recklessthings | 彡 cora hale

Cora waits until she's sure the coach is gone and not going to be coming back before her arm is grabbing Alek's tightly, probably enough to cause pain. There are not enough Hales in the world for her not to, however, and while she knows there's no way that this kid could have found out enough about her to know that she's a Hale and con the coach at the same time, she's also spent three days as a wolf, lost her brother, and has no idea why people suddenly want to kill her a little more than usual.

Her temper doesn't really have a short fuse to begin with either.

"Why did he call you 'Hale'?"

"Woah."

Alek's jaw locks as she grabs his arm - which, yes, impressive strength there tiny lady - but he doesn't look amused by it. His own temper is one that flares all too easily, though he's gotten better at it. The world can be increasingly grateful that he is. Or just grateful he has an older brother that cares enough to nag at him until he works out his "issues."

"Maybe because that's my name. I was trying to help you."

Well, that's good because she's not amused either. Her eyes narrow for a moment, and she doesn't let go, but at least she's not using her claws because that could get messy. Really, unfortunately messy.

"First name or last name."

It's not a question, it's a demand, and she really should have better people skills than this by now, but the rift didn't see fit to drop in Stiles after her to temper her ... well, temper.

"Last." His eyes narrow as he attempts to jerk his arm away from her, none too delicately. His people skills are honestly no better than Cora's, so this is clearly going to glorious places here.

"Now will you tell me what your problem is?"

Her eyes clouded for a moment, but she lets him go as she takes a step back. She doesn't know what to make of any of that, of there being other Hales in whatever messed up version of Chicago this is, but it makes her chest tighten. It makes her want to punch a wall or scream or do any number of things, because there shouldn't be any more Hales, and yet somehow they keep appearing, almost as though they want to rub it in her face that she was alone for so long and she didn't have to be.

"Of course you are." She gives a half laugh as she paces away from him, running a hand through her hair. "I mean why not? My brother disappears into thin air and I can suddenly turn into a wolf, so why not spontaneous random Hales that I've never seen before."

Cora is having a bad day. She may be actually freaking out now. Don't mind her, Alek, she'll probably get a grip eventually.

Despite the fact Cora laughs, Alek can tell there's nothing remotely funny about this moment for her.

It's not his fault, of course. He can't change the fact he has the name he does, like he can't change the fact she doesn't have her brother with her. That's not what anger's about. Anger's a secondary emotion. It's easier than fear. It's the weapon people use to keep themselves from hurting. Alek knows that because he is a master at lashing out in anger instead of anything else he may be feeling. It's for that reason, more than anything, he remains surprisingly quiet in the face of Cora's outburst.

"I thought I'd sensed a wolf." And if it's something that happened to her suddenly, that can really only mean one thing. "It's your rift ability. You're a Wanderer, right? Whenever a wanderer falls through the rift, they're changed somehow."

And he can help.

" ... What?"

None of what he just said made any sense, and she wishes that it did. She wishes that somehow that explanation just slotted all the pieces into place for her, but it doesn't. The only word that she recognizes in that sentence is "Wanderer," and the only time she's heard it, there were people looking to do her harm for it.

(Not that that isn't something Cora's used to - she's been fighting against hunters her whole life - but at least then she knew why. This she has no idea what "Wanderer" even means.)

Despite the fact that he isn't using it in the same way, she still takes a step back, preparing for a blow that isn't coming, but constantly ready to fight all the same. She's a Hale. She doesn't really know how to stop fighting.

"I don't even know what that means." She shakes her head. "All I know is that one minute I was in the middle of Chicago, the next I was on the pier and I couldn't shift like that before. So since you seem to know more than I do, please. By all means, explain it to me."

He snorts a little.

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Alek says to her, without taking a step back or forward. "And believe it or not, your taking this all out on me doesn't magically make me want to."

He was just in the locker room, minding his own business.

The problem is Cora doesn't want to be nice. Cora's been stuck as a wolf for three days. Cora is confused and scared and both of those things tend to come with a side of her lashing out more than anything else, and this kid, this person with her name is making himself the easiest target at the moment. So she grits her teeth and draws herself together, pushing back the emotion until nothing is left but hide she was forced to grow after the fire. Part of her is reaching out desperately for the help, but the other part doesn't know if she can trust him.

"Fine," she says through grit teeth. "I'll figure it out myself."

Just like she always does.

She steps back and turns on her heel to go, not caring about her bare feet or anything else, just wanting to make it back to her den so she can figure out where to go from there.

