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Night falls. He walks through the hallways of the school. There’s no one here, because no one in their right mind is particularly eager to be at the site of many murders during the night.
He makes it to his destination, and without even slight hesitation, he jumps in. The water meets him with a harsh slap. He swims to the bottom of the swimming pool.
His thoughts are soon drowned out. It’s perfect. He doesn’t know how he hasn’t thought of this before.
Here, in the depths, there are no riddles to get wrong, no people who were hurt by his actions. The water washes away the blood on his hands. There is no one with his face to scream he’s a thousand years old because people can’t talk underwater.
He’s starting to get to his limit of holding his breath.
Obsessive researching after Matt and the kanima flashes in his mind. Voluntary apnea is refusing to inhale when you drown, even if that way, it hurts more. But, like he'd told Morell, completely unaware that she would in the future threaten to inject him with pancuronium bromide... When you do inhale, it’s actually kind of peaceful.
He inhales. Peace tastes a lot like chlorine.
He regains consciousness after being poisoned, gets hit with the memories of what happened, and promptly throws up all over the animal clinic’s floor.
“Is that because of the poison?”
That’s Scott’s voice. Scott is still here. Why is he still here? Why isn’t he running far away?
“No,” Deaton says quietly. “It’s not.”
He’s just dry heaving now. The nogitsune had not been particularly concerned with putting food or water in his body but he’s so nauseous, he needs to get everything out.
There’s nothing to get out. There’s nothing.
When he finishes, Scott approaches him. Stiles backs away to the wall, panic surging through him.
“No, no, what are you doing?”
Scott holds out his hands, palms up. “It’s okay,” he placates, the way he might talk to a scared animal during his job.
“It’s not okay, I hurt you.” He has to make Scott understand, but then Stiles doesn’t understand it himself. Their roles should be reversed here. “I hurt you, why aren’t you scared of me?”
“It wasn’t you,” Scott says. “The fox is poisoned now. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
It is poisoned, he realizes with sudden clarity. He can feel the fox in his mind, asleep, writhing in agony.
“But… The poison isn’t forever.” He’d meant to ask that as a question, but it comes out as a flat-toned statement.
Deaton answers anyway. “No. It will wear off.”
Scott’s eyes are filled with concern for his friend.
His breath hitches. “Scott, why would you still care about me after I… It felt good.”
“What?”
“I enjoyed it.”
He can’t bring himself to look at Scott. He can’t bear to see disgust on his face, even when he deserves it.
“Look at me.”
He does, because he’s always been powerless to resist Scott. What is Scott thinking?
“Are you still feeling good?”
He barks out a laugh, but it sounds suspiciously like a sob. “No. The opposite of that.”
“Well, that’s something,” Scott says, clearly trying to be optimistic. “If you were still into it we’d have a different problem.”
“I’m still the problem,” he snaps.
“I know,” Scott says, sounding so tired, but also so sure. “We’ll figure something out.”
That’s Scott. Always trying to find a way in which the villains are defeated with the least amount of casualties, but Stiles doesn’t think that’s going to work this time. There’s a thing inside his head and it’s hungry. It’s really fucking hungry.
He pretends to believe Scott anyway.
He’s covered in bandages. There’s a silence in his head, and it should feel comforting, but he’s panicking.
What happened to us, he wonders, before correcting himself. Me, me, me, what happened to me, there is no us anymore. There never was.
We all know that’s a lie, sneers the fox, but that can’t be right because for the first time in a while there’s a silence in his head.
“Stiles. It’s okay.”
Scott. Steady and reassuring and yes, that’s right, he thought the trickster was you, twist a sword he twisted first. Doesn’t it feel good to be powerful?
“Scott?” He’s not sure what he’s really asking. Salvation, maybe.
They’re all looking at him.
Melissa with distrust and suspicion and oh god, he’d taunted her, he’d thrown the real reason Scott’s dad left in her face. He knew he would hate you. No, no, no. That had never been the reason he hadn’t told Scott. Does she hate him now, too?
