All Our Yesterdays
Chapter 2
Monday morning after the birthday party, Scott felt a sense of relief as he looked over the schedule for that day. The clinic was going to be very busy; in fact, they were going to be ridiculously busy. “Good,” he said out loud to the room, forgetting that he wasn’t the only person there.
Alan looked up from where he was hanging up his coat. “Anything good in particular?”
Scott considered lying to him, but then he shoved the urge down. Alan had done nothing to deserve it. “We’re really busy today. I’m looking forward to that, because this weekend was something else.” Hoping that would end the conversation, Scott moved toward the front door to flip the sign over.
“I imagine arguing with your mother would be something to ruin the last few days.” Deaton looked apologetic.
Scott sighed. Of course, his Emissary would have an inkling of what went on in the backyard at the Hale House. And then again at his mother’s house. And then again at his apartment. He shouldn’t have lost his temper with his mother; there was a reason he hadn’t just come out and told her how he felt before. She was just as stubborn as he was, and it didn’t seem like she was planning on letting this particular conflict go any time soon.
“I apologize if my cooperation made you uncomfortable.” Alan went on as if Scott’s silence was an invitation to do so. “I’ll admit, I was on your mother’s side when she suggested that we needed to hold a party for you.”
“How did you know what we argued about?” Scott thought he had hid his emotions pretty well when he finally had come back into the Hale House.
“While I may conceal my insights in order to respect another’s privacy, I think I’m a good judge when people are upset and trying to pretend they aren’t. Also, your mother called me to ask for my advice. I hope you don’t mind that I talked to her.”
“No. No, I’m glad you did. How much did she tell you?” Scott wasn’t ashamed of his feelings.
“I believe she told me enough to understand the gist of your argument.” Alan walked around to face Scott directly. He did this when he wanted to signal that he was about to say something important.
Scott put his hands in his coat pockets. “You agree with her?”
“I don’t. I don’t agree with you either.” The veterinarian’s smooth voice held no judgment; it was the professional, gentle tone he took when he was simply concerned. “She’s not wrong to think that you should make more of an effort to satisfy your own needs. Balance is, after all, a tenet of my other occupation. If you live only for others and never do anything for yourself, eventually you will become overbalanced. Fatigued. For people like you, it’s a common danger. On the other hand, I think that what you said to your mother wasn’t wrong. Your life is the sum of your experiences, and you’ve experienced taking on a lot of responsibility at a far younger age than most people. For my part I regret my role in that, but it doesn’t change what you’ve endured. It is part of you now.”
“You shouldn’t regret what you did. My mom shouldn’t either. I was frustrated, and I said …” Scott bit his lip. “I made it sound like I blamed her, and I don’t. She did the best she could. You did the best you could. I did the best I could. And we accomplished a lot.”
“But like all things, those accomplishments had a price.” Deaton concluded.
“Yes.” Scott was so glad that Alan understood him. But then again, that was part of the job description for an Emissary, wasn’t it?
“If I may offer you a bit of unasked-for advice, since we both know that everything you do or want to do will have such requirements, it’s best to try not to pay the debts you don’t actually owe.” He claps his hands. “Do you want to do the neutering or should I?”
“You should.” Scott nodded earnestly. “I can’t bear to look them in the eyes when I do it.”
Scott had remarked to his friends on more than one occasion that the aftermath of a fight with a person you loved was very similar to the aftermath of a firefight. You moved gingerly so that you wouldn’t re-open that wounds because you didn’t know if this was the time when you would bleed out because of them. You kept playing the events over and over in your head to see if there was something you could have done differently to minimize the damage or avoid it entirely.
There hadn’t been anything he could have done differently. His mother loved him too much to let this go.
So Scott threw himself into his work. The dogs, the cats, and the sick iguana that he dealt with over those days were easy. They didn’t want what was best for you. They didn’t have to wonder if trauma was making you close down or that you just didn’t want to talk. They either loved you or they didn’t.
