Work Text:
Plant Flowers Over My Grave
Derek fell in love with Allison at her very first assassination attempt.
It was an arrow, no less and Allison was but a child albeit with a deadly aim. She had wild hair, raven-wing eyes and apple cheeks. When she concentrated hard, her face looked like that of a chipmunk, but it was so endearing. Derek looked and looked and forgot to duck even when his security detail who had been waiting in the car (Derek was too embarrassed to get an ice-cream with his bodyguard trailing behind him) had burst through the door and was shouting at him to get the hell down.
Derek was not ashamed to admit he liked to drown himself in mint and choco-chips whenever he used to be stood up at a date (which happened to take place at a disturbing frequency), making him a loyal customer of Melissa’s since he was six and came here for the first time with his dad.
This time he was thinking about experimenting with a different flavor, because who knows it might just change his luck. He had been concentrating on the glassed boxes of bubblegum-coloured ice-cream and looking forward to a quiet evening at home with a dog-eared book from the royal library. He never saw the girl sitting with a motley group of school students suddenly standing up and gripping her bow and the quiver of arrows which were resting against the glass wall of the restaurant.
“No…Allison, don’t…” he heard and there was such genuine panic in the voice that he looked back only to see an arrow pointed towards his heart.
“What?” he asked stupidly, which his assassin couldn’t hear over the din in the little ice-cream parlour as people were scrambling to get away from the little girl who looked like a wild animal.
His eyes met hers: green and hazel clashing with black and it was like his world exploded and he could see it in techni-colour for the first time; like before this, nothing was worthwhile.
She loosened the arrow, but Derek stood his ground like an idiot. Well, uncle Peter kept on saying how Derek was not quite the brightest crayon in the box and it’s like Derek lived to prove him right.
“Ow,” he complained as the arrow hit him in the chest and fell on the ground. He looked down and stared at the arrowhead, which was a blunt wooden shaft. Derek looked up to find his tiny assassin throwing him a challenging smile and leaping behind the counter to disappear in the backroom.
She was never found and Derek refused to give a description even when his mom pointed out to the two broken ribs and the possibility of how it might have punctured his heart or his lungs and what then, how was she supposed to react when her son, the crown prince of the tiny Kingdom of Beacon Hills, died at the tender age of sixteen.
Well, Derek was in love. You don’t give away the identity of the person you have fallen in love with at the very first sight just because they happen to try to kill you. That’s just mean!
So, Derek scowled at his best friend Boyd when he made his first love confession as the latter fell off the chair, laughing (“only you, Hale,” he wheezed, “only you!”). He suffered through his big sister who had passed over the claim to be the next in the line of succession in favour of Derek going mother hen over him and pretty much stalking him around. He sucked it up as his little sister who adored him was clinging to him more than ever like a live Velcro monkey (“no, Cora, I cannot take you to school. You are too young for tha…oh for Chrissake, don’t cry. OK, I will have mom talk to Principal Martin. Now calm down.”)
Then his other best friend (“You wish, Hale!”) or the person he secretly wished to be his best friend (and never dared to say it out loud) was going postal over his apparent lack of self-preservation instinct. Lemurs and insects drawn to the fire might have been mentioned. Derek might have zoned out a bit mid-rant, thinking about the fire in the little assassin’s eyes. But he was quickly dragged back to the reality by the scruff of his neck by Lydia.
“You could have died, you gigantic moron,” she had thrown her purse at his head and damn the thing must have weighed a ton. “I know you saw her. She is a threat to your life. You even refuse to let Parrish interrogate the ice-cream shop owner–”
“They will never give me any ice-cream,” he said petulantly.
“Which is obviously more important than your life.” She had rolled her eyes so hard at him that he winced in sympathy.
“It was just a child,” Derek defended. Then, he looked horrified, “oh my God, I am a total paedo.”
Lydia threw her hands in air, 100% done!
…
Allison fell in love with Derek the first time she failed to assassinate him.
It was also the most shameful day in her entire life because she could not bring herself to complete the task she had been groomed from birth to do.
