Fic: Untitled (Before the vault), Teen Wolf, Cora, Gen
For beacon_hills, I had to write a short story for a missing scene or a filler scene (something that happened off screen).
What about Cora, before Derek finds her in the vault?
Cora POV
2 395 words (Gen)
She’s cleaning the bar's countertop, thinking about the errands she’ll run tomorrow before her next shift, when an overheard word makes Cora falter.
Beacon Hills.
She must have heard wrong, there’s no way…
“But why is Argent going all the way to California?” the small guy with the checkered shirt asks. He's got a cowboy hat and boots, too. All night he acted as he’s hot stuff, but the only reason he got a smile out of Cora is because she needs the tips for a new motorbike. It turns out she should have been paying more attention.
“Kate Argent is dead. Word through the grapevine is that the Hales got her,” answers his buddy.
Cora’s heart skips at that. The Hales, in Beacon Hills? She’s dizzy, all of a sudden, and it must show because Pablo who was walking by puts a hand on her lower back to steady her. He lets go as soon as she’s grounded, which she appreciates.
“Are you okay?” he asks, frowning. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
He’s not that far from the truth.
“I don’t feel so good,” Cora admits. She should stay, try to learn more information from the dynamic duo in the back - they slammed tequila shots all night - but it’s as if the bar is closing in on her.
“You? Sick?” Pablo looks even more concerned. “Go rest, take tomorrow off if needs be.”
“Yeah?”
"No problem. I'll manage for a night," he says with a smile.
Cora’s grateful, he’s a great boss, even if his bar is a Hunter meeting spot and she suspects he’s retired from the business himself. Maybe he wouldn’t be so understanding if he knew she is a werewolf.
She goes to get her stuff, counts her share of tips and leaves with a wave.
As Cora walks down the street towards her the edge of the village, she can't stop hearing the words.
Beacon Hills.
California.
The Hales got an Argent.
As soon as she is out range of potentially prying eyes, Cora shifts and runs, a blur on her usual trail in the tropical forest.
She needs to clear her head.
**
Cora goes straight to the Alpha when she reaches the commune. You can't be too careful when Hunters are in town.
When Alpha Silva opens the door at Cora's light knocking, she's in pajamas, rubbing her eyes.
"Do you realize what time-" she starts, tone annoyed but then her eyes sharpen and she drags Cora in before closing the door. "What did you do? Were you followed?"
"I didn't do anything," Cora says, sullen. Get into a fight a time or three and you get a reputation. She hasn't been in trouble in months.
"You're freaked out, that makes me nervous," Alpha Silva says, gesturing Cora towards the kitchen. "Will I need coffee? Should I call Jerome?"
Jerome is her second, and he's a mean sonofabitch that hates Cora. He thinks she gets preferential treatment, which is a load of bullshit. Cora shakes her head no. "It's probably nothing."
"Let me be the judge of that."
Alpha Silva never liked that Cora willingly works for Pablo, but she does appreciate the head's up when a situation arises. But to explain why she is so unsettled, Cora has to explain her past, something she never did in the five years she became Pack adjacent. Somehow, Alpha Silva doesn't look surprised at all and Cora realizes they have known for a long time.
It's only a small comfort.
**
Jerome wants Cora to lie low, arguing it's not safe for her to go back. It pisses her off because she can take care of herself. In the end, Cora doesn't take advantage of a potential day off and goes back to work the following night.
She barely slept, still unsettled by her confession and the overheard conversation that is playing again and again in her head. Is it true? What Hales? Who's Kate Argent? How come those two bozos happened to talk about it in her bar in Nowhere, Costa Rica? If they are Hunters around, how much of a threat are they to the Silva Pack?
Unfortunately the two guys are long gone.
She packs the very same night, even though Alpha Silva urges her to stay until she has more info. She has contacts, she promises.
Cora's been waiting for too long, she doesn't want to overthink this for weeks until details may or may not come. She leaves everything behind - again - save from a small backpack.
