Permanent Ink

Scott McCall gets the tattoo at seventeen; two bands around his bicep as a reward for not talking to Allison during the entire summer. The first time, he gets the tattoo by regular means; a tattoo parlor and ink. It doesn't hurt - his tolerance for pain has risen to unbelievable heights in the past years, and when the tattoo machine inks his skin all he feels is a tickle at most. The ink doesn't last, not until he tattoos it again - this time with fire and wolfsbane and mountain ash by the hands of Derek Hale, and only that time is it permanent. Only that time it decides to stay on his skin for as long as he will live.

The tattoo holds no other meaning then, just circles that he used to absentmindedly trace with his fingers, or draw in the corners his notebook and he's okay with that. He's not looking for meaning, really, even though he ends up finding it somewhere along the line of protecting his city and saving his pack.

They all find meaning in it, and it makes them all stronger.

Liam decides to get the tattoo - his birthday was just last week and he got his step-dad to sign the permission form after doing all the house chores for three months beforehand and promising that he'd pay for it himself - and, initially, he keeps it a secret. It's not that he wants to keep it from Scott, but he feels a bit shy about it at the beginning. He's still not sure that he deserves it, that he's earned it, and even though he knows Scott wouldn't think that way, he's still not ready to tell him what he's planned on doing.

He gets the pack symbol tattooed on his forearm, going around his arm much in the same way Scott's does, and it takes a few hours but it barely hurts and the tattoo artist is almost surprised - "I've been through worse." is a sentence that's on tip of Liam's tongue as a reply but he doesn't let it out.

It's only after he gets home from the tattoo parlor and the fine ink disappears from his skin in the matter of hours, as if it healed, that he decides to ask Scott to help him.

"I got a tattoo on Friday.", he starts the conversation and Scott's eyes soften. Liam knows that Scott understands what happened and that the question doesn't have to be voiced, but he asks it, anyway. "Why did it disappear?"

Scott gives him a reassuring smile. "Did you know that tattoo also means 'open wound'?", he asks and Liam shakes his head. "Our wounds heal. That's why it disappeared."

"Then how did you get your tattoo?"

"Derek helped me.", Scott replies. He puts a hand on Liam's shoulder. "And I'll help you.", he promises and Liam returns a smile. "What did you want tattooed?"

It's a Thursday after lacrosse practice. Scott's got a blowtorch, mountain ash and wolfsbane, Derek on the phone and three people ready to hold Liam down. "You sure you want this?", he asks Liam one more time. The beta nods surely. "It's gonna hurt like hell."

Liam just puts his left hand on the table in response, and Malia grabs it and holds it down instantly. "I can take it.", he says and Scott doesn't ask again.

Liam yells for two hours, his teeth and claws coming out. Malia, Kira and Parrish hold him down and Scott burns the symbol into the beta's skin with fire and wolfsbane, covering it with mountain ash afterwards.

This time, the tattoo doesn't disappear.

When Scott visits Allison's grave, the pack symbol stares back at him from the right edge of her tombstone. He never asked for it to be put there - he knows it was Chris Argent just as well as he knows that seeing an Argent be part of a wolf-pack would make any of her ancestors turn in their grave and it makes him smirk - and it's carved into the marble stone, right next to Allison's name.

"I miss you.", he speaks to the Heavens. "We all do. It's like there's an empty space next to us. We love you. Always have, always will.", Scott repeats the same words every time before he leaves and, somehow, he always feel better after. As if a weight has been lifted off his shoulders for the time being and he feels free for a while before it's time to take the burden back again, as if he's Atlas and he's holding the world.

Isaac visits every few months; returning from France with new stories and a brighter smile and Scott thinks moving did him good. Scott misses him, and he's never been shy at admitting that. Isaac was one of his first betas - even when Scott himself was a beta - and Melissa misses the young boy, too. She signed the adoption papers not long before Isaac left for Paris with Chris Argent (whose name was signed right under hers), and with an array of last names to choose from, Isaac left to make a life for himself somewhere less ridden with memories. Although, he quickly surprised himself by feeling an unfamiliar sense of nostalgia he's never really felt before - homesickness, the feeling was - and Isaac smiled at himself once he realized that he indeed had a home to return to if he ever felt the need to.

It was an unfamiliar feeling to him, but not one he didn't want.

The last thing he did before leaving was ask Derek for a favor; it resulted in burnt skin right above his heart, which later revealed a circle inside a bigger circle.

For Isaac, the tattoo meant home, and a promise that he would return to it.

