Chapter Text
“I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,
high on that Tree of which none hath heard
from what roots it rises to heaven.” - Hávamál
Somehow they’re alive.
In the first few days after defeating the Nogistune, Scott repeats it over and over again like a mantra, hoping it will eventually sink in: Allison is alive, Isaac is healed, Lydia is safe, Kira is ok, Malia is adjusting, Stiles is himself.
After one week, he’s mostly caught up on the pile of assignments he’d been neglecting with a few essays still to finish up. He finds an old SAT prep book in the library that’s only a decade or so out of date and adds it to the pile of veterinary books Deaton recommended.
After the second week, Scott stops calling Stiles in the middle of the night just to make sure he’s ok. Stiles hasn’t complained – in fact he’s often already awake and all too eager to talk instead of sleep. But Scott knows it’s too much. If he wants things to go back to normal, he has to start acting like it.
After the third week, Allison is released from the hospital. The doctors call the speed of her recovery ‘miraculous’ but Isaac jokes that she probably just couldn’t stand to be fussed over for one second longer. Whatever the reason, Scott is grateful enough not to question it.
She is alive. They are all ok. Which means Scott is ok.
He has to be. For them.
He knows them by scent and by sound, knows how their heartbeats overlap when they are all together, a rhythm that settles the wolf in him. He knows the sharp scent of Isaac’s fear after a nightmare and the uptick in Lydia’s breathing when something grabs her attention. He knows how Malia’s face goes blank when she’s processing too many things at once, he knows that Kira’s shoulders rise a half-centimeter when she’s uncomfortable and that she uses lemon-scented shampoo.
He does his homework and eats three meals a day. He studies, reading ahead for English but struggling to put together essays that make the teacher happy. Math is interesting enough that Scott usually looks forward to the bonus problems. He aces his AP Biology and AP Chemistry tests. He signed up for Psychology next term along with Stiles and Allison, a prospect thrilling and so precarious that Scott forces himself not to think about it too much. Any plans for the future hover like mirages, waiting to disappear if he looks too closely. So he tries not to look too closely.
On full moon nights, he joins Malia, Isaac, and Derek for long runs through the northern forest. After thirty minutes, the pounding of his heart usually crowds out the urge to sink his teeth into something. The chilly air cleans the red-tinge from around his eyes and Scott runs until he can almost imagine he’s shedding his body amidst the trees and becoming pure motion, expanding his senses until Scott McCall is nothing except a tiny dot in the center of a vast rustling of noises and scents.
Lacrosse practice fills up most afternoons, welcome hours where he just has to wear out his muscles in the pursuit of simple, achievable goals. After practice, he stays late on his shifts until Deaton gently but firmly nudges him out the door, insisting he take some time for himself.
Time for himself is exactly what Scott has been trying to avoid.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to but it never goes the right way. He can’t just lie back and listen to music anymore or spend a lazy hour in bed without his thoughts sinking into a black place – Allison’s head cradled in his lap, the Nogitsune smiling like Stiles never would, the sight of Isaac burnt and unconscious in the hospital bed. Instead, he does pullups and lets Kira introduce him to her favorite anime. He helps his mom with dinner and texts Stiles and helps Malia with her shift.
Allison’s alive, Isaac is healed, Lydia is safe, Kira is ok, Malia is doing better, Stiles is himself.
At night, he repeats it over and over again, keeping his eyes firmly closed.
Allison’s alive, Isaac is healed, Lydia is safe, Kira is ok, Malia is doing better, Stiles is himself.
They’re ok. They’re alive and together. Everything else is survivable.
Eventually, he falls asleep.
*****
“Soooo…” Stiles said. “What would you do if you were in a time loop?”
It wasn’t exactly an old memory but it felt like decades ago – before the bite, a simple rainy day, a day just like a hundred others. They couldn’t go outside without getting drenched so Stiles had been flinging out questions almost too fast for Scott to answer, his brain doing that thing where it just turned up loose thoughts the the way Scott might dig around in his pockets for spare change. But now Stiles was focused, the force of whatever idea taking his whole attention and his energy only leaking through in quick taps of his fingers.
Scott set down his textbook and looked up to meet Stiles’ expectant stare.
“Uh, like the same day over and over again? Or the same week or…?”
“That’s not –” Stiles scrunched his whole face in a way that meant Scott was missing the point. “Say it’s like the same day. Or some fixed interval of time. Whatever. You can’t escape. What would you do?”
