2015.09.02 - Bit Parts: Doing Your Werewolf Homework

*Ainsley calls in Stiles to help her learn more about werewolves and whether she might become one.*

September 2, 2015

Beacon Hills Public Library

After the attack, Ainsley was kept in a room to check for changes, since she did hit her head pretty hard back there. After that, and getting stitched up and given a crutch, she was released. The damage was almost entirely flesh wounds, and so she's got a whole lot of gauze here and there covering fresh stitches so she doesn't make a mess or get infections.

She's using crutches because of her leg, which have been placed against the side of the table she's seated at. She picked an area where she'll be able to speak with someone in a hushed tone of voice, and she's thumbing aimlessly through a set of books on mystical creatures, but she has this frustrated frown on her face suggesting she's having difficulty really finding anything of worth. She had called Stiles, so that he could come help her out. Her hushed voice sounded sullen, the strain telling of how this is affecting her.

Stiles arrives, carrying a stack of books, some mystical and some just text books, and plunks down to sit across from Ainsley, careful to avoid jostling her injured leg. He offers a small, sympathetic smile, but doesn't get mushy about it. "So, okay. Research," he says, setting his books aside and leaning forward on his elbows to check out what Ainsley is reading. "So, you've got questions. I've got answers." He tilts his head slightly, shrugging, adding, "Probably."

It's a book about werewolves. It's one of the inaccurate ones that isn't very helpful, if he's seen it before, mostly just an examination of werewolf mythos from the perspective of a skeptic. Ainsley closes the book shortly after Stiles arrives and speaks to her, his smile dissolving her frown in favor of a neutral, tired-looking stare. "Here..." She digs in that fanny pack of hers and produces a picture. It's a picture of her bite in a medical setting with proper lighting. "Do you know what would do that?" she wonders, tapping the picture a couple of times. "Beyond that, all I remember was that it was big and its eyes were..." She trails off, her brow furrowing and her gaze almost going vacant. She moves on, "I remember it looked like what I imagined werewolves were supposed to look like, before, uh... before I met Scott." She grows very awkward about it, her hand gingerly touching at a patch of gauze on her face.

Stiles' grimace is as exaggerated as most of his expressions, entailing an actual recoil of his head, as he regards first the book and then the photo. He looks at the picture, frowning, and shakes his head. "Well, I kinda hate to kick over the sand castle of your joy, here, but this book is... pretty much fairy tales." He snags one from his stack and offers it over. "The myth of Lycaon isn't a bad place to start, if you're looking for old stories, but..." he tilts his head first one way, then the other, raising his eyebrows. "I kinda figure you're looking for more practical facts and figures kind of a thing. So, *ba-ba-da*, I brought this." He slides over another book, a treatise on physiological lycanthropy by Dr. Conrad Fenris.

After a short pause, he asks, "Uh. The eyes. Did you catch the color?"

Ainsley pushes aside her less-than-good discovery to pick up the treatise. When she opens it up, the name 'Fenris' makes her raise both of her brows carefully. She answers dimly, "They didn't match. One of them looked..." She scrunches her face. "It looked sick, milky colored. The other was this light blue that was almost the same. It almost looked dead," she explains to him, "It doesn't feel like that's right, though. I hit my head, so..." She reaches up to touch the spot, frowning sadly at him. Then she starts flipping through pages of the treatise, moving at a slow pace to absorb it.

Stiles' expression twists into a thoughtful look. "So it looked... big and wolfy, but it didn't have red eyes? Well. Good news and bad news." He tilts back in the chair, balancing it on two legs, and steeples his hands in front of him. Tilting his head one way, then the other as he speaks, he says, "Good news: You're not at risk from the type of werewolf you've heard of before. Bad news: There's other types out there, and it could've been one of those. In which case... I *might* know a guy, but it's a long shot." Chewing his lip thoughtfully, he says, "Either way, you might want to invest in a panic room and hide in there during the full moon."

"Different *types* of werewolves?" Ainsley murmurs at Stiles with a look of shock and disbelief, and then she starts rubbing her face, further worried by the thought that she really will become some sort of vicious people eater. "That thing took my car's door off. Maybe... maybe some chains..." She lets out a heavy sigh, and flips another page, soaking in the details on another page... then she stops and rests her forehead against the table and places her hands on her head, just silently stressing out before him.

