A/N: Music for this chapter:

Olaf Arnalds | NPR MUSIC LIVE

That evening, Derek ran to Stiles's house in time to hear the Sheriff say goodbye to his son as he left for work. As always, Stiles told him to be careful, but this time he patted his dad on the shoulder as if he wanted to say more. Then he stumbled up the stairs and climbed onto the roof, catching a glimpse of the older man as he climbed into his cruiser.

Derek joined him and they both watched as the Sheriff pulled out of the driveway. Stiles seemed different today, pensive. Derek was unsure what had changed. He wondered why he seemed so down.

"I worry about him."

Derek wasn't sure where the conversation was going, so he said nothing. He looked down at his hands and waited for Stiles to continue.

"My dad is good at his job, and he's tough as shit, but there's always the chance that he won't come home." Stiles wasn't bitter. Derek couldn't quite place the emotion he was hearing. "And… I don't think I'd be able to deal with losing him. Not after my mom." He spoke the last bit as if speaking to loud would shatter the night sky.

His eyes snapped over to watch Stiles in the semi darkness. "What… what was it like?" He asked in a tentative whisper. He needed to understand how Stiles and his father had been capable of handling that kind of grief and still be reasonably happy.

He didn't want to push Stiles, even though he was curious. They sat in the dark for a few moments and Derek considered what it would have been like to watch your parent die in a situation so radically different from his own. What was it even like to prepare for the death of a loved one? How do you come to terms with someone's imminent death?

Stiles's head tilted in the direction of Derek's voice, but he knew Stiles probably couldn't seem him very well. "I—I don't really even know. When she got sick, really sick, I mean, I started to avoid her. I didn't want to see that she had lost her hair. I didn't want to face anything that wasn't—wasn't her." His voice broke a little at that.

"I was selfish. I was only thinking about how she looked wrong. And I couldn't really get over that." Derek nodded, more to himself than anything else. He had avoided visiting Peter for months after—well, he couldn't stand the burns marring his face. Couldn't understand why he wasn't healing. Couldn't deal with the fact that he was broken beyond werewolf abilities.

"By the time I realized she wasn't getting better, I had wasted over six months of time I could have been spending with her. Really being with her, not just kind of at breakfast and sometimes at dinner. I actually looked at her for the first time in weeks and I noticed that her nails and skin were yellowed; she was shivering even though she was wearing a heavy sweater and a wool cap in May.

"She had dark circles under her eyes and sunken cheeks. She looked nothing like my cheerful mother had looked months before. I remember how much it terrified me. The harsh breaths her lungs struggled to drag in and the amount of time it took for her to get up and walk anywhere. I was eight years old… I couldn't really handle it."

Derek was taken aback at the flow of information from Stiles. But it made sense. Neither of the Stilinskis seemed to ever talk about her. Ever. Maybe Stiles had needed to vent all this time. He needed to talk about it. Derek watched as Stiles wrung his hands, pulling at his fingers, obsessively cracking his knuckles and avoiding eye contact.

"It was just a few weeks after I turned nine that she lost the ability to walk altogether. We admitted her to the hospital and learned that her lung cancer had… spread," he sighed, "To her liver, her lymphs, and her brain. That's the thing about cancer. It just keeps taking. There's no boundary. If there's food and room, it will grow.

"I spent hours next to her in the hospital. We would tell stories and look at photo albums together. We would talk and talk until she was too tired and had to sleep. Even then I wouldn't leave. That's where I met Scott, you know. At the hospital. His mom was my favorite nurse and one time, when my mom was sleeping, she introduced me to her idiot son. We've been best friends ever since. He was the one thing that distracted me from the fact that my mom grew less coherent, less lucid every day."

Derek caught the glint of tears glossing Stiles's amber eyes. "I was there, you know."

"What?" Derek wasn't sure what they were talking about this time.

"When she died. My mom." He clarified. "I was at the hospital visiting. Dad was out working—car accident, some girl under a huge car pile up—so it was just me and her." His voice was remarkably steady.

