Title: Swallow the Bitter Ash
Rating: R
Warnings: Assault, Not Scott McCall Friendly, Not Alan Deaton Friendly, Canon Major Character Death (Temporary-Derek Hale)
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Tags: Teen Wolf: The Movie Spoilers, Getting Back Together
Summary: There was nothing more bitter than seeing your past life in the worst way.
Word Count:
Author Notes: I will probably never be over Teen Wolf: The Movie. I'm going to be salty forever.
Beta: Grammarly



"Swallow for me, please," the doctor said as she gently laid her hand on Stiles' throat.

It hurt like a son of a bitch when he did it, but he also knew that she needed to see how his throat was working and what his face looked like when he swallowed.

"Don't speak," the doctor said.

Stiles gave her a glare because she had told him that ten times already. He hadn't spoken a word since he got there, waving to the damage to his throat as his reason for being there with the registration lady. The flash of his badge was also helpful in getting him into the back. He was given a tablet to input everything into, and he filled it out with ease, knowing his insurance stuff off the top of his head.

There was already an FBI team heading to find Scott, hoping to find him on the road leaving Beacon Hills since that would be added charges of fleeing the scene and other things that would be the icing on the cake for the attempted murder.

Stiles jumped at the knock on the door. It opened, and a nurse was standing there.

"Doctor, the Sheriff is here demanding to see him. I told him that he's an FBI agent, not one of his," the nurse said.

The doctor laughed as she looked Stiles in the face. "Cindy, it would be best to allow the Sheriff back to see his son."

"Oh," the nurse said and disappeared, not shutting the door.

Noah slipped into the room three seconds later and shut the door behind him.

"Has he had scans done yet?"

"We are getting ready to take him back to do that. I've advised him not to speak. He's been doing pretty well with his eyebrows and his phone in making sure that we understand him."

"I won't make him speak. He can message me or something. I just needed to see him when I heard there is a manhunt for someone who tried to kill an FBI agent. I'm also a little bit of security against the person coming back to do it. The FBI agents are all looking for the attempted murderer. I'm not allowed to work the case for reasons. We have guards on the outer area of the ER as well."

"You think the person will come back and attempt again?"

"We have no clue. Per the text from Stiles, he was heading to LA, but that doesn't mean he won't turn around to try and finish the job."

"Well, I'll make sure the nursing staff are aware."

"The photo we have on file of him is being passed around right now by Deputy Parrish."

"I'm going to see when he will get his scans. Remember to not let him talk. Swallowing is very painful as well. No food or drink at all until we see the full damage. He might choke on liquids."

"Got it."

The doctor left the room, and it was just Stiles with his father now. He looked at his father, who looked very upset.

"I know you can't tell me everything. Is this over bringing Derek back to life?"

Stiles nodded his head enough that it didn't hurt his neck.

"I don't understand why he hates Derek so much."

Stiles knew that his father tried to see the best in Scott, even if sometimes that goodness didn't show up in how he looked at his son. There were a lot of reasons why Scott hated Derek, and the biggest was that Scott was still pissed that he hadn't been allowed to kill Peter years ago and make himself human, even if there was a basis for that. Derek had said he had heard it, but they had all heard so many things over the years that turned out to be wrong as hell. Scott would have been an alpha and even more idiotic than he had been.

"You are okay right?"

Stiles wobbled his hand back and forth. This was going to get him thrown into therapy for a while. Having a man he thought was his brother try and kill him was fucking him up in the head. He had forgiven Scott for a lot of things over the years. This was something that he could not ignore. He wasn't going to let Scott get away with this. The court he would be tried in was closed and kept that way for security reasons, but the judges and everyone involved were aware of the supernatural. Hell, the lawyer who worked for the federal courts and would be the prosecutor was a Werewolf, and she would know the moment Scott lied.

He wanted to cry, but he knew that was a bad idea.

"What do you need?" Noah asked.

Stiles shrugged because he wasn't sure. Now that he was safe in the hospital and his father was there, he felt like he could let go and didn't have to be on top of everything. He could let go for a little bit and wallow in what he was going through.

