Spoilers

An AU, a crossover and a ramble.

He finds out why Derek treats him the way he does when he is seventeen. It's always been pure frustration, agitation with a side of something he sees when Derek pushes him against walls or slams him against his own jeep. It's like there is something Derek is always on the presuppose of saying something that is exceedingly important. When he mentions this to Scott he's brushed off. He is thinking entirely too much about nothing. Derek is like that with everyone.

So Stiles just tucks away that slight bit of curiosity and life goes on in a way that has become normal. Danger, near death experiences, hunters with code issues, werewolves who want to rule everything. Life goes on and every adventure always begins with or includes Derek shoving him against something and glaring at Stiles to protect him. As though Stiles should already know when danger is coming and to be fully capable of rescuing himself. Like a hunter who isn't a hunter.

He doesn't get it but life goes on and Stiles just goes with it. Eventually Derek has to slam him against things and save him less and less until one day, he doesn't have to at all. He looks immensely pleased and pats Stiles on the back after a particularly hard tumble with a wraith.

He mutters 'almost' to Stiles, leaving the teen baffled and confused as he grins and stalks back towards the house like he's taking a normal midnight stroll. Through the dark dank woods. Covered in blood.

Almost for what? This is what Stiles wants to ask and he does, later on. He's seated on the hood of his jeep staring at Derek whose face is hidden half by shadow hardly discernible in the moonlight slivers that part through the tall tree tops. 'Can you please explain this to me?'

'Spoilers.' Derek says and the tone means that the topic is closed and no answers will be given.

Stiles did not squawk indignantly, he did not tumble off of the jeeps hood and try to grab at Derek's wrist. He didn't.

But he wanted to.

'Spoilers? Seriously who says that?'

Seven weeks, seven days and seven hours later (he didn't keep the weeks/date/time. This was told to him later on) is when something major happened. Something that would change Stiles's life.

He meets a woman in town. She's a little older with red hair, a set expression on her pretty round face and a deep Scottish accent-not quite a burr or it might be. Stiles had never met anyone with a Scottish accent before so he couldn't tell if she burred or not.

The woman's name comes much later, after she manhandles him out of his own vehicle. He's pulled by her impressively strong hands, grip air tight. He stares forlorn at his empty jeep. Driver door pulled opened and empty, and he wonders how his father will deal with his disappearance; Jeep abandoned at the corner store, door opened with key in the ignition.

All signs point to Badly.

He realizes later as he is being pushed into what is probably going to be a very tight space, that he could have pulled away from her at any time. He's not incredibly strong, not like the wolves or hunters but he's enough. Stiles could have pulled away from her, run at any time. But he hadn't, she said he wouldn't run from her because he had to trust.

'You have got to trust in this. Trust in me.' She said and instantly he did trust her. It was an inevitability. A fact.

The space wasn't small and tight like he'd imagined it would be from the outside, all blue and tall with Police Box printed on it in white (oh the sweet irony.) Its large and reminds him of yellowed ceramic and gold. He walks down a ramp towards a strange podium with even stranger attachments and wonders if he's fallen asleep. Especially when he sees a man with floppy hair and bow tie grinning at him. The grin should be comforting, its goofy enough and kind, but Stiles doesn't feel all that assured in that grin. That grin spells ulterior motives.

'Seven weeks, seven days and seven hours! How about seven years?'

Floppy hair, boy tie, large grin calls himself The Doctor. Its his name, has been for a long long time, he assure Stiles. He tells him about the police box, or Time and Relative Dimension in Space (Tardis) and his adventures. He tells Stiles things he isn't sure he's supposed to know (but it turned out alright, The Doctor assures him.)

He asks the cliché question the why me and is answered with a warm smile;

'It has to be you. It's always you Anaxagoras.'

This is how he finds himself with a brown leather wrist strap (called a vortex manipulator) instructions on how to use it (he'd been shown how to use it to exhaustion, but the instructions were really nice to fall back on) and dropped off in the summer or 2004. Seven years into his past, to be precise.

He's been given instructions, told why he had to do this (fixed point in time Stiles, it's a fixed point in time!) He isn't happy about it he really isn't. The only silver lining is that he knows where he's supposed to go and when. Knows that once he's finished that he can go back to his own time.

