There's a kitten with a torn ear and a side full of bandages that Derek can't help staring at. Deaton follows his gaze and says, "Would you like to hold her?"
"I—Yeah," Derek says, and carefully shapes his hands around her fur. She's warm and her nose is very pink and she squirms at first but settles almost as soon as he deposits her in the folds of the shirt Stiles let him change into. He'd been right about Stiles' muscles. The shirt's mostly the right size but swims around Derek's shoulders. Over it he's got Dad's jacket—Stiles took him to his, older him's, apartment, he had a key and he knew where everything was. He didn't know the jacket was Dad's, but he knew where it would be, when Derek mentioned it, not really expecting an answer.
Older Derek's apartment smelled like him and a little bit of Stiles and even less of Scott and some other people, probably Scott's pack. Mostly it smelled lonely. Derek doesn't get that, why older him is lonely if he's got so many people. If he's got Stiles.
There was a picture of older him and Cora in his bedroom. Older Derek looks nothing like him, and Cora—She's supposed to be eleven, and instead she's Stiles' age. It made Derek dizzy.
The kitten twitches her nose, burrows under Dad's jacket to press herself closer against his chest. He dips his hand in to find her. She licks his fingers.
"What happened to her?" Derek asks, interrupting whatever really serious discussion Stiles and Deaton are having that he hasn't been paying attention to.
"It's hard to say," Deaton says, turning to Derek. "My guess is she got separated from her—"
Stiles makes an aborted noise, looking from Derek to Deaton very meaningfully, like Derek doesn't get his oh-so-subtle signals, like finding out she's alone too is what's gonna break him.
"So she's nobody's," Derek says, instead of pointing this out. "You just found her."
"That's right."
Good, Derek thinks, and tucks his jacket a little warmer around her.
He names her Laura.
Stiles and Scott are in trouble for road tripping to Mexico without telling their parents. They're grounded until they're sixty and banned from any more supernatural adventures forever and Stiles' father gets all the bacon he wants and Scott's mother is very, very—
"Mom," Scott says, and steps sideways, leaving his mother frowning at Derek's forehead for a second before she refocuses. "It's Derek."
"We had to go get him," Stiles says.
"And you didn't think we might want to help you with that?" Stiles' father asks, after a long pause where he stares at Derek like he's some kind of code to crack.
Stiles goes pink. "That… may not have occurred to us," he allows.
"Well Christ, Stiles, what do you think—" Stiles' dad stops, shakes his head just the way Stiles does. "Are you alright?" he asks Derek.
Derek really doesn't know what to say to that.
Quietly, Stiles says, "I had to tell him about, you know—"
"Of course," Stiles' dad says, and steps a little closer to Derek, like he's trying to shield him from a still-fresh crime scene. "Those were some good people," he says. "They deserved a hell of a lot better. And your sister—" He rubs his eyes. "I'm sorry."
It's somehow worse when he says it. It sounds more real, more permanent. Derek looks down at his hands, watches them tremble. The world blurs again.
"Hey," Stiles says, and then his hand is on Derek's shoulder, contact heat seeping all down that side. He doesn't say anything else. There's nothing he could say, nothing that would matter. It's not a nightmare, it's not gonna be okay, it's just—this. Forever.
They stand like that for a long time.
"Where's Cora?" Derek asks, eventually. He almost doesn't want to see her. He doesn't know what he'd say, what he'd do. What she'd want from him, if she even wants to see him. He's supposed to be stronger than her, supposed to protect her, but she's older than him now and everything's all turned around.
"She's safe," Stiles says, which isn't an answer.
Derek can't stop shivering. He grits his teeth, says, "That's not an answer."
"I don't know," Stiles says. "But De—you said she was safe."
"That doesn't mean—" Panic shocks through him again, but it's sluggish when it hits. He's tired of this, of older Derek's life. He's just tired.
"Yeah, it does," Stiles says. "I trust you."
"You shouldn't," Derek says.
There's food. Stiles' dad cooked, which he never does. He grills, apparently, and cooks vicariously through the various fast food chains, which Stiles points out is cholesterol city, and his dad argues—Derek can't even hear them, really, anymore. He makes a feeble attempt at putting something on a fork. He holds the fork for a while, staring blankly at it, and puts it back down.
"You sure you're finished?" Stiles' dad asks when Derek stands up.
Derek feels a thousand years old. Maybe this has happened a thousand times already.
"I'm… yeah," he says.
"You should drink something, at least."
"Fine," Derek says, and drinks a couple sips of a hot chocolate Stiles' father hands him before gagging and running to the bathroom to be sick.
Stiles changes his sheets, takes the couch. "No, I want to," he says, when Derek protests vaguely.
The new sheets are too clean, like they're barely out of the packaging. The factory smell makes Derek's head hurt. He pulls the pillow out of its case, presses his face into it. It smells like Stiles, like Stiles' dad, like someone else Derek guesses was Stiles' mom.
He dreams about fires, his family on some giant grill, their house shriveling around them like heated plastic, trapping them inside.
He wakes up with his fangs out and blood in his mouth, blood on Stiles' pillow, blood still dripping from the already-healing claw marks across his chest, up and down his arms. There's still the slightest indent of a bite mark fading from Derek's wrist. He recognizes the shape of his own teeth.
There's blood gunking up Dad's leather jacket.
Derek wishes he'd just died in that fire.
He takes a molten hot shower, watches the water swirl pink. Redresses in Stiles' shirt, older Derek's jeans, Dad's jacket, which he'd tried to scrub clean in the bathroom sink. He'd let the water run till the sink was clean, flushed all the blood-gunked tissues, flushed again. There's still a tough stain of gritty dried blood left in the jacket lining, which won't come out for anything.
