When she awoke there was no blood on her face. There wasn't much to see in fact, as her surroundings were blurred by a strange darkness that the shallow illumination of a single light did nothing to quell. Lydia was sitting on the floor of this space, curled into a ball until she gathered herself to stand and let her eyes adjust to the lack of natural light. Even so, the dull bulb above her only seemed to stretch its glow in a brief spiral before the disturbing black jutted out and filled the room.

What alarmed her more was the fact that no one else was there. Deaton, Scott, Stiles – no trace of any of them. As her thoughts started to run in circles a small voice crept up inside of her, increasing in volume exponentially before exploding in her head.

"Do you think there's a normal for us?"

Lydia's words rang out echoing around her, seeming to emanate outward from her and reverberate along walls. The sentence rang in her head, repeating and repeating until they blurred together into a stream of noise. There was little light and only the sound of her own voice repeating the words as if from an intercom. She wasn't at the clinic anymore that much she could tell. The small box was black from first glance and the only objects she could make out were a bed and walls, padded with a soft material that gave resistance when she gave it a stronger push. The absence of a door, or a doorknob, made her do several laps around the room searching.

The jumbled white noise in her head continued as she searched, hands hoping to grasp anything that she could push, move, or get through. Out, that's all she knew or wanted. Lydia wanted to be out of this room; wanted to go back to the clinic where, even with the threats of narcoleptic werewolves, she'd rather be. Jackson she could handle. A windowless, strangely dark room with no apparent exit was much more difficult, especially with the voice in her head – her own voice – repeating mixed, confused sentences over and over again.

"It was too great, so I started to ask myself if I'd just wake and it'd all be a dream."

This time the voice was louder. So loud that Lydia took to the bed and covered her ears with the rough-spun fabrics covering it, trying to drown the words out. This was the dream. There was no other explanation for the overlapping waves of sound in her head that occasionally broke through and appeared as words. They all happened to be things she had said, but it still didn't make sense any other way. It was a horrible nightmare, one even worse than those featuring Peter.

A sudden urge to fall asleep came over her. A debilitating fatigue spread until the bed was a welcome feeling underneath her and the rough covers and pillow felt like a piece of heaven. Try as she might, sleep never came. Seconds began and hours ended, time spinning out of control with the washing, all-consuming breadth of noise in her head. The fuzz would clear from time to time and events from the previous days would play out. Remembering when Stiles told her he was there; remembering hiding in her dreams; remembering the kiss; being stalked by Jackson; remembering the awkward first time after watching a horror movie; remembering Stiles.

Stiles.

"Stiles."

The hiss had disappeared completely upon thinking about Stiles. The voice in her head was calm when it spoke the syllable and didn't resume its awful white noise afterwards. This, Stiles, was real. The emotional tie was keeping the voices out, leaving Lydia free of the overwhelming voice – her own voice. With that she could close her eyes, rest against the hard surface of the pillow, and get some sleep. Run, run, running far away from questioning the reality around her Lydia's eyelids fell slowly as she drifted to sleep with the comforting silence around her.

Lydia dreamt of the clinic. There wasn't a scene playing out in front of her, there wasn't even a physical embodiment of anything that told her it was where she fell. There was just a feeling; feeling Stiles shake her – she didn't need to see him, she remembered this anxious grasp – and Deaton speaking in a low voice. What he said she couldn't distinguish, but the silence from the two boys was enough of an indicator that whatever he had said wasn't particularly great news. The next thing she knew was Stiles and Scott bringing her to a standing position and, trying her damndest, she couldn't get a word out. Then again it was a dream – it didn't matter what she 'said.'

There wasn't much to it afterwards. They seemed to be taking this dream incarnation of her somewhere, to a hospital hopefully. Something clicked in her consciousness inside of the dream that confirmed it – it was unusual, like she had been answered. It wasn't that she knew the information prior. It didn't feel like a tucked away fact at all. At first she was unsure and then, then a bright light flickered in front of her that erased the question.