Leaning back on the bed, Stiles let himself relax. He knew he needed to, as it would help him in the coming hours. He still had to give his statement, but he needed a laptop for that because he wasn't typing that shit out on his phone in an email.

"Your team will catch him, and then we will deal with this. I know that since it's an attack on an FBI agent, this will go to federal court and the courts that were set up to make sure that the supernatural community can be represented in its whole for the good and ill it does."

Stiles nodded and kept the laugh he wanted to let out inside. There was a single person who had the chops to handle Scott's case, and Scott would hate the hell out of it. On the whole, this was a group of lawyers who worked as appointed lawyers for those who couldn't afford their own. At the head of that was Peter hale. The FBI made sure the lawyers had the chops to work federal cases, and all of them were supernatural in some fashion, the only ones who weren't always supernatural were the juries, and that was for the few cases that went before juries.

If a jury was needed, it was taken from the collective packs who had signed up to be part of the justice system that worked for them.

Peter and Derek had been the push behind all of that in the wake of Monroe and the FBI being the ones who took her down. The court system had been created to judge her for her actions against a group of people who were just like the rest of the world; there were bad, and there were good, and killing them all based on a few was bigotry at its finest.

Monroe was in a deep dark hole in a black book prison that was made as humanely as possible for all kinds of supernaturals there were caught across the board.

"You need sleep, don't you?"

Stiles nodded. Sleep was going to be a long ways away. He had an O2 monitor on his hand to make sure he wasn't going to swell up so much that he couldn't breathe on his own.

"Okay, Stiles, we are heading to get you all kinds of scans. Your father is more than welcome to come with me, and we will oversee it all. You'll be fine. Then we can see about letting you get some rest."

---

The darkness around him had Stiles stopping. It was rare that a hospital room was that dark with machines that gave off low levels of light, even in the middle of the night.

Stiles heard the soft snores of his father, and it was the only reason he didn't freak out. His father wouldn't be asleep unless it was safe.

It wasn't until the hand holding his moved that Stiles realized what woke him up. He swallowed, and it hurt like hell. He was so thirsty feeling but knew he had a saline drip that would allow him to stay hydrated even with his throat being as bruised as it was.

"Are you okay?" the person asked. It took a few seconds to register it as Eli.

Stiles nodded, knowing that keen Werewolf eyes were going to see him.

"Good. He was just caught on the highway, the BOLO for his truck paid off, and once it was known it was for him attacking and trying to strangle an FBI Agent, things went even wilder. The highway patrol that caught him carries wolfsbane bullets. He was put down that way and given the antidote as soon as he was behind an Ash line to stop him from escaping. Your team is headed back to Beacon Hills to work the rest of the stuff with Harris now."

Stiles wasn't sure why Eli was the one giving him the information. He wasn't sure where Derek was. Probably trying to understand his new eyes and the power it gave him just for being who he was.

"Dad's getting a run down from the nurse on food and such that he can make for you. I think you are going to be getting spaghetti-o's from a can for a while."

Stiles laughed, and it hurt, but it was worth it. He paused as he felt the pain drain from his body.

"Eli," Stiles croaked.

"I'm not taking much. Dad's worked well with me. Even before I could do it. I know what I'm doing."

"Listen to him, Stiles," Noah said.

Stiles stared at him even though his father couldn't see him. He just needed to make sure that he was fine. He couldn't do that if Eli took it all, and he didn't like Eli feeling that pain.

"Uncle Peter's already going to see him since he's been assigned the case as soon as Scott asked for a lawyer and said he couldn't afford one. I'm hoping that the look on his face will be captured on film. I'm sure he's going to be upset."

"You seemed fine with Scott before this," Noah said.

"Dad always stood me that things might be different once I became a Werewolf fully and he smells wrong. Are you going to stay with us, Papa?"

