LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I do not own any plotlines nor characters in the Teen Wolf franchise. This is a work of speculative, amateur fiction. No profit was made, nor intended to ever be made.
AN: For Okamihybrid, who ultimately, gave me the inspiration to write a fic for a TV show that I've never seen an episode of. I just read up on it a bit and read her fanfics. So this story is for you, thanks so much for challenging me!
Let My Body Hit the Floor
Jackson never saw it coming, he never realized how bad it had gotten. He thought she was lucky, she could be both a part of them and apart from them. She was uniquely qualified to walk a bridge between both worlds. He never realized how bad it had gotten, and now things were so out of hand that he was reaching towards her and asking, with a naked look to him, a desperate tone to his voice for the mug she held in her hand.
"Just give me the mug baby! Please! Just give me the mug!"
How in the hell had he missed it?
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It starts innocently enough Lydia can't be turned, she's immune to the bite. It's very rare, but not unheard of. Then it turns out she's immune to kanima poison. Again, even more rare, but not unheard of. Also, it makes sense, to be immune to both. But then things start piling up. More and more things that can't hurt her, can't end her life.
A witch comes to town... and Lydia is immune. It turns out that the new girl in art class is psychic, and can't so much as get a read on Lydia's emotional state, nevermind her actual thoughts. You run with wolves and the world gets blown wide open, and with every new creature that comes to Beacon Hill, Lydia finds one more thing she's immune to.
It stops being something to joke about. At least to her.
Then she starts to actively experiment. When her cousin gets strep throat and her aunt is pregnant, Lydia cares for little Abby. She never gets sick. Then later, she sits and thinks. She's never been sick, not really. The occasional reaction to an immunization, but that's it. Lydia has won the perfect attendance medal at every single school she's ever attended for every year of her schooling life. What does it mean if you can't get sick? It's all she can think about now.
The experiments get more risky. She volunteers at a hospital, works in the lab. Infected blood, disease samples. She injects herself with a little bit of pretty much everything she can get her hands on. It never enters her mind how insane this is. How foolish. It never gets the chance to, because Lydia never gets sick. She never wanted to be untouchable, and now she wonders if that is exactly what she is.
Summer ends and with it Lydia's volunteer lab job. She goes back to school. Listens to Jackson's problems, tries to help him become the best version of himself that he can be. The person she knows is inside there. They laugh, the pack grows tighter, he stops treating her like his arm ornament and like he really wants to just... be with her. It's everything she's wanted, but she can't enjoy it like she thought she would. She just keeps wondering how untouchable she truly is.
So in November, after everyone is sleeping off Thanksgiving dinner, Lydia takes every single pill in the house and swallows them. Not in desperate handfuls, but methodically, one at a time. She writes each pill down and each dose in a notebook, carefully catalogs any and all possible symptoms. After all... this is for science you know.
Her stomach hurts, but only a little bit. She vomits once and only once. Nothing much happens. Lydia is fine, she is... immune. Her body absorbs everything, and spits out a fully functional her. So she takes the next step. But the next step, that one is a doozy.
Lydia goes to the top of the staircase in her school, and when no one is looking, she jumps. She breaks her leg, her arm, dislocates her knee and spends quite some time healing up. When Jackson asks her what happened, she tells him someone left a piece of paper on the stairs and that she slipped on it. He believes her and, as the much better soon to be man he has become, he tends to her. Jackson loves her, and while he'll never be sappy like Scott, he doesn't try to hide it from her anymore.
As for Lydia, she finds one thing she isn't immune to. Physical damage, violence. She can gargle pills and infected blood while standing next to a coughing Ebola patient while an alpha chews on her and 20 other supernatural creatures attempt to use their powers on her... and she'll be just fine. Put a bullet in her, and Lydia is dead, the same as anyone else.
And for a while, that comforts her. But only for a while.
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It's not that Jackson is too busy or too self involved to notice that something is very wrong with his girlfriend. It's that he can't really imagine that there ever would be. She's... his rock. Like Allison is for Scott, just minus the awesome archery skills and explosives training. She can ground him and reel him back from the edge. She always has an open smile for him and her body feels perfect against and under his own. She's seen him at his worst, and still loved him. After that, as far as Jackson is concerned, Lydia is perfect and more than that, she is safe.
Scott has to worry about creatures hurting Allison, Jackson doesn't. Because they can't. Lydia has a layer of protection around her that no one else has, or so he thinks. The idea that she is so safe behind her immunity shield is a calming one, both to him and to his furry side. So it just never occurs to him that something could be wrong with the girl he loves. Because that can't happen... and it wouldn't. Right?
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It's 4 months since Lydia was fully healed up and released from the hospital. The pack has thrown her a welcome back to the real world party at the Hale house. Lydia smiles, plays her part, cuddles with Jackson, laughs at Stiles jokes, says something sarcastic to Peter, wishes she was as strong as Erica or as skilled as Allison. She plays her part to perfection. But inside an image is growing, like a cancer inside of her, of her broken and smashed on the floor. It makes her shiver.
