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Sometimes, Lydia wonders if it will ever be the right time to tell him.
If there will ever be a moment when all of their pieces are in the perfect place for each other, when he is free and she is waiting and they can come together and fall into a perfect harmony, their hearts beating together in time and their fingers intertwined. She can imagine it, can imagine the way that he would smell just lying in bed, his arm wrapped around her to protect her, to keep her close, and at the same time to hold them both together because without the other they would fall apart.
She doesn’t think so. Because now, at this moment, he is happy and vibrant, he is expanding and growing and lighting up the world of someone else; he has moved on, and put her in the past and maybe he hasn’t forgotten about the way that he felt drawn to her but he no longer has the same beating desire to be with her, to touch her, to love her in the way that she has never been loved before. Stiles has Malia, she knows, and Malia loves him and cares for him and is right for him in all the ways that Lydia isn’t: she is innocent, she is trusting, she hasn’t been damaged beyond repair, and she certainly doesn’t have a history of conveniently forgetting that Stiles Stilinski is a person who exists right next to her. Malia can love easily, and be loved easily, and she allows him to be the expert because she is so new to being in love and being in a relationship. Malia is the free open sky that can hold the sun without a problem, can change and be with him even when the rest of the world doesn’t see him.
Lydia is none of those things.
She lost her innocence a long time ago, when a man twice her age gripped her between his palms and ripped his teeth into her veins to bleed her dry, out of a sick desire for power and her body, out of a need to torment everyone and everything he came into contact with. He put his cracks in her, an already damaged little girl whose parents hated each other and barely noticed when their daughter was in the house or when she was out of it. The only time they cared was late at night, when she stumbled home not quite drunk but sure as hell acting like it, pretending like she was years older than she was, demanding to be seen in the only way they knew how to see: anger and disappointment written all over their faces. But even that little girl knew how to mask it, knew how to glue herself back together and put on a face for the world to see. That little girl locked herself up in her tower of porcelain skin and make-up, with clothes and popularity and all the things little girls need to protect themselves from the world around them. Lydia armed her tower and hid herself away, not daring to truly peek out of herself and look at the world surrounding her and the people surrounding her.
She didn’t need friends; she didn’t need anyone, because friends would poke at her and wonder about the cracks that were bound to show if they truly cared. She gripped tightly onto the people that didn’t care, basing her self worth on what others saw in her and when they didn’t like it, didn’t like her, consoled herself with the idea that they didn’t know the girl in the broken tower of flesh she wore to shield herself. She held on to those that didn’t look too closely, hoping that they would never get attached and telling herself that she couldn’t, either, not really, because they didn’t know her and how could she love people who didn’t know her? But Jackson came and he growled when he wanted her and her made her feel powerful in ways that she hadn’t felt before, with his arms and his kisses and his flesh white hot on hers melting her cracks together. She thought, for the first time since hiding herself away, that maybe she would be whole enough to be herself soon, that Jackson could help her find herself amid the rubble of other people’s mistakes that had left her cracked and damaged. She thought this every time he told her he loved her, every time she took it to heart; she thought that maybe one day she would be able to leave her tower and be herself again, that one day she will be strong enough to be out in the world.
After that she found Allison, someone who was like her and at the same time so different from her, so whole in all the ways that Lydia was broken and couldn’t quite fix herself, someone who seemed open and loving and curious about the world around her. Who was strong and defiant and at the same time completely herself, not hiding away the parts of herself that seemed inconvenient, like Lydia. She was drawn to Allison and the way that she worked and Allison worked and they worked together, the way that Allison seemed to know exactly what to say or do when Lydia needed her most. She wondered if this was what it was like to have someone know you, know the real you, and Lydia showed Allison a way into the tower that she had never shown anyone before. Lydia took Allison in to her broken self and showed her what pieces she could and let Allison find others out on her own and was amazed when Allison didn’t care, when Allison liked what she saw. She helped put Lydia back together and gave Lydia all the strength she needed to keep herself strong and gave her the hope she needed to imagine a world where her tower wasn’t needed, where she could fly away into the world and be herself.
