History Repeating
At first Derek doesn't know if he'll be able to breathe again after Paige. Forget loving again… hell, forget looking himself in the mirror. She'd stopped breathing, and it'd been his fault, his fault on so many levels. Every level. He'd brought her to that school, brought the Alpha there… and done everything after. How is he, a killer, allowed to keep breathing, while Paige rots away six feet under?
His mother's voice telling him he isn't a monster, that his eyes don't change him, don't say anything about him… that should help him through the worst nights, but it only stabs the truth in deeper. Because she doesn't understand. She couldn't know that for the first time, when he was with Paige, he had felt like a monster.
Long before he'd torn into her heart with his claws.
All his life, his family secret has always been a source of pride for Derek, causing his chest to puff up every time he made an impossible basket, dodged around players with a speed and finesse they could hardly follow, much less match. But then he'd met Paige, and for the first time in his life he'd started to question his heritage, to be really afraid. Because for the first time in his life, he'd wanted to share every piece of himself with someone. And how could he? What if he told her, and he didn't get it? What if she ran from him? What if he lost her? All at once he'd felt, on some deep down level he couldn't understand, unworthy. And so he'd made the decision to try and drag her down with him.
If they were both pack, they'd be in this together. She would have to stay with him, would have to understand.
And because he'd been scared, stupid, and selfish, they'd both ended up broken.
.-
Time passes. Derek still refuses to go out on runs with the family, to let the blue in his eyes show. Mom, patient as always, covers for him, saying that he's sick or tired or too busy with schoolwork. His older sister and brothers know something's up but then, they know he'd been with Paige and that she'd died. They have their own theories about that, he's heard them muttering to each other through the walls: that it'd been an Alpha from one of the other packs, maybe, trying to get to Mom. Some peripheral payback for one slight or another. Some Alpha or other is always feeling slighted.
The pups are too young or self-involved to even notice there's a problem. They stick their tongues out and call him a moody teenager and then go back to whatever pressing dramas occupy their prepubescent lives. The merits of Lego video games versus actual Legos, or those sappy kid pop stars whose voices haven't even broken but whose lovesick lyrics are starting to get to Derek way more than they ever should.
The last month of the school year passes this way, in a hazy mix of self-loathing and self-pity, and when he begs his mother to let him go away for the summer – anywhere, it didn't matter, just away – she doesn't fight him on it. She tells the pups he's going to summer camp (and he forces himself to smile and say that maybe one day, when they've learned to control their wolves, they can go too. And he doesn't choke on the irony of the words even once).
And so he spends his sixteenth summer alone in the California forests, trying to accept the blue in his once-golden eyes, and the hollow pit where his heart had been.
.-
Summer ends, and the Derek that comes back from the woods isn't the same one who went in. He's harder now, in every way imaginable: taller; narrower around the hips and broader around the shoulders. His jawline has sharpened, and he gets stubble if he doesn't shave for a day. When he looks in the mirror now, he doesn't see the boy who killed Paige.
And he feels like he can breathe again.
His family doesn't go out howling in the woods anymore. Maybe the pups have all just grown out of it, or maybe Mom has changed habits on purpose, so he doesn't have to share the new color of his eyes until he's ready. She still kisses him on the forehead and tells him it doesn't matter, and he smiles and agrees and knows that she knows he's lying.
.-
Kate Argent is the absolute definition of woman.
Nearly two weeks into this… whatever this is between them, and Derek can still hardly wrap his head around the idea that she would want this, that she would look at him and see something worth taking. That she would have her way with him once and still want to come back the next day. That she would be pursuing him.
Not that he's doing much running, what with his back being cornered by the long stretch of her mattress and her lithe legs straddling him as she alternates hungry bites and kisses down the length of his exposed chest.
Kate Argent: twenty-two years old to his seventeen, and beautiful in the way that fire is beautiful, that a sharp blade is beautiful. Hot and wild, and tempered and fierce.
And he knows, deep down, past the lust and the hormones and the sheer, lonely thrill of being wanted, exactly what it is that draws him to Kate.
She's molded metal, all the way through.
