Don't judge me. I just really like this show. Only part 1 of what feels like three parts, but may be only two. And I need to work on the main character's voice:

 

“I realize that I’m probably the last you want to talk to right now,” Allison said to Stiles. She’d arrived to Stiles room unannounced, unwelcomed, and unrepentant, but since that described most of Stiles’s visitors, he was willing to let that go. Her continued existence was another matter.

 

“You got that right,” he said, cutting her off. “Get the hell out of my house.”

 

Her eyes flashed. Not literally, not like Scott’s might have, but the steel spines that let Argent men and women stand strong against the dark showed in her dark eyes and Stiles found himself wanting to flinch. “I realize that,” she continued as if he had said nothing, “but right now I need your help.” They stared, Stiles still furious, Allison’s cooled but still firm. Very slowly, Stiles nodded. It wasn’t in his makeup to not help someone. “Something has been bothering me about the night my aunt died. My dad caught up to us, outside the Hale House, right before she went to kill Scott. He stopped her, reminded her of the code, but she told him that she was only doing what she was told.”

 

“She had orders? From who?”

 

“That was my question too. That, and what those orders were. And who else got them.”

 

“Good questions,” Stiles admitted. With a jerk of his head, he waved Allison into his desk chair as he sat on his bed. “Any ideas?”

 

“My mother, my grandfather. I don’t know who would have been more likely. My father seems to follow the code strictly, but they were both less principled. Had their own agendas.” The pain of losing most of her family flashed across her face, but Stiles was unmoved. Mostly. The pain the Argents inflicted on his father, on Scott, on Scott’s mother, even on Derek, all that kept Stiles from feeling very sorry they were gone.

 

But, still. Allison had been a friend. And they had been her world. So, only mostly unmoved.

 

“Short of a Ouiji board, I don’t think we’re getting much information out of them.” Stiles said, and began to chew on his lip in thought. “No, let’s not try that. With our luck, it might work.”

 

“Actually, I had something else in mind. My mother was too careful to have left records or notes, especially if she was running something behind my father’s back. But my grandfather, I don’t think he would have imagined any of us questioning him.”

 

“Still a pretty crafty guy. And surprisingly good with modern technology. Just looking at him you’d think cars were new-fangled, but no.”

 

“No, he was all for anything that would make it easier to spread mayhem and destruction. And crafty. That’s as good a word as any for him, I guess. So you think he would have covered himself too?”

 

“Won’t hurt to check, but yeah, I think so. But your aunt…careful and your aunt don’t really belong in the same sentence, unless ‘aim’ is in there too.” Lip chewing apparently not enough, he’d moved on to biting the tip of his thumb.

 

Allison nodded. “My mother took charge of putting all my aunt’s things into storage. She said I might want some of it someday, as the pain of her loss faded. I couldn’t imagine then I would ever sympathize enough with Kate to be able to mourn her, but now.”

 

“Now you know better.”

 

“Yes. I know them better, and that. And myself.” She shook her head, unbound black hair spilling forward as the self-pity faded. “So, my father would have the keys to their storage units, maybe even some of their personal papers.”

 

“Did she have a laptop?” At her silent question, Stiles shrugged. “She moved around a lot, and apparently your father kept digital records. If she had a laptop, maybe there’s something important on there.”

 

“What about Derek?” Stiles would later wonder how much he’d given away. Allison was one of the sharpest, observant people he’d ever met. And, annoyingly, as closed as he was open. If she came to any conclusions about why his body and expression tightened when she mentioned that name, she didn’t state them. “Well, he was sleeping with her. Kate mentioned it in passing once. If she had a moment of carelessness or two, one of them might have been with him, if he remembers. He’s about the only one still around who might.”

 

“Except your father. He might know more than he’s told you, things he might not have even known for sure then that he’s reconsidered.”

 

“Yes. And I can ask him. But you’ll need to ask Derek.”

 

“Because he’d kill you?”

 

“Because,” Allison said with a slow smile he hadn’t seen on her in some time, which reminded Stiles of the girl Scott had fallen so hard for, “out of everyone, Derek might actually tell you if you ask.”

 

“Fine. I’ll ask.” No need to ask her what she meant. Why she smiled. Screw her. “Anything else you need from me?”

