recklessthings | 彡 cora hale

It was Alek's idea.

Once he realizes the gravity of the situation, he'll feel like a dick for it. Not that he could've possibly known what was behind door number whatever-it-is-he-has-lost-track-now. It just felt like something they could do to pass the time while they were on the boat, beyond going to the movie theater so Cora can get a taste of all the movies she's missed while she's been on the run. In retrospect, they likely should've just settled in for some Quentin Tarantino flicks and called it a day.

His curiosity got the best of him; it all but became a game, until they found the door with flames licking at the walls. He barely lets out a curse word before Cora is reaction, intensely and stronger than anything he's ever seen of her.

It's more than alarm, there's panic and Alek is thankfully someone that has quick reflexes.

Closing the door, he grabs her by the waist and places as much distance as possible between them and the door. It leads him toward the deck, where there's open space and air, because what she really needs to do is breathe right now, and he is terrified he won't get through to her, terrified he will suck at this as he sucks at a lot of other things that have to do with caring and being good at comfort.

"Cora," he says, his voice full of intent as his hands frame her face. "Hey, hey." He nudges her chin upward so that she will look at him. "We're okay."

Once they're away from the feel of the heat and the smell she calms somewhat, deep breaths as though her body is trying to remind itself how to pass oxygen to the brain again. The adrenaline fades as she looks at him, pupils that had been blown wide dilating to something that's more normal and the intense emotion of the moment fading. She doesn't pull away from his touch - in fact, if anything she leans into it, hands coming up to rest on his wrists as though she wants to keep that contact there, but not wanting to use actual words to say it.

When the panic is gone completely, however, comes the frustration - mostly with herself - as well as the embarrassment. She hasn't lost it like that in a long time, not since she was a kid, and the fact that he keeps managing to find her in these situations grinds at that part of her that insists on taking care of herself. She doesn't like to be vulnerable, or weak, yet she keeps finding herself there with him.

She also doesn't know what to do with the large part of her that is okay with that, that trusts him not to abuse this piece of her she's giving away. That, in and of itself, is new and scary, and she isn't sure how to handle it, but every instinct is telling her to just fall into it, head first.

"I'm sorry," she manages to get out eventually, her eyes falling to the ground. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ... " Lose it like that.

Alek doesn't answer her immediately.

They have certain similarities, him and Cora. They don't like being or feeling weak, and because of this, Alek has a tendency to put up a wall or shrug things off that otherwise matter. For some reason, he never has the inclination to do this with Cora. Maybe because he can sense she understands the defense mechanism, and she has scars of her own for all of their healing abilities. They aren't the kinds of scars you can see - not unless you're looking closely.

His touch lingers against her, as does his gaze, despite the fact she isn't looking at him. "You don't have to apologize to me," he says finally. He's the one that irrationally feels sorry for leading them to this room. "I just want to understand."

It takes her a moment to respond, because she doesn't talk about the night she lost her family, not even to Derek. With Derek it all becomes bogged down in his guilt, in the pain that he caused, and with anyone else from Beacon Hills who knows, it's all looks of pity. The Hales became the town's great tragedy, the accident that went unsolved for so long - the thing people whisper about, gossip about. In Beacon Hills, people hear the name "Hale" and all they see are ashes. They have long since forgotten that once upon a time, they were people.

For Cora, it's the night she lost everything. Her pack, her mother, her alpha, and no one seems to grasp the sense of that loss who isn't mired in grief of their own, so she keeps it to herself. Besides, it isn't really their business anyway. Ninety-nine percent of the time, Cora is fine. She walks through the world like it can't touch her, like she's bulletproof - fireproof.

Even if she knows she's not.

But she knows that this is that one percent of the time. She can't walk away from this and not acknowledge that something is wrong. Normal people don't have panic attacks when faced with fire. Her grip on his wrists tightens for a moment, before she finally looks up again and tries to actually put it into words.

