When it happens, Derek isn't there.

He's gone.

He needed space and something to do, and Braeden was just the right kind of distraction that could take him away from Beacon Hills and all of their madness.

So, when it happens, he isn't there. He doesn't even hear about it until he wakes up to all the glass in his small apartment shattering in a single blow, in the middle of the night.

He hears about it from Stiles himself – pale, translucent and unequivocally dead.

X

Stiles doesn't want to haunt him, he just doesn't know where to go – he's seventeen, dead, and tied to the Nemeton in a way that won't let him leave.

He talks, sometimes. Derek isn't really sure if "talk" is the right way to describe it, Stiles says things, and Derek gets it – maybe he uses his voice, maybe he doesn't, Derek isn't sure. He just knows.

He knows Stiles is seventeen, more afraid than he had ever been while he was still alive, and he's terribly mad.

He thought, innocent kid that he was, that once he was dead, he would move on. Become nothing at all or see his mom again. Hang out for a few years with her while his dad didn't join them. He was kind of cool with that – living was so much work.

But, you know, it didn't happen.

He died and came back once, the Nemeton is in his soul, and he can't leave. He's not sure what it is exactly that he can't leave – clearly, he's left Beacon Hills behind, but he's still tied to something, and he has to solve that to finally understand what comes next – and hewants to go to the next level.

Stiles, to no surprise of Derek's, really – is terribly bad at being a ghost.

X

Derek wants to know how Stiles died, but Stiles doesn't want to tell him. Derek doesn't really know what to do with that – he had never seen a ghost before Stiles. He won't say he thought they didn't exist, because it's kind of hard to discredit any kind of creature when you're a werewolf yourself, but ghosts had always been on his list for 'potentially imaginary'.

Derek asks once, and he has to replace all the glass in his bedroom windows – again. Stiles kind of apologizes, but doesn't really go back to the subject.

He doesn't feel like sharing the particulars from his death, and Derek thinks he may have to respect that.

Derek gives Stiles (and himself, really) three days to adjust. He tries asking again, he tries reasoning that Derek may be able to help Stiles move on if the teen tells him how he died, how it happened, but nothing can make him say a single word about it.

When Derek is at his wit's end, he finally breaks and calls Scott.

X

Scott's voice is frantic when he answers, blabbering about Derek coming back and helping them find Stiles because Stiles has been missing for four days.

You know, the four days he's been hanging out – dead – with Derek.

Scott doesn't know Stiles is dead.

Derek hangs up and stares at Stiles.

All the teen does is look back, and they stare, stare and stare.

X

Derek feels guilty when he has to admit to himself that he was hoping, even if only a little bit, that Stiles would stay behind when he hopped into his car and drove all night and half the next morning to get to Beacon Hills.

How, exactly, is he going to tell Scott that he knows where Stiles is – not his body, but Stiles – because Stiles is dead and talking in his head?

How is he going to tell the Sheriff that his only son is dead?

He gets out of the car and knocks on the McCalls' door three times.

By his side, Stiles just stares. Pale and unchanging, eyes dull and sad and awful, and Derek starts to think that maybe he is a little bit dead too, or he wouldn't be able to actually see Stiles as he does.

X

He had known perfectly well that he wasn't in love with Braeden when he decided to follow her out of Beacon Hills – she was good in bed, she had helped him overcome his limitations when he was more breakable than usual, and she didn't love him either.

It was kind of the perfect scenario for him to escape and not feel guilty about it for breaking someone's heart or leaving with no excuse and being labelled a coward.

Searching for the Desert Wolf wasn't that much fun, though, and soon they separated.

Derek got a small apartment and decided to give himself some time to come to terms with what he was, what he could be, who he wanted to become.

He wanted to find himself.

Now, months later, he needed to find Stiles.

Well, Stiles's body. Stiles himself was right beside him.

X

For the ghost of a dead teen with ADHD, Stiles sure knew how to be quiet.

Derek entered Melissa's living-room, and took a deep breath, because everyone was there – Isaac, back from France, and Jackson back from London, and Scott, True Alpha and worrying, and Kira, insecure and unsure and biting her nails, and Malia, out of place and nervous and fidgety, and Chris Argent, looking pained at one more teen disappearing, and Melissa, eyes worried, but keeping a strong façade for her son and her friend, and the Sheriff, eyes crazed from lack of sleep and too much caffeine and finally Lydia, pale and determined (and clearly already knowing that Stiles was not alive. She knew. Derek had only to look to realize that she knew).

Stiles was right by his side, and he stared at the Sheriff more than all the others.

They organized search parties again, and Derek only ever nodded when someone told him to do anything, and his voice wouldn't work – he couldn't tell them. He couldn't.

That night, back in that thrice-damned loft, Derek stared at walls and sighed a lot.

