The sun was bright, the wind was calm and cooling; it was a perfect summer day, one that is rarely seen in generally gloomy Beacon hills. His eyes flickered open, still in the haze of sleep; the sudden bright light irritated him, but as he scrunched his eyes he caught a glimpse of the long willow branches swaying over the water, a blur of walking here kind of occurred to him, with someone. A flutter of a memory, walking here with someone hand in hand…alternating, vaguely he recalled…someone.
Everything was still kind of hazy. As he turned away from the sun, it occurred to him that they were at the creek, the one that was a short walk from the Hale house. Derek knew he always walked there, but both the jeep and his car were parked side by side right by the bank in front of them.
His car and Stiles' jeep... It was peculiar, but he couldn't understand why…just yet.
Someone tightened his/her arm around him. They were seated on the ground leaning against the solitary willow, Stiles was leaning against its massive trunk and he was sitting in between his legs, leaning against Stiles. He turned to look up at him, his warm amber brown eyes glittering in the sunlight, his mischievous smile ever present. The image flickered in his consciousness further emphasizing his hazy feeling. He tried to focus, focus on Stiles brilliant smile, as Stiles' eyes turned back to the glittering waters before them. He sighed in contentment, feeling lighter than he had in years. Derek smiled with his head resting against Stile's chest; he closed his eyes for the briefest of moments...
A growl startled him awake. It was dark now and he had been asleep on the ground, Stiles was nowhere to be found. And at that very moment, he heard a chilling crunch followed by a quickly silenced scream. He was up in a flash and right behind his car, where his senses alerted him the noise had come from. He froze in his tracks as his eyes caught Stiles', and the light he'd seen in those eyes just moments before fade fast. He almost didn't notice how Stiles seemed to be missing a great chunk of his right abdomen. Just as his knees fell to the ground besides Stiles' body, it was dragged under the car. His fast reflexes reached for a hand, but not fast enough as he'd barely grasped his fingertips, his eyes followed Stiles' till they disappeared under the jeep, and then as his eyes tried to find the animal responsible for such…
His eyes connected with a glowing red pair of eyes in the hazy darkness underneath the car, they glowed just as he'd always remembered them to and faded into the distant darkness with the body of Stiles. He wanted to scream, but he found himself growling in abject rage, it felt like more of a lament than a challenge, but… friend or something more, whatever Stiles was, he was dead. He launched himself in the direction the eyes disappeared into. He picked up a scent heading into the nearby forest, one that was growing stronger and mixing with an even stronger scent of blood, traces of it were growing as he got closer to a small clearing. Sure enough, he found the hulking figure crouched over Stiles' lifeless form, blood pouring from the mouth of the Alpha, tauntingly toying with Stiles' body.
He launched himself onto the Alpha without a moment's hesitation, giving himself over to his own metamorphosis that barely took a few seconds. They wrestled each other slashing and ripping at each other's vital organs, looking more like bears in battle than wolves, even though they seemed the wounds seemed to heal in seconds. Derek finally managed to secure the upper hand in their evenly matched fight, wrestling the hulking figure by its neck and extended jaw with his massive clawed hands. Derek barely noticed how their transformations were near identical in their heated exchange, now he couldn't deny it; there was a sense of familiarity here too great to ignore. Was this another Hale, much like his uncle? It couldn't be his uncle still, could it?
"Who are you!" he demanded through his fangs, split-second transforming himself back to semi-human form. The alpha that lay in his clutches seized the opportunity of lessened power and wrestled free as he simultaneously managed to kick him against a tree.
When Derek managed to barely gather his senses again, the Alpha had managed to grab what was left of Stiles and growl at him from a safe distance. He seem to be growling with his prize kill slung over his back, his body rippling with the effects of mutation receding. As Derek's vision returned from being blurry, the near naked human form that stood at a distance was staring back at him, baring his fangs and roaring back challengingly.
And as his eyes finally focussed on the figure in front of him, further enhanced by his supernatural senses, Derek stared back in manic bewilderment.
"It…just…impossible!" He knew what he was looking at, but he couldn't believe it. Height to body type, ear to eye, the beast that stood before him… the feral Alpha… as much as it was impossible, staring back at him, baring a familiar row of sharp fangs, eyes glowing despairingly red… was his mirror reflection. It was him, with the one thing…Stiles. Everything within him just exploded, every emotion amplifying his transformation. His worst fears made life.
He set off in a sprint after…himself, who now was dragging Stiles' dead body across the forest floor as he ran in superhuman speed. Retribution was on his mind, but then…his eyes, connected with the now pale face of Stiles.
