Make Ships With Volatile Souls

[sickle_stories]

Fandom: Teen Wolf
Summary: Kate watches Derek and doesn't change her mind
Notes: Sequel to Love is Just a Bloodsport, A Banquet of Consequences, Sweet’s the Air With Curly Smoke (From All My Burning Bridges), The Smell of Something Burning, and Between Epiphany and Epitaph.  AU take on the Hale house fire and its consequences.  Title from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad.

Make Ships with Volatile Souls

I wanted to hurt you
but the victory is that I could not stomach it.

{Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken}

She hadn’t meant to change her mind.  Wasn’t sure she had.  She still smiled at the thought of the fire, at the knowledge of a good plan well-orchestrated, was still immensely satisfied with herself, but the fact was, she was sitting in a motel with her little werewolf.

And wasn’t that the problem.

She did change her mind, if only for an instant, but the others still set the fire without her.  She couldn’t stop them, didn’t want to anyway, but she drove to Beacon Hills High with a duffel stuffed with Chris’ clothes along with her own.  She sat in the principal’s office with knife on her ankle and wolfsbane in her pocket and lied.

She took her werewolf and ran, drove them out of town before the fire was out.  She smiled at the smoke and watched the ambulances rush past them.  One of them was for the sister, would have been for both of the teens - tragic accident at Beacon Hills High, that had been her idea too - if only she hadn’t changed her mind.

She didn’t change her mind.

Only the boy had to go and fall in love with her.

So here she was, sitting on a single bed in a motel somewhere in Nevada with Derek - the boy, the werewolf, the easy mark and exquisite fuck - and she didn’t know why.

She was pissed, though. 

She thought she would figure things out, that the pieces would fall together as she drove, that she would pull over somewhere out in the desert and -  What?  Kiss him?  Kill him?  Both?  Leave him by the side of the road or turn both of them back around?  Instead she just kept feeding the cigarette burner and checking Derek’s pulse, putting mile after mile between them and what she let happen, what she made happen, what she had wanted to happen and now couldn’t say.

So she tore at her food like she was the wolf instead of Derek, and was angry.  Angry at the arsonists for carrying through and angry at herself for not.  Angry at Derek for being so malleable, hating the way he had fallen apart under her, the way she had twisted him around her finger. 

She hated that she had burned her bridges along with Derek’s home.  She couldn’t go back to Beacon Hills, couldn’t let Derek go either.  Chris would find her, would catch up with her eventually, might not even suspect her, but he would have to come to her, and she wasn’t going to stop moving, not for a while. 

Kate stood up and walked to Derek, ran her fingers through his hair like she always did, then pulled.  His fangs were out and the edges of his irises were starting to glow.  She leaned down close until they were sharing breath and smiled, because the boy still loved her but the wolf wanted to go for the throat.  Kate couldn’t decide which made her happier. 

The job was done and the world was hers for the taking, hers to burn, one bridge at a time.  She was the alpha bitch with the omega orphan danging off her finger. 

She kissed him hard and he tasted bitter, wolfsbane ash and grief and the barest hint of hatred she could fan to life or smother.  Decisions played on her tongue and she changed her mind, didn’t change her mind, kissed him soft, felt his fangs turn to teeth and then she was doing the biting.

She went for the throat.

“Let’s go to New York.”