Stiles was a quiet, steadying force at Derek's side while he tried to get his thoughts in order, looking for a place to start. A fingerhold in the tangled web of betrayal and disaster that his life had been. But really, there was only one person at the center of it all.
"I had an uncle," Derek said, his voice still low and rough. "My mom's youngest brother."
"Peter," Stiles supplied softly, and Derek made a soft noise of affirmation.
"He was closer to my age than my mom's. But he was older, and sarcastic, and cool, and — I looked up to him, even though I knew he was a little bit of a troublemaker. He liked to create conflict, it — it amused him — but he wasn't bad. He wasn't evil." It was important to Derek that Stiles knew this.
"I had a girlfriend, when I was in ninth grade. Just for a little while. Her name was Paige. She was funny, and sarcastic, and —" Derek was suddenly swamped by memories, things he rarely let himself think about — the thud of his basketball in the school hallway and the clear, sonorous notes of a cello. "I didn't really know her, I guess, looking back. But at the time, I thought it was forever, and Peter told me —" Derek cleared his throat but the lump remained. "Peter told me we could never be together if she stayed human. That — that she would be scared of who I really was. So he arranged — there was this other alpha, who was out to impress my mom. Peter got him to bite Paige."
Derek could feel the shock jolt through Stiles. "Without — without her consent?" Stiles asked, the horror of it clear in his voice.
"I didn't know." Derek closed his eyes, overwhelmed with the shame of it, the events he had set into motion through his passivity and ignorance. "I didn't know until you told Boyd and Erica, how important that was. I don't know if Peter knew. I'd like to think that he didn't, that there wasn't something so wrong with him, even back then."
Stiles nodded, as if to himself, assimilating the information. "And the Bite didn't take."
"I'd never — I'd never seen someone get turned," Derek ground out. "I thought maybe it was supposed to be that way, but then —" He closed his eyes, but the image was burned into his mind, inescapable. "There was black fluid, welling up from everywhere — her eyes and her nose, and she was choking on it, and — and the pain." He tried to take another deep breath but he couldn't get air in. "So much pain, I couldn't drain it fast enough."
"It's okay," Stiles was murmuring. Derek felt Stiles' warm fingers brush his cheeks, wiping away tears he hadn't even realized were there.
"I snapped her neck," Derek bit out. "She asked me to make it stop, and I couldn't —" He managed to pull in a deep, shuddery breath. "I killed her."
"Derek, you didn't know —" Stiles started.
"I didn't ask!" Derek roared. Stiles flinched and Derek closed his eyes in self-hatred. "I'm sorry," he said, controlling his voice carefully. "But it's true. Yes, I was a stupid kid, and yes, I didn't want her to die, but — but I knew it was wrong. I knew if she wanted the Bite I should do it properly — introduce her to mom, and — and ask her if she wanted to be pack. But I was a coward. I just wanted it all to have happened already, and so I let Peter take the decision out of my hands, and I sat by and listened to her cry and whimper as that alpha forced the Bite on her, and by the time I got up the courage to do anything, it was too late."
They sat in silence for awhile — Derek trying to control his heaving breath and racing pulse, Stiles pressed tight against his side, anchoring him to the present.
"My eyes were blue after that. The mark of a werewolf who has killed an innocent. My mom — she tried to tell me it was okay, that I was still —" he choked up again at the memory of his mother's fingers, soft on his cheek. "That I was still beautiful, but most of the rest of the pack were...wary. They knew something had happened, although they weren't sure what. And so I spent most of my time alone, and when Kate came along —"
Stiles made an involuntary, hurt noise and Derek sighed, pulling him closer. He wanted to get the rest of this out, but he gave himself a moment to just breathe in Stiles' scent, letting the warmth and comfort of it soothe the raw edges of Derek's nerves.
"Is she dead?" Stiles asked, eventually. "Kate?"
"Yeah."
"Good." Stiles' voice was low and ferocious, startling Derek. He almost forgot, sometimes. Day to day, it was easy to only remember cheerful, wise-cracking Stiles. Stiles was warmth, and comfort, and sunny smiles. It was only at times like these that Derek was reminded that he was so much more. That he was also the boy who had lost his mother and his sight on the same day, and battled on. The boy who was best friends with a banshee, and who had defeated a kanima. The boy who ran with wolves. And now a man, who had practically walked through fire to save Derek's undeserving life.
