THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT EVENTUALLY
"Long time, no see!"
Just as Ace uttered those words, Cora and Boyd bolted out of the vault, most certainly setting out to destroy everything in their paths.
"Scott, go after them!" Derek yelled, not having broken the tense eye contact he held with the man in front of him, the main who he once claimed was like a brother to him.
"You heard the man, Scotty!" Ace shouted, not breaking the eye contact with Derek either.
Scott, despite knowing about Ace being alive, was still shock-stricken to see the man in the flesh.
"But Derek-"
"Just go!" Derek cut him off, baring into Ace's eyes like he was murdering him in his mind.
Scott hesitated, sparing one long glance at his best friend's brother, frankly churning his nose up in disgust from what he had heard about him last night, and then reluctantly ran after Cora and Boyd, leaving Derek to deal with Ace.
"You know, Derek..." Ace spoke, pacing slowly around the vault with his hands behind his back, "I've been imagining this moment for quite some time now..."
"Why are you back?" Derek asked with a clenched jaw, "After all this time, why now?"
"You don't even seem remotely phased that I'm alive, brother."
"Don't call me that."
"Ouch." Ace said sarcastically, placing his hand over his chest in a dramatic fashion, "You mean we're not brother's from different mother's anymore?"
"We never were." Derek spat.
"Well that's not exactly true, is it..." Ace raised his eyebrows, "You and I used to be like those damn Salvatore brother's my sister was obsessed with. Fell for the same girl, ended in tragedy and what-not."
"Don't talk about her."
"Who, Paige?" Ace cocked his head to the side, finding comedy in the whole situation unlike Derek, "Have I hit a nerve?"
"Stop deflecting, Ace." Derek sneered, "What the fuck are you doing back here?"
"Right, right..." said the dirty blonde, "Well, there's quite a few reasons, if I'm honest. Do you fancy a list?"
When Derek didn't answer, shooting later-type glares into Ace's eyes, Ace chuckled, and continued.
"Firstly, Deucalion wants a couple things. You're one of them, does that make you feel special?" Ace faked a pouty face as he teased his former best friend.
"He wants me in your pathetic little pack?"
"Oi, watch it!" Ace pretended to be offended, shooting his hands up either side of him, "You don't wanna be callin' a pack of alpha's pathetic now, do you?"
"Fine, allow me to rephrase." Derek seethed, "Your pack's not pathetic, just you."
"Ooh burn!" Ace snorted with laughter.
Clearly, Derek's attitude was doing nothing but amusing him.
"What are the other reasons, hmm?" said the Hale man.
"Right, right-- got sidetracked, sorry." Ace chuckled, "I came back to see my little sister, you know-- family is everything, and all that crap."
"Once she learns everything you're keeping from her, she's not gonna want anything to do with you, Ace."
"You say that like you're not keeping it from her either." Ace countered, "Poor girl still believes Maggie and James are her parents, so obviously you haven't told her."
"I've done my best to keep her in the dark, yes." Derek snarled, "She doesn't deserve to know the crap that revolves around her very existence."
"She's gonna find out eventually, Derek." Ace smirked, "She turned seventeen a couple days ago."
Derek's stern jaw faltered, like he was unaware of that fact.
"You didn't know?" Ace picked up on his wavered expression, "Little old Aspen is seventeen now, you and I both know what that means."
"Ace-"
"She knows she's not human." the dirty-blonde cut him off, continuing to slowly walk around the vault, his hands clasped behind his back, "She'll eventually figure out she's adopted if she hasn't already.... now how long do you it'll take for her to figure out the rest?"
"How'd you do it?" Derek muttered, changing the subject.
"Be more specific, mate." Ace chuckled to himself.
"Your death, you idiot." Derek scoffed, growing impatient, "How'd you fake it?"
"I paid people off, fuckin' dumbass." Ace rolled his eyes, "Of course, I was broke at the time, so your generous uncle Peter lent me some cash to pay off the medical examiner. The body was never mine, it was some nameless tweak who really did get into a car crash that night, I just paid them off to say it was me."
"Peter knew you were alive this whole time?" Derek asked, this being news to him. But then again, he didn't put it past Peter to hold onto knowledge like this.
"Course he did!" Ace smiled widely in amusement, "The guy's an absolute legend, by the way. Shame you two are nothing alike."
"You only like him cause he's just as psychotic as you are."
