Unbroken ▹ Teen Wolf [02]

47; intrusive thoughts

The silence in the McCall house couldn't be described as awkward.

No, that was far too lighthearted. Suffocating? Perhaps. But everyone could breathe just fine. Heavy? Certainly, but that felt too light. Painful? Extremely. The best way to describe the silence, especially that between Rachel and Scott as they sat in the living room waiting for Stiles — who they now knew without a doubt was indeed the real Stiles — was to not describe it at all.

Not long after the nogitsune's departure with Lydia, Noshiko Yukimura had arrived at Stiles' request. Accompanied by two Oni. The kitsune's demonic warriors marked Stiles' neck with a kanji and vanished without a fight, leaving no more question about whether or not it truly was Stiles. However, it was too close to sunrise for them to go after the nogitsune— meaning unless they wanted to leave Lydia alone with him until dusk, there was little time to sit around.

For all they knew, she could've been dead already. She wasn't, but she could've been. The nogitsune wouldn't go through all that trouble to get her just to kill her; everyone knew that. It was the only thing keeping Rachel on the couch while they waited for Melissa to check on Stiles' again. He'd been in bad shape before the Oni got ahold of him, and he certainly hadn't improved since then.

He needed Scott's help to make it up and down the stairs, and very clearly had not slept in days. No one was quite sure how he was still standing, even with help. Nonetheless, he was adamant on going with them wherever they went— the first place being to the Sheriff's station. The last they'd told the Sheriff had been about apprehending the nogitsune hours ago over the phone. No one had told him yet that they truly did have Stiles back. For the time being.

"You know you can go if you want to." Scott told her, his voice sincere. "You don't have to stay, it's Stiles."

"I know." But did she really? She watched the Oni brand Stiles, proving beyond a shred of doubt that it was truly him but did she believe it? She wanted to. But every time she looked into those brown eyes, she didn't see sincerity. She knew it was there, buried deep beneath layers upon layers of remorse, pain, fear and regret, but she couldn't see it. She couldn't see Stiles. She saw the the nogitsune.

She'd been tricked by a monster wearing a familiar face before, and she refused to ever let it happen again. First had been Peter, her favourite uncle turned psychopath; and then Stiles, her best friend, possessed. Monsters could hide inside anyone, and knowing that made her want nothing more than isolation.

She knew it was Stiles, but she didn't trust him. Who's to say the nogitsune didn't drive him insane? Who's to say it didn't turn him into a monster just like it? Stiles was himself, but was he the same version of himself they knew and loved? Rachel could only see him as someone else. He looked like one of her best friends, one of the people she trusted most in the world, but she couldn't trust him. Not one bit.

Every time she was in the same room as him, she couldn't help but watch him as though he were a bomb on the verge of detonation. He was like a train wreck— something so catastrophic, looking away was utterly impossible. If she so much as blinked, she worried he'd be a completely different person when her eyes reopened a millisecond later.