I do not own Teen Wolf or any of its characters. I only own Celeste. If I did I would bring in Halsey as a main character so fast you don't even know.

Song - Ghost // Halsey (Lost Kings remix)

Celeste's POV

The crisp crunch of deadened leaves reached Celeste's welcoming ears with an invigorating sense of familiarity as she greeted them with the soles of her red Converse.

As much as the new-found feeling of having people genuinely want to spend time with her excited the girl, she needed desperately a break from the social scene to recharge, which is how she found herself creeping around the woods yet again in search of temporary isolation.

She had stayed at the hospital with Jackson until a worried Lydia made an appearance, at which point Celeste had promptly shoved all of the paperwork and responsibilities into the strawberry blonde's capable hands and made a run for it.

It had grown increasingly apparent that Lydia was still upset at Celeste by the her haughty tone and the way she waited the obligatory three rings to pick up her phone in an attempt to seem like she didn't need Celeste when the dark haired girl had initially called her to inform her of Jackson's situation.

Due to this, Celeste had decided it was better to walk home than face her friend's wrath, but was quickly derailed from her begrudging objective by the promise of the quietly whimsical wooded area she had grown to love.

Currently, she was exploring the area she had been in the general direction of last week before the equal parts creepy and handsome man had so rudely stopped her.

She almost stepped directly onto a large, almost cartoonish red and white mushroom, but caught herself at the last minute.

She crouched next to it with a wistful smile. The sight of it caused her thoughts to fade to a memory from the age of six.

9 years prior

The world around the young girl was spinning. Her long, dark hair was a windy mess and the end of her white dress was dyed with grass stains.

Even so, giddy laughter bubbled out from her grinning lips as she swayed along with her surroundings.

"Again," she demanded with excitement as she reached her arms up gleefully to the man in front of her, wanting him to pick her up in his arms and spin her around like he had done moments before.

"I think if I do it again you might get sick, little bee," he refused, but with an amused smile that reached his eyes and the crinkles of his deeply etched crow's feet.

A whimsical laugh reached the pair's ears from the mouth of the girl's mother from where she sat with another woman around her age a few yards away.

Young Celeste pouted in a childish manner, yet quickly brushed off the denial in an equally youthful fashion, flouncing over towards her mother and away from her still smiling father, stopping only when she spotted a large, red and white mushroom out of the corner of her eye.

Fascination overtook her, and she immediately forgot her original goal as she approached the earth's superficial offering.

Crouching down next to it, her first impulse was to reach out and pluck it from its home in the large yard, but a gentle hand grasped her forearm.

She gasped, and her wide eyes went from the unpainted nails adorning the hand wrapped around her skinny arm to meet the sparkling eyes of her smiling mother.

"Darling, don't disturb them," her mother warned ominously.

"Disturb who?" the confused girl asked with her dark brows furrowed.

"The fairies, of course," the woman chastised playfully, her smile growing at the shock in her daughter's expression, "this is where they live."

"The fairies," Celeste repeated with a gasp, "the fairies are living in our yard?"

"No sweetheart," her mother explained tenderly, "we are living in their home. This land was nature's home before us. And they don't mind company, but we must respect them and be careful to leave them undisturbed. You can look, but don't touch. Nature has been very kind to us; we must present it with the same level of honor. Do you understand?"

Celeste nodded her head vigorously, but her foremost thoughts were preoccupied with the prospect of fairies living just inches away.

The rest of her afternoon was spent guarding her new friend's home from her destructive older brother and his friend, whispering her secrets and thoughts to the mushroom, and providing tiny caps filled with lemonade for them to drink.

She was most careful not to touch them, though, and she didn't act upon the urge to pick flowers and decorate for her tiny companions.

After all, she wouldn't want to disturb the fairies, and she most definitely wouldn't want to disappoint her mother.

Present time

Celeste smiled wistfully at the memory. She supposed that was where her love of photography sprouted from. It was her little way to preserve nature without disturbing it.

Providing it with the respect it deserved.

She gripped her camera from its place around her neck and brought it up to eye level, snapping a quick photo of the memory triggering mushroom.

Then, hesitating, she surveyed her surroundings to make sure she was truly alone before leaning down fully and hovering over the mushroom closely. She felt a bit silly, but was overcome with the urge.

"If you're in there," she whispered shakily, "please help bring my mother back to me."

The resounding snap of a twig behind her sent her whirling, in fear of being discovered at such a decidedly emo moment.

She sighed out her relief but her breath immediately left her again at the sight of the grazing doe only yards away.

Celeste rose from the ground as quietly as she could, determined to get a picture of the beautiful creature near her.

However, at the crunching of old leaves beneath her, the doe froze, ears perked and muscles taut before bolting.

"Jiminy Christmas," Celeste muttered under her breath before following after the doe in desperation.

She followed the animal for a while, but stopped when her target ducked away into another portion of the forest and Celeste decided she should just let the poor thing be.

Her focus was soon directed instead to the huge, decrepit structure in front of her. Celeste's eyes fluttered about, trying to take the entire house in front of her in.

