Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Beacon Hills Elementary School isn’t that far from Beacon Hills High School. However, if you’re the legal guardian of a six year old trying to wrap up class as quickly as possible while yelling at the students you coach that “no practice is not canceled! It’s just going to start 20 minutes later than usual, now go get your asses to the locker room!” sometimes it takes a little longer than anticipated to get to the elementary school to pick said six year old up. Sometimes said six year old ends up sitting on the bench in front of her school on her very first day of first grade after class gets out waiting for her guardian to come pick her up. Thankfully for her, she isn’t alone. A second grader is in a similar boat and is sitting right beside her.

It was Audrey’s very first day of real school and it had been so scary and so fun! Before she’d just have half day programs or babysitters, but now she was in school! The young girl tried not to lose her excitement when her uncle wasn’t in the pickup lane. Tried not to lose encouragement when slowly all the other grades, not just the first grade were released for the day and slowly but surely they were all picked up. Tried not to look too concerned when it was only her and a boy setting up shop at a bench outside the front office waiting. Tried not to visibly freak out, lest one of the chaperones waiting outside come ask the two kids what was wrong. It wasn’t all bad though, the boy seated next to her seemed equally nervous but he was nice. He’d shown her the comic he’d slipped in his backpack that morning, even though you weren’t supposed to have them at school. It was a Spider-Man comic and he told her about all the other ones that he had, his brother had gotten him a Batman and Robin one for him for his 8th birthday a few months back. 

Then a car pulled up. It wasn’t Uncle Bobby’s, Audrey knew that much. It was a small, grey four door sedan. Out of it came a boy several years older than them, but one who must’ve been barely old enough to drive. “Hey, Isaac!” He called with a wave to Audrey’s benchmate. 

Isaac, Audrey’s apparent benchmate, lit up, “Camden!” he was more excited than he’d been about his comic a moment earlier, “What are you doing here? I thought Dad was going to get me?”

“Nah, he’s already at the high school for pre-season swim practice, so he sent me with the car,” He, apparently Camden, was grinning a cheshire cat grin, “Never thought he’d actually let me use the car,”

Audrey watched the two boys with her hands folded in her lap, they both had rather curly dark blonde hair and based on their conversation one could assume they were brothers. She twisted her hands anxiously when there was still no sign of Uncle Bobby. Unbeknownst to her, the older boy, Camden, could see how nervous the young girl was and fully shut off the car before asking, “Who’s your new friend?”

“Oh!” Isaac practically shouted, “This is…” he trailed off, having never asked her name. The second grader immediately looked sheepish and turned back towards Audrey, “What’s your name?” 

“Audrey Finstock-Moffat!” It was a declaration . She’d been practicing her full name, a lot. “And yours is Isaac?” 

“Did you seriously forget to introduce yourself, Iz? C’mon little man,” Camden berated, but there was no real heat, he was just giving his little brother a hard time, “You start talking about comics and forget about everything else in the world I guess,” he gave a very exaggerated shrug on the ‘I guess’ as he made his way around the car and towards the kids.

Audrey giggled, Isaac did not. He was even more red than he’d been a minute ago when he had to ask for Audrey’s name. 

“Camden Lahey,” Camden dropped to his knees and held out a hand to Audrey, “Nice to meet you Audrey Finstock-Moffat, I like your pigtails”

Audrey shook the older boy’s hand, giggling still with what might’ve been a slight blush, “Nice to meet you too. You got him a Batman and Robin comic for his birthday?!”

Camden laughed, caught off guard by the sudden topic change, “Yes ma’am, can I ask about where your ride is?” and glanced at Isaac who was in between being embarrassed and wanting to talk about comics more with Audrey. 

“That’s so cool. Batman is cool, so is Robin! I’m just like them ya know!” Then she had an epiphany and gasped, “Spider-Man is like them too!”

Both boys turned their attention to Audrey now, “How?!” Isaac practically demanded as Camden asked, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t have parents either!” 

