Derek tracks the hours by the fading shades of sunlight, keeps tracking as the sky goes pink, purple, orange again. He doesn't feel anything like Peter promised. Just Malia's steady heartbeat, her soft breaths beside him, the stench of smoke and burnt leather almost breathable by now.
"You're not a monster," Malia says, considering. "You never hurt anyone."
Derek scoffs. It catches in his throat, makes his eyes water. "You missed a lot."
"Kate tricked me too," Malia says.
"She tricked me twice," Derek reminds her. "I was gonna kill Peter."
"Trust the instinct," Malia says.
"I helped her," Derek says desperately. Someone has to understand what he's done. Someone has to stop saying you didn't know like that makes it okay, someone needs to—Laura would be furious. She'd kill him. She'd never let him forget it. But everyone here keeps acting like it's fine, like he's some poor victim, like—even Scott pretended for months.
"I loved her," Derek says, jaw clenched sharp. "I would've—I let her into my house, I let her—"
"I loved my dad," Malia says. She frowns, considering. "I think I loved him."
"That's not—" Derek stops, frustrated. "He's your dad. You can't help loving your dad."
"You can't help loving anyone," Malia challenges.
"I should've," Derek says stubbornly. "I should've. There must've been a million signs I missed, just because—"
"It feels real," Malia says. "Like you're supposed to do stuff like that. If you want to be a real person, you need a—you need someone who's yours. Like in a movie."
Derek looks away, face burning. "I was an idiot."
"She tricked everyone," Malia says. "Pretending to be me. None of them figured it out." Her voice is oddly still. "Not even Stiles."
"He knew you weren't killing all those people," Derek says, after a while.
"Wow," Malia says. "How does he do it."
"I didn't," Derek admits.
"You never met me," Malia says. "Not this you. But Stiles was—I thought he was, anyway. Stupid." She shrugs, a little stiffly. "It's better now. How things are."
"So it wasn't," Derek starts.
"No," Malia says, exasperated. "There are actually entire minutes of my life that aren't affected by you at all."
Derek rolls his eyes.
"I mean it," Malia says. "Lydia and I practiced breakup lines for weeks before I finally choked on cute and said something."
"More like everything," Derek says, smirking just a little.
"Shut up." Malia swats his shoulder. Her mouth curls up side by side. "There were flashcards."
"Flashcards," Derek says, struggling not to laugh outright.
"Color coded," Malia says. "I just wanted to say, 'You don't know me at all, and I feel so stupid, and when you try to touch me I can't stop thinking about you touching her and not even feeling a difference, and I thought we were real but I guess I was just a warm body, probably female, completely indistinguishable from anyone else in those categories,' but Lydia said I should try a 'softer approach.'" She frowns, brows drawing together. "What's the point? He got sad anyway."
"'Humans lie,'" Derek quotes. "My father said that all the time. I never believed him."
"Peter lies," Malia says. "All the time. Humans give you clothes."
"Clothes," Derek says dubiously.
"Stiles gave me his shirt," Malia says. "My dad gave me his jacket. They both kept trying to make me human. I thought I had to—It's so stupid."
"I gave you my dad's jacket," Derek says uncomfortably.
"I was cold, dumbass," Malia says, rolling her eyes. "You were actually paying attention."
It's weirdly peaceful just standing like this, watching the sun rise up over the line of trees. They're halfbreathing dying fire, just talking.
Derek's hands are burning, but that's okay. That's okay. Derek's hands are burning, his wrists. He can't make it matter.
Malia's by him, Dad's healing, Derek's getting warmer and warmer all the time.
The wall of heat is thick, getting thicker, so sharp Derek's fighting it blind. Choking up ash, smoke spilling past him, but he can still get through, he can still—
Laura grabs his collar, yanks him back.
"Are you crazy?"
Her eyes are halogen red, high beams in the darkness. Derek looks away, rubs his raw eyes clear.
"There's someone in there," he says hoarsely. "They're not even trying."
"Because it's suicide," Laura snaps.
"For humans," Derek says. Werewolves heal, he's already healed. And even if he burns for days, even if he burns forever, if it saves somebody—
"This isn't our fire," Laura snaps. "This isn't our problem. We're leaving."
It's an order, alpha strong, and Derek's too hollow to fight it.
He stares out the window as they pull away, watches the smoke rise and rise and rise, sirens screaming, until Laura swats his arm, says, "Stop being morbid," and turns the car around.
They show all the pictures on TV for weeks: the girl who died in there, her whole family. A million stories about who she was, who she could've become.
When Laura finds Derek watching the reports again, paralyzed with guilt, she glowers at him, then dumps the set in the closet so roughly it shatters.
"What's happening?" Laura demands. Derek blinks up at her.
It's not Laura. It's someone else. Feels like family, but that's just stupid.
Derek doesn't have any other family.
"Malia," she says, like she's just reminding him. Like Derek's supposed to know who that is when he's never even heard her name before. "What's happening to you?"
"I don't know," Derek says, but he can smell fire.
