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Tweak says, "do anything...be anything"

Derek Hale is the worst alpha (theworstalpha) wrote in paradisolog,
@ 2016-04-07 16:07:00

Entry tags:

~derek hale (theworstalpha), ~sara lance (theyellowbird)

WHO: Derek Hale & ~~OTA~~ Sara Lance
WHERE: The lake near camp
WHEN: Thursday afternoon
WHAT: Cooling off in the lake
WARNINGS: Passing mention of non-sexual nudity
STATUS: Complete

Some have labeled me so savvy and I'll admit, I agree to disagree.

This place moved at the speed of goddamned light, Derek realized. Part of him was wary of that, but the other part wanted very much to embrace it, because it meant he didn't have to let himself wallow in missing Larissa. He'd had his grieving period, he accepted that they couldn't be together and it was sad, but he would never begrudge her her decision. It had been a short while since they'd parted ways and Derek wanted to make the most of the opportunity before him. He could do something here that actually mattered and nobody had to die for him to do it. ...that said, it was more than a little overwhelming to be approached about fathering a woman's child when he'd never seen or spoken to her before.

But the fact that he'd gotten two propositions from two beautiful women in less than twelve hours certainly didn't suck.

Derek had spent the first night in the jungle as a wolf, because he hadn't had an awful lot of time during the first day to build a shelter for himself. He'd woken this morning with the sun and gotten straight to work. Derek observed the other rudimentary shelters and, while he had no actual idea what the hell he was doing, he assumed that a little trial and error would help him figure it out. How hard could it really be?

A lot harder than he'd thought, as it turned out, and halfway into the afternoon, when he was sweating buckets and had stripped down to his boxer shorts to work only to find that it didn't help how hot and exhausted he was — or the fact that he couldn't get his goddamned shelter to stay upright, for that matter — Derek gave up. He'd sleep in the jungle again as the wolf and that was just as well for him. It wasn't like he minded. Hell, maybe he could keep an ear out for potential threats approaching the camp. He didn't think the bear would venture in that far with the swell of numerous human scents floating around, but he might not be able to say the same for something else.

"Fuck this," he grunted, kicking the remnants of a third attempt at a shelter as it laid in a heap of branches and leaves at his feet. Wiping his forehead with the curve of of his shoulder and upper arm, Derek stalked away from the sad remains of a failed attempt and headed to the lake. He probably should've been a little more self-conscious considering the plethora of people from his past, but he wasn't; if they didn't like it, they wouldn't look and Derek wasn't going to walk around in soggy boxer shorts the rest of the day just to make a bunch of people he never really felt connected with happy, anyway. He left the boxer shorts on a rock and dove into the lake, surfacing a few yards away, a few seconds later and he shook his head sharply to send the worst of the water flying.

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theworstalpha
2016-04-08 09:17 pm UTC (link)

With a little smirk, Derek nodded. Yeah, he knew. He watched that train wreck from start to finish because he couldn't stop. Even Derek Hale was sucked in by that particular trend. "Yeah, I get that. That's fair enough," he agreed. He wondered where they'd gotten a deck of cards or whether they'd just gotten so bored after a few days that they'd made them just to have something "normal" to do in their down time. "Poker, huh? Nice, if you guys have another game, I want to get in on that."

He winced a little at the thought of being in a place this hot that didn't have some place to cool off. "God, no thanks. I can only take so much heat before it puts me in a terrible mood," he replied. It didn't help that werewolves' body heat ran higher, typically, than humans. If he'd gotten to this place and there hadn't been, at the very least, access to the ocean, he probably would've asked to be immediately sent back.

"You'd be surprised what I would believe," Derek commented, watching passively as she started to move. If anyone could understand some level of crazy, he thought, it was probably him. How many people could say that they'd been locked in a tomb and de-aged into their teen years by a psychotic ex? Derek was guessing not many. When she finally did say, Derek gave a facial shrug. "Time traveling vigilante, sure," he agreed before laughing a little. "Why not? I've seen, heard, and experienced plenty of things most people would never believe, so I don't mind suspending disbelief for the sake of conversation. Life's fucking weird," he went on before actually answering her question. "Originally, I'm from Beacon Hills, California, but I've lived in Brooklyn...and then, for the past two years, I was actually living in Brazil with my little sister. As it turns out, I dig South America a lot more than I dig North America. It afforded me the time and ability to do a little much-needed soul searching."

