Disclaimer: See initial chapter.

A/N: Inspired by the following comment by, RollieZCheezKake: "How about Thomas and Ruby gets into an argument over a toy or something, and they eventually work it out through a fluffy moment." I think this is off the mark, so I may have to try to do this again. This features Stiles with the twins. I hope that's okay.

A/N2: Thank you simplyn2deep for catching the double-paste. I have fixed it.

Thomas stomps his foot, and uses the hand not clutching what looks to Stiles like a torn bit of cloth, to sign the words, 'No! Mine! Leave alone!'

Ruby glares at her brother and launches herself at him with fingernails turned to claws. She tears at her brother's arm, trying to take the cloth from him, and for the life of him, Stiles can't figure out why either of them want the ratty bit of cloth.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. One moment the two had been sitting side-by-side, Ruby coloring in the book that her grandpa had gotten as a gift to spoil her, Thomas practicing writing the letter R in the primer he'd gotten from Isaac, and Stiles had felt that it would be okay for him to sneak into the kitchen to start lunch. The next thing he knew, there was a loud cry, and Stiles ran into the living room to find that they were both on opposite sides of the room, circling, and snarling at each other.

The item that they are fighting over looks like something that they'd dug out of the trash, and Stiles can't see anything special about it.

"Let go!" Ruby shouts, and she claws her brother's arm, drawing blood, but Thomas merely takes a step back, holding onto the scrap of cloth as though his life depends on it.

"That's mine, Thomas, give it to me," Ruby says, slashing at her brother.

Thomas signs, 'No. Mine,' and clutches it closer to his chest.

Stiles has never seen them like this before. Sure, they've fought before, according to his father, and Dr. Deaton, it's common for siblings to fight, but they've never fought with each other like this, and never over something as silly as a bit of blue cloth. He's momentarily at a loss for what to do as both children ignore his shouted order to, "Stop."

Ruby swipes at her brother, completely ignoring Stiles' voice. Thomas turns his shoulder into his sister's attack, taking another claw to the back, making Stiles dizzy with worry, and at the sight of the fresh, freely flowing blood that seeps through the tears in the little boy's tee-shirt.

Stiles has never had much of a stomach for blood, and living with a pack of werewolves hasn't changed that. If anything, he's gotten more squeamish. Even with supernatural healing, Stiles has still had to patch up far more gruesome injuries than he'd like, and he has a feeling that, when this fight is over, he's going to have some major patching up to do. Not only of the twins, but of himself, because it's clear that he's going to have to step in before the two tear each other limb from limb.

Both children are partially transformed, and, though he knows that it's a risk going in between the two of them, and that potential bloody injuries are really the least of his worries, Stiles knows that he doesn't really have a choice. If he lets the fight continue on the way that it's going, he's worried that they'll end up killing each other.

Taking his life in his hands, Stiles draws in a deep breath, and wades into the thick of the fight. He whistles, the sound, harsh and loud in his own ears, doesn't even faze the children. They continue fighting, a whirl of tangled limbs, and partial cat appendages. Stiles thinks he sees a tail, and the furry tip of a bloodied ear.

Thomas still has the torn cloth in his hand, stubbornly holding it in a tight fist, keeping it away from Ruby's frenetically scratching claws.

'This wouldn't be happening if Derek, or even Scott or Isaac was home,' Stiles can't help thinking a little bitterly.

The twins both deferred to any of the three wolves in almost everything. Ruby occasionally fought her Papa over bedtime when something that she wanted to watch was on TV, and Thomas had the big bad wolf wrapped around his little finger. Now that he was no longer terrified of Derek, Thomas was starting to learn how to manipulate his Papa into getting what he wanted. Both could easily get away with murder.

All three wolves were at an important week long summit for were folk, though, and wouldn't be back for another three days. Stiles regrets telling Derek that he could handle the twins on his own. Hindsight has definitely decided to bite him in the ass.

"Ruby, Thomas, stop." Stiles' attempt to raise his voice above the din that the twins are making is unimpressive.

He tries to channel his father's most authoritative tone of voice and takes a deep breath. Placing a hand on each child, and biting back a curse when a claw catches him in the side, Stiles ignores the flash of pain, and draws up to his full height.

He's never going to be as impressive, or as hulking in presence as Derek, but the twins are much smaller than he is, and maybe if he acts the part of an alpha, it'll work and they'll stop fighting so he can patch them all up. If not, he's in for a world of hurt, and the rest of the pack is liable to come home to a bloody mess in the living room.

