Chapter 50: The Bridge
Everywhere she looked, she saw Kate's face. Not because of her own paranoia for once, but because one of the largest manhunts in history was afoot, searching for the mass murderer who faked her own death to escape custody. Newspapers, internet, TV-reports and radio circled her description over and over.
Call this number if you see her. Considered armed and dangerous. Do not approach. Driving a silver SUV, last seen crossing state borders and heading south. Apparently, whoever or whatever Sheriff Stilinski found in Kate's grave convinced him that she was still out there and he had sounded the alarm. Fraud was investigated at the coroner's office, how something like this could happen. Even Joe, with her limited funds, would bet a hundred bucks it could never be traced back to the Argents.
The manhunt would make it harder for Kate to come back to Beacon Hills, but Joe had no doubts she would eventually. Manic need for revenge and retribution, probably not quelled by the fact she was (probably) turning into a werewolf. And, Joe thought, she wanted Alpha blood — for something yet to be determined.
"Knock knock," said Aunt Melissa and tapped the open door to Joe's room. She leaned against it, watching Joe shove stacks of paper into boxes, not bothering to sort through her research. Aunt Mel took a deep breath. "You're really doing this, huh?"
"Yeah," Joe mumbled and continued packing. Her whole room, her whole life basically, was spread neatly into cardboard boxes and waiting to be carried out into her car. Not a big room, not too much to carry. The furniture was all Aunt Mel's except from the computer chair, so Joe would not be bringing a lot with her.
"Ever gonna tell me what happened?" Aunt Mel asked softly and went to sit on Joe's bed, now stripped of its covers. "I mean, apart from the life-or-death fight with the creepy principal who was mind-controlling the scary reptillian thing Jackson turned into."
Joe's reasoning for moving out had been vague, but how was she gonna tell her aunt that she did not trust Scott anymore? That she could not live in the same house as him right now?
"I'm not stupid, I know something happened with you and Scott," Aunt Mel continued when Joe only kept shoving her notes into wherever they could fit. "If you tell me, I can ground him for what he did. Take away his TV or-"
"It's not him, it's me." It was not a lie, not technically. He still did not realize what he did had been wrong based on how he had made absolutely zero attempt to apologize. Maybe it was just Joe's hang-ups, but so be it. She had been unable to even look at him after that night, no resolution forthcoming just yet. Maybe one day... "It's just me and my issues."
"You know, if you keep cutting people out of your life, you might end up alone."
"I'm not cutting Scott out of my life," Joe said, involuntarily confirming that he was the problem, at least for her. I'll still be in Beacon Hills, Aunt Mel, I'm not moving cross-country. I just need some space right now. I need to get out of this house."
"And you think moving in with some guy you've only known for a few months is the right solution?"
"Hey, he offered and he has the space, so..."
Not to mention, when Kate came after her again, she would not be risking Aunt Mel's life.
Done with her desk, Joe moved on to stuff all her clothes into large trash bags for transport. Her fingers touched the fabric of the floral monstrosity she'd worn to the reunion dinner and she smiled briefly. She still thought it was so ugly it looked cool. Aunt Mel told her to hold on for a second and disappeared from Joe's room only to return with the boots from Target.
"I never wear them anyway," Aunt Mel said and handed the high-heeled boots to Joe. "Come on, take 'em, they go well with the dress."
Joe kept smiling. "Thanks."
Aunt Mel helped her stack the boxes in her Ford Fiesta and quickly declared Joe would need to go several trips. Joe didn't mind. The sun was out, Scott was in school and she was not going far anyway.
A large delivery van stood outside the laundromat when Joe got there, the drivers discussing how they had emptied out the place just a few months ago and was now there putting it all back. Jimmy, in a multi-colored shirt that would actually match Joe's dress pretty well, stood with his hands behind his back surveying the movers, probably afraid they would scratch any of the furniture.
"Oh good, you're here," he said as she carried the first cardboard box past him. "We need to agree on the general layout of the apartment. I suppose you will need your own desk and I suggest we use the common area in the living room instead of our rooms. You'll see why, they already brought in your bed."
He did not offer to help her carry the boxes upstairs, but Joe did not mind. She did not have much and most of it was just lecture or research notes that had accumulated over the years. As Aunt Mel predicted, it took Joe three trips with her car back and forth between the McCall house and Jimmy's apartment and four times that up and down the stairs in the apartment building.
After that night with the kanima, Jimmy had offered her his guest room. Okay, so it was after she had nagged about how betrayed and scared she felt for several hours he had offered her to move in. It might have been just to shut her up, but the more they discussed it, the more they realized it could be a viable solution. Safety in numbers and all. He hid it well, but his encounter with Kate had left him just as scared as she was.
These talks had happened when they trailed the Preserve looking for any trace of where Erica and Boyd had went. Not sure why he was still helping her, but she welcomed it anyway. Perhaps he did not want to be alone or his loyalty to the few he deemed as his friends ran deeper than she had anticipated. If he was planning something, he seemed to be in it for the long game at least. For some reason, she felt she could trust him.
In the end, they had found nothing more than a trace. Jimmy had triangulated the last known location of Erica's cell phone and they found it covered in mud with an arrow straight through it. Her last call had been to Joe. The trail ended there.
The Argents had a lot to answer for.
As Joe expected by now, her bruises and scratches were healed in just a few days. It added up to all the other times she had been wounded lately, healed at twice or thrice the speed as normal, even without Derek there as a pain-relief mechanism. She had not seen him since that night, not that she had made any particular efforts to do so. Neither had he. Postponing the inevitable truth where she was genuinly unsure which outcome she was hoping for.
Balancing the final cardboard box on her hip, Joe shut the trunk of her Ford and locked it. It was nearing sunset and the whole street was lit up in a deep orange hue. As she turned around, she was face to face with Chris Argent who stood a good ten feet away.
