He doesn't make it. He gets to the last period, halfway through, then finds a memory lurking somewhere under his desk, that tackles him full-force to the ground. Stiles tries with all his might to shut it out, to focus on the maths lesson, but he can't.

He can only see a smashed window, feel the night air whipping round his face and the dead panic upon releasing a dark druid has stolen his father for a human sacrifice. It's stupid; that was ages ago, they got through that. His father is fine. But all he can see is a broken window, a crumpled sheriff's badge. And that's enough. Scott doesn't get there in time, he's had to sit on the other side of the classroom. He sees his friend's back roll forward, knows he's struggling. But he doesn't get there in time, it happens too quickly. One second Stiles is struggling, the next he's gone.

A mumbled explanation to the teacher, a mess of desperate limbs as he tears for the door. It slams behind him. He tries to find solace in the quiet peace of the hallway, devoid of students for once. But all he can see is his own body becoming powder and crumbling to the ground at his feet. It's not helping, there isn't anywhere left in this school that doesn't have an ugly scar carved out of it. And he's trying to patch them up but they just keep opening.

Stiles knows that Scott will be after him any second now but for some reason he can't face that idea. Can't face his best friend's kind hand on his shoulder, his look of sympathy as he takes him to be picked up by his father. Because then Scott will go back to class and get on with it, while Stiles is taken home like some sickly child and it's not fair.

So he runs down the corridor, round corners and up flights of stairs; anything to lose Scott (even though he knows Scott has his scent on speed-dial, so to speak). Somehow, he ends up in the art studio. It's empty, no class in there at this moment in time. He shuts the door, tries to ignore the slightly choking must and smell of chemicals. He already feels like he can't breathe and this room isn't really helping. He's about to turn and leave, to find somewhere else to hole up until the final bell for the day (would it be so bad to pretend to Lydia that he did it, he succeeded?). But then he hears a sniff from somewhere in the corner. The sound of someone hastily pulling themselves together in the face of possible intrusion.

Stiles pauses, takes a nervous step towards the centre. There would have been a time, not even that long ago, when he would have been curious, and nothing else. None of this heart-thudding, palms-sweating terror he's feeling he has now. Sometimes a nasty voice likes to whisper in his ear, to tell him that it was his own fault he got possessed. By prying in things that weren't his business.

He stills keeps going though. He wants to know.

He peeks around an easel, ready to take down a crying werewolf if he needs to (he's not really). But it's not a crying werewolf. It's a crying banshee. But Stiles prefers to call her Lydia.

She's crying without any breath left in her, her chest heaving up and down in short, sharp movements. She's exhausted. The wide yet glossed over look of her eyes settles it; she's having a panic attack. She's been having one for a while. Stiles isn't sure how long she's been here or how she's managed to not pass out yet. But he quickly concludes that that doesn't matter. She needs help.

He isn't sure that he's the best person for the job. His own panic attack is hovering somewhere around his ears, temporarily distracted by the sight of Lydia's tears. It could return at any moment and then what use would it be?

He doesn't care. "Lydia?" he asks, a little nervously. He knows that when he's mid-panic, he can snap at those trying to break through the glass box closing in around him. If Lydia snaps at him, what will he do next? Probably just sit and panic next to her, try and match his hyperventilating to her own.

She finally looks at him and sucks in a deep breath, shaking her head. "I'm fine," she whispers, "just…I'm fine," she repeats, and Stiles knows what she's doing. She's trying to convince herself that she's alright, that she can get through this on her own. "I just…I just…" Her face crumples and she's starting to cry again. "I don't know how to do it without her Stiles!"

It's an impressive amount of speaking considering her current state. Stiles doesn't remember ever being able to say quite that much during one of his panics. Sitting down beside her, he keeps his hands in his lap (just in case this is one of those panic attacks that get worse with someone else's touch). But she's having none of that. She turns herself towards him, her face coming to press firmly against his arm until he shifts to pull her against his side in a slightly lopsided one-armed hug. Then she wriggles slightly, coming to rest against the ridge of his collar bone. He can feel her tears pooling there. His eyes drift across the room, expecting to find the fallen Aiden sprawled on the floor because this is so damn familiar.

He is vaguely aware that Lydia's crying has a pattern, centred around her determination to hide her tears. It makes him sad that she is so scared about showing him the tear tracks on her cheeks, but he can't blame her. Not when the only reason he has come across her is because he was running away from sharing another panic attack with Scott. So he lets her try and stifle her sobs (decidedly in vain) for a few minutes, until she suddenly calms. Panics attacks can be like that; like a fire raging until suddenly one big bucket of water extinguishes it completely. She flops in his arms, exhausted. He feels as if he's been holding his own fear back the whole time she's been freaking out against him and now he too feels fatigue dragging his shoulders down.

Finally, she looks up at him. "I wanted to be her lab partner. Nobody else's. But she's not here and I just don't know how to keep going without her…" She's not really talking to him, more to herself. But he nods his understanding, just in case she needs some reaction from him. "I keep thinking she's going to come back, like this is some sort of holiday she's on. But she doesn't. She's never going to come back, Stiles…."

