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Beacon Hills was a nightmare she thought she’d already awoken from. Yet here she was, standing outside of the charred shell of a memory; what remained of her childhood home. It still held the smell of her family, bastardized by ash, decay, and years of abandonment.
The fresh scent of her sister’s blood was just salt on the wound she thought had healed years before. That smell hung heavy throughout almost the entire property, as well as through the woods she had still thought safe from the tragedy. She had only been back in Beacon Hills for a day, and had spent almost the entire time in the corpse of her old house. Morbidly she wondered if the scent would ever leave her mind, even once she was well outside of the property lines. Outside of town, even. She and Laura hadn’t spoken very often in the years since the fire, but knowing she had a family member she could reach out to if she needed had been a lifeline she only fully acknowledged now that it was gone.
The forest around her house was vast, and almost always empty of humans. The wildlife wandered quietly and undisturbed, allowing her senses to pick up disturbances much further away than she had grown used to in New York. The silence alone made the memories of the woods she had once known feel hollow. It had been filled near-constantly with energetic kids, and with adults looking for some solace which could never be found in such a full house.
It wasn’t until she had almost stumbled upon the space where Laura’s scent was strongest that she even realized she was wandering. She must have been drawn to the scent of family, despite how tainted it was with death. She also noticed she was not alone, though how she missed the sound of two teenagers barreling obnoxiously through the normally peaceful woods she couldn’t say.
This would be her first human interaction since returning to Beacon Hills. She could easily avoid it altogether, but she recognized the scent of one of them from the inhaler she held in her pocket. During a previous, more deliberate visit to what appeared to be her sister’s death site, she had found the item where she had half expected to find her sister. She couldn’t decide if she was lucky or not that the puffer was all she discovered there.
Steeling herself, she prepared to return the inhaler to its owner. She had known people who used them; from what she could recall they were quite necessary in the daily life of an asthmatic. She wasn’t about to let some teen die from running too much just because she was worried about her social skills.
Generally, she wasn’t too bad with people. However, it had been too long since she’d presented as male to anyone, so she was worried about how this would pan out. Before leaving New York, she had gathered a few friends to help her revamp her wardrobe and recreate her presentation. She barely owned a pair of pants, much less a men’s pair, and pretty much forgotten almost everything people coded socially with men. The girls were full of advice about wide stances, deepening her voice, keeping monotone. Things she hadn’t bothered with for so long she wasn’t even sure she could pull it off anymore. Her rush to return back to Beacon Hills meant she had barely any time to practice these traits away from a mirror.
She heard one of the teens say something about werewolves, piquing her interest. She was about to write it off as a false alarm when she realized one of them had been bit. She realized she would be seeing more of them if that was the case.
Placing her feet firmly apart and squaring her shoulders, she called out to the unfamiliar faces.
She was surprised with how well the conversation went. The two seemed to find her intimidating; something the girls back home recommended to her for presenting as male. She was walking away when she heard one of them speak.
“Dude, that was Derek Hale. His whole family burned to death in a fire like 10 years ago.”
Her thrill over the successful human interaction couldn’t overshadow the pain of hearing that. She wondered if people had been speaking so casually about the fire for the last decade. She tried to forget about the misgendering.
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Derek heard through the grapevine about Scott and an Argent girl going to some party. Sadly, her “grapevine” was listening to teenagers’ conversations. She hadn’t liked teenagers very much when she was one, and she didn’t like them any more now. However, Scott’s scent was unmistakable. He was turning. Maternal instinct or not, if she was going to find out who mutilated her sister, she had to be the one to teach Scott how to be a wolf. And Scott’s only other options were a murderer or total confusion. So as much as she disliked teenagers and being around them, she was going to be there for Scott. The fact that his date was an Argent appeared to just be an unfortunate coincidence.
(Dressing for the cool evening, she found herself missing her leather jacket from New York the most. It had shape to it, gave her some hips. Her new one looked like a potato sack in comparison, but at least it still smelled like the old one. Like home.)
The party was loud and filled with people, to the point where she almost didn’t need the leather to remind herself of her old scene. Her mind flooded with memories of clubs and get-togethers and midnight pizza orders for way too many people. It took a dog barking a few feet away to remind her she was here for a reason. Reverie broken, she realized Scott’s heartbeat was already elevated; it was only a matter of time. He seemed to really like Allison, and the way they were dancing had his blood pressure rising steadily. Derek was far from surprised when Scott soon broke away from his date, stumbling through the crowd and into his mother’s car. It was almost too predictable.
Derek quickly approached Allison. In the back of her mind, she heard the girls back home reminding her of how predatory men acted around young women. It had made them all uncomfortable, thinking about how she might need to enter that role in order to pass as male. However this wasn’t a time for convincing acting, it was a time to keep Allison safe. She couldn’t risk not knowing where Allison was tonight, not with Scott so untrained with a full moon in the sky.
---
It wasn’t until they were halfway to Allison’s house that Derek truly appreciated how much she was risking by driving the hunters’ daughter home. Voluntarily entering Argent property wasn’t something she could recall anyone in her family doing. Allison seemed sweet though, so Derek decided to let her family history slide. “Sins of the father” and all that. The only uncomfortable part of the journey was how high she had kept the heat, in order to get Allison to take her jacket off, it would smell enough like her to grab Scott’s attention. She had certainly put a lot of faith in these teenagers to keep this plan in motion, she supposed. Their goodbye was to the point, nothing more flowery than a simple “goodnight”.
---
In the woods, she was in the process of placing Allison’s jacket on a tree branch when she heard the hunters. Even worse, she could hear Scott. She had been so close to success.
Scott was too overcome with anger for her to approach calmly, and she couldn’t very well forget that she needed to appear dominant. Not just to gain respect, but to avoid her personality being scrutinized. There was still hope for her being able to breeze in and out of this town, in the closet and unremarkable. For that, she needed Scott not to question her.
So maybe the tackle was a bit overboard.
She also probably should have given more clear instructions on how to avoid the hunters. Time constraints, she told herself, though she still felt bad for the kid getting shot through the arm.
Her guilt was interrupted, however, by how unimpressed Scott was with his new powers. She wasn’t about to argue semantics while he was bleeding out of his hand. No, she didn’t “do this to him,” but she could get to that another time. For now, maybe if he thought she did, it would make her seem more powerful. That was the goal, after all. But she couldn’t help but be bothered by his frustration. She had been a wolf her whole life, it wasn’t something to get mad about. Of all the things about her, it was the one thing she had known from a young age that was to be celebrated. Kept secret from humans, yes, but within the pack? She remembered reading comics with her sister and comparing themselves to the superheros, with their super hearing and speed. Why couldn’t Scott see that? Why couldn’t she have that back? Her family would know how to deal with Scott’s fear, she knew they would…
Having lost herself on that train of thought, she had talked herself into a corner. She had a split second to decide between inspiring this young wolf, and avoiding saying something that would feel like dousing her soul in ice water. She decided that prioritizing someone else is an easy way to depersonalize a situation, so.
“We’re brothers now.”
She wasn’t even sure if she was out of earshot before the tears started falling.