Summary: Derek feels guilty after Kate tries to kill his family, and so, he does the only thing he can do: he runs away and becomes a lumberjack. Derek/Stiles, all human AU

A/N: So, this is my first fic in the Teen Wolf fandom. I was originally planning on writing the whole thing before posting it, but I know myself better than that. If I do that, it will end up languishing in my Incomplete Fanfics folder forever. *sigh* This is unbeta'd, so if any of you find mistakes, please let me know. Also, I don't really know anything about lumberjacking or environmental science, so while I tried to do my research, some of the story may not be completely factual.

Anyway, this fic is based on a tumblr post made by gyzym (Found here (delete the spaces): gyzym. tumblr post /31282738971 /teen-wolf-fics-i-want-so-much-i-could-cry). I hope it's okay that I ended up running with it. I've made several changes to her original idea, but if I tell you guys what they are, it will ruin the story, so I'm not going to. You'll have to read to find out. :)

For those of you who don't know, bushcraft is basically wilderness survival training. My brother is actually training to be a bushcraft instructor, so everything about bushcraft in this fic comes from what I've heard him talk about. If you guys want more information about what it's like living in the woods, you can read his blog here (again, delete the spaces): dave man done gone wild. com.

Also, to all of my Star Trek readers, I'm very sorry about the delay. Please know that I am trying to work through my writers block on that particular story. It's kinda a sensitive topic, so yeah… Bear with me.

And now, after a ridiculously long author's note, you guys should all go enjoy the first chapter of Timber! XD

Chapter One

It had started when his house burned down.

Well, no, actually it had started when he fell in love with Paige.

Paige had been beautiful, warm, and so full of life that he had never even suspected that she was sick until after she had told him so. By then, it had been too late, and Derek, being all of fifteen at the time, had been completely enthralled by her. He had been sure that it would be like it was in the storybooks. Love would save the day, and he and Paige would ride off into the sunset, both alive and both healthy.

It hadn't happened like that, of course. Derek had spent a grand total of six months falling more and more in love with her, and then, she had died. To make matters worse, it hadn't even been the illness that had killed her. It had been his fault—he had been the one to cut their already short time even shorter—and Derek had been, for lack of a better word, devastated.

And guilty. Yeah, he definitely felt guilty.

Kate had come along later that year when people were finally trying to have that "you need to move on with your life" talk with him, and Derek, in an effort to prove that he had, took her up on her offer.

He'd been stupid. A sixteen-year-old, completely sex-crazed idiot. Kate had led him around by the nose. Hell, he'd known she was doing it, and he'd let her because she was the first girl he had ever had sex with, and at the time, Derek had really wanted to be wanted. More than that, he had wanted to be noticed, and Kate noticed him.

Derek had had his excuses at the time. Even if Paige hadn't died earlier that year, Derek was still the middle child of seven, and while he loved his parents, sometimes there really wasn't enough of them to go around. More often than not, Derek ended up fading into the background, especially since he was quiet and didn't demand attention like other siblings he could name (there's a reason he called her Loud-mouth Laura).

Anyway, if he hadn't been so caught up in the fact that she was giving him sex, Derek might have noticed that Kate was also insane. Literally. She belonged in a white padded cell with the straitjacket and everything. Everyone tried to warn him, but he was so stupidly gone on her that he just didn't listen.

So he was the only one who was surprised when she tried to burn down his family's home with said family trapped inside. They all got out alive with only a few nasty-looking burns and smoke-inhalation to show for their brush with death, but still, Derek had been shaken.

He had caused that. If he hadn't been around, if he hadn't been stupid, nobody would have gotten hurt.

And so, he had run and kept running until he eventually settled down in a tiny little town, in middle-of-nowhere Oregon of all places.

Things had been a bit touch and go for a while, but fortunately he had stumbled upon a job only a few weeks after leaving home. The local lumber company had been in desperate need of new choker setters, and the supervisor hadn't exactly cared that his eighteenth birthday was still over a year away. Lahey's Lumber was a privately owned lumber company, and while Mr. Lahey wasn't exactly the kind of guy Derek would have wanted to be working for if he had had a choice, he was also the only person Derek had met who was willing to hire a clearly underage teenager without asking too many questions.