It's all in the wrist strap. The coordinates are set to timer and will take him there whether he likes it or not and while he knew that there were things he'd have to do and that he was given enough information to get by along with a wallet with plain white paper and a weird screwdriver (a much older version of The Doctor's but it would work fine) he was still a bit nervous.

Because he's standing in front of the Hale house a year before its supposed to go up in flames and he been sworn not to mention what will happen to it in a year. Sworn to let it happen because that was also a fixed point in time, that it had to happen.

Derek is fifteen and slight for his age. All stringy awkward limbs and not as tall as Stiles. He's standing on the front porch staring at the stranger with a mix of fascination and horror. Stiles had just appeared with a snap on the grounds in front of the house. Derek is alone (the paper tells him) and somehow Stiles has to convince Derek to join him on his adventures throughout time and the known universe.

He introduces himself as Anaxagoras and answers as many questions as he can, truthfully (they are all written down and answered for Stiles on another slip of paper tucked into the pocket of his new leather jacket) and smiles as much as he can without appearing like some sort of crazy stranger or a threat.

Derek is still a werewolf, didn't matter that he was so obviously Beta and small in comparison to what he will become in the future.

Derek calls the vortex manipulator 'awesome' and fiddles with the screwdriver just once (its hard on his ears) before he asks Stiles, again, why he's decided to drop in on Beacon Hills the 'most boring place to seriously ever exist.'

There is the opening he's been waiting for and he's excited and terrified. Because this is it, the beginning of something crucial. He has to do this just right or everything is over.

He smiles down at Derek. Fifteen year old Derek whose glassy colored eyes are wide and trusting, his young face unblemished by the brooding intensity that will eclipse it within a year. Stiles lifts his hand in offering, the wrist strap (as he calls it) blips once the timer counting down. Departure in 10...9...8...

'Come with me.'

...7...6

'Where?'

...5...4

'Anywhere.'

...3...2

'Okay.'

Derek grasps Stiles hand tightly, afraid that he's made some sort of mistake.

...1

'Almost.' Stiles tells him before a flash of colors that could neither be described or named flood their vision and the sensation of being pulled apart overtakes and they're gone from 2004 all together.

It answers everything once Stiles has enough time to think, that Derek must have known this was going to happen from the beginning. They land in 1869 in France. There is a woman waiting for them, tough as nails with light-colored curls and a grin like a cat caught the canary. She introduces herself as River Song and the three of them, together, travel worlds and different times with the intended purpose of making sure The Doctor gets himself to where he needs to be so that the universe doesn't collapse.

'Your initial time lines are out of sync.' River says to Stiles one night in the New Roman Empire. 'Youre first meeting with him was obviously not his first meeting with you.'

'This is crazy.' Stiles tells her. He recalls his first meeting with Derek. Tall and dark, looming in the distance wearing a leather jackets and a bland expression on his handsome jaded face.

Meeting out of sync. Derek is fifteen when he meets seventeen year old Stiles for the first time. They have their adventures for an entire summer, saving The Doctor behind the scenes without being seen. They've gotten to know River Song without knowing too much about her at all and they've nearly been killed by aliens that look like giant pepper shakers, toy robot men and an assortment of other creepy crawlys to last either of them a life time.

And yet Stiles is sixteen years old when he first meets 23-year-old Derek Hale, a werewolf. He has small adventures with Derek and Scott and the others. There was the Kanima and Alpha packs and Peter Hale and Hunters. Its poultry in comparison. For Stiles, Beacon Hills seems like a cake walk.

Daleks, Cybermen, meeting with Torchwood. Derek fits in well enough but Stiles always felt a sense of foreboding around the Captain only to be made perfectly sound in 1965 when Britain is threatened by a super flu.

He can't say he will ever forgive Jack over what happened next and often times he wonders if any are left alive, the orphans that Stiles couldn't save. Wasn't supposed to save. Derek doesn't know much about it not yet anyway. Fifteen year old Derek is happy to look around and bond with Captain Jack Harkness until its time to go.

He wonders if Derek in the future knows the truth about it and decides that when he and past Derek are returned to their own time lines, that he will ask him.

River is with them sometimes times, most times and when she isn't it's because she can't be. Stiles and Derek visit Space Florida, Barcelona (the planet) and had even taken care of a few of the noseless dogs.

