Lydia spent the afternoon walking, weighing her options, going over the two conversations she had with Stiles again. The anger was still boiling inside of her but she had questions. Lydia was a woman of science and she needed to have all the data before she could reach a conclusion.

Meeting Stiles was therefore an obligation; she owed it at least to herself.

She was afraid of what she could discover. Stiles had in his hands the missing piece of the puzzle she had been trying to recreate for years and she had the feeling that this little piece could change the entire picture.

And yet, there was this little voice in her head. Telling her tirelessly that she already knew what this picture looked like.

At 5PM Lydia was approaching the village square and saw that Stiles was already there. He was pacing and glancing at his watch almost every second while running his other hand nervously through his hair.

When his eyes eventually fell on her, he froze. He wanted to smile at her but there was something in the way she looked at him (in the way she glared at him) that intimidated him.

They sat at a table outside a cafe; Stiles ordered a coffee and Lydia a mint syrup.

"What kind of monster?" she asked after a long silence with no forewarning.

Stiles wasn't sure what to do and hesitated a long moment. He knew she needed to know the truth but this question was forcing him to go straight to the point, leaving him no chance to make things look easier to accept.

"Look, I need to explain some things first."

"No, just answer me."

Stiles swallowed slowly, incapable of looking away from her eyes. He understood that he wouldn't have any other choice but to answer her questions. One after the other. He surrendered and answered with the same attitude.

"A werewolf. His name is Peter Hale."

"A werewolf?"

She flinched slightly but collected herself immediately, adding the idea that werewolves existed to her life paradigm. He nodded and she continued.

"How is that possible?"

"I guess… I don't really know… All I know is that they are real and some, like Peter, were born werewolf and others are turned with a bite."

"I have been bitten."

"Yeah but nothing happened to you after that, we kept watch on you for a while."

"How come nothing happened?"

"We never found out."

"So, it didn't have any effect?"

"I don't know."

"I thought the point of this meeting was for you to answer my questions..."

She was slowly getting fed up with it. She was ready to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural but not without answers and Stiles was more than disappointing.

"Yes! I can explain everything: what happened, the unexplained disappearance and deaths, Allison… but there are so many things I still don't know!"

She was unsure what to answer. Stiles was clearly nervous and she was wondering if he could feel as lost as she was.

"Very well. Tell me what happened to Allison then."

He took a deep breath and began to tell her a story that kept sending shivers down her spine. Every single detail echoed something in her somehow. She had the feeling she was listening to the summary of a movie she watched while falling asleep.

When Stiles explained to her that she had been manipulated by Peter Hale to help him come back to life, she saw herself years ago waking up with bare feet, in her pajamas, and in the middle of nowhere.

When he explained that he, Scott and Allison were too late to save his own father; she remembered the feeling she once had in class. She was drowning and couldn't stop from crying the entire day.

When he explained that something evil took control over him, committing murders with his own hands and face, she remembered feeling continually disorientated for weeks. Feeling like nothing was real, like she couldn't tell her dreams and nightmares from the reality.

When he told her how Allison died, she recalled screaming with all of her strength in the street and recalled the pain she had felt in her stomach. Like she had been stabbed.

It was Lydia's turn to swallow with difficulty. She had slowly turned pale.

"Does everything have something to do with Peter?" She had asked this question without knowing why, as if it was a certainty for her that the monster from her nightmares, this Peter Hale, was responsible for everything.

"Yeah, that's what I found out."

"And Scott? What did he have to do with it?"

"He was the first Peter bit. That's what turned him."

She remained silent for a little while and tried to hide the confusion in her mind.

"When did you leave?" She finally asked.

"When I was 18, a few years after Allison's death."

"What made you leave?"

"I couldn't afford college and I blamed myself for everything. My father's death, your attack, Allison's death and even Scott's bite. If I hadn't dragged him into the woods that night, nothing would have happened. I wanted to come here, say goodbye to Allison and find Peter to avenge everyone."

Lydia didn't reply.

Anxiety was rising in Stiles: he had sworn to himself to tell the truth, to be sincere, to tell her everything and to lower his protections to let her in. She had to know everything he knew. But dwelling on all of that was painful and he felt as if he was in front of the Lydia he knew in high school, the one who would have died instead of letting her emotions show, the cold-hearted queen as the gossipers used to call her.