Derek had just been grateful to have a job, even if he still hadn't had a place to sleep.

It had been hard for that first year. Derek had never been away from his family, and he had definitely never done anything quite as dangerous as lumberjacking. It really didn't help that at the time he hadn't been making enough money to even pay the rent at the small town's single motel on top of keeping himself fed. He had ended up building himself a small shelter in the woods (though he had made sure to choose a part of the woods that wasn't owned by Mr. Lahey; seriously, the guy was a total dick).

He hadn't exactly been a stranger to building shelters and surviving off the land, something he was now very grateful to his family for. The Hales had always been very in touch with the land, and so Derek had already known how to camp without a tent, how to build a fire, and how to either trap or hunt for his own food.

Mr. Lahey had died in a freak lumber accident about five years after Derek had joined the crew, and the guy's eighteen-year-old son, Isaac, had taken over. Derek hadn't been able to find it in his heart to mourn that asshole, and honestly, he was kinda glad he was dead, if only for Isaac's sake. Isaac had also been on the lumber crew, and if it was hard on Derek working such a tough job at seventeen, he could only imagine what it was like for thirteen-year-old Isaac. He hadn't exactly been in a position to say anything about it at the time, but he had tried to look out for Isaac as best he could.

Derek still tried to look out for Isaac, even now that his father was dead. The kid wasn't a replacement for the younger brother he had left behind, but he came pretty damn close, and Derek really didn't want to see anything bad happen to him.

Over the years, Derek had become comfortable with how things were. He lived in the woods by himself and worked in the woods with Isaac and a few other guys and things were good.

Then he met Scott and Boyd.

Scott McCall and Vernon Boyd were trying to start up, of all things, a bushcraft training school. They stumbled across Derek's shelter while attempting to plan out their courses, and had proceeded to join him at his fire without invitation.

He really should have run away while he had the chance.

When Scott found out that Derek had been living in the woods for the past eight years, hunting and trapping his own food, and in general doing all of the things he and Boyd were going to be teaching people to do, he had grinned at Derek dopily and asked him to help them out.

Derek's answer had been an unequivocal 'no'.

Unfortunately, Scott was persistent and never took 'no' for an answer. He stopped by Derek's shelter at least twice a week, and despite the fact that he was ridiculously annoying, they somehow ended up becoming friends (Boyd was actually his favorite—if only because he didn't talk as much—but Scott didn't need to know that).

A year and a half later, Derek somehow got drawn into helping out with their first group of students, and everything had been downhill from there. Derek still wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but he was glad that it did, because he actually enjoyed teaching hunting and tracking to the successive groups of students. Not that he would ever—ever —admit that to Scott.

Things were surprisingly good. Sure, he still missed his family, but overall, he couldn't really complain. He might not have his family, but he did have Isaac and Scott and Boyd and occasionally Boyd's girlfriend, Erica. He hadn't really wanted to care about anyone when he left home, but now, he was glad that he wasn't alone.

So, yeah, things were good—had been good for years now, in fact—and Derek could only hope that they would stay that way for as long as possible.

Stiles was attempting to make coffee, cook breakfast, and search for a job when his phone rang. It startled him, and because he was, well, him, he flailed and the pancake he had been trying to flip ended up half in the pan and half on the stove top.

"Shit," he muttered, scrambling to grab his phone with one hand while simultaneously struggling to scrape the pancake off of the burner and back into the pan. As he hurried to bring the phone up to his ear, his arm—the thing had a life of its own, seriously—somehow managed to hit the mixing bowl containing the pancake batter, tipping it over and spilling its contents onto the counter.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck… What!?" he exclaimed as he pressed the 'TALK' button on his cell phone.

"Well," a voice huffed at him through the speaker. "Is that any way to greet your best friend?"

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Laura, you messed up my pancake flipping. I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation." He looked down at the burnt bits of pancake sticking to the stove and sighed as he turned off the burner.

