Fic: Open With a Gambit or be Rogue (1/2)
Title: Open With a Gambit or be Rogue
Author: kayevelyn
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Stiles/Derek, Erica/Boyd, Scott/Isaac, Jackson/Danny
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He establishes the school because he needs something safe. (The one where Peter runs a mutant school)
Notes: For my very good friend Chelsea :)
peter
He establishes the school because he needs something safe. People know about other schools, other so called safe havens that only end up becoming political targets every time the mutant debate comes up, and Peter doesn’t want that. He wants a place where children and teens can be safe to grow and learn their powers without fear. Does he envision his students becoming great crime fighters? No. If that’s the path they choose so be it, but students at The Hale Academy come here to be safe, normal citizens at the end of the day.
It’s just him to begin with, him and three of his younger cousins who have very minor mutations: Christina emits lights from her hands, Kevin gets gills underwater and Heather shifts into a cat when she’s scared. Small, non-destructive powers that don’t cause any major mishaps. Peter thinks he’s equipped to deal with them since his power consists of things exploding after he touches them.
That had been fun as a teenager, before he had learned control.
They expand quickly though. The moment his family knows he’s set up this school they start sending him more of their children (children they kept secret because of fear of mutants), and soon he needs to move to a bigger compound just to house everyone.
With the bigger house comes more students. Word gets out, quiet whispers about his school and how it is safe, and after the first year Peter has to put a cap on enrollment because he’s only one man and he can’t manage more than thirty students.
He is able to expand when his oldest students turn eighteen and a few of them stick around instead of going off to college. They stay and mentor new students, and by the tenth year of his school being in session he has eighty students ranging from twelve to eighteen, and twenty staff members.
Not all of the staff are former students. One of them is even a human, the parents of one of Peter’s more rambunctious students. John is a great help though, teaching mutant-human history and providing the kids an example of what humanity should be about: a man who willingly married a mutant with no question, who doesn’t judge even the strangest mutation. Some of the kids need that more than they need the regular school lessons.
Peter is just glad he can provide for all that he does.
derek + laura
Derek doesn’t know when his mutation manifested, and neither does Laura, so they don’t join the school until Derek is sixteen and Laura has already finished school. Their Uncle Peter assumes they developed at the same time, or that Derek had developed first, because that was the only way they didn’t know about Laura until she went out to college and was out of Derek’s sight for the first time ever.
She looks beautiful Derek hears, and she wears the blue skin proudly. He has only ever seen it in photographs. She teases Derek sometimes, looking at him with her human face. He knows she doesn’t blame him for suppressing her mutation for so long, for ingraining his powers in her so much that it took two weeks for her powers to finally manifest once she was away to college, but when she teases that he stopped her from being her true self for so long it still hurts.
Laura thrives at the school, teaching math, and becoming a role model to all of the younger students who have physical mutations. She teaches them how to love themselves, and entertains everyone when she sometimes slips up her transformations, because she’s still learning just like the younger students.
Derek hates the school, but he stays because it’s family. No one wants to spend time with him at first because of his powers, and by the time he’s able to get it under control, that he only suppresses someone’s power when they are touching him, it’s already been five years and people are used to giving him a wide berth. Peter talks to him some nights and asks if he wants to leave, offers him other opportunities. He knows he’d fit in with humans, never drawing attention to himself, but Derek feels like that would be turning his back on who he is.
He does some good here, suppressing the more violent outbursts from some of their students, even if it gets him resented.
His powers will be useful to someone some day. He just needs to wait.
jackson
He comes to the school because it’s either that or prison. He only gets the choice because when he burns down his fake-parents’ house he doesn’t kill them. His fake-mother cries, trying to understand how he can get so mad that it makes his mutation manifests so early. Mutants come into their powers in their early teens, and Jackson is barely eight.
He looks her dead in the eye across the courtroom and tells her, “it’s because I hate you.”
It’s for the best, in the end. He doesn’t think he would have fit anywhere else. The Hale Academy is his new home and he makes quick friends with other people who are like him. Some of them don’t know their real-parents either, and it’s a bond he shares with them.
He never stops resenting his fake-parents, but when he’s sixteen he finally sends his fake-mother a letter, thanking her for the contributions over the year. He knows the quiet donations are the reason Peter got to build another housing residence, and a baseball field. These people may not mean anything to him but for some reason he means something to them, and Laura has told him that he should never spit in the face of someone trying to help him.
stiles
The last person Stiles touches is his mother when she’s giving him her power to fly. He doesn’t want it because that’s her power, and he has memories of her holding him tight as she flies around their town, showing him the world from a new perspective.
