Chapter 2: there is no such thing as a linear life

Summary:

And now Peter.

Notes:

To be honest I liked writing this chapter more. Don't get me wrong, I love Derek, and I loved writing him, but to me Peter's experiences lent such an intimate, raw feeling to this whole chapter. Derek's chapter needed to happen, but Peter's was fun to write :D

Here's my warning for suffocation. It's not a true case of suffocating but all the panic and mental trauma is there so I'm putting this here. Be gentle with yourselves.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

November 26, 2005

Peter doesn't actually remember killing his niece.

He can't decide whether or not he's glad for that, but there's nothing he can do to change it so he's forced to accept it. He does remember waking up in the hospital with a woman standing over him, her voice sugary grateful as she speaks to someone he can't see. Later he'll place the time of the memory as being soon after the fire, will understand what the bandages over his right eye mean, the padding covering his face and neck and arm, but right now it feels like a collar has been snapped onto his neck and he wants to scream, to rip at it.

His body won't obey him, he can't move, can't speak, can barely understand what's being said over the sudden roar of loss gutting through him when he reaches for his bonds to call for help. The empty places have the texture of ripped up blades of grass left out in the sun, brittle and thin and broken. His pack, his family – gone. All the threads, the masterpiece of bonds inside him has been burned away, he has been burned away, the taste of ashes put in his mouth.

The woman cuts through the fog, laying a hand over his throat like a slip of silk. Never has a threat been so real, so present, as that soft palm. It's barely a brush through the padding protecting his pain, the feeling traveling through it in a muffled, terrifying kind of way. She squeezes almost gently, petting at his covered jugular like a child might pet a puppy, her expression cat content. The tips of her nails drag lightly over the edges of the bandages, digging under the lip of gauze to scrape at skin that feels like raw meat. Her blonde hair is lit up by the window like a halo of gold, like a ring of flame.

"The nurses think you're not in there, pup, they think you're all but brain-dead. But we know better, don't we?" her voice is coy, like she's inviting him in on a secret, "I know you're in there, your kind is too hardy, too monstrous, to be defeated by something like this. But I don't think you'll be going anywhere anytime soon, mhm? I think not."

Her nails knead at him, dragging upwards to tap on the thing inside his mouth, tilting his chin up in a mockery of respect. There's a pleased little quirk tugging at her lips, "I've never understood why people keep game preserves, you know. Why not just kill it, don't play with your food, blah blah blah, you know? Of course you do."

He's already delirious in his agony - later he'll realise he'd already metabolised the pain medication they must've given him - and isn't truly paying attention, his body lax while his mind screams, but something about her tone makes the hair on the back of his neck want to stand up. It doesn't, but he feels the shiver inside all the same.

"But now I think I get it. There's something to this feeling of power, wolf. Knowing that no matter how hard or fast your prey runs, they can't actually escape. Maybe you let one or two go to grow bigger, build up the population, prolong the gene pool, but the fence is always there, and so are you. I may take up big game hunting. Well, small game, compared to your kind, I suppose."

Her hand cups his neck, squeezing until he can feel her gripping the thing in his throat, massaging her hold so he can't focus on anything but the feel of it rubbing against him inside.

His brain is seething, fear clogging his nose and throat, choking at him with a strange sort of grinding panic even though the tubes plugged into him make sure he can still breathe. His vision pops and tilts crazily as she very minutely shakes the fistful she has, clenching down on his jugular until he can feel the tickling of blood streaming down and wetting the bed under his shoulders. There at the back of his tongue it slides a little against his tonsils, the hateful feeling of it keeping his mouth open all he can register as the length of it moves slightly all the way down into him. It shakes against his insides, slipping further down into his stomach for a moment. It's the closest he gets to moving, the hesitation in his automatic muscles that might've snapped something out relaxing as she stills her hand and resumes that steady pressure.

He barely registers it, locked in a battle, screaming inside with the need to breathe - he's going to die, he can't even swallow, can't stop her, can't even blink away the tears. Air is forced into him but it feels like he's fading, like she's filling him with wet clay, the smell of her perfume soaking into his bandages. Somewhere in the back of his mind beneath the roar of suffocation is the pathetic, crawling ache, pleading with her to just kill him, just slit his throat (it would be so easy, like a sigh) please God just end it.

Years later he'll understand why she doesn't, will have the terrible knowledge that he meant nothing but fifteen minutes of pleasure to her. He'll realise how strongly she got off on just - just holding his throat and knowing that he could do nothing. Staring down at her own death made impotent, cradling his life in her palm like a frantic butterfly and choosing to let it go, knowing she could always come back and take it because he was nothing. He couldn't even wipe away his own tears.

