"Scott?" Stiles called the moment they stepped into the vet's office.

He was leading the way, checking behind the front desk as if Scott was crouching behind it, and running to the examination room with his sneakers squeaking across the floor. Lydia and Melissa rushed to catch up, giving each other looks when Scott didn't respond.

As Stiles entered the room, he practically ran into Scott, who pushed his hands out so Stiles didn't run head long into him.

"Stiles? What are you doing here?" Scott asked, and his gaze moved behind Stiles, to Lydia and then to his mom. His eyes widened.

"Mom? What the hell-?"

"She can help," Stiles said hurriedly, holding out his hands in a placating gesture.

Scott shook his head vigorously, realization dawning on him."What? No, Stiles-"

Melissa cleared her throat, and every face in the room moved toward her.

"I think I can decide for myself if I want to be here or not," she said quietly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Lydia couldn't help but agree. From what she'd seen, Melissa McCall was a very capable woman.

Scott was about to protest some more, but Stiles cut him off. "Look, we have a lot more important problems right now, Scott. We need help."

Scott gave one last look at his mom, who raised her eyebrows at him. The werewolf sighed and looked to Stiles reluctantly. "What is it?"

"You might wanna sit down," Stiles said.


Lydia knew she'd have to help Stiles explain everything. He was already falling apart at the seams, sitting on the examination table waiting for Allison, Isaac, Derek - who apparently had been there the whole time, lurking in the shadows and brooding - and Peter fucking Hale to get settled in with Scott and Melissa, leaning against the wall.

They all had to be there, of course. These were the people who would help them, and she and Stiles didn't want to have to explain all of this a thousand times over. Once was enough.

Lydia leaned against the examination table beside Stiles. It was strange facing all of these people and having them look at her like she had all the answers. She was so used to just tagging along, being left in the dark and being pushed out of harm's way.

Now, they were the ones in the dark, and she was the one to pull them out.

Stiles sighed. "I'm assuming you told Derek all about your ambush on the Darach," Stiles asked Scott, his voice flat.

Scott nodded, and Derek gave a nod to validate his response.

"Alright, Melissa, you're gonna have to bear with us here. We don't have time to explain everything, but you'll catch on," Stiles said, and Melissa gave an understanding nod.

Stiles looked down and opened his mouth to start, but instead ended up looking to Lydia. Her stomach did a little flip in her stomach. She was nervous. Why was she nervous? These were her friends.

Derek Hale was her friend. Peter Hale was a, uhm, colleague. At least, she was forced to think of it this way considering they were going to be spending a lot of time together for the next few...days, or weeks, or months, depending how long it takes.

Ah, look how far they've come.

She swallowed. "So, as you've probably come to realize... the Darach is after me. Not to kill me, obviously. I think it's attempting to make me..." she swallowed again, and found herself looking anywhere but the eyes of the people in front of her. "To make me join them."

"How so?" Derek asked.

Lydia took a breath. "They want me to kill another. Someone innocent, someone pure. It's some sort of sick initiation process."

"Long story short, we tried to trick it into thinking Lydia did sacrifice someone - which had some unfortunate side effects..." Stiles swallowed and the people in the room who experienced the graveyard incident shifted uncomfortably. "But, uh, yeah, for the past week we thought it worked in the end. Until earlier tonight."

This was the part neither of them wanted to speak of ever again.

It was Lydia who stole the reigns though, because Stiles looked like he had trouble opening his mouth.

"Stiles and I went to the bonfire tonight-"

"Oh, wait, so are you two like a thing now?" Isaac asked, uncrossing an arm and pointing to them with his index and middle finger.

Lydia looked at him with a furrowed brow, incredulous. Stiles narrowed his eyes at him and shook his head, probably wondering why he chose the absolute worst time in the world to ask that question. The rest of the room just sort of glared at him.

Isaac looked at the floor. He looked like an oversized child who'd just gotten scolded. "Sorry. Go on."

"So, uhm," Lydia cleared her throat and hoped she wasn't blushing after that interruption. "We were about to leave to go look for Scott when the fireworks basically went berzerk and started firing into the crowd."

