Teenwolf xbb fic: Tangled Lonely Path Forward Part two
Title: Tangled, Lonely Path Forward
Author: indusnm
Artist: dollarformyname
Back to Part One
*
Dean opened his eyes. For the first time in a long while, he had no idea where he was, and that didn’t bother him. He could feel the heat of someone beside him, someone he’d not just fucked but whom he’d slept with, and that should be bothering him but it wasn’t. Which, of course, was completely freaking him out.
An arm snaked around him and pulled him closer. “Stop overreacting. You’re an adult, you had sex with another, unmarried adult. Get over it.”
“Christ,” Dean exhaled noisily. “Sam must have noticed I wasn’t in the room-“
“Sam saw us last night. He didn’t throw a hissy fit and disown you or do anything much at all, so I think you’ll deal.”
“Sam saw?!?” Dean jumped out of bed and began looking for his pants. “Fuck it, I know they’re somewhere.”
“I killed Laura.”
Dean stopped moving clothes and sheets around and looked at Peter. Something about the set, almost unconcerned cast of Peter’s face made him stop and listen.
“The fire- it killed my family. My parents, my siblings, and my three nieces and nephews, with another on the way. Jamie and Bry were too young for school and Ryan’d had issues with the full moon the night before so we kept him home. But Derek and Laura, my older brother’s two, were at school. I don’t remember much about that day, except that I was with Darcy, Derek’s mother, doing some repairs in the upstairs bathroom when it started. We smelled something, and then we knew something was wrong. It was like someone had severed the wires in our brains. We knew we had to get to the kids, and that we were going to die if we stayed in that house, but we couldn’t seem to figure out how to get out. I think that the bitch, Kate Argent, must have put mountain ash on the windowsills when she seduced my underage nephew into letting her into our house for an afternoon fuck the day before. Thanks to the wolfsbane gas she dosed us with, I don’t remember much of what happened, though I can still see Jamie suffocate to death in her mother’s arms. The smoke, you see, kills before the fire does. Her eyes were looking right into mine as the light went out of them, and the only comfort I had was that I was going to die and be with them in a few minutes.”
Dean swallowed. “Okay,” he said stupidly. “Okay.”
Peter went on as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “I don’t know how long it was before I came back to myself, but it wasn’t that long. All I can remember is seeing Derek and Laura, shell-shocked and grieving. And the smell of that woman was still in my nostrils, almost drowning out the smell of burned flesh. See, I’d smelled her in the hour of what should have been my death, and I’d smelled her on Derek for the past few months. During the seven-year coma after that, Derek would visit and tell me things he’d never tell anyone else, things he thought no one was hearing, and I put all the pieces together. And in my angry, insane mind, I started to think the only way to obtain justice for those I lost was to become Alpha and do it myself, since Laura couldn’t or wouldn’t. It wasn’t until after I came back, after Derek and the kids killed me that I realized I’d killed more than an obstacle in my glorious master plan. I’d killed the girl who’d been the first baby in her generation, who’d taught me how to change diapers and hold babies, who’d walked to her father from my hands while her mother documented her first steps and cheered us on.”
Dean sat back down on the bed heavily. “Okay,” he said again.
“Is that all you can say? Okay?” Peter asked with understandable irritation.
Dean got why Peter was irritated, and a confession like that deserved one in turn. “My dad, before he died, told me I might have to kill my brother one day.”
Peter raised an eyebrow, searching for truth in Dean’s face, and then got to his knees. He crawled towards where Dean was sitting on the bed and cradled the hunter’s face in his hand. “Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t kill him.”
Dean shook him off. “You don’t get it. My dad wouldn’t say-“
“Fuck your dad.” Peter could feel Dean’s anger rise, but he was always more the type to face the storm with mocking laughter than run for shelter. “No, I get what he was doing but take it from someone who has the blood of someone they love on their hands. There’s always what you think is a good reason, and then you wake up one day and you know that was bullshit or temporary insanity or whatever. Find another way.”
“Find another way,” Dean repeated. He turned the words over on his tongue, thought about them a bit, before he smiled. He leaned over and kissed Peter, ignoring morning breath and all the work they had to do.
Peter smiled against his lips and gently pushed him down before straddling him on the bed.
*
The next day was, for lack of a better word, awkward, which wasn’t surprising considering the walls were not soundproof and there were parents there who’d heard their kids having sex. Stiles’s father tried not to look at Derek, who avoided being in the same room as Peter and Dean, and Chris Argent bristled every time Scott was in Allison’s vicinity. Sam, on the other hand, was falling over himself trying to show how supportive he was of his brother. Stiles wasn’t quite sure where Sam had managed to find a rainbow shirt and a PFLAG laptop decal in Beacon Hills before nine in the morning but hey, he wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t thought anyone could turn the shade of greenish-red Dean was sporting every time his brother spoke. Isaac seemed to be the only oblivious one, but that was probably because he spent most of his downtime skyping with Kyra, the werewolf mechanic he’d met last year while visiting Lydia and Jackson.
Melissa McCall came over after her shift with Chris’s hunters, who were staying in the town and watching over her and the general populace, while Erica and Boyd ran in from where they were patrolling the less-frequented borders of Beacon Hills. All of them picked up on the strange atmosphere but aside from a hurried, whispered conversation between Melissa and Stiles’s father, no one asked anything. He had a feeling Boyd and Erica had smelled enough, despite his shower (but it was with Derek so did that even count?) that they knew exactly what was going on, but they just smirked and kept quiet.
“Okay,” Melissa broke into the awkward start and stop of conversations, interrupting Sam in his rambling story of the first Gay-Straight Alliance meeting he’d attended at Stanford. It was probably also his last, but he’d gone to support a friend who’d just come out, so more power to him. “Okay, so what’s going on? What’s the plan?”
“Are we sure this thing is coming?”
“Yes,” Sam answered, but this time he was echoed by Derek, who shrugged when everyone stared at him. “Something is.”
Stiles stared at Derek. “You can feel it?” Turning to the others, he explained. “One of the books I read had a theory that Alphas have a stronger relationship to the forest. Sometimes, when a threat was coming, they would know before it got here.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “The birds aren’t talking to me, Stiles. This isn’t a Disney cartoon or some mystical story where I’m one with the forest. I got a call a few minutes ago from a pack member in French Camp; the family you mentioned that were killed by a rake-wielding neighbor were werewolves.”
“When were you going to tell us?” Scott demanded as he rose to his feet.
“Now, when we were all together. Sit down.” Derek’s voice was calm and tight, and there was enough authority to make even Scott obey without argument. “They were the Alpha and her family, to be precise. I’ve sent out feelers to the other towns you mentioned but I have a feeling we’re going to have similar news. Whatever this is, it’s hunting werewolves.”
In the silence that fell over the room, Melissa McCall moved closer to her son and Boyd took Erica’s hand. Then Sam broke the tense atmosphere and shot to his feet. “I have an idea, but I need to do more research.”
*
“So… J. K. Rowling had it wrong. Werewolves don’t join the Dark Side.”
Sam rolled his eyes but huffed out a laugh. “I guess, Lydia.” He moved closer to the phone as he spoke, unsure if she could hear everything over the background noise of beta training. “But you see what I do, right? You think they’re talking about werewolves?”
“Hey, I’ve taken four college semesters of Latin, like you did. We’re both reading this right. Werewolves are the natural enemies of demons, because they can sense them and Alphas can destroy them. But why now?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are packs everywhere, Sam, and they have been living peacefully for years. Some less peacefully than others, but regardless, there seems to be a concerted effort to go around killing Alphas.”
“Fuck… it’s the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He’s planning something,” Sam realized. “Something big is going down so they’re starting to take out the beings they know can stop them.”
Lydia didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Sam braced himself because he’d been warned she didn’t pull punches. “Sam, whatever is going on probably has something to do with what your family’s been fighting, what killed your mother and your father.”
“I know,” he whispered, knowing the werewolves could hear him. But it wasn’t them he was worried about.
Lydia sighed. “Well whatever it is, thanks for coming there and warning them. And please, Sam, keep my town and my pack as safe as you can.”
“I will.”
His voice was reassuring, but as she disconnected the call, Lydia bit her lip and stared into the distance. She was startled out of her distracted thoughts when strong, warm hands pressed on her shoulders. She looked up at Jackson and tried to smile, but her expression crumbled.
“Do we need to go back?” he asked, his hand already reaching for his phone. He’d go, too, risking the money and approval his parents meted out, even though he needed both. Derek’d ordered him not to burn his parental bridges because Derek thought family was sacrosanct, but Pack came first. His family’d get over their Beacon Hills issues way faster than he’d get over ditching his Pack.
She shook her head. “No, not this time. We need to work through the summer if we want to graduate early and get back to Beacon Hills after grad school. We’ll go back on the full moon as intended.”
His hands pressed down a little, and she put her own up to clasp his, feeling him hold it and bend down to kiss her palm. He came around the sofa to hold her and together they looked out the window and worried.
There were a lot of reasons to stay away. There were the parental threats to cut off all aid if Jackson went back, the destructive relationship Lydia still had with her parents, all the Supernatural bullshit that was probably going to get one or both of them killed one day, and the hunters. But there was one reason to go back. One very, very important reason. They were Pack.
“Okay, let’s go this weekend,” Lydia said.
Jackson smiled.
*
Scott had a book open in front of him, but had trouble focusing on it as he thought about Allison’s hair, the way she smiled at him, or how the sweat rolled down her face when she straddled him…
“Dude, you’re such a cliché,” Stiles’s mocking voice surprised him out of his thoughts. The house had been quiet, so he’d drifted off, but the sound of his best friend talking made him concentrate on his senses. It sounded like Stiles was in the kitchen.
“My dad taught me.” That was Dean’s voice. Scott could smell gun oil, and he couldn’t help snickering. Stiles was right; Dean was a cliché.
There was silence, and Scott couldn’t help thinking of his own father, who’d never really stuck around to teach him anything. But Stiles’s father had. “Mine did too. He had guns in the house so I had to learn to use them. Scott, too. My mom hated them- she’d rather they weren’t there and she was kinda rabidly anti-gun, but she got that my dad didn’t have a choice. Still, she also knew hiding them wouldn’t work so she was okay with my learning. But I don’t know, since she died, I haven’t been able to use them without thinking of how much she would have hated that.”
Again, silence. Stiles never mentioned his mother to strangers, and Scott was about to join them in the kitchen when Dean spoke. “Wait, are we having a moment?”
Scott didn’t hear what Stiles answered because his phone went off at that exact moment. A few seconds later he burst into the kitchen to spread the bad news. “It’s here.”
*
“So wait, you smelled something?”
“Yeah. Derek was patrolling the northern part of the road leading from the house to the preserve and he smelled matches burning. ‘Course, he checked it out because he didn’t want some kids setting the forest on fire, but there was no trace of fire. Just in case, he called Peter, Sam, and your dad and they came out to smell it. Peter said it could be sulfur. Sam said demons smelled like sulfur. So they think it’s here.” Scott spoke so quickly that they barely kept up as they drove through the forest, but his lungs were able to keep up with the speed that excitement brought to his vocal cords.