Derek leaned back a little to wet his head again without being rude enough to completely ignore Sara for the few seconds it'd take to dunk himself. "Did you catch him? The immortal mass-murdering tyrant?"

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theyellowbird
2016-04-08 09:50 pm UTC (link)

Sara nodded, "Noted. I'll likely just post an invitation online. Pretty much just feel free to call for a game whenever." It wasn't like there was a hell of a lot to do at night anyway unless you had someone to hook up with. There wouldn't be until people started to create new forms of entertainment like she had with the cards. Some books would be nice.

"You got use to it after a while." because you pretty much had to, there wasn't exactly a choice to take off to a different location when you joined the league. "At the very least I think it gave me a leg up here."

Seeing that he was a werewolf, she could only imagine some of the things he would have seen in his lifetime. But time travel and werewolves still seemed to be different types of strange and different. "Life is really fucking weird." she agreed. He'd moved around a bit. Sara had never even heard of Beacon Hills until coming here, but she'd been to Brooklyn, and Brazil. "Brazil is beautiful, I've spent a little time there." but many places were beautiful, she had done a lot of traveling over the past ten years. "I can see the appeal in staying there a while." Though her own soul searching had pretty much taken her right back to Asia. Maybe that should have told her something.

"No." she said, a flash of annoyance crossing her face not at all directed at him. "Unfortunately when you're immortal you have a lot of time to gather resources, power, and become great at vanishing for decades at a time." For all she knew, the rest of her team was dead. It was likely, because why else would they have took off and then never come back? "Anyway, something happened on our last attempt. Not sure what, but the majority of the team went missing with the ship. This island seemed like a much better option than the sexism of the 50s."

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theworstalpha
2016-04-09 03:06 pm UTC (link)

At her suggestion, Derek nodded. "Cool, yeah, I might then," he said. He was surrounded by people he already knew from home, but that didn't mean he had to spend time with them and Derek didn't intend to. He was much more interested in getting to know the other volunteers on the island, especially if they all looked like the women he'd met so far, Sara included. Derek could get used to this.

"I believe it," he said. He'd gotten used to the climate down in Brazil, which had taken a while. It was similar to the climate here, but it had been more humid. This was kind of a nice change, except that back in Brazil, he'd only really put himself to work when he was running or he was indoors with air conditioning running, so this was a bit of a shift out of the comfort zone and he supposed once he adjusted it wouldn't bother him as much anymore.

Derek's eyebrows lifted with interest when she said she'd been to Brazil. "Oh yeah? Where in?" he asked curiously. "My sister lives down there. It was time to move on to greener pastures and following her down sounded like a good idea. Turns out, I like it a lot better down there," he replied. "So good on her for finding it. I wouldn't have thought of it." Derek probably would've gone back to New York, by reflex, when fleeing from Beacon Hills, otherwise, and the winters that he'd hated as a teenager and in his early twenties would've been a nightmare to re-adjust to, so it was really just as well the way things were.

When she answered, Derek missed the flash on her expression but he didn't miss the spike in the chemosignals. Clearly, a sensitive topic and he reminded himself not to push the subject. "I wouldn't have wanted to stay in the fifties, either," he agreed, nose wrinkling. "I'd have wound up in prison for beating the shit out of all the unwittingly misogynistic assholes in that decade, for sure." Sometimes, just seeing movies or television shows set in that time period got Derek heated; he couldn't imagine being stranded there.

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theyellowbird
2016-04-11 02:40 pm UTC (link)

"São Paulo." she answered. "Mostly, anyway. I was sent after some members of the Primeiro Comando da Capital. Luckily they were all mostly in the same city." That had been a pain in the ass, she hadn't want to start a backlash that would hurt innocent civilians. "But I had a very brief time to just enjoy the city. But no time to really explore any other parts." She had planned on traveling through it after her resurrection, but she'd kind of just held up in in Asia. At some point in time she was really going to have to go back to some of the place she had been but never really had a chance to experience due to one mission or another.

That got her to smile, nodding in approval. She hoped he was serious, and that wasn't just a line. She had been calling out the 50s from the moment they had arrived in it. It was not a period she wanted to live in. "Good answer. You have no idea how very close I came to doing just that." she'd managed to mess with a few of them, making sure they were hit by accident or something casual. But it had been the best she could do at the time. "It was a special type of hell." Ray and Kendra had seemed to be taking to it better than she was, but apparently that had all been in her head. Hopefully Kendra was doing okay.