When he does return, he visits Allison's grave daily, but never stays long. Isaac gave up praying long ago, never really believing in God, but he still prays for Allison. Talks to her. He likes to think she hears him. It gives him comfort.

Lydia traces the symbol with her fingers when she visits. Every time, without a fault, as she speaks to her friend that has fallen in battle. Lydia feels an echo of the pain she felt that night in her chest every time she remembers Allison, but she's learned to live with the echo of that pain. It brings her comfort now, even.

She does the same when she visits Aiden's grave; she leaves flowers and lights a candle and talks to the air in which she swears she can feel him and she traces the symbol of the McCall pack that's engraved next to his name as she says: "I always believed you were one of the good guys. I still do."

When Ethan visits Beacon Hills, they go to the graves together and he holds her as she keeps back her tears, not letting them fall. They aren't tears of sadness, not really; more those of shared times and memories she keeps.

Ethan doesn't cry; or if he does, Lydia never sees it. He still feels hollow no matter how much time has passed. Ethan will probably always feel like that, like a limb is missing from his body and he sometimes doesn't know how to live on without it but he somehow still does.

It was Lydia who asked that the symbol gets engraved on Aiden's tombstone. It was after one of the first times she visited - one of the times when she'd still fall down and cry and feel her heart break over and over again - and she remembers Ethan shaking his head and saying how it wasn't necessary. Lydia shut him up immediately, and next time they visited the symbol was there.

"He was pack.", she said then, her voice strong and her back straight. "You're pack.", she turned to Ethan. "Don't forget it.", Lydia takes his hand a squeezes it firmly but somehow still gently at the same time, and it's one of the few times Lydia's seen him cry. Her heart aches at the sound of his broken sobs and Lydia tells herself that she never wants to feel loss like that in her life, although a little voice in her head is screaming how she already has.

She shuts the voice out.

Ethan gets the pack symbol inked on the skin by his ribs with fire and he does it himself, barely letting out a sound.

He's known pain. That wasn't it.

("Does it hurt you as much as it hurts me?" his brother asked him what seems a lifetime ago, and Ethan remembers a whispered yes escaping his lips, pain surrounding every syllable. During the bad days, Ethan tries to convince himself that he never answered the question, or that the answer was actually no. Tries to convince himself that it hurt him more than it hurt his brother.

Ethan likes to delude himself into thinking that his brother's death was painless.

Sometimes, the delusion works.)

Lydia gets the tattoo after she finally feels at peace with her powers, with what she is. It lets her give an extra meaning to her tattoo: in addition to her loyalty to the pack - to her family - it now also means balance. It means power; power that she has and power that she's in control of.

She puts the tattoo on the back of her neck. Initially, she thought about maybe putting it on her throat, next to where there's still the slightest of scars from when La Bête du Gévaudan almost ripped out her throat, or maybe to go to the extremes and have it go around her whole neck, like a necklace that protects her biggest weapon; her scream.

But she settles on a simple symbol on the back of her neck, making the tattoo only fully visible once she lifts her hair up. It doesn't matter to her that it's not out there for everyone to see because it isn't there for them; it's there for her, and that's what matters.

Scott notices it when she asks him to spar with her, once. She usually only sparred with Jordan, but she thinks that she should broaden her horizons. She has training sessions with Parrish on Saturday mornings, but she reserves one weekday to train with whoever is free in the pack. Kira is teaching her how to use nunchucks, and Malia's fighting style is much more ferocious and raw than Parrish's because where he learned to fight in the army, she taught herself everything she needed and what Malia teaches Lydia is improvisation; she pushes her to think fast and act faster, and Lydia is taking as much advantage from those sessions as she can.

Today, she's sparring with Scott and she can see he's holding back; he always is, no matter who he's training with. It's a trait that's so Scott McCall that Lydia can't hate him for it (she could never hate Scott, anyway), but she still keeps reminding him that she's not breakable.

"I know that, Lydia.", he says. Scott's breathing is a bit heavy because they've been sparring for a while, and Lydia knows that if he has trouble catching his breath then she must look terrible. "You're probably stronger than all of us put together.", she smiles fondly at the compliment. "I'll try harder."

Lydia chuckles. "You better. I'm here for a proper training. Otherwise, I'd call Stiles."

Scott laughs. He loves Stiles like a brother but, man, is he the least athletic person he knows.

Lydia turns around to pick up her water bottle, fixing her ponytail in the process and that's when Scott sees it. She can feel his eyes on the back of her neck but he surprises her by not saying anything.

