Derek lay with Stiles pulled close against his chest, his nose buried in the nape of Stiles' neck. The bed was warm and soft and smelled of Derek and Stiles and sex, stripes of late afternoon sunlight filtering hazily through the windows to puddle on the rumpled duvet.

"Hey," Stiles asked, his voice sleepy. "What color are your eyes? I keep asking Scott and he always says he can't tell."

"Hazel, I guess?" Derek said. "Mostly green and brown, but sometimes they look a little blue."

Stiles snorted. "Figures, you have some unfairly gorgeous eyes to go with the rest of you. Forget that mine don't even work, I always used to hate that they were just boring brown."

"That's not true." Derek pulled himself up on one elbow, indignant. "Your eyes are beautiful. They're like — like polished mahogany, and when the light catches them, they look like honey."

"Wow." Stiles sounded stunned. He cleared his throat. "That's — that's quite poetic, Sourwolf." Derek humphed, settling back into bed, glad that Stiles couldn't see his blush. "I guess — " Stiles began. "I mean, I know I've changed, but in my head, I'm still the dorky 12-year-old with a buzzcut that I saw the last time I looked in a mirror."

Derek nuzzled into the slight fuzz at the nape of Stiles' neck, breathing him in. "I had big ears," he confessed. "And bunny teeth. It took forever to grow into them. I still haven't all the way."

Stiles chuckled. "That's awesome."

Derek's mood sobered, unable to think about his 15-year-old self without thinking about her. "I was so stupid," he said bitterly, the familiar self-hatred clamoring so loudly inside his head that he couldn't help but voice it. "Thinking an — an attractive twenty-something-year-old woman was interested in me. I was such an easy target."

"Don't say that." Stiles' voice was suddenly sharp. He sat up, seeming fully awake now. "You were a kid, acting like a kid would. What, were you supposed to — to suspect something? That a grown-ass woman was seducing you just so she could — so she could murder everyone you loved? That's — it's so far outside the realm of anything you could possibly have thought. She was batshit crazy, Derek. There's no defending yourself against someone like that."

Derek blinked, surprised by Stiles' vehement response.

Stiles sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair, making it stand almost upright. "I — just tell me that you haven't been thinking that, all these years, Derek. I mean, Laura must have —"

"I never told her." The words burst out of Derek without forethought. He swallowed thickly, covering his face with his arm, afraid to see what Stiles might be thinking. Coward.

For a long moment he could only hear the rapid thump of Stiles' heart, his shallow breaths. He waited, listening, his chest tight with anxiety, wondering if Stiles would leave now that he knew.

Slowly, he felt Stiles settle down again at his side, his breathing evening out, his heartbeat slowing. Derek pulled him closer, gratefully, and although Stiles pressed himself against Derek's body he stayed uncharacteristically silent and still. The minutes crept by, until finally Stiles spoke, his voice soft and meditative.

"You know, my mom and I had this thing. When she picked me up from school, I mean. I used to tell her all these stupid jokes I made up during the day. I mean, really stupid, they weren't even really funny, but I'd spend all day trying to come up with them, and if I could make her laugh, it — it felt like I had won the lottery."

Derek turned to look at Stiles in surprise, both relieved and confused by the change of topic. Stiles didn't seem to be expecting a response, though, barely pausing before he continued.

"A lot of people, when they're in a car accident, they get a brain injury, or at least a concussion, and they don't even remember the accident. It's not even that they repress it or whatever — it's just, the process of putting memories into storage gets interrupted. 'Neurochemical cascade,' they call it. Like that guy who was driving Princess Diana, or whatever. They'll never know exactly what happened. The experience is just — gone forever."

Derek ran his hand down Stiles' back, trying clumsily to soothe him. "Is that what happened to you?"

"No." Stiles pulled in an unsteady breath. "But I told my dad it did. When he finally got up the courage to ask me, I lied — told him that I couldn't even remember mom picking me up that day."

Derek felt the little shudders passing through Stiles' body, the effort he was making to keep it together. "Why?"

"Because — mom had this big old Jeep, you know? A baby blue CJ5. She bought it in grad school and it was almost as old as she was, but it was a tough old thing. Indestructible. Dad used to make fun of it all the time, but she wouldn't part with it for the world. Called it her baby."

Derek tried to follow the leaps in Stiles' thought process. "Stiles —"

"On that day, the day of the accident," Stiles interrupted, as if pressured to get his words out even though it sounded as if each one was costing him dearly. "I had just told her a joke, and she was laughing, and — and afterwards, I kept thinking about it. Because I remembered every second of it, and I just kept thinking, that if I — if I hadn't distracted her — I was such a little spaz, I was always distracting people — maybe she would have seen that guy coming. Even just a split second or two, enough to hit the brakes. Maybe he would have hit the hood of that tough old Jeep and just spun us or something, instead of slamming right into the driver's side and rolling us. If I had just kept my stupid mouth shut and let her concentrate on driving, maybe my mom would have made it."

