Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lydia Martin’s memories of her time at Beacon Hills High School would one day become a blurry, incomprehensible amalgam of shiny new lipstick tubes and designer heels; a quick flash of sharp fangs out of the corner of her eye, and the nauseating smell of wolfs bane. Sometimes she thought that the blurriness was seeping into her tangible memories, permanently erasing, perhaps forever, those few moments that she actually needed to remember.

Driving around with Allison, windows open and music blaring; the look on Jackson’s face when she had made the first move and kissed him; the deep, red eyes staring out at her from the darkness of the video store; the pile of junk that Stiles Stilinski had shoved onto the shelves of his bookcase, potential presents for her birthday.

And, of course, the day she had told her parents that she wouldn’t be going to college next year. That she needed to take a year off, figuring out what it was that she really wanted to do. It was the disappointment and worry in their eyes that she hoped the aforementioned blurriness would eventually reach and snuff out, so that she could pretend she hadn’t thrown her entire life away because of a few nightmares.

From that day onwards she lived her life in sharp, clear focus. She never forgot a thing (even when she wanted to), and as she lay in bed at the end of each achingly bright day, she was pretty sure she could make out her future less and less, dwindling away into the horizon like an old Hollywood couple, heart-shaped and silhouetted in a fancy convertible.

***

2 yrs. later.

Friday morning was wet, warm, and dark. Her hair wasn’t curling the way that she wanted it to, so she was shanghaied into stacking it on top of her head with bobby pins and more hairspray than she usually preferred. She slipped easily into a light, breezy dress, and stepped a bit shakily into a pair of weathered combat boots. The surety she felt listening to the treads grip the wet cement under her feet gave her a feeling of assurance that she sorely missed. The sweater she had pulled on over her dress had sleeves that fell past her wrists, and she pulled nervously at the loose threads. It was the comforting feeling of gripping the sleeves with her fingers, like she used to when she was younger. A habit her parents had thought she had grown out of.

“Wrong again,” she mumbled to herself. She was in the midst of unwrapping her headphones from around her phone when a noise sounded from a thicket of bushes to her left. She stopped walking; fingers hovering above the thin rubber wires, eyes wide, and heart racing. Don’t speak, she thought quickly, don’t ask. It won’t answer if you don’t ask. She swallowed audibly, and though her mind was adamantly opposed to speaking, her voice commandeered her throat and mouth, quietly whispering, “W-who…?” She sucked in a breath through her teeth, despising her own mulish whispers. Loudly, she tried again, “Who’s there?”

The street was silent. The humidity had enveloped it in a thick blanket, making everything muffled and distant. The leafy blend of greenery sat vibrant at the corner of her eye; the gray fog of the morning seemed to have had suddenly lost its magic within its many boughs and branches. Lydia felt as though she could see every drop of dew; see the atoms of each leaf magnified beneath the water – like hundreds, thousands, of tiny microscopes. She didn’t want to perceive their vibrancy, or hear the slightest rustle caused by the barest hint of a breeze. The wind began to sound more like a wheezing breath: a warm, struggling for air type feeling against the back of her exposed neck.

The fine hairs on her arms and legs rose and vibrated within her skin, the breath became heavy with purpose, the colors in the thicket, brighter, so bright she had to squint, and as the breath at her neck paused, as if to speak, the loud, overwhelming intensity of her surroundings culminated in a frightening silence, and all at once a bark of her name returned the street to its previous mediocrity. The bushes and small trees had returned to a deep, forest gray – the leaves heavy with excess moisture. The air had returned to its previous stillness, too wet for any actual wind.

He was standing in front of her before she had even a moment to process the thought that it had been his voice that had shouted her name only moments earlier, breaking the spell she had unwittingly fallen under.

“Lydia, are you okay?” He had placed undo emphasis on each word, as if he had asked her the same question a dozen times already. “Hey!”

