Peter stood in front of what appeared to be an abandoned construction site, somewhere around the outskirts of town, deeper into the preserve. He swayed his head slightly to the side, before his irises followed the movement shortly after.
"Look who's following who now?" he said lightly.
"Yeah... I guess," said Malia, as she came out from behind some trees she was using for cover.
"You didn't go with Scott?" he asked when she didn't say anything else.
"No. What are you doing here?" she said, looking at the pile of rubble in front of her.
"You could say I missed home," he answered. He walked a few feet around the place before stopping. As it turned out, the construction site he was contemplating was none other than the grounds where the Hale house stood, once upon the years.
Malia stared at her father's back. It was the first time in a while that he'd addressed her without looking her in the eyes, "They say you rose back to life in this place," she cut their silence short.
"Not my finest hour, to be perfectly honest," he spoke without turning her way.
"What was your finest hour then?" at those words from her, he finally spun around to face her, for a few seconds before setting his attention back on what had it previously.
"Not sure I have one,"
"Last night, when we were in the car, you said that we needed to start somewhere in order to build a... Father daughter relationship," she said.
"And If I remember clearly, you told me that I should stop trying, and that we didn't have a typical relationship,"
"I didn't mean we should completely stop trying. I have questions, lots of them," she made him look at her again, her voice became softer at that statement. She kept going when he didn't say anything, "I don't want to hear about how you met the desert wolf. I want to hear about the rest of your family, the good side of it, I want to hear more about your life,"
He chuckled softly, before crouching to pick a piece of splintered wood between his hands. He stared at it and fiddled with it, like it was the most interesting thing in the world. He remained silent for a while. Malia had begun to think that, it was no use trying to talk to him then so, maybe another time? If they'd ever gotten another chance to talk, they all knew that moments of piece like those had become a rarity for them.
But then his voice came to her ears, "This piece of land became a state propriety a few years ago. I don't know what they'd planned to build here, but they put everything on hold, due to... circumstances. I think they completely abandoned the idea if you ask me, "he paused, then resumed his speech, "Talia had picked this place for us, and we all had to follow her here. At the time, I really hated her policies and ideals, I hated the way she chose to lead the pack. I thought that being anything other than ruthless made us look weak... I never even tried to understand her, why she acted the way that she did, or why she picked the words that she did. Throughout the years, the Hale family had dedicated its efforts and wealth towards rebuilding the town around it,"
"Beacon Hills...," Malia muttered.
"I didn't understand her choice to do that, not then at least. All I did was complain, stand in Talia's way and cause problems in my spare time and then..." he trailed off.
"And then, there was the fire..." his voice grew too constrained to continue his sentence so, Malia finished it for him.
"I was the only survivor, or so I thought, since there was Cora too. But unlike her, I was trapped in a werewolf coma. It drove me insane; I knew who did it, but I was stuck in a state where I wasn't able to do a thing. You know the rest of the story after that,"
"Yeah... You pretty much lost it," she said.
"I only went after the responsible ones," he objected.
"And then some...," he glanced at her for a moment, after she'd said that. But then he again looked back down at the piece of wood he was still holding, "Last night, when we were stuck in that illusion. You kept saying Talia and Laura's names. You saw them, didn't you?"
"Guilt, I suppose. Turns out, even I can feel that,"
"You know, I shifted in a car, on the night the desert wolf attacked me for the first time. I don't remember anything that happened after that, but I think I did hurt them, my mom and my sister," Malia allowed the memories of the potentially most horrible and traumatic event in her life to surface. She wasn't very sure of her reasons, but at the time, she thought she was trying to walk in her father's shoes, to relate to him, to ease his suffering perhaps...
"Malia...," he began, "You can't possibly compare your situation to my actions. You, losing control over your powers at nine years old, as someone was raining gunshots at your mother's car; can't possibly be comparable to me, murdering my own niece in order to become an alpha, insanity or not,"
He hadn't even noticed her movement, until she'd crouched beside him. He couldn't get himself to lift his gaze towards hers, but he knew her eyes bore into him, and then she spoke, "You know, no matter how I spin this around, I can't help but think that... In your craze, you did one thing really right,"
"And what was that?" he wondered.
"You chose Scott McCall,"
******
"Busy mind? Marie-Amélie Argent," said the huntress, making sure to pronounce the name with a French accent.
Maylee's eyes shot up towards Allison faster than the speed of light. Nobody had called her by that name in... A century. Nobody could, for nobody knew what her real name ever was before she became Maylee. Even that accent remained as fresh in her mind as the last time she'd heard it.
"If I asked you, how you knew my real name, would you answer me honestly?" Maylee's shock had already faded from her face when she spoke.
"I would," said Allison simply.
Maylee picked Allison's arrow by its head, she lifted it to her eye level, and gazed at the Argent's family crest for a moment, "So, who told you my name?" she asked.
"Mary-jeanne Valet did,"
"So, there is an afterlife, ... I am not sure how to feel about that," Maylee smiled, her eyes still on the emblem as she twirled the arrow around between her fingers.
"I spent a lot of time in her company. Where I was, time didn't matter, but it felt like forever. She told me about somethings, and she showed me some others. But I want to hear your story from your own mouth," said Allison.
"You look so much like my mother, Marie-Jeanne's granddaughter. A fierce woman she was. I loved my mother but, sometimes... Sometimes she scared me. She always knew what she wanted, and God help you if you chose to stand in her way, even if you did so by mistake. Her own husband, my father, didn't dare to, not even in that era,"
"So, you're her great granddaughter," said Allison.
"You know, I hear people talk sometimes, complain about how they were born in the wrong century and how they thought they belonged in a previous epoch. It always makes me chuckle; if any of those people were yanked out of their time and thrown into older times, they'd cry tears of blood. In my Era, even the privileged were oppressed," Maylee paused, but Allison was patient and she trusted her to pick up where she'd stopped, and that, she did, "Me and my two brothers, Antoine and Emile followed a strict training program to become hunters like our parents were before us. And I was being groomed to become the next leader of the clan, after my mother. The fact that I was only fifteen mattered very little. I just had to be perfect, my mother would accept nothing less of me,"
"But you weren't perfect," Allison commented before Maylee could continue.
"Marie-Jeanne Valet may have been the very first huntress to join the Argents. But even at the time, the Argent family was already well versed into the supernatural. In fact, that was the reason Marie-Jeanne met Henry and remained with him in the first place. See? The clan had a code of their own, even before Marie-Jeanne Valet joined it. All members bore the responsibility to put their relatives out of their misery, if they ever happened to be bitten by an alpha,"
"You were bitten by an alpha, weren't you?" asked Allison.
"I was still fifteen, and two possibilities offered themselves to me. Either the bite would kill me, or one of my siblings would have to put me down,"
"You ran away...,"
"I didn't run very far mind you. It turned out, my body couldn't handle the bite. The alpha that'd bitten me, found me right before I kissed life goodbye. But instead of finishing me off, he gave me a choice,"
"I am guessing the choice was either die there, or join the apprentice?" Allison suggested.
Maylee nodded her head before speaking again, "I wanted to live," she brought her gaze lower towards the floor, "I really didn't want to die,"
"And that was how you became Maylee,"
"That was it indeed, my dear great, great and great grandniece," Maylee responded with a little smile.