Something was telling him that she could hear what he was saying. It shouldn't have made any sense, but when he spoke to the unresponsive Lydia there was no lack of conviction in his voice – no fear that his words were in vain. Even so, the first thing to go through his mind in this situation was the sick familiarity of it all. He figured the cruelty of this reality was too great for this to count as a nightmare, either. Not even his own, oftentimes dark, consideration of life would dare touch this subject matter. Stiles had buried this feeling away years ago, but here it was again taunting him.

"Lydia, I know you can hear me," he said, hands trembling.

If it took every ounce of willpower he had Stiles was going to keep himself together. If he fell apart now he may as well have lost hope already, and that just wasn't going to happen anytime soon. He had itself in him, he thought. Stiles told himself that whatever was screwing with her head had unknowingly made a serious mistake in trying to tangle with Lydia.

"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-"

Stiles felt another lump in his throat and images of a small boy sitting in the same hospital enter his mind. The boy paid little attention to anyone else but the woman lying motionless in the cot. Food, sleep, the chill air – they all faded into the background.

Fighting past those memories, his voice finally cracked under some unusual pressure in his chest that slowly came from seemingly nowhere. The strain was similar to when Lydia had ignored him and pretended to not care, and it came back in full swing. Something made him shudder and tighten his grip on her hand, those potential tears coming to fruition before spilling over the bridge of his nose.

"We can't do this without you. What happens when more things start coming?" Stiles gestured, knowing that wasn't really it even if it were just as true as what he continued with, "We – I… I really fucking need you, Lydia."

There it was, open for anyone to hear. Stiles knew she heard it. He could feel her hear it as crazy as that thought was and with that the black weight on his heart began to fall apart. He wiped away the tears still left on his face and tried to sniff away the remaining buildup. He wished he could explain it. One moment that familiar darkness crushed down on him as hard as it ever had and then the next it was as if something – someone – had lifted it off of him. Right when he could feel the trickle of an epiphany on its way, there was a flutter of footsteps from behind him and he felt compelled to let go of the limp white hand.

Instead of the medical personnel he had been expecting, hoping for them to bring her back with nothing but good news, there was both his and Lydia's parents. The bedraggled woman was saying something to his dad, who were both arguing with the other man as he gave Stiles a fiery stare and pointed at him threateningly.

"This was your fault, wasn't it?" His voice was just as thick with contempt as his eyes, "She's been hanging around with this former kidnapper and look what happened!"

A white heat spilled over inside of Lydia that she didn't recognize or expect. This was very different, but the essence of it was the same as the frantic beat still residual in the ambiance. The source wasn't changing, but the output had that anger filling it and Lydia had a strange compulsion to hit something or someone.

Lydia knew how to handle this – she knew exactly what it was like when someone took an uninformed perspective about her.

Where did that come from?

That was the explanation of the feeling and its familiarity, beyond that intangible 'feeling.' It was the beginning of an argument forming on her lips, followed by incredulity and the sting of ignorance being directed at her. As before, she let her muscles relax with a deep breath and simply forget it, move on and focus on what was in front of her. Unfortunately there was only a wall in front of her.

When would someone tell her where she was? The lonely cell was starting to get tiresome and Lydia had some words for Stiles.

Though he might have felt like he was right before the last few years of his life, now the only thing he could sense was a sudden urge to throw a punch. Everything that had been put in front of him these past few months – nearly losing his dad, best friend, and now whatever was happening to Lydia – was culminating to a triple point where he couldn't believe what he was hearing. These people, or rather just Lydia's dad, had sat by the wayside when she needed someone most and now they had the fucking nerve to call Stiles out. It was enough to bring him to make a fist and seriously consider that punch.

Then, just like the panic attack and earlier when he was certain he was going bawl his eyes out, it faded. He had taken a deep breath and let his shoulders relax slightly. Stiles felt the weight shift from his shoulders and give him room to speak. Before he could even open his mouth, his father started first.

"Let's just calm down and talk about this," he said through grit teeth, obviously holding back what he really wanted to say, "Scott and Stiles said she just collapsed, and I believe them."

