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In the inside pocket of Derek Hale's favorite jacket, folded up and torn and dirtied so much that it looks more gray than white, is a list of things Laura Hale will never get to do. Derek used to keep a separate list for every member of his family, but as he's gotten older he's buried his list with each of them, in the little plot designated for the whole Hale family. It isn't that he's gotten over their deaths, but Laura was the one to find them, and told him that it would be better to let go of his lists It was one of the tasks she was going to accomplish while she was in Beacon Hills.
Laura Hale will never go to prom.
He tried to keep the events in a chronological order, and it was senior year for Laura when Kate killed their entire family and ran off to New York. Laura had told him once, in the apartment in New York, that she hadn't been really interested in going, but Derek knows better. She had already bought the dress, a pretty long red gown with some kind of sparkly material, but the dress burned in the fire, and anyway both of them had been put off of the color red for years.
Laura Hale will never be the Alpha of a real pack.
He knows that two wolves does not a pack make; it's one of several reasons why he gave the bite to Jackson, and then later to Isaac, Erica, and Boyd: a pack needs members, to delegate tasks and for companionship, and Derek watched Laura fight for years to both try and find more pack numbers and tell him how they only really needed each other. He tried his best to be the best beta he could for Laura, but look how that ended.
The list goes on for a full page, with some corrections: he got rid of Laura Hale will never have children after remembering how horrified Laura had looked after the two of them had babysat some of their baby cousins, and he's pretty sure that Laura would have laughed in his face if he had kept that line in the list. He never had to write things like Laura Hale will never go to college or will never have her first job or will never buy a house like he did for some of his younger family members, because she got all of those done in New York. But others, like Laura Hale will never meet someone she wanted to settle down with and Laura Hale will never be a bride or a bridesmaid hurt, because Laura loved weddings.
It takes Derek four years after he buries Laura in the back yard of the burned out Hale house before he feels ready to bury his letter with her body, but when he does, the last line is Laura Hale will never see Derek with the love of his life.
