Chapter Text
coda.
Noah makes his way carefully through the forest, branches and dead brush crackling under his feet. His knees ache, and it will probably take all night and most of the following morning for him to hike back to the house. He isn’t as young as he used to be.
After that extraordinary harvest, Stiles visited the temple as frequently as possible, more often than even his mother. He always seemed to return home with something they needed—herbs that not even the healer had seen before when Stiles was ill with a common cold; two hares the weeks the hunters struggled to catch any game.
The following harvest was better than the last; this year’s harvest was more prosperous still. Noah knows his son is to blame, but Stiles offered no explanation beyond a smile that spoke of secrets and the touch of his fingers to his right hip.
Noah sighs. He looks up at the cliffs at his side, taking that familiar, sharp turn.
The ancient building still stops him in his tracks. The columns are more moss-covered, and the edifice has crumbled further at the corners, but otherwise, the temple remains unchanged, even after all this time.
Noah, however, has changed quite a bit. He pauses at the bottom of the steps, using one of the columns to hold himself up as he catches his breath.
Keep up, old man, he hears Claudia saying in his ear. He runs his fingers along the grooves of the carved rowan tree, following the same pattern he watched Claudia trace all those years ago.
Sighing, Noah uses the column for leverage and heaves himself up the steps. The sight that greets him as he steps inside has changed a great deal.
The grass is still midsummer-green beneath his feet but filled with wildflowers of many colors, pink, blue, purple, and white.
“Wolfsbane,” Noah whispers under his breath, thinking of the stem tucked behind Stiles’ ear.
A rowan tree towers above the nemeton. Noah tilts his head back. The limbs of the tree reach towards the sky, over the walls of the temple, out and beyond. Claudia told him the nemeton once stood in a sacred grove; looking up at the tree before him, Noah understands why it was once a symbol of the unparalleled power of the gods.
“My nephew is going to be so angry.”
Noah stills at the sound of a voice at his back. He lowers his head, turning slowly. There’s a man sitting on the nemeton stump who wasn’t there a moment ago, long legs crossed at the ankles, lounging backward on his hands like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Noah blinks, expecting the man to disappear; he doesn’t. “Your nephew?”
“That I met you first. He’s going to hold that over my head for centuries.” The man smirks like the idea thrills him to death. He looks up into the canopy of the tree and rolls his eyes. “Subtlety is not that boy’s strong suit,” he mutters.
Noah rubs a hand over his mouth. He takes a tentative step forward, keeping as much space between himself and the stranger as he dares.
“You’re…” The word sticks in his throat, refusing to come out.
The man’s fingers tap at his knee. “A god,” he says, an impertinent smile tugging at his mouth, “but you can call me Peter.”
Noah shakes his head. “I must be out of my mind.” That or dreaming.
“Is it so hard to believe that your wife and son were praying to actual gods?”
Noah thinks of Claudia’s face the night she came home and told him she was with child. Of two hares clutched in Stiles’ fist where the hunters could catch none, of a bountiful, autumn harvest appearing in the middle of winter. “No, I suppose not.”
Peter preens, pleased with himself. He stands, examining the trunk of the tree like Noah is only worthy of half his attention. He continues on unperturbed. “Why are you here, Noah? You haven’t been inside of this temple since before your son was born.”
“How do you know that?”
“God,” he says again, more forcefully this time. “We listened to your family when they spoke to us. We heard you just before your wife gave birth. Do you remember that?”
Noah remembers—that desperate plea he sent up moments before Stiles came into the world, for some force in the universe to keep his wife alive. He should be thankful, even grateful that someone, somewhere, was actually listening.
Instead, anger rises in Noah’s chest, an unexpected beast. He remembers Claudia’s words from mere weeks before she passed. The way she cried in his arms, knowing pleading with the gods wouldn’t do any good, the same way Stiles tried so desperately to save his mother and received nothing in return.
“Then why did you not answer their prayers?”
Peter stills; it’s the stillness of a predator hiding in the grass, just before they slaughter their prey. The thought occurs to Noah, briefly and too late, that he maybe shouldn’t anger a being more powerful than he could fathom.
Except Stiles inherited his tendency to poke at things that could harm him, and he didn’t get that from his mother.
Peter’s eyes flicker, burning the bright red of scorched embers in the hearth. “We did what we could,” he says, voice deceptively calm, the eye of a storm just before the wind destroys everything in its path. “Which I assume you are well aware of, considering you have two extremely observant eyes in your head. Even the gods’ powers are limited. Death is the end for all things, human and otherwise.”
Noah scoffs, even while his heart pounds, breath coming short and making him lightheaded. “Even gods?”
The storm passes. Peter’s eyes remain that inhuman crimson, his anger leashed for the time being. “Yes. Even us.”
Peter sits down again. He pats the space beside him, and Noah sees no alternative but to obey the unspoken order and sit down, too.
“I dislike repeating myself,” Peter says coldly, “but this once, I will make an exception. Why are you here, Noah? What is it you came to ask of the old gods?”
“I—” Noah pauses, unsure of himself. He thought he came here to seek answers for the past three years, full of wonders that seemed to appear with no catalyst but Stiles' entreaties to the gods.
Images of Stiles flashes across his memory: holding a hand to his chest over his heart; fingers playing at his hip along the mark imprinted on his skin that he thinks Noah hasn't noticed; the smile on his face after his visits to the temple that often don't fade for days—the one that reminds Noah of Claudia's smile.
