Loads of information in this chapter, but I have ten years to cover, so bear with me – it won't be this rushed in the actual plot.

I hope you guys enjoy it!

When it all falls apart

Chapter Two

Stiles is prepared to spend the rest of his summer completely alone. After the whole Alpha fiasco, there's still about a month of summer holidays left, and he knows Scott is too offended to apologize, and if he's honest with himself, he doesn't really want him to. Scott apologizing would mean Stiles would have to forgive him and then break his heart – he's done, he doesn't want to be the sidekick in his own life, he doesn't want to put Scott first, he wants to be the main character of his own storyline, and that means he really needs to stay away from Scott.

Which means he has to stay away from everybody else because they're all a big happy pack all over again – or that's what he thinks until the night Jackson Whittemore knocks on his door. Stiles is really confused when he sees Jackson there, and the blond looks just as uncomfortable, but Stiles invites him in, and the boy is polite to his dad, and asks to talk to Stiles in private.

"If this is about your little gang with Hale, I'm out. I'm having nothing to do with it anymore" Stiles says firmly, and he can sense more than see his dad looking at him a bit proudly.

"No" Jackson says, sounding not exactly humble, but at least not as much of a jerk, "Quite the opposite, actually" he finishes, and Stiles frowns at him before inviting him to his room.

Turns out that, unsurprisingly, Jackson isn't good in a pack environment. Scott, apparently, had finally bowed his head to Derek, and after being rescued, Erica and Boyd were a part of Derek's pack again – that made Derek's pack a big one, what with five betas and a human, because where Scott goes, Allison goes, even if Stiles thinks they're all stupid, the girl tried to kill them all, but okay, not his business – but Jackson doesn't know how to play in a large group of people.

It had never been his plan to be a pawn to Derek, anyway – his aim at being a werewolf was always to be a lone wolf, but his experience with Derek's pack, however short, had made him see that being an Omega wasn't good.

"I just want to know how Scott did it" he says, after letting Stiles know he's left the Hale pack, "How he managed to still be a Beta, or at least not go Omega, without an Alpha, or a pack."

Stiles stares at Jackson, and he thinks about it for a bit, because he doesn't know what helping Jackson will entail. He doesn't want to be the one Derek comes after when Jackson kills everyone in town in a fit of rage for going rogue, and at the same time, he thinks there's something more to it than Jackson not knowing how to play in a team. When he voices his suspicions to Jackson the blond gets this tight set of his jaw, as if it pains him to be talking to Stiles, but he stares Stiles down and admits that, yes, there is.

There's Lydia, and there's the fact that Peter Hale is still very much a part of Derek's pack, and that through him, Lydia would be pack too, and she can't take it.

So he's leaving, at risk of being alone and weak, so that she won't have to suffer.

He actually says he's put her through too much already, and that's what makes Stiles decide to try and help him, within reason, because it's Lydia, and even if he knows he'll never have a chance with her, he wants her to be happy.

That's how much of a sap he is.

"Scott had me. And Allison" he says simply, shrugging a bit, "We were there for him, I guess, and that made us a makeshift pack for him, while it lasted. He was never Omega because he had a pack, even if the rest of it were human-only."

Jackson is pensive after this, and he stares at Stiles speculatively for a few seconds.

"Do you think Lydia and Danny would be enough?" he asks, and Stiles shrugs again.

"I really don't know. I just remember it was something Derek said once."

Jackson nods, and he looks like he wants to ask or say something else, but he doesn't. He does say thank you, looking as if that'll haunt him forever, and it makes Stiles smile a little bit.

"You'll be fine" Stiles ends up saying, when they are at the door, "Lydia is probably worth more than all of the people in their little gang" he jokes, and Jackson snorts.

"Not your little gang anymore either" Jackson says rather than asks, and Stiles just shakes his head, remembering Scott telling him he didn't need him anymore.

"I don't think I ever was" he replies, and Jackson nods at him again, leaving in his shiny Porsche.

He's got the girl, the car and the super powers, and Stiles's got… nothing.

When his dad passes by him, heading to the kitchen, and squeezes his shoulder for a moment, though, Stiles smiles. Not really nothing if he can have his relationship with his dad back.

The next day his dad is back at work and Stiles fully expects to spend the whole day by himself, completely alone, and that's fine. He should get used to it, anyway. He plans on sleeping in, having something ridiculously unhealthy for lunch, and play Assassin's Creed till his dad gets back for dinner, and that's it.