She does it for him, softly smearing them away from the left side of his face where the skin is free from gauze and brutally spreading her own scent.

He doesn't last much longer after that, too close to the edge of the black insanity creeping in around the burns, but he won't ever forget the delighted way she smiles then, like a young girl in her glee. Her lips are red as a cherry popsicle, her teeth white as bleached bone when she opens her mouth and giggles, "Just think of it as me picking off the weak stock from the herd, if that makes it easier to understand, wolf."

2005 - 2012

It won't be until later that he realises exactly what happened, why Laura was even in Beacon Hills, was even back within reach of his wolf. The most confusing part is that he doesn't remember anyone else being with him when he hunted, those frenzied chases through the preserve. He remembers the taste of iron and the texture of kicking deer muscle rolling over his tongue, the feel of the moon in his fur, the thrum of his feet hitting the ground. Nobody would have been safe around him, surely.

Then he realises, his wolf would have been going largely by scent, would have been driven to leave things alone if they smelled like him. The woman, the nurse, whatever her name was. She had to have been the one, had to have seen him, apparently followed him and taken pictures. He traces the mail later, wonders why she sent those pictures to Laura of all people, what she'd hoped to gain. He supposes they'll never know, because from what they can tell she must have gotten too close to him between sending the pictures and Laura arriving.

She's listed as Missing in Beacon Hills, and Peter really hopes he didn't eat her, but honestly if he did he's not that fussed. The woman apparently followed a werewolf out into the middle of the woods as it hunted – like a stalker sneaking to take perverted pictures of a girl in the bathroom – and got eaten for her folly. The world probably won't miss her much.

There are moments of lucidity over what he now knows to be the course of years, chopped up sights and sounds that make little sense even once he has the capacity to think about them. He thinks there's something in his throat, his lips are dry and his breathing is strange around the – tube? He recalls hearing Derek's voice, remembers the drip of something above him and the hum of machines, the harsh scent of scrubbed walls and floors clogging his nose to any other smells. Once he remembers hearing a tapping and vaguely seeing in his peripheral a bird at the window, a tiny shadow hopping to and fro before disappearing like a wisp of smoke into the brighter daylight.

A couple times he wakes up enough to feel something tugging at him, something cramping in his head like scar tissue flattening out. He wants to whine, to twitch violently away, but his limbs aren't his own. It's like his arms and legs and neck, even his eyes and mouth, have been replaced by heavy ropes unable to move. The madness of straining forward eventually tires him back out but the feeling isn't something easy to forget. Like having a foot fall asleep and knowing you'll move it only for nothing to change, not even a single toe moving even as your mind presses and shoves at it.

It's terrifying both times it happens, to have a front row seat to his own body and not be able to take possession of it. The term for it is so plain, so not fitting for the experience. When he mentions it to his therapist in the months after properly waking up she calls it 'sleep paralysis', though she admits that it might've just been the coma itself.

Sometimes he thinks he's awake, thinks he hears Derek talking somewhere close by, though soon enough he's lost the meaning of the words. Vowels stretch out and elongate strangely, bunching up in the next moment so his mind trips over them, unable to feel out the tone and sounds of the letters. Just hearing his nephew's voice helps, like a hand brushing his in the darkness to let him know he's not alone. He can never pull himself towards that voice, his body limp and numb, but even when his mind fades he has a sense that he's not abandoned, only very hurt. There is not a word to describe how comforting that belief is.

July 31, 2012

It's a horrifying thing, to wake up and remember the snap of bones, the gush of something hot and wet running down the creases of his lips. Her face is so pale, the ridges of her brows relaxing into a facsimile of the one he's known for eighteen years, and all he can see is her little moon face with the tiny pink bow, red and wailing as the emissary wipes her down. He's suddenly eight years old again, watching in awe as his big sister gives a sobbing gust of relief and the shriek of birth rings in their ears.

Bright pink cheeks fat and puffy, traces of whelping blood behind her itty-bitty ears and a smudge of black hair over the crown of her head. Ten tiny fingers, curled up into fists so small he could wrap both in one hand, perfect tiny feet with the most amazing scrunched up toes he's ever seen. He loves her immediately, he'll protect her forever. He tells his sister as much, tells her wife the same, and they grin tiredly at him. He gets to hold her as they check Talia over, making sure everything that should be out has come out and nothing inside has torn.

Laura, they told the family weeks ago. She's amazing, he decides as she screws up her face at him and lets loose the longest, shrillest, most indignant shriek he's ever heard. He's very impressed with this tiny girl.

