likeahero | [For Derek]

Entry tags:

derek,
in-game

[For Derek]

Oliver's been in the city long enough (a year now, a whole goddamn year) to know there are things he can't explain in any way that doesn't accept the supernatural as a reality. Derek had proven as much. Porthos hunted vampires. Superheroes with superpowers exist.

There's too much evidence to turn a blind eye, so eventually Oliver doesn't. And he sees a lot.

The night has been quiet so far, though a short talk with Alexei earlier has left Oliver on edge. Felicity flirts with him through his earpiece and he can picture her easily, on their couch in her pajamas, laptop on the coffee table and bowl of ice cream in hand as she guides him through the night. It helps.

He's perched on the edge of a short rooftop, about to break radio silence again when he hears a scream cut short in the alley below. The street light cast large shadows in the alley, but the screamer is wearing something that catches the light every now and then as she fights back. Eventually she stills and then Oliver sees it: a larger shadow over her body. A vampire feeding.

Oliver doesn't hesitate, but he isn't one hundred percent sure just how to take care of a vampire (Wood? Silver?), and he doesn't want to send an arrow through its heart only to find out it was a human after all.

He shoots and immediately rappels down into the alley, the creature shrieking in rage as he hits the ground. When he looks up again, another arrow already nocked, the vampire rips the first one out of his shoulder and turns his full attention to Oliver.

Well, at least he's sure it's a vampire now.

The girl shifts behind it, and Oliver is thankful for that much, even if he knows this is not going to end well. Felicity's going to kill him.

He shoots again, two arrows in rapid succession, one aiming for the heart, the other for an eye as the vampire turns into a blur as it rushes toward him.

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Fucking vampires.

It's reached full on infestation levels, and something needs to be done. Derek isn't a vigilante, not like some of the people that he's aligned himself with, but he's taken to wandering the streets at night because he can take on a vampire and have the upper hand. They're fast, he's faster. They're strong, he's stronger. And if he can keep even one person from becoming a midnight snack, it's worth missing out on sleep. It's not like he does much of it anyway.

He hears the scream and heads for it, moving quickly and skidding into the alley with his eyes glowing red. There's a girl that smells like fear and blood, but her pulse is steady so Derek focuses on the vampire and Oliver. Or whatever probably ridiculous name he has for himself when he's out like this. Derek still isn't over Allison called herself Alpha, of all the goddamn things.

The vampire is rushing for Oliver and Derek darts forward, throwing himself in front of Oliver with his fangs dropped, eyes blazing as his lips curl back in a snarl. His clawed fingers grip the vampire by the neck and he stops it just before it hits Oliver, not even straining as he lifts the thing off its feet. The vampire tries to claw at his hand, hissing like an angry cat while it fixes dark, bloodthirsty eyes on Derek.

"Not a friend of yours, I take it?" Derek asks blandly, glancing over his shoulder at Oliver as the vampire struggles.

Derek is there before Oliver realizes what is happening. He’d braced himself for a hit that didn't come, and his knuckles are white where he grips his bow. He takes a step back, putting distance between himself and the vampire, despite his curiosity. Slade's powers seem like child’s play now, compared to what he’s just seen.

"Far from it," Oliver responds, voice low and rough as he tries to calm himself. Seeing Derek’s easy strength as he handles the vampires is just as unsettling, but he feels just a bit better having some backup that can actually handle the problem.

Derek smirks wryly and turns back to the vampire. He doesn't like to kill, but this thing isn't a human or anything like it. It's just a rabid animal with nothing on its mind but the kill, and it smells like death and old blood when it hisses in Derek's face. Its pale skin is papery and thin, and its brittle nails leave red marks and welts on Derek's arm that heal over almost immediately.

He turns to smash the vampire's head against the brick, and it goes limp as Derek drops it to the ground. He doesn't know if it's dead, not without a pulse to listen to, but at least it isn't getting up. They have to have their heads removed from their bodies to be killed, he's pretty sure. And this kind can't be in the sun. There are vampires in the city that have been taken from home, just like Derek and Oliver, and they're miles away from these creatures, this plague on the city.

