City of Colour
The last thing he sees in colour is a mix of red and orange of fire as his home burns. The black soot-streaked across Laura's hands and face and the reddening skin of Peter's burned flesh. The aftermath of his sin before the colour dies away and black and grey are left. The world doesn't end even if the agony and sorrow burrow into the marrow of his bones.
They pick up what's left of their lives two small gym bags with donated clothes that smell of laundry detergent and foreign people while the traces of smoke and ash cling to them and run away. They run and run until Beacon Hills fades and the clawing and desperation in their blood stings and leaves them hollow. They run and run until they reach New York a city of suffocating buildings and crowds of ever-changing people. Get lost in the constant change of New York where there is no home and cling to the remains of a pack even if there wasn't enough left of him for Laura to hold onto.
They make a life in a small studio apartment with two bedrooms where a wall made of glass looks out at the towering buildings. How much of the decision is based on how stifled the city is or the fear of confined spaces he doesn't ask instead he asks which room Laura wants. He's 15 and Laura is 21 they both aren't ready for the world that burned their own. Orphaned children left raw and open playing in a world where every shadow startles them and threatens to rip what they have left.
Laura's favourite thing maybe the only thing she likes about New York City is the lights. How no matter the time there is always a sign lit up. She always points them out when they're out on the streets insomniac and past the point of breaking. Walk along the streets that are bathed in every colour. There is no path they just go wherever the wind shifts them to. And if a few times he sees the dark brown of Laura's hair as she dances to a street performance, or as she walks ahead of him turning over her shoulder to smile at him he tells himself it's a memory that doesn't exist anymore. It's beautiful though and his heart can't help but ache.
New York is a city of colour and he's not sorry he doesn't get to see it.
Most of the time he spends in the apartment or at work, he talks too few prefers the company of solitude over everything. He walks with an aching void in his chest. There are times he presses his fingers against the sternum its solid and whole and it feels like a lie. Laura is quiet, but her eyes are always on him she holds him tighter presses her forehead against his chest and takes shuddering sighs that sound more like injured whimpers.
The days he can't sleep he spends up on the rooftop a cemented ground with bricked ledge and a rusted metal door to the stairs. He sits on the edge of the rooftop ledge legs over the side. In Beacon Hills, the galaxies are visible trails that curve and bend up in the sky in New York the light pollution of the city makes sky black. The building across is a fortress of brick and steel a few covered windows glowing while the rest are black squares. Hundreds and hundreds of similar structures stretch over the land as he looks only minor differences in style. He tilts his head down and stares at the asphalt how fast would he fall?
When the world is black and bleak blurs the grey the wolf stirs in his chest howls at the wrongness of the world wants blood on his fangs and a beating heart in his claws. The wolf wants anything but the apathetic numbness so it curls around the anger and sinks its teeth in and makes it a part of itself.
As he gazes at Laura's body at the black liquid pooled into the grey earth and congealed on her skin. He bends down and tries to scrub the blood off with his bare hands. A skitter of a rabbit near the blackberry bush sounds.
This part of the Preserve had been her favourite every spring robins would lay their clutches in the trees and every winter a barnyard owl would live in the hole she'd forced him to make when he was a kid. In the spring, they would come to hunt for robin eggshells because Laura had loved the colour of the shells and he could never say no to her.
A sparrow chirps in the evergreen tree above them a soft sweet sound. He brushes and watches the blood flake off as he continues to rub. "Hey, Laura I think the robins are back this year." He cradles Laura's head in his lap and picks out the leaves and twigs in her hair. "You made me climb up with you every year even when you were in high school to look at nests." His throat constricts.
Another sparrow joins the first.
What had been the colour of Laura's eyes?
The grave of his sister he digs out himself near their home because it's the only thing he can do. He can't take Laura's body for a proper funeral down where they buried whatever was left and he doesn't remember all the rituals for a burial. Never listened and no one cared enough to teach him. What did he matter stuck in the middle and forgotten?
And now he can't give his alpha a burial according to the customs of their kind.
Once the earth is returned to the hole he packs the eggshells he can't tell if they're robin shells.
The world dims less grey mingled with black now.
He spends the night standing over the last part of home that he returns back to their lands.
Everything moves and he doesn't want to, but he does too.
It's Peter who figures it out. Standing in the apartment building, he rents in the core of Beacon Hills when he tries to get an answer out of his uncle. New couches surrounding the coffee table with a whisky glass half drained. The living room floor lined with wood as he paces from one end to the other. He doesn't look at the pictures Peter's hung up on the walls.
Peter stands by the marble fireplace watching him.
"Did Laura ever know?"
