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It takes maybe half an hour for Derek to stop clutching the wheel, to stop feeling like something is going to happen, something that will prevent him from leaving the town. Nothing does; he passes the welcome sign, standing crooked and dirty from the storm, for the second time this night.
“You couldn’t at least buy something that’s not a soccer mom car while you were an Alpha?” Cora says, lightly. “Mom had a Camaro.”
“We can fit more things into this car,” Derek says. He doesn’t know how to talk to Cora. Most of the time they’ve spent together was colored by anger, adrenaline, fear, and Cora being poisoned. She doesn’t smell like family. She smells like pack, though. That could be a start.
“If we had any. Do we have any destination in mind?”
Derek shrugs.
“Peter offered his apartment if we needed to crash somewhere. He lives in the next town over.”
“No destination, then,” Cora says and slants him a look. “Sorry. I just want to get out of Beacon Hills.”
There’s something under Derek’s skin, almost like an itch, whispering about Beacon Hills and how interesting it can be, how it shines in the dark. It’s probably not a good sign, but Derek is tired, and the itch is easy to ignore.
They have to stop, eventually, at a motel that hasn’t seen better days in a long while. Derek’s head is killing him. There are things they should talk about, but most of what he’s capable of right now consists of trying not to drown in the shower. When he returns to the room, two squeaky beds with barely a foot of space between them, Cora has already fallen asleep.
Derek is too exhausted to sleep. His phone keeps blinking at him until he gives up and checks it. There’s one text.
Thanks.
It’s from Stiles. Derek has no idea what he’s thanking him for. He lets the phone hit the floor and curls into himself to sleep.
In the morning Derek tells Cora about the last time he left Beacon Hills. She is excited about the possibilities of New York, but he doesn’t want to go back, there’s too many memories he isn’t ready to deal with. They settle on something smaller, first. While they drive, Cora tells Derek about several years she spent tagging after another pack across Brazil, hovering at the edges of their territory, not exactly a welcome presence, but not chased off, either. They were smart enough to evade hunters, so they were good enough for her, she says, shrugging.
Over the next three days Derek learns things about Cora: she knows a lot of swear words in Portuguese; she can’t drive and makes terrible music choices if left alone with the car radio; she never went to high school, but she studied for it.
They make it to Arizona before Derek gets another message from Stiles; he has nearly forgotten about his phone. Cora is the one charging it in every motel and shitty fast food joint they stop at so she can play Angry Birds while he’s driving. She lets him have it back once they pay for the night and goes out. Derek feels unsafe without her, without knowing where she is.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m going to find a postcard of The Grand Canyon, not fuck off to South America. Chill, brother.” She smiles then, her face becoming softer, gentler. “I’ll be back in an hour, okay? Stop worrying. We’re not in Kansas anymore. And check your messages.”
Derek does. This one reads, Cora’s not legally dead anymore, Peter’s got a shitton of paperwork to file. You’re lucky you’re not here.
As with the previous one, Derek doesn’t know if he should reply. His finger hovers over the delete button for a second. He doesn’t press it.
There’s more of them after that, enough so Cora rolls her eyes and buys herself another phone. Derek doesn’t know why he hasn’t deleted his contacts yet; these texts Stiles seems intent on sending him just confuse him, make him want to return for that fleeting moment he reads them, where he should be making a new home with Cora.
When they reach Boston there’s so many texts Derek has to scroll down to find the first one. Scott doesn’t know what to do with a pack, reads one, and the next one is about the Sheriff’s possible date with Scott’s mother. Derek has stopped pretending they are addressed to him at all; they read more like a personal diary. Sometimes there are texts about him. It’s kind of boring without you lurking around, Derek gets in a grocery store, with Cora frowning critically at steaks on display. If you’re reading this after all, forget I said that, chimes next. Derek bites back a smirk.
He doesn’t reply to any of them.
“I want to go to college,” Cora says one evening. They rented an apartment a month ago, and the photos she’s made of the city are lined up on the wall, frameless and vibrant. She turns to Derek. “The papers Peter sent— There should be enough to pay for tuition, right?”
She’s anxious, bright-eyed in a way Derek hasn’t ever seen her, as if she used all these months to figure out what she wants and finally found it. Derek mostly used the time to stop feeling paranoid and old.
“You’ll have to-”
“Take some tests, I know.” She rearranges her stack of postcards. There is more than a dozen of them. They don’t have anyone to send them to. “I want to, though. Something normal. It won’t be easy.” Cora makes a face at Derek. “I hate studying.”
They still have a lot of things they should talk about, but it’s getting easier. Derek still feels restless, as though he should be doing something too, but the idea of trying to find a job leaves a weird, ashen taste in his mouth. At least he has less and less nightmares.
By the middle of December the last text Stiles had sent him is three weeks old. Derek has been tempted to answer it the most.
Isaac and Allison are together. Never thought I’d say that, but at least if something happened, Scott would. Stop. PINING, I s2g.
For Christmas, Cora takes Derek ice skating. She claims Brazil severely lacked in ice rinks and grumpy big brothers to humiliate, so she’s merely making up for lost time. She plays dirty, tugging Derek’s arm until he falls on the ice, and then she’s laughing, head thrown back.
“Don’t get up, I need to take a picture,” she tells him, kicks him in the shin when he tries to stand. “Where’s your Christmas spirit, Derek, come on.”
Derek glowers at her. “If you ever show it to anyone…”
“Nobody you know, I swear,” Cora says, smiling down at him. She takes a step back, trying to find a good angle, slips and lands on her ass in front of Derek with a thump.
She looks stunned; Derek is chuckling under his breath before he can stop himself.
“Shut up,” Cora says. “You’re the worst. I will buy you the ugliest sweater ever.”
Derek sends a postcard, just one, on the twenty-seventh; it’s the one Cora bought back in The Grand Canyon. It has an old coffee stain right where he’s supposed to write a message, so Derek doesn’t; he scribbles Stiles’ address and, after a moment of hesitation, puts “-DH” right under the stain.
Maybe next time Stiles sends him a text, he’ll send a reply.