“We’re terrible without them. This is why we never would have worked.”
Lydia lifts her head, looking determined and in control even while she clutches an arm across the gash running from hip to rib, soaking her blouse.
“And, really Stiles, what does it say about you that Peter is the one who makes you less terrible?”
Stiles rolls his eyes at her, grinning with blood-stained teeth, “Yeah, thanks for the insight, Lydia.”
He’s working as fast as possible, but it’s not enough. Looking up at a treacherous sky, he knows. “Fuck! I can’t, we’re losing the moon. Lydia...”
“Again?” Her eyes frantically trace across his face as she lifts the curved dagger.
“Again.” And he keeps his eyes on hers as she sinks it into his throat.
It’s not a quick thing, with Lydia and Cora. They’re both reluctant to trust, sharp edges. They dance around each other, watching, gauging interest, for months. It’s a slow build of strong foundations. It’s brick after brick of realizing they can rely on each other, that this one will stay. It’s cautious maybe-dates that turn into frenzied kisses and games of who cares more and less at the same time. It’s the eventual understanding that neither of them are going anywhere.
Peter and Stiles are the opposite. It’s swift and messy and too intense, too soon. They sink metaphorical claws in, bound up by loyalty and lust and the finally, finally of finding someone who can keep up. They drown in each other and it’s too loud and too quiet by turns. They don’t stop crashing into the most beautiful of disasters.
Jackson leaves and Boyd and Erica leave. Deaton retires and takes Scott with him. Chris and Allison and Isaac finally go and then Derek comes home. They have an odd little pack of five people, three wolves, no alpha.
Derek builds a big house where the pack stays most of the time. He bitches about the sex stink they leave all over the place, but it’s difficult to take him seriously while he’s practically purring on the sofa, surrounded by the four of them.
Every now and then a pack or an alpha with delusions of grandeur will come onto their territory, thinking it an easy claim. That usually ends with Stiles and Lydia stumbling out of the preserve, magics stronger and nails dirty and hair wild.
Over the years, the rumours grow, and the challenges for Beacon Hills ebb to nothing.
So when the coven comes, it’s a surprise. They’re ruthless in the same way Stiles and Lydia are, which means there’s no drawn out chase. There’s no villain monologue or complicated plan. Just the drained husks of three Hale wolves at the base of a Nemeton howling with fury.
They can’t go back very far. Time is linear and unforgiving, and all the leeway they have is twelve minutes and nineteen seconds before the witches complete their failed sacrifice. It’s not enough time to contact Derek or Peter or Cora (they tried), not enough time to make it to the Nemeton (they tried), not enough time to summon any ally in the preserve to aid them (they tried and tried and tried and tried). It’s enough time to kill the handful of coven members they appear in front of, although that usually ends up with Lydia being gutted and Stiles’ spine snapping as he’s thrown against a rock.
They start using as much of the twelve minutes as they can to plan. They kill the witches as swiftly as possible, researching snippets of a spell, of anything that can help them. They spend precious minutes and seconds cobbling together the correct lunar ritual. They go back again and again, until the coven becomes noise in the background of the waxing gibbous moon. They go back and they figure out a fraction more and they die and they start over.
“I think I have it. I think I, shit, Lydia, I think this could work. Well, it’ll work or make things a whole, whole lot worse.”
Lydia huffs her hair out of the way, nudging aside a crumpled witch with distaste on her face.
“How much worse is worse, Stiles?”
He shrugs and wrinkles his nose, “...Like... apocalypse worse?”
She sighs deeply and returns the shrug, “See? This is why we need them. They’d probably stop us.”
And then she grins sharply as she pulls the dagger across his neck.
“So tell me your plan.” They'd gotten the initial witch disposal down to a little under two minutes and change.
“Gonna tell you while I work.” He digs his fingers deep into the ground beneath them, until he feels the roots that spread under the whole of the preserve.
“We die and come back. And back again. But our wolves don’t? Why not? What have we got that they don’t?”
Lydia’s brow furrows while she follows Stiles’ lead, ruining her manicure in the dirt. She slowly raises up her head to look at him, mouth in a tight line.
“...You want to kill the Nemeton and bring it back with us. You want to take the only other thing with blood magic soaked in, kill it, and hope it comes back with us instead of murdering every living thing in a fifty mile radius.”
He lights up, “Exactly!”
She blinks at him as something like conscience tries to spark to life within her. Then she imagines a lifetime without Cora, and she pulls a root out of the ground screaming while Stiles’ eyes pulse gold and all she can smell is fire.
Peter closes his eyes as the inner circle of the coven approaches. They don’t gloat, they don’t speak at all. From the moment they appeared, every action has been calculated and economical. He can feel Cora beside him, seething. Derek uses the limited range he has to hold Peter’s hand and squeeze hard, Peter’s jaw clenching and throat burning at the fear and resignation.
He feels a shock behind him, and thinks This is it, no coming back from this one, when the coven leader begins to wail. His eyes open wide and he presses back hard against the trunk of the Nemeton. Roots and bramble vines rise up from the earth, out from the trees, tearing the coven apart like ragdolls. The whole forest rages and feasts.
Peter watches the destruction in wonder, and feels laughter bubbling up inside. This carnage has his mate’s name written all over it.
Sixteen minutes later, Stiles and Lydia tumble into view. Lydia only has eyes for Cora, while Stiles swaggers over to Peter and Derek, smirk firmly in place.
“You’re going to be insufferable about this, aren’t you?” Peter rubs his wrists and then pulls Stiles in close, sighing as he breathes in blood and spark and mate and pack.
“Died for you, babe. Died for you so much. You owe me romance now. Midnight picnics and shit. Flowers! Chocolates! Fine leather goods! I want a club jacket.”
Cora rolls her eyes hard and begins to drag Lydia away. Derek huffs and follows them with a clap on Stiles’ shoulder.
Stiles lets them go ahead a bit and turns to Peter, hand on his wolf’s chest so he can feel the heart beating below. “I’d end the world for you.”
And Peter draws him in tightly once more, foreheads pressed together and mouths nearly touching.
They share breath while the last of the coven is drawn underground and the forest quiets to nothing but the rustling of the wind through leaves in the moonlight.