Chapter Text
Derek Hale was not a professional thief-catcher. He wasn’t a professional anything; he just so happened to be pickpocketed by an extremely underwhelming young man. Stealth, it seemed, had simply abandoned the hand of which was shoved obviously into Derek’s pocket. It was nigh impossible not to feel a set of fingers fumbling around in his pocket, awkwardly searching for something.
“Sorry,” grunted the Breton man—more boy than man, really—having purposely tripped himself into Derek’s side in an attempt to distract him from the blatant pocket-groping he was currently engaged in. “Must’ve had too much mead, right? Stuff always gets me the second I stand up,” pulling away, the Breton paused to clap Derek on the shoulder and slowly draw his other hand back behind himself as if adjusting his tunic.
Derek didn’t let the young man pull back, arm shooting out and snagging his hand around the wrist connected to the very palm that contained a good handful of jewels. They were all ones that Derek had spent months pilfering from bandits—mostly those who had bothered to challenge him for passage through various quiet pathways and trails.
“Doesn’t seem to stop you from trying to steal from me,” Derek growled, chest rumbling with irritation. He wasn’t fond of thieves, and even less fond of ones who lacked the ability to even do their job properly. The Breton’s eyes went wide for only a second before he was giving Derek a silly grin and opening his hand to reveal the gems previously clenched in his fingers.
“You got me, friend,” he said sheepishly, watching Derek snag his trinkets back, “I can’t help it if my fingers wander a little. Some tell me they’re magic—might even have a mind of their own once I get enough mead in me.”
Derek tucked the jewels back into his coin purse, cinching it tight against his tunic belt and adjusting his armor over it. “You haven’t had a drop of the stuff since you came in,” he pointed out lowly, looking up at the Breton and giving him a stare just to get across the fact that lying to Derek was going to get him nowhere. The Breton, who had been in the process of leaning against the counter, stared blankly at Derek with his mouth just the tiniest bit agape.
“Pardon?”
“The mead, you’ve had none of it.” For good measure, Derek grabbed his own tankard and drank from it deeply, the liquid settling heavily in his belly and warming him straight through. He licked his lips, wanting desperately to flash his teeth at the young thief and tell him to scram. “My suggestion is that you leave before you lose that hand you seem to enjoy shoving into other men’s tunics.”
It was obvious that the Breton was used to such words, because he laughed and shrugged blithely. “You make it sound as if that’s a bad thing,” he pointed out with a grin, gesturing for the bartender to bring him a tankard. The bartender looked at him, laughed, shook his head and walked off to serve another older traveler sitting just a few stools down. Undeterred, the Breton sidled in close to Derek, leaning in conspiratorially.
“You wouldn’t happen to be for hire, would you? The friend I normally travel with has had an unfortunate encounter with a witch, so I’m left without a travel companion for the moment. You seem like a smart guy; a big, strong Nord who—”
“No.”
The Breton’s grin vanished, the dimples on his cheeks—still slightly plump from baby fat; Talos, this boy is young—fading as quickly as they’d appeared. He raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously? You can’t see the productivity in working as a team with me? I’ll break it down for you.” He held up his hand, propping up two fingers. “Firstly, you aren’t proficient in magic—I can tell—which means you rely on potions to heal yourself. That’s expensive. I am proficient in magic, healing being one of my strengths, ergo I can save you money and make sure you don’t die in some undignified manner in a random cave. Secondly, and I’m sure you can tell, I’m not exactly some huge guy with muscles bursting at the seams. You are. We balance.”
“My answer is no,” interrupted Derek. He narrowed his eyes, glaring at the young Breton.
The kid’s mouth dropped open a bit, and he jerked backwards, but only slightly. He frowned, and piped up, “You can’t just glare at people and expect them to go away. It’s probably worked on a lot of people, considering that glare is pretty freaky, to be honest, but it won’t work on me.” He rolled his eyes. “Saying no is just illogical. If you think about it, there is nothing to lose from traveling together. You get extra magic help, I get extra brawn help, everybody wins.” He wiggled his fingers, raising his eyebrows. “These babies have mojo like you wouldn’t believe.”
