The hospital cafeteria was the current headquarters of Lydia's true fans - her pack. Or at least the trio that would become her pack if she survived. Plus Stiles, obviously.
And they didn't care if she was a sweetheart or a psychopath - because she was theirs. Allison didn't know that Lydia's Alpha was keeping watch on them, attuned to any sign of bad news in its many various forms.
Derek was alert but empty handed. His pack had doubled in size overnight, but as humble beginnings go, these were pretty pathetic. Lydia was seemingly stuck - she wasn't dead yet, and even so her change to a werewolf constitution was not complete. Jackson, unable to control the extremes of his emotions even as a human, had spent his first day as a werewolf transforming from wolfman to young man and back again, over and over. While in werewolf form, he fought fiercely. Each time he shifted back into human form he flip-flopped between accusations and apologies. Jackson was too preoccupied with his own new station in life to have asked about Lydia's, but Scott had brought him to the hospital during a lull in his frenzy to check on her. That was when they had discovered the chocolate pudding in the cafeteria contained a mild sedative that seemed to take the edge off him better than wrestling in the Hale house had all morning.
Scott was responsible for managing Jackson, and Derek considered the present success of that arrangement the only good news about their nascent pack life. In his satisfaction, he scowled thoughtfully at Scott, who of course did not interpret the expression as one of approval, and skirted off warily with Stiles to buy five more bowls of pudding.
The four of them sat around a square table, making various additional non-verbal miscommunications, to the sounds of Jackson scraping a plastic spoon along the inside of styrofoam containers and Stiles' rapid typing on his laptop. Scott's mind was beginning to wander back to whether he had missed his only opportunity to return to humanity the other night, but just then he saw Dr. Deaton, his boss at the vet clinic, put his head in at the door of the cafeteria. Deaton and Derek exchanged a quick gesture, and Derek got up immediately, leaving the boys with a glower that rooted them to their seats.
Stiles looked at Scott meaningfully, and Scott concentrated on applying his growing werewolf skills to eavesdrop down the hall, around the corner, and under the door to the stairwell where the two men had gone. But all Deaton was saying was, "I'm sorry, I just don't know." There was Derek's heavy touch on his arm, and then the surprisingly loud reverb of their footsteps. Scott shivered and tried to resume human-range hearing. He shook his head 'no' to Stiles.
"Scott, Derek has no idea what he's doing," Stiles insisted brightly.
"Okay, but Mr. Argent has some things in mind," Scott murmured, impatient and anxious. Even Jackson, seeming to sense his threat, had looked up when they had passed him in the hall.
"But we're not going to let anything happen to Lydia," continued Stiles, undeterred.
"Well, we're not doing anything to help her, either!" The characteristic whine was creeping into Scott's voice, the one he had when his loyalty demanded something his mind didn't know how to provide.
"I, my friend, may have something," Stiles said, concentrating on his screen.
Derek fell heavily back into his chair. "You have to do something for her," Scott nagged.
"Do I?" The muscles in Derek's face tightened. "What should I be doing?"
"You have to help her, you know, to finish...becoming like us...so she can get better!"
"She's supposed to just change on her own," Derek snapped. "Everybody I ever saw - ," he looked around to see if anyone was near them, "- get bitten, they just changed on their own, or..." He spread his hands pitilessly to indicate the alternative.
"Well, we're not going to let that happen to her. You have to think of something to help her," Scott whispered, a little wild.
"Guys, I think I may have something," Stiles announced over his laptop.
"Scott, you are going to have to start accepting that in our world - "
"She's my friend, she's - she's - I mean, don't you feel - "
"Yes, of course I can feel her, but they don't always make it - "
"How can you - "
"Guys." Stiles put a hand on both their shoulders, but withdrew immediately when two sets of unnatural eyes flashed at him, one pair ice blue and the other yellow as the harvest moon. "Okay, let's tone it down and listen to me, because I am apparently the only one here with problem solving skills." He slid a hand under his laptop.
"Stiles, there's nothing on the internet that's going to help with our- "
"Ah hem! Apparently some of your kind are a teensy bit more hip to the 21st Century," he said, turning the laptop to face them, "because I just found the WebMD of Were. WereMD. WebMD dot com slash fur. Web - "
Derek snatched the computer away and peered at the columns of tiny print.
"What in...?"
A seeming encyclopedia filled the page with a chaotic mix of definitions and diagrams. They spanned the gamut from medicinal ("When topically applied, the tincture has a profound effect upon blockages.") to mechanical (showing how to put the components of a ham radio together) to botanical ("All members of the Nightshade family will lend a fortifying presence to the sleep of occult beings.") The subjects were cacophonous, but certainly a large amount was supernatural information.
"What makes you think this isn't just some crackpot human who's - "
But a drawing toward the bottom of the page caught Derek's attention and seemed to answer his question all at once. It was a map of Northern California that looked like it had been drawn on a napkin and scanned in. Seemingly all the counties had been laid out wrong and mis-labelled, because right where Butte County should be was simply the name "Hale."
Derek's eyes darted back and forth until he concluded, "This is a territory map," with such wide-eyed incredulity that it was all Stiles could do to keep from laughing. But he knew his case would be lost if he didn't press on.
"Yeah, not as sneaky as you usually play it, but I'm thinking it's legit. And so look at the 'Work With Me' page," he said reaching over to click the mouse.
A glamor shot of a scrawny, dark haired hippie accompanied a long list of skills and professions, mostly as represented on the previous page, but also encompassing meteorology, photography, taxidermy, and the offer of "I'll build you a website!" in flashing green text, next to a white square that said "Javascript Error."
"I think she's our best bet."
"Stiles, we don't even know if - "
"Look, Derek, it says 'Occult Healing and Mythic Diagnostics' which is exactly what we need right now."
"This isn't how we - "
"Dude. It's time to call in the big guns. The object of my unreciprocated affections is lying in here dying and no one in the building can do what she needs done for her. Frankly, if you knew what to do, you would have done it by now, and you haven't. It's okay to feel ashamed; real men cry, you know?" Derek squinted into the whirlwind, but Stiles carried on. "You know what else real men do? They ask for help."
"Help?" Derek repeated. "Help? Did you notice a welcoming committee when Scott was bit? Have you seen me going off to congratulation parties for graduating to Alpha? Our kind - they don't help. And if they did, there'd be strings attached that we couldn't handle. I don't know what this is," he indicated the website,"but it's not our answer."
There had been a soft ding as Derek had been speaking, and Stiles spun the laptop back toward himself.
"I think you're wrong, man, because she just emailed me back to say we can pick her up in Redding tonight."