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Derek hesitates to answer the call. Always does when Stiles is calling. He doesn’t have anything against the kid; not really. It’s just that Stiles always has this way about him that drives Derek half around the bend. When it comes to passing information along, he can’t just lay it out there like a normal person would. No, the kid has to spin circles around the subject three times before wrestling it to the ground.
That’s why Derek hesitates, and that’s why Derek is so completely thrown when he does answer the call and in return, receives a clipped, very stressed message. “It’s Cora.”
Derek doesn’t bother to reply, and the call is disconnected before Stiles has a chance to pass any further information along because frankly, Derek doesn’t need it. He’s heard all he needs to hear in those few brief seconds. The blaring sirens of the emergency vehicles were drowned out only by the hammering of Stiles’s panicked heart, and it makes Derek’s heart hurry to catch up.
-O-o-o-O-
He bursts through the emergency room doors, following their mixed scents like a homing pigeon. A woman – a nurse, who Derek subconsciously recognizes as Scott’s mom – ushers him across the floor. She has an arm wrapped around his lower back and a hand in his, squeezing comfort into his body as she explains the situation, but he hears none of it. Instead he is focused on the room that lies ahead.
He can see them; Cora lying deathly still, her heartbeat slow, but steady, and Stiles…Stiles, of all people, with his hand wrapped around hers, speaking soft, comforting words to her as though he’s an old hand at it. And maybe he is, but Derek doesn’t get the chance to wonder about Stiles’s experience because suddenly his vision is grayed out by a solid wall of khaki.
Stilinski – the father, not the son – is blocking Derek’s path; his hand firm on Derek’s chest, holding him back, pushing him back, and Derek is in such a state of shock that it doesn’t occur to him to fight the man off. The Sheriff draws Derek aside, talking at him, asking him questions, but the sound blends in to the muffled chaos of the machines and voices that surround him, and Derek can’t help but feel like he’s drowning in it.
His sister; his baby sister whom he thought he had lost, is lying in that hospital room, just over there, just out of reach, and Derek feels like his world is splintering apart. It’s only been days – just a few days – since he’d lost Boyd; since he’d killed Boyd, and Derek is faced with the sudden realization that it is happening all over again. He is losing everyone he cares about, except this time, it isn’t happening in one fell swoop – one blazing inferno. It’s happening one at a time; piece by piece, like dominos falling in slow motion, each one knocking the next one over until they are all laid out – dead – in a circle around Derek’s feet.
His chest tightens and he’s staring up into pale green eyes, and in all of this it suddenly occurs to Derek that he isn’t any shorter than the Sheriff and there’s no reason that he should be looking up at the man. That’s when he finds himself slipping, and it might be the strangest sensation that Derek has ever felt because his heart is racing, and the walls are growing dark around the edges, and all the commotion around him has been narrowed down to just one voice.
“Derek?”
It’s soft; the voice. Quiet and careful, it draws Derek out. “Derek.”
Slowly the darkness lifts and Derek’s eyes open. “There you are.”
A burst of cold, fresh air fills up his lungs and he’s able to breathe again. “You okay there, buddy?”
There’s a hand braced against Derek’s shoulder; its firm grip kneading gingerly. “Come on, man. Lemme help you up.”
Derek looks up from the floor, still light-headed, to find Stiles standing there. The kid wraps his hands around Derek’s biceps and gives just the briefest nod before hauling Derek to his feet as though he was the Alpha and Derek was the scrawny high school kid, instead of the other way around.
“You’re okay,” he assures, tugging and straightening the seams of Derek’s shirt like it’s his job. “Just a little panic attack, but you’re gonna be fine. Come on, I’ll take you to her.”
Derek can hear him, that’s not the problem. The problem is that Derek can’t for the life of him, figure out what Stiles is saying.
“What?” Stiles complains. “Don’t look at me like that. You Hales are always looking at me like I’m the crazy one, but I’m not the one who just had a panic attack in the middle of everything. Haven’t had one in a very long time, I’ll have you know.”
“What are you doing?” Derek asks, looking around, his head still in a fog. The Sheriff and Mrs. McCall – Melissa, his brain furnishes – are standing there, just beyond the immediate circle of Derek and Stiles.
“Holding you up,” Stiles supplies like it should be obvious. His hands are firmly in place below Derek’s elbows, and Derek recognizes that Stiles is perhaps the only thing keeping Derek on his feet. “But you’ve gotta pull yourself together, man, cuz your sister needs you.”
When Derek shakes his head to try and clear the cobwebs, Stiles ducks back into his blurry line of vision.
“Cora needs you,” he insists.
Cora. Derek breathes. Her name, escaping on a whisper, is like a bucket of cold water, dousing him and snapping Derek out of his self-induced fog. He straightens up of his own accord and takes a deep, cleansing breath to build up his confidence because Lord knows he’s been lacking in that area these last couple of weeks.
“Okay?” Stiles asks, still gripping Derek’s arms securely. Derek meets Stiles concerned look and tries hard not to overthink the reason why lately, this look of concern has become Stiles’s go-to expression around him.
Derek takes another deep breath and nods. He can do this. “Okay.”