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When Lydia took up archery, nobody was surprised.
While they might have had their doubts and worries, they never said a word about it. Not even her mother dared to ask loud the question of what or why. Instead her mother hid the way her eyes filled with tears and within short notice Lydia had everything she would need to begin practicing. Even as no one said anything out loud, she saw what they meant in the weak smiles, the whispered “okay” that made it clear what they thought.
We understand
Lydia didn’t believe they actually did, but as long as they were happy and as long as they thought she was coping it was fine. It was more of a bother when they thought she wanted to be stronger to protect herself, or try to protect everyone else. As Peter mentioned one night, he thought she ought to leave that to those who were more… physically activated. Lydia happily reminded him, that if she was trying to be Allison, she would already have struck him with a Taser for even daring to speak with her. Yet it would be more her own style to poison him as he slept.
She was not trying to become Allison. She was only trying to learn archery for her personal sake.
Allison had showed her, so many times, how to stand how to aim how to draw and how to let go. The memories held strong, maybe even enchanted by her loss, but if Lydia was still she could almost smell the forest around her, a heavy fresh smell of earth, and hear the wind rustle the leaves and a car driving by on the road far, far away, even when she was in her own room.
Lydia used to sit beside Allison, always having something to do with her hands, like a book or next week’s math homework, as Allison released arrow after arrow into the air. The irregular rhythm of them hitting trees had a certain familiarity to it, and then, Allison’s running steps as she ran to fetch her arrows back from the bark. Lydia turned another page by the time Allison was back, and Allison stood and held and let go, the sun painting the colours of the forest around them.
Archery was not as easy as Allison had led her to believe. Lydia had a talent for holding her hands steady, chemicals and nail-polish never spilling once she had them in her grasp. Pulling a string back shouldn’t be hard yet her arm shook no matter how much she willed it to stay still. Lydia found she could hurt in muscles she barely knew she had, and her limbs weren’t happy with the repetitive motions.
Her goal was never to become as good as Allison. Even the chance that she might was laughable before she even started and now, as she concentrated to hold the bow still for even a moment, it was obvious. That was not the reason she was practising archery, though. Lydia found the notion calming, even after the ground was littered with arrows, even when her back hurt and her fingers twitched and shook for hours after, that what the others thought about her current obsessions wasn’t true .
In the end, she did get better at it.
Stiles asked her once, following her out to the spot in the forest, and watching her fail over and over again. He asked her, half genuinely curious and half with a laugh not far away from his lips, why she couldn’t just calculate the strength needed for her to shoot straight with that brain of hers. Math, he mused, was her triumph and passion after all.
Lydia smiled at him then, took the arrow he had been spinning in his hand from him, and put it on the string of the bow. She probably could, she agreed, but what would be the point if she couldn’t transfer her theory into practise? And, she added as she aimed once more at the target nailed to a tree further away, practise makes perfect.
Stiles shrugged, sat down in Lydia’s usual spot, and together they watched arrow after arrow hit the ground.
Lydia knew they worried about her, just as much as she worried about them. Worry seemed to be a regular part of their life now.
Danny came by her house one night. Only seeing him smile on her doorstep awoke a forgotten nostalgic feeling in her and without any hesitation she let him in. Danny was, Lydia decided, a much needed stability in Beacon Hills. A fixed point even when the storm raged on outside. He had always been that to Jackson and to her, one of the few people she deemed trustworthy, before Allison walked into their lives.
Danny was also a great hugger.
It wasn’t until later, when they were lounging in her room; he brought up the question about her archery. Yet instead of tripping around the issue he simply wondered if she wanted to go running with him. He had noticed (and Danny noticed much more than anyone thought) that she had been in physical pain lately.
It had to be 2 a.m. when they finally run out of the house and the night was cold. Danny matched his speed to hers, yet kept a good pace and Lydia found herself listening to the rhythmic sound of their feet hitting asphalt in almost perfect synchronization.