Hearing his name, Stiles decides that this is his moment to speak. "I know," he says, after a long moment of silence as he tries to work out what he can possibly say to help. "I miss her too." And he does. He misses her in between the horror of what the nogitsune made him do, where he feels a thick guilt that he doesn't spend more time mourning her loss. We killed her Stiles, we wanted to kill her, we don't care, says the voice in his head at this time and that's usually when Stiles starts having to scream himself awake or start counting his fingers.

"Why did she have to die?" Lydia whispers, her voice shattered like a china doll that some petulant child has picked up, and thrown across the room. The voice still lingering in his mind tells him that what Lydia is really asking is why did he have to kill her and Stiles has to cough to stop panic sealing his throat shut.

The cough brings Lydia's gaze up to him and she frowns, realisation blossoming in the corner of her red raw eyes. "But…you're not okay either, are you?" She kneels up on her legs, her face inches away from his. She's suddenly lucid again, and Stiles knows that she will see through any lie he tries to spin her.

So he shakes his head. A wonky smile tries to break through but doesn't quite succeed, leaving him with an odd grimace. "But you already knew that, right?" he asks, bitterness in his voice. She's the banshee who can apparently sense his every emotion- surely that means he's spared having to admit his failure himself?

She manages a smile back (even that little, reluctant smile brings a light to her eyes that Stiles thinks is brighter than the sun). "I was a bit preoccupied," she admits, gesturing to her tear-scarred cheeks. She shifts so she's resting against the wall instead of Stiles' shoulders, her eyes narrowing as she concentrates for a moment. "Your dad…you were scared about him?" she asks, and Stiles has to marvel at her abilities, despite everything. He nods, eyes straying down to his fingers. She places a hand on his arm, gently squeezes. "He's okay, he's still okay."

"When I was…when he was..." Stiles closes his eyes, because he doesn't like to think of the nogitsune and how it felt to have that monster strutting around his mind. "When I wasn't me, sometimes the nogitsune would just feed me with these images, over and over. And they were always the same. He was dead and I had his blood all over my hands. And sometimes he would show me how I did it, how I took my time killing him, so the pain never went away, until he was begging to be killed…" Stiles feels his heart quickening again so stops talking. He can't lose his grip again, he was doing so well.

"But you didn't, Stiles. You wouldn't."

"I hurt Scott, didn't I? It's the same thing. I had no power over what that thing was doing, none. I was damn useless," he spits out this last word, a word he's heard so many times in relation to himself. Teachers whispering in the staff room; he's a sweet kid but he's useless, won't amount to anything.

Lydia shrugs. "I wasn't able to stop myself poisoning all of you guys at my birthday party, either. We're not superhuman, Stiles. We're not werewolves. And who knows whether even one of the werewolves would have been able to keep that thing out? It chose you Stiles, because you had so much love in your life. It knew it could cause the most chaos with you. Knew you had the brains so that combined with its own, it would be almost unstoppable." She smiles weakly, and nudges him with one shoulder. "You probably should be flattered."

Stiles has to laugh that that. He glances to her and Lydia isn't sure she's ever seen someone look at her with such love in their eyes. Even her parents never mustered up that much emotion; not because they didn't love her but just because they didn't do emotions in the same way that Stiles did. Stiles was unabashed about how he felt for people. If he hated them, he hated them. If he cared, he cared with every ounce of him. "That's one way of looking at it," she hears him say, distantly. She knows it's her turn to speak now but she can't quite find the words she's looking for, as if someone has pulled English right out of her head. He's waiting for her, and a moment later he's grinning in a slightly knowing way that irritates her enough to snap her out of it.

"Shut up," she says, and stands up.

"I didn't say anything," he grins, stumbling onto his own feet (sometimes she imagines Stiles has a couple of invisible limbs that exist purely to trip him up).

"You had a look, on your face."

"An interrogatory one?" he asks, quick as a whip. He's grinning even more now, thriving on her irritation like he always has. And like she always has with him, if she's honest.

"Very funny."

He flicks his head back in a smug movement of acceptance. Then he turns serious again, hands sliding back into his pockets. "Do you really believe those things? Or are you just saying them to make me feel better?"

She shakes her head at once. "That's not really my style," she points out, shrugging. He has to nod at that because it's true. Lydia doesn't really like to beat around the bush. "I read up about them, when we were trying to find a way to save you. This book said that the nogitsune will do anything it can to cause as much chaos as possible, including who it picks as a host. It couldn't pick Scott because he's already a wolf and Allison…" she shifts, uncomfortable because she doesn't want to speak ill of someone no longer here. "Well, Allison's family meant that she upset some people in the past, who then didn't trust her. You were the perfect and only choice out of the three who sacrificed themselves to the Nemeton."

