Chapter Text
"The Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not... That makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win..." -John Steinbeck, East of Eden
"What am I supposed to do?" The words are tinged with desperation and anger, but Derek barely hears them. Scott's voice is tinny, like he's speaking from far away. Or maybe it's Derek who’s far away, separated by six years of pain and despair and guilt. The smell of smoke and burning flesh is heavy on the crisp fall air, as clear and sharp as sound isn't.
The scent of death is overwhelming and choking, but not unfamiliar, not anymore.
Peter is dying, but even if he wasn't, Derek knows he needs to be put down. Like a rabid dog, he thinks, bitter, because this is the only chance any of them will have to match the alpha strength, that is even now starting to knit broken flesh back together.
Which means Derek has to make a choice.
Peter knows it too. His glowing eyes are wide and blood red. Pain twists his face into a gruesome rictus, but the faint impression of a smirk lingers beneath it. Like Peter has one final trick up his sleeve, and he's confident of victory.
"You've. Already. Decided," Peter rasps. The words are tinged with alpha power, and they call to Derek, to the part of him that still acknowledges pack. He has to fight against the command in them. It would be so easy to make that final strike, to take the power that smells like lightning before a storm, like the sharp bite of electricity running under his skin.
Derek jerks back, suddenly nauseous and cold, and Scott is at his side in an instant. His hand on Derek's shoulder is hot, even through his leather jacket. Derek stumbles away from him, falls over onto hands and knees, and retches into the dry leaves scattering the ground.
When his body has stopped heaving, he looks up to see Scott kneeling over Peter in his place. Derek's claws unsheathe despite himself, and he digs them into the cool dirt. It's a fight to stay still, curled on the ground, to keep every instinct he has in check and let this happen the way he knows, intellectually, that it has to. Scott deserves a chance at a normal life. Unlike him, a small voice whispers in his head, cynical and hurt. Young like the teenagers standing in a tense circle around them.
And Derek… he’s just ready for everything to be over, so he can go off and lick his wounds in peace.
Scott doesn't do anything at first, and Peter has gone quiet except for the labored gurgling of his breathing. There's a long moment of nothing at all, and the world slowly starts to come back into focus for him, in that silence.
He wants to look away, but he can't.
Scott hesitates for a moment, and Derek follows Scott's gaze as it tracks over the clearing one last time, catching first on Allison as she clings to her father, her expression somewhere between hopeful and horrified. And then on to Jackson and Stiles, standing close by as well. Jackson's jaw clenches when Derek catches his eyes, and he looks away. Stiles, on the other hand, holds his gaze. It's a challenge, but there's sympathy too, and that's almost too much for Derek to handle, so he look away. He turns back to the gruesome tableau that is his uncle's final moment, just in time to watch Scott draw a clawed hand back with deadly momentum. The strike, when it comes, is clean and precise, splattering blood across the ground like rain.
Derek feels Peter die.
Peter was his alpha. Had been. As his life soaks away onto the forest floor, the magnetic pull of pack slowly seep away too.
In the wake of that loss, he is only barely aware of Scott as he lurches away, the movement fumbling and awkward. Scott smells like fear and anger; his breathing is quick and rasping and too loud, on the verge of an asthma attack. Human.
Allison jerks out of her father's hold and is at Scott's side in a heartbeat. She doesn't say anything, just clings to him and makes broken wet noises that Scott kisses from her mouth.
Derek turns away from the sight. He's exhausted and there's a knot in his chest that tightens even further at the knowledge that Scott got everything he wanted, at a price Derek had to pay. He walks into the darkness of the forest and lets the shift overtake him. He's confident that tonight at least, no one will follow him.
~~~
"What are you doing here Stiles?"
Derek lifts his head and looks toward the door, but he doesn't bother getting up. He's sprawled out—not exactly comfortable, but close enough not to care—across a dirty and broken couch that he’d picked up off the side of the street a couple of nights ago. It smells like mold and sex and rusted metal. He hates it, but it had been convenient and not something anyone would miss. It had the added benefit of not being covered in Kate Argent's blood.
"I just..." Stiles trails off. Derek watches him fidget with the front pocket of his hoodie, where the stitching is slowly coming undone. There are dark shadows underneath his eyes, and he looks like he's lost weight. There's a sharp medicinal tang to him too, much stronger than Derek remembers, and disconcertingly similar to the amphetamine scent that clings to the couch as strongly as old sex.