"Well obviously you do! One of them is your kid," Mr. Martin retorted with.

Lydia's mother, who had been quiet after entering the room and looking at Lydia with falling eyes, turned to speak to the group.

"I believe them," she murmured, "I believe him."

Stiles remembered when he went to Lydia's room after she had been distant and detached from all of them, specifically that her mom had seemed aware of the situation. It dawned on him that she had known what was going on with her daughter but she didn't know what to do or how to handle it. The nightmares, the screaming must have all been too much for them. Seeing her child so close to nothing had paralyzed her into inaction.

Stiles knew that's what happened to parents. He knew it's what happened to husbands, as well. It was the same apparent apathy in his dad that masked the crumbling psyche of someone who had lost a loved one – Lydia to her mother, and Stiles's mother to the sheriff. If that cool, collected voice that had been calming him this whole time wasn't there Stiles would have fallen into another rage over the fact that Lydia's dad was focusing his energy on being angry. Years of it had taught Stiles that it never lead to anything more than a breakdown.

"Look, I really don't care what you think," Stiles said evenly, "You can say it was my fault all you want. Go ahead, waste your time. I've got more important things to worry about."

He punctuated that final sentence by nodding to the three of them and sitting back down at his original post. There was only the sound of a flustered man walking off to alert Stiles to any change behind him. Then her mother joined him by sitting on the opposite side of the bed. She gave him a brief smile that he returned sadly.

Despite his willingness to stay up until Lydia stirred, Stiles found himself asleep before too long. His eyes were growing heavier and heavier with each second and his hand was becoming sweaty and clammy still holding onto Lydia's, gently rubbing circles into it just like he always did. The only thing that kept him semi-conscious was the ghost of her index finger flitting over his knuckles just like she always did.

And with that thought he blinked and the next thing he saw was an open white space, the hand in his responding with urgency to his pulling. The strawberry blonde hair in his peripherals was a godsend, and then there was the familiar hitching giggle trailing behind and the long finger running across his knuckles. Stiles swore he felt the pang of nerves when she did it in real life just as she was in the dream.

And just like in reality the first reaction he had was to rub his thumb in circles before turning to leave her with a short, inviting kiss. Stiles had that same warm explosion in his chest before turning around with a smile split clear across his face, ready to pull Lydia close to him. What he found however was the hospital room sans awake-Lydia. The dream fell to the wayside when he saw what had woken him – a nurse was shaking him, repeating something.

"Sir, sir? Are you…?" He trailed off and it took Stiles a couple seconds to figure out what was going on.

"Oh, yeah… uhh, no I'm not family," he stuttered out, awaiting the inevitable clear off speech.

Instead he only got a sigh and an exasperated look from the nurse, who was holding one of those clipboards he had always seen doctors and nurses carry around with them.

"I mean, I'm not family but I'm kind of a loved one… does that count?" He didn't even know what he might be getting into.

"All I really had to say was that – oh, Ms. Martin!"

The young-looking nurse spun around to speak with Lydia's mother, who had apparently stepped out and gotten two cups of coffee. There weren't too many times Stiles could say he had even talked to her, but he was starting to like this woman a whole lot. The nurse explained something that Stiles couldn't quite catch to the woman, whose brow knotted together and eyes took on the same watery filter Stiles had seen before. Whatever he had said, the news wasn't great.

The older women thanked him with a throaty response before sitting back down and offering Stiles a coffee. He took it and drank it under what he could only assume wasn't an auspice that Lydia would wake soon. A heavy silence damp with an unspoken conversation followed for a few minutes before Stiles lifted his head to speak with the woman across from him.

"Do they know how long?" He asked, desperate for an answer to this question he'd been asking for hours now.

The disquiet in the sigh that answered him was enough for that question. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy. Stiles didn't want to dwell on the possibilities without being told just how bad it was, so he kept questioning.

"Can they… help her?" He followed up with, still somehow hoping for the best.

Stiles didn't want to escalate this anymore than he felt it had. He had already jumped to the most terrifying conclusion just hours before and the only reason this wasn't on the forefront was the dream only moments prior to the nurse's interruption. It had felt so real and left him with a mild content incongruous to the horror of sitting bedside to a comatose Lydia, holding her limp hand waiting for a response.

