Chapter Text
Words for the chapter: 아들 Adeul (son) 정훈 (Jung-hoon) 햇살 Haetsal (sunshine)
The house is creepy and moldy and Derek can literally see black goo dripping from the ceiling in what he guesses used to be the dining room. “I don’t like this place,” Jung whispers. It’s the first real shelter they’ve found since leaving Jung’s house. “It’s dirty and smells bad.” Marta whimpers and presses her cold, wet nose against the back of Derek’s hand, as if agreeing that they should leave.
“I know, haetsal, but we have to stay here the night. It’s too dangerous otherwise. Besides, Derek’s dirty and smells bad and we still love him, don’t we?”
Jung cracks a smile at that, and Derek’s tired, but amused, protest is welcomed in the dankness of the new place. They’ve been moving east, hoping to find something there. It’s what Derek’s family was trying to do, comb the US from west to east, looking for hope. Even though Derek’s found his hope now, he figures looking for more can’t hurt.
Stiles doles out their food for the night, fussing over Jung by wetting his t-shirt with his spit and trying to rub the dried human blood from Jung’s face. Derek watches them, a painfully fond look on his face. Even back when everything was normal, Derek would never have imagined a life like this for himself. Despite everything, he’s actually content. Maybe even happy. His life as a laborer, broken from his previous abusive relationship and in pieces at his feet, doesn’t even feel like it was his own. It feels like that life was a bad Hallmark movie that he never saw the end of because he walked out of the room before Laura could rope him into watching the end of it.
Of course he remembers his family, remembers how it felt to have their love and support, constant and strong, always at his side...and he wishes they were here right now to enjoy what seems to be the tail end of the worst part. But he remembers their fall all too well, and knows that the only time he’ll ever see any of them ever again is in heaven...or hell.
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“Kill her, Derek.” Derek could feel his claws pushing out and retracting, over and over, his fingers hot and wet from slashing Peter’s throat not even five minutes before. “You know you need to. You know you want to,” her voice coaxed, and Derek’s entire body hurt from resisting the shift. He didn't want to, not at all. He didn’t want to end his older sister’s life any more than he wanted to end his uncle’s. Why did everything always fall on him? Why was this decision his?
“Kill her now!” Kate’s voice screamed inside his head, and as she lunged Derek ripped out Laura’s throat with his claws that were still dripping with Peter’s blood. She fell hard, blood rushing from her neck, and Derek dropped to the ground and sobbed. “Now Derek, you have to man up and get back up. More are coming.”
Derek could hear the validity in her statement, knew that she was right. It was only going to be a few minutes before the next infected supernatural creature came to attack him. He looked around at the bloody bodies of his family. His father, killed by his mother’s claws as he tried to stop her from ripping Cora apart. His mother, killed by his father’s quick bullet. His cousins, who ripped each other apart. Peter, who he killed himself. Laura. Cora was missing from the littering of bodies, but Derek was sure that she was dead or feral: he could see the crazed look in her eyes as she burst from the shelter, snarling.
He couldn't see much through his own tears, but he knew that he had to go. So with Kate’s voice in his head and his family’s blood on his hands, he ran.
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Many things have changed in the weeks since they’ve added Jung to their unit. They’ve been spending more time hunting for live food rather than scavenging for it (Jung needs more than tomato juice to survive, and Stiles thinks that it’s hilarious that Derek so obviously loves hunting fresh meat with their little vampire), they’ve been staying in way too many caves for them to not be bears, and Stiles has learned how much he loves being a father.
He found out Jung’s full name is Jung-hoon, and he even learned how to spell it in korean, which made Jung completely light up when Stiles could finally do it perfectly in the dirt on the floor of their fourth cave. It seems like Derek’s adjusted well to the dad life as well. Apparently, his sister’s boyfriend had been korean, and he had picked up a few things, namely pleasantries and comments about the weather. Which is how they start calling Jung, haetsal, which means something that roughly translates to ‘sunshine’ in korean.
Jung’s also taken to calling himself their ‘adeul,’ which means ‘son’ (and no, Stiles definitely did not cry when he found out what that meant. Not at all). Stiles kind of worried that their makeshift family unit would be weird, or awkward, or uncomfortable. But Jung and Derek both took to the whole situation much better than Stiles had anticipated. Plus, Marta is extremely good at diffusing any tense situations. Stiles swears that if he didn't already know that dog shapeshifters didn't exist, he'd think that Marta was one.