“I guess I’d just go to school, do my homework...”
“Oh, c’mon. That’s it?” Stiles cast him a look of utter disappointment.“What about escaping? Breaking the loop?”
He swung around in his chair like he couldn’t even bear to look at Scott. The momentum carried him right back around and Scott waved with his pencil as Stiles spun past for a second time.
“You just explained that I can’t escape,” Scott said, very reasonably, and Stiles groaned, his head thudding back into the padded chair with a very anti-climactic thump. “It was a, uh, hold on…” Scott flipped back a page in the geometry textbook to find a definition. “...a postulate of your question that the time loop is inescapable. So there’s no point.”
“I meant that you haven’t escaped it yet. Theoretically. Like it hasn’t happened so far but you don’t know for a fact that you can’t escape. Maybe you have to try something else – maybe you need to click your heels three times or… recite Pi up to 5000 digits or watch Star Wars backwards or lick a really specific part of the sidewalk or cut all green M&Ms in half.”
“Uh huh.” Sometimes talking to Stiles meant letting him poke and prod at a conversation until Scott either said what he was looking for or Stiles got impatient and steered it there himself. Scott had a feeling this might be one of those times. “I would try everything I could think of but –”
“Everything?” Stiles seized on the word, literally, his nimble hands darting out as if to grab it from Scott’s mouth.“What about if you had to kill someone? Or admit that I’m better at Halo?”
“I don’t th– How is that actually going to help?”
“I mean, you don’t know. It’s a freaking time loop and you’ve already tried everything else. Everything.”
“I’ve licked every sidewalk? That doesn’t seem very –”
“Yes, Scotty,” Stiles leveled him with a stare that told him not to question this further. “You’ve licked every single sidewalk. All that’s left is to admit that you could never quite beat me at –”
“Forget it. I’ll just take the time loop. And you’re definitely not better at me at Halo. Honesty is more important than escaping.”
Stiles grinned at him.
“Ok, ok if you want to keep living in delusion. But the other thing – what if you have to kill someone? It’s your last shot. Otherwise you’re stuck forever.”
Stiles was still grinning but Scott couldn’t help feeling like this was definitely the less fun part of the question.
“It’s a bad time loop?” he asked. He doubted if there was any other kind but it still seemed important to clarify.
“The worst,” Stiles confirmed gravely. “The baddest level of badness. And it’s a Monday, like for eternity."
“Who am I murdering?”
“Huh,” Stiles said, as though that hadn’t even occurred to him. It seemed pretty important to Scott but Stiles could sometimes get ahead of himself when it came to details. “Let’s say it’s like the worst possible guy. He really sucks. It’s like a no-brainer… well, except for the fact that we are currently braining it right now – it’s an easy-brainer.”
“Ok.” Scott said at last. “I guess.”
“You’d kill him?” Stiles actually looked surprised, even though it seemed to be the end-point of this whole scenario.
“If I have to… It wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“Dude, you’ve got no enthusiasm. With that attitude you better hope we never actually get stuck in a time loop.”
“Maybe we already are,” Scott said without quite knowing why.
Of course, that made Stiles light up like a thousand-watt Christmas tree.
“Ohhh, wait, what do you mean?”
Scott wasn’t even sure exactly what he meant except that he remembered how days at his father’s place unfolded in agonizingly familiar patterns until it seemed he was dragging himself through the same day over and over again, struggling for the same breath but never quite getting it. Or earlier, when he listened at the top of the stairs and heard the same fights, the same shouts until he could replay them in his memory almost before they happened.
Bad days had a way of coming back again and again.
But Scott didn’t know how to say all that. It was always Stiles who said things well, so much that it could seem like his mouth was dragging the rest of him along with it. Scott had the opposite problem, he could mull things over for a long time and still wouldn’t be sure how to put it into words.
So he shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just said it for some reason.”
“No but this is important.” Stiles flailed out of his chair and plopped down next to Scott on the bed. “If we’re in a time loop and you’re the only one who remembers, you better tell me, ok? That’s like basic friend etiquette.”
“I will.”
And Scott bumped Stiles’ solemnly outstretched fist to seal the promise. He didn’t have to ask if Stiles would believe him. Of course Stiles would believe him.
*****
Scott dreams that he’s burning.
