Disclaimer: teen wolf does not belong to me in any way, shape or form - okay so y'all know me well enough to know that I LOVE angst, it's my fav, so naturally here's some more angst for ya, hope y'all enjoy :)
They never saw him there, slinking about in the shadows. Didn't detect his breathing nor his heartbeat, too overcome in their own anguish to realise. He preferred it that way. He didn't want people seeing him so broken, so weakened by grief. He detested company right now, wanting to wallow in sorrow and self pity by himself.
So he stood well back and watched as they carried her body from the back seat of Derek's car, wrapped loosely in a white sheet towards the makeshift sloppy hole they had dug right next to her favourite tree where a proud treehouse once stood, her and her cousins playing from sunrise to nightfall throughout the summer. He remembered it just like it was yesterday, all those young children happy and gleeful as they explored the woods, eagerly making huts and playing hide and seek.
He remembered it so well because, some part of him, wanted that life back. That simple life where his family were all together and alive, his nieces and nephews playing loudly and scaling trees. He wanted a life where his daughter was still alive.
He never realised, didn't comprehend, what an impact she had on his life. How one person, one teenage girl, could make him feel so many things he long thought gone. She resented him and he couldn't blame her - he was selfish and controlling, he had hurt her, but yet despite trying to remain impartial, he had loved her like any father would.
Such a pity she would never know that.
What a shame that the only memories she had of him were bloodied and tainted by his evil streak.
He would now never get a chance to prove himself to her, show her that in his strange, damaged way he really did love and care for her. She was his daughter, how could he not?
He spent the first sixteen years of her life being her uncle, watching another man raise his child but unable to do a damn thing to change this. Be forced to sit paralysed for six years, desperate for her to visit more often, wanting to see the person she became from the pig-tailed, dungaree wearing Tom boy he remembered.
And he hasn't been disappointed.
Despite their differences, their arguments, his frustration and her anger, he had been proud of her. He would think to himself that he did that - he created her. She had his blood running through her - the blood of a fighter. And she had fought none stop, constantly battling with either others or herself, trying to deny the dark side she knew resided in her. But she was stubborn, deflecting problem after problem until she came face to face with a problem she couldn't fight.
Peter let out a long sigh, feeling the scorching heat of tears well beneath his lids again as he watched her body - her dead, cold body - being lowered into the ground and a surge of anger tore through his body at that, wanting to shout that she didn't deserve this, not being left out here alone just feet from where she watched her family burn alive but he couldn't find his voice. His throat ached, the weight of grief holding him down like chains around his ankles.
She was so young yet so tormented, he saw it every time he looked her in the eyes. No seventeen year old should have horrors like that. Maybe - just maybe - the hopeful part of him wished that maybe now, finally, she was at peace. But the pessimistic, grieving angered part of him wanted to scream and demand for her to come back, she was too young to die, her entire life ahead of her.
A life that he was sure she would have lived out magnificently.
A life that was now wasted.
And all for what? For him?
Peter clenched his jaw, his heart too broken to even muster up an ounce of sympathy for the lanky teenager crying hollowly as he watched the grave be filled up. This was all his fault. He warned Kayla, he warned her that human would bring nothing but misery and distress to her life, that he would ruin her but she never listened and she continued to fall in love with him more and more until she was willing to die for him.
He was bitter. Consumed by fiery rage. His daughter didn't deserve this. If anyone should be dead and in the ground it was him... It was Stilinski.
But he got out unhurt and unscathed. Well, lucky him.
Others weren't so fortunate.
It was no secret he and Kayla didn't have the best relationship. In fact they didn't really have a relationship but he wasn't completely heartless. He wasn't the monster that everyone made him out to be.
He still had a handful of her drawings from preschool. A small photo of her in first grade tucked away in his wallet. A key ring she sent him one Christmas all those years ago. He was banned from loving her for years that, yes, it became easier to hide his love, to pretend, but it didn't diminish it. The love he felt as a father was still just as prominent as when he found out she had been born.
He just didn't get a chance to show that.
Now he never would.
How fucking tragic.
So he watched. He watched silently as his own flesh and blood was buried, parts of his already damaged soul crushing to ash and dust.
He had failed, as simple as that. He failed her in life and now he was failing her in death, unable to even let his tears slip as he felt numb and hollow from the inside out, unable to fully grasp what was going on despite watching the events unfold in front of his very eyes.
He just wanted another chance to make everything okay. To start afresh. To say no to John and Jody, that he wasn't going to be pushed about, that she was his daughter and they couldn't take her away. Maybe then she would have grown up with three loving parents instead of this constant crippling secret that tore their family apart.
This crippling secret that tore him apart.
He remembered that awful night of the fire. Remembered feeling so desperate and fearful that for the first time in years, he didn't think of himself. He didn't think of self preservation. All he thought about was her - his daughter. Because he couldn't let her die. He loved her too much, as simple as that.
So he fought tooth and nail to make sure she got out safely, whether or not he met the same fate. Sometimes that's the only way being bed-bound and mute was tolerable - when he thought about her, his daughter, out living the life she deserved to live despite his own agony.
Only this time he didn't get a chance to do the same as before.
He had outlived Kayla - Kayla who was once so full of life and wit, her sharp tongue able to silence an entire room and strip skin from bone with just one fierce look, her attitude that sometimes made him want to ground her but recognised she got it from him, that very same Kayla was now still and unmoving, resting in the cold earth that would nurture her decaying body.
Proof that there was no good in the world, not really. Especially when people like him were still alive and kicking, getting a second chance, and people like Kayla... His daughter he never really had, were punished for doing good.
He had lived the last seventeen years in regret, wishing he could change time and have a chance at being a proper dad, one that she deserved, one that he knew she had craved since she found out and now he would have to live the remainder of his sad, pitying life in the very same regret.
Regret that he would never make things right.
Regret that he had let his daughter slip through his fingers, never to be got back.
A/N) seeeee? Peter does cares somewhere haha whoa, sorry, had to, I was in need of some angst, got me back in the writing mood haha so please please pretty p,ease with a cherry on top let me know what you think, especially about peters thoughts and the angst ha, and I shall see y'all again real soon, thank you lovelies X