"We were talking like it was any other day. Other than a few hallucinations, that day had been really good. We had been laughing and she went quiet. It wasn't unusual, for her to trail off mid thought or speech though, so I didn't think on it. And she turned to me with clarity in her eyes and she said one of the most coherent things I'd heard her say in days. She told me 'I wish I could do more.' And I was surprised. 'More? What more could you possibly do?' I asked her. She seemed to gather herself. 'More love. More stories. More hugs.'

"Then she turned her head to the corner of the room, voice slurring a bit again said 'John, I love you.' She was talking to thin air. She thought my dad was there, and she spoke like she was talking to both of us. 'You boys have to take care of each other. I love you both—so much. I'm the luckiest lady…' She didn't really finish her sentence."

Stiles impatiently wiped at the tears on his cheeks. "She turned back to the corner and lifted her hand as if she was touching his shoulder or his cheek and whispered something. I still don't know what she said; her speech was so garbled by then. She held my hands in one of hers, the other lifted as if to do the same with my dad. Eventually that hand fell back to the bed.

"There was a smile on her face the entire time, even when the machines started beeping and the nurses rushed in. Even when Melissa had to pull me away screaming and take me outside to calm me down." He smiled without mirth. "That must have been a picnic. My dad got there by the time it was over. I just remember sitting slumped in a waiting room chair, head in my hands, trying to pretend none of it happened."

The silence stretched out and it didn't seem like Stiles was going to break it. Strangely enough, Derek was uncomfortable in the silence. He wanted Stiles to talk so he wouldn't have to address his own feelings of grief and guilt. He didn't want to feel those things; not now.

"So that's when the panic attacks started." Derek said.

"Yeah. It wasn't bad for the first year. I mean—considering. I was devastated, heartbroken, unable to really function but it was the better part of those two years. On her—anniversary," Stiles swallowed thickly, "that's when it really went to shit."

"Why?"

"I started to forget what she was like. What her smile looked like and how her hair curled about her face. What her laugh sounded like, what she smelled like, if she told good bedtime stories… I could barely remember anything. And that was more terrifying than anything else." Stiles finally looked over directly into Derek's face. His eyes burned red as they looked at each other.

"And then the self-harm." It was spoken nearly too quiet for Stiles's human ability to hear clearly.

"It was an accident the first time. But the pain gave me peace, and I hadn't felt that way in so long." He spoke as if he needed Derek to understand; he was desperate for it. Derek nodded and grabbed his hand.

Stiles re-positioned them so they were both laying on their backs and his head was on Derek's shoulder. He was so trusting. They twined their fingers and looked up at the stars, listening as Stiles's breathing deepened and evened out. Derek lay still, trying not to let his conversation knock loose the pain he had secured tightly in his mind. He had never really explained the entirety of Kate's involvement. He'd never told any of them why it was as much his fault as hers. He had let her in, in more ways than one.

The smoke of guilt roiled in his stomach. He remembered what it was like to come home to a disaster so great the smoke closed off the sky and made it seem like dusk. How he had charged, paying no attention to the yells of the fireman or the sound of sirens that rang like church bells. How he smashed into the invisible wall created by mountain ash that was rung in a tight circle. He had fought at it, dragged back by the men in fireproof suits.

In the scuffle, one of the men broke the circle and Derek fought doubly hard to get to his family. He heard their howls of pain loud as day. The fire had been raging for hours. No one in the house had been able to call for help, and there was no one living anywhere near them to notice. It wasn't until later in the day a hiker smelled the smoke and called in. But by then, it had been too late for them.

