All Our Yesterdays

[princeescalusi]

Chapter 4

The wheels of the car made a deep humming noise against the rough concrete of the highway. It was strangely relaxing to Scott, partially because of how normal it seemed. A million cars, trucks, and busses had passed over this highway in exactly the same way that his car was passing over it.

Scott crossed the border between Arizona and New Mexico about an hour after sunrise; the sky was clear in front of him and there was only wispy clouds in his rear-view mirror. He passed a few other vehicles on U.S. 64 which was common for this time of year and this time of the morning. All around the highway, the desert spread out in front of him, dead and unwelcoming. He knew, intellectually, that it really wasn’t dead. He had learned that by spending time in deserts just like this one over the years. He knew that life was there, but it was hidden. Waiting.

Scott had driven from San Francisco to Kayenta, Arizona in one sitting. When he had finally pulled over in the tiny town, he had been exhausted. Alpha werewolf or not, thirteen and a half hours alone in a Prius was going to drain anyone. On the positive side, the motel had been had been surprisingly well kept. The bed had been really, really comfortable, something he wouldn’t have expected in a town that strained to see its population reach five hundred.



Blindly groping with one hand, he searched through the radio stations to find some music. Due to this trip, he now had a thorough categorical knowledge of radio stations throughout California and Arizona. Learning that had been an unplanned necessity, as he had forgotten his phone at Stiles’ apartment.

Scott was suspicious of himself. He supposed he could have done it by accident, but it was not like he had been in a rush when he had left. He had had time for Stiles to cook breakfast. He was pretty sure that while he hadn’t planned to leave it, he had to have done it on purpose, and he wasn’t sure why he had made that subconscious choice. Maybe he wanted to be out of contact from everyone for a while. He certainly had enough reason to avoid his mother and Derek. Maybe he wanted to have an excuse to visit Stiles on the way back. The night before had been productive as catharsis went, but it might be nice to hang with his best friend without tears.

Stiles had been right in the most uncomfortable way a person could be right. He had spoken a truth that couldn’t be denied any longer, even by Scott, and that truth, coupled with the concern of his mother and friends, was angling to be an enormous pain in his ass.

They were supposed to have gotten better, and they hadn’t. Though, in all fairness to the rest of humanity, no one had actually told them that they were supposed to get better. Scott and Stiles had assumed that as they grew up all the nightmares would fade. They had assumed that one day, they’d be just like everyone else; that the torture, possession, sleep-wrecking horror, guilt and depression would just go away.

It hadn’t worked out that way.

Scott had watched it not work out for Stiles and Lydia. Scott had thought, at the end of high school, the long path that his two closest friends had started down since the third grade would lead to a happy ending. He had wanted it to be a happy ending. Maybe he had become too invested in it being a happy ending.

Scott had been there when it started, when Stiles had hatched his slightly creepy ‘ten-year plan’ to win Lydia’s affections. And maybe it had been more than slightly creepy, but it did not matter where it had started, it only mattered where it ended. He had watched Stiles learn to appreciate Lydia for who Lydia was, not who he imagined her to be, at the same Stiles had learned to do the same with all the people he loved. He had watched Stiles learn to stop trying to earn Lydia’s love, because that’s not how love worked.

As he grew up, Stiles had stopped trying to win her, and he had chosen to become her friend. Unsurprisingly, they made an excellent team. Stiles’ deductive capabilities and knowledge of law enforcement married to Lydia’s crystal-sharp mind and her Banshee abilities had aided the pack, had aided Scott, on more than one occasion. And in that time of working together, Scott was sure that Lydia had come to see Stiles the way he saw Stiles. It was no surprise to the alpha when that friendship turned to love. Scott remembered how good he felt when he realized they were in love; he couldn’t imagine how good they felt.

But, as it turned out, love wasn’t enough. And wasn’t that a kick in the balls?

They had gotten married after Lydia had completed her doctorate. Stiles had confessed that even the relatively short distance between Virginia and Massachusetts had been stressful on both of them, and they decided that they needed to affirm their commitment. Scott, of course, had been Best Man; Malia had been the Maid of Honor, and they had both been mature enough not to make the wedding party uncomfortable. Lydia had planned the affair out with her usual skill and taste; it had been something out of a magazine. Scott had spent the night pretending that watching their happiness while Malia avoided him didn’t feel like getting punched repeatedly.

Six years later, Claudia had been born. As he held the bundle of preciousness in the hospital, he felt like Stiles had stabbed him in the stomach again, only this time in a good way.

