Author's Note:
This is truly a labor of love. Updates will be a bit sporadic, but I do actually have a few chapters completely written so hopefully I won't keep you all waiting for long. I owe a lot to the lovely Sam and the wonderful Westley. (deputydarrish & lovelessayase on tumblr!)
Christine Felicity Hale is born to Talia Meghan Hale on the first of August 1985. The section on her birth certificate reading "father" is left blank, though Talia knows exactly who it is. It is for her protection, her daughter's protection, and her daughter's father's protection that no record of him is attached to her.
-x-
She's almost two years old when her mother marries the omega who broke off from his pack in Sacramento. He's a good man, a good wolf, and that is all that matters in the end. She doesn't remember this-it's only years later, long after his death (and her mother's) that she finds out that he came to their family after her birth. That doesn't matter to her either. In the time that he was alive, he was her father as much as any man.
Within the year that follows, she watches her mother's stomach swell in gentle curves. Watches her glow with the gentle smiles.
Laura is born that July, and Christine's life changes with that moment.
-x-
It's not like she notices at first. She's a toddler when her sister is born, and she's used to the coming and going of omegas and breakaway family packs. But her mother's attention is less on her and more on her sister.
Christine is not a wolf. She doesn't need her mother's constant attention in quite the same way as Lore.
Derek is born when Christine is four, on Christmas Day. Their aunt makes werewolf Jesus jokes that year and every year following, and it makes Uncle Peter grin his wickedly creepy grin every time.
She doesn't notice that her mother and stepfather spend less time focused on her and more on her siblings until she's entering kindergarten.
It doesn't matter though. She knows her mother loves her.
Right?
-x-
Christine goes by Felicity in school, wears her middle name like a shield. Like a superhero identity. This is who I am outside the supernatural.
She's several grades ahead of her peers, having spent her time alone scouring over books and researching on the internet, devouring knowledge as if it would fill some hole in her she didn't know she had.
She's wickedly smart, and she knows it.
She is in the summer between seventh and eighth grades when Cora is born. She's ten years old.
-x-
Of her siblings, growing up, Christine is closest to Derek. He's the quietest of her siblings, and could give Christine a run for her money in his potential if he had the chance.
But he doesn't. He won't.
Her siblings are home schooled until middle school out of necessity, to keep the secret. They don't have teachers in Beacon Hills in the know, and it means her siblings are taught by their father while her mother does her Alpha duties, and Christine is in school.
On nights when Derek is free from werewolf duties, he and Christine go up on the roof and she teaches him things that are beyond their father's scope of knowledge. It doesn't happen often, though it does happen more and more as he learns control.
Christine graduates Beacon Hills High School when she is fifteen years old. Derek won't go to school until the following year.
She almost waits.
-x-
Stanford is like a dream. There's a small pack among the teaching staff consisting of an Alpha and two betas, and they welcome her with open arms. She's a human born to one of the country's most famous Alphas, and it makes her some sort of prize.
She wows them with her talent, with her love of learning and tinkering and doing. She completes her first degree in two years, but continues on for more.
-x-
She's nineteen when she gets the call from Laura. It's probably just minutes ahead of her mother's attempt to call her, but Laura knew just as much as anyone how close Christine and Derek had always been.
"Paige is dead. Something happened, and she got bit, and Derek had to snap her neck."
She clears a week of classes away, takes time off her work study.
She goes to her brother's side.
-x-
Leaving Derek this time is one of the hardest things she's ever had to do.
"Derek. I'm coming back, okay? I have to finish out this degree, and then I am coming home. For good. Okay? And I'll visit, as much as I can."
And she does. She's back every weekend that she can scavenge enough time without sacrificing her work study, actually taking the money her mother offers instead of trying to make it on her own.
-x-
It's exactly four weeks before graduation when she gets a call from her Laura in the middle of the night.
"Chrissy... Felicity. Hunters burned down the house. Uncle Peter's in a coma and he's not healing. It's just me and Derek left. Don't go home. It's not safe. We're taking off."
"What? No, Lore-"
"Felicity. I will contact you as soon as it's safe. I'm going to take good care of Derek, okay? I'm... I'm the Alpha now."
And Felicity can hear it in her voice, the capital A. The honesty. The terror.
"No, I'll meet you somewhere. We can hide toget-"
"Felicity. You're in danger simply for being related to us. They will kill you if they find out you're alive."
"That I'm-what?"
"I can't explain right now. Stay away from Beacon Hills. Don't try and find us. I will call you when it's safe."
And before she can protest, there is a dial tone in her ear and a ringing in her head.
-x-
She calls the sheriff from an encrypted phone line early in the morning.
"Stilinski."
"... I think... I was home for the weekend."
"What? Who is this...?"
"I... Christine Hale was home for the weekend. Okay? She didn't make it out."
"There's no evidence-"
"I was home for the weekend, Sheriff Stilinski. Please, I... My family... They're... Gone. I can't..."
There is a long silence.
"You're asking me to commit a crime, Felicity."
"I'm asking you to give me a second chance."
-x-
In the end, she knows the evidence of her return piles up as truth. She knows it's a lie. The sheriff does too. But she's good at what she does.
In the ashes of the Hale Fire, Christine Felicity Hale dies.
And miles away, Smoak rises.
-x-
Felicity Meghan Smoak is born on December 25th, 1988. She's an only child born to a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. She isn't close to her mother, and she has no one else.
A whole new identity. A whole new life.
-x-
During her first year at MIT, under her new name, she's stalked by a cocky young man who plays lacrosse and it's one of the most disconcerting moments of her life.
At first she thinks he's a hunter. When he turns out to be as mundane and human as anyone, she doesn't relax.
There are monsters with teeth and claws and wolfsbane bullets. And there are monsters of the mundane, human kind. She needs to remember that.
-x-
Working at Queen Consolidated is... an experience. She loves it, most of the time. She has her projects and tasks, her troubleshooting and...
At home she has her things the way she likes them.
Her old cell phone, long outdated and lacking all the gadgetry and apps of her newer phones, still sits at her side every night.
Every time she boots up her computer, every time she opens a browser, every time she picks up her phone or her tablet, she thinks about looking up the fire, about booking tickets back to Beacon Hills, about finding Laura and Derek.
It itches to do something, anything.
She keeps to what her Alpha asked of her.
She waits. Her little pink cell phone still active under the name Christine Felicity Hale stays charged and ready, waiting for a call that never comes.
Time passes slowly.