Work Text:
And through it all, Peter was really not okay.
In the first real living moments after what had happened, the fire, he’d coddled himself in lingering frustrations.
Thoughts of the Niece who abandoned him and left him in a hospital, an omega unprotected, consoled his memories of what he had done to her.
He’d killed her
The resentment he harboured toward his sister, a leader and the alpha. Always the Alpha.
It kept at bay the guilt when he undermined her son. Time and time again.
The same son who let them burn him again. The nephew that should have been on his side.
All the rage had burned deep in his chest for so long. Preserved in an unresponsive body where it had no choice but to brew into something twisted and dark.
The Kanima. Deucalion. Jennifer.
They had nothing on Peter.
Seeking power for powers sake. Cloaked in revenge. False justifications.
No
Peter
Peter deserved vindication. He deserved better than what he had been given. The pity reparations granted to him. Being allowed to crawl at the heels of teenagers. The paper thin protection of pack, dangled always so close above his head. And Peter would jump every time. The need for stability calling louder than pride.
For a while Peter thrived in his own insanity. His wolf tamed by a goal in sight. If they wouldn’t take him, then he would take them.
Pack. Finally.
But when he looked into the eyes of insanity, real insanity, he found he didn’t want it anymore.
The Nogitsune changed a lot of things.
The sun never fell the right way across the preserve anymore.
Tree’s cast haunted shadows across the dirtied ground, and the grass grew withered and weak.
No-one else seemed to have noticed. They were too busy recovering.
Scott, though alpha, hadn't been much of one of late.
The others understood. He wasn't done healing.
Stiles wasn't either.
Stiles was too busy being acting alpha.
If Peter spared any thought to it, which he wasn’t prone to, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
At some point in time Stiles may have chosen different people for a pack. Scott would be there, of course, and Lydia as well (though then with different reason, if Peter remembered correctly).
He wouldn’t have chosen differently now.
They, miraculously, had become rather functional. Even in recent times, with an absent alpha and a distant acting alpha, they moved as one in a way they never had before.
Well.
Stiles may have chosen a little differently if he was given the choice.
Somehow Peter didn’t think he’d personally make the cut.
The months went by, and things started to shift again.
The school term started. Scott’s smile was seen with more frequency and Stiles’ a little less now that he didn’t have to pretend anymore. Chris Argent came back to town. Isaac didn’t.
It was harder for Peter now. Before, under the cloak of misery, he had found himself a place. He could observe unchallenged and exist peripherally unquestioned.
But now everyone was thinking straight again, and Peter was once again the biggest threat.
Peter remembered Stiles saying as an aside to Scott a few months back that they’d get back to Peter later. They had bigger problems at the time. Peter had smiled, imagining it a joke.
But the anger was creeping back into their faces every time they looked at him.
He was a channel for the unjustness that has befallen them all. It struck Peter now that it had never been a joke. He was always the next problem to be dealt with.
He entertained the idea of seeing Malia. His daughter. Getting involved in her life. He almost did once. Almost stopped her when he saw her in the street.
He didn’t.
He didn’t need to see anymore contempt aimed at him. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime.
It was on the eve of an anniversary that Peter almost left.
He was resting at the foot of an old life, back pressed against the cool edge of a bike rack that was tucked amongst the trees, watching as the rising sun broke through the canopy over head. The rays that managed to push through illuminated a stack of wood planks that had been piled up beside the porch.
Peter thought Derek might be rebuilding. He’d gone to offer his help a week ago. He had thought that, maybe, repairing the house would repair something in him that he’d lost. Something between them that he’d lost. Derek’s expression had been cold and hard when he’d questioned why Peter was there.
Peter never did offer his help. He never really thought Derek would accept it.
He was here now to pay a parting homage.
He’d never really leave the house behind, it was still a part of him whether he wanted it to be or not. It lay hidden in the darkness at night; ablaze with flames and guilt. But the ashes lay in the grass here. Family wouldn’t come with him if he left. They’d abandoned him long ago.
Maybe when he’d killed Laura, perhaps long before.
Talia had taken his daughter.
Why? Who had he been that she mistrust him so? Did she take that memory too, or was it apart of him that he himself had long forgiven, but she had not?
It wasn’t worth questioning now.
He wasn’t going to search out Malia.
If he left now, Talia would have her way.
The last act of obedience he owed his Alpha.
He rose to leave. His eyes cast one last sweeping look around at the broken memorial. A noise from the woods behind him made him freeze, instinct made him crouch, and confusion made him rise again when Chris Argent emerged from the throng of trees.
He seemed not to notice Peter at all; walking forwards before pausing at the foot of the porch, his hand resting on a broken rail. Peter wondered what it was he saw when he looked at that house. Maybe the blood of his sister that had painted the wall before Peter came back to scrub it off. It wasn’t an act of respect to her; he didn’t want her memory tied to this place amongst his family’s ashes. She didn’t deserve that. Derek didn’t deserve to have her so intrinsically linked to everything that was.