Now her face is smeared with his blood instead of her mother's, her eyes dimming back to brown as her rage and fear leaves them, a burst blood vessel in one giving a rictus of Alpha. It doesn't heal. Suddenly he breaks and runs, his wolf not fully understanding the pain, only seeking to outrun it.

They never do.

August 31, 2012

The first time he wakes up with someone beside him he feels something rush through him, feels strength where there hadn't been any.

"I'm here," Derek says, his hand finding Peter's, "I'm right here, Peter. Alpha."

His breath catching in his chest, he tries to ask why but the word comes out all mangled around the tube in his mouth. He can't makes more words come out, can't push them past the tube weighing his tongue down, but he thinks Derek can hear them anyway. Why did they leave him, didn't they hear him screaming for them? Why is Derek here, why is his mind so quiet and empty, why is this happening? He aches as he moves, burying his nose into Derek's hair and unsure now if he really wants an answer.

Something's opening in his bond though, that hard, firm cord coiling him and Derek together from Alpha to Delta. It feels unbreakable, so fragile he's afraid to touch it, might rub the dust off of its wings like a butterfly and kill it. The feeling of helplessness pulls him in where he might've shied away, and he feels out the scars put under his hand, the Order torn into the wolf's pelt leaving bald spots where the fur has rubbed away. Oh, Derek, baby. Laura, sweetheart, what did you do?

He loses time for an hour or so but when he comes back Derek's still there, still holding him and tucked into his throat as close as he can without disturbing the breathing tube. He loses time there with his nephew curled up against him, jerking a little and registering the tilt of moonlight over the wall where it wasn't a moment ago – was it a moment ago? Jesus where's Derek – he's here, he's still here, murmuring with his throat against Peter's shoulder. His heartbeat is steady there, the rhythm settling the Alpha in him before it has time to do more than grumble.

Derek tells him he can't stay – Peter knew that probably but he's still overcome by the wave of bleakness cresting in his chest as Derek explains that he'll be back later in the day even if Peter won't know he's there. His hand is still clasped lightly over the back of Derek's neck, holding his scent there, brushing it through the back of his hair and wishing he could somehow put it under the boy's skin. Man. Derek's not a boy anymore.

Peter's not a boy anymore, at least he doesn't think so. He remembers vaguely the way the old man at the coffee shop would always call him a brat, didn't matter that he was almost twenty-six, the man had been there when his mom had been in high school, had seen maybe four generations of Hales. He wants to ask how long he's been here, how much time he's lost. He still feels twenty-six, still a little young, old enough to boss his nieces and nephews around but young enough for Talia to scruff him playfully and for his mom to call him her 'sweet boy', for his dad to take him under his arm because his dad was unreasonably tall and ruffle his hair. Can he still be young if he's now the oldest?

He jerks again – Derek, he's here, he's right here, the light's moved again, focus, he should be able to just focus. It gets worse, he thinks, but suddenly he can't move his arms anymore and then he feels the moon slipping out of him, his mind dripping out of his hold like ice melting in his palm, the darkness dancing around the edge of his view. It leaps closer in dizzy flirting movements, curling up around his mind until he loses track of whether or not he's even awake. Whether he's even aware.

September 20, 2012

It's not something he would ever want Derek to know, but the sudden and disorienting shift from one place to the next is something out a nightmare. It's like losing time but now he doesn't even have the reassurance that at least he's in the same place. No, he feels like he shuts his eyes for a moment and then opens them somewhere else. Even the air is different, the lighting has changed completely, the bed is newer and stiffer under him. It's strange to realise that even the breathing tube in his mouth tastes different, doesn't have the teeth marks the old one had. The rough fabric of the hospital robes are gone but the IV is still attached to his arm and he can smell the plastic under the covers where he assumes his catheter and feeding tube are equipped.

Derek is there, holding onto him the same as before, talking to him. It's not quite idle chatter, though it is quiet and slow. Derek's giving him details about what's happened, the steps Derek's taking for their future, it's all the mark of an excellent Delta, a good caregiver and a capable protector. Everything he knew Derek would be as he got older, in other words. Peter wants to talk, wants to tell Derek how proud he is of him, how he always knew what a wonderful wolf he would be, but he can barely breathe with the emotion so instead he presses closer.

Then suddenly Derek's scent is there, filling up the space and making the air nearly vibrate with the scent of a pleased Delta. It's intoxicating and overwhelming and Peter can't deal with the way Derek starts to go boneless over him, the posture both protective and relaxed. Everything in his nephew's body is telling Peter's wolf that he's not a failure, that his Delta has so much faith in him, that 'here he's right here trusting Peter, see?' It's wonderful and terrifying.