Derek could feel the small hitches in Stiles' breath against his chest, could smell the salt of his tears, even though his voice was still measured and calm.

"Stiles, you can't really believe — "

"I don't." Stiles snapped, and then pulled in a deep breath, as if regretting his outburst. "I mean," he continued, his voice softer now, "Maybe I did then, but not so much anymore. But at the time I was terrified my dad would find out what I had done. That he would blame me as much as I blamed myself. That he was secretly wishing that — I mean, my mom was great. If it had been me that died, she would have been amazing, and strong, and helped my dad through it. Instead, she was the one to die, and my dad was left with this hyperactive, smartass little bastard who was disabled now to boot, and — and I was beyond useless at taking care of us."

Derek wanted to argue, to tell Stiles that his dad loved him and would never have wished for that, but he stopped himself. How many times had he told himself the same thing? — that he should have died, instead of his family. That it wasn't fair that the innocent ones had perished while he was left alive, eaten up by his betrayal. Maybe logic didn't enter into it much.

"Did you ever tell him?" he asked instead.

"Yeah." Stiles pulled in another deep, jagged breath and let it out on a sigh. "One night — he was drinking a lot back then, and I heard him crying in his room. And I just — I felt so guilty I couldn't stand it for a minute longer. So I went in there, and just blabbed everything."

Stiles stopped there, seemingly remembering. Derek pulled back enough to look at him. His eyelashes were spiky over amber eyes bright with tears, his mouth soft with remembrance.

"What happened when you told him?"

"Oh." Stiles seemed to be startled back out his memories. His smile was quavering but genuine. "He hugged the bejeesus out of me, so tight I thought my insides were gonna come squishing out of my ears. And he told me —" Stiles' voice broke, and he had to clear his throat before starting again, his voice still thick with unshed tears. "He told me how glad he was to know — you know, that she wasn't scared, or anything, in her last few moments. That she had died laughing."

"Stiles." It hurt Derek, to see Stiles like this, made him want to draw away the pain like he could for a bruise or a broken bone, but it didn't work like that. Instead he just pulled Stiles closer, rubbing his back, nuzzling into his hair, trying to communicate with his body what he was so incompetent saying with words.

"Your dad loves you," Derek finally said. "If you could see his face, how proud he is of you —"

"I know." Stiles sighed again, a deep shuddering breath that seemed to drain most of the residual tension from him. His hand found Derek's arm, squeezing fiercely. "Just like I know that Laura loved you, and was proud of you."

Derek could feel his own muscles tensing, the reflexive denial caught behind his teeth. "It's not the same," he growled. "It wasn't your fault."

"Or yours." Stiles' voice was implacable, his heartbeat steady. "The only guilty people here are that murderous psychopath Kate, and that asshole who got behind the wheel drunk on a Tuesday afternoon. Not you, and not me." Derek could feel Stiles pressing his forehead hard against Derek's chest, as if he were trying to push the conviction of his thoughts straight into Derek's body. "It's life, and it sucks, but we don't get to pick and choose. Who lives and who dies — it's not up to us. We just have to do what we can with the life we have. Make it what the people who loved us would have wanted for us. And maybe you weren't ready to be forgiven yet, and that's why you never told Laura, because there's not a single doubt in my mind that she would have told you exactly what I'm telling you now."

"It's not —" Derek had thought of it a million times, telling Laura. Had played out her reaction in his head almost endlessly — the shock, the horror. The disgust. He had imagined Laura driving him away, out of their little pack of two, turning him out to fend for himself in this city he despised.

Maybe you weren't ready to be forgiven yet.

Derek turned Stiles' words over in his mind. For the first time, he stopped imagining the worst possible scenario, the scenes from his deepest, guiltiest fears, and instead tried to think about Laura as she really was. Laura, still mostly a child herself, picking them both up and pushing them forward, tirelessly. Running from hunters, and then navigating them both through this harsh, chaotic city despite still struggling with her sudden alpha powers. Laura, who wouldn't allow Derek to sink into his own grief and guilt. Who bullied him into finishing his GED and enrolling in college, who made a home for them both. Who wanted him to be happy.

He's right, you know. Laura's voice spoke, so clear in his head that it made Derek want to howl with the simple misery of missing her. He hadn't realized he was crying until he felt Stiles' fingers warm on his face, carefully wiping the tears away with the pad his thumb.

"It's not that easy," Derek said in misery and frustration, although whether he was talking to Stiles or Laura or both, he didn't even know.

Stiles just nodded, his breath warm against Derek's skin as his hand stayed, cupping Derek's jaw. "Not easy. Never easy," Stiles confirmed, his voice so gentle it made something inside Derek feel like it was breaking. "But it's time."