Dogsbody prologue
Title: Dogsbody; The Adventures of Allie Hale
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Genre: Alternate Universe, drama, touch of romance.
Style: Mostly narration based.
Warning: Contains canon-typical violence and death, and implied statutory rape in this installment [well, mostly from knowing canon], attempted sexual assault in later chapter probably.
[ie, Peter Hale and Kate Argent being themselves]
Pairings present in fic as a whole: Jackson/Lydia, Stiles/Allison, Scott/Lydia, unfortunate Kate/Derek.
When Allison Argent was ten years old, her family moved to Beacon Hills, and she got the best babysitter ever. Derek wore denim jackets, and drove a Subaru, and if she finished her homework in time, he'd let her pick which Disney movie to watch, and braid her hair.
When Derek Hale was sixteen, a family of Hunters came to town, and his parents said we need to know what they know, and Laura had graduated High School early and was in her first year of college in another town, and Derek was the only one in the Pack the right age to earn extra money through babysitting.
~
After six months in Beacon Hills, Victoria and Chris Argent are growing increasingly uneasy. They can tell here's a Pack of werewolves here, but they can't tell who any of the are. And granted, none of the townsfolk are turning up dead or maimed, so perhaps their presence is enough to make the wolves behave. But Chris isn't used to living so long in one place, and Gerard keeps asking for updates, and what's taking you so long Chris, do I need to come out there myself?
The only upside is that Allison's doing really well in school, and Derek is the most reliable babysitter they've ever had. He's even watched Allison on a half-hours' notice a few times, when Chris and Victoria had been called out by other Hunters on short notice.
A few months before Allison's eleventh birthday, Aunt Kate moves in with them.
~
Kate Argent figures out Derek within a couple of weeks, and doesn't tell anyone. If Chris hasn't figured things out by now, then he doesn't deserve for Kate to share intel, and the same goes for the rest of the Hunters involved. She'll just do this on her own.
And Gerard and his demands for updates can just wait this is delicate situation Gerard hold your horses, an I have things under control.
A few weeks more, and all she needs is a distraction for Chris and Victoria on the other side of town, and she'll be all set.
~
Derek gets a call around nine at night or so, the Argents need him to babysit Allison on short notice again.
They've just finished watching Mulan when he gets a very bad feeling, and calls home.
When no one answers, he buckles Allison into the Subaru, because Victoria and Chris aren't answering their cell phones and he can't leave Allison alone she's eleven.
~
The propane tank in the basement exploding launches Peter out of the burning house at the same time the cars converge on Kate; Victoria and Chris drive right up, and Derek stops just within sight of the house and tells Allison to stay in the car.
[half a state away, Laura is all of a sudden an Alpha what just happened]
[Peter is on fire and he can smell his family burning and but no one's screaming anymore they're dead they're dead they're dead-]
[all of the Argents present live, but two of the four arsonists Kate got to help have their throats ripped out]
Allison doesn't stay in the car.
Her memories of that night are mostly fire and screaming and pain, but a few moments stand out, like her parents on the ground, Dad staunching a flow of blood from Mom's leg.
Something slicing into her back, and then a gunshot.
Aunt Kate pointing a gun at her and crying and saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh baby I'm so sorry."
Then being thrown back into the Subaru, and blacking out.
~
The Argents have been doing this for generations, they have contacts high up in about forty state governments, and they're working on the other ten.
The Hale House Fire can't be passed off as an electrical accident, not with the freaking bullet the hospital staff pulled out of Peter Hale sitting in the police evidence locker. And Kate kicked the bodies of two of her accomplices into the fire after Derek stole Allison away, so the claw marks on their throats wouldn't raise questions, and scared off her other two helpers. But she's going to have to keep her head down for a while.
Victoria passes her leg injury off as a car accident, and Chris is alternating between wanting to kill his sister and wanting to kill himself, and wanting to track the remaining Hales down.
Gerard vetoes that option. "We still don't know the thresh hold for the Change taking effect, Chris. If your sister was right about the depths of those wounds, and she was in a much better position to see than you were, then Allison is either dead, or as good as dead."
The Argents have been Hunting werewolves for a long time. Casualties happen, and cover stories are good, but not needing cover story is better, and very shortly, as far as all official records are concerned, Chris and Victoria Argent never had a daughter.
~
A month later, Laura Hale surfaces at the other end of California from Beacon Hills, with her younger brother and cousin. Laura's now the legal guardian for Derek and Elizabeth "Allie" Hale. She stays on the radar long enough to grab the insurance money, but not enough for the police from Beacon Hills to catch up and ask if her family had any enemies, and then she vanishes again.
~
Allie's human, and sometimes that's an asset, like when Laura gets tangled in a net woven out of wolfsbane, or they need someone to negotiate that won't get shot on sight.
Sometimes it's a problem. Over the years, she acquires a wide collection of scars, starting with the claw lines down her back. There's a little one between her last two ribs on her left side, where a spear went through Derek and into her. She's pretty sure that happened in Montana, but it might have been Idaho. The set circling her right ankle came from an Omega grabbing onto her as he slid over the edge of a cliff in Oregon, Laura's grip on the collar of her leather jacket the only thing keeping her from sliding over too.
[They all wear leather jackets now, since it's better protection from road rash when you slip on the concrete with a Hunter after you.]
At fifteen, Allie gets a gash on her arm and a broken bone, from an improperly sharpened ax. When Allie doesn't start healing, the Hunter-in-training that hit her drops the ax, eyes widening, and starts apologizing profusely. The trainee's mentor isn't apologetic at all- a human that runs with wolves is a dog, kid, nothing more -but it's still enough of a faux pas to get them out of that territory without further harassment.
[Laura and Derek don't get any scars, though they both get new sets of nightmares]
~
Sometimes, when they find a town without any obvious Hunters, Allie gets enrolled in school for a bit, and Laura leaves for weeks at a time. The first is when Allie's thirteen, and Laura comes back with a set of fake IDs for all three of them. The next time is after the Oregon Omega Incident, and Laura brings back a gun for Allie, and takes them to Vegas for a week for a marksmanship course.
A couple months before Allie's seventeenth birthday, when they're in Arizona, Laura gives Derek the keys to the Camaro they picked up in Tennessee, and gets on a Greyhound bus.
She said she'd call soon.