It was charred, boarded up, and most of the windows were broken in, but it looked like it was once a really beautiful dwelling.

Celeste felt instantly drawn to the building, not even noticing as she walked closer and closer.

A tentative hand reached forward to brush against the blackened paneling, but the pads of her fingers were met a surface that sent a burning shock through her whole being, and a shrill whistle that one could identify as screams resounded in her ears.

With a gasp, Celeste's hand shot back into the clutch of her other and the moment it disconnected from the structure the feeling evaporated.

With heavy breaths, she backed hastily away with shock clear in her eyes. Despite this, her curiosity only strengthened, and she had to physically resist the urge to go back and touch it again.

The aura surrounding the house felt like pain, it felt like anguish even, but it also felt like a home.

Celeste rubbed her face vigorously, smudging her makeup no doubt, and tried to shake herself of whatever subconscious part of her brain had awoken and urged her to think about auras and give inanimate objects feelings.

With a dazed shake of the head, Celeste turned on her heel and forced herself to vacate the area without looking back.

☾ ☽

Celeste breathed a sigh of relief as she finally stepped onto the jogger's path of the Beacon Hill's Preserve.

She in no way regretted venturing off the trail once in a while to explore, but this behavior often did result in getting lost.

She quickly reached the entrance of the forest and was greeted by the familiar sight of the parking lot.

However, she was also greeted by the unfamiliar sight of a sleek black Camaro parked in the outskirts of the lot.

This was an oddity, seeing as the area was completely barren except for the daunting vehicle, and there were many more spots of easier access to the forest open.

This, paired with the increasingly apparent feeling of being watched had her mind drawing up a rapid fire conclusion that caused a slight smirk to etch itself upon her lips.

"If you wanted to speak to me, Derek Hale," she called out tauntingly, "you could have just approached me like an actual human being."

She whirled around and, low and behold, an aggressively confused Derek Hale was standing less than a foot away from her.

"How the hell do you know my name?" he growled out, close enough that Celeste could feel his angry breathing.

"I don't like my friends getting into cars with strangers," she explained with a nonchalant shrug, "so I looked you up."

He blinked, momentarily taken aback before regaining his gaze of intimidation, but Celeste thought she could see a glint of admiration in his mossy eyes.

"You're a hard man to find," she admitted, "you're not exactly on Facebook. I only discovered your surname when I stumbled upon an old article."

With her final words, she stepped forward, her eyes blazing with a mixture of sorrow and admiration in regards to his ability to keep surviving after the devastating loss he had suffered.

The air changed around them, they both knew she was referring to the article printed on the infamous Hale house fire.

The strong eye contact the man held with Celeste wavered, and she took in sadly the way his tensed shoulders loosened ever so slightly, and she was hit with the reality of how broken he was.

The trouble with building your entire personality around a facade of strength when you're struggling so deeply is that even the tiniest lenience can shatter through the opaque glass that makes up the walls you have put up.

However, it is only noticeable to those who also have these tinted windows up for defenses, which is precisely how Celeste was able to tell that Derek Hale was a shell of a man.

She reached for his hand, and though he tensed at her touch, Derek allowed her to grasp it warily.

Celeste tried to communicate her empathy to his situation through this simple gesture, tried to tell him without words that it was okay to hurt.

Sometimes, most of the time, even the simplest of actions could resound with a person a thousand times louder than any spoken word could.

"What are you?" Derek spoke the only words he could manage with little conviction, as his mind was now preoccupied with a foreign feeling of warmth and security that traveled from Celeste to him in a way that was more apparent than simply a feeling of mutual understanding.

It was as though the enigmatic girl had literally transferred these emotions to him.

"I'm a Cancer," she teased to lighten the mood for the sake of the obviously disoriented man before her, "how about you? You seem like a Capricorn."

He snorted, pulling his hand away. Despite the loss of contact, he still felt as if he was connected to Celeste somehow.

"Where are you going?" he asked, for some reason genuinely worried about the young girl's well-being, "I'll drive you."

"Yeah, okay," Celeste agreed, and for a reason unbeknownst to her she actually trusted him, "only because I'm lazy and don't want to walk home. Please do not murder me and store my body in a ditch somewhere."

He only rolled his eyes and walked ahead of her in the direction of his car.

"If you do kill me," she followed behind him, "do it in a really cool way. Melt me in a vat of green acid like the Joker or something."

☾ ☽

Melanie Martinez blasted from the speakers hooked up to Celeste's speakers as she danced clumsily around the kitchen, gathering the ingredients to make Lydia's favorite red velvet cupcakes.

She figured her apparent "betrayal" could be fixed with baked goods.

After all, she knew Lydia secretly only wanted to know that Celeste cared, and that she valued Lydia's friendship over others.

Her encounter with Derek had been obscure, but it rested with her better than most of the other odd things that had happened to her since her move to Beacon Hills.

She was sifting the flour into a large glass bowl when she was startled into spilling a little on the counter by the shrill call of the doorbell.

