you're parallel to the dark (teen wolf)
you're parallel to the dark
teen wolf there are ghosts in the house, and the memories of people who burned. (derek hale & co.; derek hale/stiles stillinski, 4320 words)
notes: because the hale house has got to be haunted. unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine, i don't own this show etc
If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.
(CHUNGKING EXPRESS)
The first person to see them is Lydia. She casually brings it up the following day while Derek is sitting on the couch, helping Scott retie the netting to his lacrosse stick. “I saw someone yesterday,” she announces in a knowing voice, leaning against the coffee table. Derek barely glances up.
Lydia clears her throat in an attempt to gain his attention. “I saw a girl in the upstairs hallway outside of one of the bedrooms. She looked about thirteen or so. She had black hair and green eyes and a little shorter than I am.”
Derek still doesn’t look up, and he ties off the knot with his teeth.
Lydia sighs loudly, putting her hands on her hips. “She didn’t see me. She was talking on a cell phone and she mentioned you by name, Derek. She said ‘hang on; let me see if my brother Derek can help us out. He’s always been good with Biology.’”
The lacrosse stick drops to the floor with a clatter.
-
Stiles is the next to see them, a few days later. Derek comes home from work - he does landscaping now and it’s good for him, he thinks, it’s good pay and good hours and it takes his mind off of things - and he finds Stiles eating take out on the couch, his legs tucked up under him, watching a garishly colored and too loud cartoon. Stiles passes Derek a can of Coke and some noodles and says between bites “Hey, Derek, do you know a woman named Naomi?”
-
At first, they were just shadows and shapes. Derek would wake sometimes to the sounds of familiar giggling in the hall, light footfalls on the stairs but he could ignore it. Once, he remembers soft hair falling on his face in the night and a gentle kiss pressed to his temple, the way his mother would when she said good night.
He remembers walking down the stairs once and feeling a small body brush up against his arm and he remembers how Emily would always push by him to get to breakfast first when they were growing up.
Once, he came home and thought he heard someone singing Damien Rice. When he turned on the foyer light, the singing stopped.
He thinks that they will fade in time.
Laura always loved Damien Rice.
-
Derek wakes up one morning and he feels like something has changed. Somehow, the air around them has shifted, and Stiles murmurs something in his sleep and curls closer to Derek’s chest. Derek absently touches Stiles’s pale cheek with just the tips of his fingers before getting out of bed.
Barefoot, he pads to the bathroom to wash his face when he stops dead in his tracks.
His aunt Joanna doesn’t look like a ghost at all as she looks at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looks solid and real and she puts her hair up in a loose knot the way Derek remembers. “I’ll be down in five minutes,” she shouts down the hall, shaking her head and smiling fondly. He thinks she’s yelling to Peter or one of their children, he can’t be sure.
She does not see Derek as she rummages through her cosmetics bag to find a tube of mascara. She applies it carefully, wiping away a smudge with the tip of her pinkie and she’s humming.
Derek watches her put the mascara away before putting on lipstick. She caps the lipstick and puts it in her bag.
She is older than she was the last time he saw her. She is older than she was the day of the fire, the day she died.
Joanna doesn’t look like the woman she was, but the woman she would have been, the woman she should be.
The humming stops quite suddenly, and the bathroom is empty.
-
“Have you seen them?”
Derek jerks his head to look at where Boyd is seated at the dining room table. Erica has her chin in her hand, and they’re both staring at Derek with wide, guileless eyes. They think he has answers.
“Have you seen the ghosts?” Erica clarifies and Boyd nods.
It takes Derek a moment to respond. “They aren’t ghosts.” The words are heavy in his mouth, and untrue.
“If they aren’t ghosts, then what are they?” Boyd asks.
“I’m not… I don’t know,” Derek admits finally. “But I do know that they won’t hurt us.”
“How do you know?” Boyd’s quiet voice has a sharp edge to it and Derek clenches his fist so hard that his nails bite into the soft skin of his palm.
“I just do,” he grits out.
(He doesn’t know. Not really.)
-
Stiles’s face is half in darkness when he whispers, “I think I saw your dad today” one night. His hands are buried in Derek’s hair and Derek’s head is on his chest. Derek’s tongue freezes in his mouth. “He was muttering about Troy or someone at work. He seemed pretty annoyed.”
Stiles’s heartbeat is slow and even against Derek’s ear and his breathing is slow and even and Derek closes his eyes. Stiles is warm under him, a solid and comforting presence.
“I don’t know what they are, Stiles,” Derek murmurs. “I don’t know what’s happening right now. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Stiles, for once, doesn’t say anything and he keeps his hands in Derek’s hair.
-
The pack takes the new guests (visitors? Intruders?) in stride and Derek is secretly very impressed. After the initial shock wears off, they get used to walking into a room and seeing Derek’s cousin Daniel doing his homework by the window or his aunt Naomi reading a book on the couch.
He supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised. They have dealt with weirder things, after all.
Besides, it’s not like the ghosts-visitors-intruders acknowledge them, anyway.
-
There’s the sound of something falling over and a burst of loud, clear laughter coming from the library and as Derek turns the corner in the hall, he hears a soft gasp and an, “oh, look!”
