Stiles couldn't open his eyes. He couldn't wake up to see that this was all a dream, that his rescue was a dream and he would wake up still strappedto that chair.

"Stiles, wake up. It's alright," A gruff voice filtered through the silence and Stiles obeyed, cracking his good eye open. The other was still wrapped in bandages.

He was met by the site of soft brown eyes staring into his own good one.

"Scott?" His voice was raspy and small, a far cry from his usual vigor. "You're real?"

Scott smiled sadly and looked more like a grimace. Stiles asked him the same question every time he woke up.

"Yeah, I'm real. I promise," Scott whispered. Stiles nodded, satisfied. His head swam with pain and exhaustion. Scott tightened his arms around his friend, and Stiles realized that Scott was sitting up against the headboard with Stiles between his legs. Stiles's sore back was bandaged and up against the solid warmth that was his best friend's chest. Stiles mumbled something before passing out again.

Scott blinked furiously to clear the tears from his eyes, unwilling to let go of his friend for even a second. He watched with blurry vision as his arm darkened with black veins of pain that he was pulling from his friend. It was like drawing the poison out of a wound, poison that never seemed to stop coming. Stiles sighed and fell deeper asleep as his pain receded for now. A soft knock on the door startled Scott and his eyes flashed red as he pulled Stiles even tighter to him. Derek stepped into the room slowly with his hands up at the sight of Scott's fading red eyes.

"Sorry," Scott whispered. Derek shrugged. "What did he do to him?"

Derek sighed, passing a hand over his face. He could still small Stiles's blood mixed with his tears and sweat and the dirty water his captor threw on him whenever he passed out. It had been a week and they couldn't seem to wash away the smell.

"I think the better question is what didn't he do?" Derek sat on the edge of the bed. Scott's brow was furrowed and sweaty from draining Stiles's pain, and it wasn't enough. "Electrical burns, lashes, bruises, cuts, broken fingers. Same as the others."

Scott squeezed his eyes shut.

He would never understand how another human could do this to someone. Stiles was no stranger to being kidnapped, being the only fully human member of a strange werewolf/supernatural creature pack.

But this time, there was nothing supernatural about what happened. No werewolves, banshees, hunters, berserkers, nothing. Just a man.

A man that had been terrorizing his victims for years, moving from small town to small town all over the country and avoiding the law every time they got close. Stiles had been the latest in a long string of victims, but he was the only one to survive.

The serial killer was not so lucky. Scott didn't kill humans.

Derek made sure he didn't have to.

The string of tortured, mutilated bodies would mysteriously stop now, and no one would ever know the truth. No one but two werewolves who would never tell a soul and a teenage boy too damaged to forget.

Stiles's face scrunched in pain, and Scott looked helplessly at Derek. He couldn't drain anymore from Stiles, it was too much. Derek reached out and gently touched Stiles where his neck met his shoulder. Immediately, black inky veins appeared on his arm as he soaked up Stiles's pain. Scott nodded gratefully, sagging into the pillows that propped him up. He checked Stiles for fever for what seemed like the hundredth time. The fever they had found him with had finally broken the night before, caused no doubt the horrifying conditions of the blood-soaked room they had found him in.

"Have you slept?" Derek asked. Scott shook his head. "You should."

"I can't leave him alone," Scott said, an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice. "I left him alone for a minute to take a shower and he freaked out."

Derek remembered hearing Stiles's panicked screams when Scott had finally left him to wash the blood off. Scott had felt horrible, and presumably hadn't left the bed for the remaining time.

It had been a week of sneaking out of the bed for quick bathroom breaks, having food brought to him, and barely closing his eyes in case Stiles woke up screaming and thrashing and struggling to get away from his nightmares. A week of remembering the way Stiles had flinched away from his touch when they found him strapped to a chair and covered in blood, fresh and old.

"I'll take him," Derek said softly. Scott looked like he wanted to protest. "Scott, you're the alpha. You need to be healthy. If you lose it, we all lose it." Derek knew it was a low blow to bring up Scott's responsibilities, but he see that it was working.

"I'll be back soon," Scott said, to whom Derek wasn't sure. He sat up carefully and held Stiles out to Derek. They clumsily switched places until Derek was sitting against the headboard, Stiles cradled gently in the V of his legs. He let the younger boy's head fall back against him, reclining more so that Stiles was laying flatter. He tucked the blankets around the still form as Scott stretched his stiff body. With one last look at his best friend and his second-in-command, he left the room. Derek ran his fingers carefully through Stiles's hair, checking the stitches that held together a gash on his head. They seemed to be healing well.

A small pile of books was on the floor by the bed, ones he assumed Lydia had left for Scott to read while he sat with Stiles. They hadn't been touched. Derek had to admit that the friendship between the two boys was beyond anything he had ever seen.

It didn't take long for him to reach for one though. He wasn't much for sitting quietly, even with such an important weight in his lap. He picked up a paperback, one that was worn and the spine cracked. He studied the cover and his mouth twitched in what Stiles once called his "closet thing to a smile you'll ever do", and opened to the first page. Stiles shifted in his sleep, turning his head to the side. Derek waited for him to wake up, and when he didn't, he began to read softly.

Stiles woke screaming.

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