If anything, Laura sounded even more offended when she spoke again. "Pancakes?" she said, her voice near a shriek. "You're making pancakes?" He held the phone away from himself and stared at it disbelievingly. God, she was loud. Seriously, she could rival him even on his most talkative days. "You never make pancakes for me," she continued. "Remember that one time I asked you to, and you gave me that long-winded lecture about how mornings were made for the perfect, healthy cereal and milk combination and that it was so much better for your heart than pancakes and bacon? Do you remember that, Stiles? Because I certainly do."

"My dad was there," he protested. "I have to set a good example when he's around or else he'll never learn. You know how parents are. It's so hard to teach them new tricks."

Laura just snorted. "Fine, but you are so making me pancakes, and I want them soon, Stilinski."

"It won't be today," Stiles replied mournfully as he looked at the mess he had made of the kitchen. The whole place reeked of burnt pancake, and the batter he had spilled earlier had slowly started to drip from the counter to the floor. "Man, I really wanted pancakes."

"Oh did you now?" Laura said pensively. God damn it. Stiles knew that tone of voice, and it never meant anything good for him. "Well, I think I could stand to buy you breakfast as long as you do something for me in return. I have a… proposal for you."

Stiles coughed. "A proposal? Laura, don't you remember what happened the last time we pretended to be married? I don't think…"

"No, no," Laura replied, and though he couldn't see her, he knew she was waving her hand as though she were batting Stiles' words out of the air. "This is a bit more serious than that. I really think we should talk about it in person."

Her words made Stiles pause. If Laura said something was serious, she really meant it. It wasn't something she said often, but when she did, he knew that whatever it was would most likely have rippling consequences. This probably wouldn't end well, but he couldn't just not help her if she needed him. She was his best friend, after all.

"Okay," he said, resigned. "Meet you at the diner in ten?"

Stiles had known Laura for almost six years now. Sometimes he looked back on it and was simultaneously amazed that it had already been that long and disbelieving of the fact that it had been only six years. She had been the TA for his freshman Intro to Political Science class, and he still remembered the suspiciously speculative look on her face—the one he now knew so well—when she had called his name for the first time. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, probably wouldn't have remembered it at all actually if she hadn't cornered him after class saying, "Stilinski, huh? As in, Sheriff Stilinski?"

Their friendship had progressed rather quickly after that, despite the four year age gap. Laura was devious and ridiculously loud. She cursed like a sailor and was almost—almost—as inappropriate as Stiles, but she also had a magnetic quality to her that made everyone like her in spite of it all.

Stiles unfortunately just came off as an asshole—which, admittedly, he pretty much was one most of the time, so he supposed that was fair. Either way, it made him a bit short in the friends department, and really, he and Laura were sort of perfect for each other anyway so it didn't take long for them to become "thick as thieves", to put it in his father's words. (Though to be fair, they had never actually done any thieving. And his dad said he was dramatic.)

Somehow, they had made it through five plus years of friendship, a friendship that had survived the rest of his stay at UC Berkeley and both of them moving back to Beacon Hills.

So, really, it wasn't like he could not hear her out, even if he had a feeling that none of this was going to end well for him. Laura's ideas never really did, even if they did seem like good ones at the time.

Stiles arrived at the diner first and grabbed their usual booth by the front window (they were both avid people watchers). Laura walked up a few minutes later, and as per usual, Stiles pulled faces at her through the glass.

She rolled her eyes as she sat down. "Stiles, you know I can barely see you through the glass. Why do you always insist on making faces at me when you know I can't see you?"

Stiles grinned at her, happy that he was able to keep the mood light for now. "Ah, but I know that you know that I'm doing it, and I also know that it happens to annoy you."

Laura snorted. "Attractive," she said. "You are never going to get a girlfriend if you keep trying to annoy people to death. A pity really. What are you going to do when I get swept off my feet by Mr. Right?"

"Says the girl who just snorted," Stiles retorted easily, not worried about it in the least. "Besides if me being annoying scares off the girls, I'll just have to go for a guy instead. It'll be like epic pigtail pulling."

"I really think that depends on the guy," Laura replied skeptically.

Stiles just smirked at her and put his hands behind his head. "Admit it," he said confidently. "No one could resist this amount of awesome."

Laura looked at him triumphantly. "Which is exactly why I need your help with my little problem."

