Summary: In order to change a horrible future world Stiles is sent back to where it all went wrong, he foolishly falls in love.
*I had not intended to love him.* The boy wrote down in the book, *I had not intended to even stay at first, to help, to guide them but I couldn't let him falter, I couldn't let them die and so I stayed, I helped, I fell, and I guess that makes me the fool, I guess that makes this pain I feel deserved. After all I was only meant to set in motion the events that would lead the True Alpha to his destiny but then I held him up and realized that I couldn't let this be his end.*
The boy sighed and dipped the feather into the inkwell and continued as the candle burned lower.
*I wasn't meant to stay, I should not have interfered, I should have let the creature kill him, but I couldn't. I didn't mean to fall in love with him and I shouldn't have let him love me.*
The boy paused as a door slammed shut down the hall and then he looked down at the page that held his flowing script.
*But perhaps I should begin at the start.* He wrote and paused again to look at the portrait that was illuminated by a spell.
The person pictured was not smiling and his jaw was covered in stubble, he was dressed simply and on his head rested a crown of flowers, beside him was a smiling young man with the biggest puppy eyes in the world and his arms wrapped tightly around a young brunette woman in a flowing blue dress, on the other side of the crowned man was a red head in a gentle green dress, next to her was a blond male and sitting down in a chair with a curly headed boy sitting by her left leg and a dark skinned man with his hand curled around her right ankle head against her thigh was a heavily pregnant blonde woman grinning at the man painting the picture.
Of course no one knew who had painted it except the boy that stared at the portrait and he would never tell, the painter never had liked to show his soft side. The boy glanced at the right shoulder of the stubbled man where the paint was thicker and had to look back at his book, that had been where he had been painted, no doubt when he hadn't come back the unsmiling man had asked that he be painted over, and he couldn't even be upset about it, it is what he would have done too.
*It started with a spell, it was dark times, creatures killed without care, and humans were becoming extinct. My father was the last of the Argents, the great Werewolf Hunters, only there hadn't been any Werewolves since a few years after the Argents killed the last of the Hales, they had lost several of their own in that battle but none felt like the loss of Christopher Argent, then again he had been trying for peace, suggesting a Mating between the two families and Peter Hale had been willing to Mate with him.
*Their story was such a sad tragedy, they had fallen in love and their family loyalty kept them from one another until they found a way to be happy together and possibly bring peace. But Katelyn Argent would have none of it, she had asked for+ a meeting and even though her brother was so happy to be with Peter Hale she demanded her Hunters to kill every Hale that had come, Christopher Argent died when he took several Wolfsbane bullets for the Werewolf he loved, they say that the howl Peter Hale let out when Christopher Argent breathed his last in his arms made all in attendance still at the sorrow that filled the noise.
*They say that while the rest of the Hales fled like cowards Peter Hale remained, refusing to relinquish his hold on his would-be Mate. They say that he buried his face in Christopher Argent's neck when Katelyn raised her sword to kill him, they say that his hold was so tight that in order to bury Christopher Argent they had to bury Peter Hale's body as well and though Katelyn loathed to give the Werewolf such an honor she did so for her brother's honor, even allowing the Werewolf's head to be placed in the grave along with his body.
*They say that a young Werewolf was killed for desecrating the Argent's grave, but thereafter Wolfsbane grew on the Argent's grave spiraling around them, protecting them.*
The boy swallowed and dipped the feather.
*The boy killed was Derek Hale, the boy I loved, but this was before I went back, before I was sent back to change the past and make our world safer, better. I managed, but the spell ran out and I was brought back to the present and now I am the only one that remembers how the world was before, when the Argents won. I went back to prevent that and I did.*
The boy sighed.
*Once I was part of a pack, now I am alone, I can never be part of a pack again because every pack already has an Argent Mated or born into them, and even if it were not so I would never wish to join a pack in such a way, after all, even if he is long dead I am still Mated to Grand Alpha Hale as my Derek became and I always will be.*
The candle flickered and the boy looked up as a young girl entered.