She convinces him to take it, to hold on tight to her until she stops moving and he has her powers forever, because she’s dying and this is the one thing she can give him so he will never forget her.
“I want you to smile when you remember me,” she says, stroking his face, and he can feel that he’s sucking what little life she has left.
The memories that come with it, the short films that play out her life in his head when he closes his eyes are a bonus he resents for the longest time.
He doesn’t talk for months after his mother dies, and he doesn’t use her power either. His father tries to figure out what’s wrong, but Stiles can’t tell him that he’s the reason she’s gone, and he doesn’t fly to show it either, so his father never knows. Stiles feels guilty when his father uproots them and moves permanently to The Hale Academy, he knows it’s some futile hope on his father’s part that he’ll open up again, but how can he?
Sure he plays the part well, sticking out in class like he always has, making everyone laugh, mostly at him instead of with him, and it’s almost like he’s healthy again. Deep down he isn’t, and he’s never sure he will be.
scott
Scott comes to The Hale Academy because his mom gets a job as the school nurse. He’s the only human child there for a while, the only human at all until Stiles’ dad joins the faculty, and he’s almost given up hope of ever manifesting until one day when he’s sixteen and Jackson shoves him into the lake.
He puts his hands out in front of him, begging for the water to not be icy cold, and he keeps waiting to be submerged until he hears Stiles let out a shout of triumph and he looks below him to see the lake frozen over. No one else has ice powers, and he realizes he did that. He grins at Jackson, whose face contorts and he flicks his lighter out, melting the ice out from under Scott.
He’s not able to refreeze the water quick enough, and he ends up encasing himself in ice in front of most of his class. The only good thing is that Peter makes Jackson defrost the ice around him, and the look on Jackson’s face when he is doing it is such a pained expression. Scott takes it, just happy that he no longer is alone.
boyd
Boyd spends most of his time with the youngest kids because they don't give him a second look when he transforms, body becoming covered in thick metal, hiding most of his features. He looks like an action figure, but all the younger kids see is a playground, and they climb over him, not afraid that he might hurt them.
He did this for his younger sisters before he came to The Hale Academy, and they liked it as much as the kids here do. Sometimes it hurts to remember them, to remember the fire that destroyed his family. He looks around the school and sees people with powers that can stop other events like that happening, and he wonders if it’s good to isolate himself like he does. He might need people one day, like his family did, and like his family he might have no one.
Then he looks at himself in the mirror, impenetrable metal, strong physique, and he thinks he doesn’t need anyone. He can take whatever is thrown at him.
He keeps playing with the youngest kids.
isaac + erica
They know they are siblings even though they don’t share the same last name.
Isaac takes one look at Erica and he knows. She grins at him shyly from across the hall where they are waiting for Peter to get out of his office, and her smile tells him that she knows as well. They may not have the memories, but they know each other.
Peter tries to explain it to them, using small words because they are small children, only ten years old, and they know they are born on the same day.
“You’ve both been in a very serious accident,” he says, mouth tense, never looking back at the man in the wheelchair who brought them to the school. “But we are lucky to have you, and you will always have a home here. You may not remember, but your names are Isaac Lahey, and Erica Reyes. Your parents were good friends, and you were together when the car crashed.” Peter looks back at the man then, who inclines his head slightly.
They can feel that those names are a lie, but no matter how hard they try they can’t remember what name feels right. In the end they don’t care, and they walk through the halls holding hands, calling each other brother and sister. Peter tries to separate them sometimes, but Isaac holds on tight to Erica and runs, and when he runs no one can catch him, not unless Derek comes into range.
Peter doesn’t try to separate them anymore, but their memories never get closer to coming back.
allison
Allison wakes up six feet underground and starts screaming. Dirt falls into her mouth and she doesn’t know what to do. The last she remembers, she was in bed fast asleep, and now she’s swallowing rocks and bugs. She closes her eyes and pushes, trying to claw to the surface, and then suddenly she’s in her parents’ basement, covered in dirt.
She screams.
The look in her mother’s eyes when they see her cuts deep and Allison is afraid of what’s happening to her. She’s afraid of what she really is, and she looks at her father, expecting to see furious hatred. He’s high in the government, always arguing against mutants, and if she is one what does that mean for his platform?
She lets out a sob and runs, phasing through both of them, and then the foundation of the house. She’s running underground but nothing is stopping her. As long as she keeps focus she stays intangible. She resurfaces three days later with no idea where she is. She’s in her pajamas and there is worldwide amber alert for her.