She had taken to carry her bow and her quiver-full of choicest arrows everywhere for the last few months. She had been practising constantly, under the stern tutelage of aunt Kate, who was oh-so-badass and Allison wanted to prove to her she was worthy of her attention. Aunt Kate was not like her father who was always telling Allison how she was just a child and she should concentrate on school now and play with her friends rather than do target practice at odd hours in the forest with her elder cousins. All Argents knew from their very birth how their entire life was centered around one purpose and that was to free their country from the oppression of a monarchy that had kept the good citizens of Beacon Hills subjugated for centuries. The first Argents in the Beacon Hills had borne the news of revolution from their native country and had tried to rouse people against the Hales. Unfortunately, people in Beacon Hills were stupid and ignorant and it was a difficult task to shake their loyalty.
It’s been less than half a century that the revolution had taken a bloody turn as the Argents came to realise the need for more drastic measures. As a result, the whole clan of them was persecuted by the Royal Guards and thrown into the prison. The few remaining had learnt to evade the guards and had been able to keep their identity hidden. It was not an ideal position to move a nation to a revolution.
So, a fraction of Argents including Allison’s aunt thought desperate times call for desperate measures and they were in favour of total anarchy. Naturally, when a plan to seduce the crown prince and kill the entire royal family through the information obtained from the infatuated 15-year old prince was foiled because of the courage and ingenuity of the head of the Royal Guard, John Stilinski, that Kate Argent thought a more direct approach would be the best. After all, it should be a spectacle – the assassination of the prince, and it should be brutal enough to teach the Hales a lesson so that they can never recover from the crushing blow.
So, Allison let out a gasp as the prince walked into the ice-cream parlour without a body-guard. She couldn’t believe her luck. The prince was wearing worn jeans torn at the knees and a plain white tee. His hair was mussed up and sticking in different directions like the prince had been running his fingers through it repeatedly. Still, in spite of the unhappy curve of his mouth and the frown between his dark eyebrows, the prince looked…well, radiant, was the word that came to her mind. He was every bit a prince, without princely garments or a white steed and a sword, though the idea of a prince carrying sword was ludicrous in modern times.
Allison’s hands chose the wrong arrow, deliberately, not the silver-tipped one traditionally used by her family for generations to use against their enemies. She chose an arrow which will not kill Derek because the prince had looked up and their eyes had met. The prince looked like he was made of rainbows and small, furry woodland creatures. And he was so breathtakingly beautiful. Allison felt the air leaving her lungs because young as she was, she knew what it meant to fall in love.
Allison couldn’t even help her lips forming a smile when the prince stared at her, looking adorably betrayed, even as she was dodging the royal guards to get away.
She was still smiling when she had reached their secret hide-outs at Aunt Kate’s.
…
When Derek met Allison the second time, it was raining hard and she was soaking wet, looking for all the world like a drowning kitten and she was hanging from the arm of a sweet-looking boy with a crooked jaw and brown eyes.
Allison used a dagger then because she was angry, having received the news of her aunt’s murder by Derek’s supposedly comatose uncle, a survivor or Kate’s arson attempt nearly seven years ago.
“This is for Kate,” Allison had looked into his eyes coldly as she plunged the knife into his chest and held him by the collar of his designer leather jacket even as he sank to his knees. “This is for my aunt.” She had twisted the knife until Derek had bit his lip and still refused to scream that would have alerted the guards instantly, maintaining the eye-contact all the while, and those eyes…God those eyes…that haunted Allison in her dreams…green and hazel and silver and a ring of scarlet around the dark of the pupils, and Allison was so fucked.
“If…if this is wh-what…” His lips had trembled and Allison had to lean down to hear him. Scott had frozen in horror in the background and Allison knew she had lost her only friend because Scott would never support violence of any kind. But it didn’t matter. Her entire world had narrowed down to the bloodied lips that belonged to the prince, who had been the root cause of her life being a living hell.
“What is it?” She had jerked him unkindly, making his eyes crinkle in pain.
“If this is what you want,” the prince had finished.
