HARSHER THAN THE BARK
A/N: Love hearing you guys' thoughts!
Enjoy!
"Why did you bring me?" Scarlett groaned as Stiles dragged her into Derek's loft.
"Because Derek's missing and you dated him for like a year." Stiles explained.
"Stiles, I don't know where he is." Scarlett told again.
"Well then the three of us," Stiles motioned to himself, Scarlett and Cora who had just turned around upon hearing them enter the loft. "Are gonna find out."
"I can't help you." Cora said blatantly. "I haven't seen my brother for six years."
"Would the two of you stop being so pessimistic. You both knew Derek for an extended amount of time so one of you must have an idea of where he is now." Stiles persisted. He was on a mission to get Derek back to Beacon Hills. He had skipped town straight after Boyd died and no one had seen him for two days now.
"I can only think of one other time, that I know of, when no one saw Derek for a couple days." Cora told them both, going back to what she was doing before they walked in to the loft…staring out the window into the rain that poured down in the dark.
"Well?" Stiles encouraged her.
Cora began her story about how Derek had been in the woods, running from the hunters. She told them that he was almost shot in the chest by an arrow but Peter had saved him. They then went to some kind of root cellar so that they wouldn't be found by the Argents.
"They were there for two days." Cora concluded. "That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us. Hide and heal."
"Okay, so is two days standard then or are we thinking Derek's on some extended getaway?" Stiles queried, eager to know where Derek was.
"Why do you care? Either of you?" Cora asked sceptically, turning to face them.
"Why do I care?" Stiles murmured. "Well, let's see, over the past few weeks my best friend tried to kill himself, his boss was nearly ritually sacrificed, a girl I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed!" Stiles ranted. "Boyd was killed by Alphas…do you want me to keep going? Because I can. For like an hour."
"You think Derek can do anything about that?" Cora asked, walking forward.
"Well since he's the one everyone seems to be after it's more like he should do something." Stiles explained his theory while Scarlett leaned against a wall. Derek really wasn't her problem anymore. Yeah, she hoped he was okay but she wasn't about to go out of her way to try and find him. He couldn't fix everything that had happened. No one could.
"I don't know," Cora started. "There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him."
"Well what was he like?" Stiles asked.
Before Cora had the chance to answer, they heard footsteps walking down the spiral staircase. The three teens turned their heads to see Peter appear.
"A lot like Scott, actually." He informed them, making Scarlett roll her eyes. She hadn't seen him since he had driven her home the morning after her accident. "A lot like most teenagers. Unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable, really, only to other teenagers." He continued, walking down the steps towards the teens.
"Well what happened? What changed him?" Stiles asked with intrigue.
"Well, the same thing that changes a lot of young men. A girl." Peter answered simply.
"You're telling me some girl broke his little heart and that's why Derek is the way he is?" Stiles asked, incredulous. However, Scarlett's interest was now peeked.
Peter smirked. "Believe it or not, our little Scarlett here wasn't the first to break Derek's heart…Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha, had blue eyes?" He asked Cora.
"I do." Scarlett whispered, her mind flashing back to when Derek first flashed his electric blue eyes at her. The first time he had revealed his werewolf form to her.
Peter turned to Scarlett. "Do you know why some werewolves have blue eyes?"
"I always thought it was just like a genetic thing." Stiles answered.
"If you want to know what changed Derek, you have to know what changed the colour of his eyes." Peter told them.
Peter started the story of how Derek was a normal teenager, despite being a werewolf, when he met her. Paige.
Peter told them that Paige was a quiet girl, she played the cello and Derek, on the other hand, was more outgoing and part of the basketball team. Scarlett recalled Derek telling her once that he used to play.
Paige had rejected Derek at first and that's what made him go for her. He thought she was different from the other girls. She was a mystery to him and there was so much more to her than what met the eye.
As Peter, while telling them the story, made his way to sit on the couch, Scarlett wondered how he knew so much about Derek's relationship with this girl. Yes, he was his uncle but from what Scarlett had seen over the past year, it wasn't like they were close. In fact, they hated each other. Due to that fact, Scarlett reminded herself that what he was saying might not be the truth. Well, not the complete truth anyway. She didn't see why he would have a reason to lie about this but it was Peter. He lied about everything.