"The hunters killed my pack by setting our house on fire. They cut off all the exits and burned it to the ground." But she pauses for a moment, and when she speaks again, her voice drops so that it's almost a whisper, but she knows that it doesn't matter and he can still hear her. "I was inside."

If there is one thing Alek will never feel toward Cora, it's pity.

He loathes it with a passion when it's directed at him, and he would never think to extend it toward anyone else. People don't benefit from being pitied, they benefit from being understood and knowing they aren't alone. So when Cora answers him, Alek doesn't make sweeping grand gestures. His eyes don't widen and he doesn't rush to apologize or tell her how awful it is and how sorry he feels she ever had to lose her family that way - even if all of these things are true and he feels them deeply.

No, his reaction is quiet - albeit no less powerful in its intensity - as he listens without interrupting, his hand reaching for her own as it remains holding his wrist. As though willing her grip to loosen, but only so that he can hold her hand instead. "How did you ... ?" his voice trails off as he thinks of how to best word it, but he hopes she understands what he means without it. How did she escape if she was trapped inside along with everyone else?

She lets him. Holding his hand is still keeping that connecting between them, it still keeps him close. She lets her fingers slip into his, trying to loosen her grip a bit so that it's not like she's keeping a death grip on his hand, but it's still as steady as it was before.

"Peter." It's a soft admission because she knows that she warned Alek about Peter, and that warning is entirely warranted, but that doesn't make it any less the truth, either. Peter had gotten out of the fire, and when he escaped he took Cora with him. "He just ... grabbed me and he got me out somehow and he told me to run." And she did. She ran for six years, waiting for one of them to come find her, to hear some word about her family.

"I didn't do anything for them. I just ran."

And she hates herself for it.

Surprise etches into his features.

It's precisely because Cora warned him about Peter that he doesn't expect it, but he is aware her current admission does not override the warning she gave him earlier. It doesn't suddenly make him trust Peter, but it does immediately make him grateful - he's why Cora is here today, why Alek has met her at all.

This must've changed Peter somehow, the way it changed Cora in its own way.

"Cora, you were a kid," Alek reminds her quietly. "I know it's easy to be hard on yourself when you look back and think of everything you could've done differently, but you were just a kid."

It changed all of them, not just Cora and Peter. You can't feel that kind of loss without having it change you. Cora was an omega. Peter trapped himself in his own mind. Derek drowned himself in guilt and self-loathing until he barely had enough self-worth to get out of bed in the morning. In the end, they all channeled that anger and loss into a quest for power, and while Cora's and Derek's were less destructive than Peter's was, it all came from the same place.

It's why they still understand him, even if they don't want to. Even if they wish to hate him for what they lost, they're still family, which means Peter will still always be a part of them - for better or for worse.

"I made it to South America on my own. I hid from hunters for six years, and I couldn't go back and save one of them? I couldn't stay and help my ... " Her voice breaks as she stills remember that feeling of her mother, her alpha, being forcefully ripped away from her. That kind of pack bond doesn't go away easily, and she spent so long feeling so lost.

No pack, no family, nothing. Just her.

"She didn't deserve to die like that. None of them did. Peter didn't deserve that." He didn't deserve to be left at the mouth of the tunnels, burned and broken, with no one there to help him heal. "I may have been a kid, but why does that mean that I deserve better?" Even if she was a child, she was still a beta. Betas are supposed to protect their alphas, not leave them there to die.

"No, they didn't," he agrees softly. None of them deserved that, and it isn't fair. Life hardly ever is, but it doesn't make it any easier of a pill to swallow. It doesn't make it okay that she lost so much of her family in one fell swoop.

"But if you had been the alpha. If you had been the parent or the adult in the situation - wouldn't you have wanted to do absolutely anything to make sure that your children or your younger family members would be spared, even if you wouldn't be?"

