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"We don't have to take the I-80," Cora says.
They're in Sacramento. Derek is behind the wheel of the Camaro, the road map open in front of him, and his key in the ignition. Cora is on the driver's seat, her head resting against the car window, and keeping guard for Derek.
"The I-80 is faster," Derek tells Cora.
"We don't have to get away so fast," she says, her eyes tracing the buildings around the gas station they're parked in.
"I know," Derek says.
He starts the car, pulls away from the gas station and back onto the road. He sticks to the I-80, the shortest distance between Beacon Hills and New York City. He's not running. He's just looking for a day off, a way out. A break. Derek has given enough, has stretched himself tight to keep everyone safe. He can admit it to himself out in the open, when he's moving so fast the thought gets lost in the flash of trees and the long stretches of road.
Distance allows him to forget. The minute he leaves California, he stops thinking about Beacon Hills, about Scott and Isaac. He doesn't forget, but the road brings him new memories from the first time he and Laura left. He sees her everywhere after that, along the road signs he never passed with her, remembers her when the cars in front of him go too slow.
Derek wants Cora to remember her too. He wants Cora to see where he and Laura lived, wants her to flip through the half-burnt pictures of their family. He wants to give her everything she didn't have the past six years, wants her to tell him where she's been because she trusts him. Derek wants to rebuild their family, wants to forget responsibilities and just be the boy he was before the fire.
That's why he takes the I-80, because maybe, the farther he gets from Beacon Hills, the closer he'll get to that boy.
-
They're passing the Welcome to Nevada sign when Derek gets the first vivid memory of him and Laura. There's nothing, physically, that he can see that brings back memories of her. When he and Laura left Beacon Hills they hadn't even gone through Nevada because Laura wanted to hug the West coast for as long as possible, drive up to Seattle to show Derek that their coffee actually sucked.
The smell reminds him of her though, a wet dirt smell that is so rare in Nevada. In Seattle, there had been nothing but rain throughout their entire trip there, but Laura had made Derek get out of the car anyway. She'd kicked water from the puddles at him until Derek was laughing, running away when she tried to hug him.
"Laura liked the rain," he says, without turning to look at Cora.
She doesn't move at all, and when Derek glances at the rear view mirror he sees that she's sprawled out in the backseat as best as she can. Her gaze is fixed on the ceiling of the Camaro, her hands on top of her stomach.
Cora doesn't look like Laura the way Derek does, but she and Derek have a similar temperament. They've bickered a lot since Cora came back, about little things that don't matter. It was nice, Derek thinks, to just have someone to tell him that he hogs the upstairs television. It's nice having a sister back, because Cora helps Derek remember his mother and Laura.
Cora has their mom's eyes, and though Derek and Laura could have been twins, Laura had inherited their mom's quiet wisdom. But Cora has a shorter temper, makes Derek feel the urge to protect, and he finds himself staring at his sister a little longer than is safe for driving.
He wishes Laura were here to tell him how to take care of Cora.
But that's just the thing. If Laura were here, Derek wouldn't have to take care of Cora. He wouldn't have had to turn three teenagers into wolves, wouldn't have had to be the one who killed Peter. Laura would have found a way to talk Peter down, to make him change his mind, and if it turned out that Peter couldn't be controlled, then Laura would have killed Peter herself. Because that's who Laura was. She was their mother's daughter, their father's little girl. Laura wouldn't have fucked things up the way Derek has.
"What was she like?" Cora asks, finally.
Derek looks back at the road before Cora can turn her head. He keeps his eyes on the stretch of highway, mostly empty in the early morning. The window by Derek's side is rolled all the way down, the wind almost icy cold as he drives.
"She liked the cold," Derek says. "When we were driving to New York she used to roll all the windows down, and when I complained she'd throw her sweater at me. She knew I was being annoying on purpose."
"She liked you best," Cora says. "I remember."
Derek grins and looks at Cora through the rearview mirror. She smiles when he sees his grin and rolls her eyes.
