chapter twenty six
fountain of youth

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

DEREK HAD aged backwards. Now, Odessa Stone was sure she had seen it all. The drive back to Beacon Hills was painfully quiet as everyone was processing what they were currently witnessing. After dropping off Malia and Kira, the remaining four teens drove straight to the Animal Clinic so Deaton could help in any way. Because they had no idea what to do.

Barging into the clinic with young Derek hanging from Scott and Stiles' arms, Deaton swiped the metal exam table clean to lay Derek on it. The Hale had been unconscious since he was loaded into the Jeep. Once Derek was on the table and settled, Odessa couldn't help but shiver at the cold air that hit her wet skin from the rain.

Seeing this, Stiles quietly took off his jacket and placed it over her shoulders. The boy had a long sleeve shirt under his jacket so she needed it more than him. The Stone gave him an appreciative smile before focusing back on Deaton, who looked down at the unconscious Derek in disbelief.

"Wow..."

"Wow," Stiles raised his brows at the man's one word, "wow as in, 'I've seen this before and I know exactly what to do,' kind of wow? 'Cause that's the kind of wow we were hoping for."

Deaton sighed, "I think you might be overestimating my abilities."

Lydia reached out and took Derek's hand, glancing around the group, "he's cold. Really cold."

As Deaton grabbed the other hand, and was also checking for a steady pulse, Scott asked his question with hesitancy, "do you think this is permanent?"

"I'm not sure a medical diagnosis is even adequate," the Doctor almost scoffed, shining a light into Derek's eyes to see if he would react, "this is well beyond my experience."

Odessa crossed her arms, shifting her stance, "so what do we do with him?"

"Until he wakes up? Probably not much," Deaton shrugged, "it might be best to leave him with me. He'll be safe here."

The Stilinski caught on to his deeper meaning, "you mean from Kate?"

"If she's alive and she is what you say she is, she won't be able to walk past that gate."

"Why would she do this to him," the Banshee wondered outwardly, eyes not leaving the man, or boy, on the table.

"Knowing Kate, it's probably for a reason that won't be any good for anyone but her."

Stiles scoffed at Deaton's words, "and bad for everyone else."

The Doctor nodded before observing the teens in front of him. He watched them all blink excessively to keep themselves awake, "you guys should probably go home," he suggested as Odessa rolled her neck to the side to loosen the tenseness she felt, "he doesn't look to be in any danger. So maybe the rest of you should get some sleep? It is a school night... and you all need to start taking care of your own lives again."

"Someone should stay with you," Scott suggested, shaking the sleepiness away from his features.

With her hand still holding Derek's, Lydia offered, "I'll stay," she shrugged at their skeptical expressions, "my grades are fine... despite missing a few classes."

Odessa chuckled shortly, "yeah, I'm not okay with this."

"Guys," the strawberry blonde looked to her best friend, who wasn't budging, "go."

"No."

Despite Odessa's protests, the McCall nodded, "text us if anything happens."

"Nope, still not okay with this," the Ember voiced, "not going anywhere," despite her declaration, both boys took her arms and practically dragged her out of the room, "okay just because you guys are bigger than me..."

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Odessa had the weirdest feeling like someone was watching her since they got back to Beacon Hills. She would be looking over her shoulder more times she could count every time she went somewhere. Which, more recently, was school. The Stone couldn't concentrate on anything Stiles was telling her and Scott as they walked into the building that morning. Though, she had an idea as to what he was telling them.

The Ember knew all about Malia's late night visits to Stiles and set ground rules as soon as she was in the know. The blonde sat Malia down one day and told her the situation with her and Stiles as simply as she could for the Tate to understand. Apparently, Malia goes into Stiles' bed to keep warm because she no longer has a fur coat to do that. While Odessa sympathized with the girl, she still didn't want her sleeping in the same bed as the guy she (kinda sort of) was in a relationship with. Odessa bought Malia a weighted blanket to help with her sleep and if the werecoyote did sleep in Stiles' room, the boy would move himself to the floor.

If Odessa and Stiles were official, there would be no Malia in Stiles' room at all. But since there was no Odessa and Stiles (yet), the blonde could only make the situation more bearable for her to be comfortable with. And Stiles agreed wholeheartedly.

If the two boys noticed her lack of attention, they didn't bring light to it. They were all still tired from their trip and the late night that came with it so no one in the pack was truly giving their full attention to anything around them.

Since the bell rang for first period and Odessa made her way to her seat behind Stiles, she would find excuses to look out the window to see if anyone was there watching her. Whether it was pushing her hair behind her ear or cracking her neck to the side—little gestures that no one would pay attention to. And she was lucky the one person who would notice something was off with her was sitting in front of her, his eyes to the front and not on her.

