The Forrest silently slumbered under an endless blanket of satin stars. The world was at peace... or it should have been. Taking a deep breath, slowly Derek closed his eyes, letting the soft and subtle sounds of ' black bettys' stereo wash over him. When he was a kid, he'd used to think that if he willed for something really hard when he opened his eyes again, it would be there, that the world would somehow be changed. Hale house had been different then. Laughter and noise had differed from every room... His family had been happy. He had been happy! Everything had seemed simple.
Reluctantly, he slowly opened his eyes... Hale house loomed before him. A burnt-out relic of the past. Yet all he saw was a beautiful memory, weeping for help. Weeping for the small child who believed he could the world by closing his eyes. He felt his breath catch in his throat. People always said that over time grief, it got easier, but it never had. Maybe it was his punishment... An endless torment. One he could never escape, no matter how far he had traveled. They didn't understand how it haunted his dreams tugging at his memories. His guilt!
Talia had once told him, it was ok to make mistakes. She'd reached out and drew him into her arms and in that moment, he'd felt safe. He'd felt his mother wash away his pain...his guilt. It wasn't ok... he'd doomed them all! He should never of let her bring him home. It was childish! The thoughts of the small boy who thought he could change the world by closing his eyes. But somewhere over the years that had passed, within all the heartache, the despair, and grief that had followed, he'd felt since he'd come to realize, there was only one person he could truly blame!
His gift had never been to change the world. His gift.... had been to ruin it!
Easing his body up to sit upon 'Black Bettys' bonnet, Derek sighed and glanced up to Hale house. He wondered if Faith was asleep yet. He hadn't meant to stop in Beacon Hills. He hadn't meant to come here at all. But somehow whilst listening to her recite her tales of being a Slayer? He'd let himself relax. He'd met her down in New Orleans. He'd been sitting in a small bar contemplating drowning his sorrows when she'd walked in. Straight away, he'd felt like there was something... something with her, he couldn't quite put his finger on. Part of her, the confidence, it had reminded him of Kate Argent, and a part of him had screamed to get off the stool, get out of there and not look back!
Instead, he'd just sat there transfixed, waiting for the next tidal wave of destruction to hit.
She'd know who he was. What he was. Wasn't that enough warning to get him moving? And what the hell was 5 by 5? She said it enough, acting like he should know what it meant... But he still had no god damn idea! She convinced him to give her a lift a San Diego... and somehow along the way, he'd turned right when he should have turned left. By the time he'd realized where they going, it had been too late. They were in Beacon Hills.
'One night! A few hours for sleep. As soon as dawn hit, they'd be out of there!'... That is what she had said. She hadn't blinked an eye when he'd pulled up at the burnt-out ruins of his family home. She'd just smiled that crazy smile as she got out of the car, telling him she was gonna find somewhere inside they could sleep. He hadn't told her that he never slept, while he was there...
Slowly Derek slid himself forward and stood up. It was time.
It was always the same time. It was as if she called to him. An irresistible urge to revisit the past. To relieve the pain and the regret. He'd told himself it wasn't her. It wasn't Paige... That it was the Nemeton. But they'd destroyed it... The Scooby Squad had destroyed it and Jennifer Blake, she was never Paige...She was dead!
He'd told himself, it was just him mourning for the first girl he'd ever truly loved. That he mourned for the life they could have had together...and how different things might have been if he hadn't been so selfish! Yet deep down, he knew... He knew it was more. It was his cross to bear. It was his shame, his guilt, and his fault! His fault the Nemeton had rewoken after hundreds of years. It was his fault that the other Packs had been drawn to Beacon Hills after...It was his fault they'd been lured by the power. They'd thought it had been his mother, Talia, It had been the Nemeton. The Hunter's they hadn't been far behind and he, he had brought death down upon his family in the guise of Kate Argent!
He'd tried to fix it. God! he'd tried to fix it so many times... But nothing ever seemed to go right!
They say you can never find the Nemeton, that it was like looking for a single tree within a Forrest. That it had to call you subconsciously... He had never, not been able to find it! Peter and he, they'd found it when they were kids. They'd played within the cellar made of its roots and made it their own special place... never knowing it was the Nemeton itself that had drawn them there, and within those rooted walls they had felt safe! They had felt like there was nothing they couldn't do! They had thought that the World was theirs to mold, however, they wished.
All they had to do was close their eyes... and wish.
