Chapter Text
Derek - The Day is a Bust:
Smoke billows from where one of the warehouse’s walls has been caved in, torn wires still sparking in the dim lighting. The chaos of fighting has dulled to a general thrum, and the support team has finally arrived.
There’s only dull sounds of chatter surrounding Derek, but he’s actively filtering most of it out, veins still thrumming with the adrenaline of battle. He takes a few deep breaths, still tense, monitoring his team.
Erica got hurt, but that’s expected; she’s always charging in too quickly, like she has something to prove. He doesn’t entirely blame her.
He’d found her in a place like this.
Fortunately, werewolf healing means she’s already back on her feet, albeit not quite up to full strength. Boyd is loitering near her side, not so close as to be seen as overbearing, but hovering close enough that he can step in the second he’s needed. He’s reliant on that proximity, needs that sense of security to keep him stable.
It keeps him from worrying about the ones they’ve lost.
Derek cocks his head to the side, for a moment losing track of Isaac.
He finds him again, at the back of the warehouse, up against a row of doors lining a hall. He’s talking to someone, but his tone is hushed and aggressive, and Derek can’t quite make out what he’s saying. He lifts his gaze, directs it towards the back, looking for the curls that poke out above most other heads, but he doesn’t see it. Cursing sharply to himself, he hastens towards where he can hear Isaac’s hushed voice. He rounds a particularly gnarly stack of cages, heavy tarp hanging over the tower doing little to cover the rusted stains over the bars or suppress the scent of iron and misery.
Everyone able to walk away already has.
Derek turns away before he thinks too hard about it.
He finally spots Isaac, bent over while haranguing one of the workers they’d apprehended during the raid. It’s a younger kid, concern plastered all over his face, but Isaac is clearly unaffected, scorn twisting his lips into a snarl, but the kid doesn’t flinch.
Kid might be a strong word.
He’s gotta be in his early twenties, blood splattered across dirty blue coveralls and trailing from his mop of brown hair, but he doesn’t smell hurt. Derek takes another, deep breath, head tilted up and lips parted to pull the scent across his palate.
He’s also another wolf.
Derek can’t and frankly doesn’t want to suppress the growl that begins to rumble in his chest, somehow drawing the attention of the two he’s been approaching.
The one cuffed against the wall pales slightly, then juts out his jaw and adopts a stubborn frown. Derek already knows he’s going to be trouble.
“What’s going on?” he barks, ignoring the trafficker completely and addressing Isaac. Isaac tilts his head to the side, an acknowledgement of rank, before answering.
“He says he’s not one of them.” Isaac jerks his head to the side, indicating the seated man.
“I’m not!” the kid defends. Derek rolls his eyes skyward.
“They never are,” he scoffs. “Is that all?” Isaac’s lips thin and Derek understands without words that there is.
“He says there’s someone else here, down the hall,” Isaac explains. Derek looks down at the kid on the ground who is wincing at Isaac’s phrasing.
“He’s why I’m here,” the kid defends. Derek tries not to roll his eyes again.
“Why should I believe you?” he snaps, though inwardly he’s already thinking about who to send to clear the hall of any survivors. He can’t hear any heartbeats from that direction, but it’s not impossible there’s some sort of sound dampening going on. The kid grits his teeth further.
“I’m a doctor ,” the kid says, wincing again when his heart gives a telltale stutter indicating a lie. “Well, okay, I’m not a doctor yet but-”
“Why should I care?” Derek spits. “You wear their colors, you were walking around uninhibited, every shred of evidence says you’re just as guilty as the monsters running this whole operation.”
The kid looks guilty now, staring at the floor between his crossed legs.
“He’s something different,” he says in lieu of any defense. Derek frowns, prepared to cut him off, but he shakes his head and stops him. “I don’t know what he is… I didn’t come in on purpose. I- I heard something, one night, when I was walking my girlfriend home. I walked past an alley and I heard this awful sound, it was like, screaming, but also something else. I didn’t understand, but I snuck around, and when I saw– well, it? Them?” He pauses here and frowns in confusion before shaking his head.
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, I’ve never seen one before. It sounded so afraid, I did everything I could to try and get closer. I had a whole escape plan! I was gonna get it out, set it free, but–”
“I don’t have time to play with vigilante bull shit,” Derek snaps, but he at least has a little more trust in this young werewolf clothed in a dirty lab coat and not fighting against his restraints. “If there’s someone that needs help getting out, pass the information along, and maybe your lawyer can negotiate a plea deal.” The kid’s jaw drops and he looks like he’s going to argue again for a moment before he deflates.