Standing in front of him are two young women - girls, really, they are girls - both with heart-shaped faces and black hair and even though they’re twins and Derek hasn’t seen them in so, so many years, he can instantly tell which one is Isabelle and which one is Emily and his breath catches in his throat and his chest tightens.
“Derek!” Isabelle exclaims with excitement. Her hair falls down to nearly her waist in a messy braid and she claps her hands. “Oh, thank God it’s you. We thought it was mom or dad or Uncle Peter. Em’s made a total mess in the library - she knocked over the tallest stack of books while we were playing - and we need your help to clean it up, Derek please.”
“I did not,” Emily protests, scowling but her eyes are bright. Then she smiles and Isabelle smiles and Derek is filled with fear and apprehension and so much joy at seeing them. His heart aches. They are so young and so much older than they were the day of the fire and so, so pretty and I killed them, he thinks. They’re my sisters and they’re dead because of me.
“You look different somehow,” Isabelle says, cocking her head and circling him. “You look like you’ve gotten older.”
“Everyone does,” Derek says without meaning to because they didn’t, not really. He’ll always remember them as his five-year-old sisters in matching pink dresses and purple bows.
“I like your jacket,” Emily adds with approval. “It makes you look tough.” They giggle again, hands covering mouths - their short nails flecked with blue polish - and Derek’s heart breaks for them, breaks for his young, beautiful sisters who never stood a chance. He wants to hug them again, to tell them that everything is fault, that he loves them, that he killed them. He wants to say, “You’re dead, you can’t be here,” but he says, “thank you,” instead and adds, “I like your nail polish.”
Emily scoffs. “Laura said it makes us look like we have corpse hands. She said only corpses should have blue nails,” and Derek feels himself go pale.
“But what does she know?” Isabelle adds. “We’re not the ones who wear too much eyeliner and big black biker boots.” She casts a glance down at the heavy black boots on Derek’s feet and grins. “No offense.”
Derek stares into his baby sisters’ bright, happy faces and says, “I - ” I killed you, I love you, I’m the reason why you’ll never grow up, you’re just memories, you’re ghosts, I don’t know what you are but you’re dead and it’s my fault and I love you so much, please forgive me, I miss you every day but it doesn’t matter in the end.
They vanish before he can finish.
-
The next day, he sees his cousins Daniel and Michael in the lawn. They’re throwing a baseball and, like Joanna and Isabelle and Emily, they look older. Daniel must be seventeen now and Michael is twelve. Derek can hear them talking but he doesn’t bother listening in on their conversation. They turn and wave at him before going back to their game.
Derek closes the blinds and draws the curtains for good measure.
-
The ghosts don’t scare Derek, not really, but he feels his chest constrict every time he sees them, which is often now. Stiles is there, though, Stiles is there and Stiles is comforting. Stiles says, “They won’t hurt you, don’t worry” and Derek almost believes him.
Erica, Boyd and Isaac are more apprehensive, though. They all eye Derek warily, as if silently asking him why are they here, what have you done?
Erica, Boyd and Isaac aren’t afraid, but they are cautious and Derek can’t blame them, not after everything they’ve all been through.
They stay with him this time, though, and he doesn’t know why they do or how to thank them.
-
Aunt Naomi sees him at three in the morning when he stumbles into the kitchen for a drink of water. The light is on, too bright, and it hurts his eyes. Naomi is at the table, dealing a game of solitaire. She works swing shift at the hospital lab and leaves for work at two in the afternoon and is home twelve hours later and she says she has a hard time winding down and that playing cards soothes her.
He sees her at the table and pretends he can’t see her. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you, he tells himself but of course Naomi catches him.
“Can’t sleep either?” she asks with a grin, gesturing to the chair opposite her. “Take a seat, Derek. We’ll play gin.”
He freezes in his tracks and takes her in. Like everyone else, she is older and the hair that falls to her shoulders is still black and she is still beautiful. She looks so much like his father that it aches deep in Derek’s chest. “I can’t,” he finally manages to say, “I have to work in the morning.”
Naomi just clucks her tongue. “I know that you mean ‘I have to get back to that boy in my room’, Derek, you can’t fool me,” and she raises one eyebrow at him, her gaze pointed but soft. Her black hoodie is threadbare and her navy blue scrubs are dirty and she smiles at him, sweet and gentle. A lanyard dangles around her neck, showing her full name and an unsmiling picture of her but now she is smiling and it’s so bright that it hurts. “Just one game with me, love, please.”
“I - I can’t, Naomi, I’m sorry,” and he puts down the water glass without drinking from it and nearly sprints upstairs.
There is no one in the kitchen in the morning.
-
Unsurprisingly, the Bestiary doesn’t contain any information about ghosts and Lydia gets all the books that she can from the library and Stiles stands behind Derek as he repeats their names over and over again like a prayer. He writes them down, mutters them under his breath and thinks about them every waking moment.
“All I have left are memories,” he tells Stiles once. “That’s all. That’s it. And now… now they’re coming to life. And I don’t know what to do.”
He thought that renovating the house last year would help.
Suffice it to say, it doesn’t.
