Work Text:
Allison stood a few feet from the cell as Peter banged on the bars, sluggish from the wolfsbane injection he’d received earlier, but no less furious. “You think you can lock me up? Me?” The Argent wasn’t really listening. She was looking at his eyes, all the rage, the desire for power, the entitlement. It reminded her of that hard glint in Kate’s eyes the night they hunted Scott and Derek, of how much she seemed to enjoy herself when she pointed her gun at Scott’s head and how angry she looked when Peter slid his claws right against the skin of her throat. Not angry that he would threaten her niece but that she’d lost, that he held her at his mercy.
They might have been from two opposite sides for most of their life, but Kate and Peter weren’t so different. No wonder they teamed up to go after Scott, even though they were probably going to try and kill each other afterwards.
She heard steps behind her. Without a word, Derek came to stand next to her. He was looking at his uncle with the same anguish she knew twisted her face. Imagining himself there. Thinking he could have become him just like she could’ve been Kate. That he alsmot did. As for her, Kate’s location might’ve gone unknown after the events at la Iglesia, but she was still there, under her skin, in her hunter’s pride and her hunger for power.
“Derek. You think you can run from this?” Peter had turned towards his nephew, blue eyes boring into green ones, a mocking grin twisting his lips. “We are werewolves. We are killers. It’s in your blood.”
It’s in your blood.
Allison thought of her father. Of how he’d looked at Scott that day he pulled him out of the car, barrel of his gun pressed against the teenage boy’s temple. The fact that he felt it was his right was clear in his eyes, just like it must have been in her mother’s when she poisoned a child his daughter’s age for the crime of being in love. Maybe there was glee, like in Kate’s eyes that night in the wood. But that thought twisted Allison’s guts, threatening to make her throw up, and she pushed it away.
“How could you ... do this to me ...?” Peter slurred. “I’ve always been there for you. Control? I taught you. I helped you, alwaaays helped you. And this is how you thank me?”
Flashes of Kate’s bright smile took over Allison’s thoughts. Memories of afternoons spent playing dress-up, of quiet confessions and irresistible laughter. Of looking into the mirror and seeing how alike they looked ...
“He’s not like you.” Cutting Peter off, the words spilled from her mouth before she could stop them, before she was even finished thinking them. “We are not like you.”
From the corner of her eye she could see Derek looking at her curiously. Bold, she took a step forward, getting a snarl from the locked up werewolf. “The same blood might be running though our veins. The same anger and pride, the same want for power. You’re right. He’ll be a werewolf, a Hale, your nephew, all his life. I’ll be an Argent, heir to hundreds of bloody-handed ancestors, forever. But we don’t look at our mistakes and think them victories. We look at how we ripped up things, people, and we promise we’ll do better.” She gulped, turning to Derek.
She didn’t like him. Not really. They’d fought side by side for Scott but he’d forever be the one who bit her mother. She knows Victoria was the one at fault and she might not hate him for it but she will not forget it. She won’t be able to, just like he won’t be able to look at her face and not see the reflection of the woman who destroyed his family. But then and there, there was an understanding.
“We might not be able to scratch our skin off of our bones” she continued, looking straight into Derek’s eyes. “We might not be able to empty our veins and start anew, to be born again without the monster inside.” Turning back towards Peter, Allison hissed: “But we fight it. We fight it and push it away and understand that when it comes out, it is our responsibility. Not that of the ones who hurt us, not that of our families.” Stepping closer to the older Hale’s cell, she breathed almost in his face: “You think you’re strong, don’t you? That you’re special. But you’re not.” She wasn’t sure who she was talking to anymore - Peter or Kate, who was lost somewhere in the Mexican Desert. It didn’t matter. “Even for a bad guy, you’re not that great. You chose the easy way. You chose the simple violence that was at the reach of your hand and rolled around in it and then asked to be praised and prized for it.” The memory of how Kate preened as she showed her Derek, strut up on that wooden wheel like an animal, constricted Allison’s throat. “You are every pathetic wannabe king out there. The woman-hater with the knife, the asshole with the gun on campus, the bully in the schoolyard and the mean cheerleader. You just got lucky. If it wasn’t for the power in your genes “ - or the hunter legacy they put between your hands - “you’d be nothing”.
Surprise shook Allison’s bones when the werewolf banged on the bars with a roar but she maintained her posture, chin up and eyes boring into his, the uppper corner of her mouth shaking with the intensity of the emotions flooding her. In a softer voice and as she pulled away, she concluded: “We’re better. We will do better.”
When she turned around to leave, her eyes met Derek’s and he nodded. She responded in kind.
They weren’t going to be friends. She didn’t like him. Not really. But with all these toxic role models gone or changed, they would need a reminder. A reminder to not cross certain lines, to pull the chains around their demons a little tighter, and of what would happen if they didn’t.