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It’s weird, seeing the dragon lying here. His already porcelain face is even paler, tattoos standing stark against white body. His usually twisted face is smoothly calm, causing Derek’s rigid muscles to unclench.
The kid looks just that: a kid. Derek realizes that the dragon doesn’t look a day over sixteen, and might even be fifteen by the way his boyish mouth flops open with childish exhaustion.
His eyes are moving fiercely behind his eyelids, but Derek can tell that he’s still sleeping by his steadily slow heartbeat. He must be dreaming. The kid’s sweating like crazy, though, and even though Derek knows he claimed that dragons have high body temperatures anyway, he actually flinches from the hotness of the dragon’s skin. The guy is obviously suffering from a fever, probably caused by the infection. Derek has only seen this done with gravely wounded werewolves, but he takes a strip of cloth from the basket and wets it with cool, clean water from his canteen. Then he gently dabs it all over the boy’s forehead. His eyes slow and then stop at the temperature change, and his stiff muscles relax at the comfort. Derek lays a hand on the boy’s neck and takes the small bit of pain he’s feeling at the moment away before leaving the basket nearby and hurrying off so he won’t be late for dinner.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Derek finds no time to get back to the dragon for another week because of Peter’s unforgivingly frustrating lessons. He’ll wake them up in the middle of the night and walk all of his pupils through an organized dragon attack; he’ll unleash them into the south woods and track them by scent, attacking them with his enormous claws at any given time; he’ll make them climb to the tops of large buildings (much to Talia’s disdain) and practice their swordsmanship while maintaining their balance.
The lessons aren’t all about the physical aspect of dragon slaughtering, though. There are multiple times in which Derek has the upper hand because of all the books he’s memorized over the years, not to mention his fascination with weaponry. One time Peter makes each trainee draw a map of their town and the surrounding areas and create a defensive plan for a dragon attack. To his own disappointment, Derek’s hypothetical pack was unable to defend itself and its town. To be fair, though, no one was able to save the entire pack.
Peter has the weirdest methods Derek has ever seen in a teacher, not to mention his painfully obvious personality issues and probably pedophilic quirks. Instead of praise, Peter thanks them for not being “as stupid as usual,” and he never says please unless he’s being sarcastic. He’ll stand a little too close to the girls in the pack. He makes the least qualified student demonstrate something they’ve only heard of and never done before (namely, Derek) in front of everyone else and leaves them stranded to be ridiculed at. And, most alarmingly, he almost never helps with the dragons he lets loose on the kids in the arena, not even when it looks like they’re losing.
Derek’s never had as many nightmares and never feared for his own life or self-preservation techniques so much as he does now.
It’s an odd thing to consider valuable.
Lessons are, amazingly, cancelled about a week after Derek last saw the dragon because Boyd is getting a sister. Wolf pups aren’t born as often as they should be, so they party while Boyd’s mom delivers the pup. The village is full of celebrations and food and fun, and Derek finds it no problem to grab some of the awesome party food and steal away to see the dragon. It’s not that the partying and festivities aren’t fun, but Derek can guess that the dragon can hear some of it and at least deserves an explanation as to what might be going on.
Surprisingly, when Derek gets there, the dragon is looking better. His face isn’t sweaty or pale and his arm isn’t clutching his abdomen or thigh because of odd tremors or anything anymore. Derek is most surprised, though, when the dragon drags himself to his foot and bows as deeply as his awkward standing position will allow. “What was that?” Derek asks curiously, watching as the boy lowers himself back down to the ground and onto his nest of leaves, grass, and moss.
The boy sighs and must be feeling reluctant to explain his actions. “It’s…” He lets out a breath. “It’s a way for dragons to show our utmost respect to someone. You…you saved my life, and thus I feel obligated to bow to you.”
Derek is actually speechless. He never knew that dragons did such civil things (but well, they are human, aren’t they?) and he can’t believe one just bowed out of respect to him.
“I also want to thank you for the fishing wire. And food.” The dragon isn’t looking at him anymore, just talking to the forest floor, but Derek knows that this is a big moment. He feels like he should say something, anything, about how honored he is.
“I brought you food from our party,” is what comes out instead. He sets the basket down next to the dragon and sits himself on his log a few feet away. “My packmate Boyd is getting a sister, so we don’t have lessons today and we’re all celebrating.”
The dragon chuckles. “We do the same thing. It’s rare for a dragon egg to not become smashed or infertile before it has a chance to be born.”
Derek nods. “It’s hard for werewolves to have kids. They can only procreate with their mates…it gets hard when people can’t find their mates or their mates are the same sex.” They sit in silence. “Could I have your name?” Derek suddenly asks.
The dragon pales, but blood quickly rushes over his face again. “You can, uh, you can call me Stiles.”
Derek nods. “Stiles,” he says, trying it off of his tongue. It’s nice to say. “Stiles the Night Fury.” Saying it like that doesn’t really make the dragon sound scary or ferocious. Derek can only picture lanky, hostile Stiles and not so much the black night fury he turns into.
“Yeah, I was meaning to ask you: what all this Night Fury stuff about? I hear it sometimes and I’m confused is that what you call dragons?”
Derek shakes his head. “No, that’s what we call you. Unless there’s another dragon that looks like you?”
“There used to be, a long time ago,” Stiles says, “but he died a while back, even before I was born.”
“Oh. Well, you’re called a Night Fury. We classify dragons by their characteristics and species and such.” Stiles just chuckles, shaking his head. “What?”
“Werewolves have always been seen as kind of…barbaric. You guys usually communicate in grunts during battle, and even though you speak our language a lot of our teachers believe that you’re stupid. Obviously they’re wrong.”