Arms down by his side, a neutral expression on his face — he gave her a nod in greeting, one she did not return. Out of everything, another Argent was the last thing she needed right now.
"Gerard has been taken care of."
She noticed the deep circles under his eyes. It had probably not been an easy week for him either. There had been a small obituary about Victoria Argent. No funeral, just a small private service for the family — what was left of it.
He did a half-shrugging motion. "Thought you should know."
"Taken care of how?" Joe asked when she found her voice.
"He won't be a threat."
Immediately, Joe scoffed. "If he's alive, he should still be considered a threat."
"Probably," Chris agreed slowly. "I won't tell you where he is. Don't take it personally." Even though he smiled, it came out looking more sad than anything else. "It's on what's known as a need-to-know basis. Primarily to avoid Kate from finding out." He cleared his throat. "He's isolated and cut off from our funds. Physically weak. I'll be notified if anything changes about his condition."
There was something about Chris' tone that left no room for discussion. In lack of anything else, Joe shrugged and said: "Okay?"
A heavy battle-worn sigh passed through Chris. "We're leaving Beacon Hills."
"For good?"
"For now," Chris corrected, but seemed mildly amused by her eagerness. "Not sure how long."
Joe scuffed her sneaker into the pavement and shifted around the box still on her hip. "You're going after Kate?"
"No." The answer seemed to pain him and his voice turned gruffer as he explained. "You gotta believe me, Joe, it's going against my every instinct to not go after her. I know firsthand how dangerous she is and what I saw that night-" He shook his head. "She's too dangerous to roam loose. Unhinged, out of control. I got some of my best guys looking for her, but if she goes south of the border it's out of my hands."
No elaboration, but he looked genuinly sorry. Joe realized what she had taken for a neutral expression was Chris Argent masking his pain as best he could.
"I'm taking Allison to some of our family in Lyon. Joe, I'm sorry, but right now Allison's all I have left and I'm," he swallowed hard, "I'm all she has left too. I can't abandon her, not even for Kate, I'm sorry."
In a few short months, Chris had lost his wife, father and sister — the last one twice. Joe recalled the look in Allison's eyes before she shot her with the tranquilizer dart, a memory that still made some of her internal organs squirm — he had come too close to losing Allison as well. It was hard to argue with his logic, but Joe still felt she wanted to. Kate might be a monster, but his family were her makers.
"You think she's going south?" she asked instead and clutched the box closer to her to conceal the nerves brought up by just thinking of Kate.
"Makes most sense. Even if she's caught, Mexico won't extradite unless the death penalty's off the table."
"You think a lethal injection would be enough?" Joe asked, harsher than intended. Her fingers dug into the cardboard of the box. "Did the bite take or not? Something was wrong with her, right? She talked about a cure, Alpha blood..."
Chris sighed, already sounding weary. "Alpha blood is a myth. It's almost an urban legend among hunters. It's not a cure, if it was, we would know about it."
They would probably not resort to ritual suicide in that case, Joe thought.
"But there's some who say that ingesting Alpha blood can hold off the turn, postpone it basically. It might have been how Gerard convinced her to keep helping him, to capture Derek instead of just killing him, because I never knew Kate to be marginally interested in the less tangible aspects of hunting. She never saw what we hunted as anything more than sophisticated animals."
If nothing else, his words shattered the uncomfortable thought on how Kate had taken some of Joe's blood already, not Derek's. Now it was her turn to swallow hard. Sophisticated animals?
"Erica is the same age as Allison," Joe said, her voice almost trembling in anger. "A girl. A person. She doesn't even have her driver's license yet. What gave you the right to go after her? And don't give me any bullshit about how potentially dangerous she can be — so far the heaviest bodycount in this town lies with the humans, a lot of them with your family."
"I'm aware," Chris said evenly with another slow nod. "Even though you might understand better if if you saw a werewolf lose control during the full moon. My point was that Kate never shared Gerard's fascination with the supernatural. Where he obviously has no problems exploiting it to his advantage," Chris' face twisted in an angry grimace, "Kate steered clear. If she's chasing Alpha blood now, she's desperate. There is no cure, Joe, none that's ever been confirmed. It's all rumors, myths and legends and Kate knows this."
Something still bothered her about this narrative — there was something Kate had said that night, something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
"For what it's worth, I don't think she'll be back here for a while. She's too smart for that. The number one thing you need as a hunter is patience. Eventually the heat will die down and-"
"She'll come back to finish the job?"
He took a while to answer. "As I said, some of the best hunters I know are on her case."
"You think they'll catch her?"
"No." The answer came resolutely and fast, but at least he was honest. "I'll keep doing what I can from overseas, but my number one priority right now is Allison. It has to be. I can't-" He shook his head. "I can't lose her too."
It was too hard to argue with a single father desperate to protect his daughter so Joe kept quiet. She had already asked him before if Gerard or Kate could have re-captured Erica and Boyd and he said not even they could be two places at once.
"I'll stay in touch if I hear anything," Chris said when Joe never responded at all. "I have to go. Take care of yourself, Joe." He sighed and looked over his shoulder at the still empty street. "You too, Mister Carter."
Eyebrows raised, Joe watched Chris Argent walk away from the laundromat as Jimmy skulked out of the shadows.
"What is it with you guys and lurking?" Joe asked, wondering how long Jimmy had been listening in. Not that it really mattered, she was just glad to not be left alone with the impending paranoia hanging over her head. Shifting the box around on her hip, she followed Jimmy to the front entrance of the apartment building.
