#Inspired by LHAW17 theme

[1989dreamer]

Everything You Had Got Destroyed

AO3

Summary: The funeral of the Hales, through Laura's eyes.

General Kate Argent warning. Also, this story does not place Deaton in a good light. Searching for title, settled on a line from Beyonce's If I Were a Boy. Full tags and warnings available at AO3 link.

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The ceremony is lovely. The mayor makes speeches about the accomplishments made possible by the generosity of the Hales, people applaud, cry, and hug the remaining Hales, and Laura hates it with her whole being.

She keeps a hand on her brother’s back, feels the minute tremors racing through his muscles. She can’t even comfort him because all the townspeople keep coming, empty words falling from their lips while the cool wind of a mild January blows across their faces.

Derek is wrapped in Dad’s jacket, left in the Camaro after another dumb argument about his mid-life crisis. Laura has a coat handed to her by a nurse from Emergency Care. She finds a pack of gum tucked inside a hidden pocket and squeezes it to pulp when the sixth grade class stumbles over Amazing Grace.

The whole thing lasts three hours. Eleven eulogies. Eleven laid to rests. Eleven “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” Derek breaks his own hand when the priest won’t shut up.

The sheriff standing next to him looks stricken and unsure while a deputy on the other side adopts a stormy glare directed at Father Donovan’s head.

The wake. They should have had a wake instead of this bullshit circus.

Not a dry eye around them except her brother and herself. But, Laura’s all cried out, doesn’t have the liquid available and Derek…Derek seems broken, small and withered, like he was in the flames too.

The ceremony is lovely and lasts too long and Laura can’t be grateful enough when it ends after she and Derek each toss eleven handfuls into the single plot that will house the bare remains of what used to be eleven people.

The crowd disperses quickly after they, one by one, offer condolences that mean nothing to Laura (Laura only because Derek isn’t listening, hunched down and breathing harshly through his mouth).

Finally, the only ones left are the sheriff and his deputy, the veterinarian Mom liked to take stray animals to, the priest, and Derek and Laura.

Sheriff Calhoun is the first to say anything, and it’s just to jam his hat back on his head, stroke his handlebar mustache and grunt, “Rain’s coming.”

Laura wants to yell at him, scream obscenities because no shit, rain’s coming, she can fucking smell it.

Father Donovan agrees with a simple nod of his head before he claps Derek on the shoulder (and Laura glares at him for startling her brother enough that he jerks and lets out a gasp).

“I wish it was a better time,” he says, absently, and Laura stares at him in horror.

The deputy hustles him away, saying, “Father Jacob, why don’t you go back inside for now?” Then he comes back and leads Derek away, one hand hovering over her brother’s back while they head deeper into the cemetery, no doubt heading for the deputy’s wife’s headstone.

The vet steps up next, offering Laura a hand. “It was a beautiful ceremony,” he offers. Laura thinks his name is Deepo or something. “I used to work with your mother.”

“Right,” Laura says, because what else is she supposed to say? Mom loved saving those strays, usually ones that had been struck somewhere close to Hale property and then either dragged themselves to the porch or were found by Derek or Cora (oh, god, Cora, the only thing left of her little sister was the bows Laura had braided into her hair the morning of the fire).

“I’m Dr. Alan Deaton,” the man offers. His gaze is perfectly sympathetic, and Laura tries to shake the unsettling feeling his bright eyes inspire. He glances dismissively at Derek in the distance before turning back to Laura. “I worked with your mom,” he stresses. “I was her emissary.”

Laura stares at the man before her. Only recently had Mom started explaining what Laura would need to know when she took over the mantle of alpha. An emissary is an advisor, someone trusted who can offer an objective viewpoint and counsel should an alpha require it. Mom had said only the alpha knew who the emissary was to ensure that the emissary would be safe in case of another pack attacking.

Deaton’s heartbeat is steady, his scent unchanged.

He’s not lying.

“You were my mother’s emissary?” Laura confirms, and Deaton nods. “Why are you offering to be mine?”

Deaton holds up a hand, curled as if scooping water. “Your mother did not have time to set up the contacts necessary for you to find your own emissary so I am merely offering my services until such a time that you no longer require them.”

A sudden blip in his heartbeat makes her ears perk. “But?” she says.

Deaton’s eyes dim and his mouth sets in a grim line. “But, I refuse to be emissary of your pack as long as your brother is part of your pack.”

“And why would I kick him out?” Laura asks.

“Because,” Deaton leans closer, sharing a secret, “he is the reason your family is dead.”

Laura draws back, angry.

Deaton holds up his hand again, cupped in the same way. “Kate Argent orchestrated the fire but she received the information about how to get into the house from Derek. They were in a relationship and Derek revealed himself to her. To an Argent.”