So once the whole how-will-this-child-fit-into-our-lives crisis was over in Stiles’s head, a new thought began to take hold: how will they deal with a child in an actual apocalypse? And how does the actual, literal apocalypse affect a developing child, vampire or not?
Well, turns out kids are incredibly resilient. Stiles should have accounted for that: their naivety and limited life experience keeps them from being able to fully comprehend the full weight of incredibly heavy subject matter and happenings. When they first left Jung’s house, Stiles and Derek stupidly forgot about Jung’s beheaded family in the front yard, parading them past it like they were looking at exhibits in a museum. Stiles had immediately told Jung to look away, but to his horror, the child was squatting next to his uncle’s head, peering curiously at its gnashing teeth.
He had made some kind of comment about his uncle biting ankles, giggled to himself, and then had grabbed Derek’s hand before they crossed the street. Stiles had been left completely gobsmacked, wondering how Jung could just shake off that sort of encounter.
Then he remembers that once, when he was little, he watched his dad run over a cat in the road. He had cried the entire night, and then the next day, when his family was going to lunch the next day, he made them pull over so he could show his dad’s roadkill to his mom, grinning and talking about how cool it was. Yeah, kids are resilient as hell. Stiles wouldn’t be surprised if it was a group of kids that were the only ones who survived this apocalypse.
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The next place they stumble upon is more normal-looking than the previous house, but it looks like it hasn’t been inhabited even longer than the other one. They walk into the house after Derek determines that there’s no one else there. Jung is sucking absentmindedly on a squirrel as they scope out the rooms, deciding on the best place to sleep.
Derek opens a cabinet to find a can of peaches, excitedly opens it, and then physically balks at the smell wafting from the can. He tilts it so Stiles can see, and Stiles laughs at the black peaches sitting in the bottom of the can. Derek’s face is still scrunched up from the smell, and it makes Jung laugh, too. Derek feigns throwing the peaches onto the small boy, and he squeals, jumping behind Stiles for the purpose of protection.
“Hey!” Stiles protests, laughing along with Derek and Jung as he pretends and fails to be offended. “I'm not your Derek-shield!”
“Yes you are,” Jung giggles, running around Stiles as Derek tries to catch him. Marta yips quietly but joyfully, tail wagging and tongue rolling as she joined the excitement.
Stiles is grinning madly, watching his little makeshift family wrestle on the muddy floor of the house, trying to fight the urge to admonish them for dirtying their clothes. He loves those two boys, and he wishes that he can give them the entire world. He wishes he can promise Jung safety, and friends, and the security of going to sleep without worrying you won’t wake up in the morning. When he finally breaks the fight up and they settle in to sleep, Stiles drifts off with his hand in Jung’s hair and his legs tangled with Derek’s.
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The community Stiles lived in before was perfectly fine. Maybe it lacked a little safety, maybe it lacked a little trust. His father used to say that a bit of mistrust never hurt anyone. In fact, it’s probably what kept them alive for so long. Their gated community was reinforced with steel bars and wooden stakes and wolfsbane. They had a few descendants of witches who still had spellbooks, and with their combined knowledge, the community was able to make a few wardings.
Stiles liked it well enough there. It was just him, his dad, and Allison. Everyone else was...well. Dead. Just like most of the world. Because there was no one left to save them. Everyone, including Stiles, had failed. It seemed like everyone was failing recently.
Allison had a hardness about her that Stiles had never seen, not even when her mother and grandfather had died back in their junior year of high school. Her eyes lacked their usual warmth and compassion. She was paler than she'd ever been. He remembers the harshness in her voice every time she spoke, like she was angry at the world for letting Scott and Lydia and her father die.
For letting Scott come back.
It was easier not to talk about them. Instead, they talked about weapons, and where their next meal would come from, and how to make use of pine sap as a firestarter. They talked about watch schedules, and vampire hunting patterns, and the best way to ration their wolfsbane.
“You're holding it wrong,” Allison said to him, adjusting his grip on the bow for him. “You'll need to get it right if you want to kill anything.”
