Chapter Text
Laura puts the receiver down softly, but Derek knows that she's angry. Even if he couldn't sense it, he can tell just by the rigid set of her shoulders and the tightness of her jaw. He opens his mouth, unsure of exactly what he's going to say, but sure that he has to say something.
"We have to go get it." Of course, what he comes out with is one of the worst things he could've said.
"Go get it?" Laura asks, voice like ice.
"Well, we can't just leave it there, Laura," Derek says. "It's family."
"Family," Laura says, and Derek feels the sudden urge to run and hide under his bed. "More important than the family you let DIE BECAUSE YOU WERE OUT THERE MAKING A NEW ONE WITH KATE FUCKING ARGENT?!" Her eyes shine Alpha red and Derek can't fight the urge to bare his neck to her in submission.
"It wasn't like that," he tries, weakly.
"Oh no," Laura says nastily. "I'll bet it was real love, too." She smiles at him. It's a mean smile. "You know, when you said that it was your fault everyone was dead I honestly thought that it was just survivor's guilt talking. But now I know you were serious."
Derek feels his stomach drop. He'd spent months toying with the idea about what would happen if he actually told Laura the truth about what happened to their family, about how involved he actually was with their deaths. He'd thought out scenarios ranging from Laura forgiving him, all the way to Laura completely disowning him and leaving him to fend for himself. He's not sure where on his scale this will land, except that he's sure he won't be getting forgiveness any time soon.
***
When Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital had called, both Derek and Laura had thought for sure that it had had something to do with Peter. He'd been in a coma for months by this point, surely he should be healed enough to start coming around by now.
Instead they'd both been blindsided with the news that a newborn baby had been abandoned on the hospital's front steps with a letter naming Derek Hale as the father. The letter had been signed Kate Ashwood, someone authorities have been unable to locate. Because there is no Kate Ashwood, at least, not a real one that Derek knows of.
He does know a Kate Argent, though, who Derek had known as Kate Ashwood until after it was too late. So had Laura.
***
It's Laura's final decision to put the baby up for adoption.
"I'm not bringing an Argent into our home!" she snaps when Derek protests. "Not after what they've done!"
"Then I'll do it myself!" Derek cries. "I'll find a new place. I don't need you!"
"I am your Alpha!" Laura declares. "You won't be able to do anything without me. Besides, you're just a kid. Do you really think they'll hand the kid over to you just for showing up?"
Derek's honestly not sure what would happen if he showed up to take the baby himself. He knows he's just a kid, but that's his baby. His family. Probably the only family he has now that doesn't hate him. He doesn't know what he's going to do about this whole mess, but he needs time.
***
Derek is out of time.
He hears Laura on the phone to the hospital, telling whoever is on the other end to place the baby up for adoption; that a letter alone isn't enough to prove paternity, and Derek won't be contesting anything or going in for any tests.
It's very early morning, not even light out yet, and Derek is pretty sure that Laura thinks he's asleep. Or maybe she knows that he's awake and listening and doing it on purpose to hurt him. Either way, he knows he has a very small window of opportunity to try to fix all this. He'll have to do it behind Laura's back, and he still doesn't know where he's going to actually take the baby, but he has to do something or there won't even be a baby to take.
Derek waits until just after dawn before he leaves his and Laura's tiny apartment. Laura is sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal when he leaves. They don't say anything to each other, though Derek is pretty sure she knows what he's up to. That she doesn't try to stop him is worrying, but he puts it out of his mind for now.
New York City is a great place for being invisible, and it's easy to get lost in the crush of the crowd. Even at this early hour the sidewalks and streets aren't empty. Derek still has to dodge pedestrians as he runs down the sidewalks and alleys. He needs to find a payphone.
He eventually finds an empty phone booth somewhere, he doesn't know where he is by this point, and immediately lunges for it. He's pretty sure he looks half-wild and insane. Definitely desperate. His chest is heaving and his hands are shaking as he feeds change into the phone. He has to look up the number for Beacon Hills Memorial, and every second that goes by just has him winding tighter and tighter. He's nearing the end of his rope when the call finally connects.
"Beacon Hills Memorial reception desk, how may I direct your call?" The voice on the other end of the line is clear and soothing, and probably way too chipper for the early hour. But Derek has no time for pleasantries.
"My name is Derek Hale," he says. "There was a baby dropped off there a few days ago. My sister called and said to adopt it out, but I don't want that. I need someone to keep the baby there until I can come get it."
"I... Okay, hold on, I'll transfer you upstairs." The hold music is peppy and cheerful and makes Derek want to tear his hair out. He has to work on calming himself down before he goes full beta-shift in a phone box on a somewhat crowded New York City street. He can already see a faint blue glow in his reflection on the phone booth's glass wall and he shuts his eyes.
"Hello, Derek?" It's a different voice that answers this time. "This is Lisa Olsen, I'm a nurse on the maternity ward. Um... about your son."
A son! This is the first time Derek's heard anything about the baby other than the fact of his existence. It just serves to make the whole thing all the more real for him. His son! But he can hear something in the nurse's voice that lets him know that this conversation won't end well for him. He physically braces himself against the walls of the phone booth.
"Please tell me he's still there," he says in a near whimper.