He was taken aback by this for a moment, unsure of how to respond. "Laura," he said cautiously. "What did you do?"

She waved her hand dismissively at him. "Let's get food first. I'm starving."

Fifteen minutes later, after their food had been ordered and delivered, Stiles was in the process of drowning his pancakes in blueberry syrup so as to better prepare them for evisceration when Laura said, "I found Derek."

Stiles' arm jerked, and the resulting river of syrup that ended up on the table seemed quite insignificant at the moment on account of the fact that, apparently, Laura had found the notorious Derek Hale. He somehow managed to pull his jaw up off of the table. "Oh my god! No, wait, what? Seriously, Laura? That's awesome. When is he coming back?" Stiles words tumbled out of him in a rush.

Laura's lips twisted, and she started violently stirring her drink, betraying her agitation. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about actually," she told him. "But before I do that, I think I should give you a bit of… history. You need to know why my little brother left in the first place before I…" She leaned forward and took a sip of her drink, and Stiles knew she was stalling in an attempt to gather her thoughts. Despite his usual inability to let silences go unbroken, he knew he needed to allow her this one.

She sat back and stared at him pensively for a moment before opening her mouth to speak. "Derek had this girlfriend when he was fifteen. Her name was Paige, and Derek was…" She trailed off briefly before finishing, "I think 'besotted' is probably the best word for it. Anyway, she died in a car accident right after his sixteenth birthday, and Derek was the one driving. The accident wasn't actually his fault—they were hit by a drunk driver—but Derek…"

Stiles looked down at his food. He knew all about guilt. For years after his mother's suicide, he had been convinced that it had been his fault. If he had been a better kid, if he had gotten straight A's rather than A's and B's, his mother wouldn't have killed herself and his father wouldn't have had that horrible look on his face—the one Stiles still saw sometimes when his dad didn't know he was being watched—for almost a year after it had happened. His guilt had caused him to have panic attacks, and honestly, if running wouldn't have meant leaving his father alone, he probably would have disappeared as completely as Derek had. Though running away wasn't really a viable option any more, as a teenager, the urge to do so had sometimes been nearly irresistible. His father had always been what kept him from doing anything drastic, but he could understand why a sixteen-year-old suffering from survivor's guilt would feel as though he lacked that type of anchor.

Stiles raised his eyes back to Laura, and honestly, this was one of those times during which the fact that she knew him so well came in handy. He didn't need to say anything, and she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Laura gave him a small smile. "I knew you would understand." She sighed. "After Paige died, Derek was very quiet. He stopped driving altogether and wouldn't hang out with his friends. All of us were worried about him, and some of us…" Laura flushed guiltily, and Stiles was sure that she had been a big part of that 'some'. "…decided to talk to him about how he needed to snap out of it and move on with his life."

Stiles winced. "I take it that didn't go over very well."

"No," she replied, shaking her head sadly. Then her eyes hardened and she practically spat, "He started sleeping with that bitch, Kate Argent."

Stiles spluttered. "Kate Argent? As in, the wackjob who tried to burn your house to the ground with all of you inside? That Kate Argent?"

"Yeah," Laura sighed. "She thought we were werewolves. Can you believe that?"

He stared at her for a moment, his head tilted slightly to the right. "Actually…"

Laura reached across the table and backhanded him on the shoulder.

Stiles scowled and rubbed his arm even as he was congratulating himself on removing that crease from her forehead. "The violence isn't really helping your case, you know."

Laura rolled her eyes. "Anyway," she said pointedly. "Derek didn't say it in so many words, but it was pretty obvious that he was only with her to prove that he was over Paige. I don't think he actually loved her or anything, and, well, we all made it out alive, but he still took the whole thing really hard." Laura huffed and said fondly, "I swear, he has the worst guilt complex. It's ridiculous."

Stiles knew that Laura loved her brother. From what she had told him over the years, he had been able to infer that they had been really close before Derek ran away. She never said so explicitly—there were few topics Laura and Stiles didn't talk about, but Derek was one of those few—but the look on her face whenever she accidentally mentioned him told Stiles all he needed to know.

