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000.01.30.23
The first hour and a half include Isaac pacing and Lydia tearing through one of Deaton's books. She doesn't have to think about her friends in a tub of ice water, not breathing, their hearts not beating, and their brains have already torn through its seven minutes of activity. After, of course, the pattern grows old, and Lydia wants to throw the book across the room because it isn't helping. Isaac has gone from pacing the length of the tubs to laying in the waiting room chairs, he too, fed up with waiting.
They don't speak at all. Too caught in thinking about what to do if this all ends horribly. Lydia loses her stability or whatever kind she had with Scott and Stiles. Aiden is hardly practical, despite his better than average looks and half-decent sex capabilities. Would Lydia be able to live with herself if Allison were to die?
000.04.02.10
Lydia has cried her eyes dry at this point. All the scenarios conjured up have broken through her carefully crafted mean girl mask, leaving nothing but Lydia Martin worn raw. They still don't talk, but Isaac has relocated to sitting next to her on the epoxy. Despite how uncomfortable it is for both of them.
It takes staring at the wall emptily for another hour before someone finally says something. "Are either of you hungry?" It's Deaton. Who looks incredibly worn out but less utterly wrecked than the (living, she has to remind herself) two teenagers.
Isaac doesn't reply but looks unamusedly at the storm pouring outside and then at the vet. Lydia doesn't want to answer, but the longer Deaton watches them, the more she realizes she has no choice. "A salad." Her voice is broken and scratchy, and she's unbelievably thirsty. "And water, please. Two." She adds when she finally notices the constant warmth next to her.
Deaton nods and leaves them in charge of watching their friends, all dead. They're not dead. She tries to convince herself, but the sight of the eerily still water says otherwise. When Deaton returns, food and water in tow is when they finally have enough energy to talk.
"What's your favorite color?" Isaac asks after he tired of forcing himself to eat a salad that his body both needs and feels repulsed. Lydia spares him an unbelieving look. "Do you want to talk imagine every way this could go wrong?"
"Green."
000.10.05.08
Lydia's falling asleep while Isaac recites the only book he's ever memorized (Spoiler alert: The Bible isn't a book). They've done a better than average job at ignoring the death hanging over their heads. Not that it doesn't come up, once, twice, maybe thrice.
"Do you think they'll die?" Lydia asked during hour eight. Isaac stared at the metal tubs a moment too long before responding.
"Does the sun shine?"
Lydia scoffs and desperately ignores the morbidity of his words. She switches the topic to dress shoes.
000.17.00.37
Deaton leaves his office, where he's been lurking for more than 75% of the excursion. He's wearing a deep frown, which is never a good look on a doctor. "What? What's wrong?" Lydia asks. Her prior dissipated anxiety, returning in full swing.
He looks grave when he turns to them. Solemn, and like the two teenagers, absolutely wrecked. Lydia knows, she knows, and if the scream building in her throat is anything to go by, the other part of her knows too. "The water will become lukewarm soon."
She almost laughs, almost, but it's jaded by the earth-shattering, ear bleeding scream that erupts. Dead, they're all dead. Allison, Scott, Stiles. They weren't supposed to die. They were supposed to live and save their parents and have their happily ever after.
When Lydia comes to, she's being held while she sobs. She doesn't remember what happened after the scream, just screaming. Isaac is holding her tight and grounding her, whispering, 'it's okay' and 'we'll get through this' as though he believes it. He doesn't.
000.20.15.00
Melissa, Chris, and Noah are in the exam room, and Lydia can hear them cry. She can hear the 'oh god's and the 'why's. Isaac doesn't let go. Even after all the tears have dried, even after Derek and Cora try to carry him away. Lydia can see everything going on around her, she can recognize it and acknowledge it, but she feels as though none of it is happening to her.
001.03.06.03
Lydia, Isaac, and the parents have been corralled, carried, and dragged into the McCall's living room. Derek, Cora, Deaton, and even Agent McCall are watching over them. Lydia hasn't let go of Isaac, and vice versa.
