AN: I've wanted to read this fic for a while, but no one had written it. So I did. :)

Note: Diverges from canon during the S2 finale. Also: (Bracketed, italicized paragraphs are flashbacks.)

…

wake me when the moon is high in the sky

…

The Stiles they get back isn't the Stiles they lost three and a half years ago.

The Stiles who went missing. The Stiles who was taken from them.

The Stiles they get back is quiet. Watchful. Tense and ready like a drawn bow. Wary and suspicious of everything from the food placed in front of him to the people walking down the street to his own fractured memories.

Because that's another thing. The Stiles they get back doesn't remember them. Is never going to remember them.

Or, no, that's not quite right; his memories of everything from before were wiped by the people who took him – but since the rescue, the doctors and scientists who've been looking into WICKED's memory-wiping technique (and isn't the name just so fitting, Scott thinks bitterly) are all fairly optimistic that Stiles and the others will start to get someof their memories back eventually. Some. Not all, but some.

It's better than none, Scott tells himself firmly. Maybe Stiles won't ever get everything back, but – maybe he'll start to recall fragments of who they – Scott, the Sheriff, the pack, everyone – used to be to him. Who he used to be to them. And, well. It's not ideal, obviously – but it's something they can build on, at least.

Whether or not Stiles will trust those memories when they finally start coming back is another matter entirely, of course, because whatever it is he's endured these last few years has apparently destroyed his trust in… well, everything, apparently.

Because not only does he not trust any of them – not Scott, not his dad, and certainly none of the medical professionals who've tried to assess his health since they found him (and failed, due to the fact that they can't get near him) – he also doesn't trust in the rescue itself. Doesn't trust that it's real.

("But they have photographs," the lanky kid says, on the second day after their rescue. "You as a kid, with your mom and your dad and that Scott guy. Years' worth of photos."

They're having a whispered, huddled conversation, the seven of them – Stiles, the lanky kid, the Asian kid, the black kid, the kid with the messed up face, and the two girls – and Scott wouldn't have been able to hear them if it weren't for, you know, werewolf hearing, but he can see them clearly where they're standing at the far end of the hall, and the Asian kid, the kid with the scarred face, and Stiles all give the lanky boy identical looks of unimpressed disbelief.

"After all the klunk we've seen them do – every shuck thing we know they're capable of – you really think a few faked photos are out of WICKED's reach?" Stiles asks, and even with the foreign words that Scott has never heard before, the meaning behind what he's saying is clear.)

There are other differences too, aside from the war suspicion and the memory loss.

The Stiles they lost three years ago was The Funny Guy. Had a quip for everything; took up the mantle of "Official Comedic Relief" and wore it with pride; handed out smiles and grins and laughter like they cost nothing.

This Stiles barely smiles. Any smiles he does pull are usually wry twists of his lips that barely last a second before they vanish under his blank, steely expression again.

Not to mention that Scott hasn't heard this Stiles laugh once; not once since they found him.

The Stiles they get back sleeps (on the rare occasion that he does sleep) with a knife in his hand and another one strapped to his calf.

The Stiles they get back watches them all constantly like they're about to try to kill him.

The Stiles they get back doesn't even answer to Stiles.

Thomas, his new friends call him.

Minho. Aris, Harriet, Sonya. Gally. Frypan.

("What the hell kind of name is Frypan?" Erica snorts when they're all reintroduced, and Stiles – Thomas – shoots her a cold, flat look.

"His name," he says, his voice as flat and unyielding as his expression, and Erica shuts up about it quick smart.)

The Stiles they get back doesn't trust anything or anyone other than those six – the people he was rescued with – and the seven of them take turns guarding the others throughout the night; five of them sleeping tangled together in a messy pile of limbs, hands on weapons and sleeping so lightly that the slightest sound wakes them all; and two on watch, always, no matter how many times Scott or the Sheriff or Melissa or Derek assure them that they're safe, they're ok now, they don't need to set a watch.

("Yeah, sure, like we haven't been told that before," the Asian kid – the one called Minho – snorts the first time they're told they're safe, and Scott doesn't know what to say in response to that.)

There were others that were rescued too, of course.