When Derek starts to come to Peter brings him closer, holds him tighter, trying to show Derek that he cares too. He's trying to be there, wants to be a good – the title gets lost in his head for a moment and in its place are the faces of the women who wore it. Joanna, Cecelia, Talia, Laura. His grandmother, mother, sister and niece. Before them had been his great-grandfather Theodore, but he hardly remembers him at all.

Their pack has been mostly matriarchal within the past couple of centuries but it's always been based on who would make the best Alpha. Yes, the Alpha's children were trained for the duty but any children in the family who showed an aptitude for leadership were given the same information, the whole pack was expected to know basic inter-pack politics and understand certain things. From there the predictions for Alpha could be assumed. Not always a wolf, but always a leader.

His great-great-granduncle had been a witch, not a wolf, had mated into the family under the approval of his Peter's great-great-great-grandaunt, Emmeline Natalia Hale. When she'd stepped down the spark had chosen Bregan instead of Lena, his wife and Emmaline's daughter. The pack had flourished under him, their land had been given new life through his magic, and he had passed on his magical talent to his son, who became his cousin Theodore's Left Hand when the time came to pass on the spark.

Focus. Oh. He wants to be a good Alpha, but the lighting has changed again and Derek's asleep – focus, how long did he lose? What time is it? There are no clocks here, why would he need one, there's only the moonlight coming in through the window to slant over the blankets, a wordless frustration building in his belly. Is it even the same night? It must be, please it has to be. How is he supposed to know? Will Derek tell him, or did he already and Peter's forgotten?

That's a new thought. What if he's not falling asleep but just forgetting these broad swathes of time? Does Derek know? How could he, if Peter doesn't? He lays there in the darkness, gripping his nephew desperately and trying to will himself to stay awake, to remember, until long after he's fallen asleep.

September 2012 - January 2013

Later Peter will be able to remember things more clearly, will take comfort in things like the damp smell of soil, the touch of a quilt draped heavy over him, the scent of tea steeping somewhere close by. Sounds of the television, the glimpses he gets of his nephew as Derek takes care of him, cleans his body and exercises his limbs for him to make the muscles move. He sees his little aloe plant more than once, sitting on the window sill to the side of the room, thick green leaves curling towards the ceiling like a sharpened rose. At some point there's a fern beside it he thinks but it's gone the next time he sees the window so he can't be sure.

He smells all kinds of plants mixed in with his nephew's base scent, from lamb's ear to purple thistle and the brittle, hardy odour of nettle. Sometimes he smells algae and pond water, sometimes the hard bite of root vegetables or the bitter tang of oranges. Once he smells the echo of wisteria and chamomile like his mother used to wear and it sends a calm through him until he's not sinking into the darkness so much as floating along its banks.

Peppermint, Ginger, Raspberries, Caramel. Something dark and earthy, maybe something citrus? If his mouth is open he can taste it, lingering there on the roof of his mouth. The drip in his arm keeps him hydrated but the taste of tea in his mouth starts to keep him sane, helps to ground him in those moments where his mind belongs to him. Sometimes he wakes up when Derek's not there, the flat is silent and still, sounds of a cat calling from the fire escape and classical music coming from somewhere under him. It's nice to wake up and have no expectations put on him, nobody there to witness it, just him and the cat.

Other moments are not so peaceful.

Sometimes he wants to rage, to scream and howl and rip at himself. He's glad he can't move in those moments, glad he has to lay there quietly when he would destroy this place, this den, that Derek has worked so hard on.

The mind is just as vulnerable as the body to starvation, Peter finds out. When you don't feed the body it will start to eat your organs, your muscle, and when you don't feed your mind it will decide you don't need your focus, your time. It will slip and slide away from thoughts you were having into blank listlessness, will steal fragments of knowledge until looking at the world through your mind is like looking through a leaf that's been chewed on by a caterpillar.

Distressing…is not quite accurate enough to describe it. It's a feeling like panic in the pit of your belly, tangling your guts until they cramp. The kind of panic where your mind just goes numb with the stress, scrambling to move, to act, to do something. The sensation is somewhat like freefall, like being lost in the woods at night, like realising you've been tossed out into sea with no solid strip of land in place to plant your feet on. What's below you? What's there? Did something touch your foot? The instinctual, visceral panic that traps the scream in your throat it's so sudden, locks your muscles up like a deadbolt.

Peter has that panic when he wakes up sometimes, has it once for almost an hour until he finally wears himself out and collapses, soaked through with sweat. He's pulled back under having never moved a muscle.