Camden tried not to choke on spit in surprise and Isaac just looked at her, wide eyed. The girl was much too young to fully grasp the depth of what she’d just said. The boys’ mother had died only a few years prior and both were much more affected by her death than this six year old seemed by her own parent’s deaths.

“Can I ask who’s picking you up then?” Camden’s voice was more cautious than it’d been. 

“My Uncle Bobby!” This was another declaration by the small brown haired girl and you know what they say ‘speak of the devil and he shall appear’ because not a moment later a car was pulling into the pick up lane at the elementary school. 

“AUDREY!” Out of the dark grey, four door hatchback popped none other than Camden’s economics teacher and the lacrosse team coach, Mr. Finstock, “Sorry about that, kiddo! Those high schoolers, I’ll tell you…” he trailed off as he took in the scene in front of him. Audrey on the bench with her backpack nearly as big as she was next to her and on her other side was a boy that must’ve only been a year or two older than her and crouched in front of them was a boy that was clearly a high schooler. 

“Aren’t you in my economics class?” he started to ask the high schooler as the boy began to straighten.

Cam didn’t have a chance to reply before Audrey was pushing herself off the bench, “UNCLE BOBBY! Hello Baba!” It was lucky she wasn’t even four feet tall because she crashed into her uncle full force and wrapped her arms around him like an octopus.

Camden opened his mouth to reply once more, but Isaac beat him to it, “Cam goes to Beacon Hills High School! He’s on the swim team!”

“Ahh,” Bobby Finstock nodded at the young boy, “Not the lacrosse team?” 

“Baba,” Audrey complained with a huge eye roll for a pint sized person.

“No sir,” Camden said goodnaturedly, “Our dad is the swim coach,” Isaac had gravitated to Cam’s side and was mimicking Audrey by hugging his brother’s legs just as Audrey was hugging her uncle’s, “Speaking of, we’d better get back before Dad grounds us from the car,”

Isaac grinned, “I call shotgun!” and quickly detached himself to run towards the car before his brother could make him sit in the back seat,”

Surprisingly Finstock nodded understandingly, “I’ve got to get back so Ace here and I can go coach lacrosse,” he started herding Audrey towards the hatchback.

Audrey started waving and loudly saying “Goodbye Isaac! Goodbye Camden!” as she went towards the back seat. Isaac was also loudly returning the gesture with waves and “Goodbye Audrey!”

“Oh, don’t forget your backpack!” Camden snatched the little girl’s backpack and passed it off to Coach Finstock.

“Thank you,” the man gave an appreciative nod, his voice surprisingly genuine and profoundly sobered of his usual brash persona, “Thank you both for keeping her company.” 

Cam could only nod in response, never in a million years having expected an actual display of vulnerability from the lacrosse coach who shouted in class and wasn’t above calling the students “pukes”. 

Of course, the coach had to immediately ruin it with a poorly timed, “Don’t think this means you’ll get special treatment in my class,” as he departed with his young niece. 

Camden couldn’t help but shake his head with a chuckle.

Not long after both parties ended up at the high school, Camden and Isaac met up with their dad for swim practice and Bobby and Audrey went to the fields to coach lacrosse practice. 

Isaac snuck off to watch lacrosse practice for the first time ever that day. He was immediately enamored because they “moved like superheroes”. He also thought it was funny when his new friend was on her uncle’s shoulders and got to blow the whistle at the unsuspecting high schoolers.

After that specific day, Camden had asked around a bit and got an explanation for why his and Isaac’s little friend had no parents, why she lived with her uncle. It also explained why her pigtails had been braided in two different ways. Bobby Finstock was not regarded as a family man in any sense of the word. It was obvious that his economics teacher was trying though, and sometimes that’s enough. 

Isaac continued to bring his comics to school in secret so he could show his new friend all the ones he had while they waited on that bench together. Every time Camden came to pick Isaac up, he’d always greet Audrey with variations of “Hello, Audrey Finstock-Moffat,” or “Is that Audrey Finstock-Moffat?!” (as that was what the young girl had declared herself when they first met) and the young girl would giggle and respond, “Hi Camden Lahey!”

