Chapter Two - introspection, darling, makes us hale and hearty

"We understand. You're not gonna go through this ordeal alone, you know."

"But that what scares me, Derek! I don't... I don't want see you-any of you-get hurt because of me. It would be better for everyone if I just stayed behind."

"Mention ordeals, and look what comes along!"

"This is not an ordeal, Boyd, this a gift! Stiles, this the kind of power you've got inside. And it's telling you not to give up. Trust me."

-x-

In the time after the fire, Derek had noticed things about his older sister that were different. Most of them were small things-she had held herself different, she was harder in her interactions with other people.

She had also joined a Renaissance reenactment group in Buffalo out of the blue and spent her weekends in fancy dress until she saved enough money to buy a suit of armor.

She had loved that armor, hand polished metal shining in the sunlight. He would come home some nights to see her just rubbing a chamois across it, the faint but ever happy smile on her lips.

After she died, he found the armor stashed under the floorboards of her childhood bedroom, wrapped in her favorite blanket. She'd wanted it close, when she returned.

But she hadn't wanted him there too.

He thinks about that a lot. The more he remembers of before, the more sense it makes. She must have remembered long before left him behind. He doesn't know if she did it to protect him, or if it was something else entirely.

He's reminded of it, for some reason, when he quietly watches Stiles now. That feeling.

The conversation he'd had with Argent when they were both jailed has been weighing heavily in his mind as of late, and he longs to ask Stiles if he had started to remember as well.

But he doesn't. If Stiles hadn't, Derek isn't sure what he would do, what he would say. Stiles would think he was crazy and Derek knows that he couldn't handle that. Not with Stiles. Maybe that's exactly why Laura hadn't. Derek doesn't think he'll ever know.

So he doesn't ask. Instead, he watches as Stiles throws his coat over the back of one of his kitchen chairs and takes his wet shoes off.

"Thanks," Stiles says a minute later, scratching the back of his head. It's a normal, natural movement from Stiles, but it doesn't fit him quite the same without the buzz cut.

"Don't worry about it. Your dad know you're here?" Derek asks as Stiles settles into the couch, tucking his feet under his legs.

"Yeah. He's not happy I left the house but he's glad I'm with someone," Stiles admits.

"They know who killed him? The mayor?" Derek asks after a moment of silence, settling into his own seat on his overstuffed chair.

"No. It's definitely supernatural though. Whoever did it drew an inverted pentagram with a V inside it on the clock face. It's written in some glittery pink crap, but it only shows up on film. None of the digital pictures even remotely show it, and you can't see it just by looking either. Well technically you couldn't see anything now anyway, it got washed off by the rain hours ago."

"It must be some kind of magic. I haven't heard of anything like that before, but there are all kinds of cinematic legends about invisible things appearing on film," Derek says, unable to help the smirk when Stiles' surprised smile looks over to him.

"Hidden depths, dude. Hidden depths. One of my dad's deputies found something on the clock but none of us are expecting it to come to anything. He can't even see it, just feel it? And all I get when I try researching is a bunch of teenage girls obsessed with sparkly vampires and shit."

"I don't think I want to know."

Stiles smiles, wide and amused. "You really don't."

-x-

The glow of the fire casts dancing shadows against her tent. It's colder than usual, but she makes up for it with an extra pelt across her shoulders. It's a jackal pelt, though a different color than hers had been before. It's comforting to have, which is why the Elder had given it to her when she had first come back.

She knew that it wasn't unusual to have lost her l'Cie, but it feels like a bitter agony to know she had lost hers three times now. And this one would be a permanent loss. Death was different than crystal.

She had hated leaving Derek behind in Beacon Hills, even with the knowledge that he would be taking her all the way here to the village. And he had. He had driven her all the way out here and been introduced to her pack with all the polite and gentle kindness that they had been raised with.

But she couldn't stay in Beacon Hills and the ghosts of her old pack that lingered on the edge of town, or with the deep and aching knowledge of having failed her l'Cie again.

Boyd had trusted her beyond measure, loved her with all his being. She had failed him when she let Erica die and she had failed him when she did not die in his place.

