Chapter 1

"Drive you to work; you'll be on time. These little problems, they're not yours and mine. Come on and listen to what I say, I've got some secrets that'll make you stay."

"What do you mean, you can't find Isaac?" Carmen asked Peter, completely slack-jawed. He had just picked her up from Danielle's house in an attempt to find a little more time to bond on the way back to Beacon Hills. That had experienced a minor set-back when he told her that her boyfriend had gone missing. "He's a person, not a sock! How do you lose him!?" She ran her hand through her long hair, shaking her head.

"It's not that we lost him, we just can't find him." He shrugged passively, trying to give her the impression that it wasn't a very big deal. He started the car and began the drive back to Beacon Hills. "Besides, I thought you two had broken up."

If this was his attempt at trying to start another one of his awkward father-type conversations then it wasn't off to a great start. "Okay, everybody needs to stop saying that. It's not true." Somehow she seemed to be the only person who actually thought that. "Do you even remotely know where he is?" She changed the subject, staring out the window.

"It's not the first time something like this has happened. He'll turn up."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME!?" She screamed, making him jump. The valiant "search and rescue" mission that Peter, Derek, and Isaac had been on for the entire summer now seemed entirely convoluted and disorganized to her.

"Relax, alright? Derek would know if he was dead." He tried to calm her down, but there was no way that was happening. He regretted even mentioning it in the first place. Getting her to trust him more always seemed to go downhill whenever he tried to work towards it. Ever since he and Derek had grown apart he was starved for attention, and getting it from Carmen gave him a second chance. He valued her as an asset to the pack and he knew that she'd be important in the fight against the Alphas. He didn't want to screw things up. "You never told me how things with Danielle went. Was she beneficial?"

"Slap yourself in the face." Carmen mumbled, watching with delight in her eyes as he did it.

"Don't use people as your own personal monkeys. They won't enjoy it." He warned her, rubbing his cheek. No matter how mature he believed she was, she was still a teenager. And teenagers fell victim to vices. She had a lot of them, and her biggest one was Isaac. The second-biggest was being able to make people look like idiots. He didn't appreciate that. "But I'm glad that you at least learned how to do something."

She thought he knew a thing or two about using people as monkeys. After all, he manipulated people based off pure talent and nature. His disposition was to lie, and that's why she couldn't make herself trust him. She had her own reservations, most of them having to do with why Scott and Derek killed him. "She told me a lot about my parents."

"Really? Like what?" Finally she had started a conversation topic with him rather than being prompted to do so. He saw this as a positive sign.

"Like that Allison's aunt set them on fire and watched them die." The anger in her voice was clearly evident, and that scared him. Every time she had ever mentioned her parents, it was difficult. Almost as if the very thought of them caused her physical pain. Isaac had let him in on this piece of information one night when they were in the woods together. She was the only thing they really had in common so it seemed appropriate.

"She um...she never talks about her parents. Whenever she thinks about the night they died she gets these really terrible episodes, like somebody's talking in her head or she's hallucinating or something. Sometimes she gets out of it for hours." Isaac shuffled his foot in the dirt awkwardly, drawing a circle with the toe of his shoe. "It's a little scary." That was an understatement. When they happened it terrified him. He couldn't have imagined how she felt about them.

"It sounds like she has posttraumatic stress disorder." Peter nodded in acknowledgement, seeing a flood of panic before Isaac's crystal blue eyes. "She does?" Both of his eyebrows shot up. She had remarkable control for someone with a condition that severe.

"She used to have it really bad right after her parents died. She's supposed to be on meds for it right now, but she—"

"Refuses to take them." He mused, suddenly becoming immersed in deep thought. It was like she was outgrowing the sickness itself.

The bluntness with which she mentioned them now was almost startling. It hadn't even phased her. "Do you think the Argents are coming back?" There was a tone of interest in her voice now, and Peter knew what would come from that kind of curiosity. He had fallen victim to it for his entire life.

"If they are, don't do anything stupid." He was too used to telling Derek those words. "They're an asset. Don't turn them against you or us. Kate was different from the rest of them. She was like Gerard. Chris and Allison aren't like that." But he knew how she felt. There was a time in his life when he would have wanted nothing more than to personally kill all of them, but he was smarter now. He knew the time was approaching when nobody could afford to put their own interests in front of the majority's needs.

But Allison almost was like that. The night they battled the kanima, all she could remember was how Allison stared into Isaac's eyes when she ripped through his skin with her daggers. In that moment Carmen had been too concerned about helping him to even process anger. Though when she thought back on it, anger was the only emotion she was capable of having. It was like forgiveness was completely out of the question. "She almost killed Isaac."

"He would have healed."

"She wanted to kill Isaac."

"Fair enough. But she didn't." That was the most important part. It didn't really give her much closure on the topic, but it got her to be quiet about it. "Once we locate him, I'm sure you'll be in a much better mood. Then you can solve whatever ridiculous relationship conflict you have so it will stop impacting your decisions and giving you bad judgement."

