Chapter Text
"Mutants. Since the discovery of their existence they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, often hatred. Across the planet, debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain or simply a new species of humanity fighting for their share of the world? Either way it is a historical fact: Sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute." - Charles Xavier
It’s approximately half past two in the morning and Stiles is hunkered down between the stacks of the Beacon County Community Library. His legs are drawn up, back resting against an uncomfortable metal shelf and rain damp sneakers soaking into the carpet. The lights are off overhead, and his phone, combined with the street lights reflecting through the windows, is giving off just enough light to see by. The library closed at eight of course, just like every other day. It wasn’t hard to break in though, at least once he worked his way through all the available books on lock picking and security system wiring.
Stiles has chosen nonfiction tonight. A stack of books that he’s already absorbed sits on his left and more to his right that he’s yet to get to. He sets a book on the pile to the left as information on the Maya Biosphere Reserve settles into his mind and is interpreted at rates that Stiles never could have imagined before his fifteenth birthday. He’s seventeen now, and in between school and working part time at the sheriff’s office for his father, Stiles has managed to absorb all of the books in Beacon Hills’ own small library and has moved on to the larger county library. He sighs picking up the next book, this one on Mayan Temples, and setting it in his lap.
Stiles sometimes wonders if he’s addicted, to information and knowledge and the strength it gives him. His powers are easy to hide. Sure at school he sometimes has to dumb himself down, but he’d always been smart, a front runner for valedictorian, it wasn’t odd that he finally surpassed Lydia Martin. Even if he did so without having to try too hard. As long as he didn’t go spouting off Fields Medal level math or reciting the book they were reading in english by heart, it wasn’t so hard to pass under the radar.
Stiles pressed his hand down on the smooth cover of the book in his lap. Closing his eyes and concentrating, smiling softly as information swept from the book, images and words entering his mind and settling in tidy patterns of knowledge that he could pull from any time. It didn’t take long to absorb the book. He’d long ago discovered that it took his gift about one second to absorb one hundred pages of text. Maybe a little longer if the book concerned new skills or languages that had to be absorbed and thoroughly learned.
It was dangerous to be a mutant. Sentinel Services, a program ostensibly formed to protect the public from those mutants who colored outside the lines of the law, were less discerning these days. As long as you had the X gene, they’d find a reason to detain you. Stiles learned that much from absorbing his dad’s case files.
It was three am when Stiles left the library, having absorbed information from a handful of other books and carefully re-shelving them. He reset the alarm system and managed to lock the door behind him with his pick set, before walking the two blocks to his jeep. He never parked in the library parking lot, there was too big of a chance that a patrolling officer would stop to investigate an abandoned car in a closed library lot. Though his power was harder to detect than most, he didn’t take any chances.
The drive home was quiet, neighborhood streets empty and house lights dimmed, typical for a Wednesday night in the suburbs. His dad’s cruiser wasn’t in the driveway, an indication that he was working yet another double shift. Stiles had developed some thoughts about staffing techniques that could help with all the overtime the sheriff was having to work. He’d only have to hire two new deputies, but so far he hadn’t been able to get his dad to listen.
One odd side effect of using his power, was that Stiles had very vivid dreams. For instance, that night he dreams of huge golden step pyramids surrounded by ocellated turkeys that wore brightly colored dresses and spouted strange riddles that Stiles thinks are meant to be prophecies. “The palace of gifts will reveal the stars” one whispers, while another wails “Two by two, men in blue!”, which Stiles thinks might just be a misquoted Firefly reference. Either way, by the time he wakes up his brain is still firing on all cylinders from the stimuli.
School is a slog, as it has been every day since he lost his best friend Heather to school district rezoning. His powers only amplify his boredom. He knows the answers to all the questions that will be asked. Not only that, but he knows where those answers came from, who developed them and what implications they have in other fields. The only thing he can’t come up with, he thinks as his shoulder is violently slammed into an adjacent locker, is why Jackson Whittemore is such a douche. Well okay, he may have some theories from a psychological profile he put together on the fly, but the fact remains...douche.
He’s in third period, listening to Mr. Harris drone on with his usual tone of superiority, about complex ions, when a knock comes at the door. “Excuse me for interrupting” Ms. Morell says, turning from Mr. Harris to look around the room, “I need…”her eyes land on Stiles, “Mr. Stilinski, can you come with me?”