Deaton regards him with suspicion, too, but it’s more clinical than Melissa’s. Peter just seems annoyed. Scott… He looks so worried.
“Where are they?” Peter asks.
“I don’t know,” Scott replies.
Lydia. His other half is gone and so is Lydia, he took Lydia.
Peter leaves without a word, either to go track them or do something else. You never know with Peter.
“Stiles, it’s okay,” Scott says again, approaching him.
He only now realizes how heavy his breathing his, and that his vision should not be this blurry. Is this a panic attack? That can’t be right. Or maybe it is.
There’s a silence in his head, and it should feel comforting, but it doesn’t.
“Please,” he says, his voice breaking. “Get them off.”
The bandages stink like death and decay and he’s terrified that while he’s wearing them he’s going to turn into it. The thing without eyes and sharp silver fangs.
He tries to stand, but his legs buckle. Scott steadies him with strong arms.
“Scott…” Melissa’s lips are pursed. “You don’t know for sure that it’s him.”
“I don’t know for sure that he’s not,” Scott counters. “Look at him. Come on.”
“It’s me,” he says, but how can he know? “I don’t know,” he confesses.
Scott’s eyes soften and he doesn’t deserve him, he twisted a fucking sword inside him, fuckfuckFUCK—
“Okay,” Melissa finally says, her eyes softening too in the face of his panic. “Let’s get you cleaned up, kid.”
The McCalls lead him upstairs because he can’t stand on his own.
“What’s wrong with me?” he wonders, his voice sounding so small. Pathetic. No wonder the nogitsune got inside him. He’s weak.
“I don’t know,” Scott says. “You got a new body, so maybe it’s just readjusting?”
He whimpers.
They make it to the bathroom where, after the bandages are removed, Scott has to help him with taking a shower.
After the water turns off, he feels more coherent.
“You… you can’t be here.”
Stupid, stubborn Scott says, “The others are looking for Lydia. Right now, I’m exactly where I need to be.”
If he was panicking before, he’s losing it now. “I’m gonna hurt you. Scott, you have to get away.”
Scott doesn’t move.
Stiles insists, “I could be pretending. He’s done it before. You don’t know.”
“Now it just sounds like you’re trying to convince me you’re pretending to be Stiles,” he says, sounding amused of all things.
He runs his teeth over his bottom lip.
“You think I’m me?”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know,” he cries, and it feels like an echo. Everyone has it, but no one can lose it. What is it, Stiles? I don’t know. I don’t know. “I don’t know.”
Scott, wordlessly, brings his arms around him, breathing in and squeezing.
Nothing about this is okay and both of them know it, but neither of them say anything. He closes his eyes.
There’s Scott and Allison, in the center of it all.
“No,” he says stupidly, as if that will undo the fact that Allison’s unconcious in Scott’s arms and there’s blood and Lydia had screamed. “No.”
Lydia, still steadying him, lets out a sob. Yes.
They attract the attention of Kira and her mom. The others only have eyes for Allison. Her lips are stained with blood, to say nothing of her abdomen. She’s gone. She’s really gone. But how can she be gone, it’s Allison.
Kira takes over supporting him so Lydia can let go. She runs towards Allison.
He watches her, running away from him as fast as she can, feeling detached.
A shiver goes through him, cutting through the numb haze, reminding him he’s dying. He’ll see Allison again soon. The thought makes him want to weep.
“You are not well,” Noshiko says, observing him with a critical eye. He squirms under the gaze of the woman who tried to murder him. Collateral damage and all that. He doesn’t blame her. “Come with us to our home. We’ll help you.”
“Thanks,” he says, voice hoarse, and Kira pinches his shoulder supportively.
He really does appreciate it. At least this way he doesn’t have to be around everyone. This way they don’t have to face the reason a love, a friend, a daughter, a girlfriend, Allison—is dead. Allison with her perfect curls and her deadly aim and he killed her.
Bile rises to his throat and he throws up. Kira and her mom wait patiently until he’s done, then lead him away.
He looks at Allison one last time before he goes, while another shiver racks through him.
He’ll see her again soon.
