Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Derek is up to his wrists in gore. He’s fighting against death itself right now, sweat beading at his temples and in the small of his back as he works to close the wound. The clock in his head is telling him that time is still on his side - they got the patient on the table within minutes, after all. The Companion – he’s forgotten her name – dabs carefully at the blood at his nod. He’s surprised at the way she shows not the least sign of care for the blood staining her beautiful gown, for the way her strawberry blonde curls are pushed ruthlessly back away from their patient.

Until the moment the gun had gone off and Stiles had crashed to the deck, the woman had seemed typically removed and in control to Derek – like every Companion he’s ever met. When she moves her hand away Derek looks over the wound site carefully, checking his work, knowing a life depends on his skill.

It’s the most comfortable he’s felt in months.

In this space, in this moment, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He has the skills and the knowledge, and he is going to win this.

He barely knows this boy, doesn’t know much about any of this rough, difficult crew. But he does know Stiles deserves better than an accidental gut-shot over a fight that’s not even his.

Derek won’t let anyone else die for his sins. Won’t let the Alliance have any more collateral damage in their relentless search for the last remaining Hales.

Chapter Text

The Sheriff stares down at Stiles, the slack face, too pale, and the gorram patched-over hole in the boy’s gut that should never-

“Heyyy,” those big eyes open, “hey there, Ba.”

He swallows hard. Stiles never calls him that. The kid still remembers his own father well enough for it to scratch him up some whenever he slips. John can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard that word from Stiles, and every single time he’d have sacrificed the guilty thrill of it to know that the boy’s fever would break, or the wound would heal, or the hallucinations would stop.

“Hey,” John says softly. “Kid, what’s the news.”

“I’m... shiny, Ba.” The words emerge like slow honey. “I’m a-okay.”

“Lying down on the job again, huh?”

He grins sleepily, “Sorry. Be up in a min...”

John watches goosebumps appear on those skinny arms and turns away to gather up a blanket. “Well, I can let it pass this once, I guess.” He smooths it over Stiles’s legs, extra careful, feels the weave of the fabric catch on the rough skin of his hands. Too rough for everything he touches, seems like.

“Don’ look so worried,” Stiles sing-songs. “M’okay... s’all ooookaaay.”

“Almost wasn’t,” John can’t help saying, though he knows it’s not right to worry Stiles with this, not now.

“He wouldn’a lemme die,” Stiles says, cutting right to the heart of John, like always. “He’s ...nice.”

John gives him a long look in return. Hadn’t taken more’n a minute to guess what Stiles had in mind, Doc lookin’ all... like he does. Only person he’s ever seen in real life that could maybe match up as Lydia’s counterpart. Stitched together neat and clean, spine straight as a rifle, jawline like you only see in vids. A tiny part of John is really, really enjoying that he got to punch that jaw, whether the doc turned out to be a fed or no.

“Don’t go workin’ too hard on that crush o’yours, shàonián,” he chides. Turn about’s fair play, after all, and he knows Stiles just as well as the boy knows him. “Doc won’t be with us for long.”

“You’re nice too,” Stiles says. Kid musta hit his head, thinking charitable thoughts about John like that.

“You and I both know I’m a mean old man,” John tells him.

Stiles shakes his head, stubborn as Claudia had always been. “Always lookin’ after...” Stiles slurs. His head slumps to one side, putting their stowaway in his line of vision. The girl’s still sleepin. Probably worn out with all that being frozen and screaming like a banshee, John supposes.

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” Stiles murmurs, and his eyes are already closing.

John stands there for far too long, watching the boy breathe. There’s decisions to make, and aint a one of ‘em gonna be easy.

Chapter Text

Derek stands in the dim, worn-down meals area of the Beacon, and wonders when he last felt this exposed – this anxious.

Cora is sleeping on a cot in the medbay, across from a still-sedated Stiles. Cora’s clearly exhausted, but her sleep is fitful. Derek knows she needs rest, and, obviously, medical care. For once in his life, Derek is utterly unsure of anything else.