No big plans, no running around the woods, no trying to get that idiot's friendship back, because he's done with the lying thing. He has to be.

That's why he's honestly surprised when at about three in the afternoon the doorbell rings, and when he answers, there's Lydia Martin. He stares at her, open mouthed, and she sighs irritably, throwing her long hair over her shoulder.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Sure! I'm sorry, come in!" he says, his voice fast and confused, because what the hell was she doing here? "Do you want anything to drink? Soda, water, coffee, tea?" he offers and she smiles a bit at him, the same smile she had when she looked for him before the whole Kanima disaster, when she thought Jackson was dead, almost two months ago.

"Just water is fine" she answers, shrugging, and then she follows him to the kitchen, sitting on one of the chairs. Stiles hands her a glass with iced water, and takes one for himself, sitting too.

"Jackson told me he was here yesterday, talking to you about his whole… abandoning the Hale pack thing" he just nods, waiting for her to say what she wants to say, "Do you really think he'll be fine without a pack?"

She looks a bit insecure, and Stiles has to try really hard to define if she's really feeling that, or if she's using that look because she knows it'll get to him.

He can't quite decide.

"As far as I can tell, all he needs is an anchor. You're it. You were enough to make him turn into the werewolf he was supposed to be, it'll certainly be enough for him to have an anchor when the full moon comes. I'd recommend it for you to be away, and him locked up, but I think you guys will be fine. If it looks like it's not working, just tell him Scott did it – that'll make him want to be better than Scott."

Lydia laughs a little at that, and Stiles smiles back, feeling a bit of the ache from the past few days ease away from him. He's feeling awful, and every time he tries to think about what happened he feels wrong.

He hates being like this with Scott, and yet he knows he can't go back to the way things were.

It hurts too much, hearing you're not needed.

"Something happened to you, Stiles" Lydia says and he shrugs in answer, not quite knowing what to say to that.

It was the truth, but what could he say? It's not like she was his friend for him to spill his guts for her, was it?

"Don't you want to talk about it?" she offers, and her tone is not annoyed or impatient, it's actually kind.

"Why would you want to hear it?" he asks a bit suspiciously, but he has a right to be, and she looks at him, her head tilted to the side a bit.

"You were willing to listen to me when no one else was. I'm willing to do the same. That's what friends do, right?"

Stiles can't decide if he's happy or miserable about it, because he gets to be her friend, and maybe he won't be so alone anymore, but at the same time she's also making it clear that they're friends, and will never be anything else – not that he hadn't got that memo with the whole love saving Jackson thing.

"I got into a fight with Scott, because he didn't tell me about his plans with Derek for the Alpha pack thing" he says carefully, and Lydia nods.

"What else? You wouldn't be this upset if that was it."

He looks away for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts, because he himself is having a hard time getting what the big deal was.

"Mainly it was because my dad got hurt. If he had told me, I would have found a way to keep him out of it, to keep him safe. And by not doing that, Scott was indirectly responsible for my dad getting hurt" he takes a deep breath, and Lydia waits, he looks down at the table, picking on the small droplets of water on his glass, "But it's… it's more than that. It's how he never thinks about anything else other than himself and Allison. Actually, it's how he got back together with Allison. And I don't know if you know this, but she tried to kill Derek, seriously kill him" he looks at Lydia again, "Her grandfather tortured me. That's why I was that bruised in the night we thought Jackson was dead. Actually, he was the one who ordered Jackson to gut himself in the middle of the field. And she was helping. Scott can't see past his love for Allison, but she hurt so many people. And then there's Isaac there too, and they're hanging out, and Scott just… forgot about me. And my dad…" he takes a deep breath before continuing, and Lydia actually put her hand over his on the table top, "Ever since my mom died, we had this really nice relationship. Of course we both screwed up, but not as much, and not as badly, as it could have been. I took care of him, and his health, and he put up with me, and being around Scott and that lot, it was making me lose it. My dad wouldn't be able to take the lies for much longer, and I was tired of it" he looks at her, his eyes wet, but he refuses to actually cry in front of Lydia, "He also told me he doesn't need me anymore. That I'm useless in a fight. So I guess the whole thing was just the straw that broke the camel's back, you know?"

Lydia stares at him for a moment, before snorting delicately, and shaking her head.