"Thought you might be interested to hear he was tellling the truth," Jimmy replied and at least held the door open for her to go upstairs. "At least as far as he knows. Alpha blood is said to have some powerful qualities, but I've never heard about using it like that. Might be more to the story than he knows — in every myth, there's a grain of truth, right? I'll keep looking into it."
They had discussed this as well the last few days. At least most of it. Joe had not told anyone about how Kate actually took her blood and did something with it — it was so weird she was still not sure she had not hallucinated the whole thing. Could Kate have drunk it? Very on point with a lot of lore, but why would she have bothered with a needle? Why not just cut open a vein and taken it Dracula-style? Ingesting and injecting were two similar words, but very different approaches.
Joe sighed as she watched Jimmy unlock the front door to the apartment — their apartment now, she supposed. Getting to the bottom of this was like fighting a Hydra. Every answer she got just raised ten more questions.
Kate on the loose. Erica and Boyd missing. Mate-bond status unknown. Cousin still being stupid. Gerard 'taken care of' was just one thing checked off on a long list of problems. Would it ever be over?
Feeling a sense of deja vu, Joe tropped up at the vet clinic almost before it was opened the day after Chris paid her a visit. Doctor Deaton was in his white coat, filling out some paperwork and looked up as the bell jingled, signalling her entrance. He gave her a smile, but she noticed it was strained.
"Joe," he said and straightened up. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Joe remained in front of the counter, not wanting to go behind it. This was not a social call. "Did you know?"
"I'm afraid you're gonna have to be a bit more specific than that," Doctor Deaton said with an open and friendly expression. At least that was true — there were several instances she could accuse him of holding back information.
"Peter Hale."
No denying it and he gave a quiet nod.
"What is an Emissary exactly?"
At that he smiled. "I think the word speaks for itself."
"Yeah, I know. It means someone on a mission." Her arms crossed as she tried to keep her cool. "Interestingly it's used for both peace negotiators and spies."
"And who," Doctor Deaton tilted his head to the side, "am I spying for?" He leaned against the counter, arms to either side of his body. "Bridget Kane is not a woman to be trifled with, I'm sure you know, and I'm sure she had nothing flattering to say about me. And yet, who is the one who lied to you for all these years?"
Joe made a face. "Both of you?"
"Technically-"
"I don't give a damn about technicalities, okay? Everyone's lying to me all the time and I'm sick of it."
His eyebrows raised, giving her an innocent look. "Derek too?"
"Derek keeps things from me," she said, almost wincing at the name, "which might not be lying, but I'm filing it under the same category." Drawing a deep breath, she could not help but ask: "You know about," the word made her feel strange, especially now because of her doubts, "us?"
"It is easy to tell," Doctor Deaton admitted, "when you know what to look for. I knew Derek's great-grandparents." He said that as if it explained everything.
"Did you know about Scott's plan?" Third point on her agenda. "You helped him, right? You made the pills at the same time." Joe walked over to put the small orange pill bottle on the counter, the one she got from Derek. He barely glanced at it, keeping his attention fixed to her. "Those pills you gave to Gerard, the ones Scott had me take, they were twice the size as these. What happened to 'not meant for regular consumption'?"
At least he looked mildly ashamed at that. "How many did you take?"
"Six."
He appeared to do some mental head calculation. "Did you experience any irregular side-effects?"
She scoffed loudly. "How am I supposed to know? I don't even know what it's supposed to be like in the first place. Taking these instead of the morphine made me act like an idiot, but I'm not sure if that was the mountain ash or the sudden withdrawal symptoms."
Deaton picked up the pill bottle and weighed it in his hands. "Unlike wolfsbane, which is a poison, mountain ash works as a barrier for the supernatural." For some reason, he glanced at the gate separating the front part of the room from the rest of the clinic. "Which is why Gerard survived, but is unable to turn as the mountain ash sealed off the receptive gene from the Alpha bite." He raised an eyebrow at Joe. "And with you it sealed off the physical part of you that holds the direct link to Derek's pain."
"Only that part?" she asked, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. "Are you sure?"
"What other symptoms were there?"
"Just this general feel of detachment. We were angry with each other. Annoyed." Something about Doctor Deaton's expression made Joe blink a few times. "That's got nothing to do with the mountain ash, huh?"
He gave her a disarming smile. "There are few certainties to these kind of things, but I should not think so, no. I'm sorry to say that if you were fighting, it was probably more spurred on by your individual personalities than any outside interference." Something seemed to occur to him and he asked: "Are you still feeling this detachment from Derek?"
Not missing out on the slight jab about their personalities, Joe shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. "I don't know." At his raised eyebrows, she huffed. "I haven't actually seen him since that night."
"It's been a week. Why not?"
Glaring at her worn sneakers, she mumbled: "I dunno. I'm just, y'know, worried it might be," Joe averted her gaze to the side now, "permanent or something."
A small smile came upon Doctor Deaton's lips. "I know six pills seem like a lot, but it should be out of your system by now. Gerard took a heavier dose of these pills for a much longer period of time and it was the stress from the bite that set off a chain reaction in his body where the body is continually fighting it." He shook the pill bottle, making the remainder of the pills rattle around. "I'm not aware of any other long-term effects unless another catalyst was introduced." Another innocent look. "Bonds like this aren't easily broken."
There was no rational reason she should feel so relieved. Then again, was it because of the bond itself or because of the person it was connected to? It did raise another question: why had Derek been avoiding her ever since that night? Maybe he blamed her for Scott's actions? Or maybe it was because they had been fighting earlier, but then again they had definitely not been fighting on the porch, but then he'd brushed her off at the warehouse and she had probably looked angry about him killing Jackson even if the kid came back to life somehow and-
"So, if it's out of my system, I should be able to feel his pain now, right?" Joe asked without thinking. It had just occured to her that something might have happened to him.