The air boils, flames swirling around him in a crackle of light and smoke. It’s bright, so bright that his eyes sting when he squints against the endless shifting of yellow, orange and white. Scott tries to glimpse anything past the whirling patterns of light but there is nothing to see except more fire, more smoke, more light. Scott tries to step forward but his feet are motionless if not burnt away. When he shouts, the muted roar of fire devours his voice and heat punches down his throat.
It occurs to him that he should be dust right now, he shouldn’t be able to see much less stand. He shouldn’t be able to feel anything. But the heat remains, swallowing him over and over again, coming like a wave and endlessly exceeding what his nerves know how to comprehend.
And it keeps coming. He’s burning and he’ll always be burning. The smell of his own ashes fill his senses even though that shouldn’t be possible. And eventually the very intensity of the sensations makes it invisible. He just keeps burning.
Scott wakes up to the pounding of his own heart and a strange feeling of disappointment. His pillow is wet against his cheek, blankets sweaty and knotted around his legs. Rolling off the bed, he stumbles to the window and pulls it open, sucking in breaths of air until his heart slows. Outside of the dream, he finally realizes what had been missing from the fire: pain. At least, none that he can remember. Opening the window wider, Scott lets the night blow over his face, sparing a quick glance at the sky. It’s overcast but he can feel the moon behind the clouds, knows it’s nearly full the same way he knows the placement of his own limbs.
The full moon used to burn, his skin prickling until he was sure he must be crumbling down into something unrecognizable. Now it’s more of a dangerous elasticity, his body hovering between states. Even now, his skin feels watery like his bones are ready to poke out, the sharp points of his fangs and claws lurking under the surface. Scents cascade over his nose so strongly that Scott still occasionally has to remind himself to keep his eyes open, not to curl up into a ball and shut out everything until the world gets small enough to feel safe in.
Before the bite, he never used to dream in all five senses. Instead there were scattered images and the nightmares that faded quickly enough in the mornings. But now the smell of smoke lingers and the memory of that much heat ripples over his muscles like a tangible weight.
It was just a dream. The same exact dream he’s been having for months. But still.
*****
He smells the hint of Stiles’ toothpaste and catches the familiar rhythm of his heart before he actually appears in the doorway of the cafeteria with a purple hoodie and hair sticking up enough to mean he probably got distracted and over-gelled it again. Stiles pauses a moment to find him and then weaves his way to Scott’s table. He barely sits down before making a poorly-concealed grab for Scott’s coffee.
Scott plucks the cup away effortlessly. Wolf-powers. And he could read Stiles’ intention from across the room. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether his new senses are doing any work or if he simply knows Stiles that well.
“No. It’ll make you sleep through Chemistry.”
“Yeah, it’s Chemistry, so that’s the whole point.” Stiles makes another graceless attempt and ends up knocking over a salt-shaker instead. “Ah shit – but c’mon, one little sip isn't enough to put me to sleep. And it doesn’t even work on you. Please, please, pleaseee.”
He sort of bats his eyes and it looks ridiculous in a good way – eyelashes and freckles and somehow Scott ends up handing him the cup without quite deciding to. Immediately, Stiles downs two gulps before Scott yanks it back out of his grasp.
“Ok, wow!” Stiles wipes his mouth and frowns down at where a few drops of coffee have vanished into the fabric of his t-shirt. “I’ll remember to personally dedicate two points on my science exam to your intervention efforts.”
Scott accepts this with a solemn nod.
“Thanks, I’ll ask Mrs. Stanley to deduct it from your final.”And then silence while Scott tries to figure out how to begin. Stiles is in a good mood and he doesn’t want to mess that up. He also doesn’t want to keep thinking about this alone. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes. And for the record, you are entitled to exactly two sips of my drink at some point in the indeterminate future. But I’m totally going to wait until you’re wearing white and then I’ll yank it out of your hand.” Stiles grins at him, bright-eyed and then waves his hand in a proceed gesture. “So what’s actually up?”
Now or never.
“Remember those weird dreams you were having?”
The cheer doesn’t exactly drain out of him but Stiles’ lips pinch together, his scent and posture gathering tension. Scott’s stomach sinks down down down and lands somewhere on the floor. Of course he shouldn’t have mentioned it. Stiles has been doing better, smiling more, making jokes without that manic edge, and the last thing he needs is someone dumping problems onto his plate.
“I– forget it, it’s not even a –”
“You’re still having dreams?”
Well, it’s too late now.