“Uh, yeah sure.” Stiles says, grabbing his bag from the floor and following the well dressed guidance counselor from the room. He hears some whispers follow him out the door, no doubt wondering what Stiles could have done to earn a trip to the office. After all, he’s only seen as the quiet, sometimes sarcastic asshole who doesn’t have any friends. What could he have possibly done? Stiles actually works hard to keep the unassuming quiet kid persona going, the sarcastic asshole part just kind of slips out.
Ms. Morell ushers him into her office and motions for him to take a seat in the chair in front of her desk. Stiles can’t help but feel antsy, just like the kids in his class, he has no idea what he’s doing here either. “So…” he starts, “What’s up, doc?” Morell smirks slightly, probably aware that the last time Stiles had been in the room what shortly after his mother died, to get counseling.
“Stiles,” she begins, “Do you have any idea why you’re here?” He shakes his head in answer, “I happened to be going over the latest round of SAT results.” Stiles freezes, and he knows without a doubt she catches it. “There have been some questions.” Stiles tries to think back to the day he took the test, he was sick, the flu, and had dragged himself into school to take the test anyway, it wasn’t cheap and he wasn’t about to make his dad pay for it again. “Do you have any idea what your score was?”
“Uh, good?” He guesses, voice cracking at the end. He had known to pick some wrong answers, to make sure he didn’t get a score that would make him an extreme outlier, but he can’t remember much about the test to be honest. He can only hope that it wasn’t…
“A perfect score, Stiles.” shit.
“Are...are you sure? I mean you could have someone else’s test. Like, are you sure there wasn’t a mix up, or…?”
“Stiles, you drew cartoons in the margins explaining answers in greater detail and insisting the test was designed for…” Morell looked down at the paper in front of her, which was apparently his graded test, goddamnit sick Stiles! “Orangutans who can’t understand simple mechanics past flinging their own feces.”
“Uh, crap, yeah that sounds like me…” he sighs, leaning back in his chair. “But I can explain, you see, I...cheated!”
“You cheated, and then decorated your test in crude drawings of mathematicians explaining your answers in greater detail?” Okay, yeah, well when she put it like that. “Stiles, I have to let you know, that two representatives from sentinel services are here.”
“What?” Stiles’ heart began to beat harder, “Wh-why would they be here?”
“Stiles you finished the test in under an hour, with a perfect score and back up evidence to support the fact that you could not have cheated. It raised some red flags.” Stiles’ breath caught, how could she be so calm about this, how could he have been so careless?
“So what? I can’t be smart without being a mutant?” Ms. Morell looked unimpressed,
“I think we both know, that after your mother died you started experiencing things that weren’t quite normal.”
Stiles was quiet for a moment, willing the panic building in his chest to settle, it wouldn’t help him now. Sentinel Services were in the building, they were waiting for him. When he left the office he had to be level headed, he had to be able to think of every possible excuse or explanation for his SAT score. He couldn’t go with them, the people Sentinel took never got out, and they never got a trial.
“You need to run.” Wait, what? Stiles looked up at the guidance counselor who was biting her lower lip. “I can only stall them for so long.” she continued, “I have a bathroom attached to my office,” she said nodding towards a small door in the corner, “There’s a window.” Stiles only stalled a moment before bursting up from his chair and grabbing his backpack. He made his way over to the door quickly, his mind running a million miles a minute, wondering if the two officers had backup waiting outside of if they deemed his power non-threatening enough to not need it. “Stiles” Morell called, “You can’t go home.” Stiles’ heart sunk.
__
New York in winter was supposed to be idyllic; skating at Rockefeller plaza, walking along snowy streets in designer mittens and coats. The truth was a little far from that though, especially if you were a homeless eighteen year old on the run from a shady government organization that wanted to kill you because you could read better than them.
Stiles brought his worn plaid coat tighter around his slim frame. The wool was wet and smelled a bit, but the charity that had handed it out at the shelter hadn’t wanted anything from him in exchange, so Stiles cherished it on days like today. It was just nearing Christmas, Thanksgiving having been a week ago, and the temperature had dropped overnight. Stiles made his way inside the local teen shelter. It was early enough that he was assured a bed, and late enough that he wouldn’t have to hang out with his fellow homeless for too long.
