you're in my arms but you've gone somewhere deeper
Notes: I'm fairly certain Isaac and Lydia have never interacted at all ever, but I really wanted to know what they were doing while Stiles, Allison and Scott were off hearing stories full of lies.
She resolved at the end of the summer not to let anything surprise her, and yet here she is in the backseat of Stiles' jeep, staring at the low-lit half-profile of Isaac Lahey in the driver's seat, listening attentively to Ms. Blake's hushed whispered directions.
"Turn right here," Ms. Blake says, so softly that Lydia has trouble hearing–not that Issac does, of course. He drives with one hand on the would-be gear shift, despite the automatic nature of Stiles' jeep.
Lydia wants desperately to laugh, here and now, and try to dispel this feeling that their lives are suddenly torn beyond repair, that when the dust settles the threads of their normal teenage lives will be lost forever, burned away to dust or perhaps lost in pools of blood too deep to contemplate.
—
Derek has simply vanished beneath Stiles' hand, as though he'd never been there at all; Lydia thinks she feels air rush past her, but it's the long, mournful echo of a howl drifting down from seemingly everywhere that makes her shiver.
"Are you alright?" Isaac is asking, soft and careful, disentangling himself from the trembling limbs of his English teacher. His first instinct must have been to protect her, Lydia thinks, and the Isaac from beneath the motel bed flashes in her mind's eye.
It's strange to reconcile one with the other; Derek chooses his betas well, but that thought hurts and she almost hates herself for it.
Lydia has to hand it to her teacher: Ms. Blake is trembling yes, her eyes wide, but they are fixed to the space Derek had occupied, and as Lydia watches, her irises lift of horror and shock and fill instead with a kind of startling warmth and compassion, as though she wants simply to gather them all up in her arms and shield them from everything they all know is coming.
Ms. Blake nods, though Lydia can't be sure if she's lying, if she's even really here. "Vernon..."
Isaac's steady calm falters into something stricken and pale. Before Lydia can even consider what would be appropriate to say, Stiles is bounding towards them.
"You should get her home," he says, as though they have not literally just lost yet another classmate to too many bloodthirsty adults – psychopaths may actually be the operative term here. "I'll stay and–"
"Stiles," she starts, but whatever Lydia had been about to say falls short of that look in his eyes, grief and panic and beneath all of that, shuttered down under a veneer of calm: rage.
"Here." Stiles takes her hand and presses his keys into her palm, holding his hand over hers for as long as it takes for Lydia to drag her eyes up to his. "Take the jeep. I'll walk."
Another protest is already leaping forward but it's all she can do to pull it back and nod. This is who they are now, individuals and together. "Call me," when you're safe "after."
Stiles' nod in kind is terse. He turns back to the wasteland of water and Lydia forces herself to turn away too, lest she be swallowed again by the cries of an infant.
Isaac is helping Ms. Blake stand, still almost-curved protectively around her. "Let's go," he says, looking at Lydia finally. It occurs to her then that this might be the first actual conversation they've ever had.
"I can take her," she says, as though they were discussing an errant child and not a full-blown adult who'd just received the worst revelation/crash course into their secret ever.
Isaac blinks once, twice. His eyes are so bright. "I can't–I can't stay here."
Lydia registers just then that he can't even look beyond her head to the scene inside the loft, and she hates herself all over again. "Want to drive?"
—
Isaac turns off the engine and tries to smile at Ms. Blake, but fails miserably. "I know it seems crazy–"
There is that urge to laugh again.
Ms. Blake doesn't dissolve into hysterics, though, if anything she is calmer than either teen when she leans foward and grasps at Isaac's sleeves, who just receives her, hands cupping her elbows.
"Kids," Their teacher looks at Lydia for a moment, then back at Isaac, and it's with a prinkling kind of dawning that Lydia realizes that Ms. Blake may understand this a lot more than she lets on.
She remembers, suddenly, painfully, that she's right, that they're just kids, kids who have to bury yet another friend, and what have their lives become?
"Just...just be safe, okay? Promise me you'll try and be safe."
"We will," Isaac says, and everyone in the car knows the sound of a lie but is willing to pretend otherwise.
He waits until she's closed her front door behind her before starting the car again.
"I remember where you live," he says after a minute or two, before she can ask. "And I didn't mean that to sound really creepy, I'm sorry."
"It's–it's okay," Lydia manages, baffled at his ability to make some semblance of a joke after what he's survived tonight, but as the seconds pass and Isaac's outwardly calm expression fractures, she knows it's not at all.