"It might surprise you to know that some of history's greatest leaders have had to endure some pretty great failures," Mr. Yukimura spoke to his class as he wrote key words on the chalkboard, "one you'll recognize from last night's reading failed in business, had a nervous breakdown, was defeated for both houses of Congress, and lost as Vice President, before he was finally elected as one of the greatest presidents that this country has ever seen. Who was he?"

Not having done the reading like she was supposed to, Odessa didn't raise her hand like some others in the room, including Stiles. The raising of her classmates hands was the biggest opportunity to look out the window, appearing as if she was looking around the room at who was raising their hands. The blonde sighed to herself when she saw no one outside. She really needed to sleep more than 4 hours a night.

Despite the hands raised, Mr. Yukimura called on someone without a raised hand, "Malia," the girl looked up, a highlighter in her mouth while she used another to highlight things in her textbook, which Odessa was sure she wasn't allowed to write in. Before Malia could answer, if she did know the answer, Scott's phone started to ring, "Scott, phones off. Malia? One of our greatest presidents. Gettysburg Address," the man ignored the hands in the air, including his daughter's when another phone, Stiles', rang, "phones off. Everyone. Malia? Does anyone else know?"

Everyone except for Odessa, Stiles and Scott raised their hands high at the question. Before anyone could get called on to finally answer the question, another phone rang through the air.

"I said phones off!"

"Dad," Kira called, wide eyed at her Dad's outburst, "that was yours."

Mr. Yukimura shifted his stance, embarrassment seeping through his figure, "oh. Um," he reached behind him into his jacket coat pocket for his phone, reading out loud the message he received, "Scott, call Lydia."

Uh oh.

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Odessa skid to a stop at the doorway of the Sheriff's Station with Scott and Stiles next to her, looking at the Sheriff with wide eyes. After going to the Animal Clinic to find a missing Derek and an injured Deaton, the three figured a young Derek would go to the only place he knew, the Hale house.

There was another dilemma on their hands. With Derek having no memory, he had no idea of what happened to his family. To him, the Hale house fire never happened. How do you tell someone that almost their entire family was dead because of something he didn't remember happening?

Sheriff motioned for the three to go into his office, and shut the door once they were in there. The man stood behind his desk with the three teens in front of him.

"I want you to be honest with me," he pleaded, looking toward his son in particular, "absolutely and completely honest. Have you been time traveling?"

Well, that was unexpected.

"Hang on, what?"

Stilinski continued, disregarding his son and the looks the teens gave him in response to his question, "because if time traveling is real, you know what? I'm done. I'm out. You're going to be driving me to Eichen House."

Odessa widened her eyes at the man's proclamation as Scott tried to reassure him, "we found him like that."

"Where? Swimming in the fountain of youth?"

"No," Stiles blinked at his Dad's tone as the girl next to him tried to keep her laughter at bay, "we found him buried in a tomb of wolfsbane in an Aztec temple in Mexico underneath a church in the middle of a town that was destroyed by an earthquake."

The Stone's laughter was gone as she looked up to the boy she liked with narrowed eyes, "are you kidding me?"

"You told me you were camping," Stilinski hissed.

"Yeah, we were... in Mexico."

As the Sheriff looked as though he could murder his son, Scott jumped in, "Derek's been aged backwards. He can't remember anything."

"We just need to talk to him."

"Yeah, well, so far he's not talking to anybody," Stilinski sighed, sitting on his desk.

The McCall looked behind him over at the main room where the young Derek was sitting, "he'll talk to me."

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

"Why would I go anywhere with you?"

Odessa watched Scott step closer to Derek from her stance next to Stiles, her arms crossing, "there was an accident," the Alpha vaguely shared, "you lost some memory, but we can help you get it back."

"How much memory?"

"A lot. But you can trust us," Scott knelt down in front of Derek to show his red eyes.

Derek sat up straighter in his seat on the couch, "you're an Alpha. Okay, who are you," he looked up to the other two teens in the room, "and who's they? Who are you?"

Odessa turned to Stiles, who was looking down at envelopes on his Dad's desk, before looking at Derek, "we're the ones keeping you out of jail."

"Let us help you."

"No."

While Stiles talked from next to her, the Ember couldn't help but think of ways to make Derek a little more trusting with them. Maybe if he saw he wasn't the only one with memory loss, he would let his guard down, "okay, dude, you almost tore apart two cops back there," the Stilinski motioned to the other room, "you need to listen to us. And that starts with no fangs, no claws, no wolf man. You got that?"

