Author's note: Hi guys! It seems like it's been a long time, doesn't it? So as I promised last summer, here is the sequel to Fast Times at Beacon Hills High, which I have very creatively titled Fast Times at Beacon Hills High 2 (sometimes my own genius amazes me). The title is sort of subject to change, but I already made the banner for it and I'm lazy and I don't really want to redo it so...

PLEASE READ THIS PART: Okay sorry for the all caps rage BUT this is important. FIRST, I recommend rereading the last chapter of the first story before you read this. SECOND, I am going to be abroad for the summer, so my updates might be weird. And by weird I mean infrequent/at really bizarre times/I don't really know what to expect. I'm PRAYING that I will be able to watch the show from a foreign country (Imma be honest, if I can't bad things will happen) and I'm assuming that I will be (the internet is a wonderful thing), but I'm just making sure you all are forewarned.

Anyway, down to business - I hope you all enjoy this chapter. We're picking up right where we left off...

Chapter 1

Tick.

The clock they hung on the wall reminded them that they were still on Earth, still in a universe that kept time. It was the only thing grounding them, the only thing drawing them out of the surreal limbo they had suddenly been plunged into. She wondered how many times a person could feel like this, how many times the world as she knew it could disintegrate beneath her feet. The tragedies seemed never-ending.

Tick

But really, what had happened wasn't a tragedy. It was merely a change. An enormous change, but a change nonetheless.

Tick

They were in the kitchen; Amy sat on one of the barstools, but Derek remained standing, frozen, tense, and paralyzed by the uncertainty of it all. By his own uncertainty and by hers.

Tick

"Are you going to say something?" his voice scratched against the silence.

Tick

"… What do you want me to say?" A whisper, barely a whisper, her tone was equally hoarse from the trauma. They had been home for hours. He had been trying to pry some response – any response, because anything was better than nothing – out of her, but this was the first time he'd achieved any success.

Tick

"Anything."

Tick

"This wasn't what I wanted."

Pain and protest etched themselves into his face the moment she spoke, as if her words were merely confirmation of his suspicions. As if he had expected her to say this all along and had simply been waiting for her to say the words before he could react. "I didn't have a choice –"

"I know," she cut him off.

"What would you have had me do? Let you die?" he continued fervently, as if she hadn't interrupted him. "You know I couldn't do that, Amy, you know I couldn't. Everyone I have ever cared about has died. I couldn't let that happen again, I couldn't." His monolog drowned out the methodical ticking; they were lost in their own world, now, cut off from the tethering sound.

"I understand. I didn't expect you to let me die, Derek."

"How can you? How can you understand?" He sounded almost angry, but she knew he wasn't – not with her, at least. "You've never experienced anything like that – I had never experienced anything like that. It's one thing to have everything you care about ripped away from you – I know what that feels like. You know what that feels like. But it's another thing entirely to have to watch it happen, to be so fucking helpless." The words gushed from his mouth with a passion that she had never known from him. Whatever happened had changed him.

But not like it had changed her.

"I don't know who I am anymore." She kept her tone as stoic as she could, not wanting to sound like a whiny child. It was so cliché, and she knew it. She knew she didn't have any right to feel sorry for herself. But it was still a struggle not to.

"I know… I know…" he acknowledged softly in an uncharacteristic murmur. "It will be hard at first, you're right. But you will feel better in time, I promise. You'll get used to it. And I'll be with you the whole way. I'll never leave you. Not. Ever. Not even for a second."

She watched him stare at his feet. Everything was amplified, now. Even the subtlest of movements were cast through a whole new lens, a warped point of view. Derek suddenly looked aged beyond his years, as if the life had been drained out of him. Never, never had she seen him so shaken. Stress lined his face, but, above all, his ambiguously colored eyes were vulnerable. And she could hear things. New things, things she'd never heard before. Like his heart rate picking up when he mentioned what'd happened, like he was relieving it. Like he was having a panic attack.

She realized then that he might have been just as traumatized as she was, if not more so. She was a changed being, true enough, but she was changed physically and it was not the memory of the incident that had changed her. Derek seemed scarred, even more scarred than before, and she wondered how it was possible for a person to endure so much emotional pain in one lifetime.

Her gaze flickered down to her own body, to her stomach. Beneath her sweatshirt, there wasn't even a scratch. But she donned a gruesome bite mark on her wrist.

