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In retrospect, Lydia really should have fucking known.
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“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”
“No. no, you’re right, I don’t. What I get is to see you trying to act as if I didn't fuck us up.”
“What!? I swear to god Stiles I don’t- That is not what’s happening here!”
“Isn’t it though?” he asks coldly.
She straightens up as she realizes where this is going, her voice repeating a fact gone unsaid for a moment too long, “I don’t blame you for it.”
He ignores her. He’s painting a picture now, “This is what I think, you look at me and you see the pathetic boy who was obsessively in love with you. You see that boy on the verge of breaking and then you give him a friend. You see him become your person, someone who’s there for you no matter what. He falls in love with you again only to realize he’s never known anything else.”
She feels a little calm pass through her as he recites the facts of their story, she’s prepared for him to go on about how long it took for them to finally get over themselves. But the wind is knocked out of her lungs when he continues,
“But then he kills your best friend and breaks your heart. You’re grieving a colossal loss and need something to hang on to because you’re too tired to recover. You choose him to be there for you when you feel like you’re in hell, but you ignore the fact that he’s the one who put you there. I don’t think you realize Lydia, that’s what’s happening here.”
She gapes at him for a good moment, takes one to collect herself, trying not to break under his challenging gaze.
She looks him in his dead eyes and clenches her jaw, “We’re different people Stiles, with different stories and apparently even more different perspectives. You did not kill Allison, the nogitsune did.”
He’s actively shaking his head now, scoffing at her. But she knows he won’t listen to belief so she gives him the facts too,
“You have a guilt complex stiles. You lose pieces of yourself every time someone you love hurts or dies. You turn your grief into guilt because it’s easier to think you don’t deserve to be here than to think about who does, but isn’t.”
Something in him breaks then, like his consciousness breaks, and his mind crumbles.
She takes another moment, but he’s subdued now, like he’s underwater.
“I know where the lines blur but Stiles, every single decision that led up to that night came from survival instinct.”
She can practically hear the gears in his mind turning as he stares at her with confusion and pain and the fucking guilt marred on his features.
She almost stops when slowly the emotion starts ebbing its way out of his face.
Still, she pleads, “You have to stop blaming yourself for what happened before it takes over your mind and eats you whole.”
It should’ve been convincing coming from her, but then the damn nogitsune wins out and she realizes just how dangerous it is to give him space in trying circumstances. Because right then, his guilt is more convincing than the legendary Lydia Martin herself.
His face tilts in a contemplative mock, “Sorry, a little too late for that.”
He says it so casually that Lydia has to repeat it in her head to fully grasp the statement.
But he doesn’t give her the time to respond,
“What kind of twisted image do you have of me?”
Her breath hitches once more as she says in warning, “Stiles.”
“No really, I’m curious. What is it you see that makes you want to care?” He shakes his head it’s the most manic concept he’s ever heard, like it’s unimaginable.
“Don’t do this.”
His voice hardens and the curious, conniving horseman takes a leave, “You think I don’t know how this story goes?”
“Stop it.” Her voice shakes.
He ignores her once more, “You think I don’t see the way you’re pulling away from me?”
“Stiles, please.”
It seems to affect him for a thousandth of a second before his mask is back on.
That millisecond makes her question her existence. It makes her want to claw at him to see himself the way she sees him, to stop this madness and forgive himself, to come back to life.
It makes her desperate, makes her feel like they have no chance if he doesn’t come back to her right that moment.
That millisecond makes her feel guilty, because who the hell is she to tell him anything about what he should feel when in reality, ever since this conversation started she’s been quietly wondering;
What if it escaped that box?
She’s the one underwater now.
What if it came back?
She distantly hears his voice, like a static radio on low volume, “Lydia, do you ever wonder if-”
What if it took over again?
The little scoff comes to her as background music, “Well, would you look at that.”
What if it never left?
“You’re piecing it together right now, aren’t you?”
The static cuts off and she hears the rain falling heavily on the roof now, her eyes lose their haze and refocus on the haunted figure in front of her.
“Piecing what together?” Her voice is weak.
He hums, waits for her to figure it out.
She shivers, she doesn’t think it’s because of the weather.
He just smiles.
And that movement makes her heart stop because here’s the thing about being as deeply in love with someone as she is with him. You grow to learn everything about them. Their voice, their tone. Their eyes, and their gaze. The kind of frown their mouth makes when they’re frustrated, the kind of smile that takes over their face when they’re happy.
She knows these things about him, is attuned to them.
So when she sees him smile just now and feels her heart stop, it isn’t because she’s enamored by it, it’s because she’s seen that particular tilt of his lips before. Has felt the tremor that passed through her when she saw it on him that one night because it passes through her again now.
Her heart stops, because that smile isn’t his.
His laugh is like a whip, snapping you to attention.
“Miss me?”