Chapter Text
“Agent Stilinski,” Stiles stated in a monotone as he answered the phone, “Who is this?”
He bit his lip to keep from screaming as he touched the boiling hot coffee pot.
“Hello, Stiles,” a silky voice said from the other end, “It’s been a while.”
It should have taken Stiles a minute to place it. It had been 12 years since he had heard it last. But he still saw the field and the floodlights and all the blood in his dreams sometimes. That voice was familiar.
“Peter?” Stiles said, too shocked to keep it out of his voice, “Why are you calling?”
Peter sighed on the other end, genuine in a way Peter rarely was. “I thought you would want to know.”
“Know what?”
“About Derek.”
“Peter, I’m too old for your cryptic shit. Either spit it out or I’m hanging up.”
“Stiles,” Peter said, his voice shaky, somehow, “Derek is dead.”
Stiles had a phone in his hand, a shattered mug, a puddle of coffee and what might be a first degree burn on his foot.
“Stiles? Are you still there?”
Peter’s voice sounded fuzzy when his phone wasn’t pressed against his ear. Without response, he hit end call.
Derek is dead.
Distantly he realized his hands were shaking. It isn’t fair, he thought. He hadn’t been there in years. He hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Why was this making him crumple so badly?
It took Stiles an hour before he could bring himself to get up and clean the mess he had made. It was slow, but he managed to throw away the shards of ceramic. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming. Derek Hale and his martyr complex the size of Texas were just fodder to everything that inevitably ended up in that town. Of course he ended up dead before 40. Of course he left behind a child. It was an old story, one that Stiles had never been willing to watch.
He had left for a reason.
He felt a familiar sense of resolve settling into his chest.
Stiles was going to go to Beacon Hills.
The Camaro looked dusty, but the same as it did all those years ago. The sort of car that Derek Hale in all his leather clad, teenage angst glory had looked unfairly handsome in, like some kind of roguish hero in a book. Maybe an anti-hero.
“Hey, pretty thing,” Stiles said, as he ran his hand over the hood of the car, “I missed you.”
Stiles tried his hardest not to think about Derek gruffly pressing the keys to the car into his hand.
My other car is more kid safe, anyway, he had said, and there’s no way your jeep will survive the ride.
As if he it was a small thing. As if that car wasn’t all he had left of his sister. Derek had always been good at that. Being kind and pretending he was doing it for his own benefit. Following Scott around when he knew he wouldn’t be able to deal with a threat alone, pushing Isaac away so he would be less of a target.
Stiles shook his firmly, as if that would dislodge the lump in his throat.
He patted the top of the car. “We’re going home.”
Derek’s two story beige house with a front lawn was jarring to look at.
When thinking of Derek he always preferred to think of him in his uncomfortably tight jeans and leather jacket. Distant. Stoic. Thinking of him in the soft maroon sweater, or him with his eyes wide, looking at the infant in his arms, or him with grief all over his face as he saw Boyd lying in the water was too much for Stiles to bear.
It was easier when Derek Hale was just a guy on the edge of the woods, staring from afar.
He stood outside, stalling at the door. He had called Peter back and demanded an explanation, which he had readily given, and then asked him, in the smallest voice he had heard Peter use, if he could tell Cora.
He could see her motorcycle parked among the several vehicles. She was the only one he had kept in contact with, both of them bound to Beacon Hills because of family but feeling terror-stricken at the idea of returning.
He rolled back his shoulders and took a deep breath. He knocked on the door. Malia opened the door pulled him into a crushing embrace.
“Hey, Malia.”
She squeezed harder and then let go. Her eyes were bloodshot. He knew she and Derek had gotten closer since she had accepted that she was a Hale, too, but he didn’t realize he was that important to her.
You miss out on a lot when you don’t come to visit, a voice in his head said. It sounded awfully similar to his dad.
He looked around the room, Lydia looking at him with such naked affection it almost made him sick. Cora with her arm wrapped firmly around a teenage boy. Eli, Stiles thought, feeling a little wild, that’s Eli.
He felt himself go stock still as he met eyes with Allison. She gave him a small smile, and he felt like he had fallen into another dimension.