-
There is a woman with long red hair sitting on the window seat in the library. The evening sun falls over her and paints her golden and Derek’s heart is in his throat and there’s such a pain in his chest that he feels like it’s going to cave in. “Mom?” he asks and his voice wavers.
Diana Hale looks up from the book in her lap and smiles slow. “Derek,” she says and the smile spreads across her face and, oh, Derek missed that smile so much. He took it for granted. “How was your day?”
Derek feels like his chest is going to collapse, but he says, “Good. It was good.” He smiles a little, in spite of himself. “The guy I’m doing work for is kind of a total dick - jerk, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have cursed, I know you hate that, he’s a jerk and he keeps threatening to fire me, but I doubt he actually will.”
His mother keeps grinning. “If anyone fires my son,” she declares, her voice teasing, “I will send your father over to… to wolf out on them,” and she laughs. She has a loud laugh, full of joy and Derek’s smile is a wet one. Diana seems to notice this instantly and she reaches for him. She doesn’t touch him, but she says, “oh, Derek, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Is this about your employer?”
“No,” Derek whispers, his voice catching in his throat. “It’s not about him.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Her brow is furrowed and she worries her lower lip between her teeth. “You look so tired. Come sit down,” and she gestures to the window seat next to her and because he is Derek and she is his mother, she asks again, “What’s bothering you?”
And Derek wants nothing more than to curl up against her and cry and cry into her shirt and hold her and let her hold him because she was right, he is tired, he’s so tired and he feels so young suddenly, and he misses his mother so, so much.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Derek finally says but the waver in his voice betrays him yet again. “It’s just… it’s nice to see you.”
Diana doesn’t say anything, she just smiles at him, but it is a concerned smile and Derek puts his hand close to hers. Their fingers are almost touching but he knows if he moves closer, she’ll go through him. Drenched in the low sunlight, her red hair shines and her face looks slightly soft focus in the glow. “It’s nice to see you, too,” Diana murmurs. “It’s always good to see you, sweetheart.” She frowns slightly at him again and says in a comforting voice, “Don’t worry about work, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Derek wishes he could touch her.
For a while, they sit in silence before the door opens and a very tall man with a strong face and heavy, dark brows dressed in a sharp suit enters the room and Derek’s tears threaten to spill over. “Derek, have you seen my phone? I’ve asked your sisters and none of them are any help at all?”
“Did you try calling it?” Derek asks, keeping his voice very soft so it won’t break.
“It’s on silent.” Samuel Hale sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. When he looks up, he eyes his son critically. “What’s the matter with you?” he asks, his forehead knotting in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Derek lets out a bark of laughter that surprises even him and he can’t stop. The tears bubble over, spilling down his cheeks and he’s laughing so hard that he’s crying, or crying so hard he’s laughing, he can’t tell which and it doesn’t matter anyway and when he finally opens his eyes, his mother and father are gone.
-
“We could try a séance,” Boyd offers. He puts his hands on the table, folds them and shrugs.
“No way, man, have you seen The Exorcist?” Erica asks, eyes wide. “No way in hell am I doing one of those. You might as well just invite Satan to your doorstep. I’m not dealing with demons or possessions or any of that shit. Not on top of ghosts.”
Lydia just scoffs. She’s eating a turkey sandwich and she tears it in half delicately with her fingertips. “That was an exorcism, Erica, there’s a difference. Besides, a séance is used to communicate with the undead. We’re already communicating with them just fine.” She puts the piece in her mouth and raises her eyebrows.
Derek glances up from his glass of water at her. “Have you spoken to them?” he asks sharply.
“I haven’t,” Erica admits, shrugging. “I mean, I see them. I see the twins and I see the woman with the red hair and the man in the suit, but they never talk to me. It’s like they don’t see me.” Boyd and Lydia nod in agreement. “But we know they’re here, and I’ve seen them speak to each other, if that helps.”
“We just don’t know why they’re here or what they want or if they want anything,” Boyd mutters and he looks at Derek because even though he doesn’t have any now and he rarely has any at any other time, they still think he has the answers.
“I… I don’t know,” Derek admits again.
He seems to be saying that a lot lately.
-
Joanna and his father are sitting in the living room having coffee and speaking in hushed tones when Derek gets home from work. They both smile at him, wide, real, warm smiles and he closes his eyes to brace himself. He opens them and they’re still there, still smiling. Steam rises from their mugs and Derek sits down on the couch next to Joanna.
He listens to their chatter and he can’t bring himself to speak. He knows what will happen if he does. He just stares at them, at the people they should have been.
They fade soon. They always do.
-
Samuel, Diana, Isabelle, Emily, Naomi, Joanna, Michael, Daniel, Derek scrawls in a notebook that he keeps tucked under his bed. Stiles watches him and doesn’t say a word.
“Samuel,” Derek murmurs, “Diana, Isabelle, Emily, Naomi, Joanna, Michael, Daniel…” and he repeats the names over and over like a prayer, Stiles’s hand on his shoulders, keeping him grounded, keeping him sane. “Joanna, Michael, Daniel…”
Laura.
Laura.