He stops and turns to look at Peter.
Peter grabs the whisky glass as he sits down on the couch feet propped up on the table one arm thrown over the back of the couch. Indulgence and indolence balanced like the whisky glass on the arm of the couch.
"Did she know about how you've seen the world ever since the fire?" Peter tips the whisky down his throat and drinks the remaining liquid.
The clock above the fireplace ticks in the silence.
Peter tilts his head and smiles.
"Aren't you going to ask how I know, Derek?"
Because underneath all that madness your still uncle Peter in all the ways that stops me from killing you a second time. How when he was 10 and poisoned with wolfsbane Peter had been the one to that stayed and took the pain away while the rest looked for the strand. Peter had gotten into bed with him and held him well he puked black slime and cried from the fever.
There's a robin perched on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. The rusted blood belly feathers shift as it hops once and then spreads its wings and flies.
He meets Peter's gaze. "Laura was going to move you up to a facility in New York the month before she came to Beacon Hills."
He doesn't stay to see the look on Peter's face.
At first, it's the clouded orange of Stiles's pill bottle that he sees as he waits for Stiles to get home. He's sitting on the bed reading one random paper scattered across every available surface in the room when he looks up and sees the flash of colour. He frowns and blinks and the bottle is back to being a shade of grey.
Stiles walks through the door whistling bag on one shoulder and lets out a choked noise as he sees him.
His lips twitch, but all he gives is a raised eyebrow.
Stiles stares at him for a hard moment before he drops his bag to the floor and bypasses him to go to the adjourning bathroom. The door slams shut behind him. He tilts his head a little picking up on Stiles's mumbles. "I thought we trained him out of the creepier phase. He's like the human version of a horror movie popup. Werewolves."
He lets himself smile as he takes off his boots and lies down on the bed arms cushioning the back his head. Stiles's voice as damns werewolves and alphas in his ear as he closes his eyes.
He sees the brown of the skin over Scott's clenched uneven jaw raised up in the air.
The wind blows through the gaps in the house a creaking sound that teeters. All he wants to do is slam Scott's head in and make the few brain cells click. He doesn't get up from the front porch. Stiles shifts his balance on his heels hands shoved in his jeans, shoulders hunched, eyes focused on the burned home behind him. He wants to grab them both by their throats and seal them up somewhere far away from the shithole of a town that they call home. He offers Scott a sharp smile and promises to bring his favourite flowers to his grave and would Stiles like daisies or forget-me-nots? Scott scowls and stomps back to the jeep. Stiles snorts and tells him he prefers lamprocapnos, bleeding hearts he clarifies and that Scott would love daffodils. Stiles gives him a wave and walks back to his jeep.
And then the colours come and go. The black of Boyd's ice skates as Boyd grins and ties the laces and steps out onto the ice. The lime green and white of Scott's bike as he drives around the empty parking lot Isaac behind him laughing and yelling. The maroon of Isaac's scarf as wraps around it his neck before going to school. The white of Jackson's lacrosse stick as he plays a match with Isaac, Stiles, Boyd, and Scott in the back of the old Hale house. The silver of Allison's arrow tips as she releases them and they hit the bull's-eyes. The pink of Lydia's lipstick cap she leaves on the porch trying to get her compact mirror back from Erica. The dark blue of Melissa's scrubs as he brings her a coffee and muffin to thank her always dealing with their brand of supernatural shit, she snorts and takes a long drink and tells him to drive safe. The red of the apple Erica throws up in the air trying to hit Stiles's in the face from his perch in the tree to get him down. The white cuffs of Deaton's lab coat as he reads over a dust eaten tomb trying to find the answer to why half of Beacon Hills is in slumbering away. The gold of the sheriff's badge as he bends down to pick it out of the mud and wipe it clean against his trousers. The silver of Peter's laptop as he slams it closed and gets up and paces away kicking up soot and leaves.
When the colours stay for more than few seconds and become more common he packs a duffle bag and runs. Leaves behind Beacon Hills and drives the woods rushing blurring into a mix of brown and green that battle the grey and black until he's two states away and the ache in chest brands over like steel.
Two weeks later he finds a motel room that smells of industrial chemical cleaner and mothballs with one bed, a small TV in front of him and lamp that doesn't have a bulb on the bedside table. He's hunched over head bent as he gazes at the duffle bag between his feet.
There's a slam of doors and the laughter of a couple from next door as they pass by his room.
He doesn't want the forgiveness and redemption he doesn't want it, he wants the world to be black and grey. All he wants is Laura, the ashes and bones of his family to be flesh and whole.
He doesn't want it.