Over a hundred, all up – men and women and children all ranging in age from six months through to twenty-six years – but none of them seem quite as… quite as damaged, as the seven young adults who've moved into Stiles' old room as though it's big enough for all of them; who refuse to separate even though there's a spare bedroom right next door that some of them could use.

(The Sheriff and Melissa make a half-hearted attempt at separating them by gender, at least, but they all immediately close ranks at the mere suggestion, postures tense and battle-ready. The kid called Aris is holding onto the two girls' wrists as though he thinks they're about to be dragged away from him, Harriet and Sonia themselves look ready to claw anyone who even thinks of approaching them, while Stiles Thomas, Minho and Frypan create a human wall in front of them with Gally covering the back.

"Yeah, last time we got split up by gender, it didn't go well for anyone," Frypan says, eyes flickering from the Sheriff to Scott to Melissa to the door and back again, assessing the threat. "So 'scuse us if we don't trust you not to jack with us all over again.")

From what Scott has been able to piece together, most of the people they rescued – the other hundred or so – hadn't actually had too bad a time of things.

They'd been kidnapped, yes, but none of them remembered that bit, WICKED had wiped all their memories in preparation for the experiment they were running, and replaced the memories with a completely fabricated set.

What the experiment was, exactly, goes over Scott's head. Something to do with brainwaves and survival instinct and behavioural patterns across the human race as a whole. It was an elaborate set up, the experiment, run by a collective of privately funded scientists who apparently had no limit to their budget. The experiment was immense, and Lydia's probably the only one among the pack who can properly follow all the logic behind it and the results it garnered.

So Scott doesn't understand the full scope of the experiment, but he has learned that most of the people who were rescued had lived, for the most part, relatively normal lives as what WICKED called "Immunes." It was only in the last few weeks when they started being picked up from their "normal life" and stored away by WICKED'S crazy scientists that things started to get a little unpleasant for them all.

They were part of Phase Two, Lydia explains. Subjects held in reserve to be added to the experiment once Phase One had been completed.

They were the lucky ones, from what Scott's picked up.

Stiles and the six others – they were Phase One.

Scott might know most of what the hundred or so Phase Two people have been through – they've been very helpful in the wake of their rescue; confused but pleased to have been retrieved from the island that turned out to not be an island at all, that turned out to be just another level in WICKED's ongoing experiment; giving detailed accounts and filling in as many blanks as they can – but Scott has next to no clue about what Stiles and his new friends have been through. No one does. None of the seven of them have spoken about it.

The scientist Brenda had given them some information. She'd been on the island with all the Subjects (and oh, how Scott hates that term); a plant by WICKED to prompt the experiment in the right direction from the inside. She'd given them some information, after the authorities had been called in to start making arrests. She'd wanted to make a deal, once she realised the charges she'd be facing. Information for immunity.

(And Stiles' face when he realised that she was with WICKED; that she was part of the organisation who had been treating them like they were nothing more than rats in a cage… Scott will be able to remember that expression with perfect clarity for the rest of his life. And Stiles wasn't the only one visibly affected. Minho had been beyond furious, and it was only Gally holding him back that had stopped him from physically laying into the scientist. No one had gotten to Sonia in time, and the diminutive blonde had gotten in a few good hits before Aris and Harriet together pinned her arms, both of them glaring furiously and spitting burning insults at Brenda even as they restrained their friend.)

So Scott knows the bare bones. Knows that the Phase One subjects were split over two huge mazes, that they were stuck there trying to work out an escape for years.

(Scott also knows that there were over sixty subjects in each maze. Over one hundred people – one hundred teenagers – and only seven of them are left standing now, at the end.)

Scott knows that they finally escaped their mazes, only to find that they'd played right into WICKED's hands and done exactly what was wanted of them. Knows that they were then forced to complete another trial – another test that cost countless lives and resulted in nothing but some data for a bunch of empathy-deficient scientists. Scott knows that they eventually rebelled and fought back, finally "escaping" to what they thought was Paradise, but that was actually just yet another construction.

In light of all that, it's not surprising that none of them trust that it's actually over this time – that they actually have been saved; that they've been rescued, that it's over, that they're safe.

Scott will never forget the moment they realised Stiles was missing.