-
He goes to her old room and it’s the only room in the house he never dared to venture into after he fixed up the house. He stands outside the door for the longest time, his hand resting on the knob before entering.
Laura is sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading a book. Her hair falls around her like a curtain and she glances up at him with large, green eyes, brushing her hair back from her face. Unlike the others, she looks exactly the same as she did when she left New York for Beacon Hills and Derek’s chest constricts painfully. He has trouble breathing.
“Hi,” she says, and she grins at him. She is beautiful, she is painfully beautiful and she looks happier than she looked since New York, since the cross country road trip, since the fire and Derek can’t do anything but stare at her, drinking her in. Her hair is still long and shiny and black and her jeans have a small hole in the left knee and they’re cuffed, revealing bare feet with red painted toenails and the very small crescent moon tattoo on the inside of her right ankle. A black leather jacket covers her striped T-shirt. Her eyes are so clear and bright and Derek holds his breath, waiting for her to speak again.
But she doesn’t say anything. She’s just looking at him with a strange expression like confusion on her face and suddenly she looks so very, very sad. “Derek…” she says softly and there is a hitch in her voice. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
Derek’s tongue freezes in his mouth and he can’t say anything to her. He just nods.
“I’ve been dead for awhile, haven’t I?” At his second nod, Laura lets out a shaky breath. “But you’re not dead, are you?”
“No,” Derek whispers, and pushing the one word out was like forcing a boulder out of his mouth. “I’m still here.”
“That - that’s good,” Laura says. “I’m glad you aren’t dead,” she adds, and she flashes him another grin, but this one is shaky. “I would feel like a terrible Alpha if you were. Not to mention how dreadful a sister I’d be if I… if you…” she trails off, presses her lips together. Her face is very, very white.
Derek can’t stop himself. “I miss you, Laura.” The words tumble out and he can’t stop them. “I miss you so much it hurts. I miss you and I miss mom and dad and Em and Izzy and Naomi and everyone else and this was all my fault.”
Laura lets out a hiccupping sob and covers her mouth with her hand and she looks up at him. Her eyes are bright with tears but he can tell she’s smiling. “Sorry,” she says with a sniffle. “I don’t mean to laugh at you. I don’t, I promise. I’m just…” She laughs, a broken, sobbing laugh and she says, “I’m just so happy to see you again, babe,” and he hates that pet name and she knows he does, but right now, it’s the most wonderful sound he’s heard in a long, long time. “You look good.” She sniffles again. “Except for that shirt. It looks like it’s a million years old. You need to throw that out as soon as you can.”
He looks down and sees she’s pointing at his faded and worn grey Henley and he protests with, “Hey, I like this shirt” and Laura giggles again, sniffing and wiping at her eyes.
“I can tell. It looks like you wear it a lot” and this conversation is so bizarre because Derek is talking to his long-dead older sister about his clothes of all things and she looks so sad and lovely and her eyes are so green and full of tears and she’s laughing and crying at the same time and she fills him with so much joy and pride and sorrow. He wants to curl up against her and never let her go.
Derek thinks about her body, cut in half. He thinks about how he buried her twice, he thinks about how she took care of him for six years and how he never thanked her once.
“Anyway,” Laura starts, clearing her throat and wiping at her nose, “I miss you, too.” She wipes at her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. “And it wasn’t your fault, Derek. You didn’t - you couldn’t have known what would happen.” She lets out another sob, this one louder and her entire body shakes. “And I’m sorry I can’t be here with you right now,” because it’s so like Laura to feel sorry for him when she’s the one who’s dead, when she’s the one who was so selfless and loving and he was the one who ruined everything.
When he’s the one who killed her.
A few moments later and Laura is wiping at her cheeks where her mascara ran and she sighs and looks at him. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispers. “It’s going to be fine. I promise, Derek. I promise. You are going to be fine.”
She is grinning when she fades.
For some reason, he believes her.
-
Soon, they become shapes and shadows again, whispers and the occasional blur of color and flash of red hair, Chanel perfume lingering in the air. Derek wakes up to hear feet on the stairs in the middle of the night and the smell of fresh coffee even though he’s the first one up but that all ends soon enough. He doesn’t see his aunts playing chess at the table or hear Emily and Isabelle giggling to each other in the early morning or Laura singing in the shower.
They fade with time and it doesn’t feel like saying goodbye.
Erica, Boyd and Isaac are calmer now. The ghosts are gone. No more stumbling into the hallway and seeing a strange woman with black hair walking around. No more eating lunch and having a man walk in, talking on his cell phone and talking about subpoenas and witnesses.
Erica says, “You know, in a few years, this’ll be something we can laugh about” and Derek had smiled thinly at her.
Everything is back to normal and the air shifts back to the way it was before.
Derek sits with Stiles on the back porch, their hands touching and Stiles looks over at him, grinning. “We’re going to be okay,” he declares. “Everything is going to turn out all right.”
“What makes you say that?” Derek asks.
“I just have a feeling,” Stiles says. “A big feeling. A good feeling. A big, good feeling… that everything is going to be okay.” And he grins again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I have a big, good feeling that everything is going to be okay,” he repeats.
Derek kisses him on the mouth.
