Chapter Text
If anyone had asked, Derek couldn't have said that he was in any way pleased about the witch standing over him. But there wasn't anyone to ask, not in the woods and certainly not near this particular bend in the steam. At least, not anyone that Derek could smell above the putrid odor of the wolfsbane that was currently rotting his gut and working its all-too-merry way toward his heart.
At the moment, Derek was sort of grateful for the smell, could appreciate how it almost drowned out the telling stench of ozone that always accompanied witches. He wondered, as he stared weakly upward, made an effort to glower, tried to look intimidating, what the witch would do.
Hunters, at the least, killed in the end.
Witches. Those fuckers did nasty, nasty shit that didn't always involve death.
As it was, he could see from the witch's utter lack of concern that his attempts to glower were pathetic at best. The witch clearly wasn't bothered. The little shit obviously didn't even think that Derek was enough of a threat to warrant knocking him out while Derek moved toward unconsciousness and died his slow, excruciating death.
No, the fucker just crouched down next to Derek with apparent blithe unconcern. He didn't even pause before he reached into Derek, looked entirely comfortable digging into a conscious werewolf, probing the shot-gun wound with his fingers.
If Derek had had extra breath, he would have screamed, howled with the sharp agony.
The fucker just wrinkled his brow thoughtfully, expression fascinated as his eyes flickered between Derek's open wound and the expressions contorting Derek'S face while he rummaged around in his gut. The sadistic shit's mouth kept moving the whole time, producing sounds that Derek couldn't follow through the pain that roared in his ears and demanded his attention.
Derek wanted to be unconscious. He wondered if he could will himself to die faster, expire before the witch could do anything.
But the witch grabbed his head and forced eye-contact, hands strangely gentle on the sides of his face, for all that they were stained, dripped with Derek's blood. The shit raised his voice, formed words slowly so that Derek could follow, and told him that he was not "going to do anything terrible, but you need to stay still, spirits be damned, so that I get the all of the bullet pieces out". Evidently the witch had an intense dislike of exploding shells.
He let go of Derek's face, bent back over the gaping hole, kept talking.
Hating himself for even wanting to take the proffered hope, Derek found himself clinging to the witch's words, using them as an anchor to keep himself still as the shit reached into his body again. The malicious fucker explained that he didn't have the tools on him to get the bullet out without poking, but he figured a werewolf couldn't take infection so using his fingers would likely be alright. Probably.
It wasn't. Derek would have told him it wasn't if he'd had a voice. If he had had the strength to move, he would have explained eloquently with his claws that nothing about this situation was ok.
The witch didn't heed his unvoiced arguments. Just kept working his fingers systematically through Derek's insides, running his fingers carefully along the lines of Derek's gut and probing his organs, telling him that this all might hurt like a bitch but once all the bullet fragments were out, he would neutralize the wolfsbane. Then everything would be ok. Everything would evidently be ok.
But who was ever dumb enough to believe a witch?