Derek was her family and he would always be the most important person in her life, since Boyd was gone.

But she needed this village. She needed her tent and the pelt on her shoulders and the flickering firelight. This? This was her penance and her home.

The cold clings to her bones suddenly, sharp and bitter.

Something is wrong. So wrong.

"Lady Cora, you must hide," a woman's voice carries through the tent and Cora turns to see the village's only were-jackal slipping inside.

"Tailor? Why are you here? Why do I need to hide?"

Tailor is quick to pull the jackal pelt off Cora's shoulders, stuffing it into her leather bag and snapping the buckles closed without even responding to anything Cora tries to ask.

"Lady Cora, you have to get out of here. It's not safe for you. Bran Bal will protect itself, but it cannot protect you too."

"Tailor, what is happening? Where is Elder-"

"Lady Cora, you need to leave. There is a danger coming for you. The village can hold its own, but we cannot protect you any longer. You must go." Tailor slings the bag across Cora's chest as she says it, pulling on the strap tightly as if emphasizing her words.

"Tailor, what is happening!" Cora grabs the other girl's wrist.

"There is a kanima after you, Lady Cora. It reeks of death and decay. You have to leave. Now, go!"

Cora hesitates, looked for a lie in the other shifter's face. She sees none.

"Be safe, Tailor," she finally says. She kisses the other girl softly, her eyes open to take in her face one last time. The surprise on Tailor's face is genuine. Unexpected first kisses tend to do that, Cora supposes.

"I love you, jackal girl," Cora tells her simply. She shifts fully and runs from the tent on four lupine legs.

-x-

"Yeah, Dad. Everything's fine. Derek said I could stay... No, I didn't just invite myself and annoy him until he said yes... I love you too, old man. I'll call you when I head out tomorrow."

Derek smirks at Stiles as he speaks, amused with his dad's teasing. The kid looks exhausted, as usual anymore, but his dad seems to be able to brighten his spirits with a few words.

"Hey, Derek?" Stiles asks a few minutes later, all semblance of humor gone from his voice and replaced with something akin to fear.

"Yeah, Stiles? Everything alright?" Derek gets up from his chair as he asks, settling on the arm of the couch to look at Stiles.

"Do you... It's just... I've been having these dreams. At first, I just... The Nogitsune gave me dreams too, so I thought... But these dreams haven't stopped," Stiles trails off, looking upset and confused. It makes something in Derek unsettled, uneasy.

"Dreams about what?" Derek asks, refusing to tease Stiles like he usually might have.

"There was a train. I was wearing this heavy cloak. It was white and everyone else on the train matched. We were handcuffed, all of us. It felt like a memory, but I'm pretty sure I would know if I was being exiled. The U.S. doesn't just exile people. Well, technically they don't..."

"The Bodhum Purge," Derek interrupts, looking directly at Stiles.

"You taking tomorrow off?"

"Sir, for my birthday, sir. My brother, Scott, he insisted on it."

"Twenty-one, huh? Maybe it's a good time to send off that letter of recommendation for officer training."

"Lieutenant..."

"You're past due for a promotion, Derek. Think of your brother, and your future. And, uh, keep your nose out of trouble."

"Out of PSICOM business, you mean."

"Yeah. Nothing good will come of it. Nothing but grief."

Two days later, Derek walks forward through the crowd, ignoring the panicked breathing and whispers circling around him.

He's in his official Guardian Corps uniform. White coat with tan lining, straps, and pockets. Tan tank top underneath, the same shade. Tan cargo shorts. Black leather gloves, with gold colored metal plates just before his fingers separate. His red cape hangs behind him off one shoulder-it's definitely one of the most nonsensical parts of the uniform, a cape. It's never made sense to him, except perhaps as something to cover his mouth with in a fire. His holster is supposed to be that same shade of tan as the rest of tan as his uniform, but he had to buck the system somewhere. Brown leather, instead. His pack is the same color.

"Join the end of the line! Attention Purge Deportees! Follow instructions and stay in your lines," the officer in full PSICOM armor at the front car of the train says, "Your belongings will be returned upon arrival."

