Things will be coming to a close soon guys, maybe two or three more chapters if I'm lucky. Hope you enjoy this one!
Love.
Stiles used to think that love was a fickle and fake thing. Teenagers fell in and out of love all of the time. Couples in love get married, divorced, have affairs and beat each other around. People love their phones, certain foods, the way the sun sets over lakes or behind mountains. People love in exaggeration, so much so that it's just another adjective. Just another word amongst millions and millions, a combination of four letters that are supposed to mean everything and end up becoming meaningless.
Her mother, all the way up until she died, used to tell Stiles 'I love you more than my heart can take sometimes. I love you so much that it feels like I'll explode from it'.
After, when her mom was gone and her dad was lost somewhere between work and a bottle, Stiles thought that must be an awful thing. To love someone so much that it hurt. To need someone so much that you feel like you might die from it, or them, or the prospect of being without.
When her dad wasn't there, when Stiles was putting herself to bed and humming her mothers lullabies to herself she would whisper just before she fell asleep promises that she would never love the way her mother had. Never so much it hurt. Never completely. Her mom had looked so sad, small and lost and pained in that white room with the blue blankets and chapped lips. The last time, when they had been curled up on that uncomfortable bed and Stiles had to move her ear all the way against her mom's lips just to hear her talk. Her mom had cried and cried and cried after that final 'I love you more than my heart can take sometimes. I love you so much that it feels like I'll explode from it.'
And then she had been gone.
Stiles had meant it too. Had never loved a phone, a food, a sunset, lake or mountain. She had never loved a person, not completely. Not with everything. Never so much that it hurt. She could never understand the people who loved, fickle and fake, or the way her mom had loved with every fibre of her being until the moment she died, until that tiny instance of human life was in front of her tangible enough to touch.
Stiles had lost a lot of blood. It was the first thing they were told as the doctor led the sheriff and himself along a too-clean corridor to the door of a room that Derek could smell her in.
Stiles had lost a lot of blood. They had to do a C-Section to get the baby out. Stiles hasn't woken up yet. They had to put the baby in NICU until they were sure it would survive. Stiles should be fine with rest and recuperation. They didn't know how long it would take the baby to breathe on its own.
Derek had been stuck on 'alive' for so long that nothing else seemed to matter, not until he could get into that room and check her heart was beating and her chest was rising for himself. Hands clenching and unclenching impatiently while the doctor talked on and on at them when it was obvious all they needed was to see her, touch her.
Too many words, strung together to make sentences Derek was hardly hearing. Peripherally, he heard the announcement that the baby, tiny and fragile as it was, had turned out to be a girl. Beside him, strong enough for Derek to feel flow deep into his own bones, he could feel the Sheriff's relief.
Time passes slowly when you're impatient; Derek has known this for a long time. It feels like hours and not minutes that they stand outside that door, but it's almost sweet relief when the doctor relents and let them in.
Inside, there are white walls that are too bright, blue blankets. Stiles had chipped lips.
The sheriff chokes on a sob beside him but he can't bring himself to care, crossing the room until he was by her side, lifting her hand to wrap her lip fingers around his wrist, where he could feel the pulse in her thumb against his own skin and know for sure that there she was, alive.
It takes Stiles almost three days to wake up properly. Between the blood loss, the anaesthetic and the pain medication she had been conscious for only moments at a time before slipping back into whatever darkness was holding her under.
Derek stayed by her bedside for the most part, leaving only when Melissa tugged his wrist until he relented and followed her. Eventually, he had found himself being pushed into staff showers, handed a change of clothes by Jackson when he had finished, food by Isaac.
Once, only once, he visited the baby.
She was tiny, hidden underneath wires and tubes that were keeping her nourished and breathing. Her skin was darker than he had expected, pink verging on red but the NICU nurse told him that was normal for babies premature and under developed. A feeling, too strong, stronger than he thought himself capable, welled up inside that space that had been empty for so long. That had only just begun to close with pack and Stiles, and Stiles becoming pack.
It was too much. When he didn't know if that tiny little piece of Stiles would survive, when her mother hadn't even woken up yet. It was too much to love this perfect little being in front of him, when she wasn't really his to love.
When Stiles woke up it was a slow and painful process. Her heart rate increased, settled, increased again. Her eyes had flickered open, winced in the light, opened again. Her hand shot out, wrapped around Derek's wrist as he reached for her. She didn't let go of him, not even when her eyes opened properly and her heart rate drew down into something average.
He supposes her pain must have been more than she let on. The incision along her stomach was deep and hardly beginning to heal, yet she didn't complain. She took the water he offered, gathered herself together while he watched, Lydia and Erica hovering worriedly in the background, and then asked for her baby.
"Stiles-" Lydia had stepped forward, hand laying over Stiles' exposed ankle lightly until she was glared at.
"My baby isn't inside of me anymore, Lydia. I knew the moment I woke up that something was wrong, okay? Just- if- if- Is it gone? Did –" She shoots Derek a desperate, pleading look that makes his heart ache. Gently, fingers stroking over her cheek and capturing tears he's certain she hadn't noticed she was crying, he tried to soothe her.
