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Sometimes Peter can still see his burned, mutilated skin when he looks in the mirror. Echoes of his brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces and sons play on a loop in the back of his mind. On an odd day he can hears their laughs, but almost always he hears their screams, their cries for help, and remembers how he couldn’t save any of them.
He blinks and the screams stop. His scars are gone, but he knows that if he squints he could see them, still faint underneath his skin. He takes a breath, ignores it, and then saunters out of the room as the epitome of calm, of sane. He has to – he was too reckless in his pursuit of revenge, and now he has to gain Derek’s trust in order for him to take his power back. He knows Derek is never going to trust him completely, but he just needs Derek to trust him enough. It’s a delicate process, unsurprisingly, but not impossible.
“I just want to help, Derek,” Peter tells his nephew for what might be the umpteenth time in as many as six or seven weeks. Derek just looks at him and grunts, practically oozing suspicion and cynicism.
But it’s all a front, because every time Peter says it, Derek starts to believe it more and more. He’s a fool for it, Peter thinks, but he doesn’t do anything to give Derek proof not to trust him. He does everything Derek asks and more. He helps find Derek’s lost pups, Boyd and Erica. He helps train the pack, gets them stronger, and informs them of the strengths and weaknesses of the Alpha pack or whatever else comes their way. He jokes like he used to. He plays nice, acts like he cares.
Peter wears his old self like skin. He wants Derek to believe he’s the same uncle from … before.
Before the fire. Before the decimation of his family – of himself.
It’s all just a façade, of course. A perfect one if he must say so himself, because if anything, for all Derek acts like he hates him, Derek still holds on to him. Holds on to Peter as the last of his family. And Peter knows he hopes that the uncle from his childhood is really back – and how naïve Derek is for hoping such a thing, he thinks. Because the real Peter Hale is dead and all that’s left is a husk of a body with a monster inside. All that’s in him is black bloodlust and anger, the need for revenge burned in him forever and all he sees when he looks at Derek is the reason he is what he is right now.
Oh, he knows about Derek’s little “romance” with the Argent bitch. Figured it out when he’d had her by the throat and took in her scent. He remembered it clinging on to a younger Derek, who was obviously hiding a relationship from the family. At the time they all laughed at it, his little sister thinking it was cute that her baby boy finally found a girl he liked and was embarrassed to tell them. They gave him some time, reckoned he’d come around to telling them when he was ready. Peter wishes they hadn’t – wishes that he’d had followed Derek and killed Kate before she could do any permanent damage.
But it’s a bit stupid to wish for something that’ll never happen, so he focuses on his anger instead. And he should feel sympathetic towards Derek, because he knows all the guilt the boy carries, but he doesn’t. Because Derek chose to hide it from them even after the fire, never once apologizing for what he had done.
Peter will use that to his advantage, though. He’ll save telling Derek he knows all about it for when he gets to be particularly difficult, and he’ll savor the broken look on Derek’s face when he does.
In the meantime, he pastes on a smile. He apologizes for killing Laura, he says he never meant to, and that he can never forgive himself for doing it. And it might have been true if the old Peter were still alive, but the new one? He couldn’t care less. Laura had the power he needed; it was as simple as that. She was better off dead anyway, he thinks – better that then seeing how pathetic Derek’s become, looking for companionship in damaged teenagers and seeking brotherhood in someone who wants nothing to do with him. Peter snorts when he thinks of Scott. If there’s anything he regrets, it is ever turning that boy. It wasn’t the best decision he made, seeing as how it caused all his plans to fall to shit.
He knows Derek is adamant about having Scott in his pack, though, so he helps draw Scott in. It’s harder than getting Derek to trust him (he’d describe it as pulling teeth), but he gets it done while using Isaac in the process, and clever little Stiles comes along as a bonus.