When she turns back around, though, there's a smile on his face and his eyes are softer.

"Come on.", Scott says, motioning with his hands for her to come closer, getting in stance. "Let's go again."

This time, he doesn't hold back as much as he used to. Lydia appreciates it.

Much like Lydia, Kira only gets her tattoo once she feels in complete control of her inner fox. It's a difficult process, although she never expected it to be easy, but she comes out of it stronger than ever. The peace she finds within herself after controlling the kitsune is something she's been missing for a while and Kira lets it overwhelm her; lets that peace lead her in life as she finally allows herself to continue on with the future fearless.

She returns to school in order to graduate, but this time she has two bands inked to her skin around her right wrist - the one which she wields her katana with most - and for her it means stability as well as pack. For her it means finally returning to her second family after the months in the desert with the Skinwalkers, and it's as if also cements everything she's learned. For Kira, it's a reminder that in the war between her own mind and the dark fox, she won.

Her mother was the one who put the tattoo there once Kira asked her for help, knowing that it would heal otherwise. She uses an old Japanese technique that Kira isn't even sure if it could be found in any book, and Kira makes sure she memorizes the process step by step. It hurt - the fox, although under Kira's control, still not being too happy with the prospect of belonging to a pack of wolves. Kira's eyes flash orange once, a string of Japanese words leaving her mouth in a hiss making her mother laugh, but the fox soon calms and the pain becomes more bearable.

Lydia's the one who understands the meaning the most, as well as the tattoo's placement.

"I use it as an anchor, too.", Lydia says and Kira nods, smiling. Anchor. The word fit perfectly.

Kira grabs Lydia's hand, squeezing it. "Wareware wa kore o motte imasu.", she says, the Japanese leaving her tongue effortlessly.

Lydia repeats it, squeezing back. Her accent is thick and even though she doesn't know a word of Japanese, Lydia understands the meaning perfectly. They've got this.

"Hey.", the strawberry blonde woman says, shrugging and with a smirk. "Maybe that could be my next tattoo."

Kira laughs.

Lydia throws three quick punches before following them with a round kick. She moves as if to go land a right hook, but doesn't and uses Jordan's confusion as a distraction to grab his arm from behind and use her balance to throw him to the ground. Lydia holds him down for a few seconds as he tries to escape before he backs down and taps out.

She laughs and lets him get up. He turns away from her to take a sip from his water bottle, but she can tell that he's smiling.

"You've been sparring with Malia lately?", he asks. "If you keep that up, I'll be spending more time on the ground than on my feet.", his tone is only half-joking.

He takes a seat on the gym's bench and Lydia soon joins him, taking off her gloves. Her muscles hurt as they've already been sparring for the past hour, but it's the good type of pain - the type she likes.

She grabs her own water bottle from her back and takes a sip, but she can feel Jordan's eyes on her. He's eyeing her tattoo - has been for a while - and she thinks she's finally figured out why he's been doing that. Lydia's just about to say something before he beats her to it.

"Do you think it would heal?", he asks, looking down at his water bottle. Suddenly, the label has become an interesting read. "If I got the tattoo."

"Probably.", Lydia replies honestly. "But there are ways around that."

"Fire.", Parrish says. "Yeah, I don't really think that'll work on me."

"Ask Kira for help.", Lydia says, trying to reassure him. "She didn't use fire for hers. Maybe her way will work.", Parrish nods, making a silent promise that he will. "What were you thinking of tattooing?", Lydia asks even though there's a voice in her head telling her she already knows.

Parrish's eyes glance quickly at Lydia's neck even though the tattoo is hidden away from him as Lydia is now sat facing him, but when he looks back at her, Lydia doesn't need more confirmation.

"Thank you. For the advice.", he says, ending the conversation. "I'll talk to Kira.", Lydia nods, smiling. She won't push the subject.

"You wanna go again?", she asks him with a smirk on her lips as she's getting up from the bench. "I promise I'll go easy on you."

"Oh, shut up.", Parrish yells, laughter filling his voice as he tosses a towel at her.

(During their next training session, Lydia can see the pack symbol tattooed on his collarbone, covered almost completely with his shirt. It suits him.)

Mason gets his tattoo on his eighteenth birthday. It goes around his left calf much like Liam's goes around his forearm, and for him it serves as a reminder of who he is. He uses it as a reminder that he is not a beast, that he is not a monster; that there is still good in him.

While lying on the parlor chair, he jokes about finally being in the inner circle. "Except I'm getting this tattooed in a much less painful way.", he says and while the tattoo artist is somewhat confused, Liam laughs with him.

