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Derek had grown used to feeling like he was in someone else’s skin.
He couldn’t quite remember when it had started, maybe he had always felt like that. He remembered liking the tops that his parents brought for his sisters. He remembered looking at flowing skirts and flowery dresses and longing, but not really understanding why he did. He remembered hating his name, and would scowl whenever someone said it.
It was a wonder his parents didn’t notice beforehand. Or perhaps they did, but didn’t want to address it. He didn’t want to think of his parents of purposely letting him feel like this, but then he thought of how hard he tried to be normal, about how hard it was to be a werewolf among the more fragile humans, about how hard it was to be a boy with the boys, like he thought he should be.
He remembered his mother brushing his hair back after a particularly hard day, had kissed his forehead and told him that, “it will get easier with age”. His control, he knew, she was talking about his control, but he had taken it to mean those feelings of confusion and had just tried harder to fit in because he wasn’t sure if he could wait so long.
He hadn’t understood then, but now he did. After the fire, when he had been feeling weak and vulnerable and alone, he had done his research.
Derek Hale wasn’t a he.
Derek Hale was a girl, she just didn’t look like one.
She never told Laura. She wanted to, a hundred times after everything, when it was just them because it was secrets that had caused this and she didn’t want it to happen again, but every time she tried, her throat would close up and Derek would have to step away, desperate for air.
Sometimes though, Derek had suspected that Laura had known. She was perceptive, her sister, and there were only so many times that one could convince their brother to get their nails painted before it felt like there was a reason behind it.
Laura had called her ‘Der’.
Better than Derek.
But then she had died, and Derek had been alone, with this secret that she wished she’d been able to tell her. She told Peter instead, when she came back to town. It had been after she had ID’d the body, when the smell of chlorine and death was still ingrained in her nose, when her hands were still shaking and she had needed her family, even if that family didn’t necessarily know that she was there.
“Laura’s dead,” she had muttered and after a pause added, “I don’t want to be a boy. I wish I wasn’t.”
A few weeks later, Derek would wish she had kept that particular secret to herself.
(To Peter’s credit, he had never spoken a word of it, although Derek supposed that his niece’s gender crisis was hardly important when one sought power and had killed his own family to get it.)
She had never told anyone else, had no intention to, nor did she have any intention of changing. She could, and more than once a week, she thought she should if just so she could shake off this feeling that she carried around with her day to day (on top of everything else, to remove that, would be a relief).
But the thing was she didn’t know if it would work on werewolves. Pain killers dissolved too quickly in her bloodstream to take an effect. Cuts and bruises healed in seconds without even a scar. How could she be sure that the hormone treatment would work? How could she be sure that she would be able to control her healing during surgery? How could she be sure that, when it was all over, her body won’t return to its factory settings and she wouldn’t be left feeling more broken that she was before?
No, she couldn’t take that risk.
So Derek swallowed the bile in her stomach and straightened her back and adjusted to who she would always be.
*
A curse, is what Roma called it, spitting the word and cackling.
A gift, Derek corrected.
Beacon Hills had always been a hot spot for trouble. There was something about this land that drew people in, benevolent and malleolus, and yet there was nothing to mark it as such. Long ago, Derek had just marked it as unclaimed territory and then shakily marked because when the pack grew and stabled, the threats lessened.
It couldn’t have come at a better time really. The pack was getting older, leaving high school and for the first time, they were able to do something normal for a change. Exams, study sessions, applying for colleges. Scott, Erica and Boyd were going to Beacon Hill Community College. Isaac was doing an apprenticeship at the bakery in town, Allison was taking a gap year to go travelling around Europe, and Lydia was going to MIT, of course, because it had been what she always wanted to do. Stiles was going to Berkley and Derek didn’t want to admit that she was pleased that he wasn’t moving so far away.
She was pleased with all of her pack, of course, but with Stiles, it felt too cliché to say there was a connection, so she wouldn’t. There was definitely something though, something that it was probably too dangerous for her to feel. He was younger, he was still a kid, it was only recently that they had even admitted to liking each other as people and then there was the whole thing with Derek not being who she appeared to be. It was too complicated, too difficult, but god, when they were together it was too easy.
