Summary:

Lydia's cousin never calls. The two redheads were never close. It's more than strange when she suddenly does call, asking about some missing friend of hers. And it's even stranger when Lydia wakes up, a few weeks later, screaming his name.

She knows this Percy Jackson is about to burst into their lives, and she knows he'll bring trouble with him. A lot of it.

So! My first try at writing something here. Hope you'll enjoy!

It's not a one-shot, but I'm not really sure about the rest, so it might take me some time to update again. You can always send a review to motivate me... ;)

Until next chapter, hopefully.

~KiSierra

Stiles answers on the first ring.

"Finally!" he exclaims from the other side. "Tell me this is about what's been nagging you all day and you wouldn't tell me about."

Lydia can't help but smile weakly at his exasperated tone, even though the tight feeling in her stomach and throat.

"Yes," she answers, trying to hide the light amusement in her voice, and the tiredness. It's close to eleven p.m., and she's been awake since dawn. It's been a tiring day. "Can we meet? I think it's too important to be over the phone."

"Of course," he answers, and she feels warm inside at the immediate answer. Not warm enough to turn off the heat in her car, though, and she fiddles with the regulator to make it even hotter. "Where do you wanna go to? I'm on my way to my jeep," Stiles says.

She looks out of the window, to the dark house she was watching from her car for the last thirty minutes. The water from the lake near it shine under the weak light of the moon. The cold feeling from earlier makes her shudder again, and she clutches the phone, missing that warm feeling the awkward boy from the other side always manages to make her feel.

"Wait," she says softly. "Is it okay that I'll come to your house?"

"Uh, yeah," he says, sounding surprised. "Dad's at the station, so we'll have the house to ourselves."

"Great," she smiles again, and it's a full smile this time. "I'll be there in a minute."

Stiles is standing at the front door, a strange look on his face as he watches her park her blue car in front of his house. His hands are tapping anxiously on his jeans-clad thighs, eyes running over her like he's trying to reassure himself.

"Where have you been?" he asks as she gets out of her car, eyes squinting fastly at her. There's something raw in his voice.

"In my car," she says, brow creasing. "Driving here. Is everything okay?"

"No, everything's not okay," he snaps, then sighs and closes his eyes. "Sorry, I just… You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I was worried. I thought you were at your house when you called."

"Oh," she says, that warm feeling she craves coming crashing, along with a tad of embarrassment. She feels stupid, as if she let him down somehow. She doesn't let it show though.

"Sorry," she says quietly, her hands tingling as she closes the car door behind her. "I was at the lake house. Actually, not at it, I didn't go inside." She shuts her mouth in determination and focuses on making her way to him, a bag in her hand, before she would embarrass herself any farther.

"The lake house? Your grandmother's lake house?" he asks and goes on before she can respond, opening the door for them. "What were you doing there alone? You were alone, right?"

"Yes," she answers, following him upstairs. "I was in my car, watching it. Can I, uh," she stops, realizing she didn't even ask him yet. He looks at her as they reach his room, and she raises her eyes to his, suddenly feeling something that feels suspiciously-close to shy.

"Is it okay that I'll stay over here for the night?" she asks. He blinks. "I already have here everything I need, so…" she nudges her bag.

It's not entirely out of order, her staying at the guest room in his house for the night. Even the sheriff and her mom are aware and okay with it. It started right after the Nogitsune, when everything was raw and fragile and everyone in the pack felt the need to stay close all the time, especially her and Stiles and Scott. But life goes on, even when one of your friends dies and another becomes emotionally unstable after being possessed by an ancient demon. Everyone got slowly better, until Scott didn't text her every few hours to make sure she's okay, and Stiles didn't call her every few nights because he couldn't breathe, and she stopped feeling like there's a hole in her chest she isn't able to fill, nothing's able. They settled back into life, not entirely different from how it used to be but definitely not the same, never the same.

But she still came, sometimes after one of them had a worse-than-usual nightmare, or with no reason at all. It felt natural and safe, and she knew Stiles didn't mind. In fact, she thinks he liked it, though if he did he didn't let it show. Just like she didn't.

But it's not that natural now. They haven't done that in a while, not since he started dating Malia. The two aren't together for some time now, but every time she felt the need to come over she started pondering it over and over, too hesitant to really ask, and Stiles never said anything.