"I should think so," he said and Joe's shoulders sank back down. There was this strange comfort of knowing if he was hurt or not. The look he gave her was pointed. "Though you won't know for sure until you talk to him."
"Yeah, no, sure." Now she cleared her throat. "So, uh, is there a rulebook or something I can look at first?"
"A what?"
"A rulebook. Something that can tell me how this works." She huffed and paced around the front room of the clinic. Kate had said she knew more than Joe about mates, but that was almost a given because Joe knew nothing. "Okay, so, we can smell each other and we're feeling each other's pain and-"
"Sharing."
She stopped. "What?"
"You're sharing each other's pain. It's divided, not duplicated." Doctor Deaton gave a small shrug, his expression telling her nothing of his intentions. "From what I've heard."
That meant a lot of things. First that the electrocution Derek suffered at the hands of Kate Argent, the mind-numbing pain that had her bedridden and near throwing up, hadn't even been all of it. It also meant that the injection she got, made Derek feel all of it.
"Werewolves have a very high pain threshold," Doctor Deaton said as if he knew what she was thinking and by this rate, she wouldn't be remotely surprised if he turned out to be a mindreader.
She blinked and tears fell, tears she wiped away hastily with the heel of her hand. "Okay. What else do you know?"
"Not much, I'll admit. It is very-"
"Rare, I know, even among werewolves," she said quickly, trying to distract from her stupid crying. "Once every hundred years or so, blah blah blah. It's not an exact science."
If Doctor Deaton took offense to her weariness, he did not let it show. He did some stuff on the register, multi-tasking as he spoke. "Surprisingly, Derek might be the one to know the most. He was very close with his great-grandfather."
Joe raised her eyebrows at the thought. It was hard to picture Derek being close to anyone. That had been before, though, right? Before the fire, before Kate, maybe even before Paige? Could she picture a young Derek Hale, who grew up in a house with ten or eleven people, sitting on his great-grandfather's knee — the one he called Pop? Maybe. If she tried.
"Did Derek tell you what 'mate' means?"
The suddden eruption of heat in Joe's cheeks evaporated every imaginary memory of Derek with his family. Stuttering like a school-girl, she mumbled: "I, uh, already know what it, uh, means."
"Really?" Doctor Deaton raised one single unimpressed eyebrow. "You want my advice? Talk to Derek. If you find the bond less intact, come back to see me. As I said, I'm not aware of any long-term effects." He seemed to regard her a second too long. "Then again, there has never been a mate-pair with one human before."
"Okay," she said, suddenly anxious to just get out of there unless he started on the specifics of mating.
Joe was an academic at heart, she had done some searches on the topic and what she found, mostly in the form of some very specific literature designed for a specific kind of woman, had her more than a little worried. Words like marking, breeding and kno- Nope, she was definitely not gonna have that talk with Doctor Deaton. Especially not if he was a mindreader.
"Have you talked to Scott at all?" Deaton asked before she could make it out the door.
One hand on the door handle, she paused and snorted in disgust. "No."
"Do you think, perhaps, you should offer him some leeway? We all make mistakes at that age."
Doctor Deaton gave her a knowing look that she firmly ignored. He was well aware of her past, as she was required to give him the history when she applied for summer jobs here. Summers she usually had at least two jobs, working herself to death to afford the document fees in her search for her mom.
"I am sure his intentions were well-meant, if poorly executed."
"Yeah, well, I don't like to be lumped together with the likes of Gerard Argent." Joe sighed and rubbed her face tiredly. "I don't like being lied to and I don't like someone else making my decisions for me. Scott pulled a hat trick and did all three. I had to learn the hard way that there's still gonna be long-term consequences despite your intentions being nothing but good. It's time he figured that out too."
Somehow Scott's claws in Derek's neck and the absence of pain in hers felt a thousand times worse than Kate beating the crap out of her. The absence of a choice, basically, which was a paradox in itself.
The door jingled as she left Deaton behind in his clinic.
One thing was certain, Joe thought as she picked up her order of an oatmilk cappucino from the barista and headed back for Jimmy's apartment, she did not have any sixth sense at finding Derek Hale.
It did not help that she knew of exactly two places he frequented. Both the depot and the Hale house had been a bust. Wandering around the warehouse district hoping to spot his car also was a no-go and she felt stupid doing it. Could she have gotten hold of his number somehow? Yes. Did she have absolutely no real reason for not doing that? Also yes. It would feel weird calling him now. Besides, what was she going to say?
'Hey, can we meet up so I can check if our supernatural mate-bond is intact?' sounded bad over phone and even worse via text.
Joe sipped her coffee as she trudged down the nearly deserted streets of downtown Beacon Hills. Not even the lucious oatmilk frothed to perfection or the enticing storefronts could distract Joe from her thoughts wandering. The depot had not only been empty, it had been completely cleared out. No sign of anyone ever being there and it had smelled sterile, much like Jimmy's apartment when she and Scott went there after Jimmy's disappearance. Covering their tracks most likely. Joe hadn't even bothered to get out of her car at the Hale house — if any werewolves were there, they would have heard her approach from a mile away.
Stuck in her musings, she rummaged through her backpack after the keys to the front door of the apartment building. As she passed the corner of the building, she caught a whiff of something familiar and froze in her steps.
Spicy, earthy, woody — masculine and strong. After being around him so much lately, she had almost gotten used to his scent. Now it was like she smelled him properly for the first time all over again.
Just smelling him at all from this distance made her want to cry, as it confirmed Deaton's words — the mountain ash had probably not done any permanent damage. Instead of crying, she rolled her eyes.
"Back to lurking?"
Derek Hale, in all his tall, dark and handsome glory emerged from the shadows where he had been leaning against the wall.
"Not a good yodeler."