Sometimes, when they don't have anything important to do when there is free time to roam to their heart's content, waiting for River to come back to them, Stiles and Derek will go back to Earth and visit different times. Sometimes they did dangerous things.

Like Stiles meeting his mother when she was seven years old and nothing but large brown eyes and bright brown curls. This had led to Derek meeting his pack before he had been born (obviously.) Derek in the future is an intimidating Alpha, Peter had been a very crazy Alpha. The two had nothing on Derek's grandfather however. Elijah Hale was a hulking figure built of rippling muscle and blazing dark green eyes who did not take kindly to the young cub in his territory (Derek had been more excited and curious than Stiles, who had been terrified.)

It was on holiday in Spain (Stiles says holiday now instead of vacation and it isn't changing soon) when he and Derek meet Donna Noble. The name strikes a chord, a name mentioned once before by The Doctor on the Tardis, but before Stiles can even begin to try to remember why the name was important there were Cybermen everywhere and Stiles had to keep himself and Derek safe.

It's later as he and Derek watch River Song prepare for a mission in what she calls The Library, that Stiles remembers Donna Noble.

'Donna Noble? She is the most important woman in all of creation.' River answers as she ties back her hair. She leans towards him and whispers into his ear, a secret that she knows that Derek can hear. Its important, very important.

They promise never to repeat her words until the time comes. She makes them promise and trusts them to keep it.

'See you soon.' She says and then is gone.

They both know that this will be the last time they see their River Song.

Stiles wants to follow, wants to get there before she makes it and somehow find a way to save her, even if he knows he isn't supposed to.

'Anaxagoras, we can't save her.' Derek says in a voice that is too close to matching the voice of Derek in the future. 'If it isn't in the coordinates than that means its fixed. We...aren't meant to save her.'

And that is that. Derek and Stiles never see their River Song again.

Its like loosing his mother again, Stiles thinks as a panic attack overtakes him. It's the moment, the exact moment that it happens. He can feel it. Derek can feel it. You don't travel through space and time, through to different worlds with someone and not form a special sort of connection, a bond that's always there until it isn't.

He only wonders how he will deal with the end of their journey, when he has to go back to the future without warning Derek about Kate, without trying to save the Hale family.

But it has to happen. It is a fixed point in time.

Stiles hates fixed points in time.

They meet Rose Tyler once. To make sure she got to Henrik's on time to meet The Doctor when she was supposed to. It was passing and quick, but she'd smiled at both on her way into the store and Derek was essentially heart struck.

They make sure that things happen the way they should; the living plastic, Mickey, meeting Clive Finch, the Nestene Consciousness... Stiles is reminded of Kate when he looks at Rose and that disturbs him. Both are strong and blond and undeniably attractive in their roughness. But Rose Tyler is/was/will be a bona-fide hero while Kate Argent is/was/will be a bona-fide killer.

He damns himself and The Doctor once he realizes what they've done. Meeting Rose for that one fleeting moment had cemented a certain type of woman Derek would be attracted to.

Anaxagoras John Stilinski just made a murdering pyromaniacs seduction job on a sixteen year old boy a helluva lot easier.

By the time he hears the familiar whoosh of the Tardis, Stiles feels a hundred years older than what he is (still seventeen) and wiser beyond what he should be. Derek seems more or less prepared for the future and says that 'one does not simply go into the future and not pay attention to certain events.'

This will later crop up in how Derek is able to afford living without working after the fire, after Laura dies and after Peter comes back. He wins the Powerball by cheating. Sneaky, Stiles thinks later on, but smart.

Aboard the Tardis alone with The Doctor and Derek is a jumble of excitement. He's curious in a way that Derek in the future never is and something in Stiles hurts because of what is going to happen.

'It's the price I have to pay, isn't it?' He later asks The Doctor. Derek is sitting in the Tardis doorway staring out into space while Stiles and The Doctor watch from the control panel. This is a Derek that Stiles had become close with, a Derek that Stiles will never get to see again after this.

He feels responsible for Derek's wellbeing and the immense guilt weighs heavily on his heart. River Song died in The Library and Derek, only fifteen years old, accepted the fact that they could not save her despite having the means to do it. Derek was strong.

'He's stronger than you give him credit for.' The Doctor says as though he can read Stiles' mind. Maybe he can.

