It's All In Your Mind

5

There was something wrong with Theo Raeken.

It was a simple observation, but an important one. He knew people could change. He hadn't seen Theo since 4th grade. And that was a long time ago. Still, the way he acted... This just simply wasn't the Theo he had known.

But of course, no one believed him. As always. He guessed he should've expected it. They never believed him. It still stung, though.

What frustrated him the most about this whole situation, was that Scott was obvious to it all. He had known Theo before as well. But apparently, there was nothing wrong with the boy, and Stiles was just overreacting and having something against their 'friend'.

So Stiles was, once again, left alone with his suspicions.

It didn't change the fact, that Stiles still firmly believed in them and tried to convince his Pack about it. But with every failed attempt, they just looked more and more annoyed. It came to a point, that those few conversations they held before, became none. And every time he just opened his mouth, they started to look annoyed and gave him frustrated looks.

Nogitsune was there for all of it and kept sneering. He told Stiles over and over that he would do way better, if he had just found new friends. The thing was... even if Stiles sometimes thought about that possibility, it just wasn't an option. He wasn't popular. He never had been, but at least before he had Scott. True, the Pack became popular, but people still sneered at him. Or ignored him. And when he was alone, sometimes they even laughed. Even those he didn't talk to at all, knew he was a sidekick.

It frustrated him more than anything else, and he had an annoying fox at his side all the time.

Besides, could he ditch the people who saved his life repeatedly? Yeah, sure, they sometimes didn't talk to him. But they just had other things in mind. They spend time with him sometimes. They had saved his life a lot of times already. They asked him for help and sometimes, they helped him too. They just didn't talk to him that much. So what? He was grateful they talked to him at all.

When he had told Nogitsune so, the trickster had cuffed him on his head with a newspaper. "Are you bloody crazy?" he had exclaimed, obviously miffed. "They're using you, idiot! They do nothing but make you do things for them, and when they don't want anything, they kick you out. How can you be bloody grateful?!"

Stiles hadn't known the answer back then and he didn't know it now. He knew they weren't the best. But they were at least something. And he needed that something.

And that was the reason, why he wanted – no needed – to prove that he was right about Theo Raeken. He had to make them see. Make them believe him, at least once.

He spent hours on finding any information he could find about Theo. He tried to talk to his dad. But the older man just rebuked him. He had tried to talk with Malia and Scott, but both of them had brushed it off.

But now, now he had a proof!

Few days back, he had found Theo's dad signature on a fine, from 8 years ago. But he needed to see if the one from now was any different. That was why he had sneaked in the school office and stole some documents.

And the signatures? They weren't the same. They weren't! Yes, they looked similar, almost the same. But Stiles was a professional in copying his father's handwriting. It only took him a second, to find all of the unnatural differences. Lines were too shaky to be written quickly, angles so different the first person couldn't have written them... It was passable – for an untrained eye such as the person in a school office, who hasn't even seen the first one – yeah sure, just another signature. And even now, looking at them side by side, they would pass. Handwriting changes over years. But this hadn't been written by the same person.