"Shut up," she says. "It was only because you were older."
Derek raises his eyebrows and doesn't elaborate. It's true he was closest to Laura, but Cora was their younger sister. Her and other kids, Derek and Laura had loved them all the same.
They ride in silence for a bit, Cora making little noise as she stares at the ceiling of the car. Derek keeps his eyes on the road, watches the stretch of road in front of him. He keeps his eyes on the street lights, glancing to the side every once in a while to look at the one-floored houses. Nothing is tall in Nevada, except for the casinos Derek can't see. He thinks that if he had time he'd like to come back one day, ride the tour bus, maybe lose some money in one of the smaller casinos.
"I remember her eyes," Cora says, finally. "You have her eyes. Dad's eyes."
Derek says nothing. He hasn't known what to say for a very long time.
"They would have been proud," Cora goes on, "To see that you didn't end up like me."
Derek can't accept that. He thinks of Cora captured by the alpha pack, about Peter rotting in the Beacon Hills hospital while he and Laura ran away. He was laughing under the rain while Cora was alone.
"You're not broken, Cora," Derek says.
Derek sees the way Cora flinches, and he remembers vividly how useless he felt after he found out about Kate. He understands the emptiness in Cora, because Derek's been empty for so long now he thinks he's always been this way.
"I'm angry all the time, Derek," she says. "I'm so mad at everything that's happened to us that sometimes I think I can understand Uncle Peter."
Derek's hands tighten on the steering wheel. He doesn't dare look at Cora because he's not ready for what he might see in her eyes.
"What did they do to you?" he asks.
He hasn't had time to ask her properly. There was too much at once back in Beacon Hills, but they're away from that now and Derek can ask her. He doesn't have to be afraid of the answer anymore because she's safe. He can ask her now, because out in the road, it's just easier to believe in their freedom.
"Nothing," she says. "They fed me. They taught me, made sure I kept up with school. Deucalion took me to Argentina and introduced me to a normal family, no wolves. The alphas came around, but I was okay most of the time. I trusted Deucalion because mom trusted him, and they never hurt me. It was a good life until they decided to use me against you."
She stops, sits up in the backseat. "I had it so good, Derek. And even then it wasn't enough. I had so much time to think," she says. "I got so mad because it's so much easier to be angry than scared. I don't know how to stop it anymore."
"You can do it," Derek says, voice certain, looking at her through the rear view mirror.
Cora meets his eyes, "How do you know?"
Derek looks out at the pavement in front of him, the point where the road disappears into the horizon. The white lines dividing the interstate into three flash past in Derek's peripheral vision. It helps him think, the constant flash of things calming him, blocking out everything else. Derek focuses on driving and lets his head clear.
He can understand Cora's anger, because even if she had the best life after the fire, that still doesn't erase the fact that she lost her entire family. No matter how many people Cora had, nothing can ever replace family, and Derek understands that. He understands her, could even understand all the things Peter did if it really came down to it, because Derek felt what they felt, what Cora still feels.
Derek killed the first girl he loved, and when he thought he'd gotten over that, his family burned because of him. He lost Laura, had to kill Peter, and after, Derek had to find his footing again because he had a pack. He had to train teenagers who didn't always understand what was at stake because they were kids. He let them down, lost Boyd and Erica, lost Isaac because Derek was too afraid of hurting him too. Derek dated a murderer who kidnapped Scott's mom and Stiles's dad.
He messed up over and over, and each time he just got angrier at himself. It gets exhausting being so angry. He understands why the anger drove Peter insane, why it ate away at him until he became the monster that bit Scott.
Derek knew, even before Stiles told him, that it was only a matter of time before the anger ate Derek alive. He knew he was going to have to find a way to embrace it or get rid of it, but then Stiles had told him to just go, to leave it all behind. He'd surprised Derek, hasn't stopped surprising Derek since the night the kanima attacked them at the school.
This is Derek's way out, so he knows Cora can find hers.