The tactic worked; the next three days passed and he avoided talking to anyone. Alan was more than capable of understanding when Scott didn’t want to speak about something and respected his silence. Others weren’t so skilled. He knew that he should call Nolan soon and give him a final answer about the sailing trip. He didn’t want to go, but he also thought that going might make his mother feel better.
The door chime announced the arrival of a visitor. Pulling his gloves off, Scott went out into the waiting room. “Good afternoon …” He paused and then gave the newcomer a big smile. “Corey! This is a surprise.”
Corey looked the same as the last time that Scott had seen him. Ever since he and Mason had moved together to San Francisco, he had been dressing in a far more sophisticated manner. Far more hip than Scott dressed, of course. On the other hand, Corey was still trying to coax some form of beard and moustache combo to appear on his face. It made him look that he had messily eaten a chocolate donut.
Corey raised his hand in greeting. “I’m sorry for not calling ahead of time. This is kind of a spur of the moment thing.” He gave Scott a wistful smile. “I’m also sorry for missing your birthday party.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Scott shook his head. “We’re pretty busy this afternoon, but not too busy for pack.” He was about to say more when a wave of stressed out scent from Corey hit him. It was so strong that Scott did not even have to focus, and it was accompanied by an overwhelming powerful chemical.
“Corey. Is there something the matter?”
Corey’s smile vanished. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but I really need to talk to both you and Dr. Deaton.”
“Yeah, come on back.” Scott turned the sign to ‘Closed’ while the chimera entered the examination room.
Alan was staring at Corey with concern from his seat near the desk, while the chimera in turn was staring at the surface of one of the examination tables. Scott stood close enough to Corey so that the chimera could feel his presence. Corey had been pack since the end of the fight with the Ghost Riders, even though he had never gone on missions during the long crusade. Scott didn’t need someone to be a fighter in order to be part of his family.
Mason was Emissary for a pack who lived just outside of San Francisco. Both of them, however, lived in the city where Mason was a successful software engineer and Corey was a not-so-successful writer. Or, as Corey frequently corrected them, he was a freelance online content generator. Stiles had referred to his career several times as ‘net-slave.’
Corey took a deep breath. “As I think both of you know, Mason and I decided to adopt.”
“Yeah.” Scott had been so glad when they had gotten married. He had been even happier when they announced their desire to have children. That Corey and Mason had remained together after high school when so many other relationships had shattered under the weight of what had happened was a bright spot in Scott’s world. The couple always joked if they could get past the amount of trauma they experienced when they were first dating they could get past anything.
“Has something happened?” Deaton asked, obviously concerned.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Corey wrung his hands. The gesture was so authentic that Scott reflexively put his hand on Corey’s shoulder. “You know they make you take a physical if you are planning to adopt a child.”
“It’s a common practice,” Deaton nodded. “Was the doctor I referred you to when you moved satisfactory?”
“He was.” Corey took a deep breath. “He was pretty good, but he found something. It looks like …” The chimera bit his lip. “It looks like I’m dying.”
Scott’s good mood collapsed into disappointment. He kept himself from asking something stupid like if Corey was sure.
“As you know, the Doctors used an enhanced form of mercury when creating us. If we stabilized as a chimera, the mercury didn’t hurt us like it would a normal human. If we failed to stabilize, then the mercury would start to expel itself from our tissues. When Theo brought me back, I stabilized.” Corey said in a rush. It was hard for him to speak; he had always hated talking about that time. “Well, when the doctor first started the tests, I had elevated levels of mercury in my bloodstream. We decided to do a test a month later and then a month after that and the levels keep getting higher.”
“That’s not good news,” Alan said calmly.
“I’m more resistant than normal humans due to my nature, but eventually the concentration will get to the point that I’ll die of mercury poisoning.”
Scott’s mind searched for an answer. “Can’t they extract the mercury before then?”
“Well, they don’t really know how. Mason thinks the saturation of certain of my tissues by the mercury is part of the process that made me what I am. If the mercury had remained in my tissues, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“May I see the doctor’s reports?” While Alan was a veterinarian just like him, he had more knowledge of both the Doctor’s experiments and human biology than Scott did. Corey handed him a flash drive.