He stares at her now, looking adorably bewildered. His eyes squint at her, lightning-fast. "Um, yeah," he answers. "I mean, the guest room needs a few hours of some intense cleaning, that I was planning to do since the last time you've been here, which was, like, years ago, but if you're okay with that -"

"I am," she smiles at him, satisfied and filled with that warmness, and he blinks again.

"Lydia," he says, and it's slow and calculated enough to make her wipe off the smile and prepare herself for a long talk. "Can you please tell me what's going on?"

She sighs and plops herself down on his bed. He sits in his chair across from her.

"It started a few weeks ago," she starts, the warm feeling slowly draining out as she focuses on the problem at hand. The tiredness and the stress Stiles had unintentionally managed to make her forget are coming back in a rash, as if they were just waiting for a chance to consume her again.

"Do you need me to bring in the board?" Stiles interrupts, looking tense as he gazes at her intently.

"No," she shakes her head, too tired to be mad at the fast disruption. "I don't think there's really enough information for that… but you can, if you want."

He hesitates for a moment before getting up and pulling his board to the center of the room. "Okay, go on," he nods at her.

"So a few weeks ago," she says again, "I got this call from my cousin. Did I ever tell you about her?"

He shakes his head. "I didn't even know you have any cousins."

"Just her," Lydia says, as if to reassure him, "and we're not very close. I saw her maybe twice in my life. My dad and her mom didn't grow up together and they don't go along very well, and setting up a meeting isn't a simple task - she lives in New York. But... it's not just that."

"What do you mean?" he asks, eyes trained on her intently.

"I mean it's not just the distance. We could've met up if we really wanted to. But I don't think we should. There's something weird about her."

"What kind of something?"

"Something like… a banshee-something? I don't really know how to call it. It's just there, and it feels like we're better stay away from each other. Far, far away," she clarifies.

"Sounds pretty intense," he says, brow furrowing. "Do you think she's like you? A banshee?"

Lydia shrugs. "She could be. She's my grandma's granddaughter too. But I don't think so. I didn't have any sort of weird feelings like these with Meredith. And Rachel, my cousin… she just feels different. Like something dangerous. Something forbidden. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't trust me either."

"What's her last name?" Stiles asks.

"Dare," Lydia answers, the name rolls off her tongue as if she's trying to taste it. "Rachel Elizabeth Dare."

He turns to the board and writes 'Rachel Dare' in a messy handwriting. He looks back at her.

"You said she called you. What did she say?"

"She asked me something - if I have any idea where some guy named Percy Jackson might be."

Stiles raises his eyebrows. "That's weird."

"I know. She said he's been missing for a few months now. I told her I have no idea who he is, and she said it's okay and asked me to call her right away if I hear anything about him."

Lydia could still remember the barely contained disappointment in Rachel's voice as she answered Lydia's response with a quiet, "Oh… Well, it's okay, I just… I had that feeling, like… Sorry, never mind. I don't want to bother you. Just… call me if anything happens, alright? If you hear anything, even the smallest, about him, just let me know."

"I forgot about it," Lydia says. "Pretty quickly, actually. It's… a bit strange, now that I think about it."

"What?"

"How I forgot it, just like that." Her brow furrows. She shakes her head a moment later. "Never mind. Anyway, I didn't think about it again, not even once. And then, today at four in the morning, I woke up in a scream. I have no idea what have I dreamt about, just that it was awful. And guess what name I was screaming?"

"That guy your cousin asked you about," Stiles catches on immediately.

She nods. "Exactly. Percy Jackson. And I still think about him. All the time. Every time I think about something else, it feels like I'm forgetting something."

Except when I speak with you, she thinks, but it fades quickly as Stiles turns back to the board with his wheels-turning-in-a-thousand-miles-a-minute face.

He writes 'what is she?' in a small writing under Rachel's name, then adds an arrow to the right and writes a big 'Percy Jackson', and a big question mark under it.

"Is that all?" he asks. "What were you doing at the lake house?"

"I had that feeling," she explains. "Ever since I woke up. I couldn't go back to sleep, and I couldn't concentrate, and it only got worse as the day went on, and I felt -" she swallows and stops herself. She doesn't need to say it, it wouldn't help their little investigation anyway. She's about to make herself go on when Stiles suddenly kneels in front of her.

