chapter twenty-five: never nothing to go on

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Chapter Twenty-Five







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never nothing to go on
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"Have you heard anything?" Julio asked Mack as she finished changing Derek's bandages

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"Have you heard anything?" Julio asked Mack as she finished changing Derek's bandages.

"Nothing," she said with the same worried look that he is undoubtedly sporting. He sighed, tossing his phone onto the table, littered with bloody gauze and bandages.

"We should be out looking for them," Derek said.

"You can barely walk," Mack said, pushing him back down when he tried to stand. He hissed, wincing in pain. "We can all barely walk. We barely got out of there alive, we can't go running back out without a plan."

"We don't have any plans!" Derek shouted. "We have nothing!"

Nothing.

Julio closed his eyes, trying to think of something, anything.

"There's never nothing," he mumbled to himself. Stiles would think of something. Stiles would figure it out. "All that racing in your head, it's tangling up all your thoughts. Close your eyes and take another deep breath so you can untangle them." Stiles' words echoed in his head. His eyes clenched harder.

"I can figure it out," he whispered.

"Julio," Derek called softly.

"I can figure it out," he said sharply, turning to look at Derek, slumped in a chair as he struggled to heal, as they all struggled to kickstart their healing. "We can't be this in the dark. There's never nothing to go on. I need," he gestured at nothing. "I need to think." He turned on his heels and snatched the keys to Stiles' jeep off of the table. Derek shouted after him as he took off running. The jeep spluttered to a start and it shook as he pressed on the gas. The trees blurred past him as he drove, holding a finger against his throbbing temple. Stiles and Yale are gone, undoubtedly stuck somewhere. Everyone else is wounded with no clear signs of healing. Between Lydia's enchanted daggers and Esther's magic, all of their wounds were still fresh, bandaged up and making them weak. Mack too, with nicks from the glass and exhausted from casting Esther out of Morgan Tulley.

Julio drove for a while, feeling numb and desperate. He finds himself parked in front of the Stilinski household, searching the flowerbeds for the spare key. The house was empty and silent, a far cry from their first night here. When they sat at the dinner table, boxes of pizza and wings spread out as Stiles shared memories of this house. Of his mother reading to him, teaching him how to cook, kissing his scrapes and bruises when he played a little too rough in the backyard. Of his father finding a frozen bottle of tequila and Stiles smiling innocently at him, his father teaching him how to drive, teaching him how to tie his shoelaces. Julio ran his fingers against the picture frames as he walked up the stairs, trying to feel Stiles' presence, trying to pull it out of the walls.

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