"So why did you end up coming here?" she wasn't sure if that was a topic that was off the table. She'd provided her reason, but that didn't mean he had to. It didn't hurt to ask though. Being stranded in the wrong time made her want to start all over again. But for some of the others, she couldn't quite place why they'd want to go through all of this.

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theworstalpha
2016-04-11 03:13 pm UTC (link)

"Nice," Derek said, smiling. He had no idea really what she was talking about as far as her mission, but he was familiar with the area. "My sister still lives in São Paulo. I took up residence not too far from it. It's nice, though, that whole area. If you ever get a chance, you should take the time. You won't regret it," he advised sincerely.

Good answer, she said, and Derek laughed. "Yeah, well...only answer," he replied, "that wouldn't have my mother turning in her grave. I was raised in a matriarchal pack; the women were the ones with the power. Being in a time period like the fifties would've been like rage-inducing, to me. I couldn't handle that. You're a better person than I am for managing to stay out of trouble. I honestly don't think I could've pulled it off," he said with another chuckle, but there was honesty in his tone and mingling with the amusement in his eyes.

With a facial shrug, Derek lowered himself in the water again. "A few reasons, honestly," he admitted. "I always wanted to make a difference, I just never seemed to be able to do it without losing allies in the battle. This seemed like a way to do it without anybody ever getting hurt. And...to push on after my last breakup. We parted on good terms and everything — it couldn't have been helped — but that doesn't really make it any easier to let go of the first person you've trusted in a decade who didn't throw it right back in your face. I figured this would be a safe way to get back on the horse. Arva promised no one would try to hunt me and if I found out that someone was, she would send me home. So...that had its appeal."

Derek cleared his throat. "It doesn't hurt that it's a tropical island filled with beautiful women," he added with a smile. "...and I'm not getting any younger. I'm not old, or anything, but I'm almost thirty... I thought the last one and I were going to do the whole getting married, having kids, white picket fence thing and if extenuating circumstances hadn't gotten in the way, maybe we would've. The fact that I want kids, though, that hasn't changed and I doubt if it will. The opportunity to come to a place where half of the point is to do just that wasn't really something I could turn away from."

It was refreshing to be able to be honest with someone he barely knew and still feel like he wasn't compromising his safety or the safety of the people he cared about. Derek had a feeling he was really going to like it here.

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theyellowbird
2016-04-11 03:46 pm UTC (link)

"Hopefully I will." she said with a shrug. "If or when I have to go back, I might just go the traveling route. No point in staying in American Suburbia. It doesn't really suit me." She would fine traveling on her own, anyone who decided to mess with her would more than likely regret that decision pretty quickly.

She fell silent as he explained, attentive to what he was saying. Break-ups she could get, even if those feelings were hard to access right now. It was hard not to make a chance when you lost someone like that, for any reason. "I get that." she said with a nod. "Is that a problem back in your world? People hunting you for being what you are?" she asked, "It wouldn't surprise me, given human history and all." But it still sucked. She could understand it maybe if there was some sort of rogue werewolf on a killing spree. Humans hunted humans for that as well. "Actually, yeah, never mind, I don't know why I asked that. Of course that's no different. Stupid question." She had to wonder if the human race was ever going to change. They'd probably all kill each other first in any world.

"Beautiful women, beautiful men." she agreed, "Can't complain about that part." Sara arched an eyebrow a the age comment, holding back a laugh behind a smirk. "Oh god. Not thirty. I think you'll be just fine here, Derek. It sounds weird to say out loud, but I think there's probably a few women who'd volunteer to make babies with you." So weird to say out loud. But that was why they were here. "You're not exactly hurting in the looks department, and you don't seem to be lacking in the brains department." She was teasing him, even if what she was saying was completely true. Sara would be shocked if he didn't end up getting what he was looking for.

"I was a little surprised, actually. At just how fast the topic of babies came up. I thought it would be a few weeks or more, until we had more built. But things are progressing pretty fast." She couldn't imagine being young and pregnant like the girls were here now, even if that was the point. But any maternal instinct she may have had when she was younger was gone now, so she probably couldn't hope to understand.