Scott didn’t realize how much of a bad friend he had become until much later. He hadn’t seen the cracks in the marriage. He hadn’t heard the lies when Stiles told him everything was ‘fine’ and ‘great.’ He hadn’t seen the brittleness in Lydia’s smiles. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. Maybe he wanted to think that his friends were living happy lives while he was off defeating those who would hurt them.

There was love in the marriage. Scott felt it. They all felt it. But he hadn’t really understood what was rotting beneath the love until Lydia and he had had a long talk. She wasn’t ever going to be controlled again, Lydia had explained. Not by anyone, not even the man she loved. And Stiles - well, Stiles had always had trouble separating devotion from possession. So, they had loved each other fiercely while tearing each other apart.

Lydia had admitted to him that she had hoped being a father would have made Stiles more like his own father, Noah. Instead, it had made him worse. His paranoid obsession with Theo at the beginning of senior year looked like neglect compared to the extremes he had went to once his daughter was born. Claudia wasn’t the answer to their problems; it was the storm that broke the dam.

Scott couldn’t even pick up the pieces for them. In the end, he didn’t even try; it wasn’t like he had any better skills when it came to romantic love.

After all, he had stopped loving Allison years ago.

He wasn’t exactly sure when it had happened, when he stopped wishing for the laws of the universe to unravel themselves and for her to be alive again. He wasn’t sure when he stopped hoping for a surprise villain with an ancient and secret form of magic to try to use a resurrected Allison against him. He still felt the pain of her death; he still felt the guilt of her death. He still could visit the grave and talk to her. But he did not ache for her. He didn’t dream about her. Nor did he feel particularly bad that he didn’t.

When he had been in high school, he’d heard people talk and read articles on the internet about how overwhelmingly romantic that character from the Harry Potter books and movies had been - Severus Snape. He hadn’t actually read the books and the movies hadn’t interested him much once real magic had fully inserted itself into his life, so he had to be reminded about the relationship between Snape and the hero’s mother, Lily. It confused him for a long time, many people’s reactions to that relationship and eventually, in the light of what had actually happened to him, it began to irritate him. Lily and Snape had had a relationship, but when Lily died she had been with the hero’s father. Snape’s obsession, his declaration of “Always,” struck Scott as both selfish and a form of self-torture. How many people’s lives - including his own - could Snape have made brighter if he had simply moved on?

Allison wasn’t someone he was in love with any more. She was someone whose memory inspired him. She was someone whose memory he cherished. She made him sad. When he remembered particular nights from sophomore year, she could even make him horny. But she was a memory.

It did not diminish her legacy. Her revision of the Code had spread through the established families, dividing the traditional hunting clans into those who accepted it, led by Chris, and those who clung to the old code, led by Severo Calavera after Araya had passed. As Scott had dismantled Monroe’s crusade, those who had not given up hunting had joined one side or the other. Scott preferred this. Monroe’s crusade had had passion but no Code. Even now, Allison’s work made people safe.

When it came to a lasting memorial, it was better than his feeble love.

That was a sharp-edge truth, wasn’t it? Allison and he hadn’t been together when she died, and that hadn’t been her fault. The breakup had been his fault, because he hadn’t been strong enough to accept her as she wanted to be. She didn’t want to need protecting; she wanted to protect him.

Scott made a habit of messing up relationships. He didn’t think he did it maliciously, but he had to admit that he had three chances at the real thing, and none of them worked out in his favor. There was no way to dodge that he was at least partially responsible for them.

He didn’t want to think of Malia. Of the three, he had spent the longest with her, and yet he had so obviously missed the signs of the end. To be fair to himself, it had been far gentler than the other two. There had been no manipulative grandfathers or scary desert-dwelling demigods. The only thing that had gotten in the way had been life.

It had been a morning just like this one in a motel in a desert just similar to this one. Scott had expected to wake up with Malia wrapped around him. She still preferred to be the big spoon. One of the benefits of being a fully grown adult was that he no longer had to be worried about being discovered by anyone’s parents - not even his own. In fact, the few times that they had visited his mom, she had just assumed they were going to be sleeping together.

It sure beat Victoria Argent’s pencil-sharpener response.

That particular morning, he had woken up alone in the motel’s bed. The sheets had been thin and he had been cold, shivering. He had rolled over, and he had seen Malia, fully dressed and standing by the wobbly dresser. “Hey,” he had called, sleepily.

Malia hadn’t answered but instead had turned away from the dresser and had sat down on the bed by him. She was fully dressed.