They got to where everyone else was gathered, and as soon as Dean got out of the car he started sniffing. “I don’t…” he began in confusion. “It’s not that clear.”
Peter stepped up behind him. “It’s faint for your human nose, and surrounded by a lot of other scents, but trust me, it’s there. It’s been a while, at least a couple of hours, so it’s not here any more.”
“So what’s the plan?” Stiles bounced on his toes a couple of times in his excitement. Out of the corner of his eye, his father saw Derek put his hand out towards Stiles as if to calm him, but then Derek stopped and turned away.
“We need to isolate ourselves,” the Sheriff decided. “This thing gets people to kill its targets, and to protect the people it makes do horrible things against their will, we need to not give them an opportunity.”
“There’s enough food in the house to hole up there a while,” Derek agreed. “Scott, I know your mother has to work but get Erica and Boyd to the hospital and have them stay with her and bring her right back here between shifts. Sheriff, Isaac is going to be going around with you on ride-alongs because he’s always dreamed of being a cop. Argent, you should probably send your hunters out of town.”
Chris wanted to argue, but he knew Derek was right. It made sense to have those who could smell the demon guarding the people who had to leave Hale House.
“I’ve been talking to Lydia, and we think there’s a way to stop Duane. We need to get the demon himself to come to us. From what I get, the bite of an Alpha is enough to make a demon mortal.”
“So Derek bites him, and we can kill him?” Dean asked.
Sheriff Stilinski looked troubled. “What about the human? Don’t demons possess people? Is killing the demon going to mean killing an innocent person?”
Sam exchanged a look with Dean, who wanted him to lie. But Sam had come to like and respect the Sheriff. “Yes, it does, and you’re right, but in this case I doubt the human would still be alive without the demon in him; demons aren’t careful about maintaining what they call their ‘meatsuits’ and he’s been possessed for a long time. He’s probably going to be grateful. Possession is a torment for the victims. Someone is using your body to do horrific things, and you have no control over it.”
Stiles shuddered. “That sounds like torture.”
“Yeah.” Dean thought of the young girl the Yellow Eyed Demon’s daughter had possessed, how she’d used her last breaths to thank him for a death that had released her from possession. “It is.”
*
“I feel like this is the hunt that is never going to end,” Dean complained.
Sam looked up from the books in front of him. “Dean, there’s so much to learn here. There are books that will never be in any library in the country, with creatures that even Bobby and Pastor Jim had never heard of. And then there’s the lore of creatures that we don’t need to hunt, who live peaceful lives side by side with humans.”
“Come on Sam, you know I’d rather be out there salting and burning then in here with a book!”
“Don’t you ever get the urge to just set up shop somewhere?”
Dean paused, remembering the homes he’d created in a million small towns all over America. “Yeah, sure I do,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t want to stop hunting.” Looking down at his hands, he added, “I don’t know if I know how to stop anymore.”
Sam swallowed. It was still too soon to think of how much he could hate his father, but sometimes it was difficult to think anything else. “I don’t know if I could just walk away from all of it. I thought that was all I wanted but if there’s anything the last couple of years have taught me, it’s that hunting will follow me wherever I go. But I guess if I can’t escape it, it might be cool if I could figure out a way to combine it with the life I’d like to have. I hate hunting, but I think I could live with it if I had a life outside of it.”
Dean looked at his brother narrowly for a few minutes and then changed the subject. “But it’s been eight days; how long before he makes his move?”
Sam thought about pushing, but decided to let it go. “He has to have figured out that we know he’s coming, or he’d have acted yesterday. He’s going to come here himself to spread his disease and take out the Alpha and anyone groomed to take over, so that the Pack tears itself apart.”
Dean thought of Peter and Derek, keeping a careful distance from each other as they navigated the hallways of their personal mausoleum, of Stiles and the way he blushed red when Derek entered a room, of Scott and the way he took care of his mother and girlfriend, of Boyd and Erica and their plans to open a bakery together, and of Isaac, who took to affection and respect with a thirst that made both Winchesters want to dig up his family for a good old-fashioned salt n’ burn. “We can’t let that happen.”
*
It was later that very day when everything came to a head. Dean and Erica had just put the finishing touches on dinner while Sam, Isaac and Peter laid the table. “What are we eating?” Peter asked as he debated over the cutlery.
“Mex”- Erica stopped mid-word when she heard her text message alert go off.
Then it was Stiles’s, Sam’s and Isaac’s. They all reached for their phones immediately but knew what the message said. Someone was coming to the house.
“Devil’s Traps!” Dean ordered, and everyone rushed to darken the lines of the Devil’s Traps they’d prepared ahead of time. He pulled out a flask of holy water and watched as Chris and Allison Argent dipped their arrows in it. Stiles, meanwhile, took his own supply and attached it to the water hose that lay coiled outside. He and Derek sprayed outside the house and by all the windows, covering all the entrances and exits except the front door. Halfway through, Derek stopped and let Stiles finish as he waited for Boyd and Scott to come back. He was half wolfed-out, scenting the air as he searched for the threat he knew was coming.
Boyd and Scott came running through the woods. Scott sported a bloody gash on his eyebrow but Boyd was dragging his leg and looked about ready to collapse. Derek ran towards him and caught him before he could. He handed him over to Scott and Stiles, telling the other two to take him inside. “It looks like wolfsbane, so get him to the Argents.”
They began to take Boyd into the house but Scott stopped first to describe what they’d seen. “I think they got the hunters to come here. The hunters are infected.”
“Fuck!” Derek waved them inside and stood outside his house, ready to protect it, and the people inside, with his life. He felt more than sensed his pack emerge to stand at his back.
Stiles, however, was still inside with Allison. They rummaged through their collection of herbs as Stiles berated Chris constantly. “Derek told you to send them away! They know how to deal with werewolves, they’ve seen us prepare for the Croatoan virus, and they’re susceptible to it. There was a reason he wanted them sent away!”
“I know!” Chris snapped back. “I told them to leave. But I don’t run an army, Stiles, and they have minds of their own.”
Stiles scoffed. “Yeah, I guess I should have expected hunters to not follow the rules.”
“Yes, you should have,” Chris agreed, acid dripping from every word.
“Enough!” Allison ordered. “Hey, Boyd, it’s going to be fine. I’m pretty sure this is it.” She quickly lit the wolfsbane on fire and then had Stiles and her father hold the young man down as she stuffed the wound. Almost as soon as Boyd had relaxed, they re-joined the battle.
The hunters whom Chris had ordered out had obviously recruited more people. Stiles wasn’t quite sure how many people were shooting at him and his pack, but there were a lot. He tried to keep an eye on his father and his… boyfriend? Lover? Alpha? Not that he worried about Derek, Sourwolf could take care of himself, but he couldn’t help having the sneaking suspicion that he was getting everything he wanted, only to have it all taken away.
He dodged a machete- who the hell carried around a machete- and swung his baseball bat at the head of the guy who’d been wielding it. They were too close together, so he wasn’t able to get in much of a swing, and the man stumbled a bit but didn’t fall. Stiles had time to think “oh shit,” before the hunter in front of him looked shocked. The hunter fell to his knees and then onto his back, the same look of shock staying on his face, and Stiles looked over him and into the eyes of the werewolf who’d saved him. “Hi,” Derek said with an irritatingly sexy grin.
“Hi,” Stiles parroted. He was pretty sure he had a goofy grin on his face, but who cared? Derek’s grin wasn’t any less goofy, and they were winning anyway, right?
But Derek suddenly stiffened and spun around. The hunters must have brought Molotov cocktails or something else flammable, because they’d managed, in the heat of the battle, to set Derek’s house on fire. Again.
“Boyd!” Erica screamed. “Boyd!” She ran towards the house but a hunter’s bullet hit her in the shoulder and she fell to the ground. She struggled up, but Derek shot past her before she could get to her feet.
Derek ran into the house, ignoring cries for him to stop. He leaped over flames and let his senses go wild, fearing he’d smell charred flesh, the odor that followed him into nightmares. But he heard a heartbeat, strong and excited, and followed it up the stairs.
Boyd was coughing constantly but he wouldn’t leave. “We have to save the books,” he gasped. The books had survived one devastating fire because they’d been stored away but would not survive another.
“Leave them,” Derek ordered, but Boyd refused. They were their culture and their history, and they’d saved their lives in the past and would save them again. Derek gave in and, instead of dragging Boyd out, grabbed Sam and Peter’s laptops and took those out as well.
They emerged, coughing, into the bloody, flame-lit night where the battle was almost done. Dean, Scott, Chris and Allison were finishing off the last of the hunters, and everyone else was just standing around, watching them walk out of the house with expressions of anger mixed in with relief. Erica ran towards Boyd and kissed him. Stiles also approached Derek, but more cautiously and awkwardly. “Dude, you went in there for a couple of books and a laptop?”
Derek shrugged. He wanted to kiss Stiles, but the way the younger man was shifting from foot to foot reminded him of all the reasons not to kiss him. He settled for pulling him in for a long, tight hug. Stiles hugged him back, clutching on as if he’d been terrified Derek wouldn’t get out on time.
“Not to interrupt the moment, but this isn’t over.” As Peter spoke, Derek was able to make out the smell of sulfur. He looked up and through the trees and saw a young man, probably just about Stiles’s age, but he smelled something much older and far darker inside of him.
Around him, the werewolves all smelled what he did, and they shifted. Dean and Sam finished off a hunter and stood, heavily armed and ready, watching the young man approach. The other humans were also ready, but all they could see was an unarmed, nicely dressed young man.
“You can’t let him come close, Derek!” Sam yelled. “He can infect any one of them.” Them, not us, but that was a thought for another time.
Derek sprang forward and ran towards the young man. It was as if his body had been waiting for this moment, because instead of shifting into the half man, half wolf form he normally took, Derek’s body continued the transformation until he was a wolf. It was the first time he’d fully transformed; a sign that he was finally embracing his status as an Alpha. He tore through the woods and his paws ate up the feet between them.
But Duane had his own tricks. When Derek was just a body length or so away, Duane waved his hand, making Derek’s body rise off the ground and slam into a tree. It hurt, but Derek’d been through worse. Before he could attack again, Peter jumped over him and managed to swipe his claws through Duane’s face before the demon used his powers to push him away. Peter’s head hit the tree hard enough that he lost consciousness immediately.
Then it was Scott who attacked from the side, but he didn’t draw any blood before he too was pushed away. Boyd and Erica attacked simultaneously, but Boyd’s lingering weakness doomed that attempt. Still, the double attack made it impossible for Duane to be too fancy in pushing them aside, and all he managed to do was throw them back a few feet.
The humans watched in frustration, wanting to help their friends and family, but unwilling to risk infection. They could end up hurting the others if they came under the demon’s control.