“Fine,” he concedes, shoulders slumped. “But you’re gonna need a tank.”
Derek blinks slowly once before his gaze darts up to Isaac’s. Isaac’s brows are lifted, and when he meets Derek’s eyes he simply shrugs.
“Tank?”
Stiles - Not a Free Fish:
The cool slide of glass is unfamiliar as it presses against Stiles’ skin where he’s backed into a corner. His own reflection shimmers back at him clearly from two sides and foggily from a third. A poor collection of sand and stone that feels unfamiliar with the stagnant water swirling around him lingers beneath him, buffeted gently by his webbed feet, and the dappled surface above belies its true nature as a few inches before a dark metal sky that he can’t shift on his own.
The reflective corner feels safer, though, than the open wall.
When Stiles first wakes in this strange new habitat, sore and hungry and confused, he barely considers the danger he may be in. The last thing he remembers is surfacing from his home for the spring equinox, an important time for his people. It’s the first equinox he’s been of maturity to join the festivities on the sand; singing, dancing, joyfully welcoming the fertility of the season, and possibly even catching himself a mate.
Adjusting his gills to waterless oxygen had been strange and disorienting, but not difficult. His center of gravity shifted, leaving him off balance, but it was wholly worth feeling the sun pressed up against his skin without a barrier of water refracting it away. He couldn’t help but stand there, eyes shut against the harshness of the light, to drink in the changes.
And now he’s here.
In a strange water that doesn’t smell like anything at all. He parts his lips, filters the water over his tongue as well as his gills, trying to taste a pheromone trail, a fish path, or even pondscum, but there’s nothing.
This water is not alive.
That’s his first clue that something is wrong, though it likely should have been obvious much sooner. When he tries to get his bearings, he still feels off kilter, though differently than when he’d first surfaced. His balance is wrong, not because the world around him can no longer bear his weight, but because his head is swimming away in different directions than his body.
It’s utterly disorienting.
When his gaze first wanders to the open wall, there is someone swimming beyond the glass. It’s his natural curiosity, of course, that so often pulls him into trouble, but it’s hard not to take interest in the only thing more visually unique than an imperfectly eroded rock beneath him, so he swims over to look.
The person beyond the glass is not swimming.
Stiles doesn’t process what that means as quickly as he should. The person beyond the glass is standing. They are taller than Stiles, and their skin is covered in many layers of fabric, which Stiles doesn’t quite understand the point of, but to each their own. Because the stranger is not swimming, Stiles sinks to the bottom of the tank so that they are at eye level.
Then the stranger bares their teeth.
Stiles jerks at the aggressive display, but curls back his lips and bares his own teeth in return. He may not know why he’s here, but he won’t take an insult standing.
“What do you want?” he asks, demands, bubbles hissing past his rows of pointed teeth. He may not have the jowls of his father yet, not quite so many rows, but he knows he is capable of striking an intimidating figure, with the frills at the side of his head and neck flared to increase his size.
The person beyond the glass jerks back as well, and their mouth moves, but Stiles can’t hear their response. He jerks forward, unintentionally bumping into the glass as he tries to hear them more clearly, but they only back away further. A groan echoes from above him, distracting him for a moment, and when he turns to look, the person is gone.
“Whatever,” he scoffs, annoyed but still unafraid. Foolishly unafraid. He wants to investigate the groaning sound, but he feels… tired. Too tired, for how recently he’s woken up, but a yawn bubbles in his chest and forces open his jaw, cracking almost painfully as it escapes. He is just so, so terribly tired… There’s nowhere to rest in this small glass space. He looks around frantically, but he can feel his swim bladder deflating, leaving him drifting to the tiny stones that aren’t as smooth as his river pebbles at home, and he can barely make himself crawl towards a corner, to at least keep him from drifting away from– away–
There’s no one from his town here.
There’s no one from his pod, the group he’d been traveling with for a safe season.
He is entirely alone and the only living thing he’s seen is the strange person not swimming on the other side of the glass–
He is trapped .
His heart begins to race, but that only makes him seem to grow more tired more quickly. The adrenaline, the panic makes him want to wake up, to move, but he only succeeds in thrashing slightly, rough stones catching on his skin and tearing through the soft mucosal membrane that keeps his skin clean and protected from parasites, stinging as they tear even further into the skin itself.
He can taste his own blood fogging the water around him before his eyes slip shut too tightly to open.