I have no excuse for how long it has taken me to update this other than we finally figured out why I've been getting sick and treatment started taking up my time. Therefore, this chapter is almost double the last one and took a while to write because I wanted to get Papa Stilinski right.

Hope you enjoy 3

John is lost.

Not in the literal sense, not like he's stumbling through the woods without direction.

Although sometimes these days it feels like that.

Every time he closes his eyes he see's the face of his daughter laid out on Derek Hale's sofa, or bleeding in his arms outside another pack's house. He see's the men he and Derek murdered in the basement of a hunter's house. That one he gets some kind of sick pleasure from.

The others just make him sick.

Stiles is bright, brilliant, and now she's broken. He has no idea what to do with this version of Stiles. Curled up in Derek's bed with her fingers twitching at her sides like she wants to touch her stomach, and a look of confusion on her face.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" He asks her, thankful that at least he hasn't had a drink this morning. He hasn't been around for almost a week after Stiles got out of the hospital. Told Derek to take her back to the house in the woods, that he would come to them. Because he's a coward who hides behind a bottle whenever something goes wrong and expects his daughter to deal with the consequences by herself.

He hates himself, more than a little bit, because although he knows that he isn't willing to change it.

"I don't know what to do." Stiles is a shadow of herself. Too thin, too quiet, too scared. Derek tells him there has been one day she left the bedroom for anything other than the bathroom, but no more than that. Stiles has confined herself to this one room, this one life, a future with a baby he's not sure she wants and a pack that doesn't know how to make it better.

"What don't you know?" He lifts the glass of water from the nightstand, holds it to Stiles mouth so that she can take a sip while she considers her answer. That's what the pack are working on at the moment, getting her to consume enough nutrients for her and the baby to survive. He's not sure she even wants to.

"I don't want it to be a girl." Once, John had dreamed about grandchildren, about a little boy to play football with and a little girl who he could spoil with dresses and barbies and tea parties.

He wants it to be a girl, actually.

"Why not?" John asks, because guessing Stiles' thought processes never creates a correct answer in his head. He watches as his daughter rolls to her side on the bed, curls in on herself a little and looks at him with such terrified confusion. He's reminded of when her mother gave birth to Stiles when they'd been expecting a boy.

"I'm not exactly a good role model, y'know?" He doesn't know. Stiles is the single best person he could imagine to raise a child, if the situation were right.

"I put myself in life threatening situations, i run with wolves. I don't know how to be a girl, how to be polite and gentle and female. I would give up everything for this pack." Stiles tells him in a quiet voice, now she's staring at the door like aforementioned pack will be right outside.

Maybe they are.

"I would give everything for this pack, but i wouldn't bring a daughter into it knowing they'd be small and fragile and human like i am. Knowing that they could be.. that what happened to me could happen to them."

"Stiles-"

"But i don't want it to be a boy, either." Stiles plunders on like John hadn't spoken and he's glad, because he has no idea what he was about to say.

"I don't want it to be a boy either because it's one of theirs, and they say that criminal behaviour can be genetic. I don't want a boy that would take after whichever of those men conceived it."

His heart is breaking. There is nothing he can do here.

"You're straight out of gender options there, sweetheart." Stiles give him a rare- oh so rare- flicker of a smile as she looks up at him. John takes a deep breath, leans forward to capture one of her hands between both of his.

"Deaton says you have about two or three weeks before the spark starts to build back up again. If you- Stiles, if you don't want this baby you need to tell us now, before it's too late." Her free hand moves, fingers tracing over the tiny swelling at her stomach, much too small for the amount of time she's had a child growing inside of her.

"I want it." Stiles tells him, splaying her hand over her stomach and closing her eyes. "I'm just scared."

"That's okay. Everyone gets scared." John presses a kiss to his daughter's hand, holding it tightly still as her breathing begins to even out and the small noises she makes as she is falling asleep can be heard.

Isaac comes into the room a moment later like he has been waiting for those sounds, climbing into the bed beside Stiles. He doesn't touch her, just lays there, like he knows sometime soon he's going to be needed and that he will be more use than John will.

It hurts something deep inside, where the promises he made to his wife are kept, that John can't be the one to help Stiles through the nightmares.

Isaac smiles at him a little, nervous still that John will be angry at him helping Stiles get away to Verne's pack. If anything, John is grateful for Isaac going with her. He isn't sure Stiles would have come out alive if he hadn't.