He looks in the mirror for the first time after seeing the original version of his body turn to dust.
It’s not good. The hollows under his eyes look too much the same as bruises, he’s paler than he’s ever been, and his cheekbones are too pronounced. The worst of it? He notices none of these things.
He’s too busy being startled by his own face. The face of a murderer.
Look at me, that face whispers. Look at me, look at me, wait for me to turn to darkness again.
He turns the mirror around. And every mirror he finds, after that. His dad definitely notices, but doesn’t comment or undo it, just quiet acceptance that kind of makes him want to scream. If he can’t stand to look at himself, how can anyone else? They must see the same thing he sees. Something evil. Something broken.
Beyond repair.
He hears a fly buzz and flinches, reaching for the flyswatter he sleeps next to these days with trembling hands.
A week has passed since Allison’s funeral, and Scott is refusing to see anyone. Stiles finds this out late because he, too, has been holing up at his house and ignoring the world. But when the week marker hits and he turns on his phone again, he notices several distressed texts from Lydia. Scott won’t see her, won’t see Isaac, won’t see anyone.
Stiles doubts he’s going to want to see him, but goes anyway, just in case. He can’t just ignore his best friend in pain.
Melissa lets him in, her face cautiously hopeful. Stiles goes upstairs and knocks on Scott’s door. No answer.
“Scott? It’s me.”
Still nothing. His shoulders slump, dejected, but then he hears movement, and then the door opens.
Wordlessly, Scott beckons him inside. They sit down on his bed.
Normally, Stiles would be trying to fill the silence with whatever springs to mind, but he knows that’s not what Scott needs right now. He settles for grasping his hand and just sitting together. It's eerily reminiscient of the time Scott's dad left. He hadn't wanted to talk then, either.
When he turns his head, he realizes Scott’s crying. Silent tears. Seeing that feels like fingernails scraping against Stiles’ heart.
“Thank you,” Scott finally says when he’s all out of tears, wiping them away with his other hand. “For coming over.”
For some reason, that’s what makes Stiles tear up. Before he knows it, Scott is holding him and he’s sobbing.
“I miss her,” he chokes out. “I miss her so much, it hurts.”
“Me too,” Scott says, sniffing. “I miss her. I love you. I love you, man.”
“Love you back,” he manages, salty tears spilling down his cheeks.
They only pull away from each other when they’re both finished crying.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come visit.”
“You have to let go.”
He forces himself to breathe in and out evenly. “What?”
“I mean, let go of your guilt,” Scott clarifies. “No one blames you.”
“You all should blame me,” he snaps, because he’s heard this all before.
“But we don’t,” Scott says, infuriatingly patient.
“You have to.”
“I won’t.”
And there’s really nothing he can do against that.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”
“I know you are,” Scott says gently. “You’re gonna be okay.”
It’s said in the same tone as if you have it, we’ll do something. I’ll do something. This is the tone of Scott McCall promising to fistfight dementia itself if it comes down to it. This is the tone that means it must be true, and all he can do is give in.
All he can do is let go.
He’s jostled out of a nightmare by his phone ringing. He assumes it’s Scott, disturbingly grateful for having been woken up at four in the morning. However, he startles when he sees the display. Lydia.
They haven’t spoken much, not since he held her hand at Allison’s funeral feeling like the world’s biggest impostor. He hadn’t deserved to be there. Chris Argent certainly deserved better than to see the face of his daughter’s killer at his daughter’s funeral.
He picks up. “Lydia. Are you okay?”
Please be okay, he doesn’t say.
“I’m fine,” she chokes out, not sounding fine in the slightest. But he’s really not in any position to judge.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
For a moment, he thinks she won’t answer. Then, ever so softly,
“Yeah,” she says. “I thought you were dead and I didn’t know if it was a banshee feeling or if it was just a nightmare. I had to check.”
“Hey, I get it. Not knowing what’s real or not can be tough,” he says, his brain-to-mouth filter, usually already not that great, completely decimated by the lack of sleep.
A long pause again.
“Yeah, it is,” Lydia says. “Did I wake you up?”