Derek was quite sure that he had never met anyone so peculiar as this boy. “No,” he repeated, firmly. He put a couple gold coins down to pay for his drink, nodding at the barkeep. Standing from his stool, he headed for the door. [!] When the smells of Riften filled his nose—mold, dead fish, mead and what Derek could only identify as corruption—he flinched and remembered why he only intended to stay one day. The sun wasn’t creeping towards the horizon quite yet; he had plenty of time to begin his trek towards—
“Hey, wait up!” That damn Breton kid who apparently didn’t know the meaning of the word “no” was trotting out of the Bee and Barb, shouldering his pack as he went. “We’re going to have to work on your manners if you’re going to be traveling with me. You’re not really rocking the whole ‘unapproachable’ persona.” Derek took a deep breath, and told himself that getting arrested for murder was not worth it to get this boy out of his hair.
The Breton then tutted, “That reminds me; we don’t even know each other’s names,” and Derek somehow suspected that his life was going to be extremely difficult from that point on.
“I don’t need to know your name,” Derek growled, shooting another glare at the kid. He headed for the city gate, sighing in exasperation when he heard scrambling footsteps behind him.
“I’m Stiles! It’s not my real name, but my real name is a bit on the odd side, even by Breton standards. You being a Nord, I figure you’d think it twice the amount of odd, since you have Nord standards, and Breton standards are probably unusual to you already. The end result being that I am uniquely Stiles. You shall never meet another.” Derek didn’t even think the kid was talking so much to irritate him. It was just how the Breton—Stiles; he could never forget him now, as much as he wanted to—spoke. That knowledge just pushed Derek to walk more quickly, pointedly not looking back at the kid trailing behind him.
There was an expectant silence, colored only by Derek’s heavy footsteps and Stiles’ quiet huff. For a moment—a brief, glorious, beautiful moment—Derek thought he’d actually gotten rid of the talkative fool. Then, the soft tap of leather on cobblestone grew louder, not quieter; damnit, he was still following Derek. “It’s common courtesy to tell a guy your name after he tells you his name,” Stiles said, ducking to walk beside Derek, then a few steps in front of him, trying to catch his eyes. “At least, it is in High Rock. Do Nords have to drink each other to sleep before introductions? Oh! Should we have had a duel for honor? Or a bar fight?”
The sad thing was that Derek wasn’t sure if Stiles were joking or not. He broadened his stride, hoping to leave Stiles behind by taking advantage of his shorter legs. Stiles simply quickened his own pace. Out of the corner of Derek’s eye, he noticed Stiles sporting an amused smirk. “If you’re trying for the strong, silent type, you know, you’ll have to get in line. There are a lot of people who want a piece of this.”
Derek could almost smell the self-deprecating lie, never mind the way Stiles’ heartbeat picked up when he spoke those words. “I assure you, nothing of the sort,” he snarled, pressing a hand to the Talos amulet under his tunic, praying for strength and the will to not kill this boy—at least, not when anyone would see him do it.
“Where are you headed? If you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to have to give you a new one. Like a nickname. You don’t seem like the type of person who’d appreciate that—in fact, you look like a big cranky-ass Nord who I probably shouldn’t piss off, so you should definitely tell me your name.”
“There’s no reason for you to know my name; you will stop following me,” Derek replied.
“I suppose I’ll just have to guess, then.” Now, Derek heard the amusement in Stiles’ voice, and wondered which deity he had angered so much that he was cursed to bear this boy’s torture. “Is it Torvar?”
If Derek were a weaker man—a weaker Nord—he would have paled at the realization that Stiles was really going to guess his name. He looked at the sky, pursed his lips into a flat line, and prayed silently for strength, prayed to all Nine gods that he would right whatever wrong he’d done in order to free himself from this Breton boy who was pushy and rude and was guessing Derek’s name.
“Judging by the fact that your face just got even more angry than it was before—and speaking of that, I’m going to take a step away from you for my own safety; no offense, you’re just very big and that’s quite the axe you’ve got there—your name isn’t Torvar. Okay. Hm. Ysgramor? Sentimental, if not archaic,” he noted. “Nope? Well, I’ll eventually get it.” He hummed for a moment before asking again. “Ralof? Sigurd? Rustleif? Hroggar?”
Derek tightened his jaw, staring straight ahead. The city’s main gates were only a block away, now. He could make it. He could escape. Just a bit longer.
“Maybe those are a bit too common. Okay. Gjuk? Knjakr?” Stiles huffed, frustrated. “This isn’t exactly fun for me, either, but I can go on. You sure you don’t want to tell me your name?” Upon getting no response besides a vicious growl, Stiles simply moved on. “Snilling?” After another failure, he gasped. “You have a girl’s name, don’t you?”
