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"You could stop all of this, you know," Peter says, and Scott's weary muscles protest the way he flinches into preparedness for battle.
He spins around, puts his back against the closed door, blocking the way out, the way to the rest of the house, to his mom.
Peter is sitting on the windowsill, fingers steepled and elbows resting on spread thighs. "You look tired, Scott," he says, face pulled into a grimace of concern, and his eyes are very red.
"I'm fine," Scott grits out, but it's so obvious he's lying; even if his heartbeat were steady, his left leg still hangs like an awkward dead weight and his chest underneath the ripped shirt is a mess of dark purple bruises.
Peter's head cocks to the side, and his mouth slants with irony. "Oh yes, you sure do look it." He sighs. "I do mean it, though. You could stop all of this. I wouldn't have to hurt any of your friends or family any more. Your mother would be safe, and Stiles. Allison. Lydia. Derek and Isaac and Boyd. Danny. I'd never touch any of them again, and you could rest easy."
Scott feels the trap closing around him, but he's just so tired, of fighting and hurting and the constant, gnawing fear. "What do you want from me?"
"You've always known what I want, Scott," Peter says, placid admonishment in his voice. "It's always been the same thing."
Scott feels like crying. "Me," he says, the word slipping out like a breath, a wet, agonized sigh. "It's always been me."
Peter smiles gently. "Always you," he says, just as softly, and there's this pain written in his eyes, across his face, like loneliness and despair and vicious, vicious longing. Like love.
"And if you had me," Scott says, and the words feel like glass in his throat, "you'd leave all of them alone."
"We'd go away together," Peter says, and his smile is wistful, fragile. "You and me, somewhere far away, and I'd never come back here again."
And Scott's heart breaks, at the thought of never seeing his mom again, or Stiles, or Allison. Of disappearing and leaving them behind. Of having to make a home somwhere, with Peter.
But his heart breaks worse when he thinks of them hurt or dead, when he could have stopped it.
"Okay," he says, as the tears begin to fall. "Okay."