Stiles lets the chair fall back forward with a thump, and he reaches over to cautiously pat the side of Ainsley's arm. Some people don't like to be touched, and he doesn't want to get punched or something. "I know. I *know*. It's a lot to take in. Actually, you might wanna consider some wine and chocolate or something, if Melissa's anything to go by." He grimaces a little. "Look, anyway, you might not even turn! And if you do, there's plenty of people who can help you learn to control it." He thinks back a bit, and he tries, "I mean, the bite's supposed to be, like, a *gift*, y'know?"

She doesn't even twitch when he touches her. His attempt to describe it as a gift gets her to straighten in her seat, and breathe a great big sigh, letting her stress deflate. Ainsley looks at Stiles carefully, tension in her clenching jaw. Her brow slowly knits, and she looks down at the book for a second, and then up at Stiles. "It didn't kill me. It could've, but it didn't," she murmurs. "It hunted me until I was somewhere it could get me where I wasn't around people, and then it tore open my car to get at me." Then she straightens more. "That is a lot of effort to go to, just to leave me in the middle of the woods the way it did. So I probably am going to turn," she reasons, "And it probably did that on purpose. And when Scott finds the bastard, I want to know what it was thinking."

"Maybe something's wrong with it," she murmurs, "The eyes looked sick, and werewolves... werewolves don't normally *get* sick, right?"

Grimacing, Stiles says, "Yeah. That makes sense. Wish I could tell you something... well, *else*." He shrugs, tilting back in his chair again, and lightly drums his fingertips along the edge of the table. "Werewolves don't get sick, but they can get poisoned. Maybe he got into a patch of wolfsbane or something." He shakes his head a bit. "We really can't be too sure 'til we catch the sonuvabitch, though. But--hey, silver lining--if he stuck around, then Scott will catch him. Then we'll be able to find out everything you need to know. So, don't freak! You'll be fine, okay? Just gotta take precautions and all's well that ends... wolf."

Ainsley smiles good-naturedly at the wolf comment. And then she gets down to studying, and understanding the wolf affliction. She keeps pausing to touch around the edge of her leg wound, making this awful face, explaining that it itches. An hour passes like a boring montage, and then the lady lets out a sigh and leans back in her seat. "So here's how I see it now, if I do turn: Pros." She references a list of notes. "I won't get sick. I'll heal from wounds much faster. I already have a community of people in a similar situation to help me out. I won't have to worry about going bald." That last one is a joke. She says it without a crack in her demeanor, and moves on. "Cons... Danger to my friends and loved ones, have to get locked up in a box, a possible extreme diet change, and I'll blow through razors like nobody's business." Again, a joke.

"Is there any way of testing before the next full moon? I'm not sure my heart could take the stress of waiting until then."

Swallowing hard, Stiles pulls out his phone. "I... might know a guy. Lemme send a couple of texts." He begins tapping out messages on his phone, nodding along with the pros. And he cracks a grin at the bald question. "Also, think about it... healthiest nails *ever*. And also, some evidence suggests a longer lifespan and slower aging process. *Bo-nus*." At the cons, he grimaces. "Thing is, most of that's only at first. You learn control, and you learn to depend on others... and then you're okay. I think you're gonna be okay, Ainsley. *Promise*." At the question of testing, he just nods back towards the phone and continues his texting.

[Text] Stiles texts: Don't kill me (to Derek Hale)

[Text] Derek Hale texts: why? (to Stiles)

[Text] Derek Hale texts: Stiles. (to Stiles)

[Text] Stiles texts: Uh. I need advice.

[Text] Derek Hale texts: talk.

[Text] Stiles texts: Girl who got attacked yesterday knows about Scott and werewolves. Thinks she might be turning. She wants to know how to tell. Before the full moon.

[Text] Derek Hale texts: You are an idiot.

[Text] Derek Hale texts: If you or Scott just told her before making sure.

[Text] Stiles texts: I handed her library books! I told her nothing! She already knew!

[Text] Derek Hale texts: how (to Stiles)

[Text] Stiles texts: Maybe Scott? Derek I don't know. She called me for help. She knew I knew.

[Text] Derek Hale texts: whoever told is going to get it (to Stiles)

[Text] Derek Hale texts: we need to figure out if it was a wolf and who (to Stiles)

[Text] Stiles texts: Bite looked like it. What she saw sounded like Peter. Alpha Peter.