"You just want to be normal again, don't you?"

He stares at her and is about to agree with it, but then he thinks about, really thinks about it, and shakes his head.

"No, that's not really it. I'm a hyperactive kid, who no one really likes all that much. I'm not sure I could ever be what people call normal, and that's not it, that's not the problem. I just want to… belong. Somewhere. I want to belong. And I thought Scott was my friend, and that I belonged with him and his pack, but I'm not pack. I'm not a part of it, and Scott is the one who made it so. I want to be me, and I want to be the one who matters in my own life. I'm… I'm tired of being a shadow."

When he finishes speaking, Lydia is staring at him with something aching to pity, but it's gone on a second, and she nods at him, as if coming to a decision.

"I understand" she says simply, and he doesn't think she truly does, he can't remember a time when Lydia wasn't the star of the school, but he also knows there's more to her than pretty looks, so he doesn't say anything else.

She leaves soon after that, and Stiles is once again convinced he's going to spend the rest of the summer alone.

That changes when the next morning his dad is banging on his door, at eight am, telling him his friends are waiting for him. Stiles thinks about asking him to tell Scott he doesn't want to see him, but decides against it, he should fight his own battles.

When he gets to the door, Jackson and Danny are there, waiting for him, dressed up in lacrosse practice uniforms.

"If you want to keep up whatever it is you did at the last game, you need to practice more" Jackson says as a way of greeting, and Danny actually smiles at his incredulous face, "Danny tells me you kicked some ass at the final game, but I'm not buying that until I see it with my own eyes. So come on, we're training" he finishes, shouldering past him into the house, and sitting in the couch, "We're wasting time, Stilinski, grab your stuff and let's go."

Maybe it was the shock, but Stiles actually went, put on his uniform, brushed his teeth, grabbed a protein bar as a makeshift breakfast and left with Jackson and Danny to the field.

He doesn't question why or how they're doing this, and when Lydia shows up at about eleven am to oversee their practice, and waves at him, smiling, he knows she's the one behind this.

He wants to say he doesn't need pity-friendships, and that he doesn't want to be the new sidekick for Jackson's wolf instead of Scott's, but Jackson doesn't use his powers to play, and Danny doesn't know anything about it, and Lydia is really nice, and Jackson turns out to actually possess a sense of humor, even if it's mostly at the expense of someone else.

Stiles actually enjoys his day, grabbing lunch with the other three at a diner, and then going home, with Jackson's promise – or maybe threat – of picking him up the next day, at the same time.

He likes it, this spending time out of the house thing, and the next day he's ready when they come for him, and Lydia comes to the field at about the same time again. Danny is nice and friendly, and Stiles is really trying to focus on getting better and Jackson and Danny actually help him out a lot – he's not that bad when someone points out his mistakes for him so that he can correct them. They fall into a routine, and Stiles is glad. The first few times Lydia and Jackson kiss around him he gets this tight knot in his gut, but it eases when he starts to see that Lydia is an amazing friend. He loves her still, but it's changing, and he's happy about it.

His dad tries to be discreet about it, but he always asks where Stiles is going, and once or twice he sees his dad's car passing by the school field, as if to check he's really there, and he guesses he deserves it. But it starts to get easier between them, because Stiles is actually out of trouble, and he genuinely likes Danny and Lydia, and even Jackson, even if that takes a lot of time to get used to.

About three weeks into their last month of holidays he and Danny trade exasperated looks every time Lydia and Jackson start their make out session, and when the full moon comes, he holds a sleep over – with Lydia and Danny at his place.

Jackson is at home, alone, and he texts them all night long, sometimes talking to Lydia just to hear her voice. It's hard, but it isn't harder than sitting by Scott's door, listening to him describe his kiss with the girl he was in love with.

They survive, and there's not a body count, so they count it as a win.

He kind of realizes, a few days later, that they're a sort of a pack again – but these people actually care about themselves first. They just want to make it through high school, date and have fun. They have their problems, and their traumas, but they're actually good people, and everything is so much easier with them.

Stiles finally sees he's actually happy around them – happier than he can remember being around Scott for the last year.

A few days after their first full moon, Jackson tells him Derek showed up at his place, asking him to come back to the pack. Knowing Derek, Stiles bets there was a lot of growling and threats involved, but Jackson denied him. He's got an anchor, and he's got friends to keep him sane enough he won't go rogue, and there's nothing Derek can do about it to make him change his mind.