Save for Peter. A fireman found him pinned under part of a still smoldering wall. With the help of two others, they lifted the wall enough to pull Peter out and to safety. They rushed him into an ambulance, not waiting for Derek who had been doing his best to reign in his wolf as he screamed and cried for his family. He had run into or at the flames multiple times, fighting tooth and nail to try and save someone, but he knew it was too late. Their screams had long since gurgled to silence. He knocked more than one

By the time Laura had been notified, they had sedated Derek to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else. He was carted back to the hospital and cuffed to a hospital bed. When he woke, bleary eyed with a stress headache, he looked blearily at Laura who had faint tracks of teary mascara hastily wiped away. He blinked at the hospital room, disorientated by the metal at his wrists and the pain in his heart and body.

When it all rushed back to him, he tensed, a growl building in his chest. Laura's eyes flashed red at him and he fell into shocked silence. He whined softly, eyes flashing soft gold in submission.

"How—" He hissed, but was interrupted as the Sheriff walked into the room.

There had been awkward conversation after he removed Derek's restraints, asking them general background questions that they had to lie about. Does your family have any enemies? —no. Of course they did. Every fucking Argent had wanted to kill them. Except Kate. Or so he had thought.

Sheriff Stilinski had discharged them very quickly and allowed them to go in and see Peter. Laura, who had already done so, hung back in the corner of the room, unable to stomach the sight of him lying there, burnt so severely.

Derek had been worried that he would start healing and give them away, but the alternative had been worse. He had barely healed at all. Flesh burned and bubbled, hair singed, eyes blank, and body limp. Derek had looked down at his best friend, unable to do anything without drawing attention to his abilities. The nurses that rushed around him were polite, but Derek could tell they were impatient.

And then—

"Stiles?" Derek said softly, his teeth gritted as he steeled himself.

Stiles pulled himself out of sleep with a slight jerk. He looked over curiously. Stiles could probably pick up on his anxiety, even without werewolf senses. "Yeah?"

"I need to—you—you know I'm not good with words all the time, but I'm going to try." Stiles was quiet, so he took that as an invitation to take his time.

Derek inhaled deeply, bracing himself. "I helped kill my family."

He heard a sharp intake of breath by his shoulder, but barreled on. "Kate," he spit out the bad taste her name left in his mouth, "I was…dating her at the time of the fire." He muttered the last word. "She and I were together. Had been for a while, actually."

Derek made a face in the darkness. He didn't like thinking about it, let alone talking about it. "She and I met at a lacrosse game. She started talking to me when I went to get concession. I could hardly believe it. But I wasn't going to let the opportunity by; she was flirty and beautiful, and I was a hormonal sixteen year old.

"She convinced me that our relationship should be secret. No one would understand our connection because she was eleven years older than me. She told me it would get her in trouble."

Derek laughed bitterly. "So it was a secret. It was so exciting. We met in strange places around town. Never around either of our families. She took my virginity. I should have known it was too good to be true. She used me to get information. I didn't even realize it. She was so cunning and charismatic, I never realized I was being questioned. I never told her about our family secret, but I didn't have to."

Derek's voice cracked a bit at the end and he cleared his throat. "After the f— afterwards, when I was seeing Peter in the hospital, all burnt and vegetative, someone sent in flowers. Nordic blue monkshood. As soon as some nurse brought them in the room, Laura and I had trouble breathing. We nearly bit the nurse's head off when we told her we were deathly allergic. She ran out, leaving the card behind."

"Right below a red kiss mark, it said 'My condolences, Kate Argent.' I never told Laura what it really meant."

Derek went quiet, waiting for Stiles to get up and leave for good. Waiting for him to yell and scream and cry out in disgust, to tell him that he was a horrible person. But Stiles surprised him.

"That bitch."

"What?" Derek asked, incredulous.

"I wish she was still alive so I could kill her myself."

Derek was taken aback. "Stiles, you don't seem to get it. It's my fault she knew where my house was. It's my fault that she knew as much about my family as she did. Knew when the most people would be home so she could pick the best time. If I had never talked to her—"

"You're wrong." Stiles interrupted him.

Derek reeled. He sat up and looked back at Stiles, face illuminated by werewolf sight. "What do you mean? I am not wrong."

"Kate was, what? Twenty seven years old? She was a grown ass woman. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew how to manipulate you. She knew what to say. It's not your fault."

