Hi everyone. We still alive after the finale? Busy trying to find ways to fill the gaping emptiness until the next season starts? Well, that's why we have fanfic.
So I'm a little bit outside of my regular fandom/pairing, but this idea came to me last night so I figured I'd give it a go. It's set post-3B, so spoilers up until then. Not much else to say about it. Completed one-shot, will not be continued, but I'll probably write more TW in the future so keep an eye out.
As always, reviews are like word-cupcakes, so please let me know what you think. Enjoy!
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"You're dead."
The words are said in unison, but the tones run parallel. Lydia says it soft, her eyes wide with disbelief; and Allison hurls the words into the space between them, sharply enough to bring tears to her eyes.
In the beat of silence that follows, they both realize they're missing something. Lydia leans against a tree – had that always been there? – and folds her arms, her eyes roaming around the clearing, taking in every detail. Allison slumps to the ground, burying her face in her hands, blocking everything out.
"You're dead too," Allison moans. "Oh my god, you died."
"Hey." Lydia pushes herself off the tree and walks over to her friend. When Allison doesn't look up, Lydia crouches down in front of her. "Look at me, Allison," she says, and after a moment the other girl complies. "I'm not dead."
Allison blinks through her tears, struggling to understand. "But I am," she says slowly. "How can you be here if you're not dead? Isn't this… isn't this the afterlife?"
Lydia straightens and looks around. It's been almost a month since they defeated the nogitsune, but she has the feeling that time doesn't move the same way here. As if to prove her point, in the time it takes her to draw breath an entire clump of ferns unfurls, withers, and dies, its dust drifting through the air despite the absence of wind. Beacon Hills is known for its strangeness, but not for disobeying the laws of physics. Ergo, she's probably not in Beacon Hills.
A chill creeps over Allison and she gets to her feet, following Lydia's gaze. This clearing, with its ever-changing foliage and its perpetually moonlit sky, is familiar to her; it's the closest thing she has to home. But until now, it hasn't felt like it. Until now, she's been alone. "Are you sure you're not dead?" she asks again, tentatively.
"I think," Lydia says, her mouth tilting up at the corner, "that I would remember dying."
To her surprise, Allison laughs. It's been so long since there's been someone here to make her laugh, anything to break the awful monotony of every day. Monochrome, silent save for distant wolf howls; she's still not sure if this is meant to be heaven or hell. But her best friend materializing in front of her had definitely tipped the scales in favor of the former.
"So you're not dead," Allison says, wrapping her arms around herself. "But I am."
"Which begs the question: where are we?"
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"Come on, just give it a rest."
Ignoring this, Lydia keeps pressing. Her hand is in mid-air, hovering, but every time she tries to move it forward, it bounces back. Repelled, like the wolves are by mountain ash. She wonders if there's such a thing that would do it to banshees.
"Lydia." Allison pulls at her arm, tugging her away. They've been searching for a while now, and they've established that they can go no farther than the edges of the clearing. Before now it hadn't even occurred to Allison to try to go farther, but Lydia seems adamant that she'll get through. "Come on."
Finally Lydia's hand falls to her side and she huffs. "We're stuck here," she says, and glares at a nearby mushroom as if it's the source of her problems. Abandoning her efforts, she marches back into the middle of the clearing, Allison in tow.
The two girls stand in the center, lost in thought, and then their thoughts collide and they turn to each other
"I shouldn't be so desperate to get away," Lydia says, but she can't quite look at her friend. "I just… it's been so hard without you."
Allison feels her heart snapping. She remembers something Stiles had once told Lydia. Death doesn't happen to you; it happens to everyone around you. He has no idea. Death had happened, so fast that Allison didn't get to say goodbye, and since then she's been alone. She's been dead, and alone, and she's always cold.
"I know," she says, although she doesn't. All she's thought about since she's been here is everyone she's left behind: Scott, Isaac, her dad. Lydia. Even Kira and the twins. But she has no idea what it's like for them, just like they don't know what it's been like for her.
Their eyes meet and for a long moment neither of them speak. The unspoken words glimmer in their eyes, pulse through their veins, but refuse to fall from their tongues. Both girls are overwhelmed with feelings they never thought they'd get to share, questions they never thought they'd get to ask, with a situation they never thought they'd find themselves in.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," Lydia says at last, and that breaks down all the barriers.
They reach for each other and meet somewhere in the middle, falling into each other's embrace, clinging to each other like nothing else matters. And in that moment, it doesn't. Time will stand still for them here.
When they break apart, they're both crying. Lydia's tears fall freely, but Allison tries to brush hers away.