It's only when Jackson hangs up that Stiles realizes Jackson included him in his friends.

And it feels really good, even if losing Scott sucks.

He doesn't see Scott, which is really weird. He doesn't see Erica, Boyd, Isaac or Allison either, and one day, when they're at the mall – Danny and Jackson at some music store, him and Lydia walking though the dress section at Macy's, because he has no problem with helping her shop -, he asks her about Allison, and Lydia looks down for a bit, before shrugging.

"I think what happened between me and Allison is pretty much what happened with you and Scott, only way less intense, because we weren't friends for that long. I know I'm not a role model for adjustment, but her relationship with Scott is just not healthy, and I got tired of never having a friend when I needed to, and always having to be there when she needed."

Sties snorts at that, because hell if he doesn't know what she's talking about, and she looks at him with her eyes narrow.

"What do you think of Danny?"

Stiles is a bit lost with her question, because what's that got to do with anything? but he shrugs as an answer.

"I think he's pretty awesome."

She just smiles, and Stiles feels a little afraid of whatever is coming.

What is coming is a party given by some guy from school, that a few months back he'd never get invited to. He runs it by his dad, and gets a green light to attend – his dad's trust is actually coming back – and it's only when Danny comes by his door to pick him up that he realizes Lydia is trying to set them up.

He's offended for about two seconds until he realizes Danny is willing to pick him up, and Danny is not a push over, he'd never do something like this if he didn't want to, not even with Lydia bullying him.

They have a great time at the party, and Danny is cute and funny, and Stiles tries not to be a total spazz, and they get along just fine. The whole crowd of people in the party eyes him a little confusedly, because since when does Stilinski hang out with the likes of Lydia Martin and Jackson Whittemore, but it's okay because Danny gives them the stinky eye and they look away.

When Danny takes him home, with ten minutes to spare in his one o'clock curfew, Stiles looks at him and kisses his cheek, feeling girly and stupid, but Danny smiles at him when he pulls away, and draws him closer, kissing him on the lips softly. Stiles forgets to close his eyes, but Danny smiles at him.

"It's okay if you don't want to" the older boy says to him, smiling all the time, gentle and caring, "We can still be friends" his hands are on Stiles's waist, and Stiles leans against him a bit more, shaking his head.

"That's not it, I just… I never…"

"Kissed a guy?" Danny asks, and Stiles smiles at him.

"More like never kissed anyone. Unless you count getting kissed by Tara Noble on sixth grade on a dare as a kiss."

He's still smiling, though, because he knows Danny won't judge him, and the other boy doesn't disappoint him, leaning closer for another kiss.

"Guess we'll have to practice this too, then" Danny says against his lips kissing him again. Still small and gentle, but with a promise of a lot more.

He leaves, and Stiles gets in with a huge smile on his face to find his dad staring at him, eyebrow raised.

"You didn't tell me this was a date" he says, and Stiles shrugs, smiling sheepishly at him.

"To be honest, neither did I. Lydia set us up, and I didn't know" he explains, and his dad shakes his head, "Is it okay, though? I mean, it's Danny, so…"

His dad smiles at him and says it is okay, as long as he doesn't start sneaking around or doing anything illegal, and only part of it is a joke. Those months back will haunt their relationship for years to come, but Stiles is decided to make his dad proud.

They still practice Lacrosse in the morning, and grab lunch together a few times a week, but now his afternoons are full of Danny, and with Danny come kisses and hot make out sessions, and he just loves it. Sometimes they go out with Jackson and Lydia, and sometimes they stay on their own – they play video games and eat junk food, and they make out in Danny's room and on his couch when his dad has the night shift, and the Sheriff starts to smile at him again like he used to, before he got his dad temporarily fired and nothing he told him was the truth.

Summer ends, and Stiles is dreading going back to school, because seeing Scott will be unavoidable then. It's just because Danny will be there, and Lydia and Jackson, that he doesn't fall apart, and when the first day of school comes around, he's glad Danny offered to pick him up instead of having him drive there by himself.

It happens sooner than he realized it would, because they are just getting out of Danny's car and Scott and Allison are passing by, hand in hand. Scott looks at him with a face like he's got a belly ache, and Stiles looks away. Danny smiles at him reassuringly, and takes his hand, pulling him to the other side of the lot, where Jackson and Lydia are just arriving. They greet their friends, and Lydia gives them a kiss on the cheek, and Stiles doesn't look back – he doesn't have to look back to know the whole pack is coming into the school together.