"You can do it," he says, finally, "Because I was angry, Cora. I wanted to kill them all, and I would have let Peter rip everyone apart if he hadn't killed Laura. But I stopped being angry."
"And then she lied to you," Cora says. "That teacher. Peter told me."
Derek watches the red desert dirt flash past. He keeps his eyes on the car in front of him, but it's too far away to matter.
"Are you angry now, Derek?"
Derek sighs, the last bit of tension easing off his shoulders. He breathes in the hot air around him. "No," he says. "Not anymore."
"Why not?" Cora asks.
Derek pushes down on the gas a little more, watches the needle tick past into 75 miles per hour.
"I'm tired," Derek admits, and it's a relief to say it out loud. "I'm tired of being angry."
"We're too young to be tired," she whispers.
They're quiet for a long time after that.
-
They're in Nebraska, driving past tall, white grain elevators. They line the road like endless white pillars broken up by patches of green trees. Cora spends half of their trip past Nebraska looking out the window, her face pressed against the glass like an excited child. Derek can't help the smile on his face when he catches her wide eyed stare.
He forgets sometimes, how little she's actually seen of Derek's world. When he looks at her, he sees her in Argentina, belonging to something Derek doesn't think he'll ever be part of. A small part of him is jealous that Cora has a home somewhere safe, and where her friends aren't in danger. Even if that home was introduced to her by Deucalion, at least Cora didn't have it as hard as Derek thought she did. At least, she was loved until Derek could find her and take over. He's forever grateful to the people who saw a lost little girl and kept her safe. But he's here now.
He glances over at Cora, and she's watching him. "Please," she says. "Just stop the car because if I have to try to convince you to stop I'm going to win. Save me the trouble."
"Yeah," he says, rolling his eyes at her. "Because you're the one driving the car."
Cora's goes silent, as though Derek's taken her by surprise. "Shit," she says after a while. "You almost sounded like a human being there."
Derek wants to tell her that he is so much more human than she thinks he is. He's the same boy who rolled his eyes at Laura, and shoved Cora off the front steps when she wouldn't shut about her boyfriend. It's just that Derek's been hiding from everyone for so long that it's hard to let people in, even when he trusts them.
Derek doesn't know how to tell her though, so he just raises an eyebrow in her direction, and hopes she can figure it out for herself.
"Just check into a hotel," she says, rolling her eyes. "I want to get lost in Nebraska."
Nebraska is 1,400 miles from Beacon Hills. It's enough that Derek doesn't fight too hard with Cora. He checks them into a little Bed & Breakfast just outside La Vista. Derek gets them a single room with two beds, and Cora doesn't object.
After they drop their things in their room, Cora drags Derek to the hotel pool. She's suddenly full of so much energy, it takes Derek by surprise. He doesn't even notice how Cora does it, but next thing he knows, he's in the pool. There's a small second where Derek 's body tenses, but he kicks his legs and nothing is frozen in place. The feeling passes and when he pulls himself out of the pool Cora's laughing, a genuine happy sound. Her shoulders shake with it, and Derek is relieved to find that she can still laugh that he doesn't notice he's laughing too. When Cora notices, she stops laughing, smiles wide at Derek's stunned face.
"See," she says, hugging him. "You're okay."
And for the first time, Derek believes it.
-
They're six days into what was supposed to be a week long trip, and they've barely made it into Illinois. Derek's taken to listening to Cora when she says they need to stop because she wants to see the biggest ball of yarn, or try Chicago style pizza. Derek wishes he'd taken away her phone, but then she'll laugh, and punch him in the shoulder, make him pose for stupid pictures in front of large Welcome signs.
He finally understands why Laura made so many stops, why she forced him into museums along the road when all Derek wanted back then was to curl up and sleep forever. Derek is forever grateful to Laura, and infinitely lucky that Cora isn't completely like him.
Cora's taken well to the trip. She knows when to smile wide and when to glare at people. It gets so easy to get carried away with her, and Derek finds himself giving in to the road games she makes up on the spot. They play I Spy, and end up competing to see who can see the farthest.