The werewolves all noted how much harder it was for Duane to use his powers on them when their attacks were coordinated, and Derek snarled out an instruction that they all seemed to understand. They circled Duane once, twice, and then they moved.
Scott and Isaac went for the feet, Boyd and Erica for the torso, and Derek made for the throat. He got Duane’s shoulder but that was enough. There was a hoarse scream, and then Duane’s eyes filled with an awful, horrifying black color that made all of them back off a bit.
There was the sharp crack of a bullet, and then a hole appeared in the center of Duane Tanner’s attractive forehead. He fell over immediately, and Dean walked into the circle of werewolves, gun in hand, and stood over the possessed boy’s body. “Sorry, kid,” he said sincerely. “But it had to be done this time.” Then, crouching down, he whispered, “For Sargent Varko, you asshole.”
*
“Well, you’re all invited to come stay at my place, except for those of you who have homes, of course,” Sheriff Stilinski offered. “And on that note, I’m going to go to my house, where I’m going to have a drink and then a shower in my bathroom, and then I’m going to sleep in my bed. Stiles, you’re coming with me. And that’s not a suggestion.”
Stiles could have said that he was twenty, and beyond his father’s orders, but the truth was that he kind of wanted to sleep in his own bed too. He looked at Derek, who was standing next to his uncle over the remnants of his still-burning house, and then back at his father.
“Go, Stiles,” Derek ordered gently, and Stiles went.
“I’m going to take you up on that offer, Sheriff, if that’s okay,” Sam said gratefully. He picked up his laptop and walked towards the Impala, looking at Dean to see if he’d follow.
Chris packed up the last of the hunter’s bodies and slammed the door shut. “I think I’m heading out now too. Allison, you’ll be home after dropping Scott and Isaac off at Melissa’s?”
“Yes, dad. See you later.” She and the boys left, all throwing one last look at Derek as they left.
Dean went to follow his brother, but then turned back at the last minute. He walked up to Derek and held his shoulder for a second, and then turned to Peter. He took Peter’s arm and pulled him back so that he could kiss him, long and lingering. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised.
Everyone left, and it was just the last two Hales. Derek watched the house burn. It wasn’t really the house he’d grown up in, that was long lost, but it was the closest they had.
Some small trinkets, remnants of a family and a normal life, had survived the first blaze, but they were beyond saving now. It had been a constant source of painful joy, the glare of a perfect sunrise, when he found something that had once meant nothing. Just three days before he’d been in what had been the vegetable garden, and he’d found the dog monopoly piece where his mom must have hidden it to avoid all the fights the kids had over it. It was truly painful to think that all that he’d managed to save was probably gone, and that he’d never again feel the heart-wrenching, angry connection he used to feel when he found remnants of his happy past.
“Are you going to rebuild it?” Peter asked hoarsely.
Derek thought about it for a second. “No,” he decided. He was done with this part of his history. It seemed as if his motto should have been: if you build it, they will come to burn it down.
“Good,” Peter said, and he exhaled. It was as if a chain had been broken for both of them. Peter could maybe begin to escape his ghosts, and Derek could begin to let go of his anger and grieve. “Put something here, will you? Not another house, but something of them. All ten of them.”
“Eleven,” Derek corrected, because even if Laura had survived the fire, Kate’s actions had set into motion events that had sealed his older sister’s fate. For all intents and purposes, Laura had died in that house with their parents and family. The years he’d gotten with her ,when she’d held them together with nothing more than her strength and her resolve, had been a gift.
“Let’s go?” Peter asked. Derek nodded, and the two men began making their way to Derek’s car. They weren’t touching or holding each other; there was too much between them for that, but for the first time in eleven years, they walked in sync with the other’s steps.
THE NEXT DAY
“Are you going somewhere?”
Sam jerked his head up at the question, almost losing his grip on the newly laundered shirts he was packing away in the duffle bag. “Um, what?”
Stiles smiled from where he was standing in the doorway of the Stilinski guest room. “I asked if you were going somewhere.”
“Well, the case is over, which is usually Dean and my cue to start going.” Sam shrugged, as if the constant moving didn’t get to him, as if the urge to grow roots didn’t tear at him.
Stiles stared at him and even though his hyperactivity made it impossible for him to hold the penetrating gaze for too long, Sam had the feeling Stiles knew exactly what he wasn’t saying. As if in support of Sam’s theory, Stiles asked, “Why?”
Sam wondered where to start: the warrants for their arrest, the demon, their mother… But Stiles had heard all of it over the past couple of weeks, so he just shrugged again.
“You know that we can help you start over, that my dad can keep the police off your tail, and that your brother is more than capable of continuing the hunts without you, and everyone knows you hate hunting, so I don’t get why you have to go.”
“You don’t know everything,” Sam told him.
“So tell me!”
Sam sat down on the bed and then leaned back, putting his head on his folded arms and staring up at the ceiling. “Apparently, my dad told my brother he might need to kill me one day. I think- I think the demon did something to me, the night he killed my mother. Something bad enough that my own father was afraid of what I might do.”
Stiles had paled a bit, but he kept up his steady gaze. “That sucks.”
Sam laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Yeah, it does.”
“Still not getting why you have to go. In fact, it kind of sounds like you should stay away from hunting, if you want my opinion. Which you probably don’t, but that’s never stopped me from giving it.”
Sam looked at him in shock. “Um, I have to find the Yellow Eyed Demon and figure out what he did to me. I have to stop whatever he’s planning.”
“Dude, from everything you’ve told me, that’s exactly what he wants you to do, and that probably means it’s the last thing you should be doing.” Sam stopped breathing for a second, but Stiles kept going. “And anyway, man- vengeance, so not a good idea. Look at what happened to Peter. He’s a walking advertisement for what happens when you start letting vengeance eat at your soul!”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It kind of is,” Stiles said, more gently. “I get needing justice, and I get what a lack of justice gets you. I’ve also had Derek, who’s still a 15-year-old kid who fell in love with a sex offending, baby-murdering bitch, as a walking advertisement for the need for closure, because he’s never gotten it. But dude, you know that Dean’s going to get justice for your mom and your girlfriend, and for all the people along the way who don’t matter enough to get backstories. I’m not telling you to walk away from the supernatural, but I’m offering you a way to do that while you go to school and make friends and become a part of the pack.”
“I don’t think the demon will let me,” Sam admitted. “And even if he did, I can’t leave Dean.”
“Fuck the demon, and don’t worry about us. We’re freaking werewolves and lizards and witches, and we have ways of taking care of ourselves. If there’s anywhere you could stay, Sam, it’s with us.”
For a second, Sam let himself think of it. If it was possible anywhere, it was possible here. Except for one thing. “Dean?”
Stiles smiled. “Yeah, dude, I don’t think you have to worry about that one,” he said enigmatically, and then ruined it all by wiggling his eyebrows. Cackling a little at Sam’s groan, he made a quick retreat, saying only, “Think about it.”
Stiles ran down the stairs, stumbling a little near the bottom but righting himself before he did any damage. “Meant to do that,” he said quickly but Derek’s back did not indicate that he’d heard him. “Hey, Sourwolf, what are you brood-” he began, but then stopped when he came up alongside Derek and followed the werewolf’s gaze to a half-full box on the dining table. He sighed. “Can’t believe I’m moving out and going to Cal soon.”
Derek stood silently for a moment and then raised his already stiff shoulders. “Stiles,” he began gently, and caused all of Stiles’s warning systems to go on red alert. “We need to talk.”
Stiles glanced back at the box before returning back to his boyfriend’s eyes and shook his head. “Oh no, no you are not doing this to me. You are not breaking up with me, dude.”
Derek caught his flailing hands and forced him to still. “Stiles, listen to me.”
“No, you are not doing this to me.”
“Stiles, listen!” It was the alpha voice, but something real and sad and steady in Derek’s voice made Stiles obey. “Stiles,” he said again in that gentle voice that Stiles was already beginning to hate, “this isn’t an ending.”
“Then why does it sound like one?”
“It’s a beginning.” Derek ducked his head and caught Stiles’s eyes, forcing him to look at him. “It’s an amazing, wonderful beginning and you deserve to go on it without worrying about the boyfriend back home. And I’m not breaking up with you. I’m just proposing a two-year break.”
“Why?” Stiles was suddenly furious. “Why are you doing this? Why would you make a move and then end this for two fucking years a few days later?”
“Because I never meant to make a move until after those two years!” Derek exploded. “Damn it Stiles, I wanted you to go to college free, and then I wanted you to come back and choose me. If we start on this now, if we use words like forever and always and all that now, you’re going to wake up one day and never know if you settled for me because that was all you knew. You’re going to be like one of those people who wakes up after ten years of marriage and realizes they never knew there was a world out there that was bigger than the town and life they grew up with! Or worse, you’re going to make me become the one person I swore I wouldn’t be. Know who that is?”
Struck silent, Stiles could only shake his head.
“Kate.” Stiles twisted away and protested at that, but Derek steamed on. “She was older and hot and I thought I was in love because it felt great that someone like her would be into me. I’m not saying I’m going to take advantage of you and kill your family or that you at twenty is comparable to me at fifteen, but still she got me at a time before I could make informed choices and took away all the great aspects of what I should have experienced in college or just being freaking young. There are huge gaps in my life, people I’ll never meet and things I’ll never get to do, because she took away the freedom I had to do them.” Derek stopped there. “I won’t be Kate.”
“You’re not, and no matter how many years -“
“No matter how many years is right.” Derek smiled sadly, and in that moment they both knew he’d won. “Stiles, for four years you’ve been the person I’ve trusted most. If I had a problem, I’d only need to text you and you’d give me five different ways to kill it by the next morning. And I’d like to think I’ve been the same for you. That was more than enough for four years, and it can be enough for another two. Another two years where you get to be a typical college student, where you get to experiment, and then if you still want to be with me, forever, I’ll be here and we’ll be pack.”
Stiles wanted to argue, but instead, what came out was, “You’ll wait?”
Derek’s smile widened. “Stiles, I spent eleven years after Kate waiting for you. I can wait a couple more. And in the meantime…”
“In the meantime,” Stiles agreed, and it was as much a promise as the way he grabbed Derek and pulled him close, pressing his face into Derek’s neck and breathing him in, feeling him scent him in return. “In the meantime.”
*
Dean packed away the wooden box that the Argents had given him, and sent a quick, silent thanks to somewhere he hasn’t quite defined yet that his brother had reminded him to take notes when Chris was talking about how the contents of the box worked. He closed the trunk of the car, stretched to work out the kinks his back had developed as he’d bent over the Impala’s secret compartment and turned, only to jump in shock. “Damn it, can’t you people stop sneaking up on me?”
Peter smirked and shrugged. “It’s a part of the gift, Dean. Aside from wearing a bell- and no, that’s not an option- I don’t see that happening.” He stopped speaking and shifted, uncharacteristically uncomfortable in his own skin.