"Was everyone okay?" Allison asked, concerned.

Stiles and Lydia gave each other a look before Stiles spoke up.

"Well, that's where it gets kind of, uhm...strange."

It was Lydia's turn again. After all, she could explain it best. Stiles hadn't felt what Lydia felt- and he hadn't screamed like she had.

"I turned around for a split second and it was just...it was like the world froze. The fire went out, the fireworks just disappeared and the people...they were all standing there. Just staring at us like- like they were possessed."

"Possession? That's not possible," Derek said. Lydia was surprised that it came from him - a guy who'd been a werewolf since birth.

"It already happened to Stiles," Lydia said before she could stop herself, and every head in the room whipped towards him. They were going to be there for days explaining everything that had happened.

Stiles cleared his throat. Lydia knew that he was not one to be uncomfortable with having all eyes on him, but in this case, he looked beyond distressed.

"When we summoned it the first time it kind of- I dunno, it used me to talk to Lydia."

"How come you never told any of us about this?" Derek asked.

Stiles made an exasperated noise and splayed his hands out. "Look, we're telling you now, okay? It doesn't even matter anymore-"

"Doesn't matter?" Peter spoke up, moving forward. "You don't think the tiny matter of this thing being able to possess humans would be important? It could get a hold of the entire town-"

"That's what we're trying to tell you if you would just listen," Stiles said.

Lydia spoke before anyone else could interrupt. "We think that it knows we deceived it, and if I don't do what it wants this time, it's not just going to use my friends as bargaining chips. It's going to use the entire town."

No one said a word as they let that sink in.

Lydia continued. "The kids at the bonfire survived. They were all unconscious when we left, but we called the cops-"

"You called the cops?" Derek exclaimed.

Stiles hopped off the table and stepped towards Derek. "What the fuck else were we supposed to do? We couldn't just leave them there and we didn't have time to check if everyone was alive-"

"You should have told us from the beginning, Stiles. I know you like to think you can, but you can't handle this on your own," Scott said. Lydia knew Scott only meant well, but she was sure that Scott's tone of voice must have registered as completely patronizing to Stiles, because he turned to him slowly.

"No? You don't think we can handle this? Listen, I don't know what the hell you were doing in here all night, but Lydia and I have been dealing with a lot more shit than you seem to understand," he spat.

Lydia could hardly breathe. They were biting each other's heads off and Lydia could see something raw and insidious growing inside of Stiles that she didn't like at all.

Scott continued, looking shocked at Stiles' outburst. "Stiles, you're human. You could die-"

"So could you, Scott! And you can't even answer your phone when all night I've been thinking you were dead-"

"I was busy!" Scott was yelling too now.

Stiles face slackened and the room went painfully silent. Then he was smiling and shaking his head, incredulous. He looked away and put a hand over his mouth.

"You were busy," he mumbled to himself.

And then, all at once, he pulled an arm back and punched Scott across the jaw, causing shocked outbursts from around the room that Lydia couldn't concentrate on, because Scott was looking back up now and his eyes were yellow and his teeth were fangs-

Scott snarled and shoved Stiles until his back hit the examination table, and Lydia yelled "Stop!"

Stiles seemed to momentarily forget about the fact that Scott was turning into a werewolf with anger directed straight at him, and he gripped the table and kicked Scott in the chest. The blow only pissed Scott off more, and he hurled himself forward too fast for anyone to act, and dragged his claws across the side of Stiles' neck.

Derek was already changing and moving towards them but someone got to them first.

"Enough!" Melissa shouted, and suddenly she was standing between the two boys with her arms outstretched. "That's enough."

Scott morphed back to human almost immediately, and Stiles pressed a hand to his neck, shocked. Lydia was relieved to see that there was only a little blood leaking through his fingers and Scott hadn't hit anything vital.

The werewolves were all human now, standing in fighting stances around them. Allison was standing with tears in her eyes and her mouth in a tight line, obviously hating her friends fighting like this just as much as Lydia did.

