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The witches are a surprise - though of course they shouldn’t be.
It’s the summer after their first year away at college, their first year away from death and danger on a daily basis since their junior year of high school, b ut it barely takes a week to settle back in, for everything to get back to normal.
Normal being a relative term, Stiles is forced to acknowledge, as Scott throws the red kap clear across the basketball court.
It hits the brick wall of the gym with a sticky thwack, leaving a mark on the side of the wall to match its name and never, ever getting back up again.
Derek mutters something about them being magnets for stupid, dangerous shit and Stiles has to physically refrain from snappishly pointing out the centre of this shit storm of supernatural (it’s Derek. It’s always Derek at the centre).
And it has been a shit storm. At first, it was just a few rogue omegas, a couple of overzealous hunters and one interesting experience with a troll. Then there were the gremlins, a horde of them tearing up the woods and leaving ugly, bloody trails in their wake. Then leprechauns in the bank and a freaking Vampire in the multi-story carpark.
The witches, though, the witches area a surprise - though of course they shouldn’t be.
They were a small coven of indeterminate ages and genders, changing each time they made contact but all smelling the same. They were there for power, for strength, for glory and a number of other ridiculous, unimaginative things that made Stiles role his eyes and beg for Darwin to enact his particular vengeance.
The witches, though, were strong and violent and wanted a wolf to match them.
They assessed and planned and sat back and watched, waited, until the pack grew uneasy and jittery.
And the pack had been so caught up in their own plan, so caught up thinking of counter offences, of sneak attacks and fighting strengths that they’d not ever considered that the witches could use Stiles against them.
He was their human, their cheerleader, their sarcastic mascot and relief. The one who brought them back to reality, grounded them in a world outside the supernatural, the real word, the world where people could get hurt, get injured, get killed. He was weaker - though not weak, never weak, not since the troll and wasn’t that awfully Harry Potter of him - he’d serve the witches purposes, sure, but he wasn’t a wolf, wasn’t strong or special or superhuman. Why would they use Stiles when they could grab anyone off the street and use them? Why choose someone surrounded by protection when anyone - anyone - would do?
But of course, Stiles was Stiles, and though he kept his spark hidden, it was there. And more than that, he knew the pack, knew them like no one else did or ever would: not just where they lived, but their weaknesses, their strengths. Knew everything from Derek’s wifi password to Allison’s favourite perfume (and Allison's wifi password and Derek's favourite perfume).
No one had suspected a thing. Not Scott, not Derek, not even Lydia.
Not Stiles.
He’d been in the back of the warehouse (it was always a warehouse), watching, waiting, trying to see who they’d pick. It was a simple spell, a binding spell that relied on a name. Such a simple thing. No blood, no messy relics or bones or eye of newt. Just a name to bind you and subjugate you.
They had a contingency for everyone: one: a well placed bullet packed full with wolfsbane, rendering them inert and useless to the witches, and two: just enough time for Stiles to make sure they didn’t die.
They had a plan. No one ever said it was a particularly good one.
But it was the only one they had, and it was the one that crumpled into dust when he’d heard it. When he’d felt the word, felt the shape of it, the meaning, and realised they’d all forgotten a Plan B.
“Mieczyslaw" Her voice skittered over his skin, itching at his elbows and behind his knees. She’d smiled, straightened and commanded, “Come here.”
And Stiles hesitated.
Except that that wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to be able to happen. She’d said his name, she’d called him the Polish monstrosity of his grandfather and great grandfather. She’d enunciated it perfectly, and yet.
Yet.
Stiles hesitated.
“Mieczyslaw. Walk towards me and stop here.” She’d said, and Stiles shrugged and didn’t move.
And let it never be said that Scott and Derek aren’t quick thinkers in a tight spot - they’re excellent at it (it’s the slow thinking, the planning and forethought, the consideration of consequences that stumps them). As the witch stands there, assessing and analysing, anger beginning to spread down through her body, they both launch themselves into action: yelling commands and tearing down the coven with swift claws and sharp canines.
And when it’s done, when Stiles’ bat is bloody and he’s breathing hard and fast, sweat dripping down his face and sticking his hair along his forehead, he walks over to her. She’s sitting, cowed and bitter, in her own pentagram.
She looks up at him and spits, “Mieczyslaw”, her bloody lip warping the perfect pronunciation, “That’s your name. It should have worked. We researched, we found it”
And Stiles shrugs, because it’s true. That was the name on the birth certificate, that was the name on all his official documentation. Meiczyslaw Stilinski.
That no-one ever called him that shouldn’t have mattered. Magic didn’t work like that.
But the witch, falling into bitterness and despair, says, “But you need love to bind a name. I suppose,” she looks up, eyes deadened and drained, "Even your mother didn’t love you enough to make it stick,” and that, there, that is the truth of it.
Because Stiles doesn’t remember Claudia, at least not very well. He doesn’t remember her as a perfect angel, a beacon of human goodness and motherly love. He doesn’t dwell on memories of how she smelt, her smiles or the type of conditioner she used in her hair. He can barely remember he laugh. To him, his early memories of his mother revolve around simpler things: her grinning and watching cartoons with him in the morning before school, her gritting her teeth in annoyance when he wouldn’t stop fidgeting at the dining table, unable to quell his energy, or frowning at him in disappointment when he’d leave his apple in the bottom of his school bag until it grew soft and smelly. These aren’t bad memories, they’re just memories: memories from a child who didn’t know he needed to cherish other ones.