He believes him.
end.
teen wolf there are ghosts in the house, and the memories of people who burned. (derek hale & co.; derek hale/stiles stillinski, 4320 words)
notes: because the hale house has got to be haunted. unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine, i don't own this show etc
If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.
(CHUNGKING EXPRESS)
The first person to see them is Lydia. She casually brings it up the following day while Derek is sitting on the couch, helping Scott retie the netting to his lacrosse stick. “I saw someone yesterday,” she announces in a knowing voice, leaning against the coffee table. Derek barely glances up.
Lydia clears her throat in an attempt to gain his attention. “I saw a girl in the upstairs hallway outside of one of the bedrooms. She looked about thirteen or so. She had black hair and green eyes and a little shorter than I am.”
Derek still doesn’t look up, and he ties off the knot with his teeth.
Lydia sighs loudly, putting her hands on her hips. “She didn’t see me. She was talking on a cell phone and she mentioned you by name, Derek. She said ‘hang on; let me see if my brother Derek can help us out. He’s always been good with Biology.’”
The lacrosse stick drops to the floor with a clatter.
-
Stiles is the next to see them, a few days later. Derek comes home from work - he does landscaping now and it’s good for him, he thinks, it’s good pay and good hours and it takes his mind off of things - and he finds Stiles eating take out on the couch, his legs tucked up under him, watching a garishly colored and too loud cartoon. Stiles passes Derek a can of Coke and some noodles and says between bites “Hey, Derek, do you know a woman named Naomi?”
-
At first, they were just shadows and shapes. Derek would wake sometimes to the sounds of familiar giggling in the hall, light footfalls on the stairs but he could ignore it. Once, he remembers soft hair falling on his face in the night and a gentle kiss pressed to his temple, the way his mother would when she said good night.
He remembers walking down the stairs once and feeling a small body brush up against his arm and he remembers how Emily would always push by him to get to breakfast first when they were growing up.
Once, he came home and thought he heard someone singing Damien Rice. When he turned on the foyer light, the singing stopped.
He thinks that they will fade in time.
Laura always loved Damien Rice.
-
Derek wakes up one morning and he feels like something has changed. Somehow, the air around them has shifted, and Stiles murmurs something in his sleep and curls closer to Derek’s chest. Derek absently touches Stiles’s pale cheek with just the tips of his fingers before getting out of bed.
Barefoot, he pads to the bathroom to wash his face when he stops dead in his tracks.
His aunt Joanna doesn’t look like a ghost at all as she looks at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looks solid and real and she puts her hair up in a loose knot the way Derek remembers. “I’ll be down in five minutes,” she shouts down the hall, shaking her head and smiling fondly. He thinks she’s yelling to Peter or one of their children, he can’t be sure.
She does not see Derek as she rummages through her cosmetics bag to find a tube of mascara. She applies it carefully, wiping away a smudge with the tip of her pinkie and she’s humming.
Derek watches her put the mascara away before putting on lipstick. She caps the lipstick and puts it in her bag.
She is older than she was the last time he saw her. She is older than she was the day of the fire, the day she died.
Joanna doesn’t look like the woman she was, but the woman she would have been, the woman she should be.
The humming stops quite suddenly, and the bathroom is empty.
-
“Have you seen them?”
Derek jerks his head to look at where Boyd is seated at the dining room table. Erica has her chin in her hand, and they’re both staring at Derek with wide, guileless eyes. They think he has answers.
“Have you seen the ghosts?” Erica clarifies and Boyd nods.
It takes Derek a moment to respond. “They aren’t ghosts.” The words are heavy in his mouth, and untrue.
“If they aren’t ghosts, then what are they?” Boyd asks.
“I’m not… I don’t know,” Derek admits finally. “But I do know that they won’t hurt us.”
“How do you know?” Boyd’s quiet voice has a sharp edge to it and Derek clenches his fist so hard that his nails bite into the soft skin of his palm.
“I just do,” he grits out.
(He doesn’t know. Not really.)
-
Stiles’s face is half in darkness when he whispers, “I think I saw your dad today” one night. His hands are buried in Derek’s hair and Derek’s head is on his chest. Derek’s tongue freezes in his mouth. “He was muttering about Troy or someone at work. He seemed pretty annoyed.”
Stiles’s heartbeat is slow and even against Derek’s ear and his breathing is slow and even and Derek closes his eyes. Stiles is warm under him, a solid and comforting presence.
“I don’t know what they are, Stiles,” Derek murmurs. “I don’t know what’s happening right now. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Stiles, for once, doesn’t say anything and he keeps his hands in Derek’s hair.
-
The pack takes the new guests (visitors? Intruders?) in stride and Derek is secretly very impressed. After the initial shock wears off, they get used to walking into a room and seeing Derek’s cousin Daniel doing his homework by the window or his aunt Naomi reading a book on the couch.
He supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised. They have dealt with weirder things, after all.
Besides, it’s not like the ghosts-visitors-intruders acknowledge them, anyway.
-
There’s the sound of something falling over and a burst of loud, clear laughter coming from the library and as Derek turns the corner in the hall, he hears a soft gasp and an, “oh, look!”