"You know about the fire," Derek said, wanting to push through and get it all out, now that he had started. "Most of my family ended up in the basement, trying to find a way to escape the flames and the mountain ash. My parents and siblings and cousins, and — Peter was visiting too. He wasn't around as much after Paige died — I still don't know what happened between him and mom — but he'd show up from time to time, cause a little trouble, and then leave again. Only Laura and I were out of the house at the time, and we just ran. We thought they were all dead."
Derek could feel Stiles' sudden focus in the tension of his muscles. "Thought?"
Derek nodded automatically, before remembering that Stiles couldn't see it. "Yeah. Until two years ago, when — when I felt Laura die."
He could feel it again, just remembering, the phantom echo of that pain. "People say it's like losing a limb, when a pack member dies, and we — we had lost so many. And then it was just us. Laura was my sister, and my only pack, and my alpha. And when she died, it felt like I was dying too. I wanted to die too."
Stiles pushed his weight into Derek's side in silent commiseration.
"And then — then I felt something different," Derek continued. He felt his eyes flare red at the memory, and squeezed them shut. "The alpha power. Her strength, coming into me. And I still don't know why it happened — it shouldn't have happened."
Stiles' brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why not? You were her next of kin, her last remaining pack. Why wouldn't it go to you?"
"Maybe, if she were killed in an accident, or by hunters, or something. But if an alpha is killed by another werewolf — it's like a challenge to their authority. The alpha power should have passed to her killer." He gritted out the next words before they could choke him. "It should have passed to Peter."
"Peter? He — he survived the fire?" Stiles' voice was breathless with shock. "He killed his own niece? His family?"
Derek pulled in another shuddery breath. "I don't think I would have believed it myself, but he — have you ever seen a werewolf take, or give, a memory?"
"I'm not sure what — oh." Derek could see the rapid thoughts clicking behind Stiles' amber eyes. "When I was a kid, Satomi — the alpha of the Ito pack — she did something. One of her betas was hurt, bad, and couldn't talk, and we had to figure out what had done it. She put her claws —" Stiles gestured to the back of his neck. "Is that? — afterwards, she just kinda knew, and told us it was a — a Vodník, you know, a — kind of an underwater ghoul."
"Yeah. It's hard to explain. I guess you could say it's a memory, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels — it feels like you're living it."
The bleakness in his voice seemed to communicate something to Stiles. "Peter did that to you," Stiles said, his voice edged in fury.
"Yeah. At first — he showed up at our apartment, right after Laura died, and at first it seemed like — like a miracle. Like I was getting some piece of my family back, like I wouldn't be alone after all." Derek hung his head. "I was glad to see him," he said bitterly. "I tried to hug him, and he just put his claws in my neck, and made me live it. Made me watch my family burn."
Stiles was gripping Derek's hand so tight it should be painful, but Derek welcomed the pressure, grounding him in the present against the vivid horrors of the past.
"We hadn't realized," Derek pressed on, doggedly. "He managed to get out of the basement, but it exploded. He was so burned, it was like — he was more dead than alive, but the healing was just enough to keep him like that. Enough for him to crawl away into the woods, where he wouldn't be found. And then, I think he went insane there. Something twisted inside him. He showed me what it was like, in his mind. Eating insects and whatever else he could dig up, living feral. He would have died — he should have died — but he didn't. He wouldn't let himself. Because he wanted revenge so badly."
"Against Kate?" Stiles asked.
"At first. It took him years to heal enough, to get his strength back, but then he killed her first. He showed me that. But then — he wanted to punish Laura and me. For leaving him, even though we didn't know. And me for — for being with Kate. So he came after us too."
"And he killed Laura." Stiles seemed to be putting the pieces together in his mind, hardly aware that he was speaking aloud.
"Yeah. He showed me that too." The words felt like they were clawing their way out of his throat now, sharp and painful. "Showed me how he cornered her, on her way home from work, and — she tried to fight back, but she wasn't ready. When it came time to hurt him, she — she still thought of him as family. She hesitated. And he didn't."
"Fucking christ," Stiles breathed. "But you said — he didn't get the alpha power?"