Then she heard something else – no, hearing wasn't how Lydia would describe it. It was a sound most definitely but it wasn't that harsh static of her own voice previously tormenting her from sleep. It was a beat, a repetitious pattern that had a definable periodicity that came out towards her and was asking something of her – it was pleading. Without thinking Lydia slowed her breath to an exaggerated inhale and exhale until the beat slowed down and joined hers.

Now her breathing and this continuous pitter-patter were in sync, and with that Lydia was jerked from the dream back into her strange, compact, ill-lit reality.

Stiles was panicking. His heart was racing, beating about a million times too fast for him to contain it. The jolts in his chest reminded him of the discomfort in his back each time his heart beat, sending twin signals to his brain. His foot was jammed straight into the accelerator and the Jeep was giving everything it could as the two boys raced to the hospital, Stiles desperate over the slumped figure in the backseat. The blood had stopped coming after only a slight stream from her nose, leaving a few drops still on the floor of the operating room in the clinic. When she collapsed, losing consciousness almost immediately after her garbled speech, the threat of a panic attack would have been close if he and Scott hadn't reacted immediately. The confusion had overridden whatever anxiety at the sudden collapse, but the fact that she was still breathing – if erratically and with a shifting rate – had helped Stiles keep himself composed.

Or as composed as he was going to get. There was a strained silence in the car as Stiles considered what Lydia had been talking about before she conked out. The only part that seemed important was what she said about dreaming the whole thing – something he too wondered. Sure there had been plenty of time between them as friends but the rapidity by which they stumbled into their relationship wasn't anything he could grasp. Stiles always told himself that she was his crush, that one unreachable person he just didn't have any chance with, so when they seemed to come together so easily it was almost too much for him to comprehend.

"It was too great, so I started to ask myself if I'd just wake and it'd all be a dream."

That was what she said. She thought what they had was so great that it was dreamlike. If his heart hadn't been pounding into his chest then he was sure a giant grin would have broken out at the thought of it.

Instead it kept pounding. Stomping. Blood was rushing in and out, making the muscles flex and relax then cycle over and over again. Pounding; slamming. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter now, the force of his own breathing become too difficult to manage. Jerking and rocking. Scott took notice and managed to wrestle the steering wheel out of his hands and swerve them to the shoulder.

"Woah, panic attack?" Scott asked.

Stiles did nothing other than nod and try to regulate his breath. He tried everything, thinking about his dad being alive; the facehugger scare; sex, porn, fucking jerking off even. He tried to visualize the kiss in the locker room, Lydia, anything that would stop this. None of it helped but Stiles kept thinking of her, kept repeating scenarios that had played out before in the hopes that something would stick and calm him down. Even recalling the feeling of just lying in his bed, legs intertwined did nothing to regulate his hearbeat.

But then he felt some pressure being relieved. At first he figured it was Scott attempting his strange ability to take some of the pain but when he looked up his friend was on his phone, face contorted and saying something to the person on the other end. The stinging pain in his back first, then the struggle to get air in no longer felt like such a monumental task. He let out an exasperated gurgle before inhaling deeply, the cold air refreshing and bitter on his tongue.

"N-no, I'm good." Stiles motioned to Scott whose face was still plastered with fear at two of his best friends' sudden breakdowns.

"I'm fine," Stiles repeated.

Even if he wanted to explain why the panic attack, and the pain in his back that had been bothering him the whole night, there wasn't anything to say. First there was the beating pains and inability to breathe, and then it slowly evaporated. His mind had been racing for Lydia and his heart followed suit. Then, in the tiniest speck of an instant, it was as if he heard something – a brief interlude where he heard her voice telling him to calm down.

So quiet, so gentle, it was all he needed to forcibly relax his muscles. Stiles looked up into the streetlight leaving an orange glow in a circle around him, the slight warmth coming off of it relaxing his bones and sending another relaxing wave over him. He stood up, dusting off his knees and stretching his back out without feeling any upward resistance. Whatever had just happened felt damn good and his body responded in turn. Turning to Scott, he gave him a pat on the shoulder and a short smile before turning around to get back on their way to the hospital.