Derek remembered the day before he left for college. The pack had done a big group thing, knowing this would be the last time they would be together for a long time, and Derek had tried her best not to feel as if this was the last time she would have all of this. (Cora managed to get it out of her, rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t be so dramatic” and after grumbling that she wasn’t being dramatic, Derek had made more of an effort to pretend).
There had been pizza and movies that voices slowly rose over as Erica and Stiles argued with Allison and Scott about the best superhero movie. (The only thing that was agreed upon was how terrible the Green Lantern movie was). And honestly, it had been one of the best melancholy moments of her life, if that made any sense at all. Because slowly, the pack dispersed and went home until there was just Derek and Stiles.
“So, I’m off to college tomorrow,” Stiles drew the words out, fiddled with the strap on his bag.
Derek glanced up from where she was cleaning boxes away, hesitated only for a second before she restarted her movements and continued her path to the kitchens. “I know. Are you ready?”
“Physically? Yes. Mentally, probably not,” Stiles admitted.
Her eyes flickered towards the teenager and away. He didn’t- he looked at her with a steady gaze. She wondered when he had begun to stand that tall, when he had begun to style his hair like that, when he had begun to look at her like…like…
She swallowed noticeably, wasn’t sure what to do with her hands so stuffed them into the pockets on her sweatpants. “You’ll be fine. College was great.”
Stiles tilted his head curiously. “You went to college?”
Derek hummed. “A few years ago now. I’d just finished when Laura…” she didn’t want to finish, and didn’t need to, because Stiles nodded in understanding. It should be easier to talk about, after all this time, but it wasn’t. She wondered if it ever would be, and she shouldn’t care so much that Stiles wouldn’t push her if it never did.
“What did you study?” he questioned lightly, shuffled forward a few steps.
“Architecture,” Derek blurted.
Stiles looked mildly surprised. “You draw?”
“A little,” Derek murmured and didn’t add that she hadn’t picked up a pencil to sketch since before Laura died.
Silence fell over them. It was comfortable, like it should be with pack, but this close to Stiles, knowing that he was older, going off to college – no longer a child, could maybe, it would be possible – and knowing that tomorrow, he would be gone from her life, even if just temporarily, was making her shoulders hunch. She was hyperaware of every moment, the slight scuffing off his shoes against the floor, of the shift of his shoulders under his shirt and the way his eyes flickered around the room, never really settling. Derek would have said that he hadn’t taken his Adderall today – or maybe, taken too much of it – but she could smell the sour tinge of fear, perhaps nerves, and it kept her anxious until she bit out a demand for what he wanted.
Stiles jumped, hands flexed around his hold on his back. He took a breath, levelled his gaze on her and set his expression with determination. “So I’m moving away tomorrow and I don’t know if – Scott’s been encouraging me to tell you because I’ve been irritating him about it, and when the same thing happened between him and Allison, and then him and Kira, I told him to just get over himself and tell them, and well, it’s time I should take my own advice and,” he stopped, fumbled over a few words and Derek hangs onto them.
In the end, it’s blurted out. The words “I like you, like you,” hang in the air, and Derek forgets for a moment that she has to breathe. In this moment, she can ignore the juvenile way the confession is given. She can ignore the endless list of issues that he spend countless hours focusing on because Stiles just said what Derek had always wished but never hoped he would feel.
“Say something,” Stiles commanded nervously.
“Why?” Derek croaked out in the end.
“Do you want a list? Because I have one,” Stiles informed him. Derek wasn’t at all surprised.
She wanted to say yes, yes I want to see it because I need to understand why, why would you want me of all people, but she resisted and said instead, “You’re leaving. You’ll meet someone at college, someone your age, someone,” better than me.
Stiles shook his head, took more steps forward until he’s pressing against the breakfast bar and that it all that stands as a barrier between them. “I’ve felt like this for four years. A semester isn’t going to change that.”