It doesn't take long to spread along the gossip mill that Stiles and Scott's epic friendship is over, and that he now hangs out with Jackson, and Lydia and Danny. It also doesn't escape anyone's notice that he and Danny are together, and they are okay with that.

Things are normal, and he's fine. He's happy.

When the first Lacrosse practice of the year rolls around, Stiles gets self-conscious while changing, because he can feel Danny's eyes on him all the time, and he smiles at his boyfriend – and what a strange concept that is – before going out in the field. He asks to try for first line, and the coach lets him do it – partly because he remembers how he played at the final, and partly because he truly needs someone, as Scott's grade were so bad last year he can't come back to the team right away. He gets the position by the skin of his teeth, and he's so excited he jumps Danny when he comes to congratulate him, and kisses him in the middle of the field.

There are a few catcalls, and Jackson's shout of gross, but he doesn't care – he has a gorgeous boyfriend, he's friends with Lydia, he's first line in the Lacrosse team, and he hasn't been about to die in more than a month.

Things are looking up.

When they are leaving the field, Isaac congratulates him on his being first line, and he thanks the guy, but doesn't talk to him more than that. Scott doesn't even look his way, glancing at Danny and Jackson with betrayal in his eyes, and Stiles can't quite decide if he's feeling betrayed by him or by Jackson for having abandoned their pack.

Probably both.

Scott doesn't come back to the Lacrosse team, and they hardly ever see each other.

They keep their distance, and things at school settle down. It's clear that there are two groups where for a few weeks last year there had been one, and the rumors are wild – people saying Stiles was actually with Scott, and they broke up because of Allison, and that's why they aren't talking. Some people saying that Allison wanted to be with Lydia, and when she didn't want her, they fought.

Everything was absurd and ridiculous, and not even close to the truth, but it was okay.

Things settle down after a few weeks, and everyone is happy enough. Sometimes the Hale pack comes to school with bags under their eyes, and there are definitely weird things going on – the first time someone shows up dead, Stiles' father is obviously taking it as a trial for his son. But Stiles doesn't go out, he calls Lydia and Jackson and Danny, and sets up a movie marathon, and the boys manage to convince Lydia to watch something other than The Notebook, and when his dad comes home at almost four in the morning, he finds his son asleep on top of his boyfriend in the living room, with their friends asleep on top of each other on the other couch.

He smiles, turns off the TV and covers the teenagers with blankets before going to bed.

They don't get involved with pack stuff, and sometimes Scott looks at Stiles as if he wants to ask for help, but they never do. They don't approach Jackson either, which is good, because things sometimes get shaky with him, and he still has problems with his parents, and he has enough to deal with without being a part of Derek Manpain Hale's pack.

The school year flies by, and Stiles manages to get great grades, because not having to worry about his life on the line does great things to his academic performance. He's not the star of the Lacrosse team, but he's one of the good ones, and plays first line all year long. They win finals, and Jackson throws a huge party to celebrate it – the same night he can celebrate losing his virginity to his boyfriend, because Danny's parents are out for the weekend, and they can be alone.

Summer passes by fast, in a blur of training, a few outings with his friends, spending time with his dad, and actually going away for a week to Jackson's parents' beach house with him, Lydia and Danny.

Senior year comes, and Stiles and Lydia start freaking out to the amusement of their respective boyfriends, because they don't know where they want to go, even if they want to be near each other. Lydia finally decided on MIT, and that kind of makes up all of their minds, because they just want to be near – Danny goes for Computer Science in MIT with Lydia, and Jackson goes for Pre-Law in Brandeis with Stiles, where the last pursues a degree in teaching.

They work their butts off, and they don't even seem to notice when the other pack in town misses school, or isn't around, or show up at school looking broken and beaten up. Stiles sees, but he refuses to be dragged in – things are good, and he's happy, and he has a place now, a pack.

They get into college in early admissions, and they know a lot of the teachers gave them great recommendations, and, for the boys, their places in the Lacrosse team certainly didn't hurt.

Lydia is valedictorian, and the three boys are proud of her. They get medals for Academic and Sports Achievements, and even if misses his dad like never before, off they go to college.