Long fingers rake up his neck and grasp his hair painfully, pulling him into a bruising kiss. Her thighs clench around his hips and his hands dig welts into her sides. And then his brain catches up to his body and he loosens his grip, turns his head and breathes an apology. All she does is let out a chuckle – low and throaty against his ear in a way that has his wolf howling – and wrenches his head so that his mouth is on hers again, and all he can think about is the roll of her hips and the way her teeth graze over his lip, his jaw… everywhere she can reach.
He's being marked, claimed, hunted; he recognizes the signs. Some days, Derek thinks Kate Argent is more of a wolf than he is.
.-
He is starting to seriously worry that he might be addicted to this woman.
She's there even when she isn't – in the tingling echoes of bites and fingernails digging into his quickly healed flesh, in the memory of her fierce, fearless eyes.
And there's the way shivers go up his skin whenever he catches sight of her without warning. When she appears on the street in town, stepping out of a car or a shop or a bar, when her eyes scan straight past him like he doesn't exist, only to flicker back hungrily the second the rest of his group is looking another way. And all Derek wants in that second is to leave his friends behind, drag Kate into the nearest alley, and let her devour him in whatever way she sees fit.
There's the way he loses all focus for a second when he catches her scent in a crowd, when he knows that she's somewhere in the gym watching him play, even if he can't see her. He doesn't know how much of all this is a game to Kate, how much of the thrill is based in being secret and forbidden. Or if there's more to their relationship…
Is this a relationship? These secret moments stolen in every dark corner they can cram themselves into? The nights of wild laughter, of light banter and hard screwing. Of waking up to feel her fingers down the corded muscles of his arms, her expression thoughtful in a way he can never get her to explain in the light of day. The long afternoons of mindless thrill-seeking, of driving deep into the wilderness and rock climbing without a rope, of her hands bracing his hips as she teaches him how to fire a gun, of her bracing him against a tree and teaching him how wring sensations out of his skin that set him shivering at the mere thought of, days later.
Derek has come to fully believe that nothing in the world can rattle Kate. That no personal secrets or life-altering revelations would earn worse than a twitched brow as she takes in all in stride. If anyone were ever to text her with some vague message to meet him at the school late at night, she would show up armed with that desert eagle she keeps tucked under her jacket, and if something started running at her, looking to bite, she'd shoot it in the head without flinching.
She's a fighter in every way Paige hadn't been. Paige, with her teasing eyes that had always just bordered on flirting, that had seemed such a challenge to his boyish seven-month-ago mind, but he now realizes had been far too soft. She'd been too soft. Innocent, trusting. Fragile. And he'd broken her.
He knows from day one that he could never break Kate.
And that's exactly what he needs now. Someone he can't hurt. Someone who dances in and out of his life like fire, who's made of metal. Unbreakable.
When he'd been with Paige he'd relished putting her off-balance. Just little things like padding, lightfooted, into a room and speaking up when she wasn't expecting him, like sneaking into her house and leaving flowers or notes on her desk. He'd been the hunter in that relationship, all the way.
Here, Derek has no illusions about who holds all the power. Being powerful protects Kate. It'll keep her safe even as she exists in a world of dangers she knows nothing about.
But there is one thing Derek can do to look out for Kate, one thing he'd been too much of a coward to do with Paige. He won't be a coward this time.
He decides to tell her.
.-
They're in the woods again, and Kate's face is making a new, surprisingly endearing expression while she listens to him talk. Her lips are just starting to curl into her usual sardonic smirk, but her brows are furrowed, eyes flitting up and down his frame like his body might tell her something his mouth isn't letting on about.
"You're a werewolf," is all she says when he's done. And then again, changing the emphasis as though that would help his claim make sense. "You're a werewolf."
And for a horrible second he's sure she doesn't believe him, sees her rethinking their relationship (six weeks in, this is definitely a relationship) and deciding he's just too young after all, too immature, if he's dragging her into the middle of the woods to play such a pitiful prank.
And then the brows smooth out, and a familiar challenge comes into her eyes, and she crosses her arms and declares: "Prove it."
He does.
And a minute later Kate is laughing, sheer delight overriding any shock, and there's no fear in her, no rejection, as she grabs his shirt and pulls him into a savage kiss, fangs and all.
