A/N: Inspired by Tyler Posey saying how he would love to see the series end with Scott's death! Yeah, I'm not for it, but it did give me this idea. So, yeah.
We Can Survive This
.
There is a word for it, she thinks in panic as her fingers twitch and she eyes the concrete walls around her. Hard and tall, they make her raise her knees to her chest and circle her arms around her legs to keep herself grounded.
She's so sure that if she remembers the word everything will go back to normal.
Everything will be perfect.
"I don't know." Allison laughs as she tosses a shirt towards her bed. "I don't think that's my colour."
Lydia gives her a disbelieving look as she picks up the shirt and studies it with a frown. "You're right. It's not."
When Allison raises a mocking eyebrow at her, Lydia can't help but smile brightly.
"It would suit me better."
Allison laughs as she dives into her wardrobe once again. "It's a good thing we're friends, because otherwise I would think that you were lying to me just to get my clothes."
"Who? Me?" Lydia mocks with wide eyes. "Never!"
She turns around, shirt in her hand, and freezes when she sees who's standing near Allison's bed in Allison's room.
"Lydia!" he breathes out her name like it's a prayer, stepping forward and lifting a hand to take her arm.
But she panics and steps back, her fingers tightening on the shirt.
He frowns with confusion as he takes his arm back. "You have to come with me," he says urgently. "You have to come with me, like, now."
Allison suddenly appears next to her, her eyes only on Lydia. "How about this? We go shopping and you show me what not to buy?"
Lydia watches the way the boy watches Allison, as if she is a ghost that shouldn't be here. But he's wrong. He's the one who is misplaced.
"Sounds like a plan," Lydia says carefully, watching as Allison's smile brightens as she turns back to her wardrobe.
She turns back to the boy, and sees the way his shoulders slump when he sees the look in her eye.
"You're not supposed to be here."
"No," he says carefully. "You're not supposed to be here." He raises his hand once more and cringes when she steps further away from him. "Come with me, Lydia. Please?"
But she shakes her head and turns away from him. "No," she says more than once. "Never."
She listens intently as her mother tells her how her day had been while they sit at the dinner table.
It's a simple dinner with a salad on each of their plates, which makes her think it's a Friday night, as per their usual.
Her mother speaks animatedly about her new teaching position, but Lydia finds her gaze pulled over her shoulder towards the boy standing close.
"I really don't know what the faculty is thinking—"
"Lydia. Please. Just come with me."
"—if they wanted a bigger budget the only way they could—"
"You don't belong here."
"—it's not the first time, is it? They could have easily—"
"This is not real. None of this is real."
She feels her breath quicken and it suddenly feels like something is pushing hard against her chest.
"Shut up," she whispers, but her mother keeps talking and the boy keeps pleading. "Shut up," she says again, louder. But, they don't stop.
She covers her ears, squeezes her eyes shut and tries to block out the rising sound. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!."
She's sitting in the cafeteria at school between Jackson and Danny, the table full of lacrosse players and conversation based on lacrosse. The topic bores her. But she smiles when she has to and she gives words of encouragement as to how their team is the best and no one can take that away from them.
The boy stands across from her, suddenly unsure, nervously bouncing from one foot to the other as he contemplates coming towards her.
With his mind finally made up, he starts towards her, stopping only when conversation suddenly ceases at her table and they all look up at him. Although deterred, he powers through.
"You can't be here, Lydia. It's not right. It's not healthy." He eyes the way the people at her table stare at him with blank eyes and then steps closer. He stops when they shift in their seats as if they are about to tackle him.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she says flippantly.
"You don't know—" He stops, suddenly tired as he pleads with her. "Lydia. Please. Just come with me."
She shakes her head and pierces a piece of fruit with her fork. "No," she says sternly.
And that was the end of that.
When she sits with Scott, both of them going over the homework in the library because, seriously, he needs to apply himself way more than any other person she knows, she sees the change in the boy.
He doesn't tell her to leave with him. Instead, he eyes Scott hungrily, studying each and every movement, every laugh, every dumbass question, as he stares without moving a muscle. She finds herself watching him instead of Scott, but Scott doesn't notice.
He makes a mistake that she knows he always makes and watches as the boy's lips quirk slightly upwards, his eyes tearing up violently because of it. It causes her heart to contract painfully, so she screws her eyes shut and thinks about something else.
The boy watches with confusion as she sits on his bed, his own form pacing up and down as he animatedly tells her his newest idea. She listens the only way she can, with an air of boredom as she rolls her eyes at the appropriate times.
But the boy is staring at her incredulously as his twin paces in front of him.