“Just the same one, really. Over and over again though.” Scott stared into his coffee cup, debating how much to say. For some reason, it feels personal. Awkward. But he’d already brought this whole thing up and now he has to see it through. Leaving Stiles with incomplete information is the highest degree of cruelty. “And it’s kind of weird.”
It takes Stiles longer than Scott would have expected to ply him for more details. Instead he just sits there for a moment, emitting a bitter, anxious smell and fiddling with the string on his hoodie. He catches Scott’s eye and sort of smiles, straightening his face from a grimace.
“So what is it? Fill me in.”
So Scott explains it, briefly, because there really isn’t much to say anyway and Stiles furrows his eyebrows, mouth twisting unconsciously as he takes it in.
“Huh. Just the same thing each night?”
“Yeah… Well, most nights.”
The nights when he sleeps enough to dream. The nights he’s not working overtime on the clinic, applying for scholarships, studying for the SATs or running out the full-moon buzz.
“But it’s supernatural?”
“Definitely.”
Scott is sure of much, the dream is too prolonged, too vivid, and too strangely simple to be a product of his own subconscious.
“Well that sucks,” Stiles says definitively and for some reason that’s enough to make Scott choke on a laugh. It does suck but just hearing Stiles say it makes the whole thing seem almost funny.
“It’s kind of…” Scott starts and then changes his mind. “It’s not too bad. But I don’t really want to have it for the rest of my life.”
“Understandable,” Stiles points at him like he just raised an insightful point in class. “That would really really suck. So we have ‘weird, repetitive dreams without any explanations’. I think that gives us a very obvious culprit.”
The Nemeton. Neither good nor bad. Not quite an enemy but definitely not a friend. Basically a great big question mark on their growing list of supernatural encounters.
“Unless something else is trying to get in touch with me,” Scott ventures at last.
Neither of them like that idea but it’s a relief to watch Stiles mull it over before shaking his head decisively.
“Nah, it must be the Nemeton. We’re barking up the right tree – hah…” This time, Stiles’ smile is slightly strained. “Anyway, I figure it’s a telepathic cell-phone sort of situation – the Nemeton got our numbers when we did the sacrifice so now it can ring us up. But I don’t think any random entity can get our contact information just out of nowhere. Unless you’ve been seeing other trees behind its back?”
“Not that I remember,” Scott says.
It’s been a pretty weird few years but at least he’s pretty sure about that.
“And you’ve tried the Lydia method?”
The Lydia Method was simple enough in theory: talk to the dream directly, find what it wants, give it. Apparently, it had ‘sort of’ worked for Stiles.
Scott shrugs.
“No response. I mean, it’s just fire so there’s nothing really to talk to.” He tries to sound casual. Undisturbed. Because as long as this is a casual conversation he can pretend he’s not dumping his problems onto Stiles. Because this isn’t really a problem. It’s more of a… potential concern. “Maybe it doesn’t like me.”
“Impossible.” Stiles says it so definitively that Scott grins despite himself. “What did Deaton say? Or did you ask Lydia?”
No, for some reason I only asked you.
“Not yet.” Scott says instead. Because he’s going to. “I mean, I’ll ask them soon. But in the meantime I guess I was wondering if you had tips on the Stiles method?”
Stiles Method is something along the lines of ‘annoy the fuck out of the Nemeton until it gives you what you want and then leaves you alone’. At least that’s how Stiles himself described it. He hadn’t exactly been generous with the details but Scott can hardly begrudge him this. Scott has a hard time begrudging Stiles anything, especially privacy in his own head.
“I mean, I really think I just got lucky.” Stiles smiles winningly but his chemosignals spike up and down sharply –relief, pride, embarrassment… guilt? “If the Nemeton even has nerves, I definitely got on them.”
“So, could you teach me?”
“My powers of annoyance are very difficult to replicate. It’s an innate-talent sort of thing. Not sure if I can teach you.”
“But I thought you were my Yoda.”
“Limits, even Yoda has.” Stiles is clearly far away, twirling the strings of his hoodie as he thinks. “Uhh, it’s honestly not a lot to go on so I vote we keep this on the back-burner – ok sorry, that’s a bad one – for now and see if anything else happens? Not to be completely lame but I feel like we have to get more information before we start sticking electrodes to your head or signing you up for psychoanalysis.”