When she returns home her parents waste no time in making sure she is quietly sent away.
“We love you. We only want what’s best for you,” her father says, and he looks like he believes what he’s saying.
Allison thinks his actions will speak louder, and she monitors his voting record from The Hale Academy. He doesn’t switch immediately, but it’s nice to see a curve, her father voting more for mutant rights than against it.
danny
Danny likes stories that delve into the argument of mutant powers, specifically if you make the power, or if the power makes you. He likes studying people and seeing their power and how it reflects in their personality. He thinks his powers came about because of his own personality; he was always quick to adapt, it came from living with an army father. He doesn’t think having the ability to adapt to anything made his personality like that.
Others will argue that people try and match their powers. Would Jackson be as volatile if his mutation was something calmer? Would Stiles crave attention so much if he could touch people? Would Isaac avoid all his problems if he couldn’t run away from them?
Danny wonders these, and thinks that they would be the same. He didn’t know any of these people before he came to the school, but Derek and Laura both didn’t manifest until they were older, and from stories they haven’t changed. He finds it fascinating, studying people like that.
When he plays devil’s advocate with himself he wonders if that’s the part of his personality that is a result of his power to adapt. He blends in, giving him the ability to watch and observe.
lydia
She knows she’s an omega level mutant, even though there isn’t a test for that. She wouldn’t let anyone test her anyway, even though Peter sometimes gives her that look that says he knows she’s hiding something, but he can’t figure out what.
On paper Lydia can do very minor telekinesis. She can flip a light switch, and under great duress she can move something the size of a bowl from one side of the room to the other. With practice her teachers think she might be able to do more.
In reality Lydia can lift the school if she chose. She knows this because she tries one night, creeping out of bed to do just that, and when she returns victorious she carefully wipes the minds of the few staff that see her. Her telepathy is strong too, so much that it should have driven her crazy when she was very young.
Lydia thinks it might have, which is the only reason she’s able to cope with it now.
She can filter peoples’ thoughts, but she rarely pays attention to them as it is. There’s no need for anyone to know what she can do. Lydia has seen the world. She knows what omega level mutants mean. She knows they have to pick a side, fight for or against humans. With her level of power there is no way for her to stay on the sidelines, so she hides it.
She has better things to do than fight wars.
Chapter 2
Author: kayevelyn
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Stiles/Derek, Erica/Boyd, Scott/Isaac, Jackson/Danny
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He establishes the school because he needs something safe. (The one where Peter runs a mutant school)
Notes: For my very good friend Chelsea :)
peter
He establishes the school because he needs something safe. People know about other schools, other so called safe havens that only end up becoming political targets every time the mutant debate comes up, and Peter doesn’t want that. He wants a place where children and teens can be safe to grow and learn their powers without fear. Does he envision his students becoming great crime fighters? No. If that’s the path they choose so be it, but students at The Hale Academy come here to be safe, normal citizens at the end of the day.
It’s just him to begin with, him and three of his younger cousins who have very minor mutations: Christina emits lights from her hands, Kevin gets gills underwater and Heather shifts into a cat when she’s scared. Small, non-destructive powers that don’t cause any major mishaps. Peter thinks he’s equipped to deal with them since his power consists of things exploding after he touches them.
That had been fun as a teenager, before he had learned control.
They expand quickly though. The moment his family knows he’s set up this school they start sending him more of their children (children they kept secret because of fear of mutants), and soon he needs to move to a bigger compound just to house everyone.
With the bigger house comes more students. Word gets out, quiet whispers about his school and how it is safe, and after the first year Peter has to put a cap on enrollment because he’s only one man and he can’t manage more than thirty students.
He is able to expand when his oldest students turn eighteen and a few of them stick around instead of going off to college. They stay and mentor new students, and by the tenth year of his school being in session he has eighty students ranging from twelve to eighteen, and twenty staff members.
Not all of the staff are former students. One of them is even a human, the parents of one of Peter’s more rambunctious students. John is a great help though, teaching mutant-human history and providing the kids an example of what humanity should be about: a man who willingly married a mutant with no question, who doesn’t judge even the strangest mutation. Some of the kids need that more than they need the regular school lessons.
Peter is just glad he can provide for all that he does.
derek + laura
Derek doesn’t know when his mutation manifested, and neither does Laura, so they don’t join the school until Derek is sixteen and Laura has already finished school. Their Uncle Peter assumes they developed at the same time, or that Derek had developed first, because that was the only way they didn’t know about Laura until she went out to college and was out of Derek’s sight for the first time ever.
