Title: What is Dead May Never Die
Author: fadingtales
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Ship: Peter Hale/Lydia Martin
A/N: Takes place during the season one finale. Title is a quote from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series/Game of Thrones. This has not been beta'd so mistakes will be unavoidable. I hope you like it nonetheless.
In a way he had been born from fire and so it was with idle amusement that he thought it would be fire to kill him. The symmetry could be admired; he liked how the cycle neatly repeated itself. As the flames licked at his skin, melting it with its scorching touch, he was being undone again.
Images of his family, memories of the other Peter, the Peter that was a good uncle, a kind man, came back to him. Memories of another life that he had buried in efforts to make room for the weight of all the revenge and anger and hate he had to fill his heart.
Memory after memory tinged black like soot flickering through his mind like the photos in one of those old View-Masters, never ending black and white. Always black and white. For that's how the world saw it. He was black and the others, they were white. Even in his most self-righteous moods, he recognized that. He accepted it. The world worked in monochromes and he knew his place. He did not expect pearly gates on the other side. No, for him there would only be fire. White, hot fire to burn his blackened soul.
And then, just for the briefest moments, as the pictures in his head blended into a fury they were passing by so quickly, a glimpse of red in his gray world.
Red hair he realizes. Strawberry blonde.
It was the girl. Lydia, he recalls her being called. A pretty name. A pretty face to match. His marred and mangled lips managed to curl in a semblance of a smile.
Lydia.
An oasis of red in his black and white memories.
With his last ounce of strength he let his mind leave his body and he imagined himself standing beside her hospital bed. Imagined himself brushing uncharred fingers against her cheek.
She would live, he was sure. She was his last, his best. She will not succumb to the bite. She mustn't. She was his last hope, his final act of being the Alpha. She would be his legacy.
He conjures a flower, a single wolfs bane stem, and sets it besides her bed. A gift for when she wakes up. A promise.
Pain wracking his body pulls him out of the daydream and he remembers again that he is burning. Grayness once again filled his vision.
From ashes to ashes. Fire burns and fire destroys. But he doesn't forget that fire also creates and only the strongest will rise from the ashes. He's been once undone by fire, but he had been redone and he will be redone once more. So goes the cycle. He's ready to be reborn.
Derek is standing above him. He throws the boy a taunt. Exactly the button he knows to push.
In a hospital room, miles away, a nurse finds a single purple flower placed besides a female patient whose chart reads: Martin, Lydia.