Chapter Text
Deucalion stares at the stranger in front of him, dazed.
The gaseous wolfsbane has vanished as if it had never been there in the first place.
Blood drips from their steel baseball bat into a gleaming crimson puddle on the cracked concrete floor.
"You good?" the stranger asks through the obscurity of their gas mask, like they aren't standing above the bludgeoned carcass of the man who had been trying to kill Deucalion for no real, conceivable reason other than some senseless, brutish idealism.
"Yes," Deucalion manages at length. "How—? Why—?"
"Just tryin' to keep the peace, dude." The stranger tosses him a tape recorder, black tea eyes blistering in their intensity. "I got his whole supervillain monologue on that thing — make sure it gets to the right people and his death should be cleared, it was well within the rights of authorized self-defence and Hunters' Code Regulations. Who knows? Maybe with him dead your vision will actually get somewhere. Fair warning, though: the only Code-worthy Argents that I know of are Chris, Allison, and maybe Rohese. So, y'know," he waves a hand generally, "try not to get dead and all that jazz."
"I... thank you."
"I don't need you to fucking thank me, Duke," the stranger says on his way out. "I need you to be one of the good guys."
The Hales are told of this momentous derailing of a massacre three days exactly before Paige Krasikeva comes sobbing and hyperventilating to their door.
She tells them a big, looming man with glowing red eyes tried to eat her. She tells them a guy, maybe a little older than her, in a gas mask and a red jacket with a steel bat saved her.
"He just said run, and to-to beat some sense into Derek, because his insecurities almost cost me my life, and, um," she sniffles, scrubs at her face like a child who, striving to stave off sleep so as not to be caught by the monsters lurking under their bed, might dig their knuckles into their eyes and drag them down their cheeks. "H-he said to tell Peter that if he pulls something like this again, he'll lace all of his tea with white wolfsbane? I, um," she scoffs out a choked laugh, "I don't know what that means."
Talia leans back in her chair with a slow exhale and decides to call a Pack-meeting within the next twenty-four hours to discuss the issue, because she seems to have less than half of the information, and that is not tenable.
The information, when she demands it, comes easily, and she's half inclined to make good on their mystery stranger's threat by the end of it, because really?
She can understand, to a degree, what they both must've been thinking: Peter had hoped this would be the strategy that'd lure Ennis away from the idea of revenge with finality, Derek had hoped that Turning Paige would lead to his happily forever after, and their idiocy had played off of each other oh, so perfectly.
Talia shouts herself hoarse, lecturing them on the proper procedure surrounding offering a civilian the Bite, about not making unilateral decisions, about how cruel they've been to Paige in all their nearsighted foolishness. Derek is slouched and chagrined, Peter seems to understand logically, but his emotions are hidden so well behind a blank facade that she can't tell if she actually got through to him.
When this is done, Talia wonders if either of them knows of Paige's saviour, since he'd seemed to know so much about them, but all she gets in that vein is confusion (Derek) and intrigue (Peter).
The next day she visits an old friend of hers to vent a little, only to be surprised by Lorraine saying:
"Wait. A gas mask and a baseball bat?"
"Yes," Talia draws out the word suspiciously.
"He's the one who saved my Maddy," Lorraine tells her. "The one who gave me all those books and told me to have a chat with Alan about what I'd been experiencing — which is how we met, remember? He popped up with Meredith, about... a month and a half later, before disappearing again."
"You're serious?"
"Yes! I've always thought - I mean, after I learned more about this stuff - that he was another Pack's Druid, and maybe he heard me wailing? Decided to do something about it? Because from what Maddy's told me, he teleported her and her whole boat from the eye of that storm just like-" she clicks her fingers- "that. And Meredith told me he sucked her scream right out of the air when she accidentally released it in school, before it could hurt anybody."
"Huh," Talia says. "He's certainly been busy. But he isn't a Druid."
"He isn't?"
"He can't be. Druidic power doesn't work like that, and it's certainly not that... grandiose."
But the question remains, then, if he isn't a Druid, what is he? How is he doing this, and, perhaps most important, why?
"Hello, Chris," sings a honeyed voice from behind.
Chris' attention snaps toward the intruder, his gun already out of its' holster and aimed at whoever it is — a boy, apparently, with braided russet hair, a red jacket, and wise eyes. He's wearing a gas mask, but Chris can tell by the way his eyes crinkle around the edges, the way sun-burnt sand swirls in his irises, that he's smiling.
Chris cocks his gun.
"You killed my father," he says.
"No offence, but he totally deserved it," the stranger agrees with cheerful solemnity.
"What the hell are you doing in my home?" Chris demands. The kid is perched on a windowsill in Chris' office, as nonchalantly as if this were something he did every day, as if they were familiar.
"I was just wondering," the kid speaks softly, fond amusement sewn through with a peculiar resignation, "how you'd feel about putting down some nazis?"
Chris takes a moment to try and reconcile this proposition with logic. Naturally, he comes to the conclusion that this kid must be crazy.
"... What?"
"They call themselves the Dread Doctors. Actually, saying they're nazis might be overselling it — or underselling it," the kid muses, then shrugs. "Either way, you'll help me."
Chris huffs out his incredulity and ire, "Are you arrogant? Or just plain stupid?"
The kid chuckles, slides a thick-packed manila envelope out from behind his back and tosses it to Chris. "If you don't help me I'll kill your sister, too, instead of, say... handing that over to the police? She's going down one way or another, Chris, but this option means that she'll live to see another day. Pick your poison, man."