“What?” Dean asked suspiciously. Peter’s behavior was a lot like Sammy’s had been as a kid when he’d wanted something he knew Dad would freak out over, but Peter shouldn’t have had any requests… “Oh hell no.”
To his credit, Peter didn’t dissemble. “Dean, you know that Sam’s happy here, that he wants to become Pack.”
“He’s not going to become a werewolf -“
Peter waved his hand dismissingly. “No, no one is suggesting the bite, and anyway, there are human members. But he’s happy here and there are good schools near enough that he can go with the rest of them, finish up his undergrad and finally go to law school. It’ll be safer for him and God knows it may be safer for the rest of us.”
“Hey, I told you that stuff in private,” Dean spoke in an angry whisper, shooting panicked glares around him.
“No one’s around. But this is the best place for him and you know it. He’s with people who know the supernatural and can help him fight it off. And can let him build a life and protect anyone he builds it with. Which is what the demon tried to destroy. You have to know that Sam being with you, on this path, is what the demon wanted so it has to be the worst possible place for him to be. This is a place where monsters, both human and not, try to be good, where horrible things happen but people rebuild, and I can’t think of a better place for Sam to be.”
Dean couldn’t argue, but at the same time, he couldn’t quite imagine getting back in that car without Sam by his side. And, “I can’t stay.”
“No, you can’t,” Peter said gently. “And you can’t be on your own. Or at least you shouldn’t. Which makes you a lot like me. I can’t stay here, with Derek. I love Derek as much as I’d love any child of my own, and I know he loves me, but the specter of Laura stands between us. Where she’ll always be, and rightfully so. I know I deserve to be haunted by her for the rest of my life, but I can live with her ghost when I’m not here, surrounded by my worst sins.”
“Are you saying you want to come with me, to be a hunter like me? With me?” Dean tried to imagine a life of hunting with someone who wanted to be there, who had as much darkness within him as he did but who somehow made the whole world brighter, who would share his bed and hunts with equal passion and competence... It was impossible and all too possible to imagine, all at once. But this wasn’t an easy life, and he didn’t wish it on anyone. “Do you realize what that would mean?”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Well, we’re going to have to negotiate where we stay and how we stay; I have enough money to live in luxury for the rest of my life and there’s no way in hell you’re getting me in a motel 6 outside of an emergency. Hell, I’d be perfectly satisfied staying in the woods before I’d sleep on scratchy sheets or use a bathroom that’s got anything on 6 legs moving around in there.”
“That’s not what I meant, but you should know that ghosts don’t always haunt five-star hotels.”
“I don’t have to work where I sleep, and I get what you meant.” Peter looked at the still smoky remains of the place he’d called home. “I know what your life means. And you should remember that I’ve been hunting since before you were born and that that I don’t die easily or permanently. But before you agree to take me with you, you should know that if you hunt with a werewolf, there are hunts you won’t be able to take and prey that you can’t kill.”
“Werewolves,” Dean acknowledged.
“Oh, I have no issue with killing rogues. I was one, yes, but I know how rogues can make life difficult for those of us trying to go… legitimate. But there are monsters who are causing no harm and humans who are as evil as demons, and I’d rather kill those who deserve it than those who were born a little different.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re going to be just like Sam and have a debate every time we go on a hunt, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Peter said, then smiled seductively. “Or maybe we can just agree to kill whatever’s killing and then fuck it out on silk sheets in some ridiculously expensive hotel room?”
Dean closed his eyes and felt Peter’s warm, gentle hands cup his face. “I’ve never hunted with anyone but family, or people who were family in all but name.”
Peter leaned forward until his breath brushed Dean’s lips. “Some day, I hope that I, and mine, will be in that category.”
Dean was so used to holding family close, to grasping on to what he had tightly as it tried to slip through his hands, that for a second he could not compute what Peter was offering. Then he opened his eyes and senses and figured it out. Pack, home, family- love, and all he had to do was say, “Yes.”
EPILOGUE- SIX YEARS LATER (the present)
Isaac whoops as he paints the last bit of trimming with a flourish. “Done!”
Scott smiles at his friend’s enthusiasm. “Looks good, Isaac.” Then, as Isaac blushes, he turns to his wife and quickly asks, “Are you sure you should be around the paint fumes?”
“Oh my God, Scott,” Allison groans. “I’m pregnant with a werewolf child; he or she’s hardly going to be allergic to non-lead paint fumes, in the womb no less. If you’re going to be like this for all nine months…”
Lydia sighs. “Can we please stop talking about this pregnancy?“ She rolls her eyes as everyone around her looks shocked. “Oh, whatever, Allison and Scott know that I’m happy for them and perfectly ready to fight Erica for godmother rights, werewolf or not, but that’s not what today is about. Today’s about the new Hale house, and Derek finally embracing the concept of four solid walls, a roof that doesn’t leak, running water and, hold the presses, electricity.” Though her words are sarcastic, her tone lacks its usual cutting bite. She’s as touched by this moment as the rest of them.
Derek would be touched too, if he could have spared any emotion for it. In some small part of himself he’s still aware of his surroundings, of Pack around him, in what is his new yard and in his home. He can hear voices from inside murmuring as they set down rugs and move furniture around a bit, but even though he can hear every word, he isn’t listening to any of it.
Instead, his heart is in his mouth as he looks straight at his new home. The house is still on Hale land; he has to keep his home there to ensure that the Pack always has it to roam on, but there are trees and enough space separating them that he can’t even see the place where his family died. Not that there’s much to see; in the past few years his Pack has done a good job of planting shrubs, flowers, and trees so that there is nothing to tell visitors that ten people died there in a horrific fire other than a plaque, engraved solely with ten names, and ten beautiful white rosebushes. He rarely lets a day pass without going to the site to tend those ten bushes, and the one red rosebush, for Laura, but he is glad that he can’t see them from his new home.
It’s a nice house, big enough for the Pack, but it looks nothing like his the home his mother built. It has more contemporary and sleek lines, with brighter colors that reflect Lydia’s burgeoning interior designer aesthetic more than his mother’s traditional sense. There is a basement, but it has multiple exits hidden all over the property and modes of communication with the outside world so that no one can ever lock the Pack in there to die.
But more than that, it’s home. And it’s never more home than when Stiles opens the door and peeks out. He’s holding a bottle of champagne, and Derek isn’t all that surprised when Stiles insists that they bang it on the front door.
“This isn’t a ship, Stiles,” Jackson rolls his eyes. He glances quickly at his watch, making sure he doesn’t have to leave for the hospital any time soon. His residency has him working an insane number of hours, and he’s grateful for the stamina that lycanthropy gives him. Sam, struggling with associate hours, is bitterly envious of Jackson’s abilities.
“Plus, I just got finished painting, and I don’t want to have to touch up the door,” Isaac groaned. “Scott, stop encouraging him.” Scott’s too busy laughing to argue.
But it’s Derek who takes the bottle from Stiles’s hand and, after a quick kiss on his husband’s lips, shatters it against the door. He watches the Pack tumble over each other as they rush inside to admire their own work, and he looks again at what they’ve built.
As he stands in the threshold, a whisper in the wind on an otherwise still night catches his attention and he turns his head. A light breeze is rustling the trees around him, trees that have watched him learn to walk, stumble and fall, and walk again. They are old, loved friends and he can’t help thinking that they are celebrating with him. It’s been a long, hard road to rebuilding, but standing where he is, he finally knows peace.
He will never forgive himself for what he did, what he brought down on his family. But with time, and with love, he’s learned something approaching acceptance.
“Hey, Wolfman!” Stiles insinuates himself between Derek’s arm and his body and angles his face so that it’s almost pressed against Derek’s. Then he lets himself go a little cross-eyed looking into Derek’s eyes because he knows just how to get Derek to stop brooding. “Come on in, we’re trying to have a party here.”
Derek can’t help it. He snorts and leans in to laugh inside Stiles’s mouth.
No, he’ll never forgive himself, any more than Peter will forgive him, or he’ll forgive Peter. But he’s got so much these days, and he’s so happy, that he’s forgetting how and why they died. Not them; he’ll never forget them and who they were even if the years dim their faces and voices, but standing here, surrounded by family and friends, Pack, he lets himself forget how they died. Because even if forgiveness is an unreachable goal, and acceptance is a plateau he has to work every single minute of every day to maintain, he has enough happiness in his life that he gets to forget from time to time.
And that’s more than enough for Derek, and his pack.
“Did you fall asleep here?” Peter’s laughter woke the six-year-old up.
Derek let his eyes open blearily as he shook off the remnants of sleep and tried to figure out why he’d drifted off sitting d- “It’s Christmas!”
“That it is, nephew mine,” Peter agreed. “What, does that mean something special to you?”
Derek spared his uncle an exasperated glare before running to the living room. “It’s Christmas, everybody!” He stopped suddenly at the sight of his entire family already congregated by the tree. Even the cat had beaten him there.
His sister rolled her eyes from where she stood, examining the different tags. “Yeah, Sherlock. We’ve all been up for ages but Mom insisted we wait until you were here to open stuff, and she wouldn’t let Uncle Peter wake…”
“That’s enough, Laura. Santa is still capable of revising that naughty and nice list,” his mother warned, and his sister subsided.
Derek couldn’t revel in his enjoyment of seeing his sister schooled because of the sheer excitement he felt at the sight of all the presents. He ran for the tree, and his legs comically cycled in the air as a strong arm wrapped itself around his waist and scooped him up mid-run. “Hey, little man. No Christmas hugs and kisses?”
Derek obliged his parents with quick hugs and kisses, but his distraction was obvious, and as soon as he was done he escaped to the tree. “What did I get?”
“Turns, kids. In fact, I’m going to play elf for the day,” Peter said as he took baby Ryan from Alex and stood over Derek and Laura.
“Mine first!” Laura and Derek yelled, and Ryan joined in with a babble. Peter absent-mindedly kissed his nephew’s fuzzy head and pulled a box out. “And the first recipient is… Miss Darcy!”
Derek and Laura couldn’t even be disappointed because it was their gift. Their mother ripped open the wrapping and exclaimed tearfully over the framed photographs inside. And then it was Derek’s turn, and then Laura’s, and little Ryan chortled over the wrapping and ignored the present when it was his. Even the cat got a little stuffed mouse and deigned to paw at it a little before remembering that he was above such things.
All too soon, there was nothing left under the tree and Derek collapsed in a sea of ribbon and colorful paper. “Best. Christmas. Ever.”
Laura smiled at him in rare perfect agreement as she sat playing patty-cake with their cousin. “What was your favorite?”
“The bike,” he answered promptly.
“Okay, kids, it’s time to clean up, wash your hands, then…” Peter called.
“Pancakes!” They all shouted together, and sprang to their feet, leaving Ryan to grab at the cat until an adult came to rescue it from the toddler’s moist grasp. Peter stood up, his nephew and biological son in his arms, and looked at the ornaments glinting in the sunlight on the tree. “Well, baby boy?”
