visionary
A small glow emitted from the silent television in the far corner of her freshly painted bedroom, in the three days since Boyd's death the brunette had already found herself going through the five stages of grief. The night it happened, she was very much in denial, she hoped that Boyd would somehow come back, or that he was never dead, like Derek. It didn't matter if he died in her lap, she still hoped, she was still in the stage of denial. The following morning came anger, she had torn apart her bedroom in a fit of rage while Chris and Allison stood in the doorway watching her, they knew better than to try and talk some sense to her. Instead, when she had calmed down and decided that she was now over the stage of anger and wanted to fix her room, they helped her, including painting the room as a distraction. Then, came the bargaining. She kept asking herself what she could have done differently, how different things could have been if she had run up those stairs quicker, or if she had never left at all and just skipped school. For hours on end she sat asking herself those questions on repeat, she asked Allison and Chris too, neither quite knew how to approach the situation. Allison didn't feel as though she was quite obligated to offer her advice after how she had handled the grief of her mother's death as for Chris, the man had never let himself grieve before, it wasn't what hunters did, his daughter and niece hadn't gotten that far yet. All the two could do was reassure the girl that she did all she could, as did everyone else, they hadn't been there, but they seemed sure of that fact.
Now, she found herself in the fourth stage. She had been in it since yesterday afternoon and it hadn't passed as fast as the previous three stages did, this one was the one she couldn't pull herself out of.
The dim light of the television was the only light she had allowed herself to see, though she hadn't even taken a glimpse of it since Allison had put it on last night, she continued staring at the same spot on the wall beside her bedroom door letting the thoughts in her mind consume her entirely. A series of plates and cups had begun piling up on her bedside table and dresser, all of Chris' and Allison's attempts to get her to eat or drink something in the time since she had entered this fourth stage. Her new curtains had been shut since they had been hung, her light switch had begun collecting dust. She couldn't face seeing the light of day when she'd watched someone have that privilege snatched away from someone else, she didn't deserve to. All she could think about was how she had failed to help him, or any of them, when she was supposed to be this powerful being whose sole purpose was protection for people, especially people like Boyd. Yet when she had tried to, she had proven completely useless, just like she knew she was.
Nobody who had been there to witness the fateful death of the young wolf has spoken to each other since they didn't know how to. Kinsey couldn't face Cora, not after she had failed to save Boyd, one of the only friends Cora had after spending months in the vault, it was clear that she didn't quite think of the pack as her friends yet, it was too soon. She hadn't spoken to Isaac either, for similar reasons, Boyd was his best friend too, they were betas together, for the first few months of their transitions they had been each other's support systems. Every full moon until Boyd was taken had been spent together, and almost every day since Boyd had gotten out had been spent the same way. Now, Boyd was gone. She didn't know what to say to him after that, not when she felt as though she was the very reason he didn't make it. She liked to think that Scott was the one being his support system these past few days, Scott was now the closest person that Isaac had to a friend, now that the wolf had taken him in the two seemed to have grown even closer. She believed Scott would take good care of the wolf, especially for her.
Lydia and Stiles had both texted her multiple times, called and skyped her too, but she had just let it ring, other than the times that Chris and Allison stepped into her room it was the only time she hadn't been sat in complete silence. Even if she didn't answer the two of them she was sure that they knew how she was doing, she had no doubt they had called Allison too.
Really, they were all waiting to see what happened to them next. They'd heard Kali's warning. If Derek didn't join them, they were all next, all destined to meet the horrid fate that Erica and Boyd had. They weren't sure whether he would allow that to happen to them by refusing to join the Alpha pack, or if he would in fact join them and become just as much of a monster as the rest of the Alpha pack were. The kind of monster who would happily kill a bunch of teenagers who were just trying to navigate through this strange life they were living with no sense of remorse.
"Kinny." Chris's voice said softly, announcing himself as he poked his head through her bedroom door. For a second his hand had reached for the light switch so he could actually see his niece as she sat curled up on her bed in the darkness. But he knew better after seeing how she had been for these past few days. She wasn't ready yet.
The brunette didn't speak as she looked at the man, providing him with a pathetic faint smile that couldn't convince even those who lacked the usual amount of brain cells. She didn't have the energy to try and act as though she was all fine and dandy. Chris strolled into the room, he looked around it as he walked, at how for the last day she had been living in squalor. The door was ajar behind him, letting in a little more light than what the room had seen lately.
He sighed as he sat down beside her, he placed an arm around the girl as she instinctively fell into his hug, resting her head on his chest as she continued to stare at that spot beside her door. Just the simple touch of her uncle, the slightest gesture had caused tears to swell in her eyes.
"How you feeling, Kiddo?" The man said softly, he knew that she wasn't going to be fine so soon, her room and the soft sniffle she had made proved that enough, but he just wanted her to speak. The already extremely quiet apartment had been lost without the sound of her voice, even if it were just a word, they needed her to speak, give them a least some sense of normality back.
"I should have been able to do something." Kinsey's voice broke as a tear rolled down her cheek, another sniffle as she wiped her tear with the sleeve of her red flannel shirt, she would have worn her blue one if it weren't for Lydia failing to return it. But after all the redhead had done for her the least she could do was let her keep the blue flannel, she could always steal one of Stiles'.
"You did everything you could, Kin," Chris reassured her as he planted a kiss into her hair.
