Chapter Text
It took an embarrassingly long time for Derek to identify that the odd, unfamiliar chirping sound he was hearing was actually a phone ringing. He looked around in confusion and searched for the source, surprised to find a cordless phone sitting in a base unit in the corner.
Since when did he have a landline in the loft? God, he had missed so much.
He shook his head as he glanced down at the caller ID. Taking a deep breath, he answered.
“Stiles?” he asked in uncertainty. His brows drew together a second later as he asked in bewilderment, “Wait – is that seriously how you spell your first name?”
She laughed and chose to ignore the question as she greeted, “Derek.”
“Hey,” he sighed and ran a hand over the back of his head, scratching at his scalp.
Since when did Stiles call him? This was possibly the first time he had ever heard her voice over the phone.
“I… uh… haven’t seen you around since…” He trailed off with a frown. Blinking in an attempt to focus his thoughts, he asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Um… well. That’s kind of up for debate?” she said with a nervous laugh. “Have you remembered anything about the past few months?”
Derek frowned at the anxiousness in her voice. “No, nothing,” he answered honestly, shaking his head out of reflex. “I remember Kate shooting me… I think she was a were-jaguar? Then, it’s just blank until I woke up in the preserve last week.”
“Oh.” Stiles answered simply – trying and failing to sound unaffected. Her voice was strained and heavy with defeat.
Derek winced, knowing his answer had upset her, although he could not even begin to guess why. “I uh… have a few flashes of memory from when I came to,” he went on, not having much to add, but wanting to keep talking to her. There was a strange, overwhelming sense of panic coiling in his gut at the thought of her hanging up, of losing the connection to her. “I think… you were there? You were asking me questions?” He closed his eyes and tried for the millionth time that week to get his muddled mind to cooperate. “Or wait… maybe I was asking you something?” He growled in frustration before shaking his head and opening his eyes. “It’s really hard to remember,” he admitted in disappointment. “But then Scott was there, and you were gone. He said you were the one who called him…”
Derek stopped to consider that, wondering why Stiles had left. Why he had not seen her when he woke up at the animal clinic or at any point since. Not that he had really seen anyone since that day, for all the good it did. On Deaton’s advice, everyone had given him space while he tried to reacclimate and get his thoughts in order. The druid believed Derek’s memories would return, and that it could be overwhelming for his mind to try and reconcile two sets of 16-year-old memories and experiences.
And so, Derek had waited. And waited. And waited. And while no memories had resurfaced, he did note a significant lack of mental clarity and a general feeling of instability, as if he were unsure of what was real. He found himself regularly counting his fingers and recalling Stiles’ reassuring voice. His thoughts were jumbled and confused. The silence of the loft which had always provided comfort, now felt horribly wrong. Empty and isolating. His entire body ached with a constant feeling of intense, nameless longing. For what, he had no idea. From the moment he had changed back, his wolf had been restless and agitated, pacing endlessly inside him as if frantically searching for something, but for the life of him, he could not remember what.
But wait… he was getting off track again. He had been puzzling over something just now. What was it? Oh, right – why had Stiles left? Why had she disappeared when Scott came to get him in the Preserve? A thought suddenly occurred to him and his breath caught in his throat. What if she had been hurt?
“Are you okay? Did something happen?” he asked, his grip on the phone tightening. His wolf was instantly surging within him, snarling, and pressing outward against its confines, eager to take control.
Stiles gave a humorless laugh. “You could say that…” she muttered unhappily, more to herself than him. Taking a breath, she asked in a voice that was entirely too small for her boisterous personality, “You really don’t remember anything?”
Derek nearly whined pitifully in time with his wolf. He was really starting to get worried now. “Why? What should I be remembering?”
He racked his brain for clues. He remembered finding it odd that his clothes had smelled so much like her when he woke, but he figured she must have been trying to haul him up or turn him over after he collapsed.
“Stiles? What’s wrong?” he pressed determinedly.
She let out a groan of exasperation before finally saying, wearily and with a confusing tone of resignation, “Just… forget it. It’s fine, Der. Don’t worry about it. Go back to trying to get your head on straight, okay? I’ll just… I’ll talk to you later.”
The call disconnected, and Derek stared down at the phone with a growing feeling of unease.
Why did he get the feeling he was missing something huge?