Stiles sighs. His shoulders slump and he seems to take Derek's lack of talking, or otherwise threatening bodily harm, as permission of some sort. Derek has just enough time to pull his feet hastily out of the way and halfway sit up, before Stiles is falling into a graceless sprawl on the other end of the couch.
"Dude, this couch is nasty," he says absently, but he doesn't get up. He just leans back and throws an arm across his eyes, as if he's trying to block out a light that isn't there.
"Stiles," Derek huffs, annoyed. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with, I don't know, Scott?" It's been a week since Scott got his humanity back.
Stiles stiffens at the words and his heart stutters for a second. It's an odd mix of signals, and it takes Derek a moment to untangle them, categorize them as anger.
"Scott and I aren't really friends right now. He pretty much wants to be with Allison. All. The. Time. It's kind of sickening, actually. Even when he's not... Dude, I can't even make a dog reference without him flipping out on me.” Stiles pauses and grimaces."He quit his job," he says like this is the real sticking point. "He needed that job."
Stiles’ mouth turns down into a bitter frown. "And I can't do that, Ok? Not...I mean, I don't have a job to quit, but that's not the point..." He frowns and forcibly gets himself back on track. "I can't just forget. I can't pretend everything's cool and there's no such thing as werewolves. Everything that happened... I mean, it was different for me obviously, but... the stuff I saw and did, that was something. I can't pretend it didn't happen. That people didn't die."
Stiles says the last quietly, and a subtle current of fear spikes through his scent, but strangely tempered with adrenaline and excitement. Derek idly thinks that Stiles must have liked the adventure of it all, and it drives home how young he is, how naive. "You're an idiot," Derek says contemplatively, when it's clear that Stiles is done talking. There's no bite to the words, but Stiles stiffens on the couch next to him nonetheless.
Derek waits almost a full minute for the torrent of defensive babble to start back up. He can practically feel the words hovering on the tip of Stiles' tongue, but they never come. It's another minute after that before Stiles finally huffs and settles back down.
"Yeah." he agrees, and then makes a deliberate show of wiggling deeper into the couch.
Derek grimaces at Stiles, but since he's been napping on the same couch on and off all day, he really doesn't have much ground to stand on. So he just stays quiet and lets Stiles sprawl there for a little longer. It feels good to have some company, at least until Stiles starts jiggling his right knee in agitation.
When the fidgeting becomes actively annoying, Derek tries again. "You should go," he says pointedly, and Stiles makes a little defeated noise in the back of his throat. He gets up, the movement jerky and aggravated, and he doesn't look back at Derek until he's at the door again.
"Thanks," he says, not quite sincere, but close enough to it that Derek knows Stiles must have gotten something from his little visit, although he can't for the life of him figure out what.
It's a long time, after slipping out the door, before the sound of his heartbeat fades beyond Derek’s ability to hear. The house feels too quiet in the absence, and he settles back against the couch again, throwing his feet back up to soak in the little bit of warmth Stiles had left in his wake.
Derek doesn’t actually expect to ever see him again, so when Stiles shows up a couple of weeks later, it’s a surprise. It probably shouldn’t be though.
"I am not going to be your token werewolf friend, Stiles."
Stiles pauses in the doorway. He’s momentarily backlit in the beam of struggling afternoon sunlight that has managed to strike its way through the thick woods that surround the house. He looks out of context, and Derek has to stop himself from staring, strangely riveted by the way the light turns the short stubble of Stiles' hair auburn.
He looks better today. His eyes are normal bright, and not glinting with manic chemical overdose. He looks healthy, if not exactly happy, and somehow older than Derek remembers him, as if all the shit of the last couple of months has finally settled within him, for better or worse.
"What? Derek that's not..." Stiles gapes at him, clearly thrown, and Derek smirks before settling pointedly back onto the same couch they'd sprawled on the last time. He knows he's being petty, but the words felt like a victory all the same.
It takes a second, during which Derek can practically see the internal debate, before Stiles finally juts out his chin and squares his shoulders.
"Allison came up to me today." The words tumble out in a rush, as if Stiles is afraid of getting interrupted. When Derek just rolls his eyes and maintains his relaxed apathy, Stiles continues more carefully. "We haven't really been friends or anything. Since, you know... Anyway, she said her grandfather came into town last night."
Derek huffs and raises an unimpressed eyebrow.
