He realizes, once the words are out of his mouth that it has to be the most unexpected thing he could have said. Because when has he ever shown so much concern for any of them, when it didn't directly benefit him?

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, there's a tiny little voice that says it isn't her fault. That she hadn't done any of this of her own volition, that it had been the voice of a dead man that had driven her to everything. That it was all she could do to go along with it, because she hadn't known that it wasn't real.

Derek at least has it in him to lower his gaze when she finally speaks up again, when she starts in on him like everything that had happened to her had been his fault. There's a breath caught in the back of his throat, in the shape of something he's trying to say and doesn't quite know how to get out -

I'm sorry -

Like it really is his fault this had happened to her in the first place. Of course, she hadn't asked to be strung along with the rest of them, to get dragged into werewolf business once Jackson had made himself a part of it. But he doesn't say it, unable to make his mouth form two simple words, three syllables that could have meant the difference between remaining indifferent and letting something else show for a change.

He swallows, eyes trained on the floor beneath her feet before he forces his gaze upward again, hazel mirroring green, expression carefully blank. "Then start talking." There's a slight tilt of his head to the side.

"It's not like you don't have the time, now."