The quiet of the cemetery was only disturbed by the rustle of leaves and an odd sniffle. The teen-aged boy sat against his mother's headstone, shredding the Gerber daisies he'd left on the grave only days before. He threw the petals angrily, watching with little satisfaction as they floated on the air a few inches before landing softly on the grass at his feet.
The cloud cover gave him shade, giving the winter day an extra chill to the air. Stiles couldn't gather his thoughts anywhere else like he could at his mother's gravesite. He knew others would find it creepy and depressing but it was the only place he found solace.
That was tainted now. He didn't know who it was that he'd been mourning since he was nine years old, bringing flowers to, crying over. If his mother was alive, then who was the person in the coffin that gave him nightmares after burying them?
"What are you doing?" The growly timber of Derek's voice interrupted Stiles' solace.
He looked up to see the beta two rows of headstones away, watching. With a chortle, he went back to mutilating the flowers. "Scott called you."
"No." Derek sounded annoyed and, for once, it wasn't aimed at Stiles. "He called Brenna to let her know it wasn't Kate you were babbling about. He wouldn't say who it was but he promised Brenna that it wasn't Kate. Brenna had Zane relay the message to me."
Silence lapsed for several minutes, Stiles was content to ignore the werewolf's presence while he was content to scrutinize the human. That silence was broken when Derek's shoes crunched leaves and grass as he moved closer.
The werewolf seemed to hesitate before sitting across from Stiles. "Your mother?" He asked, gesturing to the headstone Stiles braced himself against.
The teen shrugged. "Don't know. Who really knows? She was burned beyond recognition. Could've been deep-fried-anyone for all I know." His anger and cynicism controlled his mouth.
Derek growled a warning to Stiles' verbalized thought process.
"At least you knew for certain." Obviously, he didn't heed the warning.
The wolf clenched his fists to abate his rage, feeling his nails elongate and slice into his palms as the urge to attack chomped at his resolve. He stamped it down quickly, claws retracting and hands healing just as quickly as they retreated. "Because you're sitting on your mother's grave, I won't soil it by spilling your blood, but you better watch your mouth, Stilinski."
Stiles closed his eyes, grimacing as he thumped his head against the cement behind him. "I'm sorry." He really didn't know what else to say. He couldn't tell Derek that his mother wasn't resting beneath them, that she was in a motel twenty miles away. Derek would hunt her down and threaten her, try to find out what soap opera reason she had to fake her death. If it wouldn't result in harm coming to his mother's well being, he might be tempted to let Derek get the answers for him. But he deflected instead. Or tried to, at least, but Derek decided it was share time before he could even open his mouth.
"The scent almost never goes away. You think it will, it starts to fade and then…"
"Someone lights a match–"
"And the sulfur takes you right back."
Silence took over again after Derek shared and was able to relate to Stiles. That might qualify as the first sign of the apocalypse or hell freezing over.
"Why do you stay in that house then? It reeks." Stiles hated that house for having always taken him back to that day at the wake. If it made him gag, a mere human, what could it be doing to a werewolf's senses?
"It's a reminder of why I do what I do. I could be part of a pack somewhere else, forgetting. However, my Uncle took my sister; Kate took my parents, my Aunts, an Uncle, my older twin siblings, a cousin. I stay in that house to remind myself that I'm still alive so that I can avenge ten of my family members."
Stiles swallowed that answer roughly. "Will it help? When you kill Kate and Peter… do you think it'll help you? Not your ghosts, but you."
Derek paused, at a loss for an immediate answer as he scrutinized Stiles. "Short of getting them all back, nothing will ever help."
The words hit Stiles hard. He had his Mom back. There were a lot of questions, problems, but he had his mother again. Alive and well. Derek still didn't have anyone. His only relative, as far as Stiles knew, was a psychotic murderer hell bent on making Derek his subservient right hand or killing him if his refused.
"At least you're building yourself a surrogate family – or pack, whichever." Off Derek's blank look, he elaborated. "You know, Brenna and Zane, Scott, me." He said himself without thinking and immediately began to fumble over words to correct himself.
"Pack is just a notion. A pack is only a real pack if there's an Alpha that they've all submitted to." Derek explained, cutting off Stiles' stuttering. The teen looked both relieved and dejected at the same time. "So when I become Alpha by default of killing Peter, you're right: I will have my pack. The four of you."
"You just said I'm right." Stiles beamed. "Could you say it again so that I can record the proof on my phone?"
Derek narrowed his eyes while he scowled. Stiles took it as him trying not to smile which always equates a win in Stiles' book.
The silence that followed once more was the rare sort of comfortable silence that didn't feel awkward or like it needed to be filled, which Stiles always felt when he was with another person and it was quiet for longer than a breath.