The girl is pressed back up against a dumpster with tears rolling down her cheeks and a hand pressed to the bloody wound on her neck, and Derek shares a look with Oliver before letting the wolf fade back under his skin, eyes hazel and teeth blunt.

"Hey, it's okay," he says quietly, doing his best to look reassuring when the girl whimpers as he approaches. She looks too young to be out like this, like she has parents worrying about her somewhere, and Derek crouches down to hold out his hand. "You're gonna be fine, alright? Let me see your hand."

He gives her a flicker of a smile and she finally reaches out her free hand, which is trembling like a leaf as Derek takes it. He focuses on her pain, pulling it from her body and taking it into himself. The veins inside of his wrist go dark for a moment, and he hears her gasp at the sudden absence of pain. She looks up at him with wide eyes and he lets go of her, stepping away.

"Go home and patch yourself up," Derek tells her, watching as she gets to her feet. "And no more wandering the streets in the middle of the night, huh?"

She nods and looks from Derek to Oliver before stammering out her thanks and turning to run off in the direction of the more suburban part of town. Derek wrinkles his nose down at the vampire and then turns to face Oliver. "I fucking hate these things."

Oliver watches and waits, quiet as Derek deals with the vampire. He keeps an eye on the thing even though it doesn't move a single muscle, looking like the dead creature it is in the faint light filtering down the alley from the street lamps.

Sure that the trouble has passed, Oliver collapses his bow and puts it away, then heads into the alley, retrieving his arrows. The first is lost, snapped in half by the vampire, but the other two are embedded in the walls on either side, the vampire having batted them away before they could do any damage.

He's pulling the second out of the wall and watching Derek with the girl when he does something Oliver can't really explain, only that she walks away as though she doesn't feel anything anymore.

The look he gives Derek is a question, begging explanation.

Derek stares right back at Oliver and he sort of gets the feeling that they could do this all night, but then the light bulb clicks on and he rolls his eyes. He looks over Oliver with a critical eye. He smells faintly of pain, like sore muscles and old wounds, but there's something healing on the meaty part of his upper arm. Something that hurts, and that will do.

"I'm full of talents," Derek says blandly, stepping forward to take Oliver's hand, the one not holding his bow, and yank his glove off. He tugs at that pain, looking pointedly down at the blackened veins in his wrist and then raises an eyebrow at Oliver before letting go. "I can't heal," he explains. "I can just take the pain."

Oliver twitches when Derek takes his hand, suppressing his instinct to pull away entirely. It feels oddly intimate, but then something happens and he watches as Derek's veins pulse a disturbing black color beneath his skin and his arm doesn't hurt anymore.

He shifts his arm a little, can still feel the old bruised skin there, but the immediate pain is completely gone.

"You're just full of surprises," he says, and then adds, grudgingly, "thanks."

Derek just nods and hands Oliver his glove back before shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. He really takes in Oliver's costume for the first time, making note of the hood and the arrows, and then raises an eyebrow at him. "So, what's your vigilante name? I know you guys all have one."

"If it helps," Oliver says as he slips the glove back on, "I didn't choose it myself."

It's not a bad name at all -- Arrowette shares it -- but he can imagine the type of amusement Derek would find in it. "People called me the Arrow. And before that, the Hood."

Not exactly the most imaginative of names, but at least they're better than Green Arrow.

"Bit on the nose," he says with a teasing smirk. It is one of the least ridiculous names he's heard. "But it's better than Alpha."

He thinks of the Red Hood, Jason, and his mouth twists a bit. So many people are gone all of a sudden, and it's still a bitter pill to swallow. Maybe Oliver is busier now, with one less vigilante on the streets.

Derek heaves a sigh and turns to look at the unconscious vampire, kicking at its foot with the toe of his boot. "It's going to wake up, you know. You have to decapitate them. Or just leave it here, and the sun will get it."

Edited 2015-06-03 06:26 (UTC)

Oliver's mouth twists slightly at the mention of the Alpha. He met her very early on, and hadn't taken much of a liking to the way she did things. She reminds him a little too much of Roy when he first started training, but at least Roy had slowly come around -- and he'd been someone Oliver had actually cared to see do so.

He gladly turns his attention back to the vampire, resisting the urge to toe it the way Derek does. "Sunshine or decapitation," he says, committing those to memory. "Does wood through the heart work?"