But Stiles knew. He knew that she was so much more than that, so much more than the mask she was currently wearing and it was slowly killing him to see her like that.

"What is that? I saw it somewhere."

She had seen his tattoo and caught his forearm.

"Where?"

"A few weeks ago, in a cafe. I thought it was an arrow and it made me think about Allison. That's what brought me here."

"You were in my cafe?"

He couldn't believe it, she had been there and he hadn't seen her?

"What is it?"

She had knowingly evaded the question. Speaking about her life to someone who had just turned her life and view of things upside down was out of the question.

"It's Japanese, it means self. It reminds me that I'm myself… If that makes sense… Sometimes I wake up and I don't know if it's real or if I'm hallucinating. It helps me concentrate. And the arrow is Allison. I always admired her courage and devotion. I want to make her death… I don't want her to be dead for nothing. She died for me, to save me."

He was struggling to find words, struggling against sobs that seemed to seek for an escape.

"I want to live for her and kill the monster who stole our lives."

He had said this last sentence in a more confident tone. His voice was devoid of tears but filled with a controlled anger. Lydia let the silence stretch a little longer and tried to read in his eyes where this sudden confidence could have come from.

She resumed with a shaky voice.

"Did I really resurrect this monster?"

Stiles nodded faintly without daring to meet her gaze. She slowly turned her eyes away.

"I don't remember anything. When my mother had wanted to move out of the country at the end of sophomore year, I knew it had something to do with my attack but I didn't know what exactly. Did she know about that?"

"No, I don't think so."

They remained quiet for a while and Lydia broke the silence to say something she never told anyone, fearing to hear the word crazy again.

"I felt Allison's death…"

It had been more a whisper and Stiles had to come closer to hear her. Lydia had a fixed stare, it looked like she wasn't gazing at anything in peculiar; she was lost in her memory.

"I was coming back home, walking down the street when I felt a lump in my throat. I screamed Allison's name without knowing why. I had never screamed so loud… It felt like someone had stabbed me…"

Stiles nodded and said something but Lydia wasn't listening.

She wanted to cry, to give way to her emotions but she couldn't. She was wondering what made her confide in this stranger, she didn't trust him yet and her anger was still there. But she felt that it helped her feel better so, she continued.

"And there is this nightmare. I don't know how many times I had it. I stopped counting… I'm in a maze or something like that…"

She was speaking faster; her breath was halting as if she was living what she was telling him.

"I want to go out. I'm looking for the way out and I see a light. I'm heading for it but the daylight turns into two big red dots… I run in the opposite direction, I jump over empty spaces, walls, I rush down stairs after stairs. I want to stop but I can't… He could catch me if I did… I don't know what he is, what it is. It sometimes looks like a wolf, sometimes like a man with sharp teeth… When he catches me, he empties me; I don't know how to explain it…"

She seemed to slowly break herself out of her trance and realised that Stiles had took her hands in his. She wanted to take her hands back and shout at him but saw blood on her fingers. She had hurt them against the splinters of the wooden table she was scratching and Stiles had to make her stop.

A light bubble of warmth seemed to suddenly chase away the void she had started to feel.

"It's stupid, isn't it?" she asked, faking a laugh.

"No, not really, no."

His gaze was so soft that she couldn't help but relax her face.

He wanted to rid her of her fears, he knew first hand that nightmares could feel as tangible as reality.

They stayed like that for a little while, wrapped in a comfortable silence. Lydia could feel some of the weight on her shoulder vanish and missed the contact with his hands as soon as he moved them away.

"Why didn't you tell me anything in high school? You all knew what was going on and decided that I didn't deserve to know?"

"No, it wasn't like that, I swear… I genuinely believed I was protecting you. If it makes you feel any better... Allison, Scott, and I...we disagreed a lot on that. Allison wanted to tell you about all of it, but I-" He sighed. "I kept telling her that if you didn't know, you'd be safe. Knowing...it ruined the lives of everyone involved."

She tried to laugh to emphasize the irony of it but her laugh got caught in her throat.