“You did,” he admits. “But I was having a nightmare too so you actually did me a favor.”
He keeps his voice light and draws a huff of a laugh out of her.
“That’s a dark thing to laugh about,” she whispers suddeny. “We’re so dark now.”
He’s not gonna bother with any it’s gonna be okay or time will heal us because he’s not Scott and he doesn’t believe it himself.
Instead, he says, “Well, being in the dark just so happens to be perfect for sleeping. You wanna try getting back to it?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep again.”
“Yeah, me neither,” he sighs, meaning more than just this night. “Let’s not sleep together?”
“Until my phone dies,” she promises wryly.
Time passes, and slowly, he’s regaining some of the weight he’d lost. He’s returned to normal paleness instead of sickly death paleness. The bags under his eyes, however, remain.
In the corner of his eye, he keeps seeing a figure covered in bandages. But whenever he turns, there’s no one there.
He tries to ignore it. He was bound to have some kind of PTSD, right? He certainly thinks evil spirit posession should count as traumatic. It’s fine. He can ignore this.
He cannot ignore it, and he finds out at the worst possible time: when his lack of sleep catches up to him.
He’s in class, and the teacher is talking, but so is the nogitsune, the same as he last saw him. Chillingly apathetic and wearing his face.
“Her, we would strangle,” he says, voice raspy, gesturing at Lydia. “Like the Darach tried to. We would do it on a lacrosse field. I like symbolism.”
A dream kanji for ‘self’ disappearing. Yeah, he remembers.
“Him,” he says, moving towards Isaac. “Locking him in a freezer would be uncreative. Unimaginative. No, we’ll impale him. The same way Boyd was impaled. We’d use Scott’s claws instead of Derek’s, though.”
Stiles stubbornly keeps his eyes focused on the blackboard, but he can’t read a thing. Like he’s experiencing the side effects of ritual sacrifice all fucking over again. His leg bounces at rapid pace.
“And of course, saving the best for last.” He considers Scott. “Stab him like his beloved, and twist it some more.”
He remembers his own fucking face screaming that he can’t be killed, and the sound mingles with Scott crying out in pain as the fox twists the sword. And it whispers, wouldn’t you like to feel powerful again?
He wakes up screaming.
He wakes up screaming in a classroom with everyone, including the teacher, staring at him.
Fuck.
He’s panting, and Scott looks so concerned, and he can’t do this. He bolts.
These days, everyone watches him go by in the hallway at school, and it’s not for the same reason they used to watch Jackson. It’s because he’s the new Lydia now, the latest teenager at BHHS to have a complete mental breakdown. They whisper how he had to go to Eichen House and he even once caught a whisper about his mom having been crazy, too. That last one had his hands curling into fists and nearly showing the asshole who said it just how crazy he is.
The hallways are empty, now, because class is still in session. That’s a relief, at least.
He considers, for a moment, if he should go back. Back to Eichen House. The idea is immediately discarded, because it’s been well established that Eichen House is not safe. It’s a really messed up place, actually, and something should probably be done about orderlies like Brunski who’ll take any excuse to inject people with his haldol. Like Stiles. He winces at the memory.
“Hey.”
It’s Scott, because of course he’s followed him out of class. Shame hits Stiles, because Scott is still trying to be new and improved, and cutting classes is not exactly part of that.
Scott sits next to him on the floor below their lockers.
“What happened?”
“I’m crazy, haven’t you heard?” he says wryly, shutting his eyes.
When he opens them, Scott looks heartbroken.
“Come on, dude,” he says quietly.
Stiles exhales.
“I just… keep seeing it. Everywhere. I feel crazy.”
“Maybe you can remind it that you beat it.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.”
Scott had given the nogitsune the bite, Kira had stabbed it, Isaac had trapped it. Chris Argent had figured out how to defeat the Oni, but only because Allison had figured it out first. Derek had helped fight them, Ethan and Aiden had helped. Aiden died helping.
What had Stiles done, except get himself posessed by a Japanese demon?