“It’s Derek,” grunted the Nord, ashamed for giving up, but also relieved that he’d be able to shut Stiles up. “You can stop guessing.”
“Wow! That was easy, right?” Stiles finally drifted a step or two away from Derek, instead of hounding him like an annoying stray puppy. “Now you know my name, and I know yours!” He glanced back at Derek. “We’re practically best friends. The talented, awesome mage and the burly, cranky Nord.”
On the whole, Derek supposed it could have been much worse.
He could have been tortured.
He could have been dead.
Whenever that mouth was closed, Derek reminded himself that it could be much, much worse. Whenever there was, for a moment or two, blissful silence, he remembered that the sound of one irritating kid’s chatter isn’t going to bring about the end of the world. Needless to say, all of his self-assurance flew out the window whenever Stiles began to speak again. [!]
“So you don’t come from Riften! I didn’t think you did. You didn’t seem like the Riften type. Not nearly dirty enough!” Stiles laughed at his own joke, and Derek concentrated on keeping his eyes on the road. There had been a few minutes back in Riften when Derek had thought he’d been free of the Breton, only to find out the man had scurried off to retrieve his horse before trotting the creature up to Derek’s side. Stiles had then proceeded to go on a brief explanation that he was unable to abandon the horse, because he was close friends with the creature, and that his horse wasn’t actually a horse, but a man named Scott who had wronged a witch.
Or something like that, Derek hadn’t particularly been paying close attention.
Shor’s Stone was only a bit further, now; he could almost make out the flickering lights of the campfires outside the mine. Maybe if he ignored Stiles vigorously enough, the talking would stop. Stiles didn’t seem to care much, though, and just kept prattling away. “I come from Daggerfall City. That’s in High Rock, if you didn’t know. It’s right on the tip of the peninsula! I was really shocked when I came here. It’s really damn cold, compared to—”
Then, the blathering came to an end, and Derek almost smiled. Almost. He glanced at the boy on the horse, wondering if he had suddenly died. Death certainly seemed to be the only thing that could possibly shut him up. When Derek looked up to confirm that the Breton boy had indeed died, though, he saw what had shocked even Stiles into silence.
“Was that a—” Stiles’ voice was small and soft, the nervous tremble to his voice complemented by the dumbfounded gape of his mouth (for once, open and silent). “By the Nine! Derek!”
Derek cut him off with a grunt, unhooking his battle-axe from its place on his back and tensing when the beast roared with a terrible volume, turning and screeching fire into the trees. In moments, the dragon descended to hover before them, and Stiles barely had a second to even shift in the saddle before his horse was rearing up and bucking Stiles from it’s back. Stiles hit the ground with a yelp and a clamber of armor, rolling onto his stomach as the horse trotted in the opposite direction of the oncoming dragon.
“Traitor!” Stiles cried angrily to the horse’s retreating backside, “See if I help you win Allison back! You can stay a horse for the rest of your days!” Stiles’ anger, though palpable, wasn’t enough to distract him from drawing his weapon with a hiss of metal. The ground shook with each downward swoop of the dragon’s wings, and Derek noticed Stiles pulling out an ebony waraxe.
The dragon thundered onto the ground, roaring its ear-splitting language to scorch another set of trees. Derek hissed, feeling a sick throb and pulse in the space between his ears. He growled at the uncomfortable feeling, baring his teeth in the dragon’s direction. It was stomping over towards Stiles, its wings awkwardly dragging along the ground. Stiles yelped, scrambling over rocks and through thicket as he tried to get away from the dragon’s snapping maw.
Derek didn’t deny that, earlier, he’d wished Stiles would shut up—no matter the reason. He’d even contemplated killing the boy himself, but death by dragon was a truly horrible fate. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even someone as irritating as the Breton boy was. He started towards the dragon, hoping to use the fact that it was focusing on Stiles to land a blow. The dragon’s tail swept in a giant arc, smacking Derek in the side and knocking him several meters away.
When Derek looked up again, the dragon had closed its huge jaw around Stiles’ arm. Somehow, the Breton didn’t even seem in pain. He was just terrified—at least, he seemed to be, what with his huge eyes and gaping mouth. Suddenly, Stiles simply pulled his arm from the beast’s jaw—straight between the teeth, flesh completely unscathed. Enraged at this escape from its clutches, the dragon reared back and the ebony axe Stiles had been holding moments before went soaring over the treetops. Derek couldn’t even hear it land.