Maybe it's 'see you later', not 'goodbye'.
**
Even inside the bus - a stew of old and new odors - Cora could feel the smell of nature and civilization alike shift with the miles they covered. The Preserve is the first place she steps into the woods since Costa Rica, though, and the contrast is overwhelming.
The smell of the forest is so different here. It's less humid. Fresher. But it's familiar even after seven years and it's what makes Cora feel as if she's made it home. Or where home used to be, at least.
Since she's never been one to shy away from hard things, Cora walks towards the remains of their house. The last time she saw it, the carcass was still smoking. It's falling apart now, nature and the elements having continued the job of tearing the house down. Cora stays fifty paces away, hesitant to go closer. There's an ominous mark on the door, one she immediately knows mean danger.
What Hales? There are no Hales here. Not right now at least, apart the tendril of a familiar smell she's not sure she can identify. This house surely doesn't look like the den of the most influential pack in California anymore.
"Look at the little wolfie," a voice says to her right, making Cora almost jump out of her skin.
She faces the danger by crouching in a fighting stance. The man who talked is tall and muscular, flanked by a dangerous looking woman. The one in the middle has a cane and sunglasses, and he's obviously the leader. On his other side are two ugly-ass twins.
Cora flashes her eyes at the five of them standing in a half circle a few paces from her, defiant. They are werewolves, too, no need to be subtle, but she feels a shiver of panic when all of their eyes flash right back, crimson red.
Alphas.
Five of them.
She's going to die where the rest of her family did, after all.
**
Cora hates this place, hates it so much. She wasn't even harmed when the Alpha pack caught her, and then threw her into this mother-fucking vault. They feed her, even though it's cheap gas station sandwiches, and she has enough water.
But every day that passes she grows convinced that maybe dying fast in the clearing would have been better.
She cannot feel the moon and it's killing her slowly instead.
**
These days when the door opens Cora stays put on her cot, eyes closed. She tried fighting. Being sneaky. Patience. All of those were hard with her wolf having no outlet anymore. But there's no way out of the vault, and she can't be bothered anymore. If she's still alive, there must be a reason, and she guesses it will be revealed one day.
It's sooner in the day than usual, but Cora tries her best to control her heart rate as the door opens (she hates giving the Alphas the satisfaction that they still scare her). She expects the usual double thump of food and a drink being thrown in, but there's scuffling instead and the door closes again. If she focuses, her senses are still sharp enough to hear two rapid heartbeats now in the vault with her. Then the heavy smell of fear - not her own for once - reaches her.
"Oh god," is whispered. "What is this place?"
"The old bank." This voice is deeper, more poised.
"But why? Shit, we were supposed to get way, be better. Not this!" The girl says.
Cora has turned her head slightly and slits her eyelid open. The first person she sees is the guy: wide of shoulders, looks strong, could be a threat. The girl, when she steps in Cora's line of sight, is slender, blond hair a mess, but with a resolute look on her face. Both seems about her age.
The girl looks at the walls, rubs her hands on her arms. "This place is weird."
The guy just noticed Cora, in the corner, and he pushes the girl behind him, acting as a barrier.
"What?" she protests, but almost snarls when she sees Cora too. Her defensive stand is typical, and she's not subtle at all.
Werewolves, then.
"Relax, I won't bite," Cora says. A second later she starts laughing hysterically: even if she had wanted to bite, she doesn't have fangs anymore.
When she sits up and wipes her eyes free of tears, still hiccupping a little, her new cellmates are watching her wearily and stand even closer to the wall than before.
"Been here a little while," she offers. It will be her only explanation.
"Why?" the guy asks.
"Fuck if I know. Why are you here?" Cora counters.
There are tears and blood on their clothes, obviously they went through a rough patch.
"No idea," the girl says. It's a lie, she has an inkling at least, but it's fair enough that she doesn't want to tell Cora.