“If you need anything,” Scott stated to Corey, earnestly. “If Mason needs anything, you just have to ask.” He put both hands on Corey’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re here for you.”
Corey gave him a fake smile. Scott looked him in the eyes, trying to silently give the chimera permission to be more open. It wasn’t part of the alpha power; it was the power of years of friendship. Corey blinked and the smile disappeared one more. “I’m scared.” The whisper was too low for Deaton to hear it, but Scott heard it perfectly.
Corey wiped his eyes and then shook his head. “I want to hear what Alan has to say. There might be something the pack can do.”
Scott went and got all three of them coffees from the shop down the street. He sometimes had to fight the urge to physically crowd a member of the pack when they were upset. It was an instinctual impulse, an animal thing, and while it pleased a part of himself that lurked far below the surface, he was particularly careful when doing it with some members of the pack. Not everyone was a wolf, and he needed to make sure he put their needs first. Authority had its cost.
Deaton began speaking immediately when he walked back into the room. This situation was about the health of a pack member; the alpha needed to know. “I agree with him, Corey. This shows a progressive breakdown. If we do not find a way to stop it, the prognosis is fatal.” It didn’t sound callous coming from Alan’s mouth. He wasn’t announcing; he was confirming. From the look of relief on the chimera’s face, it had desired effect.
“What is happening?” Scott demanded.
Corey gestured for Alan to continue.
“It seems that the Doctors never designed their subjects for long term viability. The process used to create the chimera isn’t a permanent one. While onset depends on the implanted supernatural tissues and the health of the subject, the breakdown of the tissues is inevitable.”
Scott felt like he was the one who was sick. “But he was fine for more than a decade.”
“I killed myself.” Corey joked morbidly. “As long as I lived in Beacon Hills, the Nemeton must have held things in check. It’s only really started since I moved to San Francisco last year.”
“Then you can move back.” Scott suggested, hopefully.
Deaton pointed out something on the computer. “Exposure to the Nemeton might slow the process down, but I suspect more will be needed. We have to find a way to stabilize him, once again.”
“What about Hayden?” Scott wanted to know. The urge to protect his pack sang in his blood. “What about Mason?”
Corey looked stricken. He hadn’t thought about them, but that wasn’t a surprise to Scott. Corey had thought of himself as weak and flawed even before he was taken to be a chimera. It wouldn’t occur to him that Mason and Hayden could possibly be in the same boat.
“Hayden should be safe,” Deaton theorized. “Your Bite change her into a full werewolf. But to be on the safe side, I’ll have her come in and perform some basic tests. As for Mason, he was given a full examination when he was shot by Monroe’s hunters. If he had any mercury-imbued tissues, they would have shown up in the surgery or in any of the medical examinations he had since then.”
Both Scott and Corey relaxed at that information. He clapped Corey on the shoulder and as he did so he thought something. He had spent so long hating the very idea of turning someone into a werewolf that it hadn’t immediately occurred to him until they started talking about Hayden. He realized, with a shock, that he was okay with the new idea that had occurred to him.
“Do you think the Bite could help him?”
Corey startled at that. He looked at Scott as if he was surprised. Did Corey think that Scott wouldn’t offer? He’d done it for Hayden.
Deaton thought about for a moment. “A full transformation would possibly remove the threat of mercury poisoning. However, when you changed her, the damage was gross physical damage that her chimera nature was having trouble healing. This is a different thing entirely. It could kill him.”
Scott nodded, deflating a little bit.
Deaton continued. “As I’m sure the doctor told you, there are treatment options that we can pursue before going to something as extreme as Scott biting you. But the choice is yours.”
Corey nodded to the veterinarian. “I have time. The doctor said that unless it accelerates, I should have six months at least.”
“And if you move back the Nemeton could give you more time. In the end, the best treatments will be a matter of timing, Corey.” Alan glanced at Scott who encouraged him to continue. “I would talk this over with Mason before making any permanent decisions.”
Corey wrung his hands again. “I like the doctor in San Francisco, but would you mind supervising things?”