What is going to happen to them now? How can he ever make Cora safe from the Alliance? What will happen to the innocent boy lying on the medbay’s other bed, the one Derek had put at risk so unforgivably?

Barely a week he’s been out of the Core and already his dedication to his oaths as a doctor are... slipping. It leaves a cold tremble in his gut to admit that.

He’s losing himself. Losing the heart of who he is, out here in the black.

He’d known the old Derek couldn’t survive too long out here. Knowing it, of course, and living it are two entirely separate things. He’ll chew on his guilt about Stiles for some time to come, and it’s nothing more than he deserves.

For right now, though, what he desperately needs to know is - what will these people do with Cora?

He glances around at their closed off expressions, squares his shoulders, and begins.

“The Hales have been one of the leading families on Osiris for generations.” Even as he says it, he recognizes the idiocy of it. His own silk waistcoat, his handmade shoes and his careful diction, set against the rough but practical clothes of the Captain, or even the Shepherd.

These impractical, beautiful things have no value out here, in the black. Much like the endlessly vaunted Hale family position.

His eyes flick to the Companion – Lydia. She is probably the closest thing he has to a peer, on this ri shao gou shi bing ship. Her beautiful face is composed, showing nothing. Derek swallows, remembering the emotion on her face when she’d shoved her embroidered wrap under Stiles’s head as his blood flowed over Derek’s fingers.

“For years the Hales have excelled at many pursuits – martial arts, sculpture, surgery, dance, in tests of strength, of speed, or endurance. It became our family legacy. There has been at least one Hale competing at every Alliance Games for the last four hundred years.”

He’s boring them. He can see the crude one – Jackson, he recalls – smothering a yawn, and gets to the point. “Then, when I was a teenager, my Uncle Peter published his research on the Hale genetic legacy. He claimed that...” Derek hesitates. Behind his back his fingers clench to white knuckles, “...that we were, quite simply, better. His data suggested our family had faster metabolic rates than the norm. That our strength, speed, reflexes, even healing, were all demonstrably 20 to 30% better than the average citizen of the Alliance, up to 50% better measured against citizens of border planets.”

There’s a moment of silence. The Captain’s stony face hasn’t changed since Derek began speaking, but the second in command, Allison, is frowning, thinking it through. She’s as beautiful as the Companion in her own way, but it’s a beauty built on toughness and pragmatism.

Derek is standing straight and tall, the way he’d been taught, and he’s trying to explain, but.

His words are all wrong. Even as they spill from his mouth he can tell he’s doing it wrong. Too stiff, too formal. He’s not reaching them. Shame of it is, he can’t seem to stop.

“I recall hearing something about the Hale family of Osiris, on a wave, a few years past,” Deaton, the Shepherd says, careful and measured.

“Yes,” Derek says, and his throat locks up for a moment. He makes his tone measured, emotionless. “When I was fifteen years old, several months after my uncle’s research was made public... there was an explosion at our compound.” He doesn’t falter, doesn’t let them see the heaving wave of grief he rides as he says, “My parents, grandparents, brother and sisters. Aunts and uncles and cousins. There were no survivors.”

“Your whole family?” That’s the pilot, Scott. He looks stricken. Alison puts a hand over his in silent comfort.

“I was taking the entry exams for the MedAcad, in the Core,” Derek says instead of answering directly. “My uncle was on approach to our home, in his ‘flyer. The blast wave caught him and he crashed, was horribly burned, spent years in recovery.”

There’s a long silence. There’s really nothing Derek can say about that period of his life. Not to these strangers, anyway. Instead he says, “I went away to complete my medical training, and my uncle was eventually released home. He had... wild theories about the explosion which... I ignored. I went on to become a trauma surgeon. And then one day my uncle contacted me, asked me to meet him. When I did-”

He has to stop then. Because Derek’s been running ever since it happened, and it seems like he still hasn’t had time to understand, to comprehend that it was real, not a crazed conspiracy theory- it happened.

