Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Title: Rainbows, Sunshine, and Werepups
Notes: This "story" will be a series of 100 scenes from a "100 Themes" challenge list. I'm choosing to do the challenge based around the overall theme of "Derek's past" so all of them will relate to Derek's past. And I'm going to stuff his past full of happiness and adorable werefluff moments because he goddam deserves some smiles.
Theme 1: Introduction
She lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed, paying close attention to just breathing, to just being aware. In the hall there were nurses and doctors and patients, visitors and family. Especially her family, her mate and her firstborn. She couldn't gather enough threads of focus to understand what Jeremy was saying to her doctor, but she knew that they were talking, could pick his smooth, deep rumble out of the clamor. All around her his scent mingled with the rest, of the doctor, the nurses, the blood and the baby.
The baby...
They'd taken him.
She opened her eyes and her mate was in the room in an instant, catching her hand as she lifted it to begin to sit. His other hand pressed into her chest to keep her from rising. "No, Ellie," he told her firmly. "Lay back."
She let him push her down, even though her panic nearly strangled her. "Derek," she told him frantically, needing him to understand. They'd just taken him.
"He's fine," he assured her. "They'll bring him back in a moment. You need to rest."
Looking up, looking into his pale eyes, she forced herself to trust him. Even as she did so, the door to the room opened and a nurse slipped through, a small bundle of blue blankets in her arms. She was full of hesitant smiles, trundling over to her bed and carefully, so very carefully, turning the bundle so that she could see the tiny, pink face nestled within it.
"Sorry for the wait," the nurse said. "We had to make sure he was ok. He was so quiet..."
"Is he ok?" she asked, holding out her hands for the child. Her child.
"He's fine," the nurse said, her hands over the top of Elyse's to steady her grip. "You're both fine. Perfectly healthy."
She tucked the bundle close to her body, pulled down the edge of the blanket with one finger. Stirring at the motion, the baby opened dark blue eyes, looked up at her silently. She smiled, and the baby's face crinkled, mouth opening with a small noise. Her gaze sought her mate's eyes, and he nodded, began to usher the nurse from the room, asking questions about when they could leave and was he allowed to bring his wife food and drink?
Almost as soon as they were gone, the door cracked open and the small form of a child wriggled in. She hesitated, not sure if she had permission to be entering this temporary den, but her mother waved her over, motioned to the heavy armchair that sat beside the bed. Laura pushed and pulled it until it sat beside the bed, until she could clamber atop it and see what was in her mother's arms.
"How come he's not a wolf?" she asked as soon as the baby's face was visible to her.
Her mother just smiled. "Until he's a little older, he'll take whatever form I take," she told her daughter.
Laura frowned. "He's not very cute," she told her mother frankly. "He's all... wrinkly."
Laughing, her mother scooped her onto the bed with one arm, snuggled her down along her side, the baby across her chest. "He'll change, as he grows. You looked like this too, you know. But you were an awfully cute puppy."
"I'm still a cute puppy," Laura stated. "Dad says so." She tilted her chin up, flexed so that she could look at the baby again. "What's his name anyway?"
"Derek," their mother said fondly, and there was no mistaking the softness in her voice for anything but boundless love. She tilted the baby so that the children could see one another. "Derek, this is your big sister, Laura."
Derek yawned, squinched his face as he closed his eyes tightly and then relaxed. Laura pursed her lips, dark eyes roaming over the tiny face of her newborn brother. Finally she snuggled her head into her mother's side, closed her eyes and said: "I guess he can stay."