Derek doesn't care, doesn't care, doesn't care.
Nothing matters, not really.
Deaton's useless. Stiles dives into his own research wormhole, only coming up to check on an increasingly listless Derek, putting food in his hands, offering books, video games. Things older Derek likes, things that must've distracted him, like Stiles said. Right now Derek doubts anything could distract him, and it's stupid to try. It's not like he wants to be happy, anyway. Mom's never going to be happy ever again. Everyone can just fuck off if they think he's just gonna push that back somewhere, paste a big stiff smile on his face and watch some Pixar movie.
He dreams about fires, sirens, howls that echo forever and forever and forever. He wakes up sick and shivering all over. He stares up at the ceiling till it goes foggy, till he has to clamp a palm over his mouth to keep from howling with them.
He runs till his muscles are screaming for relief, keeps going. Wind whipping past him, all air sucking past him, leaving him breathless, but he doesn't stop until it feels like his muscles are tearing from the bone.
There's an exercise bar in older Derek's apartment. Derek saw it that first time with Stiles. It's important, suddenly, the only thing that matters, to run there, pry the window open with a claw—
"Derek," Kate says.
Derek nearly falls two stories. He scrambles down the side of the building, somersaults off the drainpipe and leaps the last few feet because it's Kate. There's one right thing left in the world, and it's Kate, standing in his doorway like she belongs there, like she's been waiting for him.
"Kate," Derek says stoically, brushing his palms off on his jeans and walking the last few steps toward her as calmly as he can.
"Hey, handsome," she says, and Derek dies a little bit, in the best way.
"You're—" he starts, and finishes, the tips of his ears burning, "really beautiful."
She smiles at him.
"I didn't know you were back in town," she says. Something starts hissing in the back of Derek's mind. He pushes it away.
"I—It was a spur of the moment thing," he says.
"Why don't you invite me inside?" Kate suggests. "We can catch up."
Derek's mouth goes dry.
"I," he says regretfully, hating the stupid instinct he'd had to run here, "I don't have a key." He should've asked Stiles for it, he should've—
Stiles, the back of his mind says. He ignores it.
Kate grins at him. "I do."
Derek lets out a relieved huff. Of course she does. Kate's probably the biggest reason he even got this apartment.
She unlocks the door easily, locks it again behind them. She must've done it a thousand times. At least there's something older Derek got right. He follows her inside. Her heels clicking across the hardwood, her soft waves of blonde hair, the sweet silhouette of her—it's incredible.
And she loves him.
There's a giant California King bed in the middle of the room. Older Derek obviously isn't lonely at all.
The hiss gets worse.
"You've been here before," Derek says.
"Of course I have, silly," Kate says, sitting on the edge of the bed and raising an eyebrow at him.
"You're here all the time," Derek says slowly.
Kate laughs. "Not all the time."
"Often, though," Derek says.
"Baby, what's wrong?"
"Don't call me that," Derek says without thinking. Kate laughs again. "Just tell me the truth."
"I'm not keeping a record," Kate says.
Derek's nostrils flare. "You've never been here before," he says. "What, did you—did you practice on another lock?"
Kate looks at him like he's losing his mind. "What?"
"You're not surprised," Derek says.
"Honey," Kate says. "You're gonna have to start making sense soon."
"That I'm—not older," Derek says. "I know what I'm supposed to look like, there's no way—"
"I don't care how you look," Kate says. It's true, Derek thinks, but she's nervous.
"I look like I'm in high school," Derek says.
"But you're not," Kate says. "It doesn't matter to me."
"Why not?" Because you love me, Derek begs.
"Because I need your help," Kate says.
Derek blinks at her.
"Do you know the first rule of the Code?" she says.
"'Protect those who can't—'"
"If you get bitten," Kate interrupts, "if you ever become anything other than human, you have to kill yourself."
Derek's brows draw together. "But—"
"There are no exceptions, there's no way around it. And the second you stop following the Code, you're hunted."
"Why?" Derek asks. It's not fair, that's not how the Code is supposed to work, it's supposed to protect people.
Kate shrugs. "I don't make the rules." She pulls down the high collar of her sweater, reveals a long, fierce pair of claw marks all across her throat.
Derek's eyes water.
"Peter attacked me," she says. The hissing turns to full-on buzzing, white noise blaring so loud it blocks out everything else. Peter hurt Paige, he killed Laura, and now—
Derek reaches out, touches the raised edges of the scar. His hand shakes. He can see it too clearly, Peter just slashing her open, watching her fall—
"I'm sorry," he says. His eyes sting. "There's something wrong with him, something—He's a monster."
Kate draws Derek in with a loose hug. He pulls her closer, kisses the side of her neck, just holds her.
"I knew you'd understand," Kate whispers.
Derek's fingers find the long line of the scar, trace it, anger boiling in him, lighting him up. "I'm gonna protect you," he swears. "Whatever it takes."
"It won't be easy," Kate says. "There are hunters looking for me, and there's this guy, he calls himself the Benefactor…"
Derek listens. He runs his fingers through Kate's hair, thinks of murder. Of finding Peter, throwing him through a wall, tearing his fucking throat out.
"I don't care," he says, when Kate's finished. "I don't care what happens to me, if I can't—" He stops, in case he's scaring her. "I just—" He watches her breathe, her chest softly rising and falling under her sweater, and thinks, Anything, anything, anything. "What do you need me to do?"