"Are we going to leave them like this?" Cora asks Derek, gesturing to the two teenagers and three adults, all in varying states of grief and unresponsiveness. The emotionally constipated werewolf (Stiles' joke) watches the room somberly.
"We should do what we can to help."
001.13.10.08
Lydia wakes up to moving underneath her. "Sorry," Isaac mumbles, recognizing her heartbeat. Lydia sits up, aching and thirsty. She doesn't dare move from his side, though.
The sun's risen and shining through the blinds, illuminating a sleeping Cora in a pile of blankets on the floor. Melissa is on the loveseat, dried tears streaking down her sleeping, otherwise peaceful, face. Argent is awake on the floor, using the loveseat as a crutch, the Sheriff asleep with him. Derek, Deaton, and Agent McCall are nowhere to be seen.
Derek returns soon after she wakes up, a bowl of soup in hand. He doesn't try to say anything, leaves the soup and goes back into whatever hole he crawled out. Lydia watches cars past outside the open window. She watches the world move while she stays in here, mourning the loss of stability and using the newly acquired one to survive.
003.01.04.00
No one but the Hales and Deaton has left the McCall house. No one enters either, as per request of Argent, who's become the only one of the five coherent enough to make orders. Agent McCall is holed up in the guest room (The one that belonged to Isaac a mere 86 hours ago). He receives food periodically (From Chris).
Lydia eats, stares out the window, and sleeps. That's been her routine for the last couple of days. She doesn't move unless jostled by Isaac waking up.
Melissa and the Sheriff walk around like zombies half the time, and the other half, they're trying (and failing) to stop the tears from coming.
The cycle is near torturous, to say the least. Lydia expects Scott, Allison and Stiles to burst in wearing the most perturbed expressions and ask something dumb. Like, "What's going on?" or "Who died?" and they'd forget everything that happened. It never happens. Instead, Natalie Martin rounds the house at eight in the morning on the third day, demanding her daughter be returned or else charges will be pressed or something of the sort.
Chris doesn't so much open the door more than three inches. Though he does take the Sheriff's phone and asks the deputies to explain the situation to the Martins when they eventually report a kidnapping.
007.03.06.44
Isaac has started helping out with Chris. Lydia watches him wake up every morning and start cleaning. Almost like if he doesn't, he'll keel over. No one ever says anything to anyone. Isaac and Chris watch the trio, still more or less unresponsive, like they've become overbearing parents in the last couple of hours.
Lydia wonders if she'll ever start moving around again, Chris (now with the addition of Isaac) had been moving them to the bathroom and leaving them in there for a few minutes, then carrying them back to the couch. It scares her how her body has stopped doing body things, like eating, she does only not waste the food they've so graciously made her, but otherwise, her body isn't functioning like normal. Future Lydia can worry about that later. Present Lydia just wants to sleep and preferably never wake up.
007.13.34.27
Lydia wakes up clutching at her chest. She feels a scream building, not a freaky supernatural one but a scream no less. The remnants of the dream play through her head in broken pieces, in flashes of terror. Their lifeless bodies, metal tubs, ice.
She doesn't know when tears started running down her face or when Isaac woke up and started rubbing a hand down her back. Lydia cries herself back to sleep, wrapped in the unnatural warmth of a werewolf shrouded in the same grief as her.
1824.12.02.54
Lydia lets the hot California sun pound on her shoulders as she stands with Isaac on the fifth anniversary since they held their friends under to their death. They remember the last moments before the three plunged headfirst into whatever afterlife awaited them. Regrets died with the Sheriff, who lay with his son in the grave before them.
Mellissa and Chris are far too busy trying to raise the three kids they adopted in remembrance of their own to stop by. The two newly twenty-one-year-olds didn't bother taking time off their jobs or school, they were going back the next day, but for now, all that matters is the four bodies at their feet.
"Want to go get shitfaced?" Isaac asks, a sheepish smile on his face. Lydia doesn't remind him that it's ten in the morning.