He feels feverish, his mind writhing as the fire climbs, the flames burning over the line of mountain ash without moving it. If he could ever pinpoint the beginning of madness it's in the moment he flings himself at the sagging, inflamed entryway - not with the intent to rescue, but with the need to die with his family. The utter disregard for his own body, becoming a thing of brutal selfish fear. He can hear them, screaming for help, howling and sobbing down in the basement most of them. There had been a voice above in the upper levels but now it's silent over the roar and hiss of the fire.

The porch has collapsed utterly, the front door caved in like a mouth belching black smoke, gruesome and sunken in on itself. If there had just been time, had been any warning at all, Rylie or Natalie, twins from his great-aunt's side of the family and both apprenticed under a coven in Los Angeles, could've broken the circle. Even little James might've had a chance, all of seven with barely enough control over his magic to puff out a candle. The oldest witch in the pack, his Aunt Molly, is nowhere to be seen – he doesn't remember her bond breaking but he can't find her there in his mind.

Peter batters at the barrier until his clothes catch fire, his claws bending against the wall of magic, his body shoving at it until he feels an arm snap under the pressure he's putting it through. Nothing registers until the fire licks up the right side of his face, slurping at his skin and tickling around his ear, shouting down into his brain painpainpainPAIN. Dropping to the earth he rubs his face against it and digs with spasming fingers, bits of grass catching alight as his face presses close to smear his cheek and scalp in the dirt. Oh the ground tears at his flesh, pulls at his face and shoulder while he rolls until the rest of the agony starts to sink in and he shrieks, lurching painfully over the dry soil as his knees pushing him up only to drop him.

Fingers of flame have started touching his hip, stroking his skin like a lover, and his pants smoke as the fire curls around his leg underneath. With a panicked heave Peter tears them off, clawing his shoe apart when it bubbles around his foot from the heat. He can smell them, his pack, the waft of cooking meat like something from a child's night terror; unnameable, uncontrollable, a madness in the darkness waiting to take him.

Finally above it all are the sounds of sirens, the wail of them following the pillar of smoke to spread out into the afternoon sky. There are already so many cars in the driveway – because they were supposed to be safe here, this was the gathering month – that the fire trucks have to pull into the yard to get closer. Peter claws feebly at the dirt – he can see the ash on the ground, the line of it thinner than his pinkie finger and as unmovable as a mountain. At least by him – he sobs, the burns on his face pulling as he slaps dirt at the ash. It does nothing; nothing can move it, can break the line, without intent and at least a trace of magic. Where is their emissary?

A deputy is crouched by him suddenly, or maybe he's been there trying to talk Peter isn't sure and doesn't care, talking about an ambulance and how his wife is on her way to break the line, to bring down the barrier. He's talking quietly, tears running down his face, his voice something for Peter to focus on instead of the scent of cooking, burning meat that's glued itself at the back of his throat.

Peter cracks his mouth open and croaks, "We – didn't do anything, no reason for this."

The man's face is ravaged by compassion and Peter gets the feeling he would hug him if he could without aggravating the burns, "There could never be a reason for something like this."

That makes Peter want to laugh, because he can still smell the fucking hunters, can taste them on the wind, the scent of aconite-laced accelerant and the sound of laughter. Suddenly he's afraid the deputy meant something else and claws upward against the drag of his right side.

In that moment he grabs the deputy by the arm, bringing himself up and forcing the words out, "Not an accident, don't you dare – " he chokes, sobbing, and collapses back to the ground. There's no way, no way his pack wouldn't have escaped, they could've been out before it really even caught, could've been safe, if this had been an accident.

The deputy is stricken and he shakes his head, starting to speak, but Peter's head is floating away, his eyesight is failing and the man starts to shout at him, or maybe at someone else. He can feel someone touching him but his body is shaking and he just wants to die, he just wants to crawl into the house and die with his family. He can't, can't get in, can't hear them anymore.

But he can taste them, can feel the scent of them coating his tongue. That's the last thing he remembers for a long time.

February 2013

There's a point, a point at which the moments when he's lucid start to feel less dreamlike, more like he's waking up from a long sleep. It surprises him the first time he manages to speak. He doesn't remember what he said later, can't parse the sounds, but at the time it shocks him and exhausts him back into sleep before he can understand the expression on Derek's face.

The next few times are no better, just short uncomfortable minutes where he can't really move but feels more awake than he's been in a long time. It's easier to look directly at things, easier to register words and scents than it was before. He can't speak, can see the images of the words but can't hear the sounds he's supposed to make for them. He has so few words bouncing around in his head. Mostly they're names. Derek, Laura, Talia. Talia's wife, Elaine. Cora. That's almost his whole vocabulary. Other things, scents, flashes of images, it jumbles up his mind and clutters the pieces he's trying to put together. He has a few other words but they're nothing he wants to dwell on.