"Enough!" Stiles feels like he's roaring, and, though he takes another claw to his already burning side, the fighting ceases, and the living room is filled with the sounds of sobbing and heavy breathing.

Both children sag against his legs, panting. Thomas is holding onto Stiles' leg with the same hand he's got the bit of blue cloth in, keeping it safe, and Ruby's got an arm wrapped tightly around Stiles' other leg. Her grip is as tight as a vice. He couldn't move if he wanted to, and though he's done nothing more than shout, and attempt to pull the children apart, he's winded, and his side aches, and throbs painfully with each beat of his heart.

"Fu-dge." Stiles breathes the word out, and though his side feels like it's on fire, he places his hands on each of the children's heads, hoping that it'll ground them until he can get his breathing under control.

He closes his eyes, and focuses on his breathing, because the last thing he needs right now is a full-blown panic attack. Both children are hurt and bleeding, and he can feel blood flowing rather freely from the wounds in his side. The twins will heal supernaturally, wounds knitting together relatively quickly, but if any of the wounds are deep, they'll need to be cleaned and dressed.

Breathing under control, Stiles opens his eyes and fights off a wave of dizziness. Spots of bright sparking light crowd his vision, and the sound of ringing invades his ears, and for a moment he worries that he's going to faint. He bites his tongue, and waits out the dizziness.

"Sit." Stiles doesn't dare lose the tone he'd managed to emulate from his father, in spite of his surprise that, not only had he managed to conjure it up, but also that it had worked as well as Derek's growled commands did.

The twins loose their hold on him so quickly that Stiles stumbles forward. He just manages to catch himself on the edge of the armchair, and he leans against it for support. The twins scramble up onto the couch as quickly as possible, and sit on opposite ends of it, keeping as far away from each other as they can.

Tears glistening in their eyes, and clinging to their lashes, they glare at each other. It's a rather pathetic looking picture, and Stiles doesn't know if he's got the physical or emotional energy to deal with whatever the hell is going on between the two.

His side throbs painfully, in sync with each beat of his heart, and Stiles worries that maybe he'd gotten more than just a few scratches, that maybe the injuries are deeper than he thought they were. He doesn't have time to assess his own injuries right now, though, and a quick, cursory exam of each child reveals that their wounds, while bloody, and numerous, are superficial. Some of them are even starting to heal on their own.

"I want answers." Stiles clings resolutely to the borrowed tone of voice, wondering if this was as hard for his father to maintain as it is for him.

The twins stop glaring at each other long enough to look at him, and Stiles presses his fingers into the plush chair to keep from caving at the trembling lips, and the stifled sobs, and the watery eyes that he's met with. He squares his jaw, and lifts an eyebrow, refusing to give into the urge to offer comfort until after he knows what the hell was going on, and why the two were engaged in a bloody battle over a piece of torn cloth smaller than a tissue.

'Mine,' Thomas signs. It's a small gesture, though, and the little boy's fingers tighten protectively around his treasure. He casts a look in his sister's direction, breath shuddering in his chest, before returning his pleading gaze to Stiles.

"No, it's not." Ruby sniffs, tears threatening to fall as she looks at Stiles, bottom lip trembling.

Stiles narrows his eyes at the little girl, and she pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth, and swallows down another sniffle. Her claws retract, and her cat ears recede. Thomas's tail disappears, and he blinks back tears.

Stiles knows now why his father often did this in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in front of him. It had to be what kept him from saying something, and gave him a handy prop to help prolong the painful silence that often saw Stiles spilling his guts to his father when he was younger. Silence, Stiles is quickly discovering, is a powerful tool for interrogation.

Ignoring the knifing pain in his side, Stiles watches with an almost cool detachment as Ruby squirms in her seat, and casts furtive glances in Thomas's direction. The little boy, fingers wrapped around the blue cloth, shoulders hunched, looks defeated, but determined.

Before Thomas can finish signing, 'It is, I found it,' Ruby's launching herself across the length of the couch, and Stiles can't get there fast enough to keep the already torn cloth from tearing even further.

Thomas starts silently sobbing, pressing the remaining section of cloth that he's managed to keep hold of, small as a postage stamp, to his nose and rubbing it. Ruby's grinning in triumph, holding the ratty piece of cloth up to her face and breathing it in, and Stiles has to fight off another bout of dizziness as he makes his way over to the couch. He falls heavily to the couch, and positions himself between the twins, though they're no longer fighting.

