Chapter Text
....
How many ways are there to love
I have become a non-believer
Teach me how to love again
And I will let my fortress burn.
How many ways to lose my heart
Mine was frozen a long time back
Teach me how to love again
And let me become your fire.
How many ways are there to die
Darling I have died thousand deaths
Just teach me how to love again
My life will be in your hands.
....
“Dad…come onnnnnn…”
“No Lex.”
“Please dad. Please, please, please.”
“I said no.”
“It is daytime. What can be your excuse? I can heal from any wounds. Jason will be with me all the time.”
“No, because I say so.”
Alexa’s face falls and Derek feels contrite immediately.
“I will take you to that ice-cream parlour you love right after this is over. I promise.”
“Dad, bribing children with ice-cream is wrong.”
“And you are the paragon of everything that is right and holy.”
“That is exactly what I am.”
Derek levels a look at his daughter, one eyebrow raised.
“Ok. You may have a point there. But daaaad –”
“No.”
“But Max is allowed to hang out in the woods with Uncle Scott and then Robbie is – ”
Alexa’s lower lip wobbles. It may be totally an act though. She is manipulative like that. Derek wonders where she gets it from. Certainly not him. He didn’t give quite so much trouble to his parents, did he?
“Lulu you know why.” Derek softens his tone nonetheless, resorting to her pet name. “You are still not in full control of your shift and you are unusually fast. What if you shift and take off without meaning to?”
“Ugh...You are ruining my life.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Says the drama queen of all time.”
“Drama queen?”
“You throw a fit each time you have to leave me with somebody else. Even with Melissa or grandpa babysitting me.”
“Dude, she has a point.”
Some things never change. Derek wipes his brow tiredly.
“Don’t call me dude.” He says for what seems to be the millionth time.
It is unusually hot even in the relatively cooler shade of the front porch that wraps around the quaint two-story house in the preserve. Derek is perspiring freely and barely restraining himself from pulling out his hair in clumps. He has been trying to teach Mickey shifting at will for last couple of hours and to control his strength in the process. The only thing it has accomplished is a bored nine-year-old pestering him about going off into the woods unsupervised. Well, not completely unsupervised for she will be with Jason. But Jason doesn’t quite count while Stiles is there to distract him. Ok so, Stiles AND Jason will be there at her heels. But Stiles is, well, Stiles. It doesn’t matter that Stiles will rather saw off his right arm before letting anything happen to Alexa and Jason will probably saw (read claw) off somebody else’s arm, whoever tries to hurt her.
But it is the principle of things that matters.
Derek is not ready to have his daughter out of his sight even for an hour. Not if he can help it.
“Derek, buddy –”
“Not your buddy either.” He snaps as Stiles. Micky almost cringes back. Six weeks into werewolfdom after getting fatally wounded in a car accident and saved by a bite from Derek, he is still somewhat skittish around his alpha. No, Derek has not gone on biting and turning people after becoming alpha the second time, not because he regretted creating his first betas, but because he already has a pack, or the pack has him, for with the amount of teasing and baiting and the bossing around he has to endure, it is hard to tell sometimes.
This one time was the result of a co-incidence and pure adrenaline. Derek’s car was just behind Mickey’s when it pretzelled around a tree following a brake failure. After Derek had pulled the boy out the car, he didn’t even think twice before sinking his teeth into his neck because the way he was bleeding out, Derek didn’t need a medical degree to know he wouldn’t be alive by the time he was taken to the hospital. When Derek narrated the incident to the pack, Scott told him it was pretty much the same circumstances under which he had bitten Liam. Mickey was way more thankful than Liam, though he was of the same age as Liam when he had been bitten. It probably helped Derek is his favourite customer in the coffee shop where he works, partly because Derek always leaves a generous tip for him and also because he kind of has a crush on the older man (to Derek’s utter embarrassment and the pack’s eternal amusement).
“You are both a dude and a buddy.” Stiles snaps back, seemingly immune to his bad mood and flashing red eyes. “Get your wolfy head out of your furry ass.”
“Stiles!” Derek exclaims.
“Lex knows more swear-word than you and I combined, probably Jason too.” Stiles rolls his eyes. “If you are trying to preserve her vocabularical innocence, the ship has already sailed and is probably anchored at Hebrides right now.”
“Half the things you say don’t even make sense.”
“What bull?” Lexi asks, curious.
“See?” Derek points at her daughter who is sitting glumly on the porch swing.
“What? It is not a swear word.”
“No, but she picks up whatever random nonsense comes out of your mouth.” Derek accuses. “Only yesterday she was asking me what is a Destiel.”
“Oh, I would be happy to explain.” Stiles beams, actually beams at Derek.
“Don’t you dare.”
“I didn’t know you are a homophobe.”
“I am not a homophobe.”
“What is a homophobe?”
“See, you are doing it again.” Derek throws his hands in air.
Jason sighs, rolling his eyes towards heaven, staying stoically silent during the entire exchange. He is a Hale after all and a cousin of Derek to the boot. No wonder he has perfected the art of eye-rolling and stoic silence. The fact that he worships the very ground Derek walks on (which baffles Derek to no end) probably helps too.
Stiles has already opened his mouth for some smart retort when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He just shoots Derek a look which means he is not quite finished with him before taking the call.
“Hey dad….whoa, calm down…what? What the hell are you talking about?”
Stiles’ eyes are bulging out of his head.
“Stiles?” Mickey asks uncertainly.
