Chapter Text
Derek drags himself through his first shift back at work, sorts out the 10K in cash for the apartment and stands in the living room for too long, breathing in the scent of Derek-and-Stiles. He sighs when it starts getting dark and drives back to Beacon Hills, slows right down as he passes Rosa’s.
He drives ten below the speed limit, suddenly leery of encountering any of the Beacon Hills law enforcement and having some kind of record for the Sheriff to possibly look up, one day. He shakes his head, not sure if he’s being ridiculous or smart. Possibly both. When he passes the welcome sign he sighs and takes the turnoff to Peter’s house, a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, bordering the woods.
His uncle has already opened the front door and gone back inside while Derek was still coming up the drive. “Derek.” He greets his nephew from the kitchen in the back of the house before Derek’s even out of the car. They never talk about it, but one of the things that keep them in regular contact are these brief moments of not having to hide their true natures. It’s the last slice of home they have left.
Well. Had left. Derek, now, possibly, has Stiles. His heartbeat quickens at the thought and he bounds onto the porch and inside.
“Uncle.”
They stare at one another for a moment, then Peter’s mouth quirks. “How was your weekend?”
“Different than you pictured,” Derek returns.
“Clearly.” He turns back to the stove, stirring something Derek recognizes immediately. It’s one of his grandmother’s recipes.
“You’re going to stay away from him,” Derek says flatly, resisting the pull of that scent, of memories, of family.
His tone is deceptively mild. “I can’t imagine our paths would have any reason to cross, Derek. A high school student-”
“You’re going to stay away from him.”
Peter sighs. “You’re not planning on bringing him around for dinner, then, I take it? I made-”
“Do not bring up Grandma,” Derek says.
“Of course I’ll mind my own business,” Peter says, long-suffering.
“Because you always have before,” he sneers.
“But that was different,” he says, surprised, and turns to face Derek. “Surely you understand that.”
“Explain it to me.”
Peter is moving forward, hands out in a parody of innocence when he stops, inhaling Derek’s scent without the mask of cooking for the first time. “What- why do you-” His eyes flick to Derek’s. “What have you done.”
“I haven’t done anything, and you’re explaining-”
“Derek James Hale,” he says, and Derek loses his breath completely at how much Peter sounds like his own sister in that moment, like Mom. “Have you sent that boy away? Your mate? Are you mad?”
“My relationship with Stiles is none of your-”
“He is your mate, boy. You recognized him, he accepted you. You can’t throw that away, Derek, you cannot be intending-”
“I haven’t thrown anything away and he is none of your business.”
“You are my only family, you are, of course, my business. Derek, don’t do this.”
He stops in the middle of another stonewall because the pain in Peter’s voice is vicious and real. For once, there’s no manipulation there.
They stare at one another for a moment and then Derek says quietly, “He’s seventeen.”
Peter’s brow wrinkles. “Human laws-”
“Still have to be lived by,” Derek interrupts, not wanting to have that debate again.
Kate had deserved to die. No question. But it was one hell of a risk that put them all under suspicion, and Peter had done it without consulting them. “And it’s not only about the law. He needs time.”
Peter narrows his eyes. “You’ve sent him away. You smelled happier than this yesterday, even after you’d seen me.”
“I’m giving him some time to think. It’s not over,” he says, then thinks for one terrified moment, it could be, “but I won’t overwhelm him into something he’s not ready for. I want him to make a real choice.”
Peter relaxes, all of a sudden. “You’re protecting him.”
“Of course.”
His face spasms too swiftly for Derek to parse what it meant. “No of course about it. The mating instinct is strong, but we’re still human enough to screw it up, to protect ourselves instead of our mate.” Suki’s ghost hangs between them.
There’s an awkward pause, and then Derek says, wolf-stubborn. “So. You’ll stay away from him.”
“I will.”
“No cryptic remarks to Stiles, or the Sheriff or anyone else. No ‘running into them accidentally’ at the supermarket. No contact at all.”
“I swear.”
