Foresight

Chapter 40: 3-13

Stiles is in his bedroom asleep. He tosses and turns and grips the sheets. He mumbles to himself. "No, no, no, no, don't let them in."

"Well it's been a while" Stiles mumbled.

Suddenly he finds himself, seemingly awake, trapped in a locker at school. As he stumbles into a classroom he sees the Nemeton growing out of the floor. As he reaches out to touch the Nemeton, thick vines shoot out of the stump and wrap around his hand.

"You have nightmares of a tree?" Isaac raised an eyebrow. "To be fair, I went through trauma. And there is the darkness around the heart and stuff" Stiles defened.

He wakes, gasping for breath, back in his bedroom. Lydia is lying next to him and he explains to her that he was having a "dream within a dream."

"Dude!" Scott's jaws fell in shock as did Stiles'. "This...How did you even do that so fast!?" Isaac asked in shock. Lydia looked at the screen with varying degrees of emotion. On the outside, she was shocked, her mouth opened slightly. But on the inside, she felt a bit of happiness and it was growing inside her which she could tell from the warmth she felt.

Suddenly he realizes the oddity of having Lydia in his bed but before he can figure that part out, his door creaks open. Over Lydia's protests, he rises to close the door because, he says, "what if they get in?" Lydia becomes increasingly upset as he approaches the door, begging him not to enter. He enters anyway and finds himself outside and once again at the Nemeton. He screams in an attempt to wake himself up and apparently succeeds.

"That was just a dream" Isaac laughed while Stiles sighed in disappointed. Lydia frowned, felling the warmth go out.

He awakens in daylight in his room, his father sticks his head in the door and tells him to get his butt to school. At school Stiles explains to Scott about "sleep paralysis" a condition whereby the sleeper's brain paralyses the body to avoid acting out a dream in the real world. Stiles says sometimes the brain wakes before the body recovers and a person becomes aware they are paralyzed. He posits that their surrogate sacrifice may have had lasting effects that are now manifesting in his sleep disorder. Stiles says what scares him the most is that he's not even sure that what's happening to him at that moment is real and not part of a dream. Stiles wakes screaming in his bed. His father rushes to hold him.

"Okay this. This is not good in any way" Noah said biting his lips, never before hearing his son scream like that before. Claudia helped onto her son, her face clearly showing how scared she was while Stiles was silent.

Scott McCall is gathering up his books, preparing for school. He turns toward the door and catches sight of his shadow – his "shadow hand" seems to be a claw. He looks at his hand and sees that it remains untransformed. He closes and opens his hand the false shadow is gone.

"And you're seeing things" Melissa sighed.

As he opens his door he is shocked to find Isaac Lahey standing there. After some uncomfortable banter, Isaac expresses concern that Scott might be angry with him. Scott says no, he is not angry, but when asked if he is sure about his answer he says no again. He explains that he's not sure how he's feeling. Isaac says Scott should hit him. Scott demurs but when Isaac insists he questions what, if anything, his friend has done to warrant a hit. He cites kissing as an example of something Isaac might have done, Isaac insists he hasn't kissed Allison. When Scott asks him if he wanted to kiss Allison, Isaac doesn't hesitate responding that he totally wanted to kiss her. Isaac flies through the door back into the hallway beyond striking the wall and rattling a picture frame. The noise draws Melissa McCall to the hall where she admonishes the "two supernatural teenage boys" not to test her patience.