“Of course, Corey.” Deaton answered. “I don’t mind, and I’ll do my best.”
Deaton and Scott looked over the files on the computer; Scott craned his neck over Deaton’s shoulder. Every once in a while, Deaton would point out a significant detail or explain something that Scott didn’t know.
Fifteen minutes into it, another thought occurred to Scott. It sprung out of his mouth immediately. “Someone should talk to Theo.”
“He could be vulnerable as well,” Deaton wondered. “Though he has never let me do as thorough examination as I did on the others.”
Corey wore a slight frown. “Scott, can I talk to you, outside? I don’t want to take Alan’s time more than I need to.”
“Okay. Sure.” Scott had wanted to continue to look over Corey’s medical files as well, but this was probably more important. They walked out the back and down into the relatively creepy alley. As much as they were safe, since he was the biggest monster in Beacon Hills, Scott wished that they’d fix it up a bit.
Corey rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t want you to think that I’m …” He hesitated. “This isn’t a really appropriate question …”
“It’s okay, Corey. You can ask me anything.” Scott had learned the hard way that being open wasn’t enough; you had to encourage your pack to speak.
The chimera looked at his feet. “Do we really want to get Theo involved?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t we?” It had been so long since Scott had seen or even thought about the First Chimera. He was no longer an enemy, but he wasn’t pack.
Corey looked up at him; his conflicted emotions were plain to see. “I feel weird about it. I think he should be told, but I don’t want to tell him. I don’t like him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to spend any of the time I have left looking for him.”
“We’re going to do …” Scott began.
Corey cut off his reassurance. “You don’t know that you’ll be able to help me. I don’t have any doubts that you and Deaton and Mason will try your best, but I have to … I have to accept that you may not be able to help me. I have to be ready to die.”
Scott felt an ache blossom in his chest. This was something that he couldn’t fight, but he wanted to. He swallowed saying something like that back down. This wasn’t about him.
“It so damn silly. I used to hate him so much, but here I am … I want to not care about Theo.”
Scott studied the other man for a moment. “You know, he became an ally.”
“Yeah. I know he tried to make up for it.” Corey’s eyes suddenly blazed forth in fury. “But I don’t care that he did that. I don’t care that he became a better person! I might die. I might never see forty. I might never hold a child of my own, and he did that. He helped them find us. He helped them kidnap us. He resurrected me to be his servant.” He took a heaving breath. “So, he doesn’t kill people any more. So he’s helped save others. It won’t change what he did to me one little bit. I’m not going to hurt him, but I don’t like him, and I’m never going to like him, and it doesn’t make me a bad person.”
Scott raised his hands to mollify him. “No one expects you to.”
Corey rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hands. “You expect me to.”
Scott gaped at this revelation. He forgot how people saw him some times. “I’d never expect you to ignore your feelings about this. I would never insist that you talk to him.”
Corey shrugged miserably.
“I’ll find him, and I’ll tell him.” Scott knew that no matter what Theo had done at first, what he had done later more than made it his responsibility to let him know about this threat to his life. “Don’t worry about it anymore. He could be fine.”
“Or he could be dead.” Corey answered bitterly. “Sorry! Sorry. I’m just upset.”
“You’re allowed to be upset. You’re allowed to get angry.” Scott took him by the forearm. “Stop worrying about Theo. I’ll handle it.”
*****
It was pretty funny what one could find themselves doing, sometimes.
Scott was running. He was running by sitting in an upper-range San Francisco restaurant in North Beach. He hadn’t run from power-mad alphas, vengeance-obsessed darach, remorseless assassins, insane scientists, the Wild Hunt, and a war that spanned continents, but he was running from working things out with his own mother.
“I’m not running.” Scott lied into the phone.
“You’re not running?” Derek responded acidly, and Scott could imagine his eyebrows shifting into their don’t-give-me-that-bullshit position. “You could have fooled me.”
Scott picked at the edge of the menu. “Someone needs to find Theo.”
“That someone doesn’t have to be you, and it doesn’t have to be you alone. I would have thought that you would at least try to avoid my mistakes.” Derek’s voice had just the right amount of accusation in it.
