Chapter Text
The sun has barely risen past the horizon, and Derek is not having a good morning. There’s a leak in his ceiling, which had dampened his maps and guitar case while he slept. Dealing with that made him too late for rations and late for patrol check in. And now, Jordan Parrish is looking at him over a pair of thick black sunglasses, a frown etched into his face.
“It’s just a job, Derek, no different than anything else I’ve had you do.” He sounds bored and a bit agitated, like he had prepared for this to be a difficult conversation but still has no energy for it.
“No,” Derek says, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms in a way he knows makes him look twice as big. “A job is running guns or ammo to the resistance. A job is sneaking into a different QZ and smuggling back food. Smuggling a kid across the fucking country is not a job, it’s a damn death sentence.” He spits the last few words, but Parrish does not look impressed.
They stare at each other for a moment. Parrish from over his sunglasses, Derek from under his furrowed brow.
“Derek, this is important. This is— this is not something I would trust anyone else with. I know you can do this.” Jordan Parrish removes his sunglasses and looks straight into Derek’s eyes. “You have to do this.”
Predictably, this pathetic excuse of a pep talk pisses Derek right the fuck off.
“Oh, I have to do this? Do I?” He gets a strong urge to shove Parrish out the window they’re standing in front of to fucking rid himself of this headache once and for all. He resists.
“Derek, it’s Stilinski’s son.”
Parrish says this through clenched teeth like it’s the last thing he wants to say. This is information that he does not want Derek to have, but it has been forced out of him. Derek pauses.
“Stilinski didn’t have a son,” he says after a moment. He knows this is true. He had known John well, liked him even, and he had never once seen or heard about him having a kid.
“Yes. He did.”
Derek hears no tell in his heartbeat, and understanding dawns on him slowly. His eyebrows creep up.
“Claudia had a child?” he asks. “That's impossible.”
“It’s true.” Parrish almost looks proud to have caught Derek off guard but if anything this information just infuriates Derek more.
“You’re telling me that she wasn’t the last Spark? That her son is here in this QZ, and you want me to smuggle him out, and bring him halfway across the fucking country?” It sounds so fucking insane that Derek laughs out loud, and the sound is foreign to his ears. “You are insane,” he adds on, just to drive the point home. “You’re fucking mad if you think I would agree to something like that.”
“Derek, he can’t stay here. He’ll be eighteen by the end of the year and by then there will be no point in hiding him. He’ll be out of control and vulnerable. The government will kill him like they killed his mother.” There is genuine concern on his face, and he smells of sadness. Derek figures whoever the boy is Parrish likely cares for him. “He needs to be training with Deaton in Denver by the end of the month.”
Derek sucks in a breath, glares at the ceiling.
“So you take him. You’re perfectly capable of protecting him,” he snaps. “Why are you even bothering me? You had to know I would say no.”
“I can’t.” He doesn’t offer up any reason, just stands there glaring at Derek as if he can force him to do this through sheer force of will. It’s not really very funny, but Derek laughs again.
“You can’t.”
“I cannot go.” Parrish looks exhausted. He slides his sunglasses back onto his face with a long suffering sigh. “Just— meet him, alright? He’s got no one looking out for him.” Derek scowls. He wants to say hell no and leave Parrish standing here alone in his stupid patrol uniform, but a small part of him is interested. Curious, at least.
“What’s in it for me?” he asks. “If I were to make it back alive, somehow, what do I get out of it?”
Parrish makes an exasperated face that Derek can read perfectly.
“Wouldn’t the fact that you saved the fucking world be enough?” his eyes say.
But honestly, no. Derek doesn’t think it would.
The chances of survival here are slim, and Parrish fucking knows that. Government patrols search for this exact kind of thing. Parrish knows this. Any supernatural creatures traveling outside of quarantine zones would be a target, as the government is in the process of finding and eliminating them all. Derek falls into this category. This, also, Parrish knows.