It's tempting to tell them to take a seat, to say that her experience is that nothing will happen for the rest of the day, but she cannot be bothered. Cora lies down again, her hands linked on her stomach.
For a second, the novelty of something happening had distracted Cora from her slow descent into insanity. But now she needs to refocus, find the bits of balance she can gather.
The newbies aren't a threat at this point, they'll have to make do without her stellar conversation.
**
Cora's eating when the wonder couple tries to engage her again.
"I'm Erica," the girl says. "And he's Boyd."
"Cora," she offers back.
She cannot add any politeness filler after it, because it would be lies. (Cora's not pleased to meet them. She would have preferred never meeting them at all.)
"We need a plan to escape," Erica says.
Cora shrugs. "There's nothing to do. I tried."
"You were alone," Boyd says. And now we're three, he doesn't add. Cora realized the guy never speaks unnecessarily, something she appreciates.
"Or were you?" Erica asks.
She's a smart cookie, that one.
"I've been alone since I got thrown in here," Cora says.
"Is someone looking for you?" Erica asks.
"Nope," Cora says with a shrug. "What about you?"
Boyd and Erica look at each other. They seem conflicted, somehow.
"We did say we'd leave," Erica says, making a face that hints that it lowers the chance they'd be missed.
"But Stiles knows we were at Argent's," Boyd says.
Cora perks right up. Argent? She hadn't had time to check that lead, going straight to the Preserve.
"Even if he tells Scott or Derek, I'm not sure they'll search for us," Erica says.
Her heart is beating a lot faster, now, and Cora doesn't understand why Boyd and Erica aren't side-eying her for it.
"Derek?" she asks, gripping her own thighs hard enough to hurt.
Erica closes up at once, and Cora gets why she wants to keep information from a stranger in a vault, she does, but she also needs to know.
"It's none of your concern," Erica says. She turns to Boyd again. "We could try to howl? It worked before."
"No use here," Cora says.
She tried, a couple of weeks back when the moon would have been round in the sky. Desperate as she was, the hope that a friendly would come to her aid if she put enough helplessness in the howl was better than just going insane, and ultimately being found dead in the trash. The Alphas had laughed at her pitiful attempt, totally unconcerned.
"What do you know?" Erica says, defiant. She turns to Boyd, hushes urgently. "We could at least try?"
"Maybe Derek would hear it. He did say that we'd have a special bond, as our Alpha."
Derek? The Alpha? Could that be her dork of an older brother? The overlap is too much to be a coincidence, with the talk of Hales in Beacon Hills and a werewolf named Derek. But then Erica visibly sags in defeat.
"We left him when it got too hard. Why would he care?"
Boyd shrugs. "He cares. I know he does."
There is unwavering confidence in his voice, that is good.
"A good Alpha always does," Cora says.
They turn to her, surprised at her intervention as if they had totally forgotten about her. She has so many questions: if they are indeed talking about Derek Hale, how he became an Alpha, when they got turned, why he chose them.
"Does he live around here?" Cora asks after a moment of silence.
"We didn't say anything to the Alphas, we won't talk to you," Erica says, chin held high.
Cora is the stranger in the vault, after all. It seems that with whatever qualities or potential that convinced the Alpha they were fit to get the bite, they do have a little bit of brains too.
"You didn't say anything to the Alphas yet," Cora corrects, taking the last half of her sandwich and her water to her cot.
She hasn't, either. But frankly, every day in this room makes her urge to sing like a canary grow and grow.
**
Cora suspects the Alphas are aware of exactly who she is. Add that with the fact that they captured Derek's- possibly her own brother - two Betas, and it hints towards a purpose.
She guesses that the Alphas want to make a move on Beacon Hills, and they are targeting the territory holder.
They'll be bait.
Cora came back to California with a faint hope of finding part of her family, but it looks like she's going to be used to kill them instead.
Fuck this place, if she survives, she's out of here for good.
