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  Stiles doesn’t really remember getting from the school to his house, after it was all over. He remembers Lydia, shaking silently in his arms, and seeing Ethan holding Aiden’s body from afar. Derek was there, and Mr. Argent, and Isaac and Kira and Scott- Scott was-

  Scott was somewhere close by, always close by, helping him dial his dad’s number and then gently taking the cell phone out of his hand because his fingers had forgotten how to grip it properly. His dad’s voice was relief and weary endearment (“I’ll see you at home, Stiles, alright? I love you.” “…Love you too, Dad.”) and Scott was promising to get Stiles home safe, and his voice sounded the same. Just the same as the sheriff’s.

  Everything went fuzzy after that. If he thinks really hard, he can conjure a vague impression of Scott’s hand at the small of his back, warm and steadying and guiding, and the familiar sound of his jeep motor, coughing in protest before it revs to life. Scott must have driven him home like he promised, but Stiles doesn’t really remember.

  What he does remember (and probably will for a long, long time), is waking up in the middle of the night to a pair of ruby eyes watching him from across the room.

  Normally, this would scare the crap out of him, but after everything that’s happened the past few weeks, maybe- maybe he’s still half-asleep. Maybe he’s still numb. Whatever the reason, all he does is stare for a moment and then blink several times. The rubies blink back. “…Scott? Why do you have your alpha eyes on?”

  His bedroom is dark, so he can barely see his friend’s mouth turn up a bit. “They’re helping keep me awake,” Scott replies, clearing his throat. It sounds like he hasn’t spoken in a while. “Sorry if I woke you.” He pauses just slightly. “You feeling okay?”

  “Yeah…yeah, I’m-” Stiles wakes up a little more. “Wait, have you been here this whole time? Since- since you drove me back? You didn’t go home? Scott, your mom’s probably- and your dad-”

  “Don’t worry, I texted my mom, she knows I’m here. I told her I was spending the night.” He arches his back, arms stretching over his head; Stiles hears something crack and pop, and he shakes his head, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

  “This isn’t- this isn’t ‘spending the night’, Scott, this is you sitting in my computer chair for hours, using wolf powers to keep yourself from falling asleep! What time is it?” He twists around in his sheets, searching for his phone or his alarm clock, neither of which can be found, but maybe it’s just so he can avoid those eyes and the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. “…Scott, what are you doing here?” Stiles mumbles, hanging his head off the side of the bed. No phone. No clock. His spare lacrosse stick is under there, though.

  “Watching you sleep,” comes the quiet answer, and Stiles is very still. And then he isn’t anymore, levering himself back upright so he can see his friend’s face, so he can’t avoid those eyes or the feeling in his stomach.

  “Why?” he asks in similar tone, and Scott looks away.

  “You don’t know how scared I was,” the alpha says, and he sounds too neutral to be fully honest. “Biting the nogitsune, and Kira stabbing him, and watching him just- crumble into dust, and you-”

  “Did you think I would do the same thing?” Stiles ventures, a touch ironic, but Scott’s shoulders curve downward, head dropping toward the hands folded tightly between his knees.

  “Yes,” he whispers, and Stiles’s mouth is dry. “And then you turned white- I mean, you were already really pale, but it was like all the rest of the blood just drained right out of your face, and you fell, you just fell away from Lydia like the wind had knocked you over, and I thought- I thought-”

  “Scott…”

  Scott shakes his head, crimson eyes squeezed tightly shut. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve done it, I’ve- I’ve killed my best friend, I’ve killed my-”

  “Come here,” Stiles says, holding out his hand. “Scott, c’mere.” And Scott glances up at him, desperate, almost as if he wants to refuse, but in the end he pulls himself out of the chair (and Stiles can see exhaustion in every flex of muscle) and takes Stiles’s hand, perching next to him on the edge of the bed. Stiles stares down at their joined hands, the intertwining of Scott’s fingers through his; he can feel hard lines and callouses and strength where there weren't any just a year ago. “You didn’t kill me.”

  “Because we were lucky,” Scott says, his voice harsh. He grips Stiles’s hand harder, almost enough to cut off the circulation, but Stiles can’t find it in him to care. “The plan was to save you, and that’s what I kept telling myself, that it would save you, that it would work, it had to, but there was no way to know for sure, we didn’t know, and then you fell, and for a minute I thought…” He goes silent for a moment, following Stiles’s gaze to their hands. “I thought you were gone.” Then he huffs, the bare beginnings of a laugh that doesn't quite make it. “I don’t think my heart started beating again until you woke up.”

  Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that. So he reaches up, finding Scott’s cheek damp in the dark, and traces under one of the eyes that are still glowing at him. “‘I said no wolf powers,’” he chides (quoting himself from a simpler time), and Scott huffs again, wetter and less steady this time, but Stiles persists. “You don’t need them here, Scott. C’mon, turn them off.”

  “I’ll fall asleep,” Scott mutters, and Stiles snorts.

  “Yeah, that’s kinda the point.” He has to let go of Scott’s hand to cradle the other teen’s face with both his own. “It’s okay, you can do it. You don’t have to stay awake. It’s okay to sleep now.” He bears the painfully searching look Scott gives him before his friend blinks twice, and alpha-red fades into dark, warm brown. A half-second later, Scott is biting back a yawn, and Stiles drags him back against the mattress, pulling the sheets and comforter over them. “It’s okay,” he repeats as Scott curls around him. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Allison is dead,” Scott whispers, and Stiles closes his eyes. Allison. God, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. “She’s dead, and I just sat in your chair for hours, afraid that the second I closed my eyes, you would- you would be dead too. Stiles-”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Stiles whispers back, running a hand through Scott’s hair, the other pressed between his shoulder blades. “You saved me, Scott. I’m not going to die.” He thinks of Allison again. Of Aiden. Of Lydia, her sobs soundless against his throat. “No one else is going to die. It’s over.” Scott sighs, and his breath is warm where Lydia’s tears were cold. His arms are wrapped around Stiles’s waist, one leg tangled between his thighs. The silence stretches, soft and comforting, a harmony of even breaths, and Stiles wonders, peering down at Scott’s still face, if the other teen has fallen asleep. “…I’m sorry,” he exhales into that silence, almost inaudible. “About Allison.”

  Scott is not asleep. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It feels like it was.”

  “I know.” The silence doesn’t last as long this time. “Please don’t ever almost stab yourself with a katana again.”

  Stiles chokes. Resists hysterical laughter. Wonders if he would have gone through with it, if that illusion in the snowy courtyard had been reality. If by killing himself, he could have saved everyone else.

  If by killing himself, he could have saved Scott.

  The answer is…there’s no question.

    But that isn't the answer Scott needs to hear right now.

  “Okay,” Stiles says, burying his face in Scott’s hair and closing his eyes again. “I won’t.”