A/N: So I wrote an aftermath piece for 3x23. This can either take place right after Allison's death or perhaps after the finale. I didn't include Kira because I don't feel like she's part of the group yet and I don't think she'd feel the same either.

Title taken from an E.E. Cummings poem.

They gather in the McCall house. It is not a conscious move, not really. But its where Scott is, sitting hunched and wrecked on the couch. Stiles pressed close, side to side, no space between, an arm wrapped around his shoulders, his forehead pressed to Scott's hair. Brothers with no blood between them except for that time when they were ten and they'd cut their palms with an old utility knife and pressed their war wounds together. A pact made in childish devotion that grew into a bond no one quite foresaw.

Melissa is in the kitchen, braced over the sink while coffee brews and water boils for tea, looking for anything and everything to keep busy. To keep the pain and sadness away, the helplessness that there's nothing she can do for her son. Knowing she should call Rafael, but unable to hit SEND on her cell.

Lydia arrives with the sheriff. Quiet, broken. The tears dried, but the track lines visible in the running makeup. She drifts, listless, like she's not really there anymore, drawn by the two boys. Sits next to Scott and its the first he moves. Reaches out to her, tucks her head against his chest, closing his eyes tight as she begins to sob. Stiles reaches across, takes her hand, connecting a trio that had once been more. That had been five and then four and they'd thought they would never lose that. But she was gone, a cornerstone ripped out from the house they'd built and now they're tottering, unsure if they'll stabilize or fall into ruin.

Stilinski makes his way to Melissa, understanding her helplessness, feeling the same. They've whispered all the sorry's they can. Embraced them and tried to absorb their sorrow, but they're outsiders. The children in that familiar living room on that old couch are a unit, a pack that the adults have only begun to entrench on. There is nothing more they can do for them in this moment. So he takes her hand, catches her when she flings herself into his chest and helps the one person he can.

No one hears Derek enter. He is just simply there, walking quietly into the house. A nod of acknowledgment to the parents in the kitchen before he sits on the coffee table in front of the three teenagers, crowding the space. Touches his forehead to Scott's, sharing the pain and understanding. He of all of them knows what is going through the young alpha. What it is to hear the love even as she died and knowing it was all your fault. That if it weren't for them, those girls would be alive. Happy. Safe. But they're not. They're gone.

The twins slip in next. Heads down, wounds still healing. They enter the living room, but keep their distance. They are a part of Scott's pack, but they hold no right to grieve with the four huddled together, wrapped in Lydia's quiet sobs. They offer their presence, the strength of their bodies instead, as a guard if anything should come looking to hurt them while the alpha lets himself the weakness of grief so he can be strong. Later, when the sorrow will let him get off his knees.

Peter brings Isaac, the former for once, quiet. He pushes the younger boy into the room, but he only takes a few scattered steps before stopping, curling into himself and wondering how he could be welcomed by the ones already there. Its Derek that looks up and nods, makes room by his side, but Isaac takes the floor. Eases his shoulders until they touch the one that made him and the one that made him a brother. Lydia curls a hand into his hair, connecting him to the circle and he lays his head on her thigh and lets himself cry with them.

Peter takes charge of the kitchen, keeping a careful distance of the two already in the space, trying not to let the grief suffocate him. He had no love for Allison, but there had been respect. No, what bothers him is the reminder. The remembrance of all he'd lost and he wants to run away from this house and the claustrophobia of it. But instead he pulls mugs out of the cabinet, drops tea into the pot to steep, doing for them what no one had done for him when he'd lost everything.

Chris is the last to arrive. Opening the door and standing there, like he's unsure where he is or how he got there. Pale, shaking. Haunted. Melissa sees him first. Lets go of Stilinski and hesitantly approaches him. Calls out his name and its a ghost that looks out at her. A man who lost his heart months ago and now has lost his soul. She wants to reach out and hold him, but their meetings have never gone well. He'd always blamed her for her son, for the boy that put his only child in danger. Would he hate them more than ever now, for the daughter he'd never see again?

Before she can decide, make a move in either direction, he turns and looks in the living room. And falls against the entryway, clinging as his eyes burn, taking in the tableau before him. The teenagers and one adult, holding onto each other as they remembered one of their own. Grieved her as strongly as he did. Scott in the middle, holding them even as an echo of his healed asthma rattled in his chest. His head lifting to view the father of the girl he'd always believed he'd spend forever with. Human eyes stared at him, swollen, bloodshot, full of his pain and sorrow and guilt and Chris... Chris wanted to hate him, but... Allison had loved him. Loved him until the end and after. He'd been there with her like he had been with Victoria. Holding those vibrant women as something dark and unstoppable took them from the world. And he could not find it in him to hate. To turn into his father. Not in this moment. Perhaps later down the road, when the despair took him he'd turn against that boy, but right then he chose the path his daughter had made. He chose to love the monsters before him. See past their mutations for the strong, courageous teenagers they were. For the people that loved Allison just as much as him.

He moved forward and Lydia eased to the side, giving him her spot at Scott's side. He slipped an arm around the boy that could have become his son-in-law and the girl that had become a sister to his daughter and pulled them onto his shoulders and took their grief. Took and took when the others tightened around this new center. Took until he couldn't anymore. Until he'd fly apart or implode into a black hole. And then he lets go, lets it disperse back in the circle of them when Stilinski curls a hand around his son's shoulder. When Melissa leans in to kiss Isaac's head and then Scott's and stays there. When Peter and the twins shuffle forward, touching a hand to a shoulder, an arm. Sharing the grief, taking the load, but most of all, telling him he is not alone. That Allison had been loved and would be missed. Always.

I'd meant this to be a Scott piece, but then it turned into this ensemble thing and then it became a Chris thing I think. Hope ya'll like it.

Peace