“If you pull this off, you’ll get more than ration cards and ammo. You’ll be famous, Derek. You’ll be revered.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Damnit, Derek!” Parrish is shouting, suddenly, waving his hands around like a demented conductor. “Just do the right fucking thing. For once. For Laura.”
This is a low blow, and Derek feels it straight in his fucking gut. He clenches his jaw and turns his head away.
“I’ll meet him,” he says, and the anger pushing at his edges threads through the words. Parrish isn’t sorry, clearly. He smiles triumphantly at Derek.
“Great. I’ll let him know.”
***
Derek doesn't know what to expect from John Stilinski’s son, but the kid still catches him off guard. When they enter the cellar, he’s sprawled across a worn leather couch with his feet over the arm, staring at the ceiling. He sits up before they make it through the door.
“Finally,” he says. His eyes are wide and warm under thick lashes, but there’s a sharpness to them, a sense of forced independence that brings with it distrust and paranoia.
His father just died, and you can see it in his face.
Derek watches silently as the boy stands and glances over at him. The kid’s eyes rake up and down his body, a questioning tilt to his eyebrow.
“Who's this?” he asks Parrish, narrowing his eyes. Parrish sighs.
“Stiles, this is Derek. He’s going to make sure you get to Denver in one piece.”
“I never agreed to-” Derek starts to protest, but Stiles talks right over him.
“Hang on, what the fuck happened to our plan?” he snaps, glaring at Parrish in a way that Derek is reluctantly impressed by. “You’re pawning me off with some fucking soldier? Is this a joke?”
“He’s not a soldier, Stiles, he’s a smuggler, and you’ll be safer with him.” Parrish still has those fucking sunglasses on, but Derek can tell that he’s exhausted and irritated by the set of his shoulders. It’s obvious he’s not enjoying this, but this fact does not deter Stiles.
“Bullshit, Jordan.” He rises to his feet, eyes narrowed. “You think I’ll be safer with some stranger? What about the fact that everyone who’s ever cared about me is dead. Everyone except for you. I don’t know him.” Stiles points a long finger straight at Derek as he says this, and Derek lifts his eyebrows back at him.
This is good news. Neither of them want to go, so they won’t go. It seems obvious, but Parrish is still talking.
“Stiles.” Parrish holds his hands up, placating, while Stiles glares back at him. “This is what your father wanted, whether he made that clear to you or not.”
This is news to Derek, who wasn't even aware of Stiles’ existence when we woke up that morning.
“My father wanted to bring me himself,” Stiles snaps. “None of this is what he wanted. None of this was supposed to happen.” He deflates as the words come out, and by the time he stops talking he looks five years younger and terrified. The smell of salt hits the air as Stiles turns away, wiping at his cheeks. “God fucking damnit,” the kid mutters, and for whatever reason, this is the moment that Derek changes his mind.
“Stiles,” he says, carefully taking a step forward. The boy doesn’t turn. “We don’t know each other, but I promise I’m good at what I do. I know the quietest way out of the QZ and I know the safest way into Denver.” Parrish looks a little too smug, so he adds, “also I’m much better company than Parrish.”
When Stiles turns to look at him there’s ice behind his eyes.
“It doesn’t really matter what I want, does it?”
***
They leave at nightfall.
Derek packs his bag full of ammo and supplies and meets Stiles in the same cellar they’d met in that morning. Stiles is waiting with his bag already packed, staring at the ceiling again.
“So, you’re a smuggler?” he asks as they make their way down an empty hallway, towards the abandoned offices that Derek uses as an inconspicuous entry and exit point.
Derek grunts in response.
“You ever smuggled a kid before?” Derek rolls his eyes.
“No,” he says. “Be quiet.”
The offices are empty, as usual, and Derek shoves away the bookcase blocking the pathway with ease. The hole has been in the wall for a long time, and Derek and some others working against the government's orders had created a path through the woods and put a hole in one of the back fences as well. Derek pulls vines back for Stiles to step under.
“Hurry up, and don’t make too much noise.”
Stiles performs an elaborate pantomime of keeping quiet, one finger in front of his smirking lips as he raises his eyebrows, then he ducks below the vines and keeps talking.