Stiles reached out and pulled on Eli to get the teen into the bed with him. Derek and his breaking up three years ago had not been good. It had been a horrible fight that had gone on too long. In the end, it had been easier to just leave and still keep in contact with Eli because there was one thing he would never do, and that was leave a child to think that he didn't want anything to do with them when he loved them. Eli might not be his, and Derek might have a lot of mixed feelings about Eli's mother not wanting him and just leaving him with Derek once she found him. But Stiles wasn't going to leave Eli behind like his mother had done. Derek didn't even say her name anymore unless Eli did.

It was something Stiles knew could be horrible, but in the end, it had worked for them with Eli coming to see Stiles a good bit in DC, and then when Stiles took the promotion and moved to San Francisco, he had been able to see him more. Stiles had left the Jeep in Beacon Hills even after Derek had fixed it up because Eli loved the damned thing, and it sitting at the garage was better than being with Stiles in San Fran, where Eli couldn't see it. Of course, now the Jeep was Eli's, just waiting for him to actually be legal in a few months to drive it. It would be great; at least now, he couldn't be accused of stealing it.

Stiles had always left it for Eli, and things had been so rough between them that things had been horrible. Still, there was not much else that could be done now. At least the paperwork hadn't been able to be filed about Derek's death since he would have to be missing for many years before being declared dead. So Derek would be able to just drop into his life again.

"I still swear you are ten and afraid of the dark."

"I was never afraid of the dark; I was afraid of the things that go bump in the night," Eli said. He didn't move off Stiles on the bed, though.

"Stiles, please stop talking," Noah said.

"The doctor said I can as long as I don't strain." The tests had come back better than Stiles had even thought. He was bruised, and the swelling was bad, but his bones were good.

The door opened, and Stiles looked at Derek standing there, hands in his pockets and what looked like his trademark grumpy frown on his face.

"I'm not leaving," Eli said.

"I wouldn't make you, but I would like to talk to Stiles alone before we get him discharged later. But we can all just sit in the dark for now." Derek stepped into the room and let the door close behind him. The room was dark again, but Stiles found he was pretty tired and going to sleep again. Especially with Eli on him like this. There had been a lot of nights like this when Stiles had been staying with Derek and Eli when he could between jobs at work. Having a schedule like he did and working from anywhere made it to when back then, Stiles could work from Derek's house just as easily as anywhere else. It was possible now as well, and it wasn't like Stiles would be working for a while. This would be looked into by the FBI to make sure he hadn't done something to enrage Scott beyond what was allowed for the job. There was no coming back from what Scott did, though.

"Is he okay?" Derek asked.

"Don't know. No nightmares yet, but who knows on that kind of thing. Time will tell." Noah sounded optimistic about it, and it made Stiles feel better about it all.

---

In the end, Scott had fucked himself more than anything. Even Peter couldn't keep him quiet, and when he was on the stand, he blew any chance of him not getting thrown in jail for attempted murder.

Peter was good at what he did. He had gotten some people off that Stiles hated that he got off, but in the end, Peter was able to prove his case better than others.

Peter could have gotten Scott off if Scott hadn't started to spout off that Stiles deserved to die because he had killed someone who was trying to kill him over a decade before. Of course, then the truth was brought out, and the proof that had been collected about that was shown in court. Stiles had been open about it at Rafe's pushing when he applied for the academy. By then, the unit was fully there, and Beacon Hills had been a hot spot for two years.

"Hey," Eli said as he dropped down into the chair beside Stiles.

Stiles turned to look at him, knowing he should be at school at this point. Only when Stiles looked at his watch he found it was after school had let out. He had been sitting at the park for hours, just thinking.

"Well, I guess this explains why you aren't answering your messages." Eli held up Stiles' phone, that was set to silent. He had left the courthouse and just kept on walking. He had ended up at the park and just parked it.

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"I get that. Dad's looking for you, and Grandpa was starting to get worried. I was just driving around and found you."

"You smelled me."

"Well, you do have a scent I know well. It is still startling that I know it even though you weren't around when I first emerged."

"Your brain knew it but didn't have the full senses to actually track that way. Derek said it was much the same with him and his family. He knew who was who the first time he shifted. I always knew you would be wonderful at this once you stopped being scared about the shift."