"That's probably true." Ace nodded, "But don't pretend like you didn't suspect my being alive as well. I sent my sister a couple notes, I contemplated sending you one as well. The difference was, Aspen needed a little nudge to suspect me being alive, I didn't think you would."
"You being back is gonna stir a lot of problems, you know that?" Derek deflected the conversation, clenching his jaw in anger and resentment.
"I know, can't wait." Ace said like a giddy child on Christmas morning, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain.
"When Aspen finds out-"
"When Aspen finds out, what?" Ace cut him off, walking over to where he stood. "Why'd you have such a soft spot for my sister, Derek? You don't have a thing for her, do you? A little young, don't you think?"
Derek rolled his eyes and scoffed at Ace's words.
"Or..." Ace continued in a menacing whisper, "are you just trying to fill the miserable void in your stone-heart that Paige left?"
"Don't fucking pretend like you didn't grieve her too!" Derek finally snapped, losing his temper, screaming in Ace's face. "Don't fucking stand there and act like her death didn't crush you as much as it did me!"
"Of course it crushed you more, Derek." Ace said calmly, "After all, you're the whole reason she died-"
Derek snapped.
Again.
The Hale werewolf grabbed Ace by the collar of his shirt, slamming him against a wall, throwing punch after punch into his face. Blood was trickling down Ace's nose, but he hardly flinched. In fact, as Derek attacked him time after time, Ace simply laughed, which annoyed Derek even more.
"I really have hit a nerve, haven't I?" Ace chuckled evilly, as Derek stopped throwing punches, but still had the collar of his shirt grasped in his hand.
"It should've been you that died that day! Not her!"
"You can't change the past, Derek." Ace said, already healing from the wounds Derek had inflicted on his face, "You might as well stop dwelling on it."
Derek finally let go of him, backing away, trying to gather himself together after Ace truly did strike a nerve bringing up Paige. What annoyed him the most was the way Ace pretended like her death wasn't a nerve for him too.
"You should probably get going, don't you think?" Ace spoke, wiping away the crimson blood from his nose that was fully healed already, "You have a beta and a sister who are out to murder anything in their path."
"We're not done here." Derek spat, but he was leaching towards the door.
"Oh, trust me, I know." Ace smirked, and reluctantly, Derek left, off to find Scott and keep Cora and Boyd from killing any innocence.
Ace laughed into the empty air once Derek was gone. He let out a sigh as he followed on out of the vault, rather pleased with himself for getting such a rise out of Derek that easily.
▬▬▬▬▬▬
"Stiles just texted me saying Lydia found a dead body." Aspen informed Allison once they were out of the bank. They had been caught by Scott, but the two girls promised they'd just go home, and Scott had bigger issues to deal with, like finding Cora and Boyd.
"Holy shit." Allison cursed.
"Yeah, she's pretty shaken up about it." said Aspen, "Maybe we should go over there?"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."
Aspen and Allison made their way over to the Argent girl's car. As they were walking, Aspen suddenly started hearing things again, things from conversations far away that a normal person shouldn't be able to hear.
But after the night of her birthday, she knew damn well she wasn't normal.
"She was here, you know?" said an unfamiliar female voice that Aspen couldn't recognise.
"Who?" said another voice, this one was male, but again, Aspen couldn't recognise it.
"The girl, Aspen. The one you're so set on finding."
"You mean you saw her?"
"No, I only heard the sounds of her pathetic screams from the storage room."
"Why was she screaming?"
"She probably found the blonde's body." said the woman, "Are you ever gonna tell us what's so special about her?"
"It's none of your business, Kali." said the man, "You all have one order, and one order only when it comes to Aspen. You find her, and you bring her to me. Is that clear?"
Aspen snapped out of it to the sounds of Allison's voice, and the Argent girl shaking her body, like trying to snap her out of a trance.
"Asp?" said Allison, snapping her fingers in her line of vision. "You good?"
"Y-yeah..." Aspen sighed shakily, her words unconvincing. "Yeah I'm fine."
"You look like you've just seen a ghost." Allison laughed.
"It's nothing." Aspen shook it off, walking around to the passenger door of the car. "Let's go find Lydia, make sure she's okay."
"Okay, but-" Allison hesitated, "Another thing..."
Aspen looked at her with raised eyebrows, expectantly.
"What you said back there... with Morell..." Allison trod lightly on her words, "about... your- brother? Your parents?"
"It's a long story..." Aspen sighed, trying hard not to think about it.