The only one who'd noticed at first was the Sheriff.

Everyone else was too preoccupied with Gerard and the Kanima and Erica and Boyd's short-lived defection to notice that Stiles hadn't been seen since the lights blew out at the lacrosse game.

It was only after Lydia went looking for him at his house, looking for advice and a sympathetic ear, and instead found a frantic Sheriff in his son's empty bedroom that anyone else realised.

And even after that there was still Jackson and Gerard to deal with – and maybe Stiles was involved in that somehow? Maybe that's where he was? – so poor John received a crash course in the supernatural, and it was only once Jackson's eyes flashed blue and Gerard slunk off into the darkness to die that it had become clear that wherever Stiles was, it wasn't here.

The resulting search had turned up Erica and Boyd who – it turns out – were the last ones to see Stiles. While he was being beaten up in the Argent's basement.

The panic levels had already been pretty high, by that stage, but they increased rather a lot in the wake of that discovery.

Chris didn't know anything; Chris hadn't even known that there were werewolves in his basement at all, much less that Stiles had been there earlier. Erica and Boyd could only help so much – they swore that Gerard had come down for Stiles and left with him hours ago, and they hadn't seen anyone since.

By the time Scott and Derek and the Sheriff had gone back to where they'd last seen Gerard and then tracked him through the old warehouse into a shadowy corner, the old man had already died – and with him, the knowledge of where Stiles had gone after he'd been taken from the basement.

Aside from the assumption that Gerard was involved, they'd had very few leads to go on – but they'd refused to give up, even as the days and then weeks and then months and then years passed… and eventually they'd connected Gerard to a scientist, Ava Paige, who'd been let go from multiple Colleges and governmental programs on account of her frequent line-crossing, her dedication to science over anything else, including humanity and basic decency, and the hunt had continued from there until they finally found an enormous high security facility in Texas.

Turns out Gerard had been supplementing his hunting income for years by supplying his old college buddy Ava with a constant stream of teenagers and young adults who she used in her experiments, and Stiles was the last one – drugged somewhere between the basement and the Argent's curb, they suspect – to be knocked out and handed over to a man in a van like he was little more than a parcel of meat.

Scott will never forget the moment they found Stiles.

A little bruised and a little bloody, all of them – Scott and the Sheriff, Allison and Chris and Lydia, Derek and his betas – and with a long line of subdued scientists and security guards scattered throughout the huge facility in their wake… and then finally, finally, Stiles was in front of them.

And after three and a half years, it should have been amazing. It should have been the reunion of the century.

But instead of Stiles greeting them with delight and a quip about their lateness; instead of an enthusiastic group hug that devolved into a laughing, crying mess; instead of laughter and tears and joy and hugs that went on for hours – Stiles had greeted them with a hand-hewn spear in one hand and a knife in the other, a downright vicious expression on his face as he'd stood side-by-side twenty or so similarly armed people, all of whom were standing defensively in front of a larger collection of huddled, frightened strangers.

And Scott was going to do it anyway – was going to run forward and sweep Stiles up in an embrace and never put him down again – but he'd taken one step and Stiles and three of the others had moved forward to match him, snarls worthy of a werewolf issuing from more than one of their throats, and then Stiles had hefted the javelin-spear-thing warningly and said in the most vicious voice Scott had ever heard from him, "Take one more step, and I'll stab you through the throat."

And that, that, had brought Scott up short, and he'd stared with a slack jaw and wide eyes and tried to parse what was happening as Stiles' gaze flickered rapidly from face to face, his spear hefted and his stance steady and sure.

"Stiles," the Sheriff had said, in a slightly thick voice. "Stiles, son. It's us."

And Stiles had stared at the lot of them with zero recognition and 100% hostility and barely restrained violence and sharp defensiveness, and he'd demanded, "Who the shuck are you?"

…

AN: First chapter is a lot of set up; things get going properly next chapter.

In other news... this is looking like it's gonna be somewhat large. There are 15 pages written so far, but they're all bits and pieces that haven't been joined together yet. It's going to be kind of huge, I think. Initially I intended for it to be a oneshot, but then the first bit was done and the rest wasn't and I was like, nup, to hell with delaying gratification, we're chaptering this thing.