Chapter Text
He’s lost; drifting in the wind without an anchor, living without a thread to keep him grounded. He knows he should go, leave, never come back. Everything inside of him pulls and hurts and aches. It would be better, he knows, to drift away with the storm; to weave in the wind like a fallen, dying leaf—crumbling in the elements, quelled into the dirt, trampled underfoot like something meaningless, something that someone forgot once used to live and thrive.
Things would be better if he weren’t here; if he could leave the only place that he can’t ever seem to escape. He’s sick of the nightmares—sick of the ghosts and the memories and the dark, lingering thoughts that haunt his tired eyes and mind. He is an inmate of his own making. He’s been cursed since the moment he was born, doomed from his first breath to live a life of pain and misery. There’s nothing he can do to stop it, nothing he can do to make the ache that always settles in his chest go away; it grows and grows, spreads into something maleficent that steals his breath like it steals the life from his body, killing him slowly from the inside.
Derek’s curse isn’t the wolf. No, the wolf was something he knew, something he understood; it was a part of him, like a limb or an organ. The wolf was something tangible, something real. His curse though—that is something else entirely.
His curse is something less defined, less solid and valid. It is more like something akin to the mark of Cain; something evil, some penance for all of his past sins. And there are so, so many sins. He needs to atone, needs it like air to breathe, but it’s something he can never get. That’s his curse. Forever carrying the weight of his past, forever steeped in sadness and guilt and shame. He’s stuck in the past while the world moves forward and forgets. But he…he can’t forget. It’s there, every time he closes his eyes, every time he feels the air fill his lungs. It’s always there, lingering in the air around him, surrounding him like a shroud that he can’t break through, can’t escape from. It’s killing him slowly, witling away a little bit more of him with each passing sunset.
Each night it gets darker, gets a little colder. Each morning the sunrise gets a little bit lonelier, a little bit more violent as it breaks the sky in bloody colors, as it drenches the world in fiery light that burns away at something deep inside of him. Each day he feels another thing inside crumble, feels another part cave in.
The days have been like this for a long time. Too long. He is a wonderer, desperately searching for anything to guide him, anything to give him a sign. But nothing appears, and it’s been too long, too long for any person to drift and die without consequence. He feels himself wearing thin. He feels it in the way his tired eyes are always sore, in the way he can’t stop his hands from shaking, he feels it in the way his limbs are a little weaker every day, feels it in the way he can’t rely on his senses anymore—not in the way he used to, not in the way he always has.
He isn’t unbreakable. Not anymore. Maybe he never really was.
In hindsight, he’s surprised he lasted as long as he has. It isn’t something he ever expected, isn’t something he ever really wanted. Once again, he is the survivor. Once again, he gets to live while everyone else dies around him; gets to, like it’s a reward. It’s his curse; to always be the one left behind, to always have to sit and watch the life fade from the people he cares about.
It kills him, cuts deeper than a wolf’s bane blade, hits the deepest part of his heart. It cuts into the place that still feels, the place that selfishly wishes he could just be the one to die, so that he could save everyone else from his curse. He is nothing. He’s the one that deserves to die.
He’s the one that the disease should’ve spread to. It should’ve taken him in the night like it took so many others.
He doesn’t waste the energy to think about how unfair it is. He gave up on fair when his family was trapped and torched in his home, when he was deceived by the first person he had ever trusted that wasn’t family. He was betrayed, and he betrayed his family. They died because of him. Because of his own stupidity, he could never hear his father laugh again, never feel his mother’s arms wrap around him, he could never play with his cousins, or read to his younger brother. He could never listen to his family howl into the night; never feel that blanket of peace spread over him, knowing that he was safe and loved and protected. He could never have that again, and it was all his fault.
Derek could never get that back, not even if he tried. But he doesn’t try, knows he doesn’t deserve it, not any of it. He knows that he’s paying for his sins. He knows why bad things keep happening and he is always the one left alive, left to remember, left to sink into the guilt and the anger and the shame of his mistakes. He deserves it. In some selfish way, he’s thankful for the pain, thankful that he is suffering. He needs it, needs the reminder that something in the world merits his pain, gives it to him in such a cruel way, over and over and over again.
It’s the only thing he’s known for so long. He wears the pain like a second skin, like it can save him. He likes to think maybe it can. Maybe his suffering could somehow make up for everything he’s ever done to the people around him. Maybe, in some small way, it could make up for the deaths his life has caused, make up for the people who are gone because of his foolish mistakes.
