Author's Note: Oh, look! It's a happy chapter! (Sort of. Not really. Cause nothing's ever happy in the Teen Wolf world.) Thanks so much for everyone who suggested some ideas, I really appreciate it. There was one idea, however, that was quite popular amongst you guys, so you'll see at the end of the chapter what I decided to do to keep the plot moving forward. Enjoy!

Lydia had truly thought things might have been beginning to look up. For her. For Stiles. For Scott. For Melissa. For every damned werewolf in Beacon Hills that deserved a little peace for once.

For one week after her kiss with Stiles, she felt solace forming in the air around her, thick and hopeful and oh-so-uplifting. One week of subjecting herself to intense and extremely necessary introspection in which she thought about how her nightmares just so happened to subside when she'd slept with Stiles the night of the graveyard incident. It was just shameless, fully-clothed cuddling, really. But she'd never felt safer. When she went home for the rest of the week while Stiles recovered, she was dumbfounded at how significantly less enjoyable her sleep was without him and how badly she wanted to kiss him again.

A bond had formed between them that night. She didn't know what it was, and she didn't know what she wanted it to be, but it was there and burning bright as she tried to slowly sink back into her life before the Darach.

And still, after that week of dissecting her own brain for some kind of understanding of herself and what her life was, she found nothing. But not only this, she was profoundly disturbed at how she hadn't thought at all of the fact that she'd stolen a body from the morgue and stabbed it with a kitchen knife. It was like these actions were just added to the string of normal incidents in her life and tucked away to the back of her mind, dismissed. That couldn't be healthy, could it?

Her days of relative peace were interrupted only on the eighth day, when she'd decided to go to the Beacon Hills Annual Bonfire. Everyone always went, because despite how lame a bonfire sounded to the teenage ear, the Beacon Hills bonfire always turned out to be an incredible event. They played good music. There was quality food. There was every teenager in Beacon Hills grinding up against each other without a care in the world.

Lydia wasn't even sure who ran the bonfire anymore, but she knew that she had to go. Yes, she may have known that Beacon Hills wasn't everything it seemed and she'd seen more death and gore and trauma than any human being should ever have had to endure, but she was still Lydia Martin. A party wasn't a party unless she showed up.

"You look fine, Lydia. Great, actually. Phenomenal-"

Lydia turned away from her vanity, squinting at Stiles with pursed lips. "I'll have you know that bombarding me with compliments will not make my hair curl any faster."

Stiles' expression twisted into one of exasperation. "You've curled the same strand like twelve times."

Lydia gave one of her signature eye rolls and went back to her task, ignoring him. She was perfectly aware that he'd been sitting on her bed watching her curl her hair for about half an hour, but patience was a virtue, no?

"You're going to have fun tonight, Stiles," Lydia said matter-of-factly, curling yet another lock of her strawberry blonde hair.

"Forgive me for completely rejecting that idea due to my past experiences with parties," Stiles said.

"This isn't even a party, really," she lied and shrugged in the mirror. "It's a community thing."

"So...a party," Stiles said flatly, looking at her in the mirror.

Lydia put down her curling iron and began fluffing her hair and tilting her head, admiring every strand and ridding it of flyaways.

"Well, I refuse to mope around here all day," she said. She turned around to face him, satisfied. "And you're not going to mope around here all day either. Stiles, your lack of social experience is really going to bite you in the ass one day."

"Great, now can we go?" Stiles asked, getting up from the bed and making his way towards the door of her bedroom.

What a grump.

She grabbed him by the hand and spun him around, grabbing his other hand and holding them in front of her. "Stiles, please just do this. For me."

She could physically see his eyes soften as he looked down at her face. She knew that all this bouncing around between near-death experiences and putting on the facade of a regular teenage boy was getting to him. He was maturing more and more every day, growing older than he should be.

Lydia could feel it too. That sense of isolation from the regular world, where she didn't feel she belonged anymore despite how hard she tried. She had the whole supernatural world on her shoulders now and she was forced to keep living amongst people who were ignorant to the most important aspect of her life.

She never thought she would admit that, but there it was. Werewolves, death, survival - they were all her life consisted of now, whether she liked it or not. Dressing up and going to a party was like sitting at the children's table at a dinner, where she didn't have to worry about anything essential, but felt completely inadequate in doing so.

