A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he's still left with the river.
A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he's still left with his hands.
-Richard Siken
And when Derek finally came back to Beacon Hills, it was a usual Tuesday afternoon. There were no big announcement and celebration, no crushing hugs or aggressive accusations, no weeping affection, welcoming grand gestures…nothing. Well, there was no one really left. It has been five years after all; he has no right to expect anyone to stay put. Beacon Hills was a Hale territory and as the last surviving member, (Peter doesn't count for shits anymore) it was Derek's job to protect it. But if he himself was willing to shrug off that responsibility and run away in search of peace, some semblance of sanity, and a purpose to go on, who is he to blame the rest of the pack for moving away?
It was only after the second week of his arrival that he went out in search of a familiar face. He found that the Stilinski house is now inhabited by an old couple that moved to the small town after retirement about a year ago. He marched to the McCall house and when no one opened the door, he dropped by the station only to discover another man sitting behind the corner office of Sheriff Stilinski. When he asked the officer at the counter, she looked at him oddly and said that the Sheriff passed away from a cardiac arrest approximately 3 years back. He couldn't ask her about Stiles. It didn't feel right to ask her. A stranger. A young police officer who wasn't in the force yet when it was Derek's prerogative to run in and out of the Sheriff's office to ask for favours about the next big, bad thing that was after them. To ask him to destroy records. Or get classified information. Or crack his mind over some important clue about supernatural incidents. It wasn't right to ask her when he should have stayed for the answers all those years ago.
He walked out of the station, hoping to go to the hospital and find Mrs McCall. Where is Scott? Or he will look for Deaton. Someone, anyone who can tell him where Stiles would have gone, if he was alright, if he had someone looking after him. He knows he wouldn't have survived the years after the fire if he didn't have Laura getting him out of bed everyday. Halfway to the car, he had to stop and actually deal with emotions he has long since tried to get rid of. Derek is intimately familiar with loss and grief and the utter betrayal of knowing that the world will never offer him reprieve from the bone-aching loneliness. He knows what it means to have your entire world ripped apart mercilessly; he knows the weight of a lifeless body against his chest, how it feels to cradle the cadaver of a loved one, and rock back and forth until he can't anymore, because they're only truly dead when you let go. His family, Laura, Boyd, Allison, all of them... they're only hopelessly, irreversibly gone when someone finally gives up and lays them on the ground, in the pool of their own blood, and the tragedy is that we all eventually do. So, really, the fact that the Sheriff is no longer around has no power to shock him. Derek Hale has lived through death a dozen times and at some point, he has had to numb his senses and mechanically function.
Then, why does it sting like flesh torn off from his chest up to his torso to recall the Sheriff's perpetually worried yet gentle eyes? Why does his voice calling Derek son once or twice ring in his head and make him want to run a mile a minute until he physically cannot bear to think of anything? And yet, he thinks of Stiles, remembers the dead and haunted look after Allison's death, the entire month of him reeking with the stench of loss mingled with panic and self-hatred and vast, empty rage… the hollow surprise and immediate disappointment when Derek finally packed his bags and left. He cannot imagine the damage done on that boy, losing his only family even if it's not for supernatural reasons. And he doesn't think he wants to know where Stiles went after all. Not if he wants to hold on to his own sanity and start over in this town.