"No, I didn't," Kinsey admitted as she sat up, finally taking her eyes off the wall as she looked at her uncle with glass eyes. "You don't get it, Uncle Chris, there's so much more I could have done and I just couldn't do it. I don't know how to and now Boyd's gone because of me."
Her voice broke as she lay her head back down on his chest to sob, she couldn't look at the man another second longer with the fear he would provide her with a look of disgust telling her even further how much of a disappointment she was, more than she already felt. If anyone's look of disappointment were to hurt her, it was her uncles that would hurt the most, even if she had Peter now, her actual father, she would always see Chris as a father figure, the one that she felt the need to do and be good for. It wasn't as though Peter could judge her, he was far from a saint himself, but Chris, he had always tried to give her the best, she felt she needed to return that.
"Kinsey nobody expects you to have it all figured out. You've known for days. None of this was your fault and nobody is blaming you for what happened to Boyd." Chris explained softly, Kinsey raised her head as she looked at him with the same glass eyes, he knew something he shouldn't know, she could tell by the way he spoke. "You're a kid, Kin. You don't need to have it all figured out yet. You did everything you could, there was nothing else you could have done." He made his point clear to the girl, at least as clear as he believed he could. The girl was stubborn, he didn't believe that he could state the point once and she would take his word for it, she was the kind of person to feel guilt and remorse. Which is what made her so different from her parents. It was the reason she was able to become what she was, she just didn't get it yet.
"Y-You know?" Kinsey mumbled, another crack in her voice as her uncle wiped her tears for her.
Chris nodded with a faint smile, far from a look of disappointment or disgust like she had been expecting from him. "Gerard gave me the hard copy of the bestiary when Allison was born, he told me that now I was a father I could handle the responsibility of what was in there. He gave me a flash drive with it on too." He began to explain, shivering at the sound of his father's name. "It took me years to look at the actual copy, and when I did, I noticed a torn-out page. That was when he told me and your mom the truth about our mother. She'd been gone about a year by then, it took him that long for him to tell us the truth. Well, some of it, he didn't give us all of the details about what was on that page. Allison told me the rest last night. She was worried."
"You're not mad?" The young girl asked with surprise.
"Mad?" Chris asked with a raised eyebrow. "If anything I'm proud." He continued, surprising the girl, even more, her tears had stopped as she looked at the man, unable to tell if he was being serious. She failed to believe that the hunter had just claimed he was proud of her for becoming some kind of supernatural being, a failure of one nonetheless. "Allison explained the whole "pure of heart and intention thing" to me, of course, I'm not mad at you. I know you're probably still processing the whole thing, but I don't think you realize how strong that makes you."
"And not just physically." A voice came from the door, turning their heads. Allison stood in the doorway, clearly, she had been eavesdropping through the door that Chris had been left ajar, she had to, she was too worried for Kinsey after not hearing a single peep from her or her TV. "If there's anyone that could become a literal Angel, it had to be you." Allison smile brightly at the girl as she walked into the room, plopping herself on the opposite of the girl from her father.
Kinsey's faint smile soon faded as she allowed her comprising thoughts into her head again, it was only a matter of time before the slight light in her head faded into darkness again. There were only so many distractions that Chris and Allison or her bedroom wall could provide her.
"But I don't know how to be this strong, remarkable Angel that Deaton was talking about."
"We'll figure it out," Chris reassured his niece.
"We're going to do it together," Allison added as she rested her head on Kinsey's, cupping her cousin's hand in her own. "And it starts with you getting out of bed and going to the loft with Stiles because he has called me fifteen times in the past hour asking for you. But first, you need to shower. You smell like the boy's locker room."
-☽○☾-
An hour later Stiles walked into the loft beside Kinsey and Isaac. He'd woken up this morning with every intention of coming to the loft and confronting Derek about the ultimatum he had been provided by Kali. If he wasn't going to take her up on the offer of joining the Alpha pack they needed to know and soon. They needed to prepare for the fight because without a doubt they were going to put one up, nobody in the pack would just allow themselves to face the death Kali threatened them with. If she was going to kill them, she would have to beat them in a fight first, all of them. Even if their experiences with fighting the Alpha pack hadn't proven successful before it wouldn't stop them from trying until they finally won. Or died.
It had taken him all day to finally be able to follow through with coming to the loft. Mainly due to Kinsey ignoring his seventy-eight text messages and thirty-two phone calls, only after that many did he think to call Allison. It had only taken three to get a hold of Isaac and convince him of joining him in confronting Derek, he didn't necessarily want the wolf's presence, but he was the last of Derek's betas, that put him at the most risk, and well, he could use Isaac coming as a way to convince Kinsey to come if she had said no. Which she didn't. As soon as he had mentioned going to the loft she had been sold, there was no explanation or persuasion required.
Stiles would have come alone if it weren't for his fear towards Derek, and slightly Cora. Both of them were more likely to talk to him if he was accompanied by a Hale. At least that was the logic he was using, he clearly didn't know Cora well enough to know that she didn't care whether he was accompanied by a Hale or not, if she wanted to kill him, or if Derek wanted to, they would.
While Kinsey paid a visit to the wolf with Stiles and Isaac Allison was paying a visit of her own, alongside a werewolf too, Scott. They needed to confront Gerard who currently sat rotting in a care home, at least that was what Chris had told his daughter and niece he was doing. Neither had exactly jumped at the opportunity of seeing the man again after the last time.