“Coward.” Peter startled.
“Excuse me?” Christopher turned his back on the house, and now Peter could see that his eyes had turned weary. The sharpness was blunted; the hidden eagerness that always double crossed his mild manner shaded by loss.
“I saw your car,” Chris nodded his head in what could have been the general direction. “It’s got all of your things in it.” Whatever Peter had at this point “You’re leaving.”
Peter didn’t see any point in denying it. It may have taken the pack a while to figure it out if Chris didn’t tell them, but he couldn’t see them chasing him down. He wasn’t worth that. “Yes.”
Chris looked more taken aback than anything. Peter couldn’t help the slight tug at his lips. He liked to take people by surprise, even now. It was a bitter taste of victory where otherwise he had none.
“Coward.” He said again, turning back to the house. Though the fire had tempered long before, Peter could help the tightening coil in his chest compelling his feet to bring him to Chris’ side.
“And where have you been these past weeks, if not hiding.” It’s a low blow. Peter knows Chris needed some time out. Beacon Hills was tainted by Allison’s memory. Anyone would need some time to recover. But Chris doesn’t smart at the remark. He smiles instead.
“I have been helping the pack. Derek is rebuilding,” He inclines his head towards the house with more certainty than he did Peter’s car “and I offered my service. You’d know if you hadn’t been hiding.” Chris wins that one.
Peter doesn’t smile. He takes a few steps back then bends his head back as well to get the full scope of the house. In his mind, the imprints of the house that once stood there fleshing out until it stood at its full height. Their family had been huge. “There’s nothing here for me Hunter.” He doesn’t say the title with the same spite that he might have done once. He’d lost the high ground.
“Your nephew-“
“-Would kill me if he had any wits about him. Fortunately for me, he doesn’t. Unfortunately, some of his pack does. Derek doesn’t have that much sway in the pack anymore. Family doesn’t count for much.” Not for me. Not anymore.
“So you run.” Christopher nods to himself, consolidating something in his mind.
It’s bait. Petty and simple. Peter wants to rise to it all the same.
“You’re not the same anymore,” Chris comments, almost off handed, over his shoulder to where Peter is still looking up at the house. “That pack that came in last month...”
Chris had been watching him then. Peter thought he might have been, but didn’t want to presume. He’d done that too often in the past.
It had been a minor incident, not really one at all, a stray pack looking for new territory. They’d hear of the Hales, and in their frustration at finding claimed land they’d tried to goad Peter. His old self would have reacted. He almost did. But Scott had growled and Peter had walked away.
“You’re his beta now, you can’t walk away from that. I don’t know enough about werewolves, not like I should, but I know that.” Peter let his eyes flash a threatening blue, but Chris shook his head minutely. “You and I both know how shallow that blue is. It doesn’t count for anything, Derek-” He doesn’t finish, and Peter wonders what he was going to say. Maybe that Derek was an innocent when he was cursed with the mark of a murderer, that the science of Wolfshood isn’t a precise one. That maybe in the un-fathomable world of the supernatural mistakes can be made.
Peter was not a mistake. His blue was earned. Even if not at the time, they were now.
Laura. Laura was an innocent.
Derek was an innocent when he tore him from his alpha.
Scott...
Your eyes were windows to the soul within. For Derek, maybe that wasn’t so.
But Peter wasn’t Derek.
Christopher was still watching Peter.
“No-one would blame you for leaving. Maybe they would be relieved. Or maybe you could prove to them that you were worth something, once: that you could be worth something again.” He pauses, but doesn't stop. “I saw you before, before the fire, I-”
Then he does stop. Sensing, perhaps, that it wasn’t his place to say anything more. He lets out a low huff, before turning on his heel fully and walking back the way he came.
Peter watches him go. Partly appreciative and partly regretful. He’d thought once, before, that maybe-
-Too much had happened since. The world had displaced too far from that fantasy.
Chris stops suddenly, and Peter finds himself frowning at his back.
Yearning that maybe he would turn around. Just once more. If Peter left now, he wouldn’t be coming back. He wanted to see him once more.
But instead, as if sensing what Peter wanted, he kept on staring resolutely forward.
“No-one would blame you.” He repeated, voice loud enough to be heard over the sound of cawing birds as they stirred from a nearby tree “But I’m not running.”
And then he disappeared behind the tree line.
That was bait.
It was petty and simple.
Peter grinned.
Maybe he’d rise to it this time.
Because Peter wasn’t okay, and Chris wasn’t okay, and it would probably never be okay again. But chaos, when given eternity, will always eventually form patterns that make sense. Peter didn’t have eternity. But he could give Beacon hills his eternity.