“Really?” Derek doesn’t mean to sound so hopeful, so vulnerable, wanted to curse herself for it, but Stiles’ eyes soften with warmth and her heart pounds in her chest.
“Really.” He said the word like an oath and Derek needed to believe him.
They kissed for the first time that night, something soft and chaste and a promise of more in the future. Stiles wished her goodbye in a whisper, as if afraid anything louder would break the spell that had fallen over them. Derek fell asleep with their kiss burnt onto her lips.
*
They were in their second year when Roma came.
It was during summer break, when everything was too hot and too sticky, and Derek found herself distracted daily by Stiles and how well he had filled out over the past year. They were together, or at least as together as they could be living a few hours apart, but what did distance matter when Stiles introduced her to his friends as his boyfriend, and Stiles was spending more nights at her loft than at his father’s house.
The smell of witch had started to spread around town, purposeful touches in places to mock the town’s supernatural inhabitancies.
“It’s like they’re covering our scent, just to toy with us,” Erica tried to explain with a disgruntled wrinkling of her nose. Of course, Stiles made a joke about dog’s marking their territory because he just couldn’t resist, and Derek didn’t stop the pillow attack that the boy was then subjected to.
Roma was a young woman with an old soul, who had a grudge against werewolf packs in general. They’d never been able to find out why, and Lydia had suggested it was because she was older than she appeared, as good an explanation as any was. It had taken over a week to track her down, too much scent everywhere, confusing the senses, but Deaton had been training Stiles to scrye and in the end, his limited expertise had been what they needed to narrow down the area of focus.
Derek couldn’t even be sure how it happened. There had been polite words that were tightened with frustration, and then bitten out threats and snarls. It happened too fast, spun out of control too quickly for Derek or Scott to properly contain it. One minute, Roma had been smiling with amusement at their expense and the next, her eyes had darkened and her lips pulled back into a sneer. Her hand rose towards Isaac, mouthy little shit that he was, Derek wasn’t really surprised that he had become the focus of the witches anger, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let her beta get hurt. Stepping in front of the blast had seemed like the best idea at the time, the only option.
In the end, she could only remember flashing white light and the fading voices of her pack shouting her name.
*
She came to at Deaton’s. She would recognise that horrible mix of disinfectant and magic anywhere. She breathed it in, and her chest ached from it. Voices slowly broke through the barrier of silence when her ears popped and acclimatised again. They called that he was awake, asked whether he was okay, some callings of his name.
She blinked her eyes open slowly, squinted against the brightness and winced. Her voice rasped when she asked, “What happened?”
“You stepped in front of unknown magic you dickwad,” Stiles’ tight voice scolded. He sounded worried and relieved at the same time, and Derek inclined her head towards it. He was on a chair beside her, leaning close, lips pressed together.
“Thanks for that,” Isaac muttered somewhere to his right, but Derek didn’t look away from Stiles.
“What happened?” she repeated and waited. Stiles’ eyes flickered up to Scott and Derek’s did the same. Scott looked worried, uncertain of how to continue, arms folded across his chest with a serious expression on his face. Derek felt his chest tighten and she asked the question again, more urgently this time.
“It’s not anything bad,” Kira assured quickly, her smile bright but strained.
“Then tell me what it is,” Derek insisted. She pushed herself up now, ignored the ache in her muscles and the commands of the pack around her to lie back down. She swung her legs over the table and stared.
They were smaller now, muscled yes, but softer. She went to touch them, to feel their realness because it couldn’t be, and stopped. Hands – just as big as they were before, but thinner, more delicate, more typically feminine. She blinked a few times, wondered if she was imagining things. She clenched the hands into fists and they responded as if they were her own.
She hadn’t realised they were shaking until Stiles’ own closed around them. She jerked up to look at him, wide eyed and asked, “What happened to me?”
“The witch, Roma, she said it was a curse,” he confessed.
Somewhere behind him, Lydia scoffed and said, “Being a woman is no punishment.”