Or at least this was the norm until Camden enlisted two years later, right out of high school. Without his brother around, Isaac had no new comics to show to Audrey. Without his brother around, Isaac’s homelife got bad, not that anyone other than Jackson Whittemore would know that for years. The two kids started to drift due to distance.

Audrey was still in fifth grade when Camden Lahey died. She was unable to comfort Isaac, as he was in sixth grade and now at Beacon Hills Middle School. The distance mixed with the mourning caused the two’s friendship to fall apart. It didn’t help that that was the first death Audrey had been able to fully comprehend and it broke her heart a little bit. Her entire family had been dead since she was a toddler, she couldn’t remember them enough to properly miss or grieve them. That was not the case with Camden Lahey though, she remembered him well, the afternoon she’d met him and Isaac might as well have been a core memory for the girl. She could not express this to Isaac or anyone else though and instead kept her grief close to her heart. 

Audrey couldn’t help but note and pay special attention to when Isaac joined the lacrosse team his freshman year. She was still in 8th grade at the time, but her ‘Baba’ had always included her in lacrosse, ever since she was baby. Of course she’d had a look at the roster and felt her heart clench when she read the “ Lahey , Isaac”. 

By the time Audrey got to high school, Isaac wouldn’t say hi back to her, he just kept his head down all the time. It didn’t help that the girl had a ‘slight’ reputation for being “just as batshit as her uncle”. It didn’t help that after Camden died, Isaac’s father had gotten even worse than he’d been after the boy’d enlisted. Not that anyone knew the man was abusing his son. No one would, not until after his death.

Isaac changed a lot around the time of his father’s death. Who could blame him? His brother’s death had thrown his life into a whirlwind and this was like someone throwing a house into the whirlwind. 

Audrey held onto that day though, her first day of first grade, she held onto the boy who was her friend for two years, the one who snuck comics out of his house just to show her. She held a metaphorical candle in memory of the Lahey brothers, tucked deep in her heart where no one could touch it. Not that anyone would ever know.

Chapter Text

It was no secret that Bobby Finstock was not a well adjusted man. If you talked to him for more than thirty seconds, that became abundantly clear. Bobby, both his siblings and his parents had all struggled with various forms of addictions throughout their lives. For the past eight years, Bobby had been sober. He intended to keep it that way. Didn’t exactly have a choice, as he had been the legal guardian of his youngest niece for just about seven years now. 

He had been trying to get sober the year before Audrey, his youngest niece and (now) adopted daughter, had been born. It hadn’t really stuck until his sister had finally invited him over not long after she had given birth. After an incident at his eldest niece, Adeline’s fifth birthday, both Bobby and his brother had been banned from the Finstock-Moffat household until they could get their shit together. So Bobby tried. His brother however, did not. 

As a result, Bobby was the only one of the two brothers invited to Andrea’s to welcome her newest daughter into the world. It was magical. He hadn’t been around for the births of his other two nieces, Adeline and Alina, so Audrey was the first really tiny person he’d ever interacted with. Yeah, he’d landed a coaching job two years prior that had turned into a full time teaching position at Beacon Hills High School, but he’d never really interacted with a real young kid. Yeah, high schoolers and his two other nieces were all pretty young, but not infant young. He hadn’t even been around his other nieces until they’d been around three, so even then that was interacting with toddlers, not babies. 

Bobby Finstock held his baby niece for the first time, just days after she’d been born. The whole family, minus his brother, had been there and it had been integral . Important . His parents were in the other room and he couldn’t even recall the last time he’d seen them not screaming at each other, but there they were, all smiles and spoiling their two older granddaughters. He looked at the baby in his arms, the pudgy little thing with the tiniest wisps of dark hair on her bruised and mildly misshapen head (he was assured this was normal) and he felt something he’d never felt before; he didn’t even know what the word for it was or if there was a word for it, but suddenly the world made sense and things were not as awful as they seemed. Suddenly it all made sense, he remembered why he’d given up alcohol and quit talking to Stacy and even why he’d cut contact with his brother who’d been his best friend their entire lives. 