“Give Todd my ration today, son. He's been looking a bit thin,” his father encouraged with a tired smile.
“If we can find out where those cub's mother is, we can get enough meat to last us a week,” Allison commented, pointing towards two bear cubs playing about a mile from their wall.
“We lost another today. Please go tell Jenny's family, I don't think I can do it again,” the former sheriff leaned back tiredly in his makeshift bed.
There were unshed tears glistening in her eyes as she looked at the pack of rabid wolves about to break down their shabby metal wall. “I'm glad Scott's not here to see this.”
“I'm glad your mom's not here to see this,” Noah Stilinski said more minutes before he took his last breath.
“I love you, Dad,” Stiles remembers saying. He'll never know if his words were ever heard.
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They walk past an abandoned park after leaving their eighth shelter, which was a room in an old school that looked like it used to be a spanish classroom. Derek catches the look in Jung’s eye and suggests that they stop for a moment to drink some water and recharge, since he can’t hear anything around for miles. Stiles looks like he’s about to protest (they are pretty out in the open, after all), but when Derek manages to catch his eye and barely shake his head, Stiles closes his mouth, nodding back.
Jung looks positively euphoric and he glances back Derek and Stiles before he sprints towards the curly slide. Derek notices that Stiles is grinning like a madman, and the second they hear Jung whooping as he goes down the slide, Stiles is off like a flash, clamoring up the metal staircase himself. Jung laughs with delight when he sees that Stiles has joined him, and he quickly convinces him to race on the double slides.
Derek settles in on one of the park’s benches, crossing his legs and watching his pack play. Marta, like the good-natured dog she is, settles in at his feet. Derek pours some of his water into an empty can and sets it on the ground near her, and she laps it up contentedly. Stiles spins around one of the metal poles and boops Jung on the nose, and Jung cries out, “Appa!”
And it takes Derek a second, but he recognizes that word. It means Dad. His heart bursts with love for their little vampire. He remembers that it was not so long ago that he thought that the little vampire would betray them to his family, or drink Stiles’s blood if he got too hungry. He remembers when he thought he might be able to resent the child for taking up their lives and adding more worry and danger to them. Most of those fears dissipated after their first week together. Jung was sweet and quiet, and had managed to prove himself as a valuable fighter and hunter.
Vampires, much like werewolves, had some enhanced abilities. Jung was incredibly quick, and his lack of a heartbeat made it so other werewolves or vamps couldn’t sense him until it was too late. The child never hesitated for the kill, which, while sad, was a valuable skill. His enhanced hearing and ability to smell blood from a good distance away also helped them detect if anything was coming near them. He had a harder time with other vampires and the infected, but the little guy could hold his own.
So Derek really doesn’t have to worry about Jung’s safety. But that fact doesn’t actually stop him. He doesn’t really know exactly where they all fit into this world, but he knows that they fit into each other’s lives. He never thought, that after losing his entire family, he could find another one. Live any semblance of a real life in this odd, new world. But look at him: sitting on a park bench, watching his son run around with his...Stiles?
This is another thing Derek isn’t quite sure about. Where he and Stiles stand. He figures that there’s no reason to define it: he would’ve found it hard enough to maintain and define a relationship before all of this, let alone now. There’s no time to actually sit down and talk about what they are, what they might become. As a werewolf, Derek is hyper-aware of all of the small touches, the heat in Stiles’s look. He’s addicted to the smell of Stiles, to the sound of his heartbeat during fights. They sleep side by side, Stiles is always scent-marking him. He finds himself seeking the human for comfort in times where he never would before. They never talked about it: were they lovers? Partners? Friends who went to each other for comfort?
Derek decides that it doesn’t matter, not really. Because right now, they’re the most important thing in the world. Right now, they’re Jung’s parents.
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Right now. Blood. Now. The now.
What is the now?
When is the now?
Blood. Smell. Squirrel. No, bunny. Cora. Cora called them bunnies.Oh, Cora. Gone. Gone forever. Mom. Dad. Laura. Peter. Gone. Dead.
Derek, too. Gone. Dead. Not yet, but almost.
Dead. But no...pain. PAIN. Screams. Does he feel? Don’t know. Doesn’t know. Didn’t know.
Cruel. Harsh. Voices. Oh no. Wolfsbane. PAIN.
