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He hates the way they can only talk about her in the between moments; in the small hours of the night, when the world is just as cold and dead and the Sheriff's had a drink too many. He hates the way she's become untouchable, unapproachable. Alive, she was smiles and laughter and warm hugs and burnt cookies. Now she's synonymous with tumours, with hospitals- with sunken eyes, collapsed veins, and death. He sees it in his dad’s eyes- sometimes all he can remember is the way it ate her up from the inside and hollowed her out. Even Scott, king of The Brightside, can only look at Stiles sadly. School is unbearable. He’s the kid whose mum had cancer.
No, that’s not right. She didn’t have cancer- she became it. She died, and suddenly that’s all she is. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Their memory of her is tumour-shaped.
He can’t remember her like that. It might be denial, it might be selfish, but it also might be the only thing that keeps him sane- he remembers her as his mother. He doesn’t let the hospital room frame his view, chooses instead to ignore the fragile bones of her wrists, her insubstantial skin. He remembers her warm eyes, her cheeky smile, the way she gripped her ankles and rolled around on the couch wailing about how her toes wanted to be freeeee! Stiles remembers the mother he finger-painted the fridge door with, who made the foulest cookies but the meanest lasagne, who taught him how to fold origami frogs from dollar bills. It makes him feel warm, then guilty. Mostly, he's just lonely.
He remembers the first day of school, his mother’s bare feet on the sidewalk (she had this thing against shoes) next to the bus-stop. She had written ‘Hello, I’m Stiles!’ on the inside of his palm, to remind him to be friendly to the other kids. Mostly, her jerky scrawl just made him feel less alone. When the teacher asked them to write their names on their books, he carefully copied each smudged letter.
There was one week in third grade where Scott, his best friend, had been visiting relatives out of state, and his mum, his bestest friend, had been at her cousin’s wedding. Before leaving, Scott had solemnly informed him that he would always return for Stiles, that he wouldn’t just leave and not come back, all floppy hair and earnest eyes. His mother had just kicked off her shoes and showed him a secret. Written on the bottom of her foot, in multi-coloured sharpie, was ‘Stiles’. She told him something he hadn't learnt in school yet, about homophones. Soles and souls. “Don’t think you’re not coming with me, kiddo.” She’d smiled, and then accidentally kicked him in the ribs when he traced the little batman symbol dotting the ‘i’.
The first couple of days were boring. Scott sent him a post card with a bear on it, which was cool, but the funk didn’t lift. Usually it was Stiles and his mum waiting up for his dad to come back from his late shift, watching Buffy together or making awesome pizza, so dinner was awkward and conversation stilted between Stiles and his dad. They didn’t spend much time one-on-one.
Day two and a half, and the rooms seemed infinitely huger, the walls so much closer. Stiles tugged off his socks after gym class and stared blankly at the bottom of his foot. The secret was faded, and a little smudged, but clear enough that every letter was printed onto his retinas. Her name, shaky like it was written at an angle. She must have done it just before she left for the airport, while he was sleeping. Now that he knew it was there, he was hyperaware of it. Every step felt like an invisible stamp, like he was leaving imprints of her name all over the sidewalk. Three thousand miles away, and their strides were perfectly matched.
He hoards those little things about her, the things that made her his. Stiles was a jealous kid, shared everything except the people in his life. His mother was a closely guarded secret, one he cherished, a relationship which often confused and excluded his father. It was Stiles and Claudia against the world.
She dies, of course, in a hospital bed, though Stiles can’t think of anything worse. Cancer cures him of his selfishness- he learns how to share his mother with hospitals, with doctors, nurses, chemo treatments and well-meaning relatives. His mother wrote their secret onto both their skins every day- until the nurse saw the sharpie on her instep and tutted about ink poisoning. After that, she wrote it into their skins, whispered ‘Stiles’ like the secret it was, until it lost meaning, became nothing but meaning. It was their prayer.
(He can’t get the nurse's voice out of his head. “Ink on skin? That can poison you, you know.” He thinks of their years of secrets, and has nightmares where the Fates tut behind their surgical masks. That will poison you, you know.)
Cancer taught him how to share, and it teaches him how to talk to his father. Stiles stares at the fat-ringed bacon in the supermarket, and the commercials about arterial health and cholesterol levels (that can poison you, you know). He and the Sheriff talk about sports and speeding tickets. Stiles finds another red headed queen. On bad nights, his father drinks too much and passes out with one hand on the gun safe. Stiles cooks, his father actually comes home, and they try. There is more whisky and panic attacks involved than is strictly healthy or normal, but they try. Sometimes the weight between them is crippling, and they both find it hard to catch their breath, but sometimes it just feels like being alone together.
They both miss her.
At eighteen, he walks alone into a tattoo parlour, cradling a polaroid of seven shaky letters on a child's sole. He limps out with a secret, and their strides are perfectly matched.