A/N: Okay, SO. I'm continuing this story after a very long hiatus. But I've recently gotten back on the Stydia train and just really wanted to keep going with it. There are a few changes, and I just want to point them out at the beginning of the chapter. One is that since the last update on this story, I've taken to writing most of my fics in the present tense, and it was too difficult to get the flow right when I tried to revert to writing in past tense. So starting with this chapter, all updates will be in present tense. I've also changed the date where they end up forward by a year to make up for the year that passed since I started this fic (I'm very bad, and I'm very sorry).
Anyways. I plan to raise this fic from the ashes, and I'm posting this chapters as a bit of a survey to see if anyone is still reading it. If so, I will continue to update, as I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to do with the story. If you read it, and if you like it, please just leave a review so that I know to keep going.
Thanks everyone :)
It isn't what he expected. Stiles isn't sure what that was, exactly, but maybe robots, or witches, or something equally terrifying, like the void. But it's just an apartment. It matches the bedroom, in it's mixture of Stiles' quirk and Lydia's class, and isn't inherently threatening in any way.
He steps forward, pulling Lydia behind him, her fingers still twined firmly with his. There's a soft click, and then light floods the apartment. He glancedsbehind him to see Lydia's fingers on a switch on the wall. They both look around, quiet, taking it in.
"It's so…"
"Normal?" He finishes, eyes flitting over a grey sofa and a flat screen TV, and a wall of books that spans the entire length of the place.
"I was going to say us."
Her voice is soft, like she hadn't meant to say it. He squeezes her hand. She must see it too, the things that are hers, and the things that are his. It's obvious to him. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, though, at least not that he can see. Nothing other than them. His eyes fall on the kitchen table, sporting a bowl full of nothing but bananas.
"Maybe we should just sit down and see what we remember. Find a place to start." He suggests. She's trembling beside him, and he thinks it probably has nothing to do with being cold. She nods, and he steers her toward the table. Stiles flips through the cupboards in the kitchen, coming up with a bag of fancy looking coffee. There's a lot of French on the label, future-Lydia must be in charge of that, but it will get the job done. So he pours it, along with some water, into the coffee maker on the counter, and pokes at the buttons on the front until a light comes on. He scans the rest of the kitchen then pulls open a drawer, unsurprised to find the notepad and pens he wants on the first try. Everything is set up exactly the way he would have done it. It makes perfect sense. There's even a ball of red string sitting in the drawer next to the coloured markers.
He grabs what he needs, then heads back to the table. Lydia is chewing on her thumbnail, and Stiles reaches out to gently pull it away.
"Are you okay?"
It's a stupid question, because he doesn't expect the answer to be anything other than no, but he needs her to keep it together. He needs her.
She gazes up at him, hazel eyes rimmed with gold, almost reminiscent of the way Scott's used to be. They seem to look through him.
"It's worse here. The feeling that you…" She pauses. "It's worse here."
Stiles falls silent as he processes that, and she slides her hand across the table, grabbing his.
"The 'I'm going to die' feeling?" He asks, eventually, just to clarify. His mouth goes dry, though he's not really sure why it even matters, not when they're already so in over their heads. But it's hardly a good omen.
She nods.
"I just thought you should know." But she looks afraid. And he realizes she isn't holding his hand to comfort him.
"Hey." He slides his chair around the table to sit next to her. "We're going to figure this out, okay?" One of his hands finds her cheek, the motion familiar, like he's done it a million times. It occurs to him, in the back of his mind, that maybe here, in this body, he has.
She looks like she wanted to argue, or maybe cry, but her eyes fall on the notepad on the table.
"That girl. This has to have something to do with either her or the fangs. Or maybe both?" She mutters, switching into problem solving mode. Stiles suspects it's the only way she can cope. But he grabs the pen and starts scribbling anyways.
"Okay. Sure. Do you think the date has any significance? Like why did we end up now?" He wonders, looking back up at her. She shrugs.
"Maybe something's going to happen. Or maybe there's something we're supposed to do?"
He hands her the pen, getting up to pour them some coffee. His mind is fuzzy, probably least of all with sleep, but it smelled good and familiar and his mouth was still dry. When he brings the mugs back to the table, Lydia has already filled most of the page with text and arrows.
"What do you have?" He asks, setting a mug down in front of her. She puts the pen down and sips at the coffee, sighing. It's exactly the way she took it five years ago, and Stiles wonders if that could have changed. What if twenty-four year old Lydia prefers two sugars to one?
"It keeps coming back to that woman from the motel. She was obviously connected to the fangs, it sounded like maybe they belonged to a relative or something." She rubs her eyes distractedly.
It's what Stiles has been thinking as well. But he isn't sure where that gets them.
"And there's something else."
The tone of Lydia's voice prompts Stiles to look up. She's biting her lip, which is distracting in it's own right, but that worried look in her eyes seems to have intensified.
"What?" He asks, a little nervous.
"She said…well she said something about you, right?"
He frowns, trying to remember. It's a bit of a blur now, between the weirdness of the kiss and the panic of losing his Jeep.
"Uh…" He's coming up blank.
"She said you have the sight? Or something like that. She said something about you being able to see the Spirit Gate, like because you're human you shouldn't have been able to." She points to a spot on the page where her loopy handwriting spells out Spirit Gate. He does remember now, the memory coming back to him in bits and pieces. She'd looked…concerned. Frightened even.
"She freaked out." He mumbles. "It was like the kiss was a test, and…"
"You failed?" Lydia asks, lips twitching. He scowls.