The year Derek proposes - something that's not a grand gesture because things like that don't matter to her, and they've never done anything normally - Braeden gets the triskele tattoo on her back much in the same fashion as Derek's, in order to show alliance with the Hale pack (a pack which is now only comprised of Derek and Cora - and Peter who is still at the lowest levels of Eichen House, but who they rarely speak of - and is but a mere shadow of what it used to be, but will still survive through them) and it is meant to also signify her becoming a Hale by name.

Although, when the members of the McCall pack arrive for the ceremony which is as small and as private as one could make it, Scott spots a new tattoo on both Derek and Braeden; each has half the McCall pack symbol on one of their forearms, and when their hands connect the tattoo finally completes itself, forming the full image of a circle within a circle. For both of them, it represents loyalty to Scott, but there's also a hidden meaning within the fact that the full symbol only forms when the two arms are linked together that seems so fitting for the two.

It makes Scott's smile widen.

Scott doesn't remember his mom ever saying she'd get the tattoo until one day she's handing him some papers and his eyes fall to her wrist.

The tattoo is small and very subtle, and Scott isn't surprised that he hasn't noticed it before because it's not meant to be noticed. The tattoo is simply there, and for the time being he decides not to mention it.

And he doesn't. Not until he sees the same tattoo on the wrist of Chris Argent. Then, he decides to mention it.

"I didn't know even you decided to get it tattooed.", he says offhandedly once, his voice as casual as he can manage it to be.

Argent doesn't reply but only sends Scott a look, and there's a voice in the back of Scott's mind telling him that the hunter might've had the tattoo for much longer than Scott thinks.

When he mentions the same to Melissa, she smiles. "It felt right. Getting it tattooed. It just felt like something I had to do. After the library."

Scott flinches slightly, hoping his mother didn't see. Melissa always gets a pained look in her eyes when she talks about the night he died, and Scott knows that the few minutes she was trying to revive him must have felt like ages to her.

(He also knows that Mason hasn't looked at him the same way since that night. Mason is now constantly looking up at him, as if in awe of the slightly older werewolf, and Scott doesn't know how to deal with that exactly. But then again, he did see Scott come back to life roaring after having no pulse for fifteen minutes which is more than enough to change someone's perception of a person. He's going to have to talk to Mason about it soon.)

It's a few weeks after he's seen Argent's tattoo that he sees the same one on Sheriff Stilinski's wrist as well, and he asks Stiles about it in a whispered voice. They're sitting on the other side of Sheriff's office desk, waiting for the older man to check up on a lead, and Scott hopes he's too busy with the computer to hear them. "Your dad got it, too?", he asks, having expressed his questions about his mom's and Argent's tattoos to Stiles beforehand.

"Yeah, I know.", Stiles says, although his whisper is louder. He doesn't really care if his father hears. "Can you imagine? My dad at a tattoo parlor - and not to arrest someone? I bet they all did it together, you know. Probably made a pact or something.", he eyes his dad's wrist as his hand's limp on the desk for now. "God, I still hate it."

Scott laugh and shakes his head, but from his father Stiles gets a stapler aimed at his direction.

"Hey, I'm sitting here!"

"Sit quietly, Stiles."

During his years as an emissary to the Hale pack, Alan Deaton wears a necklace with a triskele pendant. The motto it represented was the hierarchy of a pack - Alpha, Beta, Omega - and how fluid the changes in it could be.

After the Hale house fire, Deaton takes off the necklace for the first time in ages, and his neck feels bare. His alliance would still be with Derek if he only asked, but the young man doesn't reach out, instead deciding to find solitude and only count on himself. Deaton believes that to be the wrong choice, but decides against pressuring Derek to do anything he doesn't want to do.

Years later, Deaton meets a young boy names Scott McCall, and since he find out the young teen has been bitten, he hopes and prays that he would be a True Alpha. He believes with his whole heart, and soon he is proven to be right. Scott's eyes turn from yellow to red - bright red - and Deaton's chest swells with incredible pride.

During his years as an emissary to the McCall pack, Alan Deaton wears a necklace with a pendant made out of mountain ash wood, engraved on it a circle inside another circle. He makes the pendant himself and wears it with pride.

His neck doesn't feel so bare anymore.

Malia pulls her hair to the side, revealing a patch of skin behind her ear where she shows she wants the tattoo made. She stays like that for a few seconds, leaning in the chair, before she grows impatient.