It's infuriating. But it's not like his frustration means anything to anybody except Derek and the doctor he finally gets introduced to, Dr. Carter.

He still has no clock in his room, no calendar. He knows he's in New York, in Derek's apartment. What month is it? What season? It feels like fall but that might just be the – the cold air inside. What year is it? How old is Derek now? He looks older, looks harder and smarter and more pained than the skinny kid Peter recalls. If feels so strange to look at him now, like he's intruding on something private.

If Peter had been with Derek as he matured he might have missed the changes to his nephew but as a nearly side-by-side comparison of the vivid image of a sixteen-year-old Derek in his mind to this hurt, weary man is a particular kind of fist to the gut that Peter never could have prepared for. It strikes in different ways that he doesn't even register all at once, some blatant but others so subtle it takes Peter several interactions to notice. The way his confident, happy nephew has morphed into a man curled in on himself like a dead flower makes Peter's insides cold and clammy. He can sense the wounded animal with patched fur in the furtive looks Derek gives him – like he's not sure that Peter's real.

As for Peter himself he can't really explain how he's feeling. There's a lot of ambiguous nausea stretching through his guts, the uncomfortable heaving feeling of his gag reflex being constantly triggered and ruthlessly suppressed by the oxygen tube shoved down his throat, and something that would probably be a permanent headache if it was happening to a human. So he lays there and tries to focus, tries to work with what he has and listen to Derek when he talks, swimming through the static in his head to pick out words he can recognise.

Dr. Carter's in the room some days, always with Derek there as they talk about him. Or he assumes it's about him – there's a lot of his name being thrown around if they aren't. Very little of what they say holds meaning to him – his head is full of holes, the coma eating through his soft memories like termites through wood. Wafer thin barriers separate him from the heat in his thoughts, the memory of dirt under his fingernails and raw, blistering skin tearing against the ground. It feels like hardly any time has passed since he was there looking up at the wall of beaten gold.

Sometimes when he closes his eyes it's still there in front of him, just beyond his reach, the shimmering sheet of fire sucking back from his straining fingers like shy child. Sparks gust around him, tantalisingly near but twirling playfully away from his skin and clothes when he grabs for them, the sound of his family screaming so loud it nearly drowns out the creak of burning wood and screeching metal.

The clot of ash at the back of his throat spills slowly – sososlowly – like gritty wet cement over his tongue, seeping between his teeth until he's gasping awake and choking on his breathing tube. His body is too weak to move more than the painful heaving of his chest, unable to wipe away the tear streaks running down his temples and the bile-spit trailing from his always open lips. It's embarrassing what a mess he is, how he can't lift even a finger to clean himself up, the frustration of it eating away at him.

Once or twice Derek's around for the dramatic wake up but he doesn't try to make everything seem like it's okay, doesn't even try to speak into the gaping silence left behind. Peter doesn't like that his nephew has had to understand what he's feeling right now but he's grateful all the same that all the man does is crawl up into the bed to sit by his head and dry his face with gentle motions. Warm fingers sift through his hair to calm and scent him and he's unable to fully name what he's feeling, this tearing, wrenching deafness in his mind where his thoughts used to run a mile a minute, working things out three, four, five steps ahead of everyone else.

If he could remember the word he's sure he would call it unbearable, maybe even devastating, He's sure that he would scream that it's killing him, that he's losing his mind – that what's even the fucking point if he's not going to be Peter anymore? He's glad he can't speak in those moments, can't tell Derek how much he sometimes wished he'd just died with the rest of their family. It wouldn't be fair to either of them for all his vitriol to pour out like so much oily sludge into the quiet, healing life Derek has been nurturing for them both. He probably doesn't have to say any of it anyway. He's somehow sure that Derek's felt the same way more than once in however long it's been. It's not a thought that's particularly comforting.

March 2013 - April 2013

The struggle with his vocabulary isn't all the same though; sometimes the letters of a word hang there in his mind but the meaning is missing, the way to push the shapes together in his mouth is cut from his wits. Other times a word will shake loose and he'll grab it without knowing what it means, he'll hold onto it and waste what feels like hours trying to puzzle out what the significance is. Like his brain is constantly jumping – his mind is a scratched CD, cutting itself off and skipping from track to track. He'll have it for just a second, but then – focus, God, please. Just. Focus.

There are things he loses that are better left eaten by the fire in his head, though. For instance, Peter can honestly say that he's glad he doesn't remember everything that happens while he's recovering. He's sad that Derek has to remember more than he does, ashamed that he's so relieved he doesn't have to keep those times with him for the rest of his life.

