True North

13

Season Five

Lena sat cross-legged on the hood of Stiles' Jeep while Scott sat a short distance in front of her. Stiles had a map open that was covering part of her knee. It was of the San Francisco Bay Area. "All right, so I found some cool two bedroom apartments in the Mission District, but they're pretty expensive. A couple in Haight and Ashbury. Also expensive."

"What about Berkeley?" Scott wondered.

"Two bedroom?" Lena asked.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah."

"There's always UC Berkeley."

Scott frowned. "Don't a lot of students live around Berkeley?"

Stiles shot his hand into the air. "Well, yeah, we could try Nob Hill. But, the Jeep would probably burn through a lot of clutches."

"You're bringing the Jeep?" Scott questioned.

Lena frowned at Scott. "That's a stupid question."

Stiles glanced at his cousin in disbelief before turning back to his friend. "Did you ask that? Did you really just ask that? You know the plan, okay? No one gets left behind. That's the plan. Lydia's not gonna have a problem getting into Stanford. Kira's thinking USF. Malia's, uh, gonna you know, she'll figure something out, okay? The plan's perfect."

Scott let out a sigh. "Or we could also wait until we actually get into college and then figure out where to live."

Lena shook her head. "Don't ruin the vision."

Stiles took her hand. "Yeah. Don't ruin the vision. You and me always wanted to go to college together. We can check out East Bay. Haven't looked at Oakland yet, you know."

Scott turned around to look at something and Lena frowned. "Are you okay, Scott? Is the full moon gonna cause you to wolf out?"

He shook his head and gave her a small smile. "No. Just thinking."

"About what?"

"Senior year."

"You're ancient."

Stiles threw his hand into the air once again. "Senior year, come on, that's, that's... That's nothing. That's going to be easy."

Scott sat up. "It's more like something Deaton told me once. You ever hear of regression to the mean?"

Stiles shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"It was his way of saying that life can't ever be all bad or all good. You know, eventually things have to come back to the middle. So, think about the last few months. Things have been good, right? But not amazing."

Stiles sighed. "Yeah, but no one's tried to kill us in six months either."

Lena shot her cousin a look. "And we're going to keep it that way."

Scott nodded at her words. "Right. We've been pretty much in the middle for awhile. Which means at some point, the scale has to tip one way or the other. Things are gonna get really good again..."

"Or really bad," Stiles said as a loud crack of thunder sounded. "Think it's been long enough?"

"Yes!" Liam cried from the tree he'd been chained to.

Scott said, "Liam's still there. I'd call that progress."

Stiles frowned at the beta. "Hey. Trying to have an adult conversation over here."

Liam rolled his eyes. "All right, you're two years older than me. And I'm fine. Lena's my age, a month younger. Just let me go."

He rattled his chains trying to free himself. Lena walked towards him and noticed blood in his clenched fists and saw his nails shifting back.