Standing in front of him are two young women - girls, really, they are girls - both with heart-shaped faces and black hair and even though they’re twins and Derek hasn’t seen them in so, so many years, he can instantly tell which one is Isabelle and which one is Emily and his breath catches in his throat and his chest tightens.
“Derek!” Isabelle exclaims with excitement. Her hair falls down to nearly her waist in a messy braid and she claps her hands. “Oh, thank God it’s you. We thought it was mom or dad or Uncle Peter. Em’s made a total mess in the library - she knocked over the tallest stack of books while we were playing - and we need your help to clean it up, Derek please.”
“I did not,” Emily protests, scowling but her eyes are bright. Then she smiles and Isabelle smiles and Derek is filled with fear and apprehension and so much joy at seeing them. His heart aches. They are so young and so much older than they were the day of the fire and so, so pretty and I killed them, he thinks. They’re my sisters and they’re dead because of me.
“You look different somehow,” Isabelle says, cocking her head and circling him. “You look like you’ve gotten older.”
“Everyone does,” Derek says without meaning to because they didn’t, not really. He’ll always remember them as his five-year-old sisters in matching pink dresses and purple bows.
“I like your jacket,” Emily adds with approval. “It makes you look tough.” They giggle again, hands covering mouths - their short nails flecked with blue polish - and Derek’s heart breaks for them, breaks for his young, beautiful sisters who never stood a chance. He wants to hug them again, to tell them that everything is fault, that he loves them, that he killed them. He wants to say, “You’re dead, you can’t be here,” but he says, “thank you,” instead and adds, “I like your nail polish.”
Emily scoffs. “Laura said it makes us look like we have corpse hands. She said only corpses should have blue nails,” and Derek feels himself go pale.
“But what does she know?” Isabelle adds. “We’re not the ones who wear too much eyeliner and big black biker boots.” She casts a glance down at the heavy black boots on Derek’s feet and grins. “No offense.”
Derek stares into his baby sisters’ bright, happy faces and says, “I - ” I killed you, I love you, I’m the reason why you’ll never grow up, you’re just memories, you’re ghosts, I don’t know what you are but you’re dead and it’s my fault and I love you so much, please forgive me, I miss you every day but it doesn’t matter in the end.
They vanish before he can finish.
-
The next day, he sees his cousins Daniel and Michael in the lawn. They’re throwing a baseball and, like Joanna and Isabelle and Emily, they look older. Daniel must be seventeen now and Michael is twelve. Derek can hear them talking but he doesn’t bother listening in on their conversation. They turn and wave at him before going back to their game.
Derek closes the blinds and draws the curtains for good measure.
-
The ghosts don’t scare Derek, not really, but he feels his chest constrict every time he sees them, which is often now. Stiles is there, though, Stiles is there and Stiles is comforting. Stiles says, “They won’t hurt you, don’t worry” and Derek almost believes him.
Erica, Boyd and Isaac are more apprehensive, though. They all eye Derek warily, as if silently asking him why are they here, what have you done?
Erica, Boyd and Isaac aren’t afraid, but they are cautious and Derek can’t blame them, not after everything they’ve all been through.
They stay with him this time, though, and he doesn’t know why they do or how to thank them.
-
Aunt Naomi sees him at three in the morning when he stumbles into the kitchen for a drink of water. The light is on, too bright, and it hurts his eyes. Naomi is at the table, dealing a game of solitaire. She works swing shift at the hospital lab and leaves for work at two in the afternoon and is home twelve hours later and she says she has a hard time winding down and that playing cards soothes her.
He sees her at the table and pretends he can’t see her. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you, he tells himself but of course Naomi catches him.
“Can’t sleep either?” she asks with a grin, gesturing to the chair opposite her. “Take a seat, Derek. We’ll play gin.”
He freezes in his tracks and takes her in. Like everyone else, she is older and the hair that falls to her shoulders is still black and she is still beautiful. She looks so much like his father that it aches deep in Derek’s chest. “I can’t,” he finally manages to say, “I have to work in the morning.”
Naomi just clucks her tongue. “I know that you mean ‘I have to get back to that boy in my room’, Derek, you can’t fool me,” and she raises one eyebrow at him, her gaze pointed but soft. Her black hoodie is threadbare and her navy blue scrubs are dirty and she smiles at him, sweet and gentle. A lanyard dangles around her neck, showing her full name and an unsmiling picture of her but now she is smiling and it’s so bright that it hurts. “Just one game with me, love, please.”
“I - I can’t, Naomi, I’m sorry,” and he puts down the water glass without drinking from it and nearly sprints upstairs.
There is no one in the kitchen in the morning.
-
Unsurprisingly, the Bestiary doesn’t contain any information about ghosts and Lydia gets all the books that she can from the library and Stiles stands behind Derek as he repeats their names over and over again like a prayer. He writes them down, mutters them under his breath and thinks about them every waking moment.
“All I have left are memories,” he tells Stiles once. “That’s all. That’s it. And now… now they’re coming to life. And I don’t know what to do.”
He thought that renovating the house last year would help.
Suffice it to say, it doesn’t.