"Granddaddy Argent is apparently pretty badass?" Stiles tries with a meaningful full body flail, as if that somehow gives his words more credibility. "She thinks he might be coming after you. You know, some sort of fucked up revenge thing for Kate. She wasn't happy about telling me, but... Allison's sort of a good person? Definitely way too good for Scott."
"I take it you guys are still fighting?"
Stiles' eyes widen and his mouth falls open. "Seriously? That's what you are taking out of all that? I tell you that her geriatric, probably psychopathic, grandpa is coming to kill you—with a sword I might add. She mentioned something about a sword-- and you are concerned about whether or not Scott and I have gone back to being BFFs?"
"He can try," Derek says lightly. He's not nearly as confident as he sounds, but the idea of dying isn't scary to him anymore. He's strangely ok with it. He's not suicidal, he doesn't want to die that badly, but if it comes down to it? At least he wouldn't have to make any more choices.
"He can try," Stiles mocks. "Fine. You know what? Your fucking funeral, man. Excuse me for giving a shit."
Derek winces, but pointedly continues to look away from Stiles. If the hunters are going to come after him, there's nothing he or Stiles can do about it. At least this way, maybe Stiles won't be in a position to get hurt too.
The life-span of an omega is notoriously short, especially in such a remote territory as Beacon Hills, where there are no other packs nearby who could keep the hunters at bay; he's accepted that fact. Has known it since he was a child, and his parents had gone on and on about the importance of pack and family. If it's not Allison's grandfather now, it will be someone else later.
"Really?" Stiles bites out. "That's it? You're just going to roll over and take it? Bare your throat like a good little wolf?"
"No," Derek feels very tired all of a sudden.
"Right. Well. OK. I guess I'll just leave you to your suicidal, broody self then." Stiles glares at him, but doesn't move right away. He just stands there with his hands on his hips, like he's waiting for Derek to do or say something. He doesn't, and Stiles finally gives up and stomps to the door, a mistake that dislodges ash and dust and sends Stiles into a coughing fit. Derek snorts in amusement; it serves him right.
"Ya know what? Fuck. You." Stiles swats the loose debris off of his plaid over shirt, throws an angry, stubborn look back at him, and then marches back outside to his Jeep.
~~~
Derek dodges to his right, more out of instinct than anything else, just as the sharp crack of a gunshot shatters the silence of the autumn night.
He has to force himself not to flinch when the bullet still passes far too close though. The smell of gunpowder is thick and acrid on his tongue as he sprints across the fog-covered field on the far outer edge of Beacon Hills cemetery.
The tree line is still several hundred yards off, and he knows the hunters are closing in. The heavy fog layering the ground helps to obscure him a little, probably the only reason he hasn't actually been shot yet, but he's afraid one of them will get lucky before he can get to the relative safety of the trees. At least the forest is his territory. He might have a chance there.
Except…fuck. Derek inwardly curses when a pair of headlights spears across the darkness. He can make out the roar of a vehicle as it speeds down the maintenance road that meanders off to his left, before it cuts directly across the path he'll have to take to reach the woods.
"Der-ek!" A gravelly voice intones mockingly behind him. You might as well give up. The hunter doesn't actually say it, but he doesn’t need to.
Another gunshot cracks through the fog, and Derek stumbles when he feels a hot, sharp pain spear across his side. Not a direct hit, and he can feel it healing already, but it startles him, slows him down at a moment when he absolutely cannot afford to lose any ground.
Those few seconds are his downfall. He watches in resigned defeat as a black SUV skids to a halt directly into the path between him and the woods. It's only a matter of seconds for a hunter to lean out of the open window and rest a fucking huge gun against the sill.
Derek knows there's no way the hunter will miss, so he goes still, like a deer caught in the headlights, and feels a wave of resignation wash over him.
Nothing happens at first. The hunter just keeps his gun carefully aimed, and Derek realizes too late that maybe this isn't going to be the easy, quick and painless death he imagined it would be.
He hears the hunters behind him coming up on him, fast, at the same moment he's aware of more headlights making their way down the service road to him, tightening the trap.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
Derek turns, stiff backed and slow, to see an old man walking toward him. His face is sagging and his hair is white. There's a manic light in his eyes though, that is at odds with the image of a smiling grandfather.
He's also holding a sword. The blade is long, and it glints with deadly menace in the light of the waning moon.