"I can't say that not knowing has improved my life…"

"I'm sorry… I truly believed I was helping."

"You should have listened to Allison."

"Yeah… I realize that now," he said with a sad smile, "You're right. Of course, you're right. You've always been the smartest of us."

He lost himself in a distant memory and Lydia was left wondering.

"What do you mean?"

Stiles let out an embarrassed laugh. His point wasn't to confess to the obsessional love he had felt for her, to the caring attention he had always had toward her. When he was 15, he knew all about the way she kept hiding herself, about how she kept lowering her intelligence to remain within the norm.

"I always knew you would win a Nobel prize or something amazing like that. You always had the answer in class but never raised your hand. I could hear you whisper every answer. I never sat too far away from you…" he said smiling, slightly embarrassed about this confession. "And I know you sometimes invented theorems to solve equations. Ms. Flemming used to get so pissed when you did that…"

They both quietly laughed at that memory.

"I would love to tell her that I ended up proving some of those theorems a few years ago!"

Lydia caught herself joining in the conversation. The mere mention of her passion had been enough to lighten her mood and she knew that a treacherous smile was slowly creeping on her lips. She could read relief in Stiles's eyes.

"I have no doubt about that."

They talked a long time about her research. Stiles didn't understand anything but kept asking her questions; she was talking with such passion that it was like being in seventh heaven for him to see her like that. He listened in awe, not wanting her to stop.

But after a while, she paused and her smile vanished.

"If I hadn't been this concerned about my reputation… Maybe we would have met sooner. And maybe…"

"No, Lydia." He had cut her off. He knew exactly what she was doing: she was going to blame herself, leading them to talk about Allison and he wanted to keep that gorgeous smile on her lips at any cost. "It wouldn't have changed anything, okay? If Peter wasn't the psychotic narcissist he is, always on the prowl for blood and power, it would have changed everything. But you had to be you. None of this is your fault."

Stiles instinctively took her hands again, drawing comforting circles with his thumbs on her fingers and keeping his voice as soft as possible. She was overcome with calm and smiled shyly, her lips pressed tightly together and her emerald green eyes filled with gratitude. He realized what he was doing and dropped her hands as fast as if he had come too close to a flame.

Lydia repressed a laugh when she saw his cheeks turning red. Anger seemed to progressively evaporate and she blamed herself for being resentful of Allison. She made the silent promise to apologise to her friend before leaving.

The afternoon was gradually turning into early evening and the air was breathable again, less humid. The sun was bathing the streets in warm orange colours. Linen was hanging in the windows, adding to the dry surrounding air nice smells of detergent and awaking memories of home and childhood. Kids were playing outside, filling the streets with their laughs.

The atmosphere was nothing but happiness, summer and vacations. It contrasted brutally with the heaviness of their conversation and the weight in their eyes.

Time went by; they kept talking.

Lydia kept asking questions to know precisely what kind of supernatural creatures crossed their paths through the years, trying to understand how it was scientifically possible. She also tried to make out the event's chronology to find a meaning behind everything she had been through. Completing the puzzle was filling her with happiness. As unbelievable as it seemed, it made sense to her.

One question remained however. Why had she been aware of everything that happened while being on another continent? Stiles didn't have any answer and it tormented her maybe even more than figuring out the werewolf metabolism.

Soon enough, their empty stomachs started to growl. They decided to stay for dinner but nervously laughed when the waiter brought them the menus: everything was written in the local dialect and nothing looked familiar.

Lydia tried to ask the waiter for guidance but he pretended to not understand what she was saying. Which made Stiles boil with anger given that he was sure she could speak better French than this asshole. They tried to google the names but couldn't find any signal.

Lydia was ready to surrender and leave when Stiles had the most ridiculous idea and suggested they could choose the dishes that sounded more appetizing.

She was hard to convince but eventually gave up for the sake of her stomach.

"What?" She asked after pronouncing every dish on the menu.

"Nothing..." Stiles closed his mouth and tried to stop staring at her. "It's just... Everything sounds tasty in your mouth... I mean pronounced like that..."

Lydia blinked, not knowing how to reply to that. Was he flirting with her? She had no time to think about a biting remark because the waiter came back and they had to make a choice.