"Yeah. I don't know why the alpha power didn't pass to him. It should have. Everyone knows that if you kill an alpha you inherit their powers. But maybe he was too — too twisted to allow it."
"Or maybe —" Stiles was chewing on his bottom lip, deep in thought. "Maybe it was a gift. If Laura was dying, if she knew Peter was coming for you next, maybe she was able to — to will the alpha power to you instead. To give you the strength you would need. To fight Peter, and win. Because that's what happened, didn't it?"
"I killed him," Derek confirmed. His head was spinning at the implications of Stiles' words. He had always considered the alpha power a curse — final proof that he had failed his whole family, leaving no one else to receive it. The idea that Laura might have wished it, that with her dying breath she might have chosen him — "Do you think that's possible?" he wondered aloud. "That Laura might have — might have been able to choose —"
"I don't know, man." Stiles' eyes were damp, his smile bittersweet. "Laura sounds like a helluva badass, if you ask me. If anyone would have been able to do it, I think she would have."
"Yeah." Derek felt the tears spring to his eyes again, didn't even try to fight them this time. "She would." He felt shaken to his foundations by the idea. All this time, the alpha powers had seemed to him to have been a curse, the mark of his failure. To think of it otherwise, as Laura's final gift to him — not only the strength to defeat Peter, but the gift of everything he had now. The ability to start his own pack, to have loved ones once again. It was all Laura had ever wanted for him, and if it had been in her power to give, she would have.
They sat there for awhile in silence, cuddled close, taking comfort in each other. Derek felt wrung-out and exhausted, but lighter as well, as if he really had been burdened by the secret in a way he hadn't appreciated until the weight of it was lifted.
"Why couldn't you tell me?" Stiles asked, as if reading his thoughts. "You have to know that — that I still feel the same way about you."
Derek closed his eyes, trying to sort through his tangled motivations and match them to words. Stiles made it all sound so simple, when it seemed to Derek to be complicated beyond imagining.
"Part of it was shame," he admitted finally. "For what I let happen to Paige. You asked me — when we first met, you asked me if I had anger issues, if I'd ever hurt anyone, and —"
"You dodged the question," Stiles finished for him. "You said that you wouldn't hurt anyone. I noticed."
Derek huffed out a resigned laugh. Of course Stiles had noticed, and filed that information away. And yet he had still let Derek into his apartment, turning his back on him, reserving judgement. As seemed to frequently be the case, Derek didn't know whether to admire Stiles' courage or despair at his poor sense of self-preservation.
"I didn't — I didn't want you to be scared of me again. And then part of it was just not wanting to remember. And I guess there's still a little bit of me that felt like — like I shouldn't tell anyone about Peter. Like it would be a final betrayal."
Derek gritted his teeth, unable to reconcile even in his own mind his conflicted feelings about Peter. "He was — what he was in the end, that wasn't him," he tried to explain to Stiles. "It wasn't the uncle I knew. And the fire did that to him — I did that to him. I wanted to keep his secret, but — it was wrong of me. You need to know. Especially since — the way he transferred his memories to me — when I have the nightmares, it's not really even me having a nightmare. It's me, being him. And I would never hurt you, but he — he might."
Stiles' brow had been furrowed up in thought, but suddenly cleared. "That's what you meant, that night," he said slowly. "When you said I was in bed with a monster. You didn't mean yourself, you — you meant Peter."
"What Peter was at the end," Derek amended. "Insane, and twisted, and —" Derek could feel his heart racing at the very thought. "I can't — I hate the idea that he could still hurt you somehow, through me. That even a small part of him lives somewhere, in my consciousness, trying to get out."
"It's okay." Stiles was rubbing at the tense muscles of Derek's forearms, trying to relax his grip. "We'll — we'll figure out a way around it. If memories like that can be put in, they can be taken out, right? So we'll find a way."
Derek blinked in startlement. That was something he had never even thought of. Living the fire, carrying inside him Kate's murder and Laura's death and Peter's insane, twisted consciousness — it seemed like a just punishment for what he had done. The idea that it could be undone — that he might still have the memory of what happened but not the experience of having lived it, or the fear of hurting those he loved because of it — it sounded too good to be true.
"We'll find a way," Stiles repeated, his voice warm and confident, and Derek closed his eyes for a moment and let himself believe.