Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf and neither do you.

Over My Dead Body

Week One – Conquest

Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.
Revelation 6:1-2

Stiles woke to the sound of the front door of his house slamming shut. One glance at the glowing alarm clock on his nightstand and he was quickly scrambling to get out of bed, legs getting tangled up in the sheets in the process. The display read two-thirty a.m.

Once he was untangled, Stiles leaped across his bedroom and looked out the window facing the street. Outside, Sheriff Stilinski was hastily making his way across the lawn before getting into his cruiser and backing out of the driveway. Barely ten seconds after his father had driven off into the night, Stiles had already gotten dressed in his customary plaid shirt with jeans and was halfway down the stairs tugging on his shoes, phone glued to his ear.

"Hello?" a voice groggily rasped into the phone from the other end.

"Hey, Scott, it's me. I'm gonna be outside your house in, like, five minutes, so get ready," Stiles quickly mumbled into his phone before hanging up and getting into his jeep and speeding off into the night.

Four minutes later Stiles pulled up in front of Scott's dark house. He looked out the passenger side window with wild eyes for signs of his best friend, his thumbs tap, tap, tapping uncontrollably to an agitated beat in his head as he waited. After thirty agonizing seconds he was ready to jump out of his jeep and barge into the McCall house and drag his wolfy best friend out by the scruff of his neck. Just as he was about to take off his seatbelt and storm into the house, the front door opened and a sloppily dressed Scott stumbled out and slowly made his way down the sidewalk until he was sitting next to Stiles.

Once Scott clicked his seatbelt in place Stiles put his Jeep in gear and took off down the street at breakneck speed.

"Stiles, where are we going? What's going on?" Scott asked, stifling a yawn and rolling his shoulders and neck to get the kinks out of them. There hadn't been any supernatural disturbances in Beacon Hills for awhile and he was just getting used to being able to sleep through the entire night again. It looked like this was the end of sleeping a solid eight hours again.

"Well, my dad basically ran out of the house like his ass was on fire in the middle of the night for the second time this week so I think it's safe to say that some freaky crap is going on again."

Scott groaned under his breath and slumped down in his seat at his words. That was the very last thing that he wanted to hear right now. "Are you sure?" he asked. Scott already knew the answer but he just didn't want to believe it.

Stiles shot him a look before pulling over onto the shoulder of the road. Not too far away from where they were parked the flashing of red and blue lights of squad cars lit up the night and the two teens watched as a young woman was strapped to a gurney and loaded into the waiting ambulance. They shared a look before getting out of the jeep and stealthily making their way closer.

Once they were close enough, Scott and Stiles crouched down low behind the green foliage on the side of the road. They watched as Stiles' father took a statement from a young man who had a thick white bandage that was stained red with blood on his head.

"What's he saying?"

Scott leaned forward and opened up his keen senses to listen in. "The guy's girlfriend went crazy on him while they were driving down the road and she grabbed the wheel before crashing the car into a tree." Stiles made to speak but he held up his hand. "Wait. Your dad just asked him if he had noticed the black veins on her body before that."

Stiles' brow furrowed at that. "Black veins?"

"Yeah, apparently his girlfriend's sick with something from what the paramedics told your dad."

Sheriff Stilinski looked in their direction just then and the two boys dove behind the trees and out of sight.

After some time Stiles got bored of watching his father and his deputies walk back and forth around the wrecked car. "Come on, let's get out of here. I want to go to the hospital and check out that woman, see what she's got." Scott nodded in agreement, stifling another yawn in the process.

Just as Stiles was about to crank the engine over on his jeep he spied a white Corvette parked a little ways in front of them with a clear view of the wreckage. The windows were heavily tinted and he couldn't tell if there was someone sitting in it but something told him that there was.

His heart beat just a little faster and he felt a cold sweat start to build up at the back of his neck.

Fear.

It was a familiar feeling.

But he didn't know why he was feeling it this time. It was probably just a random person who had stopped to take a look at the accident. Maybe to try to help.