And nothing in Derek's whole life has been as good as this moment: as freeing as it is to be touched and savored like this without fear. She's still grinning as she breaks away from the kiss, trailing a finger down the newly rough line of his jaw.
"Your eyes are blue," she says, and Derek flinches at the reminder, before she presses a kiss into his jaw, leans up to his ear, and breathes: "It suits you. Now tell me everything."
He thinks he's probably in love with this woman.
.-
He's still at the school when the police find him. Classes have long since let out, but it's still basketball season and Coach has been piling on the practices. And Derek doesn't know if he cares much about basketball these days, but he's promised his Mom that he would try this year, and stay involved, and set a good example for the pups. And so he's stuck with it, grueling hours and all.
He's sitting in the principal's office beside a grim looking deputy for nearly five minutes before Laura's brought in. Laura's in student council, and volleyball, and the school play, and who knows what else she's decided to cram into her senior schedule. He doesn't know what she'd being doing at the school tonight. But now she's looking tenser than Derek has ever seen her, and she catches his eyes and tries to communicate something silently before the police even start speaking. He can't decide what her eyes are saying, and he keeps getting distracted by the thick smell coming off all of the officers.
They smell like smoke, and sorrow.
The man who'd been waiting with him stands, clears his throat, and introduces himself as Deputy Stilinski. Then he pauses, and apologizes that the Sheriff couldn't be here himself, but he's hard at work investigating…
And then he trails off again, like he has to regather his thoughts before he can continue. And Derek knows by now that it's bad. He'd know it even without Laura's (thankfully human) nails digging into his arm. He knows it from the way the deputy can't quite look them in the eye, and the smell of smoke and sorrow, and the fact that the Sheriff's hard at work investigating… something. Yeah, he knows it's bad.
He can't possibly imagine how bad it is.
.-
Laura's still clutching his arm as they make their way out of the school, but he thinks it might be to help keep him standing, not the other way around.
"You knew," he breathes, and it's not a question. She nods, glances at the deputy clearing the way up ahead, the other officer trailing a few feet behind, before whispering back.
"I felt it. When it happened… I felt it go into me."
"Felt it…" he trails off again when he realizes what she meant, and he swears it's only sheer wolf fortitude that keeps him on his feet as his head swivels unsteadily to look at her. "You felt Mom die. You're the Alpha now?"
She squeezes her eyes shut, a lone tear escapes, and the last hope he'd had of this being some horrible mistake is torn from him.
.-
This must be the absolute worst he is capable of feeling. He'd thought that before, with Paige, and he realizes now how naïve he'd been. How stupid he'd been to push his family away after that, to spend a whole summer on his own when he should have been soaking up every second he could with them.
He hates himself for not being at the house when it happened. He hates Laura for having Mom's eyes now when she turns. He hates the fire department for not responding fast enough, and his family for not realizing what was happening and getting out in time.
Because, goddamnit, they were wolves! Most of them were wolves. Enough of them were wolves. How could they possibly have not smelled the fire starting? How come they hadn't leapt over the flames, through the flames, kicked straight through the walls to safety if they had to? It just doesn't make sense.
Laura realizes it too, and that's when she starts talking about murder.
She's in the Sheriff's office now, her new Alpha side coming through in force as she argues with the man in charge, demanding tests and records and autopsy notes in increasingly deafening shouts. Derek is sitting in the main lobby on a long, wooden bench, nails digging into his palms and wishing he could be anywhere but there.
There's a scrawny, pale boy about Cora's age – about the age Cora had been – sitting behind the deputy's desk and scribbling what looks like stick figures attacking each other on a sheet of notebook paper while his math assignment sits, untouched, a foot away. He keeps looking up in what Derek's sure he imagines to be subtle, discerning glances, but come off more as a series of jerky, wide-eyed stares.
Derek squeezes his eyes shut, fighting the urge to let the blue show for the kid. That would probably stop the looks. Unless it set him screaming. He does not need to deal with screaming right now.
He needs to be anywhere else but this building. Even back at that ratty disaster of a motel they're being put up in on the town's dime. He wants to be away from Laura's increasing agitation and her talk of revenge, away from the useless hospital updates about Peter, saying that while his survival is a "miracle," his condition remains unchanged.
