Chapter Text
Stiles is walking to the front door when the sight of his father stops him in his tracks. Huh, he thinks, his father is not his father. This man is taller and bulkier, but he feels like his father. His soul is the same something whispers inside him. That’s new too, this voice, this Spark inside him is stronger here, more in tune with his body.
He’s wary of Stiles, Stiles can tell. He twitches when Stiles enters the room and he never has his back to Stiles. But his father also loves him, he can tell. He always makes sure Stiles has bread to eat and clothes to wear. He’s scared, but he still makes an effort to talk to him. Before he can say a word, his father tells him to go find his mother.
Discomforted by his father not father, Stiles leaves the little compound and wanders into town. The townspeople sneer at him, they stare and point, others shoo him away from their food stall. He doesn’t understand, can’t speak, can’t defend himself. He can feel that he’s scared, something foreboding is on the horizon. Something awful is happening soon.
Nevermind that, he needs to find his mother. His mother? She’s dead, what. Not dead. Here she isn’t dead, his Spark whispers. Oh that’s right, His mother, sick with some unseen illness speaking in tongues and roaming around the village. She’s actively shunned and ignored.
Stiles is in the town square where the market is hustling and bustling when he catches sight of his mother.
“Diseased. You’re curse. Created from ill will. A being of ill will. You’ve taken lives haven’t you, wench?”, his mother says, her farm-rough hands wrapped around the town head’s daughter’s face.
Then, Stiles’ mother brought forth a knife and raised it to slit the girl’s throat. The girl’s servant knocks Stiles’ mother over at the last moment and the knife swings large and slices the girl’s face as Stiles watches from two stalls down. Horrified. The cut sizzles and smokes and his mother is accused of witchcraft.
Stiles’ mother is sentenced to death by pyre. Her crime of injuring the town head’s precious daughter. His father is heartbroken and angry, but there’s nothing one man can do. So he locks Stiles in the house and goes to say farewell to his wife.
Stiles is talented at picking any and all locks, but this one won’t budge. His father knew him too well. Stiles is desperate and scared and he cries tears of frustration, he needs to see his mom. She may have hurt the girl, but she’s still his mom. He cries and wishes and wills the door to open and his chest gets really tight and the door gives. It opens and it’s like the lock and the knots of rope were never there.
He runs to town square but he’s too late. They’ve tied her to the pyre and the town head drops the torch just as Stiles runs towards her. He screams for her and she screams for herself. The flames egged on by the dry brush underneath.
Stiles throws himself at the pyre. Drags piles of smoking brush away. The flames licking at his arms. He doesn’t feel it. He wills the flames to stop for the brush to stop burning and he’s furious they don’t. How dare they take his mother. His mother who raised him who fed him the best parts of the rabbits his father catches, his mother who sings to him on cold nights to make him forget that he’s freezing to death. He’s furious and he wills it again, his chest goes tight, he can’t breathe and the smoke makes him close his eyes but when he opens them, the flames have died, the dry brush resistant to fire. He’s joyous just for a moment before arms grab his shoulders and drag him to where the town head is standing. The grey looking old man kicks him in the ribs, yelling about him being an abomination as his daughter looks on in glee.
He hurts, his ribs, his arms, his heart (he can’t hear his mother screaming anymore, they must’ve relit the fire). But he can’t die like this, he hurts, his ribs are fragile so he wills them strong like the mountain that is north of the village, the large daunting one with stone rock faces that he likes to try to climb but stopped once his mother cried when he got hurt. He wills his body to be as hard as stone as unyielding as the mountain and the next kick the towns head aims at him connects, but it snaps his foot, his toes breaking upon impact. The towns head screams and Stiles uses that moment to roll away and with the momentum of his roll, he staggers up and runs towards the mountain.
Something is telling him not to look (his Spark), but he can’t help it, he has to know. He peers back and he almost trips in his need to run straight back. His mother, his beautiful radiant mother. Her bottom half was torched and grisly, her upper half slowly becoming the same way. She’s stopped breathing he can tell, her eyes are open, unfocused, glassy but he feels like she’s looking at him, urging him on.
He runs to the mountains and scales the rock face like he’s done a thousand times before. He hides on the mountain. Gathering plants that he’s seen his mother pick and grind for his father a million times before. He picks them all and hides in his cave, the one he goes to when the world gets too much and his ears buzz like flies around manure. He chews up the plants and mixes it with the mud found in the cave. Then, he applies it to his burns, tears gathering in his eyes. His mother used to distract him by singing to him when she wrapped his wounds. She won’t be doing that anymore. Exhausted, he falls into a dreamless sleep.
His father finds him early the next morning, gently calling his name at the mouth of the cave. Only his father would know where his is, having exasperatedly collected him a thousand times before, back when his mother still smiled and he still had time to be childish and bothersome.
His chest clenches and it’s different, it’s not the…the power that he called upon before, its different. His chest is closing up and he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He’s scared, but that’s his father why would his power, his Spark, respond like this. Resolute he stands up and slowly exits the cave. His father startles and stares at him.
“Johanne...”, his father looks disappointed, almost scared to have found him.
“Look at you. You’re hurt, have you eaten?”
He shakes his head overcome with emotion, his father! His father is here, everything will be alright. His father hands him a little bread roll and he cries as he eats it, his hands are crusted over with scabs and the wounds pull when he tries to eat.
His father shakes his head and takes the bread roll from him. He tears it apart and feeds him bite by bite.
“Come here Johanne,” his father holds him close, kisses him on his forehead like he hasn’t done in years, “Are you finished? Let’s get you cleaned up.”
His father leads him to the river nearby and tells him to wash his face as he stands guard. Here, his power, it swells unbelievably. It’s errant and strong, cresting to a large wave inside him. No, it tells him, no Johanne. But Johanne, Johanne who was raised by his mother was taught to obey and to respect his father. He loves his father, he reminds himself so he obediently gets on his knees at the river bank and looks in. His hands, covered in the poultice he made on the fly ache and pulls every time he moves them, but he dips them in the water anyways and nearly screams, the water is so cold and frigid like ice. He gathers it in his burnt palms and raises them to his eyes to clear the smoke from them, he scrubs and he scrubs and he hears a branch snap behind him.
“Father,” he calls out anxiously.
“Johanne,” his father’s voice breaks, “my son. I’m sorry but this is mercy compare to what they’ll do if they catch you.”
His eyes clear and he opens them just in time for his father to grab him by the neck and push him towards the river. The last thing he sees is his father’s reflection in the water, tears streaming down his face.
Johanne doesn’t struggle despite the initial jerk. He knows it’s for naught. His power is screaming away inside him, confident it can overcome his father and win. But Johanne is tired, he’s so tired and so sad. His father is killing him so he let’s go. He turns limp just as the water turns bright from the reflection of something, fire, the towns head and his people were here. His father’s hands loosen from his neck and for a moment he thinks he’ll survive, but a second later his father’s foot pushes him down and hastens the process by applying pressure on his windpipe. And everything goes black.
Stiles startles awake plastered with sweat. He pulls out his dream journal and logs it down. June 14, 2014 #32, the same dream, the same scenario, his hand shakes as he writes “Dream sequence ended when I died.”