When Stiles meets Derek the second time, it's year three.
The coldness in Stiles is just as it was when Derek left, but the shadows in and on Derek have grown darker and deeper.
There is a certain strength in it, Stiles muses, in the camaraderie of family lost in front of their eyes.
They've both gotten thinner since last they met, and to Derek Stiles seems too thin, too worn inside and outside, frayed at the edges.
Stiles has a tattoo now, too, one that he shows to Derek at night from the light of a single candle.
It's a huge tree, the roots disappearing beneath the edge of his sweatpants and the leafless branches spreading out over his shoulders.
Derek doesn't ask, but Stiles explains it's a nemeton; a sacred tree he once saw on a hike in the woods. He buried his father under it, he explains, not caring if it makes sense or not.
Because to be fair, nothing makes sense anymore.
Stiles says the tree is just a stump now, and that the one on his back is for the tree that will ever grow over his father's grave and that the branches are without leaves because the family will die out with him.
When they meet this time, Derek pats Stiles on the back, and the warmth returns a little bit, and a little bit more than last time.
Stiles thinks that maybe he won't die of the cold-that-is-not-cold after all.
He stays with Derek and his friends in the abandoned church in Mexico for a couple of weeks, needing the time way from Scott and the others. It's getting hard to only have three people to be with constantly. Well, four now that Allison has joined them.
Stiles tells Derek about Scott and Allison and how it hurts to look at them because they found each other too late, but the bond between them is so strong that neither is willing to let go.
He doesn't envy them, or so he claims, it's just too much all at once, with the tender confessions and sharing of lives not nearly lived enough and growing up too hard and too fast in a world that will soon end.
Derek nods, and says it's hard to watch Erica and Boyd. They've been together a while, he says, but watching to people love one another, however quietly, is still hard.
The first days the group gets to know each other. While Isaac, Boyd and Erica all went to school with Stiles, they never really spoke. They talk about Beacon Hills, about all the crazy stuff that went down there that doesn't seem crazy anymore.
Derek and Cora shares legends their parents told them when they were growing up, and for hours each day they forget about the ending that is creeping closer each passing second.
It's a way for them all to cope, to talk about happier times and childhood memories and stories they've never shared with anyone else.
Above all else, they avoid to speak of everything that's happened since they learnt The End was coming, and what they think will happen. It's an unspoken rule in the church that is now Home; don't talk about The End. It will come anyways, and it will either be fast and violent, or slow and torturous and there is nothing they can do to stop it.
On the evening of Stiles' second-to-last day, Derek brings him out to the tallest building in the crumbled town.
For a time they only watch the sky and drink some altar wine Derek found a while back. There's still a lot left because it tastes awful, but it's been spiked with vodka to make the alcohol last longer, so at least it creates a pleasant buzz, even if it doesn't dull the taste.
They talk about their losses, sharing the pain of the lack of those closest to them in a time when they are needed the most.
Stiles and Derek are both grown up, and have grown so much more since the disaster, but there is still that hole where parents should have been.
Derek talks about how he was at school for lacrosse practice when the fire happened, and that he thought for years he was the only one left, until he found his uncle wilting away from madness and scars at a caring home, and a get-well letter from Cora.
It was the madness of being chained both mentally and physically that killed Peter in the end, and Derek was glad to see his uncle finally released.
And then he learnt his former girlfriend was the one behind the fire – previously thought to be an accident and then proven to be arson – and the pain and grief had almost led him to kill her.
Kate was later found mauled by a group of wolves, just after The End was announced.
In return, Stiles tells Derek about how he held his mother's hand while she took her last breaths in a hospital bed when he was ten, and his father was away at work, and that even though he had Scott and Melissa, it still felt as if were just his dad and himself left in the world.
Scott's dad had left – mistakenly thinking Melissa had wanted him gone from their lives – and never looked back, and so the Sheriff became an honorary father to Scott and Melissa a mother figure to Stiles.
Stiles' breath hitches as he talks about how his father died – his first time talking about it to anyone, in fact – and as he talks and tells stories about what life was like before The End began, night slips way to the soft colour of a desert morning, and Stiles realises it's been two years to the date since his father dies.
He doesn't want to cry, so used to having to be strong and proud that he's still alive even after everything, and he fights the tears until Derek places a hand on his back and it feels as if the floodgates have opened.
Derek hold on to Stiles as he cries the tear he's held back for two years, finally letting go of the feeling of guilt of not seeing the gun in the young boy's hands in time to stop it.
They don't speak for a long time, and as the sky fills with the sound of the dawning day, Stiles' sobs quiets down until he falls still and asleep in Derek's arms from exhaustion.
Carrying Stiles inside, Derek ignores the look Erica gives him and gently puts Stiles down on his mattress, sliding his own up to it.
When they wake in the afternoon, Stiles' cheeks are stiff from his tears and his hand is linked with Derek's.
Leaving is harder.
Stiles promised to meet Scott and the others the next day however, and in order to get there in time he needs to start walking.
The last thing he tells Derek is that they're moving south and that if they're meant to meet again, they will, but he won't tell which country or city they're going to.
There is no guarantee they'll meet again, so when Stiles is the one to leave, Derek hugs him quickly, before he almost jumps away at the sudden contact.
It's an unspoken rule between them that was decided without any mention of it; do not get attached – it only brings pain and heartache.
As he walks away, more warmth spreading through him and into his bones, Stiles thinks that's easier said than done.