How would she explain this? For now, it didn't matter. Sure, people would come looking for her. Of course they would – she'd just up and vanished from the hospital. But Scott and Stiles were still at there, leading everyone off her trail. They had a little while before people came knocking at the door of their apartment.

She felt like her life had been ruined and saved all at the same time. She would have made the same decision, of course, even if she knew it wasn't what he wanted. And she didn't want this, but it wasn't the end of the universe. She was glad to be alive. She would rather be alive as a werewolf than dead.

But he had been right all along. They all had, those many months ago in Stiles' bedroom. They had warned her. They'd told her to turn around and save herself from this world, this terrible world where her friends and her neighbors were at each other's throats, death was around every corner, and every moment could be their last. But none of them had known, not even her, that she'd been a part of it long before then. Long before most of them had. Since the day she was born, she'd been a part of it. Just like Derek.

And that brought her back to what had happened. She was a werewolf, now, finally becoming what nature had intended. Finally becoming the monster she was meant to be.

She didn't want it. She wanted to be human. But Derek had done what was necessary to save her. He would have done anything, she realized.

Apparently he loved her. She must have missed something, because it was now an obvious implication. It hadn't been so obvious a few hours ago, when she was still a human.

And she still hadn't heard him say it, not when she was bleeding on the ground, not when she was lying in that hospital bed, and not since they'd been home. Maybe he did say it, while she was unconscious, but she obviously wouldn't have been able to hear the words.

"What now?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know. But one thing's for sure: I'm going to kill that geriatric piece of shit. Gerard Argent is a dead fucking man."

The blue eyes that now held an entirely new significance searched his face. He didn't swear very often. "There's going to be a war, isn't there? A new one, not like before. It's going to be worse."

"I think so."

"We should just go. We should just leave," she pleaded. "We could start over somewhere new, somewhere where no one knows us." She gripped his hand harshly to emphasize her point.

"I thought you wanted to stay here. You refused to go with your family when they left. Why the sudden change?"

"It wasn't Beacon Hills that I didn't want to leave, it was you."

He thought about the prospect – he thought about it hard. It appealed to him more than she could ever know. "We can't… Scott, Stiles… They need me – they need us. Wherever we go, trouble will always follow. It's inevitable, given what we are. We might be able to stave it off for a while, but it will all be a lie – a farce. We can play pretend, but we will never be able to truly escape." And I can't let the Argents get away with what they did. "Whatever storm is coming," he continued, "we'll get through it." He was so grim. For someone who had just witnessed his girlfriend come back from the brink of death and make a full recovery, he didn't look very relieved. And it made sense why – this was only the beginning.

Tick

Tick

Tick

"I'm all right now, you know. We can just be happy about that, if only for a little while."

His eyes pierced hers, willing her to understand how lucky she was. How lucky they both were. Her hand ghosted over his cheek. "Derek… I'm here, I'm okay. I'm here…"

"You were so close to dying, Amy. So close." His voice cracked and for a moment she thought he might break down, but he composed himself and kept his features impassive. "It's a miracle you're alive. It's a miracle that what I did actually worked. I'm serious. A miracle. It shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have… I have no idea why it did," he explained almost incoherently.

"I guess it's a good thing you were there, huh?" Her attempt to lighten the mood fell completely flat. He removed her hand from his face and held it in his own, his expression grave as ever. "Thank you," she breathed. "Thank you for saving me. I love you, Derek, I really do. And if you have something to say to me, please, please tell me. If this has taught us anything, surely it's that our time together could be limited. We shouldn't waste even a second fighting over trivial things, like we always do."

Tick

"I know how you feel about me," he said, not coldly. "You don't have to keep telling me. After the first time… to me, it feels like it looses meaning every time someone says it – I don't necessarily mean you, but people in general. Saying it over and over won't make it any more true. I do love you, obviously, but it can sound so trite," he managed. "So many people say it without even knowing what it really means. I don't even think I knew what it meant until recently. What I felt for Kate wasn't real love, not like this."

"I never took you for a romantic," she chuckled lightly.

He furrowed his brow in protest, but she quickly moved forward and covered his lips with hers. It was such a melancholy kiss; he was practically grimacing through it, as if it were nothing more than a reminder of how weak she made him. But it was. It was too late to fret over it. The damage had been done, the realization had already hit him: she was his greatest weakness.

"Derek," she whispered when they broke apart, "you need to start a pack."

