"I still think I should take you to the hospital." Lydia told him, her eyes focused on the red line with broken stitches that she had had to unbandage; Stiles shortly winced the moment the cotton pad with alcohol touched against his wound so suddenly, making the strawberry blonde frown even deeper as her eyes studied the boy from head to toe while he rested on her bed. "Or at least to your dad." She continued, holding his arm steady so she didn't hurt him any more than he already seemed to be; not at all surprised when Stiles' head started shaking in instant response to what she had offered.

Of course he had said no; from the moment Lydia helped him up from the parking lot's floor and that relieved gaze and breath of air escaped him, he had been telling her once and time again that he didn't want anyone but Scott to know that he was back. It had made no sense at first, and even while she drove him to the only other place she could think of (her home), she considered ignoring his pleas in order to do what was best for him. But then she had told him to explain, that she would care for him, but if she was going to ignore her common sense, which nearly begged her to take him away to get treated in a hospital, then she needed a good reason for it. "She's going to have all of her attention over here, Lydia." Stiles reminded her for the third time, once again attempting his original argument to stop her from any public announcements. "If she finds me—"

"She's not going to find you." Lydia repeated, reaching inside the little first aid box for patches and a bandage. "I'm just saying that I'm sure I could bring your father in here without anyone finding out." She told him, keeping along that frown that seemed to be nearly permanent from the moment they had headed inside her empty home; one of the many times she thanked her mother's young-at-heart mentality for being away, because at least, like that, she could continue with her boyfriend's confidence request much easier than she would be otherwise. "He's a mess, Stiles."

The boy frowned and pressed his head deeper into the pillow when another pang of pain cursed through his arm when she continued to clean the wound. "I'm aware of that, Lydia. I didn't ask for a nutjob druid-gone-bad to come back from the dead and kidnap me, but she did it anyway." His tone escaped frustrated, angry, even, and, had the circumstances been any different, Lydia would have worried upon his loud tone; but could she possibly blame him for being angry? For being so frustrated, when every single member of the pack, plus the Sheriff, were just as frustrated at their lacking ability to find him in the first place? No; the answer was no.

She sighed after that self-conscious realisation. This is all a lie. "What?" She asked, looking up at Stiles' closed eyes for a moment, stopping upon her movements of pressing the gauze onto his arm to frown a little deeper, her eyes searching his features for what felt like the millionth time for any possible sign that his lips had been the ones to release such words into the air. His eyes opened to look in her direction, shadowed only by the frown that also adorned his features.

"What?" He echoed, his own eyes dancing upon hers as if he were to find any and every answer in one of the many shades of her greens. And a look that the strawberry blonde had seen many times before crossed his visage with a gentle concern that relaxed her upon recognition and nearly completely pushed away the sudden concern over the words she had heard. "Lydia, are you okay?"

There it was; the Stiles she knew and was used to. It was the third time that night that she had heard a raspy unwanted version of his voice whispering into her ear, and it worried her, but the look that crossed his eyes, the gentleness with which he used his undamaged hand to rest it atop hers, the way he started attempting to get up from the bed even if she'd asked him not to, they were all things that reassured her enough to blame the worry she had been drowning in for the past weeks for the things she suddenly heard. She had to sigh, to shake her head shortly with a forced upon grin while her eyes fell back onto her hands to resume the task of bandaging his arm. "You're the one that just came back from being kidnapped." She told him, making sure to not tighten the bandage too much so she wouldn't cut off the arm's circulation. "I'm just a little worried about you." She patted his newly bandaged hand once she finished, lifting her eyes to look into his own.

And before he knew it, he had propped himself on an elbow and used his good hand to rest it at the back of her neck so he could gently pull her close until his lips had crashed against her own; it was a kiss she easily returned, because there had been a moment in the last three days in which she truly started believing she was never going to see the boy again, and that kiss, it felt like a stolen luxury she never thought herself possible to welcome again. Lydiaaaaaaaaa! It made her hands ball against his dishevelled shirt, and remain there even after the shock of such a call inside her head shook her internally. "I'm going to be okay." He reassured her, brushing the pad of his thumb against the soft skin of her cheek and frowning in mirror to her own expression. "I will go to my Dad soon, there's nothing I want more." He admitted. "But I want to talk to Scott before I can do anything to put anyone else in danger."

It was a logical explanation, and it nearly became enough for Lydia; it probably would have if it wasn't for the repeated calls inside her head, the headache that slowly formed, the strangeness of his touch as it fell away from her. "How did you escape, anyway?" She asked him, sitting upright to place the first aid box items in order so she could easily discard of the used ones, and wishing upon her own sanity to blame the unspoken calls to her concern over the boy who had somewhat exhaustedly fallen against the bed once again. "You didn't tell me."

The boy's lips lifted in a rather sardonic smile. "Well, she may be a psycho dark druid, but she's still just human." He admitted before a breathed snort escaped him to accompany the shake of his head. "If that even makes any sense."

"It doesn't." Lydia admitted, lifting her gaze in the amber eyed boy's direction once again. "But still, I know what you mean." She nodded. "What happened?" Her hands continued moving, closing the box's lid and making sure the bandages were rightfully placed against his skin.