She looks beautiful Derek hears, and she wears the blue skin proudly. He has only ever seen it in photographs. She teases Derek sometimes, looking at him with her human face. He knows she doesn’t blame him for suppressing her mutation for so long, for ingraining his powers in her so much that it took two weeks for her powers to finally manifest once she was away to college, but when she teases that he stopped her from being her true self for so long it still hurts.
Laura thrives at the school, teaching math, and becoming a role model to all of the younger students who have physical mutations. She teaches them how to love themselves, and entertains everyone when she sometimes slips up her transformations, because she’s still learning just like the younger students.
Derek hates the school, but he stays because it’s family. No one wants to spend time with him at first because of his powers, and by the time he’s able to get it under control, that he only suppresses someone’s power when they are touching him, it’s already been five years and people are used to giving him a wide berth. Peter talks to him some nights and asks if he wants to leave, offers him other opportunities. He knows he’d fit in with humans, never drawing attention to himself, but Derek feels like that would be turning his back on who he is.
He does some good here, suppressing the more violent outbursts from some of their students, even if it gets him resented.
His powers will be useful to someone some day. He just needs to wait.
jackson
He comes to the school because it’s either that or prison. He only gets the choice because when he burns down his fake-parents’ house he doesn’t kill them. His fake-mother cries, trying to understand how he can get so mad that it makes his mutation manifests so early. Mutants come into their powers in their early teens, and Jackson is barely eight.
He looks her dead in the eye across the courtroom and tells her, “it’s because I hate you.”
It’s for the best, in the end. He doesn’t think he would have fit anywhere else. The Hale Academy is his new home and he makes quick friends with other people who are like him. Some of them don’t know their real-parents either, and it’s a bond he shares with them.
He never stops resenting his fake-parents, but when he’s sixteen he finally sends his fake-mother a letter, thanking her for the contributions over the year. He knows the quiet donations are the reason Peter got to build another housing residence, and a baseball field. These people may not mean anything to him but for some reason he means something to them, and Laura has told him that he should never spit in the face of someone trying to help him.
stiles
The last person Stiles touches is his mother when she’s giving him her power to fly. He doesn’t want it because that’s her power, and he has memories of her holding him tight as she flies around their town, showing him the world from a new perspective.
She convinces him to take it, to hold on tight to her until she stops moving and he has her powers forever, because she’s dying and this is the one thing she can give him so he will never forget her.
“I want you to smile when you remember me,” she says, stroking his face, and he can feel that he’s sucking what little life she has left.
The memories that come with it, the short films that play out her life in his head when he closes his eyes are a bonus he resents for the longest time.
He doesn’t talk for months after his mother dies, and he doesn’t use her power either. His father tries to figure out what’s wrong, but Stiles can’t tell him that he’s the reason she’s gone, and he doesn’t fly to show it either, so his father never knows. Stiles feels guilty when his father uproots them and moves permanently to The Hale Academy, he knows it’s some futile hope on his father’s part that he’ll open up again, but how can he?
Sure he plays the part well, sticking out in class like he always has, making everyone laugh, mostly at him instead of with him, and it’s almost like he’s healthy again. Deep down he isn’t, and he’s never sure he will be.
scott
Scott comes to The Hale Academy because his mom gets a job as the school nurse. He’s the only human child there for a while, the only human at all until Stiles’ dad joins the faculty, and he’s almost given up hope of ever manifesting until one day when he’s sixteen and Jackson shoves him into the lake.
He puts his hands out in front of him, begging for the water to not be icy cold, and he keeps waiting to be submerged until he hears Stiles let out a shout of triumph and he looks below him to see the lake frozen over. No one else has ice powers, and he realizes he did that. He grins at Jackson, whose face contorts and he flicks his lighter out, melting the ice out from under Scott.
He’s not able to refreeze the water quick enough, and he ends up encasing himself in ice in front of most of his class. The only good thing is that Peter makes Jackson defrost the ice around him, and the look on Jackson’s face when he is doing it is such a pained expression. Scott takes it, just happy that he no longer is alone.
boyd
Boyd spends most of his time with the youngest kids because they don't give him a second look when he transforms, body becoming covered in thick metal, hiding most of his features. He looks like an action figure, but all the younger kids see is a playground, and they climb over him, not afraid that he might hurt them.
He did this for his younger sisters before he came to The Hale Academy, and they liked it as much as the kids here do. Sometimes it hurts to remember them, to remember the fire that destroyed his family. He looks around the school and sees people with powers that can stop other events like that happening, and he wonders if it’s good to isolate himself like he does. He might need people one day, like his family did, and like his family he might have no one.