"Stiles?" She asked.
"Yes, Coreen?" The boy answered.
"You told me to come get you before we served dinner in the hall." Coreen said.
The boy nodded, "Thank you, Coreen."
"What are you writing down here in the dark?" She asked.
The boy shook his head as he closed the book after whispering a drying spell on the ink. "A love story mixed in with horror."
"Can I read it?" The girl asked as Stiles joined her at the door.
"I don't think you'd like it, Coreen, it doesn't end happy." Stiles told her.
"Why not?" The girl asked as they walked to the girl's rooms.
"Because that's not how it ends." Stiles said softly as he helped the girl dress for dinner.
He was only allowed to do so because he showed no interest in wanting her, whether it be to wed or bed her, not even in an unconscious scent reveal and she had sent so many others away in tears. Stiles had let everything she said roll off of him and held her when she finally started to cry for the loss of her mother.
"Couldn't you change it?" Coreen asked as Stiles laced up her dress.
"I could but that wouldn't change the truth of it." Stiles said as he brushed the girl's long blonde hair and pinned it up gently. "There, perfect."
Coreen looked at herself in the mirror.
"Everyone says I look like Lady Erica from the First Pack." Coreen said softly.
Stiles smiled as he remembered the spirited Werewolf that fell in love with Boyd.
"There is a passing resemblance, but then you are descended from her." Stiles reminded her.
Coreen tried to catch Stiles' eyes in the mirror but he had already turned away.
"Why didn't Grand Alpha Hale take a Mate?" Coreen asked.
"No one knows." Stiles said as he placed a light crown a top her head. "There all ready."
"Thank you."
Stiles nodded. "If that's all you need tonight, Coreen, I'd like to continue writing my story."
"Yes, begone peasant." The girl said haughtily waving him away.
Stiles smiled as he turned away, "Good night, Princess Hale."
The girl whirled around to yell at Stiles but the man was already gone.
Stiles lit the new candle quietly and sat down again at his desk, when he had returned to this time he had been surprised to find that even with the changed past his room was still the same even though little else was, which was a good thing, the creatures and humans lived in relative peace, and Hunters were employed only to kill those beings who killed for pleasure, not just creatures but humans too. The Argents were still the best of the business and Stiles was still an Argent but he had 'retired' because he wasn't in the proper state to Hunt.
So he had been given a room in the castle that had been built on Hale ground long after technology died and the creatures banded together to overthrow the governments and let the Earth heal from the scars that humanity gave it, because he was still an Argent, one trained as an Emissionary, which made him useful even if he didn't Hunt.
And he remembered how to get through to a grieving Hale, even if she wasn't one by blood, so he had earned an honorary pack status when Coreen had told her father that she was keeping him, but not true pack status, he hadn't asked for it either which he knew made the current Grand Alpha Hale curious.
Stiles opened the book and looked at the words on the page, after a moment he took up the feather and dipped it into the ink.
*I do not know entirely what happened after I was forced to leave the Pack, I know only what was written in the Histories and the Herstories, the Herstories were all Lydia and Erica, I know because those two could get Derek to agree to anything, especially after Erica pupped. But I never am sure how much is true because there is so much that is left out in Histories.
*I do know that Derek never took another Mate, no matter how the Werewolves that came together under his rule probably asked him to, or demanded him to. I know that Derek most likely died waiting for me to return to him and I am sorry I never managed to find a spell that would allow me to stay permanently in the past without changing the future. I am sorry that he died always waiting for someone that would never return.*
Stiles paused to scrub at his eyes.
*But that is the end and I promised the beginning, didn't I?*
Stiles took a deep breath and began.
*The first time I saw him I had just finished manipulating the True Alpha's memories so he believed that we had been friends since childhood, it was just after he'd been bitten and we went looking for the inhaler he had lost when he's been walking home from the hospital the night before.
*'This is privet property.' The then beta had said, and I just wanted to yell at him, before I came back this is where Scott died, accidently wolfing out and attacking Derek, Derek had killed him for being a rouge, but I changed that.
