++++++
Stiles was sitting in the loft, looking up at Cora who was staring out the fogged windows. He had taken Sabrina back home so she could rest. Cora was telling him of a time that she remembered her brother Derek being in trouble.
He had been out for a run in the woods at night when he had bumped into another werewolf. Derek had only enough time to get a look at the guy before an arrow was lodged into his throat. It had been a hunter belonging to the Argents that had taken the guy out and he wanted to take Derek out. That was until Peter had arrived to help him as their mother had sent him out to find him.
He had pulled Derek away as more hunters including Allison's father and grandfather had come in to hunt for them. They then had gone off to hide in a secret cellar in the woods.
"They were there for two days. Waiting, hiding," she mumbled, still staring out the window. "That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us. Hide and Heal."
"Okay," Stiles huffed as he paced in front of the table. "So is two days standard then? Or are we thinking that Derek is on, like, some extended getaway."
Cora turned to look over at him. "Why do you care?"
Stiles stopped pacing and widened his eyes at her. "Why do I care? Lee see, because over the last few weeks, my best friend and girlfriend tried to kill themselves, his boss nearly got ritually sacrificed, a girl that I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed. Boyd was killed by Alphas. My girlfriend got electrocuted. You want me to keep going?" he asked as Cora lowered her head down. "Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour."
Cora started to move away from the window and towards him. "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. Yeah." Cora shook her head. "I don't know. There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him."
Stiles stopped pacing and looked straight at her. He just realized that he didn't know too much about Derek's past, at least when it came to his family and life before Kate Argent and the fire. "What was he like?" he asked with interest.
But then there was some sound from the staircase as Peter came down it. "A lot like Scott, actually," he said as he stepped down. "A lot like most teenagers. Unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers."
Stiles rolled his eyes. "And so what happened? What changed him?"
"Well, the same thing that changes a lot of young men...a girl?"
Now Stiles let out a skeptical scoff. "You're telling me that some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?"
Peter then turned to Cora. "Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha and had blue eyes?" He then turned to Stiles. "Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?"
Stiles narrowed his eyes. "No, I just always thought that it was, like, a genetic thing."
"If you want to know what changed Derek, you need to know what changed the color of his eyes."
++++++
Peter began to tell Stiles and Cora of the day that Derek had formally met a girl that he liked.
It was a girl named Paige who was quite a cello player. They had met when Paige had been practicing her playing in the music room but Derek had been making a lot of noise just outside with his friends on the basketball team.
She told them to quiet down and Derek was cocky with her and tried to show off with the basketball to her. That only made her give up and go back to the music room and try to keep practicing. Derek had gone after her and wanted to know her name. She kept refusing to tell him, even though she knew his name, so he made a challenge to get her name if he played an instrument. He picked up a triangle.
Stiles thought that young Derek kind of reminded him of Jackson. A popular guy that loved to flaunt himself around like he ruled the school.
"Okay so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you?" Stiles asked him. "How old are you now?" he asked Peter.
He shrugged. "Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think." Stiles blew out a heated breath. "Okay, that was frustratingly vague." He pointed at Cora. "How old are you?"
"I'm seventeen," she said.
"See, that's an answer. That's how we answer people." But Cora tilted her head a bit. "Well, seventeen in how you'd measure in years." Stiles rolled his eyes. "All right, I'm just going to drop it," he said as Cora tried not to laugh at him. "Okay, what happened to Derek and the cello girl," he said getting them back to the subject.
"What do you think happened?" Peter said. "They're teenagers. One minute it's, 'I hate you, don't talk to me' and the next it's frantic groping in any dark corner they could manage to find themselves alone in for five minutes. Their favorite dark corner was an abandoned distillery outside of Beacon Hills."
Stiles narrowed his eyes at him. "All right, hold up. How do you know all this? You just said they were alone." "Back then, I wasn't just Derek's uncle, I was his best friend. His closest confidante. That's how I know."
Peter began telling what happened after his sister showed up to the packs in the distillery.
Talia had begun arguing in favor of Ennis' desire to have payback against the Argents, claiming that it was his right. Though Deucalion was arguing that even though it was Ennis' right, that didn't mean he was right to. He argued that if Ennis did this then it wouldn't stop. The violence and death would just travel back and forth. Though Ennis was having none of it as the brutal way his beta was slaughtered and his body butchered and violated. He then went and carved the sign for vendetta into the metal wall with his claws.