"So, if Derek was a sophomore back then how old was he?" Stiles asked, taking a seat next to Scarlett on the table she had made herself comfortable on for listening in to the, inevitably, long story. "How old were you? Wait, how old are you now?"
"Not as young as we could have been but not as old as you might think." Peter answered making Scarlett narrow her eyes at him.
"Seriously? Could you be any more cryptic?" She questioned, her mind being jumbled by Peter's way of 'explaining' things.
"How old are you?" Stiles asked Cora who had taken Scarlett's place, leaning against the wall.
"Seventeen." She answered simply, making Scarlett sigh with relief. At least one of the Hale's was straightforward enough for the simple humans, like herself and Stiles, to understand.
"See? That's an answer." Stiles announced.
Cora made a face before speaking again. "Well, seventeen as you would measure in years."
"Okay how about we just drop that subject." Scarlett said quickly, not wanting to become any more confused about werewolf age. "Get back to the story."
Peter smirked. "Well aren't you eager to learn…tell me, Scarlett has the jealousy started creeping its way into your head yet?"
Scarlett rolled her eyes. He was pathetic. "No. There's no reason for me to get jealous. This was ten years ago and need I remind you that Derek and I are no longer dating?"
"Would you two stop?" Stiles groaned. Scarlett shot him a look. Peter had been the one to start it. She was just defending herself. "What happened with Derek and the cello girl?"
"What do you think happened?" Peter asked, incredulous. How they hadn't put the pieces together yet really did baffle him. "They were teenagers. One minute it's 'I hate you' and the next it's frantic groping in any dark corner they could manage to find themselves alone in for five minutes. And their favourite dark corner was an abandoned distillery just outside of Beacon Hills."
Scarlett's brows furrowed. Again, she was confused. "How would you even know this? I doubt Derek ran to tell his pervy uncle about all the 'frantic groping' he'd been doing." Scarlett said, not trusting Peter.
"Well, back then I wasn't just Derek's uncle. I was his best friend." Peter informed her, leaning forward to return her glare. "His closest confidant. That's how I know."
Peter continued with the next part of his story. The part where one night Derek and Paige were in the distillery. They had been many times before but Peter still felt the need to spy on them, naturally, like the creep he was.
Peter told the three teens about how Derek and Paige's lovey-dovey time was cut short when Derek smelled blood and then heard someone coming towards the distillery. Derek left with Paige but Peter stayed and hid, watching as the Alphas—Deucalion, Kali and Ennis—gathered in the distillery with their packs to discuss how one of Ennis' betas had been dragged there, by the Argents, with an arrow already in his throat before he was hung by his hands and cut in half. Ennis was enraged but Kali didn't understand why she and her pack should care about one of Ennis'. Deucalion, on the other hand, tried to make Ennis see reason.
"That was when she showed up." Peter said, his eyes seeming to look off somewhere in the distance.
"Who?" Scarlett queried.
"My sister." He shrugged.
"Derek's mother." Scarlett concluded. Peter nodded.
"She had the ability to shapeshift into an actual wolf, therefore she was respected by all the other Alphas and their packs. She was the one they would go to for advice and guidance…Talia Hale."
He explained how she had arrived to hear what Ennis had to say and to make sure that no fighting broke out between the packs. He painted an image of her with his words, depicting her as tall, strong, quietly confident and brave.
Scarlett imagined her as being an intimidating, yet kind, woman.
Peter then told them that Ennis wasn't to be dissuaded from his path of revenge. He wanted to get even with hunters for killing a member of his pack. Peter stood from his seat on the couch and walked to the window, where the condensation had gathered. He told them that Ennis clawed out a symbol on the wall of the distillery. The symbol of revenge amongst the werewolves. And, in the condensation on the window, Peter drew the small spiral as he saw the memory of Ennis doing it.
"Our mark for vendetta." Peter declared when he had finished drawing the symbol.
"Man, you guys really take that whole revenge thing seriously, like, to a whole new level, don't you?" Stiles sighed.
"It's not just revenge." Cora countered. "Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing a member of family."
Scarlett raised a brow. "Then what's it like?" Scarlett couldn't image a pain worse than losing a family member…someone you loved.
"It's like losing a limb." Cora clarified.