[Text] Stiles texts: What does Ainsley know? (to Scott McCall)

[Text] Derek Hale texts: get the others. taking him down. (to Stiles)

[Text] Stiles texts: We so need a plan. Plus Derek wants to know how Ainsley knows. (to Scott McCall and Derek Hale)

[Text] Stiles texts: And I didn't do it!

[Text] Scott McCall texts: She saw me fight a Wendigo.

[Text] Stiles texts: Well shit. Can't blame you for that one. (to Scott McCall)

[Text] Stiles texts: Okay. She saw Scott fight a Wendigo. (to Derek Hale)

[Text] Derek Hale texts: ...just get the others. (to Stiles and Scott McCall)

Ainsley watches Stiles while he begins sending out messages, smiling at him again because of the word 'Promise.' She closes her eyes. "When I saw those things in the hospital, I wasn't thinking I'd get attacked by something out of the blue," she tells Stiles, her voice a little quiet. "But once the first weird thing happened..." She snaps her fingers a couple times, "Again and again, and now this. Meeting weird people and wondering, 'are they crazy, or are they an actual creature of the night?'" She rubs at one of her arms, the itching of some of the scratches she got bothering her some. "When did you first get introduced to all of this?"

Glancing at Ainsley, Stiles sets his phone aside and lets the chair again fall back to all four legs with a thump. "So... you know about all of this because... of Scott, right?" He reaches up to idly rub at one eyebrow with his thumb, looking thoughtful. "I'm kinda... unclear on how *you* found out about all this, actually... but I know you do. But, just so I'm not telling anyone's secrets... It was him?"

"Oh." Ainsley hadn't thought about it until Stiles asked. "I was taking a body down to the morgue with Melissa at the time, and it turns out these...things were using the morgue as a snack bar. They came at us, and Scott showed up just in time to deal with them and save both of us. I saw weird monsters fight, and..." She shrugs. "Then it snowballed. After that, I was out trying to clear my head, when this weirdo shows up, tells me a zombie is after my blood. And then I'm standing in a parking lot over a burning zombie corpse with a shotgun, wondering where my life had gone."

"And now this." She gestures at herself in general, meaning the attack.

"Scott was there to give his mom something to eat, and he smelled the blood from those things eating."

"Wow," Stiles says, shaking his head. "Welp, mine's a lot... simpler. I dragged Scott out into the woods late one night, he got lost... and he got bit. I guess I kinda figured out what'd happened before he did." He smirks a little, once more rocking back onto two chair legs, and gives a shrug, "And now *my* life is crazy and weird. Mostly it's pretty awesome, though." He shakes his head some and says, "Trust me. You, uh... get more used to it. Y'know?"

That makes Ainsley frown again. "You're right. I will get used to it, I have to, now." She looks around, "Something about this town..." She trails off, and her gaze goes a little distant. "You don't go into this thinking it will be this complicated, but then you find out that werewolves can be people like Scott, and that he can have friends like you, and that his mom still loves and supports him, and..." She rubs the back of her neck.

"Some of my distant family are hunters. Were hunters? Dean wasn't very clear about it. He avoided the subject like a pro."

"Kinda like anything else," Stiles says with a shrug. "People are different, so others decide they're scary. Doesn't matter what it is. Different country, race, sex, sexuality... y'know. Humans are great at making monsters our of anyone we don't like too much." He smirks a little. "'Course, werewolves are a little more extreme than that gay interracial couple next door, but... they can still be awesome people. Like Scott. Like you probably will be too, y'know? Don't get all--"

But whatever bit of perhaps-wisdom that Stiles planned to spout next is lost, because he tilts back just a *bit* too far in the chair, and with a look of panic and pinwheeling arms, he goes pitching backward, smacks into the floor, and executes an accidentally flawless reverse somersault.

"...Ow."

Ainsley watches Stiles stumble with wide eyes... and barks out a laugh that she quickly restrains, because they're in a library. "Are... are you okay?" she wonders, picking up her crutches to walk around the table and get a look at the fallen teen, smiling warmly down at him.

Stiles picks himself up gingerly, but he's grinning, rubbing the back of his head. "I think I was gonna make a really smart observation or something, probably about 'balance,' just for irony's sake, but... maybe the better lesson, here, is 'life's unpredictable, so we might as well laugh'? I dunno. I got nothin'." He grins, brushing himself up, and rights the chair. "But I bet the look on my face was *priceless*."