"I'm sorry I had to die," Allison says, even though she knows that if she lived that day over again, she would make the same choice. She would always make the same choice.
Lydia dips her head in acknowledgement of this, her feelings too strong to allow her to speak. The two girls – the hunter and the banshee – sit down on the dew-wet grass, cross-legged, facing each other. They gaze into faces they never thought they'd see again, and feel things they would rather not feel again. Though neither of them says it, they're both keenly aware that this meeting will come to an end, and soon.
"So if you're not dead," Allison says delicately, "how did you get here?"
Lydia tilts her head, thinking, trying to remember. Flashes comes to her: bright light, sharp pain, blurred colors. She closes her eyes. "I don't know."
Allison pulls a clump of grass out of the ground, and a new one springs up in its place. She looks to her hand, and it's empty. "The nogitsune," she says after a while. "You killed it, right? And the others are okay? What happened after I left?"
The questions tumble from her mouth like raindrops, falling onto the grass between them, and Lydia smiles a slow sad smile. "Which one do you want me to answer first? It's kind of a long story."
A gust of wind stirs the grass. Allison spreads her arms wide. "I've got time."
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Time passes. How quickly or slowly, the girls can't tell. They share their stories and their pain, flowers rise from the earth and fall back again, the leaves rustle overhead, and all the while a storm is building. The rain starts as Allison is finishing her side of the story, which principally involves endless nights sprawled on the grass in this very clearing.
Lydia doesn't mind the rain, but she notices that Allison is shivering. But when she suggests they seek shelter in the trees, Allison shakes her head.
"If I go into those trees, I…" Allison trails off, the shadows reflected in her eyes, sorrow reflected in her voice.
Lydia nods; she knows. "You can't come back."
Returning her gaze to her friend, Allison frowns slightly. "I don't know how I know that."
"The same way that I know that I have to leave soon." Lydia runs her hands up and down her legs, trying to get some warmth back into them. It's not that it's cold; it's that it was warm, and somehow all the warmth has been leached out of the air, out of skin and bones and souls, and Lydia can hardly breathe without feeling icicles scraping her throat.
Her time here is running out, but as the flashes of memory get stronger she wonders which way she'll leave: the way she came, or the way Allison is going. It doesn't feel like she's dead, but she's never been dead before so she doesn't have anything to compare it to.
"It's going to get better," Allison says, startling Lydia out of her reverie. "Down there, I mean. Or, up there. I'm not really sure how this whole limbo thing works."
The laugh that bubbles up in Lydia's throat feels unnatural, and she stifles it after a couple of beats. "I just don't know how to go on without you," she admits. It's not often she feels vulnerable, and even less often she shows it. But here, in this clearing beyond time and space and laws of logic, such confessions seem not only ordinary but expected.
"You have to." Allison takes Lydia's hand in both of her own, suddenly scared that all she's done, all she sacrificed, will be for nothing. She died so Lydia could live, so all of them could; and if they can't work out how to be okay without her, she may as well have not done it at all. "Promise me you'll find a way to keep going. You and Scott and Stiles and Isaac… you all have to keep going. For me."
"Without you," Lydia reminds her, but the fire in Allison's eyes is enough to convince her to pick up the metaphorical sword she'd thrown to the floor in that dark tunnel, when the scream was torn from her throat and her heart was torn out of her chest.
"Lydia." Allison catches her friend's eyes, holds her gaze. "Promise me. Don't you dare tell me that I died for nothing."
The rain picks up, until Lydia can't even feel her own body in the downpour. Everything is water, even the air she's breathing, but she's not drowning. "I promise," she says. "We'll keep fighting."
The wolf howls in the distance turn into wails, and Lydia tastes salt on her lips. And she understands.
"They're calling me," she says in wonder. She remembers the accident – the wet road, the broken guardrail. The screech of tires, the impact of the crash. She's not dead, but she's come damn close.
The wails turn into whispers, and Allison smiles. And suddenly she's not cold anymore, and she's not afraid.
"They're calling me too," she says, her gaze shifting to a place beyond Lydia's shoulder, somewhere deep in the shadows, where nothing but light awaits her. She's dead, but she's going home.
The two girls stand up, still holding hands. Their whispered farewells are caught and carried by the rain, solidified and crystallized, hitting the ground with an echo that will never be forgotten. This is the goodbye they never got to have, the closure they didn't know they needed.
Their paths stretch ahead of them, unknown and unexplored, yet so painfully bright and clear. They hold on until the last minute, their hands still brushing even when they feel themselves being pulled away. They keep holding on, until the exact moment they know it's going to be okay.
And then they let go.
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There you go. Thoughts? I'd love to hear from you, so drop me a review. :)