"They wouldn't even let him see the body." Peter said, without turning around. He kept his cold stare fixed on the window.
"Why not?" Stiles asked.
"They weren't related." Peter answered simply.
"I don't get it." Cora announced. "What does this have to do with Derek?"
"Yeah I've been wondering the same thing for the past fifteen minutes." Scarlett sighed. "Would you mind maybe, I don't know, getting to the point?"
Peter turned around, giving Scarlett a sharp look. "It has everything to do with him. You see, it's never just a single moment. It's a confluence of events. Personally, I looked at Ennis' situation and I saw profound loss. Derek saw something different. He saw…opportunity."
"Opportunity for what, exactly?" Scarlett didn't know where Peter was going with this but if she had to take a wild guess, it would be that the story was about to take a dark turn.
"To always be with her."
Derek and Paige's relationship was going smoothly. They were falling more in love each day. Scarlett thought it was a very heart-warming story. Everyone has their first love and the story of Derek's was actually very sweet. She was surprised at herself. She thought that maybe she would feel a twinge of jealousy but it just never came. Scarlett guessed that it was because all of this happened so long ago and she really had nothing to do with it.
"The thing was, he had this constant fear. He was obsessing over it. Thinking about it all day, all night…always on his mind. What if she found out?" Peter made it sound very theatrical but it wasn't an irrational fear for someone like Derek to have. After all, Scott had gone through the same thing only last year. He was terrified of Allison finding out about him and never wanting to speak to him again. And to make matters worse, her family were hunters who were out to get him. "I kept telling him not to do it. Every day he thought about it, the more convinced he became. And you know teenagers…I bet he even blames me. He's probably convinced himself the whole thing was my idea."
"He came to me, telling me how Laura had told him about the packs being in town. There were more Alphas than any of us had ever seen before in one place. He knew Talia would never do it and he knew that the packs wouldn't be staying for long. He was convinced that he had to do it before they all left and he lost his chance." Peter informed them, seeming like he was reliving the memories. "He kept going on and on about how it would only take one bite and she would never get sick again. She would remain young, more beautiful and she would be able to protect herself. He convinced himself that he was going to do the right thing. Do right by her because, in his eyes, the bite was a gift."
"That doesn't sound like Derek." Scarlett snapped immediately, calling Peter on his bullshit.
Peter shrugged. "You didn't know him back then."
"But you said he was just like Scott." Scarlett countered. "And Scott would never make that kind of decision for someone else and he certainly wouldn't say that the bite was a gift."
"I said he was a lot like Scott. Not just like him." Peter defended himself, narrowing his eyes at Scarlett.
Stiles raised his hand mockingly. "I have a question." They all turned to him. "Can we break from the story to talk about Scott's boss' involvement in all this. How does he know so much?"
"Because he was an emissary. To Talia." Peter answered.
"A what?" Stiles questioned.
"It means he was like Talia's advisor." Scarlett clarified for him.
"All of the older wolves had a kind of relationship with the druids. They were wise so they gave advice." Peter explained further.
"They keep us…connected, to humanity. But they're a secret even in the pack." Cora added in. "Sometimes only the Alpha knows who the emissary is. Derek and I had no idea about Deaton."
"Or his sister, Morrell." Peter said, making Scarlett's eyes widen in realisation.
"That's why she was at the bank." She mumbled.
"She's an emissary too?" Stiles queried, trying to retain all the information he was learning.
"For the Alpha pack." Peter clarified for him, making Stiles' eyes bug out.
"Our guidance counsellor? Why the hell don't you people tell me any of this stuff? I shared some really intimate details with her." Stiles complained.
"And did she give you good advice?" Cora asked obviously.
"Yeah, actually." Stiles admitted. It made sense to Scarlett that Morrell was an emissary. She had given Scarlett extremely good advice about taking control of her own life when she was forced to go to a session after the incident at the Sheriff's station with Matt.
"That's what they do." Peter told them. "Now, let's get back to the story so we can all get on with our lives, shall we?"
Stiles made a gesture for Peter to go ahead. "The night before the packs left. That was when it was going to happen. That's when Paige would receive the bite." Peter explained. "I told Derek I would arrange it. I told Ennis where he could find Paige and Derek. In the school."
"Ennis?" Cora gasped. "Why would you choose him?"