It was what he had tried to do with Paige. Wish so hard that she would be healed. Wish so hard that he could save her.....
He wasn't sure how long he'd been walking. It was always the way, his mind swept him up with the thoughts of his past. the burdens of his sin. he wasn't sure when he'd even turned away from Hale house to walk into the Forrest!
But here he was... He always ended up at the same location... A small clearing in the forest. The stump of an ancient tree jutting out of the concaved ground where the cellar used to be... Instinctively Derek's eyes lowered, looking at the wall of exposed roots, and within the shadows cast from the light of the stars overhead, he saw her. Young and beautiful, like the day he'd first seen her...
"I love you, Paige... Forgive me,"
He'd always whisper it. Scared that if he said it too loud, then the moment, the formation of the shadows would be somehow be broken and within his mind, he wouldn't get to hear her whisper I love you back.
But this night, this night it was different. Barely had he said the words when he noticed the blood. Like crimson ribbons, it weaved down along the Nemeton's roots... The air tasted metallic, like a fresh kill. Startled, confused he hadn't noticed it before, Derek stumbled back away from the tree's exposed roots only to hear movent in the forest behind him. the snapping of a twig... the movement of the undergrowth where someone or something had brushed too closely past it. Instantly his head jerked towards the sounds. "Who's there?" He demanded into the forest... Derek's heart was beating fast within his chest but he had to know, he had to see. Cautiously he stepped forward, glancing quickly back into the cellar. The roots laid still, dirt clogged around their old and brittle tendrils. There was no blood!
It should have given him some relief, but instead, it did the opposite.
"Show yourself!" He continued... calling out again into the borderline of trees.
Whatever was happening in Beacon Hills, there was one thing he was sure of... The Nemeton, the Hellmouth... it was awake once again and it wanted fresh blood!
...Sacrifice... Prompt for Homecoming: Return to Beacon Hills (10 years after the events of Teen wolf) -Written in the 1st for sake of the prompt-
Sacrifice.... it was a big word!
A big word that meant different things to different people. To most, it meant giving up something from their comfort zone. An activity they sought enjoyment from or maybe their lifestyle... like if they were living above their means and the money was running out or growing tight. Whatever! Sacrifice was something that everyone believed they had done at some stage or other in their lives and for some, that sacrifice was minimal but for others, it seemed like everything! The woman in the hotel room next door... Well, she believed she'd sacrificed everything and the man that she was complaining to... Her husband? Her boyfriend?.... He believed she had barely sacrificed anything! That he'd sacrificed a lot more by just staying with her when he'd got her pregnant. When they'd had a kid neither of them was ready for. And the baby, well it was obviously sacrificing its sleep. The constant bickering of the kid's parents had woken it some time ago and it had been crying ever since. Funny thing was, neither of the parents seemed to notice. They were too focused on trying to get the last word in... trying to make their personal sacrifices seem more important than the others. They were too busy trying to make each other feel guilty!
And that's the thing with sacrifice.
If you've gotta constantly tell someone what you've sacrificed for them... Well, it's probably not much of a sacrifice. It's definitely on the lower side of the scale anyway! And definitely not worth keeping the whole bloody Hotels floor up for! I'd thought about just lifting my hand from where I lay on top of the bed to knock on the wall. Tell them to quieten it down, that people were sleeping. But in all honesty, a few hours of sleep sacrificed... It wasn't a big deal. In a way, it had actually been comforting to me. Knowing that the world went on, oblivious to everything I'd seen...everything I'd done and faced over the past the years. I mean, maybe in a different life, the schmuck next door... He could have been me... And the woman? Malia?...Kira?.... No... It could have been Allison!
Another party had apparently joined the argument. Apparently another of the Hotel's guests from down the hall. The funny thing was they were so concerned with voicing their own ongoing sacrifices that none of them realised that raising voices, only added to the sacrifice they were expecting others to tolerate. And the baby.. well, what would it take for one of them... any one of them to notice that it was still crying!
Babys... they were innocent. They didn't have a clue what sacrifice was. Neither did kids really. The term sacrificed was taught to them by their parents... the people around them, and usually as a way to make them feel guilty about something or other, so they wouldn't do it again. And over time it became a handy tool, a weapon of words to use against each other when you couldn't get what you wanted, or things didn't go your way.
I closed my eyes and smiled. There were worse things I'd had to try to get sleep through. And somehow I'd always managed to survive. The trick was to draw comfort. to draw strength from the ones you loved. The ones who made every battle worth fighting. The ones who made you smile and the ones you knew would always have your back, no matter what.