 

“Help with her laptop, if I find one. Hacking isn’t exactly within my skillset.”

 

“Not mine either.” This time Stiles smiled. “But I know who does know his way around computers. And who would be perfect to ask a favor of him. Assuming I can convince him to play ball.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll give it your all,” Allison said. “I’ve never seen you do less.” She finally, finally stood up to leave. “I’ll call you in a couple days, letting you know where I’m at with all this.”

 

“Fine.” He couldn’t bring himself to wish her luck, or even say goodbye properly.

 

He hoped she never came back. At least, that’s what he told himself, even as he began planning exactly how he was to approach Derek.

 

 

 

“What is that?” was Derek’s rather stunned reaction.

 

Stiles had only thought he always felt just a little bit ridiculous. He knew better now; before he’d at least always felt like himself, as terrible and as awkward as that was, this was worse. A t-shirt from before the lacrosse practices had begun having an effect. Skinny blue jeans he’d purchased a couple months ago under the influence of his friends from the Jungle and that he’d worn exactly twice, neither time outside of his bedroom. A choker that used to belong to his mother, “borrowed” from her jewelry case that his father even now kept in their bedroom. Black cherry chapstick he’d bought just today at Lydia’s unexplained insistence that he couldn’t help but lick at constantly. He’d finally cracked and asked her advice on the best way to approach the terminally grumpy, figuring her experience with Jackson would stand him in good stead, and this was the result.

 

“What? I think I look pretty good.” Stiles tried to sound like he meant it, little use as it was to lie to a werewolf.

 

“Liar.” Derek still sounded stunned, but his eyes were getting at least a little less wide. His gaze was still taking in the total effect of Stiles’s look. “You do look good though. I’ve just never seen you try to look good like this before. What is the occasion, you going out with Danny again?”

 

That was new. This was all new. Stiles dropping by to see Derek for no particular reason. Stiles going out with Danny, because Danny needed a wing man and Jackson, Isaac, and Scott couldn’t act laidback if you paid them. Derek grudgingly at first and then more naturally paying Stiles attention and compliments, in a way that raised a couple eyebrows in the pack. Stiles had not yet tried to make anything with this new status, but after talking with Allison, and then Lydia, here he was. And if they had been wrong, he had maybe twenty seconds to live.

 

“Later, maybe. We talked about it.” Which was true, they decided not to, but they could change their minds. “Actually, I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions. Personal ones, but important for some research I’m doing.”

 

Derek looked confused, but not hostile. “I guess that might be alright. Why don’t you come inside with me? It’s getting too hot to work anyways.”

 

Stiles admired the work Derek had put into restoring his family’s home. It wouldn’t, from what he remembers, look quite like it had before the fire. He’d eventually just knocked down and paved over one old section that would never be sound again, and added a deck along the northern wall. The paint, he promised, would be blue on grey instead of brown on white. Stiles could have told him it wouldn’t be enough, but maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe he just needed to be doing something constructive, and making his family’s home his own gave him something that just making what was left of their pack his own did not.

 

He was doing most of the work, but not all of it. Scott, Isaac, Erica, and Boyd all turned up now and then to lend a hand. Chris Argent had spent all of a weekend helping to lay wiring down. Danny and Jackson had come by, but left quickly; neither being all that great with manual labor. Allison had not shown up at all, proving she was at least as smart as she was good looking. Stiles might be willing to cooperate once his curiosity was engaged, but Derek tended to blame her for not only her own actions, but her mother’s and aunt’s as well.

 

Stiles considered acting like he’d come up with the questions on his own for that reason, but doing that would be too close to lying, and Allison wasn’t worth risking whatever this was building between him and Derek. Better to be honest, if blunt. “I’m here to talk about Kate, Derek.”

 

Derek was never the most effusive, but his voice was even flatter than normal as he answered. “There is nothing to say about her. Ever.”

 

“We were talking about her, and things aren’t adding up completely. What did she think she was doing?”

