Stiles Stilinski's Home for Supernatural Friends

The Terrible Weight of Knowing Literally Everything (An Unexpected Love Letter)

Peter Hale, for all of his curiosity, had never been truly surprised by anything.

Growing up with glowing eyes, razor-sharp claws, and a wolf always lurking in the back of his mind kind of took all of the supernatural mystique out of the world.

Whatever mysteries remained quickly faded after years of being groomed to become the bloody left hand of the Hale pack.

Once he'd reached his twenties, he'd met too many monsters—both creature and human alike—for people to surprise him anymore.

He'd seen too much, he'd done too much—too early and all too often—to be outmaneuvered in such a way.

Sure, he didn't know everything. His narcissism didn't actually reach levels of delusion (thank you so very much, dearest Talia), but he knew how the undercurrents behind the push and pull of the world flowed. He knew how people worked; and if he didn't at first glance, his sharp eyes and sharper mind usually only needed a second or third before the plot was spoiled for him.

So, Peter Hale didn't get surprised.

This was a truth he'd lived with for over thirty years.

(Never surprised while watching from the shadows behind his grandfather, his father, and then his older sister—)

This was a truth he'd burned with.

(Never, never surprised that the Argents finally found a way to kill his family, his pack; their cruelty as blinding as black smoke, their Hypocritical Oath nonsense as sickening as burning blue wolfsbane—)

This wasn't a truth he'd died with.

(That maddening boy, eyes too bright, chemosignals constantly in flux and slightly bitter to his nose, edged in medication and tingling with ozone—

"Do you want the bite? Yes or no?"

"I don't wanna be like you."

"Do you know what I heard just then? Your heart beating slightly faster over the words 'I. Don't. Want.'"

A pause. Those bright eyes narrowing, and the striking scent of lightning.

"Oh, that? That's just the Ritalin kicking in. Go save your nephew, you absolute weirdo.")

Maybe he had been deluded after all.

He dies with that truth shattered, his nephew's claws in his neck and the ghost of his sister's laughter ringing in his ears.

(Fuck you, Talia.)

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After his resurrection—and just because he can't be (alright, isn't usually) surprised, doesn't mean that he isn't the one doing the surprising to others; honestly, it's way too easy and often delightfully fun—he notices a pattern.

That idiotic boy kept surprising him.

Kept surviving him. And surviving all of the others that followed.

Gerard.

That awful lizard boy.

Deucalion and his pack of slavering mongrels (the female, Kali, didn't even wear shoes??).

Jessica Black. Or whatever her name was—either way, her blood was red on his fingertips in the end.

The sacrifice.

Oni and fox spirits too ancient to fathom.

An assorted array of literal assassins.

Kate Argent, that had somehow become even more unfathomably unhinged as a creature of the night (Gods but he still burnburnburned with hatred for that bitch, his first goal after gaining back his alpha spark was always going to be tearing out her black heart).