The boy sighed, It's a lie! relaxing against the cushiony surface of the bed, his eyes closing once again for a few moments before he even allowed himself to speak. "What I could." He confided, opening his eyes again and attempting to sit, only to be pushed back down by Lydia's touch. He rolled his eyes, but then started speaking again. "I hit her on the head with a piece of wood and ran for dear life." He shifted on the bed, to at least rest softly on his side. "I ran and ran, and then you found me."

Lydia's brows rose, both for his explanation and the repeated calling that did not dissipate from her mind, releasing a breathed puff of near disbelief that she was going to express much more about out loud until her phone started buzzing on the night table; on the caller ID, a smiley Scott McCall shone and announced his need to talk to her. "I'm going to make you something to eat." She informed, reaching for the phone with a little smile prior to forcing upon a strict look across her face. "Don't move." With a simple roll of his eyes to confirm her demands, Lydia stood from the bed, took the first aid kit with her, and left the room, swiping her finger to the right on the screen to answer the call. "Hi, Scott." She said with a rather cheery tone, a cheerfulness placed there rather easily with Stiles being in her bedroom, regardless of the concern over his well being and much more importantly, Jennifer's return.

A subject to which she was brought back to like a punch to the stomach with Scott's voice. "Lydia?" He asked, worry bleeding upon his tone while the wind sang against her ear from his end of the line. "Are you okay? Why didn't you answer the phone before? Where are you?" So many questions thrown so loosely in her direction made her frown as she headed downstairs after placing the first aid kit back in her mother's washroom.

How could she have been so careless? "Scott, I'm okay." She quickly told him. "I'm home, I'm sorry I didn't call before; you should have been my first call, and I'm sorry, I just—" She breathed. Why hadn't she called? Stiles had told her he wanted to speak to Scott before anyone else, yet she hadn't called, and—

"Lydia?" Scott repeated, and she could hear the frown in his words; how dare she? Stiles had already been missing and suddenly she decided to go AWOL on them? "Are you sure you're okay?"

She placed the phone on speaker, reaching within cupboards for bread and jam and peanut butter. "I am! It's not me you should be worrying about, Scott, you should—"

"That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about." Scott interrupted her, and she could hear car doors closing in the background. "We're leaving the site right now. We got the same scent we told you about from Stiles, and—"

The wolf had attempted to continue talking, but a rather tranquil Lydia attempted to interrupt him. "Scott, listen!" And finally the alpha quieted. Her hands moved in sync to open jars and place slices of bread on a white plate. "Stiles is okay. I found him." She said, looking at the phone as if she were looking right into her friend's eyes. "I don't know how, but I was on my way to you when I just..." She sighed. "I don't even know how to explain it. But he's okay, I was going to call you, but some of his stitches ripped open and I had to take care of it. He doesn't want to talk to anyone until he talks to you."

There was a nearly eerie silence from the other end of the line; one in which Lydia would have genuinely thought the call had cut if it weren't for the sound of the engine purring into her ear. "Stiles is with you?" Scott asked, but he didn't sound cheerful the way she had expected him to; he sounded wary.

It made Lydia frown. "Yes." She simply replied. "It's completely impossible, but he said that Jennifer had him, that he barely escaped her." She informed him, listening to the engine echoing louder from his end of the line. "I wanted to take him to a hospital, but he said he'd rather talk to you first instead of putting anyone in danger. And I should have called you, but—"

"Lydia, I need you to pretend that everything is okay." A female voice echoed from the other side, making Lydia frown even deeper as she reached for the phone on the counter. "Go to Stiles, and keep him there, we're on our way to you."

She pressed the speaker button again to turn it off. "Allison?" She asked, almost immediately forgetting about the sandwich in front of her. Why was Allison talking to her from Scott's phone? "What's going on?"

The static of breath against her ear only made Lydia's worry beat like a drum along with her heart against her ears. "You need to keep Stiles distracted, keep him there." Allison replied hasitly. "He can't leave your house, we're on our way."

"What are you talking about?" By now the frustration in the banshee's voice was more than evident as she gripped the phone even tighter, her eyes searching along the counter of her kitchen as if the answers to her questions were printed on the expensive material. "Will you please tell me what the hell is going on?" There was a creaking sound behind her.

"Lydia?" The familiar voice came from the direction of the soft noise.

She turned around. "It's not Stiles." Allison told her rather hurriedly in the phone. "Jennifer's not back, the boy with you is not Stiles, it's just his body." She paused, and the new information sunk within her frame like a heavy rock. "Lydia, Stiles is possessed by a demon."

The boy standing feet away from the strawberry blonde tsked his tongue shortly at the very same time that the phone in her hand flew away toward one of the walls in her kitchen, strangely in sync with a flick of his hand. "I imagined this going a whole lot differently." The boy said in a rough amused tone and the familiar gentle frustration from his features dissipated and shifted into a murderous and terrifyingly amused grimace; his amber eyes shone under the light of the kitchen with a gaze that made a chilling fear travel down her spine, because not only had his expression changed, but the sound of Stiles' voice calling to her in her mind got louder along with the other voices that haunted her. "But I guess we can't all always get what we want, can we?" And with a simple blink of his lids, the expression on his features became many times more terrifying, because the familiar and warm soft amber in his orbs drifted and disappeared behind an endless pitch black. "Plan B."

That's when Lydia Martin screamed.

To Be Continued.