"Why not?" Peter shrugged. "Ennis needed a new member for his pack, Paige was young and strong, doing a favour for Derek meant Ennis would be in good with Talia. And back then, everyone wanted to be in good with her."
"He doesn't remember it was Ennis, does he?" Stiles asked, making Scarlett wonder how anyone could forget the guy that bit your girlfriend.
"If he does, he keeps it to himself." Peter told them.
"So what happened? Did she turn?" Scarlett asked, eager to find out how the story ended.
"Almost." Peter murmured. "I was there. I watched it all happen. He came at Ennis. A fifteen-year-old boy. Against a giant." Scarlett had to admire the bravery in that. It also showed just how stupid love could make a person. "There was no reason for him to fight. She'd already been bitten before he could change his mind."
"So did she turn?" Cora asked, wanting to know the answer as much as Scarlett and Stiles. Peter was taking his sweet time answering the one, simple, question however.
"She should have." Peter whispered, making Scarlett's brows furrowed. She didn't know what else could have happened. "Most of the time, the bite takes…most of the time."
"When you offered it to me, you said 'if' it doesn't kill you…" Stiles reminded Peter. Scarlett's eyes widened. She never knew that Stiles had been offered the bite and she certainly wasn't aware that the bite could kill someone.
"If." Peter muttered the single, most important, word. "He took her to a root cellar and I followed them, thinking that maybe I could help but it was too late. She was well on her way to death. I had no idea what to think, what to feel when I saw him cradling her to him. He asked me what was happening to her…but he knew. It didn't matter that she was young and strong. Some people just aren't made for this."
Scarlett swallowed a lump in her throat as she continued to listen to the heart-breaking story.
"She fought, she struggled, trying to stay alive…but it was useless. Her fate had already been sealed. Derek tried to take her pain away, tried to undo the wrong he had done but nothing could save her." Peter continued, his voice never faltering despite how he was talking about such a horrible thing. "She told him that she knew what he was all along and she told him that she still loved him. She cried and cried, the pain must've been…unbearable, for both of them. Paige knew she didn't have long left. She just wanted it to be over…so she begged him. She begged him to end her suffering. And he did."
Scarlett felt something wet on her face and she immediately wiped away the stray tear.
"I remember taking her from his arms, to the woods, to a place where I knew it would be found. And it was." Peter looked up. "By you, Scarlett." Scarlett's head snapped up and her eyes widened as both Stiles and Cora looked at her and Peter with similar expressions.
"Me? What? How?" She asked frantically.
"You were young. You couldn't have been more than seven." Peter told her.
Scarlett shook her head but then froze. She had a very prominent nightmare when she was seven years old and over the years she had forgotten it but having an image of what Paige must have looked like, dying in Derek's arms, in her head brought it back from where her subconscious had locked it away.
"Hurry up Dad!" A seven-year-old Scarlett McCall shouted as she ran through the woods with her big-girl flashlight. The McCall's often went on walks at night when they were still a family.
"Scarlett, just wait a minute!" Rafael McCall shouted back at her. "You can't just leave your brother behind." Scott McCall was behind his father. He had stopped, needing to use his inhaler because of all the running they'd been doing.
"Scarlett!" Scott shouted. "Wait for me!"
Scarlett giggled and turned around, looking for her brother and her father but she couldn't see them in the darkness. She began walking backwards slowly but her ankles hit something and she tripped. She quickly scrambled to her feet, grabbing the flashlight and shining it on what she had tripped over. Her eyes widened and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
She saw a body. The body of a young girl. She was pale and covered in dirt and blood.
"Scarlett!" Rafael raced towards his daughter's scream. He found her standing and staring at the body, frozen in shock. He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Get your brother and go back to mom." Scarlett didn't say anything. "Do you hear me, Scarlett? Go, now!"
Scarlett came back to reality, tears filling her eyes. "They told me it was a nightmare. I-I thought it was." Peter shook his head and Stiles put his hand over hers in a comforting gesture. "How did you know?" Scarlett asked Peter.
"Because I was there. I had just left her body and I was about to leave but I heard you shouting so I thought I'd stick around to see what happened." Peter answered nonchalantly.
"You're sick, you know that?" Scarlett asked, her voice venomous. What kind of person would just wait around to see who found a dead body that they had put there?
