Work Text:
Allison Argent was nothing if not methodical in whatever she put her mind to. She’d plan something out, taking into account every possible way something may or may not go right or wrong. It made for fantastic paper writing, not so great on written tests, but she balanced it out. When she planned out her plan of attack for helping her friends take down Cora and Boyd the night of the full moon without having them find out, the only thing that went wrong was having Isaac see her, but otherwise her help diverted the rogue wolves into a safe environment where the alpha could deal with them. Her job done, she went home before her dad found her there.
When she drew up a mental plan for helping out when Scott (and Isaac) went to talk to Deucalion in the abandoned mall, she didn’t really have to plan so much as she had to plan on how to stay away from the alpha wolves. She was good with her bow and arrows, and even with hand-to-hand combat, but there’s no way she could take on the alphas if they chose to make her a target one on one. So her plan was to keep away from them but maintain a line of sight good enough for her to shoot.
In addition to being able to plan with the best of them, she also knew when to follow. The night in the motel, she used her gifts to help her friends as best she could. When Stiles stepped up to Scott, who had been tripping on wolfsbane at that point, she had stood back and let him speak, because for all she and Scott loved each other and being together would probably be their endgame (present on again off again Ross/Rachel scenario notwithstanding), Allison’s relationship with Scott was nothing on Stiles’. She watched with nothing short of awe and amazement as Stiles talked Scott, her Scott, down from burning himself alive. She’d seen Stiles step into gasoline to snap Scott out of his haze, even though Stiles was only human, no special powers, nothing saying he would survive if the worse happened, Stiles did it, and he took the flare from Scott.
She hadn’t needed to plan then, but she’d needed to take the cues where they were, act accordingly, think things through. And everyone had survived.
Then she found out about Gerard. And planning on how she was going to tell Derek and Stiles became a new plateau for her to reach successfully.
She’d joined the pack in an official capacity when Scott (and later Lydia) both joined. Until that point she’d been helping where she could, giving hunting advice to the boys while Derek went to her father, helping plan, helping to strategise, watching, listening, learning... She’d had a feel for it before Derek accepted her. She’d helped his pack, started to make amends for what she had done before the summer. It had been tough going, she knew she had a lot to make up for. Her talk with Stiles after the summer had started helped kick start the recovery.
Relations had slowly been improving with the whole pack, not just Stiles and Derek. Isaac was warming up to her, even after the incident in the stock cupboard during detention, her and Scott were getting closer without the romance aspect of it. If she were honest, she caught herself looking at Isaac and Scott more than once during classes, but she wouldn’t admit it to anyone. She never spoke to Boyd anyway so there wasn’t really a relationship to mend there, only to start, and as for Cora... she honestly didn’t trust Cora as far as she could throw her. There was something shifty about the girl and from what Allison could gather, everyone thought so.
Stiles had Peter looking into it, though she wasn’t sure it was behind Derek’s back or with his consent.
Her dad didn’t want her involved with the Supernatural at all. He’d made mistakes, they both had, while handling the Hale pack. Their entire family had made mistakes, broken the code, tortured innocent people, wolves or humans. Hell, Kate had killed their entire family without blinking and that... that was something Allison couldn’t abide. The needless death and destruction. She couldn’t do it, even though her Grandpa had tried to bring it out of her, almost succeeding before he allegedly met his end. The things he’d done... and to Stiles!
She would never forgive herself for not doing anything to help Stiles in that situation. She’d never forgive herself, nor would she accept forgiveness. She would be a part of the pack and work to earn their trust again because it was important, it meant more to her than just living and going about her everyday business. She needed that network, her friends. She needed their support and felt like she had support to offer too.
Which is why, after everything that had happened recently, with the alphas, the attacks by the druid at the motel, finding out her Grandpa was actually alive... and then Boyd, she knew she needed to tell them everything.
Boyd.
Boyd had never been her friend, she was never his. They never mixed, never had the need to beyond Scott, before they became pack and even then it was only ever fleeting. But she felt the pain of his loss. It had actually been Stiles who told them to talk it out and she realised that she needed to make amends there too because she remembered Boyd and Erica being tortured in her family’s basement.
Between Boyd returning and then dying, there hadn’t been much time for them to talk, but they had a couple of times. Both stilted, but informative. She believed that given time, they could’ve been good friends, but life doesn’t always work the way you want it to and they lost one more battle; they lost Boyd. To Kali and the twins.
His loss was hard... she saw the pack going through day to day motions during school hours and it ached inside her that she couldn’t do anything to help them feel better. Isaac was taking it the worst of the betas, he’d been turned not long before Boyd and they’d grown up together as wolves, essentially. He’d lost his brother. She watched him lean in for contact between Stiles and Scott whenever he got close enough and she saw Stiles trying to touch him and comfort him as much as possible. She helped Scott with small touches as much as she could but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t their alpha, she was a human beta at best, and they’d always gravitate towards Stiles before her.
It was a mess.
Their lives were a mess.
She missed being the oblivious teenager she’d been when her family had first moved into Beacon Hills. A time when she didn’t know werewolves existed, or Kanimas, or druids... packs of alphas that kill other packs, any of it. She missed being a teenager. But this was her life now and she wouldn’t back away from it. She couldn’t.
When she walked into the loft a few days after Boyd’s death and saw the water Lydia told her about to be all but gone (there were a few puddles here and there), she slowly made her way down the steps and into the main living area stopping when she saw Derek and Stiles sat together on the sofa in silence, both reading from a book on Derek’s lap.
“Hey,” she said, her voice cracking, and Stiles, who had looked up when she came into view, frowned in concern.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, shifting so he was only barely leaning on Derek now.
She wrung her hands together and her eyes darted around the loft, looking to see if there was anyone else in the area until, satisfied, she turned back to the pair. “We need to talk.”