"Gerard." Derek nods his chin in acknowledgement.
"I see my reputation has preceded me. Good." Gerard draws the final word out, slow and menacing.
Derek doesn't say anything. His body is rigid with anticipation, and his senses are on high alert.
He doubts he'll be able to get away, but he’ll be damned if he’s going down without a fight. He might even be able to take a couple of the hunters down with him. The thought spurs a kick of adrenaline, and his claws lengthen. He might not be an alpha, but he is a born werewolf. Since they are refusing to give him the quick bullet to the brain that he’d hoped, in his darker moments, would be his end, he’s determined to show them what that means.
It's the alertness of his senses, his sharp-eyed vigilance for an opening, that draws his attention away from Gerard, and behind him, a little to his right. The scent is familiar, but not at the same time, and Derek feels his heart speed up in disbelief when Scott steps out of the obscuring mist. That moment of recognition douses his concentration, shocking the breath out him. Against his will, he feels the transformation that has been roiling under his skin retreat. It leaves him feeling vulnerable and human in a way that he hasn't for over six years.
"Ah. I see you recognize my new associate," Gerard says with manic glee. "I'm afraid my dear granddaughter was too soft for my tastes, but Scott here... Well, he was most helpful. Isn't it convenient that he knew about your habit of visiting the cemetery? The information was a bit...imprecise. I was getting impatient after a week," Gerard wrinkles his nose and gives Derek a look that's almost conspiratorial. "But it was certainly useful in the end, don't you think?
Derek can't think of much of anything. Betrayal is an old friend to him, after all. It feels ironic and darkly appropriate.
Scott won't meet his eyes. He just stands there looking uncomfortable, unarmed, but clearly not any ally of Derek’s. There hadn't been any taste of a lie in Gerard's words about Scott's role in this.
"Nothing to say?" Gerard laughs, and then he nods to someone behind Derek. There's the crack of a bullet, and then all Derek knows is the pain of impact. He seizes as the bullet strikes him in the back, and then roars, falls to his hands and knees. When there’s no immediate acid sting, he knows that at least the bullet has not been laced with wolfsbane, but the agony from a direct hit is terrible.
"You didn't think I would make this easy, did you?" Gerard mocks. "It's because of you that my daughter is dead. No. This won't be easy. You will be begging for death before I finally grant it to you. And then, finally, this place will be cleansed from the taint of your kind."
Derek spits up blood onto the ground. When he looks back up he knows his eyes are once again glowing with the outrage of his wolf, but this only prompts another laugh from Gerard.
There's another crack, another flash of agony, in his leg this time, and Derek falls to his stomach. His blood smells hot and metallic on the air, thick on his tongue as he gasps desperately.
He's barely aware of anything as Gerard stalks up to him. He groans as the old man kicks him viciously, rolling him over with the hard leather toe of his shoe. His sword is the only bright thing in the dark night, and Derek is strangely riveted by the reflection of the moon in its silvery surface.
Even only half full, blurred in the reflective blade of the sword, it's bright and peaceful, and Derek is reminded of running with Laura beneath its pale glow. They hadn't done it often in the years after the fire, and only once recently, back in New York. That had been before he'd found out about her need to return home, though, about the itch that had been building under her skin, calling her back as inexorably as the pull of the moon at its peak.
It was almost ironic that this is what his mind focuses on now, with her dead and Derek not far behind. He'd been so angry at Laura, when she'd told him about returning. Looking back, all he can think about is how fierce she'd seemed. How strong and stubborn, like their mother. Qualities he'd always thought he disliked about her, until he didn't have them, didn't have her standing like a shield between him and the rest of the world.
The press of a cold edge against the back of his neck is shocking. A thin trickle of blood wells up almost immediately, tracing down the skin of his neck and dripping wetly to the ground, before the pressure disappears. There’s a blur of fraught kinetic energy, and Derek closes his eyes, waits.
And....It's more the sudden flurry of activity around him, the shrill ree-ar of a siren, that breaks Derek out of his breathless, interminable moments of waiting.
He lifts his cheek from the cool dirt, and shakes his head to clear his blurred vision. The hunters are scrambling, frantic, backlit by seizing flashes of red and blue. The vehicles Derek had seen earlier have arrived in a screech of tires and chaos, and Derek dimly realizes that Gerard has moved a few feet away from him. He’s barking orders in a rough but clear voice, and there's a calm determination to him, a madness in his casualness, as he tries to organize a retreat. Derek shivers violently and heaves against the ground in pain and relief both.