Derek wasn’t sure she could breathe. “A woman?” she croaked.
Stiles nodded, didn’t smile but didn’t pull away. Just watched her. Derek wondered whether she looked relieved, whether she looked devastated, whether she looked anything at all. Her emotions were too scattered for her to pin point exactly.
“Show me,” she demanded.
Lydia had a hand held mirror, and she offered it silently and Derek grasped it too tightly. She didn’t look for a moment, needed a second to brace herself for what she was going to see because she’d spent her whole life telling herself that this couldn’t happen and yet – she looked at Stiles and he strained a smile. She could see the way it weakened at the edges, but she pretended that she couldn’t when she took strength and finally looked at herself.
Her face was still the same shape; that was the first thing she noticed. Nothing had changed there, but the line of her eyes were more almond shaped than they had been before. Her eyelashes shorter, her cheekbones higher, her nose rounder, her lips pump and curved. She blinked. The image in the mirror copied her. She rose her second hand to touch herself, felt the nerve endings jump under her fingertips and shuddered out a laugh.
“I’m a girl,” she muttered. She felt lighter than she had in a long time.
Derek Hale had grown used to the skin she was born in, the one that didn’t feel like her own, but looking at herself like this, at what she should have been, she wasn’t just contented anymore.
She felt right.
*
Deaton said that they would look for a way to reverse the spell and Derek’s smile had wavered when she agreed. Then the veterinarian had levelled her with this look, this knowing look, and she’d had to look away from it. Honestly, she wasn’t all that surprised that he knew. Deaton had always been like that, even when she had been a child and he, the old friend of his mothers.
“If that’s what you wish,” he added carefully.
Derek swallowed. “I…”
“Why wouldn’t Derek want to be changed back?” Erica questioned.
Derek ducked her head and didn’t say anything. Stiles shifted beside him, nudged his shoulder against her knee.
Deaton hummed noncommittally, and told Derek that she would need to come in at some point during the week so that he could run more tests, to see the extent of the changes magic had caused. Derek agreed, and quietly thanked him for the subject change.
*
Derek wallowed in the loss of her old body for about a week.
Despite everything, she had worked hard to earn the body she had, and looking at her clothes – Henley’s and skinny jeans that were too big for her now – she felt nostalgic. But then she would look at herself, bare in the mirror and touch the curves that she now had, and happiness swelled within her. It didn’t matter what she had lost because what she had gained was more than she had ever dreamed.
She spent three days in the loft, wearing oversized t-shirts and wrapped up in blankets. Stiles had wanted to join her, but Derek had insisted that she needed a few days to get used to herself like this. She didn’t want to say that she was afraid that Stiles would be able to read how she felt, would know what she was before. Would know that the person that she was now was who she wanted to be, and that might not be the person that Stiles wanted to be with. The thought would creep up every once and a while, and Derek would force it down.
She refused to let something like that spoil this moment.
On the fourth day, Lydia cornered Derek. She entered with bags from designer boutiques over spilling from her hands and said, “I took the liberty of going shopping. You’ll need something different now, and you can’t spend all that time locked up here.”
“You didn’t have to. It won’t be a permanent thing,” she reminded her, although the words brought acid to her throat.
In turn, the redhead had rolled her eyes and stated, “I’m sure we can find a way to make it so, just in case Roma comes back with any bright ideas to change this.”
Derek looked taken aback, surprised and god just a little terrified, and Lydia had tempered slightly, her voice low and careful when she said, “The happiest I’d ever seen you was when you were looking into that mirror. I want you to stay like that.”
Derek blinked, didn’t even realise the tears were there. Lydia turned away to fiddle aimlessly with the bags, allowed her the moment and Derek was grateful. She blinked away the water, wiped roughly at those who had escaped and cleared her throat before she asked, “What should I try on first?”
She grinned wickedly, eyes alit with mischievous, and Derek wasn’t sure whether she should be terrified of the monster that she was about to face or not.