"Yes, I know." He answered simply. "To everyone else, to your father, it was just another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."
"And what about Derek?" Cora demanded.
"Taking an innocent life takes something from you as well…a bit of your soul. Darkening it. Dimming that once brilliant golden-yellow to a cold, steel, blue. Like mine." Peter flashed his blue werewolf eyes.
Peter left after that but the three teens remained sitting on the steps at the door of Derek's loft. Scarlett was still reeling over the fact that her nightmare about finding Paige's body wasn't actually a nightmare. And the fact that it was Derek's first love freaked her out even more. It must've just been some sort of fucked up coincidence.
Stiles sat, contemplating something and it irked Cora. "What?" She asked. "What's that look?"
"What look?" Stiles wondered.
Cora sighed. "The look that makes me wanna punch you." She snapped.
"Oh, my God you are so Derek's sister." Stiles said, eyeing Cora with caution.
"What is with the look?" Cora demanded.
"I just don't believe him." Stiles said.
"Well then that makes two of us." Scarlett sighed.
Cora gave both of them a blank look so Stiles took it upon himself to explain his theory to her. "Look, in Miss Blake's class." Scarlett tensed. She had forgotten all about her. "We're reading Heart of Darkness. It's in first person, narrated by Marlow. The thing is, he's an unreliable narrator. You know the details of it have changed just because of his perspective."
"Well then we heard the story from Peter's perspective." Cora concluded.
Scarlett shook her head. "No I think you have a point, Stiles. I don't think he was telling the truth. Well, not the whole truth anyway. I can't imagine Derek ever wanting to give the bite to someone just so he wouldn't lose them. He's not like that." Scarlett couldn't believe herself. She was defending Derek because she didn't believe he could be that selfish when she had just witnessed, first-hand, how selfish he could really be.
Cora turned to look at Scarlett. "So, what? Are you just gonna ask Derek about the girl he fell in love with and then killed?"
Scarlett put her hands up. "Oh no, I'm not going there." She still didn't want to be a part of Derek's life anymore and even just listening to that story and being here was involving her and that was about as much as she could take.
"I will." Stiles declared. "If I have to."
Scarlett jogged down the stairs and noticed Melissa sitting on the couch. Melissa turned and smiled at Scarlett. "Hey, you wanna come watch some Grey's?"
Scarlett shook her head but walked down the rest of the way to stand behind Melissa, leaning over the back of the couch. "Hey mom, can I ask you something?"
"Sure honey, what is it?" Melissa asked, not looking away from the gripping Grey's Anatomy episode.
"It's about that nightmare I had when I was seven…the one about the dead girl."
Melissa froze and paused the episode to turn around to Scarlett, trying to play off her concern with a smile. "What about it hun?"
Scarlett hesitated for a moment before speaking. "It wasn't really a nightmare, was it?"
Melissa stood up and walked around the couch to place a hand on Scarlett's shoulder. "Who told you that, Scar?"
"Just answer the question." Scarlett sighed.
Melissa nodded and looked down. "No. It wasn't a nightmare. You did find a body…but sweetie, she wasn't just some random girl. She had been you and Scott's babysitter for over a year."
Scarlett's eyes bulged. "What? Are you serious?" Scarlett wasn't expecting to hear that. It was just too weird. That Derek's first love used to take care of Scarlett when she was little.
Melissa sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and giving a small nod. "Yeah, she was a really sweet girl. She was quiet, kept to herself but she did have a boyfriend for a while. I think he actually helped out with you guys a couple of times."
Scarlett gave her mother and deadpan look. "You mean Derek?"
Melissa laughed a little before the realisation came to her. "Oh my God!" Her hands flew up to her mouth. "It was Derek. Wow, it was so long ago I just…wow."
"Yeah. I just heard the story of how he fell in love with Paige and then had to kill her." Scarlett groaned, sitting on the back of the couch, her head spinning from all of this information. So, she had met Derek when she was a kid. Great.
"Kill her?" Melissa asked with wide eyes.
Scarlett nodded. "To make an overly long story short, she got bitten by an Alpha and the bite didn't take so Derek killed her to stop her being in pain."
"That's awful." Melissa said, looking down with a solemn look. "Everyone thought it was an animal attack."
"Yeah well now we all know the truth."