Sighing, she strode through the hall to the front door, standing on her tip toes to look through the peep hole.

Her eyes widened considerably at the sight of one Stiles Stilinski muttering to himself on her front stoop.

Clicking open the lock, she tentatively opened the door to peer out at him.

He jumped at her presence, nearly losing his grip on the book he clutched in his fumbling hands.

"Stiles?" she greeted confusedly, and he grinned nervously at her.

"Celeste! Hello! I was in the area and I thought maybe I would return your- are you baking?" His originally rehearsed sounding greeting was interrupted as he was distracted.

Her brows furrowed at his abrupt change in topic, but she answered his question nonetheless.

"I am, how'd you know?"

"You have some flour on your nose," he said with a small smile.

Celeste blushed, muttering an oh and rubbing furiously at her nose.

"It's still- never mind. It's cute," Stiles spoke casually before paling at his own words, "your house! Your house is cute!"

"Oh, thanks," Celeste thanked him confusedly, "my mom likes to decorate."

"I can tell," the spastic boy nodded his head exaggeratedly, grateful for a change in subject, "very Martha Stewart."

"Yeah," Celeste laughed before glancing down, "is that my book?"

She gestured to the familiar copy of Salem's Lot in Stiles' hands and he smiled sheepishly.

"Oh yeah," he confirmed as if just remembering, "You left it in the stands after Jackson was injured."

"You mean after Scott body slammed into Jackson in a manner reminiscent to that of the Incredible Hulk's?"

"Um. Yes."

Celeste laughed, stepping to the side and brandishing for Stiles to come in.

Stiles blinked, pointing to himself and turning around as if she was holding the door open for someone else.

Celeste rolled her eyes, letting out a soft bout of laughter.

"Do I need to verbally invite you in?" she teased as he scrambled past her into the Lune household, "Are you a vampire or something?"

Stiles stopped abruptly and turned to face her with a shocked face as she closed the door softly behind him.

"What? No! Vampires don't exist," he reprimanded her with an oddly panicked expression, "nothing of the sort does. Not vampires, or werewolves. Why would you even say that?"

Stiles fidgeted under Celeste's confused gaze, fiddling with his fingers.

"Anyways," Celeste blinked, shrugging off his odd behavior as a typical Stiles spasm, "if you feel like hanging out for a little while, you can have a cupcake. I could use the company."

Celeste internally winced at how desperate that sounded, but Stiles' eyes lit up and he nodded spastically in a way that pulled all of the stress out of her in a single breath.

She led him to the kitchen, and he situated himself in a bar stool as she resumed her task.

Stiles pushed her book to the side and rested his chin in his hands with his elbows propped up against the counter, mesmerized as she began creating her bowl of wet ingredients.

"Do you always perv on your parent's separated egg whites when they bake?" Celeste teased.

"Yeah, my dad doesn't bake," Stiles said with a snort.

"And your mom?" Celeste hummed out casually as she poured in the vanilla extract, nearly spilling it when she caught sight of Stiles' crestfallen face.

"Oh rats," she internally cursed herself, "you don't have to answer that."

"If you're assuming my mother passed away," Stiles said with a sad smile upon his pink lips, "you'd be correct. Don't worry, you didn't know. Just please, whatever you do, don't pity me."

Celeste gripped the glass bowl in distress at her mistake.

"Trust me, I won't," Celeste insisted, "I lost my dad too."

"Yeah?" Stiles asked, looking into her eyes, "Hey, if you put us together, we could be Batman."

Celeste appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood, and quickly played along.

"That reminds me," she changed topics, "I still can't find it within me to believe you when you say you prefer DC over Marvel."

"Why not?" Stiles cried indignantly, "You do too, and Batman is my all-time favorite superhero."

"I can understand Batman being your favorite, obviously. He is the best one," Celeste admitted, "but I just feel like DC's plotlines are generally a lot more complex in terms of characters. None are completely good or bad. DC is nestled deeply in a world of shades of gray. Marvel's characters are definitely more black and white, like you. Which isn't at all a bad thing. It's just a different perspective."

Stiles blinked, pondering her words for what they really meant. He cocked his head slightly, looking at Celeste.

"And you," he asked curiously, "are you Marvel or DC?"

Celeste smiled humorlessly at the boy in front of her, looking at a point slightly next to his eye line rather than looking directly into his wondering hazel eyes.

"I've preferred DC since I was eight years old."

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Its up!!!! It's crap and confusing and riddled with continuity errors and doesn't really flow but its up!!!!

I really like writing about Derek and Celeste, so far they're my brotp. Obviously nothing romantic will happen between them bc Celeste is like 8 years old (she's 16 but whatever) but I ship them friendship wise so hard.

Seriously I know I am literal human garbage and I don't update for like years at a time. Just pester me to do it and I will because I give into peer pressure.

I go back to school tomorrow please force feed me a cactus?? Ok sorry for complaining I love you all my sweet children please stay hydrated and if you're still in school and you are going back soon stay strong I belive at you.

You are the sweetest little buttercups,

-Belle xx

(also stay hydrated)