Jackson ended things, which hurt her but didn’t break her; she understood that maybe he was confused, that he needed time. She thought this and held herself together as best she could, as more and more people put their claws into her and tore her apart. Allison was with her, she knew, and that kept her together more than she wanted to admit. Then Peter broke her but she hoped that Jackson, once he came to his senses again, could do the same thing he had done before, before she was crazy and brought a man back to life, before she screamed and wandered and saw things she should see, when he pieced her back together. Lydia did the best she could with what she had, putting her own bandages on her broken memories and thoughts and feelings, telling herself that once he helped her put herself back together again she would be safe.
And then Jackson left, his absence pulling off the tape and bandages she used to act like she was whole, ripping pieces of her off and taking them with him to London where he never picked up the phone and didn’t call and made it clear that he couldn’t care anymore. But she isn’t broken, not completely; she won’t let herself break because of some man attacking her, because of some boy who didn’t care.
This mask of power and confidence she uses to keep other people at bay is the only thing she knows anymore, and she isn’t going to let it come apart and show people what is inside, not because Jackson had left her vulnerable, not because Peter exposed her to unimaginable horror.
Then Allison died, and Lydia’s little cracked soul shattered into a thousand iridescent pieces that glittered in the moonlight, her scream tearing her own heart apart shred by shred with its loud booms echoing around her, filling her with its sound. She was finally fully broken, she knew, and Aiden’s death did nothing but convince her that she would never be whole again, that she needs to hide her broken pieces away. She trapped herself even more tightly in her tower to keep herself together, to keep all of her pieces in one place so she doesn’t come completely undone and join the only person to see her pieces in a place that other people can’t follow, not yet. She is not whole, not completely herself or anyone else, not quite. She is many different things to many different people and for a time she prefers it this way but she knows that this is not healthy nor is it the way that people live, and she realizes that this is too much to put on one person. From her tower she looks at all of the pieces and thinks that she will never be unscathed or innocent, not again, not in the ways that other people need her to be in order to connect to her in the ways that they want to. Lydia stares at her soul with its shattered parts and she knows as she examines her pieces who she wishes would be able to connect to her if she were whole.
But the knowledge of her own imperfection doesn’t stop her when she is in the hallway watching him from afar. His hair is messy in a way that she loves, sticking up in the front and matted down in the back and she wonders if he even knows how to use a brush after so long of having his hair buzzed close to his head. He lights up his friends faces and leaves Malia with a look of pure awe in her eye as he talks and Lydia stares at him and wonders if Malia is content with being his moon, with catching his light and reflecting it at others but she doesn’t let herself think that for long. Lydia sighs and keeps watching at him, and imagines that Stiles is the sun and Malia is the moon and she is nothing but a broken girl in a tower thousands of miles away, with all of her self scattered about with no one to see it all together. She looks out of the small window in the tower of her being and sees the sun, cradled by the sky, and she wants nothing more than to be there with him, to see him in all his glory. She wants to fly free.
Lydia shuts her locker door. It barely makes a sound and yet, somehow, Stiles hears it, his ears trained to pick up the noises that she makes despite not being supernatural. He looks up and spots her and his eyes grow wide, she assumes, because it’s his first Lydia Martin sighting in over a week (which isn’t the coincidence that she leads everyone else to believe it is but she can’t say those things out loud to anyone anymore because she has no one to listen). He disentangles himself from Malia and waves to Scott, backing away from their pack without the ease that she has picked up from months and months of fading away into background. She watches him for a few moments, picking up on the way that he smiles and stops to say something to Kira and make one last final joke before his friends allow his feet to carry him in her direction.
By this time, she is already sliding gracefully through the halls away from all of them, her hair swishing in time with her legs pumping and keeping her eyes straight ahead on anyone and anything but him, but her own personal sun. Her heels click away quietly as she weaves in and out of crowds gracefully, appearing and disappearing out of the corner of eyes without drawing any attention to herself. Lydia mastered the art of making herself invisible a long time ago and she uses it now. She can hear him coming for her, hear his footsteps heavy against the slick and sticky and dirty linoleum, the way he can awkwardly slide right into people and still have them forgive him with just a smile. She hears all of this and keeps walking, wanting to break into a run but knowing that if she did he would know something is different, something is changed. Then he would never stop in his relentless pursuit of her, would never leave her be.