“You split yourself in half,” Scott says. “You separated yourself from it. I wouldn’t call that nothing.”
“Oh,” he says stupidly. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Scott says, amused.
He notices, suddenly, that during this conversation there have been no bandages in the corner of his eye. There is no one.
No one except him and his best friend, against the world. Like old times. He feels a little lighter than before.
“What are you doing here?”
Malia finishes climbing through his window and lands on her feet. “I wanted to see you.”
They’ve crossed paths in the school hallways and he’s been tutoring her with math in the library, but they haven’t had a solo conversation of just the two of them since that time in Eichen’s basement.
The reminder of what happened in the basement makes his cheeks heat up a little. “See me? Or…see me?”
“Is there a difference?”
He sighs and gets up from his desk before sitting down on his bed and patting the space next to him. "Alright, then. Sit.”
She does, and immediately leans in for a kiss. He lets her. It starts slow and soft, but before he knows it she's kissing the hell out of him, tongue and all, and it feels so good until he brings a stop to it.
“I don’t get it.” She’s frowning like he’s a math equation, and it makes his heart clench.
“You’re beautiful, in so many ways,” he tells her gently. “But I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
She’s still frowning. “Okay,” she says, surprising him a little with how easily she agrees. “Do you want me to go?”
“You can stay. If you want.”
She lies down on his bed. He lies down next to her, intwining their hands, and they just exist for a while. Just them.
It’s the most relaxed he’s felt in months.
“You saw me where I never was and where I could not be. And yet within that very place, my face you often see.”
“Reflection.”
“You've heard me before, yet you hear me again. Then I die until you call me again.”
“Echo.”
“Let me in.”
He can’t say no. And it's like voluntary apnea, where struggling is pointless and only hurts, but giving in will give peace. He can’t say no, so he might as well stop struggling.
“Careful,” warns the trickster. “I am as big as you are, but I am weightless. Who am I?”
“That’s not… I don’t know.”
It strangles Lydia. It makes Scott impale Isaac.
His fault. It’s all his fault.
But… That’s not right. It can’t be right. The nogitsune is gone.
“Try to wake up,” he mutters to himself. “Wake up. Just wake up.”
“You can’t wake up,” it says, circling Scott. “This isn’t a dream. Don’t you remember?”
He remembers. He knows what it’s like to hope he’s dreaming, that he’s not really hurting his friends, that he’s not really responsible for murders. He remembers what it’s like not to be in control of his own body.
What if this is still that? What if defeating the nogitsune had just been one nightmare within another nightmare that never actually happened?
“That’s right,” it croons approvingly. Blood gushes from Scott’s wound. “Now you’re getting it. There is no escape from me. You’re stepping on glass, little fox.”
What if the nogitsune isn’t real either? What if Stiles never came back to life after he drowned in icy water, and this has all been some twisted version of hell? Or maybe actual hell. Maybe this is what he deserves, for his mother, for Heather, for Erica Boyd Aiden Allison god no Allison—
He’s in his bed. He’s woken up—maybe, he’s not actually sure. He tries to move his limbs, but they don’t even twitch. He tries to close his eyes again, but that doesn’t happen either. He calls out but no sound comes. He’s stuck.
He’s trapped.
He’s trapped inside his own mind, it’s back, it’s back it never left it’s always been here it’s still here and it’s going to kill Scott Lydia everyone and it will feel good—
“Hey, hey, kid, you’re alright, you’re alright. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Oh, he realizes numbly. The sleep paralysis has worn off.
“Shadow,” he says hysterically. The answer to the last riddle, he should have known. “Shadow.”
He clings to his dad tightly and shuts his eyes, blocking everything out.
“You’re gonna be alright,” he says in a low voice, rubbing Stiles’ back.
They’re nice words, but they’re only words.
Is this real, or is this just another dream?
He doesn’t bother going back to sleep again to find out, ingesting so much coffee he’s shaking—but then again, he’s always shaking these days, so who even knows. He paces around the empty living room like he’s a ghost, before going to the kitchen sink.