*We left, running back to the jeep that I had borrowed and giggling as I drove back to town.
*I never realized how powerful a True Alpha was until I realized he was filling in the gaps to the memory spell that I had unknowingly left, he provided me with a parent, not one I would have chosen but one that needed me, just by casually saying that I should go tell the Sheriff about who we saw in the woods. And I realized that the jeep I'd taken belonged to the man.
*I fit so seamlessly into his life that he never questioned it. And then I was busy helping Scott get his control and keeping Derek afloat while the Kanima stalked around the pool.
*I felt the spell trying to end then, when I was edging us to the diver's bar, could feel it telling me I'd completed the task but the life I had in my arms told me I wasn't finished yet and I felt my Spark burn and echo throughout my body as my hand slipped on the bar and the insistent tugging faded away for the moment.
*It was not the last time it happened, but it became stronger and stronger each time until finally my Spark couldn't halt it anymore and I was brought back to the present.
*I'll never forget that day, or night as it was, but I am getting ahead of myself.
*Derek was a fool to turn so many children, and Scott was foolish to fully trust the Argents so easily. But not Christopher Argent, he was as good as the Histories had immortalized him as but he was so sad and I don't think any of the others saw it. He was especially sad after I mentioned the death of Peter Hale offhandedly, I realized then as I watched the tears gather in his eyes while Lydia and Allison told me to shut up and focus on our training that he had loved Peter Hale long before he had proposed the Treaty that would never be.
*We decided, meaning I, that if there would be Humans in the Pack that they should be trained to handle the Supernatural, just in case they were caught out without the Pack. Christopher was surprisingly agreeable, his wife not so much.
*They had such arguments about it, not just about training Allison but Lydia and me too. Eventually Christopher admitted that he couldn't stay in their marriage if she wasn't willing to let him help us, help us learn to keep ourselves safe. She tried to make him stay but he filed for divorce soon after and she admitted defeat when even his father couldn't get him to go back to her. Christopher revealed to her that he only married her at his father's insistence and it was time he started doing things for himself instead of for his father.
*Allison chose to remain by her father's side and Derek welcomed them into the Hale house that they were rebuilding, again at my prompting.
*Then Peter Hale used Lydia to come back to life and Gerard Argent was hell bent on a revenge kick, only it turned out that he wanted a cure for his cancer.
*Everything happened so fast, I barely convinced Boyd and Erica not to run away, and then Derek and Peter were saving Lydia's boyfriend Jackson and I was pushing the spell away so I could stay and Gerard Argent was dying.
*For a moment I felt sorrow for how twisted my ancestor had become, and I followed after him while the others loaded themselves into the available cars.
*I knelt beside him as the mountain ash battled the bite and I wondered if I was wrong to settle him in my arms and hold him as he exhaled for the final time. A part of me wanted to hate him, he had been so unforgiving and evil when he was torturing Erica and Boyd, but I remembered how many monsters died over the years with only their killers standing over them like they were superior to them and how many Humans had died with only the creature that killed them already feasting on the flesh they provided.
*So I held Gerard Argent as he died and when he asked me why I gave him the only answer I could, 'Even monsters do not deserve to die alone.'
*And he died with something akin to awe in his eyes among the pain and hatred. After he breathed his last I snapped his neck, the last thing we needed was a Kanima repeat and I stayed with his body for twenty-four hours to make sure he wasn't coming back as anything and then I buried him out on the preserve with none of the honor deserving of an Argent because he had dishonored our family the moment he approved of Katelyn's plan to kill the Hales years before, when he decided that Peter Hale killing Katelyn was deserving of retribution, never mind that killing Katelyn had been retribution for the massacre of the Hales.
*I left his grave unmarked but for the field of Wolfsbane I had buried him in to prevent him from ever harming anyone ever again.
*When I slipped into the Hale house I didn't expect anyone to be up, but a light flicked on as I headed up the stairs.