"Where's Derek?" John whispers at Isaac, letting go of Stiles' hand gently to place it down on the bed, dragging the sheet she had kicked down back over her and smoothing it out. Just for a moment, he allows himself to remember doing things like this for her when she was young, innocent, happy. He pulls away a moment later, reminding himself harshly that Stiles will never be innocent again, and it's been a long time since she's been 'young'. And happy?

Happy probably won't exist in Stiles' life for a long, long time now.

"Kitchen. He's going to try fruit pieces with Stiles tonight."

Fruit pieces. Stiles was a little over two years old when she first hit her obsession with pieces of apple and strawberry.

John just nods at Isaac, spares one last look at Stiles and tries to commit to memory the calm look on her face as she slips into a sleep that will probably be pulled apart with nightmares by the time he gets home.

He leaves before the pain in his chest gets any worse.

Derek is wielding a irrationally large and very sharp knife and glaring at a punnet of strawberries like they've personally offended him.

"She likes them quartered with exactly one and a half table spoons of sugar per six strawberries." Derek chokes on a laugh and drops his knife with a sigh.

"How'd she figure out those exact preferences?" Derek turns a gives him a half-smile half-grimace.

"They were all her mom would eat when she was sick, they had plenty of practice figuring out what made them the best." Derek nods and turns back around, gathering up his knife and choosing six strawberries out of the box. The rest will go back in the refrigerator, John knows, because Stiles won't eat anything more than that right now.

"How's she doing?" The kid asks, slicing the berries precisely. There is a moment John thinks Derek will slice too close to his thumb, but it misses narrowly.

"You'd know better, this is the first i've been around since she got home." Because home is the Hale house, for Stiles now at least. Derek shrugs, and John can only imagine the carefully schooled expression on the kids face.

"She's a bitter mix of pain, confusion and terror. The entire house smells like it, but there's something underneath it that smells sweet and innocent. I've only been able to smell it since she came home. I think it's the baby, and i think that means she really does want it."

"Okay."

That's all the conversation John can stand today, turning on his heels and all but running out of the house. He had to go back to work tonight anyway, and that would be his reason for leaving without even waiting for Stiles to wake up to say goodbye.

Derek understands the lingering scent of whiskey and frustration on the Sheriff, he really does. But when Stiles rolls over carefully and nestles as tightly as she can into his side, smelling like sadness and regret he can't fathom why what was such a magnificent father could almost abandon his daughter to a pack of wolves at the worst point in her life.

"He doesn't love me anymore, does he?" Stiles whispers into his shoulder, cold nose pressed against his collarbone and the salty taste of bitterness tainting the already hard to breathe air around her.

"Of course he does, Stiles." Derek whispers back into her hair, burying his nose into the sweetest part of her scent, moving around until he finds the scent he thinks is the babies.

"He's confused, and he's angry at what happened, but he loves you. He will always love you no matter what, he's your dad." Her breathe brushes across the exposed skin of his neck as she sighs.

"Sometimes-" Stiles mumbles, long after he thinks she's drifting towards sleep. "Sometimes i think i must have screwed up really bad, and that everything that's happened it just karma. That's it's my fault."

"No." Derek uses his hand, tilts her chin up until she's looking at him with glassy, distant eyes. "Don't you ever think that, okay? What happened to you, what you did for us? We can never repay you, we can never make it up to you, but you did it for the right reasons and those men took advantage of you. It was never your fault. Okay? It never will be."

It's a recurring desire, the desperate need to have those vile men in front of him so that he can rip them apart piece by piece all over again. He wants to hunt down Gerard and kill him once and for all, for giving those men the orders to touch Stiles in the first place.

Silence descends over them again, but Derek is under no illusions of Stiles going to sleep. Every so often her fingers will curl tighter in his shirt, or she'll whimper at a pain and Derek will have to pull those dark lines through his veins and take her pain for himself. There is clearly something else on her mind, because as much as she has nightmares and often declares a hatred for the vulnerability sleep causes, she always falls asleep when Derek has his nose buried in her hair and she has her free hand pressed over one of his steady pulse points.

"Will you still want me-" Stiles swallows audibly, drops her hand to her stomach to trace the tiny bump swelling between the too-sharp protrusion of her hips, beneath the too-visible outline of her ribs.

"Will you still want us, after? When it's born, and i'm changed and a mom and probably more scared? How can you even want me now? I don't understand, Derek." Derek rolls them softly, turns so that she is lying on her back and he is half beside her, half above her and she isn't taking any of his weight. Her heartbeat stutters, a sudden look of fear flickers over her face but a moment later the glassy look in her eyes leaves and Stiles is right there beneath him, more trustful, more safe than he's felt her in what feels like so long.