Laura finds where Derek is curled down by another headstone, the deputy holding onto him as Derek sobs loudly. The first time he’s broken since that night. Laura’s heart clenches painfully, skin itching with the need to go to her beta, soothe his pain.

“And when did this Argent approach my brother?” Laura has been at college the last few months—she’s going for a degree in child psychology since there aren’t enough therapists in the know. Maybe that was her mistake, leaving her future betas alone for so long.

“A few weeks ago,” Deaton answers.

“And you watched this ‘relationship’ grow without mentioning it to his alpha, my mother?”

Deaton’s heartbeat rises and settles quickly, but it’s his tell—that and the overwhelming stench of guilt rolling off him.

“Excuse me, my beta needs me.” She pushes past the vet, and he grabs her wrist.

“Don’t,” he says, eyes boring into hers. “Don’t push away your best contact.”

“My best contact?” she says icily, jerking her hand free. “My best contact failed to mention that an adult was seeking out an illicit relationship with my underage brother.” A sudden, horrifying thought occurs to Laura and she freezes. Faintly, through the blood rushing in her ears, she can hear Derek whining, reacting to her distress.

“Did you let my family die because you wanted to punish Derek?”

Now it’s her turn to grab Deaton’s wrist. The man barely winces in pain as Laura squeezes his wrist, the bones cracking under her fingers.

“Get the fuck away from us. Don’t ever offer your brand of help again.”

Derek crashes into her back and wraps his arms around her waist. He’s been a whole head taller than her for almost a year now, but he shrinks into her warmth, face pressed against the back of her neck.

Deaton uses the distraction to pull away, his broken wrist cradled to his chest. The deputy watches him go, a knowing look on his face.

“You kids doing all right?” He winces as soon as he speaks and stammers an apology.

“It’s okay,” Laura tells him and only means it a little. As long as she has Derek with her she knows they will be okay even if it isn’t okay right now.

Besides, she can smell the alcohol on his breath, faded, like he hasn’t had a drink in hours, but still there. He’s still grieving his wife. He at least understands where the Hales are at mentally.

“We can’t stay here. Not with that still here.” Laura could probably run Deaton out of town, make sure he never works as an emissary again. Of course, the best solution would be to kill him, but Laura doesn’t think she could do that to her beta. In fact, she isn’t sure she even wants to expand her pack. It wouldn’t feel right. Their family hasn’t even been dead a week yet. She’s not ready to take in new people, train them while she’s still new to her control, to her grief.

Derek tightens his arms around her, his tears soaking through her coat, leaving indelible marks on her skin.

“I understand,” the deputy says. “I hope you find your peace without losing too much of yourself.” He eyes his patrol car sadly, and Laura sees a spindly boy sitting in the front passenger seat. She recognizes him from Cora’s class, from the choir.

“I hope you don’t lose more of yourself,” she offers to the deputy. “And thank you, for all you’ve done for us.”

“Keep in touch, kiddo.”

Laura doesn’t respond, leading Derek, who still hasn’t relinquished his hold on her, to the Camaro. She can’t really say anything right now, still shocked and angry that Deaton, her mother’s emissary, would rather watch the whole family die than help Derek out of a situation that Laura is positive he was pressured in to.

It’s her job as his alpha to protect him, and she can’t do that in Beacon Hills.

There isn’t room to heal when they can’t go anywhere without reminders of their family everywhere. She doesn’t know how the deputy and his son have managed, but she knows it helps that they can’t smell where the people who no longer walk lived and breathed.

“We’re getting out of this town,” Laura tells Derek when he slides into the passenger seat. She reaches across him and buckles him in. Derek just stares at her.

“Peter?” he finally says.

“Do you remember Mom’s friend, Alpha Satomi? I’ll call her, have her check in on him. She’ll also take care of our territory while we’re gone.”

Satomi is the only nearby alpha her mother told her to trust. Ennis and Kali on the west and north sides are power hungry, more of an assembled family than one of blood, not that Laura thinks there’s anything wrong with that. And the Teller pack to the east is bloodthirsty and cruel even to their own pack members.

Satomi is their neighbor to the south, and she has had a long, respectable relationship with Talia. Satomi had offered to take them in for a time, but Laura couldn’t start her tenure as alpha in debt like that and had turned her down.

She wonders if it was the right call.

One way to find out.

She stops at the Quik-Mart on the way out of Beacon Hills, gets a full tank of gas and those chocolate crème things Derek used to like when he was ten. She also buys an atlas and a road map.

The farther they get from town, the easier it is to breathe until the windows are down, and Derek’s hanging out like a dog, sniffing everything new. Laura sometimes forgets that he hasn’t ever left home, a sheltered puppy just waiting to be plucked off the vine by a cruel, remorseless hunter.

Laura vows then, if she ever comes across Kate Argent, she’ll rip her throat out with her teeth.

For now, though, she laughs when Derek pulls his head in and scrapes bugs off his face. And it doesn’t hurt much.

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