Ryan threw his arms out and leaned back, squealing in pure, perfect joy.
THE END
Author: indusnm
Artist: dollarformyname
Back to Part One
*
Dean opened his eyes. For the first time in a long while, he had no idea where he was, and that didn’t bother him. He could feel the heat of someone beside him, someone he’d not just fucked but whom he’d slept with, and that should be bothering him but it wasn’t. Which, of course, was completely freaking him out.
An arm snaked around him and pulled him closer. “Stop overreacting. You’re an adult, you had sex with another, unmarried adult. Get over it.”
“Christ,” Dean exhaled noisily. “Sam must have noticed I wasn’t in the room-“
“Sam saw us last night. He didn’t throw a hissy fit and disown you or do anything much at all, so I think you’ll deal.”
“Sam saw?!?” Dean jumped out of bed and began looking for his pants. “Fuck it, I know they’re somewhere.”
“I killed Laura.”
Dean stopped moving clothes and sheets around and looked at Peter. Something about the set, almost unconcerned cast of Peter’s face made him stop and listen.
“The fire- it killed my family. My parents, my siblings, and my three nieces and nephews, with another on the way. Jamie and Bry were too young for school and Ryan’d had issues with the full moon the night before so we kept him home. But Derek and Laura, my older brother’s two, were at school. I don’t remember much about that day, except that I was with Darcy, Derek’s mother, doing some repairs in the upstairs bathroom when it started. We smelled something, and then we knew something was wrong. It was like someone had severed the wires in our brains. We knew we had to get to the kids, and that we were going to die if we stayed in that house, but we couldn’t seem to figure out how to get out. I think that the bitch, Kate Argent, must have put mountain ash on the windowsills when she seduced my underage nephew into letting her into our house for an afternoon fuck the day before. Thanks to the wolfsbane gas she dosed us with, I don’t remember much of what happened, though I can still see Jamie suffocate to death in her mother’s arms. The smoke, you see, kills before the fire does. Her eyes were looking right into mine as the light went out of them, and the only comfort I had was that I was going to die and be with them in a few minutes.”
Dean swallowed. “Okay,” he said stupidly. “Okay.”
Peter went on as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “I don’t know how long it was before I came back to myself, but it wasn’t that long. All I can remember is seeing Derek and Laura, shell-shocked and grieving. And the smell of that woman was still in my nostrils, almost drowning out the smell of burned flesh. See, I’d smelled her in the hour of what should have been my death, and I’d smelled her on Derek for the past few months. During the seven-year coma after that, Derek would visit and tell me things he’d never tell anyone else, things he thought no one was hearing, and I put all the pieces together. And in my angry, insane mind, I started to think the only way to obtain justice for those I lost was to become Alpha and do it myself, since Laura couldn’t or wouldn’t. It wasn’t until after I came back, after Derek and the kids killed me that I realized I’d killed more than an obstacle in my glorious master plan. I’d killed the girl who’d been the first baby in her generation, who’d taught me how to change diapers and hold babies, who’d walked to her father from my hands while her mother documented her first steps and cheered us on.”
Dean sat back down on the bed heavily. “Okay,” he said again.
“Is that all you can say? Okay?” Peter asked with understandable irritation.
Dean got why Peter was irritated, and a confession like that deserved one in turn. “My dad, before he died, told me I might have to kill my brother one day.”
Peter raised an eyebrow, searching for truth in Dean’s face, and then got to his knees. He crawled towards where Dean was sitting on the bed and cradled the hunter’s face in his hand. “Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t kill him.”
Dean shook him off. “You don’t get it. My dad wouldn’t say-“
“Fuck your dad.” Peter could feel Dean’s anger rise, but he was always more the type to face the storm with mocking laughter than run for shelter. “No, I get what he was doing but take it from someone who has the blood of someone they love on their hands. There’s always what you think is a good reason, and then you wake up one day and you know that was bullshit or temporary insanity or whatever. Find another way.”
“Find another way,” Dean repeated. He turned the words over on his tongue, thought about them a bit, before he smiled. He leaned over and kissed Peter, ignoring morning breath and all the work they had to do.
Peter smiled against his lips and gently pushed him down before straddling him on the bed.
*
The next day was, for lack of a better word, awkward, which wasn’t surprising considering the walls were not soundproof and there were parents there who’d heard their kids having sex. Stiles’s father tried not to look at Derek, who avoided being in the same room as Peter and Dean, and Chris Argent bristled every time Scott was in Allison’s vicinity. Sam, on the other hand, was falling over himself trying to show how supportive he was of his brother. Stiles wasn’t quite sure where Sam had managed to find a rainbow shirt and a PFLAG laptop decal in Beacon Hills before nine in the morning but hey, he wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t thought anyone could turn the shade of greenish-red Dean was sporting every time his brother spoke. Isaac seemed to be the only oblivious one, but that was probably because he spent most of his downtime skyping with Kyra, the werewolf mechanic he’d met last year while visiting Lydia and Jackson.
Melissa McCall came over after her shift with Chris’s hunters, who were staying in the town and watching over her and the general populace, while Erica and Boyd ran in from where they were patrolling the less-frequented borders of Beacon Hills. All of them picked up on the strange atmosphere but aside from a hurried, whispered conversation between Melissa and Stiles’s father, no one asked anything. He had a feeling Boyd and Erica had smelled enough, despite his shower (but it was with Derek so did that even count?) that they knew exactly what was going on, but they just smirked and kept quiet.
“Okay,” Melissa broke into the awkward start and stop of conversations, interrupting Sam in his rambling story of the first Gay-Straight Alliance meeting he’d attended at Stanford. It was probably also his last, but he’d gone to support a friend who’d just come out, so more power to him. “Okay, so what’s going on? What’s the plan?”
“Are we sure this thing is coming?”
“Yes,” Sam answered, but this time he was echoed by Derek, who shrugged when everyone stared at him. “Something is.”
Stiles stared at Derek. “You can feel it?” Turning to the others, he explained. “One of the books I read had a theory that Alphas have a stronger relationship to the forest. Sometimes, when a threat was coming, they would know before it got here.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “The birds aren’t talking to me, Stiles. This isn’t a Disney cartoon or some mystical story where I’m one with the forest. I got a call a few minutes ago from a pack member in French Camp; the family you mentioned that were killed by a rake-wielding neighbor were werewolves.”
“When were you going to tell us?” Scott demanded as he rose to his feet.
“Now, when we were all together. Sit down.” Derek’s voice was calm and tight, and there was enough authority to make even Scott obey without argument. “They were the Alpha and her family, to be precise. I’ve sent out feelers to the other towns you mentioned but I have a feeling we’re going to have similar news. Whatever this is, it’s hunting werewolves.”
In the silence that fell over the room, Melissa McCall moved closer to her son and Boyd took Erica’s hand. Then Sam broke the tense atmosphere and shot to his feet. “I have an idea, but I need to do more research.”
*
“So… J. K. Rowling had it wrong. Werewolves don’t join the Dark Side.”
Sam rolled his eyes but huffed out a laugh. “I guess, Lydia.” He moved closer to the phone as he spoke, unsure if she could hear everything over the background noise of beta training. “But you see what I do, right? You think they’re talking about werewolves?”
“Hey, I’ve taken four college semesters of Latin, like you did. We’re both reading this right. Werewolves are the natural enemies of demons, because they can sense them and Alphas can destroy them. But why now?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are packs everywhere, Sam, and they have been living peacefully for years. Some less peacefully than others, but regardless, there seems to be a concerted effort to go around killing Alphas.”
“Fuck… it’s the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He’s planning something,” Sam realized. “Something big is going down so they’re starting to take out the beings they know can stop them.”
Lydia didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Sam braced himself because he’d been warned she didn’t pull punches. “Sam, whatever is going on probably has something to do with what your family’s been fighting, what killed your mother and your father.”
“I know,” he whispered, knowing the werewolves could hear him. But it wasn’t them he was worried about.
Lydia sighed. “Well whatever it is, thanks for coming there and warning them. And please, Sam, keep my town and my pack as safe as you can.”
“I will.”
His voice was reassuring, but as she disconnected the call, Lydia bit her lip and stared into the distance. She was startled out of her distracted thoughts when strong, warm hands pressed on her shoulders. She looked up at Jackson and tried to smile, but her expression crumbled.
“Do we need to go back?” he asked, his hand already reaching for his phone. He’d go, too, risking the money and approval his parents meted out, even though he needed both. Derek’d ordered him not to burn his parental bridges because Derek thought family was sacrosanct, but Pack came first. His family’d get over their Beacon Hills issues way faster than he’d get over ditching his Pack.
She shook her head. “No, not this time. We need to work through the summer if we want to graduate early and get back to Beacon Hills after grad school. We’ll go back on the full moon as intended.”
His hands pressed down a little, and she put her own up to clasp his, feeling him hold it and bend down to kiss her palm. He came around the sofa to hold her and together they looked out the window and worried.
There were a lot of reasons to stay away. There were the parental threats to cut off all aid if Jackson went back, the destructive relationship Lydia still had with her parents, all the Supernatural bullshit that was probably going to get one or both of them killed one day, and the hunters. But there was one reason to go back. One very, very important reason. They were Pack.
“Okay, let’s go this weekend,” Lydia said.
Jackson smiled.
*
Scott had a book open in front of him, but had trouble focusing on it as he thought about Allison’s hair, the way she smiled at him, or how the sweat rolled down her face when she straddled him…
“Dude, you’re such a cliché,” Stiles’s mocking voice surprised him out of his thoughts. The house had been quiet, so he’d drifted off, but the sound of his best friend talking made him concentrate on his senses. It sounded like Stiles was in the kitchen.
“My dad taught me.” That was Dean’s voice. Scott could smell gun oil, and he couldn’t help snickering. Stiles was right; Dean was a cliché.
There was silence, and Scott couldn’t help thinking of his own father, who’d never really stuck around to teach him anything. But Stiles’s father had. “Mine did too. He had guns in the house so I had to learn to use them. Scott, too. My mom hated them- she’d rather they weren’t there and she was kinda rabidly anti-gun, but she got that my dad didn’t have a choice. Still, she also knew hiding them wouldn’t work so she was okay with my learning. But I don’t know, since she died, I haven’t been able to use them without thinking of how much she would have hated that.”
Again, silence. Stiles never mentioned his mother to strangers, and Scott was about to join them in the kitchen when Dean spoke. “Wait, are we having a moment?”
Scott didn’t hear what Stiles answered because his phone went off at that exact moment. A few seconds later he burst into the kitchen to spread the bad news. “It’s here.”
*
“So wait, you smelled something?”
“Yeah. Derek was patrolling the northern part of the road leading from the house to the preserve and he smelled matches burning. ‘Course, he checked it out because he didn’t want some kids setting the forest on fire, but there was no trace of fire. Just in case, he called Peter, Sam, and your dad and they came out to smell it. Peter said it could be sulfur. Sam said demons smelled like sulfur. So they think it’s here.” Scott spoke so quickly that they barely kept up as they drove through the forest, but his lungs were able to keep up with the speed that excitement brought to his vocal cords.