Derek doesn't miss the expression on Oliver's face when he mentions Allison. Or Alpha, as he would know her. Derek doesn't like the approach she's taken to her vigilantism. It reminds him too much of when she went off the rails after her mother died, and how she tried to hunt him down. He thinks back to their last encounter in the alley after Jason disappeared, and how unhinged she had seemed.

He would talk to her about it, if he thought it would do any good. For as much as she says they're pack, and how she calls Derek the alpha, Allison is never going to do anything that Allison doesn't want to do.

"You know, I have no idea. That might be a myth, just like werewolves and silver," Derek tells him, but then he thinks of Luke and backpedals a bit. "My kind of werewolf, at least."

He makes a mental note to ask Dean about the staking, and maybe just to talk to him about this in general. The vampires are becoming a real problem, and Dean is the best person he can think of to help him deal with it.

"Getting bit by them won't do anything except make you bleed," Derek informs him. "You have to ingest their blood to turn, so if you do go the decapitation route, be careful."

"Noted," Oliver says, allowing his disgust at the mere thought of it show in his voice. He does file away the note on werewolves and silver, just in case. At least Derek seems to be the lesser of all the supernatural creatures hanging around in the city.

"What happens to the body when it dies?"

"They turn to dust, which is pretty convenient," Derek informs him, sighing and wrinkling his nose down at the vampire before turning to look at Oliver skeptically. "I don't suppose you're hiding a machete or something somewhere in all that leather."

Derek can tear the thing's head off if he needs to, but if there's another option, he'd gladly take it. Another thought occurs to him and he looks at Oliver with a vaguely serious expression.

"There are a few vampires in the city that are like me," Derek starts. "Which is to say, they aren't from here. They were brought here, like we were, and they're nothing like these things. But I doubt you'll ever confuse them, considering that they aren't preying on people in alleys and they don't look like monsters."

Oliver shakes his head briefly at the question. He wonders if it would be worth making up a few wood arrows to use as stakes, just in case he ever needs them. And he doesn't want to see Derek rip something's head off, even if that something is a vampire that deserves it.

"The ones actually doing this all look like him?" he asks, pointing down to the vampire at their feet just to be clear.

"Yeah, there's no mistaking these things as human," Derek says with a grimace. "And not that it matters to you, but they smell terrible."

There's still the matter of getting rid of the thing, and Derek huffs as he looks around. A few yards away lies a wooden palette, and Derek goes over to it. He plants his boot on it and reaches down to tear off one of the pieces of wood, breaking it with his hands so that the tip is jagged. He comes over to Oliver and looks at his makeshift stake before meeting his eyes. "Should we see if this works?"

Derek's casual strength still takes Oliver by surprise, but he takes it in and tries to accept it as yet another little thing in his rapidly expanding worldview.

"I suppose we should," he agrees, reluctant even though he knows it needs to happen. He needs to see what happens, to know what to expect in the future - though he hopes it doesn't have to happen.

Derek looks down at the vampire, and reminds himself that it isn't human. It isn't anything that Derek can reason with, or help. There's nothing that they could possibly do, and this really is the only option left. He shares a look with Oliver that he hopes conveys this well enough, and he takes no pleasure in the way he bends over and drives the stake through the thing's chest.

He takes a step back and reaches across Oliver, pushing him back slightly with his forearm and waiting. For a long moment, he thinks it was a pointless endeavor, but then the vampire suddenly turns ashen and gray before crumbling away and leaving nothing but a pile of dust in its wake.

"Huh," Derek says after a moment, pulling his arm away and looking over at Oliver with a slight shrug. "That was easy."

"And disgusting," Oliver adds. It had been fascinating in a way, but it was still a whole body crumbling into dust. It looked nothing like the random vampire movies he's watched over the years, and Oliver hopes he won't have to do this again.

He's fine with leaving the vampire slaying to Derek and others who are more equipped for it. At least he knows what to expect and how to prepare for it now.

"Guess I should be adding a couple of wooden arrows to my quiver."

"Could have been worse," Derek says with a shrug. The makeshift stake doesn't even have any blood on it, and Derek tosses it aside. "Makes clean up easy, at least."