She released him like his words burnt and he collapsed on the sidewalk like a broken toy.
“If she had stabbed him one inch above, the death would have been instantaneous,” Doctor Deaton had commented later.
…
“…and it is with great honour that we declare our country becoming a constitutional monarchy and that a general election will take place as soon as the final draft of the Constitution is ratified by a representation of the cross-section of the general populace of Beacon Hills. The fact that none of this would have been possible without the tireless efforts of the crown prince Derek Hale who believed in…”
Allison shielded her eyes from the sun to stare at Scott McCall. His eyes were shining with hope and joy as Queen Talia Hale stood beside him, smiling at her protégé, the youngest Prime Minister at the age of twenty-five. Her father was there on the centre stage as well, sitting right beside Peter Hale and instead of ripping each others’ throats, they were murmuring in low voices.
All members of the royal family were there; important people like Deaton, the advisor to the royal family and their personal physician, Lydia Martin – the terrifyingly beautiful foreign affairs minister, Isaac Lahey – the social worker, Erica Reyes – the first female bodyguard to the royal children. Hell, even Stiles was there! He was in no way a fan of the royal family and he leaned more towards anarchist politics like Allison. Still, he was sitting in the front row, knocking back his glasses from time to time and grinning from ear to ear, looking up at his best friend with pride and awe.
Everybody was there except for the man Allison had hoped to see. Everything she did was to achieve democracy and now she had nothing left to fight for. But fighting was all she had known. It was all she was ever good at and now that there was no reason left to fight anymore she didn’t know if there a purpose to her life. She wanted to see the person who used to be her purpose and then, she would probably get a clue.
But Derek Hale was nowhere to be seen.
…
“But you hate guns?” Derek couldn’t help blurting out and Allison shoved the muzzle of her Glock harder into his skull.
“I hate you even more,” she said firmly.
Derek took in the dishevelled hair, the cold and distant eyes, the dark circles beneath it and the ill-fitted clothes that had seen better days. His face softened.
“Chris would like to know if you are alive or dead, you know,” he shrugged, “just saying.”
“Don’t take my father’s name,” Allison ordered. “He may have forgiven you for killing my mom, but I haven’t.”
“I didn’t know she was your mom, Allison,” Derek whispered. “She was about to kill Scott simply because his political views are different from the Argents. He is a pacifist and that is not a crime. He has never harmed any–”
“Stop,” Allison hissed. “Stop right now or I swear I will shoot you in the stomach and leave you to bleed out on the floor.”
“Allison,” Derek spoke softly, “you have me for three days and you are yet to shoot me though you talk about it all the time.”
“It’s because of your goddamn eyes!” Allison all but yelled, whirling round and kicking a wooden box making it fly across the room in frustration. “I am going to gouge them out of your skull. Yeah, that’s a good plan. I will make you suffer as you have made me suffer. I knew nothing but killing since I was born. I didn’t have a childhood because you existed. You are…you are the bane of my existence.”
“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Derek frowned.
Allison threw her hands in air. “That is what you got from my entire rant?”
…
Chris Argent burst through the door with Erica and Jordan Parrish two days later with Lydia in tow. She stuck out like a sore thumb in her little blue dress and her high heels in the bleak warehouse. Turned out she was more efficient than the entire police force of Beacon Hills to decipher the clues left behind and follow them like fallen breadcrumbs to find Allison and Derek.
“Where did she go?” Argent rushed towards the broken window that opened into a narrow road that winded into the Beacon Hills Preserve after a mile or so. “Where is my daughter?”
“No…” Derek rushed after him the moment Erica cut him loose. “Chris, don’t. She has rigged the whole pl–”
The explosion cut him short, but he had already managed to bring Chris down and cover him with his own body.
When Chris staggered to his feet and turned his attention to Derek, horrified at the bloody mess that was his back now, Derek simply put up a hand and assured, “I’m OK…‘m fine.”
Though he might have completely ruined the effect by passing out on the floor.