Despite his suggestion, Stiles looks like he’s two seconds away from whipping out his phone and searching up ‘fire dreams’ on obscure online forums until he misses class and probably dinner and sleep.
Scott doesn’t want that.
“No, that’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking too,” he says firmly. It’s not like he expected Stiles to have a magic solution. If anything, the relief of telling someone, of telling Stiles, is enough to make the dream seem perfectly manageable. “Thanks.”
Stiles snorts.
“Yeah, the patented ‘wait and see’ method. That definitely hasn’t backfired in the past.”
Scott shakes his head.
“Honestly, it’s probably nothing. The ‘don’t wait and see’ method is normally what’s caused us more problems. ”
He can handle a few dreams. If that’s his biggest worry then he’ll live with it gladly.
*****
Scott burns without burning, an endless cocoon of heat that quickly becomes unbearable and then so unbearable it’s fine. He tries to move but it’s as though there’s nothing really to move through, the flames surrounding him with the same intensity, the same brightness, regardless of which direction he walks. A snippet from Chemistry floats through his brain, reminding him that fire is the classic example of an exothermic reaction, a chemical process that releases energy as a product. Without fuel, fire should consume into nothing. At least in the physical world. Scott assumes the laws of thermodynamics probably don’t apply in this realm.
A shadow moves ahead, so faint it might just be a stray formation of smoke.
“Hello?” Shouting into the unknown has never felt particularly smart but his options are limited here. “Who are you?”
More movement. A few moments ago, the fire had seemed endless. Now, there’s a clear periphery and a silhouette creeps along the edge.
“Hello?” Scott pauses, hesitates. “Are you there? Can you help me?”
The fire vanishes like a light being switched off.
If the glare of the flames had been blinding, their absence is equally disorienting. Scott blinks hard, squinting into the sudden darkness for a moment before everything becomes terribly familiar: a parking lot at night, the smell of gasoline and Motel Glen Capri scrawled in neon letters. Like before, his arm extends rigidly to the side, his fist clenched around the base of the flare. Like before, Scott is shivering as though his body is trying to grab the last bit of cold before what happens next. What doesn’t happen next, Scott reminds himself. He doesn’t die here.
Even from almost an arms length away, the heat of the flare seems to brush his cheek.
Here again. Okay.
Scott tries to restart his breathing but the smell of gasoline is strong enough that he nearly gags on it.
From just outside the puddle, Stiles watches him. It’s the Stiles from that night, almost – the same red hoodie, grey shirt. But he smells wrong, like nothing and then raw meat and then rain-soaked wood. Scott shivers again, revulsion seizing him and making his nostrils flare. His senses clash against the superficial resemblance and Scott feels the hairs on his neck and arms standing up. Not Stiles. It’s a Stiles-puppet, reminding him of a crudely drawn outline, a jumble of features and details that don’t add up to anything but a mask.
The thing takes another few steps until it’s facing him from across the few feet of gasoline-slick cement. Scott forces in another breath, grasping for anything to ground himself in this place. There’s nothing for a moment, then the powdery, mineral scent of bones and then an almost-human smell but tinged with something grassy and vegetable. Whatever is in front of him, its scent is in constant flux and that, more than the fire, is enough to make him afraid.
What kind of creature can change its scent so completely?
“Nemeton,” he tries. “Is… am I right?”
“You name us.” The statement is almost ritualistic. Not-Stiles inclines its head, the carefully-controlled gesture of a marionette. It fixes its eyes on Scott’s face with a blank kind of fascination. It doesn’t blink. “Scott McCall.”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Scott hears the sarcastic edge in his voice but can’t bring himself to regret it. It takes most of his willpower to suppress the growl that tries to crawl up his throat. “But you’re not him. Please stop using his face.”
The thing shudders, a ripple moving across ‘Stiles’ that makes Scott think of branches shaking in the wind. He doesn’t like it.
“Everything here is our face.” The not-Stiles steadies itself, turning its eyes back to Scott with a curious gleam. It gestures to the lights of the motel, the parking lot, the clouded sky. “This is the face you chose for us.”
“Um… I don’t think – ” Scott feels like he’s taking an exam without knowing which subject he’s supposed to be graded on. He should have talked to Deaton. After so many nights wishing he could talk to the dream and now he’s completely clueless about what to say. “I guess I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t choose this. You’ve been sending me dreams. You brought me here.”