Her head snapped up so quickly she felt a small pop at the base of her neck and winced. His hand had started to snake its way towards her chin, but she waved him away, swallowing back the urge to cry that had been building familiarly at the back of her throat.

“I’m fine, Stiles. Everything is fine.”

“Yeah? Well, it didn’t look ‘fine.’” His hair was a bit bigger than usual, and he had on the same rumpled clothes he’d been wearing the night before.

“Did you not go home and change?” She felt her nose wrinkle in distaste. “The use of those air quotes was totally necessary, by the way.”

Stiles sighed and dragged his hands down the front of his face. “Is that really what we’re going to talk about right now?”

“We will be talking about whatever I say we’re going to be talking about, and in this case, it’s the fact that you have been, for some reason, wearing the same clothes for nearly 24 hours,” Lydia bent to pick up her phone, forcing him to take a quick step back, “…when we both know you left early enough this morning to both shower and change.”

He replied with an offended gasp, bringing his hand to his chest in a wounded southern belle kind of gesture. “I showered… I just…” he shifted uncomfortably, “…I was worried about you, that’s all.”

Putting her phone in the pocket of her bag, she shook her head to clear it, and went to adjust the uneven strings coming from his hood. “Nothing to worry about,” she smiled, “I’m fine.”

***

After an aggravatingly silent walk into town, they found themselves seated in two overly stuffed armchairs at a coffee shop downtown. They had already planned to meet there, but Lydia could tell that he was feeling antsy, on the verge of suggesting that they go someplace else.

“It was happening again wasn’t it?” He spoke in a clipped tone, his knuckles immediately going to rest at his chin and mouth, trying to hold his tongue and failing. “Lydia, I know that we agreed I wouldn’t bring this kind of stuff up unnecessarily,” he paused, stopping to watch her remove the tea bag from her mug, “but come on… this is starting to feel… necessary!” He spoke his final words in a whispered tone, realizing he was getting a bit too worked up than was appropriate in public.

He huffed at her stubborn persistence in keeping mum, and glanced fleetingly at his own lukewarm drink. His tea had already gone cold in the 30 minutes he had spent staring her down, and he glanced longingly back at the soda machine behind the counter. Hearing her clear her throat, he quickly looked back, expecting her to finally say something, only to instead see the disapproving eyebrow raise of a woman who had explicitly explained to Stiles that the high sugar content of soda was not good for him. He frowned and disparagingly raised the mug to his lips, gulping down the cold herbal tea with the tiny bits of leaves or flower petals (or whatever) that had slipped out of the bag.

She shook her sugar packets at the ends, listening for the sound of each granule falling into place. She vaguely heard his annoyed tapping in the background; a chewed up pencil moving frantically up and down against his notebook, but this was easily ignored. Her life seemed to be falling apart at the seams (literally), and before she made the decision to violently rip it apart with Stiles as her co-pilot, she wanted a perfect cup of English Breakfast first.

It had started to drizzle outside when Lydia placed her spoon on the small plate underneath her cup, and she sighed with relief, as if she and the sky had been mutually holding their breaths since her near-encounter earlier that morning.

“There really isn’t anything to discuss,” she spoke plainly and without the nerves she had felt so keenly earlier, “There’s nothing to talk about that we haven’t said before.”

If she hadn’t know him for so long, she probably would have glared at his obnoxious sighing, but she had (almost too long), and she wasn’t wasting a perfectly good glare on his childish behavior. As soon as he realized that his little tantrum wasn’t getting him anywhere, he abruptly stood and walked over towards the glass case at the front of the store, staring angrily at the last few muffins and slices of pound cake as if they were the reason his girlfriend was getting on his last, supernaturally irked nerves. Lydia knew he wasn’t actually upset with her, just frustrated with how she had chosen to deal with her little… handicap.

