None of them could have imagined a worse pack meeting than the one they were about to walk into. It was nearing 9 PM when they all finally gathered into Derek's loft. The members of what was left of their small pack sat quietly after finding their usual places on the sparse furniture in the loft. Everyone's eyes avoided the spot that Stiles would have normally occupied: the corner seat in between Scott and Derek.
Derek wished he had been able to think of anything to say, even just something to say to start the meeting, but he had nothing.
Lydia ended up being the first one to say something. She couldn't stand the quiet any longer and she couldn't stop herself from crying.
"I'm sorry." She wiped some tears from her cheeks as the rest of the group looked to her. "It's my fault. I should have known. I should have been able to see it coming, not just find out when it happened."
Allison gently grabbed Lydia's hand and squeezed it. "None of us saw this coming Lydia. It's not your fault. None of us are at fault."
"Or maybe all of us are," Scott said quietly. "We all should have tried to help him. We all knew something was off with him. He wasn't handling this whole darkness thing as well as you and I were, Allison. I don't care if you don't feel it's your fault. I don't think it's your fault. It's mine and I know it. I was a shitty friend who wasn't there for him-"
"I do feel guilty, Scott. There's just another, logical part, of my brain that knows we're not the reason Stiles did this," Allison interrupted. It hurt to say his name but she tried not to cry. She'd cried enough already.
"You guys don't understand," Lydia said. "I knew when he died. I was feeling death and before I knew it, I was in front of his house. I knew he had died but I couldn't go in. I left him in there for someone else- for his dad- to find. I just. I didn't want to be the one to find his body like that… I'm sorry."
"Lydia, if you knew he was dead, then it was already too late. It's okay that you didn't go in. You don't always have to be the one to find the dead," Isaac said in an attempt to comfort her.
"Look. Let's all stop trying to figure out who feels the most to blame. Okay? Because yeah, we all should have tried to help more. I know I could have done a whole hell of a lot more for the kid, but he's gone now and there's nothing we can do but move on." Derek wasn't sure why he had taken such a callous approach in talking to the pack. He didn't mean to come off so insensitive. He just couldn't handle all the emotion in the room at the moment. He regretted having the pack meeting without Stiles. He didn't want to be part of a pack without Stiles. Not anymore.
No one knew what to say. Now would have been the time in a normal pack meeting when Stiles would have made a witty comment to ease the tension. It made Derek feel worse. Almost everyone always found Stiles's comments immature and annoying, but now that Stiles was gone, Derek finally understood how invaluable Stiles's role was; how calculated most of Stiles's comments were, and how, without even knowing it, the whole pack needed him there to keep everyone from going crazy.
"So what do we do now?" Isaac asked quietly, not directing his question at anyone in particular.
That was the question on everyone's minds. What were they supposed to do now? Their best researcher, best human, best friend, was now gone and there didn't seem to be anywhere to move on to.
"We just keep going," Derek finally said after a minute. "We just do what Stiles would have wanted us to do. We keep protecting this town and each other. We give ourselves time to deal with this and the fucked-up way we all feel now, and then we keep going because we don't have another choice."
Derek ran his hand over his face and sighed. "So, let's make this the only pack meeting about him. We get all the shit out that we need to say and then we don't talk about it unless we have to. I know this will be with us forever, but right now, we can say and feel however we want. This pack meeting is our memorial to him. We can share all the great or shitty stories about him we want, just between us- his pack."
He didn't really feel like he could say much to these kids about what was going on in his head, but he knew they all needed to spill their hearts and souls out to each other and use this time to grieve because after this, they all had to be strong and get back to protecting the town from whatever new bullshit was going to come their way.
"He would have laughed at us for sitting around and feeling like this." Scott was the first to speak up. He stared at the table in front of him and just let his thoughts out. "He would have made a joke about how we're all moping around and this isn't a big deal."
Scott could feel tears stinging his eyes and he felt like he would rather implode than talk about his brother in the past tense like this. "I just can't stop thinking about how he saved my life so much. He talked me out of burning myself alive but I wasn't there to return the favor… and I guess I'm pissed at myself for all this, but I'm furious with him too. Like, why the fuck does he get to just… kill himself and leave us here to deal with that?"
Scott didn't expect anyone to answer. He knew there were no answers to his million questions, and that upset him too. He didn't feel like talking anymore. He felt more like killing himself too, rather than spend one more second in this pack meeting without Stiles. But he just wiped the tears from his face and let his gaze drift to the floor.
"I think he'd be mad too though," Isaac said. "Like, his thought process was always one step ahead of the rest of us and he would start to get impatient with people when their brains weren't as quick to come up with conclusions. It's like, since he had all this other shit going on in his head, he forgot that he was actually smarter than most people."
"I think he did know that but he didn't want to admit it and he certainly didn't want to be conventionally smart. He wouldn't try to get good grades, he'd just learn about all the other random things he could. He knew what he was doing and he always used his knowledge in order to help people rather than himself." Lydia couldn't help but give a sad smile as she remembered Stiles struggling to pay attention in class and trying to make his brain function the way teachers taught him it should instead of just letting his mind race and pick up all the information it could.
"He seemed to want to use his genius to learn about the people around him rather than facts in a book," Lydia concluded. She sometimes envied the way he could just soak up information about the people around him and catch onto what people were going to do just because he could read a room better than most.
They spent the better part of an hour sharing memories of Stiles. Most of the stories were good but the group ended in tears after the stories were over anyway.
Derek was the only one who wasn't crying by the end of the night. He had stayed silent most of the time, just laughing at the appropriate times and trying to think of any stories that he could share that didn't make him seem like a jerk to Stiles. Derek didn't know what to add. He didn't feel like he should say anything. He certainly hadn't been the best friend to Stiles that the rest of them had been. He was just the douchebag alpha who demanded too much and never showed any appreciation.
It was midnight by the time everyone started heading home.
Scott seemed to linger back for just a second after everyone else. "You're good right Derek? You didn't say much tonight."
"I'm fine Scott. What could I say? The kid saved my life a couple times and I was an ass to him when he didn't deserve it. I liked the kid, so this is hard for me too, but I didn't grow up with him like you guys did, so I just want you guys to be okay as much as possible." Derek plastered on the best sympathetic smile he could come up with and was glad that he had been able to control his heartbeat through the lies.
"Okay. Well… I'll see you later." Scott wanted to say more. He felt like he needed to tell everyone everything that he's thinking about them now, while they're all still here.
A/N: the beginning dialogue seems sort of rushed to me but let me know.
In good news, I have decided there are several more chapters to come. As I was writing this and the next chapter I found that there are several more chapters worth of things. So don't worry it's not over yet.
