title: there is a light that never goes out
author: alex (maraudings)
rating: t
word count: 2,974
disclaimer: teen wolf and its characters belong to mtv, not me. written for fun not profit.
a/n: i wanted to have this finished and up before this weeks episode aired tuesday, but since i wanted to focus on lydia's healing process after 5x16 i thought i should see what they do with it in case there's something i could work with. (lol joke's on me right)
anyway, basically this focuses on the immediate couple of day following lydia's rescue from eichen and how she's dealing with what just happened. i wanted to keep it more pack-oriented, but i think the complete disregard for the developments in stiles and lydia's relationship forced this to end up a bit more stydia-leaning towards the end (because what the fuck even was that). i really, really wanted to fit allison in here somewhere (because her lack of mentioning on this show is ridiculous and totally unrealistic, thanks) but i think there was too much going on for her. maybe next time..
hope you enjoy!
- there is a light that never goes out -
Her first night home, she discovers quickly that sleep is not going to come to her.
A part of her probably doesn't want to, she concludes. After being comatose for a couple of weeks it would make sense that she feels hesitant going to sleep again.
She doesn't hear anything. The voices had been all but easily ignored whispers in the corner of her mind since the mistletoe was applied. Yet, something was still wrong. She dreamt she was back in Eichen house, still trying to escape. She'd scream and she'd scream, and all around her were the bodies of orderlies dropping like flies.
By the time the sun rose the next day part of her wasn't sure she was even free in the first place.
Scott came to visit her first, as he would. She is awake when he comes in, propped up in her bed with dozens of pillow and buried underneath enough blankets in an attempt to force sleep to come.
He stands unsure and apologetic at her doorway. He's here to apologize—it is Scott after all, he feels responsible for everything—but instead he stammers out something about his mom wanting to examine her head (the mistletoe that currently presides in the baseball-sized hole in the side of her head is no substitute for skull bone, she supposed). "She says be careful in the meantime," he says quietly, looking as ever Scott-McCall-earnest as only he could. "Bed rest is preferred, don't touch the..." He gestures to the side of her head. "... it, a lot."
"That's not a problem." Lydia responds, thinking of the mass of gauze and bandages that currently covered the wound. "I don't think I'm going to leave this bed for weeks. I have enough school work to keep me here, anyway." That was true. The pile of packets and notes on her desk in the corner stood nearly a foot tall, and for the first time it looked utterly unappealing to her.
"Are you okay?" He asks. "Apart from your head, I mean?"
She wants to say yes. She wants to tell him that everything is perfect now that she's out and safe and that everything could go back to normal and that nothing had changed.
But that was not the case.
He's still waiting for a response, watching her closely, but she doesn't know what to say. So Lydia simply pats the empty space at the side of her bed and gestures to the TV.
It wasn't his fault. There was nothing Scott could have done to help her, to stop her. She just was not fixable. And he, being the self-sacrificing person he was, would take her guilt on and adopt it as if it were his. If anything she should be thanking him until she ran out of breath for his role in getting her the hell out of there, because despite how she feels she knows they all risked a lot to save her, and she would have died without them. But they say nothing, and Scott wordlessly slides in next to her and pats her leg gently.
There wasn't anything that needed to be said.
-x-
Kira came to see her next, all smiles and bearing gifts of chocolates and homemade dinners for the next week. Lydia hasn't been hungry for days, but the gesture is sweet and a hundred percent Kira so it was extremely hard to tell her no.
Lydia's head is still wrapped in layers and layers of gauze and ace bandages from her Melissa McCall house visit (prognosis: come into the hospital and get a titanium plate put in, or it's a helmet for life) so Kira was hesitant about lounging in the vacant place next to her. Instead, she sits at the foot of her bed and just talks. About the Skin Walkers, about the Kitsune, about her own struggles with her inability for control.
Lydia knows what that's like, what it feels to have something inside of you running lose and unrestrained. She saw exactly what it was capable of not three days ago.
"It's good to have you back," Lydia says after a silence settled between them and the image of blood splatters on a basement wall left her mind. "Something was definitely off when you left, with the group dynamic and everything."
"Thanks." Kira smiles slightly. "I could say the exact same thing to you. I'm sorry for what happened. You know, being left there like that."
She could say it easier than Scott could, but it still didn't need to be said. But Lydia smiles, tells her it's okay (because it was), and lets her have that moment.
Liam was going to visit, Kira tells her next, but he feels too guilty to face her. If he hadn't fallen directly into Theo's plan, if he hadn't attacked Scott, maybe Lydia could have been saved from going comatose in the first place.
