Red Strings


When she was in the third grade, she wore a red ribbon in her hair. Her mother always told her it clashed with her strawberry locks, but never had the heart to take the ribbon from her daughter.

The first day he sat by her in class, the red ribbon was out of her hair and twirled around her small fingers.

"Why isn't the ribbon in your hair?" he asked.

She gave him no real answer, merely a shrug. She handed the ribbon to him.

"Take it. I don't want it."

He took it from her hands and put in his pocket.

He kept the ribbon for the rest of his life.


He didn't notice when he started using red for things he left unsolved.

Maybe he used red because it was the color of the ribbon she gave him, or maybe it was because of a story his mother used to tell him.

"Red strings of fate," she used to say, as if she knew something Stiles didn't.

The red ribbon was a metaphor that he sometimes tied around his pinkie finger.

"Soulmates," he whispered, shaking his head.

Such a thing wasn't possible.


Red strings for unsolved leads. Red lipstick she wears to stun boys into silence. Red Fs at the top of his papers.

Red, red, red.

Red had become the unknown, the mysteries.

If he could paint, he would paint Lydia in a brilliant shade of red.

Because Stiles knew that she was the mystery, that she is all he ever wanted to solve.


Her hand found his. She didn't shudder at the red blood covering it.

"You're okay, Stiles. You'll be okay," she whispered, more to herself than to him.

He looked up at her, completely dazed.

"You have to be okay," she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

His free hand went into his pocket and he pulled on the red ribbon.

He handed it to her, and she inhales deeply.

"Is that...?"

He nods, and treads the ribbon around both of their hand.

"The red string of fate," he explained.

She leaned down slowly and pressed her lips gently to his.

"I thought red meant that you had no idea," she said.

He laughed. "I don't have any idea."


She wore red more often, he healed and the red of his blood stained clothes was forgotten.

"Thank you," she started, "for saving me that night."

He shrugged. "Red strings."

That's all he had to say because both of them knew the meaning behind those two words. They knew how red strings connected them, and how they always would.