[He knows how it sounds. How it has to sound to someone who's been through the things that Dean's been through. Who's suffered the losses that Dean has suffered. Losing people isn't new to Stiles. His mom had died from frontotemporal dementia when he'd been eight, but he'd lost her long before then. She hadn't known who he was for a long time before her death. And in some ways that's almost more painful than watching her die in front of him.

There've been plenty of other losses, most in the last year and a half. It's just that he's only been directly responsible for the ones the Nogitsune hadn't given him a choice about. Allison may be the only one of the people he'd gotten killed that he loves, but her death has wrecked the rest of them irrevocably.

He thinks of the other him, the one who was on the mirror Barge. The one who'd lost his world's Scott that night at the Glen Capri. He thinks of how that had been enough to send other him over the edge without the need for evil spirit possession helping him along. Certain things, certain events can just break a person so completely that there's so little chance of going back. He knows that's what he's facing with Dean. Knows that he's that broken. More so, possibly.

Stiles exhales slowly, leaning back in the booth and regarding Dean for a long moment.]

I know. I've been out of my depth a lot. [Hell, it's practically his comfort zone at this point.]

And you could be right. Maybe something more powerful will come along and pull you back again. [He pauses, pops a peanut into his mouth and chews it.] But until it does, if it does, I'm not going anywhere. [He doesn't say or mean that in a threatening way, just a quiet, honest truth laid out between them.]