The explosion knocks out her hearing for a moment. Lydia stays pressed low to the ground, gripping Allison tight. Before her, two of her friends (two of only four) are engulfed in the flames.

For a moment, a wonderful moment, she thought they were getting out of this hellhole intact. Stiles had seemed so confident when he stepped into the puddle of gasoline, so firm. Scott was rocked, yes, but Stiles has a certain authority about him. He's been doing this longer than she has. Lydia trusted him to fix things, more than she probably should have.

It had been too late. Lydia saw the change in Scott's eyes, but Stiles was looking at the flame in his hand. The flare was falling towards the fire before any of them knew it, and Lydia only had time to shove Allison out of the way.

Scott and Stiles are best friends. They had been since grade school. Lydia remembers being jealous of how close they were, back before she gained the popularity she used to hold so dear. As a lonely third grader, braiding her own hair in the back of the classroom and hoping her mom remembered to pick her up that afternoon, nothing had appealed to her more than the concept of friendship. Looking at Stiles and Scott shoving each other at the front of the room, she decided that what was she wanted. Without the shoving, of course. She just wanted a best friend.

She knows now that was never what was in the cards for her. Scott and Stiles were a different kind of friendship than what she had with Jackson, certainly, but also with Allison or Danny. They were brothers, like Stiles had said. Together until the end.

They managed that. The until the end part. Lydia is anything but stupid. The flames are rising higher and higher, the open night air feeding them. There's no way they're still alive, logically. She'll just skip right over the denial stage of grief, if that's all right with the universe.

Allison stirs underneath her, and she knows they need to move farther away from the flames. The silence in her ears is morphing into a sharp ringing. They shouldn't be damaged this badly. It must be adrenaline.

Lydia places her palms on the ground, ready to lift herself up, when something catches her eye. The inferno of flames, which she'd been trying to avoid looking at, shoots higher into the sky, and something black stirs within it.

Her heart leaps in her chest- it's impossible, yes, but Lydia's seen a lot of impossible things in the past few months. Maybe Scott's werewolf powers kicked in. Maybe he's getting up, pulling Stiles with him. She blinks against the wall of heat the flames are sending off, trying to look closer.

It happens in a flash, and then she's gone.

When she comes to, Isaac is slapping her. "Lydia! What the hell is going on?!"

The ringing is gone. She shakes her head a little bit, registering scalding of the skin on one side of her face. The tears come almost instantly.

"Stiles-" she chokes out. "And Scott. They're dead."

Isaac stares down at her in shock, and Lydia doesn't bother to scoot away from him like she normally would.

"No," Isaac says slowly. "No way. Sc-scott almost died yesterday, but he was fine. No way."

"It was the heat," Lydia reasons, realizing as she says it. "Whatever's doing this, it knew that we figured it out. It used Scott-that gas. Scott had a flare, the one we left behind. We couldn't stop him with heat, because he was already holding it-"

Isaac jerks away from her suddenly, and she flips over to see him sprinting off into the treeline.

Her side is tender where she hit the ground, and Lydia knows mentally she's not all there, but she pulls in a deep breath, trying to detach herself. She can't call Stiles to come help her. They're on their own. She eases herself up into a sitting position, taking in the scene before her.

Allison is sitting there, just sitting there. Boyd is crouched a few feet away from her, watching. He turns to stare at Lydia, eyes glinting gold.

"Stiles?" he asks.

"H-he tried to stop Scott," she said. "He almost did."

"The fire burnt itself out," he tells her. "Burned their bodies up. There's nothing left."

"That's-"she chokes a bit, closes her eyes briefly before continuing. "That can't be right. It shouldn't have been that hot."

"It was," he replies simply. His gaze darts back over to Allison, and Lydia remembers Stiles mentioning something about Boyd- how Allison shot arrows at him and Erica. After a tense moment, he turns back to her. "I need to find Isaac."

He's gone before she can even consider asking him to say.

After Boyd, the night falls into a simple progression of events. A quick phone call to Allison's father, moving forward to sit next to her friend, and waiting until he arrives, hours later- just as the sun is peeking up over the trees. Isaac and Boyd do not return.

Chris Argent takes one look at his daughter before scooping her up into his arms. Allison remains like a limp rag doll, and Lydia knows this is no fairy tale love story like they may have giggled about in some other world. Her mother, her aunt, even her grandfather- Scott is the last straw. Scott is too much. She is broke now, maybe permanently.

Four friends.

"It's just for one night."

"A lot can happen in one night."

One.

"Lydia?"

Mr. Argent's voice breaks into her thoughts, and she knows he can see the crazy in her eyes the same way Stiles could.

"Lydia, I can take you home, too, if you want," he offers.

She nods, and then she is bundled into the passenger seat. She doesn't know where the blanket came from, but she also knows there's about twenty firearms in the trunk, so maybe the Argents are just over-prepared people.

Mr. Argent disappears for several minutes, and her phone buzzes. Danny. The only one left. She ignores it. Better to keep him away from this. Don't let the motel eat him, too.

At night she sometimes dreams of wolves who eat her alive. Wolves or lizards who flick their tongues in her face.

This has no name, and it won't eat her. She won't be lured into the flames, and she won't walk there either. She could though, and not scream when they lick at her feet.

She knows that. She doesn't have to scream.

She just does.

Burnt until there's nothing left.

No.

Mr. Argent's car is away from the bus and the big burn spot. It faces the woods, and Lydia doesn't look behind. She looks forward, forward into the woods that ate Isaac.

Allison could be asleep now. Lydia hopes she is, but she doesn't look back to check.

Forward.

Into the woods.

By the time Mr. Argent comes back, she is gone. Not into the black this time, but forward.