season 3, episode 8: visionary

"Taking an innocent life takes something from you as well. Bit of your soul. Darkening it. Dimming the once brilliant, golden yellow to a cold, steel blue."

IT WAS DARK outside in Beacon Hills, the occasional rumbles of thunder being heard all around as the rain poured down from the night sky and onto the concrete ground, the grass, creating it into mud whenever the wet raindrops slammed against the ground, and the many windows all around the plenty of buildings in the small town full of werewolves and other supernatural.

Derek Hale's loft was as quiet as it usually was, other than the thunder and raindrops slamming against the large window at the end of the apartment. Cora found herself staring out the window and in the darkness ahead while she explained a story about her brother and uncle to the two humans behind her. Occasionally, Y/n and Stiles found themselves exchanging glances as they continued to listen to the werewolf in front of them.

"They were there for two days." Cora continues. "Waiting, hiding. That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us. Hide and heal."

"So is two days standard then? Or are we thinking Derek's on some extended getaway?" Y/n questions.

Cora turns around to face them. "Why do you guys care?"

"Let's see, because over the last few weeks, our 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." Stiles rambles. "You want me to keep going? Cause I can. For, like, an hour."

"You think Derek can do anything about that?" Cora asks.

"Since he's the one everyone seems to be after, it's more like he should do something about it. Yeah." Y/n replies.

Cora shrugs. "I don't know. There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him."

"What was he like?" Y/n questions.

Before the female werewolf could say anything, the sound of footsteps made them all look upwards to see her and Derek's uncle making his way down the circular staircase behind the brunette werewolf. Peter seemed to hold a look of thought in his face as he remembered what his nephew was like, stopping mid-way on the stairs.

"A lot like Scott, actually." Peter recalls, walking the rest of his way down. "A lot like most teenagers. Unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers."

"And so what happened? What changed him?" Stiles asks.

Peter sighs. "The same thing that changes a lot of young men. A girl."

Stiles raises a brow. "You're telling us some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?"

"Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha had blue eyes?" Peter reminds to his niece, looking back at the other two. "Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?"

"I just always thought it was a genetic thing." Stiles admits while Y/n shakes her head.

"If you wanna know what changed Derek, you need to know what changed the color of his eyes." Peter states.

The four of them found themselves sitting around in the quiet and usually empty loft as the three teenagers listened to Peter explain the story when they were younger and how a girl had stolen Derek's heart when he was only a teenager, close to the age that the three were in at the moment right now.

"So if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you? How old are you now?" Stiles questions with squinted eyes, clearly being confused.

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

"Okay, that was frustratingly vague." Stiles comments.

Y/n looks to the girl beside her. "How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen." Cora mumbles in response.

Stiles points at her, looking to the oldest of the four of them. "See, that's an answer. That's how we answer people."

"Well, seventeen how you'd measure in years." Cora adds.

Stiles shakes his head. "Alright, I'm just gonna drop it. What happened to Derek and the cello girl?"

"What do you think happened? They're teenagers. One minutes, 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. Their favorite dark corner was an abandoned distillery outside of Beacon Hills." Peter informs.

"Hold up." Stiles intervenes. "How do you know all this? You just said that 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 reveals.

The ex-Alpha continues on with the story and how he had watched the packs speak to one another in the same place Derek and his cello girl would always go together. Standing up from his spot on the sofa, he ventures over to the window, using his index finger to draw a spiral on the glass window, showing it to the other three.

"Our mark for vendetta." Peter tells them.

"Man, you guys really take that revenge thing to a whole new level, don't you?" Stiles comments, receiving a nudge from Y/n.

"It's not just revenge." Cora grumbles. "Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing family. It's like you lose a limb."

"They wouldn't even let him see the body." Peter adds.

Cora shrugs. "I don't get it. What does this have to do with Derek?"

"Everything. It's never just a single moment. It's a confluence of events. Personally, I looked at Ennis' circumstances, I saw profound loss. Derek saw something different. He saw opportunity." Peter tells them.

"Opportunity to do what?" Y/n asks.

"To always be with her." Peter replies. "The thing was, he had this constant fear. He was obsessing over it, thinking about it all night, all day. Always on his mind."

The werewolf soon found himself explaining to the teenagers how Derek's constant fear that would never leave his mind was the cello girl finding out about his werewolf self and how the only way they could always be together would be by turning her.

"I kept telling him not to do it. Everyday the more he 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 states.

The man had continued to go on a bit more before Cora found herself looking between Y/n and Stiles as she went further on to them about the emissaries. As she did that, Peter had his arms crossed as he paced back and forth a few times while the teenagers were sitting down at the single table in the loft.

"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 explains.

"Or his sister, Morrell." Peter adds.

Y/n raises a brow. "She's an emissary, too?"

Peter nods. "For the Alpha pack."

"Our guidance counselor?" Stiles questions loudly, sharing a surprised expression with his best friend. "Why the hell don't you people tell us any of this stuff, huh? I shared some really intimate details with her."

"And did she give you good advice?" Cora asks, receiving a nod.

"That's what they do. That's what Deaton used to do for Talia." Peter recalls, referring to his sister.

The topic soon moved back to Derek and his cello girl, who's name was Paige, and the night she had been bitten. Cora held a slight surprised expression when her uncle told them that he had gotten Ennis to do what Derek had been considering when he mentioned it to his nephew.

"Ennis? Why would you choose him?" Cora questions.

Peter shrugs. "Why not? 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, everybody wanted to be in good with her."

"He doesn't remember it was Ennis, does he?" Y/n asks.

"If he does, he keeps it to himself." Peter points out.

Y/n sighs. "So then what happened?"

"Did he turn her?" Stiles adds in question.

Peter gulps. "Almost. He came at Ennis. 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 questions.

"She should have. Most of the time, the bite takes. Most of the time." Peter whispers.

Stiles squints his eyes on the werewolf. "When you offered it to me, you said, 'if it doesn't kill you'..."

Peter nods. "If. He asked me what was happening to her. He knew the answer, though. It didn't matter that she was young and strong. Some people just aren't made for this. She fought. She struggled desperately. Trying to survive. I remember taking her body from his arms, to the woods, to a place where I knew that it would be found. Another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."

"And what about Derek?" Cora asks.

"Taking an innocent life takes something from you as well. Bit of your soul. Darkening it. Dimming the once brilliant, golden yellow to a cold, steel blue." Peter informs, looking up at them with glowing blue eyes. "Like mine."

Time and time passed and Peter had left the room, leaving the three teenagers to sit near the stairs by the front door of the loft. Having sat in between Stiles and Cora, Y/n glances at her best friend to see he had this certain expression on his face, as if he were in deep thought, something that she knew he actually was doing, no doubt thinking about the story Peter had told them.

"Stiles, you have that look on your face." Y/n speaks up.

Stiles raises a brow. "What look?"

"The kind of look that makes me wanna punch you." Cora snaps before Y/n could respond.

Stiles sighs, rolling his eyes. "You are so Derek's sister. I forgot."

"What's with the look?" Y/n questions.

"I just don't believe him. In Ms. Blake's class we're reading 'Heart of Darkness'. And it's in first person. Narrated by Marlow. The thing is that he's an unreliable narrator. You know the details of it have changed just because of his perspective." Stiles explains.

"Well, then we heard the story from Peter's perspective." Cora states.

"Right, and I don't think we got the whole story." Stiles admits.

"So, what? Are you just gonna ask Derek about the girl he fell in love with and then killed?" Y/n asks.

Stiles shrugs. "If I have to, yeah."