“You’re up early.” He had given her a smile, but she hadn’t returned it.

“Yeah.”

“Is there something the matter?” He had pulled himself upright on the bed, bring the sheets to cover him. Something had been wrong, and it had not seemed like a good idea to have this discussion while naked.

“What day is today?” She had asked him.

His smile had returned. “It’s your birthday. Your twenty-second birthday. Did you think I forgot it?” Scott had not forgotten it. He had actually made reservations for a really, really fancy restaurant in Las Vegas. He had gotten tickets for the Cirque Du Soleil as well.

“Yeah.” She had shaken her head. “Where did we wake up last year?”

“Virginia.” His smile had faltered. “I think it was Falmouth.”

“And the year before that?”

“The dungeon in Idaho.” He had not liked where this conversation was going. “What’s the matter, Lia?”

“I’m leaving.” She had said it like she had said everything, as if she was unable to deceive and unwilling to sugarcoat her own decision.

“What?” Scott hadn’t been very eloquent. He had reached out for Malia and she had pulled away, shaking her head.

“This is the third year in a row where I haven’t seen my father on my birthday. We haven’t spent more than two months in the same place since Monroe started her bullshit. I’ve still never been to France.” Malia still had not sounded angry. She had sounded more sad than anything.

Scott had felt panic rise in his chest. “You’ve been to France; we were at De Gaulle for a layover.” The joke hadn’t landed well at all. “I’m sorry, Lia, we …” He had swallowed. “We can …”

“No, we can’t. You can’t tell me that if I asked you to, you would walk away from this. And if you did, you’d go back home and you’d pretend it didn’t bother you. And I know it would bother you.”

“I could,” Scott had protested, but he hadn’t really meant it, had he? “I could give this up.”

“That’s not who you are, Scott. You think you’re responsible for everyone out there, and you think you’re responsible for Monroe being who she is, and you’ll think about every single person who dies to her army while you’re at home with me.” Malia had shaken her head. “It is who you are, and I don’t want you to change. I love who you are. I love how you care. I love your bravery. I love that little squat you do when people are upset, and you want them to talk to you.”

Scott wished he had gone back and stopped the next words from coming out of his mouth. “But you don’t love me enough to stay.”

“No.” Malia had never believed in lies. “I don’t love you enough to stay. I want more.”

Malia had leaned down and kissed him. It wasn’t chaste. It wasn’t a cop out. It was a real kiss, with passion and intensity. They had kissed like this a thousand times. This one tasted of salt and good bye.

“So, you can’t be sad, okay?” She had demanded. “Be happy for me. I’m going to do the things that I always wanted to do. I’m going to spend time with my Dad. I’m going to get a job. I’m going to go to France - really go to France and eat croissants and take a thousand pictures of museums and towers.”

“But not with me.” Scott had almost thrown up at that. But he hadn’t.

“No. Not with you. I spent eight years as a coyote out of guilt, Scott. I’m not going to spend eight years as a soldier out of love.”

She had stood up then and went back to the cabinet. She had packed while he was asleep. He had clutched at the covers of the bed, thinking of begging, thinking of anything he could do that would get her to stay. But he knew that he shouldn’t. Even eleven years later, he still believed that had been the right choice.

“Take care of yourself.” Malia had said over her shoulder as she had left the motel room.

Scott looked over at the desert as it sped past his window. The worst part of the break-up with Malia had been that she wasn’t wrong. He would have been hard pressed to abandon the struggle against Monroe’s crusade. He would have felt guilty if people had kept dying if he had been sitting at home and living. That’s why he hadn’t even hooked up with someone again until the crusade had been defeated and even then it was half-hearted.

He knew why he was occupied with the past now. He knew why he was heading to where he was heading. Talking with Stiles, understanding just how badly his best friend had left things with his wife, had gotten him thinking about things he had left undone. Allison was gone; he couldn’t do anything more than honor her memory. Malia had left him; he had had his chance with her and blown it. But Kira was still out there. Or, more precisely, she was still out there, somewhere.

The only clue he had was Shiprock. He had gone there with Stiles and rescued her and her mother. Once she had rejoined the Skin-walkers, perhaps they had gone back there. Perhaps he could find her there.

He hadn’t tried before now, and he was ashamed that he hadn’t. He could tell himself that he was just following Noshiko’s advice about the Skin-walkers. Kira’s mother had suggested that his best course of action was simply to be patient. Kira would be able to leave them only when her training was completed and not before, and none of the people truly involved were short-lived.

