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Peter Hale knows a thing or two about what being burned feels like.
It’s not just that little burn, like when your hand slips when you take a tray of cookies out of the oven.
Amy used to make cookies all the time, and Peter would sneak one to their daughter when Amy pretended not to notice. One day she accidentally caught her wrist against the tray and she cursed softly when she ran cold water over it.
On the day of the fire, Amy didn’t curse.
She screamed in agony until her lungs filled with smoke and she couldn’t scream anymore.
He remembers how the smoke stung his eyes as he dropped to the ground, trying to crawl to the basement door. She lined the door with wolfsbane.
It killed him to do it, but he crawled away.
Make no mistake, Peter Hale died that day.
As he dragged himself out of the house sputtering as fresh air filled his lungs, he could feel the flames licking around him slowly being put out.
Being burned by fire is agonizing. It is relentless and awful and it hurts. It seems too long before it gets to the point where the nerve endings are damaged.
When a pair of bull headed teenagers set him on fire again, Peter doesn’t scream.
He falls to the ground, and all of a sudden, his nephew, angry and defiant, has his claws raised above him, and Peter knows what is about to happen. Peter stares right at Derek, not quite dead yet. He stares at him and tries to say why he did it. But he can’t, so he closes his eyes and waits.
Sometimes burns are so bad the nerves are destroyed. They’ve burned away enough, leaving mottled flesh in its wake and they heal, eventually, to cringing scars.
But nothing hurts the way that look did. That brief moment of hesitation before Derek tore out his throat staring into his eyes. He killed the boy’s sister, after all. One of the last remnants of his family. Laura wasn’t a leader. She wasn’t trained, and she didn’t know what being the alpha would entail. Neither did Peter, granted, but with what was to come, she shouldn’t have to suffer the loss of her home when a new pack came into town.
He killed her for power, and that is not noble. But it takes more than nobility and honor to survive in this world, so maybe killing his niece was a mercy of a sort.
Derek had his instincts and knew something was happening, so he started creating a new pack.
He wasn’t prepared for the emotional bond that that entailed, not by a long shot.
Peter lost more than his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and parents. He lost his wife and their daughter. His wife had been turned by Peter’s brother after they had become engaged, but their daughter was human.
There can be no peace after something you’ve created is destroyed.
So when he looks in a mirror after a redheaded genius brings him back to life, he breaks it.
His skin is healed, and he looks quite like he did before the fire. No more scars covered his skin.
That’s okay.
He still can’t feel a thing.