There's the sound of a pencil being set down, and a long breath being drawn in, and then the boy at the deputy's desk is talking to him.
"I heard about your house. My dad was there when it happened. Well, not when it happened. When it stopped happening. Um." His voice is oddly stilted, tight with some kind of emotion and Derek thinks it's probably pity. His hand moves and his nails dig deep into the wooden armrest of the bench. His jaw clenches, and he feels the hint of a fang bite his gums. "I'm sorry about your family," the boy continues. "I know it… I mean, I know how you feel a little. My mom…"
And Derek can't handle this right now. He can't handle sitting here, listening to Laura try and shout their problems away, or the emotions radiating off of this stranger as he tries to empathize with Derek… because there's no space in Derek right now for empathy, for commiserating, for bonding over being broken. His whole family was here yesterday and today they're just gone. Just dead.
And he can't focus on anything else... he can't feel anything else. He can't.
He shoots to his feet and makes a break for the doors. Let Laura track him down later. He needs to be away from the sad looks and the cloying smell of sadness and the shoulder pats and the sympathetic words and…
And when he breaks out into daylight he sees her standing there: the one person who'd be able to make all this… not better, maybe, but hurt less.
She's leaning against the side of a police car casually enough that she could have been waiting there for five minutes or an hour. She smiles as she catches sight of him, and this is the first time she's ever acknowledged him in public but he doesn't think about that, hardly even notices. She's here, and there's no pity in her eyes, and that's all he needs right now.
She slowly straightens up, her shoulders rolling back in a faux casual way that has his eyes flitting to her chest out of habit, and he takes a step toward her before stalling… because something about this moment is incredibly wrong.
Why doesn't she look pitying? Or at least upset, or anything? She's waiting around outside the police station so she must know what happened, but she's smiling at him like this is one of their discreet locker room rendezvous. She seems calm. Happy.
"Kate," his voice is faint, unsure. "What are you doing here?"
She takes a few quick steps toward him, coming in close enough to touch. Close enough that the smell of her – familiar and fearless and positively gleeful – leaves his nostrils flaring, his heart beating faster. Then she reaches out slowly, and he sees that she's pulled an envelope out of her pocket, and she's pressing it, palm outward, over his heart.
"I came to offer my condolences, Derek."
He glances down at the envelope but doesn't take it, the entire situation too surreal for him to really respond to. Here's Kate, waiting for him. Talking to him in the street, in front of people, for the first time. And… did she really buy him a condolence card?
"Sweetheart," she breathes, and her lips are twisting upward, fighting a playful grin with mock seriousness. "Don't you know what Argent means in French?" His brain stutters over the seeming non-sequitur, and all he can think is – no, I take Spanish. Then those lips purse, and he can see that she's mocking him, and he just can't wrap his head around why. Kate's always been hard, been rough and violent and taught him to savor both… but she's never been cold like this. Not cruel.
Her free hand swoops down, grasps his right wrist, and places a slow, lingering kiss against his knuckles before guiding his hand to the envelope. He takes it, and her fingers trace a teasing path down to his navel before they fall away, and she falls a step back. His skin is left buzzing in the wake of her touch, but it's as much in alert now as anything. Because something is definitely wrong.
"I want you to know that this wasn't all some great master plan, Derek. When we started out it was because of those roguish good looks, nothing else." She tilts her head, her eyes running down his frame, and she lets out a soft "mmm" of appreciation. And Derek's hand is still pressing the envelope numbly against his chest, and he can feel his heart starting to race, pounding rapidfire straight into his palm. And his brain can't quite follow the meaning in her words, is trying to rework them, reshape them, until they make any kind of sense, when she flashes her teeth and adds: "It's just luck that you ended up being what I was looking for in more ways than one."
He knows then. The sick twisting in his gut is telling him, even if his mind refuses to work it out. He wants her to stop, just stop speaking now before everything falls completely apart. Wants her to tug him close and kiss his problems away… except he suddenly can't stand the idea of touching her.
She quirks a brow.
"Aren't you even going to open my little present?"