They got to where everyone else was gathered, and as soon as Dean got out of the car he started sniffing. “I don’t…” he began in confusion. “It’s not that clear.”
Peter stepped up behind him. “It’s faint for your human nose, and surrounded by a lot of other scents, but trust me, it’s there. It’s been a while, at least a couple of hours, so it’s not here any more.”
“So what’s the plan?” Stiles bounced on his toes a couple of times in his excitement. Out of the corner of his eye, his father saw Derek put his hand out towards Stiles as if to calm him, but then Derek stopped and turned away.
“We need to isolate ourselves,” the Sheriff decided. “This thing gets people to kill its targets, and to protect the people it makes do horrible things against their will, we need to not give them an opportunity.”
“There’s enough food in the house to hole up there a while,” Derek agreed. “Scott, I know your mother has to work but get Erica and Boyd to the hospital and have them stay with her and bring her right back here between shifts. Sheriff, Isaac is going to be going around with you on ride-alongs because he’s always dreamed of being a cop. Argent, you should probably send your hunters out of town.”
Chris wanted to argue, but he knew Derek was right. It made sense to have those who could smell the demon guarding the people who had to leave Hale House.
“I’ve been talking to Lydia, and we think there’s a way to stop Duane. We need to get the demon himself to come to us. From what I get, the bite of an Alpha is enough to make a demon mortal.”
“So Derek bites him, and we can kill him?” Dean asked.
Sheriff Stilinski looked troubled. “What about the human? Don’t demons possess people? Is killing the demon going to mean killing an innocent person?”
Sam exchanged a look with Dean, who wanted him to lie. But Sam had come to like and respect the Sheriff. “Yes, it does, and you’re right, but in this case I doubt the human would still be alive without the demon in him; demons aren’t careful about maintaining what they call their ‘meatsuits’ and he’s been possessed for a long time. He’s probably going to be grateful. Possession is a torment for the victims. Someone is using your body to do horrific things, and you have no control over it.”
Stiles shuddered. “That sounds like torture.”
“Yeah.” Dean thought of the young girl the Yellow Eyed Demon’s daughter had possessed, how she’d used her last breaths to thank him for a death that had released her from possession. “It is.”
*
“I feel like this is the hunt that is never going to end,” Dean complained.
Sam looked up from the books in front of him. “Dean, there’s so much to learn here. There are books that will never be in any library in the country, with creatures that even Bobby and Pastor Jim had never heard of. And then there’s the lore of creatures that we don’t need to hunt, who live peaceful lives side by side with humans.”
“Come on Sam, you know I’d rather be out there salting and burning then in here with a book!”
“Don’t you ever get the urge to just set up shop somewhere?”
Dean paused, remembering the homes he’d created in a million small towns all over America. “Yeah, sure I do,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t want to stop hunting.” Looking down at his hands, he added, “I don’t know if I know how to stop anymore.”
Sam swallowed. It was still too soon to think of how much he could hate his father, but sometimes it was difficult to think anything else. “I don’t know if I could just walk away from all of it. I thought that was all I wanted but if there’s anything the last couple of years have taught me, it’s that hunting will follow me wherever I go. But I guess if I can’t escape it, it might be cool if I could figure out a way to combine it with the life I’d like to have. I hate hunting, but I think I could live with it if I had a life outside of it.”
Dean looked at his brother narrowly for a few minutes and then changed the subject. “But it’s been eight days; how long before he makes his move?”
Sam thought about pushing, but decided to let it go. “He has to have figured out that we know he’s coming, or he’d have acted yesterday. He’s going to come here himself to spread his disease and take out the Alpha and anyone groomed to take over, so that the Pack tears itself apart.”
Dean thought of Peter and Derek, keeping a careful distance from each other as they navigated the hallways of their personal mausoleum, of Stiles and the way he blushed red when Derek entered a room, of Scott and the way he took care of his mother and girlfriend, of Boyd and Erica and their plans to open a bakery together, and of Isaac, who took to affection and respect with a thirst that made both Winchesters want to dig up his family for a good old-fashioned salt n’ burn. “We can’t let that happen.”
*
It was later that very day when everything came to a head. Dean and Erica had just put the finishing touches on dinner while Sam, Isaac and Peter laid the table. “What are we eating?” Peter asked as he debated over the cutlery.
“Mex”- Erica stopped mid-word when she heard her text message alert go off.
Then it was Stiles’s, Sam’s and Isaac’s. They all reached for their phones immediately but knew what the message said. Someone was coming to the house.
“Devil’s Traps!” Dean ordered, and everyone rushed to darken the lines of the Devil’s Traps they’d prepared ahead of time. He pulled out a flask of holy water and watched as Chris and Allison Argent dipped their arrows in it. Stiles, meanwhile, took his own supply and attached it to the water hose that lay coiled outside. He and Derek sprayed outside the house and by all the windows, covering all the entrances and exits except the front door. Halfway through, Derek stopped and let Stiles finish as he waited for Boyd and Scott to come back. He was half wolfed-out, scenting the air as he searched for the threat he knew was coming.
Boyd and Scott came running through the woods. Scott sported a bloody gash on his eyebrow but Boyd was dragging his leg and looked about ready to collapse. Derek ran towards him and caught him before he could. He handed him over to Scott and Stiles, telling the other two to take him inside. “It looks like wolfsbane, so get him to the Argents.”
They began to take Boyd into the house but Scott stopped first to describe what they’d seen. “I think they got the hunters to come here. The hunters are infected.”
“Fuck!” Derek waved them inside and stood outside his house, ready to protect it, and the people inside, with his life. He felt more than sensed his pack emerge to stand at his back.
Stiles, however, was still inside with Allison. They rummaged through their collection of herbs as Stiles berated Chris constantly. “Derek told you to send them away! They know how to deal with werewolves, they’ve seen us prepare for the Croatoan virus, and they’re susceptible to it. There was a reason he wanted them sent away!”
“I know!” Chris snapped back. “I told them to leave. But I don’t run an army, Stiles, and they have minds of their own.”
Stiles scoffed. “Yeah, I guess I should have expected hunters to not follow the rules.”
“Yes, you should have,” Chris agreed, acid dripping from every word.
“Enough!” Allison ordered. “Hey, Boyd, it’s going to be fine. I’m pretty sure this is it.” She quickly lit the wolfsbane on fire and then had Stiles and her father hold the young man down as she stuffed the wound. Almost as soon as Boyd had relaxed, they re-joined the battle.
The hunters whom Chris had ordered out had obviously recruited more people. Stiles wasn’t quite sure how many people were shooting at him and his pack, but there were a lot. He tried to keep an eye on his father and his… boyfriend? Lover? Alpha? Not that he worried about Derek, Sourwolf could take care of himself, but he couldn’t help having the sneaking suspicion that he was getting everything he wanted, only to have it all taken away.
He dodged a machete- who the hell carried around a machete- and swung his baseball bat at the head of the guy who’d been wielding it. They were too close together, so he wasn’t able to get in much of a swing, and the man stumbled a bit but didn’t fall. Stiles had time to think “oh shit,” before the hunter in front of him looked shocked. The hunter fell to his knees and then onto his back, the same look of shock staying on his face, and Stiles looked over him and into the eyes of the werewolf who’d saved him. “Hi,” Derek said with an irritatingly sexy grin.
“Hi,” Stiles parroted. He was pretty sure he had a goofy grin on his face, but who cared? Derek’s grin wasn’t any less goofy, and they were winning anyway, right?
But Derek suddenly stiffened and spun around. The hunters must have brought Molotov cocktails or something else flammable, because they’d managed, in the heat of the battle, to set Derek’s house on fire. Again.
“Boyd!” Erica screamed. “Boyd!” She ran towards the house but a hunter’s bullet hit her in the shoulder and she fell to the ground. She struggled up, but Derek shot past her before she could get to her feet.
Derek ran into the house, ignoring cries for him to stop. He leaped over flames and let his senses go wild, fearing he’d smell charred flesh, the odor that followed him into nightmares. But he heard a heartbeat, strong and excited, and followed it up the stairs.
Boyd was coughing constantly but he wouldn’t leave. “We have to save the books,” he gasped. The books had survived one devastating fire because they’d been stored away but would not survive another.
“Leave them,” Derek ordered, but Boyd refused. They were their culture and their history, and they’d saved their lives in the past and would save them again. Derek gave in and, instead of dragging Boyd out, grabbed Sam and Peter’s laptops and took those out as well.
They emerged, coughing, into the bloody, flame-lit night where the battle was almost done. Dean, Scott, Chris and Allison were finishing off the last of the hunters, and everyone else was just standing around, watching them walk out of the house with expressions of anger mixed in with relief. Erica ran towards Boyd and kissed him. Stiles also approached Derek, but more cautiously and awkwardly. “Dude, you went in there for a couple of books and a laptop?”
Derek shrugged. He wanted to kiss Stiles, but the way the younger man was shifting from foot to foot reminded him of all the reasons not to kiss him. He settled for pulling him in for a long, tight hug. Stiles hugged him back, clutching on as if he’d been terrified Derek wouldn’t get out on time.
“Not to interrupt the moment, but this isn’t over.” As Peter spoke, Derek was able to make out the smell of sulfur. He looked up and through the trees and saw a young man, probably just about Stiles’s age, but he smelled something much older and far darker inside of him.
Around him, the werewolves all smelled what he did, and they shifted. Dean and Sam finished off a hunter and stood, heavily armed and ready, watching the young man approach. The other humans were also ready, but all they could see was an unarmed, nicely dressed young man.
“You can’t let him come close, Derek!” Sam yelled. “He can infect any one of them.” Them, not us, but that was a thought for another time.
Derek sprang forward and ran towards the young man. It was as if his body had been waiting for this moment, because instead of shifting into the half man, half wolf form he normally took, Derek’s body continued the transformation until he was a wolf. It was the first time he’d fully transformed; a sign that he was finally embracing his status as an Alpha. He tore through the woods and his paws ate up the feet between them.
But Duane had his own tricks. When Derek was just a body length or so away, Duane waved his hand, making Derek’s body rise off the ground and slam into a tree. It hurt, but Derek’d been through worse. Before he could attack again, Peter jumped over him and managed to swipe his claws through Duane’s face before the demon used his powers to push him away. Peter’s head hit the tree hard enough that he lost consciousness immediately.
Then it was Scott who attacked from the side, but he didn’t draw any blood before he too was pushed away. Boyd and Erica attacked simultaneously, but Boyd’s lingering weakness doomed that attempt. Still, the double attack made it impossible for Duane to be too fancy in pushing them aside, and all he managed to do was throw them back a few feet.
The humans watched in frustration, wanting to help their friends and family, but unwilling to risk infection. They could end up hurting the others if they came under the demon’s control.