There's a sudden uprising in noise as a young couple tries to bolt off the platform a few feet ahead. The other PSICOM soldiers immediately raise their guns, a few of them chasing the couple. They give no warning and shoot, a volley of bullets taking the couple down where they stand.

People scream, someone's loud cry says they fired no warning shot. It doesn't calm the panic at all. The armored officer at the front walks forward with loud, heavy footsteps and says again, his voice angered, "Do not leave your line! This is for your own safety!"

Derek continues forward again, skipping the line to speak to the armored officer.

"Hmm? What's the GC doing here," the officer asks when Derek reaches him, nodding at the Guardian Corps patch on Derek's shoulder denoting him as a soldier himself, "This op's under PSICOM direction."

"So direct me," Derek demands, throwing his head towards the train, "Let me on. I wanna be purged."

The officer growls a little, steps forward to speak quietly to Derek. "Only civs get purged. Sanctum's staff and soldiers are exempt."

"Then I quit," Derek replies evenly. He hands over his weapon, ignores the reaction of the crowd around him.

The officer growls again, but takes it. "Line up!"

Derek walks to the end of the line in silence. Someone breaks from the line ahead, but doesn't run. Instead he sweeps in right behind Derek and whispers to him.

"Excuse me. Hey, soldier. What gives?"

Derek doesn't turn, "I volunteered."

"Really? You don't look ready to go quietly into that good night."

"You want quiet? You better take the next train," Derek replies.

The line moves forward, and Derek can only faintly hear the man's next words. "Huh, now I really want to see what you're up to."

It doesn't matter what the man thinks, what any of them think. Derek had to rescue Scott before they transported everyone to Pulse and out of his reach. This was his only chance to save him, joining the purge.

"What?" Stiles' eyes are wide in surprise.

"Do you remember... anything else?"

-x-

Stiles doesn't remember much, at least not much clearly. He remembers being a child in Palumpolum, remembers his mother getting sick and dying and his dad remarrying, remembers his stepmother paying for a trip to Bodhum and the terror of the Purge. Remembers knowing that the trip to Pulse would surely end in his death.

Everything after that is fragmented, almost blurred. He remembers a survival knife, pressed into his hands by Derek. He remembered hating Isaac, though he had no true recollection as to why.

Stiles isn't sure whether to believe it when Derek tells him that he's remembering his life before. Derek doesn't blame him. He hadn't been raised to believe in anything and everything the way that Derek had been, and Derek struggles to trust that it was real sometimes, even now.

"Stiles, I get it. Just... you can always ask me. If it's real. I wouldn't lie. Not about that. You deserve to know the truth," Derek tells him, looking away for the first time in what felt like hours.

"I... Okay... Thanks..."

-x-

She finally shifts back a few hours later, her paws aching from the hard journey. Her palms and feet bleed slowly, trying to catch up after hours of healing and reopening on hard ground and pointed rocks.

Her satchel had stayed attached to her wolf form, though she had been sure she was about to lose it several times. The leather is worn a little thin from where it dragged against the ground, but it's still intact and usable and that's all that mattered.

She sneaks into a fenced in backyard of a quiet house to change, finding a spare dress in what Tailor had packed her. She doesn't know where she is exactly, just that her first shift into wolf form shouldn't have been that easy and that she had never run that fast in her entire life.

She's exhausted, her arms and legs weak and shaky. She wants to rest, to eat and sleep and wake up in the morning to Tailor's smile and forget for a little while that Boyd is dead.

But she can't. There's a kanima after her, and she has no idea why.

She slips on the flats Tailor had packed and starts walking.

Her cell phone still reads No Service, but she knows she needs to find somewhere with enough to call Derek.

She doesn't have anyone else anymore, does she?

-x-

December 23rd starts with the crystal clear sky of the morning after a storm, quiet and still. The air is bitterly cold, but the wind grants reprieve with its quiet.

Peter wakes to the mid-morning sunlight streaming through the skylight above his bed, relaxed and well-rested. There's no hurry to climb out of his sheets, so he doesn't. Instead, he lingers as the morning draws on, quietly contemplating his plans for the afternoon.

