Lydia felt Allison's loss weighing on her every waking moment. It had only been a few weeks, but Lydia already wished the insistent pain that she felt would go away. She just wanted to forget everything. She just wanted to go someplace far away and forget who and what she was. She wanted to go to the coast and drift away in the sea. She didn't care if she lived or died anymore.
She spent the first few days sobbing into her pillows while her mother tried desperately to console her. She hardly ate anything, she refused to attend the last few days of school. When she showed up for her finals she took them and immediately left when she finished. She didn't want anyone to see the grief hanging about her like a thick fog, engulfing her, consuming her.
When they were still trying to defeat the nogitsune things were different. She could push her thoughts of Allison away while focusing on imminent danger. When everything was finished and the funeral came and went and Allison was nothing more than a cold body in the ground, Lydia couldn't take it anymore. She saw Allison in everything. She thought of all the things that she wished she'd asked her. She thought about how strong Allison had been and how she wished she could be that strong too.
There was no escaping her own grief…Until the anger hit her. One summer evening while her mother was away speaking with a realtor about selling their lake house, Lydia curled by herself in a hammock on their front porch and watched the sun set. She was never content these days. Whenever she was alone she longed for company, but when she was surrounded by people she wanted nothing more than her solitude. As the sky grew darker she climbed out of the hammock and went inside to find a distraction. There had to be a book she had not yet read…
Lydia's house was unreasonably large, therefore it had unreasonably sized book shelves filled with an abundance of books. However, Lydia had read almost all of them that interested her. She had found that immersing herself in someone else's world helped her to forget her own world for the time being.
But, there were no new books to distract Lydia so she trudged upstairs and into her room. She settled into her desk chair intending to get a start on her summer assignments from school when she noticed something poking out of one of her notebooks. Without thinking, she tugged on the corner of the object and slid it from its hiding place. It was a photo of her and Allison from her 17th birthday party. Allison looked so young and full of life in the picture. Her cheeks were rosy and dimpled, frozen with a past joy. She would do almost anything to hear the sound of her best friend's laugh ringing in her ears again.
A wave of emotion cascaded through Lydia leaving her feeling sick and faint. Her throat felt tight and her vision blurred as tears welled up in her green eyes. She hated this. She promised herself she wouldn't cry so much. She promised…
"Fuck promises." Lydia sobbed to herself. "Fuck promises and tears and death." Anger surged through her veins like poison. It burned its way through her until she was in a rage, determined to burn the whole dsmn world to the ground for taking her best friend. She stood up angrily, knocking over her desk chair, and began to tear at the photos on the wall. She tore them away with a fierceness she didn't know she possessed. Next was everything on her desk. All the pens, books, and paper tumbled to the ground. She threw things, she screamed until her throat felt as though her vocal chords would split. She ripped away bedspread, yanking it off the mattress and onto the floor, knocking a vase of flowers over in the process. It shattered, water and shards of glass spraying the floor and Lydia's bare feet. She cried even harder as her skin began to sting and bleed from the cuts. She wanted to see this world burn for what it did to Allison. In that moment, she felt a darkness within her that brought a new kind of strength with the anger. She wanted to raze Beacon Hills. If her best friend could no longer exist on this world, she didn't want this world at all. Blood began to mingle with the water and she slumped to the floor in a heap, hating Allison for dying on her, hating herself for letting her and hating the unknown for taking away her best friend. She loved Allison so much. She had never known true friendship until she befriended the huntress.
Lydia had no idea how long she sat there at the foot of her bed, letting the blood and water stain her carpet, her clothes, her life. Allison's blood had forever stained her. No amount of club soda or bleach could clear that away.
Lydia flinched at the sound of the front door opening, but made no move to rise from her position on the damp carpet. "Lydia!" Mrs. Martin called out. "LYDIA!" Lydia tried to shout a response but her voice came out sounding like a choked kind of whisper. Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Mrs. Martin soon found herself in Lydia's dark room. "Lyds?"
"Over here, mom." Lydia responded. Her mother flipped the bedside lamp on and gasped as she took in the scene before her.
"Lydia…oh, my baby girl. What have you done?" She looked down at her daughter with the kind of expression that made Lydia feel as though she were a little kid again. As if her mother had read her mind she sat next to Lydia and cradled her until Lydia's tears were nothing more than salty trails down her cheeks and her sobs nothing more than the occasional hiccup.
"I'm so so sorry, Lydia." Her mother said, her voice shaking.
"I'm sorry, Mom…I destroyed my room." Lydia said assessing the damage.
"I don't care about this room, silly. I care about you. Your best friend was murdered less than a month ago. You're hurting and it's hard and I've been so worried about you. If trashing your room relieves that pain just a little…then I can handle the mess. Although I'd prefer if you'd refrain from tearing yourself up." She gestured at Lydia's bloody feet and the broken vase.
"Yeah…" Lydia winced as she wiggled her feet. "I'm going…I'm going to take a shower and clean myself up. I'll clean up the rest of this before bed."
"Okay, darling…" her mother said, a frown on her face. "Let me know if you need anything."
As soon as her mother left the room, Lydia shut the door and began to undress. She let her shorts fall to the ground, peeled her blouse away from her breast and let her hair fall in tangles from the bun on top of her head. She stepped into the shower stall, letting the scalding hot water burn away her anger and grief. She watched as the blood mixed with the water and slid down the drain and out of site.
When she was finished, she wrapped herself in a towel and proceeded to dress her wounds, wrapping her tender feet with gauze and medical tape to stem the blood flow and protect the cuts from infection. Then Lydia combed her hair carefully, removing the tangles from her strawberry-blonde hair and slipped into her pajamas. Tonight was not a night for silky gowns. It was a night for oversized t-shirts. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were hard and she looked fierce and determined. She wasn't a little girl anymore. This wasn't a game. She would be ready from now on. She was Lydia Martin. She was a banshee. Death would haunt her for the rest of her life. It was time to get tough.