This makes Stiles feel a little lighter. In his head, he is the idiot, the fool, the weak one who was easy prey to the dark fox. But Lydia makes him almost sound like a hero. "Thanks," he whispers, and finds himself taking her hand, squeezing it gently. She glances down at it and for a moment Stiles thinks she's going to pull it back, but she doesn't. She keeps it there and then slowly squeezes back.

"We should get back to class," she murmurs finally, after a comfortable moment of silence.

Stiles shakes his head. "No we shouldn't…."

"We shouldn't?" she turns to stare at him, confused and slightly apprehensive (because when Stiles starts disagreeing with her plans, it usually means he's about to do something incredibly crazy and stupid. Think fire alarm.)

"No, we shouldn't." He comes to stand in front of her, and places his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Lydia, we made a bet. And I lost. But so did you. Neither of us can make it through a day at school, we're a mess. We shouldn't be here. Our friends died, to name but a few nuggets of shit that we've dealt with lately. So why do we think we should be trying to fight our way through school days? Screw it, life's too short. Let's get out of here."

Lydia raises an eyebrow, clearly not convinced just yet. "Where would we go?" she asks, looking around the room as if this is the entire world now.

Stiles shrugs, waggles his eyebrows in an almost challenging fashion. "Anywhere."

Lydia rolls her eyes, pushes past him. "Stiles, I'm not really in the mood for some wild journey into the unknown. I'm tired. You were having some pretty vivid dreams last night so guess what that meant for me. I just want to get through today and go home and rest."

Stiles grits his teeth, pushes his hands together in frustration. "Fine, fine, fine no adventure," he huffs, hurrying after her and coming to block her path again. "Come back to mine. We have too many boxes of cookies because my dad thinks that's the answer to everything. Plus he's off work today so we won't be alone in the house in case you were worried about it being weird…"

"You know I wasn't until you said that," Lydia huffs, rolls her eyes again. Then she pauses, clearly considering it. "I have a science paper due tomorrow."

"I can help, you know I'm better at science than you."

Lydia shoots him a look of abject disgust at such an idea. But it's hiding a smirk that suggests she knows he's right. Maths on the other hand- he stands no chance. With a start, she realises that this is one reason perhaps that Stiles will always reside in a different part of her heart to Aiden. Because he will actually study with her when he asks to, not just try and get her dress off. "Are you really in a state to study?" she asks.

"Are you?" he retorts. When she doesn't answer, he moves to open the door. "I have cookies, a father who will make terrible jokes at you and quite possibly the best collection of stupid sci-fi films that I know you're itching analyse the logic of with me. I know we think we're not allowed to be happy right now, but when have we ever cared about the rules?"

Lydia considers it, then purses his lips. "If we go, you lose the bet," she states, grinning.

"So do you," he retorts, but she shakes her head.

"You said if you did make it through the day, I lost. You said nothing about me staying in school."

Stiles opens his mouth to argue, then realises she's absolutely right. He grits his teeth, then smirks, takes her hand and tugs her towards the door. "It's worth a few meetings with the guidance counsellor."

"At least five."

Stiles pauses their progress back down the stairs, turns to shoot her a forlorn look. "Five?" he splutters, and she nods.

"And I'll be checking. I know where the files are kept now."

"You're evil." Stiles states this with rather a lot of feeling but Lydia is quite used to this boy insulting her as if he means it. It doesn't bother her at all, not when she knows how he carefully frames her drawings, buys out whole department stores because he's scared to get her the wrong birthday present.

So she just laughs and nods. "An evil old banshee," she agrees.

He turns to face her, standing on the step below so that they're basically the same height. "Evil, yes. Banshee, yes. Old? Not quite. You're too pretty to be old yet, Lydia Martin." The words come out of his mouth automatically and maybe in the past he would be embarrassed. But not now. And it's that unabashed adoration for her that makes her suddenly lean down and kiss him.

Flush on the lips.

And just like before, when she was trying to halt his panic attack, she feels that little spark flash against her chest. That spark of realisation that she's got to find a way to be brave enough and let herself fall in love with this boy. She feels the softness of his lips, the slight puff of a surprised breath, the nub of his nose resting against his. And he feels a warmth spreading across his shoulders and down his back, feels her lipstick smudging against his lips, feels her hands coming to rest against his cheeks.

She pulls away a second later. She's looking at him with wild panic in her eyes as if she's terribly afraid she's overstepped a mark. So he moves to reassure her, placing one hand on her back. "Did you think I was having another panic attack?" he asks, grinning.

"Something like that." Her voice is a whisper, as if she still doesn't quite trust herself.

Stiles nods, still grinning (and why wouldn't he? This has been his standard dream for longer than he can remember). "Thought so." He moves his hand back to hers, takes it with a firm sense of confidence that this is where it belongs. "Come on. Wouldn't want to have another panic attack, would we?"

Sitting in class, trying not to worry, Scott receives a text from Stiles. It says three words: "Ten year plan." He grins, shakes his head, returns to his work. Because he has this sneaking suspicion that if Lydia Martin has finally started fulfilling her side of the plan then Stiles might just be alright.