As Stiles listened, his eyes widened. He couldn't believe that Deucalion was trying to go with a pacifist approach. In a way, the man sounded just as optimistic and ideal as Scott. He wondered what happened to make such a man go and become a twisted lunatic.
Peter went over to the window and drew a spiral into the condensation. "Our mark for vendetta."
"Man, you guys really take that revenge thing to, like, a whole new level, don't you?" Stiles remembered back when Peter had his own vendetta to settle and started lashing out at innocent people that hadn't laid so much as a finger to the Hales.
"It mot just revenge. Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing family," Cora argued. "It's like you lose a limb."
"They wouldn't even let him see the body." He began to tell them of Ennis being at the hospital but the orderlies and soon the police arriving to hold Ennis back and keep him from taking the body from the morgue.
"I don't get it," Cora cut in. "What does this have to do with Derek?"
He looked back at her. "Everything. It's never just a single moment. It's a confluence of events. Personally, I looked at Ennis' circumstance, I saw profound loss. Derek saw something different. He saw opportunity."
"Opportunity? To do what?" Stiles said softly. "To always be with her." "Paige?" Cora said. Peter nodded. "The thing was, he had this constant fear. He was obsessing over it, thinking about it all night, all day. Always on his mind. I kept telling him not to do it. Every day the more he had thought about it, the more convinced he became. You know teenagers. I bet he even blames me. He's probably convinced himself the whole thing was my idea."Peter's tone was low, sad and full of regret.
He then shared a grim look with Cora who stared blankly back at him. Stiles also looked grimly at him.
++++++
"They keep us connected to our humanity," Cora said softly as she explained emissaries to Stiles. "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."
"Or his sister, Morrell," Peter put in.
"She's an emissary too?" Peter nodded. "For the Alpha pack." Stiles' eyes widened. "Our guidance counselor?!" Now Stiles felt mortified. "Why don't you guys tell me any of this stuff? I shared really intimate details with her!"
"And did she give you good advice?" Cora asked him.
Stiles head tilted a bit. "Actually, yeah," he nodded. "She did."
"That's what they do," said Peter. "That's what Deaton used to do for Talia." He then started to explain what happened between Talia and Deaton having a meeting with Deucalion to discuss Gerard and Ennis' vendetta.
Deaton was telling Deucalion that it might not be the wisest course of action to try and reach out to Gerard Argent in peace. Talia agreed with him, mostly because she felt that Gerard wouldn't accept it. Deucalion argued that Gerard would be worried about the well-being of his own people as they were but Talia countered that Gerard wouldn't care because he was psychotic. Deaton even told him the story of the Scorpion and The Frog to try and argue that Deucalion shouldn't put so much faith in a man like Gerard but the Alpha was set in going through with offering the hunter an olive branch. Talia respected his decision though she warned him to not go alone.
Again, as Stiles heard this, he thought that Deucalion really was like Scott, once upon a time. Peter then began telling another story about Derek.
Derek had been waiting over at the locker rooms in the school. Sending a message for Paige to meet up with him. Instead, she had come across Ennis. The plan was for him to bite Paige so that she could turn into a werewolf and then she and Derek could be together with no fear of her leaving him.
"Wait," Cora said stopping her uncle. "Ennis? Why would you choose him?"
"Why not?" Peter said blankly. "Ennis needed a new member for his pack. Paige was young and strong. Doing a favor for Derek meant Ennis would be in good for Talia. Back then, everyone wanted to be in good with her."
Stiles raised his head a bit and his eyes went and focused on Peter. "He doesn't remember it was Ennis, does he?" "If he does then he keeps it to himself." "So then what happened? Did he turn her?"
Peter then continued telling the story.
Peter was there, overseeing the whole thing. Derek apparently had second thoughts and raced to try and stop Ennis from biting her. He looked out into the hall to see the Alpha leering over his girlfriend.
"Almost. He came at Ennis," Peter told them as he paced. "A fifteen year old boy against a giant. There was no reason for him to fight. She'd already been bitten." "So, did she turn?" Cora asked him. "She should have." Peter lowered his gaze. "Most of the time, the bite takes. Most of the time."
Stiles then remembered what Peter once told him. "When you offered it to me, you said if it doesn't kill you-."
He nodded. "If." He then explained about Derek taking Paige to the cellar. Peter had found them there and Derek asked him what was happening to her. Paige was in his arms, bleeding black blood and getting weaker. "He knew the answer though. It didn't matter that she was young and strong. Some people just aren't made for this." Stiles and Cora glared down at that. "She fought...she struggled desperately. Trying to survive."