She held Stiles hands between her own and he sighed, closing his eyes. He had completely recovered from the graveyard incident - physically, at least. He had been sleeping remarkably better too over that past week obviously, since the circles under his eyes had almost diminished completely. Even so, Lydia still felt the strange but unquenchable need to protect him like he was a magnet for all impending doom.

Stiles let out a breath. "I'm sorry. I just- I mean, a party? It's-"

"I know. I get it. But you can't keep punishing yourself over all this. You deserve this," Lydia said, trying to convey as much sincerity as possible because she knew Stiles didn't believe it.

He looked about to say something else, but Lydia interrupted him with an exaggerated eye roll. "Would you stop over thinking everything?"

They stood there for a moment, Lydia rubbing her thumbs in circles on his hands before he took them away from her and put them on her waist instead, pulling her towards him.

They'd come to realize through their friendship - and now more-than-friendship - that despite Stiles' tendency to talk a lot and Lydia's need to express every intelligent thought that crosses her mind, her and Stiles' relationship seemed to be made up of mostly contact. Physical contact and eye contact were the only things they needed to thoroughly communicate, and it was refreshing. It was different.

"You do look great though," Stiles said, smiling.

She was wearing a nice dark green dress that cut off a little above her knees. It was made of a strange leather material that hugged her curves nicely but was sophisticated enough with long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline. She wasn't looking for any boys on her ass, after all. She wasn't quite sure what she and Stiles were, but she was certain that she liked it.

"I know," Lydia grinned, swaying with his hands on her hips.

And then they were in the Jeep - which Lydia wasn't sure she was particularly fond of just yet - and Stiles was in a significantly better mood. They had just missed the sunset and were now driving in twilight, the sky a quickly dimming dark blue. They didn't say much as they drove, but they didn't feel the need to turn the radio on either. Stiles' fingers tapped idly on the steering wheel while Lydia leaned her head against her headrest and made due with watching the streetlights blur by, lighting up her face in intervals.

They turned into a large parking lot and when they got out of the car, Lydia was facing a vast sandy beach where she could see the large yellow bonfire about a hundred feet away, lighting up the ocean shore. She could hear music in the distance, a tune that she vaguely recognized as "Unique In Its Madness" by Of Verona, and she smiled to herself at the hundreds and hundreds of teenagers she saw ahead. She could practically see all the red solo cups from where she stood, and she was pretty sure their contents didn't consist of punch and Coca Cola.

"A community thing?" Stiles said uncertainly, making his way over to her side.

Lydia just looked up at him and shrugged. He held out his arm for her to hook hers through, but she raised her eyebrows at him. Obviously, he wasn't quite aware that they were past hooking arms. She rolled her eyes and yanked his arm down by the hand, gripping it tightly in hers and pulling him over the curb of the parking lot and down to the beach.

She ignored the small twinge of worry in her stomach and reminded herself to get checked out for an anxiety disorder at some point soon. Recently, she almost always felt this way upon entering a new environment - and she refused to acknowledge the fact that this gut feeling was usually right. She wasn't going to alienate herself from every event in Beacon Hills because of a gut feeling. This was a new start.

They made their way towards the huge bonfire, moving through different scatters of people chatting or dancing or flirting. She recognized like 98% of the people there, and a lot of them were shooting glances at her hand intertwined with Stiles' and their eyes darting between them like they were the new celebrity scandal. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at all of them, and when she caught the eye of a few of them, she raised her eyebrows, challenging.

Not that she couldn't understand their shock and curiosity. Who would have thought Lydia Martin would show up to a party with Stiles Stilinski and look genuinely interested in his company? But then again, she was no longer surprised by the idea now that she knew this boy, and now that she's watched him die. Her feelings were so raw and new at the moment that she was surprised she wasn't lying in a ball in the corner with her thumb in her mouth.

Stiles seemed completely oblivious to the looks, his head darting around like he was trying to take in everything all at once.

But Lydia knew him better than that.

"Who are you looking for?" she asked.

Stiles whipped his head around to look down at her, incredulous. "How do you know I'm looking for anyone? I'm not looking for anyone."

Lydia just gave him a skeptical look that could wither him where he stood.

Stiles sighed, his body visibly slumping as they walked. "Look, I'm trying not to ruin the mood. But Scott hasn't answered my texts all day and I'm wondering if maybe he'll just show up here."

Lydia looked away from Stiles and sighed, pulling him in a different direction as a herd of drunken teenagers came hurtling towards them. "Stiles, he's a werewolf. He's got things to do."