Derek feels a little offended. “Well, obviously. We have very civilized ways of dealing with things. We’re not animals.”
“But you think we are, don’t you?” Stiles isn’t accusatory when he says it. “You seemed very surprised when I told you that dragons shapeshift.”
“Yeah,” Derek admits, face heating a little. “We don’t think you’re stupid, since your attacks are obviously planned and thought-out, but anyone in my village would probably laugh at you if you went up to them and told them you were a dragon.”
“Good to know,” Stiles says. “Definitely won’t be visiting your village anytime soon.”
The silence is awkward. Well at least Derek thinks so, but he’s usually forcing normal conversations into awkward silences so how could he ever know the difference between a comfortable silence and an awkward one? “Are you—” Derek starts, then stops, clears his throat, and begins again. “Are you feeling better?”
“Doesn’t hurt as much, fever’s gone. I can stand.” The dragon looks at the werewolf. “I’m definitely better.”
“I uh, I hope you won’t use this opportunity to shift into a dragon and eat me during our conversations,” Derek says, hands clasped nervously as he bites his bottom lip and stares at he forest floor in front of Stiles’s feet.
To his surprise, the dragon bursts out laughing. “I don’t see how I could, after you saved me and all. There’s got to be some kind of moral rule book that states that you can’t kill the person who saved your life numerous times.” He laughs again. “Nah man, I won’t kill you. I don’t really like killing.”
Derek wrinkles his brow in confusion. “But doesn’t every dragon like killing? Isn’t that why you do it?”
Stiles looks up like Derek’s the crazy one. “No way! I thought werewolves liked killing!”
Derek shakes his head immediately. “My mom’s been looking for a way to stop the violence ever since it started, which was long before she had a say in anything.”
“Well shit,” Stiles says. “No one wants to kill anyone, but we’re still killing each other anyway.”
“I wonder why that is,” Derek muses.
“Yeah, wonder why,” is what echoes back.
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“Wait!” Isaac screams, ducking as a large shield is hurled at his head. His bucket of water sloshes over and spills completely in his struggle.
“The Hideous Zippleback will not wait for you to be ready, Mr. Lahey,” Peter drawls, watching lazily from his perch that Derek is seriously beginning to hate. “You must douse the correct head with your bucket of water and be able to get away.”
Cora snarls at the dragon, quick to throw her water on a head, but the dragon just smirks and gurgles out immense amounts of poisonous air. It has a tint of wolfsbane—enough to confuse and fog the mind, but not enough to knock out or kill. “Damn it!” She cries, quick and sharp, and that causes the dragon to loll its head around, obviously hurt by the screech.
They all hear it when Aiden shouts and suddenly both him and Ethan are doused in water, spluttering and glaring at each other. Erica throws her water at the dragon win a shriek when it sneaks up on her, but her aim isn’t the best and it splashes all over its green scales instead. Boyd has his bucket firmly in his hands until he hears Erica shrieking again, and he tosses the entire thing at one of the heads—hitting it with the wood, but not the water.
Boyd is smart—Derek knows that—and once he realizes only Derek has his bucket left he follows the dragon as well as he can through the thick smoke. Erica is flanking one side of the dragon, the twins on the other, and they’re all trying to figure out whether it’s the left or the right one that can set the poisonous gas alight with its electricity. There’s chasing it towards Derek, leading it so he can use their last bucket on the creature. Derek hears a crackle behind him and jumps around, just in time to see a snake-like head slither into view from the depths of the purple fog. Derek backs up, but he’s met with a wall. It’s the same if he looks to his left, and he can see a silhouette of the second head to his right.
It’s almost smiling at him, and he knows that it knows that he’s cornered. Derek grips his bucket tightly, determined that this isn’t the end. Derek sees dragons in a different light ever since meeting Stiles: he knows that there’s an actual person behind those eyes, waiting to shift back into a coherent human. It’s just trying to survive. The dragon eyes Derek’s bucket and his grip and he can see the submission in its eyes as its jaws crackle with electricity. It’s the correct head. The second head comes into view, warily watching the exchange between the werewolf and its other half, knowing that its time is through. One head nudges the other, the electrical one opens its jaws, and—
Derek throws his bucket to the ground. The water spills out, wetting the dirt ground and pooling at his feet, pooling everywhere. The dragons look surprised, and Derek drags one leg out behind him, as far as it will go, and bows deeply to the two dragons that inhibit one body. His arms are outstretched to keep his balance, and he knows that he’s more than vulnerable in this state, but the dragons were willing to die honorably, to give up by each other’s sides, even though they didn’t know that they weren’t fighting to the death. Derek finds that worthy of his respect.
It also has the reaction he intended, which is such visible surprise that the dragons stumble backwards—almost crushing Boyd—in their absolute awe at the werewolf. Derek watches confusedly as they trip over each other’s feet and twist their necks until they can’t even move anymore, their main concern no longer their lives but just getting another glance at the werewolf that showed them respect.
Peter uses this to harness the dragons and shove them into their cage, barring it with a loud clank. “You all are lucky Derek was there to save your asses, otherwise you would all be dead. Whether it was stupidity, fear, hastiness, or overprotectiveness, you all wasted your water buckets for stupid reasons. Derek, however, let the beast think he was cornered before getting the job done. That’s what it takes to be a member of the pack. That’s doing your part.” Peter claps Derek on the shoulder, rubbing his pride on the side of Derek’s neck. He knows that the pack will be able to smell it for e rest of the day, and tries to avoid the glares the other teenagers are giving him.
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