But that was the point, wasn’t it? Back in high school, he had assumed that she’d be gone for a couple of months. A couple had stretched into ten, and before he knew it, more terrible things had happened, then he had gotten with Malia, and slowly he had let Kira fade from his mind.

Scott justified it by telling himself that Kira was better off without him. After all, the only reason that she was experimented on by the Dread Doctors was because she was part of his pack. It was better for her to go into the desert and find inner balance; at least she wasn’t dead.

When he thought about it later, he knew that it wasn’t the true reason. She had wanted to be with him, and he had wanted to be with her, but he had been scared of what had been happening with her fox spirit. What if she changed too much? So, instead of confronting his fears of what Kira might become - that she might become someone who didn’t want him or didn’t need him like Allison had no longer wanted him or needed him - he had let circumstances remove the decision from his hands.

It was like he had learned nothing from the disaster of the fall of senior year. You can’t help people if you aren’t honest with them. You can’t help people if you aren’t honest with yourself. He had witnessed the night before last with Stiles how old habits could wreck beautiful things. Scott needed to be better; he needed to try to talk to Kira. He needed to do it now, even fifteen years later, which was why he pulled off the highway and on the dirt road to the Skin-walkers’ lair.

Scott pulled up before the unique rock formation. He was pretty sure that this was the one where he had confronted them before. He couldn’t be absolutely sure. The Yukimura’s Toyota had long been reclaimed by the family.

He walked over the dry, dusty ground and the sun-bleached rocks. It was pretty enough, he guessed, but he couldn’t imagine living out here with no trees, no buildings, and no people. It seemed so terribly lonely.

There was no answer to Scott’s presence but the gentle murmur of the wind among the rocks. He had reached the very base of the stone formation, yet no one had made their presence known. Maybe this was going to be a wasted trip.

Scott shook his head. He was avoiding things again. He knew a way to get their attention. He lifted up his head and howled, the howl you use to call your pack members to you. Kira might still recognize it; she might still answer it.

As the last echoes of the howl died out among the rocks, the ground began to shake. Kira had told him when she came back from here how they had come up out of the ground. They had talked it over with Noshiko and Deaton, and he had told them that they really didn’t live under the ground. The earth was their medium when they chose to exit the dimension in which they existed.

Scott hoped they didn’t remember him attacking last time, or if they did, they weren’t the type to hold grudges. As the three women emerged from the ground, he struggled to place their scent. They had traces of humanity but mostly they were ash and leather and paint and something else that he had never experienced before. He had no names for it. Perhaps it was the smell of the other world to which they belonged.

They watched him with something he assumed was cool disregard.

“I’d like to talk to Kira, please.” Scott pitched his voice to be confident yet polite. He wasn’t going to beg; he was an alpha.

The trio did not answer him. They were studying him with narrowed eyes, as one might study a dead skunk that had gotten smashed by a truck. Scott didn’t fidget; that wouldn’t be good. Minutes passed by and Scott thought about saying something else when they just turned and walked away.

“Okay.” Scott didn’t know what to do now.

“Hello.” Kira’s voice whispered directly behind him. He hadn’t heard her, which was a shock. He whirled around and the world stopped between the beats of his heart. There she was. It was almost too much too process.

The first thing he noticed is that she hadn’t aged a day. He had aged, maybe not as quickly and as thoroughly as a human would, but he didn’t look like a teenager anymore. She, on the other hand, looked just as young as when he had said good bye to her in this very spot fifteen years before.

The second thing he noticed were her feet. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. She was standing in the desert, and while it might not have been the hottest part of the day, the rocks had to be uncomfortable. Her feet were a little dirty, but they were callused. They were tougher. It was a shock to him.

The third thing he noticed was that she wasn’t dressed in leather like the Skin-walkers, and she wasn’t dressed in the clothes he had dropped her off in. She was dressed in what might have been a kimono. It was one of her mother’s that Scott had seen. He didn’t understand why she would have it or why she would wear it. Kira had never been big into traditional clothing. It had also seen better days, dirty and torn at the edges.

The last thing he noticed was her scent. It smelled like her - her skin, her hair - but it also smelled like ozone. Like the sky after a thunderstorm. He’d caught bits of it before after she used her powers, but only in gusts. This was ingrained on her being; she must have made progress on blending her fox and herself. In addition, there was that same scent he couldn’t place on the Skin-walkers.

Scott’s mouth fell open just a tiny bit, and he swallowed/inhaled at the same time. It was dizzying to be near her again, to see her again. Dizzying and terrifying. “Hello.” No one ever said he was a poet.