Derek tried on every skirt, shirt, dress and pair of shoes that Lydia had brought with her, listened painstakingly to each piece of advice she was given as if afraid that if she forgot even a piece, this would all be taken away from her. After Lydia had left, she carefully folded each article of clothing, returned them to their bags and lined the bags up in front of her wardrobe, not quite ready to swap them for the old.
*
From Stiles:
[19:46] U okay???
To Stiles:
[19:47] Better than I thought I’d be. At least, until I saw your horrifying grammar.
From Stiles:
[19:48] Ha ha. V funny
[19:48] Ive been doing research n i think i might have found smth about spell reversals
To Stiles:
[19:57] Oh.
From Stiles:
[19:57] oh??? thats all u have to say???
To Stiles:
[19:59] I don’t know what else to say.
From Stiles:
[20:00] smth like ‘yay stiles thank u for finding smth amidst the crap that the internet throws at u u’re my hero’
[20:02] ????
[20:03] dude y aren’t u answering????
[20:05] ????????????????
[20:07] okay im getting seriously worried now. r u ok????
[20:08] i said smth wrong didn’t i
To Stiles:
[20:10] No, you didn’t. Don’t worry. Thank you Stiles.
*
Derek should have expected Stiles’ arrival early the next morning. She had been up anyway, unable to sleep and from the look of him when he looked to her, slumber hadn’t come easily to Stiles either. She was in her pyjamas, one of her old shirts and a pair of boxers, hair rumpled with sleep and she pulled her legs closer to herself, as if that could protect her.
“We need to talk,” Stiles declared.
Derek nodded in answer, and tried not to recoil away when Stiles carefully dropped into the open seat on the sofa beside her. Silence stretched out before them and unlike those times before, awkwardness weighted it down. It settled on Derek’s skin and made her want to itch, more so than anything had before. Stiles refused to look towards her, gazed out to the centre of the room, as if in thought and Derek wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say.
When Stiles sighed loudly, it shocked Derek, made her still as if she were startled prey.
“I did something wrong last night.” He paused and then corrected himself, “I’ve been doing something wrong since this happened. I never asked you.”
“Asked me?”
“What you wanted,” Stiles elaborated, “I just assumed…and I shouldn’t have. Just, you never gave me any indication that you…”
“I didn’t want to,” Derek denied and then hesitated, “I was okay not to. It wasn’t that big of a deal. It didn’t matter, I didn’t want it to change things.”
“It does matter though, doesn’t it?” Stiles persisted, eyebrows furrowed in the middle and face drawn tight with distress, “Because you felt – and I didn’t know. I’m your boyfriend. This is something that I should know, right?”
Derek winced. She curled her toes. “No one knew,” she admitted, “I’ve never told anyone before. I didn’t think I could change, could be – so like I said, it didn’t matter.”
“You don’t have to, ya know, go through surgery to be considered a woman,” Stiles replied. There was an uneasy edge to his voice, as if he wasn’t entirely sure of the facts he was saying but believed them to be true. “I would have called you my girlfriend, not my,” he didn’t say the word. That’s fine, Derek didn’t really want to hear it.
Stiles scrubbed a hand down his face tiredly, and Derek watched him through her eyelashes. “And what would you call me now?” she murmured.
“Depends on whether you still want,” he gestured between them, “you know, us as...us.”
Derek tilted her head in confusion at the vagueness. “Shouldn’t I be asking that question?” she tried to smile ruefully, but her fear fed into it and made it weak, “I’m the one who doesn’t have,” she gestured towards her crotch.
Stiles’ eyes followed the direction and then returned to narrow on Derek’s face. “What’s that go to do with anything? I mean, okay I’ll have to get used to it, just like you will. But I’m bisexual. I like girls. And more importantly, I like you. A lot. More than I thought I would,” he laughed and pressed a shaking hand through his hair, “And I don’t really know much about all this stuff, but you’re still you right? I don’t see why my feelings would change just because you don’t have the parts I was expecting.”