The loft had been drained of the water that they'd flooded it with, not a single electrical wire in sight. Or blood. Any reminder that Boyd died here was gone, at least in the loft, but not in their minds. It was still raw, maybe even too raw for them to be stood here so casually.
Cora stood at the large window of the loft that still had the mark of the Alpha pack painted onto it, she watched as the rain hit against the glass, listening to the distance thunder rumbled, her back to the three who had entered without announcing themselves. Not that they needed to, she could smell them from the second they had walked into the building. Kinsey's coconut-scented shampoo, Stiles's ax body spray, and Isaac's strong aftershave, with a hint of dog, the way she expected him to smell.
Stiles had been abrupt, he didn't greet the wolf standing at the window, he got straight to the point of asking where Derek was. But rather than provide him or the other two with a simple answer, she acted in true Hale fashion, a cryptic story about Peter and Derek when the Alpha was just a teenager, younger than even they were now.
She told the story of a night when Derek had been out in the woods, running for his life from a group of hunters, the Argents. Kinsey wasn't surprised by that detail, her family was far from perfection, either side of them. Cora remained unsure of who led the group of hunters back then, she lacked that much detail in her story, it was one she had been told by Derek to act as a warning, a warning of what to do if she ever found herself in a mix up with hunters like them. Derek had been a witness to the violent murder of another werewolf that night, just inches away from him. He'd watched as an arrow shot through the neck of the other werewolf who had been doing nothing but trying to protect a Hale werewolf, somehow, he knew that Derek was a Hale. It was about to happen to Derek too until Peter had found him and rushed them to sanctuary. For two days they hid in a root cellar out in the middle of the woods, waiting and hiding. Like she and every other werewolf had been taught to do against hunters. She supposed that was what Derek was doing now. With the way Kali had been acting she was just as dangerous as a group of trained hunters, the same rules applied. Derek needed to wait and hide after the other night. It was all of them should have been doing. Hiding, waiting, healing.
"Okay, so is four days standard then? Or are we thinking Derek's on, like, some extended getaway?" Stiles asked as he, Kinsey, and Isaac continued to stand on the opposite side of the loft. He wasn't expecting to stay long, he didn't see the purpose of making himself comfortable. Once he had gotten a straight answer as to where Derek might be he was prepared to drag the two who accompanied him to the loft there.
"Why do you care?" Cora asked in a snarl as she turned to face him.
"Why do I care?" Stiles scoffed. Both Isaac and Kinsey gave him a look of warning. This was Cora they were talking to, a Hale, a particularly feral one at that, if he said the wrong thing they may not be able to provide him with protection against her. "Let's see, because, over the last few weeks, my best friend tried to kill himself, his boss nearly got ritually sacrificed, a girl that I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed. Boyd was killed by Alphas. And it turns out that Kinsey is an Angel. You want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For like, an hour."
"I think you made your point." Isaac stopped him. Surprisingly, he took the wolf's advice.
Cora rolled her eyes at the two boys. "You think Derek can do anything about that?"
"Well, since he's the one everyone seems to be after, it's more like he should do something about it." Stiles shrugged, his statement was honest, and it was one Isaac didn't disagree with. Derek was the Alpha in this situation, maybe not to all of them, but he was the one who should be taking the responsibility in this case. He had turned Isaac himself. For a while, he was Scott's beta, though it seemed as though he considered himself an omega now. He was Cora's Alpha. And if the rules that applied to werewolves applied to Angel's, he was Kinsey's too.
What none of the teenagers in the loft knew was that the statement was incorrect. The only person after Derek was Kali, purely for revenge. Scott had found out the real reason why the Alpha pack was in town, he had just failed to mention it to the rest of the pack, after Boyd it wasn't the right time to add to their already extortionately large plate of problems. Deucalion wanted an Alpha, he just didn't want Derek, he wanted the rarest of Alpha werewolves, a true Alpha. That fact had been enough to incite fear inside of Scott, the kind of fear his friends didn't need after what they had witnessed the other night. Deucalion wanted an undefeatable pack, which consisted of the Alpha that Scott would become. For now, it would be something he kept to himself, hoping that their lack of knowledge would come in their favor and protect them. It was clear that he wouldn't be able to protect himself, not when Deucalion wanted him.
"I don't know." Cora followed. "There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him." The young wolf admitted, it had been too long since she truly knew her brother, a fact that she hoped to change now she was back, but it was proving fairly difficult.
"What was he like?" Kinsey asked curiously. Derek's past was something she had never heard much about that, not from the wolf himself or even her father during the summer when he had tried to build a closer relationship with her. That was another thing providing difficulty now she was at school and not hanging around him consistently, it was just one of the reasons he had offered her a room in his downtown apartment. Speaking of the man himself, as though Kinsey had summoned him with her thoughts, the sound of footsteps descending down the metal staircase turned the attention of the three teenagers to him rather than Cora. If there were a person who would be able to answer that question, it was him.
Peter stopped on the staircase as he provided them with their answer. "A lot like Scott, actually." He said with humor slightly lacing his words, as if it were ironic that Scott had turned out to be like Derek. "A lot like most teenagers. Unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic... Tolerable really only to other teenagers." He described as he continued to walk towards them, ready to properly greet his daughter who he hadn't seen for longer than it should have been. "Hello, Angel." He teased, placing a kiss on the top of her head as if they were a closer-knit family than they really were, she was too taken by surprise to move back before he had made the gesture. Peter then looked at Stiles. "Human." He nodded with a smug grin, then turned to Isaac. Since hearing about the blossoming relationship between his daughter and Derek's beta he hadn't seen the young wolf, he assumed that revelation was the exact reason why. Isaac provided the man with a nervous smile. Usually, he wouldn't have smiled at all, but people knew about him and Kinsey now, he needed to at least act like he could tolerate her father. "Dead wolf walking." Peter muttered in a slightly threatening tone.
