watching the light fade from his father’s eyes, the man’s lips moving in an attempt to say something.

He didn’t need to say it, Stiles could feel it.

Fear, concern, love, anger.

Anger, anger, anger.

When his father’s body crumpled to the ground, the wolf had turned its attention to Stiles, snarling, bloodied, and the rest of the pack converged on the young spark.

Intent.

He stepped forward, cheeks and breathing wet, walking until he reached the snarling animal that was standing near his father’s body.

Anger, intent.

Stiles reported finding his father’s body amongst several other bodies that were not immediately identifiable. He’d been numb as he sat in the police station, recalling how sparse it had looked compared to the station back in Beacon Hills. He’d told his story, about being chased through the woods, multiple footsteps, and then nothing. There was no blood spatter on his clothes, only a large pool of it, later conclusively identified as only his father’s, in the centre of his chest where he had folded over the man and cried for the last time.

The spark should have been more careful to eviscerate the entire pack, and not just the wolves that had surrounded him, because shortly after that, packs knew him as a witch that murdered packs.

He never did learn exactly why they were after him and his father, but Stiles felt no justice in knowing that they had died. It should have taken longer, it should have been more painful.

It was the first time that he had returned back to Beacon Hills, dressed in all black, staying away from everyone at the funeral. His rented suit hid his tattoos, and he wore gloves over his fingers. Deputies tried to approach him, but the spark ducked them.

There were funds raised, and Stiles took them. He sold his father’s sedan and had an inventory of their storage shed sent to him, only choosing to continue paying for it because of the family photo albums. The sedan had been nice, but there was another car waiting for him to continue his journey.

Life was harder, after the death of his father. Stiles was alone, but not scared. He was no longer a boy, boys didn’t go through what he had been through. Now, he was a spark, and he had to earn a living somehow.

Stiles crafted potions for those who needed them, he used public libraries to set up a purposefully shoddy looking website that dropped subtle clues to his true knowledge, and he worked his ass off in exchange for information, a few decent false IDs, and money. It wasn’t much of a living, but it was something. He built up the tattoos on his body, until he finally got the one that he’d thought would finish the ensemble; a dandelion behind his ear, and a shrug bush on his back, where he remembered his father’s hands to fall when he was embraced.

Of course, you never truly finished being a spark.

Years passed, and Stiles never admired the supernatural again. He regarded them with cold disdain and grew prickly. The only thing that he took comfort in were the flowers.

Flowers that had sprung up around himself and his mother, that had curled at the foot of the freshly overturned soil of his father’s grave. Flowers that were life that Stiles could create, but couldn’t save. Necromancy was a myth, at least in the idea of ever truly getting a loved one back, so he leaned to link himself to the land over the years, until his hikes for magical ingredients lead him to a suspicious amount of large-ass trees.

Nemetons.

Connecting with them, Stiles became an unstoppable force. His spark was stronger than ever, but he felt no pride. If it had been stronger before, maybe he would have been able to stop the people he loved from dying, but he hadn’t.

Soured by life, he vowed to keep on going. Alcohol numbed the pain, strangers filled the emptiness, but the only connections Stiles were made were business ones. He would live, as the last Stilinski, but he would do it only as a giant fuck you to the universe that had ruined him.