Author: Elivira

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Warnings: None, Mild AU

Summary: The Nogitsune is gone, but a little something got left behind.

(The one where Stiles can read emotion, Scott is a ball or worry, and Lydia is the only person Stiles can stand to be around.)

When Stiles wakes up, the world is spinning around him in a swirl of pain; he can feel it in the air, soaking into the walls of the wherever he is, like a plague of suffering. He stares blearily at the face hovering above him, feels tears trailing down his face, cold as the air shifts. There is so much, so so much. He stares blankly at the swirls of green, brown, and sickly yellow in the air above him as they twist and turn, disappearing into the ceiling and walls.

"Stiles, Stiles, Stiles." Scott's voice echoes in the room, far away and faint.

"Hey Scotty." He murmurs.

"Stiles." Scott says again.

"Yep, that's me." Stiles slurs.

Black and gray smoke swirls around Scott's face, Stiles' eyes focus on them, and everything else in the room is blurry. Stiles is suddenly filled with the overwhelming emotion of guiltworryguilt. He screams, his head pounding, eyes wide as machines beep frantically in the background. Scott yells his name and the overwhelming feeling of worryguiltworry drills into his head.

Lydia stares down at him with big hazel eyes and Stiles tries to smile, tries to ignore the gray wisps of smoke curling around the fingers that she has clasped under her chin, but his eyes drift tothem anyway.

"Stiles?" She asks softly.

"Is it gone?" He croaks, voice hoarse. It has to be, because if the nogitsune is still here, still in him, if this is another trick, he doesn't know if he can survive it.

"Yes," she says, "it's gone. Kira's mom sealed it beneath the nemeton again."

"Good." Stiles says, relief relaxing fists that he hadn't realized were clenched.

"What are you looking at?" Lydia asks, eyebrows furrowed into an inquisitive expression that used to make Stiles want to kiss her, but now just fills him with a rush of affection. He jerks his eyes away from the gray wisps.

"What are they?" He asks.

"What are what?"

His breath catches as he realizes that she can't see them, the maze muted colors that fills the room, or the gray tendrils curling around her fingers. She can't see them because he is seeing something that the nogitsune had seen: the unhappy emotions that people people can't help but feel, pain and desperation, anger and agony. It (he) had feasted on the sickly yellow paint, the chartreuse tangle of anguish. The nogitsune had fed on the hate, started confrontation to feast on the anger and it had seen them all, the negative emotions tangling together in the air.

'It's not gone.'

"It's not gone, it's not gone!" He gasps, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed. "Lydia get away from me! It's not gone." Lydia stares at him with wide eyes, lipstick red lips parted in an 'O' surprise.

"Stiles no it isn't. It's gone." Lydia gasps

"No, it's not, oh my God!" Stiles yells, terror clouding his mind. "It's still in me."

"Stiles!" Lydia snaps, standing from her chair. "The nogitsune is gone. The oni checked you."

Stiles relaxes a bit, his hand darting to feel behind his left ear. He feels it: The slightly raised flesh of the oni's mark. The kanji for 'self' burned deep into his skin. He relaxes, fingers tracing the outline of the character.

"I can still see them." He murmurs. Staring at the not-so-empty air, the smoky curls of griefdissapointmentpainsufferingAGONYhelplessness twisting around the room. The hospital is full of negative emotions; the nogitsune had loved it, but Stiles hates it.

"See what?" Lydia asks, worryworryconfusion radiating out of her in a blur of blackblacksilver.

"All of it." Stiles tells her, because he can't not tell her, if anyone is going to understand, it will be Lydia, Lydia who knows thing or two about seeing things no one else can. Lydia who knows what it's to lose your mind. "The nogitsune fed off of people's negative emotion, or feelings, or whatever you want to call it. They're everywhere, and the nogitsune could see them."

Lydia raises her eyebrows, confusion curling around her.

"It's like smoke floating in the air. The hospital is full of it, that's why it kept coming back here." Stiles continues hoarsely. "Like right now I can tell that you're very confused and a little bit scared."

Stiles is surprised by himself. The nogitsune had known how to read to smoke, been able to tell what color went with what emotion. It's as if the knowledge, as well as the ability, has been left behind.

"You sure it's gone?" He asks again rubbing his eyes and following a dark brown trail of suffering that seeps in from the room adjacent to his. He feels it like a bone-deep ache in his chest.

"Yes." Lydia says confidently.

Stiles' finger rubs at the symbol behind his ear.

"Yeah, it is."

Sometime Stiles wakes up and forgets that the nogitsune is gone. He just lays in his bed and forgets that he can move, that he is in control. His eyes follow the trail of worry coming through the wall from his father's room and he remembers. He lifts his hands in front of his face and counts.

One

His dad attempted to get him to go back to school. Stiles had tried and couldn't even make it into the building. Smoke floated around the school so thickly that he could barely see. Flashes of stressjealousydisappointmentdepression had assaulted him and he woke up twelve hours later back in the hospital, IV itching on his arm.

Two

Being around Scott gives him a headache, makes him want to vomit. Scott can't hide his emotions at all and every time Stiles sees him, the air is thick with worry, gray wrapping around Scott's neck like a macabre scarf.

Three

Allison is a mess of olive pain, dark red anger and yellow stress. They float above her like a storm cloud, dark and foreboding. She was almost killed by the nogitsune and flinches every time Stiles makes a sudden movement. He doesn't blame her, knows what she sees when she looks at him, just like when he looks at himself in the mirror, all Stiles can see is the nogitsune staring back at him.

Four

Isaac is chartreuse and dark blue, anguish and disappointment. It doesn't hurt to be around him like it does to be around Scott, but Stiles takes avoiding him whenever he can.

Five

Lydia is a breath of fresh air. Emotions tightly controlled and easily ignored. It takes her two days to learn how to clear her mind and Stiles wants to hug her. He can still see ghostly trails of smoky worry curling around her fingers, so faint, he has to concentrate to see it.

Six

There is a family diner a couple blocks from the school. It's a quiet place and Stiles likes it there. The calm and contented atmosphere has little to no emotion hanging in the air. He sneaks away whenever he needs to escape Scott's worry or Lydia's pointed interest, just to bask in the blessed normality of it. The regulars all know his name (admittedly not all that surprising, Beacon Hills is a small town), and the pretty red haired waitress knows what he likes and usually brings him an extra-large order of curly fries.

Seven

Scott drags Stiles to Deaton's as soon as he gets released from the hospital. Kira calls her mother, and they all gather in a small examination room.

"It seems as if the nogitsune left some of itself in you when it left. It won't harm you physically but the mental strain will be extreme.

Eight

He has meditation sessions with Noshiko and Kira twice a week. It helps, lets him block out the world for a couple of hours and leaves him feeling better for a couple of days.

Nine

"Scott!" He snaps one day when they're in the library. "Stop it."

"What?" Scott asks, his eyebrows furrowing as he looks at Stiles in confusion.

"You're projecting." Stiles says, closing his eyes, fingers pressing at his aching temples.

"Huh?"

"Your emotions, idiot." Lydia says from the other side of the table, without looking up from her AP chemistry textbook.

"Oh." Scott says. "Oh!" Embarrassments seeps out of him, thick orange smoke mixing with the gray worryworryworry that Scott never seems to leave behind.

"Sorry dude." Scott takes a couple of deep breaths in a sad attempt to calm himself. "Sorry."

Ten

He stares at the ceiling, takes a long breath, strong and from deep in his lungs, like Noshiko had taught him. His dad's worrying fades to the back of his mind.

'School, I can do that.'