Isaac felt as his heart sank in his stomach, a lump forming in his throat. He was most definitely that, clearly, Peter wasn't happy about the situationship that he had formed with his daughter and he wasn't afraid to show it. Kinsey hadn't been happy about the threat as she narrowed her eyes at her father, Stiles, on the other hand, couldn't have been more glad to see the exchange. For a split second, he had actually respected Peter. But watching Peter maul Isaac to death for getting involved with his daughter wasn't why he came here. Today.
"So what happened to Derek? What changed him?" Stiles asked.
"Well, the same thing that changes a lot of young men. A girl." Peter shrugged, looking at the three teenagers who stood in a line with a smirk, how fitting, he thought. There couldn't be a more perfect example to demonstrate his point than his daughter and the two who were clearly so in love with her, it didn't matter which one he looked at, both boys fitted the description.
The three gathered that they would be here longer than Stiles anticipated, finally, they chose to make themselves comfortable as they sat down at the table, as did Cora, all preparing to find out more about a young Derek Hale.
"You're telling me some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?" Isaac questioned the former Alpha in complete disbelief, he knew his Alpha, and he wasn't the kind of person to be heartbroken, at least he didn't seem like the type. For months Isaac questioned if Derek even had a heart to break at all.
Peter turned to Cora. "Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha? Had blue eyes?" He jogged his niece's memory, Cora nodded. "Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?" The man asked as he looked between the three teenagers, Kinsey and Isaac both shook their heads, even the werewolf out of the three of them had never been told why.
"I always thought it was like a genetic thing." Stiles shrugged.
Peter shook his head, but if they wanted to know what changed Derek, they had to first know what changed the color of his eyes, and he was happy to be the narrator of what happened to his nephew. Frankly, they were all surprised that he wasn't going to make them wait for Derek to tell them himself or just figure it out for themselves.
It was a little while after Derek and Peter had found themselves hiding in the root cellar from the Argent's that Derek had met a girl. The girl in question was Paige, as Peter told them. She played the cello while a young Derek was on the basketball team, it was what seemed to be the typical high school sweetheart kind of love. She was a good, smart girl and Derek, well he tried to be the bad-boy high school jock, they all knew the type from experience, though as Peter pointed out, basketball was the sport back then rather than lacrosse like his daughter and the two teenagers were used to in their high school lives. Derek had had his sights on Paige for a while, he found amusement in teasing her, showing off in front of her, as many teenagers did back then, some still used the same methods now. Kinsey looked at Isaac, he had also tried that method. His relentless annoying her as he followed her around the school halls, all the attempts he made to flirt with her no matter how much she tried to shrug it off. And now, because of one single late night during the summer, they were whatever they were now.
From what they had heard from Peter's story, things weren't so different from what they were now, when the girls stopped paying attention, it only made them crave it more. He could see that between his daughter and the two boys. She had used that very method, not purposely, but she had. Her lack of interest in a relationship with Isaac before the summer had been the very thing that made him more persistent in pursuing her until she eventually admitted what she had been denying for months on end. And now, while she found happiness in Isaac's arm, Stiles was the one who craved more, he craved to be that one that she turned to.
It was where Derek and Paige's story had begun too.
He recalled the first conversation the two lovers had with one another, he knew all the details from when Derek would come home pining over his non-existent relationship with Paige as if he would have any interest in the relationship of two high schoolers at the age of twenty-eight. He may not have known it then, but at that age, he was the father of an eight-year-old. Maybe if he did know that Derek wouldn't have told him the story of Paige so confidently, Peter would have been too caught up in fatherly duties to listen to him.
Paige had been in the music room attempting to practice on her cello when she had heard the ruckus of teenage boys out in the corridor, it wasn't particularly a new noise considering the boy's locker room was just a few doors down. She was familiar with the loud cheering of all of the boys after basketball practice, even more so after a game. But there was something about that day that made her stand up and walk out of the door, into the hallway to face the group of whooping boys head-on. Of course, with the confrontation, a young Derek had begun to show off, he quickly realized Paige had no interest when she had turned her back to him and walked back into the music room, prepared to sit through the nose like she usually did. Within a few minutes, Derek was stood in the doorway, alone, apologizing for his actions, though Paige was unbothered by his apology, she didn't believe him. She knew his type.
Still, Derek remained persistent as he asked the girl's name.
Paige made the young wolf a deal. If he could play any instrument in the room, she would give him the privilege of knowing her name. A confident Derek had nodded as he walked around the room, staring at all the large and intimidating instruments that he knew he couldn't play. He walked to the back of the room where all the smaller instruments were kept. It took him a while to find the one that he could play, but he did find one. The triangle. He stood in front of the girl with a smug smile as he tapped it, sounding a small, sweet chime. There was no denying Paige was humored, maybe even impressed by his quick thinking as he stood proudly.
She stuck to her deal, telling him her name. And that was just the beginning of them.