She felt a sense of deterioration, like something around her was crumbling, falling apart at the seams.

"Let me see," Melissa said to Stiles, her voice calm.

"It's fine," Stiles said, breathing hard.

"Stiles," Melissa insisted.

He removed his hand and let her take a look at the wound. Four claws had grazed him, breaking the skin from the side of his neck right over to his throat. It bled slowly and in small amounts but it kept coming as Melissa searched around for bandages.

Scott was stepping back, his mouth parted and his eyes wide, shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he breathed, and the apology was genuine and full of guilt.

Stiles had his head down, but he looked up at Scott with his eyes, no longer angry. There was only sadness there now, and Lydia wondered if Stiles could feel it too. The deterioration.

He pressed his lips together and gave Scott a small nod that said he forgave him and he understood, but he didn't say anything back.

Melissa came back with a cotton bandage that was meant for animals, and she pressed it to Stiles' neck, speaking as she taped it down. "Now, if we're going to beat this - this Darach thing, then we're going to need everyone, do you understand?" Melissa said with burning determination that only a mother could have. Her hair was falling in her face and she struggled to put the bandage on Stiles and look at everyone in the room at the same time. Stiles grabbed her hand and gave her a nod that she took as a sign that he could do the bandaging himself, and she stepped back.

"I don't think it's going to be enough," Isaac spoke up. "I saw it that night at the graveyard. It was like it was indestructible- it's stronger than all of us put together."

Lydia watched as Melissa kept her eyes on the boys, looking between them and obviously wondering where and when this friendship went wrong today.

"It may be powerful, but I'm willing to bet it doesn't have nearly as much brain power as we do. We've got-" Melissa looked around the room doing a quick count, "We've got eight people, including myself. And one of them's a genius."

She gave a pointed look at Lydia, and Lydia blushed. Melissa smiled knowingly.

"She's right," Derek said. "We can't overpower it on strength alone, but we can outsmart it somehow. We're going to have to kill it."

Scott spoke up, turning away from Stiles with guilt still on his face. "How? Brains or not, this thing is still unkillable."

"Nothing's unkillable. If that's even a word," Peter added under his breath. He sighed. "We just have to find its weak spot. Its Achilles' heel."

"It's Lydia," Stiles spoke up, one arm holding the bandage in place while the other was wrapped around his torso, like he was hugging himself. Everyone looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

"Lydia is its weak spot," Stiles explained. "I mean, that's why it's here. That's why it's doing all of this is because it wants Lydia to join it. You guys ripped the thing apart and shot arrows in its face back at the graveyard, but Lydia was the one who made it disappear just by speaking Latin."

Lydia knew Stiles was only trying to explain the ways in which Lydia was the Darach's weakness, but it still felt like he was glorifying her in some way, and she felt self-conscious. He still believed in her, and he was trying to get the others to believe in her too.

"What are you suggesting?" Isaac asked. He seemed intrigued by what Stiles was saying, and Lydia could swear he had looked at her like he was genuinely impressed with her.

Stiles didn't speak for a moment, looking over to Lydia like he was seeing her for the first time. Every time he looked at her, it felt like this. Like he was peeling a new layer off of her and discovering something about her that no one else would ever know.

She wondered what he was seeing in her now as she stood there with her arms crossed, frightened and exhausted and wearing a silly green party dress.

He looked away from her and back at the others. "I'm just saying that if there's anyone who knows how to kick this thing off the face of the earth, it's Lydia."

Lydia gave him a small smile from under her lashes. She realized that everyone was looking at her, waiting for her to speak. The smile wiped from her face and she put her hands out defensively.

"Listen, I don't know how it works. This connection I have with it. I-I can't just turn it on and off-"

"Lydia, it's okay," Allison said, moving toward her friend. She put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a small, thin-lipped smile.

Lydia nodded, feeling like she wanted to fold in on herself with all of these people suddenly counting on her. They'd give her time. They'd give her time to find out whatever there was to find out about the Darach, and then they'd listen to her.

She was the chief of this operation now. Stiles' eyes said it all, and the spark of fear that was fraying her nerves was a good indication as well.