"I'll have you know I have gotten no complaints, except for that one time, but that's because Malia is kind of aggressive, and the biting thing got kind of out of control, and-"
Lydia holds up a hand, making a face.
"Don't need to know, Stiles." He half expects her to smile again, make fun of him, but she doesn't. Her face stays impassive.
"I'm just saying." He sighs. "She was babbling about me having this sight, right, and she was definitely surprised by something about the, uh…"
"Kiss." Lydia nods. "Exactly. Like she was feeling you out, and she found something she wasn't bargaining for. Something in you."
Stiles raises an eyebrow.
"Wouldn't be the first time."
This time she does laugh, a quick snicker that she doesn't even try to repress. It almost knocks him off his feet, the relief of seeing a smile on her face again, her dimples, no matter how temporary. They've both been through enough, both wake up drenched in sweat after the nightmares that aren't really nightmares. He suspects they both have a pretty serious case of PTSD, but that seems to come with the territory in Beacon Hills.
Still, he misses seeing her smile.
She sighs.
"What I'm saying, Stiles, is that maybe you had something to do with how we got here."
He freezes.
"Wait, as in, you think I'm supernatural? Some kind of time traveler?" It probably shouldn't sound so ridiculous to him, considering they're sitting in the apartment of their twenty-four year old selves, and she's frowning at him with a face that is slightly different than the one he's used to, and he can actually feel the stubble coming in on his jaw which is something he's never had to worry about before. But he's awkward and clumsy and he bleeds and doesn't heal and it's always felt like there was no one quite as human as plain old Stiles. So it sounds ridiculous. "Like Doctor Who?"
She rolls her eyes at the reference.
"I'm not saying you're an alien. I'm just saying…maybe we shouldn't rule out the possibility that you're the reason we're here."
It almost sounds like an accusation, even though he knows she doesn't mean it as one.
"Okay." He says, though it's not. If he's the one who brought them here, he has no idea how to get them back. And he's not sure he can live with the weight of that on his shoulders, not with Lydia sitting across from him looking so heartbreakingly forlorn that he just wants to pull her into his arms and never let go.
He watches her glance down at the list, scratching out a few things and adding some annotations. He thinks he's glad she's here with him, and feels immediately guilty for doing so. He should wish she was back where she was supposed to be, and that he'd never dragged her into this mess. And he does, for the most part. But every time his heart takes off racing, threatening one of the panic attacks he's so familiar with, all it takes is a glance at her, the way her hair falls over her bare shoulder, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and he feels a little more like they might figure this out after all.
A look at the clock on the wall tells him it's just after eight, and something occurs to him.
"Should we…do we leave the apartment?"
She blinks at him.
"Like are we hiding out in here? Or should we see what's out there?" Opening the bedroom door was one thing. There's an entire world out there that's not theirs. The idea terrifies him, but the detective in him can't help but be curious.
"I…we'll have to leave." She says, frowning. "At some point. We'll only get so far in here. We don't have that much to go on."
They both stare at the notepad in front of them, barely a page's worth of words and names to start with. There's a possibility, that he's aware of, that they won't ever get back. That they'll be stuck here, five years of their lives missing, and that he'll die, leaving Lydia alone in a world she knows nothing about.
He's pulled from his thoughts by a noise, music coming from the bedroom. He looks at Lydia, alarmed, but she just stares through the doorway warily.
It sounds vaguely like a band he likes, though he's never heard the song before. He gets up, walking nervously toward the sound, and sees the phone they discarded earlier lighting up on the bed.
Oh.
He picks it up, gingerly, and sees Scott's name flashing across the screen. Without a second though, he taps the green answer icon, and holds it to his ear.
"Hello?" He's suddenly aware of exactly how much deeper his voice has gotten, and almost drops the phone when Scott's voice comes through.
"Stiles?"
It sounds like him, but not. The same way Lydia does, the same way he does.
"Scott. Hey." He manages. "What's up?"
Stiles could just tell Scott, could open his mouth and let the story fall out, something about the woman from the motel, and magical fangs, and oh by the way apparently I might be supernatural and have accidentally propelled myself and Lydia five years into the future.
But he doesn't. That's not something you blurt out over the phone. And this Scott sounds just different enough from his Scott that Stiles decides to hold his tongue.
"We're running kind of late. I know we were supposed to meet at nine, but you know Kira."
Yes, Stiles thinks, he does. Or he used to. He probably doesn't know this Kira at all.
"No worries." He forces the words out, his tongue like sandpaper. "You want to push it back?"
"Yeah, if you don't mind. Nine-thirty okay?"
Stiles swallows.
"Sure. Hey, where are we meeting again?" He tries to be cavalier. "Lyds and I, we couldn't remember…"
It's a risk, he knows that. For all he knows they could be going to a wedding or something. But if Scott finds the question strange, Stiles can't tell over the phone.
"Four Barrel, right? The one on Valencia?"
It doesn't sound familiar. For the first time, it occurs to Stiles that they might not be in Beacon Hills.
"Yeah, right." He forces a laugh. "Okay, see you there."
When he hangs up, he notices Lydia sitting on the end of the bed. She's obviously been listening, and her head is tilted in curiosity.
"So, we're going out." She deduces. He nods. The whole thing feels even more surreal after talking to Scott. His eyes fall on the curtains hanging on the far wall. He strides towards them, pulling them open a little harder than necessary. He has to blink against the bright morning light, and then he sees it, in all it's International Orange glory.
"Lydia." He says hoarsely. "We're in San Francisco."