The familiar lump in his throat and the urge to throw up told him otherwise.

"Stiles? Stiles!"

Stiles blinked and looked at Scott in surprise.

"You okay?"

He paused to evaluate how he felt and after a minute Stiles nodded. He was okay.

Stiles started his jeep and then made his way to the hospital, hyper aware of the way Scott kept shooting him furtive glances. He was sure his friend was wondering about what had spooked him. But that was the thing; Stiles barely knew what it was that had scared him himself.

A few minutes later they arrived at the county hospital and the two teens made their way in.

"Hey, Mom," Scott greeted through another yawn.

Melissa McCall looked up from the chart in her hand, surprised. Everything had been quiet on the supernatural front as far as she knew so it was a shock to find the two of them here at such a late hour.

"What's up, boys?" she asked, flipping closed the chart and making her way down the hall to room 210 with the boys close on her heels.

Stiles nervously ran a hand through his hair. He hated to ask, but... "Was their a woman brought in a little while ago? With black veins?"

Scott's mom gave them a funny look as they stopped outside the room. "How did you know?" she asked, pushing open the door.

The two teens peered into the room over her head. Lying prone and lifeless on the hospital bed was the woman they had seen get taken away by the ambulance. If it wasn't for the sound of the steady beeping from the monitor they would have thought she was dead. Just as his father had said, the woman's veins were black. They stood out with sharp relief against her sallow skin in crisscrossing patterns on her arms and crept up the column of her throat. It reminded him of the way wild vines grew and grew until completely taking over.

If he wasn't mistaken, it looked as if...

"She's dying," Scott whispered, finishing his unspoken thought.

His mother nodded solemnly. "She's not the first either. Three other cases came in over the past few days. Within hours of being admitted they all died."

"What did they have?" Stiles asked, looking the woman over again. He had never heard of any sickness or disease like this before.

She shrugged helplessly. "That's the thing, nobody knows."

"Is it contagious, Mom?" Scott asked, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. He was going to kill Stiles if he got whatever that woman had. Especially if it had some sort of supernatural origins.

"No." Melissa shook her head. "It seems that random people are getting sick since none of the others had any connections with each other before getting sick. As far as I know there is no patient zero."

Scott and Stiles stood in the doorway, both unsure of whom or what was causing this sickness, this disease. There were no indicators as to what was going on. Maybe it was just a coincidence that all those people died with the same illness, that they had contracted some disease and it killed them. Or maybe the currents being put out by the Nemeton had drawn some dark entity to the town and was killing people in its own way. They were basically grasping at straws. It could be either one of those theories.

But Stiles couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the driver of the white Corvette had something to do with this sudden plague.

After saying goodbye to Scott's mother the two friends made their way out of the hospital. They were discussing what the woman could have possibly gotten and from what or who had given it to her. But just before they got to the parking lot, Stiles quickly grabbed Scott by the back of his shirt and dragged him until they were crouching down behind one of the ambulances.

"Stiles! What the hell, man!"

Stiles ignored him and clamped a hand down over his friend's mouth. Cautiously, he peered around the ambulance at the car parked next to his jeep. It was probably just a coincidence but in Beacon Hills there was no such thing. But parked next to the pale blue, piece of crap Jeep of his was the white Corvette.

There was no way that the person who was driving that muscle car could have possibly known where they were going. Stiles had kept checking his mirror the entire drive for the damn thing and had never seen it. And he knew for a fact that there was only that one road from the wreckage that led to the hospital. So that person couldn't have followed them either.

There was no way, absolutely no way, that the driver could have possibly known unless he heard Stiles talking to Scott from where they stood hidden in the trees.

Eventually a man of average height and weight appeared from the other side of the parking lot. He looked to be around middle age with a shock of white hair on his head that made him seem even paler and older than he was. The man looked like any other man but there was just something about him that made a chill run down Stiles' spine. His gut clenched painfully and told him that he was something inhuman.

Something dangerous that needed to be gotten rid of. ASAP.

