Title: Knocking But No One Answers
Rating: K+?
Summary: The thing about watching somebody you love die is that, once you do it once, you just know when it's happening again.
Author's Note: This was written on a whim after reading Jeff Davis' tweet earlier about how Stiles' mom died "Slowly." It was unexpectedly painful. The fic title comes from Elton John's song "Empty Garden."
Warnings: Character death and mentions of such deaths.
Knocking But No One Answers
The thing about watching somebody you love die is that, once you do it once, you just know when it's happening again.
It's almost an out of body experience to watch somebody you love die slowly. His mom's cancer was found by accident- she was having her kidneys scanned and they just barely saw the bottom part of her lung in the scan and that's when they saw it. So she had more time than most. But Stiles didn't know if that was such a good thing sometimes. She had twenty months of living with a hopeless prognosis. And twenty months of planning.
In some ways, the second time is easier.
But then, it can never really get easier.
It's a sick sense of deja vu, sitting next to this bed. But there are some endings that are inevitable, some sicknesses that even supernatural powers to heal can't fight.
So Stiles watches. And listens.
Derek seems to have many regrets. And Stiles sees in the reflection of his life that Derek sees a gaping hole, a hale-family-sized hole that he never quite filled, no matter how hard he tried with the pack. Any spark of love was almost always stamped out before it had a chance to grow, consumed by the same wrenches of fate that started the flames that extinguished his blood family.
Stiles doesn't want Derek to die. But he feels guilty for it, seemingly unable to separate the desire for Derek to live from his own selfish reasons for it. Derek is his place in the pack. He's the reason that Stiles is able to consider himself part of the pack at all, despite the lack of the common thread for everybody else there. He is the reason that Stiles even sees half of the pack these days. Derek's will is the will that pulls the pack, their loose semblance of a family, together- in some strange twist of fate, it's Derek's being that makes them all a family.
When he's gone, that family will dissipate to a loose and unfamiliar fold. The same as it was before he took on the task of bringing them all together following whatever drive or motivation he'd had.
When Derek is gone, they'll go back to being a bunch of kids in high school- the same problems, the same trouble, only this time there really won't be anybody with a clue what they're doing.
And when Derek is gone, Stiles feels like a part of him will be too.
Because really, for him, there is no place in the pack without Derek. There is no place in the supernatural world for Stiles Stilinski without Derek hale. Not in Derek's small corner of it or the much larger one that he's sure now exists.
It's selfish, he knows. Derek is dying and he's worried about his place in a pack that will cease to exist once he goes.
But the hale pack is neutral territory. A place that all the members of their ragtag band can find a level ground because no blood has ever been spilled there. There is no other such place that the pack would care to, or frankly, have the motivation to go. Nobody else can command the authority of every other person in the pack- whether because of events long-since past or more recent. There's too much blood in the water under a bridge blown away years previously by anger, frustration and teenaged drama.
And so they're all watching him die.
And the platitudes that people give Derek in Stiles' presence have him cringing. But even he's uttered the same words in one form or another in similar situations, the ability to express himself eloquently seemingly forever out of his reach. They all translate to the same thing, the same, "This really sucks for you. I'm glad that I don't have lung cancer. I'll miss you when you're gone." And Stiles has no doubt that they really will miss Derek- in some form or another.
But not a single other one of them understands what it's truly like when they're gone. None of them were there when Derek realized that this was one injury that he couldn't overcome and that he was destined to have an ending just as unfortunate and premature as the rest of his family. Derek didn't even have to tell Stiles what was going on- he knew. And he knew without having the supernatural ability to comprehend impending death like the rest of the pack. Because there are some things that you can be human and understand just as well.
None of the rest of the pack had spent hours in the hospital, braiding and untwisting and rebraiding the same strands of yarn, watching Derek fight with the lessening strength that he had left. It was as if none of them really understood that this was something he couldn't heal. How little time they had left.
None of them understood how surreal it is to stand in the closet of a twenty-five year-old man, watching him calmly pick out clothes to be buried in as though it's something that they've been anticipating for years.
But Stiles does.
It feels the same as watching your late-thirties mother do the same thing, except that when you're eight, you don't know enough about what's actually happening to understand.
When you're sixteen, you know.
And when you're sixteen, it hurts just as much. Because the thing about watching somebody you love die is that it doesn't matter how many times it's happened before. It always hurts.
You can do the same thing, holding onto the person's hand in the silence that precedes the somehow quieter, more ominous silence that you know is going to follow. Telling the person in the hospital bed to hold on, even if you know they can't hear you. You can tell when the person is fighting to say something, to say anything to the people who care too much in a world that cares too little.
There was never a good time to say goodbye because Stiles was never ready to let his mom says hers yet. Because when you're eight, there's always more that needs doing. And this time isn't really different because there's still so much more to do before he's ready to let Derek say goodbye. But there would always be too many moments that still needed having and never enough time so maybe by closure on Derek's part would be good.
When the inevitable comes, Stiles feels like he's stuck in a nightmare that he's had since he was eight. When he closes his eyes, he remembers both their smiles, both their laughs. They both filled a hole. He remembers the way his mom used to say, "you make me so proud" in the same mental breath as he hears Derek commenting on how annoying he is ninety-nine percent of the time. Stiles can still remember the way his mom's hand seemed so fragile and peaceful in his small hands. He never thought that Derek's hands could seem that fragile and yet, they are. And somehow, it's this thought that comforts him.
It's the thought of Derek's reaction to Stiles feeling superior to him at all that makes him laugh through his tears.
And really, the thing about watching somebody you love die is that, once you do it once, you know that times to be sad and remember will come. But so will laughter. And so will times to smile. Because they did before. They always do.