"Okay, so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you?" Stiles asked, clearly taking the wrong message from Peter's story so far. He was getting too stuck in the minor details to see that this was a story about young, idiotic love between a werewolf and a normal girl rather than a story about Derek. There was much more to the story than what met the eye. He was the only one who didn't seem to understand that. "How old are you now?" Stiles continued to ask with a raised brow, staring at the man who'd perched himself on the sofa while telling his tale.
"Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think."
Stiles shook his head, even more, confused about the detail. He turned to Kinsey with the same raised brow as he questioned her about her father's age, it was one of the few facts she did know about her father, but he was very private when it came to his personal details. Especially his age, he couldn't have people knowing that he wasn't in fact twenty-one like he wished he was. Even Isaac didn't know how old Peter was, and now it had been brought up, he too was curious, but he didn't dare to ask Peter as Stiles had. The man already wanted him dead.
"Okay, that was frustratingly vague." Stiles groaned before turning to Cora who sat beside her cousin with a slight smile across her face, she was also one of the very few people to know the age of her uncle, she also knew how private he liked to be about that kind of information. "How old are you?" Stiles asked the girl, he hadn't exactly gotten the chance to get to know her.
"I'm 17."
"See, that's an answer. That's how we answer people." Stiles said as he turned back to Peter. Cora's age was a detail that everyone but him had known. Of course, Kinsey was related to the wolf, of course, she knew the girl's age, her birthday too in fact. Isaac had lived with the wolf for a short while. But in that time he had gotten to know quite a lot about the fellow beta. Peter had been there for the birth of his niece, only because he'd been the one to get stuck with the duty of babysitting duty of Laura and Derek.
"Well, 17 how you'd measure in years," Cora added, teasing the human boy further.
"All right, I'm just gonna drop it." Stiles shook his head, giving up with anyone who had the last name, Hale. Or even if they simply shared the gene of that family. Cora and Kinsey looked at one another with grins across their faces, annoying Stiles had quickly become one of Cora's favorite past times. "What happened to Derek and the cello girl?" The boy asked, prepared to get back to Peter's story.
"What do you think happened? They're teenagers. One minute, it's, "I hate you, don't talk to me," The next it's frantic groping in any dark corner they could manage to find themselves alone in for five minutes." Peter deadpanned. "Isn't that right, Isaac?" He asked the young wolf with a slight growl. He knew the details, more than a father could ever want to know, Derek hadn't saved him from all of the graphic details of his daughter's relationship with his beta. Derek had to see his uncle's reactions to such a story, it brought him joy seeing Peter become overwhelmed with disgust, and then a typical fatherly rage.
"Please just get back to the story." Kinsey groaned with embarrassment while Issac shifted in his seat, if he made it past today he was going to consider himself the luckiest person alive.
Derek and Paige's favorite dark corner, as Peter referred to it, was an abandoned distillery just outside of town. He wasn't a stranger to that dark corner, he had been a teenager once before too, he refrained from mentioning a particular detail to his daughter. He had caused her enough embarrassment for a few moments. Mentioning that she had been conceived in the distillery that he was talking about would scar her more than embarrass her. Instead, he kept his story strictly about Derek and Paige, there was a time and place for him to talk to his daughter about the past he had with her mother and how two forbidden enemies came to be what they once were. But in the past few months of bonding with his daughter, he hadn't felt prepared to talk to her about his very own star-crossed lovers story that he had with Kate. There were only a few differences between him and Kate to the tale of Romeo and Juliet. One, he hadn't died. Two, unlike the two youngsters in the tale that everyone knew, he and Kate weren't in love. At least he was sure that he was never in love with the woman who ended up murdering most of his family.
Derek and Paige often found themselves in the distillery for their alone time, because, of course, the school wasn't sufficient. They couldn't properly be alone in school, they couldn't do what all teenagers do, in order to be truly alone they had to find even the most remote dark corners. And it wasn't as if Derek could take Paige home, not when his house was filled with werewolves. She wouldn't have made it through the front door.
Isaac interrupted Peter's story again to ask how exactly he knew all of this information when he'd claimed moments ago that Derek and Paige would head to the distillery alone. If he were to guess, it seemed to her like Peter had always had an act for being creepy and stepping over boundaries, that certainly hadn't changed.
He imagined he would have followed the two of them, watched them through a small hole in the wall. A thought that made him shiver, and then an even more horrifying thought crossed his mind. Had Peter ever spied on him and his daughter? Is that how he knew? Maybe it was the fear of talking, but he couldn't help the thought crossing his mind. He hadn't thought about something as simple as Derek tattling on him and Kinsey.
Peter defended his actions with an explanation that back then he wasn't just an uncle to Derek, but his best friend and closest confidant. Comparing his relationship with Derek to the one that Kinsey shared with Allison, that seemed to make it clear to all of them just how close he and Derek had been, the two of them were the closest that anyone had ever known.
One night while at the distillery with Paige, Derek had heard something, sensed something in the distillery, something had happened there. When it was clear he had in fact heard a noise and it wasn't just his mind, he and Paige had hidden. Three packs appeared in the distillery that night, the original packs of Ennis, Deucalion, and Kali before they had killed them. They talked about the werewolf that Derek had seen killed right in front of him, once the Argents had killed him he was taken to the distillery, cut in half as they did with all wolves they caught. Back then, it was justified after one of Ennis's beta's had accidentally killed a hunter. But Ennis wasn't the Alpha everyone looked to. There was one Alpha above all who was so strong, she had the ability to shapeshift like no other, her rare abilities made her a leader, the kind of person that people would seek guidance from.