He is though. He's pitifully glad that he doesn't have to recall the nights he pukes around the oxygen tube, jerking and shaking from his nightmares or the way he can barely breathe when he starts sobbing. He blissfully forgets the seizure he has while Derek's at work that pops the catheter bag and spills the bedpan. It's an unspeakable solace that he doesn't remember lying in his own piss and shit soaked sheets for seven hours until Derek gets home and finds him curled on his side with his claws out, the mattress torn up and his IV ripped out. There had been a lot of crying involved and it wasn't a good day for either of them, but the only part Peter remembers is the warm rag washing his face and neck clean.

The only way he knows about all the bad times he can't recall is because Derek confides to him years later how glad he is that Peter doesn't have those memories, that he'll never be haunted by them or forced to relive them. When Peter apologises for forgetting, his nephew hugs him and whispers that it's nothing he wouldn't do, over and over again, for the life they've built.

May 2013

It's taken a hard few months but finally he clears his throat when Derek pauses his reading and whispers the apology he's been sitting on since he looked down at the dead girl who wouldn't heal and ran away from her. The look on Derek's face is enough to make him want to say it again, to say it until the words become magical and fix the way he's just destroyed the moment of accomplishment. He doesn't say anything though, because he can't speak in the face of Derek's crumpled expression, the way his eyes are just wrecked.

That's when Peter knows that something's wrong. But Derek only takes a deep, shuddering breath and leans over to hug him. Peter can feel him shaking, can feel the wet spots against his shirt when Derek murmurs how he's proud of him, but Peter doesn't say anything in response. He's not sure his words would come out right and it's not like he knows what they would be anyway.

What can he say in the face of that grief, when he's not even sure it is grief? What if it's anger and his mind just isn't getting it right?

He does realise that Derek's not told him everything, has barely told him anything, really, but he can't fault him for it. Or maybe he did tell him, he wonders for not the first time. Maybe Peter's just forgotten, maybe he's losing time still. How would he know? It's a sense of grinding resignation that's wearing down on his remaining sanity, chipping away the foundations he's trying to rebuild on.

It feels like the rug he's standing on keeps developing soft spots and lumps in its folds, tripping him up and fluttering to tug at his feet. He's still standing but only because he's stubborn, braced on all-fours in his desperation.

He's gone his whole life knowing he's not a human, has never been anything but proud of being a werewolf, but it's not until he starts questioning his own thoughts and memories that he begins to feel like an animal. There in the gaps between remembered time he's nothing more than a simple-minded beast. It's something that stays with him even after his time starts to even out, starts to lay itself flat like mortared bricks at his feet, solid and unmovable. No, he never loses that memory – the feeling of mindless wandering from day to day is a thing that haunts his nightmares for years.

June 2013

Seven years. Well, almost seven years. Like an almost matters at all. It doesn't do anything to bridge the chasm that's just ripped open in Peter's mind at the knowledge.

He's not even sure he answers Derek when his nephew tells him how long he was asleep, can't be sure he doesn't go quiet and lose his voice. He remembers looking at the threads in his quilt, running his shaking fingers over the stitches until he looked up and found Derek watching the sky outside the window with a lost look to his face.

For a moment Peter wants to snarl at him, wants to bite and snap at how at least Derek's been awake, at least Derek can walk and eat and talk. His breath is still caught in his mouth though, mixing his letters around until he can't be sure the words he has are right or real. It gives him the time he needs to break the swell of hurt, furious rage and at last take his nephew's hand. He doesn't speak, he can't. Not yet. But he holds on, and lets Derek hold onto him, and they sit there until the little square of sky has gone dark and grieve together over the years they've lost.

June is the month he sits up on his own, it's the month of his first full sentence without losing any words, it's the month he gets to try eating tiny bites of yoghurt. He chokes the first dozen times, his throat rejecting the sensation and closing up in panic but eventually he out-stubborns his body and manages to swallow a few drops.

It's not a quick-transition by any means, and he loses so much weight once the breathing tube is out and they start him on a liquid diet that Dr. Carter brings in. The nutrition potions are thick and grainy, suited for a metabolism-heavy supernatural like an Alpha were, tasting mostly of oats and iron as Peter fights to swallow them. She explains that they aren't a permanent solution and can cause constipation and severe gut pain if taken too often, but Peter fights for the option.

They can still use the G-tube if they have to but after so long he wants to just be able to eat on his own. It's infuriating, to have the mockery of strength on full moons, knowing he was able to fight, able to hunt, and have barely enough power to lift a spoon when the sun rises. On the positive side, the work of swallowing them helps him practice for getting other foods down and they sustain him while he struggles with blended eggs and concentrated protein drinks. It gets better.