"I have never, ever wanted someone the way i want you. Okay? Nothing that has happened has changed that, and nothing will. You and the baby, and the rest of this pack, you're what my life revolves around."

"Derek-"

"I love you, alright. I love you so much."

The words want to stick in his throat. This kind of vulnerability got his entire family killed, but he knows that Stiles wouldn't do that to him. If she can trust him; male, strong, dominant above her then he can trust her with his deepest feelings, the reason he will stick around with her and a baby that isn't his biologically but he hopes will be in everything else.

Stiles is gasping a little beneath him, tears in her eyes, and he wants to kiss her so much but he knows he has to wait for her to make the move. He doesn't want to scare her, or push her, and he wants her to love him back, even if she can't say it to him yet.

It feels like forever, as he scents the confusion, the fear, the hope, the tinge of happiness coming from her before she sneaks a hand up behind his head and meets him halfway in the softest kiss. Just a chaste press of mouths before she pulls away and he rolls back to her side so she can curl into him as much as possible with her injuries. Just like they were before Stiles voiced her concerns.

"I can't say it, not yet, i don't know when. But you know, right?" He does, he can smell it mixing in with the scent of child coming from her, like he's been accepted into the only happiness she has right now even if she is confused the most about those parts of her life right now.

"I know." He whispers back into her hair, holding her gently.

"It's okay. I know."

Derek leaves Stiles in the capable hands of Isaac and Danny the next day, stashed away in his bedroom just like every day. Although, something was different this morning, a little bit lighter. It's been the first time since they brought her back that Stiles has greeted him with a smile and a tiny press of her lips at the corner of his mouth instead of glassy eyes and the scent of terror.

They have a prearranged meeting with Scott and the Argents, and he knows they're hoping to cement a more secure treaty and talk about Scott's re-admission to the pack. It'll be a long day, frustrating probably, but he knows somewhere inside in the places that Stiles isn't even thinking about right now, she misses the boy that's been her best friend since third grade.

Erica and Boyd both have family commitments today, a piece of their life in which Derek encourages. He knows exactly how important every second of time with the people you care about it. So he takes Jackson, as a beta representative, and Lydia because, well, Lydia. No one likes crossing her, and he's never seen her loose an argument or accept something in an agreement that she doesn't want. And he knows now that she has the best interests of not only Stiles, herself and Jackson at heart, but also that of the rest of the pack. The commitment she showed during the Alpha Pack fiasco proved as much.

"How is she?" Scott asks the moment everyone is seated around the Argent's breakfast bar. He's twitchy stood to the side of Allison with a remarkably good puppy dog face.

"Terrified, hurt, pregnant." Lydia spits at him, buried into Jackson's side like he's the only thing restraining her right now. Maybe he is, but that's not exactly an endorsement given that Derek can smell Jackson's anger at Scott rolling off him in waves. They watch as Scott drops his head, as Allison hides her expression in her coffee cup.

"Scott and Allison would like to apologise to Stiles, properly, and go about being accepted back into the pack."Jackson growls lowly under his breath and Chris reaches for the gun at his belt reflexively until Allison nudges him and Lydia pinches Jackson in the side so he stops.

"We'll have to talk to Stiles about seeing you both." Derek nods at the teens stood sheepishly at the side. "I think maybe distance is better right now, but i'm willing to retract your expulsion from the pack if you're willing to drop back down to the bottom of the food chain."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Allison asks meekly as Chris sighs and nods once.

"It means that Scott doesn't deserve to be first, second or third to me. He answers to all other wolves and has no authority over them. And you are going to have to work your way back into the pack bond if you want to be accepted. And neither of you come anywhere near the house, or Stiles, unless she tells you that you can. Do you understand?"

Stiles might be doing better now, but Derek isn't going to take risks. The last time Scott attempted an apology with Stiles her latent magic triggered, they ended up finding out she was pregnant and Stiles almost decided to kill herself. They didn't need anything remotely close to that happening again.

Both the teens nod, flushed with embarrassment and guilt. Derek's wolf rumbles under the surface, angry at the rational human side of his personality that knows they should be allowed a second chance at pack life.

"That doesn't mean any of us trust you, or that you will ever be forgiven for choosing yourselves over a pack mate. You get that?" Jackson growls out, arm tightening around Lydia as she runs a hand down his chest soothingly.