“Be quiet, hurry up,” he mimics in an overly deep voice, flashing a grin over his shoulder. “Parrish is much better company than you, don’t kid yourself.”
Derek glares at the back of Stiles’ head and feels intensely regretful. The kid has clearly made peace with this arrangement, but Derek is not sure if this is a good thing. Now, he is going to go down in history as the guy who strangled the world’s last hope because he was so fucking infuriating.
“You know,” Stiles keeps talking, “I’ve never been outside the QZ, or, outside at all, really.” He doesn’t smell or sound as upset about this as Derek would expect someone to be. “It’s beautiful.” He’s looking at the trees like they’re wonders from another world, and Derek guesses for him they basically are. “When mom was alive, I didn’t really get it, you know? They told me it wasn’t safe for me to leave the house, and I didn’t even question it. And then, after those men came and killed her, my dad explained everything to me.” He trips over a root and stumbles slightly, before regaining his footing and flashing Derek a self deprecating smile. “He explained like, why they came after her, and that they’d come after me too, if they knew about me.”
He shrugs, and Derek bites back the instinct to tell him he doesn’t need to know the whole tragic backstory because he is actually a bit curious.
“You’re like me, aren’t you?” Stiles asks after a few silent moments. He seems hopeful, almost, and Derek doesn’t want to take that from him.
“In a way,” he mutters. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Stiles that there’s no one like him. If he inherited his mother’s gift, like Parrish assumes he did, his entire life will be devoted to a cause he didn’t get to choose. If Stiles is truly the last spark, this journey from hell is only the beginning.
They reach the end of the path where the chain link fence is ripped, and again Derek holds it out of the way for Stiles to duck under.
“I have a car stashed in the woods a few miles out,” Derek says, “as long as we can find gas along the way we should be able to take it all the way there.” It’s never that simple. Derek is fully expecting the worst case scenario to become reality, but Laura had always said it was best not to speak these things out loud, and Derek tended to agree.
“Well, then lead the way, Derek.” Stiles mimes tipping his hat, and Derek continues down the path. “So you’re like me in a way.” Again, his voice drops several octaves as he quotes Derek, even though Derek’s voice is barely deeper than his own. “But what does that mean exactly? ‘Cause being a spark or whatever doesn’t seem worth all this fucking isolation and murder. I mean, all I do is accidentally set things on fire or blow up bullfrogs or hear people’s thoughts. I’d rather just… not.”
Derek doesn’t know which part, if any, he should respond to. He’s definitely had moments where he hated being born the way he was. He loves being a wolf, but he’d give it up in a heartbeat if it meant his family could be alive. He wouldn’t even have to think about it.
“You can hear people’s thoughts?” he asks. When he glances back at Stiles he’s smirking at the forest floor.
“Sometimes,” the boy says cryptically. Derek does not like the sound of that.
***
The beat up Range Rover is right where Derek left it, and Stiles stares at the machine with wide eyes. Most likely, he’s never seen an actual car outside of photos and movies. Derek tries and fails to not be charmed by his awe at things that Derek merely sees as a haunted reminder of the past.
Once in the car, Derek allows himself to relax a bit. Sneaking in and out of territories is always nerve-wracking, but he can’t deny how incredible it feels to be on the open highway, no other cars in sight. Stiles quiets down once they get moving, eyes glued to the window as he watches the world blur by. Derek flexes his fingers on the steering wheel and feels the rumble of the engine beneath them.
They make good distance on that first day.
That night they sleep in the back of the car, seats folded down like it’s a camping trip rather than a death march. It’s cold, and Derek can see Stiles shivering, but letting the car run through the night isn’t an option and the kid clearly wants to stay as far from Derek as possible. Derek doesn’t blame him.
Stiles is alone out here. They both are. If they die on this trip, as Derek is expecting they will, there will be no one to miss them. Perhaps this is why Parrish asked him to go in the first place.
At the end of the day, Derek is just as alone as Stiles is.