Derek found it sad really, how much he had come to resent his childhood hometown; he had used to really love this place and had always planned on coming back here after college. Now…now he could barely stand to wait until morning to head back to the tiny apartment he shared with Laura in New York. She had sent him back here to tie up a few loose ends with the hospital and Uncle Peter's extended health care—he still wasn't exactly sure why that had to be done in person, though. At present, he had just finished up at the hospital and was currently on his way out, but remained blissfully unaware over how drastically his life was about to change.
Driving along the road that would eventually lead him to his temporary home away from home, a shabby motel on the outskirts of town, he felt a sudden chill run along his spine. As he glanced in each of his mirrors and out through each window he finally noticed flashing red and blue lights of a sheriff's vehicle stopped up ahead near the train tracks that ran along the town's limits. Shifting only his eyes to enhance his vision, he discovered that an officer had stopped because a car had crashed violently and laid in a crumpled ruin on the tracks; it appeared as though the officer, who seemed to be an aged Deputy Stilinski (probably Sheriff Stilinski now?), was attempting and failing to free whoever was trapped in the car. With the realization that he could easily shift the car, Derek started to ease his own car over to the side of the road so that he could go and help.
He parked the car and reached over to unclasp his seatbelt only to be startled by the sudden appearance of an older teenager in the passenger seat next to him, holding a small bundle on her lap. Oddly enough, he only felt a sense of overwhelming sorrow instead of what one might be expected to feel at the appearance of a stranger in their car besides the initial surprise. He watched her for a few moments—she simply stared at the scene in front of them—before he turned back to watch as well; his desire to get out of the car and go help all but forgotten.
He jumped again when she finally spoke several moments later. "I tried to tell him, you know."
"Tell him what?"
"That it wouldn't do any good, it was too late for me. That he had more important places to be."
"Dep—Sheriff Stilinski is a good man. He… He helped my family before. He wouldn't have been able to just leave you."
"So it would seem. But he should have been with his wife, she is—was—dying and he should have been able to be with her. I tried to tell him and like I said, it was too late for me."
"But you're in my car…and you seem fine?"
The teenager carefully pressed the baby into his arms, Derek fumbling for just a moment before he steadied his arms and gently cradled the baby's head for support. "If you still want to help me, Derek, then there is something you can do for me. My son and I, we've been unable to return to our home for some time now due to what he is. Unfortunately, unlike my son, I am unsuitable for this modern world and my body sustained fatal injuries from the car accident." At this, Derek attempted a discreet sniff, attempting to figure out just what this teenager exactly was; he faintly associated her scent with those that he had previously smelled deep in the Preserve when he was younger—those that he associated with beings known as the Fae.
Derek supposed that fit, as a Fae would likely be the only being powerful enough to pull off the situation that was currently going on inside and outside of his car. Now that he thought about it, he remembered his Uncle Peter mentioning something about how iron tended to be incredibly harmful to them and if he wasn't mistaken, those train tracks, where the car was lying, consisted of mostly iron.
The fae paused briefly at Derek's less-than-discreet-sniff, but only merely continued on with what she was saying, "Once I am gone, he will have no one left, as he is an outcast amongst our kind, and I cannot simply allow him to be raised amongst humans due to his true nature as they would never understand him. So, if you wish to truly help me…" She paused, looking at him expectantly.
"I…" Derek started, but couldn't finish, mouth simply hanging open as he stared down at the baby in his arms; he couldn't believe that this mother was calmly discussing her death and the subsequent adoption of her baby across his carseats; maybe he'd been the one to get into a car accident and was having a delirious dream. Of course he had wanted to help her, that's what he had stopped his car in order to actually go physically help—not so that he could have parenthood thrust upon him!
The fae-girl smiled kindly at him before leaning over to whisper the baby's name into Derek's ear; true names held meaning and power to the fae and were not to be uttered allowed carelessly. Derek balked at the monstrosity that this poor infant was gifted with and the girl, seeing his distress, murmured, "Perhaps a nickname, then?" before turning her eyes back toward Sheriff Stilinski on the road. "What did you say this man's name was again?"
"Oh, uhm, Sheriff Stilinski?" Derek mumbled back in response, unable to take his eyes off of the newborn in his arms.
"Hmm." The mother mumbled thoughtfully, reaching over to brush a fingertip across the downy fuzz atop the baby's head. "How about Stiles, then-after a man who has shown us both kindness? There are worse namesakes out there."
Derek merely nodded along with the woman, internally freaking out over whether or not she had done something to make him so agreeable—or maybe the baby was doing it. In no reality was Derek just sitting here allowing this woman to hand him a baby and agreeing to become a father when he had never even seen her before in his life-he didn't even know her name!
"Please, take good care of him, Derek." The fae pleaded, before leaning over to whisper something to the baby in his arms in a language that he had no hope of ever understanding. Then without even giving Derek a chance to protest, she disappeared from the interior of his car, leaving him to continue gaping down at the peacefully sleeping and unaware baby left in his care. "What the fuck?"
Deciding that it was probably a good idea to not be caught with a newborn baby, that he had no sane explanation for mind you, just sitting in his car rather than in a protective carseat, Derek decided that he better put some distance between himself and the Sheriff who seemed to remain 'blissfully' unaware of crisis Derek was currently going through. It also wasn't like he could just walk up to the car and thrust the baby back into his mother's arms; she'd been pretty clear on that aspect, what with the whole not going to survive the accident.
Tucking the baby as safely as he could into the passenger seat, he started the car and carefully maneuvered it back onto the road and away from the scene.