"Police!"
Derek finally gets the pain enough under control that he manages to sit up, only to come to an abrupt stop at the sharp end of Gerard's sword once more.
"I don't think so, beast." Gerard hisses. He looms back over Derek again, and he looks beyond anger, beyond anything even remotely human. The crazed light in his eyes is easily one of the most frightening things Derek has ever seen in his life. It reminds him of Peter, but worse. So far beyond anything that even Peter had managed, in his most broken and inhuman.
"Step away from him and put the weapon down!" a voice shouts, and Derek's eyes flick up in recognition. There's only one police officer standing there, gun draw, and following his command to Gerard, he speaks quietly into the radio clipped to his jacket.
"Requesting backup..." Sheriff Stilinski says, calm and determined.
Gerard doesn't move away, just laughs. "I don't think so."
"I repeat. Put the weapon down, or I will shoot."
Gerard growls, and in a move that's surprisingly quick considering his age, he draws his arm back and brings the blade into a powerful arc straight towards Derek.
A crack of gunfire breaks the night, and Derek flinches involuntarily, and then watches in stunned silence as Gerard stumbles back.
Another shot, and the old man falls to his knees. He drop the sword to the ground with a thud, and reaches up with his now free hand to swipe at the blood gathering at the corners of his mouth. He stares at it for a moment, and then his eyes roll up into his head and he falls back.
Derek knows when he dies. Can hear the moment that his lungs take a last rattling breath, and his heart shudders to a stop.
There's nothing after that. It's eerily silent. The sheriff is just standing there, gun still aimed warily at Gerard. He only lowers the gun when some movement, or sound, or maybe fatherly intuition, draws his attention off to his left.
Derek's too.
"Stiles..." he says, soft, probably too soft for human ears, considering how far Stiles is from him. He's standing behind his father, clutching at the edge of the door to his Jeep. He looks pale and worried, but after getting a nod from his dad that everything is clear, he steps away and runs to Derek's side.
"Oh my god. Derek. Are you ok? Please tell me you're ok. Dude, if you aren't..." His hands are gentle as he pulls Derek up against him, supporting him in a way that feels suddenly intimate, especially with the sheriff still standing off to the side, face caught between amused and worried and... he looks startled too, wary like he's not sure Derek isn't a threat, either.
And shit. He realizes that he's still wolfed out, that the sheriff is looking directly at him, and he's miraculously still letting his son within touching distance.
"I'm fine,” he tells Stiles distractedly.
"Dude. You really aren't."
Derek nods in acknowledgement, and meets Stiles’ eyes. "But I will be."
"Yeah." A small smile quirks Stiles’ lips, before turning almost feral-- any werewolf would be proud-- as he looks at something over Derek's shoulder.
"Scott," he says, voice hard, and honestly, Derek hadn't even realized Scott was still there at all. He is, though, and there's a horrified look on his face when he lifts his head to look directly at them, eyes wide and scared.
"Oh my god. Stiles I..."
"You what? You didn't know what you were doing? Jesus! He was going to kill Derek. He would have killed you if you were still a werewolf. Which, you aren't. Because of," Stiles waves his hands to encompass all of Derek.
"I know. I know that. I'm... god I'm sorry. I was just..."
"A selfish dick?" Stiles suggests, and Scott flinches.
"That's enough, Stiles," the sheriff says, coming toward them. He lays a hand on his son's shoulder and draws him to his feet. "You need to get Scott out of here. Backup'll be here any minute."
"What about Derek?"
The sheriff sighs and looks down at Derek, and if feels like the man is judging him somehow. He says, pointedly, "I'll take care of him, son. It's a pretty clear-cut case here,” and that must mean something to Stiles, because he purses his lips, but nods in acknowledgement nonetheless.
“Ok. I’ll see you at home?”
“Yeah. Get outta here.”
Stiles hesitates, then turns to glare at Scott. When he waves his hand impatiently, Scott follows him, trailing in Stiles' wake and looking for all the world like a kicked puppy. He only stops briefly when the sheriff claps hand on his shoulder. The man’s words are soft, but with his hearing, Derek picks up on them without any effort.
"You are better than this, Scott."
Scott flinches, but looks the sheriff directly in the eyes. He nods. "Yes sir."