Peter can easily say Stiles is his favorite, even if he’s a cynical little shit for the most part. He can’t help but grin with too much teeth at the boy whenever he glares at him, distrust like a brick wall between them. The boy is too smart for his own good, but too stupid in that he decides to stay amongst a pack of wolves he has no place in. Though, when Peter thinks about how Stiles had no problem challenging him – as an Alpha at the time in the lacrosse field with Lydia, and even now with sarcastic remarks and questioning his motives – he realizes that Stiles can very well hold his own. Still, Stiles could do better than this crowd, even if he doesn’t seem to want to.
“I’m on to you, Peter,” Stiles says one day, with a squint and a stern finger pointed in his face. And Peter can’t help but catch the digit between his teeth with a mocking growl, eliciting a yelp of surprise and a wide-eyed look from Stiles. The boy turns a bright red and snatches the finger from his mouth, and promptly backs away with an embarrassed scowl.
“I’m still on to you,” he says, and with a raised eyebrow and a smirk Peter purrs,
“Sure you are, Stiles.”
And the boy huffs, turns his back on Peter (tsk tsk tsk, shame on you Stiles, turning your back on a predator) and leaves. (That fucking kid. The things Peter wants to do to him.)
Peter gets a kick out of harassing the boy after that. He’d stand a little too close to Stiles, or come up behind him when he’s least suspecting and laugh when Stiles lets out a startled yell. He’ll unnecessarily whisper information into the Stiles’ ear and lean over him – or on rare occasions, rest his chin on Stiles’ shoulder – if Stiles is doing research on the computer. It’s such a regular occurrence that the pack doesn’t really look surprised anymore when Peter actively needles Stiles, although Derek still gives him weird looks for it.
It takes a pretty gruesome attack from the Alpha pack for them to pull their heads out of their asses, but the pack finally starts to work together as a cohesive unit. Perhaps even as a family, the back of Peter’s mind supplies, and he shuts it up and squashes any warm (not burning…how strange) feelings that it may bring up because he doesn’t have space for that in him. He doesn’t want any space for that in him.
And even if he did want it, as much as they tolerated him, the pack doesn’t really want him there. He sees the discomfort in the way they stand whenever he’s around. (The pure hate in Lydia’s eyes when he’s in the same space as her. He can’t blame her for that one though.) It doesn’t hurt him one bit – in fact, he smiles and merrily watches them squirm.
Still, Peter watches Erica and Lydia bond over the fact that they practically have the boys wrapped around their finger. He watches Isaac stop acting skittish when people try to touch him. He watches Boyd and Stiles start a friendship that should have started a long time ago. He watches Scott tease Derek without any heat behind his words while Derek comes up with a sarcastic, but playful, quip for a comeback. He watches all of these kids come together, and can’t help but feel proud, because he was the one responsible for all of that.
He smothers the pride, however, when Stiles catches him smiling gently at a play fight between Derek and Scott. He stops to turn and sneer at the boy, which Stiles promptly rolls his eyes at. Peter briefly considers ripping those pretty little eyes out of his sockets but settles for invading the boy’s personal space. It does the trick, as Stiles is backing off with a scowl to revel his nephew’s.
“Just because you’re trying to intimidate me doesn’t mean I didn’t see you being a big softie,” the idiot still finds it in him to tease.
Peter narrows his eyes, “I’m not a good person, Stiles.”
He says it because apparently Stiles needs a fresh dose of fear. But the boy just raises a brow –Peter’s pretty sure it mirrors his own look of ridicule – and says,
“I’m not stupid, Peter. Of course I know you’re still an evil son of a bitch.”
And he walks away, just like that. And Peter laughs, and laughs, and can’t stop laughing even when Derek and Scott has stopped their little skirmish to look at him curiously.
It’s Christmas time when Peter figures that maybe now is about time to stage his coup, take his power while Derek’s defenses are down where Peter’s considered. But then Stiles sits beside him on the used, battered couch in Derek’s new apartment, handing over a cup of iced coffee.
Well, maybe not now, he thinks as he takes a sip.
And then the boy puts a Santa hat on him, and snaps a picture when he blinks. Peter grimaces,
Perhaps he will, after all.
Stiles lets out a laugh, sets down a square gift on his lap and pats him on the shoulder.
Peter raises his brows.
Then again, not now, he supposes.