When he brought them what their ordered, Stiles raised an interrogatory eyebrow to Lydia who was trying to conceal a laugh behind her hand. She had something with what looked like pork and beef feet. Stiles's plate on the other hand had a terrible smell. He learned afterwards that is was mutton tripe. As it turned out, red wine made both dishes perfectly acceptable. They drank one bottle between the two of them and ordered another one.

Lydia felt wonderful. She didn't know if the warmth she was feeling could be attributed to the wine or to happiness but if she was being honest, she didn't care. The main thing was: she was euphoric.

"Okay, new question… What did you see the last time you went to the movies?"

"I don't really go to the movies."

Stiles was staring at her, mouth agape.

"Never?"

"Well, sometimes… But I realized that I didn't really like that, that I was going because that's what people expect from you and not because I enjoyed it. So, I tend not to go if I can help it."

Stiles (an incredulous expression printed on his face) still hadn't closed his mouth. Lydia tried to close his jaw from her fingertip and laughed. It seemed to shake him out of his lethargy.

"But why? What do you do then?"

"I read. I like to read. You have the time to truly understand, you think, you play with your imagination. With a movie, you have to see things with the director's eyes and I hate when people try to impose things on me."

She took another sip of wine a small smile on her lips without breaking eye contact with a dazed Stiles.

"And you?" she resumed, "What kind of movies do you like?"

"Star Wars!"

The lack of hesitation and his rush made her smile even more. "Oh really?"

She raised an eyebrow, faking a surprised look but then, she stared at him wide-eyed suddenly realizing something.

"Wait a minute… Were you the one who kept leaving drawings of Han and a redhead Leia in my locker? With sentences like Be the Leia to my Han for prom?"

"God no…" he answered frowning, "I had a different style. I would rather join the Lacrosse team to get your attention you know… And I would never draw you as a redhead!"

"You were on the Lacrosse team?" She asked while trying to hide her smile behind her napkin.

"Oh yeah totally! You never saw me? I was so good though at like… cheering, warming the bench, giving water to the other players… all that stuff you know!"

He was smirking and Lydia couldn't help but laugh. They were wrapped in a comfortable silence, enjoying the warmth settling around them.

Lydia eventually broke the silence.

"Why Star Wars?"

"I don't really know… I've always loved it. It's not just another science fiction saga with heroes and adventures. Well… there are heroes and adventures, but it's way more than that. They all fight for what they believe is good, even Darth Vador. But at the same time, they make mistakes, they were all damaged in some way. Their choices made them who they are, even the bad ones. It's a tragedy, a story about politics, choices and vengeance. I'm sure someone wiser than me would find a philosophy of life with it."

He stopped, beside himself with passion and stared at Lydia whose gaze was fixated on him.

"Wait, don't tell me you never watched the movies…" he said frowning.

"Oh no, I did! It's just… I've heard about those people who lived, dreamed, breathed Star Wars but I've always thought it was more like a myth." She paused, smirking. "But I get it… You could almost convince me to watch them with you…"

She was now smiling and biting her lower lip, slightly titling her head and Stiles was speechless. He was thrown by this flirty version of Lydia. Wait a minute, was she flirting with him? He couldn't get rid of the vision of her small frame snuggled up against his side under a warm blanket with popcorn and the music of the opening credits in the background.

He suddenly became conscious of the flush on his cheeks and tried to stare at anything that wasn't her burning green gaze or the showing lace at her blouse's cleavage.

They kept talking for a long while. Lydia tried to explain some mathematical theories, talked about physics and philosophy while Stiles asked questions and realized that her knowledge had no boundaries. He was clever but the wine wasn't helping so Lydia used several napkins to draw diagrams. Stiles didn't know it was even possible to worship her more than he already did.

Their hands kept brushing when they would grab at the same time their glass or the bottle, sending a rush of blood and electricity down their entire bodies. Sometimes, the brush would linger a little too long. His thumb would stroke her palm or she would slightly intertwine their fingertips but they would quickly take their hands away after a few seconds.

Happiness could be read on their faces, heard in the clear notes of their laughs. As if the entire day and the day before hadn't existed, as if their past were blank pages that they could fill with whatever they wanted.