Derek and Jason stare at Stiles with a near identical expression of concern. Alexa walks up to him and hugs his leg. He places a hand on her head, petting her hair absently.
“Are you sure?” Stiles asks. His face is pinched into an expression which is hopeful and terrified at the same time.
“Stiles.”
Stiles’ head snaps to Derek and their eyes lock. They stay motionless like that for some moments even after Stiles has disconnected the phone.
“She is back. She is here.”
Derek staggers back.
“No.”
“Derek.” Stiles’ eyes are watering and he cannot see past the blurriness. He is not quite sure what he is feeling, but this is probably how a heart attack feels like because it fucking hurts, like his chest is torn open and he is bleeding on the inside.
“Dad says it is her.” He says quietly, eyes never leaving Derek even as Jason comes and wraps his arms around him from behind. His boyfriend has some idea whom they are talking about. But Mickey is completely lost, though he doesn’t dare voicing the inevitable question.
Alexa, of course, has no such qualms.
“Who is back?” She asks.
Derek wants to sink down to his knees and howl, but he has a nine-year old who has now left Stiles to attach herself to him and is looking up at him with big eyes of indeterminable colour.
His eyes.
Stiles once found an old photo of Derek’s family from somewhere (Derek is pretty sure it was Deaton) in which Derek is around ten and commented how Alexa would have looked like his identical twin if she were his sister instead of his daughter. Nobody refuted the fact, even those who haven’t seen the photograph. Lydia and Kira often coos over Alexa, calling her a mini-Derek, discussing how she is going to grow up to be a heartbreaker. Derek dreads the day.
“She was sitting in the kitchen when dad got home, in her favourite chair. As real as anything.”
“No.” Derek repeats. He cannot go through this again. It is like the history repeating itself with a sickening consistency. “No. This is a joke. Tell me this is a joke Stiles.”
“I am afraid not.” Stiles’ eyes spill over.
“Somebody better start talking right now.” Alexa threatens.
She is such a Lydia Martin sometimes. Derek blames the girls’ night out from which he is banished, but he keeps a lookout anyway, from his vantage point at the roof of Lydia’s house. Lydia doesn’t even need Kira or Malia to know he is there. So when she climbed out of the attic window and sat beside him, he knew that she knew. More than he was willing to admit.
She brought a can of beer and sat beside him wordlessly until his shivering died down and then hugged him, burying her face right at the spot over his heart, as if it was she who was drawing strength from him, while his arm went around her without thinking.
Derek was not fooled. Especially when his eyes were damp and he knew Lydia could see it perfectly in the moonlight.
She knows too much...old, knowing Lydia, who doesn’t want to appear too sweet, but is too sweet anyway.
Then Derek’s breathing hitched and then before he knew it he was crying like a baby, hiding his face into her warm, sweater-clad shoulder.
She didn’t say a thing, but just held onto him fiercely, like she would never let him go.
She hasn’t.
But paranoia aside, for which nobody actually blames him, shakes their head a little too sadly and looks at him with eyes a little too soft for his comfort, but doesn’t really blame him, he has been doing ok.
And now this.
“It is your mom.” Stiles says for Derek seems like he has lost the capability to form coherent words altogether. “My sister. Vi. She is back.”
Derek makes a wounded noise and Jason is not sure whom to comfort first. His boyfriend, his cousin or the little girl or the clueless, newly-turned beta who is feeling overwhelmed at the distress of his alpha.
“Or somebody in her place, wearing her face.” Stiles’ voice hardens over.
Their eyes lock again and this time something silent is communicated between them. Derek nods almost imperceptibly and visibly pulls himself up. He picks Alexa up, kissing her lightly on the forehead. It is more for himself rather than for re-assuring his daughter, Derek realises, for at least she has no idea about the stormclouds gathering in the horizon.
Derek calms his heartbeat down and meets the wide grey-green stare of his daughter head on.
“I will drop you at Lydia’s for a little bit.” He says and his voice is calm. “Do you think you will be ok?”
“Sure dad.” She replies, eyeing Derek a bit uncertainly. Derek has never let her alone even with her grandfather who is the goddamn sheriff of Beacon Hills for crying out loud. If he does, it is but an illusion for he is always somewhere at a shouting or a howling distance. Alexa knows this. Something must have rattled his dad badly enough.
Derek nods.
“Ok. Micky is coming with me.” He starts walking towards his car with Alexa in his arms. “Jason, you and Stiles better head home. Pick up Scott from the clinic and if possible, Malia too. I will reach there as soon as I drop Lulu off.”
Stiles knows better than to argue. Though normally he never lets Derek order them around, alpha or no alpha, but this is not the time for their back and forth banters. He gets inside Jason’s silver Lincoln MKZ without protest as Derek lowers Lexy gently into the passenger seat of his Toyota and buckles in the seat belt.
“Do you think…” Jason starts as they are backing out of the clearing in front of the new Hale house (well it has been ten years now and so not exactly new).
“Do I think my twin sister has come back after nine fucking years and waltzed into her home completely unscathed, by some miracle?” Stiles asks, lips pressed into a grim line. “It is Beacon Hills dude. Nothing is that simple.”
“So you think it is not Vi.”
“I don’t know JJ.” Stiles heaves a heavy sigh as the car rolls down the gravelly path leading out of Beacon Hills Preserve and he cannot help it when the memories hit him like a freight train.
“I don’t know.” He mumbles with his face pressed against the glass window.