This is going to kill him, Stiles said. Or maybe thought. Derek wasn't quite sure anymore.This is going to kill my dad. He can't function without me. He could barely function without her. Now I'm gone too.

Derek didn't answer, because he didn't know what to say – it was, after all, the truth. With Stiles being dead, they might as well bury the Sheriff too.

X

The next day, Derek and Lydia were the ones looking for a body – all the others were still trying to look for Stiles.

Nothing strange had happened. There were no new creatures, no newcomers, no hunters, or wolves, or Kitsunes, or Oni, or whatever the hell The Sheriff's Deputy was – nothing.

Stiles had been fine. He still had some trouble with the Darkness left behind from the Nogitsune, but he had been fine. Things with Malia were fine, and things with Scott were fine, and he had his projects, but he was fine.

How did you die? How the hell did you manage to die when everything's finally fine in this fucking town?

Stiles stares and stares.

Derek assumes he should be thankful there's no broken glass that night.

X

It doesn't occur to him to look in his old place because there isn't even the idea of a house there anymore.

Maybe the structure in the basement is still solid enough, but the house is gone, tore down by the city, and what the hell would Stiles be doing there, anyway?

I came because you called.

Derek looks at him and frowns, because he hadn't called Stiles. He wouldn't. Out of all the people he'd call to meet him in the creepy remains of his house, Stiles was very, very low on his list.

I know that now.

His voice is hollow – if a dead voice can be anymore hollow than being dead, anyway.

You may want to look for Peter, you know.

That gives Derek pause, because Peter is never good news. Double crossing and triple crossing anyone in his way, and why would Stiles believe Peter?

Stiles didn't.

But he did believe Derek. He wanted to help, he always did.

No one had heard from Derek for months, everyone was a bit worried, of course Stiles would come when he called.

Derek walks forward, following the pale shape in front of him – Stiles is leading him to his grave.

Derek left a message, and Stiles came through, because that's what Stiles does – he comes through. He'll help you when you're a new werewolf, and he'll stay with you when you're dying of wolfsbane poisoning even if you're mean and ungrateful, and he'll keep you above water even if he could drown himself with the effort, and he'll miss his game and mess up things with his dad to make sure everyone's okay. He'll help save the guy who hurt the girl he loved, and he'll fix the girl who killed her whole family. Stiles will make sure his dad is healthy, he'll help the new creature find out what he is, and he'll deal with his darkness on his own, because he doesn't want anyone to worry about the guilt he carries for killing his best friend's one true love. He'll come when you call, even if it isn't really you, because that's what Stiles does: he comes when you call.

Derek wants to call him now, but he knows better than to do that – there's no one in this part of the preserve, there isn't even a squirrel around here. There's an unmarked little plot of land, though. Just big enough that a tall and lanky and skinny teen would fit in, stepped on enough that someone who wasn't looking for it wouldn't notice it, but Derek did, because Stiles is right beside him, looking down.

Derek kind of thinks that if Stiles were alive, he would be crying.

You could have saved me.

Derek digs halfheartedly, at first, not really wanting to dig deep enough to find anything. Maybe if Stiles isn't in this shallow grave there's a way to reverse this.

He wanted you to come, he thought you'd come if I called.

He closes his eyes when he feels the first little bit of plastic get stuck in his claws, and he pulls back and tries to get the sweat away from his eyes. Sweat. Tears. He doesn't really know – everything tastes of salt, and guilt and regret.

I didn't call, though. I wouldn't really. He got angry. And then he killed me.

His body is strangely preserved – maybe there's a spell, maybe there's something else, maybe he just can't see straight, because he's feeling dizzy when he pulls Stiles out of the earth and stares and stares. How is he going to tell the Sheriff? How is he going to tell the others? How is he going to live with himself, knowing that indirectly he caused this?

Funny thing, though. He thought I was being brave by not calling you, and I wasn't. I really, really wasn't. I just got used to knowing that no one comes when I call.

Derek stares at him and he wants to tell the dead body, or maybe the ghost beside him that he would have come – but he can't.

It's strangely hard to lie to the dead.

X

He doesn't stay.

Stiles follows him back out of Beacon Hills, silent and accusing by his side.

You could have saved me, he hears, again and again.

Derek knows.

He leaves, runs away again, like the coward that he apparently can't stop himself from becoming, and he… goes. Just goes, until his own existence is as irrelevant as he is.

A lot of people call it giving up, he kind of thinks he's just finally living up to what he set himself up to be.

Maybe he'll die soon, and then he'll find out what it's like to be Stiles, after all.

X

(Stiles is the one who finds him, pale and asleep, in his old loft, and no one knows how he got there.

He doesn't wake up when they call. He doesn't answer when they scream. He just sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

We have to wake him up. We have to.

No one has answers this time, though, they don't know what's wrong, and so all that is left to Stiles is stare and stare.

And hope Derek wakes up.)