"You don't think he'd find the time to answer his text messages after all the crap that happened?" Stiles asked, allowing her to tow him along towards the six foot wide bonfire. "It's weird."

"He's probably too busy drowning in sexual tension between him and Allison to reach his phone," Lydia said flippantly.

"Or he's dying. Painfully and bloody and surrounded by dick werewolves," Stiles supplied, raising his voice as the music changed to a song with a crushing beat.

Finally, Lydia paused, pulling him close so he could hear her. "He's fine. You're over thinking things again."

"Am I?" Stiles asked quietly, staring her in the face as she latched on to his forearm.

She didn't answer. She couldn't, because then she'd be lying to him and to herself. Who knew if Scott was okay? Stiles had every right to be worried, though she really wished he wouldn't be. She truly did want him to have good time.

She wanted to have a good time with him.

Lydia sighed. "When you left his house that morning after the graveyard...he told you he'd let you know if anything serious came up, right?"

"Yeah-"

"So, you don't trust him? You don't think he's learned his lesson about underestimating you?" Lydia pushed.

"Underestimated or not, I'm still human and he's still a werewolf and he's also really stubborn," Stiles said.

Lydia furrowed her brow and shook her head at him. "So are you."

Stiles mouth fell open indignantly, but Lydia shook her head vigorously. "Look, can we just stop talking about werewolves for one night? Please? Scott can take care of himself."

Of course, Lydia knew that would be something a little hard to believe for Stiles, since it was only weeks ago that he had to step into a puddle of gasoline to stop his friend from killing himself.

Stiles stared longingly at a red solo cup as a guy ran passed them without a shirt on, obviously completely hammered.

Lydia widened her eyes up at him. "You want to drink?"

"Maybe," Stiles replied, wrinkling his nose adorably.

Lydia raised her eyebrows at him and curled her bottom lip, impressed. "Hm. Didn't peg you as the type."

Stiles sighed, still staring at the grinning teenagers bustling around them. "Me neither."

A tipsy Stiles was a happy Stiles. It was odd, because Jackson had always been a really angry drunk, and that's what she usually expected when she had a few drinks with someone.

But as she sat on a log by the fire, Stiles sat on the ground beside her, spinning a cup around on his finger and just talking and talking.

It might have annoyed her if she wasn't a little tipsy herself.

"I mean, a werewolf? A werewolf. Never gets old, really. Blind werewolves and werewolves that come back from the dead and that's nothing compared to the friggin Kanima-"

"Stiles,"Lydia warned, but apparently Stiles had it covered. He nudged the guy beside him who looked exceptionally irritated by him.

"I'm in an online game that battles mythical creatures," he whispered.

The guy widened his eyes dramatically and nodded his head before rolling his eyes and looking back to his girlfriend. Lydia smacked Stiles on the back of the head.

"Ow! Lydia-"

"Control yourself," Lydia whispered harshly.

Stiles craned his neck to look up at her. He raised his eyebrows at her and blinked stupidly. "You really think they give a shit what I'm talking about? I could talk about that woman I stole from the morgue last week and they wouldn't even blink."

Lydia held her breath, but no one around them reacted to what he was saying. They were smooching or flirting or laughing, some dangerously close to the fire.

"See?" Stiles said, and then he gave one really loud "ha!"

He bounced his plastic cup off her forehead and she closed her eyes, willing herself not to attack him. At least, the rational part of her was trying not to attack him, whereas the drunken part of her gave out a really horrifying snort of laughter.

And then she wouldn't stop when Stiles was giggling and nudging his head against her knee.

"Lydia," Stiles said, trying to stabilize himself again. He pulled himself on to the log beside her, dusting the dirt off his jeans. "You know, I never believed that gingers don't have souls stuff, you know? You have a big soul...it's so big-"

Lydia leaned in next to him, brushing her lips against his ear as she whispered, "I'm strawberry blonde."

And then Stiles broke into laughter again, shaking with it as she nudged her head into his collarbone and grinned stupidly.

"You know there's fireworks tonight, right?" Lydia said while Stiles was wiping tears from his eyes.

"Fireworks. That'll be eventful," Stiles said, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her closer.

If Lydia wasn't so drunkenly happy at that point, she might have noticed a pull in her stomach.

Like an elastic band.

A feeling so uncannily similar to what she felt back at the graveyard, when the Darach let her go.

Only now, it was coming back.