"You felt what?" he asks, and her throat tightens, because he's so gentle, and she was fighting the urge to cry for a whole day now, and her throat was starting to throb again, and it's so much worse than it should be because she thought they finally got to have some peace and quiet.

"I felt like something is about to go horribly wrong," she says, not louder than a whisper. "It was silent, Stiles. Not a whisper. Like it's too quiet, like the quiet before the storm."

He squeezes her hands and looks at her with those unreadable eyes of his, light brown and sweet like honey. "It's going to be okay, Lydia," he says quietly. "We'll figure it out. Like always."

But what if this time we don't? She wants to ask, but instead she exhales. She does so slowly, letting herself relax under his touch, letting herself calm down. The tightness in her throat lessened, and she puts on a determined face. Stiles half-smiles at her.

"Anyway," she goes back to business, and Stiles stands up again. "I felt really bad the whole day. By eight I couldn't take it anymore, I had to go out, do something." Before she left her house she took a bag with everything she'll need for the night, because she was starting to have this feeling like this is about to be a long one. Now that feeling was only getting stronger. "I drove around the town a few times, stopped where I felt worse than usual, walked around. At some point, I realized the feeling was getting stronger as I got closer to my grandma's lake house. I stopped outside and watched it for some time, and it was still too quiet. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I called you. That's it."

Stiles silently writes 'Lake House' above Percy's name, then turns to her.

"I hope you know, Lydia - You know you can tell me anything, right? I mean, you didn't need to wait the whole day to tell me. I've been here since the morning."

His voice is quiet, quieter than quiet, and though he doesn't look away and he sounds more irritated than anything else, she knows that look in his eyes that means he is uncertain. Uncertain in a way that makes her want to embrace him. Of course she knows he's here. He's the only one that always been here, including when she didn't even knew or cared about his name.

And she wants to be there for him too. That's exactly the reason she refused to say anything the whole day - because she cares. And she knows, maybe better than anyone (except Scott), that Stiles doesn't take things lightly. He takes them to his heart, and he loses sleep over them. Always been this way. Got worse after the Nogitsune. And even worse now, after what happened with Donovan. Stiles doesn't deal well with worry -who would have in his place? - and if it's possible, she would spare him any emotional stress she can. So for a whole day, she ignored him when he asked what's wrong, up until she couldn't take it anymore. She had never considered herself selfish, but maybe she is.

But she also knows that Stiles has a hard time with confronting a problem, especially emotional problem, especially if it's about him. So she plays along.

"Of course I know," she rolls her eyes. "You weren't very subtle about it."

"I was worried!" he protests with an annoyed voice, and he's okay now, she can see that. Both of them are, if you ignore her growing headache and that damn silence eating her from the inside.

"Let's focus, okay?" she asks seriously, and he goes somber. "What are we going to do?"

He sighs and examines the board again. "I don't think there's a lot we can do," he says. "You were right, there's not enough information at all. We could go and wait outside the lake house, just in case, but I don't know if anything will is actually going to happen."

She's standing before he's even finished. "Yes, that's a good idea. My headache gets worse when I'm close to that place. Let's go."

Lydia wakes up with a start.

Her heart is racing. She shots up and looks around, breath stuttering. Stiles is sound asleep next to her in the driver's seat, snoring lightly. Everything's quiet inside his jeep.

She gets up and exits the vehicle as quietly as she can, almost stumbling. She looks at the lake house in front of her, the crescent moon lighting it and the lake itself with a weak white light, and she feels dizzy. Her head is pounding hard, the hardest she ever felt before. She thinks it's about to explode.

The voices inside her head, that's what woke her up. They're back. Through the pain, she's able to feel some kind of relief about it, because with everything that happened she started to feel like they're part of her, and being without them was something akin to losing sight. Or maybe hearing.

The relief quickly fades though, leaving her cold and empty, and the voices are getting stronger, more demanding, and she covers her ears but it doesn't help - never does - because they're coming from the inside. She stumbles forward, walking blindly until she feels water covering her feet, and she tries to listen to the whispers, she tries to tell them to slow down, but they don't, they just go faster, and they scream inside her head but she doesn't understand, she can't understand, she wraps her hands around her head and crouch, and they are so loud - too loud -

"RUN!" someone yells, and she's just registering that it came from outside her head when there's suddenly water all around her, pushing her back, and something is - hissing?