And numbly, knowing all the while that he'll regret it, he tugs the envelope open. Something is sliding around inside it, something loose and light like sand or dirt. He frowns, pouring it out into his hand, and the second it touches him he jerks instinctively back. His hand thrums like it's been bashed with a sledgehammer, and the envelope flutters to the ground.
Mountain ash.
Then it all slams together in his head. Past the shock he can feel his eyes flashing blue, but Kate doesn't so much as flinch, her own dancing up toward the police station and back.
"Oh, come on, Der. Are you really willing to start something out in public like this, with witnesses all around? With your very last family member inside, surrounded by all those people with guns?"
Mountain ash… that's why they'd burned. Why they hadn't fought their way free of the house. Why it was looking like the entire family had been confined to the den in the basement. The wolves in the house wouldn't be able to break through the barrier, and the humans had been choked by the smoke and the flames before they could break it.
He bites back a growl, and barely keeps his fingers from turning into claws. And all the while something inside of him is crumbling, something he didn't know he had left to break.
He should have learned by now: there's always something else you can lose.
And right now the piece of him that had belonged to Kate is shattering and spinning away in sick, dizzying spirals, and he can't manage to swallow the question clawing at his insides:
"Why?"
She tuts softly, and waits until a pair of patrolmen stroll past them and into the station. And then she's stepping in again, and he can't bring himself to move back because every ounce of effort is going into not fleeing, not crying, not ripping her throat out with his bare teeth. She leans in close but this time doesn't touch him, though her breath rippling over his neck is enough to make him tense up to the point of shuddering.
"Oh, don't give me those poor lost puppy eyes, Derbear. Your kind, brawny beefcakes though you might be, are a disease on this planet that needs wiping out. And don't act all innocent on me, baby. I've seen your eyes, remember? I know what the blue in them means."
He shoves her back, then, and she barely manages to keep her feet as she rubs her shoulder, laughing. A few passersby glance up and away, frowning, and Kate pitches her next words soft enough that no human would be able to hear.
"What's it like for you when you claw them open, Derek? Is it a thrill? Do you get off on it? Or are you just disappointed that the chase is finally over?"
His voice has come back in the aftermath of the shove, though it's rough and ragged from the strain of not transforming.
"Are you talking about me or yourself, Kate?"
She laughs again – that wild, reckless laugh he'd have died to hear sixty seconds ago. When anything had still made sense. Before he realized how badly he'd been betrayed.
"Touché. Maybe we're not so different after all. Except for one little thing, wolf-boy: I hunt down killers. Your baby blues there? They tell a different story."
He wants to snap that she's wrong, that his family had been innocent, that Kate's just as bad as he is. Worse. But he can't, because the memory of Paige is choking him suddenly, and no amount of remembered words from his dead mother will be enough to outweigh the fact that Paige is dead… that his whole family is dead… because of him. Because of his weakness, his bad decisions. He is a killer.
Is that why she'd done this? She'd seen the blue in his eyes and decided his whole family was evil?
He wants to rip out her heart, then rip out his own. He wants to shout for Laura, shout for the cops, tell them that he has the confessed killer right here in front of him. But what proof does he have? Nothing but her word, which he doubts he'll get her to repeat, and a pile of mountain ash already blowing away in the breeze.
So instead of shouting for help, instead of launching himself at her in the middle of a street full of witnesses, he takes the last option left to him: he talks.
"I... don't understand. You knew when my practices were. That I wouldn't be there. Why wouldn't you wait 'til I got home?"
He wants to snarl the words, snap them, but in his own ears they sound more like whimpers.
"Oh, sweetie." He wants her to stop that. Stop the endearments, the light, dancing tone. And the gleam in her eyes shows she knows it, too. "You hit it right on the head a minute ago, didn't you? If I killed you all at once the game would be over. And you know how I like making a good thing last."
He knows. God, he knows. He'd been drawn to her for every reason she'd been an obvious threat. How had he not seen any of this before?
"I'll kill you." He's never said that before, never said it and meant it.
But Kate just breathes in a deep, satisfied sigh, like he's confessed his love to her, not his undying hatred. Her hands are on her hips, head tilted and stance casual, but he recognizes the set of her legs from when she'd taught him to shoot, can see that her fingers are a twitch away from her barely-concealed gun.