 

“She thought she was murdering my family. And she succeeded.” Heat was creeping into his voice, but Derek was so controlled his expression did not flicker, though he did look away. “Are you asking if there was any clue, any sign she was thinking this when I was with her? No. Nothing I can pin down. I’ve spent years crawling back and forth in my memories, trying to find that one thing I missed, the lie I should have detected, but there isn’t one.” He covered his eyes with his large hand, and it took almost more strength than Stiles had to not try and take it into his own.

 

Then he wondered why he was stopping himself, and did take it. Derek said the rest looking straight into his eyes. “She was the perfect product of her family. A born to betray, betray me and mine. She made no mistakes where I could detect them, except for missing Laura and I.”

 

“I’m sorry, but I had to ask. What she did doesn’t match the ideals of Chris or even Victoria. So we wanted to know if there was something else, something organized, that we might have to watch for.”

 

“Not that I know of. She may have just been crazy, like her father, but I’ve long since decided that Victoria and Chris were the exceptions, and most other hunters were like Kate.

 

“Which is why I don’t trust Allison. She doesn’t have her father’s values. Which leaves Kate’s. I’m guessing she was what brought this up?”

 

Stiles nodded. “She started to worry whose orders Kate was following.”

 

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Now get out.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not stupid, Stiles. Neither is Allison, I take it, if she dressed you like that and had you ask me about her aunt. I don’t like playing other people, like you did to Danny, and I really don’t like it when someone does it to me. So get out. Don’t come back before I seek you out, or attracted to you or not, I will hurt you.”

 

Stiles found himself in his jeep with no exact memory of how he got there. His mind was almost completely blank, except for the words “attracted,” chased by “Get out.”

 

He wanted to hate Allison for that, for opening those doors in his emotions with the same action that closed them. But he was too self-honest for that. She might have put the question in his head, but his own curiosity asked it. Decided to test Derek.

 

It was hard to see the road as he drove, with all those tears that refused to fall standing in his eyes.

 

 

 

Three days later, Allison entered Stiles’s room without knocking. “Can’t a guy sleep?” he asked her, as she once again took a seat at his desk.

 

Her eyebrow quirked up. “It’s barely 4 o’clock,” she observed.

 

Stiles just grunted in response. He’d slept a lot, the last couple of days. Tried to, anyways. Allison patiently waited for him to sit up and talked to her. He noticed she moved less, like a true hunter. She was never like him, all energy and chatter, but the more he saw her the more it bothered him. Eventually he gave in, standing up to turn on the light.

 

It was a measure of Allison’s new nature that she didn’t respond to his near-naked body. Getting dressed seemed like too much effort lately, especially if he was going to wind up right back in bed once his father left for the day. Showering had been too much effort, too. He couldn’t quite bring himself to care. “Derek didn’t know anything. He said, and I quote, that Kate was the perfect product of your family. For some reason, it didn’t sound like a compliment, coming from him.”

 

She nodded, like that didn’t surprise her. “We’re trained in various techniques, I’m learning. Some of them involve going undercover.”

 

“Do they include betraying your friends?” he couldn’t help but snap.

 

“They include keeping your emotions so checked it’s hard to have real friends, as real friends have a tendency to become real dead when you are least ready for it. So, yes.”

 

Stiles sighed. Things like that made it harder and easier to hate her. “So, he didn’t have anything. I don’t have anything. You can go any time.”

 

“After I share this,” she said, pulling a tape recorder out of her pocket. It’d been a while since Stiles had seen anyone but his dad with one of those, but he was totally unsurprised Allison had one around.

 

“Is it a confession?” he asked.

 

“Of a sort. I talked to my dad. I figured it would help later if I could play it back, so I could really think about what he was telling me.”

 

“That’s kind of awesome, and a little bit scary too.” And he was once again reminded how different from his guest he was when he couldn’t stop his next thought from crossing his face. “Did you record the last time we talked? Are you recording us now?”

 

In answer, Allison pulled a second recorder from the pocket on her other side. She waved it at him a little, before putting it back away.

 

He decided she was at least 80% evil now, minimum.

 

“So, anyways. I wanted you to listen to it, if you could. You’re the closest person I know to being a cop. Maybe you’ll pick up on something I missed.”

 

“Here I thought you never missed.”

 

A laughing smile erupted before she could stop it. “Maybe,” she said as she set the recorder down to play.