Clenching his fingers tight around the hilt of his axe, Derek began to jog towards the dragon. Stiles’ mad scramble for shelter was enough of a distraction for Derek to use the force of his mass and embed the axe deep into the creature’s flank and tear a bone-rattling bellow from it. Derek wrenched his axe back, slinging blood everywhere as he rolled beneath the monster’s belly, intent on keeping the beast disoriented and unaware of his location so he could find a safe moment to strike again. Stiles was instantly struggling to his feet, taking that moment to bolt out of the dragon’s line of sight and...
...straight for Derek.
“Give me a weapon!” Stiles hissed, pawing at the shoulder of Derek’s armor. “Something, a dagger, I don’t know!”
“I thought you were a mage!” Derek snarled, shoving at Stiles’ chest and scrambling to get his axe into a proper grip at the same time he kept side-stepping to stay under the dragon’s line of sight. “Why do you need something of mine? Go get your axe!”
“He threw it into a tree!” Stiles hissed, stumbling over his own feet when Derek lurched forward as the dragon shifted onto its hind legs to take flight. “Oh god, we’re going to die.”
“Shut up!” Derek moved quickly, swinging his battleaxe just as the ground shook and the dragon began to lift off. The axe embedded itself deep into the dragon’s forearm, wrenching another infuriated cry from the monster.
Stiles whooped, pumping his arms like a child when Derek quickly withdrew. “Keep this up and we might actually survive!” Stiles encouraged, attempting to conjure some sort of fire spell—a basic level magic that even Derek, himself, knew how to do. Either way, it wasn’t the time to be casting spells when the dragon was shifting, flying up to turn around with the intent of eating the both of them.
Derek ran, heading straight for an outcropping of rocks that wasn’t too far off. He grabbed Stiles’ wrist along the way, slinging his axe up and sheathing it for a little extra speed. Stiles stumbled after him, talking incessantly the entire time.
“Are you seriously going to run away? Kyne, we’re like, two on one here. You stabbed it in the leg! Come on, man, don’t give up, now!” By the time they reached the cluster of rocks, Derek shoved Stiles down, pressing him into the largest nook he could find. He didn't hesitate to crowding atop of the Breton just as the dragon made a sweep over the land, shooting bursts of flame with every other angry cry that escaped it.
“I appreciate the concern and all, but I can fight too,” Stiles muttered, face smashed inelegantly against Derek’s breast plate. “I just need a weapon. As you can see, I am without aforementioned weaponry, due to the fact that the dragon is a thieving wench who has no regard for how costly axes can be.”
“Be silent,” Derek hissed, half tempted to just smash the Breton’s face into his armor, knock him out, and be done with it.
“What happened to the ‘hack, kill, smash, Skyrim is for the Nords!’ thing you were doing earlier?” Stiles grumbled under his breath, “it seemed to be working out just fine.”
Though half of his sentence was drowned out by another roar from the dragon overhead—it seemed Stiles was content with voicing his opinions in any situation, at any given time.
Derek lifted his head, peeking up over the rocks and scanning across the valley. “Your axe is fifty feet east of here,” he muttered—earning a dry "oh, lovely" from Stiles—and then glanced up to where the dragon was doubling back again, “I can’t kill this thing on my own.”
“I was under the impression that I was helping you.” Stiles pointed out, teeth tapping Derek’s breast plate unintentionally.
“Helping would require more than just whining like a babe.” Derek shot back, lunging over the rock and unsheathing his axe as the dragon started to swing around. It’s wings were shifting in a manner that meant it was preparing to land, and Derek darted forward. He used his weight to add momentum to his swing, the axe moving in a deadly arc for the dragon’s chest just as the creature released a loud bellow and pushed up from the ground. Derek stumbled, balance thrown completely, and whirled around to see Stiles running across the field like his tunic had been lit up by a flame atronach.
Derek cursed under his breath, because the dragon was far closer to Stiles than Stiles was to his axe. Hauling his axe up, Derek thanked the heavens he wasn’t a weak Breton or Imperial, and that his body and enhanced strength made it relatively easy for him to sprint after Stiles. He leapt onto a long rock that was jutting out of the ground, using it for leverage to leap higher. Axe high over his head, Derek couldn’t help the animalistic howl of a war cry as he swung his arms down.