"They say it's… that it was a blockage. It might be; might be…" she trailed off, eyes flitting to the girl in the bed, "It's probably a tumor. Surgery… or maybe, maybe something else if it comes to that."

The woman's eyes looked as terrified and lost as Stiles was feeling then.

"What do you mean, something else?" He put out, optimistic again.

Stiles hated feeling like he was interrogating a terrified mother, but again he jumped to conclusions and he wanted her to say something else. Her answer was exactly what he didn't want to hear, though. The answer was the monolithic C-word that seemed to overtake whatever conversation it had succeeded, regardless of anything said before and between and usually after.

With it came Stiles's memories of sitting next to a bed of a woman withering away, eyes calm but body weak. His mom had always told him it would be okay, that things would be fine. Then, one day, he wasn't allowed to visit her. Stiles didn't know how to handle that, since he had his schoolwork brought into him at the hospital and had stayed with his mother for so long he couldn't really remember the span of time. The next day he wasn't allowed either, and soon a week passed and his father told him what happened to his mother.

Then he was standing beside a wooden box, crying and clinging onto his dad.

Just as the coffin enclosed his mom, the wood began to take shape around Lydia and Stiles's back gave a jerk. His eyes welled up, the heat in his face removed and leaving a cold want in them. He could see the hole they would put her in, the machinery used to dig it up, and the forlorn man who asked curious questions and said nonsense meant to leave them with a lasting impression of her. Then they lowered her into the hole and covered the coffin with dirt, as if hiding her from the rest of the life ahead of her.

Stiles could feel his breaths quicken, the air in his lungs expand for a brief second and leave almost immediately, when these events splashed across in his head. They were Lydia's future, or lack thereof. If they botched a surgery, who knows what would happen. If it was cancerous then it was even more fucked and Stiles knew it. He'd seen his mother go through that hell and end up six feet under, and here was the girl he'd list right under his mom as the most important woman in his life.

Right when the difficulty of breathing struck him hardest, Stiles could feel a calm rush over him like it had before. This time he was confused, wondering how he could be settling like this under the current circumstances. He got out of the chair, walking away in the hope to get some fresh air.

When he let go of Lydia's hand, there was a strong change in that calming feeling. The fragile snap of a breath left his throat before it all clicked. Stiles sent a text to Scott, fingers flying in an insane hurry.

There was white. Blank white openness and the feeling of something pulling at her to which she responded by pulling back. Lydia started suddenly, wary of what this new environment was before she saw the figure that was pulling at her, at least from behind. She could pick Stiles out from any angle at this point, and this was one she appreciated frequently.

The thought made her laugh a little and, out of some instinct, she gave Stiles's hand the usual caress of finger over knuckles before it responded in kind. She saw him turn around, or she thought she did, and she prepared for the follow-up kiss – and preferably more – before she was set back to the half-lit cell.

"Fuck," she exclaimed to the nothingness.

There was a whole novella-length essay she could write about the pathetic state she was in, but it didn't matter anymore because that rigid pattern of beat, beat, beat had taken to an irregular sequence again. As before she took a breath and tried to line hers up with that pattern and set it back in line with a normalized heartrate, but this time there was a struggle on the other end. Lydia had never felt resistance when this happened. No matter the state of the beat, it had always succumbed and fell under whatever she was doing. It was always comforting when it happened and she couldn't explain why, but now that it seemed like there was some inhibitor between the faint rattle and her attempts to equalize it with her own breathing she felt panicked and scared. The action still happened but the even steadying took longer than it ever had.

Lydia wished she could explain why it felt right to keep that pace in check, or why she felt compelled to do it in the first place, but at the moment all she wanted was to talk. To speak to someone who would listen to her and most importantly she just wanted to see Stiles's eyes respond to something she said again.

A/N: As usual: review it, friends! Cue the "it's radical" speech, and etc., but seriously it's great when you do it. Think of it as an investment in Stydia futures :)

And, of course, I don't own the TW anything. I'm just a goof who likes writing in the universe.