*'Stiles.' Christopher began, Peter glaring beside him. 'Where were you so late and for a whole day? You missed training, you know better than that.'
*'My dad...' I'd started only to be interrupted by Peter.
*'Funny, he didn't know where you were.'
*So I told them, I left out the worst bits like me being related to Christopher, about how they died before and why I was sent back, so I only told them I was sent back in time to help and my mission was top secret. They wanted more information but I told them if I told them more I would run the risk of destroying the time stream, never mind that I had already altered this time stream more than I should have.
*They believed me, and, thankfully, left me to my mission.
*Then one day while I was showing Isaac how to shoot a crossbow Derek came over to talk to me, he asked me out and before I could think of how many ways it could go wrong I said yes.
*The date wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, we were interrupted by witches the first time, then a pack that wanted to take over the territory, and then Harpies, then a freaky tenticle monster that was somehow transported to the lake.
*That one was almost fun, Derek and I crawled out of the lake laughing because otherwise we might cry and then Derek was kissing me and I fell, I fell hard and he carried me back to the house and I fell into an exhausted sleep and for a while everything went perfectly.
*Derek and I Mated and I knew I could never leave him, even though the tugging got more insistent and harder to push away. Erica got pregnant, Peter and Christopher Mated, Allison and Scott married and Mated and our pack expanded to include Scott's mom, the Sheriff, and Jackson's friend Danny. And Peter insisted we sit for a portrait, just the original Pack which didn't include him. Unable to help myself I made a flower crown for Erica because she was 'blooming' as my family had always described it because saying pregnant had been a sure way to get every nearby creature after you.
*She had insisted that Derek wear it because so many packs had started to ask us for our help and slowly they were deciding that maybe something should be done about the interfearaces with nature, they wanted Derek and his pack to lead them.
*Derek tried to talk to me about it but I'd been in pain from the spell all day and my Spark was only weakly keeping it at bay, eventually my Spark would fail and I would be returned to the time I had left, so I told Derek that this conversation would keep and could he just hold me for a while.
*'Hold me tighter, Sourwolf.' I'd asked him, begged him, 'I want the proof that this wasn't a dream.' I'd whispered delirious by now from the pain of holding back the spell, 'I'm sorry I made you love me.' I'd whispered as my Spark sputtered and went out and I began to fade from his arms.
*He'd shouted so loudly and just before I faded away completely he had howled so sorrowfully that I wondered if this was the howl that Peter Hale had given when Christopher died before I had changed it all.
*Then I was home in the room that I once shared with Derek, the placards all around me telling me that no one had lived in the House since the last of the Grand Alpha's original Pack died, and then they made it a museum.
*I'd walked through the museum and let myself into the basement, it had been locked since the last of the Pack died the placard on the wall said and I looked around the dusty room and when I found the painting I couldn't help but take it. I relocked the basement and walked out of the building and I found a new, beautiful world to find my place in. Most people would be thrilled to find that they had changed their world for the best but I only felt empty, lonely, lost.
*My real father found me just sitting in the field of wolfsbane that I'd buried Gerard Argent in more than three thousand years before with the painting leaning on a tree and a crown of flowers in my hands.
*He took me to the place I apparently lived and hung the portrait up, placing a lighting spell on it, and when he asked me if I was collecting Wolfsbane for antidotes I knew he didn't remember sending me back.
*I suppose that was for the best, I really didn't want to see that desperate man again, a man so desperate that he'd sent his only child back in time with a spell that might not work, or might kill him in the process and I guess it was only fitting that I was the only person to recall the horror that was the original time stream.*
Stiles stopped and flexed his hand, he had been writing the entire night, wanting to get the story out, he had only stopped to light a new candle and to tell Coreen a bedtime story, then he was writing again.
*So, you see,* The boy wrote carefully, *I had not intended to love him, but I cannot say I am sorry to have fallen for him, to have known how wonderful he was, how beautiful his smile was when he chose to share it, I am only sorry to have left him wondering what happened, sorry to have left him. I cannot be sorry for loving him, because he so deserved to be loved and I am lucky to have been loved by him.* Stiles finished as dawn entered though his window.