But the spell broke when the waiter came to tell them that his shift was coming to an end and that they needed to pay. They paid, stood up and started to walk away, leaving their smiles behind them to wear the masks that had been hardening their faces for so many years.

They exchanged their phone numbers and promised each other to stay in touch while walking back to Lydia's hotel.

"Are you leaving tomorrow?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Yeah. I've got a new lead for…"

He cut himself off, not wanting to bring Peter Hale back in the conversation but the atmosphere had been already altered. Lydia felt it, felt the void inside of her again and moved away from his arm that she had linked with hers.

"You'll be careful, right?"

"Yeah…"

Silence fell on them again by the time they reached Lydia's hotel. Speechless, they stared at each other for a little while, not knowing what to do, what to say. Lydia eventually took him in her arms, wishing him good night and opened the door.

Stiles's gaze stayed on her until she disappeared in the lobby. He had wanted to ask her to come with him but knew it would have been a bad idea so, he hadn't said anything. He turned around and started to walk away, sighing in the night and wondering if he would be able to fall asleep tonight. It would be a miracle if he would.

That night, Lydia woke up crying in her hotel room. She'd had her nightmare once again and the monster was human this time. She was sitting against a wall in a small path, naked, with her stomach cut opened and her guts streaming down the gutter. The monster was devouring her entrails, smiling at her with a toothy grin. She couldn't do anything, couldn't move a single limb. She was struggling to keep her eyes opened but it took too much of her energy and she needed that energy to beg him to stop. Which she didn't. He whispered awful things in her hear. She couldn't remember what.

When she woke up, a new rage had settled in her. Some sort of heat was spreading inside her chest. Not the comfortable but fleeting warmth she had felt the entire evening. It was something permanent, cruel, colder maybe. Revenge.

Stiles's revelations and her nightmare mingled. She had to go out on her balcony to breathe the night fresh air but had forgotten that her room was facing the cemetery. From her spot, she could see Allison's grave.

She grabbed her phone and sent a text to Stiles, telling him that she would come with him to find Peter if he wanted her to. The second after hitting send, she received a plain Okay.

She wanted to find him, make him pay. And if she had to go through it to feel warm, to feel blood flowing in her veins, she would take it. She couldn't go back to work anyway: she couldn't see herself take back her life where she left it. Not when she knew that the monster from her nightmare was real and that Allison wasn't avenged.

When the police questioned her, the neighbour maintained that she had heard noises during the night. She hadn't had the reaction to look at the time but when she went out, it was pitch dark. The air was icy and the light of the full moon intensified the whiteness of her breath, each exhalation turning into curls of smoke before vanishing into the night. She had tightened her robe to feel warmer. She wasn't positive about what exactly she had been hearing. She couldn't tell if those cries belonged to a dog, a wolf or a human being, just like cats can sometimes imitate the cry of a new-born baby. They were several of them, fighting. Her only certainty was that there were sounds of flesh, bodies thrown against walls. They were whining, groaning. It had sent a shiver down her spine, so she had gone back inside. This nice woman was well known for her psychotic disorders. No action was taken about her call.

The taste of blood in his mouth was the only thing that prompted him to crawl out of his den. The taste of the victory he just crushed. At his feet were four gutted corpses: animals? humans? What did it matter? Blood and flesh are the same.

He went out, it had been ages since he had felt such a surge of energy. Knowing where it was coming from was unimportant. Something was warming him from the inside and that thing was keeping him alive. He had no idea whether he was walking on four feet or two, he couldn't tell the difference. He didn't even know what came out of his mouth when he uttered sounds.

The street turned left and that's when he saw her. She must have been 15 years old, beautiful strawberry blond hair and green eyes. The teenager stopped in her track when she saw him, visibly scared. He had no idea what made him scary but he loved that horrified look in the eyes of the people who crossed his path.

Suddenly, the urge of tasting her felt too strong. She was easy to catch; her flesh was tender and easily ripped up. She was still alive when he ate her intestine. He tried to soothe her, telling her how beautiful she was, that he was in love with her, that all of this was nothing but natural. He managed to make her quiet. Or maybe had she eventually died? That didn't really matter.