-
There is a woman with long red hair sitting on the window seat in the library. The evening sun falls over her and paints her golden and Derek’s heart is in his throat and there’s such a pain in his chest that he feels like it’s going to cave in. “Mom?” he asks and his voice wavers.
Diana Hale looks up from the book in her lap and smiles slow. “Derek,” she says and the smile spreads across her face and, oh, Derek missed that smile so much. He took it for granted. “How was your day?”
Derek feels like his chest is going to collapse, but he says, “Good. It was good.” He smiles a little, in spite of himself. “The guy I’m doing work for is kind of a total dick - jerk, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have cursed, I know you hate that, he’s a jerk and he keeps threatening to fire me, but I doubt he actually will.”
His mother keeps grinning. “If anyone fires my son,” she declares, her voice teasing, “I will send your father over to… to wolf out on them,” and she laughs. She has a loud laugh, full of joy and Derek’s smile is a wet one. Diana seems to notice this instantly and she reaches for him. She doesn’t touch him, but she says, “oh, Derek, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Is this about your employer?”
“No,” Derek whispers, his voice catching in his throat. “It’s not about him.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Her brow is furrowed and she worries her lower lip between her teeth. “You look so tired. Come sit down,” and she gestures to the window seat next to her and because he is Derek and she is his mother, she asks again, “What’s bothering you?”
And Derek wants nothing more than to curl up against her and cry and cry into her shirt and hold her and let her hold him because she was right, he is tired, he’s so tired and he feels so young suddenly, and he misses his mother so, so much.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Derek finally says but the waver in his voice betrays him yet again. “It’s just… it’s nice to see you.”
Diana doesn’t say anything, she just smiles at him, but it is a concerned smile and Derek puts his hand close to hers. Their fingers are almost touching but he knows if he moves closer, she’ll go through him. Drenched in the low sunlight, her red hair shines and her face looks slightly soft focus in the glow. “It’s nice to see you, too,” Diana murmurs. “It’s always good to see you, sweetheart.” She frowns slightly at him again and says in a comforting voice, “Don’t worry about work, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Derek wishes he could touch her.
For a while, they sit in silence before the door opens and a very tall man with a strong face and heavy, dark brows dressed in a sharp suit enters the room and Derek’s tears threaten to spill over. “Derek, have you seen my phone? I’ve asked your sisters and none of them are any help at all?”
“Did you try calling it?” Derek asks, keeping his voice very soft so it won’t break.
“It’s on silent.” Samuel Hale sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. When he looks up, he eyes his son critically. “What’s the matter with you?” he asks, his forehead knotting in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Derek lets out a bark of laughter that surprises even him and he can’t stop. The tears bubble over, spilling down his cheeks and he’s laughing so hard that he’s crying, or crying so hard he’s laughing, he can’t tell which and it doesn’t matter anyway and when he finally opens his eyes, his mother and father are gone.
-
“We could try a séance,” Boyd offers. He puts his hands on the table, folds them and shrugs.
“No way, man, have you seen The Exorcist?” Erica asks, eyes wide. “No way in hell am I doing one of those. You might as well just invite Satan to your doorstep. I’m not dealing with demons or possessions or any of that shit. Not on top of ghosts.”
Lydia just scoffs. She’s eating a turkey sandwich and she tears it in half delicately with her fingertips. “That was an exorcism, Erica, there’s a difference. Besides, a séance is used to communicate with the undead. We’re already communicating with them just fine.” She puts the piece in her mouth and raises her eyebrows.
Derek glances up from his glass of water at her. “Have you spoken to them?” he asks sharply.
“I haven’t,” Erica admits, shrugging. “I mean, I see them. I see the twins and I see the woman with the red hair and the man in the suit, but they never talk to me. It’s like they don’t see me.” Boyd and Lydia nod in agreement. “But we know they’re here, and I’ve seen them speak to each other, if that helps.”
“We just don’t know why they’re here or what they want or if they want anything,” Boyd mutters and he looks at Derek because even though he doesn’t have any now and he rarely has any at any other time, they still think he has the answers.
“I… I don’t know,” Derek admits again.
He seems to be saying that a lot lately.
-
Joanna and his father are sitting in the living room having coffee and speaking in hushed tones when Derek gets home from work. They both smile at him, wide, real, warm smiles and he closes his eyes to brace himself. He opens them and they’re still there, still smiling. Steam rises from their mugs and Derek sits down on the couch next to Joanna.
He listens to their chatter and he can’t bring himself to speak. He knows what will happen if he does. He just stares at them, at the people they should have been.
They fade soon. They always do.
-
Samuel, Diana, Isabelle, Emily, Naomi, Joanna, Michael, Daniel, Derek scrawls in a notebook that he keeps tucked under his bed. Stiles watches him and doesn’t say a word.
“Samuel,” Derek murmurs, “Diana, Isabelle, Emily, Naomi, Joanna, Michael, Daniel…” and he repeats the names over and over like a prayer, Stiles’s hand on his shoulders, keeping him grounded, keeping him sane. “Joanna, Michael, Daniel…”
Laura.
Laura.