It wasn’t that Stiles had anything against people like him, no home, no connections, nowhere to go. He understood that, he lived that. Everyone had baggage and it manifested itself in a lot of different ways, and yeah some people had some personality disorders, but he understood. The thing that he couldn’t stand was the lack of physical boundaries. There was no personal space bubble in a homeless shelter. That for Stiles, was a problem.
It hadn’t taken Stiles long to realize that a result of being on the run at seventeen, leaving your only family and your life behind, was an inordinate amount of stress. Stress that, in others, might have manifested itself as panic attacks or sweaty palms, but for him, resulted in a broadening of his powers. Suddenly he could not only absorb books, he could absorb people. He could read them; see their past, their worries and their trauma with one touch.
It was hard to turn off at first, as scared and alone as he was. A year later he has it under control, for the most part, but when he's tried it still sneaks through the cracks in his mind. He doesn’t have quirky vivid dreams any more. His dreams are of pain and addiction and unwanted sexual contact. He wakes screaming most mornings.
“Hey, Noah” Jasmine smiles up at him from a cot along the wall. It’s a prime spot, not having to have strangers on both sides of you, and Stiles takes the one beside her. “How is it out there?”
“Oh you know,” Stiles smirks, taking off his thin gloves and rubbing his fingers together to get feeling back to the tips, “cold as hell and alienating as ever.” Jasmine nods, shrugging her coat higher on her bony shoulders. She’s no stranger to alienation, having been kicked out of her family home for coming out at fourteen. She pushes and smooths her plush afro back from her face, wrapping it in a small bun. Her makeup looks more garish under the harsh shelter lights, bright pink lips stained and little smeared from whatever client she took earlier in the night, silver eye shadow coloring the area under her bottom eyelashes. She was still beautiful though, high cheekbones and plush lips, with eyes that smiled when she did, and she did smile. A lot more than Stiles did. “Did you get anything to eat tonight?” She asks, eyeing the community table that was quickly emptying of sandwiches and water bottles.
“Yeah” Stiles pulls his backpack from behind him, unzipping the front pocket and taking out a bag of half eaten jerky he’d found near the 81st Street subway station. He offers her some, and she takes it shyly, and thanks him with a smile.
He doesn’t see Jasmine often, but if he had to say, he’d say she’s the closest thing he’s made to a friend in the past year. He’d traveled a long way from California, wanting to keep as much space between him and the Sentinels as he could, and trying to ensure his dad would be kept out of their investigation as much as possible. To say the journey had been harrowing was an understatement. In the month that it took him to walk, hitch or otherwise travel across the country, he’d experienced more trauma than he could have imagined. It was amazing what strangers would do to others for fun. He knew, however, that he hadn’t gone through half as much as people like Jasmine.
The first night Stiles spent in a New York shelter had scared him more than anything he’d experienced before. It was only Jasmine walking in to the same place that saved him from melting down entirely. She must have recognized the hunted look in his eyes, because she’d sat down on the cot next to him and walked him through the ropes. How things worked at the shelters, which were best, the best areas of the floor to sleep, and how to make sure you got food, and that night she’d held his hand as he slept.
He’d seen everything, he hadn’t known how to shut it off yet, just starting to realize the depths of his new power. In the morning he looked at her with wonder. How could a girl be so kind after what she’d been through, after what she’d had to resort to just to get by? If Jasmine was a mutant, her power would undoubtedly be the ability to comfort others and help them look on the bright side. It never fully worked on Stiles, but he was glad that she had that unshakable faith in the world to see her through these dark days.
That night Stiles didn’t dream about other’s trauma, but his own. Flashes of a big rig cabin, thick fingers pulling at his clothes, reaching for his crotch. He remembers running out of cash in Utah, the first time he’d been forced to dive into a dumpster, the first time he got so sick he from eating rotten food he thought he might die. Knowing that he couldn’t go to a hospital without Sentinel Services tracking him down. Lying in his own vomit in a dimly lit alley way, just waiting for the stomach cramps and cold sweat to ease. He remembers the first time someone offered him warmth and ride for a sexual favor and how tempted he was. He remembers the time he wasn’t offered, laying used and discarded on the side of the road in Ohio.
Stiles wakes up screaming again, and doesn’t dare fall back asleep.