AN: Please note the following warnings: prescription drug abuse, alcohol abuse, murder, major character death, blood, mentions of PTSD.
Do You See It Now?
Her obsession with perfection, the carefully placed makeup to hide how she never sleeps, never eats. The way she spends her nights sprawled in her bed with the meds the doctor gave her to combat her, what? PTSD? Coupled with several glasses of her mother's finest wine, until the world blurs at the edges and nothing hurts anymore. None of those things even hint at normalcy, or perfection, and it only makes her realize how utterly stupid everyone around her is. How blind.
Then of course, she loses herself to Peter. He's in her head, her house, and her bed. He's everywhere; all the time. But he understands her and he treats her the way no one else ever has. She gradually lets herself be wrapped tighter around his finger until she finds herself terrified at a half-assed grave under the Hale house, resurrecting the man that tried to eat her throat out.
After they kill Jackson – and he comes back to life, of course – everyone thinks that everything is going to be the same. And for the most part? It is. They go back to classes, they have their summer, they fight the supernatural. The only difference is that Lydia is no longer in the dark about it.
At least, that's what she lets everyone believe. But thinks are so much different now. She still isn't sleeping, or eating, and maybe it's her immunity that makes even the wolves blind to how she's dying inside. Rotting from the inside out, everything good in her turning black until it seeps into her skin. The dark bags under her eyes, the bruises across her knuckles from furiously punching the walls, the bile she spews up when she wakes up hung over.
She'd like to blame it on Peter. For being in her head, crawling around in there and making her understand what insanity is. But if she's being honest with herself – the only person she can be honest with – this all started a long, long time ago. The supernatural bullshit that is her life only...gave her that extra push to the ledge.
I
She starts with her mother because it makes sense. She can't entirely blame her problems on the woman that birthed her, but it's a start. Plus, her father lives too far away now. It's easy enough, too, to start with someone she doesn't really care about.
She does it during dinner, careful to ignore the glass of wine she's gifted. Her mother rambles on about something or other – a bitch at work, who she just can't stand, and is it really fair that she needs a job now that Lydia's father is gone, really? – That Lydia only half pays attention to. Her eyes are focused intensely on the dark, fancy red wine that her mother pulls at liberally, eyes clouding with drunk and sleep.
It's her mother's own medicine; to help her sleep. Not that she has any problem with it, drinking herself just as stupid as Lydia does. It's a very peaceful thing to watch. Mrs Martin finished almost the entire bottle by herself and gradually, she falls asleep.
Lydia is smart, though. She knows her mother will probably vomit at some point, her body's way of trying to fix itself. She gags the woman with duct tape and ties her down with thick wool scarves, before dragging the chair to the closet.
Her work calls the house the next day and Lydia tells them that her mother won't be coming back – she's quit. And her mother is so very unimportant to the people she surrounds herself that no one questions in. In a week, a smell begins to permeate the air. Lydia drags the chair from the closet, and shoves it down the basement stairs.
I
She thinks of Stiles next. Actually, she has the perfect moment to do it, too, and knows that when she tells Derek a monster did it, her heart will not skip a beat with a lie. But then she remembers how he's a boy who has tried to give her everything, and she recalls the look on his father's face at Mrs Stilinski's funeral. How Stiles had slept outside her hospital room for days, and how his father had wrapped her in his Sheriff's jacket the night she stumbled from the woods.
She removes her hand from her purse, leaving behind the jagged hunting knife that leaves marks like a kanimas claws – and Derek would have never smelt a thing, would he, only Lydia, and that's normal. That's the way it had been with Jackson, no scent, nothing to follow, nothing, just...nothing.
No; she won't do this to Stiles.
She purposely forgets how he's told her before, that death happens to everyone around you. Not the dead themselves.
I
She decides on Jackson after carefully thinking it over. He comes back here, to Beacon Hills sometimes – lets the wolf take over and he runs, turning a five hour car drive into an exhausting two and a half hour run. His parents have moved him away since his resurrection, but his pack is here. He's afraid of going omega.
This suits Lydia just fine; all it takes is dedication and a phone call. Then he's in her room, smiling at her. Really smiling. She remembers him asking her do you still – and she had. But she hadn't forgiven him; not after the Hell he had put her through. She knows as well, that he never told her he loves her back. That she had been the only one to say it.
She thinks she should be more upset about Jackson than she is. But really, Lydia isn't upset about much anymore. The rot inside of her has spread further still, engulfing in brain and pushing at her skin. She always feels like her flesh is crawling with a million tiny insects, that her insides are so swollen with darkness that they're begging to burst from her. It's a gross feeling, one that causes her to stand for hours on end under the heat of her shower.
"What's that smell?" Jackson's brow furrows.
Lydia blinks, head tilting. He probably smells her mother. "I don't smell anything." And she doesn't. She's gotten so used to the stench that she doesn't bat an eye at it anymore. So really, it isn't a lie. Her heart does not skip a beat. "Come here."
It's easy for him to fall prey to her mouth and body, settling prone against the best. She tosses her hair and laughs at him, whispering against his lips that she wants to put on her special lip gloss.
She knows the exact chemical formula for a Molotov cocktail. Did they really think she'd be unable to turn any item near her into a weapon? This is a special type of lip gloss – strawberry flavored, and scented, as she's always worn. Still; it has one key ingredient. A very high dosage of wolfsbane extract, that is perfectly, beautifully harmless to her.