Thomas presses himself to Stiles' side, heedless of his adoptive father's injuries, and holds onto him as hard as he'd been holding onto the cloth that he and Ruby had been fighting over. It's hard for Stiles to be mad at either of them as Ruby settles in beside him, too, a low, content rumble coming from her chest. It's something that Derek does, too, after a particularly stressful experience is over. It's comforting, and Stiles thinks he understands what's happened, but he has to confirm it before he can properly address, and then fix it, and then patch himself up.

"Is that a piece of Papa Derek's tee-shirt that Daddy was going to patch up?" Stiles asks, keeping his voice quiet and even, another tone that he's borrowing from his father, knowing first hand how well it works.

Ruby and Thomas both stiffen. Thomas nods, but Ruby draws a deep breath.

"Thomas did it. He tore up Papa's shirt," Ruby confesses, voice hard and accusatory. "He didn't share."

Hot tears wet Stiles' damaged side, and Thomas's silent sobs increase in intensity at his sister's words. Stiles tries hard not to let the pain he's in color his tone of voice. His heart aches, and he's still dizzy, and Derek won't be home for another three days.

In spite of her harsh words, Ruby's close to tears, too, and Stiles realizes that all of them are missing Derek, and it's up to him to be the adult here. He doesn't want to, because he's hurt, and when he thinks about Derek, he can feel the coolness of his partner's side of the bed. It's empty, and Stiles is alone with a houseful of the strays that he's taken in, and he feels abandoned. He knows it's irrational and that a week is just a blip in time, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

He pushes aside the gaping hole in his own heart, and pulls the twins close, comforting them as best he can. "Sh, it's okay. Papa's going to be home before you know it."

Ruby clutches at Stiles' arm. "Promise?"

Stiles rubs Ruby and Thomas's backs, relieved as both relax against him. "I promise. I know that a week seems like a really long time, but the week is almost over. He'll be back before the quarter moon."

Ruby sniffs and buries her face against his side. "Mama and first Papa never came back," she says quietly, and Thomas's grip on Stiles tightens, making Stiles see stars until he's able to adjust to the pain, and breathe through it. "They promised, too. And they left, and they never came back, and we never even had anything to 'member their scent by. We got lots of stuff to 'member you and Papa's scents."

'Not forget,' Thomas signed against Stiles' side. 'Afraid.'

Stiles closed his eyes, and wondered how the hell his father had coped with his own, and Stiles' pain, after Stiles' mother had died. How had he handled all of Stiles' insecurities? How had he managed to push aside his own pain to put that of his son's first? One day soon, Stiles was going to let his father know just how much he appreciated everything that he'd done for him over the years, now that he finally understood. At least in part.

"I can't promise that nothing will ever happen to your father and I," Stiles says, hating the truth of his words, and the need to say them, but, even if it would be so much easier to do, he refuses to lie to his children. They've already been hurt too much in their young lives. "But I can promise that, if we have to leave, like Papa had to go on this trip, we'll always do everything in our power to come back to you. We love you, and nothing is going to change that."

He presses a kiss to the top of each of their heads, and holds them until their tears dry. More exhausted than he'd been during finals week, and during their latest battle, Stiles pushes himself off of the couch, and wincing as the movement jars the scratches in his side, he leads both children into the bedroom that he and Derek share.

As he opens the dresser drawer that contains Derek's tee-shirts, Stiles wonders why this hadn't occurred to him before Ruby and Thomas had gotten into a bloody fight over a torn corner of one of Derek's old tee-shirts. It had occurred to his dad, even before Stiles' mother had died, to give Stiles something of hers to hold, and bury his face into when things got really hard, and Stiles couldn't think or breathe, or see past the pain of losing her.

Many a panic attack had been averted or assuaged by his mother's favorite pink sweater. Though it's become well worn from use over the years, Stiles still has his mother's pink sweater, and, if he presses his face into it, and breathes deeply, he can still smell her scent - lilacs, vanilla, and lemon.

Stiles remembers every nuance of the day that his father gave the sweater to him. He'd been a little older than the twins at the time, and his mother was very sick, his father was always sad, and Stiles was just confused. His father had brought Stiles into his room, much as Stiles was doing now, and had opened his parents' walk-in closet, waving Stiles in with a sad smile. He'd let his son pick out one item of his mother's clothing to keep with him whenever he wanted his mother to be close, and couldn't be near her for whatever reason.