The manila envelope holds enough collected evidence to put anyone away for life: files upon files describing in detail how Katherine Argent had seduced young boys from well-established families, how she'd burnt their houses down with said family inside, and how she'd left every boy she'd seduced as the fire's only living survivor. Two of her victims committed suicide, one is in a psych ward, and another - as fucked up as he is - is willing to testify.
"Fuck," Chris breathes.
"Yeah," the kid says grimly, "I had worse on your dad. Look, I'm not doing this to, like, fuck your family, or to randomly murder a bunch of people — your dad and your sister lost sight of the Code a long ass time ago. I'm just doing what I need to do to protect the people I love. And, hey, at least I'm giving you a choice here, right?"
"It's not much of one," Chris murmurs lowly as he looks through pictures and, worse still, the proof that these Packs were good for their communities, all stable and Code-bearing 'weres right up until his baby sister lit them up. She'd had no reason to do this. None. And yet.
"No," his blackmailer agrees quietly, buttery sunlight melting over all his angles and sharp edges, painting him too goddamn young for the conversation they're having, "but it's more than she deserves, isn't it?"
"Yes," Chris agrees, sliding the disastrous contents of the manila envelope back home, "it is." He squares his shoulders and looks at the kid dead on, "So, these Dread Doctors..."
Around a month after the Paige incident, and Derek's still not talking to him. Peter wonders if he should be less hurt by it than he is, but he can't seem to shake the feeling that, despite trying only to do his job - he is the Left Hand, after all, observing threats and strategically disposing of them is what he does - he fucked up.
"Peter," Talia calls down the basement stairs, her voice a shock through the silence of their library, "with me."
"Where to?" he asks, closing the book he'd been poring over, trying to find some information on the newest supernatural oddity that's been plaguing Beacon Hills.
"Argent called, he wants to renew the treaty."
"Seriously?"
When they arrive at the set meeting location (a traditional style sushi bar with private rooms. Peter has a sneaking suspicion that the Argents' connection with the Yakuza has something to do with it) all they find is one Chris Argent with a large binder full of papers in front of him.
"Victoria didn't want to do this," he tells them, point-blank. "But I've looked it over, and this is — it's much better than the treaty we have now. There are a lot more contingencies for both of us and there's more accountability, it's-" he huffs something incredulous and mildly indecipherable. "It's good."
"You and your Matriarch didn't write it?" Talia asks, flipping through it herself and making appreciative noises as she does.
"My Matriarch didn't want shit to do with it, but we're being blackmailed so we don't have much of a choice."
"Blackmailed?" Peter inquires curiously as he takes the binder from his Alpha — whoever did write the treaty did damn good work, it's effectively devoid of loopholes, and subclause 489b simply states: Peter, I know you'll want to push your boundaries. Don't.
He nearly chokes on startled laughter when he reads it.
"There was this kid, he may sound familiar: red jacket, gas mask, his weapon of choice is a steel baseball bat? He talked like he knew you, but that may not mean much, he talked like he knew me. He did, I guess. Enough about my little sister to get her life without a chance of parole (not that I'm saying she didn't deserve it, for what she did), enough about the whole Clan to bury us and most of the people we've come into contact with since medieval times..."
"Your sister's in prison?" Talia asks, dumbfounded, as Peter finds at least six more easter eggs, four directed at him, two directed at Derek, and one directed at Victoria Argent.
"As of yesterday," Chris confirms. "Aunt Ro and I saw that she went easy and we have people stationed at the prison she's at to make sure she stays. The council wasn't too happy with her behaviour."
"He went to the council?"
"No," Chris says, "I did. She massacred at least five families, committed statutory rape and abuse toward at least as many minors, all because they were werewolves. It wasn't just going against the Code, it was — what she did was just, wrong. On every level." He snorts derisively, "My dad was worse, according to Mischief. he didn't show me any proof of that - said he wanted to spare me some - but considering everything else he had, I'm inclined to believe him."
"I'm so sorry, Chris," Talia sighs, shaking her head in sympathy.
"His name is Mischief?" Peter finds himself asking, he's already located eight more, a few for Cora, some for Chris, one, even, for little Allison — for when she's older, he's assuming.
"That's the one he gave me to call him by. He's a- he's a good guy, he certainly has your best interests at heart, and, from what I can tell, ours, too."
Talia nods, gives Peter the okay, and he's smiling despite himself when he signs the dotted line, handing the binder back to her to do the same.
Normally these things take longer, take hours of negotiation and re-negotiation and hashing out the particulars at least three times over before there's any end in sight. Not so, today, and since the room's been booked with their usual habits in mind they decide they might as well take advantage of it and actually partake in the services the restaurant provides.
Chris tells them more about Mischief over supper: the hunt he did with him, how old he thinks he is ("Seventeen, at most."), how the kid fights like he's dancing, babbles incessantly, and should never be left in a room alone with his wife. They tell Chris the handful of stories they have (from Deucalion to Paige and Lorraine, along with a few other tales through the pipeline) and the theories: Deaton's idea that he may be a Spark, Talia's that he may be working for another Pack, Peter's that he has clairvoyance of some sort.
Eventually, though, over the sushi, sashimi, and saké, the conversation drifts, to Derek's relationship problems, to Chris and Victoria wanting to move back to Beacon Hills, to the idea that Cora, Gabriel, and Allison could actually be friends.