She sees salvation up ahead and her step quickens but he is taller than her with longer legs and better muscles to carry him faster, and he is behind her calling her name before she can do anything about it. She turns like a wind, her hair curling around one side of her face and her eyes widening and her lips parting to say his name, too, just to let him know that she still can. And he is with her, nearly on top of her, his distance not enough to keep her from falling into his orbit, to keep her out of his gravity. She feels herself being pulled toward him and it is everything she can do to stay still, to stay in her tower and away from her sun, though she looks at him and she envies his warmth.
He asks her a question, brief and friendly, and she imagines his fingers stroking the side of her face, their touch soft and gentle against her cheek and she can feel the way it tickles her jaw and makes her dig her teeth into her lips. As she imagines, she answers him coolly, her voice not betraying a single thought running through her mind.
He says something back with a grin on his face and she feels heat on hers. She pictures him gripping her hair and moving her head to expose her neck as his lips work their way from her mouth down the side of her face, his mouth hot against her exposed flesh, his teeth barely grazing the skin as he keeps kissing.
She says something in return and he smiles again and takes a step toward her, animated and alive, hands moving quickly to express a point. She can feel those hands on her hips as he picks her up and holds her against the wall, his strength keeping her aloft as he aggressively kisses her and spreads her thighs so he can get closer to her. She feels those hands caressing her back and every inch of skin, warming her and sending shivers down her spine because he has the power to do both and he knows it. In the real world, far away from the theater inside her mind, she answers with a click of her tongue and a raise of her eyebrow.
Then he does touch her, his hand on her arm, and a part of Lydia jumps out of her tower in a moment of weakness and finds herself flying toward the sun, free at last, free at last. Everything is bright. She can feel his warmth on her skin and wants to close her eyes and bask in the way that she feels alive, bask in the way that he is the one to draw her out of her tower. She loves him, and she knows she loves him, and she can feel herself circling closer and closer to him.
Allison accepted Lydia for everything she was and everything she wasn’t and Lydia knows that best friends are there to accept and care. Loving Allison meant loving the pieces of herself even if they were locked in a tower, meant showing the darkness to someone else and letting them judge. But it is loving Stiles that makes her feel like running and jumping and exposing herself, finally. It is loving Stiles that makes Lydia want to come out of her tower and show all of her pieces to the world, to not hide anymore; it’s this love that makes her feel not like she should be whole but that all of her pieces, broken and shattered and cracked, could be out in the sun, shimmering and shining and reflecting his light, too, but also showing her own.
Lydia licks her lips and the little piece that escaped her carefully constructed tower thinks about telling him how she feels and letting him break down the last of her walls instead of just seeing behind them. She thinks about being free and happy and thinks that maybe this is the right time and that piece glides closer and closer and she opens her mouth to say something to him, to let him know. She opens her mouth and another voice comes out and suddenly the world is back and Malia and Scott and Kira are there, happy to see her too, excited that she has been found after a week of being invisible to their radars, of hiding out in libraries and classrooms and bedrooms far away from them. They bring her back to reality and suddenly she is no longer aloft. Stiles lets go of her arm with a few other words and she realizes that it wasn’t the right time, not for him, because he is her friend and Malia is her friend. It wasn’t the right time because it’s never the right time, and she briefly considers constructing a ten year plan to rival his own but with a high chance of success.
He walks away from her.
The little piece of herself, the brave piece of her that saw freedom and took it, falls from the sky, its wax wings melted and gone. She feels herself falling and falling with no way to get back; every step he takes makes her fall faster and she watches him leave her. The world rushes by in hues of blue and green and white, and Lydia Martin’s heart falls from the sky where it wanted to meet the sun and plummets into the ocean with no chance of being saved.