Now he was finished, his tale told, his story over.
Stiles cast a drying spell on the ink and closed the book, when he hadn't been able to find words he had sketched scenes from his memories, there were images of Scott dancing with Allison, of Peter just holding Christopher in a moment of silence together, of Erica yelling at Boyd, Lydia being lifted to sit on Jackson's shoulder, of Danny and Isaac's first kiss, and sketches of Derek's smile, how brightly his eyes shone when he looked at Stiles.
There were sketches of Scott's mom, the Sheriff and the group all together, but mostly there was Derek.
Stiles lifted the candle and walked to his bed, he placed the flower crown he'd made when he first arrived back a year ago, kept alive by a simple spell the first he'd done when his Spark had returned, on his head and settled the candle on the bedside table with the book and laid down on the bed and closed his eyes, wishing that when he woke Derek would hold him in his arms.
Stiles woke with arms tight around him. He snuggled closer and hummed as he smelled Derek's scent, smiling softly in his sleep.
It took Stiles a long while to open his eyes and he let his smile get wider as he gazed at his Mate's sleeping face. Stiles brushed a lock of hair out of Derek's face waking the wolf, who blinked sleepily at him.
"If this is a dream, don't let me wake, I do not believe I can live any longer without you." Stiles whispered quietly.
"I'm here Stiles, we found a spell that would send me to my Mate." Derek told Stiles, "Which I am so mad at you for not telling me you were from the future."
"I didn't plan on coming back, I was going to stay with you until I died, but my Spark couldn't hold back the spell anymore." Stiles whispered.
"How long were you holding it back?" Derek asked.
"Since the pool." Stiles said, "I couldn't let you die there."
"And I said I didn't trust you." Derek whispered.
"It doesn't matter, you're here, with me." Stiles whispered as he kissed his Mate.
The wolf growled lowly and rolled on top of Stiles, "It's been five years for me." He said as he scented Stiles.
"Only a year for me, which is good, any longer and I wouldn't be here."
Derek looked at Stiles sharply.
"I couldn't live any longer knowing you were gone, maybe if you were just away, but as far as I knew I would only ever see you again if I died, I needed you." Stiles whispered.
Derek whined and laid his body on Stiles' his nose in Stiles' neck, smelling him.
They drifted off to sleep that way and only woke when Coreen let out a piercing scream that brought her father and the royal guard.
Derek immediatly moved so he was between Stiles and the intruders.
"Stop!" Stiles shouted as he gripped Derek's shoulder and pulled him down so his nose was buried in his neck, his arms wrapping around his waist tightly.
"This is my Mate, Derek." Stiles told the king.
"And where has he been for the last year?" Coreen snarled.
"Trying to find a way to my Mate." Derek growled at the child, glaring at her from where his head rested on Stiles' shoulder.
"Don't be such a Sourwolf." Stiles said.
"I'll rip your throat out, with my teeth." Derek murmured back.
Stiles smiled softly.
Coreen grinned, "Does that mean the story ends happily now?" She asked as she waved her father and the guards away while she entered the room.
"That can be arranged." Stiles told her as he sat down on the bed with Derek leaning against him on his left side while Coreen took the right side.
"Will you tell it to me?" She asked.
"Alright." Stiles said, "But first outside."
The three settled on the grass on just outside of the old Hale house, now museum, they had done the tour, Derek whispering little things he had missed before Derek had been sent to him.
They unpacked their picnic and Derek settled his head against Stiles' thighs.
"Tell the story now, Stiles." Coreen begged.
"Okay, bossy." Stiles teased, petting Derek's hair. "I had not intended to love him." Stile began looking down at Derek, "I had not even intended to stay..."
And Stiles told the child his story, although only Derek and him would know the truth of it and perhaps that was for the best. No one else need know the desperation that had sent Stiles back in time to change the future.
I was once again inspired.