He tore apart four more of the two dozen daisies, passing two to Derek, who merely held and twirled them between his fingertips. They sat opposite each other with their toes aligned, both with their knees drawn up towards their chests and arms stretched out to rest on them. Petals blew against and over their shoes as dusk began to change the feeling in the air.
Stiles took the lull as an opportunity to reflect on the man across from him. The beta had opened up to someone – probably for the first time with someone who wasn't his sister or seemingly comatose Uncle. He'd related to Stiles about losing a loved one gruesomely to fire. In Derek's case, many loved ones. But it was all for naught because his mother was alive, negating the moment of bonding and making him feel like crap for misleading Derek.
Derek tensed suddenly, shoulders squaring, before standing in a single graceful movement. "I'll give you two privacy. Make sure to leave before dark."
"Right," Stiles smirked, tilting his head up for a better view of Derek. "Cemetery plus nighttime equals vampires."
Derek snorted, "No, dumbass." He flung the daisies at Stiles' head. "The rival wolves. Don't forget, you were already attacked by one today. Let's leave it to one rescue a day, alright?"
"Concerned?" Stiles asked smartly.
Derek didn't give him a verbal response, choosing to roll his eyes and whack Stiles upside the head as he passed. It was an improvement on their usual physicality in their tentative friendship.
Stiles closed his eyes and rested his head against the warm cement behind him, letting the quiet envelop him. He tried to clear his mind – not an easy feat for Stiles – and relaxed into the wind and solitary of the graveyard.
He could feel everything slipping away as a need to nap tried to pull him in. It'd been an exhausting day. His breath was evening out and peace was crawling in when the sound of footsteps jerked him into alertness. He squinted up at the person haloed by the falling sun peaking through the tree.
"I need time." He groaned, thumping his head back once more.
His mother sighed, "Time isn't a luxury we have right now." When he didn't show any more signs of acknowledging her, she slowly descended until she was sitting next to him. "Ask me anything. I'll try to answer honestly."
Stiles thought on it for several long minutes. Everything he came up with just made him reexamine the situation and felt impossibly old at only seventeen years old. His life had become some cosmic joke. Werewolves, mothers faking their deaths, his senior year of high school… it was like the premise to a bad television show for the CW.
"Who did we bury? Who are we sitting on top of? Who's the person I've been visiting for eight years? You know, next month is the nine year anniversary. Dad and I have been trying to think of a way to get through the next year before the really tough one, the ten year anniversary. So if you hadn't come back, who would it be that we'd been mourning for a decade this time next year?" It seemed to be the most appropriate question to ask, given where they were. Plus, Stiles needed a name to reassure his mind that this was real. Have her give him a name he could research, put weight behind her story that this was his mother and not some weird doppelganger.
"A Jane Doe was provided for authenticity." She answered, her voice drawing out the sentence as she calculated the possible openings that the answer could bring.
"A Jane Doe was provided?" Stiles repeated, "Who are you?" He asked incredulously.
"I'm still your mother. I'm still Natalie Stilinski. I just have a lot more secrets than the last time you saw me. The same can be said about you, though."
He swallowed nervously, "Any secrets I have are outweighed by anything you've been hiding."
"If you want answers, you have to come with me." She stood, extending her hand down to her son.
"Now you're a terminator." His fists clenched, feeling the pressure course through his veins like electricity. "Why can't you just tell me things right now instead of trying to buy yourself more time to come up with cleverly worded runarounds?"
When the anger fizzled out, he noticed that his mother was staring down at him with pride lighting her eyes and a smile tugging her lips. "Things are starting, my sweet little prince." She caressed his cheek when he stood. "I promise that if you come with me now, I'll explain everything."
Stiles was hesitant, but the term of endearment from childhood ultimately softened him. He needed to understand what was happening more than anything. It'd been a long, emotional day, and he needed to see it through to the end.
Steeling his resolve, he slipped his hand into his mother's. "Let's go."
Derek was but a shadow in the woods, lurking along the sparse line of trees as he kept an eye on the human of his pack. He had followed the Jeep to the vet's office Scott worked at.
His nostrils flared and eyes narrowed. Scott wasn't there and the office was closed. The scent of Henry Deaton was strong inside, along with two other figures. One was vaguely familiar and he quickly placed it to the boy who Stiles had recruited to hack for them before while searching for the identity of the Alpha. He was also Stiles' friend and lab partner, who he'd ran into several times over the last eight months. The other person with him was female and their base scent was similar enough to deduce that they were related.
Stiles stepped from his Jeep, scanning the area nervously as his passenger exited too. Derek couldn't see her or pick up a scent on the wind, and his hackles rose. Something was preventing him from scenting her.
With a final glare as the two entered the office, he turned and ran into the woods. It was starting.
The next chapter will be up within the week. It's the big chapter where you find everything out and I still want to tweak and add to it. :) Hope you enjoyed!