"It's not doing that." She grumbled to herself, crossing her arms over her chest. She just admitted that they had relationship conflict, and it was exactly what he wanted to hear.

"You literally made me slap myself in the face for even mentioning that fact that you and Isaac were no longer together, and you just got finished telling me that you essentially wanted to kill Allison. So yes, it's doing both of those things and it needs to stop. You don't need vengeance." Well not yet, at least.

"Vengeance is a good motivator." She smirked knowingly, looking over at him. He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"Not for a teenage girl." She was a teenager, but she was definitely more clever than average. She experienced emotions on a completely different plane from mostly everybody her age and it gave her the advantage of staying level-headed in certain situations. It also made her more apt to convincing herself to do terrible things.

"I'm not a normal teenage girl." She corrected him. The words rolled off her tongue with ease, as she was clearly familiar with having to repeat this sentence to people.

He pulled up to a traffic light and tried to get some time to compartmentalize everything. She was different. Something about her just wasn't the same from four months ago. He thought it had to do with gaining more power, but if it was she would have never been able to shut up about it. Her character had shifted in a strange way and he had to correct it before it was too late. She'd end up devaluing herself. "You have school tomorrow. We can talk about that." He suggested, hoping that she'd throw him a bone.

"It's school." Now that was a normal teenager's response. The way her eyebrows moved could give him the hint that she was clearly disinterested in the topic. "I'm getting a ride with Stiles." It was a first-day tradition. She never rode to school without somebody who was close to her.

He quickly jumped at that. "Well that's good, right? You two are close friends." Now he was just making stupid statements. It occurred to him that they never really talked about her life other than her ability or Isaac. He made a mental note to work on that, but he'd probably forget about doing it anyways.

"Yeah, I guess." She'd talked to him on a weekly basis over the summer. She never really told him what she was up to, but he never really asked either. He was too busy mending Scott's broken heart, and it wasn't like she had minded. She had grown apart from everybody over the summer and for a good reason. "So why'd you volunteer to come get me anyways? My brother could have done it."

"Because I felt like we needed to talk." Peter wasn't particularly close with her brother, but they did know each other. Again, like with Isaac, Carmen was the only thing they had in common. Peter wasn't interested in Troy's ability because he found it mundane and boring. It was an ability that humans had an interest in, and he found most humans boring to begin with. He thought it was a crime that not even her parents had been intrigued by her gift. He'd just assumed that they didn't know what they had been given.

"About how you lost my boyfriend?" She wouldn't stop bringing it up. It was almost like she wanted to make Peter feel bad about it. She wanted him to give a human response. Even though there had been plenty of change in her the one thing that remained the same was that she still cared about Isaac. She still loved him. To her it seemed like he was the only sure thing in the world.

"He's a person, not a sock. We didn't lose him." He repeated her earlier wisecrack in a snarky tone. She rolled her eyes. The only reason she was clever enough to not fall for one of his tricks was because she had learned to think like him. That wasn't exactly something to be proud of. "And no, I just wanted to talk to see how you were doing."

"That's what my dad would try saying when he wanted to pry at my life." She mused, twirling her hair around her index finger. It was like she had grown out of her inner conflicts like a pair of shoes. Like she barely even found the time to care. Her bluntness was startling.

"I'm hardly your father, which is easy for both of us to agree on. I just want to make sure you're on the right path." His tone of voice seemed innocent enough, but she wasn't buying it. "We're all depending on you to have a clear head when the time comes. We can't afford for you to get into a temper tantrum."

"I'm not a child."

"That's arguable."

She opened her mouth to say something incredibly sarcastic but she bit her tongue. He was right. "Whatever." She mumbled, seeing the Welcome to Beacon Hills sign pass her window as they drove by it. She smiled to herself and she could feel heat growing in the pit of her stomach. She'd missed it here. No matter how much she had discovered about herself when she was with Danielle, it wasn't home. Beacon Hills was the closest thing she'd had to a home since her parents died. She'd gotten attached to it.

"Your brother might be at the hospital. I didn't check with him before." Peter said casually, turning on the road by the high school. Both of her eyebrows shot up.

"So you're telling me that he's gonna come home from work tonight, see me sitting on the couch, and think I teleported to get here?"

"Well, the teleporting is a little far-fetched..."

"Peter, you're joking. Legally, this is called kidnapping." She scoffed, shaking her head. For some reason she was barely surprised that he hadn't notified her brother. It was just in his nature.

"I came back from the dead, so I don't think the legal system seems to impact me very much."


This chapter's song was "Barely Legal" by the Strokes.

A couple of you guys wanted to see more of Carmen's relationship with Peter and I really am going to enjoy developing that over the course of the story. Also, I'm just looking forward to a lot of character changes as well because the third season of the show does delve into that a lot and I'm excited to try my hand at it.

Also, thank you so much to everybody who's followed/favorited/reviewed so far! Before I put this chapter up I had like 37 followers already and that's crazy! Thanks for all the support. :)