So, so lonely.
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Shelter number eleven is a local doctor’s office. Since they’re camping out in a small town, it’s a very small, four-roomed office. The exam tables have rips in their cushions, and from the look on Derek’s face it’s from a werewolf. Jung loves it though, exclaiming something about having a real bed and bouncing on top of it. “I’m gonna go and find some sheets!” He exclaims, running out of the observation room. Marta lets out a soft bark and gallops after him, and their footsteps can be heard thundering softly down the hallway. Derek and Stiles smile after him, ready to get settled in themselves. They drag in two other observation tables, one that they find in another room and one that they find tucked away in a storage closet, shoving them all together to make a fairly nice-looking bed.
Derek sits gently on it, hands clasped in the way he only does when he’s at ease. Stiles catches his eye and he nods his head in response: yes, Jung’s fine for the moment. At that, Stiles sits next to Derek, their sides completely pressed against each other’s. Stiles places his hand on top of Derek’s clasped ones, and Derek takes that as a cue to rest his head on Stiles’s shoulder.
Stiles can feel Derek’s hot breath on his neck, blowing on him in soft little puffs. He feels the warmth of Derek’s body against his, can smell the dirt and blood mixture that is totally and completely Derek, can feel the tickle of the man’s hair. “I’m a terrible person,” Stiles says suddenly. Stiles doesn’t even have to look to know that Derek’s frowning.
“Why?” Yeah, he sounds pouty. Whenever he sounds like that, it means that he’s scowling.
“The world has gone to shit, right?” Stiles rationalizes, reminding himself more than Derek.
“I...guess?” Derek says, clearly not understanding where Stiles is going with this.
“Well, the whole world is falling apart. Literally. So why do I feel like everything is finally coming together?”
Stiles can feel Derek shift against him, and he knows that if they weren’t so close, Derek would be shrugging. Derek used to shrug a lot in the beginning of their partnership. It was his main form of communication. Actually, the first time Derek ever shrugged at him was after he had been captured by the cannibals, close to starvation, in that cold, dank basement. Stiles had been bound in duct tape, and Derek, close to feral as anything, was in a cage.
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“Hey. Hey, dude.” Stiles said, voice scratchy and pitiful. He tries again, this time putting some strength behind his words.
“Don’t call me dude,” the thing in the corner growled back, voice guttural.
“Hey! You’re not crazy!” Stiles said excitedly. The thing merely grunted at him, but Stiles distinctly remembered it saying something just moments before, so he wasn’t disheartened. “Hey, can you get out? I think these guys are gonna eat us.” He paused for a moment, considering his own words. “Well, guys and girls. Cannibalism doesn’t discriminate. Or at least, I don’t think it does. Do you think women cannibals have to fight for equal rights to be taken seriously among the male cannibals?”
“I’m in a cage,” the thing--well, guy--spat out, seemingly ignoring Stiles’s rambling. That was probably for the best. His rambling wasn’t the most productive thing in the world.
“Can you not get out of it?”
“Laced with wolfsbane,” the dude said, each word coming out like it’s painful.
Stiles was hit with the realization fairly hard, harder than he thought the cannibals hit him with their big stick. “Oh. You’re...you’re a werewolf.” That was met with silence. “Well, you’re talking with me, so you’re not infected. Right?”
There was silence, but if Stiles squinted, he thought he could see the werewolf move his shoulders in a shrug-like motion. There was silence. It didn’t last long.
“Well, I’m Stiles.”
The werewolf didn’t respond for a while, and Stiles thought that that was the end of their captives bonding, but then he said, “Derek.” Stiles took that as his name.
“Well, Derek, I’m sweating like fucking crazy, and do you know what that means?” Derek grunted again, which Stiles took to mean as, “No Stiles, what on earth could that mean?”
“Well I’m glad you asked. I think I’m slippery enough and my wrists are thin enough that I can...just…ha!” Stiles held up his hands in front of him triumphantly, showing off his one duct-taped hand and his other free one. “Freedom. Now, if I let you out, will you eat me?”
Stiles was now getting close enough to the cage that he could see Derek’s red eyes, and the werewolf was honest-to-god glaring at him like he was the most annoying thing on the face of the planet. And, well, with most of the population dead, Stiles wouldn’t doubt if he actually was the most annoying thing on the planet. “Okay, okay, fine. We have a much better chance of breaking out of here together, wouldn’t you say?”