"Stiles, what's wrong with you?" Scott hissed, ripping his friend's hand away from his mouth. He eyed him with a bewildered expression.

Stiles shot him a look that made it clear that he thought Scott was being dumb. "What's wrong is that the creepy guy over there followed us to the hospital and I think he has something to do with those people getting sick!"

Scott eyed him warily and peered around the ambulance. He frowned and looked around the parking lot with sharp eyes, confused and exasperated. "Stiles, there's no one there."

"What!" He scrambled to his feet and ran around the ambulance until he stood in the middle of the lot with Scott a few feet behind him. Stiles pivoted on the spot, looking for the man and the white Corvette, but both were gone now as if they were never there in the first place. "But I swear I saw him!"

He felt the beginning of a headache coming on as he scrambled to come up with an explanation. It just didn't make any sense. Stiles slapped a hand over his eye just as it started to twitch. He wasn't crazy. He saw that guy whether Scott had seen him or not.

Scott clamped a reassuring hand down on his best friend's shoulder. "If you're sure, man, I'll believe you." He didn't know what he truly believed but if Stiles was certain that he saw something then he was going to trust him. After all that they had been through together it was best not to rule out everything now, no matter how crazy the thought might be.

"I'm sure, Scott."

He nodded and that was that.

The two boys climbed into Stiles' jeep and after Stiles dropped Scott off at his house he drove home and immediately went back to bed, not even bothering to change his clothes. He just wanted to forget and escape into a dreamless sleep, to pretend that he didn't just have a delusion in the middle of the hospital parking lot for just a few hours.

OOOOOO

Over the course of the next few days Stiles did extensive research about the sickness that was spreading across town. Six new cases had come in and each one died within hours of getting sick. It seemed as if it was beginning to spread rapidly now but there was still no discernible pattern between them.

Stiles was lucky enough to get to the hospital just before one of them slipped away and was claimed by Death the day before. He had questioned a young man who couldn't have been any more than a few years older than him. What he had learned from the twenty year old had chilled him down to the bone.

Days before the man had become sick he had noticed that a mysterious white car had been following him around town. At first he thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him but then he started seeing a man dressed in white with hair just as light. He appeared everywhere he had gone and eventually the young man had felt as if he had gone crazy.

No one but him had ever seen the odd man with the white hair.

The hours leading up to his hospitalization were spent wandering around town, attempting to escape the silent specter. And the longer he ran, the sicker he got with every step until he was delirious and standing in the middle of the road outside the police station with his veins thick and dark against his sallow skin.

After he was told all of that Stiles went home with his heart in his throat and buried himself in research about the man in white. He poured through thick tomes about ghosts, phantoms, and other dangerous spirits. He scoured the Internet from top to bottom, using every available search engine he could get his hands on all at the same time.

There was only one thing that he was sure of from all that he had learned. Death was coming for him whether he wanted it to or not.

The hours passed one by one and blurred together as Stiles lost time. Scott had called him numerous times before giving up and finally showing up with Allison and Lydia in tow. The three of them tried to get him to take a break but there was little they could do to persuade him. Stiles was determined to find out as much as he could before it was too late. He had seen the man and his Corvette sitting outside across the street hours ago and he was willing to bet that if he looked again he would still be there.

The others didn't understand.

They couldn't see him.

They didn't know what he knew and wasn't about to tell them either. Scott, Allison, and Lydia - especially Lydia - didn't need to be burdened with the knowledge that he was bound for an inevitable death. He only wanted to make sure that they would be able to get rid of whoever or whatever that man was when he was gone.

Stiles rapidly scanned the page in front of him for any words that seemed to pop out at him before quickly flipping the pages of the book and giving the same treatment to the new text in front of him. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in any of the books or other research materials he had found that explained any of this. He was tired and the only thing he wanted to do was go to sleep, but if he did there was that lingering fear at the back of his mind that he wouldn't be waking up later. And, damn it, he couldn't leave his friends without any idea of what was out there!