"Old," Cora laughs when Derek quits.
"I let you win," Derek answers.
"Excuses," Cora sings back at him.
They have Chicago style pizza, and end up staying in Chicago for a week. They go to Navy Pier, get lost in all the shops. The next day, they go back and get on the ferris wheel, and Derek even smiles when they get their picture taken. After, Cora buys them both mugs with their faces on them.
Derek tells Cora how much he hates her, and she laughs and laughs.
-
There are days, though, when things catch up with Derek. It usually happens when Cora's driving. He has too much time to think, and it's so easy to fall asleep because Cora can't seem to drive without something playing on the radio.
He thinks about how Scott's still just a kid, and how Derek abandoned him. Derek pictures thousands of things that can go wrong, how maybe Derek misread everything and Scott really wasn't ready to be alpha. He thinks about Isaac and how alone he must be, how Derek is just one more person who left him now.
Sometimes, Derek will think of Stiles, about how tired Stiles was getting towards the end. He'll remember the sleepless nights over the summer where Stiles would sneak over to Derek's loft to help Peter and Derek pour over the bestiary. Sometimes, Derek dreams of drowning in pale skin and dark brown hair, and it's so hard to tell who Derek is supposed to be drowning in.
When Derek is driving and Cora falls asleep with her head against the passenger's side window, Derek will look at her, at the way she clenches her hands into fists. He'll see the way her face smoothes out in her sleep, at how young she really is. Derek will remember that she's the same age as Stiles, as Scott, as Isaac. Derek looks at Cora, and he hopes that Isaac has someone to protect him now.
Derek knows he won't let anyone hurt Cora, promises to make sure that she comes out of this okay. He wants her happy, fooling around with kids her age, and making fun of how old Derek is now. Derek doesn't want her wishing she could set back time and take back everything she's ever done. Derek doesn't want her to be afraid of opening up to someone someday, of being so afraid of hurting others that she never allows herself to be happy again.
He doesn't want Cora hating herself for dreaming about boys with pale skin and dark hair.
-
They're over two weeks into their trip, staying at a Hampton Inn in Washington DC when Derek has one of his worst nights. He dreams of his mother and father drowning in ash, of Laura with her throat slit open. He hears Boyd yelling at him, blaming him for Erica, and it's terrifying to hear Boyd's usually quiet voice raised in anger.
Derek wakes angry at himself for thinking that he could ever get away. He sits on the edge of his bed, facing Cora's bed and the window. Their hotel room is wide and carpeted so that Derek's feet make no noise when he gets up. He heads for the bathroom door, hand clenched tight on the doorknob. He breathes out hard, runs a hand over his hair and tugs.
"Derek?" Cora asks, her voice rough with sleep.
Derek doesn't say anything, just turns to look at her. He wants to tell her that everything is fine, but doesn't know how to say it.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
No, Derek thinks, bitterly. He says nothing out loud.
Cora sits up in the bed, her hair falling over her right side and hiding her face from Derek. He can hear her weary sigh.
"You're not okay," she says.
Derek takes his hand off the bathroom doorknob, forces his legs to carry him back to his bed. He sinks down, his eyes focused on a spot over Cora's shoulder. He can make out a dark spot on the white walls even in the dark. He lets his eyes focus on that, on the sounds of water running through the pipes in the walls.
Derek doesn't to think about how Cora seems to think he's not okay. He doesn't want to think too hard on how she's been waiting for him to admit it, doesn't want to think that no matter how many times he laughs he won't be able to convince her that he's fine. It makes him feel useless, to have his baby sister keeping an eye on him, to have her worry that he's going to crack eventually.
It makes Derek even angrier for having nightmares when there are worse things than being on a road trip with his sister. He doesn't say anything, because anything that can come out of his mouth would be a lie. He is not okay. And he doesn't understand why.
"You're different," Cora says, eventually.
She says it as though it's nothing, and though it feels out of place in their conversation now, Derek can tell Cora has been thinking about it for a long time. She's gone still where she's sitting on her bed, her back straight and her gaze averted.