He looked good. Beard back to its usual stubble, black hair casually spiked and his bright eyes staring straight into her soul so she thought her heart would stop. Dressed in his regular ensemble of a gray henley shirt and dark jeans. The way he looked at her, she was glad she was wearing normal clothes — jeans and a black t-shirt instead of her sweats.
Whatever quip she wanted to make to distract from her nerves died at her lips. Derek's eyes were hard, jaw flexed — he was here on business.
"We found where the hunters ambushed Boyd and Erica. I know you did too, I could detect your scent." A slight pause as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. "Did you find anything?"
"Yeah." She cleared her throat because of how rough she sounded. Nice to see you too, Derek. "Hang on."
Crushing the myriad of weird emotions that had erupted in her from his scent alone, she put her coffee on the ground next to her backpack and sorted through all the junk to find Erica's broken phone. At least that gave her an excuse to stop looking at him. It turned up underneath her latest revision of the paper, another thing she had been ignoring the last week.
She'd placed the phone, arrow and all, in a plastic bag for safe storing. As she got up, she handed it over to him and tried to breathe normally instead of filling her lungs with his scent.
"Explains why she never called," Joe mumbled and took a sip of her coffee. "Jimmy wasn't able to get a sense of direction where they went after Chris let them go, too many tracks leading in and out of the house."
He nodded. "Same here. We checked the remaining Argent-owned locations. Nothing. Everything's cleared out."
Even without saying it, she knew what he meant. No sign of Kate either.
Derek's eyes were locked on the arrow stuck through the cell phone in his hands. He twirled it over, felt the missile, probably recalling how it felt to have one of those piercing his heart. Joe could at least remember it and it hadn't even been her heart.
Here goes nothing.
Licking her lips, she pinched her own arm and Derek's eyes immediately snapped up to hers in confusion.
"You felt that?" she asked, trying to at least keep the hope out of her voice. The last remains of the sun cast a deep glow over his face as he nodded slowly. She followed suit and cleared her throat in an attempt to sound casual. "Just, uh, checking."
A long uncomfortable silence stretched out and Joe regretted all attempts to be stealthy about it. She should have just asked. Of course he had been busy looking for Erica and Boyd — it was stupid to think she and Jimmy were the only ones trying to find them. Of course he had been worried about something actually important than whether or not the mate-bond had been affected by Scott's stunt.
"You stopped taking the pills?"
In the midst of taking a sip of her coffee as she thought of a way to apologize, Joe spluttered it back into her cup. Staring at him, she realized he was focused on the phone in a way that told her he was working hard to keep that focus. Even though his head was turned downwards, she could detect a slight furrow between his brows. The question had probably been genuine.
"Yeah," she said breathlessly, a bit perplexed. It had never occured to her that he would think that, but of course he did. Her own damn fault he did. Without thinking, she addded: "To be honest, I never want to take another pill in my life."
It was not just the mountain ash she meant. The day after the kanima had been like the worst hangover she had ever experienced. In less than a day, she had quit morphine cold turkey, started on a heavy dosage of mountain ash and been injected with enough ketamine 'to take down a horse'. Add an adrenaline crash, a large helping of paranoia and general fatigue to the mix and it resulted in shivering under the covers for twelve hours straight. If Aunt Mel hadn't insisted on Joe to get some fluids and salt into her system, she would still have been a useless wreck a week after.
Realizing he was still not looking up, which meant he was still not convinced, she sighed heavily. "Derek, I didn't even want to take the pill when you asked me to. I had no idea I was taking them that whole day — I could strangle Scott for what he did."
"Scott only did what he thought was right." Still with the phone in his hands, he glanced up and shrugged when she gave him an incredulous look. "I can't blame him for trying to keep you safe." Now his gaze averted down, studying the arrow again. "Which is more than I did."
"Derek-"
His nostrils flared as he made a sharp movement with his head, glaring towards the sign of the laundromat. "I practically let you get taken by Kate. Again."
Joe sighed and ran a hand through her hair. She should have known he would try to take the fall for that. As if she hadn't let her guard down. As if there weren't three other werewolves and a hunter in the same vicinity who also let their guards down, too focused on the weapon instead of the wielder.
"Okay, first of all, Scott's an idiot and I don't endorse his methods at all. Going behind everyone's back, including yours, like that is bound to end in disaster. Second of all," she raised her voice to prevent Derek from responding, "you didn't let me be taken by Kate."
Already shaking his head as she talked, he flipped the phone over in his hands. "If I'd stopped for just a few more seconds-"
"She would have found another way," Joe interjected. "Derek, I'm not blaming you for anything. I get it."
His only response was glancing at her for a second before looking away again and she took a deep breath.
"Look, I don't have that many credits in psychology and I'm not nearly as good at this as Alex, but I'm guessing you're pretty good at compartmentalizing." It was a fair guess, guy had to be to even function as well as he did after everything he had been through. "You were preparing yourself for making a tough decision," killing Jackson, "and there was no room for me in that same compartment, right?"
His eyes flickered to her, a bit unsure, but he nodded eventually.
"Which, you know, sucks for other reasons, but again, I get it," Joe said with another shrug and shook her coffee cup, finding it empty. At his still doubtful expression, she elaborated: "I don't mind you having my back, but you gotta let me return the favor. Share the burden occasionally."
Now she got the full intensity of his glare. "Have you talked to Deaton?"
"Yeah?" she said slowly and felt her brows furrow. "How'd you-" Blinking, she shook her head because it didn't really matter how he knew that. "He, uh, said the mountain ash should be out of my system by now." She blew air out of her mouth and tried to find a non-awkward phrasing. "I don't know if you can tell. If you felt my pain just now, I guess that's a good sign and I could sort of smell you when I walked by, so... we good?"
