Author's Note: Thank you very much to PsychoticSmartypants for reviewing! I hope you all like this chapter.

Chapter 20

Derek, Amy, and Isaac awoke Saturday morning to a cacophony of noise coming from their living room window. Isaac, the closest of the three, jolted unceremoniously off of the sofa like he had been poked with a cattle prod. After recovering, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the heels of his palms, only to see Stiles hunched on the fire escape. The latter was gesticulating with one hand and clutching a sheet of paper with the other.

Isaac lazily opened the window, and at the same time Derek and Amy emerged from their room looking similarly groggy.

"What the hell are you doing here?" was Derek's hoarse-voiced demand.

"Why couldn'tyou just ring the doorbell?" Amy slurred, pulling her tangled hair into a messy bun.

"This way's faster," Stiles shrugged with a mischievous grin. "Plus, I have some important news." He waved the paper purposefully and sat at the counter. The rest followed suit.

"What is it?" questioned Amy.

"I ran a background check on Lyssa," was his dramatic preamble. "This is what I found out."

"How'd you do it so quickly?" Isaac interrupted. "Doesn't that stuff take like a month?"

"Hello? Dad's the Sheriff, smart one," he quipped. "Anyway, it was pretty standard except for a few things…"

Derek was markedly silent, but Amy immediately probed, "Yes?"

"Well, for starters her story about living in the next town over checks out. Her most recent address is from a place called Oak Creek, which is pretty close to here. She's moved around a couple of times in here life, but nothing out of the ordinary. What's really interesting is this – " he laid the paper flat on the countertop for all of them to see. "This is her birth certificate."

"She was born in Beacon Hills?!" Amy exclaimed in shock.

"Not just that," Stiles went on. "Look at the parents."

"There's no father listed…" Isaac observed.

"Exactly. 'Mother: Clara Alvarez,' but no dad. Now that in itself isn't super weird, but why wouldn't' she tell us that she was born in Beacon Hills?"

"How long did she live here?" asked Derek.

"Not long. Only a week later there are records of her mom renting an apartment in Oak Creek."

Derek shrugged. "Maybe she didn't know she was born here."

"That's what I thought might have been the case at first," Stiles allowed. "But then I looked into her mom. Clara Alvarez died in a car accident in Oak Creek only a couple of months ago. Drunk driver, nothing supernatural-related as far as I can tell. Don't you think it's weird she didn't mention that, though? I mean, given that she lived with her and that this happened so recently, it seems kind of fishy. They were probably super close – it was just the two of them her entire life."

"Maybe she's not comfortable talking about it," Derek suggested solemnly. "I think all of us can understand better than most how that might feel."

The other three were silent – it dawned on them suddenly that Stiles and Amy had lost one parent, while Derek and Isaac had lost both.

"Yeah," Stiles said slowly. It was only after Derek had drawn attention to it that he realized they were treating this girl more like a criminal than the scared, lonely twenty-year-old that she likely was. "But," he continued, "what would you do after you lost the only parent that you had ever known?"

A realization hit Amy. "Look for the other one."

Stiles caught Amy's eyes in a long, meaningful glance. "And where would be the best place to start?"

"Here. Beacon Hills," Isaac finished.

Stiles, Amy, and Isaac shared a triumphant expression, as though they had just cracked some elusive mystery.

Derek's pursed lips conveyed a bit more skepticism. "Even if that's the case," he began, "that doesn't necessarily implicate her in any of this Kanima stuff."

"Maybe not, but it definitely brings some things to light," replied Amy. "Don't you think it's odd that she's never mentioned any of this?"

"Not really," he refuted, scratching the back of his head restlessly. "I wouldn't have told us, if I were her."

They were quiet. Perhaps this was true – it had in fact taken Derek quite a while to open up to them. But still, Lyssa was intent on gaining their trust, and trust required openness. Derek had been involved in no such effort when they'd first met him.

"Not everyone's as impenetrable as you are, Derek," said Stiles abruptly, shattering the air of somber awkwardness.

Isaac cocked an eyebrow and smirked. "Impenetrable?" he repeated.

Stiles, a bit sheepish about his SAT word usage, replied, "You know what I'm trying to say."

Derek folded his arms over his well-defined chest and rolled his eyes. "Whatever. You've got a point that this might be something to look into. I'll try bringing it up the next time we're alone when you guys are at school, that way she won't feel cornered. We won't get anywhere by putting her on the spot."

Now it was Amy's turn to roll her eyes. "Fine," she huffed. "While we're on the subject, though, I might as well mention what Stiles and I discussed the other day."