More guilt, thought Lydia. Despite not being a werewolf in any since of the word, she would come to be able to sniff out guilt better than most in the next few days.
And she, out of anyone, stunk the worst of them all.
-x-
Lydia can fully admit that she was not expecting who showed up the next day.
Her mother opens the door with a knock (which was unnecessary—she'd been awake and alert for hours) and stands aside to reveal Malia's apprehensive form appearing in her doorway, looking about as comfortable as she does in math class. Lydia doesn't need to be able to hear her heartbeat to know she is feeling extremely misplaced—she can see it in her posture, on her face, and the way she leaned desperately to follow Michelle out of her bedroom.
She says very little, not even coming close to the bed. Just a brief grunting of whether or not she was okay, and a half-serious offer to replace the bandage on her head.
She's still guilty, though, like the others. Though it's completely different; hers manifesting from her homicidal obsession with her own mother. Still, Lydia understands. Too much happens in this town for her to be annoyed she isn't the center of everyone's focus- Malia's especially.
"It's okay, Malia," she insists, without prompt. "I'm sorry about the Desert Wolf." Your mother, she thinks, and wonders how this happened to become their lives.
Malia says nothing, still, and that was expected. What wasn't was her slight show of an appreciative smile that flickered on her face.
She doesn't stay long, and Lydia wasn't holding her breath that she would.
-x-
The next day she checks into the hospital for her surgery.
She tenses as they shave the hair around the side of her head, holds her breath at the sight of any medical instrument she did not recognize. She has to fight the urge to run at the thought of being placed under, being put back in such a vulnerable and uncontrollable state.
She doesn't know exactly what is going to happen, what could happen once she is placed under but she hopes to whoever is listening that no one dies this time.
Melissa gets a few seconds of alone time with her before she is wheeled to the OR to tell her that Deaton had filled her in on the situation, and to reassure her that the mistletoe that was keeping her together would remain where it was. Something inside of Lydia wants to laugh at the idea that she will forever be held together by a parasitic plant encasing a section of her skull, but instead she smiles in thanks and hopes that Scott's mother is able to get away just in case.
Her stomach is in knots as they place an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth and count her down.
-x-
He comes to see her last.
Slightly still drugged up and groggy from her post-surgery pain medicine-induced sleep (oxycodone evidently knocks her out and sends her into a dreamless sleep in about three minutes), she at first doesn't realize why she is awake. But there is a creak in the hinges of her door that sends her attention flying and she knows before she sees him that he has come to visit her.
He entered quietly, rapping his knuckles softly against her open door. Lydia notices that Michelle didn't follow him up like the others. It seems she finally trusts him.
Lydia speaks first. "Hey." She attempts at sitting up a little, but the weight of her head still feels like too much for her to bear. Even with the current absence of voices (they would return, though, in sure time), a dull throbbing still remained.
"Hi." There's an awkward half step further into the room, and it does not go unnoticed by either of them. It hangs in the air, and they both seem to acknowledge that there is something to be awkward about.
Lydia was at a loss to properly voice her gratitude for him. He came back for her, even when she asked him to leave. He came back despite Valack, despite the chimera attack, despite the growing chance that she could literally scream his head off.
The last part sends shivers down her spine and causes dread to breed in the pit of her stomach. She could have. She almost did, even. She thinks of the blood running down from his ear, and in her current fog it pools in her hands until it lay thick and heavy. Almost.
Stiles was still standing there, saying nothing yet watching her so closely.
Finally, he tries first. "How's, uh, how's your head?"
"Tender." She responds, hand going up to lightly graze the gauze reflexively. "Quiet, anyway. I don't know how long for."
He nods slowly, looking at her in the way only he does. Usually she would look away, break the spell, but today she held it.
It was the same as it ever was, but yet somehow it was like he was seeing her for the first time. There's relief, that she can easily discern, but something was there she had never noticed before.
Lydia clears her throat. "So, how is everyone doing?" (As if she hasn't spent the several days doing nothing but receiving guests and staring at her ceiling.)
Stiles turns his attention to the floor as he finally starts to actually step into the room. "As fine as they can be, I suppose. Scott just started to heal, so that's a good piece of news. However there is still a bloodthirsty, homicidal, giant, hulk-wolf running around town which really puts a damper on, well, basically everything. Oh, and Theo is still alive, so that still sucks."
Lydia has to work to suppress a small smile- none of what they were experiencing was a laughing matter and yet his familiar antics and idioms were a welcome sight.
There's something else he wants to ask, she can tell. He stand near the foot of her bed, near her blanket covered feet, and she can almost hear the way he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for a cue. She gives it to him. "Is there something wrong?"