Of course Derek only raised his eyebrows at that incredibly vague question, but his eyes did look less hard now. Maybe in twenty years or so, she would be able to interpret whatever the hell his facial expressions meant.
"Are things back to normal?" she found herself asking instead and then cringed for several reasons. "Not normal, I mean, our normal- not our normal, just normal for us, uh, which was not what I meant either, I mean-" Joe took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair again, knowing it messed up her curl pattern. Her gaze got stuck on the phone in his hands instead of his face. "I have no idea what I mean."
Luckily for her, Derek had a knack for reading her mind. He tapped the phone in his hands and there was something downright indescribable on his face as he said: "Bonds aren't easily broken."
Another strange sense of relief and she let out a small breath. A smile seemed to tug on Derek's lips, even as he bent his head to look at the phone, and that made her stomach do strange somersaults inside of her. Before her blush could work itself up, he cleared his throat and handed the cell phone back.
"Thanks," she mumbled and dumped it into her backpack again. She was keeping it for evidence for now, just in case. In case of...something. She wasn't sure. As the sun crept below the horizon it started to get chilly and Joe hefted the backpack up again.
"I stopped by your aunt's house," Derek said before she could take a step towards the doors. "She told me you'd be here. Are you moving in with Jimmy?"
"Yeah, I kind of already did." A large part of her wanted to ask why he had waited a week before contacting he, but if he thought she had continued taking the pills it explained some of it. Deciding to shift the attention, she gave Derek a lopsided half-smile. "Why, jealous?"
He did not even warrant that with a response, but he shrugged as he folded his arms over his incredily muscular chest. "You've moving out because of Scott?"
"Not just Scott," Joe said, thinking of Kate. A second of hesitation, before she asked: "I stopped by the depot earlier. Looks like you cleared out?"
Derek's turn to hesitate. Anyone overhearing their conversation must think they were experiencing lag with all the awkward pauses.
"It's compromised," Derek said eventually as he watched her unlock the front doors. Joe had the keys now, even though her knee-jerk reaction was always to ring all the door bells. "I'm moving us — Isaac and me — to a new location."
"Better not be that house of yours, that place is a safety hazard," Joe said and paused with the door open. Of course, remembering the broken bannister did not help on her awkwardness at all. She cleared her throat, trying to disguise any rising heat in her chest, and nodded to the staircase inside. "I got your jackets upstairs if you want them." For good measure, she added: "Jimmy's not home."
Derek had already nodded at her first lame attempt at an invitation.
"I'm working on something a little more long-term," Derek said as he followed her upstairs. They reached Jimmy's apartment and Derek stopped. "How many locks do you really need? Your roommate is a werewolf with the ability to fully shapeshift."
"Jealous?" she asked again as she finished the unlocking-combination and pushed the door open. She never caught his response, if there was any. "Locks are for me, anyway. I'm not letting her get the jump on me again. Come on, I'm in here."
Jimmy had let her know earlier he would be out most of the day and the apartment was as predicted totally empty. Making some vague comment to ignore the mess — they had just moved in yesterday after all — she had Derek follow her inside the guest room, which she guessed was her room now. It was the same size as the room she had at Aunt Mel's house, but the bed was twice as wide, leaving no space for a desk or any other furniture than a dresser and closet for her clothes.
Several stacks of unpacked boxes covered the available floor space in the room and Derek remained by the door with his arms crossed.
"Hang on." Joe dumped her backpack on her bed and dove down underneath the window. She knew she had seen them here somewhere, between her suitcase and the wall, ah, there. Straightening up, she handed the two familiar plastic bags to Derek. "You never took them with you last time."
His jackets, stored for safe-keeping and scent-prevention. A seal Derek tore apart easily.
"You want to keep this one?" he asked and held out the one of leather, the first one she acquired that night of the full moon. There was nothing in his expression to tell of his intentions.
Frozen in place, she managed to stutter: "I'm more of a jean jacket kind of gal."
His bright eyes glittered in the dim light, eyebrow slightly raised. Challenging her for some reason. "It looked better on you than me."
That was a downright lie, but she could not find the words to say so. Unable to help the blush rising, she swallowed heavily as if that would push her heart back down to where it belonged. Joe mumbled a thanks and accepted the jacket, putting it on the top of her suitcase. He immediately shrugged the other jacket on, a good fit over the loose shirt he wore underneath. A good fit she tried to ignore by staring out the window instead — she had a lovely view of a brick wall on the other side of the narrow alley.
It felt like hours dragged on while neither said anything. The spacious room felt cramped with all the boxes and the large bed — and both of them in here. The flimsy excuse for inviting him up here had been fulfilled and she waited for or expected him to leave. He didn't.
Still staring out the window — lovely running bond pattern of bricks, very neat — she only heard him sigh and shift around to lean against the wall next to the door.
"You okay, Joe?" Another slight pause, like so many times before this afternoon. "I'm not talking about this thing with Scott."
"Do you mean to ask if I'm fully traumatized by Kate now?" Joe said with a bitter laugh, not turning around yet. She sucked in a breath and crossed her arms. "Don't worry, I got room for one more."
Because she would be back, Joe thought. Even Chris thought so. Kate would be back eventually and that time, one of them would die.
Derek did not say anything and she could not bring herself to look at his expression. Joe despised Kate, loathed her, wanted her very existence erased, but Derek must feel he was stuck in a neverending nightmare with that woman.
"What'd she tell you this time?"
The question surprised her, but it probably shouldn't. Most people would have asked what Kate did to Joe, but not him. Derek, of all people, knew that Kate's most dangerous weapon was her words.
