Peter wondered how many people he'd been in his lifetime. He'd been one person as a child, but he'd changed into someone else when his parents died. The child version of himself never would have survived that. So, he became someone different.
He must have been yet another person when he'd sired Malia, and certainly wasn't that same person after Talia took his memories of her.
The person he became during his coma was completely different. Almost an un-person. After all, to be a person then surely you must have more than one desire? One purpose? What he became during the coma had only a single thought, repeated.
After his resurrection, he'd become yet another person. Six then? Six different people, all living Peter Hale's life. They were all still there, sometimes fighting to come to the front. The witless infant, the scared parentless child, the unabashedly confident teen, the angry confused man, and the single-minded beast of revenge.
And Peter now, pushing them all back. They'd had their turn. It was his now.
Half a dozen past selves living under his skin, like the unrestful dead; unaware that their time is over.
Peter found that most people did not understand this the way he did. Most of them remained their childhood selves, never being forced to grow into something better adapted for survival.
As far as Peter could tell, Stiles had rebuilt himself four or more times, and was still currently living every version he'd created.
It made Peter dizzy to even think about.
He'd watched Stiles flip from confident researcher to concerned caretaker to grieving son in the space of an hour, sometimes even less. Stoic friend, excitable young adult, hopeless romantic. They were all evident, with no divide between the margins of his life.
Peter first thought perhaps this meant Stiles had never had to completely remake himself.
Peter knew what the death of a parent does to a child. Stiles had also been unmade at the hands of the Nogitsune. The shattering of his worldview at Peter’s own hands was likely another moment of tearing down and rebuilding.
The teen he’d met in the woods was still occasionally evident in the capable pack member next to Peter now. Stiles maintained childish glee. His loyalty remained to the ones he'd chosen, no matter when those choices were made. By all appearances, every version of Stiles was constantly simmering just below the surface, ready to take over given the slightest chance.
"I'm still just one person, dude," Stiles said, a little confused when Peter asked him about it. "Like I get what you mean about being different people in the past... but all those people were me too?"
"But they are no longer you," Peter argued. "A selfish child doesn't cook for his father, Stiles. You're not the same person you were when you were ten, and yet-"
Comprehension dawned on Stiles' face.
"Yeah," he interrupted Peter. "When I was ten, I was selfish, and that's not something I want to be now. It's not something that's useful to me. But I also loved reading comics when I was ten, and I still do. It's something that I like about myself, so I keep doing it. Keep the comics, discard the selfishness. I like cooking for my dad, so I keep doing that too, even though I started cooking for him because of specific anxieties that I don’t have anymore. Keep the cooking, discard the anxiety.”
Peter pursed his lips for a beat before bursting out, “How do you pick through the wreckage? How can you sort through the bloody scraps of who you used to be, and decide what to keep and what to toss? What good is it, ultimately, if those parts have already proven themselves incapable of surviving?”
Stiles sat back, a little stunned.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I guess… because I’m the one who decides whether I survived or not. I'm not going to kill the parts of myself that haven't done me harm, because they're the reason I want to survive."
Peter sat silently for a moment before saying softly, "What if there is no part of your past self that you want to survive?"
"Then... I think you might want to listen harder to yourself," Stiles suggested. "Is there really no part of yourself that you miss?"
The ghosts beneath Peter's skin began to itch.
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