“Look, I’m not making your mistakes. I didn’t move into an abandoned train station when I had millions of dollars in the bank. I’m not lurking around high schools.” Scott tried to go for humor, but there was some bite to his words. He was frustrated that no one understood. He had hoped that Derek would be the one to understand but, in the end, he got why the former alpha couldn’t. Derek had actually evolved when he let go off the tragedies of the past and embraced a new way of living. It couldn’t have been too far a stretch for his friend to see Scott as doing something similar: letting old decisions weigh him down.
“You’re fighting a war, Scott, that’s been over for years.” Derek pointed out carefully. “You’ve created ways of dealing that made perfect sense when you started, but they don’t make sense any more. Those are exactly my mistakes.”
“I wish my mother hadn’t recruited you into this,” Scott complained.
“She cares about you. As do I.” Derek tried to sound reasonable. “I’ve experienced this side of you before; you can be very stubborn when you think you’re right.”
“I could also be right,” Scott snapped back. “I’m not a teenager anymore.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just acting like one.” Derek replied.
“Tell you what. When I get back, you and Mom can lure me out into the woods and throw me into trees until I agree with you.” Scott wondered when he had started taking sarcasm lessons from Stiles.
Derek didn’t answer. The disapproval seeped through the phone.
“I’m sorry. That was a low blow. Can we table this until I get back? I’ll sit down with you and we’ll talk, okay?”
“Do you promise?” Derek asked. Everyone knew that if Scott promised, he would try his best.
“I promise. I’ll talk to you later.” They exchanged farewells. Scott scowled at the empty place setting in front of him.
Regardless of what Derek thought, their situations were not similar. While he had never wanted to be an alpha let alone a werewolf, he had somehow managed to save more people than he had gotten killed. Taking responsibility for that had been hard, but it had been worth it, and part of taking responsibility included being prepared. What they wanted him to do wouldn’t just be letting go of terrible memories, it would be discarding lessons paid for in blood - his and other’s.
If he stopped being the best alpha he could be, if he stopped being ready to protect his pack, if he couldn’t save innocents, it would make everything that had happened before pointless.
He waited patiently for his father to arrive. It would be one uncomfortable conversation with someone he loved followed by another uncomfortable conversation with someone he should love more than he did. He didn’t hate or even resent his father in the same way he once had. It had become clear over the years that his father’s frame of reference didn’t work the same as his did.
His father categorized people. He sorted them into little boxes: Family, Coworkers, Criminals, Others, etc. In Rafael’s head, he kept track of what category was the most important at any given time. Criminals needed to be caught, so that was usually his highest priority. Coworkers and Family frequently fought for second place. Sometimes Family became more important than anything else, but it wouldn’t stay that way. It wasn’t a malicious decision. It simply was.
It also didn’t help that his father wasn’t the most punctual person in the world. Rafael was the type of man who planned out every appointment as if he could control exactly how much time he would spend at each. He couldn’t; no one could, but that didn’t stop him from trying. And that made him habitually late.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Rafael said predictably. “Did you order without me?”
“No, Dad.” Scott kept his tone light and free from annoyance. No matter how irritating some of his father’s behaviors could be, he was the one asking for something tonight. “I just had a beer.”
“Thought you couldn’t have that?” His father inquired conversationally.
No, you can’t have it. Scott swallowed the retort. His father tended not to remember the details of his supernatural existence. “I can drink it; I just can’t get drunk. Some craft beers taste pretty good though.”
They made small talk for a while, ordering particular food at Rafael’s suggestion. This was one of his favorite restaurants. It fit his father. It was unpretentious enough not to make one feel uncomfortable, yet pricey enough to make you feel elite. And now his father was very elite: he was the Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Field Office.
“So.” His father took a sip of his iced tea right after saying this. The conversation was about to go in a very unpleasant direction. “Would you be at all interested in why Stiles and I couldn’t make it to your birthday party?”
Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it interesting?” He wasn’t sixteen anymore, and he understood the importance of what the FBI did. He had needed his father when he was sixteen and scared out of his mind. That was seventeen years ago; he had gotten used to having his father only when it was convenient.
Rafael started in on a tale of heroin smuggling in the Port of San Francisco. Scott was sure what had happened was very important to someone. It was obviously important to his father and from the amount of times his father mentioned him, it was important to Stiles as well.
If he was feeling grumpy or uncharitable, he might have found it ironic that Stiles had turned out to be more like his father than Scott was, but in his heart he knew that wasn’t true. Rafael was a dedicated agent and good at his job, but he treated it like a job. It wasn’t personal. Stiles, Scott knew, took it personally. High school had shown Stiles that there was evil in the world beyond incurable diseases, and college had shown him that some of that evil had nothing at all to do with the supernatural. People could be vile to each other without claws or fangs. Stiles realized that he could stop it. Stiles found that he wanted to stop it. His father was a good FBI agent; Stiles was a fantastic FBI agent.
And yet, Scott still wished sometimes that Stiles wasn’t so fantastic. He pushed those feelings away. He wasn’t here to judge anyone. He was here to get help.
“So you told me on the phone that you need my help. What’s wrong?” Rafael had finished his tale of the heroin and was tucking into his steak.
“I need help finding someone. He’s gone off the grid and no one knows where he is. I’d hire a private investigator, but time is a factor.” Scott started to explain. “You met him once - Theo Raeken.”
“Theo Raeken.” Rafael’s eyes lidded for a moment as he made an effort to recall who he was. “Wait a minute, wasn’t he the one who tried to kill you?”
“Uhhhh. Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”
Rafael looked very disbelieving. “A long time ago. Didn’t he murder his sister?”
Scott couldn’t believe that he had suddenly put in a position of having to defend Theo. “Well he was ten and being manipulated by mad scientists?”
“And didn’t he murder two more people and was an accessory to nine other murders - even if they didn’t all stick?” His father looked very uncomfortable at that last part.
“Yes.” Scott admitted.
“And what’s he up to now?” His father asked. Scott felt like he was being interrogated.
“He may be dying. He was a chimera - I told you about them - the process that creating them could be failing.” Scott decided honesty was the best approach.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Rafael commented flippantly.
“Dad!”
“I’m not going to apologize. At the least, he should be in jail. If for some reason that can’t happen, death is an appropriate substitute.” This was simply consistent behavior; the Special Agent in Charge had no sympathy for criminals.
“He worked hard to come back from that. I accepted his help, and I accepted him as an ally.” Scott tried to explain.
Rafael burst out laughing but stopped when he saw that Scott was serious. His eyes narrowed as he contemplated his son. From the tone of his voice, he might even have been a little angry. “Wow. Scott, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not the State of California, and you’re not Jesus Christ. Your forgiveness of Theo is pretty much as useful as tits on a bull.” He shook his head. “Those kids who died had families. They had futures. It’s not your place to say that he’s made up for what he did.”
“I’m not his defense attorney, Dad. I just want to know where he is so I can warn him that he could be dying.” Scott complained. “Yes, he murdered people, but there’s no evidence you or anyone else could use to try him.”
“I don’t know, Scott. I’m pretty good at finding evidence.” Rafael looked him in the eye. “I don’t like the idea that people get away with crimes because they’re not human.”
Scott didn’t know what to say to that. If he were being objective, he had gotten away with crimes because he was not human.
“I know. If you remember, I fought a war over this. You can’t put supernatural people through the system without exposing us, but we can’t let that be used to protect murderers and thieves. I try my best as an alpha. If you’ve got a better answer, please tell me.”
“You know I don’t.” Rafael shook his head ruefully. They fell silent for a few minutes, eating their dinner, until the agent looked up again. “It’s important to you to find Theo?”
Scott answer without thinking. “Yes. No matter what he’s done, he deserves to know the danger.”
“I’m not the one you need to be talking to, then.” His father chuckled. “I’m not the one who keeps track of potential enemies to you and your pack.”
Scott squinted at his father. Who could …?
He sighed. “Stiles.”