Derek’s throat is tight, and when she opened her mouth to try and get some air in, an embarrassing squeak leaves her. Stiles’ head snapped around worriedly, and Derek clamped her lips together. She shook her head, clenched her eyes shut when the tear stung with relief. Her hands trembled and she clutched them together around the front of her legs in an attempt to get them to stop.
“I thought…”
Stiles’ said, “I suppose we should stop trying to think for each other.”
Derek snorted a wet sob, and smiled wide enough that her cheeks ached.
“Your smile, it’s still the same as before,” Stiles told her later, stroking his fingers down the side of her face and his fingers dipping into the dents of her dimples.
“Is that a good thing?” Derek murmured in return, stared back at him. Let him touch as he wished.
Stiles hummed. “It’s the best thing. I love your smile.”
I love you, Derek thought, and her palms clammed up at the truth of it.
*
Some days, she wakes up and seeing herself in the mirror was too much. She would examine herself, take in the swell of her breasts and how wide her hips were and the thatch of dark hair between her legs, and find it hard to breath.
Derek worked out in those moments. Threw herself back into old routines, something that she was used to. The pull of her muscles, the aching of her limbs, the stickiness of the sweat sticking her clothes to her back. The first thing, she had thought it would be the same. It wasn’t. She hadn’t quite realised that struggle of boobs. She had bras but nothing seemed to really help, keep them in place, and the more she jumped and moved, the more they hurt.
In the end, she had reluctantly admitted defeat and slouched on the couch with ice cream. Stiles found her like that in the evening, and she griped about how much breasts sucked.
The next day, when Stiles brought her a sports bra and told her to give it a try, she nearly told him again.
She bit down on the words and instead, pressed him into the wall to show him exactly how she felt.
Derek had always been better with action than words anyhow.
*
“I don’t want to be Derek anymore,” was the first thing she said when the pack meeting officially began. She hunched forward, had her hands clenched in her lap and she avoided the eyes that turned to her. She’d been trying to figure out how to say it, how to convince everyone that – and the fears of them not being okay with it, with losing her pack all over again terrified her. But she had to tell them, just as Stiles said, just as Lydia said.
“What do you mean you don’t want to be Derek anymore?” Isaac arched an eyebrow slowly.
Derek shifted a little in place. She opened her mouth, and closed it quickly when words struggled to come. Tried again to the same result. She pressed her lips together roughly. From beside her, Stiles reached into her lap and wrapped a hand around her own. He squeezed once in a silent offer of support, and Derek clung back desperately. From across the room, Lydia’s lips twitched upward at the corners in encouragement. She utilised it to find her will.
“I mean, I don’t want to go back to…how I was before. I want to stay like this,” she gestured to herself with her free hand. Stiles’ thumb caressed her skin and she added, “I never felt right before, but I never – with everything, I couldn’t – but I have it now and,” she cut herself off with a frustrated noise.
She wished this was easier.
“So you want to be a girl now?” Scott questioned, with a confused frown.
“I never was a guy. I just…looked like one,” Derek explained awkwardly, because he knew no better way of doing it.
Scott nodded slowly, one in understanding, and then the next in acceptance. “Okay. So what do we call you now?”
Derek blinked slowly. “Huh?”
“Do you still want us to call you Derek?” Allison elaborated with a polite smile. It was a little pulled at the edges, and Derek could sense the unease from her, but the look in her eyes was genuine, she was trying, and that’s all Derek wanted.
“I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” Derek muttered.
“Ooh, what about Megan?” Kira suggested excitedly, “Um, Charlotte? Ruby?”
Erica laughed. “Ruby, really? Little on the nose don’t you think?”
Derek was silent. She felt overwhelmed and disbelieving and pleased, so very pleased. The tightness in her stomach had been replaced with something lighter, and she felt as if she could breathe easier. Still, she clung to Stiles’ hand and tried not to let her expression give way to what she was feeling. It had never been difficult to hide what she felt before, but this was different wasn’t it? This was real stuff, the real her, something that had always been out of reach.