Derek looks at her, sees sadness in eyes, and it's so different from the Cora he's used to seeing that it throws him off guard. He can't help but stare.
Cora tries to turn, but she doesn't do it fast enough and Derek catches the unshed tears in her eyes. He feels like the breath has been punched out of him. He looks at Cora's hunched back, the way her hands are fists at her sides. She's shaking, but Derek knows better than to touch her when she's like this. He knows her, remembers the time she punched him in the face when that dick, Jimmy, broke up with her and Derek caught her crying.
"They died," he says. "You died."
He feels like he's answering his own question about the nightmares. It feels like such a flimsy excuse, but it's the best explanation he can give both of them, and Derek thinks Cora should understand because everyone died for her too. Cora shakes her head, but she turns around. Her eyes are red from her tears, but she's not crying when she meets Derek's eyes.
"I'm not dead," she tells him. "You're not dead."
"I know," Derek says.
"It's not your fault," she says with such conviction, Derek almost believes her.
Then he remembers that she doesn't know about Kate, that Derek never told her. He can't look at her after that, doesn't want to see the disgust on her face when he does tell her.
"Derek?" she asks, her voice closer.
When Derek looks up, she's standing in front of him, her eyes concerned. Her hand is warm on his cheek and Derek lets himself lean forward into her hug. He murmurs everything into her shoulder, knows that she hears, and for the first time in a long time, Derek Hale cries.
-
They find a place in Park Slope in Brooklyn on the day of Stiles's birthday. Derek knows because his phone rings at six in the morning, and when he goes to turn it off, there are black block letters flashing: STILES TURNS SEVENTEEN TODAY.
Derek smiles, tucks the phone back into his pocket and goes back to helping Cora unload boxes from the trunk of the Camaro. The apartment they rented is on 13th street, in between 7th and 8th avenues. It's the good part of Brooklyn, where all the parents and their perfect little children live.
There are three floors in the brownstone Derek and Cora are moving in to. When the landlady brings the papers over to their empty second floor apartment, she asks them if they'll be staying for one year or two.
Derek looks at Cora, at the small space a little to the right of the door that's going to be their living room. He eyes the stainless steel kitchen, the white walls, and the dark cherry wood floors. Everything is clean, even though the owners have been gone for more than three months now. Cora's boxes are stacked by the window directly in front of the door, mostly things she picked up on their way to New York. Derek's boxes are under the window to the right.
He has more boxes than Cora does.
"A year," Derek says, finally.
The landlady gives him the key, makes him sign three copies of the lease, and wishes them good luck.
They spend the rest of the day cleaning out the cupboards, and putting wrapped souvenirs where they don't belong. Derek piles boxes in the space that's going to be their living room, skips the kitchen, and heads down the narrow hallway.
Immediately to left of the hallway is the first bathroom, clean white tiles, and a bathtub with a showerhead. Derek calls dibs on the bathroom, and ignores Cora when she protests. Next to the bathroom is a second door with a washer and a dryer. Derek closes that door, opens the one directly across from it to find a small closet.
At the end of the hall are two doors. The first door to the right is the smaller of the two bedrooms, with a walk-in closet, and a large window taking up the wall directly in front of the door. Derek likes way the room floods with light when he pulls open the shades. They're high enough and far away enough from the brownstones on 14th street that Derek doesn't need to worry about privacy. He opens the window, and closes the door behind him when he leaves.
The second bedroom is wider than the first, and has three windows on the shorter wall, opposite the door, so that more light flood in. The walk-in closet to the left of the door is bigger than the one in Derek's room, the bathroom more open.
"I'll fight you for this room," Cora says, coming in behind Derek. "I swear, Derek. I will rip you apart for this room."
Derek barely glances at her over his shoulder. "I'm older," he says, just to mess with her.
"I'm faster," she answers.
"Of course you are," Derek says, shouldering his way backwards out the door.
