Hello all! As some of you may know, I have another piece on this site called Truth and Consequences (if you haven't read it and you like these characters you should try it out!). I have the best readers ever for that and one of them, the brilliant Athena 606, volunteered to make a video for the piece so I agreed to write a Dydia piece in return. Now this is a cyclic thing because I had never really considered the characters of Derek and Lydia together but they started bugging me to be a couple, so I youtubed to see if there was a following and I saw her "Ships in the Night " vid of them and then I was hooked and the characters just demanded to be written in T&C. I hope you like this, please review if you do. There is much more to come from it. Enjoy!

Jacob's Ladder

After the confrontation with Gerard and Jackson's transition Derek had hoped that life would be quiet for at least a little while. However when he returned to his burned out family home the next day the front door had been marked by the Alpha pack and after a few days of searching it was clear that Boyd and Erica had been taken as well. Derek and Scott had found signs of a struggle in the woods and a short blood trail that disappeared after about 100 yards. Once it was clear that they were not going to find any more evidence in the reserve, they called everyone to meet back at the Hale house and form a plan for recovering their lost pack members.

As Derek approached the house he was exhausted. There were times that he felt like he hadn't had a good night's sleep since the fire, his dreams haunted him, the faces of his family haunted him and now the faces of his pack, of these children he had transitioned into monsters for his own benefit haunted him as well. He was responsible for them; each of them were outsiders, loners and desperate for some type of contact so he had used that to manipulate them into taking the bite and joining him so he would be safer. But the thing was—he couldn't keep them safe, he had proven it time and again—with Jackson, with Erica and Boyd, that he could not keep them safe from hunters or the supernatural and now he was afraid that no matter what choice he made, someone was going to get hurt. The oppression of these thoughts weighed on the young Alpha, making his feel weary to his bones.

Taking a deep sigh, running his hand over his face as he mounted the steps of the dilapidate house he was startled by a sharp, shrill wail filling the air, scenting the environment quickly he looked down to find a very tiny, very naked infant screaming on his doorstep.

Lydia was sleeping, or at least she was trying to sleep, lost in that daze between sleep and dreams. Over the last week her entire world had changed, but somehow it all started to make more sense. This world was a better fit. Werewolves were real. Not only were they real, but she had been attacked by, haunted by, and resurrected one not to mention the fact that she helped her ex-boyfriend turn into one after he spent months killing people as a giant lizard. That's right, ex-boyfriend, because even though her love for Jackson is what saved his life and helped him transition into a wolf, they had both decided that the love they share for one another was no longer romantic.

Both Jackson and Lydia were lost souls; they were beautiful and intelligent, but they were also lonely, destructive and vindictive. They were the alphas in their world and they had been draw to each other because they recognize similar drives and insecurities. They understood each other, they loved each other, but as a couple they were toxic for each other because they exploited those insecurities and brought out the worst in each other. They decided to be there for one another always as friends, but their time as lovers was over for now.

Oddly enough, Lydia felt like a great weight had been removed from her shoulders when they made that decision, like she was free from the role she had cast herself in and now she could just love her friend with no requirements and honestly, Jackson was in no place for anyone putting requirements on him right now either. They were both traumatized from the past few months, hell from the past decade in their own skin and now it was time to heal that damage and grow into the people they would be. So now, as she tried to sleep, she wondered what her role in this whole crazy werewolf pack was going to be. Yeah, her life was beyond fucked up but it was hers to control now. What she didn't know at the time was that it was just going to get weirder as this night went on.

Just as she succumbed to her exhaustion, Lydia felt more than heard a sharp cry. As the shrill sound got louder, it seemed to surround her, the noise piercing her body and radiating through her torso. She could feel sharp pains, like hunger pangs, filling her belly and her chest felt heavy and tight. Her skin was cold, shivers passed through her body and she could feel her nipples tighten unpleasantly against the thin cotton of her nightgown as a deep chill took over her. Before she had commanded her brain to move, before she was really awake, she found herself walking through the woods barefoot in nothing but her knee length, white cotton gown. It was cold out tonight, in the 40's, and Lydia had no idea why she was wondering through the woods again, she only knew that she had to follow the sound of that cry, that she had to help.

Derek stared at the screaming child for a few moments, trying to figure out if this was really happening or if he had finally lost his mind due to lack of sleep and too much time spent around crazy teenage werewolves. It was Peter's approach that shook him out of his revelry, "What the hell is that?"

"Um, it looks like a baby," Derek responded, knowing that is sounded stupid.

"Why would someone leave an infant out here in the middle of nowhere, are they trying to kill it?"

Looking at the infant, still screaming from under the Alpha pack tag, Derek shrugged, "How the hell would I know, I just got here, there is no scent even on the baby? How is that possible that a living being not have a scent?"

"It's not," Peter proclaimed as he marched up the stairs, lifting the child for the first time, sniffing it, "But it would seem that this little one does not." He looked intrigued, still holding the child out as if he were observing it while the child screamed his head off, his skin turning a deep red and his veins popping to the surface.

"Jesus Peter stop it, you are scaring the poor thing to death." Derek scolded, shucking off his coat and wrapping the infant in it before entering the house as the others arrived.

Five minutes later, the baby, still screaming, lay in the center of the table in what was left of the Hale living room. All of the pack members had formed a semicircle around the table, staring at the squirming baby.

"I think we should call my dad, he can, I don't know, put it in foster care of something," Stiles suggested, looking thoroughly perplexed.

"Yeah and tell him what, make sure you put him in a good werewolf home where they will teach him to hunt bunnies and Christian values?" Jackson snapped.

"We don't know that the baby is a wolf," Scott corrected.

"Yeah, someone just happened to make their way miles into the woods to drop off their newborn on this haunted Hale house doorstep, this kid is a freak of some sort," Jackson replied.

"He is not a freak," Isaac began.

"Shut up everyone!" Derek yelled, making the baby scream even louder.

"Good work," Stiles smirked.

Derek spun around to unleash some frustration on the smartass human only to be stopped by the appearance of Lydia at the door behind Stiles, "Lydia" he whispered, "what are you doing," his statement drifted off as he took in the redhead— dirty feet, thin white nightgown with silver buttons and lace trim. She was shivering, her lips tinged in blue, but what really shocked Derek was two spreading wet spots on the front of her gown, just over her breasts.

All of the men in the room watched in shock as the petit girl approached the squawking baby, lifting him gently as she unbuttons the top four buttons of her gown, bringing the tiny child to her breast, she lets out a slight gasp as the baby closes his velvet lips around her left nipple, sucking with more strength than his small size portrayed. After a moment, Lydia felt the pressure in her chest release as the child pulled in his first mouthful of milk, resting his tiny hand on her chest, he calmed almost instantly. After a moment of staring at the child in her arms, Lydia suddenly looks up at the boys and asked, "So are all of you just going to stand there and gawk or are you going to get this baby a blanket, he is freezing."