He wipes his hands on his jeans and looks over at Oliver, huffing out a soft laugh before giving him a wry ghost of a smile. "Probably wouldn't hurt. Just make sure to get them in the heart."

Derek remembers the scene he happened upon when he first arrived in the alley, and gives Oliver a look. "Though I doubt that'll be a problem for you, Arrow."

"You're hilarious." Sometimes Oliver thinks his and Derek's entire burgeoning friendship revolves around Derek trying his best to make Oliver uncomfortable or teasing him. He doesn't mind it so much, even though it reminds him of Tommy -- or maybe because it does.

"You do this often?" he asks, nodding at the small pile of dust that used to be the vampire.

"Hey, I was paying you a compliment, ingrate." Derek smirks a little and lets his gaze travel over the bow in Oliver's hand. He sort of wants to get out in the open and put Oliver's aim against Derek's reflexes and see what would happen. "Though I'd like to see you try and put an arrow in me."

He gets a sudden flash of a memory, of Allison drawing back her bow with a hard, cold look in her eyes, and he shakes it off. At Oliver's question, he turns his attention back to the former vampire and shakes his head. "No, I'm pretty new to it, and it isn't exactly what would have sprung to mind when it came to potential hobbies."

A light breeze blows through the alley, sending the ash spreading across the dirty asphalt, and Derek frowns thoughtfully. "They've always been around, as far as I can remember at least, but they're getting worst. I have a friend who kind of specialized in this sort of thing back where he's from. I'm going to go talk to him about it, I think."

Oliver allows himself to consider what it'd be like to take Derek on -- maybe as practice if he's going to be encountering more and more things that are beyond the scope of merely human. It had been too damn close with the vampire, even if he got one arrow in.

He turns to Derek, raising an eyebrow. "Are you friends with a vampire hunter?"

Derek wrinkles nose at the term hunter. The word makes him think of Argents and death, the phantom smell of smoke and charred wood. But he does trust that Dean was honorable, and that he never drew first blood. He knows that Dean doesn't hate him just for being a different species.

"An everything hunter, really," Derek says with a shrug. "Where he's from, at least. I'd say he's more of a supernatural expert than I am. I may be a werewolf but I'm fairly certain that vampires didn't even exist where I'm from."

Derek sighs and lifts his chin to meet Oliver's gaze. "I'll see what he suggests. Want me to keep you updated?"

"I'd appreciate it," Oliver says with a nod. "Whatever will help if I run into of these things in the future."

He hopes it won't come to that, but it's better to be safe and ready for whatever may come. And he knows Felicity would appreciate that much as well.

"Wolves and vampires...anything else out here I should know about?"

"No problem," Derek tells him as he slides his hand into his pocket, fingers curling around his phone. "When I need to get a hold of you do I throw up the bat signal, or do you want to give me your number?"

He huffs out a laugh, but then his expression goes a little thoughtful at Oliver's question, and he meets his eyes. "Plenty of things. There are witches and mages. Faeries."

Sookie flits through his mind, and he smiles a little. "But there are monsters out there, too. So just be careful. And I'll keep an eye out for you."

It's not until after he says it that he realizes that it might sound a little condescending, but it's not how he meant it. Derek doesn't have a pack, or a territory, not anymore. But that doesn't mean that the urges and instincts that come with having those things have gone away. He wants to keep this town safe, and he wants to keep the people who matter to him safe.

And apparently, Oliver has found himself in that category.

Oliver rolls his eyes and holds a hand out for Derek's phone.

Magic, fairies, it all sounds like a world much bigger than Oliver's used to, and he doesn't mind Derek's offer for help and some sort of protection. He's not an idiot, and he knows there are things out there he's not quite up to facing.

"I wouldn't mind a little back up from time to time."

Derek laughs and sets his phone in Oliver's hand, and then holds his own hand expectantly. Once he has Oliver's phone, he puts in his own information and hands it back over with a nod. He's glad Oliver doesn't put up resistance to Derek's offer of help, and it makes him breathe easier to know that Oliver will reach out to Derek if he needs.

"Anytime," Derek tells him, and he means it. "Just give me a call."

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[For Derek]

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