He deserved good things. Andrea deserved good things. Adeline deserved good things, Alina deserved good things, and Audrey Gale, the tiniest little human he’d ever been in close proximity with, deserved good things.

˚☽˚｡⋆𓃦⋆｡ ˚☽˚

Bobby prided himself on being a fairly punctual person, he woke up extra early to make sure he could get to morning practice for lacrosse and/or track year round, even during the summer. So it wasn’t the best feeling in the world when he was already over an hour late to his niece’s first birthday party, stuck at yet another red light after the day had thrown curveball after curveball at him. He hadn’t been late to Adeline’s 14th birthday or Alina’s 7th birthday earlier in the year, but here he was, dropping the ball for little Audrey. 

Just before he turned onto Andrea’s street, he felt it. To this day he wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he could and would always be able to remember the next moments in perfect clarity. Bobby turned onto Andrea’s street and was immediately met with the sight of at least half a dozen cop cars. Andrea lived two houses away from the cul-de-sac, right where the fucking three ambulances were parked and the yard was full of various emergency personnel, EMTs with stretchers being the most ‘lively’ of all the commotion; officers shoeing neighbors back into their houses and putting up police tape. He stopped his car right in the middle of the street, body in autopilot, being drawn towards the chaos. Later he would realize that he hadn’t even turned the car off, left it running with the key in the ignition. 

Like a shitty tv show, one of the gurneys was being rolled past him as he walked up in a daze and an arm was dangling from below the sheet. That was his mother’s watch, her ring. Bobby stopped dead. Well, he wasn’t the dead one. Slowly, it was dawning on him. There were more gurneys, and from the sounds of the sirens approaching, there would be more soon. 

A police officer was in his face, trying to shove him back towards the other curious spectators. He doesn’t remember uttering “that’s my mother” or “this is my sister’s house” but he must’ve conveyed that information somehow, because the cops and EMTs were all looking at him differently and not shoving him away like they had been before. They were still urging him to leave, to vacate, to get out of their active crime scene, but not with the same vigor they had for all the neighbors. 

And then he heard the wail of a baby. The cry of an infant, small and confused and just wanting her mother. 

If you were to ask, Bobby would again not even remember the stumbling forward, the pushing past the police and them letting him. The EMT who gave him a once over before letting him take his niece into his arms, body immediately going into soothing mode, bouncing the tiny baby girl in his arms ever so carefully as he shushed at her and kept her from looking at the bloody interior that had once been a nice living room. 

Much like that day had been, the next few months proceeded to be a nightmare, a hazy, yearning for the sweet release of inebriation, nightmare. Trials and pleading to juries. Stuffy suits and baby formula. Bobby Finstock was at rock bottom 8 months later. He’d been at rock bottom. He sat on the floor of his shit apartment full of boxes of baby things and his sister’s belongings. A certain niece of his, now his daughter legally, sat on the floor in front of him chewing on a blanket. Bobby Finstock lowered his head into his hands and started to shake with sobs.

˚☽˚｡⋆𓃦⋆｡ ˚☽˚

Eight year old Audrey had just finished packing the last of her belongings. She sat on her bare bed frame and tried not to fall through the wooden panels as she waited for the moving men to get there. Her and her Baba were moving to a real house! He’d been saving up for so long and they were finally going to live in something bigger than their tiny apartment! Their new house even had a small backyard! Audrey was so excited, because Uncle Bobby told her he was pretty sure the oak tree that took up most of the back yard was big enough for a tire swing!! Their new home was also the perfect distance between Beacon Hills Elementary where Audrey went and Beacon Hills High School where Baba worked. 

She liked their apartment well enough, but she was ready for a change. She knew Baba was as well. All his jokes about wanting to leave all the bad memories this place had, she knew they weren’t really jokes. She didn’t exactly know what bad memories he was talking about, but adults were weird and saw things differently, so she wasn't super worried about it.

She was so excited though! Their new house was two stories! Which meant that there was an upstairs and a downstairs and Uncle Bobby had promised her an upstairs bedroom! She had been bragging to her best friend, Lorilee about it the last time they called on the landline, and she had been assured by Baba that their new place would have a landline and he would give Ms. Lily their new number so she could still call Lori all the time! 