He thinks, briefly, of starting early. But in the end, the sweet and unexpected bite of the next part would be too good to rush through.

His phone rings, an unobtrusive tinkling of chimes that marks his favored one's call. He rolls over to answer it, smirking as the voice came over the line.

"Peter."

"Yes, my boy?"

"She got away."

-x-

Derek adjusts the blanket thrown over Stiles' sleeping form before he picks the phone up from the cold concrete. Stiles has a number of missed calls, three from his dad and one from Scott, but no voicemails. Derek can only assume the sheriff was just trying to check in, but he hardly wants to invade Stiles' privacy by checking the texts either way. He scrolls through the contacts until he finds the Sheriff's number and taps the numbers into his own cell phone before flipping Stiles' phone to silent and putting it back down on the floor.

"Sheriff Stilinski," a rough, sleep worn voice answers.

"Sir, this is Derek Hale-"

"Hale. What happened?" There's a worry carried over in the sheriff's voice, which immediately lost the tired edge and gone right into awake and aware.

"Nothing, Sheriff. I just wanted to let you know that Stiles was still sleeping."

There is silence for a long beat before the sheriff finally spoke again. "He's asleep?"

Derek isn't sure he likes the faint note of surprise at that prospect.

"He fell asleep around one this morning. Other than snoring on and off, he's slept pretty hard on my couch."

"Oh, thank god," the sheriff whispers and Derek gets the distinct impression that he isn't supposed to have heard it.

Derek sleeps for a bit, but mostly he stays awake and thinks about everything that's happened. About everything that's happening now. He's only been awake for about half an hour when he senses Stiles waking in the early afternoon, blinking blearily as he came to slowly. He sits up a lot more slowly that Derek had expected, stretching his arms out with a wide yawn.

"You're looking extra creepy, staring at me sleeping, dude," Stiles says, the hint of a smile on his face. Derek has to fight back his own answering grin.

"I heard your breathing change. I haven't spent all morning watching you," Derek retorts, picking his book back up in an exaggerated gesture.

"Twilight? You're kidding right? Please tell me Cora left that here," Stiles demands, looking disappointed in Derek's choice of reading material. Derek can't blame him.

He waits a moment in complete silence as Stiles stares at him before slipping the dust cover off to reveal a worn copy of Frankenstein.

"You... What even are you?" Stiles sputters, laughter in his voice. Derek lets the smile cross his face then, finding comfort in the fact that he'd made Stiles laugh.

After a while, they return to their attempt at finding answers to their latest mystery. Derek scours books that are, by and large, fairly useless. Stiles hijacks his computer, typing quickly and often, but neither of them are as silent as they might have been only hours before.

It's easy for them to get lost in their research and occasional joint reminiscing of a past that seems even more fantastical than the one they live in now, which is why Derek nearly drops his book when his phone suddenly rings.

"My kid still with you, Hale?" The sheriff's voice echoes through the phone. Derek crooks a finger at Stiles where he sits sprawled across the couch with the laptop, various internet searches going in multiple tabs.

"Yeah, he's researching on my laptop. Here," Derek answers, handing the phone over to Stiles.

"Hello? Oh, hey Dad... No, I didn't even know it was on silent. What's-seriously? Do you think it's-no, of course. Did Parrish take pictures with a film camera? Yeah, that's how Caitlin... Uh, I don't know. I could call her, see if she used a darkroom or went to like Wal-Mart or something? Yeah, give me like fifteen minutes. Love you too."

Stiles looks a little dazed as he hands Derek's phone back to him before turning back to find his own phone.

"What happened?"

"The turnaround for principals at BHHS sucks this year. My dad said someone drowned him in his bathtub, fully clothed. His kid found him. Just a sec," Stiles answers. He stops to lift his phone to his ear.

"Hey, Caitlin? Stiles, here. I have kind of a weird question for you..."