Out of the corner of his eye a small, thin figure entered his line of sight and the next thing he knew a small, finely manicured hand snatched the book out from beneath his fingertips and angrily threw it against the wall across his bedroom. Before he could react, tiny hands took firm hold of his face and forced him to turn. Beautiful grass green eyes holding back a stream of tears framed by fiery red hair gazed beseechingly into his.

"Stiles, please. You need to stop this," she pleaded, traitorous tears flowing freely down her face now. "You're wearing yourself out! You've been in here for three days! And, and you-I've been so worried..."

He frowned. Someone as beautiful as she shouldn't be crying. Especially not over him.

Stiles brought a hesitant hand up and tenderly wiped her tears away with the pad of his thumb before softly cradling her face in his palm. She softened at his touch and leaned into his hand, her eyelids fluttering shut. "Lydia, I'll be fine," he whispered. It was a lie and from the way she flinched he knew that she knew this too.

"Please. Just stop for a few minutes."

Before he realized what he was doing he was nodding at her request and was being led across the room until they were both lying on his bed.

He didn't know how long they had laid there like that face to face on his bed but the sun had long set by now and Lydia had fallen asleep, her hair forming a deep red fan above her head on his pillow. Stiles smiled softly at the sight. This was something out of his wildest dreams. Never had he ever thought the day Lydia Martin would sleep in his bed would ever come, especially now. But yet here she was.

Slowly, Stiles rose from his bed, careful not to wake her. He stood there for a moment longer, savoring the sight of her and burning it to his memory. If he was going to die soon then he wanted to have at least one good last memory before he was to be treated with the sad and pitying looks of his friends and family as he died.

He quietly crept across the room until he stood looking out the window at the street below. His eyes adjusted to the darkness outside and with a heavy heart he spotted the white Corvette. Leaning against the door of the car and staring back at him was the man in white. His face was expressionless and the look in his eyes blank.

He was waiting.

Stiles swallowed around the lump in his throat and backed away from the window. He wasn't ready to die yet.

He glanced over at Lydia as she slept. She had looked so scared and worried for him earlier. Stiles rarely ever saw that side of her. It was strangely comforting to him to know that she cared that deeply about him. At least he knew that on some level she loved him and that was good enough for him.

Stiles smiled softly at her before sitting back at his desk. One by one he began to clear his desk of papers and books. Some went in the trash while others were put back on the shelves. It was all pointless now. He was on borrowed time now and he had wasted so much of it researching only to find nothing useful.

He swept his hand across the desk, pushing the rest of the loose papers over the edge and into the trash. They fluttered down and landed with a soft whishing sound. A muted thump gave him pause and Stiles stilled. He looked over the edge of his desk and saw a book lying next to the overflowing trash can.

Upon further inspection he realized that it was a copy of the Bible. Stiles stared at it for a moment before randomly flipping through the passages. He wasn't particularly religious but it wouldn't hurt to take a look. After all, what did he have to lose?

Certain words seemed to stand out on the pages to him and though some of the verses he read were supposed to bring him comfort, they only served to make him feel worse. But something compelled him to keep searching through it.

Death claimed and conquered all of those people and I'm going to be next, he thought bitterly. And there's nothing I can do to stop it from happening either.

Stiles paused, his hands stilling over the pages of the book as his last thought ran through his head again. Quickly he shut the Bible and opened the browser on his laptop before typing five words into the search bar. He clicked on the first result and skimmed through the information. He did the same for the next five. The words seemed to pop out at him on the screen and he knew he found what he was looking for.

Without a second thought he printed out the pages and bookmarked them too for good measure. Once they finished printing he skimmed through the information again and again and even found the same words in the Bible he had tossed aside. And each time he read the words it felt as if his heart was sinking further and further with dread and as if the lump in his throat threatened to choke him at any moment.

The situation was worse than he originally thought.

Much worse.

His grip on the papers loosened and they dropped back to the desk.

The apocalypse was coming to Beacon Hills.