It's always fucking fire.
"He's finding his shape again," Mom's emissary says.
Derek looks at him skeptically. "What?"
"Have you ever heard of dynamic equilibrium?" the emissary says.
Malia groans. "Does it matter?"
"There is a theory, in science and the supernatural," the emissary says patiently. "Everything has a natural ebb and flow. The wax and wane of the moon, for example."
"The circle of life," Derek says tiredly. "Awimoweh, awimoweh."
"—is another example, yes," the emissary says placidly. "I admit I've always been interested in the theory. One of my favorite flowers is papaver californicum. It's a shame you left when you did."
"So he's going back to the way he was," Malia recaps, which doesn't make any sense at all. "Getting older."
"We're all getting older," the emissary says. Malia glowers at him. "In a sense, yes," he agrees. He turns to Derek. "But dynamic equilibrium of the supernatural variety often takes a more… erratic route. Have you been feeling anything unusual?"
"—here, I'm here," someone says breathlessly, crashing through the doors, flailing as he struggles to steady himself against them. "Is he okay? What's happening?"
"He doesn't remember me," Malia tells him. "He won't remember you."
The guy's eyes narrow as he straightens, comes closer. "What do you mean he doesn't—"
"Stiles," Derek says.
"Yeah!" the guy says, frowning at Malia. "Got it in one."
"What's a stiles?" Derek asks.
"Wait, really?" the guy asks, deflating. "Me," he says, flourishing emphatically. "That's me, I'm Stiles. Stiles Stilin—You look different."
"He thought I was Laura," Malia says.
"Not once I saw you," Derek says defensively. "You—sound the same. Sort of." His ears and the back of his neck prickle. He's probably still gonna be blushing like a cartoon character when he's thirty. He exhales hard. "Where is she?"
Stiles gapes at him, then frantically tries to rearrange his face behind both hands.
It doesn't work.
"What?" Derek snaps, fear threading all through him.
"She's… not here," Stiles says helpfully.
Derek snorts. "I kind of figured that out myself, actually."
"Look," Stiles says, a little desperately. "You're—what, fifteen?"
"Seventeen," Derek says, drawing himself up to his full height before he even realizes what he's doing. It doesn't matter. these people don't even know him, they're strangers.
His ears burn anyway, shoulders tensing defensively.
"How old are you?" he demands, hating everything.
"Seventeen," Stiles says.
"Sixteen," Malia says. "Eight human, eight coyote."
"Right," Derek says stupidly. "What?"
"You're seventeen," Stiles says. "And you don't—Stiles. Stilinski." He watches Derek carefully, like he's gonna think a little harder and go, "Oh, that Stiles. Of course."
"I told you, he doesn't remember," Malia says.
"I just thought—"
"You believed Kate," Malia says, and glares at her fingernails.
Derek goes cold.
"Yeah," Stiles says, looking at him. Why's he looking at him? He should look at Malia, she's the one talking.
Talking about Kate.
"Yeah, I did," Stiles says. "I didn't—I barely knew you, Malia. I barely knew me, after—" He stops. "I didn't know."
"No shit," Malia says, but softer.
"I'm sorry," Stiles says, and Malia says, "Shut up, idiot," and drags him into a hug, and Derek feels like he's drowning.
Until he doesn't feel anything at all.
Derek bites his lip in concentration, brow furrowed, rotating pieces of sky-colored cardboard from a carefully sorted pile and trying them one by one.
"We're gonna figure this out, buddy," Stiles says quietly. "Don't worry."
"Not worried," Derek scoffs, patting a piece of cloud into place. "It's olny 400 pieces. Dad an' me—that doesn't go there." He pulls the piece from Stiles' fingers, frowns at him.
"Yeah," Stiles says, grinning crookedly. "I don't know what I was thinking."
"My dad once did a twenty thousand piece puzzle," Derek brags, beaming just thinking about it. "And I helped."
"Twenty thousand," Stiles says, in appropriate tones of approval. "That must've been huge."
"No," Derek says. "The pieces were miniature. My dad does it by smell."
"Werewolves have their own puzzles," Stiles realizes.
Derek goes still, stares at him.
That's a secret. Derek's not allowed to tell anyone. Not even Liam, no one. Or he's in big trouble.
"Says who he's a werewolf?" Derek demands. "You don't know."
"Good point," Stiles says hurriedly, snatching up a puzzle piece at random. "Hey, where do you think this goes?"
"Says who?" Derek presses, anxious.
"Hey, it's okay," Stiles says, softer. "My best friend's a werewolf. So's my boyfriend. Or—I mean, it's complicated. Like, really complicated. Super weird right now, actually. This is pretty much the apex of—Anyway. The point is, I know lots of werewolves. So you don't have to, I don't know, freak out and shift and get stuck that way, okay? We can totally avoid that. With teamwork! You and me, buddy."
"Don't care about your stupid boyfriend," Derek says grumpily, eyes scrunching, puzzle pieces crumpling in his fist.