"It was traumatic, and while I knew that Dad would never hurt me, I was still very young, and he scared me. The coyotes scared me more. Aunt Malia never shifts around me. I think she's way too scared to even try it and freak me out even now."

"We will have to work on that, just to be sure it wouldn't do for her to have to shift and it be at the wrong time, and you do freak out."

"You coming to dinner?"

"I don't know."

Hale family dinners were a tradition, and even though it had been years since Stiles had been invited, he still wasn't sure he was ready to take that step.

"Please. It'll be so much better with you there, and you and Uncle Peter can really upset everyone with the gritty details of Scott freaking out in court and trying to call you a killer."

"You are too fascinated by this stuff."

"Did you drive?"

"I didn't. You gonna drive me home?"

"Is it home?"

Stiles closed his eyes. He wasn't sure it was home, but it felt like it. He wanted to be here in Beacon Hills again, even if he only slept in the bed once a week. He didn't want to have anything more than being with Derek and Eli. Yet he was so scared of being hurt again.

"Yes."

"Good. Then let's go. Dad's doing deer burgers."

"He's trying to butter me up."

"Well, he could get a kiss out of you for the last meal he made."

Stiles blushed at that. It had been habit one he thought he had broken years ago, but the habit still was to thank Derek with a kiss on his cheek for a well-cooked meal.

Even a mouth out, there were things that Stiles had trouble with, and he had to take very small bites, and swallowing large ones was painful. The bones in his neck had been bruised by the force used. It had been graphic when the doctor who had testified said that if Scott has used that much force with a rope or something like it, there would have been nothing connected.

The trial had left no thought in Stiles' mind but that Scott literally thought he had done enough damage to kill Stiles instead of just enough to knock him out.

Stiles wasn't even the one that went down and saved Derek; he was just the one that knew he wasn't dead. The bond between them was still strong, even after years of being broken up and Derek muting it on his end to where he hadn't known it was there.

"Let's go then."

"Yeah." Stiles stood up, his legs protesting, moving after sitting in the same position for so long. He stumbled a little, but his legs stopped protesting by his third step.

'You okay?"

"Legs didn't like moving after so long," Stiles said.

"Ah. I don't miss that." Eli looked at him, worried, but Stiles gave him a smile.

Eli chattered at him the entire way to the house. Stiles went through all of the messages on his phone and made sure his father knew he was fine. Noah would be joining them at dinner that evening so that everyone Stiles wanted around would be there. It seemed that Parrish would be there as well, his relationship finally getting to the point where Malia was willing to call him more than her dick provider.

Beacon Hills was very changed, but at the heart, it was still the same.

The house was still nestled right next to the Preserve but unlike the old Hale house, inside of the city so that they were safer.

Derek's SUV was in the driveway, and there was a spot for the Jeep as well. No other vehicles were there. Peter was probably still filing all of the paperwork needed for Soctt for the sentencing hearing the next day. Unlike the rest of the court system, there wasn't a massive backlog for the supernatural. Things moved very, very fast once things were started. Scott's case was open and shut, and even with Peter needing time to do things, the case had been quick.

Once Stiles was in the house, he inhaled and smelled the scent of the burgers on the grill from the backyard. That meant Derek had the doors open. Which was just fine with him. He didn't mind the breeze that came in from the Preserve. As the sun went down, he would need something over his arms, but he could easily grab something from Derek's closet. He might even go and grab that already. There was a chill to the air even though the sun was still up.

"I'll join you outside soon."

"Okay." Eli looked like he was afraid that Stiles would take off, but he went toward the kitchen.

Stiles went into Derek's room and opened the closet, stopping at the red near the far side. He snagged the hanger and pulled it out, finding it was the red hoodie he had thought he had lost in the move away from Derek's. There had been a bag of his longer-sleeved stuff that had gone missing, and he had thought the airline had lost it. They had recouped him for the lost clothes, and that had been it. Now Stiles felt a little bad about that. He hadn't been an ass, though, as it was easy if someone had taken the wrong thing at the carousel.