He doesn’t know when it started, doesn’t know what triggered it, but he remembers the letter. It was years after he came back to Beacon Hills, years after he chased the ghost of his sister across the country. It was before he knew just how far down the rabbit hole goes. It was after he had built his pack, after he had fought and won for the right to lead, to protect them in what little way he could. Maybe that was the spark, the straw that broke the camel’s back. He should’ve seen it coming, should’ve known that things were going too well, that everyone was starting to get too happy.
Then the letter came.
~
Derek remembers it was written on old parchment that felt more like skin than paper under Derek’s fingers. The lack of a return address made him curious and his curiosity got the best of him. He opened it while the pack was over, celebrating their high school graduation. They were having a party. All of his wolves were there; Scott, Boyd, Isaac, Peter. Stiles, Lydia, and Danny were there too. Jackson had even showed up as a surprise, bringing some wolves from the territory he was staying in with him. There were also some of the wolves from the pack in New York that Derek and Laura had stayed with after the fire. He felt surrounded by the closest thing to family he’d had in a long time. Derek was happy, maybe honest-to-god happy for the first time since Laura died.
It was a stupid mistake, such a small thing to do, but it was the catalyst. He knew as soon as he opened the letter, as soon as the brilliant blue powder drifted into the air in a flurry that coated everything in its wake and stuck to the surface of their skin like a leach. He tried to warn the rest of the pack, tried to get the words out to tell them to run, to leave, but the powder was seeping into his skin, into his blood. It was paralyzing his body, freezing his mind. All Derek could do was watch as the dust landed on the people closest to him, watch as the paralytic set in. he saw some of the wolves from the other territories running toward the door, saw Peter and Jackson pulling the humans out with them.
Derek was sitting on the couch, with Scott and Boyd on either side of him. Isaac was on the floor, just out of Derek’s line of sight. The powder was burning his skin, boiling the blood inside of him, working its way in to his system. It was the most intense kind of wolfs bane he’d ever been exposed to. It felt like it was burning everything he was, ripping him apart inside and out and all he could do was sit there and feel it burn away the wolf inside of him, feel it set fire to every single nerve and cell of his body.
He was dying. He could feel it. And he knew the wolves around him were dying too. He was their alpha. He could sense the life slowly start to drain from them, feel their energy deplete and their lights slowly start to stifle out. It was agony; the worst kind of torture. They were all dying, all having their life force leached from their bodies and Derek couldn’t do anything to stop it. He was their alpha. He was supposed to be able to protect them.
He’d been trying, trying so hard to do just that after Boyd and Erica had been attacked. It had cut so deep when Erica had died, had killed a part of the pack. It took a long time for them to get over it and Derek pledged to never let them suffer life that again.
But here they were, all slowly dying, and Derek could do nothing.
He felt Isaac go first; the weakest of his wolves, worn down by life, unable to be completely fixed even with his supernatural senses. He felt Isaac’s death like a flare in his mind and he knew the men next to him could feel it too. Boyd was the second. Derek felt him struggle next to him, heard through the roar of the flames in his head the sluggish sound of his heartbeat before it fizzled out, before his breath came to a raspy halt. Derek felt the tears in his eyes, felt the saline burn like ice as they slid from his lids and down his cheeks. He tried to open his mouth, tried to turn his head just a little, to look at Scott, to tell him to hold on, to say something, anything. But Derek couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All he could do was try and keep breathing through the searing, agonizing pain.
It was like nothing he ever felt before. It was like every spec of powder was traveling through his skin, locating one single part inside of him and seeking to annihilate it. It felt worse than being electrocuted, felt worse than any type of pain he’d ever felt before. It was extinguishing everything, taking everything he had built and worked for. It wasn’t just killing him. He would be okay if he would be the only one dying, but he wasn’t. Isaac, Boyd…and Scott, sitting next to him, struggling so hard against the pain, against the hot, burning pain he must be feeling ignite in his blood.
He could sense it, when Scott died. He could feel it like a cord being severed, like a thread being cut. He cursed the fates and their cutting weapons, cursed himself for letting them die, for letting everyone around him die again. It cut deep, so deep. It felt like he was losing his family all over again. Scott had been like a brother to him, like a replacement, a second chance at the little brother he’d lost all those years ago. But now he was gone, just like everyone else.
Derek remembers the darkness coming after that. The pain became too much, became a white flare inside of him. He wanted to die, wanted to die so badly and just end the misery. But he didn’t.