The rhythm didn’t bring the same calm that Allison’s arrows used to do, but it drained her anger away, just a little bit.
Scott rarely watched her while she practiced archery. Lydia also never let him take away her pain after training, the actually pain decreasing after every time she held the bow in her hand. Maybe she got used to it. She did hold his hand though, helped him study when life moved to fast and always answered his texts quickly.
While she never let him relieve her of her pain, they shared a lot of it nowadays, that aching that even supernatural powers couldn’t dampen. One day when they were seated next to each other in class Lydia wondered to herself if she had ever got to know him had not Allison, new pretty girl Allison with smiling eyes and a kind open heart opening up roads for friendships that she would ever had considered before.
They talked about it sometimes. Both knew that talking about “what ifs” were as dangerous could be, but he was one person she couldn’t lie to. It was Scott who kept her walking the line, that stupid line of saving people and reminding how good if felt giving your all to protect those you love when she started to doubt if it was worth it at all.
Protect those who cannot protect themselves.
It helped Lydia feel a bit closer to Allison again, and they spoke the words like a prayer to fate.
Finally one day, when the bow had stilled in her hand and the arrow flew rather straight, she knocked on Chris Argent’s door. He wasn’t a man of emotion, yet he never could stop her walking into his apartment asking for a book or for information. Allison would never forgive them if they let her father fade away in his own sadness and emptiness and while he rarely talked about other things than asking her how school was how they were holding up, he allowed her to stay for a while, keep him company when Melissa, Sheriff and surprisingly Derek, weren’t already there.
This was the first time since Allison died, taht Lydia asked him of a personal favour, the two of them alone in his apartment. She asked for one of Allison’s arrow, one of her used ones. Chis looked taken aback for a moment, looking at her in a way Lydia had long since learned meant he was suspicious. Yet still he beckoned her to follow him, and in the end she was given four instead of one.
It was the first time Lydia saw Chris cry, sob more like it, and she stayed with him with a hand on his arm until he silently, wearily asked her to leave.
When she walked to the forest, with Allison’s own arrows in a quiver on her back, she was alone. The silence lay heavy around her except the far off sound of a car driving the road into Beacon Hills. Her notebook was filled with maps of which trees Allison used as targets.
Lydia stood, she pulled, she aimed and she let go.
This is why they didn’t understand.
When Lydia took up archery, nobody said a word. The mourning in their eyes said that they understood her coping with what happened and let her play. She hated it, how Peter was the only one who outright guessed right what she needed. Archery itself was never coping for her, because archery was only a small part of what made Allison, Allison. Archery was a means to an end.
Her goal had always been the moment Allison’s arrow hit the tree, flown from Lydia’s own hands.
Her goal had always been the vibrations making it possible for her to hear the whisper hiding in the wind around her. The whisper was not as messy, as crumbled as it ought to be, as they used to be. It was a laugh, light and Lydia’s vision was filled with images of Allison smiling, dimples showing in her cheeks and creases around her eyes.
When the vibrations died out, so did the whisper and Lydia quickly prepared another arrow to her bow. Thump, it said as it struck the tree and Allison’s voice rang in her ears yet again. Happy and calm and content, and now the forest started to blur around Lydia, her eyes filling up against her will with burning tears. She pulled in a shaking breath, nearing a sob when she tried to calm herself and took aim once again.
The third arrow flew and this time she caught words among the whispers. Her own name and “safe” in a breath of relief and Lydia was shaking. When the fourth one hit the tree she felt more than heard the words “love, protect, here”, in rapid succession and by now the noises falling from her mouth were far from pretty.
The noises were hulking and ugly, broken but she was laughing through them. Because it worked.
Lydia walked, leaves rustling underneath her boots as she took back the arrows once again. She prepared once again. “Hello, Allison.” Lydia said, and the next thump against the tree brought whispers and laughter and a calmness she had forgotten.
She could start coping now.
For the first time in months, Lydia didn’t feel like screaming.
~*~
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