"I'm fine as long as it's not the full Moon," Derek's statement caught their attention.

"You still have trouble with the full Moon?"

"I said I'm fine."

Stiles stood from his seat on his Dad's desk, "all right, toy coming with us or not?"

"You want me to trust you," Derek's eyes moved between the two boys, the girl in the room staying quiet, "where's my family?"

The three teens glanced at each other before Scott sighed, and Odessa made the decision in her head as to how she could help, "there was a fire and..."

"They're not here anymore," the three boys turned to Odessa, who kept her soft gaze on Derek, "they're fine. They just had to move out of Beacon Hills for a while," the blonde made her way to him and crouched in front of him, ignoring her friends' eyes on her figure, "listen, I'm in the same boat as you. I came here with no memory... I don't know if my parents are alive. I don't know when my birthday is," she chuckled sadly, "but what I do know is that the two guys behind me—you can trust them. You can trust me," she made sure to keep her heart beat steady. "I promise, as soon as we get your memory back, we'll bring you to your family."

Derek kept his watery gaze on her as he exhaled shakily, "okay."

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Odessa couldn't help but try to stop her hands from shaking in her spot between the two boys as they watched Derek get discharged from custody. She hated lying like that. She hated using her misfortune as a way to get someone to trust her. As soon as the young Derek nodded to her, her heart beat sped up so much she thought she was going to put herself in a panic. The blonde felt awful, and somewhat disappointed in herself. All she wanted to do was help, so why did she feel so crappy when she did?

A warm hand covering hers made Odessa pull away from her thoughts, meeting the soft hazel eyes of Stiles, who smiled reassuringly to her, reading her like a book. Odessa took his hand completely, squeezing it as if that would take the anxiety out from her body.

"Odie shouldn't have done that," Scott couldn't help but mutter, not catching onto how bad the girl felt for doing what she did, "she lied her ass off."

Stiles ran his thumb across the girl's knuckle before retorting, "hey, her ass is fine," he ignored the looks he received at his choice of words, "she saved him a ton of unnecessary pain. We'll figure this out in a day or two, he goes back to being old Derek, everyone's happy. Except for Derek, who's never happy."

"It's just another person we're lying to, though," the Stone murmured from between them, her brown eyes stayed on her and Stiles' conjoined hands, "with Melissa, your Dad, Malia... and I just added Derek to the list, which didn't help."

Scott brought his hand to rub her shoulder comfortingly, "all right," he turned to them, "take him to my house and don't let him out of your sight."

"And where are you going?"

"I'm gonna go talk to the guy we should have gone to before."

As Scott took his leave, Stiles couldn't help but look back and exclaim, "yeah, I hate that guy."

Odessa couldn't help but interlock her hand with the boy's as he groaned, giving him a small smile as Derek started his way over to them, "come on."

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Odessa should've remembered dinner night was that same night. The Stone made it a habit to be anywhere else but home when Scott and Agent McCall were supposed to have their annual dinner night together to try and bond and fix their relationship. And when she saw Agent McCall with bags of Chinese food in his hands when she walked in the McCall residence with Stiles and a young Derek, she wanted to slap herself at her forgetfulness.

"We're just going to wait here for Scott," Stiles started while opening the front door, "we're going to sit quietly. We're not going to call or talk to anyone."

"Do I talk to you?"

"No."

Derek glanced at Odessa, "do I talk to her?"

"Absolutely not," Stiles shut down before the blonde could even open her mouth.

"Fine."

"Good."

"Who's gonna talk to him?"

The Ember followed Derek's gaze, her eyes widening, "oh no."

Agent McCall stuffed his free hand in his pocket as the other held a bag full of Chinese food, "what are you guys doing here," he then turned to Odessa, "except for you because you live here."

"We're waiting for Scott," Derek answered as Odessa gave the man a tight smile.

"Yeah, so am I," Agent McCall nodded, missing the look Stiles gave Odessa, which was a look only one would describe as 'are you kidding me?', "we're supposed to have dinner. I brought extra. You guys hungry?"

Yeah, she really should've remembered.

"Yeah."

"No," Stiles spoke over Derek, "we're not hungry."

"No, I'm starving."

"None of us are hungry. Thanks, though."

Agent McCall nodded, unconvincingly, "okay, well if you're not hungry, Stiles, your friend can still eat with us," he nodded toward Derek, "what's your name?"

Before Derek could answer, Stiles spoke over him, "Miguel," he ignored the incredulous glance the girl next to him gave him, stammering, "my cousin Miguel. From Mexico. So..."

To make matters worse, Agent McCall started to speak to Derek in Spanish, which made the two teens panic.