Kira stepped forward and around him as if she was studying him. It was a strange thing for her to do, but it spoke to confidence. She had overcome at least some of her lack of confidence in herself.

Scott watched her as she circled him. “You look amazing.” He meant it. Yes, it was strange how she was dressed and that she didn’t look as if she had aged, but he hadn’t had a clear vision in his mind of what she was supposed to look like. It didn’t matter; she still made his heart clench at her smile.

“And you look old.” It felt like a slap in the face. He was older, and Scott hadn’t heard any scorn or shock in the voice, but it still felt wrong. “How long has it been?”

“Fifteen years.” Scott swallowed. “I … I’m sorry that I didn’t …”

“Oh, I don’t mind that.” She dismissed his apology. “It didn’t seem like fifteen years. It was hard to tell how much time was passing below.” She looked up at the sky. “The world doesn’t seem to have changed that much.”

“There’s been some changes.” Scott felt wistful. There was so much for her to catch up with. “How … how are you doing?”

Kira looked at him and turned her head to one side as if contemplating how to answer that. “That’s not what you want to ask, is it? That’s a question people ask each other when they really can’t ask what they want to ask.”

Scott bit his lip. She was playing with him, but he couldn’t tell if she was playing with him to put him at ease or playing with him just to play with him. “What question do I want to ask?”

“You want to ask how are we doing.” She skipped once and kicked up the dust of the desert. “And that’s a good question to ask, but it might not be the best question to answer.”

Scott felt confused. “Are you alright?” This was not how he imagined this going.

Kira reached out and put a hand on his cheek. Scott felt it tingle, like when you got close to an electric fence or a high-tension power line. “I feel balanced. I feel strong. I feel powerful.”

She wasn’t answering him directly. She was teasing him and playing with him but it wasn’t … light-hearted. Scott got the feeling that she was trying to tell him something without telling him directly. “Does that mean you can come back?”

“Yes. Do I want to come back?” Kira replied, lifting her hand off his cheek.

“I hope you do.” She was being more enigmatic than Deaton on a bad day. “I hope you want to see your mom and dad. I hope … “ He marveled at his own hesitation. In a flash, he realize this is what his mom, Derek and Stiles had been getting at. He should want things. “I was hoping you wanted to see me.”

“You were hoping I wanted to see you?” Kira grew somber. “Which ‘I’ would that be?”

Scott reached out with one hand to take her by the shoulder and her eye cut to his hand. When they were together, he would do this without hesitation but the look in her eyes was one of wariness. The puzzle piece fell into place.

“You don’t know me anymore. I don’t know you.” He said, aloud.

“How could we know each other?” She answered. “Sand and wind and moons have passed between us.”

Scott finally understood. The confidence. The aloofness. The talking in riddles. She had either become more of a kitsune or more of a Skin-walker. What had he expected after fifteen years? She had changed, just as Allison had changed. Just as he had changed. “Do you want to know me?”

“We should go on dates!” She laughed and it was a slightly sarcastic laugh. He was very familiar with that. “The doctor and the teenager.”

Scott let his shoulders sag. He hadn’t even thought of that. She was as old as he was, but she looked like a teenager. She probably could change her shape into someone older, but it would not feel right to ask her to do it.

Scott rubbed at his eyes. Kira looked at him like you’d look at a puppy in a pet cone, amusement and sadness mixed together. “Do you want me to … do you want me to bring you your tail?”

Kira pursed her lips as she thought about it. “There is no safer place than in your care.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Until later, alpha.”

Before Scott could think to answer, she was gone in a billowing cloud of dust that came up out of nowhere. It was certainly dramatic enough. He hadn’t even got to touch her.

Scott made his way back to the car, slowly. He glanced at his watch as he did so. It had taken less than a half-hour to put an end to that story. She was so different now, wild and strange. It should have made him mad, but it didn’t. After all, why did he expect that she would be unchanged? Why did he think that she would have been as eager to see him as she was to see her? It was his fault, after all, that she had had to go into the desert in the first place. The Dread Doctors had only come after her because she was in his pack.

He sat down behind the wheel of the car. He had let her go when she had asked him to and she had become this. It was a good thing, wasn’t it? Life was never all good or all bad, and while it seemed she was no longer the person he knew, she was alive and she was in control of herself. She wasn’t going to be consumed by the fox spirit. She had centuries in front of her to become anything she wanted to be. It was a good trade.

Scott only cried for forty-five minutes before he started the car and went back to the highway.