'He's going to hate me.' Stiles says. 'He's going to hate us both.'

The Doctor doesn't say anything but it's plainly written in his expression that 'yes he will hate us' and 'yes, we deserve it.'

It's dark when the Tardis materializes on the Hale grounds, just an hour after Stiles and Derek had started their journey if the time on his pocket watch (a gift from Franciszek Czapek in 1876) is anything to go by.

Goodbye's are always sad. It doesn't matter that Stiles assure Derek that he will see him again without question. Derek is still a clingy mess, sad to be rid of Stiles and of adventure.

'But what if you need me?' Derek asks.

'Well, it's a good thing I know where to find you Derek. I promise.' Stiles says and means it truthfully instead of placating an emotional teenage boy. He takes off his leather jacket, new when he'd purchased it, and places it on Derek's shoulders. 'I'll be seeing you soon.'

"'Anaxagoras...thank you.'

He's going to miss this Derek.

Its strange in the Tardis with The Doctor. Strange and surreal and empty without the constant weight of Derek in his presence always a constant. He wonders how things will be after he gets back to his own time, if he can attach himself to Derek in the way they'd been attached this summer.

The Doctor is quiet and fidgeting with the controls taking Stiles back to July of 2011. There's something else going on too. Stiles isn't stupid, he knows when someone is not saying something important.

He asks The Doctor what he's hiding.

'Oh this and that. Things yet to be, you know how it is.' The Doctor says offhandedly in a way that he must think Stiles understands.

He does.

'So something is going to happen that I can't know yet.'

'You had to prepare him for something that has and has not happened yet. Something that will set a fixed point into my timeline. A decision he convinces me to make.' The Doctor looks old, his eyes are vast as he looks at Stiles. 'It really did have to be you.'

The Tardis doors open and Stiles sees his jeep, driver door still opened, in the distance. He wonders how long he's been gone and imagines its been barely five minutes and he's glad. Someone would have noticed the abandoned jeep after a few hours.

He walks down the ramp, half way there he pauses and turns back to The Doctor and says;

'You could have saved her.'

The Doctor nods and says;

'I know. You could have saved them.'

The Hale's. Stiles could have saved the Hale's, could have stopped Kate and saved Derek from her seduction from the pain that he would experience the loss. He could have saved Peter from his madness and from killing Laura, if only he would have stopped Kate.

He could have and yet...he wasn't supposed to.

'I know.' He says to The Doctor. 'I know.'

And he's gone. Out of the Tardis and back into his jeep and down the road back home, despite the fact that he really wants to drive to the burned out house to see Derek, he's tired. He's so tired.

He walks through the door happy that the house is empty. Trudging to the kitchen he opens the refrigerator and takes out the carton of milk. He sits on the counter, drinking the milk straight from the carton letting his eyes roam over the kitchen he hadn't seen in three months (or a year-he remembered the year that never was. So did that technically make him eighteen?)

Stiles hadn't seen Scott in three months, hadn't seen his dad in three months. He felt nothing at this. Didn't know how to feel about the time that had elapsed in the last moment he remembered seeing them both before he'd left 2011.

Empty was a word he could use. Numb.

He capped the milk carton and placed it in the refrigerator. He'd call for take away instead of cook-his dad could cheat on his diet once at least.

Let him live all out because you only live once.

Like River.

He makes his way up the stairs and to his bedroom. Falls into a heap on his bed and lets himself grieve all over again, not just for River Song but for all of the other people he could not save. For the Hale's. For his mother. For Derek. Because past Derek might as well be dead. Future/current Derek was nothing like him at all.

It's a few hours later that Derek crawls in through Stiles bedroom window wearing the leather jacket he always wears. It the same leather jacket Stiles had met him in during both 2011 and 2004 respectively. Stiles jacket.

'Anaxagoras, huh?' Derek leans against the wall by the window. 'It gets better with time.' He says like he knows what Stiles is thinking.

'I could have stopped it. All of it.'

'Yeah, you could have.' Derek nods. "And reality, time itself would die. You know that Stiles. You remember that.'

'Yeah well, pterodactyl flying in the park is a very small price to pay for saving your family. I could deal with that.'

'Then Dickens' plays would repeat forever and you know how old they got. They were almost essentially the same!'