She had met Lori at a lacrosse camp a year earlier. Her uncle, being the coach of Beacon Hills High School’s team had been partially in charge of the event and he couldn’t get a sitter for her, nor did he usually try to, he kind of just brought the little girl everywhere he went and made it other people’s problems. The lacrosse event was being hosted by Devenford Preparatory Academy and Beacon Hills High School in a shocking show of good sportsmanship. Which, Audrey had been informed, was entirely because Baba’s boss, Mr. Cowell said he 1. had to “play nice”, 2. It was great recruitment for the high school team in the future, and 3. It brought in a lot of money for the school. Anyways, Audrey had gotten to go to the lacrosse camp and spent most of it running around and causing small amounts of mischief. Nothing crazy, but little mischief. 

The camp was primarily geared towards middle schoolers, but there was a small spattering of elementary schoolers at the camp too. Ones that either really did have a lot of lacrosse potential, a lot of passion for the sport, or their parents were convinced they were going to be star players despite the fact that they were some snot-nosed kid who flinched every time the ball got near them. 

Lori had been at the Lacrosse camp because her brother was both a and b, had a lot of potential and was passionate about the sport. Their parents had also been there, but their father, Coop, was busy monitoring Brett, Lori’s older brother. Lori’s mom, Lily, thankfully stuck close to the bleachers and let her young daughter hide in her skirt. That is until none other than Audrey Finstock-Moffat spotted the little blonde girl and invited her to play. 

The next several days of camp were full of the two little girls running around, hiding beneath the bleachers, making mud pies and trying to sell them to the high school volunteers at the camp and having a grand time. At the end of camp, Audrey practically demanded that Baba get Ms. Lily’s contact because Lori was her “most bestest friend in the world!” So, Bobby Finstock, being an absolute sucker for his niece and only his niece, did as she requested and the two girls proceeded to have a myriad of playdates and sleepovers. In fact, the girls were set to have a sleepover as soon as Baba and Audrey were all moved into the new place!

Baba was still outside on his flip-phone, waiting for the moving truck that should’ve been there already. Audrey was still in what had been her childhood bedroom making sure she hadn’t missed anything. Originally the room had been Uncle Bobby’s at home office for lacrosse stuff, but then she’d moved in and it became her room since his apartment was small and there was only one real bedroom and the small office that she’d been residing in for about 6 years now. Baba loved to tease that she wouldn’t let him sleep in his room alone for her whole first year with him, occupying his bedroom and being the reason he was an avid coffee drinker!

Audrey’s attention was stolen by her Baba’s flailing hands that could be seen from her window. The glass wasn’t too thick so she could hear him yelling “What do you mean you’ve been delayed another hour? I don’t want to spend my entire winter break away from my students trying to unpack! It’s only a two week long winter break! I want to be able to enjoy it!!” The young girl frowned, she didn’t want to spend her whole winter break unpacking either! Lori was coming over the second her room looked livable! She hadn’t gotten to see the other girl in over a month because both the other girls' parents had been really busy with business travel something or other. 

˚☽˚｡⋆𓃦⋆｡ ˚☽˚

However, it would seem that the girls’ sleepovers just before and after Christmas would be some of the last carefree moments either girl ever got. That Beacon Hills was not a kind place to live. Poor Bobby would nearly relapse again as the news broke out on January 26th. Around 12 people, 8 members of the prominent Hale Family and a few members of their extended family had died in a fire that overtook the family’s home. 

The part that no one knew, that no one would know for years later was on that night of January 25th, Brett and Lori’s parents, Lily and Cooper, showed up at the doorstep of Talia Hale’s home with an urgent message from Satomi Ito. This was not unusual, as Satomi and Talia were good friends, but usually the betas came with Satomi herself, not alone. They were invited inside with the usual formalities, but unfortunately, never had a chance to leave or even share with Talia what Satomi had wanted to tell her, for the fire started and consumed them all. 