"Your baby is alive, Stiles. She's premature, and under developed. They have her in the neo-natal intensive care unit at the moment." Her eyes clench shut, fingers curling into her palms as she breathes deeply. It's the centring method that Deaton taught her at the beginning of her magical training, Derek recognises, and he counts along in his head with her until she loosens up.
"How bad is it?" He is proud, when her voice hardly even shakes.
"At the moment her lungs are not as developed as they would like so they have her on a ventilator, and they have tubes for feeding and nutrition. The nurse told Isaac and your dad that all of her other vitals are becoming much more stable. They're just not sure how well her lungs will do." Derek hesitates, wraps his hand around her securely. "They aren't sure she'll ever come off the machine yet, Stiles."
The hitch in her breath is telling, the tears in her eyes are expected, and the strength in her voice is always, always a surprise.
"I'm glad it's a girl." She tells them with a smile. "Take me to her."
It's not really an argument, in order to get out of her room and to the NICU all Stiles has to do is send Erica out for a wheelchair and let Lydia deal with the nurse. There are some disapproving looks while her IV's are changed over to the chair pole, but other than that there isn't much that can be done.
Stiles is anxious all the way to the neo-natal unit, especially so when she and Derek are wrapped up in clean scrubs and booties, masks and gloves. It seems like so much protection when it's her own little girl in there, but she goes with it, because it's like she can feel her. Like there is a tether that got stronger the closer they got to her, pulling and tugging in the right direction until Stiles finally, finally reached her daughter.
It's instantaneous. Her mother never told her about that. No matter how much she avoiding the kind of love that hurts and consumes and could end a person with one wrong move, here it is right in front of her.
It's like every cell in her body knows this tiny person, wrapped in wires and hardly the size of her hand. It's like her heart has swollen ten times bigger inside her chest and it's a wonder, such a wonder, that her body can hold all of that.
She loves so much it hurts. She loves so much she feels like she could explode from it.
"Is she supposed to be that tiny?" Stiles turns imploring eyes up to the nurse that followed them in here. She has a kind face, which is good Stiles supposes, but she hopes that she is not the kind to sugar coat it if something is seriously bad.
"No." The nurse shakes her head. "Your girl is little for being ten weeks premature. I've seen babies at twenty three weeks bigger than this. She's a fighter though, everything but her lungs look practically perfect."
"And her lungs? How are they?" Derek's voice is nervous; like he isn't sure he is allowed to ask. Stiles reaches up the hand not attached to an IV, settling it over his where it is resting lightly on her shoulder.
"We're definitely seeing improvement. It might be a while yet before anything significant happens in that department though. You'll have to talk with Dr Wilbur about treatment options and future plans though." The nurse smiles and the goes about fussing with the machines and checking numbers as they both just stare at the tiny little body inside the clear box.
It's hardly a surprise when she starts to cry. Stiles had been able to feel this bubble of emotion crushing down on her windpipe the moment she caught glance of her daughter. She is reminded again, of how much her mother cried and cried, that last time she had told Stiles how much loving her hurt. How it was too much. She wonders, absently and before the first real sob breaks through, why any woman would willingly put themselves through the pain of loving a child.
"I wanna hold her." She manages to choke out as Derek drags over a chair quickly to sit beside her. He shushes her gently, careful not to jostle her. The pain that she had been feeling across her incision site drifted away and she knew he was taking that pain, but it wasn't enough. Would never be enough again.
"I know." Derek replies quietly. "I want to hold her too." He whispers it like it's supposed to be a secret, like he's not supposed to want to love her. Stiles lets her tears dry out before she looks up at him, catching his eyes directly.
"I get that- that you didn't exactly sign up for all of this." She gestures wildly around the room and over herself. "But, I... Derek. I only ever feel safe when I'm with you. If – I mean, if you want, and it's totally cool if you don't, you could be like her... her dad, maybe? I know we haven't talked, but, you know right. That-" Stiles stops babbling when she sees the look on his face, like he's been struck between the eyes with a hammer. Quickly, trying to push away her sense of rejection and pain, she look away from him and tries to backtrack.
"Y'know what, forget I even asked okay? You're going to be epic Uncle Derek and she'll love you all the more for it. It's fine, I'm probably just imagin-"
"Stiles." Derek's voice is pitched low, different, quieter and slightly amused with a hint of something that Stiles can't quite put her finger on. When she doesn't look up at him, he raises his hand slowly enough that she can see it in her peripheral vision and has a chance to pull away if she wants or needs to. She doesn't, and instead his fingers rest beneath her chin and tilt her face up until she is looking at him again.
"I would be honoured." His eyes shift to the baby and then back to her just so that she understands, before his fingers and tilting her a little closer. She knows what he's going to do, can feel the little ball of nerves and anticipation building inside of her. He's hesitating, and she knows why, hates it even, but the anticipation is almost as sweet as her annoyance is bitter.
"And I love you. I hope that you never doubt that."
Stiles just about grins at him before he kisses her, soft and careful, like she didn't know she needed. She thinks about how much it must have taken him to say those words out loud to her, when every other person he has loved has hurt him or died. She thinks about how she thought she hadn't loved, not really, not with everything, before today.
Stiles knows different now. She has loved completely, too much all of the time, from the moment he saved her. She knows that now. Her heart hurts, feels so big it might explode, but it's okay because she's safe with him.