Progress is painstaking and he clings on by the tips of his claws some days but he and Derek lean on their bond and they have each other to share in the 'little' victories. Nothing in those days is a little victory, not when every battle is fought till all parties are at their wits' end and ready to scream, but they're something to look back on later and marvel at.

They're memories he doesn't mind.

July 2013

Peter's not sure that Derek ever forgives himself when he finds out about Peter losing time. There's a defeated kind of sadness to him when Peter finally explains his fears of forgetting things, of blank gaps in his memory.

Which is not to say that he's defeated by it.

The clock, Derek explained as he installs it on the table by the bed, reads the time from a satellite and can't be wrong unless the time zone setting gets changed. It also reads the day, month and year, like a tiny calendar. It's letters and numbers glow a little so he can see them better at night.

Peter fights against the drag of his distress when he fully realises that almost seven years have passed since he last saw his sister and mother, last heard the voices of their family, last walked. It's not something he likes thinking about, not something he gets to focus on if he wants a productive day. When he starts to think about the time he's lost his words tend to abandon him to swish around in his chest, mixing up his thoughts until he just –

So he works to push past the thoughts, watches instead how his nephew's hands set up the clock so it faces him from the nightstand, adjusts it so even if Peter's lying flat he'll be able to see the display. The count of the milliseconds is strangely comforting, like waves on a beach that crash and roll over to start again, the background of the night sky soothing so his minds quiets to a dull roar. A precision clock, a smart clock, whatever that means, a clock that's specific and correct down to the nanosecond because somewhere up orbiting the earth a satellite is watching the planets and reading the time to it.

The phone is something else, set up on its stand by the clock and plugged in to a charger so it never dies. The app on it reads him, listens to his breathing patterns, shows him how long he's been sleeping and how his sleep was. Did he toss and turn or did he sleep deeply. They're things he wonders but now he can see, can even listen to recordings of things he might've said. He's never been one to talk in his sleep that he knows of but it's reassuring all the same and he makes sure to pay attention when Derek explains how it works.

By the end of it he feels raw and more than a little vulnerable but the Delta scent soaked into the den helps so much he could cry. There are still things he doesn't know; he's getting better at telling when Derek avoids things, changes the subject, backtracks from what he was going to say. It's fine. He's not ready for whatever it is, is sometimes barely ready to open his mouth and speak simple sentences. He can't imagine it's urgent, understands there are things he's not prepared to be told. It's not like he doesn't have a few puzzle pieces for himself, but he's not in a rush to relive things while he's trying to make his hands quit shaking long enough to eat a spoonful of applesauce.

It's not like he's going anywhere anytime soon, and he can finally admit to himself that there's nowhere he'd rather be, that he's glad – most days if not all – that he lived. That he's glad he didn't die with the rest of them, that he's relieved he's still here for Derek, still gets to see his nephew every day and talk to him, halted though his words are. Derek's never seemed to even notice when he makes mistakes, appears every time to simply enjoy hearing Peter talking. And maybe he is – Peter's own happiness with the process is largely tempered by the slow progress and the times when he can't say more than one or two straight words.

Suddenly he remembers a saying he heard a while back – seven years and some change – and he laughs until his face hurts. Derek stops on his way past the open door to listen, a bemused but fond look to his eyebrows as he leans against the doorframe until Peter's tired and his laughing is tapering off.

"What's got you in such a good mood?"

Peter just looks up at him with a sad absolution and breathes, "We're all works in progress."

Notes:

The scene, again from Watership Down because it just fit here, dammit, that really portrays Kate's whole bearing/attitude throughout her talk with Peter. (Go look up the cat catching the rabbit in Watership Down on YT, FFNET stole it again)

Also I imagine that the way Kate squeezes his throat with the tube inside would be somewhat like waterboarding, though I can't say so based on personal experience. She would have turned down the heart-rate machine for sure, adjusting it so the nurses wouldn't be alerted to his pulse flying up. Just another thing to highlight how awful she is, you know...for funsies.

Really hope you like this! I'm ending this one here though I have more planned. There are other people I didn't mention here who will be introduced in a more linear way later. I felt like Peter wasn't really in the frame of mind to take note of all the people cycling through their lives when he's trying to just get a hold on his own head.
There will be more in the series later on but I figure I might as well put this out since I'm finished with it and it has the ability to stand on its own. Tell me what you thought!

"It's the days you have every right to breakdown and fall apart, yet choose to show up anyway that matter most. Don't diminish the small steps that others can't see."
― Brittany Burgunder

Thanks for reading!