She took a deep breath. "I do know that we have to figure out a plan right away. We have to trap it somehow, and that won't be easy. We've deceived it once before, and it's angry now. It'll expect us to play tricks on it."

"Well, then, I guess we'll just have to regain its trust," Peter said.

He didn't elaborate, and no one bothered to ask. They'd figure it out soon enough.

The room was quiet, and Scott seemed to be trying to bite his tongue, but it didn't work. He turned to Melissa. "Mom-"

Melissa held out a hand and spoke firmly. "No. Nuh-uh. Let me get something straight right now - none of you are getting rid of me. I'm in this now and you're all psychotic if you think I'm going to go back after all of this."

That was it on that subject. No one dared to argue, though Scott looked severely displeased with that statement.

Lydia cleared her throat. "Stiles, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Stiles looked just as confused as the rest of the people in the room, but he obliged, following her out of the room, out of the vet's office and into the parking lot.

She sighed, turning to face him. "Are you okay?"

Stiles shrugged. "It's just a scratch-"

"No. No, that's not what I meant."

Stiles slumped a little and licked his lips, looking away. It was still dark out, and Lydia guessed it was around 4 in the morning as they stood under a streetlight, the small breeze blowing their hair into their faces.

"Lydia-"

"Please, just tell me the truth," she begged quietly.

Stiles looked at her, grinding his teeth. His brow was furrowed with some kind of pain that she wasn't quite sure she understood, but she wanted to. She just wanted him to open up to her. It wasn't fair when she was an open book to him what with his miraculous power to analyze her, and he was still an ancient vault, locked and bolted for years.

"I..." Stiles started, and then he took a deep breath. His voice was a whisper. "I don't know why I did that. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"I think you know," Lydia said softly. "I think you know that this is too much, and that Scott's right. You can't keep trying to do this alone anymore."

Stiles closed his eyes at that, like he was wishing she wouldn't say those words. He looked like he desperately wanted to cry. She grabbed his hands, much like she did back at her room all those hours ago, but with more sincerity than she'd ever shown anyone.

"I brought Melissa here even though I knew it was the last thing Scott ever wanted-"

"Do you remember what you said back at the hospital? In the office?"

Stiles opened his eyes and looked up at her, like he was surprised she'd even remembered. He knew exactly what she was talking.

"You called her mom, Stiles. I know it wasn't just a slip-up," Lydia said, rubbing her thumbs in circles on his hands and stepping closer.

Stiles shook his head. "Wha-what are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that you know her just as well as Scott does, and I think you love her too," she whispered. She let that sink in for a moment, in case he needed a second to truly realize that. "You wouldn't have let her come today if you didn't think it was right."

Stiles just stared at her, and then he looked down at their hands and took a deep breath, nodding.

"Just let us help you, Stiles. Okay? Let them take care of themselves this time."

There it was. What she had wanted to say at the bonfire. She truly hoped her message had come across this time, underneath this streetlight with his hands in hers.

Take care of yourself.

So she kissed him like she had back at Scott's house, taking her hands away and putting them on each side of his face instead. He kissed her back like she was a lifeline, and she let him take whatever strength he needed from her. He let his hands trace down her face and neck. After so many times Stiles had put his life in front of hers and kept her safe, it was her turn to be there for him, and she knew that. She was the strong one now.

It was her and the Darach.

They broke apart, and Lydia leaned her head against his chest. "You ready?" she whispered, breathless.

She wasn't sure what she meant by the question. Ready for what? Ready for whatever mission they were cooking up back in the vet's office? Ready for whatever danger lay ahead of them?

But it didn't matter, because Stiles had an answer, and Lydia knew it was the truth.

"I'm ready."


Author's Note: There you go readers! I'd like to hear your thoughts on my characterization in this chapter, because I've been feeling a little iffy about it and I really do like to know what you think so that I can improve. Especially this darker side of Stiles, because we've never really seen him so angry in the show, so I wasn't sure how to go about it. Anyways, hope you enjoyed! I'm off to start the next chapter. :)