Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Peter dies, he dies in a fire.

He kills his niece to live again and doesn't regret it. Kate Argent's blood smells sweet when he rips her throat out.

The second time Peter dies, fire makes him weak and he stares his nephew in the face for that long second before claws rip through the soft flesh of his neck.

He fucks with a teenage girl's mind until she doesn't know what she's doing when she brings him back to life. She flinches every time she sees him and it makes him grin.

The third time Peter dies, it's on the wrong end of a wolfsbane bullet. Chris Argent gets a lucky shot. Derek's puppies are too scattered and scared to notice at first, and by the time they come looking, the poison has spread to his heart.

He haunts Lydia again, but it's Stiles who digs him up this time. He doesn't mean to. He was trying to bury Peter for good, but Peter still knows a few more tricks than a punk teenager. Derek gives him this look and says, "You're a curse," which makes Peter throw himself on the couch vacated by Allison and Scott and laugh and laugh.

The fourth time Peter dies, it's in another house fire, except he's the one who set it. Fighting fire with fire has a nice ring to it, he thinks. It was supposed to look like an electrical accident, only Chris Argent is a sneaky bastard and catches him before he's finished setting up. He traps them both in the basement, and Peter lights it up anyway, but the distraction costs him. Chris cranks up the electric generator down there to 1000 volts and makes a break for it while Peter is passing out.

Peter doesn't remember much about how he comes back. One day he's just there, in a little dugout den in the middle of the Preserve, half transformed, hungry, and naked. Derek clearly expects to find him in the middle of the woods but startles when Peter speaks. Derek tells him that Chris survived, though badly burned, and was away right now at Allison's college graduation. Peter's more careful this time when Chris comes back.

The fifth time Peter dies, Allison sinks a poisoned arrow into his heart, and another half dozen after he's down. His last thought is that he always knew she bred true.

He doesn't need anyone's help coming back this time. He feels the moon before he wakes, strong and powerful, and that's how he feels for all of two seconds before the heavy weight of dirt presses into his senses. Digging out of a grave is harder than the movies make it out to be. When he's finally out, hours later, he's in the middle of nowhere, and it takes hours more to find his way back to the house. He's understandably cranky, so he doesn't care about breaking down the door, the mess he leaves in the kitchen, or the frustrated anger that has Derek throwing him out again. He'll take credit for the feud between the pack and the local hunters, but he won't be sorry for it.

The sixth time Peter dies, he's the bait and he sets the fire off with a bang. He's rather proud of how it works out. His little enforced road trip was actually a good idea, and Derek lets him come back to wash the blood out of his clothes every once in while. He never asks what Peter's been up to while he's gone, which Peter takes as tacit approval and an agreement not to talk about Fight Club. Stiles bitches enough as it is, and Peter doesn't want Derek butting in where he doesn't want to be anyway. Luring these last hunters is the easy part, even the pair that have to be first cousins, but getting the warehouse rigged is harder since he has to make sure the explosions cut off all the exits.

For the first time, Peter wakes up in some random morgue, the full moon shining in the window. He makes it back to Beacon Hills in time for Scott and Allison's wedding, the pack on the groom's side and only friends on the bride's.

The seventh time Peter dies, he takes a bullet for Erica. It's not wolfsbane, but it hits him right between the eyes, and even a werewolf can't recover from his brains being splattered across the pavement. He has the truck and Erica needs a new couch for cheap so they're not exactly in the best part of town. Peter doesn't mean to save Erica, he just acts before he thinks about it, shoving her out of the way on instinct he barely registers. He hears the crack of the gun but never does see who fires at them.

When he wakes up, head pounding, he's on the back porch, and Erica and Lydia are sitting on the lawn chairs watching Scott and Allison's two-year-old puppies wrestle in the afternoon sunlight. Erica's in a fresh shirt and nudges Lydia when his eyes open. Lydia still doesn't like him, but now she only rolls her eyes at his sarcasm and bosses Derek around when he crosses her invisible and ever changing lines of creepiness. Peter likes to point out that at some point he stopped driving the resurrection train.

The eighth time Peter dies, it starts with a thousand cuts and ends with his torso ripped open. He wasn't trying to outrun them. If they were on his tail, they weren't chasing Scott and his kids, they weren't noticing the pack still too far away but closing in fast. He lets them get close enough for the crossbow, gives them a taste of winning, before darting off again through the trees.

He knows these woods like the back of his hand, better even, and he knows where Allison will park her minivan, where Stiles will anchor the old Hale property to keep the rest of the kids safe, where Erica and Isaac will leave the truck and start running to cut across the hills, where Boyd and Jackson will corner the hunters' backup on the roads, where Derek will howl to tell him he's coming, coming. He sees Allison first and lets them get close enough to get in range. Too close.

Ramona and Kyle pounce on him when he inhales, knocking his breath away again. Peter doesn't mind. He's just happy they're safe and can jabber about how they were totally cool as they ran for their lives and argue over whose idea it was to bait hunters. Derek interrupts to tell them to say their thanks and then report to their mother for punishment and don't ask him to intervene because he won't. They deserve what they get.

Once the kids go in, Derek's pups who are no longer pups come outside. Erica throws a clean shirt at Peter's head. They talk about the hunters, about defenses, about stupid kids looking for thrills, about Stiles's bad influence and how it's really Scott's fault. They laugh, and Isaac punches Peter on the arm when Jackson makes the requisite jokes, then they talk about who's cooking dinner, and Boyd, would it kill you to make something other than red beans and rice. Peter breathes deep, breathes in his pack, and when Allison joins them a while later, she sits beside him.

The ninth time Peter dies, he lights his own pyre. It's been a long time since he last died. Years and years, and kids and grandkids and even one great-grand on the way. The Hale house doesn't look new again. It needs a fresh coat of paint and a better internet connection, or something. Peter's lost track of how the world's changed, stopped caring about the time he started dozing off in front of bad movies instead of joining in the snarking. Derek has long since submitted to Kyle, still hale and healthy if a little hard of hearing these days. Even age comes to werewolves, though they all joke that it's what happens when you listen to Stiles talk non-stop for fifty years.

Nobody's joking now though, not with the scent of Allison's sickness still lingering and Scott sitting and staring out the window like he doesn't know what to do next. Night will bring the full moon, and Peter knows. He starts with one log from the woodpile, then another. The kids think it's a game, and help with glee, but their parents and their grandparents know, too.

Kyle works beside Peter, watching him with his mother's eyes, while Ramona and Larry direct their little helpers. Erica cries quiet tears as she and Boyd gather kindling. Stiles prepares his herbs in silence. Derek and Lydia boss everyone around, and Jackson tells Peter he's building it wrong. Isaac sits with Scott who watches him the whole time with the weight of a hundred years. Peter has a lot of regrets. As the moon rises, he lets them go.

Peter burns, and his ashes finally scatter.

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