Just a Kid [Derek Hale]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"They were there for two days, waiting. Hiding. That's what we're taught to do when the Hunters find us-- hide and heal," Cora began. Cora was looking out of the window, Stiles was stood a short distance away, Peter was sat at the top of the stairs and Hayley was sat at the desk trying to soothe the migraine which was forming. There was lack of sleep, worrying about Derek, and now when Talia was finally asleep everyone was talking and being so loud. Derek had been gone for days - since Boyd died.

She'd recovered from the injury for the most part, although she had a massive bandage around her stomach which was hidden by her jumper. If it hurt or not she couldn't tell you. She had bigger things to worry about then some daft pain.

"Okay, so, is two days standard, then, or are we thinking Derek's on, like, some extended getaway?" Stiles asked, and Cora whirled around to look at him anger filled in her face.

"Why do I care??? Let's see...Because, over the last few weeks: my best friend's 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... I... Do you want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour."

"Stiles-" Hayley began, but Cora cut her off.

"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."

"Stiles, Boyd is dead," Hayley cut in. It seemed to be a trend within the pack where no-one grieved or let anyone else grieve when someone died. No-one let Lydia grieve when Jackson 'died', no-one let Allison have the time to grieve when her mother died, no-one let anyone have the time to themselves and to think about what they'd lost. "Maybe, he's grieving because his pack member is dead," she repeated and the room fell into silence.

It was a few seconds later when Cora spoke up, "there's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him."

"What was he like?" Stiles asked.

"A lot like Scott, actually." Peter's voice sounded out, and they looked up to him as he walked down the stairs, "a lot like most teenagers-- unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers..."

"And so what happened? What changed him?" Stiles asked. He never stopped asking questions.

"Well, the same thing that changes a lot of young men... a girl."

"You're telling me some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?" Stiles scoffed.

"Do you remember Derek, before he was an Alpha, had blue eyes? Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?" Hayley had never thought about it before. Truth be told she didn't really care about the colour of someone's eyes.

"I just always thought it was, like, a genetic thing..." Stiles shrugged.

"If you want to know what changed Derek, you need to know what changed the colour of his eyes."

Peter began to tell them the tale of how sophomore Derek, who was the hopeless romantic, met a girl called Paige. Supposedly the pair met and Derek had an immediate attraction to her, whether it be her intelligence, her defiance, or her beauty. It could have been any of them.

"Okay, so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he?" Stiles asked, looking to Peter who'd taken a seat on the sofa, "How old were you? How old are you now?"

"Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think..."

"Forty-eight?" Hayley asked, and Peter looked at her horrified. "The wrinkles..."