"I'm just glad you didn't kiss me," he said when Scott stepped into the passenger seat and closed the door.

Lydia rose from the bed quickly, her eyes wide. The light had begun to fill the room, clearly defining the white, padded walls and the cot she was sleeping on. There was a faint outline of a door, but indeed there was no way for her to open it from the inside. She wanted to scream, to shout for Stiles, but when she tried to shout again there was a dull sensation that flittered over her senses before she fell back into the bed asleep.

"When do you think she'll wake up?" Stiles asked Scott's mother without taking his eyes off of the pale face, eyes closed on the cot.

"We don't know yet. There's no serious damage on the outside, but we won't know the full extent until we run a few tests. It'd be best if you just…"

Stiles wasn't putting up with someone telling him to leave.

"No, I'm staying. Sorry, I'm just not; I can't leave her if she wakes up tonight." Stiles knew it wasn't very likely to happen, but he would never forgive himself if the first thing Lydia woke up to was an empty, cold hospital room.

She wanted to scream, to yell, to shout. Everything Lydia could do best, wail and cry for help. It's what her powers were, or whatever the hell she wanted to call being a banshee, and now she couldn't do anything about the silence. Voiceless she sat in the cot, feeling a black grip take hold in her chest. There was an immediate hopelessness to the words she wanted to yell, as if Stiles wouldn't listen even if he could hear her. It was that same darkness that covered her when her nightmares started up in earnest again.

"It's pointless," she said to the empty room, "I'll only hurt him again, hurt myself, then it'll all go to shit anyways. Best to just… stay inside here."

Lydia's eyes were watering now as that thought trickled between the cracks of the darkness, filling it up and leaving her all sealed up. All tied up, invulnerable to whatever he could say. It didn't matter now – there wasn't any reason to keep the charade going. If she kept it going then her outstanding capability at ruining incredible things would inevitably come into focus, sending both of them into this downward spiral.

"I'm not in love. I'm not in love. I'm not in love…" she whispered to herself.

She repeated the mantra in time with that faint beat in the back of her head, tears flowing freely onto the pillow in the quiet of the now bright room. The sting of the words on her tongue brought the harsh tears further into focus when another voice interrupted her, this time masculine and all too familiar.

"Lydia, I know you can hear me."

Lydia's heart pounded faster and faster, this time outpacing the patient beat alongside it. Stiles was speaking to her over that same insane loudspeaker her own voice had used earlier. His voice was so fragile it made it nearly impossible to keep repeating those words.

"I'm not in love. I'm not in love. I'm not in love…"

Then he continued,

"I'm right here. You know I'm always right here, so just… just wake up. I don't know what happened, but we can fix it. I can't-"

His voice stopped, the pitter-patter increased tempo, and the shakiness that always preceded tears filtered into his speech.

"We can't do this without you. What happens when more things start coming? We – I… I really fucking need you, Lydia."

"I'm not in love…" she whispered, crying earnestly.

She had to keep telling herself that. There wasn't any way it was real. Here, this blackness slowly loosening its grip – that was real. Being in love with Stiles Stilinski, mutual affection and care, wasn't real. It just couldn't be. Nothing was ever perfect, not even the fucked up perfect they had together. It was perfect that he could be adorable, idiotic, intelligent, clumsy, and athletic all at once; amazing that he cared about her enough to ask if sex was 'all right' with her when she half didn't care if his dad was in the same room; incredible she felt the same way about him that he did for her.

There was mutual love there. Something way beyond what she ever felt with Jackson, even if she did define that as love.

"I'm…" she tried to start the repetition up again, but her voice failed her. She couldn't even say it anymore.

A/N: I had a little bit of a moment writing this. I originally wanted to go down a way, way darker path but I felt it was too black/white and this is a bit more nuanced. Either way, I hope you liked it! If you didn't that's totally okay too. No matter what you felt, leaving a review tells me so much and makes me want to continue writing this stuff.

It's, like, the best feeling getting reviews guys!

Oh and P.S. I don't own anything related to TW. I'm just being a dork and writing fanfiction.

P.P.S. This isn't nearly the final chapter!