It seemed that the bag had never made it out of Beacon Hills. He grabbed the hoodie and put it on. It smelled of Derek, so he had probably been using it on his pillow sometimes when the loneliness had set in. It should have been creepier, but Stiles also had a few bits of Derek's clothes; his attachment was just in wearing them and less using them as a sleep aid. The oversized sleep shirt he had taken had been sometimes the only thing to help him when he was panicking.

Once in the backyard, Derek's gaze snapped over to him, and then he did a double take as he saw what Stiles was wearing. Instead of looking upset, he just looked at Stiles with a raised eyebrow. Derek knew exactly where his own missing clothes had gone.

"Burgers are almost done. Eli needs help cutting the onions."

"Not got control of that yet?" Stiles asked. He didn't want to go inside and mess with onions. He kind of wanted to stay outside with Derek and have that talk that was now long overdue.

"No, he doesn't. Ah, Malia's got that. She and Parrish just got here. She's the best at controlling her ability to smell things. So, you found the clothes I kept."

"I actually had the airline pay me back for the lost items because enough were missing that I had packed in a bag that I thought it had been lost when I flew to DC."

"Sorry. Despite everything, I wasn't doing well with all of that. I needed something that was going to help me control myself, and it was the only thing I could think of. I should have asked, especially before taking that one there, but I just couldn't."

"You were afraid I would tell you no. I mean, I might have, but then you were auditioning for the role of the most maladjusted person in the world with not trusting me."

Derek closed his eyes at that and turned back to the grill. He flipped a few of the burgers and moved some up to the open rack on the top to not cook as much but just stay warm.

"Jealousy has never been something I deal well with, especially when my boyfriend is telling me that he doesn't trust me not to fuck my entire team when we were out in the field on a case dealing with a serial rapist."

"I've worked on myself. Peter pretty much just threw me into therapy after that. It took a month for everyone to finally get the words out of me about why I had pretty much pushed you out of my life. Why anyone mentioning you was pissing me off. Why Eli was moping around like it was the end of the world. He didn't understand it. He has so much trust in everyone that I never had."

"You used to before Kate. I'm not even sure where the jealousy thing came from. I tried to think about it. I mean, Kate lied to you, but there was never a thing of someone cheating on you that I knew of. So it was all kinds of confusing for me."

"I wasn't ready for a relationship. I was still too much in fight or flight, and I latched onto that because I felt like I didn't deserve you. It was its own self-fulfilling prophecy in the end. My therapist was pretty blunt about all of that. I see it all now."

"How come you never reached out?"

"Why would I? You were happy, and I had been an asshole about it all."

"You never wanted to gauge if I was able to forgive you and see if we could try again?"

"No, but I wanted to. I just was too afraid of being told no. I'm still afraid of being told no. That is until a group of witches ad druids appeared down in that underworld area and kicked the ass of the Nogitsune and made sure it was never going to hurt anyone ever again. I knew that they had been sent by you when the lead guy called me Sourwolf before getting anywhere near me."

"You were nearly feral from being an alpha with no bonds. The bonds were still there but muted by the underworld as it was meant to do. So, we made sure that you had something to latch onto. I was afraid of what the Nogitsune had set up for me down there, so I was not allowed to go. That team is on tap to help with all kinds of cases for the FBI. The kind of stuff that we can't handle on our own. We don't use them often, but they mostly just work for little money because they want to help the world."

"Strange to have a druid who wants to help the world and not just keep the balance."

"Eh, the druids we knew are not exactly free of influence. Even Deaton's on the shady side of good. He has his own idea of what balance is and tries to maintain that even when the world tries to balance it another way. A true druid will step in and stop a slaughter because it would set the world off balance instead of just trying to fix it after it happened. Deaton's kind of druid are just idiots in the long run, but thankfully, there are others who try to stop that kind of shit from happening. That Deaton is wholly focused on Scott and making his impact in the world good to make up for not helping to protect your family is the only good thing. Mostly, Deaton's harmless."

"What about now that Scott will be in jail for at least a decade with therapy included?"