"Not much," Joe admitted, for once glad she was so out of it she had missed most of Kate's venom. "Generic name-calling and threats." Her brows furrowed at the memory. "Called me Plan B..." She finally glanced over at Derek, who she guessed was Plan A. "You ever heard about using Alpha blood to postpone," vague hand waving in his direction, "the turn?"
With a heavy exhale, Derek crossed his arms and shrugged. "No, but Alpha blood's said to have a lot of strange qualities."
"How does that work?"
"Magic?" Derek suggested with a raised eyebrow and a hint of a smile on his lips. "It's not meant to be explainable."
"Doesn't stop being magic just because you can explain it," Joe mumbled and pushed off from the windowsill to sit on the edge of her bed. "Derek, she," her brows pulled down further in concentration to avoid freezing up at the memory, "she took my blood."
He shoved himself off the wall in a hard movement. A physical reaction, she guessed, body responding to a perceived threat. With no one to fight and nowhere to go, he peered down at her and crossed his arms again. "What do you mean she took your blood?"
"She used a needle," Joe explained slowly, staring at the dresser in front of her, "and extracted probably a good ounce, if not more." Her mouth moved quietly, trying to form the impossible words. It sounded weird in her head, even weirder out loud. "And then I couldn't find it afterwards and I'm kinda sure she injected it into her own arm, because her sleeve was pulled really far up and," she looked up at Derek, "I kinda need you to tell me if this is a thing or if she's gone completely insane. I mean, both of those are really worrisome, but..."
As she trailed off, Derek's eyebrows did not look like they were coming down anytime soon. "It's not a thing I've ever heard about."
"But it could be a thing?"
They stared at each other with equally weirded out expressions.
"And considering I was pumped full of mountain ash at the time, what does that mean? We all saw what happened to Gerard, but Kate was bit more than a week earlier." No reaction from Derek, so she guessed Peter must have finally told him what Jimmy was. "And I'm not sure how much of her abilities had manifested, because I was able to fight her off first and then after doing something with my blood, she drop-kicked the kanima into a car and," Joe shook her head and gestured to her suitcase, "I could barely get this up the stairs so I know I've not accidentally gained superstrength. I've heard of hysterical strength, but... Derek, I got so many questions I don't know where to begin."
At his continued silence — not because he was ignoring her, but probably because he was trying to wrap his own head around what she had just said — she bounced up from the bed again and paced around the four steps she could in front of it.
"What's the timeline when you're bit? I mean, she looked bad from the start, but her wounds had healed — had something gone wrong? Could she be stuck in this weird limbo now like Gerard? I didn't see any Exorcist-vomiting of black goo from her, but I was half-drugged on ketamine at the time so I guess I could have missed it. Why would she be after my blood in the first place? You said that Alpha blood's got some weird supernatural qualities, does mate-blood got other weird supernatural qualities?"
"Not that I know of," Derek said slowly, only responding to her last question and she was about to call him out on it, but he shook his head. "I don't know the rest. Timeline varies, it goes faster the younger you are, but a week seems long. Last time something went wrong without killing them," he rubbed the back of his neck and Joe winced at the thought of Paige, "was with Jackson."
His words left another uncomfortable silence.
"Oh my God," Joe had no chance to keep her voice down, "could she turn into a kanima? Does she have identity issues? I mean, she was definitely not adopted," her voice turned dark at the thought of Geard, "but I would have said she had more of an antisocial disorder than a disassociative one."
"Sometimes the shape you take reflects the person you are."
Joe stared at him — it sounded like a quote and was way too poetic for their situation. "Okay, considering what kind of person Kate is, that is terrifying. And, you know, the funny thing is I can't think of a single more scary thing than her as a human, so," Joe stared out into the air, "I need more locks on the door. And a bigger gun."
"If she comes back, we'll deal with it," Derek said slowly, sounding way too calm, but that might be to prevent her from freaking out too much. "Peter's tapping into his network to keep track of her movements. She's on the run from more than us, remember? She'll be forced to lay low and if she surfaces, we'll know."
With a huff, she sat back down on the bed. "You're like the most pragmatic person I've ever met." Her fingertips danced on the opposite arm where she still had them crossed over her chest. "Peter's not going after her either?"
Another unnatural pause in the conversation. "No," he eventually admitted and took a deep breath. "There's something else I have to tell you."
A smile tugged on her lips despite the situation. "Are you trying to communicate?"
"Not if you don't shut up and listen," Derek said evenly. He waited for her to shrug in response, indicating silence from her side. "There's another pack coming. A rival pack." Derek stared into the room. "An Alpha Pack."
The way he said it, it probably meant something. At least to him. He sighed at her confused expression.
"It's not good," he clarified.
"Oh."
"Peter says they're already here, but we've trawled the entire Preserve by now. Looking for them or Erica and Boyd. Haven't found anything." He shook his head, a mild cleft between his brows. "Not sure what they want yet."
"How do you know they're here?"
"Their sign. They left it on the door of my house," Derek said, still deep in thought. My house, Joe noted. He still felt the Hale house was home. "A warning or a challenge, I'm not sure yet."
"There's always going to be something, huh?" Joe mumbled, thinking back to their talk the same night before everything that went down at the warehouse. It felt like two different lives, even though they were just hours apart. All she had wanted then was time with Derek, alone, no imminent danger approaching. Now, what did she want? Time? Space? Derek?
"One more thing," Derek said, but it was not in response to her question, it was a follow-up to his own. The bed dipped as he sat down next to her on the bed. Still some distance between them, but closer than they'd been since she physically threw herself on top of him to shield him from a gunshot. "Give me your phone."
"Why?" Joe asked automatically, even as she reached for it and Derek's rolling eyes was all the answer she needed. "Fine."
He unlocked it and she hovered over his shoulder, watching him enter a number and saving it as a contact with the conservative designation of-
"Derek Hale?" she asked and laughed at his confused look. "Of all the monikers in the world, of all the puns available, and you go for just your name? Wait, what am I saved as in your phone?"