"Wait."

Alek pinches the bridge of his nose and inwardly sighs, before he trots on after her. The truth of the matter is, he doesn't need nice. It's not like he's very nice himself, in case she hadn't noticed it already. But there's a softie inside of him that knows she isn't going to figure it out by herself. She'd have to ask someone else, and not everyone can be trusted in Chicago. He can't in good conscience allow a newbie to go off on their own without knowing what she needs to know.

Even one with claws, metaphorically or literally.

"Look, my last name obviously offends you, but there are things you need to know. And you can listen without ripping out my jugular, or you can try figuring it out by yourself, but I can promise you you'll run into a wall and not everyone here can be trusted."

It's not that it offends her. It's that she can't tell if it's a trick or not which very well come with the explanation she's offering. And if her experiences in Chicago thus far are any indication, she wouldn't have trusted what they said anyway. She isn't really sure if she can't trust him either, but she won't rip out his jugular either.

She doesn't say anything, just slowly exhales through her nose as she faces him and crosses her arms in front of her chest, before raising an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain. Okay. She's listening.

(Sometimes, she is so Derek's sister. Unfortunately, Alek won't appreciate that.)

(He will soon enough!!)

For now, he's grateful she at least sticks around long enough for him to explain. "Not everyone's a fan of Wanderers." That's probably an important part to start off with. "There are those that blame you for the rifts, for the way things go haywire, and how overpopulated the city can become. Some of them will leave you alone but some of them won't. There's a coalition called the Chicago Liberation Front, and they make it their mission to take Wanderers down. Be careful and keep an eye out for them."

It's not about whether she can take care of herself or not. It's that they're lethal, they're many, and they can instantly know if someone is from their world or not. Even Alek takes them seriously.

Okay. That's fine. She files that information away for later, under names like the Argents and the Calaveras, but that none of that answers one very important question. Well, two, but the first one she's going to ask is the important one.

"I still don't get what a Wanderer is. What rifts?"

This girl did not get the welcome speech, Alek. You're going to have to start from scratch.

Seriously, what is with the welcome wagon lately. They're slacking.

"Rifts are - I guess they're not much different to wormholes. They're tears in the fabric of the universe, cracks in space and time - that kind of thing. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. ... Sometimes people slip through the cracks. These people are called Wanderers."

A.k.a, Cora. And well, they're called other things, but Wanderers is the friendlier term.

It's not all their fault.

Cora will take Wanderer. She's mostly busy trying to process everything else he just said right now. So she fell through a crack in the universe. Awesome. That explains how Derek was there one minute and gone the next, and probably freaking out on whatever the other side of this crack is.

"Okay. So how do I get back?"

She has family to get back to, family that she just got back and she can't leave Derek alone.

This is the part he really hates, for the record.

He might even be steeling himself in case she decides to punch him for the bad news, though there's never any telling how one will react. There is no right or wrong way to do so. "There is no getting back. It's a one-way ticket."

The look on Cora's face goes through stages as the realization sets in. At first she scoffs, ready to say that there has to be a way. Maybe he just doesn't know it yet, because he's a dumb kid and kids don't know anything about how the world works. Only she knows from experience that some know it a little too well, and that's when the skepticism fades to realization and realization goes to flickers of grief all too quickly.

She just got Derek back. She just had family again, a pack again. But why would they let her keep it? Hales never get what they want after all.

She glances away from him for a moment, her shoulders caving a bit under the pressure of it, before looking down and swallowing hard. It also means that Alek isn't an actual Hale, not a Hale from her world, just a guy with the name.

"Sorry. About the Hale thing." She swallows hard before looking up at him again. "There aren't exactly a lot of us in my world."

Alek is being surprisingly good about not taking it personally.

It's not about him, and whereas his temper usually doesn't let him see that, he's trying to get better at it. He's trying because he doesn't want to hurt people the way he hurt Carter. He could've killed Carter if Jeremy hadn't been there to stop him. He doesn't want people to be scared of him. (He doesn't want to be scared of himself.)

There isn't anything he can do about it, and he is genuinely sorry for the pain she must be feeling. He shakes his head. "I'm the one that's sorry. The rift's not going to apologize, so one of us should." No one should get uprooted from their home, from their family. He tries imagining it happening to him, suddenly finding himself without his brothers, and he grows paralyzed at the thought. They are all he has.