Talia Hale. Better known by the two teenage boys as Derek's mother. Cora's mother. Talia was related to every person in the room apart from them, though, like the two boys, Kinsey had never met the woman before her mother murdered her.
It had been guidance that had brought the three packs to the distillery that night, but where they were on the against side of the argument Talia seemed to see no fault in what had happened to Ennis's Beta. Like Gerard and the hunters, she and the werewolves also followed traditions much older than them. Her lack of willingness to support Ennis's side had angered and frustrated him, and that was the night he left the mark on the walls of the distillery. With his claws her made the werewolves mark for vendetta.
Peter created the visual on the condensation of the lost window, a small but meaningful spiral. One that wolves still followed now.
"Man, you guys really take that revenge thing to, like, a whole new level, don't you?" Stiles commented, forgetting to make sure he had a filter when he spoke. Peter had explained the meaningfulness behind the mark, only for Stiles to mock it seconds later.
"It's not just revenge," Cora argued. "Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing family. It's like you lose a limb." She explained. It was something that all three wolves were familiar with.
"They wouldn't even let him see the body," Peter explained.
Though the four teenagers understood that losing a pack member was severe and that Ennis was probably feeling pain like never before when he claimed he wanted revenge all four of them failed to see what this part of the story had to do with Derek. They had quickly gone from a tale of love between two polar opposite high schoolers who hooked up in abandoned distilleries to a tale of angry Alpha werewolves seeking revenge on a family of well-known hunters, Kinsey's well-known family of hunters to be exact. Which was the exact reason she was the one to ask her father what any of this had to do with Derek, it seemed appropriate for it to be her.
Peter them that although it may not seem that way, Ennis losing his Beta had everything to do with Derek. While Peter described how he had seen it as a profound loss Derek had seen it as something different back then, an opportunity he called it. An opportunity to always be with Paige. Once Derek knew truly that Paige loved him he began fearing, obsessing over the time when she found out when she knew what he really was. Scared that once she knew about the claws, fangs, and glowing eyes she would run for the hills. He was naive back then, he used to insist to Peter that she wouldn't find out, but as he told them now, and as he told Derek, they always do. It was something that two teenagers knew all too well.
Stiles and Kinsey could remember clearly when they had been keeping Scott's secret from Allison to try and protect her from the likes of Peter, but as he said, they all found out, they always did. No matter what they tried to hide that seemed to be the case.
Things could never stay hidden forever. Especially not werewolves.
According to Peter, back then Derek could only see one way to confirm that he would be with Paige, despite his supposed arguments Derek insisted that if he wanted to stay with the love of his life he would have to turn her. He couldn't be without Paige without turning her, even if she knew about him being a werewolf, she would never survive if she wasn't one herself. As Peter said those words, as he explained Derek's reasoning Isaac and Kinsey looked at each other, they couldn't help but wonder if that were true. Kinsey knew about werewolves, she was related to some of the most well-known ones, but she wasn't one herself. They had to wonder if Derek was right in thinking that Paige couldn't possibly survive like that, and in turn, neither could Kinsey. Peter told them about how often Derek would talk about turning Paige, the more he thought of the idea of spending his entire life with Paige by making her a werewolf the more he convinced himself that it was the only option. Kinsey couldn't help but wonder, what if.
"You know teenagers. I bet he even blames me. He's probably convinced himself the whole thing was my idea." Peter shrugged, dispelling any responsibility.
"But it wasn't?" Cora asked.
"No." The wolf insisted, shaking his head. "It was all Derek."
But that wasn't the truth. Of course, Peter wasn't willing to tell the four teenagers he had been the one to cause Derek to do what he did, that it was all his idea. He'd spent months convincing his daughter that he was a changed man, that when he was the Alpha tormenting the entire town he had been in a rough patch. Fueled by the need for revenge, he had gotten that now, he had more important things to think about, like her, he wasn't going to ruin that by telling them that he was the reason behind what happened to Paige. She would never look at him the same, not when she was so adamant on people having a choice when it came to receiving the bite, she had made her point once before how she would never want it. If he told her that he was the one who encouraged Derek to take away that choice, all his hard work on their relationship would be soiled immediately. That was something he wasn't willing to do.
As he looked at the teenagers he thought about the truth, the one they'd never hear.
Turning Paige was his idea, all his. He'd been the one to obsess over it, put it into Derek's head every day without fail, hoping that his naive nephew would listen to him and provide the world with another werewolf. The superior species that the world needed more of. After all, he was Derek's closest confidante. And with the Alphas being in town, it was the perfect time for him to suggest it. Talia would never do it, both Peter and Derek knew that but one of the other Alphas roaming the town might, and back then, they were everywhere. But they wouldn't be for much longer. Derek's clock of opportunity was ticking. The time to do it was then. Peter didn't let his nephew forget that.
One little bite. One bite and she'd never get sick again, she'd stay young and beautiful, maybe even more beautiful. Able to protect herself. The bite is a gift. He told Derek.
There was an old myth. The myth of Lycaon. According to the myth, some Greek citizens believed they owed their lives more to Prometheus than to the gods of Olympus. And some followers even took names to honor the Titans instead of the gods. Like Deucalion, who'd taken the name of Promethesus' son. Lycaon didn't just refuse to honor the gods. He challenged them. He invited Zeus to a banquet and then tried to serve him the flesh of a human being. Angered, Zeus blew apart the place with lightning bolts and then punished Lycaon and his sons by turning them into wolves. The lesser part known is how Lycaon sought out the Druids to help turn him back to human. It was believed ancient Druids knew how to shapeshift. They couldn't make Lycaon and his sons human again, but they did teach them how to shift back and forth. And so the Druids became important advisors to the packs. Emissaries, they're known as.