"They understand." Chris answers verbally for them, as neither of them seem able to do much more than stand there not making eye contact.

"Now, about the treaty-"

Stiles is not where Derek expects her to be when they get home.

She is sitting in the kitchen with a hand wrapped around Isaac's wrist as they watch Danny trying to juggle two oranges and a kiwi without dropping them.

Stiles is laughing.

It feels like forever and day since he heard her laugh. Honest and true, tinged with happiness and relaxation like he hasn't smelt from her or any of the pack in such a long time.

There is an empty plate and a glass of orange juice beside it in front of Stiles, and she smells healthier than he remembers from this morning. The fact that it means she's eaten, that she's actually gotten something in her stomach, managed to come downstairs and laugh at the antics of their pack, makes a swelling of relief and pride gather in his stomach as he, Lydia and Jackson observe them from the kitchen doorway.

"Oh, Derek!" Danny fumbles with the fruit he's throwing, as Stiles turns in her seat to look at him and grace him with a tiny smile and a blush across her prominent cheekbones.

"You can clean up the splattered kiwi all over my floor now, Danny." Derek snorts, moving forward to crouch beside Stiles with a small smile of his own.

"Hey." Stiles is still blushing, cheek coloured pale pink in a way they haven't since even before Gerard picked apart her life. He can hardly resist touching it, brushing a finger lightly over her skin to feel the pure lifeblood flowing beneath and reminding himself once again that he didn't completely fuck up. That she is alive, recovering, here with him right now and smiling.

"Hey yourself." Derek smiles back, ignoring the way Lydia and Jackson are herding Danny and Isaac out of the room with their own gentle smiles and the scent of relief and happiness surrounding them.

"How're you feeling?" He asks, standing and moving so that he's sat in the chair opposite in, grinning at her pout as he steals her orange juice to sip from. Stiles shrugs at him gently, still so mindful of her injuries even though he knows both he and Isaac have drawn the pain out of her today.

"I feel- i don't know. Lighter, i think? Does that make sense? When i woke up this morning i was scared of the nightmares or that my dad hated me or that you'd leave me. I think yesterday helped, it finally got through. I'm not better, i'm still terrified of what's happening. We still need to figure out the magic thing when it comes back, there is so much going on, but i think it seems a little easier to deal with now."

Derek couldn't help but let his grin widen, not only at Stiles' words but at the typical spew of words that had disappeared from his life. The flow and ebb, rise and fall of Stiles voice and the slight hitch in her breathing when she was speaking too fast. The sheer emotion and passion she puts behind each word.

Stiles seemed to register the amount of words that had just flown from her, more maybe than he's heard at one time since the attacks, and she blushes that lovely pale pink across her cheeks again, spreading down the sides of her neck as he chuckles.

"So, how'd the meeting go?" Stiles asks over-enthusiastically, attempting to divert attention. It works, only because Derek needs to talk to her about Scott and Allison's admission to the pack and her wants when it comes to seeing them again.

He decides to leave that for now though. Spoiling Stiles' rare good mood, her freedom and her happiness, seems like a kind of blasphemy. They deserve this right now. Stiles fed, more relaxed, safe and alive and recovering. So he'll leave it for another day.

"It went good, i think. There are some things to talk about, hash out and work through the kinks, but good overall." Stiles nods at him, embarrassed flush, much to Derek's disappointment, fading away into paleness again. The smell of rushing blood fades a little and he gains pleasure from the smell of Stiles, of his clothes on her, of the pack around her and the underlying sweetness of the baby she's carrying.

"Okay, good." Stiles smiles at him, tugging at the bottom of the shirt she's wearing; one of Derek's, he notices. "So i was wondering, now that the pack are out for a while. Good job on the room clearing, by the way, do you wanna- i don't know. Just watch a movie or something? Like the old pack nights but just us? You don't have to, it's just been a while and now i'm out of the bedroom..." She trails off as he stands, rounding the table to stand next to her and help her stand from the chair, still shaky on her feet. Slowly, as always, he leans forwards and presses a soft kiss to her forehead.

"I'd love to." She smiles up at him, bright and almost-innocent. Close to the way she used to be, but not quite.

Derek isn't deluded enough to believe they'll ever get back the old Stiles, not that innocent, naive, wide eyed girl who wanted to trust in everything. But this is good too, this Stiles that woke up this morning and thought that maybe life was worth being excited for, happy about.

So for now he'll watch movies with her on her good day and be happy as she is about it.