“Guys,” Stiles interjected over the voices, “Don’t you think Derek should get to decide if she wants to change her name?”
“Right, of course, sorry,” Kira flushed and frowned apologetically.
Derek smiled a little in her direction. The girl meant no harm, and she had known Kira long enough to know that she just overexcited about things. A bit like Stiles at times. “It’s fine,” she assured, “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, just. It’s just, those names, they’re not for me.”
She let herself think. Her name, although a boy’s, had been the one that her mother had given her. She remembered being told the long story of how she came to be named such, about her father’s great grandfather who had lived through more decades than anyone had really expected him to. And how, to his father, that man had been likened his grandfather and father combined. When she was born, he had died only a month or so before, and it was why she was honoured with such.
“That was if you were born a boy,” her father stated, “If you were a girl, your mother was insistent on her choice of name.”
“That’s because your name choices were terrible,” her mother teased back in her defence.
Her younger self had been too interested, had tilted her head up to meet her mother’s gaze and asked what she might have been called.
Even though it was years ago, Derek could still remember the softness at the edges of her mother’s smile. Could remember how she pushed his hair away from his face and stroked his cheek and affectionately and said.
“Dahlia. I want to be Dahlia.”
(When Scott called her Lia for the first time, an affectionate nickname, she thought she was going to cry. She gave him a dead arm and an extra slice of pizza instead).
*
A week later, Allison pressed the amulet into Dahlia’s hands. She quirked an eyebrow in confusion and peers down at the design upon the silver. Dahlia was pretty sure that she’s seen this before, in some kind of book but she can’t be sure what one. Even without knowing what it means, she can smell the magic, sharp and bitter and itching her nose.
“What’s this for?” she wondered.
Allison smiled gently. “Hopefully, it’ll help you stay like this.”
Behind her, Stiles’ head raised over the top of his laptop to survey the scene. He doesn’t say anything – he had been doing that a lot, when it comes to her change. He let her take control and power through the situation without him stepping in to help her. Maybe before, that would have worried her, made her think that he didn’t approve, but she knew Stiles, and she knew what this was. This was him letting her have complete control on something that meant too much to her, and where his opinion on the matter, unless asked, should never come into question. She appreciated it – but he watched with interest.
Dahlia swallowed and carefully said, “It will?”
“Lydia did the research. Double checked it with Deaton, and then I got my dad to get his hands on it. Apparently, it was in the possession of an old friend, some Canadian witch hunter. It’s supposed to keep glamours up, but we figured, since it stops the magic from failing that…”
“…It’ll stop me from changing back to…how I was before,” Dahlia finished the sentence.
She stared at the amulet and it stared back. It seemed so insignificant, so easily overlooked, and yet this small token would save her. Her hand shook and she slowly enclosed her fingers around it, squeezed until the rising pattern pushed into her palm.
“Thank you,” she whispered, because she didn’t know anything else to say.
Allison smiled at her, put a hand to her arm and squeezed. “You’re welcome, Lia.”
*
She wears a dress when she goes to the cemetery. She sits there in silence for ten minutes before she tells her family how much better she is now. She wondered what her family would say, if they could see her now, and pretended that the feeling of disconnection that she’d felt since the fire was actually a mark of their love.
She left trembling and with tear tracks on her cheeks, and wished that it wasn’t pretend.
*
Dahlia lingered behind everyone. Through the kitchen window, she could see everyone, her pack, outside enjoying the sun. She could hear the voices, the laughter, something that warmed her. This is what pack was supposed to be about, about family and friends, not just a group of fighters to battle with. She could smell the meat cooking on the grill, steaks and burgers and sausages, and knew that beyond, the Sheriff would be manning the grill, with Chris Argent at his side. Although the ex-hunter had been invited for three years, even since blood had been shed together and they’d saved each other’s lives on more than one occasion, things were still tense and he preferred to keep the company of the Sheriff, as if that were safer. (Dahlia also suspected that the man had taken more than a friendly fancy towards John Stilinski, but she’d be damned if she was going to be the one to tell Stiles that). On any other day, it would be enough to make her step over the threshold and out into the sun, but today was different.