He shakes his head, seemingly fascinated with the knit-pattern of a throw blanket. "No, no, nothing wrong. Just came to see how you were."
"And I'm alright."
"No voices?"
"No." For now.
There is a pause. "Do you..." His hand quickly reaches to scratch at the back of his neck. "Do you want to talk about Valack?"
Through the fog, she sees it—a head. But only half a head, really, as the other half has been completely blown apart. It was an image she had only ever seen before in action movies, placed there to shock. But this hadn't been a movie. This hadn't been set up with makeup, and effects. It was Beacon Hills, California. And she is an eighteen-year-old girl who didn't ask for any of this.
"Why would I-" her voice cracks. "Why would I want to do that?"
"You're right, bad idea. I'm sorry…" he begins to backtrack, but she isn't listening.
"Honestly I don't want to think about it ever again. I don't want to think about what it feels like to have a drill enter my skull, I don't want to think about how the inside of his head looked on the floor, and I definitely don't want to think about what could have happened if I was still there."
It isn't unsurprising that he immediately goes to sit next to her (he is Stiles, after all). The rims of her eyes starts to burn, and she briefly wonders if she'd get away with blaming the welling on the meds and her exhaustion. If it were someone other than Stiles, maybe.
"Lydia, hey," his hand is on top of hers, attempting to soothing her. "Hey, it's fine, you're safe now. You're never going back there as long as I'm around, okay? You never have to set foot in Eichen again. I promise."
"That's not really..." That's not it, she thinks. She hopes desperately that he can figure out what's wrong so she doesn't have to say it out loud.
I blew somebody's head off. I could have done the same to any of you. I have all this power and I don't know what to do with it. I don't even think I want it. I just want to graduate and go to college. I don't want to wonder if one day I'll just go catatonic again and kill more people, kill our friends, kill you. I don't want to feel like a ticking time bomb.
He's still looking at her, patiently as ever, so she can't be annoyed when she realizes she's going to have to say it for his benefit.
"I could have killed you, Stiles. I could have killed everyone. I did kill—" a swallow, "I did kill somebody. And not even just kill, I decimated him. I destroyed his head. How could I do that to someone?"
She had been picking up his reactions the second she had started talking; his hand tightens against hers, inhaling sharply as if on the verge of protesting, eyes still as soft and concern-filled as ever. "No, no, Lydia," he starts the second she pauses to catch her hastily escaping breath. "That's not—that isn't your fault, okay?"
"What do you mean, not my fault? Stiles, I screamed. His head blew in half because of it."
"Lydia, you couldn't control it. Hey," he's trying to make her look him in the eyes. "Hey, it was not intentional, alright? You couldn't prevent it."
"Exactly, I couldn't prevent it. That could have been anyone. It could have been Scott, it could have been Kira, it could have been—"
"But it wasn't—"
"It was still someone! A terrible someone, admittedly, but it only proves that I can do that. That I am capable of that, Stiles."
His brows knit in determination. "Lydia, listen to me. We would never let you do that, alright? I would never let you kill an innocent person." She opens her mouth to protest this but he keeps talking. "I would never let that happen."
He's so earnest and so intent that something within her pauses the hysteria for the slightest of moments and she believes him.
She grasps onto his hand that at some point in the last few seconds had moved onto her shoulder, suddenly overwhelmed. Maybe it was the pain-killers (it was probably the painkillers) but she was suddenly exhausted. So, so exhausted.
"I'm so tired of this," she says quietly. "I'm tired of worrying about seeing more of my friends die, and I'm tired of feeling partially responsible for everything that goes wrong in this town. I'm tired of people trying to kill me. I'm tired of stumbling onto dead bodies. I'm tired of having to look at dead bodies. I just want to get into college and graduate."
"I know." She hadn't noticed until now, but her own exhaustion seems to be echoed in his face— in the circles under his eyes, in the slight dullness to his skin, in the slow movements of his gaze. He looks weary as he forms his next sentence. "I sometimes can't believe it's been almost two years of this."
And how much longer would it continue for? Lydia doesn't ask, but she doesn't have to— Stiles' thoughts seemed to have reached the same path hers had as he conveyed their shared answer without words.
There would likely be no stopping it. They would be dealing with death until they died.
"I should let you sleep," Stiles says after a moment, his hand ghosting down from her shoulder as he begins to stand from the bed.
"Stiles," her hand grabs his wrist as he turns for the door, and he pauses. "Thank you, for coming back for me. I can't... Thank you."
He smiles softly. "It's no problem, Lydia."
He leaves, and with him goes some of the darkness.