…
Allison counted his scars as he lay on his stomach, sleeping, with his tiny mouth slightly open and two of his front teeth peeking through. She touched the raised line where a glass had embedded deep into his flesh, puncturing his lever, the one that almost got him killed. Once she had caressed each one of them she moved onto his hair, raking her fingers through the soft, raven tresses.
Her prince.
He smiled in his sleep and she leaned down to drop a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Then she nuzzled his cheek where it dimpled and licked the shell of his ear, making him shiver in his sleep.
Her head snapped up at the sound of approaching footsteps and she climbed down the bed where she was straddling Derek. The man murmured a sleepy protest.
“Please stay,” he whispered and Allison turned back, shocked. Derek was looking straight at her.
The footsteps paused at the door. Allison leapt through the window, earning a startled gasp.
“Allison,” Derek said and he was at the window in an instant.
She blew him a kiss which he caught and pressed to the heart and in a blink of an eye, she disappeared from his line of sight.
“Again?” Allison heard a female voice exclaiming loudly while she crouched behind a bush as the guards crisscrossed the royal garden. “Did you see her? Is she still there in the garden?”
“She is gone a long time back, Erica.” Derek’s voice is playful. “Don’t you think I would have called you if I saw her?”
“No, you wouldn’t, your highness,” Erica replied and sounded very put-upon about it.
“She is not hurting anybody,” Derek hedged. “She is just…”
“Leaving you a rose for each of your scars, giving your bodyguards grey hair before they turn thirty, like a fucking creep!” Erica sassed and Allison could practically see her holding up the offending flower which she had left on Derek’s bedside table this time. “I know. She has explained it in great detail when she kidnapped you last time. Again.”
“Think of it this way,” Derek was saying patiently, “she didn’t try to blow anybody up. Or set Isaac’s scarf on fire, totally accidentally, of course. So that must be an improvement.”
Allison snorted. That was totally on purpose. An orange and blue scarf was an abomination and it deserved to burn in the seventh circle of hell.
“You are completely crazy and you two deserve each other.”
Allison smiled and decided she liked Erica.
…
“I think I kind of like you,” Allison said.
“You think?” Allison could almost hear Derek rolling his eyes.
“I think you don’t hate me either,” she bit her lip anxiously.
“Whatever gave you the idea?” Derek drawled.
“I will kill you if you don’t stop rolling your eyes at me.”
“You are not…very good at killing me,” Derek chuckled.
“Maybe I have never tried very hard.”
Derek glanced sideways at the girl sitting beside him. She was wolfing down an ice-cream without a care in the world (“I told you I would take you on a date.” “Technically, you ambushed me in my office.” “But I got you ice-creams. Mint and choco-chips. See, I remember.” “And you also insisted that we sit here on the window ledge. I think you are still after my life.” “Nah, I just dig the view.”).
“Are we ever going to have a normal date?” he asked desperately.
“It’s not my fault that you choose to become a human rights lawyer and that your office is located on the twentieth floor.”
“We can sit inside?” Derek pointed out. “I have a comfortable couch and all.”
“Now where is the fun in that.” Allison leaned towards him and kissed him on the cheek.
Derek wanted to turn his head, just a little bit so that their lips met. He wanted to taste her, bury his nose in her throat and learn how she smelt. He wanted to take her into his arms and never let her go.
But he was scared. What if he fell?
“Don’t be,” Allison cupped his face, turning his head towards her. “I will save you.”
…
The first time Derek kissed Allison was the day she got shot by his own bodyguards. He held her frail body against his chest.
“Kiss me,” she demanded and Derek did, but he was crying all the while.
“Don’t,” he said, lost and broken, because even in the scant light he could see her eyes glazed over in pain and he knew this was it. That you could flirt with death only so many times before it caught up with you. “I love you, Allison. Please…”
But she smiled, looking content for a moment and reached up.
“It’s OK,” she said, brushing his tears, smearing blood across his cheek. “I love you too, prince.”
“I am not a prince,” Derek hugged her closer and murmured against her hair. “I am a nobody without you.”
“You are my prince,” she said. “Now kiss me again.”