A few weeks after Lydia had dashed her parents’ hopes and dreams by delaying her admittance to college, she had found a way of getting herself a part-time job at the community college library. What better way to excel in her macabre new talents than through hours and hours of arduous research? Not that it was necessarily helping, she was still scared out of her wits 90% of the time – but still, 90% was better than a hundred.

She had spoken to the administration, shown them her grades and academic history, politely and convincingly letting them know that she had every intention of attending their fine institution, but she was having some family problems, and could they make an exception just this once, and let her work on campus prior to her admission? Turns out, they were as desperate for good students as Lydia had predicted. It didn’t pay much, but she wasn’t paying rent, and it gave her something to do when Stiles was in class or off visiting Scott.

***

It was full on raining outside when they parted ways outside of Stiles’ classroom, and the drumming on the roof was a pleasant buzz; it echoed in the empty hallways and she knew that he was about to get another mark for lateness, but he never seemed to care about those things in the least. They paused outside the closed door and he looked at her thoughtfully before gently placing his hand on the back of her neck. She immediately felt the tension begin to leak out of her, almost as if he were drawing it out, like every inch of her was an open wound. Their earlier disagreement appeared to be forgotten for the time being.

“I’ll see you later?”

She smiled and leaned in to press her lips softly against his, “If you’re lucky.”

***

The library was about as empty as you would expect it to be on a Friday. There were a few stragglers, rushing to get papers or research done before the weekend, but it was largely quiet and undisturbed. Lydia may have “taken a break” from her academic life, but that didn’t mean she was any less eager to learn. Students and library patrons kept to themselves for the most part, so she spent a large portion of her time picking books off the shelves and reading until her shift was up. Sometimes it was a novel, but she preferred to read those at home, tucked between the sheets with Stiles’ light snuffling next to her. Her reading at work was usually of the non-fiction variety, odd and occult-ish type works; most of it pressed between soft, yellow pages, aged & antiquated.

In the frightening months leading up to the revelation that she had in fact, her whole life, been what is referred to as a “banshee,” Lydia had desperately craved to know what had been the matter with her. She had thought that if she could at least assign a name to her condition, the crippling anxiety would dissipate, and if it was an illness, maybe there was a cure. But being a banshee wasn’t just a sickness that she could pop a few pills for; it wasn’t even a psychological issue that overly-priced counseling sessions could fix; it was just who she was, and there was nothing she could do to change that.

Stiles had reminded her of this on more than one occasion; just last night, she had sat shivering and wet on her bed while he had rushed in and out of the hallway, frantically grabbing all the towels she had in the closet, and wrapping them tightly around her arms and shoulders, briskly rubbing his hands up and down her tiny frame. There was something hanging around her house. She knew that now, especially after this morning. She’d suspected for weeks now, but had stubbornly ignored it, even at his prompting.

Her lips still quivered slightly, her teeth chattering silently, and he paused in his furious attempts at wringing her out, bringing his hands up to cradle her face. He moved slowly, probably trying not to startle her; she was always a bit skittish after these kinds of things. They were warm, heavenly compared to her chilled skin, her hair dripping wet against the towels and now the skin of his fingers.

“Lydia,” he whispered, and she closed her eyes, ashamed and angry at being unable to accept the realities of her situation. It had been because of her that he had run from her house in a panic, no shoes, rain coming down in sheets, only to find her standing nearly comatose in the middle of the road a few houses down. If she could just accept what she was, maybe she could control it. Maybe her boyfriend wouldn’t have to be so concerned for her all the time.

“I’m sorry,” she answered, her voice hoarse from screaming, “I should have just told you what was happening.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes as if to say that it didn’t matter, but she noticed they were wet and red, and she swallowed, felt the scratchiness of her throat, as if sick, and winced.

“I’ll make you some tea,” he said, wiping his thumbs beneath her eyes and planting a kiss on her forehead, “you should change out of those wet clothes.”

And of course, in typical Lydia fashion, she had woken up only a few hours later, back to denial and sarcasm, insisting that there was nothing else to talk about.