Brushing only against his mouth, the wolfsbane is only enough to paralyze him. He watches her with horrified eyes, tongue swollen from the toxin, unable to beg her not to. She ignores him and fetches the vial of mountain ash, mixed perfectly with pentobarbital. It's a quick death – unconsciousness, then cardiac arrest.
It isn't satisfying, and she manages to drag him down to the basement before the anger overtakes her and she shatters another mirror. Her second this week. She spends hours showering afterwards, and when Erica asks her in school "Have you heard from Jackson?" Sniffing just a little fiercely.
Well, Lydia isn't lying when she says "Not since this weekend." Because Jackson is dead. He can't talk anymore.
I
The knife she couldn't use on Stiles, she is fully willing to use on Alison. Everyone knows that the girls hang out on the weekends. If she can get this done and get home to lock herself away – bathe, bathe, perfume, bathe – before running into any of the werewolves, not a single one of them will be the wiser. They still haven't caught on to Jackson yet.
She'd been smart with that. His phone had been carefully disassembled, and she had mentally tutted at Stiles and Danny's frustration over not being able to track him. She'd answered the door teary eyed and weeping to the Sheriff, saying she hadn't seen Jackson in weeks. He'd offered her a pat on the shoulder, then left.
They are all so completely, ridiculously stupid. Even Deaton, who always prides himself on being in the know.
Her father still hasn't called, anyway, although his lawyer has sent Mrs Martin a few emails. That Lydia has replied to, naturally.
She's been biding her time, waiting for Chris to leave the leave so she and Alison can be by themselves. Once he's gone, she sighs through her nose and turns to her best friend. "This isn't anything personal." She says, smiling softly. "It's more of..." She pauses, and then shrugs. Alison merely hitches an eyebrow, before tossing her brush at Lydia.
"Want to do my hair?"
Lydia does. It makes Alison give her her back, and gives her time to grab the knife. She takes a few moments to actually brush her, before the knife comes across her face, wicked sharp and painful. "Like I said. It's nothing personal. Just, I've seen your aunt, you know." She laughs and it's humorless, as she managed to drag Alison under her own body and dig the blade into the sensitive flesh of her belly. "You look so much like her. If it weren't for her – my life wouldn't be perfect but I wouldn't have had Peter in my head."
She's blaming Peter for this insanity, now. It is a lie. She can't feel her heart skip over the rush of adrenaline, though.
When she is done, Alison is unrecognizable. She calls Stiles as she drives home – tarp over her seats that she'll burn when she gets home – and cries to him about how she and Alison had a fight. How she'd had to leave early, and it totally ruined her plans for shopping that evening. Stiles is sympathetic.
He's still sympathetic when he calls her the next morning, frantic, asking if she'd seen anyone lurking. She meets the pack later that day, screaming and crying about how it isn't fair, and she didn't see anyone. She had left before they went shopping, because they'd been fighting!
It is not a lie. No one is the wiser.
I
Derek isn't hard. In fact, he's sort of ridiculously easy. All it takes is the gun she'd stolen from Chris Argent a few days before Alison's death. That gun, and a single wolfsbane laced bullet, directly to the head.
He's standing on the steps of the Hale house when he does it, brow furrowed in confusion. He's seen her disembodied before – knows how she looks when she's out of her head, in a place far away. He's not expecting her to actually shoot. He's even trying to smile, hands help up placatingly. He can't smell the wolfsbane in the silver she realizes. He doesn't think she can hurt him.
She proves him wrong, and then leaves him out in the cold.
The Pack is scattered. Scott has gone into hiding since Alison has died, and the Beta's are off trying to hunt down Jackson, a trail long gone cold. Peter is following the rumor of a second, larger Alpha pack that might be coming through town.
She knows when Peter finds Derek; he'll think that it was Chris – retaliation for his daughter, his wife, his sister, his father. His everything.
She is not disappointed, or proven wrong. Nor is she surprised when Peter returns, a week after Stiles has found Derek's body – it's been ten days – and Chris Argent's death is the only thing the town can talk about. Torn limb from limb.
There is no Alpha now. The pack is broken. Lydia is shattered.
I
She is going to do Peter next. Or she was. Until she walks into her house after a session with the grief counsellor to find Sheriff Stilinski standing at the top of the basement stairs, face pale with horror. She contemplates running, or maybe shoving him, but there's another officer behind her.
She's immune to the supernatural, not bullets.
The trial is incredibly short. Mentally unfit. She 'didn't know what she was doing'. They can't link her to Derek or Alison, but two out of four isn't bad. Peter shows up to the sentencing, and when she catches his eye he smiles.
Her insides burn with the first real emotion she's felt since her initial arrest seven months ago. She identifies it as anger because Lydia realizes that he knew. He always knew.
He wraps a gentle hand over Stiles and Isaac's shoulders and, still smiling, he mouths at her thank you.
Lydia wonders if perhaps the psychologists are right – if she doesn't know what she did. Because in this moment, for the very first time, Lydia is questioning herself. How much of that was me, she wonders and how much of that was him, inside of me?
She's going to go away for a long time; she has the rest of eternity to figure it out.