Derek shrugged at him for real that time, and Stiles just sighed dramatically. “Well, we can at least try it.” He noticed that on a nearby table was a pen and paper, and he grabbed the pen. He quickly pulled the pen apart and began to pick at the lock with the ink cartridge, deciding that it would take too long to straighten out the spring coiled at the bottom of the pen. He had Derek’s lock sprung fairly quickly (being the son of the Sheriff really had its perks) and suddenly he was face-to-face with an alpha werewolf.
Derek just stood there looking at him, as if waiting for orders. He made no move to leave the cage.
“Well, hopefully that did the trick. We should probably make a plan, don’t you think? How about you come out and we get ready to escape for good?” Stiles took some steps back, leaving Derek room to step out of the cage.
Derek shrugged, but eventually complied. If only Stiles had known the significance of their meeting at the time.
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“Maybe because it is?” Derek asks quietly, and it takes Stiles a moment to shake the memory and remember what they were talking about before.
“Y’know what? My mom, my dad, my best friend...everyone I ever knew and loved is dead. Why am I...allowed to be so….”
“Content?” Derek tries to finish the sentence for him.
“Happy,” Stiles settles on, and it’s that moment when Jung decides to come back, arms full of fabric. “What’d you find, haetsal?” Stiles asks, drinking in the smile on the boy’s face.
“I couldn’t find sheets, but here are some curtains! Don’t worry, the windows were boarded up.” Stiles ruffles their little vampire’s hair, making the boy halfheartedly complain. Marta jumps up and licks Jung’s cheek. It’s hard to remember that their little vampire is eleven years old now, growing even through his almost immortality. The thing about vamps is that their lifespans are five times as long as the average humans. So they grow at about the same rate as a human child until they hit about eighteen, when the aging process slows considerably. It makes Stiles strangely happy, thinking of never having to see their little boy fully grow up. Always being theirs.
“They’re perfect, adeul,” Derek says softly, and Jung absolutely glows at the praise.
This, Stiles realizes. This is why he’s allowed to be happy. Because this little vampire decided to join their lives, Stiles is able to be happy. To find contentedness in the shitty, shitty world they live in. No matter the situation: the fight, the shelter or lack thereof, the hunger, the thirst, Stiles realizes that he’ll be happy as long as he has Jung and Derek by his side. They give him happiness, purpose. Without them, he would probably be dead a hundred times over. And not because of the infected.
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Jung knows something is wrong. Appa Derek is sniffing the air like Marta. It’s a werewolf thing, now be quiet, Jung, he’s told. He can smell, too. He knows that there’s something here, but he doesn’t know what. He can’t remember what the smell is. Appa Stiles places a hand on the back of appa Derek’s neck, but that doesn’t work like it usually does. Appa Derek is still stiff. They’re walking slowly, and Marta doesn’t like it. Jung doesn’t either, if he’s being honest. Which he should be, said appa Stiles. He should always be honest, especially with himself.
There’s something in the air, a tension that feels so heavy and scary. Jung knows that this is so much different than anything he’s ever seen. Appa Stiles has a hand on his machete now, instead of appa Derek’s neck. It makes Jung uneasy, his stomach dropping. He grips Martha’s scruff a little tighter.
“Halt!” Someone from above yells, and appa Derek looks like a wolf, with claws and red eyes and lots of hair and fangs. Jung decides it’s a good time to bring out his own fangs, and he hisses threateningly at the person yelling at them. His parents never let him yell at people, it wasn’t nice. Plus, he can’t really see the person, and this frustrates him.
“Don’t come any closer! Turn around and don’t come back, or I’ll shoot!” The person says, and appa Stiles raises his hands slowly in the air.
“We’re not here to hurt anyone. Please, I’m Stiles, and this is--”
“I don’t care!” The person yells. Which, rude. “This is our part of town, and I am authorized to shoot if you don’t comply.”
“Authorized by whom?” Appa Stiles asks, and Jung wants to grab his hand and run them all out of there. Appa Stiles isn’t like him and appa Derek. He might not be able to get shot.
“I’m not joking. I’m gonna start counting if you don’t leave!”