He brought the corpse back in his path and piled it up above the other corpses, guessing that birds and rats would take over.

One last time, he howled to the moon before slipping further into the darkness.

Stiles didn't sleep a lot that night. He had waited in his car until the influence of wine wore off. He couldn't help but think that he should have told her something else, but what? Something was missing. His entire teenage years had been spent admiring her, protecting her from afar. She had been the main point of his existence without knowing it. With distance and years, his mind had only turned her into some sort of mythical creature, a gorgeous and unapproachable goddess, barely human.

Seeing her without expecting it, talking to her, giving everything away within a few hours seemed now surreal. Had it truly happened? No, it was probably another trick; his mind was playing him once again. A few hours and she had disappeared. It was a dream, nothing more. It wasn't possible, he had thought about this moment a thousand times and hadn't told her a single thing he wanted to tell her. He was pondering while staring at the moon, a full moon that was lighting up the village in black and white.

He fell asleep until the buzzing of his phone woke him up. He had a message. From Lydia. His heart leaped in his throat, she wanted to come with him? Without thinking about anything, he answered "okay" while knowing that he shouldn't have answered at all.

Several emotions were crossing his mind but there was no way he could tell them apart since they all seemed to turn into warmth waves overwhelming him when he recalled her smile, her laugh. He was the personification of bliss: sitting in his car, smiling at the moon, the eyes full of stars and the stomach full of butterflies.

He fell asleep again but the feeling of an impending disaster woke him up. Something inside of him was telling him that he had irrevocably doomed her. He could have backed up, could have left when he had seen her at the cemetery. She would have gone home, had a chance for a normal life. What was he giving her if not a search he knew could last forever? A tragic destiny without redemption?

He didn't fall asleep again after that. He watched the sun rising in the sky. He could leave, there was still time. He didn't. Instead, he wrote her to meet him at his car at seven. The thought of the disaster to come was still tightening his chest when he bought them two coffees and something to eat. He was selfish, always had been. He cursed himself for that; his father and Allison had died because of that! What if Lydia died too?

But when he saw her coming from afar, all his thought faded away. The sight of her had hushed the voices in his head. He only felt the same adoration he had always felt for her.

After they drank their coffees and ate, they went away. They had a few days trip ahead of them: Stiles's new lead would take them to Spain, to a village in the middle of the country. After his last fruitless chase, he had found a young man waiting for him in front of his hotel. The man had told him that a woman from Peter's family wanted to meet him, he had given him all the information and had vanished in the night before Stiles could ask any questions. He was still suspicious but it was his only lead given his source couldn't be reached.

Before leaving the village, they went one last time to the cemetery to make their goodbyes to Allison. They then made a stop in the nearer big city for Lydia who had to buy some clothes and send an email to her university.

Stiles tried to convince her to go back home but she refused. She finally understood those tragic heroines who only lived for vengeance, who could only breathe after their act had been done. She was Antigone, Electra, she was all of those Greeks goddesses filled with the urge to make the men pay, the ones who had scorned them. She was thrusting with justice and blood. Everything else was an illusion. Vengeance gave her a landmark, a magnetic north and she had no desire to give it up. Not after spending so many years losing herself in her own existence.

She didn't flinch when she sent her email, putting this part of her life behind her. Since the day before, she finally felt alive. Emotions, genuine emotions, were rushing inside of her and even if she couldn't name them or tell them apart, she knew they didn't compare to what she had been feeling for the last ten years. She wasn't cold anymore, not like before. It didn't feel like tomorrow would be the same day as yesterday because she didn't know what the future held. It gave her shivers that woke her up from what seemed to be a long sleep, a long coma. She had been sleeping with opened eyes, surviving without living.

They bought everything necessary and got back into the car. After more than two decades spent living in the same world, breathing the same suffocating air, they had found each other. They had stroke their matches above Allison's grave, merging their pain to create a dangerous and eternal fire, a thousand years old fire. Together they had awakened the Erinyes, children of the Earth and the Sky, born from the primordial Chaos to restore justice.

Their car headed towards the sun. They looked at each other one last time before crossing the exit sign of the town. They recognized in the gaze of the other the same determination, the one that had driven Orestes crazy and that would make Peter beg for mercy.