Cora laughs and shoves back, slips under Derek's arm, and gets into the room. "Faster than you," she says, and slams the door in his face.
-
They fall into a routine around their third month living in New York. Derek gets a job working at one of the free-trade, organic only, coffee shops that serve coffee with strange names in recyclable cups. Derek loves it there, because he doesn't need to work for money. It's just to keep him busy, so he's better at dealing with costumers because he never has to worry about being nice to them.
Most of the customers are overly polite though, and they leave great tips. Derek gets a couple of numbers too, and he keeps them, though he never calls anyone back. He likes the calm that comes with looking after a kid, so he enrolls Cora in the Berkeley Carroll School. She hates him for it, but she gets over it, and Derek learns to love the way she'll come in from school with mud on her face from soccer practice.
But eventually, working at the coffee shop gets repetitive, and Cora can't stand school. She gets fidgety, and Derek can understand that, because he feels it too. He doesn't fit in a simple life, itches to get back in his car and just drive.
-
One their eight month of living in the apartment, when Cora is out jogging at Prospect Park, Derek gets the letter to renew their lease. He takes the envelope and tosses it on top of the desk in his room. He tries not to think about how he still has the bag he left Beacon Hills with tucked under his bed. He hasn't taken anything out of it, keeps it in case of emergencies.
He tries not to think too hard about what it means that Cora never unpacked her bag either, that all of their most important papers are tucked into those bags.
-
At the end of March, with two weeks to go until their lease ends, Derek finds Cora flipping through their old photo album. Her fingers linger on the faded pictures of their mom and dad. Derek leans against the kitchen counter, and watches her as she leans on the couch in the living room.
"I miss home," Cora says.
Derek wants to tell her that they are home, that this apartment in their quiet neighborhood is their home. He wants to say that even if it feels like they're wearing the wrong skin, it's all right because they're family and home is wherever Cora is.
"Not like that," Cora says when Derek explains it to her. "I grew up with other people in Argentina. I miss them."
"We're family," Derek says, because doesn't know how to explain to her what that means anymore.
"I know," Cora says, coming over to put her hand on Derek's arm. "But part of growing up is knowing that we move on, make our own family. Me and you, we'll always be family. But you have yours in Beacon Hills and I have mine in Argentina. I miss them, Derek. And I know you miss Isaac, and Scott, and Stiles."
Derek doesn't miss them, because he hasn't given himself time to miss them. He fills his days with making sure everything is perfect for Cora, with focusing on not looking over his shoulder on his way to work, with believing that he's finally safe.
"Go home, Derek," she says. "Don't keep running away."
"I'm not," Derek tells her. "Running."
Cora smiles at him, the sad smile she has rarely used this past year. She puts her hands on his shoulder and shakes him a little. "If you say so," she says.
Derek watches her sit down in the one-seater couch he's come to acknowledge as hers. She curls up with her feet under her, the remote in her hand. If Derek watches closely, he can see that she doesn't fit in the living room, that neither does he. It hurts to know that he and Cora don't fit perfectly the way he and Laura did, that maybe he and Scott fit better than he and Cora do now.
But he can also look at their apartment and realize that they have things in the house, but nothing is really theirs.
"Okay," Derek says, finally.
Cora looks up from the TV, and when Derek looks at her, he realizes he's never seen her this happy before. "Yeah?" she asks.
He sighs, the knot in his chest twisting tighter. "Go home, Cora," he says, and he means it.
-
Three days later, Derek drives Cora to the JFK airport in Queens. He watches her pass through the security checkpoint, sees her smile as she waves goodbye. There are the beginning of laugh lines around her eyes that remind Derek of how much she's grown. Her hair bounces across her shoulders as she walks, her eyes fixed on him, the sadness he feels staring back at him from her eyes. She looks so much like their mother in that moment that Derek wishes he had a camera. Watching her, Derek thinks he can finally feel the emptiness in his chest filling back up again.
He waves goodbye until he can't see her anymore, and then Derek gets in the Camaro and starts driving.