Her sight clears. She stands up. She's able to push the sounds to the back of her head again and focus, the feeling of being consumed disappearing.

There's a woman in front of her. Only it's not a woman. Not entirely. It's something… stranger.

Her hair waves around her, hissing, as if it's a living thing. Her eyes are glowing green, and her hair seems to be the same color, but it's hard to know in the lack of light. She's hissing too now, lips pulled back, as she looks at Lydia with hungry eyes.

There's more hissing from behind her. Lydia turns around to find herself face to face with another creature, similar to the first one but the eyes and hair, which are bright orange instead of the sicky green. This one is closer, and Lydia can see now that her hairs really aren't hairs, but snakes. They're all turned to hiss at her. The monster's eyes glisten as she scans Lydia from head to toe, tongue darting out as if she's trying to taste her. Lydia would be dinner before she'd make one step to get away.

Then there's a boy. At least, Lydia thinks it's a boy - it's too dark to see clearly, and the tall figure moves like a hurricane of movements. He has something in his hand, something long and sharp - it slashes the night's air mercilessly. The water whirls around them, the wind blowing all around, and she can't see anything but she can hear it all - the wind whipping at the lake's water, the hissing, the swirling of the water around them, the screeching sounds of something that cannot be human, the clashing of metal against metal, metal against flesh. She can hear the almost-silent steps of the boy in the water, the quietness of his movements and breaths. He moves so swiftly in the water, so soundlessly, she can't help but follow his silence in the confusion and chaos around her.

A moment later it's over. The boy - guy - is standing in front of her, covered by the night's darkness, only his rough outline visible to her. The female monsters are gone. She can see now how tall he is - probably more than six foot - and his lean and muscular shape. She can hear his heavy breathing, even heavier than hers.

"Where - where did they go?" she asks shakily.

He sighs, hands somewhat trembling as he raises them to wipe something off his face. "You saw all of this?" he asks instead of answering, voice unsteady. "You saw them - how they are?"

Her heart is still racing. "I saw the snakes if that's what you mean," she answers, cringing at her higher-than-usual-voice. He doesn't answer for a few quiet moments.

"Well?" she demands, the feeling of being trapped - though she is free to go and she knows it - getting stronger, making her antsy and - afraid. The voices are getting stronger again.

"They're gone," he says, vague enough to make her even more unsure.

"Lydia!"

She turns around. Stiles is running to them, looking disheveled and worried, flashlight in hand. He steps into the water without even noticing and stops next to her, eyes scanning her urgently.

"Are you okay? What's going on?" His eyes land on the guy in the shadows, who's starting to make his way to the other direction but doesn't go out of the water. "Who's that?"

The guy freezes. Stiles aims the flashlight at him, and in the strong light, she can see his torn clothes - shaggy sports shoes, a faded pair of jeans, an almost-completely ruined orange shirt - all dirty and looking like they're about to fall apart any minute. He has long, wild black hair that seems to be begging for a haircut. His skin is tanned deeply.

He is totally dry, even though he just fought wildly in the water. Not one drop.

The longer she looks at him, the stronger the voices are becoming, as unreadable as before. Her head and throat start to throb again.

"Wait," she yells. "What were they? Those female things?"

"What female things?" Stiles asks.

The guy turns to the side, looking hesitant. The voices whisper something urgently, not clear enough for her to understand. "They're called Gorgons."

"Thank you," she says, softer this time. "For saving me. Would you like to stay here for some time? We can help you."

"What are you doing?" Stiles whispers to her. She doesn't answer, she doesn't know what to say - she has no idea herself. It's instinctual, her words getting out before she even knows what she is about to say, but she doesn't do anything to stop them. Something is needed to be done, something Lydia can't do, but the banshee can.

It seems that the mysterious guy understands that too, because he doesn't say no immediately. He turns himself fully towards them.

Lydia looks into the greenest eyes she has ever seen.

"If it's not a problem..." he says hesitantly, eyes flicking between her and Stiles.

"No, don't worry about it," she says. "I'm Lydia Martin, this is Stiles." She looks at him intently, the whispers getting louder and louder, just about to break the surface. "Who are you?"

It doesn't really matter. She knows the answer anyway. And yet she listens closely to his response, trying to understand the true answer.

"I'm Percy Jackson," he says, and through the mayhem inside her head, one whisper makes itself audible. Lydia hears it clearly.

It says, I don't know.