She glanced up from her book to find the library empty, the one or two students who had been there earlier apparently having left while her mind wandered, and the only sounds were the ticking clock above her head and the persistent pitter-patter of the rain against the skylights. There was a distant thud from somewhere deep in the stacks and she jumped slightly, head shaking in an attempt to regain her focus on the subject at hand: “It has even been suggested that banshees are familial guardian angels or souls of unbaptized children or even the souls of women who committed the sin of pride in life.”

She sighed dejectedly and grabbed the pen that she had stuck carelessly into the mass atop her head, intent on underlining the last few words, “…the souls of women who committed the sin of pride in life,” when a thudding echo sounded for a second time, and her previously, perfectly straight line, veered sloppily off the page.

“Shit,” she whispered, staring unhappily at the ugliness marking a library book. The words that she had responded to so self-pityingly before were now partially hidden behind the ink of her pen, and she pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes. She was so sick of feeling sorry for herself, she wasn’t entirely sure how anyone could stand being around her anymore.

Preferring anger and self-righteousness to the idea of throwing herself yet another pity party, she decided that marching towards the back of the library and yelling at whoever had decided that tossing books around was a good idea, seemed like an infinitely better option than wondering for the 100th time when Stiles was going to come to his freaking senses and just dump her already.

***

One of Lydia’s favorite things about the community college library was the tiled floors. Most schools she’d visited, Allison’s, for example, had a carpeted library, which was alright, she supposed, seeing as how it muffled footsteps and kept distractions to a minimum. But as a one-time frequent buyer of nearly all high-heeled footwear, Lydia had always adored the sound of her shoes striking a hard surface. The joy had gone out of her in recent months, but before this whole banshee, werewolf, hunter nonsense she had had a sense of herself so great, that she had actually enjoyed the idea of announcing herself to the room – as if she were a debutante, and the click of her shoes were akin to an uppity butler standing at the foot of the stairs, announcing her entrance.

The boots that she’d put on that morning weren’t quite so noticeable as a pair of pumps, but considering the quiet of the library, and Lydia’s own heightened awareness, they did make a quiet, subtle sound between the bookshelves, occasionally a pebble caught between the treads of her soles scraped against the floor, or the leather squeaked softly.

There were no windows or skylights towards this end of the library, so there was only the ugly florescence lighting her way, motion-activated, which meant she was walking in the dark unless directly beneath any particular panel. It was supposed to save energy, but in her opinion it was just creepy. They kept the oldest books towards the back, in the dark, where no one ever went; unless someone needed a quiet, isolated place to make-out, or if you were a mysterious, supernatural creature, in which case, she herself filled both those qualifications quite perfectly.

Considering the frequency of her “visits” the last two days, she wasn’t particularly happy about having to traverse the dark aisles, but she did need a distraction.

One or two books lay open on the floor, both concerning completely different subjects, and open to pages of seemingly no significance. She kneeled to the floor, a hand extended towards the bigger tome on her left, when the flickering light above her head simply clicked, and went dark. And as she crouched in the dark, her fingertips resting against the dusty floor, her breaths shaky and unsure, she thought of Stiles, and she remembered the person she’d been before she was a banshee; before she discovered that she wasn’t who she thought she was.

The heavy silence of the morning returned, as did the sharpness of her senses. The old, musty smell of the books, the slowed ticking of the clock, all the way back towards the entrance of the library. She was in complete darkness, so it was difficult to see, but maybe that’s what it had had in mind.

There were lips hovering towards the top of her ear, or at the very least, the illusion of flesh, hiding in the dark; a breath poised to speak. Her own lips dropped open, a scream building at the back of her throat, but she willed a scolding “hush,” and compelled herself to listen.