"Oh, my God."

Luckily for them, Derek spoke back to the Agent in fluent Spanish, which made the man smile.

"Fantastic. Egg roll," Agent McCall turned back to the bag, "I got your favorite Odessa. Maybe instead of putting it in the fridge for later, you can actually eat at the table for once."

Odessa pursed her lips at his suggestion before turning to Stiles, who was watching her warningly, before turning to the Agent and shrugging, "one plate couldn't hurt."

After unboxing all the food and settling at the table, Odessa couldn't help but dig right in, not remembering the last time she had a good meal. Fighting people who want to kill them or going to Mexico really took a toll on her food intake.

It was only a couple minutes into dinner did Agent McCall try to strike up a conversation.

"So, uh, Miguel," the man started, digging into his shrimp fried rice, "what did you say your last name was again?"

Before Derek could answer, Stiles stepped in, "oh, it's Juarez. Cinqua... Tiago."

"That's a mouthful," Agent McCall glanced to Odessa, who was eating her beef and broccoli silently. The girl nodded with pursed lips as the man turned to Derek again, "how do you spell that?"

The Hale didn't answer, only looking to the hazel eyed boy beside him, who answered with a shrug, "phonetically."

Another few minutes of silence went by, and Odessa was almost done with her dinner. Letting her brown eyes wonder, they stopped on Derek, who was looking at Agent McCall's badge that was on the table.

"Mr. McCall, you're an FBI Agent?"

"He's low level," the Stilinski interjected, "very low level. He doesn't even have a voice."

Disregarding Stiles' words, Derek grew more curious, "so do you investigate murders?"

Agent McCall nodded, "sometimes. When it's a Federal crime."

"What about fires?"

At that question, Odessa and Stiles locked eyes, starting to panic. The former cleared her throat, wiping her mouth with her napkin, "shouldn't Scott be here by now?"

"We should call Scott," the hazel eyed boy nodded before chuckling nervously, taking out his phone.

Ignoring Stiles, Agent McCall continued the conversation, "what kind of fires are you talking about?"

"Do you know anything about the Hale family?"

Uh, oh... again.

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

"Get the hell off him," Odessa hissed at Derek, grabbing his shoulders to push him off of Stiles, who was pinned against his door.

With the blonde in front of him protectively, Stiles panted, "okay, I didn't lie. I omitted certain truths. Vital truths now that I think about it."

"I don't want to talk to you," young Derek then glanced to Odessa, remembering the lies she told him too, "I don't want to talk to either of you. I wanna talk to the Alpha. I'll talk to Scott."

The Ember nodded, trying to defuse the situation, "okay, okay. We're gonna go get him for you," she motioned to her and the boy behind her, "just stay put, okay?"

Receiving a nod, the two teens made their way downstairs to get their phones to try and reach Scott. Little did they know, by the time they reached him, Derek would be already gone, with Kate right behind him.

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Derek was back to normal. After racing down to the school, where Kate persuaded Derek to go with her, he had turned back to his regular self while fighting Berserkers. Odessa had recalled Argent saying something about killing Berserkers a while ago, so she guessed the creature wasn't uncommon and killable.

While Odessa, Lydia and Stiles went down to the Hale vault that was open, Scott and Malia had faced the Berserkers, who put up a mean fight.

Peter had been robbed.

A total of 117 million dollars was stolen right under his nose. 117 million. That's a whole lot of money.

Odessa wouldn't even know what to do with that much money. Maybe she would buy herself a car, after she learned to drive, of course. Pay Melissa rent money for staying even though the woman would never agree to it. Put the money away for college, if she wanted to go. Give it to charity. The possibilities with that much money were endless. So for the person who did take it, what was their goal in using it?

That topic plagued the Stone's thoughts as she looked out the passenger seat window while Stiles drove her home. The two sat in silence, not that they minded. They liked the quiet between them whenever they were together.

Pulling up to the McCall residence, Odessa couldn't help but furrow her brows at a figure talking to Scott in the driveway. Stiles pulled into the driveway with the same expression, and as soon as his keys were out of the ignition, the two jumped out of the Jeep to see who it was.

Taking a few steps forward from the Jeep, Odessa couldn't help but feel her heart stop at the unfamiliar, yet so familiar, face in front of her. Her breath hitched, causing her two friends to look at her questioningly.

"Odie," Stiles muttered, moving toward her to grab her hand, "do you know this guy?"

The boy next to Scott took a step forward with soft eyes, "hey, Odie..."

"... Silas?"

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

BOOM!
hehehehehe
that's all i gotta
say about that ;)