The werewolves all noted how much harder it was for Duane to use his powers on them when their attacks were coordinated, and Derek snarled out an instruction that they all seemed to understand. They circled Duane once, twice, and then they moved.
Scott and Isaac went for the feet, Boyd and Erica for the torso, and Derek made for the throat. He got Duane’s shoulder but that was enough. There was a hoarse scream, and then Duane’s eyes filled with an awful, horrifying black color that made all of them back off a bit.
There was the sharp crack of a bullet, and then a hole appeared in the center of Duane Tanner’s attractive forehead. He fell over immediately, and Dean walked into the circle of werewolves, gun in hand, and stood over the possessed boy’s body. “Sorry, kid,” he said sincerely. “But it had to be done this time.” Then, crouching down, he whispered, “For Sargent Varko, you asshole.”
*
“Well, you’re all invited to come stay at my place, except for those of you who have homes, of course,” Sheriff Stilinski offered. “And on that note, I’m going to go to my house, where I’m going to have a drink and then a shower in my bathroom, and then I’m going to sleep in my bed. Stiles, you’re coming with me. And that’s not a suggestion.”
Stiles could have said that he was twenty, and beyond his father’s orders, but the truth was that he kind of wanted to sleep in his own bed too. He looked at Derek, who was standing next to his uncle over the remnants of his still-burning house, and then back at his father.
“Go, Stiles,” Derek ordered gently, and Stiles went.
“I’m going to take you up on that offer, Sheriff, if that’s okay,” Sam said gratefully. He picked up his laptop and walked towards the Impala, looking at Dean to see if he’d follow.
Chris packed up the last of the hunter’s bodies and slammed the door shut. “I think I’m heading out now too. Allison, you’ll be home after dropping Scott and Isaac off at Melissa’s?”
“Yes, dad. See you later.” She and the boys left, all throwing one last look at Derek as they left.
Dean went to follow his brother, but then turned back at the last minute. He walked up to Derek and held his shoulder for a second, and then turned to Peter. He took Peter’s arm and pulled him back so that he could kiss him, long and lingering. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised.
Everyone left, and it was just the last two Hales. Derek watched the house burn. It wasn’t really the house he’d grown up in, that was long lost, but it was the closest they had.
Some small trinkets, remnants of a family and a normal life, had survived the first blaze, but they were beyond saving now. It had been a constant source of painful joy, the glare of a perfect sunrise, when he found something that had once meant nothing. Just three days before he’d been in what had been the vegetable garden, and he’d found the dog monopoly piece where his mom must have hidden it to avoid all the fights the kids had over it. It was truly painful to think that all that he’d managed to save was probably gone, and that he’d never again feel the heart-wrenching, angry connection he used to feel when he found remnants of his happy past.
“Are you going to rebuild it?” Peter asked hoarsely.
Derek thought about it for a second. “No,” he decided. He was done with this part of his history. It seemed as if his motto should have been: if you build it, they will come to burn it down.
“Good,” Peter said, and he exhaled. It was as if a chain had been broken for both of them. Peter could maybe begin to escape his ghosts, and Derek could begin to let go of his anger and grieve. “Put something here, will you? Not another house, but something of them. All ten of them.”
“Eleven,” Derek corrected, because even if Laura had survived the fire, Kate’s actions had set into motion events that had sealed his older sister’s fate. For all intents and purposes, Laura had died in that house with their parents and family. The years he’d gotten with her ,when she’d held them together with nothing more than her strength and her resolve, had been a gift.
“Let’s go?” Peter asked. Derek nodded, and the two men began making their way to Derek’s car. They weren’t touching or holding each other; there was too much between them for that, but for the first time in eleven years, they walked in sync with the other’s steps.
THE NEXT DAY
“Are you going somewhere?”
Sam jerked his head up at the question, almost losing his grip on the newly laundered shirts he was packing away in the duffle bag. “Um, what?”
Stiles smiled from where he was standing in the doorway of the Stilinski guest room. “I asked if you were going somewhere.”
“Well, the case is over, which is usually Dean and my cue to start going.” Sam shrugged, as if the constant moving didn’t get to him, as if the urge to grow roots didn’t tear at him.
Stiles stared at him and even though his hyperactivity made it impossible for him to hold the penetrating gaze for too long, Sam had the feeling Stiles knew exactly what he wasn’t saying. As if in support of Sam’s theory, Stiles asked, “Why?”
Sam wondered where to start: the warrants for their arrest, the demon, their mother… But Stiles had heard all of it over the past couple of weeks, so he just shrugged again.
“You know that we can help you start over, that my dad can keep the police off your tail, and that your brother is more than capable of continuing the hunts without you, and everyone knows you hate hunting, so I don’t get why you have to go.”
“You don’t know everything,” Sam told him.
“So tell me!”
Sam sat down on the bed and then leaned back, putting his head on his folded arms and staring up at the ceiling. “Apparently, my dad told my brother he might need to kill me one day. I think- I think the demon did something to me, the night he killed my mother. Something bad enough that my own father was afraid of what I might do.”
Stiles had paled a bit, but he kept up his steady gaze. “That sucks.”
Sam laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Yeah, it does.”
“Still not getting why you have to go. In fact, it kind of sounds like you should stay away from hunting, if you want my opinion. Which you probably don’t, but that’s never stopped me from giving it.”
Sam looked at him in shock. “Um, I have to find the Yellow Eyed Demon and figure out what he did to me. I have to stop whatever he’s planning.”
“Dude, from everything you’ve told me, that’s exactly what he wants you to do, and that probably means it’s the last thing you should be doing.” Sam stopped breathing for a second, but Stiles kept going. “And anyway, man- vengeance, so not a good idea. Look at what happened to Peter. He’s a walking advertisement for what happens when you start letting vengeance eat at your soul!”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It kind of is,” Stiles said, more gently. “I get needing justice, and I get what a lack of justice gets you. I’ve also had Derek, who’s still a 15-year-old kid who fell in love with a sex offending, baby-murdering bitch, as a walking advertisement for the need for closure, because he’s never gotten it. But dude, you know that Dean’s going to get justice for your mom and your girlfriend, and for all the people along the way who don’t matter enough to get backstories. I’m not telling you to walk away from the supernatural, but I’m offering you a way to do that while you go to school and make friends and become a part of the pack.”
“I don’t think the demon will let me,” Sam admitted. “And even if he did, I can’t leave Dean.”
“Fuck the demon, and don’t worry about us. We’re freaking werewolves and lizards and witches, and we have ways of taking care of ourselves. If there’s anywhere you could stay, Sam, it’s with us.”
For a second, Sam let himself think of it. If it was possible anywhere, it was possible here. Except for one thing. “Dean?”
Stiles smiled. “Yeah, dude, I don’t think you have to worry about that one,” he said enigmatically, and then ruined it all by wiggling his eyebrows. Cackling a little at Sam’s groan, he made a quick retreat, saying only, “Think about it.”
Stiles ran down the stairs, stumbling a little near the bottom but righting himself before he did any damage. “Meant to do that,” he said quickly but Derek’s back did not indicate that he’d heard him. “Hey, Sourwolf, what are you brood-” he began, but then stopped when he came up alongside Derek and followed the werewolf’s gaze to a half-full box on the dining table. He sighed. “Can’t believe I’m moving out and going to Cal soon.”
Derek stood silently for a moment and then raised his already stiff shoulders. “Stiles,” he began gently, and caused all of Stiles’s warning systems to go on red alert. “We need to talk.”
Stiles glanced back at the box before returning back to his boyfriend’s eyes and shook his head. “Oh no, no you are not doing this to me. You are not breaking up with me, dude.”
Derek caught his flailing hands and forced him to still. “Stiles, listen to me.”
“No, you are not doing this to me.”
“Stiles, listen!” It was the alpha voice, but something real and sad and steady in Derek’s voice made Stiles obey. “Stiles,” he said again in that gentle voice that Stiles was already beginning to hate, “this isn’t an ending.”
“Then why does it sound like one?”
“It’s a beginning.” Derek ducked his head and caught Stiles’s eyes, forcing him to look at him. “It’s an amazing, wonderful beginning and you deserve to go on it without worrying about the boyfriend back home. And I’m not breaking up with you. I’m just proposing a two-year break.”
“Why?” Stiles was suddenly furious. “Why are you doing this? Why would you make a move and then end this for two fucking years a few days later?”
“Because I never meant to make a move until after those two years!” Derek exploded. “Damn it Stiles, I wanted you to go to college free, and then I wanted you to come back and choose me. If we start on this now, if we use words like forever and always and all that now, you’re going to wake up one day and never know if you settled for me because that was all you knew. You’re going to be like one of those people who wakes up after ten years of marriage and realizes they never knew there was a world out there that was bigger than the town and life they grew up with! Or worse, you’re going to make me become the one person I swore I wouldn’t be. Know who that is?”
Struck silent, Stiles could only shake his head.
“Kate.” Stiles twisted away and protested at that, but Derek steamed on. “She was older and hot and I thought I was in love because it felt great that someone like her would be into me. I’m not saying I’m going to take advantage of you and kill your family or that you at twenty is comparable to me at fifteen, but still she got me at a time before I could make informed choices and took away all the great aspects of what I should have experienced in college or just being freaking young. There are huge gaps in my life, people I’ll never meet and things I’ll never get to do, because she took away the freedom I had to do them.” Derek stopped there. “I won’t be Kate.”
“You’re not, and no matter how many years -“
“No matter how many years is right.” Derek smiled sadly, and in that moment they both knew he’d won. “Stiles, for four years you’ve been the person I’ve trusted most. If I had a problem, I’d only need to text you and you’d give me five different ways to kill it by the next morning. And I’d like to think I’ve been the same for you. That was more than enough for four years, and it can be enough for another two. Another two years where you get to be a typical college student, where you get to experiment, and then if you still want to be with me, forever, I’ll be here and we’ll be pack.”
Stiles wanted to argue, but instead, what came out was, “You’ll wait?”
Derek’s smile widened. “Stiles, I spent eleven years after Kate waiting for you. I can wait a couple more. And in the meantime…”
“In the meantime,” Stiles agreed, and it was as much a promise as the way he grabbed Derek and pulled him close, pressing his face into Derek’s neck and breathing him in, feeling him scent him in return. “In the meantime.”
*
Dean packed away the wooden box that the Argents had given him, and sent a quick, silent thanks to somewhere he hasn’t quite defined yet that his brother had reminded him to take notes when Chris was talking about how the contents of the box worked. He closed the trunk of the car, stretched to work out the kinks his back had developed as he’d bent over the Impala’s secret compartment and turned, only to jump in shock. “Damn it, can’t you people stop sneaking up on me?”
Peter smirked and shrugged. “It’s a part of the gift, Dean. Aside from wearing a bell- and no, that’s not an option- I don’t see that happening.” He stopped speaking and shifted, uncharacteristically uncomfortable in his own skin.