Practical. She was being practical. Out of a coma for a matter of hours, she was already planning their next move. Derek felt an odd swell of pride – everything that had happened, as horrible as it'd been, had made her strong. She had undergone a transformation before ever becoming a werewolf. It was hard to pinpoint when exactly, but in the time between discovering her family's secret and enduring the death of her father she had grown up – she'd had to in order to stay alive. And maybe that's what he'd seen in her from the start. He hadn't been able to identify it until now, but maybe that was the initial, inexplicable hold she had over him – the ability to evolve for the sake of survival, no matter what the cost. It reminded him of himself. She was growing stronger and stronger as time marched on, and he felt glad to be able to help her. He was suddenly realizing that perhaps they weren't nearly as different as he had originally thought.

"I really only need one more," he reasoned. "I already have Scott… And you."

"Scott didn't seem very cooperative when you first mentioned the idea, from what I remember," she reminded him guardedly.

"I'm banking on him coming to his senses... If he does, I'll only need one more." His face remained contorted into a thoughtful frown. For a brief moment, Amy could read his mind.

"You still want it to be Jackson, even after what Scott and Stiles said."

"Ever heard the expression 'the devil you know'?" he replied without missing a beat.

She didn't really like the idea, but she saw his point. Jackson was flawed, but at least they understood his flaws. He could be managed, and there was a minimal risk that he would be able to fool them into trusting him. If they kept him on a leash, so to speak, he could be controlled. Derek was the Alpha, after all. He was the one with the power.

"How are we going to explain this to everyone?"

"What do you mean?"

"Uh, me sneaking out of the hospital after nearly dying? Don't you think that's gonna arouse some suspicion?"

"We don't really have any other choice than to say you made a miraculous recovery. We can tell them that you woke up alone and you were disoriented or something and just wanted to get home – I'll say that I found you here and didn't take you back because you seemed okay."

"Alright, sounds like a plan. Hopefully no one will ask too many questions."

"Seeing as you're all right, I don't think they will. They're not going to give up the investigation of who stabbed you, though."

"I'll tell them that I don't remember what the person looked like. Honestly, this is a matter that we should deal with ourselves."

"I couldn't agree more," he said tersely, gritting his teeth. It was obvious that he was trying to suppress a strong rage towards the Argents.

"We can discuss it in more detail later, with Scott and Stiles," she sighed. "For now… I think we should just take it easy for a little bit. For the rest of the day, at least."

Amy wasn't really concerned for herself; Derek clearly needed her after what had happened, though she knew he would never acknowledge it. He needed something to ground him. He needed some semblance of stability. And she wanted that to be her – and maybe it had been – but, in his mind, that stability had just been proved to be an illusion. He'd genuinely thought she was going to die, she could see that now – it had taken so much out of him that he could hardly allow himself to feel relieved. He had been her anchor when her father died, and now he needed her to be his.

"C'mere," she murmured almost unintelligibly, pulling him by the fabric of his shirt against her seated form. She embraced him tightly and kissed him again, as if to assure him that she was real, that she wasn't going anywhere. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and breathed in her scent, which was now startlingly unfamiliar. Unfamiliar, but – in a way – familiar. Like she was a part of him.

In a sense, he had turned her. Technically, she had been a werewolf to begin with, but he had revived it. So, she was his part of him; she was part of his pack, and she was so much more. The dynamic between them was permanently altered. Yesterday, she had been his human girlfriend. Today, she was… his pack-mate. And they would be connected forever.

It didn't scare him, this change, not exactly. He had almost completely shirked his fear of commitment when it came to her. But there was a seriousness to their relationship now, a seriousness that hadn't quite been there before. They'd had an emotional connection to one another, but a biological component had just been added. It made their relationship seem more concrete.

"It's going to be okay," she assured him. She readjusted her grip around his neck and in response he tightened his arms around her waist as he stood in front of the stool, between her knees.

He laughed mirthlessly, a low rumble against her skin. "Just because you keep saying that doesn't mean it's true."

Author's note: Thanks for reading, my loves! As always, PLEASE REVIEW and let me know what you think! Sorry if this chapter is kinda anti-climactic. Think of it as a sort of intro. And let me know what you thought of the season 3 premiere while you're at it! What'd you think of the new characters? Review review review! Also check out my deviantart if you want to see some banners - my account name is rosie2102.