He clears his throat and lifts his eyes to the far wall. “He took me with him into a building I later realized belonged to a government agency. I thought he was insane, that the pain had broken his mind until I saw-”

“What?” That’s the Shepherd.

“My sister.”

As one, they all glance to where the medbay sits.

“No,” Derek manages to say. “Not Cora. My older sister. Laura. She was...” he licks his lips and glances away, struggling to say it. “All those years since the fire. They’d been running... experiments. Manipulating the genome. Harvesting her eggs. Trying to find out why we were the way we were.”

“We got her out of the- we got her out,” Derek says. He can’t begin to name the place they’d kept her, the way she’d been chained like a dog. If he starts down that path, he’ll lose all restraint, howl it out like a beast and tear down every world he sees, stone by stone.

“And then she told us about Cora. She was- they’d put her into stasis,” he squares his shoulders. “Security discovered us while we were on our way to where she’d been – stored,” he grits out. “Laura- fought them off. Made me promise...”

He looks down at the floor and keeps his eyes open so he won’t see it yet again. Laura, eyes burning with protective fury as she’d thrown Derek the stolen keypass, flecked with blood. Get her out, Derek, swear to me you’ll get her out- Then the last sight of her, as the tiny shuttle lifted off the roof. She’d flung herself into the path of the laser trying to bring the shuttle down. His sister, his big sister Laura, body cut cleanly in two. And Peter, beyond all reason, ripping at the guards with his bare hands until they finally brought him down, his unseeing eyes staring up at the fair blue sky.

“I made it out, with the stasis pod,” he finishes. “Ran as far as I could. It’s just the two of us now. We’ve been running ever since, looking for – safety.”

“That’s... quite a story, son,” Deaton says finally.

“Yeah. It’s a tale of woe,” the Sheriff says. There’s a beat before he adds, “Meantime we’ve got the Alliance on our tail and a fed locked up below. You got a solution for that doesn’t land the rest of us in the soup?”

Derek stares helplessly back at him. How had this all gone so wrong? “I never thought-”

“Yeah,” the older man says, flat and tight. “That’s about what I figured.”

Chapter Text

“How did you come to be here, on this ship?” It’s the only conversational gambit Derek can think of. He’s never been particularly good with people, and losing almost his entire family hadn’t exactly encouraged him to step out of his shell.

There’s a long silence. Derek is halfway convinced Stiles isn’t going to speak to him – no more than he deserves – when the younger man licks his lips, nervous or uncomfortable or something, and then says quietly, “I hail from Beacon.”

Āya māya. Derek can’t disguise the sharp inhale. Even in the Core, the Battle of Beacon Hills was famous, and not for anything good. He’d guessed the Sheriff had been there, of course, easy enough considering the coat, the attitude and the name of the ship. But somehow Stiles – sunny, sweethearted Stiles – had seemed unmarked by that kind of ugliness.

Stupid, of course. There’s nowhere in the ‘verse that offers compassion or ease for anyone, no matter how wide their smile, or good their intentions. Derek’s own life is proof enough of that.

Stiles keeps working, though, hands quick and certain on the – something – he’s repairing, or modifying, or possibly inventing. He doesn’t look up as he continues.

“My two little sisters died but a few weeks before the battle,” he says, distressingly calm. “Fever swept through the place and took them along with it. Most folks blamed the troops, but, I don’t know. That had happened plenty enough in the years before, war or no.”

Derek just stares at him.

Stiles swallows and says, softer, “They told all us dirt farmers to evacuate, o’course. Had their big shiny battle all planned out, ‘cept,” he shrugs and slants a sad smile Derek’s way. “Momma was... well, the new baby was comin’, and she wasn’t in no fit state to move. Pa sent me out to find some willow root for the pain and when I came back-”

He takes a long breath and whispers to his clenched fists, “Just dust and ashes. S’all there was, for miles.”

“Stiles,” Derek says helplessly.