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theworstalpha
2016-04-11 05:12 pm UTC (link)

Was it a problem? Derek lifted his eyebrows and opened his mouth to respond, but Sara seemed to catch herself and backpedal the question. He smiled, but it didn't really reach his eyes. "It's a huge problem, yeah. I used to have a really big family. Now it's just me and my baby sister," he replied, intentionally omitting the crazy uncle, "and Malia was news to me a couple of years ago, but that's complicated and I don't know a whole lot about it. The rest of them were hunted. We used to protect that town but now there's only us left and, quite frankly, it isn't really worth protecting anymore. At least, not by me." Was he bitter? Absolutely. There were some people in that town worth protecting, he supposed, but Scott could have it. Derek didn't want anything to do with the town that took everything that mattered away from him. Not anymore. "I'm kind of hoping that this place will be different, since we're all starting it from the ground up," he admitted.

A soft laugh escaped him. Derek had no interest in the men, but he couldn't deny the fact that Arva — or whoever — had chosen pretty damn selectively as far as looks went. Not that he could blame her. Them. Whatever. "Hey, thirty's getting up there to start a family back home, especially because it takes forever to establish trust to even start a relationship, never mind all that. Here, that's nothing. Back home, by the time I had kids and they were in school, I'd probably be damn near forty at the rate I was going," he pointed out with levity in his tone to let her know that he wasn't offended, but he still felt he had a point. He couldn't help smirking a little at the compliment and the rib that came with it. "I can't tell if I should be flattered or mildly offended, Sara," he laughed. "But I could say the same for you." That she was attractive and at least appeared not to be 'lacking in the brains department,' that was.

To Sara's point, Derek lifted his eyebrows. "Yeah, that's...not how I intend to do things, but to each their own, I guess. In my opinion, it would've been smarter to wait, but that's just me, maybe. And maybe you," he replied.

Derek looked back over Sara's shoulder at the rubble he'd left in his wake and he wrinkled his nose, lips pursed in thought. "Ugh, I probably should get back to it and try again..." he muttered, frowning slightly.

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theyellowbird
2016-04-11 07:20 pm UTC (link)

Coming back to life meant she often felt disconnected from feelings and emotions. But not in the situation like this. She hadn't quite expected an answer like that. Sara could only imagine the rage she would feel had someone managed to take out her entire family. They had been targeted before, but she had managed to keep them safe. But to lose almost everyone and still remain what seemed like a decent person? That required an incredible strength. "It should be different. I think it helps that most of us seem to have some sort of exposure to what would be considered a guess a 'normal' human life. Whatever normal means. But so far Arva seems to be filtering out the assholes." She hoped it staid that way. If anyone started hunting others for being different, she wouldn't be opposed to taking them out.

Sara shrugged, still not totally bothered by the age. "I think parents are becoming parents at a later stage in life. In your thirties wouldn't be so different from a lot of people." People were focusing on careers first, from she could tell, and Sara was all for that. But everyone was different. "Probably both." she was still grinning, "I apparently have a talent for doing that. As for me, no waiting, because no kids." she said with a shake of her head. "I signed up to help build and support the community, just not through babies." She wouldn't even know what to do with that.

Sara looked behind her, scanning the ground until she found what she assumed was his attempt at a shelter. "Don't let me hold you up." she replied, clearly amused by the pile on the ground. "Don't give up either. You'll figure it out."

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theworstalpha
2016-04-11 08:09 pm UTC (link)

Derek certainly hoped that it was. But, if it wasn't, then it wasn't. "I have a contingency plan in place, in any case, if it isn't. But I have high hopes," he admitted. The idea that werewolves could live in peace with humans without having to pretend to be something that they weren't was more than appealing; it seemed too good to be true. Given the nature of this place so far, though, even Derek had to admit that maybe there was no such thing as "too good to be true" anymore; maybe things were just...true. "I gotta give her credit for that. Small favors," he replied with a smile when Sara pointed out that it seemed to her that Arva was being selective with personality, as well. At least that meant he'd never have to worry about Kate or Peter showing up, if that pattern was intentional rather than coincidental.

"It probably would be, really...we age slower," he said, refuting his own point to agree with Sara's. "It's just not really how I saw my life unfolding, I guess." He smirked a little. "Both then," he laughed. She said that she wasn't interested in having children and while he couldn't fault her for that, it left him a little curious as to why. To Derek, the idea of kids somewhere down the road in his future was just a given. It wasn't any of his business, though, so he didn't ask.

"Giving up isn't really something I do lightly," Derek replied as he started swimming toward her in order to move past her. He paused beside her and leaned a little closer. "But if I don't get it down in a week's time, I'm taking you up on that offer," he said with a little grin. "I'll see you around, Sara."

With that, he swam the rest of the way to the shore and dragged himself out of the water, grabbing his clothes to get dressed and then he headed off to try with the shelter again.

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