“Not here. Not us.” The Nemeton resumes its slow pacing once more and Scott turns to keep it in view, his shoes scuffing against the wet asphalt. “We only gave you a dream. Many dreams. But you shaped them. You wrapped yourself in fire and we could not reach you. Until now.” It seems momentarily stymied by that. Stiles' inquisitive eyes pass over him and Scott shivers again at the strangeness hiding behind his friend’s face. “Why now?”
Whatever Scott expected from finally talking to the Nemeton, he didn’t expect it to be looking to him for explanations.
“I really don’t know.” Honesty is his first instinct. This might very well be another trick but Scott has no hope of finding that out immediately. If it's willing to ask him questions, he’ll give it the truest answers he has. “I don’t know why I’m here or why you’ve been giving me dreams. And what do you mean by ‘shaping’ them?”
It just looks at him.
“We meant what we said.”
Not very helpful.
Scott dimly remembers Stiles mentioning how frustrating it is to talk to a tree, no matter what form it’s in. Now Scott knows what he meant.
“Ok…” he looks around the parking lot again, scanning desperately for some clue to why they’re here. The Not-Stiles circles him and Scott suppresses every instinct that tells him he’s being stalked, that tells him to bare his teeth and make himself threatening. He will not assume this is an enemy. Still, he’s not exactly confident that it’s a friend either. “But you said that you’ve been sending me these dreams? Why?”
“We gave you dreams.” The Nemeton emphasizes the sentence as though it had offered him a gift. “We wanted to meet.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you.” Scott does his best to sound pleasant. Introducing himself to a potentially-undead tree may be the strangest thing that’s happened all week but Scott’s had a lot of practice with strange lately. “The thing is that I’m kind of trying to sleep now though. No offense or anything. So what did you want to meet me about?”
“Dreams are places of unfinished business,” the Nemeton says, as if in response, and Scott wonders if it’s choosing to ignore him or simply misinterpreting the question. “Dreams have branches. Crossroads. Perhaps you are trying to retrace your steps.”
It uses Stiles’ voice but the pace is wrong. Stiles talks faster than he can breath, he breaks off and starts again, gathers steam or goes on tangents. This thing speaks too evenly to truly sound like him. Scott tries to look at its shoulder or its chest or anything besides the face it stole to talk to him.
Retrace your steps.
He grips the flare so tightly his fingers hurt, it sizzles and sparks and Scott makes the mistake of glancing down at the gasoline pooling around his feet. He sees nothing, no reflection, just black. He’s standing on an abyss.
“I’ve moved on.” Somehow the words get caught in his tightening throat. The air is still clear but he feels the ghost of Peter’s claws in his neck and the sound of another long-dead fire seems to roar in his ears. He smells muscle and flesh bubbling, skin charring, melting, and then crumbling to ash. Screams he never heard echo in his ears and his voice is rough as though he’s choking on smoke. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t.”
The thing ripples again, finally breaking eye contact. The parking lot beneath Scott’s feet ripples as well, rising and falling in an ocean of asphalt. When the ground settles, the Nemeton meets his eyes again.
“Then we will leave now.”
Curt. Abrupt.
Is it that simple? Did Scott do something wrong? Did he do something right? Or does this have nothing to do with him at all?
“Oh, ok, I didn’t –”
The Nemton steps onto the gasoline and the words die in Scott’s mouth as he’s struck with deja-vu so powerful that he nearly staggers back. Only a year ago, Stiles had stepped here with him, promising that Scott was more than nothing, more than a failure who couldn’t save anyone or change anything. Now, the Nemeton walks forward until it’s right in front of him. Up close, it smells of oak-sap, iron, and pollen-dusted leaves. The instinct to shift is almost overwhelming and Scott grits his teeth, jamming them together as his jaw tries to thicken against his will.
“Scott McCall.” It savours his name with a slow sort of hunger. “We will meet again.”
It extends a hand, eyes flickering, a firefly dancing in the very center of each pupil. When Scott accepts its handshake, the rough texture of its palm rubs against his own, a sensation closer to treebark than human skin.
“We will meet again.”
The next time Scott blinks, he’s opening his eyes to his own ceiling. Cold, he’s shivering and the smell of gasoline is thick in his nostrils. The Nemeton’s facsimile of Stiles hovers behind his eyelids and Scott sits up as though he can leave the dream further behind. His hands ache around the memory of the flare.
Two hours later, after a shower and a change of clothes, the smell of gasoline still hasn’t quite gone away.