With difficulty Stiles stood and sluggishly made his way across his room until he was sitting on the edge of his bed. For some time he sat there staring off blankly at the wall, unsure of what he should do. So little time with so much that he wanted to accomplish. But eventually he decided that if he was going to die at any moment he would like to spend those last minutes with Lydia.

He lay back down on his bed and just stared at her. She was so beautiful. It made his heart ache to think that these would be the last moments he would be able to spend with her for the rest of his life.

Hesitantly Stiles reached a hand out to run the back of his fingers down the peaches and cream of her cheek. He smiled to himself when she sighed softly in her sleep and nuzzled against his touch. She murmured his name a moment later, making him grin.

"Lydia," he whispered back before wrapping her tiny body in his warm embrace and finally allowing himself to succumb to sleep and enter dreamland with her.

OOOOOO

Stiles didn't know how long he had been asleep but it felt as if his entire body ached liked he had been hit by a truck and then backed up on by it. And he couldn't open his eyes but he knew he was awake.

That was the only thing he was sure of.

He didn't know where he was. What time it was. How long he had been asleep. If his friends knew where he was. Where Lydia was.

Lydia.

The thought of her name brought warmth to Stiles' chest. Or at least, where he thought his chest was. He couldn't feel very much except for the aches and pains.

He wondered where she was, if she was alright.

He missed her.

He wished he could hear her voice one last time.

"Stiles."

It was faint but he knew it was someone calling out for him.

"Stiles...Stiles...wake up...please...I need you...Stiles..."

That voice. He recognized that voice now.

It was her.

It was Lydia!

Stiles forced his eyelids to open but it was no use. It was like there was a weight on them. He struggled for what seemed like a lifetime before he gave up and settled on concentrating on listening to what was going on around him.

It sounded like there were three other people in the room with him and Lydia, wherever they were.

Two voices, one male and one female, sounded like they were farther away from Lydia. They were hushed but heated, as if the two were arguing. But about what? Him? He wasn't sure.

The third person was quiet. If Stiles concentrated hard enough he could count their breaths, but doing so gave him a headache so he stopped. He wasn't sure but he thought it was his dad.

Time passed sluggishly for Stiles, though it was possible that it was moving faster than he thought. He didn't know how much time had passed but eventually he became more aware of what was going on around him. The voices were clearer now. He could feel his hands now and the slight warmth of another, much smaller, hand in his own.

With great effort he forced his eyes open. The lights were dimmed in the hospital room and he could vaguely make out the shapes of the four people in the room. A strangled gasp beside his head brought his attention to the redheaded girl sitting next to him.

Lydia leaned forward in her seat and tightly squeezed Stiles' hand, her smile sad but full of relief. "Stiles," she breathed.

He grinned weakly back at her. "You miss me?" he asked. She gave a shaky laugh at his lame attempt at a joke.

Behind her Scott and Allison had stopped their bickering, his eyes returning back to their dark brown from their werewolf yellow as they stared at Stiles in shock. They both rushed forward until they stood beside Lydia.

"How do you feel, man?" Scott asked his voice hushed.

Stiles shrugged the best he could. "I've definitely been better. Feel like I've been thrown out of a moving truck and then ran over by it a couple dozen times but other than that I'm fine." His friends gave him weak smiles but he could tell that they were on the verge of breaking down in tears.

Allison inched closer to the bed, tears in her eyes. "You're going to be alright, Stiles. You'll be out of here in no time."

Stiles wanted to laugh but he knew that if he did he would be in even more pain than he already was. "Yeah, I'll be out of here alright. In a body bag." It was insensitive, he knew that, but it was also true. He didn't see himself leaving the hospital in any other way.

Her composure broke and the tears fell freely down her cheeks. Allison grasped at Scott's shirt blindly as she sobbed. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and stared at his best friend, stricken and utterly devastated by these turn of events.

Lydia let out a strangled sob and grabbed desperately at Stiles' arm. "No! I won't let that happen!" she cried out.

Stiles smiled softly at the banshee and raised a darkly veined arm to run his fingers through her red locks. "It's going to be okay, Lydia. I promise."