“I want my son to be happy,” he says quietly. As happy as he and Claudia used to be.
Peter stares, red eyes snapping back to piercing blue so quickly, Noah flinches. A moment of tense silence stretches thin between them, threatening to snap before Peter deigns himself ready to answer.
“You Stilinskis really are something,” he says with a surprising lack of sarcasm. “You never pray for yourselves.”
Noah frowns. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No. It is a rare thing.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I can't grant him happiness for his entire life. Even gods do not control everything in the universe. But I promise to intervene where I can. I ask for a single thing in return.”
Noah purses his lips. “What?”
“Don’t look so petrified. I'm not asking for your life.” He grins, his teeth razor sharp. They say the old gods could take the form of some creature half-man, half-wolf.
Noah swallows. "Then what are you asking for?"
“Acceptance.”
Noah folds his arms over his chest. “Acceptance.”
“Yes. My nephew has an interesting way of getting what he wants—including circumnavigating rules of the universe older than time itself.” Peter throws out his arm, dramatically gesturing to the rowan tree. “You sit beneath one example. That tree is barely three years old.”
“That’s not possible,” Noah says before his brain can catch up with his mouth.
“You are speaking with a god,” Peter says, his tone of voice calling Noah an idiot without him ever voicing the word.
“You make a fair point,” Noah mutters. Three years. He counts backward in his head.
His arms drop to his sides. “The harvest,” he whispers.
Peter nods. “As I said—you’re much too observant to ask such stupid questions.”
“You didn’t say anything about stupid questions.”
“My mistake. I should have.”
Noah looks up at the canopy of the rowan tree, too distracted to respond to the obvious slight. “What did he give?” He may not have taken part in Claudia’s traditions; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t listening. Summoning the gods requires sacrifice. An act of supplication and desperation.
Stiles was very desperate.
“Himself,” Peter says.
Noah’s hands clench into fists. “You mean his life.”
A pinch of that earlier anger creeps back into Peter’s voice. “If I meant his life, I would have said so. I mean he gave himself.” His lips slip back into the smirk that seems so at home on his face. “In more ways than one.”
Noah huffs when Peter doesn't elaborate and rolls his eyes skyward. “I have no idea what any of this means.”
“You will. Eventually.”
“Are all of the gods so infuriatingly vague?”
“Well, if I gave you all of the answers, you wouldn’t learn a thing, now would you, Noah? That and a little chaos is good for the soul every now and again.” Peter laughs to himself as he rises to his feet. “Derek is going to hate me,” he adds with unrestrained glee and disappears.
Noah stares at the empty space for a long time, mulling over the day’s events. He stands and treks home in a daze, unsure whether or not the god's appearance was even real. He's half-convinced he hallucinated the entire conversation, the result of rampant exhaustion or some sort of fever dream.
That is, until the night Stiles introduces him to Derek.
Noah stares at the man standing beside his son, their hands wound tightly together. His head spins as Peter's words return to him in a flood.
Derek is going to hate me.
Himself. In more ways than one.
He casts his thoughts back further still, to the morning after the harvest and Stiles tucking a wolfsbane flower behind Noah’s ear, saying, “Not all of the gods. Just one.”
Oh.
Oh.
Now he understands.
Peter couldn’t just tell him this plainly? Noah swears he hears Peter’s snide laughter in response to the thought.
Noah shakes his head, finally able to convince his stubborn muscles to unclench so he can shake Derek’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says, and he means it. Even if he does squeeze Derek’s hand just this side of too tight.
Derek’s lips twitch into a smirk eerily reminiscent of that of his uncle. Unlike Peter, Derek is unfailingly polite. Stiles speaks with his usual enthusiasm, and Derek ducks his flailing hands with an ease that speaks to years of experience.
Three years, to be exact.
Noah presses his fingers to his forehead, staring at the dying fire in the hearth. He feels a headache coming on.
Stiles frowns. “Are you alright?”
“Just cold, I think."
If Stiles picks up on the lie, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he stands and says, “I’ll get some more firewood.”
He ducks down to hiss in Noah’s ear. “Be nice.”
“I am always nice.”
Stiles snorts and steps outside. Derek’s eyes follow him across the room and out the door, a magnet drawn due north.
Noah follows his gaze and sighs. “I haven’t seen him this happy since his mother died,” he says the moment Stiles is out of earshot.
Derek’s smile lights up his entire face making him look like a young boy rather than the god Noah knows him to be. “He makes me happy, too.”
“I’m glad of that.” Noah leans forward, and Derek jumps. He takes no small amount of satisfaction in knowing he’s caught the other man off-guard. “But if you hurt my son, god or no god, I will find a way to destroy you.”
To his surprise, Derek grins with a fondness that speaks of more love than Noah could ever put into words. It’s everything Noah has ever wanted for his son, for someone to love him as much as Noah loved his wife.
He only wishes Claudia was here to see it.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Derek says. He looks up, eyes far too knowing like he can read every thought in Noah’s head.
Noah clears his throat and changes the subject before he’s overcome by his emotions. “So. Peter’s nephew.”
Derek’s smile is immediately replaced by a scowl, hackles rising like an angry cat—as riled up as his uncle predicted.
Noah’s answering burst of laughter rings throughout the entire house.