Work Text:
"Stiles," Isaac says, reaching out toward him.
"No." Stiles steps back, out of reach, a long coil of rope clutched in his hands. "I've got this."
He sets the rope down next to his shovel and a small pot of aconite, fresh purple flowers almost glowing in the steady beam of Isaac's flashlight. He rubbed his hands raw on the wood handle of the shovel and his palms itch, dirt caked over cuts and scrapes. His dad has a better shovel in the garage, but he couldn't — he can't go home. He's covered in blood and dirt, he can't go home.
He won't let Isaac help with this part. Stiles knows how to do this, how to bind this kind of grave. He did the whole thing in reverse, once, tearing up rope and heaving up earth, and he can't put that right, but he can do this.
Stiles climbs down into the hole. The wall of dirt doesn't quite come up to the top of his head. He thinks it'll be deep enough; the binding should hold.
"Pass him down," Stiles says.
"Are you sure—" Isaac stops when Stiles glares at him, which has to be a first. Stiles is tired and filthy and he wants this to be over, so yes, he's sure.
Derek is heavier than Stiles expected, and Stiles' arms are worn out from digging; he has to let Derek's weight pull him down to his knees to keep from dropping him, and then he's half-trapped under Derek's body in the narrow space of the grave, hunched over him without meaning to be, one hand braced against the packed dirt wall.
Isaac peers down at him, the beam of the flashlight playing over Derek's face, illuminating too much.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Stiles says, head twisted away from the ruin of Derek's throat, eyes squeezed shut. "Go check on Scott."
Isaac sets his flashlight down on the edge of the grave before he goes. The beam isn't shining directly down anymore, but there's enough light that it isn't completely dark down in the bottom. When Stiles opens his eyes, Derek is visible but shadowed, not as overwhelming.
He eases himself out from under Derek, getting to his feet and leaning down to settle Derek more evenly on his back. Derek doesn't look like Laura did, horrified, staring; Stiles cleaned him up a little, got the worst of the blood off his face, changed his shirt. He changed a dead man's shirt. That was intensely creepy, but it seemed like something he ought to do.
"Sorry about this," Stiles says to Derek. Someone should say something. Isaac isn't going to say anything, and even if Scott had anything to say, he's down for the count right now. "Sorry—" What? Sorry you died? He laughs shakily, rubbing the back of his wrist over his eyes.
"I'm sorry about Laura," he says, because he's never told Derek that before. Sorry I desecrated your sister's grave just never seemed like an appropriate topic of conversation. "And I'm sorry for all the times I said or, or implied that I wanted you to die, because I didn't, I swear I never wanted anyone to die." Except maybe Peter, but Stiles has given up on that one. "I don't know what to say here, man, I really am just — sorry, fuck."
He stares down at Derek for a moment, hands tucked under his arms.
"I wish you hadn't done that," he says. This is his last chance to tell Derek off to his face. Stiles doesn't care if it's disrespectful or not. "It was a real dick move, you know? You can't even die without being an asshole about it, what is wrong with you? Couldn't you ever just—"
But Derek isn't going to yell back, and it feels horrible suddenly, painful and hollow.
"Sorry," he says again, throat aching as he forces the words out, eyes stinging. "You're still an asshole, but — I'm sorry."
He climbs out of Derek's grave, wiping his hands on his jeans. He twists the rope around the aconite and plants it at the foot of the grave, and then he rises with the rope in his hands, hesitating.
He peers down into the grave. Derek doesn't look peaceful, exactly, but he looks — no, Stiles can't find a nice, comforting way of spinning it; Derek just looks dead. He looks like someone killed him, because someone did.
In the seconds before, right before, Derek looked at Stiles, gaze finding him immediately. There was something in his expression Stiles couldn't name until Derek was already hitting the ground. Derek was dead and gone when Stiles realized that look was regret, that Derek had looked at Stiles with — that Derek had looked right at Stiles, like Stiles was the last thing he wanted to see. Derek was gone, and Stiles was left with that.
Now he's unspooling rope, moving in a spiral around Derek's grave.
He can't bring Derek back, can't yell what were you thinking and why would you do this to me and shake him and — he can't. But he can do this. He knows how.