"I'm so sorry," Lisa Olsen says. "You just missed him. There was a family already here, waiting for a go-ahead to take him home. He's already gone." Derek slams the receiver down, cracking the phone. He drops to his knees in the phone booth and starts sobbing for the first time since he came to New York.
***
Derek doesn't return to the apartment until later that evening. He's been crying on and off all day, so his eyes are still red-rimmed and puffy.
It had gotten him a few sympathetic glances as he'd wandered aimlessly around the city (also a few suspicious glances, truth be told), but he'd mostly ignored them.
There is barely any reaction from Laura when Derek passes her on the couch on his way to his bedroom. Neither of them speak to each other for the rest of the night.
***
Derek doesn't get out of bed for a whole week.
When he finally exits his room for anything longer than a quick trip to the bathroom, he's quiet and subdued. He fixes himself a bowl of cereal, the only food he's eaten all week that hadn't been stale crackers, and eats it mechanically at the kitchen table. Laura is sitting next to him eating toast, but he doesn't acknowledge her, even as he sees her glancing at him in his peripheral vision.
They don't talk.
When Derek is finished he goes back to his room and strips his bed. He's not alright, but he knows he needs to find something to do with himself. What's done is done, and he can't turn back time. This isn't the first time he's wished he could.
The pain of never getting to meet his baby, even if he is part Argent, settles over his heart alongside all the other hurts. Just another bad thing that happened that's his fault.
After that whole week in bed he's managed to convince himself that the baby is definitely better off without him. Derek kills everything he touches, his baby is better off spared that.
His heart still cries out for his lost family; each member he lost in the fire, Peter comatose in his hospital bed, Laura who hates him now (as she well should, he supposes), and his son who will have better luck raised by people who aren't as damaged as him. Derek pushes it all down deep and resolves to ignore it. There's nothing else for it except to keep moving on.
What else can he do at this point?
***
Laura and Derek are in New York for nearly six years.
They were desperate and clinging to each other when they first arrived, but their relationship has been permanently damaged by the revealed secret of Derek's betrayal.
They rely on each other to get by and to fulfill their pack needs, but they are no longer close.
Sometimes they talk about the family they lost. Their parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins. Sometimes there is physical comfort in brief hugs and shoulder pats. Sometimes there are tears, mostly from Laura.
Neither of them ever mentions the baby, though Derek never stops thinking about him.
The only time it ever comes up is four years after that initial call, when Laura finds out she's pregnant. The man she'd been seeing dumps her when he finds out, and then disappears. Laura doesn't mind, she'd been worried about letting him in on the werewolf secret, and now she won't have to. She starts making plans about how she's going to raise the baby on her own, looking for ways to rearrange her life so that this new baby will fit into it.
When Derek sees this he's hit with a wave of jealousy and anger so strong that he has to leave the apartment for a while. He spends a few nights sleeping in the back room of the bar he works at, until he's sure that he can go back and be around Laura without wanting to take out all his rage and pain on her.
It's not the only time he has to leave the apartment. The day Laura brings home some tiny baby clothes is the day Derek nearly tears the front door off its hinges on his way out.
Laura ends up miscarrying about a month later. Derek wakes up one night to the smell of blood and the sound of Laura crying. He finds her in the bathroom, naked from the waist down and sobbing. The toilet seat is covered in blood.
Derek surveys the scene calmly, not even reacting when Laura turns to him with tear-filled eyes and a quivering lip.
"Derek," she gasps brokenly. She reaches a hand out to him, but he backs away, returning to his room and shutting the door behind himself. He stares blankly into the darkness of the room, listening to Laura crying down the hall.
He thinks he should feel something right now. He doesn't feel anything. He briefly wonders if that makes him the bad person he always knew he was deep down. He goes back to sleep.
Laura is pale and red-eyed at the kitchen table when Derek wakes up the next morning. She catches his eye when he stops in the kitchen doorway. The smell of blood still lingers in the air, but it's mostly overpowered by the smell of bleach.
"I had to flush it down the toilet," Laura says. "It was easiest that way." Derek doesn't say anything. He's suddenly struck with the thought that he absolutely doesn't care. About Laura, her baby, about anything really. He's pretty sure this isn't healthy, but he doesn't really care about that either.
"Can you please say something?" She asks. Derek shrugs his shoulders.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he says.
He leaves the apartment. He's barefoot and still wearing his sleep clothes. He can hear Laura crying as he goes.
He doesn't care about those things either.
***
Derek is 22 when Laura tells him that she needs to go back to Beacon Hills. She doesn't ask him to go with her; he doesn't offer. He doesn't go to the airport to see her off, doesn't even know which day she's leaving until he comes home from work one day to a note left in the apartment.
Their relationship has deteriorated quite a bit by this point. Big and little things had kept piling onto it and neither of them had tried to repair any of it. There is a lot less anger these days; mostly they're apathetic towards one another. They only really come together on full moons and on the anniversary of the fire, but they otherwise keep to themselves and have separate lives.
They don't talk about the babies.
Derek has trouble looking Laura in the eye most days, for a variety of reasons. He misses the close relationship he used to have with her, but he figures that they're both too far gone to get that closeness back.
One afternoon, a searing pain in his chest brings him to his knees and he knows for sure that he'll never get that closeness back no matter what.