You just had to remember the good times. The times you'd been there for them and them, there for you. Remember what you'd overcome together, big or small, and those simple conversations you'd had together. The conversations, the ones where you feel free enough to pour your heart out... they mean the most.
They meant the most to me!
Beacon Hill's High... That was where it had all started for Stiles and me. Sophomore year. It was the year everything changed! It was the year I met Allison and fell in love for the first time. I still remember the first time I saw her. The first time she smiled at me. The first time we talked and the first time we kissed. I still remembered the first time we'd made out and the first time it had gone further than either of us had anticipated. I remembered how I'd thought nothing could ever keep us apart. That, I'd found the girl, the woman I was going to be with forever!
Even through the rocky patches, her obligations as the Daughter to Hunters... mine as a new Beta, trying to do what was right, trying to protect my friends from this strange and very dangerous new world, we'd all found ourselves unwillingly flung into... the bond. The trust in each other still remained. We believed in each other. We believed the sacrifices were worth it! We'd never realised at first how deadly those sacrifices could be! It was always someone else. Someone else who died. Sure they were people we all knew, but they were never our pack... my pack!
I remembered Derek telling me, that even back then, I was an Alpha of my own pack already... and at the time, I just didn't understand it. It seemed a lifetime ago now. A lifetime of heartache and hurt. A lifetime of fear, not for myself, but for the ones I loved. A lifetime of sacrifices. Wondering if there was anything I could have done differently. The what if's I call them! What if Allison hadn't gone to Mexico, what if somehow, I'd had the foresight to stop her... Would we have got back together? Would she still have told me that she still loved me? Would that have been us in the Hotel room next door?...
Slowly I exhaled, relishing in the feeling of all the air in my lungs slowly departing. it always centred me.
You can't live on - What if's. You can never move forward if you dwell on the sacrifices you, or those around you made in the past. There is no time machine! No fang-dangled superhero method to go back in the past and change the things that happened back then. Instead, you're meant to learn from them. To never take anyone for granted or at any moment. You never know when it will be the last time you see them. The last time you get to see them smile...or hear their voice.
I wished I could tell the people in the room next to me that...
But somewhere, sometime in the night where I'd bee lost in my thoughts of the past, lost in thoughts of Allison Argent, it had finally gone quiet. The other angry Hotel patron had returned to their own room. Someone had picked up the crying baby and soothed it back to sleep and if I listened real close, I could hear all three of them breathing, those slow drawn out breaths of a deep slumber.
Slowly I opened my eyes. The sun was already rising, Dawn seemed to come real quick these days, or maybe it was just because I felt so damn tired! So damn tired of always being on the road. Of always looking for others like me, the ones I could save and teach there was a different way. A better way to live than constantly having to look over their shoulders...that I could help or send somewhere that they'd be safe. I was feeling homesick. It happened on and off over the years since I'd left Beacon Hill, and somehow, I'd always put off returning. Telling myself just another day and then I'd go home...
I mean... you can't run forever, right?
Slowly I pushed myself up and sat on the edge of the bed and lifted my hands rubbing them downwards over my face in a bid to wake up. it wasn't working. there was nothing for it. a cold shower and I'd be fine. Just one more day. One more day and I might save someone else's life! I might make all the difference to how long they get to live... to sacrifices they have to deal with... The cold water hit my body like an arctic blast! Purposely I stuck my head under the shower's spout until the water no longer felt cold. Until I was awake. I was doing it again! I was putting off going home. it was almost like I had convinced myself that as long as I was gone... Everyone else, they'd be safe. It wasn't a sacrifice. It was a lie!
Stepping out of the shower I grabbed a towel wrapping it around my waist and made my back to sit upon the edge of the bed where I checked my phone. At one point in the night, I'd heard it ring, but I had ignored it. Not wanting to open my eyes. Not wanting to stop thinking of the past, of those special memories... the ones that make the sacrifices special... that shape who you are now... who you become.
And as I began to listen to the voicemail... My stomach turned and I wished I hadn't been so bloody selfish! I wished I'd sacrificed the minute it would have taken from my thoughts to answer the damn phone!
"Scott! pick up you're damn phone! ....SCOTT!!.... We're in trouble here!..... Pick up your damn phone! She's back! We tried to stop her but it's too late! We can't escape...She's... She's found us!!...."