He scrubs furiously at his hands. They’re stained with invisble blood and the room is on fire with invisible smoke because he can’t breathe.
He’s coughing out water. Someone’s beating on his chest, but his vision is blurry and his ears are ringing.
“What were you thinking?!”
His vision finally focuses properly and he catches strawberry blonde locks.
“Lydia…” It’s all he can say, mesmerized by the tear tracks on her cheeks.
“Do you have any idea,” she tells him, her eyes thunderous, “how it feels to jolt awake in the middle of the night and feel like you’re about to die, only to find out you did it to yourself?”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all he knows how to say these days.
“Sorry,” she scoffs. “Were you sorry when you almost impaled yourself with a sword? Would you have been sorry when Scott and I had to attend yet another funeral of someone we love?”
“You love me?”
It’s the wrong takeaway, judging by the way Lydia glares at him.
“Yes, you idiot. Against all common sense, I love you.” She nearly spits it with contempt. “So if you could refrain from killing yourself…”
Her voice cracks and with it, so does he. Shame hits him, full force.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I didn’t mean to, I just…”
“You didn’t mean to?” she repeats incredulously. “What, did you sleepwalk yourself into the pool?”
She lifts an eyebrow, knowing that’s not it because then he wouldn’t be apologizing. He looks away.
“If you die,” she starts, then stops. Her anger seems to have faded. Fresh tears spill from her eyes. “If you die, I will literally go out of my freaking mind.”
That makes him look at her again, but he doesn’t know what to say, how to reply to his own words being parroted back at him.
Death doesn't happen to you, he remembers. It happens to the people around you.
“She’s dead,” he says. “All of you can tell me it’s not my fault and to let go of the guilt as many times as you want, but Allison is dead, and it is my fault.”
“So what? You blame yourself and we don’t. Get over it.”
“What…” He gapes at her. “Are you serious right now?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says slowly, her voice pulled taut. “Allison is gone and you’re still here. We need you, not your guilt.”
It’s harsh, but maybe harsh is exactly what he needs because those words cut through his overflowing guilt in a way nothing else has.
“Okay,” he finally says. “I understand.”
Her eyes are puffy and she’s wearing no make-up but he’s never found her more beautiful than in this moment. “Good.”
She takes his hand. After all this time, after everything that happened, it still feels the same.
“Let’s go home,” Lydia says.
He knows better than to hope Lydia will just keep the incident to herself, but is still surprised when Scott climbs his window looking absolutely devastated.
“Lydia told me what happened,” he says, unneccesarily. That much is clear from the kicked puppy look.
“Scott, I…”
“What? What were you thinking? How could you do that?” Scott’s on the verge of tears, he realizes with horror.
“Scott….” It’s the same tone as when he’d just been puked up and wearing bandages. It’s a whole new kind of helpless. “I don’t know how to move on from this.”
“By letting your friends help you,” Scott says, equally helpless. “By letting me help you.”
He’s such a bad friend, piling onto Scott’s worries when he’s already dealing with Allison’s death. Almost making him lose his best friend, too. God, he’s so selfish. But he’s been drowning ever since the ice bath and he doesn’t know how to stop.
“I’m not gonna suddenly wake up and be a good person,” he says. “I see the way you all look at me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I’m not me,” he snaps, before deflating. “And I deserve it.”
Scott seems briefly surprised, but then resignation crosses his face and yeah, he knows. It’s not just Scott who he sees double-taking sometimes. Lydia, too. Kira. Isaac. Pretty much everyone, actually, except Malia.
“You don’t. We defeated it, and you don’t deserve to be looked at like it’ll posess you again. Which it won’t,” Scott says firmly. “It’s gone. It’s gone, I promise it is. I forgive you, you know I do, right?”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely, not bothering to repeat he doesn’t deserve it.
“That’s good. But you need to forgive yourself.”
Like that’s so easy. “How?”
“That’s something you’ve got to figure out yourself. I can’t do it for you.”
His breath hitches in his throat, and finally he says what he’s been thinking all along. “Scott, I don’t even know if this is real.”