He knows that his mother read a lot, that she was smart, that she had an eclectic belief system and was always open to the possibility of things, but he knows this more from other people: in a distant, abstract sense. Descriptions or comparisons dropped as compliments or with exasperated sighs.
“You’re just like your mother”
“She would definitely have agreed with you there”
“Well, you didn’t inherit that from your father”.
But he does remember her getting sick, then getting sicker. and then all his memories are slightly tarnished, tinged by the huge elephant in the room: the memories of her anger at him, her disdain that turned to fear as her mind slowly deteriorated. She wasn’t nice and she wasn’t kind in those months, and everything comes back to the one memory: the last memory. Her in the hospital, hair disorderly and in disarray, eyes unhinged as she accused him and cringed away in fear.
“He’s trying to hurt me. He’s trying to kill me."
And to a young kid, that sounded a whole lot like it was his fault that she was dying. That she was dead.
And for years - years - he’d believed it. He’d held onto the happy memories, the fake ones, the one’s he’d stolen from photographs and expectations born from bad TV and books about sad, downtrodden orphans. He’d imagined her as soft and understanding, full of love and life and energy. He imagined her dancing, laughing, feet tripping into bookshelves or over chairs or even just air, because he got his clumsiness from someone and it certainly wasn’t his dad. He’d sneak into his dad’s ensuite and steal her perfume, smelling it, breathing it deep as he clung to memories that weren’t his and weren’t real.
And he’d cry. And then he’d yell and swear and push and push until the only people who stuck by him were his dad and Scott, because it was all his fault. All his fault that she was dying, that she was dead.
The panic attacks had begun then; had over taken him and drowned out his control of his own body.
And then his dad told him it wasn’t. His dad sat him down and told him she’d been sick - she’d not been right in her head and there was nothing he’d done - nothing he could have possibly done, not physically, not mentally, not spiritually - that could have killed her, that could have saved her.
And then the counsellor had said the same thing. Again and again and again.
And then, when Stiles eventually got the courage to confide in Scott, Scott told him the same thing. It wasn’t his fault.
And after a while, after Stiles had talked it out, had breathed and analysed and researched and finally realised, he started to tell it to himself. It wasn’t his fault.
And his memories of his mother became more real, more…true. They weren’t lies anymore, they weren’t wishful thinking - they were honest and complicated and contradictory. He grew to accept that they weren’t pretty, that their relationship wasn’t clean: he didn’t kill her, but even at the end she thought he was trying to. In the end the sickness had got to her, had warped her so much that she didn’t know or recognise him.
It didn’t mean he didn’t love her, every part of her, but she didn’t, couldn’t love him.
And this, this is the key to it all, because the lore states that names are given in love, bound in care and protection and intention. They identify you, and so they have power. Power from you, and power over you. A name can trap you, bind you, be used against you, so it's something to be kept protected, kept hidden and known only to a few.
These days names are open, tokenistic, worn on labels and yelled across parking lots and printed on everything: clothes, books, phones, slapped across the internet and given away with every purchase, every smile.
But Claudia, she’d named him. She’d given him a name, a name handed down through family: from her father to her son. She’d wrapped him in it, whispered it to him and tied it all around.
Mieczyslaw.
She’d given him a name unpronounceable, a name unspellable, a name complicated enough that it was hidden, a secret that wasn’t and yet was; something protected.
And Stiles, Stiles felt fear grip him when he heard the witch whisper it, heard her savour the unfamiliar syllables and the rhythm of it, the stress and beat of it, as she completed the spell, the corner of her lip lifting when Scott and Derek both realised their mistake.
Her pronunciation was perfect. The Polish syllables as natural as breathing.
And yet.
Yet.
Stiles hesitates, and the witch says, "Even your mother didn’t love you enough to make it stick"
For a moment, it cows him, makes him flinch, and it's a cheap shot but she goes for it, digging it in, “She must have hated you - oooh, feared you - feared how you hurt her, how you drained the life from her -"
But it’s only for a moment, because the filth spewing out of her mouth doesn’t really affect him. He’s thrown worse at the mirror. Thrown much worse at his own face, at his father, at Scott and Derek and the pack. Stiles sighs and crouches down, leaning his weight on the bat. He looks across at her, not knowing her name and not caring.
“My name,” he says, “is Stiles.”
And that, that there is the truth opened. Because his mother had given him the name Mieczyslaw, had called that name to him, had bound it, but it wasn’t the name that stuck. He could never pronounce it, could never spell it, and, in truth, could and would never use it. She’d called him that, but she wasn’t what mattered to him, wasn’t what was important to him.
She had stripped the meaning from the name when she’d said “Mieczyslaw is killing me”.
But Stiles. Stiles was a name handed down through generations, too. It was a name given in protection, bound to him, by the people who loved him the most. It was reinforced every day; said to catch attention, as a hello or goodbye, yelled across abandoned train stations in anger and annoyance, breathed out with want and pleading; said with love, with laughter, with frustration and amazement. It was a name that fit him, not something he was born with, but something that grew into him, that named him, that was him. And Claudia, his mom, she’d called him that in the good times, differentiated him from her paranoia, her ugliness. Stiles was a name given in love.
And that’s the thing, with old magic. Sometimes it isn’t truth, but intention, that matters. Mieczyslaw might be his name on his birth records, but for all intents and purposes, he was, and is, Stiles.