@theb1te, @newtsnogitsune these two went together exceedingly well for me, so I combined them. Thank you both!! There’s a war in Derek’s mind. It’s a war between the parts of him he can control, and the parts of him he cannot. It’s a war between the man he’s become and the fragile child he once was, standing silent and terrified as he watched flames lick the sky and turn his family to dust. He wasn’t even in the fire. He and Laura only found out once they’d started towards home, heard the sirens, and smelled the smoke. There had been firefighters there already, but the Hale house was secluded enough that by the time they’d arrived it had already been too late. Derek had watched helplessly as the flames burned through the part of his chest reserved for pack bonds and familial love, leaving behind nothing but a charred hole inside of him. He was no longer a child when the people he now considered his friends, his family threw Molotov cocktails at his uncle. They unknowingly creating a hybrid kind of monster that it took every ounce of Derek’s anger and hatred – holding fast to the image of Laura’s open, haunted eyes – to push past and eliminate. Fire has always cut him deeper than anything else. Deeper, even, then the scent of French perfume and the wicked smile on plump pink lips.
Over the past few hours the ring of fire trapping him where he stands, seems to grow closer even though Derek knows it had been lit in a fixed circle by the hunters to contain him. They could be Kates or Monroe’s or Araya’s, Derek can’t tell the difference at this point. They all want him dead.
There was a time – in the dark months after Scott and Erica and Boyd and Isaac all suffered under his hands, after Cora came back only to find a disappointment and left, after he watched the pack crumble under the heavy loss of Allison, who was everything Kate never was – where Derek would have agreed with them. But he isn’t that person anymore. Now, he has a pack that loves him, an alpha he trusts with his life. He has friends, a family again. He’s scraped away the festering wound in his heart and taken the risk of revealing new, tender flesh. And he hasn’t been let down yet – they’ve come through for him time, and time again. His vision swims, tears that might have fallen evaporating with the heat of the flames. He desperately – helplessly – searches for an escape that does not exist. He can’t hear anything over the roar of the flames and the pounding of his own heart in his ears. He sinks to his knees, wrapping his arms over his head, trying futilely to protect himself from once more burning – this time literally rather than metaphorically. Suddenly, there’s a voice in his ear. It takes Derek a moment to remember how to breathe, how to hear, how to do anything but hide. “Derek,” the voice says. “Derek, come on, get up, you’re okay. I’ve got you.” Arms wrap around him from the back, another person on their knees, holding Derek tightly even as he shakes. As the flames die, extinguished by some unknown force, the room that had been lit by them grows dark. Derek focuses on trying to breathe, lifting his head and blinking his eyes open slowly, cautiously. He glances down at the hands that hold him. Hands he knows, hands he trusts with his life and with more. His nose is full of the scent of ash and gasoline, but he can hear now, a familiar cadence of a heartbeat and breathing. Derek doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he turns to face the person holding him. Jordan’s face is pinched with concern, his green eyes narrowed, his hair a mess. He’s mostly naked, Derek notes absently. It’s far from the first time he’s seen Jordan like this, covered in ash and dust and all the things he normally fears, but doesn’t where Jordan is concerned. Jordan burns, but unlike fire, Jordan has never hurt him. Jordan would never hurt him. Derek opens his mouth but still can’t find words and Jordan’s expression softens. He leans forward to press their foreheads together. “You’re safe now, Derek. We got here as soon as we could. I’m sorry.” Derek isn’t quite sure what Jordan is sorry for, but he just accepts it, allowing his head to slip from resting against Jordan’s to laying against the hellhounds’s too-warm shoulder, face buried in his neck. Jordan rests his chin on Derek’s temple and allows him the quiet moment. There are likely others in the room, but Derek doesn’t care. He’s been through a whirlwind of emotions in the last minutes, fear and helplessness, despair, panic, and then this heavy, exhausting wave of relief. It’s hour’s later, curled between Jordan’s legs on the couch, freshly showered, that Derek remembers the sequence of events. “You walked through the fire to get to me,” he says quietly. Jordan’s hand, fingers trailing lightly up and down Derek’s bicep, stills. A chuckle rumbles through his chest. “Fire can’t hurt me,” he reminds Derek quietly. “I had to get to you. I knew you were probably terrified.”
Derek has known, subconsciously, that this was true. Jordan is a hellhound, he lights himself on fire regularly. No man-made flame could hurt him. But, it isn’t until this moment, still reeling from the events of the day, that Derek lets the weight of that fact settle, heavy and comforting in the same way Jordan’s embrace had been earlier.
Fire has taken so much from Derek. It has ravaged his life and his soul, warped him into a person he hated. He’d used the fire, the pain, as an awful excuse for hurting others.
Fire had destroyed Derek, and he built himself back up from the ashes. He’s earned a place int he pack, earned a place here, safe in Jordan’s apartment, in his arms, in his life.
And Jordan is impervious to fire. Fire has taken everything from Derek, but not this, never the man he loves. He smiles, the first of the day, and presses his lips against Jordan’s softly.