Derek couldn't believe his life sometimes: what had started out as a simple act of coming home to review and update his uncle's hospital care had turned into a trip that resulted in him becoming a father to a newborn half-fae-half-human infant through some mystical fae-agreement-whammy (that was the only explanation—Derek had never been that agreeable in his life. Besides, what kind of person just randomly accepted stranger's babies like it was no big deal? Jesus. Christ.).
He wasn't sure how he was going to explain this situation to his Alpha, his sister. Right now, he was just relieved that descriptions of individual items wouldn't show up on the statements for the credit cards he shared with Laura, just amounts, because he really wasn't looking forward to a phone call questioning his sudden desire to buy the local Target out of baby supplies. He reasoned that Laura would be less likely to freak out in the actual face of a cute baby versus having time to freak out over it after hearing about it on the phone; besides, she'd been making noises about expanding the pack recently—Derek was merely helping her out here.
Yeah, no, Derek was pretty sure that was utter bullshit and that he was in shock; he had no idea how this had happened, even though it had happened directly to him—he was there! He couldn't be trusted with this—he was at fault for death of practically his entire pack! As he felt the panic creeping up on him, Derek collapsed onto the bed in his hotel room with Stiles nestled in his arms, attempting not to drop him. As his breaths become shorter and more desperate, the baby stirred from sleep and drowsily blinked large amber eyes up at him.
Derek continued to become increasingly more distressed and lightheaded until he felt small chubby fingers securely wrap themselves around one of his larger ones and squeeze tightly. Closing his eyes, he focused on that until his heart-rate slowed and his breaths evened out. Once he finally calmed down, he opened his eyes to find the baby still staring at him.
Derek gently traced a finger down the baby's pink cheek, smiling as his tiny mouth formed a perfect "o" in a yawn. "Hello, Stiles." Maybe…maybe he could do this. After all, where else was this little guy going to go? So far, no police officers had busted down the door demanding to know where the missing baby of the dead fae-girl was, he hadn't heard anything about it on the news and no one had given him any weird glances while he was at the store with a baby he wasn't supposed to actually have. So at this point Derek was assuming that the fae had done something to either alter the Sheriff's perception of the accident or no one actually knew about Stiles.
"Hmm…" He squinted his eyes suspiciously at the bundle in his arms, when he realized that his sense of calm wasn't going anywhere, "Are you makin—" He cut off abruptly as the Stiles' eyes flashed green briefly before he closed them and seemed to fall back asleep almost instantaneously. Yeah, mystical fae-agreement-whammy, Derek thought hysterically.
The next morning found Derek carefully stowing a mountain of baby paraphernalia in the trunk of the Camaro, blessedly thankful that he had chosen to drive back to Beacon Hills rather than fly, before spending close to twenty minutes trying to carefully buckle Stiles and the carseat in the back—he was pretty sure Stiles was giving him a tiny-judgmental-baby-look by the time it was all said and done.
Derek scrubbed his hands down his face before exhaling loudly and getting into the driver's seat. This was it, no going back after this point; not that he could exactly turn around and hand the baby back over to his mother nor could he in good conscience leave a half-fae baby to humans (who apparently had no idea he even existed). Additionally, Derek felt bad for the little guy: he apparently didn't have anyone out there left, he'd lost the only family he had left; Derek could relate to losing family.
Even if (although it probably wasn't an 'if' and was more likely an 'yes-you-were-actually-manipulated-into-wanting-me) he had been coerced into agreeing to take care of the infant, it's not like this was a situation that compared to…anything like before. It was a fae-baby, not a hunter: he wasn't actively seeking out his pack to destroy it. In fact, if hunters found out about him, they would probably—Derek sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Glancing into the back seat, he made up his mind; Derek couldn't leave the baby here without anyone else to care for it. He texted Laura to let her know that he was heading back but planned on taking it at slower pace—claimed that he needed a little more time to himself after being back in Beacon Hills; he wasn't exactly sure that she bought that excuse but thankfully she wasn't blasting up his phone demanding to know why he had an infant stowed away in the backseat (Shut up, Laura was crazy like that).
All in all, the trip took a little over a week due to Derek taking the time to stop often to check on Stiles who was a surprisingly quiet baby in the car—he hoped that this was good foreshadowing for the future—and to spend the night at various motels along the way: he figured keeping a newborn in a car for an entire drive across the country straight-through probably wouldn't be a spectacular first thing to do as a new parent.
When he and Stiles finally arrived back at the small apartment in New York, Derek discovered that his sister was nowhere to be found. On the one hand, he was thankful for this, because he still wasn't exactly sure how she was going to take the news of…well, Stiles, but on the other hand, he would have really rather just gotten it over with instead of continuing to stress over it further. Thankfully, or not, Laura chose to arrive home shortly after he had settled Stiles on the couch and prevented him from continuing to freak out any further.
"There's a baby on our couch!"
"Nothing gets passed you, Laura. No wonder you're the Alpha."
"Derek! Derek, I know things have been rough lately and that you really didn't want to go back to Beacon Hills, but please tell me that you didn't steal a baby. Oh my god, oh my god. Derek!" Laura pleaded, grabbing onto both of his arms in her distress. Seriously? Derek thought, why would he steal a baby?
"I didn't steal him, Laura. H-he lost his mother. I—It..it's a long story."
"I think I've got time, Derek." His sister remarked, visibly calming herself down before pulling him over to the couch to sit beside Stiles, who continued to sleep peacefully despite the commotion going on around him.
Thus, Derek spent the next hour going over the tragic trip with Laura, starting with his completed task of updating Peter's care to discovering the car accident on the side of the road to their Pack's newest addition: Stiles.
"The hell, Derek, you're lucky that we know a guy that can handle this! You can't just have babies spontaneously appearing out of nowhere!" She shrieked, shaking him in frustration. All in all, Derek figured she took it pretty well.