Derek opened his mouth to protest, but Stiles cut him off. "No, I'm serious. The Argents, and other hunters like them, are smart. They know what they're doing. They know how to track and set traps and kill when they think they need to. Whether or not they choose to be morally correct depends on them. There's nothing you said that Evil Barbie would not have been able to figure out on her own."

"Stiles!" The words ripped out of him like they were wrenched from his very heart. "You don't understand. I told her where we lived. I gave her a key. It doesn't matter that she could have figured it out on her own.I trusted her. I let her in." Stiles was silent as Derek threw his legs off the side of the roof and jumped down.

He didn't look back. Pain and hate churned inside of him and he could not bear to channel it into hate as he normally did. Half wolfed out, he ran away, far away from Stiles's house. He could hear, faintly over the sound of breath scraping through his clenched teeth and wind rushing in his ears, the sound of Stiles calling after him. And very softly, "I don't blame you."

He ran mindlessly, heading for the woods, as he always did. He plunged head first into the tree line, crashing through brambles and limbs that snagged and burned his skin. The little nicks and cuts knitted closed before he had time to take his next breath. He hurtled through distractedly, barely avoiding collisions with trees. He heard, in the small part of his brain still paying attention, the silence of animals that feared him as he passed.

He had never told. Never told anyone. Never talked about it. Never spoken about why he was so inherently guilty about it all. Why it wasn't just Kate's fault. He had never explained why he hadn't started to move. Why he couldn't move on. Why the guilt the heaviest weight to bear.

In order to cope, he had convinced himself that he was not guilty. He was not. He was angry. He was filled with hatred. He was unspeakably wrathful. He pulled himself away from others, telling himself it was because he hated all humans. They weren't trustworthy. They were evil. They hated his kind. They would kill him and his family and all people like them if given the opportunity.

He never really admitted to himself that it was because he didn't deserve company. He didn't deserve anyone's kindness or love or respect. He brought death and destruction. No one could love him. No one would be safe around him. He had pulled away from Laura as well. Even as they moved to New York, he remained remote and quiet. Never spoke about what happened.

He shuffled about life, never breaking an unspoken vow of nearly complete silence.

I don't blame you.

The words echoed in his mind.

No, he didn't understand. He didn't understand all of it.

I don't blame you.

How could he not blame him? He had helped kill his family. He practically handed her the matches.

No, you didn't.

His subconscious argued with him in a voice like Stiles.

Yes, I did. I told her about us.

You didn't tell her your secret. She already knew. She would have known the minute you said your name.

No, no. He fought the idea. This was what had kept him sane this whole time. This was how he had gone about his life. The anger, he could do anger.

This anger is keeping you from yourself. This is not who you are anymore. You don't need to be angry.

But if he let go of his anger, what did he have?

You have me, idiot. The voice of Stiles whispered to him. You have and Scott and Erica and Isaac and Boyd and Allison and Lydia and Jackson and you have me. We're here for you.

Derek blinked and slowed down. All this time he had thought he'd been tied to an anchor drowning him in a sea of endless remorse. But that wasn't really the case. He wasn't tied to it. Not anymore. Somewhere along the line, he had turned around and held on to it. He kept clinging to the weight that was slowly killing him.

And all you have to do is let go.

So he did.

And the world kept spinning.

He stopped moving and looked around at the forest. The world shimmered behind his eye lids and he felt himself shifting. His claws inched forward and his teeth grew pointed. His eyes flashed and he took a deep breath. The warm air filled his lungs and calmed his wolf, which was stretching and sniffing the air.

Hair sprouted from every pore, covering his body with warm fur. He felt his body stretching and crouching in all different places. His bones shifted position and his spine curved to accommodate his newly shaped skull. His clothes skewed and scrunched around in some areas and ripped around others.

Despite the chaos of his newly changing body, his mind had finally found calm. He accepted the remorse, but for the first time since the fire, he did not feel guilty. He felt tears prick his eyes, lifting a paw (seriously) to scrub at his snout.

