triggeringthehealing:

Summary: It’s no secret that Stiles can work with mountain ash. What he isn’t expecting is just how easily he can do it. He can’t help but wonder if maybe there’s more to it than him being a Spark.

Derek/Stiles || PG || 983w || AO3

A/N: Written for the @fullmoonficlet challenge – prompt #295: ash

It’s a perfect circle.

Stiles stares at the ground around him in amazement, stunned into silence. That alone should be a cause for alarm, not that anyone is able to pay attention to him. Scott is off to Stiles’s left, fending off two Betas of the pack that they’re fighting. Derek… Stiles isn’t quite sure where Derek is, but it’s likely that he’s in the pile on the other side of the clearing, where Stiles can see Erica and Boyd doing their best to put their recent training to good use.

They’d been attacked during a training session out in the woods, not far from the old Hale house – which made it just far enough from anyone’s home that it was less of a deal than if the attacking pack found them in town somewhere. As it is, Stiles still wondering how they were even found, why Deaton’s newly set up boundary wards didn’t alert them to intruders. He reaches into his pocket – the one where he doesn’t carry vials of potentially useful stuff, which he now sees is perfectly warranted – and he glances at the screen.

The phone mocks him with the name of the operator but no coverage bars on the screen. Of course. Even if the wards did work, Deaton wouldn’t have a way to get in touch. And seeing as they were kind of close to the boundaries, the lack of a warning about the intruders – attackers, Stiles’s brain points out – suddenly makes sense.

“Stay right there!” Scott calls out, interrupting Stiles’s musing. “Stiles, don’t fall out of the circle!”

Mildly irritated at the assumption, Stiles glares at Scott for a moment, then sighs in resignation because it’s not a pointless remark, not with Stiles’s ability to fall into and out of places everywhere. He’d like to think that Scott noticed the circle of mountain ash, the perfect curve that surrounds Stiles, but it’s unlikely. The wolves who came out of the woods immediately started snarling – Stiles wondered if that was a sound that could be made by a human or another wolf – and swiping at the others. They didn’t seem to be paying attention to Stiles at all, but he knew better than to trust it.

Cue, the mountain ash ring.

He’s been practicing, learning from Deaton – and the internet. The latter was a bit of a time-waster, for now, the former proving a lot more informative than Stiles was used to. It’s how he knows that not even Deaton can manage a perfect circle, the line of ash around him smooth and steady.  Deaton told him once that making anything even a little circular would be a success, enough to prove that Stiles does indeed have a Spark. As it is – Stiles thinks when he notices the inner edge of the barrier he put up – the mountain ash seems like it’s glowing. It’s too dark to see the change with his normal sight.

“It’s the same,” Derek says when Stiles asks about the rules for anyone who attacks.

He emerged from the pile of bodies which now includes Erica – she’s smirking from her spot, Boyd already halfway across the clearing, on the way to Scott. Isaac is running over too and the rest of the visiting pack seems to be restrained enough.

“We capture, question, then see what to do about these,” he tells Stiles as he circles around and then heads towards Scott.

The barrier is holding, Stiles thinks, judging by the way Derek couldn’t get any closer, which has got to be driving him crazy. At least this time he can’t blame Stiles for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no way of knowing that Stiles should be skipping today’s training session, he got caught by surprise as much as the rest of the pack did.

Instead of dwelling on what Derek will find to be unhappy about, Stiles looks at the defeated – but very much alive – werewolves who already submitted to Derek. There’s not a red eye in sight, not among the newcomers. Stiles frowns and glances to where Derek and Scott are still fighting two other weres – now significantly more human-looking than when they barged in here. But when those two flash their eyes just before they obviously give up the fight, they’re not red either, just one blue and the other yellow.

They’re all Betas, Stiles thinks in amazement. They don’t have a leader.

Just as he realizes that the fight seems to stop. Stiles notices because Derek steps forward slowly, one hand on the unknown werewolf enough to keep them in line. Stiles figures that they’ll all head over to the Hale house ruins for the questioning that Derek mentioned. He’s loath to put down the barrier though, considering that it seems significant that the ash fell on the ground the way it did. It turns out that he’s not wrong about Derek’s plan for the attacking Alpha-less pack.

“We’re going to bring them to the house,” he says to his own pack.

They all nod and start ushering the intruders away from the clearing when Derek lets go of the one he was holding. He heads over to where Stiles is still standing and stops when the ash barrier won’t let him get any closer.

“You should talk to Deaton about this,” Derek says, pointing at the circle. “I’ve only ever seen Druids make a circle.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Stiles says, stepping across the line. “Guess maybe I’m more than a Spark?”

Derek smiles – something that he still doesn’t do often, but more so when it’s only him and Stiles – and pulls Stiles closer.

“I think maybe you are,” he says before leaning in for a quick kiss. “You know, if you are, there’s an Emissary spot open in my pack.”

Stiles grins and returns the kiss, not needing to say anything else.