***

The sun was just beginning to peek out from in-between the clouds when Stiles’ final class let out for the day. He let out a breath, relieved at the sight of the sun and the weekend. As he made his way towards his bike, chained up at the library exit, a cool breeze blew through his hair, and he could feel the humidity from the last few days finally ease up; if only slightly, at the very least an indication of far more pleasant weather to come. He was thinking about maybe taking Lydia out of town for a few days to get her mind off things, when he was suddenly struck by the sight of her leaning up against his bike, her face turned towards the slim ray of sunlight which had begun to shine on campus.

The breeze blew through the small tendrils of hair that had escaped from her bun, and ruffled the end of her dress against her thighs. She looked more relaxed than he had seen her in weeks, eyes closed and lips quirked vaguely upwards; no lines of tension in her face or neck, and he felt his heart thud happily in his chest.

He had attempted a quiet approach, but she had already heard his clumsy footfalls against the pavement, and it was really the half-whispered, “Shit!” that caught her attention and she smiled, turning towards him with flirtatious, half-lidded eyes.

“I meant to do that.”

“You always do.”

She remained largely at ease, but when she raised and crossed her arms, pressing them protectively against her chest, and a look of anxiousness stole at her features he frowned, taking a few steps closer, presuming the romantic moment which he had anticipated only moments before to already be ruined due to his own clumsiness.

“Everything go okay today?”

On a sigh and yet another familiar, reassuring smile she stepped away, revealing his chained bike, pressing him to get on with it. He had to physically stop himself from squinting comically in suspicion, but seeing as how he was still taken with the lovely image he’d seen only seconds earlier, he instead pressed a sloppy kiss to her temple and acquiesced, unchaining his bike and walking it slowly away from the emptying parking lot, Lydia at his side.

***

They returned home in silence, albeit a far more comfortable one than their walk to the coffee shop that morning. He rode slowly, and she walked at his side, taking comfort in the sound of the tires gripping the wet pavement and her boots treading softly. The breeze and sun remained and she was grateful, and had a sudden craving for a bowl of freshly washed, green grapes by the pool, with Stiles chattering excitedly about one thing or another.

“So, are you planning on telling me why you look so pleased?” he asked, smiling hesitantly, “Or are you making me guess?”

She skipped ahead of his bike and turned around, walking backwards, a more graceful motion than he could ever conceive of.

“I had a little visit in the library today.”

“Allison?”

“Nope,” smiling, her dimples deep and charming, “besides, she’s visiting Scott this weekend, remember?”

“How could I forget,” he answered dryly, “it’s not as if he talked to me about anything else yesterday.”

“Oh, come on, they’re cute!”

“No, Lydia, we’re cute.”

She stopped, tilting her head to the side as if in deep concentration and then nodded decisively.

“Correct.”

“So?”

He had stopped his bike in protest of her adorable attempts at procrastination. Not that it wasn’t kind of working, but if he didn’t get some answers soon he was going to go out of his damn mind with curiosity.

“…Hmm?”

“Lydia. Who visited you?”

She gripped the worn leather handlebars of his bike, the sides of her hands touching his own, and looked meaningfully, seriously, into his eyes, “Please don’t freak out.”

He said nothing, sensing she had more to say, but he was immediately on high alert, poised for bad news; for the sight of her hands shaking, or her eyes glassy. But as he snuck a peek down at her small hands next to his, he saw they held firm; and when he looked briefly into her familiar, green eyes, he saw only a purposeful stare.

“Whatever’s been hanging around the house, it…” she paused, searching for the right word, “it must have followed me to the library today.”

“Lydia. “

“No, but Stiles, that’s the thing, it was totally fine.”

She hesitantly placed a hand over his and looked down at where they touched, rubbing her thumb over his hand, taking a moment to appreciate the solid, warm feeling of his skin against hers. Stiles allowed a moment or two of silence and she was relieved to have a moment, to remember the cold whispers, the intangibility of the presence she had felt in the library, on the street near her house that morning, and in the middle of the block the night before; how torturous it must be, to exist and yet still be barely anything; just a blip that not a single person would notice except for her.