“What?” Dean asked suspiciously. Peter’s behavior was a lot like Sammy’s had been as a kid when he’d wanted something he knew Dad would freak out over, but Peter shouldn’t have had any requests… “Oh hell no.”
To his credit, Peter didn’t dissemble. “Dean, you know that Sam’s happy here, that he wants to become Pack.”
“He’s not going to become a werewolf -“
Peter waved his hand dismissingly. “No, no one is suggesting the bite, and anyway, there are human members. But he’s happy here and there are good schools near enough that he can go with the rest of them, finish up his undergrad and finally go to law school. It’ll be safer for him and God knows it may be safer for the rest of us.”
“Hey, I told you that stuff in private,” Dean spoke in an angry whisper, shooting panicked glares around him.
“No one’s around. But this is the best place for him and you know it. He’s with people who know the supernatural and can help him fight it off. And can let him build a life and protect anyone he builds it with. Which is what the demon tried to destroy. You have to know that Sam being with you, on this path, is what the demon wanted so it has to be the worst possible place for him to be. This is a place where monsters, both human and not, try to be good, where horrible things happen but people rebuild, and I can’t think of a better place for Sam to be.”
Dean couldn’t argue, but at the same time, he couldn’t quite imagine getting back in that car without Sam by his side. And, “I can’t stay.”
“No, you can’t,” Peter said gently. “And you can’t be on your own. Or at least you shouldn’t. Which makes you a lot like me. I can’t stay here, with Derek. I love Derek as much as I’d love any child of my own, and I know he loves me, but the specter of Laura stands between us. Where she’ll always be, and rightfully so. I know I deserve to be haunted by her for the rest of my life, but I can live with her ghost when I’m not here, surrounded by my worst sins.”
“Are you saying you want to come with me, to be a hunter like me? With me?” Dean tried to imagine a life of hunting with someone who wanted to be there, who had as much darkness within him as he did but who somehow made the whole world brighter, who would share his bed and hunts with equal passion and competence... It was impossible and all too possible to imagine, all at once. But this wasn’t an easy life, and he didn’t wish it on anyone. “Do you realize what that would mean?”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Well, we’re going to have to negotiate where we stay and how we stay; I have enough money to live in luxury for the rest of my life and there’s no way in hell you’re getting me in a motel 6 outside of an emergency. Hell, I’d be perfectly satisfied staying in the woods before I’d sleep on scratchy sheets or use a bathroom that’s got anything on 6 legs moving around in there.”
“That’s not what I meant, but you should know that ghosts don’t always haunt five-star hotels.”
“I don’t have to work where I sleep, and I get what you meant.” Peter looked at the still smoky remains of the place he’d called home. “I know what your life means. And you should remember that I’ve been hunting since before you were born and that that I don’t die easily or permanently. But before you agree to take me with you, you should know that if you hunt with a werewolf, there are hunts you won’t be able to take and prey that you can’t kill.”
“Werewolves,” Dean acknowledged.
“Oh, I have no issue with killing rogues. I was one, yes, but I know how rogues can make life difficult for those of us trying to go… legitimate. But there are monsters who are causing no harm and humans who are as evil as demons, and I’d rather kill those who deserve it than those who were born a little different.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re going to be just like Sam and have a debate every time we go on a hunt, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Peter said, then smiled seductively. “Or maybe we can just agree to kill whatever’s killing and then fuck it out on silk sheets in some ridiculously expensive hotel room?”
Dean closed his eyes and felt Peter’s warm, gentle hands cup his face. “I’ve never hunted with anyone but family, or people who were family in all but name.”
Peter leaned forward until his breath brushed Dean’s lips. “Some day, I hope that I, and mine, will be in that category.”
Dean was so used to holding family close, to grasping on to what he had tightly as it tried to slip through his hands, that for a second he could not compute what Peter was offering. Then he opened his eyes and senses and figured it out. Pack, home, family- love, and all he had to do was say, “Yes.”
EPILOGUE- SIX YEARS LATER (the present)
Isaac whoops as he paints the last bit of trimming with a flourish. “Done!”
Scott smiles at his friend’s enthusiasm. “Looks good, Isaac.” Then, as Isaac blushes, he turns to his wife and quickly asks, “Are you sure you should be around the paint fumes?”
“Oh my God, Scott,” Allison groans. “I’m pregnant with a werewolf child; he or she’s hardly going to be allergic to non-lead paint fumes, in the womb no less. If you’re going to be like this for all nine months…”
Lydia sighs. “Can we please stop talking about this pregnancy?“ She rolls her eyes as everyone around her looks shocked. “Oh, whatever, Allison and Scott know that I’m happy for them and perfectly ready to fight Erica for godmother rights, werewolf or not, but that’s not what today is about. Today’s about the new Hale house, and Derek finally embracing the concept of four solid walls, a roof that doesn’t leak, running water and, hold the presses, electricity.” Though her words are sarcastic, her tone lacks its usual cutting bite. She’s as touched by this moment as the rest of them.
Derek would be touched too, if he could have spared any emotion for it. In some small part of himself he’s still aware of his surroundings, of Pack around him, in what is his new yard and in his home. He can hear voices from inside murmuring as they set down rugs and move furniture around a bit, but even though he can hear every word, he isn’t listening to any of it.
Instead, his heart is in his mouth as he looks straight at his new home. The house is still on Hale land; he has to keep his home there to ensure that the Pack always has it to roam on, but there are trees and enough space separating them that he can’t even see the place where his family died. Not that there’s much to see; in the past few years his Pack has done a good job of planting shrubs, flowers, and trees so that there is nothing to tell visitors that ten people died there in a horrific fire other than a plaque, engraved solely with ten names, and ten beautiful white rosebushes. He rarely lets a day pass without going to the site to tend those ten bushes, and the one red rosebush, for Laura, but he is glad that he can’t see them from his new home.
It’s a nice house, big enough for the Pack, but it looks nothing like his the home his mother built. It has more contemporary and sleek lines, with brighter colors that reflect Lydia’s burgeoning interior designer aesthetic more than his mother’s traditional sense. There is a basement, but it has multiple exits hidden all over the property and modes of communication with the outside world so that no one can ever lock the Pack in there to die.
But more than that, it’s home. And it’s never more home than when Stiles opens the door and peeks out. He’s holding a bottle of champagne, and Derek isn’t all that surprised when Stiles insists that they bang it on the front door.
“This isn’t a ship, Stiles,” Jackson rolls his eyes. He glances quickly at his watch, making sure he doesn’t have to leave for the hospital any time soon. His residency has him working an insane number of hours, and he’s grateful for the stamina that lycanthropy gives him. Sam, struggling with associate hours, is bitterly envious of Jackson’s abilities.
“Plus, I just got finished painting, and I don’t want to have to touch up the door,” Isaac groaned. “Scott, stop encouraging him.” Scott’s too busy laughing to argue.
But it’s Derek who takes the bottle from Stiles’s hand and, after a quick kiss on his husband’s lips, shatters it against the door. He watches the Pack tumble over each other as they rush inside to admire their own work, and he looks again at what they’ve built.
As he stands in the threshold, a whisper in the wind on an otherwise still night catches his attention and he turns his head. A light breeze is rustling the trees around him, trees that have watched him learn to walk, stumble and fall, and walk again. They are old, loved friends and he can’t help thinking that they are celebrating with him. It’s been a long, hard road to rebuilding, but standing where he is, he finally knows peace.
He will never forgive himself for what he did, what he brought down on his family. But with time, and with love, he’s learned something approaching acceptance.
“Hey, Wolfman!” Stiles insinuates himself between Derek’s arm and his body and angles his face so that it’s almost pressed against Derek’s. Then he lets himself go a little cross-eyed looking into Derek’s eyes because he knows just how to get Derek to stop brooding. “Come on in, we’re trying to have a party here.”
Derek can’t help it. He snorts and leans in to laugh inside Stiles’s mouth.
No, he’ll never forgive himself, any more than Peter will forgive him, or he’ll forgive Peter. But he’s got so much these days, and he’s so happy, that he’s forgetting how and why they died. Not them; he’ll never forget them and who they were even if the years dim their faces and voices, but standing here, surrounded by family and friends, Pack, he lets himself forget how they died. Because even if forgiveness is an unreachable goal, and acceptance is a plateau he has to work every single minute of every day to maintain, he has enough happiness in his life that he gets to forget from time to time.
And that’s more than enough for Derek, and his pack.
“Did you fall asleep here?” Peter’s laughter woke the six-year-old up.
Derek let his eyes open blearily as he shook off the remnants of sleep and tried to figure out why he’d drifted off sitting d- “It’s Christmas!”
“That it is, nephew mine,” Peter agreed. “What, does that mean something special to you?”
Derek spared his uncle an exasperated glare before running to the living room. “It’s Christmas, everybody!” He stopped suddenly at the sight of his entire family already congregated by the tree. Even the cat had beaten him there.
His sister rolled her eyes from where she stood, examining the different tags. “Yeah, Sherlock. We’ve all been up for ages but Mom insisted we wait until you were here to open stuff, and she wouldn’t let Uncle Peter wake…”
“That’s enough, Laura. Santa is still capable of revising that naughty and nice list,” his mother warned, and his sister subsided.
Derek couldn’t revel in his enjoyment of seeing his sister schooled because of the sheer excitement he felt at the sight of all the presents. He ran for the tree, and his legs comically cycled in the air as a strong arm wrapped itself around his waist and scooped him up mid-run. “Hey, little man. No Christmas hugs and kisses?”
Derek obliged his parents with quick hugs and kisses, but his distraction was obvious, and as soon as he was done he escaped to the tree. “What did I get?”
“Turns, kids. In fact, I’m going to play elf for the day,” Peter said as he took baby Ryan from Alex and stood over Derek and Laura.
“Mine first!” Laura and Derek yelled, and Ryan joined in with a babble. Peter absent-mindedly kissed his nephew’s fuzzy head and pulled a box out. “And the first recipient is… Miss Darcy!”
Derek and Laura couldn’t even be disappointed because it was their gift. Their mother ripped open the wrapping and exclaimed tearfully over the framed photographs inside. And then it was Derek’s turn, and then Laura’s, and little Ryan chortled over the wrapping and ignored the present when it was his. Even the cat got a little stuffed mouse and deigned to paw at it a little before remembering that he was above such things.
All too soon, there was nothing left under the tree and Derek collapsed in a sea of ribbon and colorful paper. “Best. Christmas. Ever.”
Laura smiled at him in rare perfect agreement as she sat playing patty-cake with their cousin. “What was your favorite?”
“The bike,” he answered promptly.
“Okay, kids, it’s time to clean up, wash your hands, then…” Peter called.
“Pancakes!” They all shouted together, and sprang to their feet, leaving Ryan to grab at the cat until an adult came to rescue it from the toddler’s moist grasp. Peter stood up, his nephew and biological son in his arms, and looked at the ornaments glinting in the sunlight on the tree. “Well, baby boy?”
Ryan threw his arms out and leaned back, squealing in pure, perfect joy.
THE END