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Allison: Just for one second, please, try and remember -
Lydia: Remember what?
Allison: Remember what it feels like. All of those times in school when you see him standing down the hall, and you cannot breathe until you're with him. Or those times in class when you - you can't stop looking at the clock because you know that he's standing right out there waiting for you. Don't you remember what that's like?
Lydia: No.
Allison: What do you mean, "no?" You've had boyfriends.
Lydia: None like that.
It's another failure, another defeat. They're no closer to destroying the Ghost-riders and finding/remember who's been taken than when they discovered The Wild Hunt in the first place. But Lydia is still insistent that Stiles is real.
He was part of their pack, part of them all individually. But it's very hard for Scott to not have doubts and he knows Malia is leaning that way as well.
His bedroom door creeks as he trudges into the room and flops down onto his bed, Lydia following slowly behind him. Not only does he have the Ghost-riders and Stiles to deal with but now there's some creature biting massive chunks into the back of people's skulls and eating part of their brain.
Groaning as he sits up, frustration and despair weigh heavily on his mind. He leans forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped; his instincts are at war with what reality is showing him. He may not be feeling the ‘absent’ piece as profoundly as Lydia but he can tell something is off, something's wrong....missing.
Speaking of Lydia. He glances up to see her standing by his window. She’s slightly hunched in on herself, arms wrapped around her waist, head bowed.
“Lydia?” He asks tentatively.
“I understand what she meant now,” she whispers brokenly, on the edge of tears. Scott rises from the bed and approaches her.
“Who?”
“Allison,” she breathes and he freezes, his heart squeezing painfully at the mention of her name.
She turns to face him, eyes wide and desperate. "It feels like I can't breathe.”
Scott clenches his jaw, desperate to find the answer that would help his friend. Help him. How do you bring something back that you can hardly remember in the first place?
“She once asked me if I remembered what it was like, to see the boy you love and how you can’t breathe until you’re with him again,” Lydia rasps. She meets his eyes with a look of profound misery and he finds it impossible to hold her gaze. The memory of lost love and hearing how deeply Allison felt for him and Lydia’s own pain an unbearable weight on his heart.
Her arms drop from her sides and she brings her hand to her chest, gripping the fabric above her lungs.
“I can’t breathe, Scott.”
He looks up again and reaches up to grip her biceps gently.
“We’ll find him. We’ll get him back, I promise,” Scott declares in a tone that brooks no arguments, doubt and fear washed from his mind. Lydia gives him a watery smile before clenching her eyes shut and releasing the tears she's kept at bay for weeks. Scott’s arms circle her and she allows herself to be vulnerable, crying and gasping for breaths she just can’t seem to catch.
fin.