Work Text:
It was meant to be a gift for his sister's fortieth birthday.
It turned out to be all he had left of all of them. Generations lost to flames.
Peter used his hidden laptop, the one with all the family files, the secrets, so that she wouldn't snoop. It's the only reason they still exist. If he'd used his desktop, they would have melted into slag with the computer.
Sitting in the dark of his ruined home he clicks the mouse on a thumbnail and the screen fills with a color photo of a little girl with light brown hair and blue eyes. She's laughing, and he remembers the faces he'd made standing behind her mother to get her to laugh.
His heart aches.
No lense flare, no need for lowered or closed eyes or special contacts, not for this little girl.
Not for his very human daughter, the first to succumb to the flames.
His hand shakes as he closes the image and opens another one.
He and his mate at their joining ceremony, facing each other before his father, his Alpha, holding hands and trying not to giggle at the solemn moment. They're looking at each other, not at the camera, and so obviously in love.
They were so in love.
The pain in his chest takes his breath just as nightmares each night of the fire leave him gasping helplessly for air, and he struggles to calm himself.
Closing the file, he opens one of the older ones. The gift was all their family photos digitized, the plan to turn them into a video show to be shared with the whole pack, and they go back well over a hundred and fifty years. Some of the earliest have the distortion but they quickly learned to hide their eyes. Here's his great-great aunt Eleanor and her family in a traditional portrait from the turn of the twentieth century, and the next is his grandfather Jon putting the star a top a Christmas tree during World War II.
So much history and he managed to save it because he didn't want his sister snooping into her gift.
Tears flood his eyes and he closes the laptop, unable to look at all he's lost anymore.
End