Jackson notices the shiver and says she should get her coat inside. She does. But when she passes the kitchen she tilts her head and looks at the cabinet under the kitchen sink. She kneels down and opens it and takes out a bottle of Draino. It's like Lydia is on auto pilot. She walks downstairs to the cellar of Derek's house, walks to the cage in one end of it and locks herself inside, putting the key in her pocket. This is where they put a wolf they can't control. If it's strong enough to hold one of them in, it will be strong enough to keep them out.
She pours the Draino into a coffee mug she had taken from the counter top in the kitchen and for a little while she just sits there, staring it at it. She's tried the supernatural, she's tried disease, she's tried drugs, but she's never tried poison. Will it work? Lydia doesn't know, so she sits and contemplates,
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Jackson notices that Lydia is taking an awfully long time to get a simple coat, so he goes inside after her, sees the door to the cellar open and sniffs her out. When he sees her in the cage, staring into a cup that reeks of a chemical cleanser, he panics. Runs over and stares at her, wide eyed like he did that night, the night he became a lizard and she saved him.
"Lydia... baby, what are you doing? Give me the mug. Give me the mug baby and come out of there. What's wrong!"
For a moment or two, she doesn't answer, but then she looks up and begins to talk. "You know, ever since I was little I always figured that I would die peaceful, like my Nana. In bed, next to the man I grew old with. In peace, maybe by a stroke, maybe by a heart attack, who knew? But peaceful and asleep."
Jackson has no idea where she's going with all of this, but he plays along. "That sounds nice. Sort of romantic, I guess."
"But I won't, you know. I'm never going to get to die like that. Because I can't." She tells him everything, the experiments, the pills, throwing herself down the stairs... and pouring herself a mug full of Draino. "The only thing that hurts me is violence. Pain, injuries, broken bones, cuts and slashes. If I'm going to die, it's going to be bloody. I'm going to be on the floor, smashed up and broken and it's going to hurt, and it's going to be the exact opposite of peaceful. It's going to be scary... and awful."
Lydia runs a hand through her hair and looks at him with unshed tears in her eyes. "I never realized how comforting that image was until I lost it Jackson. Now, I just get to wait till someone hurts me enough to kill me. Unless... unless this Draino makes me sick."
Jackson's heart goes into overdrive and he thinks 'I'm only a teenager, I don't know how to deal with this!' Then it hits him, he most likely wouldn't be able to deal with this even if he was 36 years old. How, exactly, does one prepare for the girl one loves, losing her mind?
Jackson just keeps her talking, anything to keep the focus on him, and off that damn cup of murder in her hands.
"Hey, so you're immune to a lot of stuff Lydia, that doesn't mean you're going to die in horrible pain. You can still grow old, and die of old age. You can still die peacefully!"
Lydia just shakes her head, looking almost right through him. "Will I? I never get sick, my body absorbs everything bad I put into it. What if it doesn't break down and age? What if... what if I can't die of old age, what if I can't grow old. Then... the only way to decide that I've had enough is to cause enough damage to die. Painfully."
She looks at the mug some more and puts it to her lips. Jackson throws himself against the bars. He HATES this cage, and he can't get to her and his lover, his love, his anchor is about to drink a mug full of poison to see if she can die. He's about to shift because there isn't a molecule of him that isn't terrified right now.
"Just give me the mug baby! Please! Just give me the mug!"
She drinks it anyway and Jackson is screaming and he can hear and feel the pack coming in response to his distress. He's going to have to watch his mate die! Why didn't he see it!
Except she doesn't die. She winces a few times like she's uncomfortable. She drinks the whole damn mug while Jackson goes insane outside that goddamn cage. When she's done she puts the mug down and wipes her lips. Then she stands up, gets the key out of her pocket and lets herself out of the cage. Her eyes wide and frightened.
Jackson pulls her into his arms, his hold tight, he sniffs at her, his fingers drift over the soft bodily spots of her vulnerability. When he and the furry traveler in his head are satisfied that their female is fine, he sits her on his lap.
"Talk to me Lydia, just... talk to me."
Her face nearly crumples. "What if I don't age Jackson, what if I spend the rest of eternity on this rock alone and untouchable?"
He doesn't really know how to respond to that, so he goes for something he rarely uses. Honesty.
"We've got time Lydia. We've got so much time to find out I you won't age. And if you don't..." Here he pauses and looks over the top of her head as he carefully plans what to say next. "If you don't, we'll just have to figure out something else to do."
Lydia sounds smaller than she ever has. "You promise."
"I promise." Jackson replies. And he means it. He hadn't noticed how bad it had gotten, but he will never make that mistake again. He doesn't know how to fix whatever is wrong with Lydia, but he swears to whatever deity is listening that he will figure it out.
And for right now, that's enough for both of them.