"Lydia…" he says, his voice cracking. "I'm not…" He moves across the room and kneels in front of her, but her eyes stay on Stiles Stilinski as he tells her that he's clearly had too much Adderall.
"Lydia, I'm alive," the boy says urgently. "I'm right here."
She feels her chin quiver as she shakes her head, her eyes watching the nervous, jumpy energy of the one person she never thought she's lose. "No, I saw you…" She thinks of the way the knife plunged into his stomach, the way he gasped, the way his eyes met hers before he fell onto his back, lifeless.
"No, I'm right here." He tries to grab her but she squirms away, her eyes still on the way he paces, his mind moving a mile a minute. Because she always found it fascinating, watching the way he worked.
"You left me," she says shakily. "You were never supposed to leave me." She wipes the tears from her cheeks and sees the way he stops suddenly with an idea. She smiles through her tears. She likes thinking about him this way, with fire and passion in his eyes.
"Lydia. Look at me."
She doesn't. She watches the Stiles she knew as he pulls at his chair, practically falling over as he grabs his laptop and starts typing fast. He's giving her a commentary as he does his research. He's such an idiot about it that it makes her want to laugh.
"Lydia…" she hears him say softly from her side.
She shakes her head, her eyes studying the way his shoulders are hunched.
"Lydia," he says gently. "Look at me."
She thinks it might break her, to look at him, but she let's her eyes roam across his face anyway.
He smiles sadly as their eyes finally meet. "I know that what happened took away so many people," he says gently, his fingers entwining against hers. "It didn't take me."
"You don't understand," she says with an undignified sob. "They killed everyone, Stiles. My mom, Allison, Jackson, Danny, Scott…" She sees the way he takes in a deep breath and she knows she had hurt him. "You…"
His eyes suddenly spark fiercely as he leans towards her. "We're alive, Lydia. I'm still alive and I can't…" He stops, tears streaking down his face as he smiles sadly. "I can't do this without you." His fingers tighten on hers and she squeezes his hands with her own. "They took my dad, you remember that?"
She nods, her own tears falling without restraint.
"Please," he chokes out. "Don't make me do this without you."
She nods before she knows what she's doing, and then he's hugging her, and then, she blinks open her eyes to see Stiles laughing happily through his tears as he pulls her practically onto his lap and hugs her like he will never let her go.
She sees Derek behind him, a small smile on his lips before he retracts his claws, turns and walks out of her room at Eichen House.
They bury the Sheriff on a gloomy Friday evening to a large audience that knew him just as well as she did. She spends the day holding Stiles upright, her fingers tightening their hold on him as he sniffed away his tears the best he could.
She spends the night in his bed, her chest against his back, her arms wrapped around his body and her hand placed protectively over the scar that should have killed him but didn't.
He holds onto her arms tight, telling her how Derek and Deaton saved his life, and how he found out about her breakdown. He tells her about how he heard her in his mind when he was fighting for consciousness. He tells her about how he ventured into her mind as she studies the claw marks embedded at the nape of his neck, where she knows she has matching claw marks in the nape of hers.
Then, with a broken voice, he tells her about the time his father had tried to take him fishing and how he had capsized them both. He tells her about the time he and Scott tried to build their own tree house only to have it stolen by a group of bullies. He tells her every story he can before he falls asleep in her arms.
"We should leave," she tells him three days later, as they lie tangled on his bed. His nose gently bumps against hers as he stares into her eyes, and she runs her hand languidly through his hair as she says the next words. "I can't be here anymore."
"Where do you want to go?" he asks her softly.
"Anywhere," she says. Anywhere where the ghosts of their loved ones don't linger. "New York, maybe."
He nods, his nose bumping her cheek. "I'd like that."
Her smile is small and genuine. "Good." She let's her hand tangle in the hairs at the nape of his neck, her palm lying flat against his skin so she can feel his heartbeat, steady and strong. "I want you to be safe. Because if anything bad ever happens to you…"
She sees his eyes widen, and feels his pulse jump against her skin. "You'll go out of your freakin' mind?" he whispers.
Her eyes widen as she remembers that conversation from so long ago, and her heart stutters to a stop. She moves that one-inch towards him and let's her lips pull against his gently, her eyes closing as she kisses him for the first time since a panic attack all those months ago.
Pulling away, she eyes the way he studies her with awe, her body practically rolling over his as she smiles through tears threatening to spill over. "I already did."
It's not how it's supposed to be, but when he kisses her, his hands touching her skin, her fingers tangling in his hair, she thinks that nothing can be as perfect.
Through supernatural beings and mass murderers, they survived, now all they had to do was live.
With Stiles, Lydia thinks that it's entirely possible.