They come home whenever is possible, and Jackson bugs Stiles until he accepts to use his frequent flier privileges, because he and his dad aren't really rolling in money. They are home for Thanksgiving, and Easter and Christmas and Summer Holidays, and they are doing great.

His dad starts dating this therapist in his first year at college, and they get married at the end of his fourth semester. Scott is at the wedding, and Melissa, but Stiles doesn't even try to make contact with them.

He and Danny are fine. They are more than fine, they are great – he's happier than he can ever remember being ever since his mom died, and he likes to think he makes Danny happy too.

Lydia and Jackson fight a lot, but they love each other, and the four of them are kind of decided not to go back to Beacon Hills after they graduate. They set up apartments in Portland, which is close enough they can visit frequently, but it's not their little town. Jackson and Lydia's place is a huge apartment, and Danny and Stiles share a loft. They have their jobs, and they are happy.

Things change, though.

Stiles would like to say it happened because this is his life, and nothing good ever lasts, but good things have actually lasted for him in the past eight years. He loves Danny quite a lot, and when the phone call comes, because he was listed as the emergency contact in his information, his whole body freezes.

Danny is dead.

In a car crash.

He can barely function for days after the thing happened. They fly back to Beacon Hills for the funeral, and the burial and the wake, and Danny's mom clings to Stiles like a lifeline. He hugs her back, and Danny's dad put his arms around them both, letting them cry.

That night, when he gets home, his dad's wife, Vanessa, pulls him in a hug, but it's only when he has his dad's arms around him that he lets it all go, sobbing like he hadn't done in a long, long while.

He decides to come back to Beacon Hills, because he can't be in that apartment without Danny, and Lydia and Jackson understand him better than anyone, and support his decision.

He finds himself a little apartment, just enough for him, rejects his dad's offer of living with him and Vanessa, because that'd be just weird, and tries to find a job.

His life is quiet for a whole year after that. Jackson and Lydia come home once a month, at least, and he talks to them a lot on the phone during that time. Danny's parents move away, but they keep in touch with Stiles, and he goes over to his dad's place for Friday night dinners and Sunday lunches. He avoids pretty much everyone who isn't family or Jackson and Lydia for a whole year.

When the school year begins, though, and he receives his newest class of five year olds to teach, he has a surprise.

Because on the roll call there's a little girl by the name of Laura Hale.

And his whole world is about to change because of it.

X

Derek has actually lost count of how many times Peter bemoans the fact that he bit Scott instead of Stiles. It started a little after his return from the dead, and continued over the years, until the time when Allison finally abandoned them – even if she was never really theirs as much as Scott was Allison's and everyone always knew that wouldn't end well.

When the Alpha pack showed up, Derek was still lost at the whole being an Alpha thing – he was never prepared for that, and he didn't know how to build a pack. Even being a sassy, sarcastic, annoying know-it-all, Peter actually helped him get through that, but Derek knew even before it happened that he'd lose Jackson because of his uncle's presence.

He never counted on losing Stiles as well, but that was on Scott, not him.

He never really understood what went on in the head of that boy, and all he could gather was that he had tunnel vision when it came to Allison, and Stiles had offended her somehow. However, if Derek could forgive her trying to kill him, why couldn't Scott forgive Stiles?

Later, months later, after a gruesome fight, when Scott is trying to hold back tears while stitching up Boyd, he confesses he made the whole thing worse on purpose. He wanted Stiles to hate him, because he was destroying his best friend's life. And it broke his heart to see him sad, but it broke it even more when he realized how happy Stiles was with his new friends. He was safe and happy with Lydia and Danny and even Jackson, and Scott was suffering, but he'd do it for Stiles.

He'd do anything for his best friend, even drive him away from them.

From that night on, it became the Pack's unspoken rule they wouldn't involve any of the others in their fights and battles, they would protect them. As the years went by, Derek and his pack fought a lot of weird things, sometimes wolves, sometimes humans, sometimes things in between, but they never let it affect the other pack, as they thought of them, even if they didn't have an Alpha. They fought while the others played Lacrosse and won championships; and they had to keep it together, having rogue wolves to fight, while the other four kids that one day they looked at as pack were studying for their exams, and deciding to go to MIT and Brandeis together, and receiving medals for Academic and Sports Achievements.

It wasn't fair, but Derek felt as if his pack, his little band of misfits, was actually living vicariously through that other group, and he couldn't begrudge them that.