Stiles does that for Ruby and Thomas now, trying not to think about his mother, about the possibility of losing Derek much too soon. He lets, first Thomas, and then, Ruby, choose one of Derek's tee-shirts to keep, and he silently thanks his father for instinctively knowing that this was what Stiles needed all of those years ago. His simple act was still benefiting Stiles over a decade later as Stiles passed it on to his children.

"Whenever you miss your Papa, all you have to do is press your face into his tee-shirt, and imagine his arms wrapped around you in a great big hug, and he'll be with you, here," Stiles says, repeating his father's words to him, almost verbatim, and pressing the fingers of his left hand to Thomas's chest, and those of his right hand to Ruby's. Both children are watching him with wide, serious eyes, their chosen tee-shirts clutched tightly in their hands.

"And here," Stiles finishes, moving his fingers from the children's hearts to their heads, and smiling at the way that Thomas's face scrunches up as he processes Stiles' words, and the way that Ruby hugs Derek's tee-shirt like a teddy bear. "This way your Papa will always be with you, even when he's away."

Thomas places a hand on Stiles' side, a look of concern on his face, and then on Stiles' arm, and he signs, 'Daddy, too.'

Blinking back tears, and fighting the urge that he has to assure Thomas that it isn't necessary for him to have one of Stiles' tee-shirts, too, Stiles offers the little boy a smile, and opens his drawer. He watches, at first amused as Thomas takes his time looking for the shirt of Stiles' that he wants, but, as he pushes tee-shirt after tee-shirt aside, sifting through the contents of Stiles ' drawer, it dawns on Stiles that this is important to the little boy. Every bit as important to him as that little piece of Derek's tee-shirt had been when he'd fought, tooth and nail, to keep it.

Stiles bites his fist when Thomas finally decides on the shirt that he wants to keep. He buries his face into it, and smiles at Stiles, signing, 'Daddy.'

It's a shirt that Stiles hasn't worn in years, but one that, when he had worn it, he'd rarely taken it off. It's peppered with tiny holes, and the pits are stained gray with sweat. The image of the bat signal has faded over time, but it's still there, and he remembers with fondness, the day that he'd gotten it, back before he'd known about werewolves, and the supernatural. Back when he'd been an innocent geek with dreams of making out with Catwoman, or Batman, or both of them at the same time.

He laughs when Ruby's nose wrinkles up at another of his well worn shirts, tossing it aside in favor of a plaid shirt that Derek has been begging him to get rid of for awhile now. She grins at him, and breathes deeply of, first his, and then Derek's, shirt, a look of bliss on her face that Stiles would've associated with drugs had she been a little older.

It's insane how happy this simple act has made the twins, and Stiles wonders if parenting will get any easier as time goes on, or if he'll always be a bumbling idiot about it, relying, too late, on what he can remember of his own upbringing.

"I'm sorry I scratched you, Daddy," Ruby says, lightly fingering Stiles' side.

It still hurts, but the bleeding has stopped, and the scratches aren't as deep as he'd feared they were. He won't need stitches, or butterfly bandages.

"It's okay, honey," Stiles says, cupping her face in his hand. "Just…"

"I won't do it again, I promise, Daddy." Ruby hugs him a little too hard, but Stiles doesn't say anything. Thomas signs an apology and joins the hug.

A few short hours later, his side is still sore, but he's cleaned the scratches, and checked for bites (there are none) and, with Ruby and Thomas' over enthusiastic help, he's well bandaged, and lunch is a success. Nap time goes by without a hitch, both children, and Stiles, exhausted by the emotional aftermath of the afternoon's events.

When Derek calls to check in with him, and the children, Stiles doesn't tell him what happened, knowing that it'll only cause him to worry and leave the summit too soon, and that could potentially result in dire consequences for the pack, and Beacon Hills. He'll explain it to him when he gets back, and they'll discuss, together, how to handle future events that take one of them away from home for an extended period of time.

For now, it's enough to hear Derek's voice, and to hold their children while they tell their Papa that they miss him, each rubbing a tee-shirt underneath their noses, and to kiss each of them turn as Derek reminds them that he loves them very much, and that he'll be back before the quarter moon rises.