He had always used anger and guilt to keep control during a shift, but it must have been that very thing that had kept him from making a full transformation. He had been subconsciously rejecting the wolf because he blamed it and his nature for the loss of his family. He could feel now the way he and the wolf were one. The way they breathed in the same pattern and blinked at the same time.

He clawed and bit at the clothes that restrained him. Although he stepped right out of his shoes, the rest proved more difficult. He ripped the shirt the best he could, rubbing against trees to remove the remaining tatters and his pants. He succeeded after a few minutes of embarrassed tail wagging and writhing on the ground.

If Stiles could see me now.

Stiles.

He took off running again. It was different this time. He was faster, stronger, more adept. He was able to run without his body rejecting the exertion. He dodged trees and jumped roots with ease, clearing each obstacle with room to spare.

He ran directly for Stiles's house, streaking across roads and through backyards. When he finally reached the building, dark and quiet, he faced the problem of getting Stiles's attention so he could come inside. He didn't want to shift back right here, seeing as he wouldn't have any clothes on, and the Sheriff could be back any minute.

He could howl… but that might attract the attention of neighbors and bothersome pack members. He decided he'd go with the most civilized and knock on the door.

He padded up the steps, feeling kind of silly, seeing as he rarely needed to use the front door. He checked for any prying eyes, lifted up on hind legs, and fell against the door with a thud. There was no response. He repeated several times, letting out a whine of frustration, when finally the door was yanked open. He looked up at Stiles brandishing an aluminum bat.

"What the—" Confused, his arms slackened. "Derek?"

Derek nodded slowly. How did he know it was me?

"Whoa! You're fully shifted! That's fucking awesome!" He looked happily down. "Uh, come in, I guess?"

Derek walked into the living room, claws clicking on the wooden floor. Stiles stopped, still watching him. "Do you need clothes?"

Derek cocked his head to the side.

"Well, you've only got one sock on and there's only about a third of shirt left on you." He shrugged as he headed up the stairs. "But we kind of already know I don't have much that will fit you."

Derek walked behind a couch and shifted back. It was simple, but not easy. Like flexing a muscle he didn't use that much. He had a hard time feeling which 'muscle' to move. When Stiles thundered back down, he was fully human again, waist down hidden behind the back of the couch.

Stiles tossed him the sweatpants and he caught it with one hand. With the other, he pulled the last shreds of his shirt off and tossed them to the floor. He distractedly steeped into the sweatpants which were, thankfully, big enough for him. "How did you know it was me?"

"I would recognize your 'Stiles, you idiot' look anywhere." Stiles quipped. "Besides, I don't know many wolves that know how to knock on doors."

"Many?" Derek questioned.

"Yeah, there's only one other, and she's on vacation at the moment. But that's not important." Derek walked around the couch. "How mmph—"

Derek cut him off with a kiss. He tried to put all his thankfulness and relief into the way he was holding Stiles. He pulled him in close, arms tight and lips soft. He nuzzled at his cheek for a few seconds before pressing their foreheads together.

"Thank you." He said sincerely.

"Uh, no problem." Stiles responded, disoriented. "What did I do?"

"You're the reason I can shift now. I've never been able to do the full shift. Never."

"Really?" Stiles looked at his mouth distractedly. "Why is that?"

"Because my anger and hate kept me tied to my semi human form."

"But Peter could go Alpha, and he was still 'Grr, argh!' about everything."

Derek rolled his eyes. "Do you remember what his Alpha form looked like? It wasn't really like a wolf. It was like a demon wolfzoid creature from hell." Stiles snorted at the description. "Hey, we can't all be genius nick-namers like you. Anyway, his Alpha form was so nightmare-ish because he forced the change out of revenge, madness, and hate. It was as disfigured as his mind and heart."

"That's great that you learned about new wolfy powers and all," Stiles said. "But you shirtless is really distracting." He reached up and sealed their mouths together.