Derek hesitates. He’s going to have to accept that. “And no more fucking women waiting outside my apartment, either.”
“Of course not,” Peter says snippily.
“How exactly is it of course not?” Derek demands, exasperated.
Peter sighs, like Derek is somehow challenged. “Because you’ve found a mate, of your own accord. I wouldn’t interfere with that,” he says, like he’s the most non-interfering person that ever lived. “I would never.”
“You couldn’t honestly have thought I was going to find a mate in some random Omega you manipulated into fucking me during the mating moon,” Derek scoffs. “I thought this obsession of yours was all about pups. Stiles isn’t going to be producing a Hale heir anytime soon.”
“Of course not. But I.” Peter hesitates, then sighs. “I suppose I should probably explain myself. Now that it’s- over.”
“What’s there to explain? You wanted to rebuild the Hale pack and you wanted to use my offspring to do it.” Derek steps back, sickened at the reminder.
Peter sighs. “Always looking on the surface, Derek.”
He raises his brows, “Well, I learned the hard way not to look any deeper.” The minute he says it he’s sorry. Peter is fucked up, they all know this, no point rubbing it in.
“Point,” his uncle says, too lightly. He licks his lips, looks just past Derek’s shoulder. The hairs on the back of Derek’s neck stand up, picking up on his uncle’s tension. “I believe we should be building up the pack,” he says, low and intense. “That’s true. There’s strength in numbers-”
“That’s Laura’s call,” Derek says. They’ve had this conversation many times before, and while he doesn’t agree with his uncle, he can’t exactly dismiss Peter’s unspoken terror that something like this could happen again. They could be targeted, it’s possible. Hunters. Other packs. Life is rarely easy for creatures like them.
“We both know why I am no candidate to expand the pack,” Peter says. True again. Peter hasn’t touched another woman since the fire. It’s another thing Derek feels he can’t fix, has no right to try.
“Right,” he says instead. “So you thought you’d raise my kids.”
Peter rolls his eyes. “We both know I’m the worst possible candidate to raise a child, Derek. An innocent child, raised by someone in my state of mind? They’d be literally better off raised by wolves. Rabid wolves.” He sniffs. “From Alabama.”
Derek ignores the jibe that has its roots in a ridiculous pack-feud from the 1800s. “Then why-”
“Laura is healing. Slowly. That Blair was a horrible mistake,” he rolls his eyes and Derek huffs in silent agreement, douchebag personal trainer, “but she tries, at least. However bad her taste in men, she is out there, meeting people. Prepared to risk falling in love.” Derek blinks.
“You cut yourself off. Not just romantically, Derek, you barely even cultivate friendships.”
He stares at his uncle. “Let me get this straight. You were worried about me? About my lack of relationships?”
Peter shrugs.
“You were concerned I was alone and your solution for that was that I get some random stranger pregnant and let you raise the child.” He says it slowly, trying to emphasise the insanity. “In what universe does that make sense?”
“I knew you’d resist matchmaking like the plague,” Peter says simply.
Correct, Derek thinks. He folds his arms.
“A child, though. You’d never turn your back on your own child.”
Correct again, Derek thinks, and then blinks. “So- wait. You were playing chicken with me that whole time? Thought once the baby was born I’d snatch it out of your arms and then, what - mission accomplished, the pack is expanding and I have an emotional connection I can’t reject.” He flings his arms out and snarls. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It made sense to me,” Peter spreads his hands and shrugs. “Worst case scenario, Laura would swoop in and take her niece or nephew. But I was fairly confident that wouldn’t-”
“You are fucking insane,” Derek stares.
“Why yes, this we already knew,” Peter says with a small, cold smile.
“And so... now this masterful plan is shelved because I went and found myself a mate.”
“I only ever wanted to see you happy, Derek,” Peter says. “You’re young enough to move on and have a good life, you should have someone by your side who understands you.” His voice drops and he says, “John and Lucy would have wanted that for you.”
