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Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf.
Laura watched the rain streak on the glass and wrapped her arms around herself. It was night outside and the city lit up beyond the glass but Laura didn't want to see the lights. So she watched the rain. And she watched the reflection of her little brother in the glass. Derek sat on the beat up, old couch with his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, staring off into nothing. The same way he'd been staring ever since the fire. She often feared that there was nothing left inside there, that the fire had burned him out too and only left a shell the same way it had done to the house. She shuddered thinking of the house and then forced herself to think of something else. She couldn't afford to think of the house, of what happened there. In a few years maybe, when Derek came alive again and he'd begun to deal with his own grief and she could trust him to look after himself. But not now. Now she had to keep the only family member she had alive, until he wanted to do it again. And he would want to live again, Laura promised herself. She would make sure of that. She'd find a life for him, for them both, one they could bear to live. One that maybe in a couple of years they could even learn to love. And maybe someday, someday they'd be happy again. Until then, she'd keep him alive. She would go back to school, get a part time job, either ship Derek off to school, because the school would keep him safe if she explained the situation or homeschooled him herself if he couldn't manage and drag him to college with her. They'd both go through the motions for something to do.
And she would keep an eye out. She didn't know if they were still following. She didn't know if they ever were but she couldn't take those chances. She would keep them both alive. Because she wouldn't let them win, the bastards. She and Derek would live. She won't let them kill them physically and she won't let them kill them mentally. And maybe, maybe in a few years when Derek was alright, she could look through the window and the only water she would be seeing would be the reflection of her tears.
Laura watched the rain because she didn't want to see the lights. They looked too much like fire.
Derek barely said any words in the first four months following the fire. He barely looked at her. Barely ate. He spent the full moons curled up in a corner, crying, shifted and digging his claws into his arms. Laura spent the full moons making sure he didn't kill himself. When he finally did begin to talk he did it by throwing tantrums. He yelled at her, he yelled at the sky, at the TV, at the couch, at the radio, at the cheerios. He destroyed the radio, destroyed the basketball, and punched the mirror in the bathroom, sometimes he just sat and screamed when he ran out of words. He stopped this behaviour abruptly two months after it started when, in a moment of fury he told her he wished she was dead. She had jerked back and when his mind caught up with what he had said he ran to the bathroom and threw up.
She sat with him on the floor of the toilet and held him in her lap and rocked him back and forth while h apologized over and over again and she assured him that she knew he didn't mean it. After that he didn't talk as much again but they were able to have conversations.
It turned out that Derek couldn't handle going to school again so when Laura signed up for college she spoke to administration and they allowed Derek to tag along with her because seriously what person wouldn't let a little brother sty with his sister after their entire family had been burned to death. They even said that if she wanted Derek could see the college guidance councilor. Derek refused of course but it was still nice to know. She got a part time job in a dingy little coffee shop whose owners also didn't mind if Derek sat in the shop doing the work she set him whilst she worked. The money wasn't much but it paid for the equally dingy apartment. Money for college came from the trust fund her parents had set up when she had started college and she used the allowance from it to buy food. Neither she nor Derek could bear to use the money from their family's life insurance.
Six months after the fire, Laura started teaching Derek how to fight. It was harder than she thought it would be. Not because he was a bad pupil but because she could remember her parents teaching her and she had to fight not to cry sometimes. Derek was a better pupil than she thought he would be. Her aim had been to teach him to defend himself but mostly to give him a routine to focus on and he took to it grapping on to it like a life line. They got up early every morning, at varying time though and ran. Then they would go though several katas and then spar. In the evening when they were both home, they'd go through the whole thing again. Derek had a fierce anger, always had, and he channeled it into fighting. Three months after they started Laura noticed that he had begun to add is own flare to some of the moves and she smiled, knowing that it meant that Derek was healing, even if he didn't know it.
A year and a half later, Laura privately rejoiced when Derek decided to go back to high school. The first day he called her fifty four times to make sure she was okay. The next week the number went down to forty five. Two weeks later it went down to thirty five. A month later it went down to twenty and stayed that way for the rest of the semester.
The next semester he only called her ten times a day.
For the rest of his high school life he called her five times a day, in between classes.
When he started college he called her three times a day even when they both were at home.
When Derek turned eighteen Laura rejoiced because at least she'd managed to keep him alive until he become an adult.
When he was eighteen Derek asked her to tattoo the triskele onto his back.
"Are you sure Derek?" she'd asked him anxiously. Because this was Derek, her little brother, who couldn't even have candles on his birthday cake and wouldn't got near the stove and who had gone vegetarian for six months because he couldn't stand the scent of cooked meat, of burned flesh.
He had gritted his teeth and nodded. After a few moments he had added, "I need this. I need to remember. Both times. The good and the bad. And that is them. And it's us. In the good times and the bad."
So she agreed. Even when she didn't know if she could handle doing it but she agreed. Because she was his alpha and he need this and she was going to do it. And she was his sister and she understood.
He laughed a shaky but determined laugh when she insisted on stenciling the triskele on his back in magic marker first and prayed desperately out loud that her hand wouldn't shake when she did it. She had to kneel down on his back to keep him steady and thought to herself when it was over that she would never forget his screams. He sounded like he had screamed every scream he had ever wanted to scream when he had heard about the fire. She hoped she never ever heard him scream like that again.
They both knocked down shots of brandy when it was over and sniffed smelling salts to get the scent out of their nostrils.
After that Derek stopped being afraid of fire.
When he was nineteen he confessed to her that it was his fault that everyone died. He told her about Kate, about telling her about his family and about the house. When she hugged him after wards he looked at her like he couldn't believe she still loved him. He had already packed up his things to leave.
Laura sat down with him, held his hands, and told him slowly and carefully how much she loved him, how much she didn't blame him and every single thing she ever loved about him. They both broke down and spent the night crying and clinging to each other.
The next day when Derek had headed off to school. Laura locked herself in the bathroom and cried all over again. Not for her dead family but for her darling little brother who had been suffering under the weight of that secret and even more so under the guilt of it.
Two days later she bought him a car and told him that he was just as beautiful as it and a whole lot more.
When he was twenty Derek finally slept with someone again and when he came home and Laura scented him she had laughed and teased him mercilessly. Derek had groaned and tried to bat her away and told her it was absolutely none of her business. And inside Laura smiled, because the fact that he could take the teasing meant that Derek could finally take care of himself. He was beginning to live again. He wanted to live.
When he was twenty Laura realized that she had made it, well part of it. She had attained her goal of making Derek want to live again. They, had, in part, beaten the bastards who had killed the rest of them. They were on the home stretch.
When Derek was twenty Laura stood in front of the window and the only water she saw were her tears reflected in the glass. And in the background fire burned in the city lights.
When Derek was twenty-one Laura got a picture in her email and left for Beacon Hills.
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