She shook her head defiantly. "It's not. You're dying and there's nothing I can do to stop it from happening...I'm not ready for you to go yet, Stilinski." He just continued to smile at her. That defiant look in her eye told him that there was nothing he could say to reassure her.

"Son."

Stiles tore his eyes away from Lydia to look at his father. The utter devastation and intangible sadness in his eyes made him flinch and cringe away. That was the very look he had been hoping to avoid from the very beginning.

It was the same look his father had when it was his mother that was lying in a bed like this.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I love you," he choked out, grasping tightly at his hand.

Stiles gave him a watery smile and squeezed back. "I love you, too, Dad."

A new round of tears ran down the Sheriff's face at his words and with one last salty-eyed glance, Stiles' father stood and shuffled out of the room. Stiles tried not to let the searing pain in his heart bother him too much at his departure. He knew that seeing him like this was too much for his father, but it still hurt to see him go.

The warmth still in his hand brought his attention back to the pretty girl sitting at his bedside. He smiled and she smiled back.

"Don't go," Lydia whispered.

"I'll try," he told her. He could tell that wasn't the answer she was looking for but was going to take what she could get. "I love you," he said, never taking his eyes off of her. "All of you."

Allison sniffled miserably into Scott's t-shirt. "We love you, too, Stiles."

"I love you, too, man," Scott returned, squeezing tightly at Allison's shoulders to comfort both of them.

Lydia said nothing, not that he expected her to say anything in the first place. But he knew that she loved him, too, from the way that she looked at him. As if a part of her was dying with him, too.

The two stared at each other for an immeasurable moment of time that spoke volumes. It said everything that they were too afraid to say and more.

I love you.

I know. I love you, too.

I wish you don't have to go.

I wish that, too.

I'm going to miss you.

I'll miss you more.

Don't go!

I have to...

Their connection broke when she closed her eyes and finally let the tears that she had been holding back all night fall. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He had never seen her look as breathtaking as he did now and he was glad he got to see her like this.

She draped her body across his and cried, barring her grief and pain for all to see.

Stiles ached to comfort her but found that he could no longer move his arms. He felt tired and ready to slip back into unconsciousness but he fought the urge. A part of him knew that if he closed his eyes he would not be waking up later.

He would not let Death conquer him.

The thought struck his mind sharply and he fought the stupor of sleep. "Apoc...alypse," he rasped out. "Com...ing. Here...Four Horsemen." He paused, blinking rapidly.

One more thing, just one more, and then he could rest.

"Lydia, I-I love you."

And then he heard a white noise that drowned out all other sounds. His sight blurred to near-nothingness until the familiar pale face of Conquest hovered over his. Stiles heard him speak clearly over the din but never saw his lips move.

"Forgive me, child. I never wanted to do any of this but she forced me to. And I do hope that you know that I didn't want to harm any of you mortals," he whispered. He paused, eying Stiles in an odd way. "Perhaps letting you live will set things back on their rightful course."

Faint like a whisper, Stiles heard a scream of anguish but he ignored it and focused on the man in front of him.

Conquest trailed off to stare at something Stiles could not see but whatever he was looking at must have solidified his decision. He then reached out a deathly pale hand with the thin outline of a crown tattooed in the junction between his thumb and forefinger and lightly touched Stiles' face with the tips of his fingers. Upon contact warmth spread through his entire body. All of his aches and pains had washed away at once and Stiles felt a million times better. The pale man gave him one last cryptic smile before vanishing.

With the pain gone he let his eyes slide shut and fell into a deep dreamless sleep, assured that he would be waking up later.

So, yeah this is my new story :) Yay! It's going to have five parts, weeks 1-4 and then the aftermath of everything. I don't know when the next chapter will be done but I'm actively working on it, hopefully it'll be done before 3B premiers next month. So fingers crossed.

And today's my birthday! I hope I get all kinds of lovely reviews! I'll respond to every one of them if you sign in to your account.

Review, I don't bite. Promise :)