Because that's what parents ought to do, above and beyond being werewolves. He doesn't know how it all works, being an omega, but he knows family. Parents are meant to protect their kids, and they often would sacrifice themselves without a second thought for them. It doesn't mean he fails to understand her guilt and her pain any less, he finds them as valid as her anger and her grief, but it doesn't make any of it her fault.

She understands the logic of what he's saying, but that doesn't really make it easier either. Her mother would have absolutely wanted her to survive, no matter what the cost was for her, because that's what mothers do. Cora knows that. Logically, she understands it. But at the same time, it doesn't make her feel better about it. It doesn't fix all those times that she's needed her mother, her family, and they hadn't been there.

But she nods in answer to the question, because it's the only answer there was. "I just wish it could have been different. It's why when I'm stuck here ... "

She wonders if one day she's going to open a door and find Talia standing behind it. She doesn't dare to hope, because hope means being disappointed, one way or another, but she wonders. She thinks about it more than she'd like to, more than she'd ever admit to Derek, and she would be lying if she said there wasn't a part of her that was reaching for it, trying to see if there was a way.

Alek's smile is completely devoid of mirth.

There's sadness at the corners, tinged faintly with regret, almost like it hurts to do so. "I wonder, too," he says quietly. He isn't looking to make this about him. It's not. It's about Cora and her regrets and and her family history. But he wants her to know that he gets it. He does, to maybe a nearly painful degree. Because sometimes he's held his breath when the door opens, even as it keeps him in place so he does not leave - but he holds his breath like maybe his mother could one day be on the other side.

It's stupid and it's useless, at least he tells his heart it's both. But he does it anyway. "I wonder more than I want to."

There's a part of her that's instantly relieved that he understands, that he doesn't judge her for wanting the impossible. (Though here, it wouldn't quite be considered impossible, would it?)

"I should just let her rest. I know that." She can't guarantee that she won't do something impulsive and stupid because when it comes to her family, her pack, she'll charge alphas and tear down whatever obstacle's in her way to keep them safe, to avenge their loss. But she at least she can acknowledge that she knows this is crossing a line too far. "I just miss her."

"I think a part of us always will." He's not trying to be a fatalist, but when you really love someone, that doesn't go away. Long after they're gone. Even when the hurt fades, a part of the grief is still there and always will be. Something about that feels right. It's the least his loved ones deserve. You can't let it cripple you, but it never really goes away. Your chest just ... finds a way to make room for it all. Somehow.

"It's okay to have those moments, you know? It really is."

There's a part of her that grasps that, that understands that the pain and the longing is a natural part of grieving, and that the pain she feels is okay - she lost her mother and her alpha in one fell swoop, who wouldn't be hurt by that - but at the same time, she's always been taught to control her emotions. She needs to master them to control that part of herself that could be let loose at any time.

The part that could tear and destroy and make her a killer, not just a predator, and she doesn't want to be a killer.

"I want to think that? But I can't." She shakes her head a bit, looking down again. "Sometimes it's so much that I feel like if I let it in, I'm going to lose it and I can't lose it. Not again."

Her answer makes her think of Ethan, a little.

It's funny that Alek has always had the opposite problem - he's never been able to contain himself, whether it's his temper or his emotions. They always got the best of him, even before he knew why. He shakes his head, not without some concern. "I get that, too. But there needs to be a balance. Not letting it in at all means it just ... builds, and then it could explode anyway, y'know? Trust me. I know about exploding."

And it's not pretty. He isn't proud of himself in those moments, and he doesn't really like the thought of her being aware of it, or ever seeing him like that.

"Yeah, but ... "

She shakes her head a bit.

"With my kind of wolf, control is drilled into us from day one. Find your anchor, control your emotions. Letting people see means exposure and exposure means hunters." And hunters can be the end of a pack, sometimes before it even begins. She shifts her weight a bit, running her hand through her hair. "I've already had that control ripped away from me once. If I don't hold onto it, I don't know if I'll be able to pull it back again."