Stiles cast her an uneasy glance, as if he thought the Alpha would not be on the same page as they were. And he was quite possibly very correct in thinking so, she acknowledged internally.

"You sure?" he asked.

Now Derek and Isaac's interests had been thoroughly piqued.

"Yeah… The Kanima attacked Scott first out of all of us, right? Well, what if it returns to finish the job? Wouldn't it make sense to be there with Lyssa so that we can rule her out as a possible suspect?"

Derek looked unexpectedly pensive at the suggestion. "You think we should use Scott as bait?"

"Not bait, per se," Stiles answered, echoing his prior discussion with Amy. "We'll just… supervise him for a bit. Discreetly," he added.

"How are we supposed to know when the Kanima is going to attack?" asked Isaac.

"Well, it gets its power from the full moon, so I feel like then would make the most sense," said Amy.

"That's when Allison's mom is supposed to change," Isaac pointed out ominously. "That's when she's supposed to kill herself."

"That's actually lucky," Derek interjected. "Whatever happens that night will narrow the pool even more."

"It's not lucky that Allison is going to lose her mother," Amy said darkly, shocked that her boyfriend – who should certainly be able to empathize, as he did so effortlessly with Lyssa – could sound so callous.

He locked her eyes in a fierce gaze. "I'd say Scott's death would have been even more unlucky."

"Still," she insisted, "we shouldn't treat it so dismissively."

"We don't even know if she's actually going to do it," Stiles pointed out. "She might not."

"Don't you think Gerard would finish the job himself if she doesn't?" she retorted; this silenced the short-haired teen quite effectively.

"She's right," Derek affirmed, "the odds of her surviving the next full moon are slim to none, if the bite isn't already killing her."

Stiles wrung his hands; killing one of the Argents – directly or indirectly – was an unmistakable act of war that would not go un-avenged.

There was a long pause in the conversation.

Amy broke it when she quietly inquired, "Do you think we should warn Allison?"

Derek, Stiles, and Isaac each looked at one another, but ultimately everyone looked to Derek as their leader.

"Don't you think that's her mother's responsibility?" he replied. "She gets a chance that most parents don't get – that my parents didn't get." His eyes were storming; the Argents themselves had robbed them of the chance he spoke of.

"What's that?" asked Isaac.

"A chance to say goodbye."

XXXXX

When everyone had left and Derek and Amy were alone, he said to her, "I'm surprised by how ready you were to use Scott to lead us to the Kanima."

"You didn't seem to be at the time," she retorted, a bit petulantly. "And do you have a better idea?"

"That's not the point I'm trying to make."

"Then what is?"

"You just seem… different."

"Stress will do that to you. You seem different, too – you're surprising me, too. I guess we don't know one another as well as we thought we did."

The muscle in Derek's jaw tensed, but his face was inscrutable. "I guess so."

Amy peered at him out of the corner of her eyes, displeased. They had been going around in circles for months, and she was growing exhausted.

"We're not getting along lately," she told him.

He concurred, but didn't say so.

"Maybe we should take a break," she went on.

His thick eyebrows lifted in apparent shock. "A break?" he repeated incredulously, his tongue fighting him in pronouncing the syllables.

"We're together all the time," she explained, "and when we're together we fight about the same things over and over again. Maybe we both just need some air."

His eyebrows lowered and drew together into a scowl. "You're serious?"

Amy sighed heavily and looked up at the ceiling, searching for the right words. "I love you, Derek. I always will. But right now I think we could both benefit from being apart. Obviously we'll still work together to stop the Kanima and the Argents and all that, but maybe I should stay somewhere else for a while."

"But this is your home," he insisted. "Where will you go?"

By this point, Amy was thoroughly used to moving around. She had gone from her home in San Francisco to her home in Beacon Hills to the Hale House to their current apartment all in less than a year.

"I'll find somewhere. With Stiles, maybe, and if not with him there's always Scott." While in a more mundane situation Allison might have been the natural choice, in this life the reasons were myriad why she could not stay with her.

"If that's what you want…" he started uncertainly, "fine."

"I think it's what you want, too," she said gently. They were not breaking up. She could never bear to break up with him. But two people could not spend every waking moment together without eventually starting to bicker like an old married couple, and they had more pressing matters that their petty arguments were diverting their attention from.

Amy could not tell whether Derek was hurt or agreed with her.

Author's Note: Please review, guys. I cannot even begin to tell you how disheartening it is to get 1 or 2 reviews per chapter when nearly 300 people are following. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Literally any opinion is appreciated. Also what do you guys think about the direction of the show? I like to hear what people think about the current season because it helps me figure out what aspects people like and which they don't so I can choose to include them in the story accordingly.