There’s silence. Peter is fucking lucky he doesn’t play the John-and-Lucy card too often. Derek suspects it hurts him to say Derek’s parents’ names. “I don’t even- I have no idea what to say to you right now.”
“Well that’s nothing new,” Peter says, and turns back to the stove like nothing strange has occurred. “Now, are you staying for dinner?”
He stares at his uncle’s back, still breathing hard, still angry. And then, for no reason at all, he thinks about the scream that had torn from his uncle’s throat as they had arrived at the house that night and smelled-
Derek and Laura had frozen in disbelief, held back by the strong arms of several deputies. Not Peter.
He had surged through the line of cops and firefighters and flung himself into the still-burning house, screaming for Suki. Derek’s overheard some of the guys at the station who were there that night swapping stories about it, marvelling at the mad strength Peter’s grief had given him. They have no idea what he could have done if they’d actually come anywhere near stopping him. It was a miracle all three of them had been too stunned to shift.
There’s a scar along the back of Peter’s neck where a burn never quite healed, having absorbed some of the mountain ash and wolfsbane that had kept the wolves trapped, disoriented.
Derek’s human father had tried to save the kids. The coroner found later he had bled out from smashing a window with his bare hands. He’d managed to push Andrew through it but Derek’s brother’s human lungs had already inhaled too much smoke and his heart had stopped there on the lawn, in front of them. So close, so close to saving just one more Hale. Jacob’s blackened body had been slumped against the same window inside the house, unable to cross the line of mountain ash.
Peter had torn the house to pieces looking for his wife. She’d been found at the bottom of the basement stairs, hunched over Emma’s lifeless body. They’d likely fallen down the stairs, disoriented by the smoke and wolfsbane and panic, probably the first to die. Derek’s mother they’d found in the attic. Judging from the wounds on her arms she’d tried breaking every wall in the house, searching for a way out for her family. He knows she would have heard every moment as they died, the snapping of Emma’s neck, Jacob’s harsh screams as he burned.
Derek takes a breath and forces his eyes away from Peter’s neck.
“Did you make dumplings,” he says, thinking of that scar and a thousand other wounds his uncle carries.
Peter nods to a bowl half-full of green-speckled dough and doesn’t turn around. “Grandma always said to let them rest first.”
He sighs, long and shaky. “Yeah,” Derek husks out, starts toward the table. “I could stay.”
They’re actually having a fairly normal dinner, talking sports and the park ranger’s new efforts to protect the local wildlife when Peter suddenly says. “You and Laura are the only family I have left.”
Derek lowers his fork. “I know.” there’s something in his uncle’s voice that has him tensing.
“I love you both.”
“I. I know,” he says again, with more difficulty.
“You mustn’t trust me, Derek.”
Derek just stares. What?
“When Laura returns. You must. Watch me.”
“What are you talking about,” Derek says flatly. He feels suddenly sick.
There’s a long silence. Peter stares down at his plate. Finally, he sets his knife and fork down neatly on his plate, and takes a quick breath. “I have. Dreams,” he says, low and quick, eyes cast down. “I take- I. I kill her. Laura. Become the alpha. I’m strong. Fierce.” His face twists, “Insane. I rebuild the pack, I force the bite on anyone I think will add to our strength, I don’t even ask. I force you to obey me.”
Derek can’t breathe. He stares across the table, at Peter’s shadowed face. His uncle stinks of panic and guilt, it’s mixing with the smell of the goulash and he knows with certainty he’ll never eat this meal again.
“You- you wouldn’t,” he finally says hoarsely. “You’d never kill Laura.”
“I most certainly hope not,” Peter says after a long time. He lifts his head and meets Derek’s eyes. “But you must not trust me. You must never turn your back. And never leave her alone with me.”
Derek pushes back from the table. He can’t stay here.
“Please promise me,” Peter says, like this is a perfectly normal conversation, like madmen beg Derek to watch out for their own treachery every day. “I am already a monster, I know this. But Derek. I don’t want to be the man who destroys what is left of our family.”
“I’ll remember,” Derek chokes out. That’s a promise he can’t help but keep.