Well, that certainly puts things into perspective.

His gaze softens, not for the first time thinking about how her life must've been like for so long. (Not for the first time experiencing that protective feeling that wants to shield her from it, however well she can take care of herself.)

"Sometimes I've taken Chicago for granted," Alek admits. When he realizes that might be cryptic, he elaborates. "Chicago is the only city in my world that has a treaty in place. It was signed by the two oldest beings alive in the world, and it basically means that people of all species can coexist there. In theory. There's still people trying to start wars, people that'll hate you for who you are, but for the most part - you're left alone. Everywhere else in the world is marked by territories, but Chicago - Chicago was free."

"There's nowhere like that where I'm from."

In some ways she almost sounds kind of jealous. The idea that somewhere could be safe, at least relatively so, would have been a safe haven for any of them. It would have been able to give them hope.

"Beacon Hills just draws us all in. It's like a magnet - supernaturals and hunters alike."

He can't exactly blame her. She should have a place like Chicago; a place where she doesn't have to run or feel hunted. A place where she can stand still without feeling like something terrible is going to happen if it does. Everyone should have a place like that, it's just that not everyone does.

Alek smirks faintly though, if only to give a bit of levity to the situation. "They weren't being subtle with the town name, huh?"

She rolls her eyes at that, not at him but at the name of the town. "It was built on something called a Nematon. It basically draws supernatural creatures to it. But my pack had lived there for ... a long time."

A really long time. Like, generations upon generations, until Kate Argent burnt it to the ground. She doesn't always feel how much she's lost, but times like this it hits her harder than she thinks it would.

Who pissed in your cheerios, Kate Argent.

"I didn't mean for today to remind you of all of that," Alek says. He isn't one to apologize lightly, and it's hard for him to verbalize when he genuinely means it, but it's true. All the same, he can't regret learning what he did about her today, either. It was important.

She shakes her head a bit, before giving him a small smile. She knows it's not his fault. He just opened a door - he didn't know what was on the other side. "It's okay. You couldn't have known. It's not like I really talk about it."

"I'm glad you did." Talk about it, that is. The small smile makes him pause, and before he can even try to talk himself out of it, Alek's already lifting his hand, fingers tucking an errand strand of hair behind her ear. "With me."

Him touching her like that makes her breath hitch ever so slightly, in a way that most people probably wouldn't catch, but werewolf hearing makes things ten times louder than they already are. She's quiet for a moment, tipping ever so slightly into his hand. Not enough that it's an obvious gesture, but enough.

"I've never really talked to anyone like I do with you."

She's never really trusted anyone enough. This is all brand-new territory, and in a lot of ways it's scary, but in others it's good too. It feels like she's a part of something, for the first time in a long time.

He catches that quick little intake of breath. Enough that it means his hand doesn't drop from her cheek all too quickly. His fingers lingers there against warm skin, the way his gaze lingers, long after his hand has dropped back to his side. The urge to kiss her is there, and it's not the first time that he's felt it. But he refuses to use a moment where she feels so vulnerable to make that kind of move. She's hurting from terrible memories about losing her mother, losing her family.

But he can tell it's only a matter of time on his end.

And it's not as scary as he thought it was. It's why he manages a small smile at her admission. "That makes two of us."

彡 cora hale | teen wolf

never be sorry /chinhands

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/veers into headcanon territory, but the show is never going to tell me anyway

rip out my heart why don't you!!!!!!

it's just how i roll <3

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	✔ Cʀᴏssᴏᴠᴇʀs/AU ✔ Aᴄᴛɪᴏɴsᴘᴀᴍ ✔ Pʀᴏsᴇ	✔ Pɪᴄᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛs ✔ Oᴛʜᴇʀᴡᴏʀᴅʟʏ ✔ Sᴛᴀʀᴛᴇʀs	♥ F/M, F/F ⏰ Uᴘ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