Scott’s eyes widen. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got these…nightmares within nightmares within nightmares. What if the nogitsune isn’t gone? What if the nogitsune was never even here? I’m losing my mind.”
He barks out a laugh when it hits him.
“I literally lost my mind. Someone else took control of it. I literally… It’s funny, why aren’t you laughing?”
He realizes he’s not laughing either. His cheeks are wet.
Scott, gently, grabs his hand. “One.” He taps Stiles’ thumb.
He keeps going that way, slowly and methodically counting Stiles’ ten fingers.
When he’s done, he says, “This is real. I promise you it’s real.”
“I can’t know that for sure.”
Scott closes his eyes, like he’s in pain. When he opens them again, they’re determined.
“You’ll believe it eventually. And either way, real or not. You’ve got me.”
“I had you before."
Scott recognizes the callback for what it is, and squeezes his hand. “And you’ve still got me,” he says, a threat and a promise.
It’s been ages since he’s gone to a party. He resists the urge to pull his hoodie over him self-consciously because it has been a long time since he’s looked in a mirror, too.
“Here to join the party?” Lydia yells eagerly when she sees him.
“Here to take you home,” he counters.
She pouts in that old, signature way of hers, really driving home the fact how hammered she is.
“Well, that’s no fun.” Her arms find his neck as she leans in closer, murmuring, “You came all this way, why not have some actual fun?”
“Lydia,” he says softly. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“You can go,” she snaps. She’s still close enough that he can smell her alcohol-scented breath. “I’m not leaving.”
“This isn’t the way to deal with it.”
She scoffs, her arms tightening their grip on his neck. “Like you’ve been dealing so well, haven’t you, Stiles? Yes. I should take advice from the one who—“
“Don’t do this.”
“Fine,” she says airily. “I suppose I could let you take me home.”
He slumps with relief. “How gracious of you,” he says dryly.
“I know,” she says with the same tone.
During the drive to her house, her buzz wears off. She seems less perky, more the way she always is now. Sad. Always so sad.
“She would have been the best hunter,” she says. “With her new code. She wanted to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Now we’ll never know.”
All he can do is stay quiet, his heart thundering, as he listens to Lydia talk about Allison.
Then he realizes Lydia is expecting him to say something.
“She…” he starts, clears his throat. “She really saved the day when we killed Peter.” It’s the first thing that springs to mind. “I threw a molotov cocktail but he caught it, and then she… She fired an arrow. Made it ignite. She saved the day.”
“She had a tendency of doing that.” Lydia smiles, and he realizes something: Lydia wants to talk about Allison. Everyone walks on eggshells around her and they avoid mentioning her dead best friend, but Lydia wants Allison to be remembered.
“You know,” he says. “She confused bestiary for bestiality before we stole it from Gerard?”
Lydia snorts out a laugh but somehow still manages to make it sound dignified.
“Yeah,” he agrees wryly, even as he feels like he’s swallowed knives, twisting and tearing inside him. “And she taught me coyotes tiptoe.”
“That’s common knowledge,” Lydia says primly. “It’s on you for not knowing it.”
“It’s not that common,” he defends. “Not everyone knows that. It is not average knowledge to have.”
She smirks. “It is if you’re a genius.”
“Which I’m not,” he points out.
“You’re pretty close,” she murmurs.
They’ve arrived at her house. He stops the car, but neither of them get out just yet.
“Thank you.”
“For driving you home? Of course, I—“
“For talking about her,” she interrupts, her eyes shining. “Thank you.”
He holds his breath, a conditioned response to Lydia leaning in.
She presses a soft kiss to his cheek before exiting the car.
It takes a long while before he leaves and drives home.
He doesn’t know how to forgive himself and he still can’t bear to see his own reflection, but what he can do is look at his friends and keep going for them.
Morell may have threatened to kill him that one time, but she does give good advice. If you’re going through hell, keep going.
He keeps going for his dad and for Scott and for Lydia. For kisses in locker rooms and kisses in basements and the way that they’re pieces that fit together despite being broken long ago.
For now, it’s enough.