"Oh, I'm looking forward to you trying. We can go to war, baby, you and your… one person, and me and all of mine. But if I were you, and I had one thing left in the world to hold on to…" her eyes flick back to the building and he can suddenly sense Laura standing there in the doorway, and Derek is distracted by a rush of panic as he wonders how long she's been there, how much she's heard. Kate's lips curl as she breathes, barely loud enough to make out: "I'd hold onto that one thing, and I'd run."
Laura closes in behind him, and he can feel the tension radiating off of her, but she touches his shoulder and he knows that none of it is directed at him. She hadn't heard. She doesn't know.
She wouldn't be able to touch him if she knew.
"What's going on here?"
Her tone is careful and even, the way Mom's had always been when dealing with a new threat. And Kate's still smiling, and Derek doesn't know if his face can even form an expression right now, and he distantly wonders what the three of them look like to the other people on the street. Just three old friends catching up, casual as anything.
"Oh, just delivering my condolences about that terrible accident to your baby brother, here."
Laura's fingers clench protectively on his arm.
"You're a hunter."
"And you must be the perceptive one in the family." Kate flashes her teeth, but all of the teasing warmth has drained out of her eyes. There was nothing casual about the air between them, now.
Laura, playing catch up in a game that had been going on months longer than she realizes, grits her teeth and snaps, "You're the one who set the fire."
"Ooh," Kate's eyes narrow. "That is a slanderous accusation. And without even a shred of evidence to support it. If I didn't know you were so distraught and irrational right now, I might even take offense."
A car honking makes Derek jump, and Kate's lips twitch at the motion. She steps out of her ready stance and lifts her hand from its place by her holster, clearly dismissing both wolves as a threat.
"Remember what I said, Baby Blue. It's not much of a hunt if the prey doesn't run."
And then she's stepping back, tugging open a door of the truck that had honked, and swinging herself inside. There are five men in there already, every one of them leering like they're looking for any excuse to kill.
The truck screams away from the curb, and that's the last Derek sees of Kate Argent for six years.
.-
Laura tries to convince the police to investigate the Argents, but like Kate had promised there isn't a shred of evidence against them. There's no way of convincing anyone it was murder at all, not without revealing how impossible it would be for the Hale family to be wiped out in something so mundane as a fire.
"Sometimes… accidents just happen."
The words are delivered carefully, heartfelt and sincere by the Sheriff, and after less than a week the case is officially closed.
.-
Derek knows they're being toyed with when he finds a line of ash blocking the motel door. He can hardly stop shaking until Laura sees what's happened, and calls the landlord to come to the room to deal with a "broken light bulb." Laura's attractive, and the man's been an obvious letch since day one. He comes quickly. The second his careless foot breaks the line of ash, Derek is out the door and running.
Laura finds him a little while later, standing stock still outside the ruin of their old house. The scent of smoke and burnt flesh still hovers over the clearing. It'll take years to wash clean.
"I should have been in there," he breathes.
And she doesn't understand. She thinks it's just sorrow making him say it, or fear.
She doesn't know how much he actually deserves to have died that day. And he knows he'll never find the courage to tell her.
.-
She might have stayed in town if it weren't for him, and sought to avenge their family against the Argents. If it weren't for her, he might have stayed, and sought his own death as penance for the lives his stupidity had stolen.
But they still have each other: the last two Hale wolves against the world. No matter how much is ripped away, there's always one thing left to lose. Laura is the last thing Derek has in the world.
And so when she takes his hand, he allows her to pull him away from the ruin of his life. They turn, and begin to run, and leave the hell that is Beacon Hills behind them.
.-
The next time Derek sets foot there, Laura's already dead.
.-
Fin
A/N: Please let me know what you think, guys; good, bad, or generally indifferent.
I'm also thinking about writing a sequel piece to this, dealing with the betrayals & heartbreaks Derek faces during the show's run, including Peter, Jennifer and, yes, Stiles. (History really does repeat itself with our poor Sourwolf, doesn't it? Everyone he loves ends up evil or dead.)
Anyway, reviews make my life (there's nothing worse in the world than posting something and getting zero feedback. ...Except maybe having your whole family die in a house fire or something). And let me know if a sequel's anything you'd be interested in seeing.