Derek had held Paige and moved to try and take away her pain but there was just too much for him to take away and make it easier. Derek wanted to apologize to her but Paige claimed that she knew. She explained that she always had a feeling about Derek being something. She asked if she was going to die, and when Derek tearfully nodded, her pain seemed to intensify as well as her fear. She asked him to help her. To make it all go away. And...he did.
"I remember taking her body from his arms," Peter somberly explained. "To the woods, to a place I knew it would be found. Another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."
Some tears fell from Cora's eyes. "And what about Derek?"
"Taking an innocent life, takes something from you as well. A bit of your soul. Darkening it. Dimming that once brilliant, golden yellow...to a cold, steel blue. Like Sabrina's and mine," he said flashing his blue eyes at them.
Stiles narrowed his eyes at the sight. So...that was why. That explained Derek's anger and warnings to Scott when they first met. Derek must've seen himself in Scott when they first met and wanted to try and spare Scott suffering the same thing. Derek's eyes would serve as a constant reminder of what he had done to Paige. He didn't want Scott to go through something like that, even if Allison wasn't a hunter. Her being a hunter reminded him of Kate and what she did to him. Scott and Allison were a double dose of his past. Not only that, but he also now knew why Jackson's eyes had been blue. From killing all those innocent people by both Matt and Gerard's wills. As for Peter...Stiles knew he had killed innocents after he got out of his coma. He couldn't help but wonder if his eyes had gone blue before or after that. Though, he wouldn't be asking that from Peter any time soon.
And as for Sabrina...Stiles wondered what innocent person had she killed? Or when? He wanted to ask her but didn't know if she would even tell him her story.
++++++
Stiles was staring off, deep in thought, and then lowered his gaze a bit. Cora was sitting next to him, watching him and noticed the sudden change.
"What?" she asked him. Stiles went and looked back at her. She pointed at her own face. "What's this look on your face?"
Stiles shrugged his shoulders. "What look?" Cora let out a heated breath. "The kind of look that makes me want to punch you." Stiles rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God. You are so Derek's sister. I forgot," he said sarcastically to her. That made Cora roll her eyes. "What is with the look?" she asked him again.
Stiles shook his head. "I just don't believe him." He then turned to face her completely. "All right, in Ms. Blake's class we're reading Heart of Darkness. And it's in first person, right? Narrated by Marlow. The thing is he's an unreliable narrator. You know the details of it have changed, you know, just because of his perspective."
"Well, then we heard the story from Peter's perspective." "Right, and I don't think we got the whole story."
Cora shook her head. "So what? Are you just gonna ask Derek about the girl he fell in love with and then killed?"
"If I have to, yeah."
++++++
Stiles stood in front of the door of the McCall House. He rang the doorbell and waited patiently until he faintly heard someone yell "COME IN!" He opened the door and closed it behind him. He glanced into the living room to find Sabrina, sitting on the couch, watching TV. She looked over at him and smiled.
Stiles nervously smiled back as he walked in and sat down next to Sabrina.
"Hey, babe. How are you feeling?" he asked.
"I've healed so I'm feeling well. What are you doing here?"
Stiles nervously rubbed the back of his neck.
"Um...I was-I just came from Derek's loft after listening to Peter tell us a story about Derek." "And?" Sabrina asked, urging him to continue. Stiles sighed. "Peter told us about a werewolves' eye colors and what they mean."
He looked up to see that Sabrina's face had fallen at the mention of eye colors. She took the remote and muted the TV. She placed it down before facing Stiles. "And you're wondering who I have killed."
"So you did-"
"Yeah," she nodded. "That's why my eyes are blue."
"If you aren't comfortable talking about this, you don't have too." Sabrina sadly smiled at him. "You're my boyfriend, Stiles...and it's time you know the truth."
Stiles took her hands into his as he gave it a gentle squeeze.
"I killed an innocent when I was ten. And yeah, that was the age I was bit," She took a deep breath before continuing. "During my first full moon, Derek had so much trouble trying to keep me in control that I had escaped from his house. I ran through the forest and then-"
She blinked back her tears before continuing. "I came across a jogger. I mean...who jogs at night? Anyway, I remember the look on his face when he saw me shifted and he was so scared. He tried to run away but I attacked him and-"
Stiles lifted his hand up and wiped a tear off her cheek. He then caressed her cheek. "Babe, you don't have to continue."
Sabrina nodded as Stiles pulled her into his arms and the two lied down on the couch, under a blanket as they held onto each other, eventually slipping into a peaceful slumber.
[Edited 2/22/17]