Help me Derek

Chapter 1

The first painting that Derek ever sold was one he'd done just after the fire. He'd always enjoyed sketching and painting, but everything that his parents had saved over the years had been lost to the flames, just like them. There were no pictures left of them, they too had burned to ash. The only images he had of his parents and the rest of his family were his memories and he was terrified of losing them too.

He thought Laura must have known how he was feeling because less than forty-eight hours after the fire had started, when he was sat in their crappy motel room fighting back the waves of grief and guilt that washed over him, Laura had appeared with a large canvas and several varieties of oils and paints for him to use. She wore a grim expression and was paler than Derek had ever seen her before, but she gave him a faint smile, more of a twitch of her lips than anything else, the sorrow and grief evident in her features.

"I thought you could paint them." She muttered, holding the canvas out for him. Derek had wanted to throw the canvas into the corner of the room, kick a foot through it, destroy it, do anything other than sit there helplessly, his family was dead and it was all his fault. "They're not great paints," Laura admitted, "We don't have a lot of money, not yet, but, when the insur..." She paused, taking a heaving sigh and swallowing back her own tears, "When the insurance money comes through we can get you some better stuff." She was still holding out the canvas and Derek stared at her for another minute, "Please, Derek, I just, I need to remember them too." Laura pleaded with wide eyes and Derek felt so guilty that he couldn't refuse her.

He snatched the canvas from her hands, setting it up in the corner room and began to paint. It took him two days to finish it, he didn't eat or sleep in that time, barely tearing his eyes from the canvas even when he went to the bathroom, feeling Laura hovering nearby but not looking around at her, he had to get it right, had to get it perfect, for her, it was his fault she'd lost her family, he had to make this perfect.

He didn't draw the pack in their human forms, that would be his next one, right now what they needed was a happy moment, he drew the pack in their wolf forms, the sleek red shine to Cora's coat, the dark mottled grey of his father's, the pure black of his mother's, her eyes shining red in amongst the gold, twenty-six different wolves appeared in the painting, his aunts and uncles, cousins, brother, sisters. They were in a clearing in the preserve, some of them half hidden in the shadows of the trees, the older ones sitting near the edge of the clearing while the younger ones played in the centre, scrabbling to be the one that stood at the top of the pile of rocks, as they had done so many times over the years.

He finally laid down his brushes when he was sure that he'd got it perfect, sure that he would be able to remember every single detail of them as their wolves for the rest of his life, he would never get to see that again, never get to play with Cora or Ellie again, never get to go hunting with his father, never watch his mother's face brighten with a wide smile, they were dead and it was all his fault. He stared at the painting for hours, tears streaming down his face because this was all that was left of them, he couldn't stop sobbing, when Laura returned she took one look at the painting and burst into tears too, wrapping her arms around Derek's shoulders and holding him as tightly as she could, wetting his shoulder with her own tears.

"It's beautiful." She whispered, "Perfect. Thank you."

They were at the motel for two weeks and were running out of money, the insurance company were not keen to pay out, Derek could understand why, but Laura kept insisting that they had to, that they would do, they just had to hold out a little longer. Part of Derek wished that Laura hadn't spent the money on his art supplies, but, whenever he looked at the painting sat at the end of the bed he couldn't find himself to be sorry about it, he didn't think Laura did either.