Derek is laughing. Stiles wonders if the apocalypse is happening. Again.

That thought sends him back into more guilt. Trapping the Master (vampire) in a sewer just to make sure that a teenage girl would have to 'die' in order to free him just to kill him anyway (it's complicated) this was not Stiles finest moment.

'But Cleopatra and Caesar were so much fun weren't they?'

'No. They really weren't.' Derek grouses remembering a rather awkward moment back in 47 BC that he'd rather not speak about (triumphal procession on the Nile in the spring. Not his finest moment.) He shudders. 'I'd rather not repeat that, thanks. Besides The Doctor would see it coming before you managed to do anything.'

'As if I could.' Stiles groans.

'Actually,' Derek nears the bed and after a moment he sits beside Stile's horizontal body. He taps Stiles wrist. 'You can try if you wanted. See?'

The vortex manipulator is fixed tightly on Stiles wrist like a second skin. He would never have noticed it there had Derek not said a word. He sits up and flips the leather covering up and stares at the buttons and the screen.

'He didn't take it.'

'He didn't take it.' Derek says reaching into the inner pocket of the jacket and pulling out-

'The sonic screwdriver! You kept it?'

Stiles could have sworn that River had taken it with her to the library. He remembered handing it to her when she asked for it over dinner. But there it was in Derek's hand.

'Wait. If you've had it for the past seven years...you've never used it?'

Derek tucks it back into his pocket with a glare. Like Stiles is missing the obvious.

'The first time you were meant to see the screwdriver was the first time you met The Doctor. Had I shown it to you before you would have known something was up the moment you'd have met him. It might have made you cause up a fuss or something. Besides, how the hell was I going to explain an advanced piece of alien technology to a bunch of teenagers without disrupting the timeline in some way?'

A valid point.

'So you've had it all this time?'

'I have.'

'And you've known. From the very beginning about me and you and...everything?'

Derek nods at ease. Pleased that it's all out there. He lays back against Stiles' too small bed, a giant against the covers. 'The day I saw you in the woods with Scott. I had to keep a distance, had to tell myself to wait. I knew immediately that I couldn't say anything to you I couldn't let myself.' He rubbed his eyes with his large palms. 'It took everything in me not to call you by your name, like I knew you. I mean I knew you. You just didn't know me yet.'

There's a pause and Stiles forgets to be a little floored by the confession because Derek's eyes are closed and he's listening for something. Somehow he looks like Stile's Derek, the one that laughed and was gangly and awkward and in love for a day with Rose Tyler. Which had made Stiles jealous for reasons he wouldn't allow himself to admit.

Because he'd known he'd have to say goodbye to that Derek eventually and come back to current Derek who didn't like him at all and probably hated him.

Though it didn't seem like he hated him at all and so he did something that he'd wanted to do countless times during that summer (and once during the year that never was) so he leaned down and kissed him.

Derek made a surprised rumble in his throat, lifting himself into the kiss. He placed a large warm hand against Stiles neck, pulling him closer, holding him so close that Stiles ended up half on top of him.

They parted and Derek grinned.

'Seven years and worth it.'

'What?'

'I've waited seven years for that kiss. First you seemed too old for me and then you were too young for me and afraid of me.' Derek pulls himself up and leans against the pillows, pulling Stiles against him. 'This is nice'

'Derek I don't want to alarm you, but your personality is showing.'

There's laughter and its nice like before and Stiles never wants this to change, hopes it never will. But it does eventually end. It goes back to the beginning.

A long time ago and far away an older different Doctor and an older Derek watch as a star burns out completely. There is nothing left of what had been, no trace of the former life giving world or the people there nor of those who wished to attack it. It is black space, empty and cold. They watch and know it had to be done, The Doctor grieves. Too many losses. Derek watches the darkness and feels cold and numb.

He feels nothing but the crumbling of his heart.

Muse: Yeah...don't ask. I was just bored and sick and had nothing else to do and my brain is leaked out so I couldn't update anything. This though, as rambling and weird as it was, actually makes me proud. I always liked the idea of a crossover of Wolf and Who where Stiles and Derek meet out of sync. I took that and rambled. I might update with their actual adventures later if I can think them up. Review not flames, like I said before. Rambling and sick. Its weird and rambly. Sorry for that.