It had been three weeks since she had officially become Dahlia Hale. In over a week, the pack would be parting, returning to schools and work and other aspects of their life, and just like every year, this was one of the only times that everyone was in the same space together, regardless.
Which means, this is biggest group of people that Dahlia had yet to face.
They all knew of course. She had no doubt that as soon as she had first been hit by the spell that the extended pack, for lack of better word, had found out what had happened to her, and she had given her permission to pass on the information of not looking for a cure to the parents. Perhaps that was just a way for her to avoid the conversation again. Perhaps she just wanted to get bad reactions out of the way, so that she could be happy as she is. She had gotten a call from Melissa just to find out how she was adjusting, spent hours on the phone listening to her mothering words, the advice of a woman to a younger woman, and had to run around the preserve three times to force away the feeling of tearful happiness. The day after, John had dropped around with doughnuts and sent her a conspiring wink when he made her promise “not to tell Stiles”, just like it was before.
She knew it was going to be okay, but this was the first time they would all be together. It felt big. Huge.
She was going to be sick.
Dahlia shook that thought from her head. No, she wouldn’t. It might feel like it now, feel like that was the better option, but it wasn’t. You’re not ashamed of who you are, she told herself. This is who you are. These are your pack mates, they know this. They don’t care. You’re not ashamed.
She repeated those words again and again.
Nervously, Dahlia smoothed down her top. She had been meticulous with her clothes today. Picked everything carefully, changed as many times as she could get away with until she was satisfied. It felt as if she were making that first impression all over again. She’d hated the feeling then too. The top was lacy, a white over shirt with an orange tank top underneath, and her shorts cut off mid-thigh to show off bare leg. She’d never done that before – seeing the flex of her muscles as she walked had been oddly distracting. She curled her painted toes in her sandals, just to drag the time out longer. They had been awkward to get on, too many straps and buckles and they felt much too flat in comparison to her boots, but the idea that she could wear them, that she was allowing herself to do such a thing, had been thrilling and her heart had been pounding with too much excitement to change after that.
She looked good. At least, she thought she did. Stiles said she did. Kira complimented her shorts, called them “cute”. Boyd gave a nod of approval. That was good right?
Dahlia shook her head. She was over thinking things. Just take the step, she ordered herself. Dragging in a long breath, hands moving to play with the pendant that now rests at between her breasts, she did just that.
It was louder out here, but Dahlia could tell that the voices had hushed just slightly when she had stepped out. She ignored the eyes that turned to her, the ones that paused on her and the ones that flittered away, and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin. It felt good, and she heaved a happy breath.
Erica wolf whistled. “Looking good Lia.”
Dahlia grumbled something but she was sure the threat was lost in the beam that crossed her face.
Stiles made a beeline to her. He was grinning madly, eyes sparkling beneath the wide brim of his baseball cap, and his cheeks were flushed. She could smell the beer on his breath when he wrapped his arms around her waist, and drew her close.
“She looks better than good, and you know it,” Stiles teased Erica, but he kept his eyes on Dahlia, heat in his gaze.
“I look fantastic,” Dahlia assured shakily, and Stiles looked delighted.
“De-Dahlia,” the Sheriff hastily corrected himself, “You get first pick of steaks.”
In her ear, Stiles murmured hotly, “Pick the biggest one, otherwise dad’s going to get my default, and I’m not having that.”
Of course, the Sheriff knew what was being said, sent Stiles a look that could have been described as “I have a gun and I’ll do what I want”, which sparked the familiar battle of wits between father and son that made Dahlia’s heart ache and fill in equal measure.
She picked the biggest steak, and didn’t care about her lipstick being smudged over her food while she ate. Melissa chided her about eating like a lady not an animal. Dahlia shot back that some ladies are animals, and spent the rest of the night grinning like a loon.
A lady.
Because that’s who she is.