"...You're Hale, too?" he asks, surprise in his voice. There shouldn't be. Her reaction now makes more sense.

She glances up at him and nods a bit. Yep, she's a Hale. It used to mean something. Something good and strong and safe. Now all it seems to mean is death. In some ways that's better - it drives people away, people who could get hurt otherwise, because in other ways all it does is attract those who smell weakness and want to eliminate them for good.

"There's only three of us, back home. Me, my brother and my uncle. The rest of them ... " She's pretty sure he could connect the dots. "I'm not really sure why anyone would pretend to be part one of us, but ... " Someone using her family name still flares her temper more often than not. "Especially another werewolf."

Oh, he does. In a quiet and subtle way, he connects the dots, and it shows in his expression.

Something aches in his chest, and not just for that reason. "If you're already a werewolf, why did you sound surprised about turning into a wolf?" he asks. Because he realizes things might work differently in her world than they do in his, but that means - that means there are more things he'll need to break to her.

And the full moon's coming soon.

She blinks up at him for a moment, but is grateful for the subject change. She doesn't really want to talk about her family anymore than he probably wants to talk about his. Especially since she needs to accept the fact that she's never going to see them again.

"Because that's something you earn." Some wolves could do it. Her mom could do it. But Cora was no where near that kind of wolf. She wasn't her mom. "I haven't."

Yep. That's what he thought. His eyes close briefly as he pulls in a solidifying breath.

"Not here," he says. He doesn't even know why anyone would want to earn it. If he could choose to be anything else, he would. "Being a werewolf here means you're a shapeshifter, and you're given two animal forms. One is the wolf, and the other one is usually a smaller animal, though you don't always immediately find out what it is."

Alek hasn't. For now. He doesn't know it yet, but he will rue the day he does find out.

"The full moon - " He swallows. "We can't control the shift during every full moon, and it's not the wolf we become."

No, it's something far, far more lethal.

It's not the form that Alek is talking about that bothers her. It sounds like it's the wolf form she's had her her whole life. That part at least is comfortable. Familiar. That part she can handle.

It's the other part, the fact that her control on a full moon is being ripped away from her again, that this time she can't get it back, that's so much more devastating. Her body slumps again, hard against the lockers behind her, letting the edge of the metal guide her to the floor so she can rest her elbows on her knees and burying her face in her hands.

She's tired of people and things taking things from her that aren't theirs to take. She didn't ask to be this kind of wolf - she didn't ask to be in this Chicago in the first place. And yet she still has to deal with all the consequences.

Alek doesn't know how to people.

He really, really does not know how to do the comfort thing. He's aware she isn't asking it of him. She isn't, in fact, asking anything of him outside the truth. But that doesn't mean he doesn't want to give it, that there isn't a part of him that wishes he knew what the right thing to say and do was at any given time, but especially in moments like these. He keeps quiet as she slides down to the floor, before he follows in suit next to her. He can't tell her it's not brutal. He can't tell her the pain isn't excruciating; that it's not scary. All of these things would be lies.

But he can do one thing. Something his own brothers have been trying to do for him, and he has not allowed. Perhaps until now, when he realizes he can't teach Cora unless he learns, too.

"I can help you," he says finally. "If you want. There aren't many of us out there in Chicago - you're the first wolf I've met outside of my brothers, but they've already been where we are. They've been teaching me the ropes and I can teach you. You shouldn't have to figure this out on your own." That's what Logan would say, and he's never met anyone smarter than Logan.

Cora shouldn't have to figure it out on her own, but that's how she's used to doing it. She's probably the Hale where losing the pack hit her a lot harder. She was so young when it happened that all of the things that her alpha should have taught her (her mother should have taught her) were learned on the fly out in the real world. She learned to control her wolf because the hunters couldn't see. She learned to control her emotions because emotions were a vulnerability that people aren't allowed to see. She knows she's a predator, she's been one her whole life.

She doesn't want to be a killer.

She knows the world she lives in, and she knows someday she may have to be, but she managed to survive six years on her own without changing the color of her eyes. She even managed to survive what the alpha pack did to her without hurting anyone (anyone but Derek, anyway) thanks to the Beacon Hills pack. She knows that if her control is really, permanently gone she can't do this on her own. But that part of her that was on her own for so long still doesn't know who to trust.

"Are you sure we can't control it?" She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, brushing away whatever may have been threatening to escape as she takes a breath and pulls herself together. "No anchors or anything to stop the shift?"


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

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