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Derek watched Stiles kneeling on the ground, face slack with disbelief and anguish. Derek kept his foot on the throat of the chimera. The creature had been terrorizing Beacon Hills for the past month. He wished he’d been able to stop him sooner. Then he could have prevented the beast from throwing Stiles’ beloved Jeep against a tree and setting them both on fire.
Stiles had managed to magic water from the creek to put out the fire before it could spread, but Derek knew that the Jeep was finally beyond saving. He didn’t know how he could make it up to him but using all of his weight, he snapped the chimera’s neck and watched it fall limply against the ground.
Now that he’d taken care of that problem, he moved towards Stiles, reaching out and laying a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “We should go,” he said. “We need to tell the others and get rid of the body.”
“No. No. We need to do something,” Stiles said, standing and approaching the Jeep.
Derek yanked him back by his shirt. “It’s still hot. You’ll burn yourself.”
“We have to save him!” Stiles shouted, wincing when one of the tires that had survived so far popped with enough force to bust the already scorched axle. The wheel fell to the ground with a groan and a thud. “That was a death rattle, wasn’t it?”
Derek didn’t know what to say, so he pulled Stiles into his arms, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I’ll have the garage come get it. Maybe we can salvage some parts.”
“No! If Roscoe is dead, he’s going out in style, not pieced out,” Stiles snapped. “I know. We’ll do a funeral pyre. I’ll build a raft to put in the creek. We’ll shove Roscoe on, light it on fire and send him off! A Viking funeral for the best damn Jeep ever made.”
“Stiles, you know intentionally burning a vehicle is not only dangerous but illegal. If we send a burning Roscoe down the river on a raft, it’ll set the whole preserve on fire.” Derek would rather do anything than being involved with fire, especially on such a large scale.
“I know, but I have to do something!” Stiles said.
“Let’s work on getting rid of the body. I’ll have Roscoe towed to the shop, and we’ll figure something out.” Derek looked over the damage. “How will we explain this to the insurance company?” He was pretty sure the only reason they’d been able to get some of Roscoe’s previous repairs taken care of was because their insurance agent was a Valkyrie, but even this might be too much for her.
The following morning, Derek woke to find Stiles missing. He sniffed the air and frowned, knowing Stiles hadn’t even slept. The sour mix of exhaustion, stress and sorrow filled the house, and Derek sneezed twice as he stepped into the kitchen to find Stiles sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a photo Erica had taken of Derek and Stiles with Roscoe. The whole thing was a silhouette and quite artistic, but it still broke Derek’s heart to know how much Stiles was suffering at the loss.
“He was my mom’s, ya know?” Stiles said. “She was the one that named him and declared him a he when every other car was called a she.” He laughed and wiped at his eyes. “She taught me how to fix him and take care of him. He was her baby and then my baby, and now he’s gone.”
“You still want to have a Viking funeral?” Derek asked, a thought occurring to him.
“Something like that,” Stiles said. “It has to be special. I know you probably think I’m being stup-”
“No,” Derek said. “You’re feeling your emotions. That’s allowed. We all deal with grief in our own way. We might not be able to burn Roscoe, but they burn effigies on Pyres for Guy Fawkes Day, so what if we have a bonfire and burn a representation.”
Stiles looked thoughtful before nodding. “Yeah, we can do that. Tonight?”
“Why don’t we do it on the next full moon with the entire pack here,” Derek suggested, knowing he’d need time for what he had planned.
“Okay, yeah. Maybe I can get a good-sized copy of this photo,” Stiles said.
“Sure,” Derek responded, pressing a kiss to the top of Stiles’ head before heading upstairs to get ready for work.
Derek spent all of his free time in his workshop behind the house. Stiles tried to come in several times, but Derek always heard him coming and would cut him off before he could see what Derek had on his workbench. The night before the full moon, Derek snuck out of bed to put the finishing touches on the project.
He saw the sun coming up through the window over the bench as he applied the last bit of paint. He stood back, smiling, proud of himself, and hoping Stiles would be pleased. Turning, he was surprised to find Stiles standing in the doorway behind him. Derek hadn’t heard him, and as he sniffed the air, he realized he couldn’t smell him either. “Did you magic yourself so I wouldn’t know you were there?”
Stiles shrugged. “I needed to know what you were doing in here.”
Derek moved aside to reveal his project. A replica of Roscoe carved out of wood and painted in excruciating detail, down to a piece of duct tape wrapped around the exhaust pipe, stood on the workbench.
Stiles opened his mouth a few times, reaching out a hand tentatively, fingers hovering over the dent in the hood from Stiles hitting that bad guy when they’d returned to Beacon Hills. “This is beautiful. Too beautiful to burn,” Stiles whispered, looking at Derek with shining eyes.
“Good thing there is this one, then,” Derek said, reaching under a tarp to pull out an unpainted version of the carving. The detail wasn’t as intricate, but it was still amazing. “I can paint it if you want. It’ll take most of the day, but I’ll do it.”
Stiles shook his head. “No, I think I’d rather go to breakfast and head over to the garage. I think we can search Roscoe for usable parts.”
“I thought you didn’t want him to be pieced out,” Derek said, his stomach growling at the mention of food.
“I thought about it, and maybe the best way to celebrate his life is to have him be an organ donor,” Stiles said, smiling. Derek nodded, unsure how much would be usable, but he would find something in Roscoe to put in another vehicle, maybe even a new, used Jeep for Stiles.