"Joe Delgado," he said very sincerely and she laughed again. Grabbing her phone back, she changed his nickname and he sighed. "No."
"Technically it means-"
"I know what it technically means," he grumbled and snatched the phone. "There."
"You just added the wolf-emoji," Joe whined and vowed to change it back to 'Lobito' the first chance she got. "So, why do I have the honor of getting your phone number, Derek Hale wolf-emoji?"
"So that the next time you find yourself in imminent danger, you can call me," he said with absolutely no trace of humor. "Or at least text me before you decide to walk into a trap again."
"Ha-ha," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I'll have you know, I've gone almost twenty-three years without even being kidnapped once. Last few months really messed up my statistics." Another question presented itself and she asked it without overthinking it for once: "Why not before?"
The answer to that came slower. "Paper trail. Argents already knew about Scott, I guess I hoped they wouldn't figure out my connection to you." Neither said anything as they both knew that had been in vain. He fiddled with her phone, tapping it in his hand. "This isn't just in case of emergencies, Joe, it's also so you can-"
What she could remained unsaid as the phone rang in his hands. He flipped it the right way up — the number was not saved to her contacts. Derek offered her the phone.
"Just let it go to voicemail," she said, as it was a number she did not need to save. Memorized to perfection several years ago. His eyebrows raised, but he did as told and they waited for the ring tone to die.
"Your dad?" Derek guessed, back to twirling the phone in his hands.
"Mm," she made a noise of confirmation. "Probably just want to yell at me for moving out from Aunt Mel's or somehow make it my fault that I couldn't manage to convince him about Kate. I'll talk to him later."
The phone lit up with a notification of a new voicemail. She pocketed the phone when Derek handed it to her. At his raised eyebrow, she shrugged. "Much later."
Something obviously weighed on his mind. Even without the phone in hand, he still seemed to fidget and she found her eyes drawn to how he tapped his fingers together.
"I talked to Peter," he said slowly, "about your healing."
"And?"
"He has no idea. A mate-bond between a human and a werewolf has never happened before, at any point in time as far as our records show."
More finger-tapping and she wondered what could have Derek Hale, someone who never wasted any movement at all, unable to keep still.
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want," he spoke slowly, choosing his words to reassure her, "but did you ever find out anything about your mother?"
"A name and a date of birth," her brows pulled together in thought, "both probably fake as it led nowhere. Why?" When he didn't answer, still stared out in the air and obviously thinking, Joe tilted her head to the side. "You're thinking she might have been like-" She broke off, corrected herself. "A werewolf?"
"It would explain a few things," Derek admitted and finally glanced at her. "But you don't smell like a wolf. And no," he smiled gently, obviously seeing the question line up behind her eyes, "there's no such thing as a half-werewolf. You either have the gene or you don't."
"I don't think I do." Joe leaned forwards on her knees. Despite the healing, she had nothing else. "What do I smell like?" For some reason, the question made him turn his head sharply towards her and she raised her brows. "I mean, do I smell human or like I'm something else?"
A flicker of relief over his face, for unknown reasons. "Human. Through and through."
The expected answer and Joe definitely felt relieved. Who knew what other things were out there? Joe shrugged, posing her most likely theory. "Could it be that I'm just tapping into some of your powers?"
"Hard to tell." His eyes glittered when he looked at her. "It's not an exact science."
A phrase she was starting to hate. Rolling her eyes, she kept quiet for a while.
"Do you think this new pack has something to do with Erica and Boyd?" she asked eventually, as she hadn't thought to do it before.
He sighed, tapped his fingers together. "Not sure. I know Erica used to live in San Francisco, might be they've gone there. But even with the Argents out of the picture, they'll be too vulnerable on their own as Omegas." Considering they were both minors without too much life experience, Joe had to agree there. "Let me handle this, Joe. They're my responsibility."
No point in answering. He knew she would not be able to leave it alone.
That was his cue for leaving apparently and the bed dipped again as he got up. Before he reached the door, she blurted out: "Is it a stupid question if I ask if you're okay?"
To her surprise, he paused in the doorway and did a half-shrug as he gave it some thought. "Not that stupid now. We've made it a week without anyone getting killed. Gotta count for something, right?"
His shirt tightened over his chest as he pulled in a deep breath, blinking a bit as if the answer surprised him too. He actually gave her a close-lipped smile. "See you around, Joe."
And we're back! Feels like forever and it's been, what, three days? Hopefully a few more answers this time around, but as Joe said, a lot more questions too.
Chapter 50, you guys! Crazy! This little thing that started as a drabble and a mere writing exercise has grown immensely.
I'm going off my own schedule already. Posting chapter 50 today (obviously), ch 51 on the 29th and then chapter 52 on the 31st. Otherwise this chapter would have been 15k words long and it just did not flow nicely. Hope you don't mind! (It's poetic to have chapter 52 posted on New Years Eve, right? Even if I started this story in August...)
SO GRATEFUL for your response to the last chapter. I know it was a tough one, but it seemed you still enjoyed it, so that's good.
Thank you for reading this story and I can't wait to hear what you think about this chapter too. Not too much action, but I think we can do without it after SO MUCH action in the previous one. Please leave a review to tell me what you think ^^
Also hope all of you had a nice Christmas/holiday! It's different this year, that's for sure, and this is the first year I'm celebrating without my family. We had snow, but it turned into rain, so it's kind of hard to really get into the Christmas spirit. In Norway, it's normal to take time off between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, not sure if that's the case everywhere. I'm at least still enjoying the time off from work and the opportunity to write, eat cookies and listen to Christmas music ^^ Take care, you guys, and stay safe!