-
He goes to her old room and it’s the only room in the house he never dared to venture into after he fixed up the house. He stands outside the door for the longest time, his hand resting on the knob before entering.
Laura is sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading a book. Her hair falls around her like a curtain and she glances up at him with large, green eyes, brushing her hair back from her face. Unlike the others, she looks exactly the same as she did when she left New York for Beacon Hills and Derek’s chest constricts painfully. He has trouble breathing.
“Hi,” she says, and she grins at him. She is beautiful, she is painfully beautiful and she looks happier than she looked since New York, since the cross country road trip, since the fire and Derek can’t do anything but stare at her, drinking her in. Her hair is still long and shiny and black and her jeans have a small hole in the left knee and they’re cuffed, revealing bare feet with red painted toenails and the very small crescent moon tattoo on the inside of her right ankle. A black leather jacket covers her striped T-shirt. Her eyes are so clear and bright and Derek holds his breath, waiting for her to speak again.
But she doesn’t say anything. She’s just looking at him with a strange expression like confusion on her face and suddenly she looks so very, very sad. “Derek…” she says softly and there is a hitch in her voice. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
Derek’s tongue freezes in his mouth and he can’t say anything to her. He just nods.
“I’ve been dead for awhile, haven’t I?” At his second nod, Laura lets out a shaky breath. “But you’re not dead, are you?”
“No,” Derek whispers, and pushing the one word out was like forcing a boulder out of his mouth. “I’m still here.”
“That - that’s good,” Laura says. “I’m glad you aren’t dead,” she adds, and she flashes him another grin, but this one is shaky. “I would feel like a terrible Alpha if you were. Not to mention how dreadful a sister I’d be if I… if you…” she trails off, presses her lips together. Her face is very, very white.
Derek can’t stop himself. “I miss you, Laura.” The words tumble out and he can’t stop them. “I miss you so much it hurts. I miss you and I miss mom and dad and Em and Izzy and Naomi and everyone else and this was all my fault.”
Laura lets out a hiccupping sob and covers her mouth with her hand and she looks up at him. Her eyes are bright with tears but he can tell she’s smiling. “Sorry,” she says with a sniffle. “I don’t mean to laugh at you. I don’t, I promise. I’m just…” She laughs, a broken, sobbing laugh and she says, “I’m just so happy to see you again, babe,” and he hates that pet name and she knows he does, but right now, it’s the most wonderful sound he’s heard in a long, long time. “You look good.” She sniffles again. “Except for that shirt. It looks like it’s a million years old. You need to throw that out as soon as you can.”
He looks down and sees she’s pointing at his faded and worn grey Henley and he protests with, “Hey, I like this shirt” and Laura giggles again, sniffing and wiping at her eyes.
“I can tell. It looks like you wear it a lot” and this conversation is so bizarre because Derek is talking to his long-dead older sister about his clothes of all things and she looks so sad and lovely and her eyes are so green and full of tears and she’s laughing and crying at the same time and she fills him with so much joy and pride and sorrow. He wants to curl up against her and never let her go.
Derek thinks about her body, cut in half. He thinks about how he buried her twice, he thinks about how she took care of him for six years and how he never thanked her once.
“Anyway,” Laura starts, clearing her throat and wiping at her nose, “I miss you, too.” She wipes at her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. “And it wasn’t your fault, Derek. You didn’t - you couldn’t have known what would happen.” She lets out another sob, this one louder and her entire body shakes. “And I’m sorry I can’t be here with you right now,” because it’s so like Laura to feel sorry for him when she’s the one who’s dead, when she’s the one who was so selfless and loving and he was the one who ruined everything.
When he’s the one who killed her.
A few moments later and Laura is wiping at her cheeks where her mascara ran and she sighs and looks at him. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispers. “It’s going to be fine. I promise, Derek. I promise. You are going to be fine.”
She is grinning when she fades.
For some reason, he believes her.
-
Soon, they become shapes and shadows again, whispers and the occasional blur of color and flash of red hair, Chanel perfume lingering in the air. Derek wakes up to hear feet on the stairs in the middle of the night and the smell of fresh coffee even though he’s the first one up but that all ends soon enough. He doesn’t see his aunts playing chess at the table or hear Emily and Isabelle giggling to each other in the early morning or Laura singing in the shower.
They fade with time and it doesn’t feel like saying goodbye.
Erica, Boyd and Isaac are calmer now. The ghosts are gone. No more stumbling into the hallway and seeing a strange woman with black hair walking around. No more eating lunch and having a man walk in, talking on his cell phone and talking about subpoenas and witnesses.
Erica says, “You know, in a few years, this’ll be something we can laugh about” and Derek had smiled thinly at her.
Everything is back to normal and the air shifts back to the way it was before.
Derek sits with Stiles on the back porch, their hands touching and Stiles looks over at him, grinning. “We’re going to be okay,” he declares. “Everything is going to turn out all right.”
“What makes you say that?” Derek asks.
“I just have a feeling,” Stiles says. “A big feeling. A good feeling. A big, good feeling… that everything is going to be okay.” And he grins again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I have a big, good feeling that everything is going to be okay,” he repeats.
Derek kisses him on the mouth.
He believes him.
end.