"They keep us connected to humanity. But they're a secret even in the pack. Sometimes only the Alpha knows who the emissary is. Derek and I had no idea about Deaton." Cora explained.
"Or his sister, Morrell."
"She's an emissary too?" Stiles and Isaac simultaneously asked. As soon as they had they looked at one another, and then at Kinsey, they had both noticed how she didn't seem surprised by that revelation. At least not in the same way that they were. "Did you know?" Stiles questioned her.
"I kind of pieced that together, yeah," Kinsey admitted.
"Why the hell don't any of you guys tell me this stuff, huh? I shared some really intimate details with her?" Stiles asked as he looked around the room.
"Don't look at me. I told her plenty of stuff too before I found out." Kinsey held up her hands in defense. She still had counseling sessions with the woman to this day, counselling with Morrell was something that she would never get out of, not if Morrell could help it. Not to mention that the woman was her and Allison's French teacher. There was no escaping her, only avoiding.
"And does she give you good advice?" Cora asked she asked the two of them, both nodding in agreement as they thought back on their experiences with Morrell. Neither could fault her for that. She was good at what she did, now Stiles knew why.
"That's what they do," Peter added. "That's what Deaton did for Talia."
"He did it for Kinsley, too. That's why Talia took her to Deaton, not just because he knew a lot about the supernatural, but because he was advising, helping her like she needed." Kinsey mumbled in realization. "Oh, my God." The girl mumbled again, her eyes widening.
"What?" Isaac asked her.
"She knew."
"Knew what?" Cora questioned the girl. Between the other four in the room, none had quite puzzled together it was that Kinsey had puzzled together about her grandmother. None could quite see the correlation she had seen.
"My grandmother gave that page to Deaton and specifically told him to use it to help save others like her. She knew that the only way an Angel could be made was through genes like hers. What if she gave it to him because she knew that I would become one?" Kinsey asked as she looked around the room, though they all still seem confused. "Think about it. Why else would an Argent go to Talia Hale for help? Why would she give a page of the bestiary to the Hale packs emissary?"
"Because she knew you were a Hale." Stiles finally figured it out.
"That's not possible." Peter shook his head with a scoff. "Kate wouldn't have told her mother."
"What if she did?" Kinsey questioned her father.
"It makes sense," Cora admitted. "Mom wouldn't have refused to help her grandmother, not if she knew that Kinsey was your daughter. Even if she was an Argent, Mom wouldn't have just sat back and let her own family be put at risk because she was supernatural. If she knew that her grandmother could give Deaton something that would help Kinsey she would have done it."
Peter thought about it. Cora was right. That was Talia, she was the Alpha of the pack, she was like a mother to all, she even mothered him, and he was her little brother. If Talia did in fact know that Kinsey was his daughter, she would have done anything that she could to make sure that she didn't meet the same fate that Kinsley White knew she was going to meet.
"But how would your grandmother know that you were going to become an Angel?" Isaac asked. He still didn't quite understand what the other four did.
"The bestiary said that Angel's have premonitions. Maybe she had one about me. I mean, I was born when she did, it's possible that she could see this far into the future."
After that revelation had been processed, and Peter had repeated at least ten times that his sister had known all along that he had a daughter, he returned back to his story. Keeping on the topic of his beloved, traitor of a sister. Talia and Deucalion had wanted to extend an olive branch to the Argents to end the war between their kinds before it got worse, Deaton had advised them against it, suggesting that it may not be as welcome as they hoped. As Peter told the part of the story he was beginning to see parts he hadn't seen before, he used to believe that Talia wanted to extend an olive branch to the Argents because she was a peacemaker, she didn't want to see more werewolves die at the hands of hunters. Now, he was beginning to believe Talia wanted peace because she knew that there was a child out in the world somewhere who was both Hale and Argent. She wanted peace for that child, so when she grew up, when she found out about her true heritage she wouldn't grow up in strife, caught in the crossfire of two feuding families.
Despite what Talia knew about her shared family with the Argents, she wasn't sure Gerard was the person to offer an olive branch to, because, well, he was a psychopath who cut people in half with a broad sword. She wasn't quite sure he would care about his grandaughter being part of both of their families, and from what Kinsley had told her, she couldn't believe that Gerard wouldn't do to the child what he did to other supernatural creatures.
Kinsey hadn't failed to notice that Peter's story involved a lot more than just Derek like she, Isaac, and Stiles had been expecting. First, it was the original story of Derek and Paige, then the Alpha packs, Ennis and his beta, Emissaries, and now, the tale of a scorpion and the frog.
Just when she was about to interrupt to ask how this had anything to do with Derek like she had when he told them about Ennis and his beta, Peter insisted that this was relevant to finding out what had changed Derek all those years ago.
When the scorpion asked the frog to carry him over the river the frog asked "How do I know you won't sting me?". The scorpion replied, "Why would I do that? Then we'd both drown." So the frog agreed. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. When the frog asked him why he did it, since now they would both die, the scorpion replied, "It's my nature."