"I'm sorry–" This time it comes out in a gasp, and it's only after he's maneuvered them to the side of the road that Isaac just drops, a puppet cut from its strings, against the steering wheel of Stiles' jeep; for a moment Lydia can't distinguish the whimpers from wolf to boy and then Isaac is shaking with the force of his sobs. It is too much grief in too small a space – she is caught in its tide and it's all Lydia can do to grab at Isaac's shoulder and pull him in.
He curls into her as though she could contain him, as though she could take on all their fears and win, as though she were not a 5 foot 3 hundred pound girl but someone capable of cradling a mourning werewolf twice her size.
Isaac is clutching at her jacket as if it were an anchor. She is too aware of the curl of his fingers against her back and Lydia thinks unwillingly of Scott and that hook that had kept him with Stiles all the way home on that wretched bus ride.
She can feel Isaac's mouth moving faintly over her shoulder but she has no idea what he could be saying, if he's even speaking at all, if he could find absolution or salvation in her skin, so Lydia thinks she might just let him live there if he must, because it's the least she can do for this poor boy who has lost and hurt so much.
Lydia wraps one arm around his back, feeling the steady pull of muscle there, while her free hand somehow ends up in the curling ends of his hair.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, over and over again, because what else is there? "I'm so sorry, Isaac, I'm so sorry."
They sit like that for a long time.
Eventually Isaac releases his fingertip grip on her jacket and leans back in his seat in one fluid motion. Lydia forgot ages ago how warm werewolves are - she wishes she could blame the sudden cold on something else, but they do live in California, after all.
The pause borders on horrifically long before Isaac says simply, very quietly, "Thanks."
His eyes flick to hers, just once, before turning back to the road and starting the jeep once again.
Lydia has to swallow a knot in her throat before she can even manage to speak.
"Don't mention it."
He won't of course, she knows, and something unnameable rises up in her throat at the thought of this moment living and dying righ here in the space between them, from the time it takes to pull into her driveway.
She can feel her heartbeat in her ears as she opens her door, painfully aware that it must sound like a drill team to Isaac even at this distance. Lydia lets calm and exhaustion win when she finally makes it up to her room. Her heart settles, which, judging from her vantage point at her window, is when Isaac chooses to finally go home.
—
No one sees or hears from Derek for two days.
"I'm going back to his place," Stiles announces over the phone. "We–we need answers, maybe his crazy relatives have them."
She shouldn't have to say, "Be careful," but she does anyway to make herself feel better and he indulges her.
"I'll let you know what I find out."
"He's lucky to have you, you know."
To say she jumps a little would be an understatement. Isaac at least has the decency to look apologetic when Lydia whirls around to face him, standing there with a slouch in his shoulders and a downward slope of his lips that only serves to remind her who they've lost.
Under the fluorescent glare of supermaket light, he looks awful. Lydia supposes werewolf healing does not help with grief, nor dark bags beneath clouded eyes.
"Come again?" she gets out, one hand against her racing heart.
Isaac inclines his head to where Lydia clutches her phone in a reflexive vice grip. "Stiles."
"What–"
"It's hard for him, sometimes," Isaac continues, shoulders curling forward as though trying to make himself smaller. "Derek, Bo–" They both flinch. "Scott and I are, well you know, and Allison's got her erm, family's skills. I know sometimes Stiles feels too–"
too lost, too scared, too curious, too much like he's drowning
"Too human," Lydia finishes for him, ignoring that voice in her head. Isaac's lips turn down even further.
"He's just so smart, you know? Smarter than any of us probably, and it's not fair that he has to worry so much about getting hurt–"
"This is Stiles we're talking about, right?" Lydia interjects with a raised eyebrow. Isaac catches her eye and she thinks she sees the faint edges of a smile in his eyes.
"Right. I just mean," He runs a hand over his neck up the back of his head. "It's nice that he has you, now. And we all know Lydia Martin's a certified genius who doesn't take prisoners."
No, she thinks, no she does not.
"You guys just...work."
Lydia isn't sure if Isaac is implying something or even that it really matters, because if she has learned anything it is that friends, family, pack, they're all precious, sacred, fragile, and Lydia wouldn't trade this thing she and Stiles have for anything, perhaps even her first Fields Medal.
She smiles though it doesn't feel right at first, because that light returns to Isaac's eyes then, and Lydia thinks she might have done something worthwhile for a change.
"Need help with those?"
He holds the door open for her and as they step out from under the awning into the warm light of the sun, Lydia allows herself the fragile and only slightly foolish hope that maybe everything will be alright, if only they can all keep moving forward together.
More Notes: I may have lost control of my life.
Annie