"Asp," Allison repeated, trying to grab her best friends attention, "I didn't even know- I didn't even know you had a brother..."
"Fine." Aspen sighed, not wanting to talk about it, but knew she should probably catch Allison up to speed on the mess that is her life. "I have a brother, his name is Ace, six years ago we found out he died in a car accident, but turns out it was all fake. He let me believe he was dead for six years, and now he's back, K?"
Aspen was taken aback when her best friend immediately wrapped her arms around her.
"I'm sorry." Allison whispered, hugging her tightly.
As much as she knew Allison was trying to help, Aspen didn't want hugs. She didn't want pity, she didn't want any of it. Because they were just reminders of how fucked up her life is becoming.
The part that scared her the most is that she didn't think finding out her brother was alive would be the last of mind-blowing revelations.
▬▬▬▬▬▬
Meanwhile, once Derek had pried himself away from ripping Ace's throat out, he was out in the middle of the preserve, trying to find his sister and his beta.
"And the hunted becomes the hunter!" he heard Peter's sarcastically dramatic voice behind him. "You really think a few high-tech dog-whistles are gonna help?"
"I don't see you offering a hand..." Derek muttered irritably, as he placed one of Argent's emitters into the ground.
"Personally, I'm trying to cut down on futile endeavors."
"Cora's alive." Derek informed him, his jaw clenched.
"I heard! Let's throw the reunion party when she's not an unstoppable killing machine."
"Ace is alive too." Derek added, waiting intruigingly to see if his uncle would pretend to be surprised by the information.
"Is he now?" said Peter, "What an interesting development."
"Don't pretend like you didn't know." Derek scoffed, getting up from where he was crouched down to face Peter. "I had an interesting catch up with him, told me an interesting story about how you helped him fake his death."
"Oh no, you caught me." Peter rolled his eyes, holding his hands up. "What can I say? I always liked that boy."
"It doesn't even surprise me..." Derek muttered to himself.
"So he's back, then." said Peter, leaning an arm against the tree. "That's gonna be interesting for our dear old Aspen, isn't it."
"She's gonna find out."
"It's about time." Peter sighed. "Anyway, back to your not-so-dead sibling..."
"I can stop her."
"Sure you can! By killing her... Which happens to be the point of this little exercise." Peter spoke, "Deucalion wants you to kill them. He wants you to get rid of his baggage, making it easier for you to join his pack. The fact that it was supposed to happen in the vault, and not up here, out in the open, doesn't change his plan.. It just means Boyd and Cora are gonna kill a few innocent people first."
"You think he's gonna make Aspen kill someone too?"
"Most likely, yes." Peter shrugged casually.
"And I should just let them? I should be okay with innocent people dying?"
"Unless you're okay killing your own..."
"I can catch them."
"Oh, come on!" Peter scoffed, "How much damage can they do? So they off a few homeless people, a drunk stumbling out of a bar too late... So what? Let Scott deal with it. Let him be the hero of his morally black-and-white world. The real survivors— you and I? We live in shades of gray.
Then again, even if you did kill them, you're still an Alpha. You can always make more Werewolves."
▬▬▬▬▬▬
After a long night of Derek, Scott and Isaac tracking down Boyd and Cora, they had finally succeeded in trapping them inside the school, to ride out the rest of the full moon.
Aspen and Allison ended up stopping by Lydia's place, making sure the strawberry blonde was okay, which she was.
Allison then gave the brunette a ride back home to the McCall residence, where she almost immediately crashed out once she set foot on her bed.
The next day, as Aspen showed up to school with Scott, both of them immediately knew something was up with Stiles.
"Hey," Aspen said softly, "What is it? I can tell something's wrong."
"It's-" Stiles said hesitantly, "It's Heather..."
"What happened?" Scott asked, as the three of them stood outside the school.
"She- she's dead..."
That was definitely not what Scott nor Aspen expected to hear.
"Oh my god, Stiles..." Aspen said softly, leaning on her tiptoes to wrap her boyfriend in a hug. "I'm so sorry..."
"It's not just that...."
"It's not?" Scott spoke up as Aspen let go of Stiles.
"No, it's.... it's the way she died." Stiles tried to explain, "She had the exact same three injuries as the Boyd Lydia found at the pool. Bashed in the head, cut throat, and strangled with a garrotte."
"Jesus Christ..." Aspen gasped, overwhelmed by what Stiles was telling her.
"I think I might know what's going on, too."