'What's the point…' he found himself saying, as all sound in the world around him was drowned by the loud beating of his own heart, rapidly receding to a slower pace.
Yet again, failed to protect.
"…Stiles.." before he had a fighting chance, the one person he…cared about, in his own twisted way, was dead. Yet another person he cared about dead. Because of…him.
Confusion, turmoil, chaos, complication, fear, anger, resentment, despair, guilt… the emotions the flooded him knocked him to the ground. Derek, for the second time today, fell to his knees in defeat. He watched helplessly as the Alpha-Derek turned and finally dropped Stiles' lifeless body to the ground a few meters away from him. Even in the dimly lit forest they were in, Derek's eyes connected with Stiles', as his head twisted in an odd angle to accusingly stare back.
The look was worse than the plight that awaited him as suddenly, hordes of faceless Hunters surrounded him, as if the shadows of this dark forest had just instantaneously given them life, each aiming their guns and arrows directly at his chest. And as the first twang of the chords release was heard, Derek let himself fall prey to whatever came next.
He shot awake with only seconds to recognize his body rippling with change. His tried to focus his shifting eyes and calm his blood pressure, and the muscles that painfully danced underneath his skin in mid-transformation. He couldn't transform here, not with Stiles just a few inches away. He couldn't transform PERIOD! He closed his eyes and tried to focus on lowering his massively beating heart. He heard a soft scratch, only to notice he'd dug his claws into the bed head in his panic. He tried to focus on his claws in first between sharp breaths.
Stiles stirred. He froze. He quickly turned away to block Stiles' view of his head, switching between facial features both human and werewolf rapidly. His eyes connected with the mirror across the room and he tried to concentrate looking at his own reflection, but it wasn't working.
He was going to shift, and fast.
He grabbed his pants from the floor and pulled them on, the shirt and jacket from across the bed can be put on later, his shoes were not really important right now. He leapt from Stiles' window and bounded in one step across the street. A few feet away he doubled over in agony as his lower body parts shifted painfully. He was starting the second stages of his shift, next would come…He couldn't hold back the barely controlled scream of agony as his back muscles expanded into thrice their size.
A heightened awareness brought to his attention a well-known stench; the solution almost materialized out of thin air in his head, but he knew heightened cognitive skills were an Alpha trait. He doubled over in a much more measured bout of agony. With whatever control he had left, he ambled as fast as he could down the closest alleyway as the bones in his knees swelled as they bowed. Running through two bends at werewolf speed he came to the bridge. By this time, he was on all fours, sprouting body hair and the hyper pigmentation process starting to spread.
It was now or never.
With whatever controlled energy he had left, he tossed himself over the closest edge into one of the many canals that flowed in and out of the town. He heard the large splash more than he felt the frigid water, another great feature of his transformed skin and fur. He tried to distract his mind from the transformation process and focus on the cold as he swam a bit deeper. The cold would help with stopping his transformation, something that outweighed the stench he had followed and jumped right into. He was still somehow transforming; the water was not cold enough it seemed.
He tried to focus on lowering his heartbeat, to get control of his transformation one last time. He tried to picture his family, his sister, focus on his memories of his past, his childhood, the memories that had led… definitely not Kate! He focussed on, with great reluctance…Stiles. How he was…somehow safe and still alive, and peacefully asleep in his own bed, in his own house. The very same bed he'd been in a few precious minutes ago, with Stiles; part of the reason he was in this bout of transformation in the first place, but he'll deal with his guilt later.
He reminisced of that one lengthy kiss they'd shared, that one kiss that had made the risk of coming over completely worth it. That one kiss that led to many other kisses, and his hands slipping under Stiles' tee to touch his warm freckled skin, to feel the calming beat of his heart, pulsing lightly beneath his touch. He could almost hear it again, in his mind.
He focussed on how being in Stiles' arms had given him the only bout of peaceful sleep he'd had since he'd become an alpha. He didn't even know he smiled when he remembered how he awoke once to find Stiles in his arms, his head cradled under his. He focussed on how…comfortable it felt to know he was with Stiles, to know on some level Stiles, cared for him.
Lost in his momentary fantasy, Derek did not even feel his human form slowly float back to the surface. He gasped in surprise when his nostrils reached above the water. He opened his eyes just as their feint red glow disappeared to reveal their natural green-amber hue, staring up at a gibbous crescent. He had drifted downstream, at least half a mile away from the bridge towards the lake.