Jung thinks for sure that they’ll leave now, but appa Stiles continues to talk. “Please! My companion, Derek, thinks--”
“Five!”
“--thinks that he smelled his sister! Do--”
“Four!”
“--you have anyone named--”
“Three!”
“--Cora here? She’d be a werewolf, and--”
“Two!” Jung starts tugging on appa Stiles’s sleeve, begging him to leave. Appa Derek just stands there, frozen.
“--this is her brother, Derek! Please!”
“One!”
“Please! Cora! Cora! Derek’s here!!”
“Adam, stop!” A gunshot goes off very suddenly, and Jung feels tears spring to his eyes. Oh no! Appa Stiles has been shot and he’ll never get better and he never told him how much he loved him and--
“Jung? Honey, are you okay?” Appa Stiles is kneeling next to him, and Jung realizes that he was breathing hard. He looks at appa Stiles, and realizes that he’s okay. He’s okay. He breathes slowly, chest hitching. He nods. “I’m sorry, I know this is scary,” he says, and Jung wipes the tears forming in his eyes. It’s okay. He’s big, bigger than he was. He can do this.
“Cora?” He hears appa Derek say, voice cracking.
“Derek?” A person appears from behind one of the buildings, her hair dark and her smell like appa Derek’s--a bit of wet fur and mud. “I...when I saw you fighting with out family, I thought you were infected. I...I ran,” she says, tearfully.
“When you ran, I thought you were infected. I thought you were going on a killing spree,” he whispers back. Jung watches them stare at each other for a moment before they rush into each other’s arms, and Jung feels a little jealous.
“Does this mean appa Derek won’t love me anymore?” He asks appa Stiles as quietly as he can. But maybe not quiet enough.
Appa Derek and his sister pull apart, and his sister has a funny smile on her face. “How about you introduce me to your friends?” She asks Derek.
Jung feels a little annoyed at being ignored. “I’m not his friend, I’m his adeul!” He says defiantly, lip sticking out.
Cora’s eyebrow shoots up at that, and she looks at Derek. “You’ve been busy, older brother.”
Appa Derek smiles warmly, which is Jung’s favorite appa Derek smile. “This is Jung. We found him almost a half year back. And no, Jung, I'll always love you. And this is Stiles,” when appa Derek looks at appa Stiles, he gets that nice glint in his eyes that makes Jung happy. It makes him feel loved. “He saved my life over a year ago.” Jung feels proud at that. His appa Stiles, saving lives. Appa Stiles calls it kicking ass and taking names, but Jung’s not supposed to say the word ass. But he can definitely think it all he wants. Ass ass ass. He giggles, then realizes that he shouldn’t when the adults look at him.
“This is Marta!” He says to turn the attention away from him, and he introduces his dog, who wags her tail happily when Jung pats her head.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Cora says. She looks up at the rooftop and looks back at them. “You’ll have to excuse Adam. He’s just trying to keep our community safe, you understand.”
“Of course,” appa Derek says, while appa Stiles says, “You have a community here!?”
Cora nods. “It’s been thriving on the rooftops of the city for the past year, almost. I joined about nine months ago, and I oversee camp recruitment. They’ve been able to grow select crops, make an irrigation system for waste, and build a real community. Plus, the high vantage point is nice.” She looks at Jung. “Do you think you’d like to check it out? We have lots of supernaturals, and some other kids about your age.”
Jung considers her for a moment. He looks at appa Stiles and appa Derek, both of whom are looking at each other, something weird in their eyes and their expressions and their smiles. Jung hasn’t seen that look in a long, long time, maybe not since everything went bad. He thinks, if he remembers right, the light in their eyes is hope. He thinks that’s a great thing to have. “What do you think, haetsal?” Appa Stiles asks him when he takes too long to answer, and Jung knows that he wants that light to stay in his appa’s eyes forever.
“I want to check it out,” he says seriously, feeling very important that he got to make this decision. “Can appa Stiles and appa Derek come, too?”
“Of course,” Cora says lightly. Appa Stiles holds out a hand, and Jung takes it.
Appa Derek takes his other hand, giving Marta enough room to walk between their bodies. He smiles down at Jung, filling the young boy with enough warmth that he actually does feel like sunshine. “We’ll follow wherever you go.”