Her funeral is the last funeral I ever attended, he thought, with some kind of strange mix of amusement and horror.
His thoughts were clicking into place, piecing themselves together slowly. When he finally spoke, it came out controlled and cold.
“Scott,” he said, anger simmering just beneath the surface, “Did you do this? Did you trade his life for hers?”
He looked taken aback. “Stiles, what? No- the nogitsune resurrected her.”
Stiles narrowed his eyes, but he never really was a match for Scott’s personal brand of earnestness.
Stiles shook his head. All that was secondary. There was something that took precedence. He put on a smile that he hoped did not look as shaky as it felt. “I don’t know if you remember me,” he said, strangely nervous for a person talking to a boy who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a day and would keel over at any moment, “The last time I saw you, you couldn’t pronounce my name, but I’m Stiles.”
Eli sniffed, and gave him a watery smile. “I know. My dad told me all about you.”
Stiles ducked his head down, blinking rapidly. He wasn’t sure if it was the idea of Derek telling his son about Stiles that got to him, or the boy calling him dad in such a reverent voice that made him hurt so badly, but he didn’t think he could keep it together if he kept looking Eli in the eye.
Stiles spun around, facing the rest of the people. After a moment to steel himself, he said, not daring to look at Eli, “Of course he did, I saved his ass a bunch of times.”
Eli laughed wetly, and Stiles couldn’t help but look at him. He had the same square jaw as his father, but it was still soft around the edges. More than anything, Stiles wanted to take him in his arms and let him let out the tears he was doing such a terrible job at holding back.
“Scott did too,” he said, his eyes distant, his voice was quiet, “I’m going to go live with Scott and Allison in LA.”
Stiles made a noise of incredulity, looking at everyone. “And everyone is okay with that? Cora? Peter? Dad? Do you think Scott and his newly resurrected child bride are the perfect people for this job?” he asked, staring right at his father, “No offense, Allison.”
She shrugged noncommittally. “Can’t argue, honestly.”
“Even Peter is more equipped- again, no offense.”
“I am a little offended,” Peter said, but the usual drama in his voice was missing.
“Can we discuss this later, Stiles?” his dad hissed, “You came here to pay your respects.”
Stiles sighed. “Where’s Der- where’s the body?”
Scott looked around, as if to see if anyone else would answer. He hesitated before saying, “There isn’t one.”
“What do you mean there isn’t a body?”
He hadn’t even noticed Parrish in the corner till he spoke. “I burned him. With hellfire.”
Stiles took a step back without realizing, as the horror of what he had heard washed over him. He looked over at Eli, who was trying to be discrete about wiping his eyes.
“You burned him alive in front of his kid?” Stiles bellowed, his throat aching, “In front of his uncle who was in the Hale fire? Did you think it would make some kind of tradition? To watch your family burn?”
He stepped forward menacingly towards Parrish, but his father grabbed his arm. “Calm down,” he said, his eyes flickering over to where Eli stood. He had twin tear tracks down his face, and had given up on trying to hide it.
He exhaled slowly. Three in, four out. He did it twice. “Even if you used hellfire, there has to be something left. Ashes at least.”
Scott sidled up to Parrish. He had that familiar confused furrow in his brow. “We did check, we did. There was nothing left. It’s almost like he-“
“-he vanished,” Parrish finished.
Stiles felt his eyes get wide. “Peter,” he said, his voice getting frantic, “You said something about the nogitsune turning into a wolf. I was too distracted to understand.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, his eyes turning sharp, “The nogitsune said it had the power of an alpha’s bite, and then shifted.”
“It can’t be a fox and a wolf,” Stiles said, thinking out loud.
“Maybe it learned something new,” Scott suggested.
Stiles shook his head. “It’s in its nature. That cannot be changed. It was in my head, but you forget that I was in the nogitsune’s head too. I know what it thought. And I know it couldn’t have been a wolf. I know the exact kind of agony it felt getting its ass kicked by you, I could taste its despair. It’s not possible, it wouldn’t have let itself be put in the nemeton box if that was true.”
“Then how-“ Scott began, but Peter had caught on.
His smile was predatory. “That wasn’t the nogitsune.”
Stiles felt himself smiling too. “And Derek isn’t dead.”