Then he looks at himself in the mirror, impenetrable metal, strong physique, and he thinks he doesn’t need anyone. He can take whatever is thrown at him.
He keeps playing with the youngest kids.
isaac + erica
They know they are siblings even though they don’t share the same last name.
Isaac takes one look at Erica and he knows. She grins at him shyly from across the hall where they are waiting for Peter to get out of his office, and her smile tells him that she knows as well. They may not have the memories, but they know each other.
Peter tries to explain it to them, using small words because they are small children, only ten years old, and they know they are born on the same day.
“You’ve both been in a very serious accident,” he says, mouth tense, never looking back at the man in the wheelchair who brought them to the school. “But we are lucky to have you, and you will always have a home here. You may not remember, but your names are Isaac Lahey, and Erica Reyes. Your parents were good friends, and you were together when the car crashed.” Peter looks back at the man then, who inclines his head slightly.
They can feel that those names are a lie, but no matter how hard they try they can’t remember what name feels right. In the end they don’t care, and they walk through the halls holding hands, calling each other brother and sister. Peter tries to separate them sometimes, but Isaac holds on tight to Erica and runs, and when he runs no one can catch him, not unless Derek comes into range.
Peter doesn’t try to separate them anymore, but their memories never get closer to coming back.
allison
Allison wakes up six feet underground and starts screaming. Dirt falls into her mouth and she doesn’t know what to do. The last she remembers, she was in bed fast asleep, and now she’s swallowing rocks and bugs. She closes her eyes and pushes, trying to claw to the surface, and then suddenly she’s in her parents’ basement, covered in dirt.
She screams.
The look in her mother’s eyes when they see her cuts deep and Allison is afraid of what’s happening to her. She’s afraid of what she really is, and she looks at her father, expecting to see furious hatred. He’s high in the government, always arguing against mutants, and if she is one what does that mean for his platform?
She lets out a sob and runs, phasing through both of them, and then the foundation of the house. She’s running underground but nothing is stopping her. As long as she keeps focus she stays intangible. She resurfaces three days later with no idea where she is. She’s in her pajamas and there is worldwide amber alert for her.
When she returns home her parents waste no time in making sure she is quietly sent away.
“We love you. We only want what’s best for you,” her father says, and he looks like he believes what he’s saying.
Allison thinks his actions will speak louder, and she monitors his voting record from The Hale Academy. He doesn’t switch immediately, but it’s nice to see a curve, her father voting more for mutant rights than against it.
danny
Danny likes stories that delve into the argument of mutant powers, specifically if you make the power, or if the power makes you. He likes studying people and seeing their power and how it reflects in their personality. He thinks his powers came about because of his own personality; he was always quick to adapt, it came from living with an army father. He doesn’t think having the ability to adapt to anything made his personality like that.
Others will argue that people try and match their powers. Would Jackson be as volatile if his mutation was something calmer? Would Stiles crave attention so much if he could touch people? Would Isaac avoid all his problems if he couldn’t run away from them?
Danny wonders these, and thinks that they would be the same. He didn’t know any of these people before he came to the school, but Derek and Laura both didn’t manifest until they were older, and from stories they haven’t changed. He finds it fascinating, studying people like that.
When he plays devil’s advocate with himself he wonders if that’s the part of his personality that is a result of his power to adapt. He blends in, giving him the ability to watch and observe.
lydia
She knows she’s an omega level mutant, even though there isn’t a test for that. She wouldn’t let anyone test her anyway, even though Peter sometimes gives her that look that says he knows she’s hiding something, but he can’t figure out what.
On paper Lydia can do very minor telekinesis. She can flip a light switch, and under great duress she can move something the size of a bowl from one side of the room to the other. With practice her teachers think she might be able to do more.
In reality Lydia can lift the school if she chose. She knows this because she tries one night, creeping out of bed to do just that, and when she returns victorious she carefully wipes the minds of the few staff that see her. Her telepathy is strong too, so much that it should have driven her crazy when she was very young.
Lydia thinks it might have, which is the only reason she’s able to cope with it now.
She can filter peoples’ thoughts, but she rarely pays attention to them as it is. There’s no need for anyone to know what she can do. Lydia has seen the world. She knows what omega level mutants mean. She knows they have to pick a side, fight for or against humans. With her level of power there is no way for her to stay on the sidelines, so she hides it.
She has better things to do than fight wars.
Chapter 2