Derek -now shivering slightly- pulled himself up to a small flight of concrete stairs that led back up to a road from the canal. Staring back at the sky as he rested a moment, by reflex he knew he had two more nights till the full moon. Great, two more nights to when his animal self is more powerful and even more uncontrollable!
"…this thing is more powerful, more animal than either of us" he'd told Scott when realization had dawned on him about who his sire was; little did he know how true his words would come to be when he'd become the Alpha.
His eyes had burned that night outside the decrepit Hale manor, almost like the blue burned out of his eyes to be replaced by the eerie red glow. Peter Hale, his last surviving relative, dead by his own hands. He'd killed his sister he justified, but retribution on your last remaining family comes with a price, a price he didn't fully understand as he ascended just as his sister once had.
When he transformed as a beta, it was such a rush, like four glasses of whiskey working its way through his bloodstream. But when he inherited the role of the Alpha, it wasn't a rush, it was intoxication; it was like someone shot him with a bottle of whiskey and it was flying in his system in an instant. If powerful was a feeling, that's what it felt like at that moment.
If Scott had challenged him in anyway at that moment, he wasn't sure how he would've reacted. He could smell the disappointment, the anger in Scott, and also his complete desperation. Then there was the confusion on Allyson, the fear, all of which he could comprehend from just her heartbeat…And then his glowing red eyes met Stiles that day… that look he gave… the way he looked, his body language, the way he took a step back, and looked at him. Every instinct in Derek was making him want to go pounce on him in an instant. The reasons were secondary, his instincts were telling him to dive right at his jugular, rip at his abdomen, maximise on every pheromone being emitted, including the one that seemed to denote some sense of affection for him.
He couldn't believe he had to fight the urge, quite literally fight every step his body took, as if it had acquired a mind of its own. It almost seemed as if his uncle hadn't lied, but maybe it was a fact that he wanted to play into; after all, Laura wouldn't easily give away her role as Alpha; someone had to take it.
Laura…he missed having his older sister to rely on; And also his alpha, who made this Alpha thing look way too easy. It was Laura herself who'd showed him how Ice helps stop the transformation. A safety measure just in case Derek ever had to subdue her. One of the many he'd heard concerning rabid Alpha's growing up in a household of werewolves, one he'd never considered he'd have to use on himself; as an Alpha himself for that matter.
Life had taken a different road again, and he was not going to sit and appreciate its many problems. Just like he had that night, he'd told himself that this would get easier with time. After all, it had taken Laura some time and experience to exert control. He'd given himself until the next instant to assert his will over his new abilities and/or enhanced ones; He was born a werewolf after all, unlike Scott. But it was almost a week and a half since he turned now, and his control seemed to be getting only worse. He had to –dare he say it- train and discipline himself just as Scott had to, yet he showed very little success, especially in the case of his sleepwalking.
The sleepwalking is what scared him the most. His subconscious taking an uninhibited stroll through beacon hills, chilled him to the bone.
He'd fallen asleep the first two nights and found himself miles away from the motel he was now staying in, once even covered in blood, human blood. He quickly confirmed it was not Stiles' with a quick peek through his window, but it convinced him to give up sleeping during the night completely and even in the daytime if he could help it. And avoiding Stiles altogether of course, but that seemed to only aggravate the situation as he found himself waking up in Stiles' backyard the very next moment he had involuntarily nodded off.
He'd managed to justify another visit to just make sure he was safe, but look where that had gotten him tonight, he'd gotten careless and fallen asleep again, and with Stiles right next to him. And that dream, if one could even call that horrible vision a dream. It was still fresh in his mind, that moment his pale bruised face and his lifeless eyes stared back at him.
He couldn't help but smile at the irony of it all. The amount of times he'd threatened to kill Stiles back then, there was even a point where he'd greatly considered it, just to shut the annoying brat up, and now his wish just might be coming true.
Another person he cared about, dead because of him.
He let his head rest on his knees as he considered how the weight of this situation was just getting to be too much to handle on his own now. Being in control or acting like he was, was getting to be exhausting. This was his sister's job, or his fathers... both of whom were dead, he reminded himself.
He'd wallowed enough he thought.
As he made his way up the small set of stairs, he considered how he had two more nights of tethering between his fading controls over his inheritance, and letting himself go to complete animalistic instinct by default. And his growing affection for Stiles might just be the boy's very own downfall; the nightmare was proof. He'd let enough people he cared about die at his hands already, his uncle would be the last.
He had two more days to get this under control…or make sure he wouldn't hurt someone, at least till this full moon was over.