This entry was originally posted here on DW, where it has
comments. Comment here or there
What about Cora, before Derek finds her in the vault?
Cora POV
2 395 words (Gen)
She’s cleaning the bar's countertop, thinking about the errands she’ll run tomorrow before her next shift, when an overheard word makes Cora falter.
Beacon Hills.
She must have heard wrong, there’s no way…
“But why is Argent going all the way to California?” the small guy with the checkered shirt asks. He's got a cowboy hat and boots, too. All night he acted as he’s hot stuff, but the only reason he got a smile out of Cora is because she needs the tips for a new motorbike. It turns out she should have been paying more attention.
“Kate Argent is dead. Word through the grapevine is that the Hales got her,” answers his buddy.
Cora’s heart skips at that. The Hales, in Beacon Hills? She’s dizzy, all of a sudden, and it must show because Pablo who was walking by puts a hand on her lower back to steady her. He lets go as soon as she’s grounded, which she appreciates.
“Are you okay?” he asks, frowning. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
He’s not that far from the truth.
“I don’t feel so good,” Cora admits. She should stay, try to learn more information from the dynamic duo in the back - they slammed tequila shots all night - but it’s as if the bar is closing in on her.
“You? Sick?” Pablo looks even more concerned. “Go rest, take tomorrow off if needs be.”
“Yeah?”
"No problem. I'll manage for a night," he says with a smile.
Cora’s grateful, he’s a great boss, even if his bar is a Hunter meeting spot and she suspects he’s retired from the business himself. Maybe he wouldn’t be so understanding if he knew she is a werewolf.
She goes to get her stuff, counts her share of tips and leaves with a wave.
As Cora walks down the street towards her the edge of the village, she can't stop hearing the words.
Beacon Hills.
California.
The Hales got an Argent.
As soon as she is out range of potentially prying eyes, Cora shifts and runs, a blur on her usual trail in the tropical forest.
She needs to clear her head.
**
Cora goes straight to the Alpha when she reaches the commune. You can't be too careful when Hunters are in town.
When Alpha Silva opens the door at Cora's light knocking, she's in pajamas, rubbing her eyes.
"Do you realize what time-" she starts, tone annoyed but then her eyes sharpen and she drags Cora in before closing the door. "What did you do? Were you followed?"
"I didn't do anything," Cora says, sullen. Get into a fight a time or three and you get a reputation. She hasn't been in trouble in months.
"You're freaked out, that makes me nervous," Alpha Silva says, gesturing Cora towards the kitchen. "Will I need coffee? Should I call Jerome?"
Jerome is her second, and he's a mean sonofabitch that hates Cora. He thinks she gets preferential treatment, which is a load of bullshit. Cora shakes her head no. "It's probably nothing."
"Let me be the judge of that."
Alpha Silva never liked that Cora willingly works for Pablo, but she does appreciate the head's up when a situation arises. But to explain why she is so unsettled, Cora has to explain her past, something she never did in the five years she became Pack adjacent. Somehow, Alpha Silva doesn't look surprised at all and Cora realizes they have known for a long time.
It's only a small comfort.
**
Jerome wants Cora to lie low, arguing it's not safe for her to go back. It pisses her off because she can take care of herself. In the end, Cora doesn't take advantage of a potential day off and goes back to work the following night.
She barely slept, still unsettled by her confession and the overheard conversation that is playing again and again in her head. Is it true? What Hales? Who's Kate Argent? How come those two bozos happened to talk about it in her bar in Nowhere, Costa Rica? If they are Hunters around, how much of a threat are they to the Silva Pack?
Unfortunately the two guys are long gone.
She packs the very same night, even though Alpha Silva urges her to stay until she has more info. She has contacts, she promises.
Cora's been waiting for too long, she doesn't want to overthink this for weeks until details may or may not come. She leaves everything behind - again - save from a small backpack.