When the other pack graduated, they were popular, they were happy, and, most of all, they were safe.

It was more than what could be said for his pack, but in a certain way Derek could tell his kids felt accomplished by the others' happiness. More than once they had to chase away something after Jackson that thought him weak for being a lone wolf. They had to protect Stiles' dad, and Stiles' himself, they had to protect Lydia for her immunity, and Danny for his association with the other three, but they managed it.

The other pack was happy, and safe, and popular, and clueless, and they let it happen.

The Hale pack didn't go far for college, and in those years they actually developed their own kind of happiness – being away from Stiles, Jackson, Lydia and Danny was good for them, because they were, for once, being happy for things they were doing themselves. Things were quieter now that Derek had finally made a name of his own as an Alpha, hunters didn't bother them as much, and creatures started to avoid Beacon Hills, because it was spoken for.

The second year in college for the teens was the first time Derek thought about dating, ever since the whole Kate Argent thing. She was older, dark skin and dark hair, gorgeous black eyes, a smile to die for, and he was kind of smitten so fast it wasn't even funny. She was a human from a werewolf family, one of the few who didn't carry the gene to be one, and she was a wild thing.

So wild that, when they found out that their carelessness had gotten her pregnant, two years after they started dating, she had thought of getting rid of the baby – she didn't when he said he'd like to have a child and she did it more because she felt she was doing the right thing.

She didn't want to be a mother though, so when Laura Hale was born, Nicole left, promising not to bother him again.

He felt lost with a small child in the pack, his small child, and his pack had college, so he had to get the hang of things by himself, mostly.

It was by the time Nicole found out about her pregnancy that Peter decided to leave, to go away, maybe travel, and not stay in Beacon Hills. Derek was kind of glad, because he would never be able to manage to trust the man again, and with his kid there it wouldn't take long before he would have to either kill Peter or cast him out.

He heard from him once in a while, talking about packs on Alaska being much more fun than the ones on California, so, apparently, he was all set.

He finally took a final step and put the remnants of the old Hale house down, building something new in its place, bright and airy, with his child in mind.

Erica was the next one to leave, finding an Alpha who was passing by in a conference at her college, and, apparently, falling madly in love with him. She went away with Derek's blessing, and sent news every week, phone calls and e-mails, about how happy she was.

Nicole was on her last month when Allison left them, and even if all of them were kind of preparing for it for years it still hurt like hell, mostly because of Scott, who had lost so much already. She had never been really okay again after the whole thing with her mother, and her dad could see it. He couldn't stay in Beacon Hills forever, and now that the Hales were back, he didn't have an excuse to stay. When push came to shove, Allison chose her family, and Scott knew he couldn't follow – he couldn't abandon his pack any more than Allison could abandon her dad, and that was the end for both of them.

On one hand, Derek was glad it was over – watching them was like watching a disaster taking its time to happen, as if you could see every single crack in the building before it collapsed completely. They loved each other, that much was clear, but love isn't always enough to make things right with them.

He healed, little by little, graduated from college as a Veterinarian and helped Deaton in his business, gaining clientele and knowledge that went far beyond animal care.

Boyd was a broker, and he was doing really well at his job for someone so young, and Isaac had become a nurse, working at the hospital with Melissa as soon as he graduated.

And Derek… kind of became a stay at home dad, because his pack was formed only by young males, and he didn't trust anyone else to be near his kid.

Laura was two when they heard about Danny's accident, and Derek and Scott actually went to the burial, watching from afar. Stiles had become a man, Jackson and Lydia by his side, their arms around their friend as he cried. He had lost his mom and now his eight-year long boyfriend, and it wasn't easy.

Scott contemplated talking to him again, but Isaac made him look at it from Stiles' perspective, and that wouldn't be good. Even if they knew Scott did what he did to protect Stiles, and that now that things were good maybe they could be friends again, to Stiles Scott had abandoned him for a girl, endangered his father and left his friendship for Isaac's.

It didn't look good.

They saw Stiles around town soon after that, and gathered he'd be staying.

When Laura was three, Derek decided, and was advised by Melissa, more than anyone else, that she needed to see other children, and he enrolled her at school. On the day of their first meet and greet with the teacher, his heart skipped a beat.

Because her teacher was Stiles.

So… what did you think?

Let me know!

REVIEW!