The point of Peter telling them the story, just like the point Deaton had made to Talia and Deucalion all those years ago, was that they shouldn't underestimate Gerard's nature. A hunter's nature. His instinct to kill those like them. After making his point about Gerard, Peter returned to the story of Derek and Paige. A story that even Cora didn't have all the information on, until now she thought she had most of it, now she realized she barely even had the blurb. The other stories within, such as what happened with the Alpha packs, she knew of simply because they were warnings that her mother used to give her as a child. Scary stories. But Derek and Paige, that was a story nobody talked about until now.
One night, Derek sent a note to Paige, asking for her to meet him in the school. He'd also arranged for Ennis to be at the school ready to attack Paige, to bite her. Derek was there that night, sitting and waiting for it to happen, for the inevitable scream when Ennis completed his task and began the process of what he hoped would be the beginning of forever.
"Ennis?" Cora asked, confused. "Why would he choose him?"
"Why not?" Peter deadpanned. "Ennis needed a new member for his pack. Paige was young and strong. Doing a favor for Derek meant Ennis would be in good with Talia. Back then, everyone wanted to be in good with her."
"He doesn't remember it was Ennis, does he?" Stiles questioned.
"If he does, he keeps it to himself."
"So then what happened?" Kinsey asked. "Did he turn her?"
"Almost."
As Derek waited, he began to have second thoughts as Paige's whimpering sounded through his ears until he couldn't take it anymore and he was running through the halls to find her. And when he had, he made the bold choice to challenge the giant. A 15-year-old-boy against a giant. They could all guess how that fight ended. Derek struggled to fight Ennis now, let alone then. But as Peter told them, there was no reason for Derek to fight him, she had already been bitten.
There was a look on Peter's face as he recalled that night. It wasn't as if he was recalling it after being told the tale by someone else, it seemed as if he could remember it like it was yesterday, like he'd been there himself, and now, he was left with the memory burnt into his mind.
"So did she turn?" Kinsey asked again.
"She should have." Peter nodded. "Most of the time, the bite takes. Most of the time."
"When you offered it to us, you said if it doesn't kill you," Stiles said with a raised brow as he looked at the man. Kinsey could remember that offer that her father had made to them after he attacked Lydia at the formal, how Stiles had hesitated and she hadn't, yet her heartbeat told her father something different about her. Now she wondered why she had seen herself with the eyes of a werewolf in the bathroom mirror at Glen Capri. Did she want it?
"If." Peter emphasized like he had that night.
𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐟. When Peter had "found" them that night, hiding in the root cellar Derek had been holding the girl in his arms as she died, her blood over his hands and body as she cried. Derek asked his uncle what was happening to her and when he'd seen her, of course, he already knew the answer. It didn't matter that Paige was young and strong. Some people just aren't made for being a werewolf. Unfortunately, Paige was one of those people.
A sickening feeling overwhelmed Kinsey as she listened to her father talking about how Paige fought against dying from the bite, none of this story settled well with her. Derek's intentions had been good, innocent, the typical intentions of a boy in love, and it ended in tragedy. No matter how hard she fought to survive, it wasn't made to happen. No matter how many times Derek took her pain, Paige wasn't meant to survive Ennis's bite. They weren't meant to have a happy ending. Some people just aren't made for being a werewolf.
"I knew," Paige mumbled softly through the black liquid oozing from her mouth.
"What do you mean?"
"Right after I told you my name, I think I knew." She nodded. "I've seen things in this town before. Things no one could really explain. And then there's the way that you talk. How you say things, like how you'd "catch a scent." And I know you can hear things. Things that no one else can hear. I knew." Paige explained, it was hard that in her dying moments Derek only seemed to be falling more and more in love with the girl who accepted him, and because he believed that she wouldn't he'd gotten her into this situation. If he had only given her the chance.
"And you still liked me?"
"I loved you." Paige corrected.
Paige knew what was happening to her too, she knew that what was happening to her meant that she was going to die, but she asked anyway. A question Derek could only answer with a nod. He couldn't bear to say the words, knowing it was his fault. Maybe he loved her too much.
She died that night. After begging for Derek to end her pain, and not in the way that Isaac had taken the pain of a poor dying dog in the animal clinic that one day, or how Scott had done it before either. That was temporary. Paige couldn't survive temporary.
He didn't want to, but he couldn't watch her die in his arms any longer. A slow, torturous death. So he had done what she asked. As Paige sobbed in his arms, he mumbled a small apology before he killed her, crushing her until she took her final dying gasp.
Paige's pain ended in that moment. Derek's? His was yet to end.
"I remember taking her body from his arms, to the woods, to a place where I knew it would be found. Another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."
"And what about Derek?" Cora asked, tears in her eyes, matching that of the other three.
"Taking an innocent life takes something from you as well. Bit of your soul. Darkening it." Peter explained, but rather than looking at his niece who asked him, he looked straight at Kinsey, as though he was giving her a fatherly warning. "Dimming the once brilliant, golden yellow, to a cold, steel blue. Like mine." He continued, flashing them his icy blue eyes.
His story ended there, with Paige's death and the reason why Derek had changed, in terms of the color of his eyes, and why he was the way he was now. But the curiosity of the teenagers hadn't. They still had questions. And not just about Derek or any of the other dozens of stories that were embedded within it. But they questioned Peter's integrity. His reliability. They were all aware of what the man was capable of, no matter how much he seemed to have changed, sometimes, the man lied. How could they be sure this wasn't one of those times? Was he a reliable source?