The dragon twisted, and Derek found himself getting caught in the gut by a monstrous arm. The air was knocked out of him, ribs cracking and blood spurting from his side where one of the dragon’s claws ripped through his skin, somehow catching in that tiny gap between his chest plate and the plating covering his back. Choking, Derek scrambled to shove himself out of the beast’s grasp, axe slipping from his hand and falling to the earth. He could hear Stiles screaming his name, but he was far too focused on avoiding the large jaws currently trying to snap him up like he was a small rodent.
He knew his body was already healing the wound, stitching it up far better than any healing spell could do—well, any healing spell cast by Derek. The dragon shrieked, teeth grazing Derek’s back before Derek was able to shove himself off of the monster’s arm and towards the ground. He hit the earth with a painful cracking of bones in his leg, limbs buckling as he rolled over dirt and grass and rocks.
“Derek!” Stiles cried, but Derek was a little more busy with making sure he wasn’t going to be chomped up by a bloodthirsty dragon to really worry about a foolish Breton that had been following him around. He glanced up, sucking in a pained breath as his leg realigned itself to see Stiles reaching for his axe. His axe, as in Derek’s axe.
Derek’s 50 pound battleaxe.
It would have been amusing in any other scenario except the one unfolding before him. Derek watched in horror as Stiles struggled to lift the axe up, his face red with exertion and eyes widening comically as the dragon spotted him. Fleetingly, Derek noted that he should give a short prayer to Talos for Stiles’ safe passage into the afterlife as the dragon advanced.
It must have been sheer luck that Stiles got the axe lifted high enough that he could, essentially, spin in a circle to swing it. What was more of a miracle than actual luck was that Stiles tripped forward and the axe dragged him a good five feet as it thudded into the dragon’s shoulder with a crunch and squelch loud enough to wake the dead.
Derek stared, and Stiles stared at where he was holding the axe embedded into the dragon’s body, and the dragon roared in agony before batting its wings and shoving off the ground. With Stiles still attached to the axe.
“DereEEEKK!” Stiles cried, his voice growing very distant, very fast, as the dragon shot up into the air with another screech. Derek wasn’t really sure why the Breton would be yelling at him, because Derek was just sitting next to a rock and watching the madness unfold. He was completely third party at this point.
Stiles dangled from the dragon’s body, but Derek could see he was clinging to the long handle of the battleaxe for dear life. They circled the field for a moment, dipping down into the valley and then heading for the mountains nearby. Stiles was almost two hundred feet away and possibly twice that in the air before Derek could no longer hear him screaming, which was impressive, even with Derek’s werewolf hearing. The dragon kept curling its head back, snapping angrily at Stiles like it could reach the Breton and wrench him off with a quick chomp. Derek figured it would be a good idea to at least follow after them so he could loot Stiles’ body if the dragon left anything behind.
As Derek would soon discover when things involved Stiles, his expectations for the outcome of the situation were completely flipped around. He was almost to where the dragon was circling up and along the mountainside when it turned to snap at Stiles and twitched wrong or shifted a wing too much, because it was suddenly crashing into the mountainside. Stiles screamed—by the Nine, how was he still alive?—and half the mountain came crashing down with the dragon. Rock and debris thundered down, the beat rolling and dropping to the earth with rubble clattering all around it. Derek waited until things were settled before he moved, shifting forward and freezing in place when the dragon began to glow. It didn’t move, lifelessly still, but the skin started to crackle and glow before catching on fire.
A hand shoved itself out from under the dragon’s dead weight.
Impossible.
Stiles pulled himself forward, the light surrounding the dragon starting to swirl and engulf his body as he finally freed himself. The fire didn’t touch him, didn’t lick at his tunic or his trousers, and Derek watched as Stiles’ flesh mended itself and the fatigued slump of his body faded with the glow that was covering him.
A glow that, Derek realized belatedly, was the soul of a dragon.
Stiles pushed himself to his feet, dusting off his trousers and shuddering. He stared at Derek, and then at the dragon, before looking back to Derek. “Are they supposed to shine like that? Weird, huh?”
Derek swallowed convulsively, struggling for words while Stiles stretched his arms out and stared at them. “Didn’t know killing a dragon made you feel like you just drank a whole bottle of skooma. I think I feel better than I have all day!”
Blinking, Derek watched Stiles clamber back over to the dragon to try and fish out Derek’s axe from the debris, his bottom wiggling around and soft grunts escaping the Breton.
There was no way in all of Oblivion that this man was the Dragonborn.