Laura, Derek, and Cora Hale, as well as Brett Talbot, and Lori Rohr all became orphans on that day. The entire town of Beacon Hills was recoiling in shock and horror, how could something of this magnitude have happened? It became a whisper, a nighttime horror story, everyone in Beacon Hills knew of the Hale House fire, the unsolved mystery that had been written off as an electrical malfunction. A tragedy that killed three generations of Hales. A monstrosity that left Peter Hale comatose and burned alive, a permanent patient of Beacon Hills Hospital’s Long Term Care unit.

Beacon Hills would never fully recover from what had happened. Even as the reminders were swept away. As Derek and Laura were carted off to some distant relative in New York. Cora, no older than Audrey and assumed to have died, had somehow escaped the fire without anyone knowing. She made it to South America and started a new life, a life of a shadow, a girl who died in the fire. 

For, when the fire department quelled the blaze, they couldn’t identify the corpses, all burned beyond recognition, so damaged they could not scrape DNA from the husks. At first, Lily’s body had been mistaken for one of the older Hale girls, and her partner, Cooper became a John Doe until Satomi Ito had come forward and told the investigators that the kids she babysat, their parents had never made it home. It took some strong implications, the police not wanting to acknowledge the old Beacon Hills resident. She tried, persuading that they must’ve been in that fire too. She knew they were, she knew why they were, but that was not very well something one could just explain to the law enforcement; “I know they’re dead because they’re a part of my pack and I sent them on a delivery and I felt the pack bonds break as they burned alive”. Of course, the police believed what they wanted to, and what they wanted to believe was that Laura and Cora Hale had burned alive and the couple were simply missing persons. 

However, the police did finally get some degree of common sense, since there were 12 deaths and several were unidentified, or not family members, there had to have been other people there. 

Regardless, after a long several months of hell, of rock bottom for Satomi Ito not unlike the rock bottom Bobby Finstock had felt in his own fight for custody after a tragedy, Satomi Ito finally got custody of her betas’ children, her born-wolf betas. Not that anyone knew they were werewolves. She became Brett and Lori’s legal guardian, and finally, fucking finally the girls were reunited. 

Lori was a year younger than Audrey and Brett, still so little, so young. So unprepared for the harshness that her future would bring, the hatred the world would throw at her. 

Satomi stood in the doorway of the ‘Finstock House’. She herself had never been here, and her betas and beta betas had only been here twice prior, just before, weeks before Cooper and Lily were killed in the Hale House Arson . Because she knew the truth, it had been arson. 

So Satomi stood in the doorway and talked to the slightly manic man as Lori and Brett thundered into the house with a familiarity they shouldn’t have had. And for the first time since their parents had died, she saw them be kids again, just for a moment. The three young children were loud and screechy, after having been loud and sobby, happy at their reunion. Well, Brett hadn’t cried, but the girls had. In fact, Brett didn’t normally come to the play dates the girls had, but neither of the siblings were ready to be out of each other’s sight. Ever since their parents died, they’d been attached at the hip to each other, now all too aware of the dangers of being a werewolf. After all, Talia hadn’t even been sure if her youngest was a werewolf, Cora; Lori and Brett’s other frequent playdate friend, and the young girl, along with other humans, like Talia’s husband’s cousin and her two kids had died in the fire.

Apparently the last time Lori had slept over at Finstock’s, there hadn’t been a tire swing in the backyard, so all three children were very excited to play, Brett included. 

Satomi allowed herself a small smile as she saw through to the kitchen and to the backyard though the window at the kitchen sink. The three kids already content to chase each other around in the mildly muddy grass.

She thanked Bobby for allowing them to sleep over, Brett included, and to call her if anything happened. He assured her it was fine if the boy stayed too because he would absolutely be trying to enact her 15 step plan to get the boy to play for Beacon Hill in high school rather than Devenford Prep, where Satomi was planning on enrolling the two kids at. 

She gave a good natured huff and left to return to the rest of her pack. She would pick the kids up in the morning.

˚☽˚｡⋆𓃦⋆｡ ˚☽˚