Work Text:
Laura wakes in a dark room on a soft, uncomfortable bed.
She blinks, trying to take in more of her surroundings. The windows covered by closed shades, the soft white walls, the white, tiled ceiling, the incessant beeping sound behind her head. The smell of pain and fear and… blood.
She pushes herself up and falls back to the bed, eyes swimming. Her entire torso screams with pain, sending fire racing through every inch of her body.
She jumps as a hand comes down on her shoulder, reaching out with clawed fingers. Another hand grasps her wrist.
“Lie still,” the woman orders, voice steady with a practiced calm. Laura’s claws recede. “You’re badly injured.”
The woman lets go of Laura’s shoulder, face finally coming into focus, tan skin and dark eyes framed by dark curly hair. Her green scrubs have tiny flowers embroidered along the collar. The ID attached to her scrubs reads Melissa McCall, RN.
Laura licks her lips. “Where am I?” She winces, throat raw and vocal cords swollen.
“Try not to talk,” Melissa says, lifting the blankets and pushing up her hospital gown to look at the skin underneath. “Beacon Hills Memorial is the answer to your question.” Satisfied with what she finds, Melissa pulls the material back down and tucks Laura in.
Laura inhales sharply, coughing when her stomach pulses with pain. Her voice sounds strained, like someone ran her throat through a coffee grinder. “What happened? How did I get here?”
Melissa pauses with her hand on one of the beeping machines behind her head. “You don’t remember?” Laura shakes her head. Melissa takes a steadying breath. “The sheriff found you in the woods a couple of hours ago. Brought you here. As for the answer to the first question, I was hoping you could tell me.”
Laura frowns, wracking her brain for any memory of what happened tonight. She left Derek in New York this morning. She drove to a hotel. She dropped her bags, rented a car, and headed into the preserve. After that, there’s a blank space in her memory, a gaping, black hole that makes her shudder. Her head pounds.
Laura presses a hand to the back of her head, feeling a bump the size of a golf ball at the base of her skull. She slides shaking fingers down to the bandage around her neck. She isn’t healing. Why isn’t she healing?
She lowers her arms down. “I don’t - remember.”
Melissa pats her shoulder. “It’s okay.” She takes off her gloves, popping open the trash can near the door and tossing them in. “We called your brother when they brought you in. He’s on his way now--”
“You called Derek?” Laura shoves herself up, vision going white, her entire body screaming. The machines behind her head whines with the rabbit-quick beat of her heart. “No. You have to call him back, tell him he can’t come here--”
Melissa shushes her, pushing her back down to the bed. She presses a button on Laura’s left side, click, click, click. With every click, Laura collapses a little bit more.
“You have to -- have to --”
The room fades, going grey, then dark, the haze of pain and panic floating away into nothing.
--
Laura wakes again to the sun streaming through her window, a sharp ache in her stomach, and her brother sitting at her bedside.
“Stupid,” Derek says, hand pressed to her wrist, voice shaking. “You’re so stupid.”
Laura sighs, wincing as she tries to sit up straighter. Her body protests with a loud burst of pain that echoes from her stomach, up into her brain, all the way into her teeth. “Love you, too.”
“Don’t joke about this,” Derek says, and Laura sighs when he shoves off of the chair, sending the legs squeaking across the tile floor. “You almost died, Laura!”
“But I didn’t--”
“You aren’t healing!”
“I think I am. Just - slowly.” Because as she heals, her memory returns in pieces, more painful than the gaping black maw of nothingness.
Derek glances from the needles in her veins, to the IVs and machines, back up to her face. “What happened out there?”
Laura swallows, throat closing around the words as they rip out of her maimed throat. “Peter’s dead.”
Derek’s eyes widen. He collapses back into the chair as one of the nurses comes in to take Laura’s vitals, making notes in her chart and asking about her day. Her sunny smile grates on Laura’s nerves.
She waits until Susie Sunshine leaves the room to turn back to her brother - her last link to her family, who she would do anything to protect. Even kill her own uncle.
“Tell me,” Derek says, and Laura takes a deep breath and tells him everything. How Peter sent her information about the fire, asking her to come to Beacon Hills. How he met her at their old house and she followed him into the woods, deep enough that Laura’s gut churned.
He bragged about killing the people associated with the fire, and how he would finish the job once he took her power for himself, building a pack of his own. He almost tore her throat out, then used a sword dipped in wolfsbane to try to cut her in half. Make Derek think hunters killed her when he found her dead body in the woods.
The thought of Derek, her Derek, her baby brother who suffered so much already losing the rest of his family gave her a final burst of strength to take him out.
She leaves out the scream wrenched from her throat as he died, right before everything went dark.
“Derek,” she says, when her brother stares at the wall, a silent mass of tension, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I had to.”
“I know.” Derek sits on the bed at her side, and Laura tugs at his hand until she can link their fingers together.
The silence weighs the air down like a slab of stone on her chest, threatening to choke.
--
The sheriff interrupts their grief, appearing at the door with Melissa and another deputy.
“You up to answering some questions?” Melissa asks, and Laura sighs, nodding her head. Derek holds up a glass of water with a straw for her to drink.
The sheriff offers his condolences about Peter, before a long line of questioning that leaves her mind spinning. She weaves a web of lies and half-truths - her uncle woke up from his coma, he asked her to come back. They wanted to see what remained of the house, someone attacked them in the woods.
By the time they leave, she’s overcome with exhaustion so powerful, she just wants to lie in bed and sleep for a week.
Her body starts healing faster around day four, making the doctor laugh and joke about miracles. She glances at Derek, who nods in silent agreement.
She signs out of the hospital before the rate of her improvement slides from amusing the doctors into raising suspicions. She trashes the prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers as soon as she hits the parking lot.
Derek tosses her the keys to his rental, not bothering to start an argument about driving he isn’t going to win.
They’re halfway to her hotel room to pick up their bags when Derek says, “So I guess we’re heading back to New York.”
Laura pulls over to the side of the road, cutting the engine so she can face Derek head-on. “What if we don’t?”
Derek blinks as if her words don’t compute. “What?”
“What if we stay here?”
“Stay,” he says, words dripping with disbelief. “In Beacon Hills.”
Laura raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Derek barks a laugh. “The shortlist? Our family was murdered here. Peter tried to kill you. Hell, for all we know, the Argents are still in town.” He shakes his head. “And what if they track Peter’s death back to you?”
“They won’t.” She sighs, dragging a hand through her hair. “I’m sick of running. Our family built this town, Derek. This is our town. Tell me you don’t feel it.”
She did - out in the preserve, rattling through her bones, the ground beneath her feet and the wind in the trees welcoming her home.
“We’re strong. We’re fighters.” She lets her eyes bleed red. Derek’s flash gold in return. “We’re Hales.”
Derek rubs a hand over his eyes. Jaw clenching, he turns to stare out the window, catching her reflection. “So, what do we do first?”
Laura grins and pulls the car back out onto the road.