Stiles turns his head away, seeking some mysterious tool that’s far out of reach. His voice is steady by the time he speaks again.

“You know the one thing that’s always in plentiful supply in a war?” Stiles asks. He wrenches hard at the casing and it comes away with a clatter.

Death? Derek thinks numbly. Unimaginable suffering?

“Orphans.” Stiles shrugs and reaches in, almost up to his shoulder. Derek can hear shades of the Sheriff in that answer, the cynical hurt beneath. That young, fresh face is angled toward Derek for a few moments as Stiles reaches around inside the machine, then something clunks and he straightens again, face turned away as he begins to speak again.

“Browncoat brigade found me wanderin’ a few days after... after. Took another few days after that ‘afore they could hand me over to what was left of the townfolk.” He shifts around on his knees and a tiny curve appears at the corner of his mouth then. “Battle was over a few days later and it turned out I liked the brigade better’n the orphanage. I snuck on board just afore their transpo was lifting off...” he shrugs. “Sheriff remembered me.”

“I bet you were hard to forget,” Derek murmurs. It’s the first chance he’s had to say anything that wouldn’t have felt like lobbing a hand grenade.

A ghost of Stiles’ usual smirk appears on his face. Then he shrugs, refocuses on his work, reassembling the machinery with quick, sure hands. For a moment he appears to hesitate, the first time he’s seemed unsure since Derek opened his damn fool mouth and asked his ‘harmless’ question. Then he says, “Sheriff was married, you know that?”

“No,” Derek says blankly. It’s pretty hard to imagine, if he’s honest.

“She took care of me, for a spell. It helped, I think, to have a brat underfoot. I learned engines from her, to start with anyways.”

Helped with what, Derek wonders? But he knows without asking that Stiles won’t go into detail on that point. Not his story to tell.

“And then... when he bought the ship, he brought me along with him,” Stiles says, like it’s that simple. Like there’s not a missing wife and a lot of years in between those two statements.

“That was a good day for him,” Derek says. “He’s lucky to have you.”

Stiles manages a smile over that, that affectionate look he always gets when he’s thinking about this stupid ship. “Good can come out of bad, I guess.”

Derek stares at him, floored as always by the sheer faith that Stiles displays despite every shitty thing life throws at him, at them.

“You are...” he begins, everything he feels and can never seem to say starts bubbling up in his chest until he can’t contain it anymore. This boy, with his rough speech and his huge heart is cracking Derek open without even trying. “Stiles, you- how do you- I-”

Stiles glances up, amber eyes glinting under the dim lights. “Hmm...?” he says absently, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Stiles,” Jackson hollers from the other end of the ship. “Move your ass. We’re due in New Corsica and there’s whores there waitin for some o’my attentions, if you know what I mean.”

“Ugh,” Stiles says, and rolls his eyes. He pushes to his feet and scrapes up the spare parts scattered all over the floor, “I’m comin, I’m comin,” he says.

Derek is left crouched there, stuck for words and feeling shockingly small.

Some small sound triggers his much vaunted Hale superhearing, one tiny scrape that echoes hugely inside this tin can, and he jerks his head back, staring up at the catwalk above.

The Sheriff stands there, staring down at Derek, hands braced on the railing, eyes hard and watchful.

Their gazes lock, and Derek has genuinely never felt so completely pinned. He’s faced inquisitions in front of the Core’s crustiest surgeons, withstood media scrutiny after the explosion and he’s stood ramrod straight while Yeye Hale roared for a solid hour on the topic of family honour and damn fool teenaged pranks and yet-

Derek can’t move. He’s suddenly wondering if enhanced healing would stop the Sheriff’s bullets, should Derek ever make a mistake and hurt Stiles.

The older man’s brow twitches, the slightest movement, and then he pushes off the railing and stalks away.

Derek waits until the Sheriff is out of earshot before he blows out a harsh breath, heart pounding ridiculously hard considering nothing even happened.

So warned, he thinks.