Maybe it's 'see you later', not 'goodbye'.
**
Even inside the bus - a stew of old and new odors - Cora could feel the smell of nature and civilization alike shift with the miles they covered. The Preserve is the first place she steps into the woods since Costa Rica, though, and the contrast is overwhelming.
The smell of the forest is so different here. It's less humid. Fresher. But it's familiar even after seven years and it's what makes Cora feel as if she's made it home. Or where home used to be, at least.
Since she's never been one to shy away from hard things, Cora walks towards the remains of their house. The last time she saw it, the carcass was still smoking. It's falling apart now, nature and the elements having continued the job of tearing the house down. Cora stays fifty paces away, hesitant to go closer. There's an ominous mark on the door, one she immediately knows mean danger.
What Hales? There are no Hales here. Not right now at least, apart the tendril of a familiar smell she's not sure she can identify. This house surely doesn't look like the den of the most influential pack in California anymore.
"Look at the little wolfie," a voice says to her right, making Cora almost jump out of her skin.
She faces the danger by crouching in a fighting stance. The man who talked is tall and muscular, flanked by a dangerous looking woman. The one in the middle has a cane and sunglasses, and he's obviously the leader. On his other side are two ugly-ass twins.
Cora flashes her eyes at the five of them standing in a half circle a few paces from her, defiant. They are werewolves, too, no need to be subtle, but she feels a shiver of panic when all of their eyes flash right back, crimson red.
Alphas.
Five of them.
She's going to die where the rest of her family did, after all.
**
Cora hates this place, hates it so much. She wasn't even harmed when the Alpha pack caught her, and then threw her into this mother-fucking vault. They feed her, even though it's cheap gas station sandwiches, and she has enough water.
But every day that passes she grows convinced that maybe dying fast in the clearing would have been better.
She cannot feel the moon and it's killing her slowly instead.
**
These days when the door opens Cora stays put on her cot, eyes closed. She tried fighting. Being sneaky. Patience. All of those were hard with her wolf having no outlet anymore. But there's no way out of the vault, and she can't be bothered anymore. If she's still alive, there must be a reason, and she guesses it will be revealed one day.
It's sooner in the day than usual, but Cora tries her best to control her heart rate as the door opens (she hates giving the Alphas the satisfaction that they still scare her). She expects the usual double thump of food and a drink being thrown in, but there's scuffling instead and the door closes again. If she focuses, her senses are still sharp enough to hear two rapid heartbeats now in the vault with her. Then the heavy smell of fear - not her own for once - reaches her.
"Oh god," is whispered. "What is this place?"
"The old bank." This voice is deeper, more poised.
"But why? Shit, we were supposed to get way, be better. Not this!" The girl says.
Cora has turned her head slightly and slits her eyelid open. The first person she sees is the guy: wide of shoulders, looks strong, could be a threat. The girl, when she steps in Cora's line of sight, is slender, blond hair a mess, but with a resolute look on her face. Both seems about her age.
The girl looks at the walls, rubs her hands on her arms. "This place is weird."
The guy just noticed Cora, in the corner, and he pushes the girl behind him, acting as a barrier.
"What?" she protests, but almost snarls when she sees Cora too. Her defensive stand is typical, and she's not subtle at all.
Werewolves, then.
"Relax, I won't bite," Cora says. A second later she starts laughing hysterically: even if she had wanted to bite, she doesn't have fangs anymore.
When she sits up and wipes her eyes free of tears, still hiccupping a little, her new cellmates are watching her wearily and stand even closer to the wall than before.
"Been here a little while," she offers. It will be her only explanation.
"Why?" the guy asks.
"Fuck if I know. Why are you here?" Cora counters.
There are tears and blood on their clothes, obviously they went through a rough patch.
"No idea," the girl says. It's a lie, she has an inkling at least, but it's fair enough that she doesn't want to tell Cora.
