Author's Note: I will forever be a fan of writing Lydia. She is such a wonderful character and I think all the ways her story could go are amazing. I think the show has a really hard time addressing grief in an appropriate way, so this is my outlet for how I wish the show had handled Lydia losing her best friend - and essentially losing Stiles as a romantic interest as well this season. She's off by herself already, so I wondered what it would be like if she really just picked up and left. Please read and review!
Blank Heart, Paper Girl
Lydia had left for school a year earlier than planned. She had surprised everyone – one day she was there, the next she was packing up her life. Not that she had brought much. Her life has become so small, so horribly blank that there was nothing left for her, at least in her mind. She was a paper cut out of the girl she used to be, and she desperately wanted to be real again.
...
She had met Dave the first week of her freshman year. She had been sitting outside the campus coffee shop, already engrossed in her advanced physics textbook, when he had laughed loudly across the small courtyard, cutting through her focus. Already annoyed at all the people, her eyes shot to him immediately, accusing him with her stare. He had merely grinned back, lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. She remembers wrinkling her nose in response, turning back down to her book and primly crossing her legs.
It hadn't been more than a few minutes until he had made his way over, cigarette smoke hanging over her head as he exhaled slowly, before announcing his presence with a smack of his hand on the table. She had jumped, looking up at him through smoke and sunshine, her face fixed in a scowl. He smirked down at her, his choppy blonde hair catching in the wind, backing away slowly with a nod of his head. She looked down at the table, fingers cautiously picking up the ridiculously drawn flyer for some band called Wallpaper Airplanes. Apparently, they were playing that night.
She snorted derisively and pinned the flyer under her iced coffee, turning her attention back to her book. It wasn't until later when she was back in her dorm, bare feet propped up against her window frame as she watched the sun setting behind the trees that she thought of it again. "Well," she thought, "it's better than another night alone." So she slipped on her worn leather jacket and flats (she had finally sworn off heels) and headed to the seedy off campus bar, flyer clutched tightly in hand.
The bar was packed. She squeezed her way to the front of the crowd, holding her purse protectively in front of her. The band hadn't started yet, but she spotted the tall, skinny blonde guy from the courtyard fiddling with one of the amps on the stage. With his confidence, she had grudgingly assumed he would be lead singer, but was surprised to find him positioning himself to the left of the spotlight, strumming on an old electric guitar absentmindedly as the rest of the band clamored on stage. As they began their set, she couldn't help but admit what the screaming girls around her had already indicated – they were pretty damn good.
After the show, she had planned to slip away unnoticed, curiosity sated and the night spent doing something other than staring at her phone. But he wound his way through the crowd before she could escape, two beers in hand and that grin overtaking his face.
"Hey, you came…wow, okay you're really here. Oh, yeah, this is for you!" he seems nervous, holding out one of the beer bottles almost cautiously.
She feels a little suspicious, naturally. But there are no scales or glowing eyes or baseball bats and at this very moment, she can't feel death prickling under her skin. She's tired of waiting for phone calls and words she never thought she'd miss. So she makes a choice, flipping her long red hair in that confident way only she knows how, and grins back at him, delicately taking the offered drink.
"Yeah, I thought I'd check it out. You guys were pretty good up there. I'm Lydia."
His eyes widen slightly, as though drinking her in and she feels that feeling she used to get when he looked at her. Like she was beautiful. Like she was important.
"I'm Dave."
...
From then on, they are inseparable. His long fingers are always flitting around her, up and down her spine, winding through her hair, grazing the soft skin of her cheeks. Her new favorite place to study becomes his worn old couch, feet propped up in his lap. He's writing songs about her and she's blushing when he dedicates them to her loudly and embarrassingly in the bar where they first met. She spends her nights with him, allowing herself to wind around him, warding off the cold she always feels with his warmth. It's enough to almost make her forget where she came from – almost enough to forget the darkness that swallowed her life.
Dave gets used to picking her up in random places. After the first few times, he never really asks why, merely accepting that this was how she was. She knows it scares him, and it scares her too. She doesn't want him to run away and the first time he finds her, barefoot and bloody, she knows it's only a matter of time. The way he holds her after – as though he doesn't quite know who she is - is a clear indicator. He's no boy with a baseball bat. He might never understand.
But she forces herself to forget that, to forget him, because she's being adored again. Dave writes her poems and sticks them in her textbooks. He comes to her scholarship banquets, grudgingly wearing the tie she bought him, and sarcastically puts her tests on the fridge. He loves her. And that's enough.
...
Lydia wakes up in the middle of the night with a start. She can feel Dave beside her, arm slung around her hip, but it gives her little comfort. Today's the day. Actually, there are a lot of days she dreads. So many people dead, littering her past with anniversaries of horrors she could never tell anyone else about. But today's the one she fears the most. She sees her phone lighting up the bedside table, and is both terrified and relieved to see a message from Scott McCall pop up.