"Well, come on, just do it!", she yells, turning around to look at Stiles.

He shoots her a confused look. "What - why are you looking at me?", he turns to Kira and Lydia. "Why is she looking at me?", they shrug, and he looks back at Malia. She lifts her eyebrows, expecting him to do something. Stiles laughs nervously. "Didn't Scott tell you I passed out while he had his done? Both times! I'm not good with this.", he turns to Liam. "You do it."

Liam looks at him, his eyebrows furrowing. "Why me?"

"Can someone just do the damn tattoo already?!", Malia yells and Lydia sighs, rolling her eyes.

"I'll do it.", she says. "Kira, Liam, hold her down.", Lydia orders and grabs the blowtorch. She puts on safety goggles before turning to Stiles. "You want to leave?"

"That..", he pauses. "Might actually be a good idea.", Stiles says. He goes to Malia and gives her a kiss on the cheek. "'Kay, love you, and see you on the other side."

Kira and Liam grab Malia to hold her down as Stiles goes to leave, and Lydia starts burning the symbol into Malia's skin. Malia grits her teeth to keep a scream from leaving her lips, and instinctively grabs Stiles' arm, who was still in reach. It's a firm grim - a little painful, even - and Stiles lets out a little yelp.

"Malia-", he calls to her and she looks at him with blue eyes and pain written all over her face.

"Should I stop?", Lydia asks, her voice loud.

Malia squeezes Stiles' arm a bit tighter, and he looks at her for a few moments before taking a seat next to her. "I'm here. It's okay.", he says. Malia nods, and Stiles looks at Lydia. "Don't stop."

Lydia continues with the tattoo and Stiles doesn't let go of Malia's hand, even once her grip loosens. He tries to distract her by talking - involves the others as well - and soon she almost forgets about the pain.

"What does it mean to you?", it's Mason who asks, and it takes Malia a while to reply as she hisses out her answer through the stings of pain coming from her neck.

"Belonging.", she says. "Family. Love. It tells me that I am not alone.", Stiles reassuringly squeezes her hand. "That blood doesn't define me; I define me."

Later - much later - when Stiles moves a strand of hair to stay behind Malia's ear, his fingers brush over the tattoo and Malia slightly shivers before kissing him.

"So, when are you getting yours?", she asks him once they pull away.

"Never.", Stiles is quick to answer. "Never ever. I hate that tattoo.", he says. "Hate it."

Stiles ends up getting the tattoo three weeks later. Malia goes with him to the tattoo parlor and as luck would have it, it's the same guy that did Scott's tattoo the first time.

"You sure you're not gonna faint?", the guy asks and Stiles laughs sarcastically. Malia's amused by the whole exchange.

Stiles knows that he doesn't need the tattoo to be reminded of what he has, of who he is; he doesn't need to prove loyalty because Scott already knows that if Stiles is loyal to anyone, it'd be to his best friend. But - as the pain of ink being drawn into his skin sends a tingling sensation down his spine - Stiles decides that it feel much like a seal to solidify an oath. And he's okay with that feeling.

Scott sees the tattoo one day after lacrosse practice, when Stiles steps out of one of the showers and has yet to put on a t-shirt. The tattoo is on his right shoulder-blade, and the circles are done in deep black ink.

Scott's chest tightens and he feels a familiar sting in his eyes. He doesn't allow tears to well up, not now.

"I didn't know..", Scott starts, but for all his self-control, his voice still ends up breaking. He clears his throat. "The tattoo. I didn't know you got one, too."

Stiles puts the t-shirt on and shrugs. "Of course I did.", he says. "We all got it. It's like a thing now, we have a thing. A pack thing. A house symbol, like in Game of Thrones.", Scott smiles.

"Be your own anchor." , Scott says, adding a motto. Just like Game of Thrones.

Stiles comes closer to Scott, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're my brother, Scott.", Stiles says. "But I still hate the damn tattoo."

Scott shakes his head, laughter escaping his lips. "No, you don't."

Stiles smiles back at him. "No, I don't."

Scott pulls Stiles into a hug.

Scott McCall gets the tattoo at seventeen; two bands around his bicep. The tattoo represents growth, hope; represents all that Scott embodies to the people around him, to the people that hear of him.

The tattoo represents his pack - a promise that he will keep them all together no matter what the price - and it's only a matter of time before they start inking it on their bodies as well.

A.N.: Let's pretend that this is more than just every single one of my Teen Wolf headcanons crammed into one fic, shall we? Also, this is the longest one-shot I've ever written. Yay me!