This is basically a crazy thing that came out of a conversation with a friend of mine before 3B started about "what would happen if I started Truth and Consequences now". As most of you know that started as an episode tag and I was frustrated by a lot of the things not discussed by 3A so this kind of happened. I know what I want to do with it, but it will be a little under nourished until I finish T&C. Please let me know what you thing and if you think I should continue. If I don't get feedback, I may drop it. Thanks ahead of time, Taraji
Chapter 1 Supernova
Staring at the door with a sense that could only be described as foreboding, Stiles jiggled his keys in his hand idly, trying to summon up the courage to knock on the damn door. Part of him was apprehensive because he felt like a shit friend. Once again they had all ignored Lydia in this supernatural shit show that had become their life. He had ignored Lydia. Deep down he knew that, while he loved Scott in a way one can only love family, Scott tended to not see the big picture; he saw all problems and people in his very simple black and white world. It was part of what made him a truly good person, but it was also what tended to make him a selfish friend. He often overlooked the pain and struggles of the others for the 'greater good'- whatever the fuck that meant. Stiles knew that better than anyone because he was often the one getting shafted. Lydia seemed to get that, she looked past the chaos and saw Stiles' own turmoil. She had brought him back from the overwhelming, crushing pain of his own mind and for that he owed her.
Scoffing to himself, he sure as hell owed her better than to ask her to be his anchor from the afterlife and then all but abandon her after he got his dad back. Stiles was smart, actually Lydia was probably the only person who understood just how smart he was because she was the only person who was smarter than him in their little pond. He knew that over the past year she had lost just as much as they all had- maybe more. Her safe world of science and logic and mind-numbingly vapid popularity had all been shattered. She had been attacked by Peter, tortured and violated for months while all of her "friends" turned on her and the only people who could explain what was going on lied to her. No one ever said it, but they were just as guilty as Peter was for allowing him to haunt Lydia. They lied to her about what happened, ignored the pain and terror that she lived in. They let let her think that she was crazy instead of taking the time to pull her into the fold.
Scott would tell you that it was protecting her, that he was trying to keep her safe from Derek and his pack, but the truth was Scott felt like everything was his fault. He thoughtthat he couldn't protect her from Peter and if he didn't tell her what happened to her, then it wasn't his fault if she got hurt. The thing is, Scott is the only person who could have empathized with Lydia. They were both attacked by the same psycho. They were both violated and hunted by him. But somehow Scott couldn't see that. Somehow he thought that letting her suffer alone was better, and that was seriously fucked up.
Not that the rest of them were any better. Stiles knew what was going on, he knew about Jackson and Peter and everything else that was going onand he just nodded along with Scott because he was so afraid of losing his best friend to this new world of theirs. He could admit it now, Stiles tried so hard to make himself useful to Scott because he was afraid that Scott would realize that he and Stiles, they weren't alike anymore. They weren't the goofy outcast. The only children of single parents who worked too much. Scott was a werewolf. A fucking werewolf. He had all of this power and this new group of people that were like him; every time Scott was a dick to Derek, Stiles cheered just a little bit but every time he saw Scott and Isaac together his heart clinched. Looking again at the door in front of him, he sighed.
All of that worrying about Scott and he had lost Lydia in the shuffle. He knew how lost she felt, how confused. Not only had she been throw into this world, she had had her own world ripped apart before the truth was finally shared with her. She had been forced to bring Peter back, had watched Jackson die and the brought him back only to have him abandon her. She had been rudderless all summer, sleeping with random guys and acting totally aloof to her friends.
Stiles wasn't stupid, he didn't believe in slut shaming because, honestly, if he was a girl he would fuck anything on legs but he knew that was not what Lydia was doing. She was clearly looking for an escape. Once she started nailing the Alpha twin it was a statement, one he not sure everyone else understood. She was letting them know that they didn't control her and that she wasn't necessarily on their team. The worst part was that they had used her, used her ability to find the bodies but once they found out what she was, that she was a Banshee, they didn't even attempt to help her figure out what that meant. Once again she was left on her own while Stiles tried to vie for Scott's attention over Isaac and Scott tried to figure out what it meant to a true alpha and Allison reformed the hunters, Lydia was alone. Lost without even a shred of understand about who or what she was.
None of them have heard from her in weeks. She avoided them at school at first but then she just seemed to have vanished. He overheard some teachers talking about sending work home yesterday and he knew that he needed to see her. She was his friend and he needed to make sure that she was going to be okay. Scoffing to himself, was okay even an option for any of them anymore?
Looking at the door again, he sighed. What the hell was he even planning on saying to her? Hey, sorry I have been a self centered dick, want to be friends now? Before he could talk himself into or out of knocking the door it swung open, "Oh," Mrs. Martin blinked at him, "I, uh." she quirked her head in the same way Lydia did, "Stiles, is it?"
Trying to cover his shock, he nodded, "Yes ma'am,"
"You must be here to see Lydia," she surmised, he nodded, attempting a smile, "Well I am just on my way out, but maybe you can get her to come out of her room." She scoffed, "She has been locked away up there all week, I can't even get her to come out to eat." Smiling at him like she is happy that there is someone else there to deal with her difficult daughter, "Head on up. Tell her there is food in the fridge if she is hungry."With that she moves past him and he can't help but wonder what she must think is going on with her daughter.