"The therapy part is great, honestly. It's probably not going to help him. He has this idea in his head that what he thinks is wrong is wrong. Like he can kill because he trusts himself to know what is right and wrong, but if anyone else does it, well, they are horrible. Or if your name is Hale, you are not to be given a second chance, while every single Tom, Dick, and Harriet is allowed to be given second chances. I mean, look at Deucalion. He is why Erica and Boyd are dead, but he was allowed to live after that and make life better, but you were someone to kill because he didn't like you."

"Let's not go into that. I've dealt with my issues around Scott in therapy. I needed an alpha and didn't want to leave Beacon Hills to find another, or I would have left him."

"Now you are an alpha in your own right. You can do what you feel you need to do. Build a pack that is what your family was supposed to be before Deaton."

"You know Peter has said much of the same about Deaton being the reason the pack went downhill. I never gave it much thought until the news of what your team was doing started to spread. People were talking about you like they talked about my mother. She had been great once, but I think that was before I was born or when I was very young. There were changes from how my grandparents ran the pack to how she did based on the history Peter told me."

"All Deaton. It was the change that probably set about a lot of shit with Beacon Hills, but I don't think he did it on purpose. I think he thought he was helping and messed up the world even more than it was already because he was trained to see the world in a way that it was never going to be or ever going to be able to be kept."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I was back then. I'm sorry for being an asshole who didn't trust you when you were one of the few people in the world who I could trust and had proven it over and over again. I did myself a huge disservice and hurt you in the process. I'm sorry."

"Thank you. I didn't make it easy, but then I was allowed to be hurt that it seemed like you didn't trust me. It was a mess, and I think we both needed the time away. I'm sorry for not reaching out once I was calmed down."

"I always knew exactly who you were doing. Peter told me all the time when he would get back from trying cases all over the country. I think he liked to rub it in my face. He was an asshole about it. I think it kept me sane."

"Well, you are the one that muted the pack bond between us on your side. I felt everything from you, by the way. It was the only reason I knew you were alive. I was getting reports you were dead, but there you were."

"Peter raked me over the coals for that one. It would have been something I could have used, but why did you feel me but no one else did?"

"Everyone you have a bond with was down there. The Nogitsune could only use magic on the ones he touched. The Oni stabbing muted the bonds of that person to everyone else who was down there. The distance helped."

Derek looked over Stiles' shoulder, and Stiles assumed that meant that the pack was hovering, listening in but making it seem like they weren't. It was a classic thing that they did. The whole pack was nosy as fuck. Still, Stiles loved them all.

"So, tomorrow night," Stiles said.

"What about it?"

"Got a babysitter?'

"I DON'T NEED A BABYSITTER ANYMORE!"

"You do too! Look at the shit you have been doing when alone!" Stiles yelled back at him. He turned to look, and Eli was slumped down in the doorway outside with the rest of the pack laughing behind him.

"It's not worse than you have gotten up to when he was your age. It wasn't too different from when you went looking for a dead body in the woods," Noah said.

Stiles huffed and looked at Derek, who was smiling.

"So about that babysitter?"

"Peter will be here for a while, so I think he can make sure Eli doesn't sneak around and follow us as we get to know each other again without nosy asses."

"Who is to say I won't just go there anyway?" Peter asked.

"Your want of me to stay out of whatever the hell you have going on with Chris Argent and me not demanding that he man an honest man out of you."

"Low blow, nephew. I thought you loved me."

"Well, Great Uncle Peter, you can just live with the fact that he takes after you so well," Stiles said.

"Must you? I'm not old enough for this."

"Well, you obviously are. it's not our fault your parents had you late in life." Stiles loved the glare that Peter gave him.

Peter had never picked a side when Stiles and Derek broke up. He just assumed they would get back together when they got their shit together. Peter gave them both hell that it wasn't months later, but it seemed that it was the best given Derek's admission. Maybe now the relationship could be something that didn't have anything more than its normal issues.

Stiles wanted that but didn't want to hurt like he did last time when it all ended. He just wanted to be happy with his family and his pack.

It wasn't too much to ask, given the hell of the last nearly two decades. Still, there would be issues, but they could face them together.

The End