It's tempting to tell them to take a seat, to say that her experience is that nothing will happen for the rest of the day, but she cannot be bothered. Cora lies down again, her hands linked on her stomach.
For a second, the novelty of something happening had distracted Cora from her slow descent into insanity. But now she needs to refocus, find the bits of balance she can gather.
The newbies aren't a threat at this point, they'll have to make do without her stellar conversation.
**
Cora's eating when the wonder couple tries to engage her again.
"I'm Erica," the girl says. "And he's Boyd."
"Cora," she offers back.
She cannot add any politeness filler after it, because it would be lies. (Cora's not pleased to meet them. She would have preferred never meeting them at all.)
"We need a plan to escape," Erica says.
Cora shrugs. "There's nothing to do. I tried."
"You were alone," Boyd says. And now we're three, he doesn't add. Cora realized the guy never speaks unnecessarily, something she appreciates.
"Or were you?" Erica asks.
She's a smart cookie, that one.
"I've been alone since I got thrown in here," Cora says.
"Is someone looking for you?" Erica asks.
"Nope," Cora says with a shrug. "What about you?"
Boyd and Erica look at each other. They seem conflicted, somehow.
"We did say we'd leave," Erica says, making a face that hints that it lowers the chance they'd be missed.
"But Stiles knows we were at Argent's," Boyd says.
Cora perks right up. Argent? She hadn't had time to check that lead, going straight to the Preserve.
"Even if he tells Scott or Derek, I'm not sure they'll search for us," Erica says.
Her heart is beating a lot faster, now, and Cora doesn't understand why Boyd and Erica aren't side-eying her for it.
"Derek?" she asks, gripping her own thighs hard enough to hurt.
Erica closes up at once, and Cora gets why she wants to keep information from a stranger in a vault, she does, but she also needs to know.
"It's none of your concern," Erica says. She turns to Boyd again. "We could try to howl? It worked before."
"No use here," Cora says.
She tried, a couple of weeks back when the moon would have been round in the sky. Desperate as she was, the hope that a friendly would come to her aid if she put enough helplessness in the howl was better than just going insane, and ultimately being found dead in the trash. The Alphas had laughed at her pitiful attempt, totally unconcerned.
"What do you know?" Erica says, defiant. She turns to Boyd, hushes urgently. "We could at least try?"
"Maybe Derek would hear it. He did say that we'd have a special bond, as our Alpha."
Derek? The Alpha? Could that be her dork of an older brother? The overlap is too much to be a coincidence, with the talk of Hales in Beacon Hills and a werewolf named Derek. But then Erica visibly sags in defeat.
"We left him when it got too hard. Why would he care?"
Boyd shrugs. "He cares. I know he does."
There is unwavering confidence in his voice, that is good.
"A good Alpha always does," Cora says.
They turn to her, surprised at her intervention as if they had totally forgotten about her. She has so many questions: if they are indeed talking about Derek Hale, how he became an Alpha, when they got turned, why he chose them.
"Does he live around here?" Cora asks after a moment of silence.
"We didn't say anything to the Alphas, we won't talk to you," Erica says, chin held high.
Cora is the stranger in the vault, after all. It seems that with whatever qualities or potential that convinced the Alpha they were fit to get the bite, they do have a little bit of brains too.
"You didn't say anything to the Alphas yet," Cora corrects, taking the last half of her sandwich and her water to her cot.
She hasn't, either. But frankly, every day in this room makes her urge to sing like a canary grow and grow.
**
Cora suspects the Alphas are aware of exactly who she is. Add that with the fact that they captured Derek's- possibly her own brother - two Betas, and it hints towards a purpose.
She guesses that the Alphas want to make a move on Beacon Hills, and they are targeting the territory holder.
They'll be bait.
Cora came back to California with a faint hope of finding part of her family, but it looks like she's going to be used to kill them instead.
Fuck this place, if she survives, she's out of here for good.
This entry was originally posted here on DW, where it has
comments. Comment here or there