Of any of them, Lydia had taken the most physical damage. Obviously Scott and Derek had been hurt, but their injuries don't exactly lead to hospital stays and scars. Lydia's had, in many ways. Her mother's flippant attitude was probably just her way of coping with a kid that was more fucked up in more ways than she could ever understand or deal with.
With another sigh, Stiles tucked his hands in his pockets and mounted the stairs, trying to come up with a way to ask Lydia how she was doing without having her turn all Lydia- ice queen on him. He had been in her room a few times, once she had even invited him to stay, but when he had turned her down—not because he wasn't interested, cause God knows he had imagined that about a million times, in graphic detail that he would never share- but because he knew that her invitation had more to do with her trying to settle something in her head than it did with him. Remembering that moment, he cringed, he should have stayed and gotten her to talk to him. That was the first time that he saw the real cracks in the facade.
He had always known that there was more to Lydia than she put out there, that she was brilliant and powerful in ways maybe even she didn't understand, but she was starting to splinter under the weight of all of this bullshit that seemed to continue to rain down on them. The lies and the pain and the fear and the constant betrayal and abandonment were crushing her and something in her eyes that night told him so. But he was too scared, too insecure to stay and be her friend so he had run, abandoning her like everyone else.
Her door was locked when he tried it. He knocked softly, not wanting to scare her but when she didn't answer it started to worry him. He knocked again, knowing that her mother had said she was in there.
"Lydia, its Stiles," he said, resting his hand on the door and listening for any sounds of movement in the room. Not for the first time he wished that he was a werewolf because it would make some things so much easier, you know like knowing if someone was in a room. "Lyd, just open the door if you are in there, I need to talk to you."
After another moment he took a deep breath and hoped that she didn't own a gun. Using his drivers license, he made quick work of opening the lock on her bedroom door and pushing it open. Looking around the dark room, Stiles nearly missed her. The bed was a mess and there were old books and notes scattered everywhere. The occasional empty water bottle and office supply scattered between them, her purple laptop discarded in the tangled blankets of the bed. It was a mess akin to what he would expect to find in his own room, but certainly not in Lydia's tightly controlled universe.
On his second pass over the mess, Stiles spotted the redhead in question, curled in the far corner of the room, her back pressed against the wall, knees tucked under her chin with her arms gripped tight around them, as if she was trying to physically hold herself together. Her hair was a mess, piled on top of her head in a loose bun, her face free of make up and puffy from crying. She did not turn towards him, her face highlighted by the full moon as she stared out of the window, the hollow, haunting expression on her face a stark contrast to vibrant colors of the room.
Stiles can feel his mouth opening and closing but he cannot find the words to start this conversation. He doesn't even know what this conversation is. He came here to apologize for being a bad friend and to maybe reach out an olive branch and figure out how to make sure that Lydia was included in pack business so that she didn't get left out anymore. He wanted to volunteer to help her research banshees and work with her on who and what she was in this supernatural supernova that had enveloped them the same way he had for Scott, but looking at her, he knew that she needed more than his sorry ass Yoda routine to fix this.
Her voice sounded tired when it interrupted his internal monologue, "Do you know what they call the male banshee?" She asks, her gaze not leaving the window.
Jerking his head a bit he almost scoffed at the ridiculousness of her question, "What?"
She lets out a dry chuckle that sounds oddly broken, "Nothing. They don't because there are no male banshees, there is simply no need." Finally turning towards him, her eyes are cold, "I am a harbinger of death, the wailing woman, outside of the world, never part of the family but really useful at predicting the end of one," she deadpans. "I am a creature of death." Her voice cracks and she brings her hand to her mouth to try to hold in the sobs.
Looking around Stiles spots the copies of book pages and printouts, all dotted with Lydia's neat, exact handwriting, circles and lines all dealing the versus histories and myths of the banshee.
Stepping forward slowly, his hands in front of him as if he was approaching a rabid animal instead of a 100 pound girl. "Lydia," he whispers, "that is the myth but, myths are not always right. Just look at the wolves, they are not the same." He lowers himself to his knees, kneeling on the floor beside her, "We will figure this out, just like we have figured out everything else."
Finally making eye contact for the first time, she just cries. Her whole body shakes as slumps forward into his chest, his arms wrapping around her involuntarily. Rubbing her back, trying to offer any little comfort that he can.
"I am a creature of death," she murmurs against is chest, "37 different cultural legends and they all say the same thing; a banshee is a woman abandoned. A creature of death and pain who is always alone. How could this have happened?" She explained through her tears in a voice bordering on panic.
Rubbing her back, he whispers comforting noises into her hair to calm her down because even he can hear her heart racing. After a while, she seems to calm a bit, still holding her, Stiles asks, "Lydia, what happened?"
Sniffling a bit, she leaned back, "I," her chin shook as she tried to form the words, "I'm pregnant," she whispered almost as if she didn't believe it herself. Leaning back, she unfurls herself and stands, placing Stiles' face nearly level with her slightly rounder belly now poking out of her black yoga pants.
A complete lack of poetry could be found in his mildly shocked, "Uh." At the sight.