Stiles wasn't really one for gambling, but he would bet that she also nursed a healthy guilt complex of her own for being the one to push Derek at Kate in the first place. He knew that he wasn't the one who could alleviate it. That was something only Derek could do, and Stiles' resolve to do anything possible to help her grew stronger. He suddenly felt like he would do anything he possibly could to fix this for her. She had said that she would need his help, and he knew that whatever it was she wanted from him, he would do his best to give it.

"He ended up in Oregon," she said after several minutes of silence. She laughed brokenly. "Can you believe that? We've spent the last ten years looking all over America for him, and he's been in Oregon—one fucking state away—this whole time."

She went silent again, and so Stiles prompted gently, "What has he been doing in Oregon?"

Laura chuckled as though she couldn't help herself and gave him a truly evil look. He knew she was plotting something, but he just couldn't figure out what it was. "Oh, you're going to love this. He's been—wait for it—working as a lumberjack."

Stiles choked on the sip he had been trying to take of his coffee. "A lumberjack?"

Laura laughed at him. "I know, right?" I laughed my ass off when Allison told me. I mean, the image itself is hilarious. My brother, Derek, the lumberjack." She giggled. "But the fact that you did your thesis on the environmental impacts of the lumber industry somehow makes it so much funnier. The company he works for was actually mentioned in your paper."

Stiles jaw dropped open. "No way. Seriously?" He had included plenty of industry examples in his study, and surprisingly enough, only one of them had been in Oregon. He had only included it because its activities had an abnormally small impact on the forest it worked in. He had even stated that further study needed to be done to determine what was causing the lack of adverse effect. "Lahey's Lumber?" he asked, just to be sure.

Laura nodded. "That's the one."

"Is that how Allison found him?" Stiles asked.

"Surprisingly, no," Laura replied with a shake of her head. "Some guys put him up on their website. He still works for the lumber company, but he's been working on the side as some kind of hunting instructor for a bushcraft training school. Apparently, there are schools were people learn how to survive in the wilderness. Did you know that?" When Stiles nodded, Laura rolled her eyes. "Of course you did. What was I thinking? Anyways, Allison said that he's been living in the woods since he got there ten years ago. Her dad is the sheriff of Bunyan County, and when she asked him about Derek, Chris said that he knew him, but that Derek was essentially a hermit. He lives in a shelter he built himself and huts for his own food most of the time."

"Has she talked to him yet?"

Laura made a face. "Can you imagine how well that would go over if he found out she was an Argent? It's a miracle he hasn't realized that Chris is Kate's brother. If he had, he probably would have run already."

Stiles couldn't keep a small grin off of his face. "I still can't believe you managed to make friends with Kate's niece. Only you, Laura." He shook his head, chuckling. "I get your point though. Allison can't exactly approach him, can she?"

Laura nodded in agreement. "Yeah, no, that would be a horrible idea."

"Are you gonna go up there, then?" Stiles asked. "I could go with you if you'd like."

"Thanks, Stiles, but that wouldn't work." She managed a small, grateful smile before continuing sadly, "I might not have seen him since we were teenagers, but I know my brother. If I show up there, he'll run."

"What are you going to do?" Stiles wondered.

Laura looked at him speculatively, and after a moment, Stiles knew exactly what she was planning to do. Everything she had said and done since she had called him that morning snapped into place, and Stiles just knew.

Stiles leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table hard as he hissed, "Laura, you can't be thinking what I think you're thinking. The answer is 'no'." Laura just looked at him, like she knew he would talk himself around to the idea if she just gave him the chance. Damn her, she was probably right, but like hell was he going to give in without at least trying to convince her of what a horrible idea this was first. "I am not going to go up there and join his bushcraft class in order to convince him to talk to you. It's not happening, Laura. Do you hear me? Not. Happening. I just graduated. I am looking for a job. I don't have time to… Well, I suppose I do have a lot of free time, but no. No, I need to be focusing on a job and my dad and you, and fuck… okay, fine, I'll do it," he gave in. It was inevitable anyway. "How long is the class?"

Laura just grinned. Stiles had a horrible feeling about this.

A/N: So, love it? Hate it? Either way, please let me know what you think. Thank you! :)