-x-

Peter smirks as the medical examiner wheels the body out of the tidy little house, taking in the shocked and surprised faces of neighbors. One of the sheriff's deputies has his arm around a terrified looking child, a skinny little thing with wide brown eyes and beauty marks on her face. She could practically be a little female Stiles.

He couldn't have planned it any better.

"Where is the poor girl going to go? She's an orphan now..."

"I heard her father didn't have any siblings. I hope she at least has a grandparent out there. Losing both parents this quickly..."

"I bet this is another murder. They really need to let us elect a new sheriff. Stilinski can't handle his son, let alone..."

Everything is falling beautifully into place.

He shifts on his feet and heads back to his bike. He pulls out his phone as he reaches it, scrolling to the Ms in his contact list and starting a call.

"Hello?"

"Come back. I don't think we'll need to worry about her. She'll be too busy watching her back to make it here in time to warn anyone."

"You sure? I'm getting close to her scent again."

"Positive. You can take Cora out if you've got time once she arrives."

-x-

The jeep refuses to start. Derek doesn't mind. He enjoys Stiles' company-perhaps more than he'd expected. They hadn't had much time to spend together since the summer, and he was happy to realize it wasn't as awkward as he'd feared.

Stiles apparently remembers something that has him occasionally flushing when he looks at Derek, but his general demeanor and teasing doesn't change. It speaks to Stiles' strength, and perhaps, also, to his growing maturity. Not that either one of them would likely admit any of that.

Derek had dropped Stiles off at the police station while he scavenged some quite heavily picked over shelves at the closest grocery store. He wasn't sure if Stiles would be coming back with him, but suspected he might given the situation. Stiles was still afraid of being by himself over the evening sometimes, and Derek knew it would definitely be worse tonight.

They have proof, this time, of the sticky shimmery invisible-well, stuff for lack of a better word. Caitlin, who Derek is at a complete loss as to knowing, had apparently pulled through with some dark room time at The Beacon Star and gotten Deputy Parrish's pictures developed. It wouldn't hold up in court, but then none of them expected it too.

Derek isn't sure how much Deputy Parrish knows of the supernatural world, but given his willingness to keep things quiet, the sheriff's trust in him, and his apparent staunch defense of Stiles, he's guessing it's at least something.

Derek pulls up in front of the sheriff's station just in time for Stiles to fly out without his coat on, flannel overshirt flapping behind him like coat tails.

Stiles jumps in the passenger seat without even saying a word, his body tense and his face an angry mask.

"What happened?" Derek asks as Stiles flips the lock button on his door and buckles himself in.

Derek is in the middle of pulling out of the parking lot when he notices Scott's father storm out of the sheriff's station, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his fist. Derek catches his eyes, watches the man take in him and Stiles with a surprised look on his face.

"Did you punch him?" Derek asks, finally pulling away. Stiles snorts.

"Did you know that I'm a psychopath with anger control issues?" Stiles asks, his breathing finally slowed, his heartbeat back to usual.

"He thinks you're the one killing people."

"No, he knows I'm the one doing it. That's not why I punched him though."

"He thinks you're a psychopathic serial killer and he said something worse than-"

"He said Scott's mom was an idiot for letting me anywhere near him."

"Is he trying to bait you?"

"I don't know. Melissa doesn't deserve that though. I didn't appreciate her as much as I should have... before. And she's even more amazing now."

Derek stops in front of Scott's house just as his phone starts to ring. He shows Stiles Cora's name on the screen and nods towards the door. Stiles hesitates for a minute as Derek answers, but Derek turns the car off and hands him the keys instead of promising to stay. It works just as well.

"Derek?" Cora's voice is hoarse and pitched oddly. Stiles is already halfway to the front door.

"Cora, what's up?"

Cora's heartbeat is suddenly loud and frantic over the phone. Derek feels himself fall into battle mode, his body tensing.

And no, he is never going to admit to anyone, especially Stiles, that he calls it battle mode in his head

"I-I'm coming home. I can't. The village..." Cora breaks off with a twisted little sob.

"Something happened to the village?"

"Tailor told me there was a kanima, Derek. And it was coming for me. I haven't stopped running since."