Instead, he opened his eyes. It was days—weeks?—later and he was on a cot in the back of the vet’s office, strapped down with scraps of leather that bit into his skin. There was an IV in his arm and he frowned at it, his sluggish mind having trouble realizing why that shouldn’t be there. He was hooked up to so many machines. They looked like hospital machines, shiny and new, monitoring his life. He didn’t know why, didn’t know what was going on. He was alone, staring up at a flickering fluorescent light. He tried to move, but the straps held him down, kept him immobile. He tried to break them, but he felt so unbearably weak that all he could do was close his eyes and let the darkness take him once more.
When he opened his eyes again, Deaton was there, watching him as he blinked into the light, as he once again tried to struggle against the binds.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned, his voice quiet, almost too quiet for Derek to hear. That wasn’t right. Why couldn’t he hear? But Deaton was speaking again, “you don’t want to hurt yourself.”
Derek tried to shake his head, but he could make out the leather across his forehead. He frowned and tried to open his mouth to speak, but the words stuck in his throat.
“Oh, I know what you’re going to say, Derek. You are going to tell me that you’ll heal.” Deaton lifts his eyebrows and levels Derek with a long look, until Derek’s eyes are hurting from the light and he has to blink, has to look away. “Well, I’m here to tell you that no, you won’t heal. Not like you used to.” Deaton takes a syringe and dispenses it into the IV in the back of Derek’s hand. “You’re not going to be able to do a lot of things you used to, I’m afraid. Things have changed, Derek. Oh, how they’ve changed.”
Derek tried to keep listening, but everything was turning blurry and dark.
It was the third time he woke up that he felt it. He knew, even as he opened his eyes what it was. He should’ve known the very first time, should’ve been able to work it out, even in his weak state. He knew what it was, but it wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t’ve been able to happen, not to anyone, but especially not to an alpha. He didn’t know how, didn’t know why, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt what was wrong.
His wolf was gone.
~
Derek stayed with Deaton for another week before he felt strong enough to get up. Even that, the simple stretching and moving of muscles had been a slow agony to his weak limbs. He fell just walking across the room, gripping onto an old x-ray machine to keep his balance. He hated himself, hated the weakness he felt. He never hated anything the way he hated his newly human body.
For the first few weeks, he felt like he was in a constant state of sensory deprivation. Everything felt off kilter. He felt removed from everything by a boundary of too little sensation. He couldn’t hear, see, smell, taste, or touch things the same. It felt so wrong, like he was a stranger in his own skin.
It was only after he could walk across the room without falling down that Deaton told him everything. Derek sat on the cot and listened with ears unwilling to hear. Deaton told him everything. He told Derek how he’d been in a coma for a close to a year, the machines stolen from the hospital and put in this room so that they could keep his life a secret, so that whoever set out the virus would think they achieved what they set out to.
Deaton told him how the powder had been a type of lycanthrope disease, a type of anthrax that specifically targeted werewolves. It had swept the country, killing off the were populace one by one. Jackson and the wolves from his territory had been carriers, unknowingly transporting the sickness inside of them even though they thought they got away. They didn’t know until it was too late, until they arrived home and started to drop like flies, infecting the rest of the pack. The same thing happened to the New York wolves, to every pack across Northern America.
They were dead, all of the werewolves in the country. They had been killed or the wolf had been burned out of them by the virus. Only the alphas survived, and even then, most of them died. As humans, their immune systems were weak, weaker than normal. They succumbed to sicknesses easily, not having built up their immune systems over the course of their life. Everything they’d been exposed to as werewolves still lingered somewhere inside of them. Many alphas fought the burning virus only to die from some common illness. But even they had been hunted, vulnerable now without the wolf to protect them, killed off one by one by hunters.
It had been almost a year, and Derek was the sole survivor.
Everyone, his whole pack, wiped out. Every wolf he had ever met was dead now. He tried to say something, anything, to Deaton, but he had no words. He elected to stay silent. What could he say? What could he possibly say to make up for what he did? Sorry wouldn’t bring Scott back, or Isaac, or Boyd, or Peter, or Jackson or any of the other innocent people who died because of his foolish choices.
Derek stayed for another few weeks before it became too much. He couldn’t stand the thought of staying there any longer, of wasting away in a back room in the vet’s office, safe and sound while he had single-handedly caused the fall and destruction of his entire species.
~