Hey Lydia, we haven't heard from you in a while. We miss you. All of us. I hope you're okay. Call me, if you can.
She's startled by the rush of affection she feels for Scott. They really haven't talked in months, since she left for school. And she had started pulling away from her friends long before that. If she was being honest with herself, she slipped away the moment that Malia Tate had come into their lives. Or came into his life.
But her best friend died today. And Scott's ex girlfriend, the love of his life, died today. She can still remember it so clearly, eyes filling up with tears as she relieves the pain of that feeling – the feeling of her best friend leaving this world. It was like someone had ripped a hole in her chest. She had screamed and screamed until finally someone had come to get her, and she worries now that maybe something had broken inside her in that tunnel.
She doesn't realize she's crying in earnest until she feels Dave shifting next to her, sitting up to wrap an arm around her shaking shoulders.
"Hey, hey, babe, what's wrong?" He's muttering comforting words into her neck, but she can't make her mouth form coherent thoughts. She hasn't cried like this in a long time. When she manages to choke back her tears long enough, it's only one word that comes out.
"Allison."
"Lydia, who's Allison? You're scaring me, what's going on?" His hands are on either side of her face now, trying to gently force her into looking at him.
She can't help but cry even harder. She had never told him. She had never even mentioned the girl who had changed her life, who had made her a better person. She can picture Allison's bright smile in her mind and she hates herself for not telling Dave about her. For not sharing every detail of a life so beautiful – a life that deserved remembering. She thinks that if Allison were here right now, she would be disappointed in her.
"You can't run and hide from your life, Lydia."
Dave is still talking at her, hands gentle in her hair now, but she can only see swords and long, dark hair and boys with dark circles under their eyes. And laughing in the cafeteria and long car rides in a beat up jeep and Allison wrinkling her nose at something Scott said. It's as though her life is swirling behind her eyes, the horrible and the wonderful and all the people she left behind. She's closing her eyes against the onslaught she's been fighting so hard to prevent for all these months, trying to turn her face away from this boy who doesn't know her, not really.
"Lydia, come on, look at me. Honey, you're beautiful when you cry, you don't have to turn away. Tell me what's wrong."
He's pleading with her and she knows it's wrong to not say something. Anything. But instead, she's pushing him away forcefully, eyes wild, heart pounding in her ears. She leaps out of bed, snatching her phone, propelling herself down his dark hallway and out into the night. She can hear him behind her, calling her name, but she can't stop. It's only once she's in her car, headlights illuminating Dave standing there, staring at her desperately, that she registers the horrible feeling in her stomach.
"I think you look really beautiful when you cry."
...
It's not just Allison that she mourns. It's him. It's Stiles, too. The boy who used to look at her like she was his personal sun. Who used to adore her the way Dave adores her now. He had even gone a step further, worming his way into her soul, seeing her for who she was. Broken. Lost. He might have even loved her for that, at least for a little while.
She's driving with no direction, not something that's entirely new for her. But it's not death chasing her away from Dave, from safety. It's her memories. She pulls the car over suddenly, hands fumbling with her cell phone. Scott said to call if she could. He didn't say who.
She sits numbly, praying both that he answers and that he continues whatever silent game they've been playing for months.
"Lydia? Lydia…are you there?"
His voice sounds both sleepy and surprised all at once and she's forced to remember a thousand of these phone calls. She always used to call him in the middle of the night when she was scared. She doesn't know why she thought he wouldn't answer. He always did.
"Lydia, I know you can hear me. Are you okay? …I-I miss you."
She can picture him sitting up in bed, hair all messy, eyes anxious. She wonders if Malia is beside him, if she can hear Lydia's tearful breathing through the phone. That thought sends her reeling, hanging up without a second thought. It's too much. He's always been too much.
...
Lydia lays her head on the steering wheel, exhausted. Sometimes it feels like she's lived a thousand years in her young life. She's so tired. And the tears are still falling, and she's whispering to herself the only thing she can think.
I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you
She misses Allison and she misses Scott and she misses Isaac and Aiden and Ethan and Derek and Kira and she misses Stiles desperately. Most of all, she misses herself. She misses the person she was when they were all together. When she had a pack. When she had a family.
She thought college would fix something in her. She thought she could color in the blank places of her heart here, that she could fill up the spaces left by all the people she had loved and lost. But she knows now how foolish that was.
Lydia Martin puts her car in drive, wiping the tears from her face determinedly. She's headed in the only direction she knows. She can almost feel Allison in the passenger seat beside her, beaming with pride. She wasn't running away anymore. She was going home. Back to Beacon Hills. Back to Stiles.