“I thought about you.” She swallowed nervously, thinking it silly that she feel at all nervous, he’d seen her in worse times and reacted fine, admirably even, but there was still an element of vulnerability there, one that she wasn’t certain she would ever lose, and she glanced up at him shyly.

“I thought about how much you loved me before all this,” she had to look away at the intensity in his eyes and continued, “You know, I thought that maybe I was being punished? Because of what I was like before?”

“Lydia,” he began again, but she silenced him, placing a finger against his lips.

“I’m still in the middle of reading that old book I found, the one concerning Celtic myth? There was some bit about how banshees… about how they might be the spirits of prideful women.”

She felt stray hairs tickling her cheek and pushed them behind her ear. The sun had begun to slowly set between when they had left campus, and when they had gotten to Lydia’s street, and she felt the final, glorious heat of the day rest reassuringly against the skin of her neck.

“But you loved me then, didn’t you?” She asked, almost desperately, “and you’re you, and you loved me then, so, how… how could it be a punishment? Maybe I wasn’t as bad as I remember?”

He looked confused, as if he couldn’t believe that she had any reason to think so lowly of herself and she felt herself begin to gape in disbelief, when the sheriff passed in his squad car, a honk and a wave towards the young couple and they were both startled out of their conversation, waving slowly back, as if they were both sinking into the depths of a tar pit.

“Lydia, what happened?”

She smiled and wiped at the tears that had begun to form in the sunken pockets beneath her eyes, normally hidden beneath a swipe or two of concealing powder, only purple and bruised in recent months, a sore spot in the rare moments she glanced in a mirror.

“I decided that that book is bullshit.”

He smiled wide and familiar, and she almost felt herself grow giddy with girlish enthusiasm, the way she used to feel at high school lacrosse games, watching her boys run, wild and sure towards the goal at the other end of the field. Jumping up and down, gripping Allison’s wrist in delight and friendship, not a care in the world.

Any doubts that she had had about her revelation, about how she wasn’t being punished; and that she just was, were permanently forgotten with his smile, an absolute, silent reassurance that her worries over the last two years had been for naught, and that no matter the flaws she’d had as a teenager – she’d been a teenager. A beautiful, smart, spoiled teenager, put in a frightening, certainly inconvenient, situation; and she’d had to adapt – and she was. Finally.

***

“We should probably call Scott; Allison too, maybe Derek; Isaac.”

“The whole gang, huh? That bad?”

“Maybe not; it certainly doesn’t hurt to be careful, though.”

“Right you are, my lady.”

“Shut up.”

His hair tickled her ear when his lips went for her neck and she giggled, kicking her feet in the water as they dangled lazily in the shallow end of her pool. A bowl of cold, freshly washed grapes rested between their legs and she went to grab them before he knocked it into the pool in a fit of clumsy, adorable lust.

“Hey! Be careful!”

“Look at me. I’m Mr. Careful,” he said, smartly, only to wince seconds later. “That was terrible. Sorry.”

“Apology not accepted.”

He frowned and grumbled playfully, his lips going into a childish pout, and she rolled her eyes, kissing his cheek with a wet smack.

“I was thinking about maybe enrolling in classes next semester.”

She wasn’t sure she actually wanted him to say anything. She already knew her parents would be their usual selves when she told them; happy and relieved, but, “Don’t you think you could get into a better school?” She could, and she probably would, but… baby steps. She wasn’t quite ready to leave just yet.

The wind blew against the water and she intently watched the ripples left behind, listened to the sound of their feet kicking beneath the surface and watched their shadows playing against the bottom of the pool from the small light installed within its walls. She popped another grape into her mouth and felt the skin split, the juice spill against her tongue and, quite suddenly, very nearly choked to death after she felt Stiles’ own grape-y lips press against her own, the smell of him, and the taste of the fruit coming together in a memory that she was sure to remember for as long as she was able.